The thrill of rebellion warmed Constance’s heart as she followed the doctor through a labyrinth of dark passageways. Beneath her dance slippers, the floorboards hummed with hidden power. She strained to hear the flow of water or the clank of gears above the doctor’s history lesson about the building of the corridors, but could discern little beyond a distant howl of wind.
Over his shoulder the doctor said, “. . . and it is rumored that the King’s great-grandfather added the final corridors that allowed him to access his private garden without passing by his guards. Even then, the family could never fully trust those who worked for them.”
She nodded into the darkness. “It is ever difficult to know whom we can truly trust. Only this week, my supposedly loyal servants staged a rebellion by refusing to vote upon a matter I held close to my heart.”
The doctor slowed his pace. “You allowed your servants to . . . vote? To share their thoughts and opinions? That is uncommonly progressive of you, Your Highness.”
She snorted. “And how was I repaid for my trust? My servants abstained from the vote, leaving me in a predicament which I am still in the process of untangling. It seems the loyalty of our retainers becomes weaker with each passing generation. I’ve been told that my ancestors suffered no indignity from any man, lowborn or high, that was not met with wrath. I try to chart my own path through life, but my way is ever blocked by those who claim to have my best interests at heart.”
The doctor glanced back over his shoulder. “Your Highness is wise. In the end, we have no one to rely on but ourselves. And perhaps, a few intimate acquaintances. It is difficult to maintain a facade when we are at our most vulnerable.”
Constance frowned. She wasn’t sure exactly what the good doctor meant. “Do you mean when we are outside our customary circumstances? If so, I know that I feel most vulnerable here tonight, despite the fiery fleet that sails upon my gown. Between you and me, I often wear a thin chainmail corset crafted from the Steamwerks’ lightest steel alloy. Don’t ask me how I got my hands on such a unique item, but I’ll tell you this much. That corset has saved my life on more than one occasion from the knives of my enemies.”
The doctor gasped. “You, too, face mortal foes? Does their mere existence not strike you with fear?”
“Not at all. It’s not as if their attacks have caused me harm. Yet, I would feel more comfortable knowing that I had some defense against the unexpected.”
“Sometimes the best defense is to be where your enemies cannot follow. And here we are, Your Majesty.”
The doctor stopped before what appeared to be a solid stone wall. He fiddled with some hidden mechanism within it, and with a grating sound, a trompe l'oeil stone-painted panel slid aside to reveal an exit into the night.
The doctor walked on. Constance followed, her heart pounding in her ears. The doctor was an odd fellow, but likable. It was a rule at masquerade events that one didn’t ask for a name, but she was curious about him. Perhaps, if she could find out the name of his courtesan sister, Auntie Madge would be able to identify him? It was rare to meet someone so easy to talk to.
Brilliant stars above rivaled the moon’s pale glory. The celestial bodies seemed so close, and Constance fancied she could reach out and pluck them from the night sky to wear as jewels upon her Elizabethan gown. Ahead, the entrance to a yew maze beckoned. From somewhere behind the tall, clipped hedges drifted a scent of roses that was so intense she was almost overwhelmed by their heady perfume.
“Where are we?” she found herself whispering, although no one but the doctor was in sight.
“The King’s astrological garden. As an enthusiast of the sciences, I suspect you will appreciate what he’s accomplished here, building on the work of his forebears both botanically and mechanically. We follow this path through the yew maze, and then . . . well, you will just have to wait and see.”
Constance hurried after the doctor as he headed for the garden. “A maze?”
“It’s the second maze at Versailles. The first, which celebrated Aesop’s fables, was destroyed to make way for new gardens. But this private maze has stood the test of time for over a hundred years. During its evolution, grottos were introduced at key points along the path so that visitors can rest and relax. Eighteen fountains reflect the maze’s theme of universal exploration. The fountains each show a point of time in man’s . . .” He coughed. “Ahem. As I should say, in both men and women’s progress in the field of travel.”
“Thank you for acknowledging that half of the human race is worth acknowledging.”
The doctor chuckled. “You’re a bold one, Your Highness. Let me point out our first fountain exhibit, showing a wingless dragon drawing the chariot of Zeus and Hera.”
Constance blinked at the bubbling fountain. “That’s a stegosaurus pulling a Celtic war chariot driven by a Neanderthal couple. They’re wearing bear skins, not robes.”
The doctor faltered in his step and turned to stare at the fountain. “But . . . that’s not the legend that is carved on the fountain’s base.”
“Someone’s got their historical details mixed up. I can’t wait to see the next one! Unless . . . is it a canoe paddled by ancient Egyptians on the moon?”
“No, that’s fountain number eight.”
“Ah, brilliant. I believe I know the text this maze was based upon. Do continue with your tour.”
“You know . . . how could you know?”
Because the original sixteenth-century text used to rest on a pedestal in Papa’s study. Constance bit her lip to stop herself from blurting out that “Anonymous” was the favorite pen name of the eighth Baron Haltwhistle, Edwin the Stargazer. He’d also built Haltwhistle Hall’s Celestial Ballroom and its clock tower observatory. From within its glass dome, she used to be able to gaze ten miles over her country estate. A wave of homesickness rocked her, one with the intensity that only comes when you’ve personally sent your home spinning off into another dimension with little hope of return.
Was she wrong to place her trust in Welli and Trusdale to find the Enigma Key tonight? Shouldn’t she rely on her own investigative power? If the doctor knew so much about Versailles’s gardens, perhaps he also knew where Louis might keep an interdimensional key?
The doctor stopped and turned to face her. “You didn’t answer my question. How do you know of this text? It is extremely rare. There are only two copies known to be in—”
“Three,” she lied. “The British Museum keeps one at hand in London. I went there with my governess as a child. It was delightful to see the engraved imaginings of the famous Anonymous. He, she, or they, was surely a genius of the first degree.”
“The British Museum? Ugh. Is there any sacred item they haven’t defiled?” The doctor walked on through the maze with Constance on his heels. The scent of roses grew ever stronger.
“I’m not sure it’s a sacred text. My understanding was that the entire book is an allegory about humanity exploring different dimensions of themselves and their universe. Time isn’t linear, solids aren’t fixed in space, we are all merely pawns in a cosmic game far beyond our comprehension. You know, nonsense. Only half of it is true, but the museum could never figure out which half.”
“Then let us skip ahead to the grand finale. Beyond the eighteenth fountain lies a part of this puzzle that isn’t mentioned in the book.”
Louis has got his hands on the addendum? That can’t be right. Those copies only stayed within the family, or so I’ve been told.
Then again, her family was littered with liars, so anything was possible.
They walked on, traveling ever deeper into the heart of the maze.
Constance put aside her quest for the Key and followed the doctor. The maze now contained a mystery connected to her ancestral line of rogues, dilettantes, and thieves. That was more temptation than she was capable of resisting. She was lucky to have met a man as fascinating as the doctor. His steps were sure and steady as they passed through identical passageways lined by evergreen hedges twelve feet in height. Multiple branches off his chosen path never once caused him to pause or take a wrong turn. Constance knew she would have spent hours if not days wandering through this hedge maze without his sure-footed navigation.
The short, clipped grass of the path was now dusted with patches of white crystalline ash that glinted in the moonlight. Wisps of white smoke drifted up from long metal grates set every twenty feet or so along the edge of the path. Constance wafted her left hand through the tendrils of cloud as they walked by. The wisp froze her glove as surely as if she’d placed her hand within an icebox. She winced and patted at the flames she couldn’t see but could feel through the kidskin.
Unnatural fumes, perhaps linked to the whirlpool cloud upon which the palace rests?
She raised her glove to her porcelain mask and cautiously sniffed. She detected ozone and a taste like burning walnuts set atop an iron plate. It was a curious combination, especially when overlaid with other smells: the sweet evergreen aroma of yew and the scent of roses that strengthened as they drew closer to the center of the maze.
Yew was known as the king of hedges, and it was possible its use here was more than ornamental. In folklore, the ancient tree species was often linked to both immortality and death, which had led to its planting in sacred places across Europe. Yew was almost indestructible to all but root rot and could live to be thousands of years old. The Magna Carta was sealed beneath a yew tree, and Henry VIII and poor Anne Boleyn were rumored to have met below a yew tree before they wed. Hadn’t she read somewhere that the current Sun King’s ancestor, Louis XV, would sometimes dress as a yew tree at masquerade balls to mingle incognito with the crowds?
Papa had planted a yew grove at Haltwhistle Hall, adding to it every year he lived there. She’d loved clipping branches from it with him each Christmas to weave into festive wreaths to decorate the dining chamber. He’d told her that yew was a resonator species between dimensions; a yew tree in this world matched the exact shape, size, and age of other yews sharing the same space throughout the multiverse. A tree was more constant than a human or an animal, less solid than a mountain or a stone.
Constance’s stomach churned beneath her gown. A yew maze coupled with fountains from Edwin the Stargazer’s nascent scientific treatise on travel between worlds didn’t bode well. His theories had been centuries ahead of their time. It wasn’t until Papa perfected the first portal generator that Edwin’s fantasies had become real.
Before them, a yew arch over the pathway promised an entrance into the center of the maze. The howling wind intensified, buffeting her with a scent of roses so intense she was close to fainting. Her companion seemed immune to the gusts of perfumed wind that blustered from the circular clearing ahead.
The doctor shouted back at her over the howling wind, “Do not be afraid, Your Highness. Today you will see what Galileo and Copernicus could not have dared to dream.” He strode into the hundred-foot-wide clearing and cast his arms open. “I present to you a celestial wonder beyond the reach of all but the gods themselves. Behold! A working model of the universe!”
But it wasn’t the universe she knew.
What have the Sun Kings built?
Around the perimeter of the clearing floated a ring of red and white rose bushes. The fragrant roses strained against silver chains that tethered their roots into cold white flames licking out of bronze grills set into the crystalline ash underfoot.
The ring of roses encircled an enormous cosmic armillary sphere. Hundreds of alternate planet earths on silver rings rotated around a blazing white sun. The huge, turning structure levitated above a hole that led straight down through Versailles’s eight-story-deep platform to swirling purple clouds beneath. Presumably, falling through the clouds would lead to an unpleasant encounter with the ground below at a very high velocity. A howling wind gusted up the pipe from the clouds, blasting through the armillary sphere’s rings before being caught and dissipated by a mirrored dome that kept the entire edifice hidden from passing airships.
Constance slowed her step, gaping at the cosmic armillary. These were the planet earths from other dimensions, other times, other universes. They all moved as if guided by clockwork on their insanely intricate planetary rotations, eternally driven by an energy source like no other. A sun that burned brighter and whiter than the north star, with a single, cool blue triangle at its core.
An Enigma Key.
Constance’s heartbeat soared, drumming in her ears more loudly than a military tattoo. Versailles was flying because the Key was generating a weak interdimensional portal in the atmosphere below the platform. One blue Key alone was not powerful enough to punch a wormhole between dimensions, but apparently, it was strong enough to keep the palace elevated above the earth. The crystalline ash scattered across the clearing was most likely a byproduct from burning aether crystals blown up from the vortex clouds below. The white fire that illuminated the center of the maze was being used as ambient light.
Constance winced as the brightness of the sun-Key burned into her eyes. She focused instead on the back of the plague doctor’s black cloak as he walked to a lectern-sized pedestal that arose from the ground in front of the armillary. He fiddled with controls upon the pedestal, and the wind from below dropped in intensity and sound.
“That’s better,” he said. “Is this not the most glorious contraption you have ever seen?” He continued to play with the controls as Constance approached. The cosmic wind eased to a breeze and the armillary globe slowed its rotational speed. The rose bushes bobbed gently on their chains, twirling slowly as if each were a figurine in a musical box. The white ash crunched beneath Constance’s satin dance slippers as she walked up beside the doctor and peered at the controls. A plethora of dials, switches, and levers indicated that this device controlled Versailles’s aerial platform in horizontal-only navigation, defense, and waste disposal. A speaker grille allowed communication with cannon crews, guard stations, servants, and gardeners located across the length and depth of the flying saucer platform.
This entire edifice was clearly the work of geniuses. But had those seventeenth-century scientists and engineers sought to power the palace with more than one Key, they could well have sent Versailles on an interdimensional trip to any one of the earths rotating in the armillary automation. Had the Sun Kings decided to stay put to consolidate their power over France, or had their subordinates fooled their masters by not informing them additional Keys would bring even greater power? Or was it possible that the kings simply never found additional Keys? If only she could ask the King himself about the armillary. What a fascinating conversation that would be.
The plague doctor hit a control, and a twenty-foot square section of the floor to the right of the control platform slid back, dropping white crystalline ash into a large bronze chamber below. A whirring of gears in the space beneath heralded the arrival of a new platform that rose to precisely fill the opening in the floor. An extra-large chaise longue, big enough for two people and piled high with red silk cushions, rested upon the newly arrived platform. A gold baroque table beside the chaise longue held a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket beside two glasses and a plate piled high with pink and yellow petit fours.
“May I entice you to taste a delightful confection?” asked the doctor, moving to sit upon the chaise longue. He picked up the iced champagne and expertly popped off the cork with his gloved thumbs.
Constance turned back to the control panel. “So, Versailles does not run upon hydroelectric power.”
“Whoever thought it did? Come, sit beside me, Your Highness.” He poured two glasses of champagne and patted the chaise longue beside him.
Constance frowned behind her mask. “Isn’t that the King’s champagne? Are you mad? You’re going to get us into trouble. Now he’ll know that someone has entered his private maze without his permission.”
The doctor laughed. “The King would not begrudge us a single bottle of his finest bubbly. There are caverns filled with supplies below our feet. Upon our leaving, the bottle will be replaced by the royal gardeners who live down there, tending the canals and maintaining the horticultural excellence of this estate.”
Constance looked down at the ground as if expecting the gardeners to burst forth from the ash before her. “They live down there permanently?”
“Indeed. They are the descendants of the original engineers and gardeners who crafted the platform of Versailles. The Sun King who first launched this palace into the heavens could not allow them to leave with their knowledge of our divine machinery. In his mercy, he ordered them and their families to live forever beneath the surface of the gardens. Over generations, they have become somewhat changed by the cosmic energy that powers the holy armillary. If one sees them, one might almost believe they are descended from fish or perhaps mermen.” He shuddered. “Do not fear, Your Highness, they shall not bother us as we enjoy the light show from the dance of the planets beside you. The gardeners are the ultimate servants, never seen and never heard. This platform couldn’t run without them.”
Constance put one hand on her hip. “Are they allowed to leave?”
The doctor snorted. “Of course not. As the great pharaohs of Egypt were sealed into their pyramids surrounded by their living retainers, so are these men and women bound forever to the Sun King. It is their honor to live to serve the majesty of the divine.”
“Technology doesn’t make a person divine.”
The doctor tilted his head. “A curious statement. If we own the power to create or destroy at our whim, does that not make us divine? From that console, the Sun King can command Versailles’s cannons to arc their fire down to the ground to destroy an ancient city. With a single proclamation, he can order a new city to be built in its place, peopled by those he deems worthy to live.”
Constance pursed her lips beneath her mask. “You’re describing a tyrannical ruler with an aerial armada, not a god.”
The doctor clenched his fists for a moment. Then he laughed and lay back upon the chaise longue. “You are full of fire, Your Highness. Rest assured, we will have this celestial oasis all to ourselves for the next few hours. We shall watch the dawn rise together over the gardens of Versailles. But first, come over here and enjoy the planetary show before you from the best seat in the house.”
Constance sauntered over and sat a little way apart from the doctor. She scanned the mirrored dome above the rotating armillary. “It seems the mirror deflects the wind and also protects the device from being seen by passing airships. The execution is brilliant. I wonder, where would the King keep the book that inspired his ancestors to construct this engine?”
The doctor moved closer to her on the chaise longue. “What does it matter? Now, My Queen, you must share with me the secrets of your armada’s percussive power.” He stroked one of the English galleons that sailed across her thigh. It fired its tiny cannon, causing him to pull his hand away with a laugh. “Delightful. I have seen movement in clockwork costumes, and I’ve even heard tiny bells ring from one or two ladies’ gowns. But cannon fire is in a league by itself.” He reached his hand toward her thigh once more.
Constance rapped his fingers with her closed fan. “The doctor has not been given permission to examine this patient.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps the patient should take her medicine.” He reached for the filled champagne glasses and held one out to her. “Remove your mask, Your Highness, that I might gaze upon you with no impediment.”
She flicked open her fan between her body and the proffered champagne glass. “The good doctor is breaking the rules of the masquerade. We do not reveal our names or our faces.”
“Yet you are a rule breaker, are you not? You followed me into this forbidden realm. You told me you did not wish to win yourself a husband this night. You speak your mind, uncaring upon whose ears your words fall. You evade the blades of assassins without fear. You, Your Majesty, are every inch as mighty as the Virgin Queen whose armada crests your gown. Now, surrender and allow France to conquer your English territory with love and pleasure.”
Constance leaned in toward him and gazed into his blue eyes behind his black-beaked mask. “Where’s the book?”
He blinked, casting a furtive glance toward the control console. “In the King’s library, I assume. Where else would one keep a book? Now, Your Highness, tell me your name, that I may sing to the heavens of my newfound love.”
Constance rose to her feet, and felt her gown tugged back by the doctor’s hand. She halted as he said, “You are being ungrateful, Your Majesty. It does not become you. Be assured, you shall have the finest quarters in the palace with all the jewels and gowns you could ever desire. Servants will scatter rose petals at your feet as you dance through the courtesans’ wing. You will befriend the most educated, the most skillful, and the loveliest women in France who have each committed to spending their lives here at Versailles. You shall want for nothing, I swear it.”
“That’s a pretty big promise for a poor country doctor.”
He threw back his head and guffawed. “Have you not solved this riddle yet, Your Highness? I have the power to grant all things you desire, for I am divine, all-knowing, all-powerful. My love for you here tonight is as genuine as my royal bloodline. You have captured my heart, and a life of luxury and romance shall be yours forever.”
Constance stared down at the black-gloved hand clutching at her skirts. “These women who stay at the palace, are they allowed to leave? Or, as the gardeners who live below our feet, are they held captive, with no hope of rescue?”
The doctor’s grip on her gown tightened. “Why would any lady wish to leave the palace? They have everything they could desire. Who yearns for freedom when they can wear the finest gowns and jewels the world can offer?”
Constance leaned down and looked the doctor in the eye. “And what if a woman desires freedom above all else?”
“Then their beauty forever feeds my roses.”
She gasped. “You . . . turn them into fertilizer?”
“The cosmic fire alone cannot keep these thorny beauties nourished. They are fed daily with the blood and bone of the enemies of my court. But you are no enemy. Come, girl, allow me to show you the heavens.”
He dragged her gown sharply toward him.
As he reached to grab her waist, Queen Constance fired every cannon upon her gown at once.
With a blinding flash and a thunderous volley, France was blasted in the face by the English Armada. The doctor screamed as his porcelain face mask shattered in the blast. His face was one she had seen in profile on gold coins in Paris. A hook-nosed face with a slender jaw, it was the face of a man willing to kill or enslave her if she would not obey.
Constance closed her fan and stabbed it directly into the right eye of the Sun King.