“I am so grateful to you,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Somehow we must save Sherzad’s life—and His Majesty’s soul.”
“I’m an atheist,” Lucien said. “I have no business saving anyone’s soul.”
Marie-Josèphe laughed. She could not help it. “Lucien, I love you, I love you without limit or boundaries.”
Driving with one hand, Lucien slipped his fingers around hers.
The wagon shuddered. Startled and frightened, Marie-Josèphe turned. Half in, half out of the wagon bed, Yves clutched the sides and pulled himself in.
“Go back to the chateau!” Marie-Josèphe cried.
“If I do,” Yves said, “I’ll never atone for betraying Sherzad.”
The full moon hung in the sky, a handsbreadth from its zenith. Marie-Josèphe sang to Sherzad, telling her, Swim to the far end of the Grand Canal, we must go far from M. Boursin, he must not see you climbing into the wagon.
Sherzad replied, her song full of hope and excitement. Propelling herself along the Grand Canal, she outpaced the galloping horses.
M. Boursin would appear at the east end of the Grand Canal one minute after midnight. He might wait a moment for Marie-Josèphe to appear, to bid the sea woman to surrender herself. At two minutes after midnight, he would sound the alarm to the guards. He would tell the King.
Marie-Josèphe looked back. The chateau glowed on its hilltop, brilliant with light.
A line of torches snaked along the path.
“Hurry,” Marie-Josèphe whispered.
Lucien wheeled the horses around the gravel track.
“Take the reins,” Lucien said. “Yves and I will—”
Sherzad clambered onto the bank at the western end of the Canal. Clumsy, agitated, she writhed toward the wagon. The cart-horses spooked and snorted and reared. The wagon lurched. Lucien rose, bracing himself, speaking softly to the powerful draft horses, bringing them to a nervous, sweating standstill.
“You must steady the horses,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I’ll calm Sherzad.” She climbed down and ran to the sea woman. “Be easy, sweet Sherzad, be still, we’ll help you.”
In a frenzy, Sherzad fought Marie-Josèphe and her brother, struggling toward the wagon as if she were still in her own element. Her claw grazed Marie-Josèphe from shoulder to breast. Sherzad slipped away, crashed to the ground, gasped, moaned. Marie-Josèphe knelt beside her.
“Sherzad, listen, listen to me.” She took Sherzad’s webbed hands. She sang, showing Sherzad what she hoped would happen. The horses stamped and snorted. Lucien soothed them with his voice and held them in check.
Sherzad sobbed and lay still. Marie-Josèphe and Yves lifted her into the wagon. So lithe and quick in the water, she was graceless on land. They sat on either side of her in the splintery wagon-bed, bracing her so she would not fall.
Lucien loosed the reins gradually, letting the horses walk, jog, canter, run, without jolting his passengers from the wagon. Terrified, the sea woman clutched Marie-Josèphe around the waist. She squirmed up beside her and kissed the deep bleeding scratch, humming regret.
“Never mind, Sherzad. Never mind.”
“And now?” Lucien shouted over the rumble of the wheels.
“The sea.”
“If we can reach it. Do you then have a plan for yourself?”
“I didn’t think beyond—I couldn’t…” She slipped her hand into her bodice and drew out a knotted handkerchief. “I have a few livres—as I didn’t have to bribe anyone to get a wagon. It will buy us bread—and fish.”
Lucien chuckled. He laughed. Marie-Josèphe opened her mouth to protest, then she began to laugh as well.
Rubies and diamonds covered Lucien’s armor. The fugitives were magnificently wealthy.
They were, as well, instantly identifiable and impossible to disguise.
The wagon rumbled through luminous darkness; the full moon gleamed on the mist.
“We might go to Brittany,” Lucien said.
“We might take passage on a ship. We could go home to Martinique.”
“I’ll take my chances with the King’s guard,” Lucien said, “before I’ll ever willingly get on another ship.”
Marie-Josèphe knew, Lucien must know, they had little more chance of hiring a ship than of escaping to Brittany.
Sherzad raised her head, her nostrils flaring; she slid from Marie-Josèphe’s arms and shrugged off Yves’ grasp and clambered up to lean on the jolting wagon seat. She gasped the wind in over her tongue, expelling the air in a hiss of satisfaction. The cart-horses plunged into a dead run.
“Easy, easy.” The horses breathed in rough snorts; Lucien slowed them. “We have a long way to go.”
The full moon sank past midnight. The harness rubbed the horses’ sweat to foam.
“Look,” Yves said.
Far behind, the road turned into a river of light, a rushing brilliant flood.
“The King,” Lucien said.
“We’ll never reach the sea,” Yves said.
“We had little chance of reaching the sea.”
“We’ve thrown our lives away on a hopeless task—?”
“Sherzad, the Seine will lead you home,” Marie-Josèphe said, “but you must swim as fast as you can, you must hide underwater whenever you hear men, or horses, or dogs.”
Sherzad understood. She sang a song of farewell to Marie-Josèphe; she laid her head against Marie-Josèphe’s shoulder and kissed the slash she had made across her breast. Marie-Josèphe’s blood smeared her cheek.
Lucien urged the laboring horses up a low rise. The lanterns and torches of their pursuers surged closer, penetrating the hollow with a spear of light.
“Lucien, can we hide? Leave the road, let them pass—?”
“Not enough cover. Too much moonlight.”
The wagon crested the rise. A curve of the Seine gleamed through luminous grey mist. Sherzad smelled the water. She sang, impatient and wild. The tiring horses fled her voice. The wagon bumped down the switchback slope.
“A few minutes,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Only a few minutes, and you’ll be free.”
The jeweled riders crested the hill. Their lanterns flung their shadows before them. They galloped across the land, fantastic, threatening. His Majesty’s Carrousel teams flowed down the slope, gathering speed, cutting the switchbacks, gaining fast.
The cart-horses plunged onto the flat, laboring into the mist of the river-plain. Marie-Josèphe fantasied that they could cross the bridge, block or burn it, leave the cavalry behind, and escape.
They’d only ford the river, Marie-Josèphe thought. And never mind the ruin of their costumes.
She held Sherzad. The wagon jolted over ruts, bouncing wildly, its wheels lifting from the ground as Lucien urged the exhausted horses to one last effort. They must only reach the bridge, where Sherzad could leap to freedom. Five hundred paces, and His Majesty’s troop still a thousand paces behind. Two hundred paces to the bridge. The torches sizzled, trailing sparks; the Carrousel headdresses waved in the air with the menace of demons.
Fifty paces. The wagon hit a rock. It jolted into the air. It crashed down. A wheel splintered. The wagon jerked sideways. Yves grabbed Marie-Josèphe and Sherzad, holding them in the wagon. The axle screamed along the road, digging a furrow through the rocks and ruts. Lucien drove the wagon onto the bridge, but where the road rose the axle caught; the wagon slewed and stuck, leaning lopsided between the stone ramparts.
“Whoa, whoa.” Lucien stopped the horses. One stumbled and fell to its knees. The other trembled, its head between its legs. The horses flinched at Sherzad’s cry of dismay, but they were too spent to try to escape her. His Majesty’s riders thundered toward them, five hundred paces away.
“If we surrender,” Yves said, “before we’re shot—”