“Is it dead?” he muttered. “If it’s spoiled, I’ll be ruined. If it’s dead, I’ll kill myself! It was fat enough yesterday — I should have butchered it then!”
Count Lucien beckoned to an artisan, who apprehensively attacked the lock with a file. Metal rasped on metal.
His Majesty reached the cage and peered inside. “Have you killed my sea monster, Mlle de la Croix?”
“No, Your Majesty.” Marie-Josèphe’s calm was as unshakeable as the King’s.
“Has it drowned itself?” He raised his voice above the racket of the file. Metal shavings fell to the ground.
“No, Your Majesty.”
Count Lucien touched the artisan’s shoulder. The man stopped filing while His Majesty spoke.
“What is it doing?”
The artisan filed at the lock.
“She’s breathing underwater, Sire.”
The artisan stopped —”Why is she doing this?” — and started.
“Because I asked her, Your Majesty.”
The artisan stopped just long enough for His Majesty to speak, then redoubled his efforts at the lock.
“You’ve trained her well.”
“I never trained her at all, Sire.”
“She obeyed you,” Yves said. “Like a dog.”
“She’s demonstrating the function of the unique lobe of her lung. It isn’t —” She hesitated. She kept the false secret. “It only allows her to breathe underwater.”
“How do you know the true function of this organ?”
“Your Majesty, the sea woman told me.”
Lorraine laughed, a short hard bark quickly suppressed. The artisan stopped, filed hard, stopped again.
“Sea woman?” His Majesty exclaimed. “Do you mean to say the sea monster speaks?”
“Marie-Josèphe, enough! I forbid you —” Yves fell silent, like the artisan, when His Majesty held up one hand.
“Answer me, Mlle de la Croix.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. I understand her. She understands me.” The artisan sawed at the lock again. “She isn’t a monster. She speaks, she’s intelligent. She’s a woman, she’s human, like me, like all of us.”
“Your Majesty, please forgive my sister — I am entirely to blame, I’ve permitted her to tax herself —”
“Will it awaken and return to the surface?”
“She will do as you command, Your Majesty,” Marie-Josèphe said. “As will I.”
“Stop that noise.” The artisan left off filing and backed away, bowing. “Mlle de la Croix,” His Majesty said, “be so kind as to open the gate.”
She descended, fitted the key in the keyhole, and turned it. The lock fell apart; the gate opened.
Leaning on Count Lucien and Lorraine, His Majesty made his way to the fountain’s rim.
“She understands. I’ll show you.” Marie-Josèphe descended the stairs to the platform. She patted the water. “Sea woman! His Majesty bids you return!” She sang the sea woman’s name.
The sea woman stretched languorously. She opened her eyes. With an abrupt and powerful kick, she ascended. At the surface, she coughed and spat out a great deal of water. She breathed with a great gasp, blew the spent breath out, and gasped again. The swellings on her forehead and cheeks expanded and deflated, making her face grotesque.
“It’s alive!” M. Boursin whispered.
“What is this thing, Mlle de la Croix,” His Majesty said, “if not a monster?”
“She’s a woman. She’s intelligent —”
“It’s no more intelligent than a parrot,” Yves said.
“This vision of ugliness, a woman?”
“Look at the skull of the sea-woman’s mate, Sire. Look at his bones, look at his hands. Listen to the sea woman, and I’ll tell you what she says.”
“The monster’s nothing like a man,” Yves said. “Look at its grotesque face, the joints of its legs — the concealment of its parts, if Your Majesty will forgive my mentioning the subject.”
“A dog, a parrot, a creature!” His Majesty exclaimed. “But certainly not a woman!”
He turned away.
The shock of failure overcame Marie-Josèphe, as cold and suffocating as if she had fallen into the sea woman’s prison. The sea woman, swimming back and forth at her feet, understood the King’s refusal. She shrieked and spat.
“M. Boursin,” His Majesty said. “Your plans, if you please.”
“Your Majesty, I’ve discovered perfection!” M. Boursin joined His Majesty inside the cage. He opened his shabby old book and displayed it for the King.
“Excellent, M. Boursin. I am pleased.”
“Be so kind as to throw it a fish, Mlle de la Croix, make it leap, so I may estimate it.”
M. Boursin gazed greedily at the sea woman; Marie-Josèphe gazed with disbelief at M.
Boursin and the King.
The sea woman spattered droplets at them with sharp flicks of her webbed toes.
“Your Majesty, the Church deems it a fish, suitable for Fridays. But its flesh is said to be succulent as meat. If I butcher it now, Your Majesty, I might make a dish — a little dish, for Your Majesty alone, perhaps a paté — for your supper alone, so you need not wait for midnight feast.”