The Oracle Glass (33 page)

“No, I'm from the family, sir. She was lost to us through sin, but when she vanished, her brother sent us all out in search of her so that he could forgive her; he's that good a Christian, he is.”

“Brother, eh? And who might he be?”

“Why, Étienne Pasquier, the
avocat
, at the House of the Marmousets.” Ah, lovely. I shall entangle my respectable brother in a horrid scandal. How he'll puff and pose when the police arrive at his door and go through the house questioning everyone to try to find out who procured the abortion.

The sergeant turned to see what progress the policeman at the bedside was making with his inquiries. Marie-Angélique's lips did not seem to be moving. The man shook her shoulder to try to rouse her; her eyes opened momentarily and rolled with terror, but not a sound escaped her. Honor, I thought. That worthless Vivonne's honor. How wasted your love was, Sister. Tell it all, tell it all.

“I know it's wrong, but I can't help feeling sorry for them,” the sergeant muttered. “Poor little girl. That one was beautiful, too. And now she won't live out the day. Don't think we're being rough—it's the only chance we have to get the name of the abortionist. We execute swine like that.”

“God grant you find him, the dreadful murderer,” I agreed. The man at the bedside sighed with disappointment and stood up, looking in our direction. He never changed his expression as he stared directly into my face. It was Desgrez. I couldn't start or flee but stood as still as a bird that is paralyzed by the snake's gaze. Courage, I said to myself, and, making my face look stupid, I shuffled with an exaggerated limp toward the bedside.

“Don't I remember you from somewhere?” he said blandly.

“A servant of the family, sent to search her out, though why they bothered, I can't say,” interrupted the novice, who had returned with a pitcher of water and several towels over her arm.

“Christian forgiveness is to be commended,” replied Desgrez, but his eyes, which never left me, seemed to cut through to my backbone.

“Let me go closer; I must see her face to know for certain,” I said in the thick, lower-class accent of the Parisian streets.

“I do know you—the
lingère
's apprentice.”

“I got me a better place now—plenty better food and less work.” Damn his excellent memory. A walking police-records office.

“With the house of…?”

“…Pasquier,” interjected the sergeant. Desgrez raised an eyebrow.

“Interesting, Sergeant. That explains the lace on the linen. I am surprised she was ever found at all. Tell me, little
lingère
—”

“Annette, sir—”

“Tell me, Annette, would this woman here be the celebrated La Pasquier?”

“I don't know nothing about that. She's just my master's sister.”

“And how, pray tell, did you end at the house of Pasquier?” I didn't like his questioning at all. It was taking a wrong turn.

“My ‘fiancé'…he knew someone and fixed it for me to get the place—” I winked. Desgrez looked at me a long time, up and down. I could see his eyes taking in the gaudy, cheap trimmings on the lower-class dress. A fastidious look of disgust crossed his face. Evidently, sexual social climbing among the lower elements didn't please him. I wonder what you think of the same thing among the rich, I thought. Did you bow to La Pasquier when she passed you in her carriage? Do you bow to La Montespan?

He drew the sergeant aside, and I could hear him say softly, “…not a word about today…this case involves bigger game than we thought…dangerous to meddle, must go to La Reynie…” I took advantage of their inattention to slip to Marie-Angélique's bedside.

“Did she tell you anything?” The sergeant's question to Desgrez carried in spite of his whisper. I knelt down beside her and put my hand on her forehead. She was burning up with fever. Desgrez's voice was low in response, but I could catch a few words from my place by the bed.

“…incoherent since the priest sent for me…not a word since the confession of abortion…he couldn't get the name from her, either…but now she's identified, I have my suspicions…”

“It's me, it's me,” I whispered urgently to Marie-Angélique. “I've come for you. Don't die, please. You must get well. How can I live if you die?”

“You, there!” Suddenly I heard the voice of Desgrez above me and looked up with a start of pure fear. Suppose he had been there awhile, silent, and heard the shift in my accent? “Maybe a woman can get it out of her.” His voice was brisk. “Ask her who the abortionist was.”

I embraced the sweating body on the bed and whispered in her ear the one thing I knew she wanted to hear above anything else. “God has surely forgiven you, Marie-Angélique.” Her eyes half opened. “Live for my sake, for those who love you.” For a moment, she seemed to speak. I put my ear close but couldn't hear a thing.

“Well?” Desgrez's voice above me sounded harsh.

“Oh, Sir, she says a name sounds like ‘Longueval.'”

“The Comte de Longueval, eh? Well, well. The old pander. I thought he was confining himself to alchemy since his last interrogation. Lebrun, we need to pay a call on the comte as soon as possible.” He strode from the bedside and was on his way, but not before I'd heard him take the sergeant aside and whisper, “Follow that servant girl when she leaves here. I want to know where she goes, whom she sees.” My heart stopped nearly as still as Marie-Angélique's.

“You needn't sit there anymore. She's dead.” The voice of the old-woman attendant roused me. She leaned over me and whispered confidentially from between rotted teeth, “Now, if the family wants to claim the body to save themselves from the disgrace of having it exposed on the street, I can arrange for it to disappear for a consideration…”

“Of course they will want it—Are you sure you can?”

“It's not easy, you know…the body of a criminal…there's lots as has a claim on them…the surgeons, for example…”

“For God's sake, how much?”

“Not a sou less than twenty écus.” The old woman looked sly.

“You'll have it. Just swear you'll keep her safe till they return for her.”

“Oh, I does it often enough…I have my ways. Don't let them dillydally, though. Tell them to send to old Marie before tomorrow night. Remember, old Marie in the Salle du Rosaire.”

As I left the hospital ward onto the rue du Marché Palu, I heard the sound of footsteps behind me. Alarmed, I fled on foot toward the Parvis Notre-Dame, and the sound of the following footsteps was lost in the street cries and noise of carriages. But the eerie pricking in my scalp still told me that someone was behind me. There was no doubt about it; I was being followed.

I knew I couldn't run, so instead I walked confidently through the crowd of shouting bearers on the square before Notre Dame to the spot where the drivers of fiacres lounged, waiting to hire their little carriages. Loudly, I engaged the driver with the sturdiest-looking horse for the long trip to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. My voice carried well, though I could barely hear it over the thumping of my heart. I've misled that policeman, I thought; now he'll go back and report. But as I mounted the little fiacre, I turned to see the red-stockinged sergeant of the Salle du Rosaire mount another carriage. My driver passed rapidly enough to the Pont Notre-Dame, only to be entangled there among the crowd of chairs and foot travelers in the narrow way between the elegant shops that lined both sides of the bridge. I peered out behind us to note with relief that the pursuing carriage was equally entangled in a knot of dandies leaving a gallery of paintings.

“Driver, I have changed my mind. Take me to the Hôtel Bouillon, and I will pay you the same. Get me there in half the time, and I will double your fare.” The long whip cracked to the left and right of us, sending a crowd of apprentices fleeing, as the driver urged his nag to a swift trot. Again I peered back behind us. My enemy was making no progress against the crowd. I saw him shake his fist at his driver. Good, he's lost, I thought. But I did not breathe easily until I had mingled with a crowd of market women bringing provisions into the kitchen entrance of the vast hotel and crept invisibly by back ways to the apartment of the one man in Paris who might help me.

***

I found Lamotte in a red silk dressing gown and Persian cap, giving orders to an assistant cook.

“Now, remember,” he was saying, “shellfish gives Monsieur L'Evêque a rash, but the nature of the entertainment is such that Madame will wish something light, terribly light, to be served. We must not weigh down the spirits of our audience, eh?” He was waving his fingers in the air to symbolize the lightness desired. Interesting, I thought. From pet poet and playwright to designer of entertainments and general factotum. A man with a good profile certainly can go far in the right circles.

“Monsieur de la Motte, a servant girl demands to see you with a message from a Mademoiselle Pasquier.” The lackey did not seem altogether respectful. Lamotte glanced up and saw me waiting at the tall, double doors of the salon, only one of which was thrown partially open.

“Oho, I know this servant girl, Pierre. And don't go making surmises about Mademoiselle Pasquier that would disturb the idol of my heart. La Pasquier is one of numerous women foolishly and uselessly in love with me, whose favors I scorn for a higher, brighter, nobler flame. No, Pierre, let Madame know that she alone commands my heart, her stellar radiance alone inspires my muse.” He accompanied these words by striking the embroidered silk directly above his heart. He had been putting on weight. Even in a few months, he had contrived to look sleeker, and his mustachios had become even grander, if possible. I could not but admire the catlike grace with which he had climbed from one society boudoir to another, until he had arrived at the very highest level, moving into the Hôtel Bouillon itself. Only two things seemed to have suffered: his name, which had come apart and added a syllable, and his passion for writing tragedy. Since his triumph with
Osmin
, he had written nothing of note for the Paris stage. But the Chevalier de la Motte was all the rage for his light verse and the charming little scenes that he wrote to be set to music for the ballet. Now he dismissed both the cook and the valet, but I saw his eyes take note of the fact that the latter stood behind the double doors to listen.

“What message have you?” he asked casually, his voice loud so it would carry behind the door.

“Monsieur de la Motte, Mademoiselle Pasquier lies dead in the Hôtel Dieu, victim of a dreadful accident. By all that you once held sacred, I beg you to return with me to help claim the body.” We both heard the rustle from behind the door as the valet departed. Good. A dead woman was no rival to even the most jealous beauty. The airy complacency fell away from Lamotte's face, and his eyes were suddenly troubled.

“What…what has happened?”

I spoke swiftly and softly now. Who knew how long we would be alone? “Not really an accident…a…a botched abortion. Can you forgive her? She said God wished her to die.” As I wiped my eyes, Lamotte took out a large handkerchief and sneezed noisily into it. “I need you, Monsieur Lamotte; she needs you, for this one last service. I've made arrangements to bribe an attendant for the body. They won't question a man, not if he says he's from the family. But me…they might take me for an accomplice of the abortionist.” Lamotte's eyes were troubled. Transporting criminals' bodies was not the work for a rising favorite of an arbiter of artistic taste.

“Her family?” he asked. “What kind of inhuman family is yours, that they won't even bury her?”

“My brother declared her dead years ago. He'll never try to claim her. He's so stingy, he'd begrudge the money for a decent burial even if it wouldn't bring disgrace to him. He's very fond of appearing respectable, Lamotte. But I've got money; you know that. I'll see her remembered, I'll have a stone made—but you must assist me. Think of what she once meant to you…” At this his face crumpled, and he suddenly looked old.

“My youth is gone, Geneviève. The man I once was has died there with her. My dreams of achieving immortal greatness, of winning the angel in the window—gone, dead, lost. Do you understand? I write poetry for ballets.”

“And much acclaimed you are! I saw
The
Princess
of
the
Enchanted
Castle
myself at Saint-Germain.”

“But my tragedy—I could never finish it. My
Sapho
. Gone, dried up. And this end…how sordid, how ordinary…” He rubbed his eyes fiercely and blew his nose again. “If
I
had written of her, she would have stabbed herself nobly with a silver dagger on a precipice above the sea, reciting classical verse. Nothing less was worthy of her. But this—bleeding to death in a filthy charity hospital…” He put his head in his hands for a long time, sighing. Then he looked up at me. “What must I do? Become an avaricious little bourgeois for the afternoon? Very well. For you, it is done.” He hitched his dressing gown tighter around his embonpoint and stood up. “Pierre! Pierre!” He clapped his hands. “Where is that rascal when you need him?” He went to the double doors and shouted; I could hear the patter of feet. Eventually the lackey returned, breathless.

“Pierre, my smallest day wig. And a suit of mourning. No funeral bands. I go to assist at a bourgeois funeral. You understand.” He waved his hand carelessly, as if annoyed by the dull and trivial duty. Then he vanished into the small cabinet behind his reception room, which I took to be his bedroom, or his dressing chamber. I could hear his voice through the open door. “Tell that servant girl to wait here to show me the way.” Always, Lamotte was a man of the theater. If anyone could play a bourgeois
avocat
to perfection, it would be he.

***

I shivered as I sat huddled alone in one of the light carriages from the
remise
of the Hôtel Bouillon. He had left me in the rue du Sablon, a street away from the entrance of the Hôtel Dieu. It wasn't that cold outside, though it was not warm. The autumn winds had blown away the dank gray clouds to show patches of blue mingled with the rosy pink of the dying day above the pointed slate roofs. The sort of day Marie-Angélique had liked. She always said weather that made your cheeks look pink could not be spoken ill of. Ahead of us on the rue du Sablon, the horses of the hired hearse waited listlessly, while the driver dozed, his reins knotted to the box.

“Don't fret indoors in weather like this, Sister! Winter will be here soon enough.” I could hear her voice in my ears as if she sat next to me. “Why, we'll go take the air at the Palais-Royal gardens, and you'll shake off that bad mood. Besides, we might very well see someone interesting…” Marie-Angélique, we'll take the air one last time, and I'll see you home.

Around the corner, the figure in black had emerged from the hospital. Even though his head was bowed, he had not forgotten the stolid walk of the bourgeois. He walked slowly, so slowly past the carriage where I waited to the waiting hearse. I could see him talking at length with the driver, who gesticulated wildly. He pressed money into the man's hand. Then the driver cracked the whip and the hearse departed down the rue du Sablon.

“What has happened? Why didn't he go in by the carriage gate?”

Lamotte seated himself wordlessly in the seat opposite me and didn't answer my question. “Don't ask,” he said at last. His face was like iron.

“But you did pay the attendant, didn't you? What's gone wrong? Why couldn't you get her right away?” Lamotte gave orders to the coachman. He closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time before he spoke again.

“Someone sent word to your brother,” he said, and the words came out like heavy stones. “Luckily, my wits were about me, and I said I was a cousin on your mother's side.”

“But…what?”

“Your brother told them they had made a mistake. He had once had a sister of that name, but she had died years ago.”

“No less than I expected.” Who had gone to him? The police. It must have been. Only they could be that swift. But Lamotte had put his hands over his face and begun to sob. I grabbed his arm and tried to shake him.

“You must tell me what happened,” I whispered fiercely.

“The body of a criminal…” I heard him say. I shook him again. “Don't ask me. Don't ask me to say,” he mumbled.

“But I must know—I can't go on without knowing,” I cried. He picked his head up and looked at me with his eyes all red.

“The anatomy theatre at the Collège Saint-Côme. They found the idea of a septic abortion…interesting. My God. Interesting. And I still see her looking down from the window—her beautiful blue eyes. Laughing. Do you understand now? There's nothing left of her—nothing. Cut up, dispersed, for the advancement of the study of the science of anatomy. I grabbed the ward surgeon by the throat. ‘She's not a machine! She had a soul! You can't do this!' ‘I'm sorry, Monsieur, what's done is done,' he said, and pulled himself away as if I were a madman. I'm afraid I made a fool of myself. I had…I had conceived a fantasy of kissing her once in farewell—just once. The only time. To bid my youth adieu, you see. Was that too much to ask? Only once, not much. But this is the modern era. There is no place anymore for gestures—romantic gestures—foolish, hopeless gestures. The men with the knives, the scientists, they got there first.” My beautiful sister, butchered like a pig. No tomb, no place for me to weep. I felt as if my bones had cracked open and the marrow run out.

Lamotte was still incoherent when they opened the great carriage gates of the Hôtel Bouillon. Hearing the shouting and rattling, he pulled himself together, wiped his face, and smoothed his once-jaunty mustachios with his fingers. “And tonight I dine with the swine, face in the trough, no better than the rest.” His voice was quiet, his eyes bitter.

“Are you all right, Monsieur de la Motte?”

“Not now, not ever,” he said, as the carriage left us at the foot of the broad staircase that rose from the
cour
d'honneur
. He looked up to the carved balustrades and gilded doors above as if surveying the gate to Gehenna. “Come with me a moment, Mademoiselle Pasquier. Talk to me about her. I…I feel as if I cannot breathe.” His face was so devastated, I could not refuse. He led me through the long corridors and open state apartments to his own tiny set of rooms in the back of the great house. Entering by the main way and winding through to the back as we did, it became clear how many retainers, pet writers and artists, orphans, distant cousins, and hangers-on were housed in the vast mansion. A mini-society, with its own levels, its own court, a tiny imitation of the great one at Versailles. A life of flattery, back stabbing, and climbing, and they counted themselves fortunate. Better to be a society sorceress, I thought. One enters and leaves by the front door as one chooses.

Passing through his reception room, he took me into a low, gilt-paneled room, lined with books. A writing desk and two comfortable armchairs were crowded amid the clutter of manuscripts and theatrical souvenirs. His dressing gown, abandoned so hastily, was flung untidily across a narrow, cluttered, brocade-hung bed stuffed into an alcove.

“My hiding place,” he said, with a gesture about the stuffy little chamber. “Even
she
must leave her beast his den.” He rummaged in a little cupboard and brought out a decanter and two glasses.

“I have not a soul but you to tell about her,” I said, taking the glass. “Who else could understand her goodness, her sweetness? Her beauty was her curse.” The brandy was strong and made me cough. He refilled my glass, and his own as well.

“Not her beauty, no. Her family. Your brother, if you will pardon me, Mademoiselle, is an unnatural monster with a stone for a heart.” He looked into his glass, as if he could see images in the bottom of it. “There are many such, nowadays. If I had the pen of Molière, I could make him comic. That is the role of art, is it not? To make monsters comic, so we can bear them, and our own cheap griefs into grand tragedy, so that others will weep with us.” He swirled the remaining liquid in the glass and then, as he took up the decanter, again, stared long into my face. Then he looked away at the tiny window, as if he were seeing into another time, and his voice was low. “Two sisters, like white roses, blooming in a dark, unnatural place. I can still see your faces peeping from the window, pulling the curtain back, just so. I always imagined her high in the tower, reading romances, waiting for her prince.” He sipped again from his glass and poured more for me, too. “Mademoiselle Pasquier,” he said in a low voice, “I dreamed of being that prince, even though I was only the son of an upholsterer.”