Yves was a dreadful shot, when we were children, Marie-Josèphe thought. I hope he has improved — or more creatures than rabbits will be in danger today!
The sea woman returned to her thoughts. Marie-Josèphe could not glory in her own taste of freedom, when her friend swam round and round in the filthy brackish water, trapped, she who had been used to swimming in the clean deep sea, any distance, any direction, governed solely by her will. Only His Majesty could restore her to her home and her family.
“Mlle de la Croix —”
Marie-Josèphe started. So intent had she been on the sea woman’s peril that she had forgotten her own.
“— you must give me a token to carry, like a knight of old.” Chartres plucked at a bit of her lace, smiling, his wild eye giving him a rakish look. The breeze ruffled the long white plumes in his hat.
The Duke of Berwick rode beside him, which astonished Marie-Josèphe. Madame would surely disapprove of her son’s associating with a bastard, even James Fitzjames, the King of England’s natural son.
“Let my friend Chartres be your champion, do,” Berwick said. He spoke with a heavy accent, but he did not lisp like his father, and he was very handsome.
“I have no token, sir,” Marie-Josèphe said.
“Come now, you must — an earring, a handkerchief, a lacing from your corset —”
“A ruffle from your petticoat,” Lorraine said from her other side.
The men on their larger horses pinned her between them. Zachi liked this no more than Marie-Josèphe. She flattened her ears and stamped one hind foot.
“If I give you my handkerchief, sir, I will not have one, and my mother would be ashamed to see me.”
The drumming neared, a wall of sound.
The ground thundered as the ancient aurochs, freed from the Menagerie, lumbered from the forest. The hunting party cried out in amazement and appreciation of the exotic creature.
The aurochs plowed the earth with its hooves; it ripped leaves to shreds with the points of its long horns. It bellowed and tossed its head, glaring about it with age-dimmed eyes. The other hunters held their fire, in respect of their King’s right to take the huge bull.
His Majesty aimed. The aurochs drank the air with wide wet nostrils. As if scenting the danger of gunpowder, it lowered its head and charged the royal caleche.
His Majesty fired.
The aurochs thundered toward him. Its wound pumped blood straight from its heart.
“Your mother is dead, Mlle de la Croix,” Lorraine said.
“You are cruel, sir.”
Count Lucien calmly handed His Majesty another loaded gun. With equal assurance, His Majesty aimed, and fired.
The aurochs stumbled, recovered, and plunged on.
Even Chartres hesitated with astonishment, but the game Lorraine led was too tempting. He leaned from his saddle and snatched at Marie-Josèphe’s petticoat lace.
His Majesty aimed, and fired a third time.
The aurochs lurched and fell, crashing to the earth before His Majesty, running as it lay. It spattered blood all around, on the ground, on the caleche, on His Majesty’s dark gold coat. When it died, the hunters cheered His Majesty’s elegant shooting.
“You are missing your hunt, sir.” Marie-Josèphe slapped Chartres’ hand away; this time she meant to hurt him.
The forest trembled like a creature alive. Camels shambled from it, and stags raced out, too many to count. Rabbits scampered headlong after them. A fox rushed into the meadow, its tail bushed with fright. Freed by His Majesty’s first kill, the hunters fired, volley after volley as the bearers handed them newly loaded guns. The camels bellowed, fell to their knees, and toppled over dead. Stags screamed and fell. Rabbits plunged over their bodies, then tumbled, shattered, across the grass.
Madame, in her scarlet livery, aimed and fired with intense calm. The fox leaped into the air, its shriek piercing the cacophony of guns and drums, and fell dead at her horse’s feet.
“His Majesty’s hunt bores me, mademoiselle,” Chartres said. “I’ve found another that I like better.”
Chartres plucked the lace at her throat. Marie-Josèphe backed Zachi, but Lorraine blocked their way. The lace ripped. Lorraine pulled one of the pins from her hair.
Arabian oryxes burst from the forest. The hunting party redoubled their fire. As if felled by a single shot, the antelopes tumbled forward in a tangle of slender legs and slender spiral horns, robbed of their grace by death. Screaming murder, iridescent peacocks flapped and lumbered onto the hunting field, scrambling among the dead stags, over the rabbits in their death-throes.
Gunsmoke roiled up and hid the forest, while the roar of gunfire drowned out the noise of the beaters. The breeze stirred the powder-smoke like thick fog.
Marie-Josèphe urged Zachi forward. Berwick’s charger stepped in front of her.