The Pearl of the Orient (Kindle Single) by Danielle Trussoni

Author:Danielle Trussoni [Trussoni, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2015-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

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Cảnh was careful to keep his mouth shut and nearly a month passed without a pearl. The queen brought the mute child with her everywhere: to the Chateau de Maussadement, to the Hameau, to Fountainebleu. Everyone knew that the queen loved excitement. The prince was a walking carnival. The court, always hungry for something new—for any excuse to dance and feast and speculate—took up the prince like a cause celebre. Courtiers thought him a marvelous addition to the Versailles milieu; the Orient emerged in every conversation. What would become, they asked, of this opulent, mute child? The prince’s silence had become more seductive than speech. His potential! If only he would open his mouth and say something charming. If only he spoke to them in the language of pearls!

To escape the prince’s public, the dauphin took Cảnh to the Hameau. There, among the cottages—each painted with vines and cracks and all the little flourishes of veritable peasant life—the children would lie in the grass near the lake and gaze at swans and bluebells. Sometimes they ran races in the shade of Marlborough Tower, the lame dauphin officiating. One day, the children rehearsed their newest drama.

“You must be the shepherd,” Mademoiselle Royale said to the dauphin.

“I don’t want to be the shepherd,” said the dauphin. “You must be the shepherd.”

“Why should I be the shepherd? I am the eldest!”

“Yes, but I am the dauphin. Therefore you must be the shepherd.”

Mademoiselle Royale played with the jabot gauze of her dress and swatted butterflies. Who could argue with such logic? She said, “I cannot be a shepherd: I’m a girl.”

“Then you may be a shepherdess.”

The Valys, the farming couple brought in from the county to care for the animals, bowed to the children, who ignored them, as always.

The dauphin turned to his younger brother, the duc de Normandie, their mother’s favorite, a perfectly formed, even fat child whose thick blond curls and satin frock were of identical sheen.

“And you are the toad,” the dauphin said his brother.

“And you,” the dauphin pointed his ebony cane in the prince’s direction, “are the happy savage.”

“But he doesn’t speak!” objected Mademoiselle Royale. “He cannot be in our piece de théâtre unless he chooses to speak.”

“All he must do is smile,” said the precocious duc de Normandie. “He is the happy savage.”

“He must perform. I will speak for him,” said the dauphin.

Mademoiselle Royale fetched her crook from the barn and freed the animals from their pens. Perfectly groomed sheep spread over the grass like low clouds.

The play commenced.

“Oh! My fold! My lovely sheep!” Mademoiselle Royale said, a hint of vibrato in her voice. “If only my prince were near.”

“Hurry! Go!” The dauphin waved his brother—a prince in the guise of a frog—to the shepherdess.

The duc de Normandie hopped across the lawn. “Rrrrrrribbit! Rrrrrrribbbit!”

The nearby lake was glassy, broken only by the glide of swans.

The dauphin pushed Cảnh at Mademoiselle Royale. She said, “You are not my fair prince. You are a savage!”

The dauphin poked the prince: Smile.

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