The Oracle Glass (26 page)

“D'Urbec, I swear. By your father, by mine.”

“And something else, Athena. I can't go without letting you know the truth. Father told me an influential widow at court had assisted him in getting his petition to the King. I…had a long time to wonder about her motives. I followed her, Athena. I followed and observed the Marquise de Morville and found that she was brilliant, calculating, and did nothing without reason. But it wasn't until I saw you, quite by chance, without that ridiculous veil, that I understood who it must have been that wrote to the authorities on the sly, denouncing the fellow who'd stolen her spoons and her virginity.”

“It was nothing, d'Urbec.”

“Call me Florent, please. I had thought…someday…to ask you…for an entirely different favor…if you could bear a man marked for life…but now…”

“Please…it will all work out…” I was stricken with shame. How cheap and shallow my motives seemed. He had showed me his heart, and I didn't dare show him mine. It was dirty.

“At least thanks to you I'm not dying on board the
Superbe
. Even if Uncle did disown me. The Bastille, that's respectable, he said. You can meet people from the very best families in the Bastille. But the galleys. No class, Geneviève.” His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper. “He said he'd have sooner hanged me himself. God, I couldn't even get arrested in the right way.” He paused. Sweat was rolling down his face from the fever. He looked all greenish gray. “Promise me. No backyard. No cellar. No river. Lamotte is keeping some money for me. Give it to my parents for a memorial service. They don't have a sou. Call him if I don't live through this. He's just moved into the Hôtel Bouillon. Swear it.”

“I swear, Florent.”

“Oath of a Roman?”

“Oath of a Roman.”

When the surgeon's assistant and Gilles had hauled him down to the kitchen, I sat down and cried. I'd only see Lamotte by losing d'Urbec. Everything was so stupid, so ruined.

“Where is that silly old woman?” I heard the surgeon call from below. “I told you; I need both women holding the candles. I need the men to hold him down.” I entered the kitchen wiping my face. “Where have you been? Lounging around weeping and wailing? Surely you can't be one of
Madame's
. Why, I've seen them take the head right off a man, smiling the whole while. Take this,” he said, grabbing the silver candelabrum he had taken from the little dining table above and shoving it into my hand. By the light of a dozen flames, he peered at my face. “Your powder's running. So's that black stuff around your eyes.” He wiped a finger across my face and inspected the residue. Then he leaned close to my ear, so no one else could hear.

“A hundred and fifty years old, eh? I'd be surprised if you were a year over sixteen, myself. Well, keep at it, you little terror; you have my admiration. I've never yet seen a girl make a fortune except on her back. Remember me when you're Queen. I'm competent, I'm silent, and everyone needs a surgeon on occasion.” I stiffened with indignation. He laughed. “Old lady, you're holding me up. Time is precious. His hour is running out fast.” He ripped off the bandage, and d'Urbec howled. “Shut up, damn you. Want to bring the police on us? Hand me that scalpel. I'm in good practice this week. Three wounds just like this one. I'll be in and out in a minute.” The scalpel darted into the oozing mess like a snake. The sticky pus burst out with the blood. “Good!” pronounced the surgeon, as d'Urbec fainted. The scalpel darted again and then retreated. Monsieur Chauvet wiped it on his apron. Then he sloshed liquid from a bottle into the hole, and the smell of alcohol filled the room.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Brandy. Best quality. Works better than a cautery iron and quicker than hot oil.” He spat on his hands, and wiped them on his apron. “And now,” he said, as his assistant helped him on with his lace ruffled shirt, “I always take cash. No notes of hand.” I paid.

“Will he live?” I asked.

“That I can't say just now. He either will or he won't, but there's nothing more I can do about it. Well, Jacques, let's be off—we've got a full night's work ahead of us.”

“More?” I asked, as I handed him his walking stick.

“Next one's easy—a rich woman's secret childbirth. Have to hurry—a carriage is meeting us at midnight on the Place Royale. I imagine they'll take us there blindfolded. That's how it's usually done with the great ones. They strip the linens and cover the crests on the bed hangings so they can't be identified. The next day you see them, all pale, in a carriage on their way to the opera…and pretend you don't recognize them. It's a strange world, as I'm sure you've noticed by now—eh, old lady?”

“It appears so, Monsieur, though of course, in good King Henri's day, it would never have happened.” He shot me a sharp, amused glance and doffed his plumed hat in a formal farewell.

“And to you, too, Monsieur, farewell. And…be careful tonight.”

“Don't worry, old lady. I've been in this business longer than you have.” And he was gone out the door and into the dark street where his carriage waited.

As I sat up by d'Urbec's bed that night, I wondered over and over how I could ever keep my promise to him without arousing the rage of the Shadow Queen. As I watched his sleeping face, so deeply sad in repose, and listened to his labored breathing, I could only ask myself over and over, Geneviève, what have you done? With all your clever scheming, all you have accomplished is to bring this ruined man who has never harmed you to his death. Geneviève, you are worse than a fool; you are a monster to have made him love you, I cursed myself and sat there while the tears ran down my face.

“She's got it bad, hasn't she?” I heard Sylvie whisper as my eyes closed with fatigue.

“It'll do her good,” Gilles answered, his voice so low I could hardly make it out. “I always thought she was made of ice. A human heart would improve that little mind-machine. I'd feel a devil of a lot safer in her service.”

***

He slept for two days, and I thought he was dying. The surgeon never returned, but I was hardly surprised. I continued to see clients and attend receptions as if nothing at all were going on. On the morning of the third day, his eyes opened and he said in a low voice, “Call Lamotte.” I sent Mustapha in full Turkish livery to the Hôtel Bouillon. In the afternoon, as I lay resting without my stays in a loose sacque of embroidered Indian cotton, Sylvie came hurrying up to rouse me.

“Madame, Madame. The most handsome man in the world is here, waiting below for you. Oh, if you could only see his mustachios, his velvet cloak—the elegant way he throws it over his shoulder. His silk stockings—Oh, his calves alone give me absolute
palpitations
!”

“That's Lamotte, Sylvie. Help me put on my cap.”

“Oh, your curls, I can't get them to lie down here in back!” she exclaimed, as she pinned my hair into a decent little knot in back to fit under my low, lace house cap. Then all aflutter, she hurried downstairs to show him up.

Lamotte had filled out in his prosperity. His early mad gallantry had been transformed into a glittering, cavalier elegance. He was, if anything, more beautiful than ever. The unconscious charm he had once radiated had become conscious and artful, but nonetheless effective for all that. He paused at the door, his eyebrows raised when he spied me, and a strange smile crossed his face.

“So
you
are the celebrated Marquise de Morville. It makes sense, all the sense in the world, in its own nonsensical way.” He bowed low, and flourished his plumed hat. “Greetings, Madame de Morville.”

“Greetings to you, Monsieur Lamotte. Your friend Monsieur d'Urbec lies in the antechamber and is in deep need of you.”

“D'Urbec the unlucky. But, by God, lucky at last. Would that I had had the foresight and daring to thrust myself upon the Angel of the Window in this manner.”

“He lies dying, Monsieur.”

“My God, I didn't know. Your message didn't say.” Genuine concern flashed for a moment across his handsome features as he rushed to his old friend's bedside. He seemed taken aback as he spied the dreadful transformation in his friend's features. “Have you done nothing at all for him?” He turned on me in a fury. “For God's sake! Send a servant to get him a doctor, before it's too late.”

“I can't, Lamotte. Any legitimate surgeon will report the wound. And what's more, you haven't seen me, either. You must swear secrecy, or I'll die twice. You have seen only the Marquise de Morville.”

“Mademoiselle Pasquier,” he said slowly, looking at me, “just what have you gotten yourself into?”

“Believe me, Monsieur Lamotte, you don't want to know. Leave it at that. He needs you, and I have risked much.” It was all wrong. We'd met again at last, but it was all sad and spoiled.

“Lamotte, you did come after all.” D'Urbec could not raise his head.

“Old friend, how could you think so little of me? I came as soon as I heard.”

“The money I left with you. You still have it?”

“It has doubled.”

“Good. I want you to send it to my parents. Not to the house in Aix. At this season my mother visits her sister in Orléans. Send it there. Rue de Bourgogne. The house of the widow Pirot. And see that I have a decent funeral, will you? For Mother's sake, if for no one else.” Lamotte burst into tears. “Come now, no weeping,” whispered d'Urbec. “My bad luck's at an end. Who would have thought it? A stupid accident. An encounter with street rowdies. It could have happened any time. Not even my enemies. Tell Griffon I won't be back. At least, Mademoiselle Pasquier has seen to it that I didn't die in the galleys, to the eternal shame of my parents.”

“I will tell them all that you died nobly,” said Lamotte, taking his friend's hand as he sat down on the low bed. He sat there a long time after d'Urbec's eyes had closed, listening to his friend's breathing, the tears running silently down his face.

For several days, d'Urbec remained much the same, neither dying nor getting well. Though the fever fell, he lay, hardly moving, looking at me whenever I came into the room through half-closed eyes. Then on a sultry August morning, when business was especially low, as I sat being annoyed that I couldn't follow the court to Fontainebleau because of d'Urbec, I heard the sound of battering on the front door. I put the volume of Tacitus I had been listlessly perusing beneath the draped table, just in case it was a client at last. I lowered my veil, hastily dusted off the oracle glass, and sent Mustapha gliding to the door.

“Get out of my way, little boy—Oh, you horrid thing; you have whiskers! Ah, there she is, the she-devil, seated there all in black! You see, Marie-Claude, I told you we should come at once!”

“Jeanne-Marie, how right you were. I told you I suspected something. True, all true.” The two dusty little women in traveling clothes, as short and active as shrews, pushed their way into my reception parlor. The boy servant who followed them, laden with their baggage, set it down with a plop, just inside the door.

“Come, Marie-Claude, he must be upstairs, just as the man said, wounded in a court intrigue…” The two women swept toward the stair.

“And just what man is that?” I asked, blocking their way upstairs.

“The Chevalier de la Motte brought to my sister's house a message that my son was perishing from a fatal wound incurred in defending the honor of a lady of high degree,” said the short one. “He brought us money he said was from my son.” They both spoke with the rolling
r
's and lazy vowels of the south. Good Lord, it had to be d'Urbec's mother. And his aunt, too. How perfectly awful. Now I lacked only his grandfather and the dog.

“The…
Chevalier
de la Motte?”

“Yes. The handsomest man I ever saw. A very important man. A personal friend of my nephew,” announced d'Urbec's aunt. “But I knew right away it was one of those court intrigues I've read about. Yes, a plot. Duels, indeed! A plot is much more like him. ‘Do you suppose at this very moment he wears an iron mask?' I asked my sister. ‘More likely,' she said, ‘he discovered who the iron mask was. I know my son; he never leaves other people's business alone. This money can't be his—he hasn't any. It's money to buy our silence. I'll get to the bottom of this,' she said, and so we used the bribe money to take the next diligence to Paris.”

“And how, pray tell, did you find my house?” My voice was cool, but I could feel the hot wrath climbing up the back of my neck.

“I recognized the arms of Bouillon on the carriage that brought the chevalier,” announced his aunt. “Then we made subtle inquiries at the
remise
of the Hôtel Bouillon when we arrived in Paris.” Subtle indeed, I thought sourly.

“And now, you shameless wanton, lead us to him, or I shall report your notorious ways to the police. There's a place for women like you, women of notorious ill life, who draw young men to ruin.” D'Urbec's mother looked righteous. I narrowed my eyes.

“If you do that,” I said in an even tone, “the man who lies upstairs will die in prison, for his part in the street brawl that took place outside my doorstep, and from which I rescued him.”

“Nonsense. Florent d'Urbec lies up there—your lover, whom you have lured to his doom,” replied his aunt. In a flash, everything suddenly became clear. Devil take that Lamotte, anyway. That is what you get when you entrust a commission to a man who writes romantic dramas for the theatre. Who knows why he'd done it—to save time, to meet some important obligation in Paris—doubtless some wretched soirée at the Hôtel Bouillon. He had hurried to hand over the money before d'Urbec had actually died. I could see it all as if I'd been there. Lamotte, self-promoted to de la Motte, with his charm, suddenly carried away by a gust of imagination as he strove to leave d'Urbec's mother with a noble memory. He'd brush away one of his easy tears, convincing himself as he spoke that everything he said was true. He'd raised his friend's prospects, added a duel, a love affair, and heaven knows what else. Perhaps a lost treasure and a royal conspiracy as well. And this mess was the result.