The Moon and the Sun

Yves glanced at her. He raised his dark arched eyebrows. “Marie-Josèphe!”

His expression changed. One moment he was the serious, ascetic, grown-up Jesuit, the next her delighted older brother. He took three long strides toward her, he embraced her, he swung her around like a child. She hugged him and pressed her cheek against the black wool of his cassock.

“I hardly recognize you—I didn’t recognize you! You’re a grown woman!”

She had so many things to tell him that she said nothing, for fear her words would spill out all at once in a tangle. He set her down and looked at her. She smiled up at him. Sun-lines creased his face when he smiled. His skin had darkened to an even deeper tan, while her complexion was fading to a fashionable paleness. His black hair lay in disarrayed curls—unlike most of the men at court, he wore no perruke—while pins and the hot iron had crafted Marie-Josèphe’s red-gold mane into ringlets beneath the lace-covered wire and the ruffles of her headdress, a fashionable fontanges.

His eyes were the same, a beautiful, intense dark blue.

“Dear brother, you look so well—the voyage must have agreed with you.”

“It was dreadful,” Yves said. “But I was too busy to be troubled.”

He put his arm around her and returned to the gold basin. The creature thrashed and cried.

“To the quay,” Yves said. The sailors hurried up the dock. Their bare tattooed arms strained at the weight of basin and water and Yves’ living prey. Marie-Josèphe tried to see inside the basin, but wet canvas covered everything. She leaned against Yves, her arm tight around his waist. She would have plenty of time to look at his creature.

They walked between the lines of courtiers. Everyone, even Madame and Monsieur and the princes and princesses of the Blood Royal, strained to see the monster Yves had captured for the King.

And then, as Yves passed, they saluted him.

Startled for a moment, Yves hesitated. Marie-Josèphe was about to dig her fingers into his ribs—Yves had always been ticklish—to give him a lively hint about his behavior. As a boy he had always paid more attention to his bird collection than to his manners.

To Marie-Josèphe’s surprise, and delight, Yves bowed to Monsieur, to Madame, with perfect courtliness and the restraint proper to his station.

Marie-Josèphe curtsied to Monsieur. She raised Madame’s hem to her lips and kissed it. The portly duchess smiled fondly at her, and nodded her approval.

Yves bowed to the members of the royal family. He passed between the double line of courtiers. Graciously, he nodded to their acclaim.

Halfway up the dock, between the dukes and duchesses, and the counts and countesses, Marie-Josèphe and Yves passed the second sedan chair. Its windows were closed tight, and the curtains drawn behind the glass. Poor Mme de Maintenon, whose only task was to follow the King from Versailles to Le Havre and back, showed no interest in the creature and its triumphant captor.

“I wish I’d been with you,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I wish I’d seen the wild sea monsters!”

“We were cold and wet and miserable, and hurricanes nearly sank us. You’d have been blamed—on a warship, a woman is as welcome as a sea monster.”

“What foolish superstition.” Marie-Josèphe’s voyage from Martinique had been uncomfortable, yet exhilarating.

“You were much better off at the convent.”

Marie-Josèphe caught her breath. He knew nothing of the convent. How could he? If he had known, he would never have left her there in boredom and silence and lonely misery.

“I’ve missed you so,” she said. “I worried!”

“Whenever I thought of you, I heard your little tunes. In my mind. Do you still write them?”

“Versailles hardly has room for amateur musicians,” she said. “But you shall hear something of mine, soon.”

“I thought of you often, Marie-Josèphe… though not in such a dress.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s immodest.”

“It’s quite proper,” she said, leaving out her own first reaction to the tight waist and low neckline. She had known nothing of court then.

“It’s unsuited to your station. And to mine.”

“It’s unsuited for a colonial girl. But you’re now the King’s natural philosopher, and I’m Mademoiselle’s lady-in-waiting. I must wear grand habit.”

“And here I thought,” Yves said, “that you’d be safely teaching arithmetic.”

They climbed up the wharf to the quay.

“I couldn’t remain at Saint-Cyr,” Marie-Josèphe said. “All the instructresses must take the veil.”

Yves glanced at her, puzzled. “That would suit you.”

The King’s departure saved her from making a sharp retort; she, and Yves, and all the courtiers bowed as their sovereign climbed into his carriage. It drove away, surrounded by musketeers. The ragged townspeople streamed after the King, cheering, shouting, pleading.

Marie-Josèphe looked around hopefully for the chevalier de Lorraine, but he climbed into Monsieur’s carriage. The other courtiers hurried to their coaches and horses and clattered after the King.