NINE
“So, Mademoiselle, let’s see how quick you are. Here are three cards: ten, queen, king. Now, I lay them out in order on their faces. Where’s the queen?” I pointed to the place where the queen lay, facedown, on La Voisin’s great, dark dining table. The winter rain rattled at the windows, in a way that made the tall, tapestry-hung room and leaping fire seem all the more cheerful and delightful. “Wrong! Try again! Ha! Wrong again! Look sharp!” The magician’s hands, smooth and deft, flashed across the cards. Another of La Voisin’s lovers, but one of the chief ones, as far as I could tell from the comings and goings in this most complex of households. An older-looking, rumpled sort of fellow in a rusty wig and homespun, the man who called himself Le Sage seemed almost deceptively clumsy, until you looked into his shrewd eyes and caught sight of the smooth-moving, swift hands, so curiously white, which he usually kept protected in gloves.
“Your eyes need glasses, Mademoiselle—why, here’s the queen, hidden up your own sleeve.” The white hand flicked past my own, as he produced the queen with a flourish.
The false shuffle, the break, the false cut, the force, I had learned them all, and now the desired card would slither invisibly to the top of the deck under my hands. Invaluable knowledge for a fortune-teller. But always, Le Sage was the master. Now he shuffled the three cards back into the deck, and the cards leaped between his hands like liquid.
“Show me that, Le Sage,” I begged.
“Foolish again, Mademoiselle,” he announced. “A card reader should never look too adept at the shuffle. A certain naive sincerity is important. Intensity. Survey each card slowly, as if you were spying an oracle of doom. Watch Madame through the peephole next time she reads for a client.” Then, as if to prove his point, he shuffled the cards again, this time with one hand only.
Madame Montvoisin’s house was a veritable factory for deception, with peepholes behind tapestries, a speaking tube between the dining room and the reception room, and oiled pulleys in the ceiling that could be worked from the floor above. In the few days I had been there, I had already seen a séance at which a ghostly white hand had appeared, conveniently lowered on a black thread. Yet even then I sensed there were things I was not allowed to see. There was the masked woman, pale and frightened, who was shown upstairs for some unknown purpose. The smoking stove in the garden pavilion and Madame’s study with its strange cupboards remained under lock and key. Sometimes Madame would silence jesting among the members of her household with a dark look, saying, “If you understood my powers, you would never say that in my presence.”
But for the most part, I was too busy to wonder about the deeper mysteries in the house on the rue Beauregard. I had been plunged into a round of instruction: the signs of the zodiac, the lines of the palm, the interpretation of blobs of candle wax dripped into a bowl of water. Then there was the deciphering of signs and portents and the study of objects, such as stones, and the memorization of which of them restored health, brought luck, or protected against poison. All must be learned, if I were to impress my new clients, for most of the aristocrats who consulted fortune-tellers were themselves students of the occult, and quick to spot an amateur.
“So, Adam, how is the progress? Didn’t I tell you she was quick?” La Voisin had bustled in from the reception parlor after the last of a long series of consultations.
“As usual, right, my love. Your powers of discovery are undimmed. And your idea—purest genius. The way she talks—all purse lipped and sharp, with those long words! Marvelous! Who would ever believe she was anything less than a century old?” La Voisin looked pleased with herself. Then nothing would do but to demonstrate my new skills. La Voisin ordered a bit of wine and a plate of cakes from the kitchen and then seated herself in her armchair at the head of the table.
“Ah, excellent,” breathed the sorceress. “But you, Mademoiselle, what is this sour look I see? Where is your gratitude for the treasures of knowledge showered on you?”
“I thought I agreed to be transformed into a beautiful object of desire, not a cardsharp,” I answered. La Voisin laughed.
“All in time, you spoiled little miss. Why, I’ve already made the arrangements. It’s about time you boarded out, anyway. I don’t want to risk my clients getting a glimpse of you before you’re done.”
“Done? Like a roast?”
“Done like a masterpiece. You will be my crowning achievement.”
“Our crowning achievement, my sweet,” corrected the magician, finishing his wine. “Have you seen Lemaire yet?”
“Yes, it’s all arranged. Consultation with Lemaire, then the dressmaker. Bouchet has been slow with the genealogy—he says court business is so heavy these days. I reminded him of his little…ah…debt to us, and that did seem to make him considerably more attentive.”
“Bouchet, the genealogist?” I interrupted. “The one who improves people’s ancestors when they want to rise at court?”
“Bouchet, the genius, my dear. You see? I’ve spared no expense. You must admit a title will enhance you. Besides, it opens so many doors. I wish you to have a well-placed clientele. Yes indeed, you’ll enjoy your new self—that I can guarantee. How do you like the title of the Marquise de Morville, eh? Elegant, isn’t it? Get used to the sound of it.”
“But…but…I will be pretty, won’t I? Like other girls? You promised.” La Voisin and Le Sage exchanged glances.
“My dear,” responded the sorceress, “I promised to make you beautiful and desired, but I did not promise to make you like other girls. A fortune-teller must never be common. You must have that air of mystery—a goddesslike distance from all that is ordinary. Adam, did you bring the book?”
With a flourish, Le Sage produced from his pocket a little volume bound in calfskin. I leafed through it. A volume of manners from the time of Henri IV.
“Now, you can study that this evening,” announced La Voisin, “after our lesson at the glass. I want you to pass for a creature from another century. The Marquise de Morville is a very old lady.”
“But I don’t want to be old,” I protested.
“Not old. Preserved in eternal youth. By the secret arts of alchemy.” She waggled her eyebrows humorously. She didn’t need to go further. I saw it at once. Mystery. Magnetism. A rare joke. Aristocratic households that would never have considered receiving the financier Pasquier, even in his days of favor and fortune, would vie with one another to receive the most outrageous charlatan ever conceived. Such are the penalties of wealth and boredom. It was delicious.
That night I wrote in my book:
December 12, 1674. The great Plato says that the masses are not fit to govern by reason of their gullibility. But what shall we say then of the first families of France, who are equally gullible? How I wish I could discuss this point with Father. I believe he would find the Marquise de Morville as splendid a prank as I do.
The very next evening, after a hilarious celebration in which far too many toasts were drunk to my splendid new career, I was bundled off in a carriage to a concealed location, where I might regenerate like a caterpillar in its cocoon before I burst on an amazed world.
***
I awoke in an alien country. Winter light was shining through the open shutters of a narrow little room and making shining patterns on the bare wooden floor by the bed. Repetitive bouquets of stenciled flowers brightened the yellow painted walls under the slanted eaves, and the tiny attic chamber smelled of fresh linen. The pillow felt as if it were filled with bricks. The featherbed weighed a thousand pounds. I had an awful headache. I turned my head. My clothes were hanging on a peg, my notebooks piled neatly beside my shoes. Someone had put a nightgown on me and put me to bed. Why, as long as I don’t move my head, the fortune-telling business isn’t bad, so far, I thought. There was a knock on the door, and a busy, buxom young woman in a cap and apron entered the room, allowing the smell of ch
ocolate to float up from somewhere in the bowels of the house. I groaned.
“So, finally up, are you? How does it feel to be one hundred and fifty years old?”
“Exactly like being fifteen. But I’ve got a terrible headache.”
“As well you might expect. I’ve never seen anyone drunker than you were last night when they delivered you here. I’ve brought you a headache remedy. I compound them myself, and they are excellent. Here, drink this and dress. You have a busy day ahead of you. You’re consulting Monsieur Lemaire today and being measured for a new gown at the tailor’s. Up! Up! Yes, you have to drink it. And let this be a lesson to you. If you’re to be a great fortune-teller, you must never lose control again. Leave wine alone, or you’ll betray yourself in company.”
I looked at the disgusting brew in the goblet. Reason enough to leave wine alone, if this were the cure. I drank it. It tasted like something dreadful scraped off the river bottom in summer.
“Ah, good. That’s it. Now, if I could only give it a better flavor, I’d make my fortune,” announced the woman. “Now, come downstairs when you’re ready. We’ve made cocoa especially in your honor.”
The headache was already passing. I got up, felt my limbs cautiously, and found them still attached, got dressed, and descended the narrow staircase. The large room downstairs was quite astonishing. It was part kitchen, part apothecary’s shop. I’d never seen anything like it. There was an oven built into the wide brick wall of the huge fireplace and a tall, strange-looking stove with a tower beside it that contained charcoal, so cunningly built that the fire in the stove could be fed continuously for many days. There were long workbenches against the wall covered with curious glassware and sealed jugs. Two little girls who looked to be about ten and twelve were filling rows of small green glass vials with a funnel and ladle under the supervision of a tall, older woman who held a copper vessel full of something mysterious. A kitchen maid in apron and cap, having stirred some eerily sweet-scented brew in a little pot beside the great soup kettle on the hearth, was now engaged in renewing the wood in the oven, from which a strange acrid smell came and mingled with the appealing scent of chocolate. There were boxes and bales of who knows what piled in the corners, and on shelves were ranged an array of strange, globular animals folded up and preserved in jars like pickles. Above everything, suspended from the ceiling, was a fantastical production of the taxidermist’s art, a hairy creation with four legs, each ending in a huge stork’s foot. The creature possessed feathered wings spread wide and a sort of human face compounded of plaster and what appeared to be goat hair. On the odd stove, a pan of cocoa was warming, while beside it on a little shelf sat a heavy earthenware plate of rolls, fresh from the baker’s, all covered with a napkin.
“Ah, so you like our harpy. Nice, isn’t she?” The older of the two women had turned around to address me. She was tall and thin, with graying hair tucked in a little cap above her pale face. She had a shrewd look to her, as if she had seen too much and made the best of it. She had introduced herself as a widow, Catherine Trianon, and people knew her as La Trianon. The little girls laid down the funnel. “Now, now,” she admonished, “you must wash your hands before you eat anything. That’s a rule, when you’re learning this trade.” Daughters? Apprentices? And just what trade was it? Alchemical? Pharmaceutical? I couldn’t tell. The girls scampered off to set a bowl beneath the tap of the immense kitchen reservoir that stood in the corner.
“How do you know it’s a she?” I asked, continuing to look up at the creature’s curiously nondescript underside. The taxidermist had provided the thing’s belly with a discreet covering of iridescent duck’s feathers.
“Because everything in the house is a she. We wouldn’t have it any other way.” The shorter, pretty woman that I’d first seen upstairs, who was known as La Dodée, had fetched cups from a shelf and set them out on an empty worktable.
“Hsst now,” warned her older companion, “I wouldn’t be so ready to gossip until I’d seen the sign.” She turned to me. “Are you one of us?” I made the sign I’d been shown. “One of us, and not one of us. How long since you left the other world?” Somehow, I knew what she meant.
“Two weeks ago,” I said.
“My, what a change. What were you doing two weeks ago before it all began?” La Trianon queried.
“I was planning to drown myself, but instead I’m here,” I said, in a matter-of-fact voice. Somehow they didn’t look as shocked as most people would. I took another sip of their excellent chocolate.
“Was it a man?” asked the shorter woman called La Dodée. “It usually is. You aren’t pregnant, are you?” What a ghastly thought. Suddenly the chocolate tasted like dust. The women saw the look in my eyes and nodded to each other. “Don’t worry,” answered La Dodée. “You’re with us now. That’s not a problem in our world. Though I can’t say they don’t try to make trouble for us. Men, I mean. They can’t bear the thought of women running a business on their own. ‘Where’s your license?’ ‘Who owns the building?’ ‘Are you sheltering felons or escapees here?’ ‘Surely you don’t live entirely without men!’ ‘Surely we do, Monsieur Police, and our papers are all in order. We’re respectable widows, following the trade left to us by our dear, departed husbands, distilling perfumes and medicines.’ We wipe a tear from our eyes. We offer a bit of rose water for the wife or girlfriend. ‘Have a drink on us, Sergeant; we know you’re only doing your duty.’ And, of course, influence helps. The influence of La Voisin. We can live as we wish. Without men.”
“She says you’ve studied,” interrupted the first woman. “So when she asked us to help you out, we said, ‘Good, if she can read and figure she can help us straighten out our records.’” I looked at the untidy piles of slips of paper everywhere. I was annoyed. This was not like a cocoon waiting to hatch a glamorous butterfly at all. La Trianon continued: “The business has gotten a little ahead of us lately. We’ve been so successful, you see—deliveries all over Europe. It’s our quality. We guarantee quality and have never had a disappointed customer. So people rely on us. Good. I knew you’d help. We look after you, you look after us, La Voisin looks after us all. Why, we’re almost a philanthropic society. Yes, welcome to our society. Do good, and you’ll always do well, as my mother used to say.”
Again, philanthropy. Surely, I had never met so many charitable souls in my life as in the last few days. We were interrupted by a silvery tinkle of a bell, from the front room, which was actually a shop front, done up as an occultist’s parlor and decorated with astrological signs. La Dodée hurried through the parlor to the front door. “Oh, that must be Monsieur Jordain, the apothecary, with his delivery,” I heard her cry as she vanished into the front room. “Thank goodness. We were all out, and we have so many orders.”
She came back escorting a benign-looking elderly gentleman carrying a number of carnation pots all tied up with twine, which he put on the biggest of the worktables.
“Here you are, ladies—still fresh and lively. What’s that I smell? Chocolate?”
“It’s all gone,” snapped La Trianon, cutting the twine and peeking into one of the pots suspiciously to judge the quality of the merchandise. I couldn’t help getting a glimpse inside myself.
The pots were full of live toads.
***
My transformation was accomplished in a series of visits to the back room of the shop of a fashionable coiffeuse-bouquetière near the Porte Saint-Denis: yet another establishment tied to Madame’s “philanthropic society.” There I was poked and prodded and passed judgment upon until I wept: my face, my walk, my posture were unforgivable in a woman of fashion. A failed ballet master in Madame’s debt was consulted and found that one leg was shorter than the other. He sent for a shoemaker, to make a padded shoe with a built-up sole, then squinted down my spine and sent for the corsetière. This worthy constructed to his order a hideous instrument of torture with steel sta
ys that ran straight up to my shoulders.
“There,” he said, as I was sewed into it so tightly that the tears squeezed from my eyes. “‘Change her so her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.’ That’s what the old witch said, and by God, that’s what I’ll do!”
“But how do I get out of it?” I asked desperately.
“You don’t,” he said calmly. “All of my pupils are sewn into their corsets night and day until they achieve court posture. Don’t worry—the bones are still soft.”
“Your eyebrows—ugh, they grow like weeds,” said the coiffeuse-bouquetière as she plucked the hairs from the bridge of my nose.
“Why can’t you do anything that isn’t painful?” I asked, my mind on my aching back and sore ribs.
“Haven’t you ever heard the old adage ‘One must suffer to be beautiful’? You’re lucky to have good skin. Not marked by the smallpox, though in a man a little marking is considered distinguished. The King, for example, is marked by the smallpox, and he is the model of elegance.”
It made a certain sort of bizarre sense. What is a flaw in a common person is merely spice in an aristocratic one. Suddenly I knew that the Marquise de Morville, if she became rich enough, powerful enough, could redefine beauty. That was La Voisin’s trick. She had no magic potion to make me truly beautiful. She would simply change the way the world saw me. It was brilliant, like a magician’s illusion.
The same dilapidated hired fiacre that always took me to and from these appointments was waiting to return me to La Trianon’s establishment. I’d grown used to the idea that the coachman, a one-eyed man in a rusty black cloak, never asked for payment. But this afternoon, something splendid happened. The one-eyed man hesitated to help me into the little carriage, squinting up and down as if I were a stranger.
“Well, well, well,” cackled the ancient driver. “Same clothes…must be the same girl, after all. Looks considerably less like a gargoyle.” As the old horse ambled off, I could hear him muttering to himself, “Not bad, not bad at all.”
The Oracle Glass Page 9