“No! Help me! Sherzad—” Marie-Josèphe slid over the leaning corner of the wagon. Lucien clambered down. Sherzad writhed and fell onto the bridge, snarling.
Lucien ran to the road. His sword slid sharp from his cane. He waited.
The fantastical shadows of the Carrousel teams galloped toward him. The horses’ hooves beat the road to dust. Burning pitch and sweat and dirt hung pungent in the air. The King led; alone, magnificent, he stopped so close that Lucien’s sword touched his horse’s chest and the beast’s hot breath ruffled the plumes in Lucien’s hat. The teams drew up behind the King. The Nubian hunting chariot brought up the rear. The cheetahs flowed from it like a river, baring their teeth and snarling.
The sun blazed from the King’s shield.
“You fought bravely beside me, Lucien,” Louis said. “Will you now fight against me?”
Lucien could not reply. Marie-Josèphe and Yves labored to help Sherzad to the crest of the bridge. The sea woman moaned with anticipation and snarled with defiance. Her tails scraped against stone.
Hurry, Lucien thought, please, hurry, I cannot make this choice.
With a shriek of triumph, Sherzad leaped from the bridge and plunged into the river.
“Swim for your life!” Marie-Josèphe cried. “Good-bye, dear Sherzad!”
His Majesty pointed downstream. Monsieur, his kimono sleeves flying like wings, galloped along the bank, his team close behind and the others following. His Majesty faced Lucien with only Lorraine and the young princes to attend him.
Lucien saluted His Majesty with his sword. He surrendered. Bourgogne and Anjou dismounted, took the sword and his cane, and presented them to their grandfather. Louis sheathed the sword.
“Will you give me your parole, M. de Chrétien?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Louis returned his sword. Lucien bowed, grateful to the King for treating him as an enemy, rather than as a traitor.
River-water closed around Sherzad. It was thick with the filth of animals and land-humans. She surfaced, spat with disgust, dove again, and set out swimming. She was bruised and sore, tiring quickly after her long imprisonment. The current helped, but she was far from the sea.
The sounds of the river changed. The silt was so thick she was nearly sound-blind. She surfaced for an instant; she kicked hard to raise herself above the mist. At the next bend, men and horses blocked the river. A long net stretched through the current. She dove again, hoping to find a way around it or beneath it. She slid past plunging hooves. When she touched the horses they screamed and thrashed and unseated their riders. The dangerous game gave her away. Riders jabbed with pikes and fired their muskets. Shot rushed past her, boiling the water with its heat; a ball snatched away a lock of her hair.
She dove. Stones weighted the net to the river bottom. Pushed into the net by the current, she fought to slip beneath the mesh. The hunters felt the strain. They pulled the net around her, tangling her, pushing her into shallows.
She erupted through the surface, burst through the mist, and flung herself over the net.
A piercing pain slashed into her foot. A furred and spotted predator growled and dragged her onto the stony bank. Sherzad writhed into the water, pulling the creature with her. Her blood filled the water, mixing with the predator’s musky pungent scent.
When the predator was submerged and vulnerable, Sherzad shouted out a sharp hard shock. Her voice, transmitted by the water, slammed into her attacker’s heart. The creature convulsed, bit hard, and fell dead.
Its mate leaped and fastened its teeth in Sherzad’s throat. She could not shout. She could not move. The predator’s canines pressed against arteries. One nip, and she would bleed to death. One hard bite, and the creature would sever her spine.
Sherzad went limp. Chaos and clamor swirled around her, the shouts of men and the blows of the pikes. The men of land beat the predator away and dragged her to the shallows. All she knew for sure was the touch of the net.
The Hurons, wearing their diamond suits and greatly amused, galloped toward Marie-Josèphe.
“Be still,” Lucien said quietly.
Marie-Josèphe was too distraught for fear. The Hurons raced past. The older man brushed a feather across her hair. The younger did the same to Yves. The old man galloped by again, leaning down to touch Lucien.
“They have claimed our hair,” Lucien said. “For my part, this perruke is ruined; they may have it.”
When the King rode away to meet his brother, Lorraine tied Marie-Josèphe’s hands to the traces of the cart-horses. Bedraggled, despondent, she made no objection. Yves struggled—a futile exercise—when Lorraine directed the musketeers to tie him at Marie-Josèphe’s left hand. Lucien bore the inevitable disgrace with arrogant disdain. Chartres and Maine bound him at Marie-Josèphe’s right.
“Someone in a high position could be of use to you now,” Lorraine said to Marie-Josèphe.
She raised her head and glared at him.
“A foolish reply.”
The horses lumbered forward. Lucien struggled to keep up, supporting himself awkwardly with his cane. The cart-horses plodded toward dawn.
“M. de Chrétien,” Lorraine said, “you are brought low.”
“And yet still you may slither beneath my foot.”
Lorraine slapped the rump of the near cart-horse. It lurched into a trot, pulling its pair with it. Lucien stumbled, recovered, scrambled.
“Whoa, whoa,” he said softly. The horses slowed, more out of exhaustion, he thought, than obedience.
It would please Lorraine, he thought, to drag me all the way to Versailles.
“Lucien—” Marie-Josèphe said.
“Shh.” He could not bear pity.
Marie-Josèphe twisted around, squinting into the darkness. “Did she escape?”
Splashing out of the shallows, His Majesty appeared through the mist. Monsieur and his teammates followed, carrying Sherzad. She was trapped in a net and suspended on poles. Marie-Josèphe sang; when the sea woman struggled, her song broke off in a sob. Sherzad wailed. Her eyes shone like a cat’s.
The young Carrousel riders, giddy with exhaustion and conquest, sparred with each other, jostled and joked, and jeered at Lucien. Old friendships dissolved without trace in the acid of the King’s disapproval. Lucien had seen it happen to others, this public humiliation. He had crafted his life so it would never happen to him. His painstaking work lay in ruins.
His Majesty stopped when he saw what the Chevalier had done. His gaze passed across Yves, and Marie-Josèphe, and the Chevalier, and fell finally upon Lucien.
“You have all gone insane.”
The sun was rising. The King sounded old, and exhausted.
27
Lucien and Yves rode the cart-horses, bareback, their hands unbound by the King’s command. Spent from her struggles and restrained by the net, Sherzad droned an eerie hum of grief that spooked riders and horses alike. Marie-Josèphe rode in the hunting chariot. Cheetahs shouldered and snarled, rubbing against her bedraggled petticoat. One sat on its haunches and watched her, its gaze on her bloodstained bodice.
The trip to Versailles took forever; it took no time at all. Marie-Josèphe pushed away exhaustion and despair, seeking escape. She matched her stance to Lucien’s: proud, shoulders straight, head up. Schemes occurred to her, each a more fanciful fairy tale than the next. If she could release the cheetahs from their collars—they might confuse the cavalry, they might frighten all the horses… but they might equally tear out her throat, or pounce on Sherzad when the riders dropped her carry-poles. If she could overpower the driver—she could gallop away in the chariot… but Chartres and Lorraine would make short work of catching her, their powerful war-horses against the stolid zebras. No matter how she escaped, in her fantasies, only Apollo dropping from the sky in his dawn chariot might free Sherzad. No matter how she escaped, the Carrousel riders surrounded Lucien and Yves.