Newton's Cannon (18 page)

Who had it been? Which cabal? He had heard the name of Orléans muttered more than once, but he did not believe that his brother's son had done this. He had a spine of seaweed and no ambition higher than bedding every woman in France.

It might have been, as Torcy and Bontemps seemed to suggest, an English spy. That was certainly the most satisfying possibility, and in many ways the likeliest. There was the Englishman who had been slain in the stables, the one posing as one of his Irish troops, to lend evidence to that theory.

And yet—Marlborough was winning on the battlefield. Why should England run the risk of international disapproval? Unless
somehow Albion had learned of the great weapon France and her king prepared for it. What had de Duillier called it? “Newton's own cannon”?

There were other possibilities. It could be the old nobles, those bastards who had engineered the Fronde long years ago. Bit by bit Louis had been destroying them in favor of the more dependable and patriotic lesser nobility.

The remaining choices were unthinkable. The duke of Maine, Louis'illegitimate son by Montespan, had a chance at the throne now that the dauphin was dead. Yet if any of his children loved him, it was Maine. And Philip, his grandson—his
single
surviving
legitimate
heir—Philip was king of Spain, thanks to him, and his ally in this war against the British.

“Louis-Alexandre,” he said, as his valet helped him on with his dressing robe. “After I meet with my ministers, I wish to go hunting.”

“Sire, it has only been three days since …”

“I am aware of the days as they pass, Louis-Alexandre. And I believe that it has been too long since I have hunted.”

“The King's Police have not finished their investigation,” Bontemps reminded him. “It is far from certain that it would be safe for you to go outside at the present.”

“I will not cower here, Louis-Alexandre, waiting for death to find me. Send as many of the Hundred Swiss as you desire— summon the entire company of Black Musketeers from Paris if you wish—but I shall hunt this afternoon.”

Bontemps' sigh was all but inaudible. “Yes, Sire,” he replied.

At times, Louis wondered if the Bourbons had not somehow gotten the blood of wolves into their line, for nothing woke the fierceness in him as did the baying of hounds, the braying of trumpets. It was almost as if he could scent the quarry, feel its fear and its fierce determination to live.

It was this wolfish sensibility that told him they were upon a stag.

If only he could ride a horse, rather than bump along behind one in the wheeled monstrosity that had been devised for him. If only he could see the courtiers around him.

The dogs were drawing nearer, running the stag in to them; beaters spread out through the woods were funneling the great beast toward his chariot. If only he had a musket—if only he could see to fire one!

Open your eyes
, the angel said. The angel had spoken to him often since the dauphin died.
Open your eyes, and I will show you how an angel might aid you.

Louis opened his eyes, and a grayness dawned where before there had only been night. To his astonishment, the world quickly grew lighter, until he could make out the slender saplings and thicker, hoarier trees.

His driver pulled the carriage to a stop and waited, cocking an ear attentively to the approach of the dogs. Without thinking, Louis stepped onto the forest floor.

The driver looked odd to Louis; his coat and boots were clear and detailed, but his face was a sort of featureless oval.

“Sire?” the driver inquired. Louis recognized the voice immediately.

“Bertrand,” Louis said, naming him. Almost instantly the visage sprang into focus, becoming Bertrand's long, red face complete with drooping mustache. Louis looked around, wondering at the forest. The trees were as clean of line and regular as the colonnade at Versailles, as if they were carved of marble. Perhaps twenty courtiers on horseback gaped at him, their faces as featureless as Bertrand's had been.

His huntsman, Jean-Claude, stood near. He mumbled a formality and his face, like Bertrand's, became distinct. The courtiers might as well have been mannequins.

“Jean-Claude, give me your weapon,” Louis said.

He took the gun—one of the new, rifled muskets, not one of the strange scientific weapons that threw lightning or God knew what else at their targets. He had forbidden those on the hunt.

A cry went up as the stag burst into sight. Louis saw it as if through a spyglass, and yet the beast still looked curiously
perfect
. In fact, it resembled a stag he had killed when just a boy, yes, even to that darkening on the shoulder blades. Its eyes were
rolling, and two of the hounds virtually hung upon it. Its haunches were soaked in blood.

Fifty paces away the beast knew its mistake and tried to fling itself somewhere, to break through its ring of tormentors. Louis gave it peace with a single lead ball through the heart.

“Why is my sight so strange?” Louis asked the angel later.

It is because I see for you
, the angel replied.
Your own eyes are ruined. But I can see through you, through your ears and your skin. Then I paint a sort of picture for you, so that you may see also. You must understand it is only an approximation of sight.

“It is very strange. Why do some people have faces while others do not?”

When you know them—when you have some memory of their face for me to model them from—then I can paint their faces for you. Otherwise, I do the best I can, Louis.”

“Do angels not have eyes like men?” he asked.

Do not presume too much
, the angel answered.
You may be the greatest king on earth, but my king is God, and he is yours as well. He has given you for me to watch over, but you may not question me.

“I am sorry,” Louis said, though in his heart he was angered that even an angel might command him.

I will forgive this once. The answer to your question is no. What my angel eyes see, your human soul could not bear. You should appreciate this gift of sight I give you, for in providing it—even in this indirect fashion—I bring myself pain.

“I thank you most humbly,” Louis answered. He felt a sudden dread: What the angel had given him, it could take back and, strange though his new vision was, it
was
vision.

Go to the mirror, Louis, for I have something else to show you
, the angel said.

Louis obeyed.

“Shit!”
he exclaimed, unable to believe what he saw. Staring back at him was Louis XIV. He wore no wig; long, beautiful chestnut curls fell to his shoulders. A darker mustache clung to
his upper lip. His face was smooth. His body was slim, and the stockinged legs bulged with firm, shapely muscle.

He was young again.

Adrienne wondered if she could catch Fatio if he fainted; he seemed unsteady on his feet as he gawked at the proof she had just handed him. Even Gustavus betrayed a tight little smile of triumph as he peered over Fatio's shoulder at her disguised letter.

“By God,” Fatio finally managed, in a strangled voice. “So simple, and yet so—” He whirled upon her. “Who is this Janus?”

Adrienne shrugged. “It came on the second schreiber.”

“Really?” Gustavus asked, his eyes glittering. “And this is your first communiqué from this Janus?”

She nodded, feeling the sudden weight of her lie around her neck.

Gustavus grinned savagely at her affirmation, and she felt a sudden unwarranted thrill of fear. How did Gustavus know she was lying?

But he merely clapped Fatio on the shoulder. “Well,” he said, “we have our answer, sir, and now we can proceed.”

“Yes! Yes!” Fatio replied enthusiastically. “Still, I wonder whom we have to thank.”

“I'm sure one of our English colleagues will claim the credit soon enough,” Gustavus responded, flicking his gaze to the aetherschreiber. “But let you and I strike while the iron is hot.”

“Oh, yes! We can give the king a date, now. That will please him—” He glanced suddenly at Adrienne and then at Nicolas d'Artagnan, standing behind her. Gustavus glared, though she did not need that to know that Fatio had said more than he ought.

A date
, Adrienne repeated to herself, walking back toward the aetherschreibers.
Another clue.

That afternoon, near three, Torcy sent for her. With Nicolas in tow, she met him in the king's antechamber.

“The king has gone to Marly for a few days, at his physi-cian's insistence,” Torcy explained to her. “He wishes you to join him there.”

“I see,” Adrienne said. She had wondered if, in the chaos, Louis had forgotten her. Whereas a few days ago that would have been cause for rejoicing, now she felt relief. Whatever forces were at play, whatever confluence of cabals had swept her up in their plotting certainly did not care what
she
wanted.

The coming storm—whatever its nature—might still break her. But if one had to weather a hurricane, she knew that it was best to be in its eye.

That eye was Louis.

And yet, the thought of being the king's mistress repulsed her more today than it had earlier.

Torcy clearly read the momentary struggle in her features. “Don't wear that long face to Marly,” he cautioned. “The king may not be capable of sight—” He hesitated, as if to add something, and then plunged on. “—but he is surrounded by those who are.”

“Your pardon,” Adrienne said. “I … I only hope I can be of some comfort to him.”

Torcy nodded diffidently. “I am certain that you can. The king has always been comforted by youth and beauty.” He paused for the barest instant, his eyes narrowing their focus. “Have you anything to tell me regarding what we discussed?”

Adrienne shook her head. “I wanted to examine the barge, especially the remains of the lantern, but my bodyguard informed me that it has been incinerated.”

“So it has,” Torcy confirmed. “Most of the ministers have convinced themselves and the king that this was an English plot. Indeed, one of the Hundred Swiss apprehended an Englishman soon after the fire.”

“What made him suspect this Englishman?”

Torcy held up his hands. “The Englishman was carrying a musket. When the guardsman approached to question him, he fired. Actually, he killed one guard.”

“But the Englishman did not confess?”

Torcy smiled wryly. “Perhaps to God. The guard arrested him with the point of his smallsword.” He reached into a coat pocket. “This is one of his rifle balls,” he added, passing it to Adrienne. “Does it tell you anything?” Torcy asked.

“It could be a catalyst,” Adrienne finally said. “It would be the simplest way to trigger the lantern into igniting the air. But if a marksman could strike the globe, why not simply shoot the king?”

“There is a plain answer to that,” Torcy said, his voice very low. “The king cannot be shot.”

“What?”

“He has been protected from bullets,” Torcy answered simply.

“Oh.” She frowned, wondering precisely how that might be done. Clearly, Torcy was not going to tell her, even if he knew. “In that case, perhaps it
was
an English plot.”

“I have no doubt that the English had a hand in this,” Torcy replied. “They know that the next king would sue for peace and relinquish much of what we have gained in the last few decades. But I smell a stink in Versailles, Mademoiselle, and it is too grand a stink to be accounted for by one dead Englishman.”

The coach bounced violently, and for the third time, Adrienne caught Nicolas glancing quickly away from her, a puzzled, thoughtful expression on his face.

“What is it, Nicolas?” she demanded, irritated. “Why do you keep gawking at me?”

“Your pardon, milady Adrienne,” he mumbled.

“Why should you care for my pardon? But if you ask your
question
, I might answer it.”

“Question, milady?”

“I am losing patience with all this,” she snapped. “The unasked questions, the half-truths, the veiled threats—” She stopped, realizing that speaking thus to one who had Torcy's confidence might not be such an intelligent maneuver.

“Again, milady, my apologies,” Nicolas said mildly. “You are quite correct. My question regards honesty,” he said, his voice barely audible over the clattering of hooves.

He looked down at the floor of the coach. Finally he cleared his throat. “I just wondered why you hide your gifts, that is all, your knowledge.”

“Torcy has spoken to you?”

“A little, but he needed to say nothing. My job is to
watch
you, milady. And though I know nothing of mathematics or science, I am not so dense that I cannot see that you
do
. And yet you hide what you know. You are an educated woman—everyone knows you attended Saint Cyr. Such women are valued, I hear, for their learning.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “so long as they learn the
right
things: to make polite conversation, to be cheerful and supportive, to know the New Testament but not the Old, to learn nothing of theology—” What use going on like this to this rustic guard?

Nicolas frowned. “I thought they taught reading and figuring the math, and …”

“Reading, yes, but only certain subjects. Mathematics, yes, of the simplest sort but never calculus, never geometry. We were taught to be horrified of science, as if it were sin.”

“And yet you learned it.”

“Indeed,” Adrienne said, chagrined at the way her voice shook. “The king and Madame de Maintenon had the good grace to send me to a school where I learned all that a woman might hope to learn. And what did I do? I betrayed that, Nicolas. Madame de Maintenon would turn in her grave if she ever knew what you know, what Torcy knows.”

“And the king?”

She shook her head. “The king thinks me blameless, yet if ever he knew I had betrayed Maintenon and Saint Cyr in such a way, he would be furious.”

“And yet you always smile.”

“Do I?” She was genuinely astonished.

“Of course. Even when arguing with the marquis de Torcy. Didn't you know this?”

Adrienne blinked, realizing stupidly that she was smiling even now. “I do not notice it,” she admitted.