THIRTEEN
Her appearance was met with a collective intake of breath from the audience. She entered perched on the shoulders of two Herculean young men, both dressed in animal skins and wearing lion masks. Each of them held her around the upper thigh, their steps perfectly matched to the music, which had darkened and slowed suggestively. She wore a serpentine eye mask of green, shimmering fabric and a gold circlet in the shape of a snake around her brow. Thick, dark hair was coiled and pinned up on her head, loose tendrils falling across her bare shoulders, but this was not her most arresting feature. She was dressed in a gown that made the nymphs look nun-like by comparison, of gauzy blue cloth fixed over one shoulder with a gold brooch, and so entirely transparent as to leave her as good as naked.
I was relieved to see that it was not Gabrielle in the part of the enchantress, though I did not recognise the girl. She was a voluptuous young woman, strong and full-figured: her breasts taut, with large dark nipples grazing the fabric, her thighs firm and rounded. She sat with her legs primly crossed at the knee, a position that made her balance precarious but served teasingly to hide her mound of Venus from sight. She held both arms aloft, a gesture which lifted and emphasised the shape of her breasts; in one hand she clasped a goblet, in the other a golden staff. Her mouth was full and wet, the tip of her tongue poking pinkly between her lips in concentration as her sturdy lions set her carefully down before the curtseying nymphs. Despite myself, I felt the reflex stirrings of desire and recalled Balthasar’s crude boast that I would spend myself in my breeches at the sight. As Circe passed her cup and staff to two of the nymphs and proceeded to gyrate languidly, in a style that involved drawing maximum attention to her attributes, a quick glance around the room at the slack jaws and lust-clouded eyes of the male spectators told me every man present – even the elderly and infirm, I guessed – was feeling the old heat in the blood and surreptitiously adjusting a cockstand.
Despite the distracting pressure in my breeches, I grew alert as she progressed down the hall towards the royal dais. On her high-backed chair Catherine sat upright, following the performance with an expression of grim approval, but it was Henri who caught my attention. He was leaning forward in his seat, hands gripping the carved armrests so that his knuckles turned white, his face rapt. Even with his half-mask, I could see there was something unusual in his expression, beyond lust or mere appreciation for beauty. Was it apprehension? Fear, even?
With that thought, my eyes flicked back to Circe. She was level with me now and facing the royal platform, dancing solely for the King, like Salome, while her nymphs cavorted in symmetry behind her. Her cheeks were flushed from her exertions, her lips parted, but there was a strange intensity in her look as she fixed her eyes on Henri, as if she were aware of no one else, or else trying to communicate wordlessly with him; her face seemed illuminated, feverish almost, with an expression of urgency or compulsion. It looked for all the world as if she truly had the King under some enchantment.
Watching them, I felt as if another significant shard of the mirror was within my grasp. When I had told Henri that Circe meant him harm, had he assumed I was talking about this woman? He had declared it to be impossible, but the way he was sitting now, every sinew taut as a bowstring, suggested he had taken the warning to heart; more than once I noticed his eyes dart sideways to the armed guards by the dais. I wondered if she could be the recent mistress he had mentioned. I found that I too was braced for any sudden movement on her part, though I was fairly certain she was not concealing a weapon anywhere in that dress. Across the hall I noticed the man in the Greek mask and the tricorn hat had advanced a few paces, so that he now stood between the front left corner of the royal platform and the edge of the tiered benches. He kept his cloak wrapped tight around himself, his arms hidden from view. As far as I could tell, his gaze was fixed on the King. Bodyguard or potential assassin? My fingers flexed; he and I were equidistant from the royal dais. If he were to dart forward, I would have to match him for speed and precision if I were to have any hope of stopping him, and if he were concealing a pistol I would surely die.
But then the music changed tempo again – lighter this time, less sinister – the spell was broken and Circe pirouetted once, gave Henri a last piercing glance and danced her way back to the girls dressed as animals on the stage, her magnificent hips swaying in mesmeric rhythm as she passed, to further lascivious cheers from the audience.
The rest of the masque unfolded as a confused patchwork of stories, in which more women scantily dressed as Greek warriors fell under Circe’s bewitchment and were turned to swine, then rescued by the cunning of a tall, slender girl in the guise of Odysseus, who was
