Emeralds studded Monseigneur’s leather leggings and gleamed in the fur of his breechclout. The cloak of iridescent feathers fluttered from his shoulders. The Grand Dauphin carried a leather shield edged with egret plumes and painted with a silver eagle, its eyes turned to the golden sun.
Monseigneur’s war-party crossed the parade ground in a wild bright chaos of feathers and jewels, leather fringe and beads, fur and ribbons. Each rider vied with all the others in extravagance and color; no rider had matched his horse to any other: piebald galloped next to skewbald, paint next to claybank. The Huron war chiefs rode with his group, as exotic as all the others in borrowed body-armor, lace, and their plumed Parisian hats.
In the grandstand, the Prince of Japan looked as if he wished he were part of Carrousel, while the Shah of Persia looked as if he were glad he was not. The Queen of Nubia lounged upon cushions, protected from the moonlight by an awning of black silk held by her handmaidens.
Each team rode its pattern. Monsieur, Chartres, and Maine strove for speed and precision, while Monseigneur’s band — to the astonishment and delight of the audience
— excelled at feats of daring and bravado, standing upright on their saddles at the gallop, swooping down to snatch golden hoops from the ground.
The moon rose halfway to its zenith. The galleon had sent no further news.
In His Majesty’s Roman cavalry, Lucien rode Zelis into the Place d’Armes.
As in their practice, the Roman troop split into two lines, into four, mirroring, double-mirroring the design.
The riders turned inward from the corners of the parade ground and urged their horses to a dead run. All four lines of horses galloped straight for the center of the field, straight toward each other. The audience cried out in anticipation, and fell silent in apprehension.
Lucien raced after the King, holding Zelis in her place.
A moment’s hesitation, a moment’s change of speed, would explode the maneuver, crashing it into a pandemonium of screaming horses and fallen riders, a disaster as brutal as war. After such a collision — a collision involving the King and three of his four legitimate heirs — no one would think of the sea woman. She might disappear...
Lucien could not bring himself to sabotage the drill.
Zelis raced through the pattern, performing it cleanly. The four lines melded to two, to one; the horses pranced toward the aristocracy’s side of the grandstand. The audience screamed and cheered and threw their flowers to the ground before their King.
The King rode to the foot of the grandstand. His subjects bowed; even the visiting monarchs rose in salute. At his signal, a line of baggage-wagons rolled onto the parade-ground. Ribbons festooned wagons and draft horses.
“Cousins, I bring you tokens of my esteem.”
He spoke to James and Mary of England. The footmen on the first wagon pulled a white silk cover from a painting twice the size of the portrait James had given Louis. The image of Louis, riding bareback in Roman armor, gazed majestically upon his exiled cousin.
“So we shall never be parted.”
“For our most distant cousin, come from his island fortress —”
The second wagon bore an enormous tapestry, rolled like a scroll. The footmen wound it on its rollers, displaying to Japan its entire length in sections. Twice as tall as a man, a hundred paces long, it documented His Majesty’s triumphs, guarded over by the gods of classical Rome.
“— a tapestry from the Gobelin manufactory, the finest in the world.”
Three wagons glittered and sparkled and chimed with a trio of crystal chandeliers, which the King presented to the Queen of Nubia.
“To illuminate your palace... though your beauty outshines their light.”
The Shah of Persia’s gift required ten wagons, each carrying several enormous mirrors mounted in baroque frames.
“Mirrors of French manufacture, the finest and clearest, for your hareem. And for our allies in New France —”
A single wagon sufficed, but the gift to the Huron war chiefs was the most costly of all. Two mannequins, made to look like wild Americans by the feathers in their perrukes, displayed suits, with hats and gloves and shoes to match, of white velvet covered with diamonds.
“— suits made to our own pattern.”
Finally, His Majesty addressed Pope Innocent.
“And for our holy cousin of Rome... “
Two wagons rolled forward. Behind panels of patterned silk, an animal shrieked.
“Exotic creatures.”
Hope flashed through Lucien’s heart. He did not wish Pope Innocent’s inquisitors on any being, much less on the sea woman. Being butchered and cooked by M. Boursin might be more merciful, but being imprisoned by the Church was a postponement of death. It contained the possibility, however remote, of reprieve.
“One wild man.”
The footmen whipped away the panels. In the first wagon, a baboon screamed and bared its fangs and rattled its cage and shat copiously through the bars.
“Two serpents, to remind us of the Garden, the fruit of knowledge, and our sins.”
Two immense anacondas twined about each other, weighing down the branches of an orange tree.