The Oracle Glass (45 page)

“Why do you look at me that way?” I asked, as he lay contented on the pillows, his hands behind his dark head, the noonday sun picking a bright pattern across his wide chest and the crumpled coverlet that was spread over far too little of us.

“Because you are so beautiful,” he said happily. “Your face, the way the dark curls fall over it, the way your gray eyes shine, your body, your mind, your soul…” Then I could feel the warmth of love welling up again to fill everything in me, even my fingertips and the ends of my hair. I thought my heart would split apart with the flood of it.

“When I first saw you there, in the window of that great, dark house, you were like the light of a little candle, flickering bravely in the gloom. Now you shine like the sun.”

“Yours forever, Florent. No matter what.” I put my head on his heart to hear it beat while he stroked my hair. “Always and forever.” I sighed again.

“And I,” he answered, “no matter what comes.”

What did come was soon enough, although we knew it had to be. He left on another of his mysterious trips, and I did not ask where he was going, or who his patron was, although I had my suspicions. After all, what one doesn't know one cannot be forced to tell. And in the meantime, although his entrée with the Mancinis had been spoiled by the Brissac affair, his welcome at the enemies of the Mancinis had become all the warmer, especially because he dressed well and made a point of losing large sums to the proper people, recouping from those who were out of favor.

“It is the last day before I must leave,” he had said only the day before, as he buttered a roll at breakfast. His dark eyes amused, he extended a bit of crust to Grandmother's parrot. The bird snatched it and converted it to crumbs, which dribbled down his feathery front.

“Pretty bird, pretty bird. Clever d'Urbec. Clever d'Urbec. Geneviève, doesn't your bird ever learn anything new?”

“Only when it pleases him.”

“He's a stubborn creature—not unlike myself, I suppose. Come now, Lorito. Say ‘pretty bird.' It's high time you quit spouting Protestant hellfire and damnation.”

“Fire and brimstone!” announced the bird and went back to cracking seeds.

“Hardheaded bird. Will you miss me when I'm gone?”

“Hell and damnation!”

“Well, that's sort of an answer,” I offered. Fall was in the air, though the days were still warm.

“Let us do something splendid, Geneviève. Let me take you driving on the Cours-la-Reine this afternoon, and then we'll go incognito to the opera. One of Lully's new operas is playing. They say the stage machines are a marvel. Would this please you, do you think?”

“Oh, divinely, Florent, and I have the perfect dress to wear. I've been saving it a long time—everyone said I was foolish, but now it's just perfect.” But when I saw Sylvie's eyes narrow as she took the rose silk dress from its muslin, I knew that, within the day, she would betray me to the Shadow Queen. It didn't matter at all to me, for something very strange had happened when I put on the dress. As I stood before the mirror admiring the embroidered flowers and the glistening rose and ivory silk, I realized suddenly that I was seeing the true color, not through a wash of crimson. In the mirror I saw nothing. Nothing, that is, but a girl with a neat waist and dark, tumbled hair, looking back out of the mirror at me with shining gray eyes.

The rest of the day, bright with summer sun, had passed in a daze of happiness. As the carriage rattled past the Tuileries Palace and its gardens to mingle with the fashionable equipages on the wide, scenic avenue of the Cours-la-Reine, Florent had no eye for the scenery. Instead he took my hand.

“You said we'd meet again, driving on the Cours-la-Reine, and you were right, Florent. Now will you steal my fortune-telling business?” I teased.

“On the contrary. I said I'd meet the Marquise de Morville—and look! She's nowhere in sight,” he said, his arm around the rose silk.

***

The next morning, when d'Urbec had departed and I spied the new paste buckles sparkling on Sylvie's shoes, I knew she had done the deed and the witch knew everything. Accounting day. It always comes. But I had the memory of his face when he first saw me come from behind the screen in the dress I now knew I'd been saving all along for him. And I could still feel his kisses on my neck as he muttered, “…too young and lovely to wear black…” Accounting day didn't matter. I felt like another person altogether. I could manage anything. Besides, I had a card up my sleeve. In the last days before d'Urbec had left, I had received the ultimate invitation. Who had informed him of me, I do not know. But Louis Quatorze himself had summoned me to Versailles to read the oracle glass.

I took a hired chair to the rue Beauregard that Wednesday afternoon, for I had dismissed my leased carriage for the weeks I had been with d'Urbec in order to save money. That afternoon, Madame was engaged in the placement of a new tall clock, which depicted the phases of the moon as well as the hours, in her black parlor. As the sweating workmen set it down in the corner by the china cupboard, she said, “No, I've changed my mind. Not over there, after all. Across from the window is better. Here it detracts from my
objets
d'art
.” The heavy shutters were closed against the heat and dust, enshrouding the room in twilight. The musty smell of scented candles perpetually lighted around the feet of the statue of the Virgin reminded me of funerals and things long dead. Madame, however, was very much alive, the sweat rolling down from beneath her white lace cap as she fanned herself with one hand and gesticulated with the other.

“Oh, there you are at last, Madame Stay-Abed,” she called to me. “You'll have to wait. I'm expecting Madame Poulaillon for her weekly…ah…consultation.” So I wandered off to the kitchen, account books under my arm, to see if there were any pastries left over from the previous day's open house.

“There're none left,” said old Montvoisin, greeting me at the kitchen door with the crumbs dribbling down his half-open, tobacco-stained shirt. His baggy old breeches looked as if he'd slept in them. He still had on his slippers and a napkin in place of the glossy horsehair wig he'd taken to wearing on weekdays. “Here, have some snuff instead.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheap tin snuffbox.

“No, thank you; it makes my nose tickle,” I answered, and he shuffled off through the double doors to the black parlor.

There I heard him say as the front door was opened, “Ah, good day, Madame Poulaillon. And how's the husband these days? Quite reformed?”

“Antoine, remove yourself,” I could hear Madame hiss. “You interfere with my business.” The double doors slammed behind him, and he meandered out to seat himself in Madame's favorite armchair and set his slippered feet on her footstool.

“Marquise,” he said, pausing to take snuff and sneeze into a vast, filthy handkerchief, “has my daughter sent you word yet? I said to her, I said, ‘Marie-Marguerite, try the Marquise. She has ready cash and doesn't carry tales.'” I looked up at him, puzzled, from where I sat on the smaller armchair opposite, and folded my fan.

“I've been busy,” I said. “I haven't heard anything.”

“Go by La Lépère's new place then, and don't take Sylvie with you. She meant to send for you, I'm sure.” He looked around as if the world were all too complex for him, his faded blue eyes all runny. Then, as if it could resolve everything, he took more snuff. “Get off me, you fool cat,” he said, as the gray tom leaped from the chair back to his lap. The tom looked at him briefly with hooded eyes and bit his thumb before he managed to sweep the cat off him with a series of nervous, unhappy gestures. “I hate
them
, too. I hate it all,” he said and then lapsed into a somnolent silence while I wondered what to make of it all.

One of the parlor doors opened suddenly, and I knew that Madame Poulaillon must have departed out the front door with her week's installment of arsenic. But the sorceress lacked the pleasant air of contentment she usually had after such transactions. She appeared irritated as I scrambled to stand, and she took the armchair that old Montvoisin had suddenly seen fit to vacate with a snort of annoyance. She tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair and did not invite me to sit. The sight of me seemed to enrage her further. Cautious, Geneviève, I said to myself.

“So, there you are, the second little ingrate. I suppose you know where Marie-Marguerite is. Everyone knows but her own mother!”

“Marie-Marguerite? What's happened? I hadn't heard.”

“Ha, I suppose you hadn't. Too busy disporting yourself with that gutter-crawling
galérien
, downing wine and oysters at my expense. I make you a marquise and you throw it away on a branded criminal.”

“He's not a criminal,” I answered, my voice cold.

“Might as well be,” she sniffed. “Anyway, Brissac will probably slit his nose for him before the month is out.” I changed the subject, in order to channel her rage in another direction.

“Isn't Marie-Marguerite's baby due soon? I thought she'd be home at a time like this.”

“That hussy! That ingrate! I offered my dear friend Romani ten thousand francs to make an honest woman of her, and she spurned him.” In a sarcastic high voice she imitated an adolescent's whine. “‘
I'm
not going to marry a professional poisoner, Mother.' ‘So, young lady, what do you think keeps putting the food in your face, eh? Especially now that you're bloated like a pig and do nothing but lie around! Romani is a genius, a man of a thousand disguises.' ‘I don't care if he's a genius; I want a nice man.' Nice, bah! A pastry cook! And not even with his own shop! A
journeyman
pastry cook! I'll not have my daughter marrying riffraff like that! So now she's run off and hidden herself, although where a girl as big as a sow and as slow as a snail could hide herself in
this
city, I do not know! I tell you; I'll find her, if I have to have my people search every house in town!”

“My, my, what a pity,” I responded. “She really ought to listen to people who have her good at heart.” The Shadow Queen glared suspiciously at me.

“I do hope you are not being sarcastic, Mademoiselle. When have
you
ever listened to me? And I imagine you've not a sou to show me after your recent debauchery.”

But here I played my winning card. “For the past two weeks there's nothing, but I've been invited to appear before the King when he returns to Saint-Germain-en-Laye next week. He's fond of novelties, they say, and my reputation has finally reached him.”

La Voisin drew in her breath. “Buckingham must have told him,” she whispered.

“Either him or Primi.”

“No, not Visconti. He's a rival. He'd not promote you so high. Ah! So high! I knew it! Your accent! Your manners! There's no substitute for the real thing, I've always said. And who groomed you to fly so high?”

“You did, Madame, and I am grateful. I intend to make the best of the opportunity.”

“Ah! That's my girl, my darling girl! Truer than my own daughter—or rather, stepdaughter. Tread carefully, my dear, and you may yet replace Visconti at his side.” There's a fantasy, I thought. A king who prided himself on never taking advice from women certainly didn't want a female fortune-teller.

But, buoyed up by her imaginings, the Shadow Queen had become expansive. Nothing would do but to have a bottle of excellent wine brought from her cellar, and even old Antoine and her oldest son were offered a glass.

“Oh, yes, and the marzipan. I know what a taste you have for it, little Marquise!” And with a sly, sideways look she went to unlock the secret cabinet where she kept it hidden. And, bother her, she gloried in the fact that in nearly five years of acquaintance, I still hadn't found out where she got it. The best in Paris. I could get opium, I could get arsenic, I could get pigeons' hearts and toads' toenails, but I couldn't find out where she got that marzipan. She always smirked when she went to fetch it. But then, I reflected, it's better to leave her mellow. Besides, I loved the stuff—so lovely, sticky, sweet, and rich, with the perfumed flavor of almonds and a hint of something else mysterious. I stayed until I had consumed several pieces and a glass of wine, leaving when I knew she was at last in a good mood.

***

La Lépère, the abortionist, had moved up in the world, both literally and figuratively. She had two rooms on the fourth floor of a narrow, shabby building that housed a ribbon maker's establishment on the first floor. At the tiny balcony at the top of the outer staircase, I found she had already opened her door, having heard my painful progress up the many rickety flights of steps.

“Antoine Montvoisin sent me,” I said to the old woman.

“I know,” she answered. “Marie-Marguerite is here. The baby was born safe and sound last night. Come in.”

We entered the darkened room to find Marie-Marguerite, her curls dank and matted to her head, sitting up and nursing the baby. “Now see here,” announced La Lépère, “don't she look good? And it's a fine boy. The live ones do give more satisfaction, though I do more of the others these days. Oh, what a world! I must have done maybe ten thousand in my lifetime!” Ten thousand? Even in her lifetime, which must be nearly eighty years by now, that seemed like quite a lot of abortions. I rapidly multiplied one-half that figure times the number of other “businesswomen” I knew worked on contract for La Voisin. No wonder the chimney in the garden pavilion smoked all the time.

“See how lovely he is,” said Marie-Marguerite, looking pleased with herself. And though I thought him rather too small and red, I agreed. “I've named him Jean-Baptiste, after his father.” She did make a pretty picture there, with her small Jean-Baptiste.
Hmm
, I'd call it “The Little Madonna of the Poisons,” I thought.