The Moon and the Sun

A much easier walk than last night! she thought. She wore her riding habit, more practical and easier to walk in than court dress.

As she neared the laboratory tent, a half-dozen heavy wagons rumbled along the Queen’s Road toward the fountain. Barrels weighed each one down.

Count Lucien cantered his grey Arabian past the wagons. The fiery horse scattered gravel from its hooves, flicked its jaunty black tail, and drew up beside the tent. Count Lucien saluted Marie-Josèphe with his walking stick. Under his supervision, the workmen raised the tent’s sides and the drivers lined up the wagons.

Marie-Josèphe entered the tent, unlatched the cage door, and hurried in. From the Fountain’s rim, she sought the sea monster.

The creature’s long dark hair and iridescent leathery tails shimmered beneath the hooves of Apollo’s dawn horses.

“Sea monster!”

The creature flicked its tails, pushing itself deeper beneath the sculpture. Marie-Josèphe reached for a fish, then thought better of it. The ice had melted around the basket, and the dead things reeked.

“Lackey!”

Unlike the sea monster, the lackey came running, pulling his forelock and keeping his gaze on the ground.

“Yes, mamselle?”

“Get rid of those smelly things. Where are the fresh fish? And the new ice?”

“Coming along from the kitchen, mamselle, here, just now.” He pointed. Several men approached, one with a wicker basket, two others pushing barrows full of ice.

“Good. Thank you.”

He bobbed a bow and ran to hurry the others along. They set a wicker basket of fish inside the cage, then went to work shovelling fresh ice onto Yves’ specimen.

Marie-Josèphe ran over the rim of the Fountain and down to the platform. The sea monster had not tried to escape a second time, for the planks were dry.

It must be terrified, Marie-Josèphe thought, sighing. Frightened animals are so hard to train.

She splashed the water with one hand, patting the surface as she would pat her bedcovers to call Hercules.

“Come, sea monster. Come here.”

The sea monster watched her from beneath the dawn chariot.

Marie-Josèphe swished a fish through the water. The sea monster raised her head, opened her mouth, and let the water flow over her tongue.

“Yes, good sea monster. Come, I’ll give you a fish.”

The sea monster spat the water noisily into the pool.

“Can you make it eat?”

Startled, Marie-Josèphe turned. “Count Lucien! I did not… I mean, I thought…”

He stood on the fountain’s rim, looking at the sea monster. She had not heard him approach. He turned his cool gaze to her.

“Did you not recognize me,” Count Lucien asked, “without my mustache?”

His tone was so dry that she was afraid to laugh, afraid she might be misinterpreting his joke.

He had shaved his fair mustache. Perhaps someone had told him courtiers these days wore mustaches only during military campaigns, and shaved them off—to be cleanshaven like His Majesty—when they returned to Versailles. He had changed his informal steinkirk tie for proper lace and ribbons, and his tied-back military wig for a fashionably styled perruke. Its curls cascaded down the shoulders of his gold-embroidered blue coat. Most of the other courtiers wore black perrukes, like the King’s, but Count Lucien’s was auburn. The color flattered his fair complexion, and his pale grey eyes.

“I recognize you,” Marie-Josèphe said stiffly. “But you attend to the King’s business, so I did not expect to speak with you.”

“The sea monster is the King’s business, Mlle de la Croix,” he said. “Your brother has the charge of it—”

“I have the charge of it, sir, while he studies the dead specimen.”

“In that case, you must expect to speak to me quite often. Can you persuade the beast to feed?”

“I hope so.”

“Your brother force-fed it.”

“I’m sure I can tame it to eat from my hand.”

“The sea monster need not be tame. His Majesty requires only that it be sleek.”

He bowed and left her, climbing down from the Fountain’s low rim awkwardly, like a child, and leaning on his walking-stick.

On the other side of the Fountain, a driver backed his wagon to the cage. Workmen rolled the barrels down the wagon-bed. The rolling barrels thundered. A gardener appeared from nowhere and raked the wagon tracks out of the gravel.

A workman crashed his sledgehammer against the barrel top, staving it in. Sea water gushed into the pool.

As other workmen in other wagons broke more barrels, the cool scent of the ocean drifted through the air. Ripples and bubbles roiled the surface of the fountain.

With a thrust of its powerful tails, the sea monster propelled its body upward. Water spilled from its open mouth, dripped from its dark hair, and trickled down its body. A tangled lock of its hair had turned light green.

Should I worry about the faded color? Marie-Josèphe wondered. Could it be a sign of illness?

The sea monster trilled a musical cry and ducked its head beneath the surface.