The Oracle Glass (30 page)

“Sylvie, the man Madame has chosen cares nothing for youth. He consumes pretty women by the dozen for breakfast. Brissac is a libertine who loves only money and whose only goal in life is to find out where the Devil lives so he can make a pact with him. For this man, I wish to look wealthy, invulnerable, and very mysterious, as if I already had the Devil's address in my pocket. He must be forced to a hard bargain. Madame has said so. I want the gray silk—the low-cut one. Don't get out the partlet. I'll wear it without so my bosom shows. Then I want every jewel I own—the pearls, the ruby crucifix, the diamond earrings, and all my bracelets. Tell Gilles to carry both sword and pistol when he attends me tonight.”

“And your hair? The veil?”

“No veil tonight. I want you to do my hair in the new style of Madame de Montespan, with the curls in the back, but ornamented only with a single, blood-red rose. That ought to please Madame.”

“A perfect touch, if I do say so. On your black hair, so striking, Madame! Symbols of wealth and passion together. What man could resist?”

“Brissac, who is as conniving as they come. We have our work cut out for us, Sylvie.” Excellent, I thought, as she put down the hairbrush. She'll carry a good report of this conversation to La Voisin. “Oh, yes,” I added, “I'll want you to wear the yellow silk and carry my handkerchief, just behind Mustapha as he carries my train. And tell him he must wear the diamond and the egret plumes on his turban. I plan to make a grand entrance, after the theater hour, when most of the guests are there already.”

The weather held well, the day of the fête, and so it was one of the last, long violet evenings of the season when my carriage threaded its way through the maze of waiting equipages and chairs clustered around the villa on the rue Beauregard. There were carriages with the arms of ancient families on them, diabolists or simple amusement seekers, who knew that La Voisin's suppers were always lavish and the company suited to the most jaded tastes. There were flashy carriages hired by the month, like mine, fiacres and chairs hired only for the night by petitioners desperate to make an impression. Fortunes could be made here: the right meeting, the lucky chance, and one's troubles would vanish. We are a nation of courts, I thought: the great nobles who surround the King for favors have little nobles to wait on them; the little ones have still smaller ones to stand around them at their
levées
. And here at the rue Beauregard is the court of the lewd, the false, the superstitious, who are spinning on their way downward to perdition. Not so different from the great court, after all. Everyone a parasite. In just what conveyance, I wondered, had the shirtless Brissac arrived?

The queen of the witches of Paris had transformed her house for the evening. The immense double doors between the black parlor and the grandly overfurnished inner rooms had been thrown open, creating a great hall. Banks of candles glittered among the tables piled with delicacies. The sound of the violins penetrated the room from the garden beyond, where the lantern-bedecked striped pavilions sheltered a great artificial dance floor, laid for the evening in the garden between the house and the pavilion. I made a great stir as I was announced at the door. Even the most bored of the courtiers, the most familiar of acquaintances, looked up from the delicacy-heaped tables at the lush, exotic little figure with the tall, silver-tipped walking stick, her train held by a turbaned pagan, her handkerchief-bearing maid followed by a heavily armed human giant of a bodyguard. I had outdone myself.

“Marquise…you look…different,” stammered La Pelletier, the witch of the lavender-ribboned love-powder sachets. Abbé Guibourg, food dribbling from the corner of his mouth, looked up and grinned a lascivious smile. A space cleared about me as I moved through the crowd. Respect, fear, awe. For I knew the future; I dispensed fate. And, above all, I must be placated—for if I became Queen, who was to say whose fortune, whose life I might someday hold in my hand? La Voisin, brilliant in flame-colored satin and diamonds, was holding court beneath the striped pavilion roof. Her petitioners and sycophants made way for me as I approached.

“Madame,” I said, bowing low, “your evening is most delightful, and I am privileged to be here.” She nodded approvingly at my jewels, my entourage, and the red rose.

“My dear Marquise, you have never looked more radiant. I take it, you have already been introduced to the Duc de Brissac?” Brissac, his dark beard showing unshaven, clad in moth-eaten blue velvet and sporting an immense court wig of last year's fashion, doffed his plumed hat and expressed his pleasure and surprise at meeting me again. I shall lead you a merry chase tonight, I thought, as I refused his offer to dance, opening my fan across my bosom to signal in the gesture that means, in the coded language of the fans, “be discreet.”

“It is a pleasure I renounced decades ago,” I said, closing my fan to display only one compartment, indicating “chaste amity,” as, head tilted, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Dancing disperses the mental energies, and I prefer to concentrate my powers.” I tapped the fan shut, and held it to the right. “We must talk in security,” it signaled.

“Your powers are only the palest shadow of your beauty,” he murmured, as we drifted away from the Shadow Queen. Somehow, we managed to arrive at the grotto. The fountain splashed in an eerily melancholy fashion as we sat on a rustic bench positioned in front of the concealed oven. What a strange place: a white-marble, ivy-entwined crematorium for the use of Madame's “philanthropic society.” A fit setting for a satanist's seduction. After a number of absurd flatteries about my white bosom and ivory hands, his fingers crept onto my neck. There is something about a man's touch when he is insincere—his fingers felt like lizards. Revolting.

I pulled away from the warm, rotten scent of his breath, snapped my fan shut, and said, “Let us be frank, Brissac. I get no pleasure from men and you, I take it, derive little from women. Cease trying to dazzle me with compliments and blind me with your expertise at love. Your rank and your person do not make me shiver with delight. I presume that for somewhat different reasons, you might say the same about me. I do not wish to be your
maîtresse en titre
; I am a woman who can be satisfied only with marriage and wish to know your terms.” He seemed shocked at my bluntness. The mask of gallantry fell, revealing naked avarice, snobbery, and the male rage at being thought less than charming.

“Marriage? To a monster? What leads you to think that a Brissac would stoop to such a shameful misalliance?” He looked as if he might strike me. I drew away from him and fixed him with a commanding stare.

“Why stoop to me at all, then? Surely not to gain pleasure from my seduction. Wouldn't your reputation suffer then, too? ‘Brissac sleeps with a deformed, centuries-old woman,' they'd say. Or were you planning that the high and mighty of the court should whisper instead, ‘Brissac has driven the ancient sorceress mad with desire—she gives him everything. What a clever fellow!'”

“You—you savage!” he exclaimed. No one likes his plans uncovered, I thought. She has mistaken him; he has deceived her. He drew himself up to his full height, which was modest, for a man, and his face froze in an aristocratic sneer.

“Evidently, Madame, no one has taken the trouble to inform you that you lack all desirable qualities for a wife: unblemished lineage, youth, that soft sweetness in the midst of innocent desires…”

“…and a handsome dowry, without which all the rest is dross,” I finished up.

“Yes, a family of standing—of fortune…”

“And perhaps, Monsieur, no one has bothered to tell you that even with rank, should you become available, you are still tarnished goods, unlikely to appeal to any family of standing. Your personal habits make you unlikely to produce heirs; add to this that rumor has it you have already tainted half the little ice sellers in town with the Italian disease—hardly an affliction one wishes to see in grandchildren. You spend money like water, especially that of other people, and have caused at least one lover to leave this earth under questionable circumstances. You have fribbled away your patrimony and alienated your connections at court. These things would weigh yet more heavily than your satanism with even the most grasping family of the petty bourgeoisie, let alone one of high lineage. No, Monsieur de Brissac, even those beneath you will not have you. I suggest you keep the wife you have. Perhaps if you are gracious, she will grant you an allowance.”

“I do not have to listen to this,” he said, rising.

“No, but before you go, you should recall that not only do I come with a fortune greater than all but a royal dowry, but that, unlike a dowry, this fortune of mine is renewed and grows daily. I wish to be a duchess; you wish to be rich—it is entirely rational to form a business partnership in the guise of marriage.”

“You—you are not a woman; you are a cold-blooded monster.”

“And you a hot-blooded one.”

“I could destroy you for these insults.”

“Why, yes, and then you'd lose your last chance at a fortune.”

“I can find a dozen better brides.”

“Good. Go try, and when you are tired of being rejected, return to me. I will of course be richer then. My terms may not be as easy.”

“Your terms?
Your
terms? How dare you! It is
my
terms you must deal with, you unnatural crone. Brissac's terms!”

I found it hard not to laugh at him as he turned on his heel and stormed out, the very picture of deflated pomposity. An excellent outcome, I thought. I've made the offer that will please La Voisin and he has declined it, thus displeasing her. And while she has hope of him, she cannot rage at me. My soup remains wholesome, and I am unbothered by Brissac. An excellent outcome.

“Ah, there you are, after your little
tête à tête
. Tell me, how did it go?” The rustle of my patroness's taffeta underskirts had announced her presence long before her voice did so.

“He did not want marriage; I let him know that marriage was the price of my fortune. He said I was too deformed and obscure for a duchess. He will seek elsewhere, fail, and then return. That I can predict without the glass.” Her mouth drew into a grim line.

“If he has been playing with me, I swear—”

“Oh, take into account that he is a man and, therefore, hot-blooded, illogical, and changeable. He must be handled delicately if you want him to…behave.”

“Ha! You are coming along nicely, my dear. Your brain is developing admirably.” She looked almost benign as she accompanied me out through the now-crowded dance floor.

At the refreshment table, we met La Lépère, who was putting candied fruits into the sagging pockets of the old jacket that she wore over her shabby gown.

“Do take some of the rolls, too, my dear; they will make a lovely breakfast,” said La Voisin as the old woman whirled around and tried to conceal what she was doing.

“You—you smile at me so. Your guests would not be so content with you if they knew what makes your garden so green,” she said, thrusting her hands into her pockets as if to prevent anyone from snatching back the concealed delicacies.

“So now you begrudge me my gardeners? Come, come. There was a time you thought more generously than that.”

There was a shrill laugh from a masked court lady who had overheard us. “Oh, my, yes, your gardeners are miracle workers! I begrudge you them myself. Look at those roses, still blooming so lushly, and those lilies! And chrysanthemums! Twice the size of mine! Oh, what is your secret?” The chemists of the rue Forez, La Trianon and La Dodée, who had stopped at the wine fountain, turned their heads toward us and nodded and smiled.

“It's what you feed them,” La Voisin said archly.

“And what is that?” the masked court lady asked.

“Have your gardeners compost spoiled fish from the market. They work miracles,” replied the sorceress with her strange, pointed little smile, and she turned away. La Lépère followed us into a grape arbor lit with hanging lanterns and draped with lush vines, heavy with fruit.

“Catherine,” she said, “it was not always like this. Take my advice as an old friend—get rid of this garden full of bones.”

“Get rid of it? Ridiculous! I'm very fond of it. They keep my oven running day and night, these courtiers, in the good season, and my garden—exquisite. And I like them there—all those little marquises and counts and chevaliers and whatnot who make my flowers bloom. And how delightful a spectacle to see their high-born parents dancing on them without a care in the world—Oh, Margot, what? The wine fountain needs renewing already? Use the cheaper Bordeaux. They've been drinking long enough not to know the difference. Yes, do hurry along now. Where was I? Oh yes, my garden. I like it this way. I have no intention of digging it up.” Insects swarmed around the lanterns, battering themselves on the glass.

“Catherine, it cannot end well. This…this…the way you mock the world. You should give it up.”

“And be poor?
Va
,
va
, I have ten mouths to feed…and I do it rather well, too, not even counting the fact that I'm supporting people like you. My business is no different from half the world's. I just do it better, that's all.”

“Better—or worse—depending on how you look at it,” muttered La Lépère, as the violins struck up a pavane.

***

It was on the Wednesday following the party that I received a note from Monsieur Geniers, my silent partner in vengeance. My uncle, the Chevalier de Saint-Laurent, had refused, it seems, to make good on his debts and, after the appropriate legal processes, had been thrown into debtors' prison, where he wrote pitiful letters begging Monsieur Geniers for money to pay the jailers for food and blankets. Good, I hope he stays locked up forever, I thought, and felt indescribable relief that I no longer risked crossing his path and being recognized. Things seem to be working out for me, for Marie-Angélique. Now I'll end my day by dropping in on Marie-Angélique to see how she is. I wonder what would be a nice gift for the baby? Half daydreaming, I mounted into the carriage, hardly noticing that it had pulled out into the street. Perhaps the baby will be a girl. That will be easy to choose for. I'll get her a dress and a little silver spoon with her name on it. The carriage paused, halted by a crowd of pedestrians, chairs, and a dray wagon at the corner of the rue de Picardie. An aunt? That will be odd, to be an aunt. All memories of Uncle flew out of my mind with the agreeable notion of aunthood. Outside, my driver was shouting insults, but I didn't really notice. Suddenly I thought of d'Urbec's busybody aunt and how her mind was all formed by romance novels. Perhaps the brain softens when one becomes an aunt. I'll borrow Marie-Angélique's copy of
Clélie
and see if it seems any less silly. Then I'll know. The odd notion amused me, and I laughed out loud. I could feel the stares of strangers at the eerie old crone who laughed alone in the carriage caught in the midst of a street quarrel.