How strange it feels, she thought, to do nothing. I cannot remember the last time I sat without drawing or needlework or copying or prayer.
Yves tried the locked gate. “Open the gate.”
“I cannot.” Marie-Josèphe replied in Latin.
Pretending nothing was amiss, the gentlemen peered into the murky water, straining for a glimpse of the sea woman.
Yves frowned. “Come now. Command the creature to leap for the gentlemen. And let me in, immediately.”
“She’s displaying her ability to breathe underwater.”
“The young lady has mistaken your creature for a fish,” said the senior scholar. The other natural philosophers chuckled. “M. de la Croix, your assistant has addled her mind by straining it with the Classics.”
Glowering, Yves rattled the gate.
If she had gained nothing else at the convent — and she had gained very little — she had learned to face wrath and contempt with tranquility. But facing Yves’ displeasure took all her strength.
“Her lungs possess an anomalous lobe, unique to the sea people,” Marie-Josèphe said, still speaking Latin.
Yves stiffened. “Your comments are of no interest.”
He believes I’ll tell the secret, Marie-Josèphe thought. The false secret.
“She hasn’t surfaced since you arrived,” she said. “The lobe allows the sea people to breathe underwater. To breathe from the water.”
“Come out of there immediately.” Yves’ voice rose.
“She intends to remain submerged until she proves it.”
“Does this anomalous lobe exist, Father de la Croix?”
Yves hesitated. “It does.”
“Why did you not mention it?” the gentleman asked.
“I shall write a paper about it. As I’ve not fully studied it, I didn’t wish to pass on erroneous conclusions.”
“Admirable restraint.”
“Thank you.”
“A glimpse of the sea monster, while it still lives, would please us all.”
Yves snatched up a pike and thrust it through the bars, but the sea woman floated out of reach.
“Mlle de la Croix,” Count Lucien said in a courteous voice, “will you open the gate?”
“I cannot, Count Lucien. I beg your forgiveness. I wouldn’t resist your direction, but this is a matter of the life or death of the sea woman.”
“Is she dying?”
“She’s saving her life. She’ll wake at her King’s command.”
17
The sea woman lay at the bottom of the pool, aware of the dirty water, the fish schooling past, the voices of the men of land. Bright sunlight warned her that she could not dive deep enough to fall into a proper trance. She maintained the languor as best she could, because the land woman had asked it of her. Every little while she gasped water into her lungs, then expelled it gradually.
The land woman was the first being she had dared to trust since her capture, the first being perceptive enough to understand her. She would trust her as long as she dared.
She lay very still, gilded by phosphorescence.
The sea woman drifted supine at the bottom of the pool, her eyes open and staring. Her long green hair floated around her. Underwater, she gasped as if for air.
The King arrived.
Marie-Josèphe rose and curtsied. Count Lucien, Yves, and the gentlemen from the Academy bowed. His Majesty struggled from his wheeled chair. His gout lamed him terribly; he put one arm around Lorraine and leaned his other hand on Count Lucien’s shoulder. Monsieur followed, carrying His Majesty’s walking staff, chasing Lorraine with his gaze. M. Boursin shambled nervously in with the rest of the entourage. The white lace at his collar and cuffs accentuated his prominent Adam’s apple, his bony wrists and skeletal hands. He carried an old book.
“Is it dead?” he muttered. “If it’s spoiled, I’ll be ruined. If it’s dead, I’ll kill myself! It was fat enough yesterday — I should have butchered it then!”
Count Lucien beckoned to an artisan, who apprehensively attacked the lock with a file. Metal rasped on metal.
His Majesty reached the cage and peered inside. “Have you killed my sea monster, Mlle de la Croix?”
“No, Your Majesty.” Marie-Josèphe’s calm was as unshakeable as the King’s.
“Has it drowned itself?” He raised his voice above the racket of the file. Metal shavings fell to the ground.
“No, Your Majesty.”
Count Lucien touched the artisan’s shoulder. The man stopped filing while His Majesty spoke.
“What is it doing?”
The artisan filed at the lock.
“She’s breathing underwater, Sire.”
The artisan stopped —”Why is she doing this?” — and started.
“Because I asked her, Your Majesty.”
The artisan stopped just long enough for His Majesty to speak, then redoubled his efforts at the lock.
“You’ve trained her well.”
“I never trained her at all, Sire.”
“She obeyed you,” Yves said. “Like a dog.”
“She’s demonstrating the function of the unique lobe of her lung. It isn’t —” She hesitated. She kept the false secret. “It only allows her to breathe underwater.”
“How do you know the true function of this organ?”
“Your Majesty, the sea woman told me.”
Lorraine laughed, a short hard bark quickly suppressed. The artisan stopped, filed hard, stopped again.
“Sea woman?” His Majesty exclaimed. “Do you mean to say the sea monster speaks?”
“Marie-Josèphe, enough! I forbid you —” Yves fell silent, like the artisan, when His Majesty held up one hand.
“Answer me, Mlle de la Croix.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I understand her. She understands me.” The artisan sawed at the lock again. “She isn’t a monster. She speaks, she’s intelligent. She’s a woman, she’s human, like me, like all of us.”
“Your Majesty, please forgive my sister — I am entirely to blame, I’ve permitted her to tax herself —”
“Will it awaken and return to the surface?”
“She will do as you command, Your Majesty,” Marie-Josèphe said. “As will I.”
“Stop that noise.” The artisan left off filing and backed away, bowing. “Mlle de la Croix,” His Majesty said, “be so kind as to open the gate.”
She descended, fitted the key in the keyhole, and turned it. The lock fell apart; the gate opened.