The aurochs plowed the earth with its hooves; it ripped leaves to shreds with the points of its long horns. It bellowed and tossed its head, glaring about it with age-dimmed eyes. The other hunters held their fire, in respect of their King’s right to take the huge bull.
His Majesty aimed. The aurochs drank the air with wide wet nostrils. As if scenting the danger of gunpowder, it lowered its head and charged the royal caleche.
His Majesty fired.
The aurochs thundered toward him. Its wound pumped blood straight from its heart.
“Your mother is dead, Mlle de la Croix,” Lorraine said.
“You are cruel, sir.”
Count Lucien calmly handed His Majesty another loaded gun. With equal assurance, His Majesty aimed, and fired.
The aurochs stumbled, recovered, and plunged on.
Even Chartres hesitated with astonishment, but the game Lorraine led was too tempting. He leaned from his saddle and snatched at Marie-Josèphe’s petticoat lace.
His Majesty aimed, and fired a third time.
The aurochs lurched and fell, crashing to the earth before His Majesty, running as it lay. It spattered blood all around, on the ground, on the caleche, on His Majesty’s dark gold coat. When it died, the hunters cheered His Majesty’s elegant shooting.
“You are missing your hunt, sir.” Marie-Josèphe slapped Chartres’ hand away; this time she meant to hurt him.
The forest trembled like a creature alive. Camels shambled from it, and stags raced out, too many to count. Rabbits scampered headlong after them. A fox rushed into the meadow, its tail bushed with fright. Freed by His Majesty’s first kill, the hunters fired, volley after volley as the bearers handed them newly loaded guns. The camels bellowed, fell to their knees, and toppled over dead. Stags screamed and fell. Rabbits plunged over their bodies, then tumbled, shattered, across the grass.
Madame, in her scarlet livery, aimed and fired with intense calm. The fox leaped into the air, its shriek piercing the cacophony of guns and drums, and fell dead at her horse’s feet.
“His Majesty’s hunt bores me, mademoiselle,” Chartres said. “I’ve found another that I like better.”
Chartres plucked the lace at her throat. Marie-Josèphe backed Zachi, but Lorraine blocked their way. The lace ripped. Lorraine pulled one of the pins from her hair.
Arabian oryxes burst from the forest. The hunting party redoubled their fire. As if felled by a single shot, the antelopes tumbled forward in a tangle of slender legs and slender spiral horns, robbed of their grace by death. Screaming murder, iridescent peacocks flapped and lumbered onto the hunting field, scrambling among the dead stags, over the rabbits in their death-throes.
Gunsmoke roiled up and hid the forest, while the roar of gunfire drowned out the noise of the beaters. The breeze stirred the powder-smoke like thick fog.
Marie-Josèphe urged Zachi forward. Berwick’s charger stepped in front of her. Chartres snatched at the lace again, tearing it from her throat. Lorraine tugged at the lace of her sleeve, dragging it against the painful cut of Dr. Fagon’s lancet.
A cloud of terrified grouse erupted from the underbrush, flapping wildly, so frightened they flew into danger instead of running to safety. Berwick’s horse shied, startling Lorraine’s and Chartres’ mounts.
Gyrfalcons screeched and arrowed toward their prey. Their claws hit the plump birds with the soft thud of crushed wings.
Marie-Josèphe touched Zachi’s mouth with the reins. The Arabian rushed backwards, reared and spun and leaped into a gallop. Chartres and Berwick and Lorraine pounded down the trail after her. Zachi sped past gamesmen opening wicker baskets, flinging a score of gobbling dindon from America into the air. Zachi never wavered when the stout brown birds erupted, into the range of the hunters’ guns.
Hoofbeats echoed so close that Marie-Josèphe feared to look back; she urged Zachi on. Chartres, the lightest of the three men, grasped the hem of Marie-Josèphe’s habit and nearly unseated her, but she tightened her right leg around the saddle-crook and shouted for Zachi to run, to flee.
Zachi ran, joyous and sure-footed, skimming over the path, outdistancing the larger horses. The hoofbeats and snorts fell behind. The laughter of the pursuers turned to irritation, then to anger. Marie-Josèphe leaned as close to Zachi’s neck as the sidesaddle allowed.
Zachi outdistanced the horses, the riders, the clamor of the hunt. Marie-Josèphe rode alone. She sat back; Zachi slowed her headlong run. The mare cantered, then trotted, then walked, along the main branch of a tangle of manicured trails, flicking her ears as Marie-Josèphe spoke.
“No horse can outdistance you,” Marie-Josèphe said. “No horse can even keep up with you. You are magnificent, and when I must return you, I’ll grieve, but I could never afford to keep you as Count Lucien can — as you deserve.”
As if she had summoned him by speaking his name, Count Lucien appeared from a side trail.
“If you continue this habit of speaking to animals, Mlle de la Croix,” Count Lucien said, “you’ll earn a reputation you won’t enjoy.”
Zelis stopped before Zachi; the two mares blew into each other’s nostrils. Marie-Josèphe fantasied that they told each other what had happened, and Count Lucien understood them.
“A reputation as a witch might aid me now,” she said. “I beg your pardon, of course I didn’t mean that.”
“You’re missing His Majesty’s hunt.”
“As are you.”
“I took a brace of grouse; I don’t eat as much as some men.”
Marie-Josèphe’s outrage boiled over. “Those wretched boys!” she cried. “That wretched Lorraine!” Her hair hung wild around her face; her lace was ruined; her left arm ached fiercely. She bunched up her hair in her uninjured right hand; she dropped it; she fumbled at her torn cravat. She burst into tears of anger and frustration.
Humiliated, she turned away from Count Lucien.
“What you must think of me!” she said. “You see me only when I’m begging for your help, or crying like a child, or making a fool of myself —”
“Hardly that.” He rode closer. “Hold still.”
She shivered at his touch, thinking, wildly, Chartres pursued me but Chrétien caught me, they both believe I —
“I am a dangerous man, but you’ll never be in danger from me. Be easy.” Count Lucien’s voice gentled her.
He tied her hair back with his own ribbon, letting his chestnut perruke fall free around his shoulders.