Goddess Read Online Free Page B

unwavering—or at least one hopes so—attention of hundreds of God’s creatures all falling upon you, upon your bare arms, your throat, even your teeth. Well, the latter doesn’t apply to you but do try to imagine it.
    Or perhaps you’re among those unfortunates who look out upon a congregation of yawning, slumbering faces—open mouths, instead of open eyes. Some people do have that effect on others. You may be among them. I see it now. I imagine you whining on about sin and moral rectitude while the masses fidget and snore and think about what they’ll have for dinner, or let their minds wander pleasantly across their more memorable transgressions. Not the impact you intend to have, I know, but we cannot all be stars in the firmament. Someone must be the earth. Dense. Unyielding. Very few of us soar as I have. Very few of us are granted wings of angels.
    Icarus?
    Very witty, Father. I’m proud of you.
    You weren’t joking?
    A cautionary tale, then. A fable? A moral lesson. How tedious. Do you really think me so feverish? I’m fully aware, I assure you, of the heights to which I ascended, of the machinery and faith—ignorance, whatever you wish to call it—it took to keep me there, of the angle and speed of my descent. Nobody feels it more keenly than me.
    So don’t trudge in here with your grubby sandals and your fables, Father. You are talking—listening—to one of the few enduring goddesses.
    I do not transgress. I transcend. I fly, with coronet and sceptre, over the heads of mortals. I amaze them. They worship at my bare feet, gaze up at me tentatively, as if the glory of my eyes might blind them.
    Ah! The wonder of it!
    The squalor.

Act 1, Scene 4
Ensemble
    T HERE ARE DUSTY MILES behind the horse’s hooves—long summer miles through hamlets and across rivers. The horse is weary. The rider is desperate for a drink and a roasted hare and maybe a woman’s mouth on his noble cock. In that order. Perhaps twice.
    He reaches the gates of the Grande Écurie. Reins in to let the sentries see his face. They bow and wave him on, announce his name to the messenger who will race ahead of him to the palace, pass the word of his arrival through the pavilions, the kitchens and the galleries.
    ‘Comte d’Armagnac!’ The guards bow again.
    ‘Jesus save us, it’s hot.’
    He hates Versailles, the fusspot orchards, the galleries, the mirrors, the godforsaken countryside. Hates the weeks wasted here, standing about in hallways, fussing with wigs and peacocks, royal mistresses and gardeners and orchestras and endless bloody fêtes . Miles from the city. Never understood the appeal. The King should be in Paris. Paris is everything. The King is everything. They belong together. Not here. Nowhere.
    Into the courtyard, through a gateway and into the inner court, scattering young boys and dogs, twisting in the saddle to check the stables, the hay store, the tack rooms, before his staff has a chance to put things to rights.
    All in order. For once. More or less. Raised voices inside the offices—that drunkard d’Aubigny shouting at someone or other.
    ‘He’s here! A day early.’
    A girl’s laughter from upstairs—the daughter, no doubt. No reply, just the big man yelling.
    Equerries run out of the shadows and pretend they’ve been at their desks all along. Stableboys furiously sweep the morning’s horse shit out of sight. They’d eat it if they had to, to get the paving stones clean. Lick it up. Swallow it. Anything.
    A horn sounds. There’s a rush of footsteps from the drill room. The boys form up into ragged lines, pushing the little ones back out of sight. A pathetic lot. He doubts any of them will ever become pages. A waste of time. Years spent drilling and coaching and they’ll all end up with their brains spattered on a battlefield somewhere in fucking Flanders. Pages are for peacetime, for courts where nothing happens.
    But Louis likes to keep up appearances.
    The fool d’Aubigny appears, trying to look