The Oracle Glass (23 page)

Since the sensation caused by my prediction of Madame de Montespan's return to favor the summer before, I had been taken up by the most fashionable salons in town. Now for the past year I had hardly ever eaten or slept at home, and hostesses snatched me up to enliven every social event with my now-celebrated wit. And so it was on a bright summer afternoon on the sixteenth of July in 1676 that I was crammed with a half dozen others into a window, rented at great expense by one of my patronesses, that overlooked the Place de Grève. It was the execution of the season, and as a result, windows and balconies overlooking the scaffold, or even just along the route of the tumbril, fetched a much higher premium than usual. The square itself and the streets into it were packed solid with humanity, and those of the noblesse who had come too late to rent window space were constrained to watch from their carriages, where the view was not half as good.

“And all for poisoning a tiresome little husband she had,” said my hostess with a sigh. “Really, that La Reynie is entirely too savage—Oh, look. There is the Princesse de Carignan in her carriage!” and she waved her handkerchief at her. The Marquise de Brinvilliers had been all the fashion for the last several weeks; the Comtesse de Soissons herself had brought a group of sightseers to the Conciergerie to watch the condemned woman led to her last Mass. But the marquise, still unrepentant, had turned and mocked the comtesse's morbid curiosity before she had vanished again into the prison. Now all of Versailles had come into the city for the edifying spectacle of her beheading and burning as an amusing change from their routine of cards, plays, and water festivals.

“I'll certainly breathe easier when that wicked woman is burned,” announced the abbé who accompanied us.

“Actually, you'll be breathing her,” I pointed out in a sour voice, for hypocrites annoy me. My hostess let out a little shriek of amusement.

“Ah, what wit, Marquise! Why, we might all take in a little bit of her evil! Even you, my dear Abbé.” Oh, bother. Without a doubt, another witticism to go the rounds of the court. How tired I was growing of hearing my own
bon
mots
come back to me, all shopworn, with someone else's name attached.

The roar of the crowd beneath the windows announced the arrival of the tumbril at last from Notre Dame, where the condemned woman had made the
amende
honorable
. Weak from the dawn's water torture, the Marquise de Brinvilliers lay back on the piled straw and wood that was to burn her corpse, clutching a crucifix to her bosom, her eyes distended and rolling with terror. She had on the plain, loose shift of the condemned and a little white muslin cap over her loose hair. The executioner stood behind her in the cart, his big two-handed sword hidden from her view. Her confessor leaned over her, exhorting her, though no one could hear his words. A guard of archers surrounded the cart, trying to beat back the crowd, but even so, the tumbril made slow progress. As she rolled her head from side to side, she spied a horseman, half hidden by the archers, accompanying the cart, and started back, making the sign of the devil's horns at him. Her confessor redoubled his efforts, and she turned her head away from the sight of the horseman.

“Why, it's Desgrez, riding there—he always makes sure to see a case through to the end, doesn't he?” said one of the gentlemen accompanying us.

“Desgrez? Oh, yes, it was he that captured her where she was hiding abroad, I do believe. He tracked her for years. At least, that's what I heard. In disguise. He discovered the written confession she'd made.”

“Clever devil, isn't he? It's not many that can catch a poisoner. Most of them get away with it.”

“Those and the doctors—otherwise, we'd all live as long as Methuselah, wouldn't we?” My hostess's husband, the Comte de Longueval, laughed too heartily at his own joke.

“Probably so…say, do you think he'll have it off at one stroke? I'll lay a wager of five louis it takes him two.”

“Done. That's Samson himself down there, not an assistant, and he could take the head off an ox at one blow. Who am I to turn down a gift of five louis?”

The executioner led her up the stairs of the scaffold, and for a moment she stood, staring up at the crowded windows, and seemed to catch my eye for an instant, before she looked away. Then the executioner cut her long hair away from her neck, and blindfolded her. I closed my eyes, not to open them until a heavy thump told me the thing was done. The archers, striking out with their halberds, cleared a space where wood, straw, and oil could be made into an immense bonfire. The pieces of the corpse were piled on top of the heaped wood and torches applied to the straw.

“That was an easy five louis. You never even saw him hesitate. What did I tell you? Samson never fails. They say he has a Mass said before each execution, to make his hand sure.” There was the clink of coin changing hands and a half-annoyed exclamation from Madame de Longueval.

“My dear friends, no differences. I am famished for a bite of supper. And there's really nothing of interest to see now. I suppose she'll burn all night.” The comtesse's mind was not of the sort to contemplate anything very long. The last thing I noted from the window was Desgrez, still on horseback, commanding the guard that surrounded the funeral pyre. Already the fickle crowd was proclaiming her a martyr. Now Desgrez would be there all night, too, to keep the crowd from stealing fragments of the body for resale as holy relics. The King's justice required that all the ashes be dumped in the Seine, and Desgrez was not only a persistent, but a literal-minded fellow.

***

The dispersing crowd kept us from our carriage, which was waiting in a nearby street. Pushing through the press of people, an enterprising printer's boy was selling broadsides in doggerel recounting the day's events and the numerous crimes of the woman whose body was being reduced to cinders in the Place de Grève. Suddenly I remembered Grandmother. In her memory, I'll have one, I thought.

“Hey! You, boy, what have you got there?” I shook my walking stick in the air to get his attention.

“‘The Remarkable Crimes and Execution of Madame de Brinvilliers,' illustrated, for only two sous, Grandmother. Guaranteed to give satisfaction,” cried the street urchin.

“Oh, I must have one,” cried a lady nearby.

“Oh, boy! Come here at once,” called out a gentleman. The crowd pushed in around him, snatching up the broadsides. By the time he turned to me, the supply in his bag was gone.

“Don't be disappointed, Grandmother. I've got a whole box full in the doorway over there—I'll get one for you right away.” And as he turned to renew his supply, I saw a heavy box of broadsides, cheap pamphlets, and used books set in the arch of a nearby doorway, watched over by a man entirely enveloped in a black cloak with a wide black hat pulled down to cover his face. An odd outfit for a balmy summer evening. Clearly, I thought, he does not want to be recognized.

“Oh, you have books, too?”

“Just a few, Grandmother. Look for yourself.” I peered into the box. Several slender volumes entitled
Parnasse
Satyrique
, ten sous each. I threw back my veil to see better. Marvelous. A witty rhymed
libelle
on the amours of the court, most magnificently detailed. I could feel myself blushing. The man in the cloak had stepped back into the shadows, and I sensed his stare burrowing into the back of my neck. How embarrassing. I pulled down my veil to hide my confusion and snatched up another book to conceal the malicious little volume I coveted.

“These two, and the broadside,” I said hurriedly and threw the boy a gold louis as I fled to rejoin the company with which I had come.

“Oh, how horrid! The ink is smearing on my hands!” exclaimed Madame de Corbon, as she settled into the carriage seat. “Here—fold this broadside up for me, my friend, and put it in your pocket.” As her gentleman companion complied, I folded my copy and tucked it away, along with my books, in the little bag I carried. An evening's pleasant reading.

“Why, what a clever idea, Madame de Morville! You have a veritable pharmacy in that bag! What mystical purpose do all those bottled potions serve?” Madame de Corbon was never less than annoying. But when one has just been a guest at a poisoner's execution, it is best not to arouse needless suspicion.

“We ancient people must resort to more artificial aids than you young creatures if we are to get about in society,” I said, doing my best to look owlish. “Besides a handkerchief and a bottle of scent, I have here a restorative cordial and a pot of rouge to relieve the pallor that is the result of a tragic life extended beyond the dark and welcome comfort of the tomb.” As Madame de Corbon inspected the rouge pot, I offered the company the cordial, which they declined.

“To each his own—eh, Madame de Morville?” said the Comte de Longueval, offering his gold enameled snuffbox around. “Myself, I prefer something a little livelier than an old lady's cordial.” The countess took snuff, as did Madame de Corbon. If you knew what was in this cordial, you might reconsider, I thought, as I took a dose while the rest of the company wielded their handkerchiefs.

“You look dreamy, Madame de Morville.” The familiar slow, slippery feeling was stealing away the horrors of the day.

“I am reminiscing about my youth. Did you know that I was present at the famous joust where King Henri Deux died? I was just a slip of a girl. Ah, what a handsome, romantic king—although of course, surpassed by our present monarch…” The conversation turned agreeably to the question of how to measure gallantry in the great figures of history. In my pleasantly drugged state, it seemed to blend in a soothing sort of mindless music. I almost regretted it when the carriage halted in the great
cour
d'honneur
of the Hôtel Soissons.

***

“You do not play, Madame?” the Comtesse de Soissons raised an eyebrow at me as I offered my salutation. She was dressed in pale blue satin, her decolletage ornamented by a quadruple strand of heavy pearls, set apart at intervals with diamonds. She sat at the head of the largest of the ivory inlaid gaming tables in the gilded salon, and around the feet of her brocade armchair, over a dozen little dogs slept or wrangled at her feet. To simplify the accounting, the players were using gold instead of counters, and tens of thousands of écus lay heaped about on the tables. As the little piles changed hands, men and women wept or exulted; stoicism was not usually the fashion among gamesters. Only the Marquis de Dangeau sat quietly, his eyes lynxlike as he surveyed the players and shuffled with a practiced hand. He was one of those who made his living at the tables, although it was not a thing to be said aloud; he played with strategy, not passion, and needed no ruses, no cards in the sleeves, no marked decks. Here and there men of lesser rank, bankers and financiers, stood beside their patrons, ready to guarantee their bets. Yet a man with good clothes and some appearance of social standing was welcome to sit at the tables if he could wager the immense sums required with the easeful insouciance of a born aristocrat.

“Oh, no, Madame, I enjoy admiring the brilliant new kinds of costumes that people wear nowadays.” In the corner, a man shrieked, tore at his hair, and left the room precipitously. “In my day,” I observed, “the civility of society was not so far advanced as now; there a man would call out the victor. The streets were slick with blood outside of the card salon of a nobleman of rank.”

“How very wise of our King to forbid dueling, in that case,” replied the countess, “because in that manner the pleasure of our games is greatly enhanced and the continuity of the players assured.”

“Wise, indeed,” I agreed in the same bland tone.

“The marquise is being terribly discreet,” the Comtesse de Longueval broke in, anxious to preserve her part in the conversation. “She who can read the future can read the cards ahead of time and wisely refrains from joining our games. Isn't that so?” She turned to me for confirmation.

“It is a point of honor with me.” I nodded austerely. As if it would be for anyone else. But the gossip I heard as I wandered among the tables with the other oglers of rank was worth more than a winning bet to me. It helped me elaborate the often-meaningless images I saw in the glass.

Madame de Soissons bestowed an ironic smile on me and returned to her game. Across the room, I recognized the Duc de Vivonne, wastrel, center of my sister's life. He was resplendent in a heavy green brocade coat, playing
bassette
at the same table with his duchesse.

From the tables floated up a woman's voice: “And then the King was so angry, he called off the party—”

“All because of the favors for the ladies?”

“It was their own fault for rushing to the market stalls in the
palais
to find out how much he had spent on the fans. A king's favor is supposed to be beyond price—”

“Well,
I
heard that he got them very inexpensively, and that they were bone and not ivory.” Useless. I passed on. The tall, gilt-paneled room seemed suddenly very hot to me. I'll sweat off my powder, I thought. I can't have them see me all pink. I glanced at my reflection in one of the large mirrors that decorated the room. Something eerie made me feel sick and dizzy inside. The card players in the mirror were not the same as those in the room. The tables were arranged differently, and the men were not in baggy breeches, ribbon-bedecked jackets, and long dark wigs. The women did not have billowing, folded-back sleeves and under-sleeves. The strange company were wearing tight, rich clothing, festooned with lace, and men and women alike wore white wigs, the men's smaller than a lackey's, done up with ribbon at the back. I hadn't called this up. I hadn't felt it come. It was just there.

Shuddering, I averted my eyes from the mirror. A woman with several patches was laughing at one of the tables nearby; beside her was a glass of white wine. I could see her face partially reflected in it. Suddenly the reflection became a skull. My breath came fast. What was happening? The alien company looked down from the mirror on the wall. The skull in the wineglass laughed. I felt I was smothering. Snatches of conversation came from the table beneath the mirror: