The Oracle Glass (16 page)

“Visconti,
bah
. An amateur,” said the Neapolitan priest in his heavy Italian accent. “He has no grasp of the sciences of divination. I myself am the fountain and origin of this particular art, as I will demonstrate.”

“Bravo, Père Prégnani,” called the elderly gentleman. “Demonstrate how your art outshines Visconti's!” So, this was Prégnani, Visconti's rival, and a nasty-looking piece of work he was. The man who was making quite a name for himself predicting horse races for the nobility. I watched his technique with some interest as he called for a handwriting sample and drew up the horoscope, attracting the attention of every soul in the room.

But it was the Marquise de Morville who gained most from the occasion, for the shrewd old lady enchanted the horoscopic ladies by allowing them to interpret her images with their various methods of divination. Their quarrel over the merits of chiromancy versus palmistry became so interesting that even the Comtesse de Gramont broke off her flirtation with Père Prégnani to join in, and by the end of the evening the marquise had received from her the most coveted invitation of all. The comtesse would curry favor with an increasingly desperate Queen by bringing her yet another of the fortune-tellers Her Highness sought in ever greater numbers. The Marquise de Morville, the most fashionable new
devineresse
in Paris, would go to Versailles.

“Your first visit to court,” said the sorceress contentedly. Her cats rubbed at her skirts as she sat in the armchair in her cabinet. I had been offered the stool. Moving up, I thought silently. Someday, she will offer the armchair. “I read it in your future. You will climb high. Would you care for another marzipan?” I took a big one. She smiled. At that moment, I would have liked to trade it for the smaller one, but it was too late. Besides, I liked marzipan. “I can, of course, advise you. I have been to the court at Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, and at Versailles. But the Queen—You have done very, very well so soon. I am gratified.” As soon as I had eaten the first marzipan, I started thinking of the next one. I won't look at the plate, I thought.

She got up suddenly and poked at the fire, which had almost extinguished itself. While her back was turned, I took another marzipan. A little one that wouldn't be noticed. The sorceress took out a ledger from the locked cupboard to consult. She turned and looked at me as she replaced the book. “Enjoy yourself among the golden ones, my dear. Learn their secrets, keep their confidences. Remember, I am always here to assist you, and them, with my little ‘confidential services.'” She sat down again. Her eyes narrowed as she noticed the plate. “Now, when will you be visiting Versailles?” She went on as if she had never noticed the missing marzipan. “I have a little package I would like delivered there. And one thing I must remind you of—why, I think of myself almost as your mother and want only your good—never show weakness to them. They are like gilded wolves. If they sense the slightest hesitation, they will turn on you and eat you in a flash. Audacity! Boldness! They only wish to be dazzled. Rely on your wits. Trust no friendships: a nest of vipers is more generous than the court of the Sun King.” Considering the source, I was impressed with the advice.

“You'll need court dress,” she announced, “though what you have will do for now, until you earn more money.” She laughed. “Would you like to see mine? The embroideries are absolutely exquisite. And well they ought to be, since the gown alone cost five thousand livres.” I wondered why she went to court. It certainly wasn't to watch the King dining in public as the tourists did.

Upstairs in her bedroom, La Voisin opened the locked armoire where ranks of clothes were hung, hidden beneath muslin shrouds. She lifted one of the protective sacks to display a silk gown in
aurore
lined with pale green. From another, an array of heavy, brightly colored petticoats in taffeta burst out.

“Oh, beautiful.” I pretended to sigh. I could see her calculating eye. She was whetting my appetite for the grand life.

“Our profession is welcomed at every court on earth—providing we are not uncouth, like the vulgar La Bosse. Mind your manners and remember my lessons, and you will have a dozen gowns like this.”

“And that? The red velvet?” I pointed to the corner of a heavy, rich robe embroidered with double-headed gold eagles that was peeping from beneath one of the muslin covers.

“Never,” she said, carefully rearranging the muslin. I got a glimpse of sea-green lace before the gown vanished from sight. “This is an emperor's robe. The only way you would ever have one is if you became Queen.” She tilted her head and looked at me anew with her black, black eyes. “My, what calculating gray eyes you have, my dear. You certainly have the brains to become Queen—and so few do—but you entirely lack the character to make a good witch. I think I need not stay up at night worrying, eh?” She shut the armoire door and turned the key in the lock with a click.

I thought of the Stoics. I thought of Monsieur Descartes. Here I was offended that I'd been told I wasn't crazy enough to be a
real
sorceress. Father, the lover of ironies, would have laughed.

A knock on the bedroom door broke the moment.

“Madame, the girl you sent for is waiting below, and your husband has returned with the package.”

“Oh, excellent, Margot. How many did Samson give him?”

“Four this time, Madame. Will you be drying them here, as usual?”

“Of course. Bring the package in.” She turned to me with a cool look, as if she were assessing me. “I have no secrets from the little marquise here,” she said in an arch tone. “The coals in the oven have burned quite low enough now.” So I was right; I thought I'd noticed an unusual heat from behind the tapestry on the bedroom wall.

As Margot left, La Voisin turned to me. “I've found you a lovely little maid. She's ever so knowledgeable about the court. She can inform you about the people you meet and keep you from embarrassing yourself. Suppose, for example, you knock at a door instead of scratch—you won't live down the disgrace. But she can tell you which doors to knock at and which to scratch at…when to open a half door to a visitor and when to open a full door. It's a matter of precedence. Precedence and court etiquette. It's important you don't go wrong. Oh, yes. And you should start to grow a long fingernail on the little finger of your left hand; all the courtiers do, for scratching at doors.” She looked pleased with herself and went on: “How very fortunate I was to acquire her…she was in the household of La Grande Mademoiselle until she attracted the notice of the wrong man. A few weeks in the Sâlpetrière caused her to repent of her life and send for me. And I, out of the kindness of a too-generous heart, arranged for her departure and am giving her a new start in life.”

Interesting. The only way a girl like that could expect to get out of prison was if she was transported for life to the colonies. So La Voisin's reach extended into the jails and “hospitals” of the city. How had she arranged the escape? And now she had another loyal follower, and a spy to report my every movement. Ah, philanthropy. It becomes a way of life. “You are too generous,” I said, and she shot me a hard look, before turning to her husband who had entered through the bedroom door.

“So there you are at last—I can't imagine why you've been so slow! How long does it take to go only down the street? It's not as if Samson lives across town, after all!” Antoine Montvoisin was, for once, not in his dressing gown but in a shabby gray homespun suit and a wide-brimmed, untrimmed felt hat drooping forlornly over a moth-eaten goat's-hair wig.

“He made me…
hic
…wait…for a long time,” Montvoisin said in a weak voice. His wife pulled aside the tapestry to reveal the oven door in the stone wall. Montvoisin stood, all drooping, his thin frame occasionally shaken by another silent hiccup.

“Unwrap them and put them on the drying rack—and don't let them drip this time. For heaven's sake! Can't you stop that infernal hiccupping?”

“It's you who…
hic
…caused it, so if you're offended, it's…
hic
…your own fault. Next time keep your toad powder…
hic
…for your clients.”

“How dare you insult my profession when you live by it? Oh, those are dreadfully damp; they'll take forever. Couldn't Samson get us any older ones?” La Voisin was scurrying about like a housewife at preserve-making time. With a rising sense of nausea, I recognized the objects that her lover Samson, the executioner of Paris, had sent her. They were human hands.

“Doesn't the smell offend you—I mean, right here in the house?” I was trying to sound cool, offhand, as if I often saw things like that. But my voice came out smaller than usual. Maybe I really wasn't cut out to be a witch, after all.

“That?” answered La Voisin. “Oh, it's no worse than curing hams. Besides, it's the smell of prosperity. That never bothers me. Pardon, but you're turning green. Do you need to sit down?” I sat down suddenly on the bed.

“Don't you stain my carpet. Use the slop jar. You? At court? You're a weakling still.”

“What…what are they for?”

“Hands of glory. They attract hidden treasure to the owner. Half the court has them. Ladies keep them sewn in their skirts, men in their pockets. Guaranteed to bring luck at the gaming tables. You needn't look so queasy. They're quite compact and free of mess once they're all dried out. They curl up, you see. I buy them from the executioner; the people were already dead. It's not as if I killed them. The King did; the courts did. Why shouldn't someone at least get a little benefit from it? I see myself as creating good from evil. I make money from something that would otherwise go to waste—that's the advantage of understanding housewifery. Nothing should ever be wasted. Learn from me, and you will be able to turn others' wickedness to your own advantage.”

I wondered what the Romans did for nausea. They probably never tried vomiting wearing corsets, either.

“Antoine, go hold her head. I won't have her dripping down that good dress I paid for. Nerve! Hah! You haven't got any, Mademoiselle. You? Want vengeance? You couldn't kill a mouse. I don't know when I've met a girl so lily-livered. It's a good thing I've found you a maid who's got more backbone than you, or you wouldn't last a week among the Great Ones.”

As she shut the oven door with a clang, Antoine Montvoisin offered me his arm to escort me downstairs.

“She may be the powerful one, but…
hic
…no matter what she tries, my soul is screwed fast to my body. There's a virtue in…
hic
…sticking power. But I recommend to you…
hic
…not to make her angry, or if you do, don't take…
hic
…food or drink in this house. And where you're going…
hic
…it's useful to know a few things. Keep…
hic
…antipoison with you, or failing that, drink a great deal of…
hic
…milk if the soup tastes…
hic
…odd. I found it…
hic
…to be most efficacious, though it's…
hic
…left me with these…
hic
…accursed hiccups. I'm telling you this because…
hic
…you seem to have more of decency…
hic
…about you.”

That night, I had dreadful dreams. The room turned into a tall, glittering dining room, and I was seated with an elegant company around a great table with a white linen cloth. Silver candelabra stood among heavily laden silver platters, and the talk was witty. There was a lovely pâté on one of the platters. A man reached out to cut it with his knife, to offer some to his lady dining companion. The pâté groaned with a human voice.

“Oh, how offensive!” the lady exclaimed, and as he hastily drew back his knife, I could see the horrid thing was bleeding where it had been cut.

“They should know better than to invite things like that to dinner,” observed a lace-bedecked gentleman. A lackey filled my glass full of a rich, green cordial.

“Oh, no more for me,” I said. “I've had too much already.” Too much. Too much. Whom did I know at this table? I looked to each side. The three friends of the rue des Marmousets were seated on either side of me, Lamotte in ribbons, Griffon in fawn-colored velvet, and d'Urbec, as pale as a ghost, in black silk.

“Tell me,” said Griffon, “does the pâté publish?”

“Isn't it sufficient that it speaks?” asked d'Urbec in that pointed way he had. His dark eyes, somehow sunken in his head, glittered with a strange bitterness and mockery I had not seen before.

“Monsieur Lamotte, take me from this dinner party. I am fatigued,” I begged. Somehow, he seemed to be the one who had brought me.

“Oh, you can't leave,” cried a man eating oysters. “You are supposed to pay for the dinner.”

“But I can't—” My desperate protest was interrupted by a woman's indignant shrieks: “You have to. What do you expect?” And with that the company began to argue about who would pay, growing louder and more quarrelsome by the minute.

“Mademoiselle Pasquier, I can't leave just now,” Lamotte confided in a low voice. “I'm filling my pockets for tomorrow's breakfast. Poet's privilege.” He took more rolls, a dozen or two vanishing beneath the table. Then he folded up a huge soup tureen into a tiny napkin and slipped it beneath his shirt. But d'Urbec looked at me with that strange, intense look that seemed to see everything.

“It offends you,” he said, throwing his napkin over the pâté. “Although if you had read the sixth chapter of my
Observations
on
the
Health
of
the
State
more carefully, you would not have been astonished at all. Come, let us leave before their quarreling sets the hall on fire.” And as the first blows sent the dishes rattling to the floor and the lighted candelabra rolling and sputtering across the fine linen cloth, he took my arm and we fled unnoticed into the night.

Sweating and terrified, I lay frozen still, waiting for the dawn. What could they mean, these dreams? Or did they mean anything at all?

***

And so it was that within the week I found myself hurtling along behind six matched grays in Madame la Maréchale's heavy carriage on the road to Versailles. My new maid, bold and henna-haired, sat across from me on the back-facing seat, clutching my hatbox and squeezed in between the Maréchale's personal maid and one of her poor relative lady-companions. Madame herself and Mademoiselle d'Elbeuf were on the seat beside me. Not so far from the château, where the road divides to go to Marly, we heard the sound of cries and the crack of whips behind us.

“How many horses?” Madame asked, as her maid leaned out the window to see who was coming. We would not defer for a four-horse equipage.

“Six, Madame,” responded the maid.

“And what color are their liveries?”

“Blue and silver, Madame de Montespan's.”

“Then by all means, tell my coachman to pull over, or we will be overturned in the ditch.” As our coach pulled to a halt on the grassy bank beside the road, a heavy carriage rolled past, the lathered horses at full canter, mud spattering from their hooves. Inside I could see three women and the pale face of a little boy. We pulled back onto the road behind them only to be halted again a mile farther on. The great coach was stopped in the center of the road, the blue-and-silver-clad postillions arguing with the coachmen, while in the road, two of the women from the carriage were weeping and exclaiming over the mangled corpse of a poor vine cutter, crushed by the carriage and horses. The huge bundle of sticks with which he had been laden was scattered all about him. Beside the road, members of his family had gathered, staring silently. A plumpish blond woman with a protruding nose and receding chin leaned out of the carriage window.