The marquise was getting to be an old friend of mine. She lived in my head, offering comments on my daily life, bothering me at night when I didn’t find sleep easy. A shrewd, sharp-tempered old lady, she coined aphorisms and told lies about her girlhood to me. She bothered me with horrid observations on my character and activities, denounced courtiers with impunity, and cackled at my annoyance. When I was placed into the heavy corset and the preposterous bell-shaped petticoat of hoops was lowered over my head, she shut Geneviève in the closet with a firm “There, now! Waiting will be good for you. In my day, we waited a lot more than young people now—and we were polite about it, too!” And she would stalk off thumping her tall walking stick to tell the world a thing or two, by way of setting it straight.
Now she stalked down the corridors of Versailles, a shriveled-up, disapproving little figure in the black of a previous century, a mysterious black veil concealing her features. She disapproved of the smell in the corridors, peered through her veil in an offended fashion at the bared bosoms of two ladies-in-waiting who were hurrying past, sniffed at the suit of a rustic-looking lordling fresh from the provinces in a manner that made him blush.
“In my day, a man took off his hat to a lady of rank, not merely touched it as if it had grown into his hair,” she said to a slender, olive-skinned gentleman in baggy black velvet trousers and embroidered gray silk jacket. The man looked back at her with a steady gaze. Visconti, the fortune-teller. The marquise was not bothered by other fortune-tellers. Especially Visconti, who lacked at least one hundred and twenty-five years of her experience.
“Good day, Monsieur Visconti. You have fully repaired my estimation of you with your second attempt.” Visconti had taken off his hat with several complex flourishes, making an elaborate court bow.
“My dear Marquise, I am delighted to have met you by this happy coincidence. My powers tell me that you have just been consulted by the Queen in the matter of her pregnancy.”
“How odd. My powers tell me the same about yourself. I presume you predicted the son she wanted.”
“No, because I wish to retain my reputation at court after her miscarriage in April.”
“That was wise. You will go far, Visconti.”
“I already have, little vixen. Last night I was taken to the King’s petit coucher. Consume yourself with envy. Though why the greatest nobles in the land would pay a hundred thousand écus for the privilege of seeing the King sit upon his chaise percée before he retires, I cannot imagine. You French are an insane nation, are you not? And the King is obliged to sit on it whether nature requires it or not because it is expected of him; there he conducts business.”
“Monsieur Visconti, you presume upon being a foreigner. Everything our monarch does is perfection itself, including sitting upon his chaise percée at the ceremony of the petit coucher.”
“I never said it was not perfection. Tell me, have you sold any more of your youth ointments now that you have risen to such rarefied heights?” Our conversation had carried us to the corridor before the cour des princes. On the far side, great doors opened into the garden. Two lackeys were holding open the door for their master to escort a woman outside to a waiting calèche for a tour of the gardens.
“Here I do readings; it is more in demand—Oh, who is that?” I was glad I was veiled. The Marquise de Morville fled in confusion, leaving Geneviève rooted to the spot, her mouth open.
“The Duc de Vivonne, La Montespan’s brother. She has made him a powerful man. Surely, you must know him—or perhaps you mean the girl who has just been helped into the calèche? She is lovely, isn’t she? That’s La Pasquier, his latest unofficial mistress. Quite a find, isn’t she? I hear she came from nowhere—a baker’s daughter, some say, but then, they may be jealous. Have you heard how he stole her from the Chevalier de la Rivière? Scandal itself. He won her in a card game—and I know for a fact he cheated! I suppose he’s brought her to see the sights. He is renowned as a connoisseur of beauty. They say he’s given her a carriage and horses and a little villa in the rue Vaugirard.”
It was Marie-Angélique, my sister. La Voisin had predicted it all that long time ago, that steaming hot summer day in her tall black fortune-telling parlor. But the thing that had shaken me was that Monsieur le Duc had on a sky-blue brocade coat and an immense, curling blond wig.
***
Now that I had told the Queen’s fortune, my readings became all the rage at court. The bored, the worried, the ambitious—they all sought me out, men and women, chambermaids and counts. Their fears, their passions, their avarice—I heard it all. Rumors started that I knew a secret that would cause the owner to win at cards; I was besieged. “The secret has a curse; to reveal it is death,” I whispered mysteriously and watched in awe as they promised to pawn their jewelry and face sure death just to own it anyway. Another rumor started that I was in fact immortal and dated from the Roman empire. I suppose I had quoted Juvenal once too often. Now strange whispers accompanied my travels up and down the corridors, and at the sight of my shrunken, black-clad figure and tall walking stick, even battle-tried soldiers drew back. Even my saucy, roving-eyed maid had fallen in with the game, walking deferentially behind me carrying my things, as if my power horrified her. Behind my back, she took bribes from people anxious to gain my secrets. It was a good thing I was at least a hundred and thirty years older than she, otherwise she’d have tried to run everything. My little philosophical notebooks and my cash went into a locked coffer, and I never let the key leave my person. Now the word went around that I kept the key to a secret chamber in a castle in the Holy Land, where the secret of the philosopher’s stone was kept.
I kept my secrets to myself. Each night in the tiny rented room in the attic of an overcrowded inn in the village of Versailles, I wrote out my coded list of clients and my predictions, still searching for the true meaning of the pictures in the oracle glass.
“Why do you sit up writing accounts every night?” Sylvie, my maid, would ask when she brushed my hair. “If I had a racket half as good as yours, you wouldn’t find me sitting up and writing. I’d be dancing, or making the bed bounce with that good-looking fellow that came to you for the secret of the cards yesterday.”
“That’s just the sort of thing that would ruin my image. My stock in trade depends on mystery and terror. People who go dancing and flirting have neither.”
“But what do you write?” she wheedled.
“I intend to become very rich someday, and one must start with the correct foundation, records and logic. The Romans—”
“Oh, bother the Romans. Sometimes I actually believe you’re as old as they say. Who else but an old lady would come to a place full of beautiful young men and rich old ones and spend her nights doing accounts? The best way to become rich is the easy way: marry a man with money. Or find a buried treasure. A woman can’t get rich by herself—that’s a law of nature.”
She unlaced my corset and helped me on with my nightgown. It was exquisite. A waterfall of fine embroidery and lace on linen as thin and pale as if it had been woven of spiders’ webs. All my things were nice now. The truth was, I was indifferent to Madame de Morville’s clothes, as long as I had my books, but La Voisin encouraged the wearing of luxurious things; it impressed my clients and was supposed to be the lure that drew me deeper into the fortune-telling business. She never understood that for me the best lure was watching the extraordinary assortment of human characters that revealed itself to me each day. It was my reward for a solitary childhood hidden in corners when the guests came.
The only dress I really wanted I was having made in secret; Monsieur Leroux, the draper, had procured the silk for me at a great bargain. But it was not a dress for the old Marquise, and that is why it had to be made secretly, safe from La Voisin’s spies. It was a dress for a young girl, not yet twenty. It had a rose bodice and skirts, turned back to show an ivory taffeta petticoat an
d a stomacher embroidered with flowers like a garden in spring. La Voisin would have hated it. I wanted to walk with André Lamotte in the orangerie in it. I wanted to smell the heavy perfumed blossoms and hear him say “I never understood it before; you are really very beautiful. All that time I was looking at the wrong face in the window.” I knew I was a fool, but I couldn’t bear not to be. It had to happen. It just had to. With magic, with money, I would make it happen.
“Just how rich do you intend to be?” Sylvie’s voice broke into my thoughts.
“Unbelievably rich. I intend to repeal that law of nature of yours.” Rich enough to revenge myself on Uncle and the world for making me what I had become, I thought silently.
“Well, you can start tomorrow with the Countess of Soissons. She ought to be a repeat client, the way she runs to fortune-tellers. She sent the most delicious little page, all covered with ribbons, when you were gone this afternoon. If you could have seen him blush when I pretended to pull up my garter!”
Olympe Mancini, the Countess of Soissons—another of the nieces of the late Cardinal Mazarin, and said to be a widow by her own hand.
“Don’t get yourself in trouble, Sylvie, teaching pages about nature.”
“Trouble? There’s no problem with that. Madame Montvoisin arranges everything.”
“I hope you don’t mean what I think you do—”
“Goodness, where have you been living—the moon? Madame Montvoisin provides the best service in the city. I recommend her to everyone. Safe and silent. Not like those others. They make a mistake, and voilà! Your body is dumped in the river. Madame does not make mistakes. You’re safer with her than with the King’s own surgeon. Her organization includes all the best ones in the city; they work on commission. All the society ladies go to her. How else could they live the gallant life at court? You ought to know; you’ve sent her enough business yourself.”
Oh, Geneviève, how could you have been so simple? La Voisin is not like you, enchanted with playing the game of deception. How could you have ever believed for a minute she didn’t offer real services, not flimflam, for all the money she gets? Here it was, as plain as could be before my very nose, and I hadn’t recognized it. She was an angel maker, a high-society abortionist, and the fortune-telling was a cover. The penalty was torture and death—for her, for her associates, for the women who employed her services. Suddenly I saw it all clearly. The secret signals, the terrified faces. A silent network of women, all tied together by fear and the possibility of mutual blackmail, was hidden behind the shining facade of gallantry and jewels, of elegant gowns and velvet masks. Hairdressers, perfumers, ladies’ tailors, all organized into a secret business cartel that covered the city like a web. “Have you a problem, my dear? I know the cleverest woman who can fix it. No one ever need know.” And I was in the center of it all. As I blew out the candle, I asked, “And La Bosse?”
“She’s a filthy woman. Only whores go to her.”
That night I couldn’t sleep, despite the medicine. And as I twisted and tangled in the sheets, I felt the eerie warmth of the oven behind the tapestry, and saw the desperate eyes of the women in the waiting room, and heard Uncle laughing, because he was a man, and could do anything he wished.
SEVENTEEN
The meeting of the King’s Council had just broken up, and His Majesty had left by an inner door, to avoid the cluster of petitioners at the public entrance of the council chamber. As the dignified procession of ministers of state, in full wigs and wide plumed hats, entered the corridor, there was a murmur of disappointment among the waiting crowd. A delicate jockeying at the door resulted in Colbert’s exit being delayed in favor of the Marquis de Louvois—Louvois the merciless, who controlled the King’s army and the King’s police, whose gaucheries of dress elicited titters from the court, and whose heavy-featured face had the unfortunate look of a coachman.
“Monsieur de Louvois…” La Reynie stepped forward as if he had just arrived, rather than having been kept waiting at his superior’s request.
“Ah, excellent. You are here,” said Louvois in the brusque, commanding tone he habitually used. “I have taken the matter up with His Majesty personally. He commends you and your police for your swiftness in locating her. And His Majesty wants you to know that he takes a profound personal interest in the case. Madame de Brinvilliers must not be allowed to flout the King’s justice. She has already been condemned in absentia, so it is appropriate that you use all necessary means to bring her back to France for execution.”
“That is understood, Your Excellency.” The two had drifted away from the crowd, Louvois, with his overdecorated walking stick and ever so slightly vulgar high-heeled shoes, and La Reynie in the sober garb of the chief of police on an official visit to Versailles. In one of the great official antechambers, apart from all listeners, they paused.
“There is something else,” Louvois said quietly. “There are persistent rumors that some of the first names in France are involved with an underground traffic in poisons. His Majesty is concerned that such tales may undermine the glory of his reign. So far, the marquise is the only woman of quality who has been connected with such crimes. His Majesty wishes you to conduct an extensive investigation concerning her possible confederates. Only when we have proved to our satisfaction that she is an isolated monster can we put these rumors to rest at last.”
“I agree completely, Monsieur de Louvois,” responded La Reynie. “But what if she is not?” Louvois turned away, silent.
Even though his carriage did not reach Paris until after nightfall, La Reynie sent a messenger immediately to Desgrez’s house.
EIGHTEEN
“Now, you must be very careful of the Comtesse de Soissons,” announced Sylvie as she laced up my corset. “Oof—Do you really want it this tight all the way up? You look straight enough to me once it’s on…Well, you shouldn’t offend her, is what I meant to say. Those Italian ladies, they’re all poisoners. ‘The Italian vice’…it’s not just a disease, that’s what I say! And the Comte de Soissons died just two years ago under very mysterious circumstances, to say nothing of others around her. And her sister, the Duchesse de Bouillon, she’s another one, I tell you. For all her salon is so fashionable, she’s still a Mancini, and they say she’s just yearning to be a widow. Don’t look so surprised. Believe me, I have my ways of knowing. But their custom can be the making of a fortune-teller—not that you aren’t all the mode since you read for the Queen. But the countess—she’s a repeat customer. Please her, and you’ll make your fortune with all those ambitious, plotting ladies. But if you’re dead, you won’t do either of us a bit of good, so don’t go stepping wrong.”
The Comtesse de Soissons, a dark-haired woman with a pointed, crafty face, and an oddly childish, turned-up nose, received me in her rooms at the palace. They were very tiny, by the world’s standards, but I now recognized how extraordinarily large and well located they were by Versailles standards, where the courtiers of even the highest ranks are packed in like pickled herring in a barrel. And of course, the gilded and inlaid furniture, the heavy carpets, and the silk tapestries were of a fabulous luxury.
“I want to know whether a…supremely noble…lover will turn again to me,” she whispered, out of the hearing of her attendants. Oh, goodness, I thought, another woman who wants to sleep with the King. They came in the dozens, high and low. Poor provincial nobility would scrape up their last sou to get their prettiest daughter presented at court; great ladies, married or not, would offer bribes to get a place among the maids of honor to the Queen or any other position where they might be seen frequently by the King. They schemed and fretted and bought love charms by the satchelful. Whenever the King’s eye wandered, business always picked up. One night with the King was like a lottery prize. Two or three nights with the King, and the court would bow at your approach. “That’s the new favorite,” they’d whisper, and the other ladies would turn awa
y their cold, powdered faces. It was a kind of magical transformation that lasted only until the gaze of the Sun King shone elsewhere, and the magic vanished. The supreme position, even for a short while, and your family reaped the benefits—pensions, offices, titles. Only an ex-mistress was not to be envied; everyone knew and pitied the fate of La Vallière, once made a duchesse but now residing, permanently shaven-headed and divested of her children, within the dank walls of the convent of the Carmelites. A very edifying change in life, said the preachers.
The image in the glass was very clear, but its significance was ambiguous. “It is unclear to me what this means,” I said frankly. “I see you in a carriage drawn by eight horses, traveling at full speed through the dark by the light of torches borne by outriders.”
The Oracle Glass Page 17