Sherzad’s captivity

Sherzad’s captivity aboard Louis XIV’s flagship is defined by the reversal of an apparent release: carried toward the ocean, she is instead bound and left hanging from the ship’s bow. Her confinement tests the difference between a ruler’s promise and actual freedom, while Marie-Josèphe de la Croix’s effort to reach her turns a broken sword into the means of escape.

A captive at sea

At the beginning of this episode, Sherzad is confined in a basin beneath a canvas canopy on the flagship’s main deck. A net restrains her as she struggles to reach the sea. Marie-Josèphe sits beside the basin and reaches through the mesh to comfort her, addressing her as a dear friend. Their contact is possible only through the barrier that holds Sherzad captive.

The ship’s arrangement makes the distance between captivity and freedom visible. Sherzad is already surrounded by the sea, yet cannot enter it; Louis XIV sits above, shaded on the upper deck, and gives the order that sets the sailors in motion. Marie-Josèphe is near Sherzad, but the movement of the vessel and the decisions about Sherzad’s fate remain under royal and naval control. The open water is close enough to be the object of her struggle, but proximity does not make her free.

The promised release reversed

As the sailors prepare to take Sherzad to the bow, Marie-Josèphe tries to reassure her with a song. She recalls that Sherzad had once been freed into the Grand Canal and tells her that Louis XIV is keeping his word. The sailors loosen the net and use it as a sling to carry Sherzad. Her weakened appearance makes the journey a sign of her deteriorating condition as well as a transition toward the sea. At the bow, she sings a farewell, her voice breaking.

The expectation of release collapses when the sailors tighten the net instead of opening it. They bind Sherzad in place, and Marie-Josèphe protests, seizing the mesh. A musketeer drags her away. Lucien de Chrétien, ill and unsteady, draws his sword and tries to intervene, but the lieutenant threatens Marie-Josèphe with a pistol. The two are overpowered and held as hostages, each made vulnerable through the other. Marie-Josèphe finally lowers the sword and can only watch as the sailors suspend Sherzad beneath the bowsprit, between the arms of the golden figurehead.

Louis XIV frames the arrangement as allowing Sherzad to see and hear the ocean, but it does not restore her freedom. He takes Lucien’s sword and breaks it on the deck before kicking the broken blade overboard. The gesture makes the power behind Sherzad’s confinement unmistakable: the same voyage that appeared to promise access to the sea has brought her within sight of it only to leave her restrained, while those who try to intervene are subdued.

Resistance within confinement

Suspended in the net, Sherzad is in pain and nearing death. The ocean remains present, but she refuses to cooperate with the people controlling the ship: she keeps silent through the afternoon and will not answer Marie-Josèphe or direct the vessel. As night approaches she sings, though her voice is hoarse. Marie-Josèphe takes the song as agreement to guide them to a cove, revealing how urgently she hopes to read Sherzad’s actions as a path toward escape. Sherzad’s earlier silence, however, has already shown that she can withhold the cooperation on which the sailors depend.

Later, Marie-Josèphe approaches the net with the broken sword. She slips its blade beneath a cord and saws at the mesh, although the blade was not made for cutting cable and quickly loses its edge. Sherzad responds by pushing a foot through the opening and tearing at the net with her claws. Their efforts are coordinated but distinct: Marie-Josèphe works at the cords with the damaged blade, while Sherzad enlarges the gap from within. When a musketeer wakes and cries out, the escape is on the verge of discovery.

Escape into the sea

Sherzad bursts through the net and falls into the water. A pistol ball passes Marie-Josèphe and strikes the sea; she clutches the broken sword and the bowsprit, afraid Sherzad may have been hit. A splash then reaches her, and Sherzad laughs, challenges her pursuers, and vanishes into the darkness. Her immediate captivity ends not through the sailors’ decision or Louis XIV’s permission, but through the combined effort of Marie-Josèphe and Sherzad herself.

The scene leaves Sherzad’s later fate unresolved, but the terms of the confinement have changed decisively. At first, she is physically close to the sea yet unable to reach it; at the end, she is gone from the ship and beyond its captors’ immediate grasp. The broken sword, first associated with the failure of armed resistance, becomes a cutting tool in Marie-Josèphe’s hands. Sherzad’s captivity thus turns on the contrast between staged access and actual release: being carried to the ocean is not freedom, while the dangerous act of escaping the net is.