The Oracle Glass (49 page)

Huddled in a corner, shaking and sweating, I was ravaged by my lack of opium. The eye came and went. But when I began to vomit up blood, a bottle of tincture of opium appeared on a plate with the bread that I was too sick to eat. I took it as a sign that La Reynie planned to release me eventually and wanted my cooperation. I sat up to look at the book he had left me with. Père Clement's sermons turned out to be of an extraordinary dullness. La Reynie's little joke. Now boredom became my enemy, as La Reynie softened me up with waiting and more silence. I leafed through the book from front to back and back to front again. Then I treated the odious sermons as if they were a code, using different mathematical methods of skipping words and letters to create new and fascinating messages from Père Clement's vapid, pompous prose. Trapped with his sermons, I grew to hate the man, although I had never met him.

When at last I was brought again into the secret hearing room, there was very little left of the Marquise de Morville. My clothes were crumpled and my hair undone. The heavy white makeup had been worn away by my tears. Humiliation and uncertainty had done as neat a job of breaking me to La Reynie's will as the police torturer would have, and without leaving a mark. That was La Reynie's way. Always efficient. But he had also given me plenty of time to ponder my situation, and I had come to the conclusion that the Lieutenant General of Police needed me more than he had revealed. I would play along with him, then flee the city at my own convenience. As soon as I was home again, I'd begin laying plans. First a bank transfer abroad, preferably through a middleman, the conversion of some of my holdings and larger
objets
d'art
into highly portable jewelry…

“So, Mademoiselle Pasquier, did you find the sermons enlightening?” La Reynie looked up from his work. A curious expression crossed his face as he spied my disarray, as if even he had not expected what he found beneath the disguise of the immortal marquise. He had been signing papers brought to him by his secretary while he waited for me to be led to him. I could read them upside down. It appeared to be his daily report to the King on conditions in the city of Paris. Crimes, gossip, plots—even upside down, it seemed calculated to arouse the interest of a man habitually bored.

“Tremendously enlightening, Monsieur. They are written in a code based on the number six.” La Reynie's eyebrows went up. “If you look at the sixth line of the sixth paragraph in the sixth sermon, and skip every sixth word, you will find the author's true meaning.” I extended the book to him. He opened to the correct page and ran his finger over the line.

“…the…Devil…rules…France…rebel…against…sin…crush…viper…tyrant.”

“Quite easy to decode, really. As everyone knows, 666 is the number of the beast in Revelations. The good father is a conspirator sending secret messages to the other Frondeurs and assassins of his gang.” I watched La Reynie as he carefully marked the place and set the book aside. It heartened me to imagine the pompous Père Clement being put to the question. “
Huitieme
coin
, please. Now, tell us again just why did you hide the message in a sermon?” It would serve him right.

“But we are not here to talk about sermons,” La Reynie said. “We are talking about an impudent nineteen-year-old girl who has run away from home to consort with criminals and amass an illicit fortune under an assumed name. In quieter times, you would deserve nothing better than to be turned back to the head of your family for a good spanking and consignment to a convent to repent at leisure. But your crimes are such, Mademoiselle”—and here he smiled in anticipation—“that His Majesty has instead turned you over to me to do whatever I wish with you. So now, Mademoiselle Pasquier, let us talk about your future…”

***

The fire leaped between the black cat andirons, and the driving rain rattled at the window of the Shadow Queen's little cabinet as she got up and poured another glass of sweet wine. Her smile was sticky sweet, too, as she offered it to me. Her informers among the jailers had told her when I was to be freed, and her own carriage had delivered me from the Châtelet directly to the rue Beauregard. Now I sat, still damp and crumpled, beside her little writing table.

“So now, have a little more, my dear…just precisely what did you tell La Reynie about me?”

“Only that you were my teacher in the art of fortune-telling and that the fees in the book were apprenticeship fees—”

“They got your books?”

“Only the last one—it didn't have anything in it…I've been careful…” She waved her hand to dismiss my excuses.

“And why did he let you go?”

“Well, he couldn't very well prosecute me for murdering myself,” I said lightly. I couldn't let her know the truth. La Voisin's eyes narrowed. “So he had to let me go, even though it didn't please him.” La Voisin's mouth clamped shut, and she tapped her fingers on the table as she looked out the rain-splashed window.

“Damn!” she said. “He'll plant an informer in your household, just to be on the safe side. Someone easily convinced by a little cash…” Sylvie, her lips seemed to say soundlessly, as the name popped into my own brain at the same time. The sorceress broke off and looked at me a long time, shaking her head. “Are you sure there's nothing else?” she asked suspiciously.

“Well, he's given my description to the watch. I can't pass the customs barriers to get out of the city without his written permission. I'm trapped here.”

“But the King—your great triumph…surely you must pass out of the city if you are called to court again…”

“He knows if he lets me out of the city to follow the court, I'm as good as gone. And I'm sure he has seen the King. After all, he reports to him daily. My identity was established too quickly for him not to have seen the King. And I'm allowed to use the glass again, providing I report all requests for political readings to him and make no political predictions of my own.”

“Thus the King keeps the letter of his word,” muttered La Voisin.

“Exactly,” I agreed.

I did not dare to tell her what information the police had asked me to bring them: information about people in debt, people desperate for a legacy, who might turn to poison to improve their situation. Their questions had led me to suspect that the confessors of Paris had done their job all too well and that the police had at last discovered the trade in “inheritance powders.” It was only a matter of time until some other informer led them to La Voisin. My plan was to drown them with trivia until such a time as I could flee safely. I would not betray the queen of the witches. Ghastly as she was, I owed her that much.

There is something depressing about cleaning up a house that the police have searched. Papers, books, and clothing were strewn everywhere. The wine cellar was a jumble and half the bottles missing. We threw out the broken china and sent the slashed tapestries out to be rewoven.

“Don't sigh so, Madame. The chair can be reupholstered.”

“I think I'll just have it patched, Sylvie. And I'm going to sell my paintings. We aren't going to be nearly as well off, now that I can't travel with the court.” The gray day suited my gray mood. The year had already turned, but spring seemed very far away. I'd managed to sell my ivory-inlaid end table and the biggest pieces of silver and convert them into two diamond bracelets. But La Reynie, when I had visited him in the gown of a fishwife from Les Halles, had wrinkled up his nose and said, as he read my report, “Ah, excellent, just what I wanted. So tell me, what does a fishwife want with diamond bracelets? I do hope you aren't thinking of leaving us. My Desgrez is a bloodhound who laughs at borders.” Sylvie, I thought, as I watched him fan away the scent of dead fish with his hand. She's on the police payroll, too. I must be more careful.

“Oh, look, Madame, a carriage is stopping before the house. It's a sign. Your grand clientele is returning.” I looked out the window and saw a familiar figure in a heavy, gold-braided cloak and wide plumed hat descend from the carriage.

“No—It's Florent! He's back!” I cried joyfully as I rushed to open the door for him. His face lit up at the sight of me, and he embraced me so tightly that my feet didn't even touch the ground.

“Oh, God, I was so hungry for you,” he said. “It's been so long, and I thought you might not…”

“…not wait for you? Florent, how could you? There's no one for me but you…” His rough cheek against my face felt so good. His warmth went through me. The sunshine of the south seemed to fill the house. He sat me down and sent Gilles upstairs with his trunk.

Then he looked around, quietly noting the vanished silver and furniture, and remarked mildly, “Things seem to have changed around here, haven't they? Ah well, they are changing throughout Europe as well. Have you heard the news about the Prince of Orange's wedding to Mary, the English princess? Quite unexpected. Now he is heir to the English throne. They say that they hurried to the chapel with only a few witnesses. But it makes sense. The King had launched a plot to have the Princess kidnapped, brought to France, and forcibly wedded to the Dauphin.”

“Actually, Florent, I predicted that wedding ages ago. That's what started all my troubles.” D'Urbec looked indulgent, as if he didn't believe a word, but he owed me a hearing anyway.

“You know,” he said, “what surprised half of Europe was how calmly the King took the news, almost as if he knew already. ‘The beggars are well matched,' he said, and that was all. Quite astonishing, really, considering how disappointed he must have been. He had planned to gain favor with the Holy Father by reconverting England to Catholicism. Amazing”—and here d'Urbec shook his head—“the King must have spies everywhere. The Prince of Orange hiccups in his own cabinet, and the King gets the news within the week.”

“That's part of the problem, too, Florent. The King has taken my living, and the police are after me.” Florent looked deeply troubled, but I put my finger across his lips to silence him. “Not here, not here,” I whispered. “Let me tell you all about it over supper.”

***

In one of the curtained assignation rooms in the back of a fashionable restaurant, I laid out the problem over supper. The very mention of my predicament cost me my appetite, but Florent ate like a wolf, finishing my portion, too, while he listened.

“…so you see, Florent, I've never been in more of a mess. La Reynie has threatened to have me condemned for freethinking, lèse-majesté, treason, and God knows what else if I don't turn police informer. If La Voisin finds out that's what he wanted, snap! She'll get rid of me just like that! Poison in the soup, an accident, who knows what? Besides, I don't earn enough money to tempt her to leave me alive, now that the King has undercut my business for fear my political predictions could be used in plots against him. And oh, Florent, I
hated
jail! I was all alone…I thought you'd think I left you…and La Reynie locked me up with nothing but a horrid book of…sermons!” I started to cry, remembering, but Florent just tipped his head back and began to laugh.

“A feast of moral masterworks? Now
there's
what I call real torture.”

“It's not funny, Florent; they were
ghastly
,” I said, wiping my eyes.

“So,” he announced cheerfully, polishing off the last bones of the capon and wiping his fingers on the napkin, “there is really only one way out of your problem.”

“Yes, out of Paris, and I'm trapped here like a dog on a leash.”

“No,” he said, “first of all you need to get married—preferably to me.”

“How would that solve anything? I thought you were brilliant, Florent, but now you turn out to think just like a man.”

“And very good thinking it is, too.” He laughed. “Consider my reasoning. First point: If you are married, your brother, as head of the family, no longer has a claim on your property—nor does he have the right to confine you in a convent for a scandalous way of life, which, by the way, you lead. So La Reynie loses this implicit threat over you. Second point: As your spouse, I can pursue your inheritance, since it becomes mine. In France, this would mean years of litigation and bribery. But abroad, it would be much simpler, because your brother does not have possession—indeed, he does not even know about Cortezia et Benson.”

“But…but—”

“No, hear me out. There's a third point. The officers at the barriers give their chief attention to goods being smuggled in, not criminals being smuggled out. You could flee the city anytime if you were content to go in disguise with only what you could carry concealed on your person. It is Madame de Morville, her carriage, her servants, that are notorious. Geneviève Pasquier on foot would be almost invisible, especially if she could restrain her desire to wear two rings on every finger. But you shrink from the gypsy life, Athena; you entertain a most understandable fear of dying in a ditch in some foreign country.”

“So what if I do?”

“Love of material things has closed your escape route, Athena. You should have considered more closely the excellent spiritual materials offered you by Monsieur de La Reynie.”

“It's not that…but my books, my silver…why, the furniture alone is worth—” Here he shushed me by putting a finger across my lips.

“Point proven, my sweet. Now, you must remember that I am a specialist in transferring resources abroad in secret. I am exactly what you require. I cannot make a move, however, unless I have a legal right to handle your property.” He cocked his head sideways and looked out of the corner of his eyes at me, his face amused.

“Florent…”

“Yes, I know what you meant to say. You'd have to trust me. And it's one thing to love a man but quite another to trust him, especially in your book—not so, little sorceress?” He smiled, finished off the last of a half-empty wine goblet, and waited to hear what I would say.

“No, that's not it. It's that you'd risk your life…”

“Risk? That's nothing to me. Geneviève, I have trusted you, even though you tell me you are a police informer.” He saw the shocked look on my face and went on. “What you do not know is that I have a vial of poison sewn in the hem of my coat. In my work, it is best not to be taken alive. The risk to me, these days, is being in Paris at all, and the main reason I am here is you. But with you…life seems…too precious to throw away. I have high connections abroad these days. We could start again overseas, have a home together, everything we can't have here. So you see? I have just trusted you with my life. The least you can do is trust me in return.”

“Florent, you're trying to trick me into marriage.” I could feel my hands shaking.

“Of course I am. And what is your answer?” I looked into the bottom of my wine goblet, trying to decide, and I could feel the fear welling up in me like a fever.

“I…I need to think. Let me tell you tomorrow.”

“And I knew that would be what you would say. Send me word when you have made up your mind, won't you? But don't delay too long; we don't know how long you have. Weeks, months—think about that when you ponder the terrifying issue of marriage.”

That night I woke up what seemed like dozens of times, trembling all over.

***

It was Grandmother's parrot that made up my mind for me. The damp thaws that come just before spring had given it a chill, and it sat huddled up on its perch, its feathers all fluffed up in a dismal ball, its black eyes mournful. As I set it by the fire to warm, it gurgled unhappily.

“Lorito, you and I feel the same,” I told it.

“Hell and damnation,” it croaked dolefully.

“Exactly. What a mess. Tell me. Should I leave or stay?”

“Sodom and Gomorrah,” announced the bird, poking his head up hopefully.

“What do you know about marriage, anyway? Me, I know too much. Lorito, I make my living from marriages where love has turned to poison. Suppose I marry him and he quits loving me?”

“Fire and brimstone,” replied the bird, agreeably.

“Oh, what help are you? I have to decide whether a fortune-teller in trouble with half the world should marry an adventurer in trouble with the other half. To marry d'Urbec—it can't work out.”

“Marry d'Urbec,” the bird said, peering at me with one eye. “Clever Lorito. Pretty Lorito.” Something about the bird's face reminded me of Grandmother in her little cap. I took out paper and ink, sat down, and wrote a letter. It contained only one word.

Yes.

***

“My love!” he cried when he saw me, his face eager and boyish. “I'll arrange everything. You won't have a worry in the world.” I loved to see him that way, his eyes bright, his mind busy. His embrace was rapturous, but I could feel something cold stalking my heart. It was fear. They all begin this way, I thought, with pledges of love.

“The chief thing for the moment is to keep everything secret—both from the police and from that old witch on the rue Beauregard. We don't want either of them to think the bird will fly. Don't let Sylvie know. I'll get witnesses and a priest who are on no one's payroll; that will buy us time, though how much I don't know.” He looked down at me suddenly. “You are happy, aren't you? As happy as I?”

“Oh, yes, Florent,” I said, as I took his hand.

“You aren't…having second thoughts, are you? Forgive me if I am terrified you might escape when I have waited so very long.”

“When I give my word, it is given; my heart will never change. Remember that, and…and be kind.”

“You mean if I should ever change? Don't think it of me, not ever.”

The next day, under the pretext of a supper party, I dressed gaily in my rose silk gown, and we drove through the gray mist to a remote parish in the suburbs, where we were met by a half-deaf old notary and two dark-cloaked, masked witnesses. It was already dusk, but even the newly lit candles in the nave revealed the ruinously needy state of the building. In the darkening arches above, there was movement and a shrill whistle: bats had made their home in the crumbling masonry. Dust sat heavy on the chipped, ancient paint of the statues of the saints. The nicked wooden panels of the confessional had cracked with age and lack of paint. Battered iron grilles sealed off the private chapels. Clearly a parish where the priest might stand in need of ready cash.

In the side chapel, the witnesses unmasked. Lucas, the underground poet, and…Lamotte. Florent's smile was ironic, as he saw me start. There are certain things one doesn't want to remember on one's wedding day, no matter how informal the occasion.

“You'll find these to be men you can trust, Geneviève. We have been through too much together for it to be otherwise.”

“…but the Duchesse de Bouillon…” I managed to say.

“…will be delighted, should it ever come to her attention,” finished Lamotte. “She loathes La Reynie and all his works.”

“An old family feud between the La Reynies and the Bouillons—over taxes, I believe,” added Florent, smoothly. Lamotte, his figure even fuller than I remembered but still resplendent in a vast pair of heavily embroidered petticoat breeches and a heavy blue velvet mantle with flame-colored satin lining, advanced several steps.

“And…,” he said, hesitating, “I owe you an apology. Both of you. It is the least I can do to make amends. Envy, d'Urbec, it makes a man a fool. And I have paid…many times over, a terrible price, beyond even that imposed by my conscience.” His face, in the fast-dimming light, looked drawn and sad. “All I ask is that when you count up my sins, don't include hard-heartedness among them.”

“Enough of this soul-searching, my dear chevalier,” announced Florent. “We have business under way, and Père Tournet does not like being detained.” Being detained from his bottle, I thought, as the old priest stumbled over the service. I could feel the panic rising as the words droned on. My mouth was too dry to make a sound as I mouthed the responses. The priest's odd, bulbous nose and moth-eaten vestments, Florent's dark, anxiety-ridden face in the flickering light, the glitter of candles reflected on tinsel and gilt—all seemed to whirl together in the strangest way. My stomach felt awful and my knees weak.

The next thing I remember is choking on brandy. “Ah, her eyes are open now,” someone said. “You fainted, Madame d'Urbec,” came the voice of the priest, “a not uncommon occurrence at weddings. Though it is of course more embarrassing if it is the groom.”