Newton's Cannon (22 page)

“You have not heard from us before,” Castries retorted, “because this marriage was seen almost two years ago. If there are those who know of the Korai, we did not want them connecting the future queen to us. That is also the reason for your ‘abduction.’ ”

“I would have been subtler, had I the leisure, my dear,” the
duchess of Orléans interjected. “I had planned a very different meeting. But after the murder of the dauphin and the attempt upon the king's life, it became impossible to approach you without suspicion. And Torcy is suspicious even so, is he not?”

“Torcy knows of my interest in science,” Adrienne said, “and that your husband placed me in the Academy of Sciences.”

“And what will he do about it?” Castries demanded. “It is not illegal, merely unseemly. Never mind all that,” she said. “Know you this, Adrienne; though we did not contact you these past few years, we have done what we could. It was the duchess here who through her husband provided you with your apartments at the king's library and brought you to the notice of Fatio de Duillier.”

“So you said,” Adrienne retorted weakly, “and yet, you seem to imply that even that was less for me than because you would have me to spy upon him.”

“You are being selfish,” Crecy said softly in a way that silenced the other women. Adrienne turned once more to regard her remarkable eyes. “There is a blackness descending upon the world, a pall, and you are bound up with it. Do you remember when you first became a Korai, when you were just a girl of nine?”

“I remember,” Adrienne retorted. “Did you see that, too?”

Crecy ignored her and went on. “Do you remember our oath? It was not merely an oath to pursue the knowledge our hearts desire, though that was part of it. It was more even than an oath to the other Korai, to help and love our sisters in Athena. There was also a third part, my dear sister. Do you remember what it was?”

Adrienne looked down at her lap. “To
preserve
,” she muttered.

“Yes,” Crecy agreed. “And yet you seem to remember only the first part of the vow.”

“I thought myself abandoned,” Adrienne snapped. “I thought I had been excommunicated without ever being told! How could you expect me to hold on to such a vow—” She caught herself. She had not wanted them to see the anger she had nursed for so long.

“And now you know that you were not.”

“Now I know only that you need me. You speak of some great darkness, but that means nothing to me. You speak of ‘preserving,’ yet what am I to preserve?”

“Humanity,” Madame de Castries said quite calmly. “Life.”

Adrienne found herself at a loss for words for a long, dark moment. “By marrying the king, I preserve humanity?”

“I have not seen it all,” Crecy admitted, “only bits and pieces. But that coming darkness comes, to some extent, because
you
opened the door. And you must help to close it.”

“This is nonsense,” Adrienne blurted. “Excuse me, Madame Marquise, Madame Duchess, but I am a servant of science, of mathematics, and what you speak of here—these are a child's
superstitions
, bogeymen. When did the daughters of Athena lose their faith in science and the masterful God revealed by science and return to the black arts?” She heard her own words, each like a drop of venom flicked from a serpent's fangs. She had found her sisters in Athena, but it seemed her words would quickly drive them away. All humor had drained from the face of the duchess of Orléans, and Castries' features were stone.

Then Castries replied sternly, “You love equations, I know. You trust them. Very well and good. But there are equations in this world so complex that only God can comprehend them, and when we are faced with them, our only tool is intuition. It is my
intuition
that to pass through this darkness, we shall need you at the king's side. Sacrifices must be made,” she continued softly. “Marrying the greatest king in the world is not the most painful sacrifice one could render.”

Adrienne remembered that being the queen had brought Maintenon misery. Being married to the Sun King was a sentence that Maintenon would not have wished upon any person, despite the fact that she had truly, deeply loved Louis. Adrienne did
not
love Louis.

But Castries was right.

She looked at the waiting women. “I do not know what Fatio is working on, but I shall detail for you what I
do
know, so that perhaps more learned minds than mine may puzzle at it. I believe it is to be some sort of weapon. Is there time for me to write equations for you?”

“I think so,” the duchess replied.

“As to the king,” Adrienne replied, “if he asks me, I do not see how I can refuse. But I tell you this frankly, my ladies, I will pray every day that he does not ask me.”

“You had best pray quickly then,” Crecy said, a hint of sorrow in her melodious voice, “for I believe he will ask you tonight.”

Adrienne closed her eyes.

“If you can see all of this,” Adrienne asked Crecy, “why can't you see what Fatio is working on? Why can't you see what will happen in these dark days you speak of?”

Crecy's lips curled in a vicious smile. “When I was young, I could see what I was asked to see. With each passing year, my mastery grows less certain. It is my curse, now, that I can never see what I want to see. Only what God wishes me to see.”

“Or perhaps the devil?” Adrienne returned.

“God or devil,” Crecy whispered, “it is always the truth, and it is rarely pleasing.”

The carriage from Marly arrived around two hours later, accompanied by thirty of the Hundred Swiss, four pistoleers, and ten mounted carabiners. Adrienne watched them pull into the gates as impassively as she could, concentrating on the details of the entourage so that her gaze would not wander to the pair of corpses laid out in front of the chateau. They were
supposed
to be her kidnappers. One of them was certainly dressed like the man who had threatened her with the
kraftpistole
, but she knew that the body was not his.

At the head of the Hundred Swiss rode Nicolas, his face drawn and doleful. His arm hung in a sling, and he rode unsteadily.

“Milady,” he began, as soon as he dismounted, “I can never apologize for allowing your capture.” He bowed his head. “I am sorry,” he murmured in a tone that wrung her heart. She wondered if he would hate her if he ever discovered that his shame and injury had been incidental details in a grand performance.

“You own no fault in this, sir,” she replied loudly so that all could hear. “I would rather that the rogues had murdered me than see such a brave man as you shamed.”

“And I would rather have died than that they should have touched you at all,” he answered.

Adrienne flashed her smile brightly. “But then who would guard me now, sir?”

He bowed again and escorted her to the carriage, handing his horse to one of the pistoleers.

Once they were both inside, the procession started. Nicolas sat speechless.

“How badly were you hurt?”Adrienne asked after a time.

“I would feel better if I had been hurt more badly.” He smiled ruefully. “As it happened, a bullet grazed my shoulder. Then something … I don't know. It felt as if all the light were sucked out of my head, and then I knew nothing until I awoke.”

“Grazed? Then why do you wear this sling?” Adrienne asked.

“It was the bone that was grazed,” Nicolas admitted. He paused. “I hear the king is livid.”

“Don't worry, Nicolas, I shall speak for you.”

“Lady, I meant only that the king is very worried about you.” He looked out the window and said softly, “
Many
were afraid that you might be murdered, or worse.”

“Well, I wasn't,” Adrienne replied.

The carriage bumped along quietly for a moment, and then Nicolas turned back to her. Something hard and bright glittered in his eyes, something both terrible and wonderful.

“I will only say this, milady,” he began, “that if another man lays hand on you without your desiring him to, it will only be because I am dead and God has received me and locked me away so that I cannot throw myself from heaven. I would forsake even salvation to prevent your being accosted again.”

“Hush,” Adrienne murmured. “Hush, Nicolas.” Her gaze locked with his for a long moment, and she felt as if she were falling from a great height.

“You don't understand,” he said finally.

“No, Nicolas,” she replied. “I think that I do.”

It was quite dark when they reached Marly. Adrienne was told that she would be received at the king's bedside before sleep.
Despite his best efforts, Nicolas had fallen asleep in the carriage. Another guard told her later that he had neither slept nor eaten since her abduction.

On the way to the royal chambers she and her escort passed through the great gallery of Marly. She found it carpeted with courtiers, mostly sitting or lying on the floor playing cards. Louis had built Marly for comfort and privacy. And yet Louis could not go anywhere without courtiers. It was as if he did not exist without them.

When the courtiers saw her there was a scattering of congratulations for her “narrow escape.” Many of the faces belied the well-wishing, and she realized with a chill that all were now watching her, wondering about her, constructing their schemes around her.

“Thank you,” she said, curtseying. “Though I must thank the count of Toulouse and his huntsmen, or I should not stand before you now.”

She curtsied again and allowed her escort to take her on to the
coucher
.

Louis lay in bed clothed in a magnificent dressing gown, the covers pulled back to his waist. “My dear Mademoiselle de Montchevreuil,” he said, his voice quite strong and clear. “It is so very good to see you alive and well. God will damn me for ever having risked you so. I beg your most humble forgiveness.”

“I— You need no forgiveness from me, Your Majesty, for you have not wronged me. And God and your son Toulouse and the guardsmen of your Hundred Swiss have all conspired to keep my body and soul together.”

“You were not hurt? They did not harm you in
any
way?”

“In no way other than delaying my arrival at Marly, Majesty,” she replied.

“Ah, my dear Adrienne,” Louis said. “I am a man and king of all France, and yet you possess more gallantry than I do. It is not meet.

“Sit here,” he said, indicating a small stool beside the bed. “I realize that you are tired, but I have something to say to you, something that a few short hours ago I feared I might never be able to say.”

“Majesty?”

“So much has gone from my life, Adrienne, so many years since the grand, beautiful days. I thought to return to that, and in some ways I think we must. France must see me as I was, so that France can be what
it
was. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Sire,” she replied.

“And yet, I am
not
what I was. Adrienne, I am
better
than what I was then; Maintenon taught me to be better. And though she began as my mistress, she taught me the folly of mistresses.” He frowned. “You see, not long ago, I believed that I was about to take a new mistress. I meant to propose this to
you
, Adrienne.”

“Me, Sire?”

“Yes, Adrienne. You are so like my Maintenon.” He sat up straighter in bed. “You see how I have changed since they killed my dauphin? The fire meant to kill me only awakened the full potency of the Persian elixir. Now that my sight has returned, you see how I have become young again?”

Adrienne felt a sweat form on her brow. The king looked no different than he had when last she had seen him, save that his eyes did not focus. What did he mean?

When she did not answer, he took her hand and patted it. “It is shocking, I'll admit. Though I have felt much younger for many years, I never thought to see again the body and face I had when I was twenty, and yet here it is! This is an age for miracles. And with these new eyes, Adrienne, I see you not as merely another Maintenon. You have a grace and a beauty about you, and you always smile. It would please me, the court, and France, if you would consent to marry me and be my queen. And, as queen, give France a new dauphin.”

Adrienne knew that there were tears coursing down her face, but there was nothing she could do about them. She did manage to let no sound escape her. Across the room, Bontemps looked away, his face almost brutalized by sympathy, though whether for her or for the king she could not say.

If Louis noticed her tears, he did not say so, but continued to stare past her, an expectant look on his face. She waited until
she was absolutely certain that she could speak without her voice breaking. “Of course, my king,” she said. “How could I ever say otherwise?”

But at least, now she was in the eye of the storm.

Dawn came with no land in sight. Ben rubbed eyes gritty with fatigue but even in full and brilliant morning he saw only the edges of a flat blue plate with him in the center.

The battering of the previous day had sunken cold stones of pain into his muscle and bone. His brain was in worse shape than his body. He had not slept; shock and terror had played themselves over and over in his mind. He could still see them enacting their parts, but he had no tears left to cry, no more prayers.

The endless expanse of sea around him was a wonderful sight. Bracewell could not sneak up on him here—he would be able to see the fiend coming for him for miles. He might not be able to stop him, but at least death would not find him unaware.

It felt to Ben as if he had a hole in his heart, for he couldn't believe James was dead. It made no sense to him: He could
remember
James talking, laughing, scowling. James was
real
, had been real all Ben's life. This nightmare with Bracewell seemed a phantasm. The last few months were the lie, the illusion. James was
real
, and that had to mean
alive
.

But morning made him understand most sharply that he had to return to Boston immediately. James was dead. But what if Bracewell went after his father and mother? What of John Collins? Ben had been the very worst sort of coward, because Bracewell had even
told
him that he would kill John; and he had run anyway to save his own miserable life. He
had
to go back. He rose stiffly and put up the sail.