The Oracle Glass

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “This,” he said. The tiny hands moved rapidly over his body. I hardly had time to watch the hidden knives flash by my nose before they were embedded in the wall in a pattern resembling the points of the compass. “When I wear the turban, I can conceal a half dozen more,” he said calmly. Sylvie’s eyes were wide with astonishment. Even Gilles had removed the pipe from his mouth.

  “You’re engaged,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll carry your train when you go out. I’ll add considerable style to your appearance. And when I’m not needed, I’m good at concealing myself in corners and overhearing things. I carry letters unseen and remove the contents of purses from below. All at your service, Madame.”

  “Mustapha, I apologize for misjudging you.”

  “A polite marquise? Madame, your origins are showing.”

  “You are a horrid little person, Mustapha, but then, so am I. I think we’ll get on.”

  ***

  The next morning, a page in blue and silver delivered a note on heavy, crested stationery to my door. It was an invitation to attend the Marquise de Montespan, the King’s official mistress and La Voisin’s prize client, at her house on the rue Vaugirard the following day. It was a command performance, not to be refused. I dared not tell La Voisin, who might well have exploded with jealousy at the thought that I might steal her favorite client. As Sylvie did my hair, she filled me with information for the visit: the great house on the rue Vaugirard was where Madame de Montespan’s children by the King were kept—for years in secret, and now openly. The widow Scarron, a poor friend of Madame de Montespan’s, had been engaged as their governess and elevated to the rank of the Marquise of Maintenon for her service. “But if you can imagine,” observed Sylvie, “she had to appear to be living elsewhere, all the time that she was in fact at the rue Vaugirard raising all those babies.” It was there, in her Paris house with her children, that Madame de Montespan had gone to earth when the King dismissed her the month previous. I looked into my dressing-table mirror as my untidy locks were transformed into the ancient hairstyle of the Marquise de Morville and pondered my delicate position.

  “But, Sylvie, you won’t tell La Voisin about this visit, will you? I know that she herself was planning to pay a call on Madame de Montespan, and you know how angry she gets if she thinks anyone is stealing her business. You know I received a summons; I didn’t seek this out.”

  “Oh, she was enraged enough yesterday when I told her, but I said, ‘Better my mistress than that horrid La Bosse and her cards, or some palm reader from heaven-knows-where. This way it’s all in the family, so to speak, and it will all come back to you.’ And she cooled down right away. So, you see? I look after your interests. The higher you rise, the better I’ll do. I wish I had a gift like yours. I wouldn’t be a maid for another day, I’ll tell you. But La Voisin, she read in my palm I’m not destined to stay a servant. Someday I’ll be mistress of hundreds, like her, and ride in a carriage, and eat and drink nothing but the choicest things. So I’m helping you now, for the day when I am great. I’ve learned from her that that is how it’s done. Look after people, and they look after you. Do you want the jeweled combs today?”

  “Get out everything from the coffer, Sylvie. These court ladies don’t believe in modesty. They rank your competence by your clothes. Yes, the pearls, and the brooch, too, along with the silver crucifix.”

  “My, that does look nice: just like an old portrait.” She stood back to admire her handiwork. The Marquise de Morville looked critically in the mirror and snapped: “The lace ruff will do better than the linen one today, Sylvie. I expect you’ve starched it fresh. That is, if the starch is any good. Ah, in my day, starch was better made…”

  “I honestly think you enjoy being that horrid old lady, Madame,” observed Sylvie.

  “Sylvie, I’ll have no familiarity. I am that horrid old lady. Don’t ever forget. The Marquise de Morville is a formidable monster.”

  A short while later, the eerie old woman who was the fright of the neighborhood stalked out the door, veiled, her heavy stick thumping on the pavement. A Turkish dwarf held her train above the mud, and her lackey, who looked every bit like the escaped criminal that he was, rushed to open the carriage door, and the unmarked equipage rattled off through the light spring mist to the rue Vaugirard.

  ***

  The reception rooms in the house in the Vaugirard district were elegant, as befits a house that might be visited at any time by a king. Even the antechambers were hung with silk tapestries and furnished with chairs and tables of rare inlaid woods. Massive gilt torchières that burned a dozen candles at a time stood in the corners. As I was shown upstairs, I took note of the paintings in their heavy, gilded frames that hung on the walls of the principal salle: Venus being arrayed by cupids before her mirror, Europa and the bull, a portrait of the King in the place of honor. Beyond, we passed up another marble staircase and through a high-ceilinged schoolroom, where I saw two little boys at writing desks. The older of the two, who looked about six or seven, was the boy I had seen in the carriage that day I had first traveled to Versailles. The younger, perhaps only three or four, was already dressed in a miniature version of the embroidered robes and crucifix of the abbé of the great monastery whose income his father had already given him. As the bigger boy got up to show his work to the somberly clad governess, I could see that he limped.

  The mother of these children and the others up in the nursery was lying on an immense gilded bed in a darkened bedroom, the very picture of prostrated grief. A cold compress was laid across her forehead, and her dark blond hair lay all damp around her neck.

  “Madame, it is the fortune-teller.”

  “Ah, the monster who foretold my banishment. Bring her closer, that I may see her.” She had herself propped up, and the compress taken away. She stared at me a long time with her curiously colored aquamarine eyes. I could see in them a calculating and malicious intelligence, reinforced by the narrow, cold little mouth above the slightly receding chin. I curtseyed deeply, as if to a queen.

  “How dare you make me a laughingstock with the Countess of Soissons.” The aquamarine eyes turned hard, like the jewels in the head of a basilisk.

  “I am deeply sorry, Madame. It was never my intention. I only read in the glass and say truthfully what I see.”

  “The Countess of Soissons is a jealous, scheming bitch. An ugly little used-up Italian who thinks she can win the favor of the king. A Mancini. What are the Mancinis but upstarts? My blood, the blood of the Mortemarts, is more ancient than that of the Bourbons. To my family, the royal family themselves are nothing but upstarts. Do you understand your crime?” She sat up on the bed in a sudden surge of wrath. “You have held a Mortemart up to the ridicule of a Mancini.” Her voice sneered at the very word. “How dare you play into her hands? How dare you offend me? I still have the power to destroy you. Do you have any idea of my power, you miserable nobody? I tell you, I shall return in gold and diamonds, and I’ll have you burned alive on the Place de Grève!” Her face had turned all pink with anger, and her words came faster and faster. Oh, my goodness, I thought. One of Madame de Montespan’s notorious rages. She was usually as good as her word, too. My mind began to work swiftly.

  “Of course you will return, for it is I who made that prophecy as well. My glass never lies, as every other fortune-teller in Paris knows. Wouldn’t it be better to have my glass at your service than my body at the Place de Grève?”

  For some reason she hesitated, and her arrogant face paled. “You know La Voisin,” she said, raising a heavily jeweled hand to her face. I pursued my advantage.

  “Yes, I know her.”

  “How well do you know her?” Her voice was unnaturally calm. I sensed danger.

  “I am…a sort of…um…business partner,” I answered.

  “What was her purpose, then, in revealing this to the Countess of Soissons
before she revealed it to me?”

  “She had no purpose. I was asked to read in the glass, and I did.”

  “La Voisin always has a purpose.”

  “I can read for you now, if you wish it.” Madame de Montespan got up and began to prowl around the room, the train of her negligee trailing behind her on the carpet. She turned suddenly.

  “That was her purpose! She wished to remind me of her power! Oh, my God, she is subtle. She has cast a spell to make me desire to bring you here. The spell, the spell is powerful. Why else would you haunt my mind, you little nobody? Why would I hear the Countess of Soissons’s mocking laughter in my dreams? La Voisin has sent you, sent you with her diabolical enchantments, to read my future. She knows what I know—the dark walls of the prison convent are waiting for me, the discarded mistress!” She paused and looked out the window onto the street, and her face sagged suddenly, like that of an old woman.

  “To never take the air, never ride in my carriage or see my children again. My hair—my beautiful hair—I have made so many elegant hairstyles fashionable—gone. My jewels, my gowns, my cards—the amusement of the theatre. I have embellished his court with my good taste. The Mortemart taste. The Mortemart wit.” She turned suddenly on me, as if I were the cause of her misfortune.

  “How many poets and painters have I made?” she cried. “How many sculptures have I commissioned? I have surrounded myself, and him, with beauty! All this to vanish! Surrounded by harpies who tell me to repent. Repent! Why should I repent? Why shouldn’t he repent as well? Is not our sin double? In our seven years, I have borne him five children. I provided him with other women when he wanted variety. I amused him with my wit when he was bored—which he is most of the time! Has he ever thought that perhaps he is bored because he is boring?” She turned and stared at me suddenly, as if I could understand how she despised men of little wit. “If this were Turkey, and he were the Sultan, I would be the second wife. I would be honored! I should have known—when he refused to make me a duchess. My future is doomed. I shall be entombed alive, I know it, and La Voisin has sent you to tell me my fate. Take out your glass and read it, read it, you horrible little corpse in black!”

  “I’ll need to sit,” I said. She had not yet requested that I do so. She was famous for that. In a world where the rank of guests was instantly rated by whether they were offered an armchair, a plain chair, or a stool, she had once made duchesses take stools and marquises remain standing. Now she had nothing but her airs.

  “If you must. My God, to have a creature like you sit in my presence. I am brought low.”

  I put my things out: the cabalistic towel, dragon rod, short candles that gave off a strange aroma, and a round, stoppered jar of water. I had her touch the glass to “bring out the image” and did all the pleasing little tricks I’d devised to make it seem more than it was. But the picture in the glass was hard to make out. A man in full clerical garb was celebrating Mass in an unfamiliar chapel. On the wall above his head was a cross—no—it was upside down. He turned briefly, and I saw his face in profile. The hideous blue-veined nose of the sinister Abbé Guibourg, who had come to dinner at La Voisin’s. He set down the chalice on a towel, and by the dim light of the tall, flickering black candles that framed him, I could see that the altar on which the towel was laid was the bare groin of a naked woman. Various figures I couldn’t quite make out were clustered around the human altar and the celebrant. A woman stepped from the shadows holding a premature stillborn child. Guibourg slit its throat and drained its blood into the chalice, then gutted it like a fish, reserving its entrails.

  “Oh, my God,” I whispered softly, “the Black Mass.” My breath had stopped at the vile sight. I could hear my heart. The woman in the shadows who had brought the little corpse turned from the altar, and I could see her face. It was La Voisin.

  “What is it? What do you see?” The eager, anxious voice behind me interrupted my thoughts.

  “Don’t breathe on the glass. You’ll fog the picture,” I snapped, and I could feel her withdraw from her post close by my shoulder.

  The hideous abbé was completing the ceremony with an indecent intimacy carried out upon the woman on the altar. As I watched her pale, doughy body writhing in the light of the candles, her hair fell away from her face, and I recognized her. The woman who had commissioned the Black Mass and who lay upon the altar was Madame de Montespan.

  I looked up from the glass to see Madame de Montespan’s face over mine, trying to peer into the water with me. Her eyes were eager, greedy, her mouth pulled into a tight little knot. Her lips seemed redder to me, like a cannibal’s who has just tasted blood.

  “Madame is taking part in a ceremony…” I began.

  “Will I be a duchess?” she whispered.

  “…it is a…private…ceremony leading to her reinstatement…” I continued delicately, and Madame de Montespan nodded with understanding. She knew. She had done it before. I took a deep breath. Somehow, fortune-telling wasn’t any fun at that moment. I had gotten in too far. Court intrigue, poison, and now Black Masses. The life of a rabbit in a snake pit. Suddenly I wanted to go take a bath.

  “Let me view further,” I said, and I was sure the pounding of my heart must be heard in the room. Again, I saw Madame de Montespan entertaining the King, her bodice blazing with diamonds. Then I saw her pour wine from a silver decanter on the sideboard, delicately moving her hand across one of the goblets so that an unknown powder sifted into it. I saw them drinking and laughing together, and the King’s face suddenly grow red with desire…

  “Madame will regain the full favor of the King. She entertains him in her chambers. He showers her with new gifts and influence. He is mad with desire for her body—”

  “Yes, yes,” I could hear her sinister whisper. “How soon? How long must I wait?”

  “I can only tell from the foliage and flowers I see in the image…Let me stir again…It looks to be…about midsummer, when the King returns from his campaign in Flanders.” Another image rose the surface: Madame de Montespan in the notorious “robe battante,” the elegant waistless gown she had popularized and with which she announced her pregnancies and the renewal of her power to the court. “Never fear,” I said. “You shall taste supreme power again, and bear the King a child in token of your reconciliation.”

  “Ah, little fortune-teller, you are a messenger sent from heaven. My highest desire—”

  A messenger from the gates of hell, you mean. The King of France is a poor fool in the thrall of the creatures of night and superstition, who have placed a woman at the height of power through the Black Mass, and who have convinced her to drug him regularly with aphrodisiacs. They have only to say the word and the aphrodisiacs can be replaced by more fatal stuff. The supreme lever of power, La Voisin had said. We rule through their weaknesses. The sorceress of the rue Beauregard held the entire kingdom of France in her hands.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Who would ever believe it?” said La Reynie, shaking his head. “She is related to half the judicial families in Paris…with her birth, her beauty, her delicacy…this—” Before him on his desk lay the only evidence against the Marquise de Brinvilliers: a little red coffer containing a few family papers and several vials of white arsenic and the written confession, signed by her own hand, that Desgrez had brought back from the convent in Liège. Randomly, he picked up a page and perused the catalogue of crimes it contained. The midsummer heat lay oppressive in the dark, paneled office. Sweat ran beneath La Reynie’s collar and trickled down the back of his neck beneath his heavy wig. It stained the neck and underarms of Desgrez’s blue jacket, as he stood before the desk of his seated chief.

  “Apart from this, Desgrez, we have nothing. After three months’ interrogation, she still denies everything. Sometimes I think from the reports that she is a complete lunatic. Abbé Pirot has been with her for the last twenty-four hours, and look a
t this report.” Desgrez took the sheet that La Reynie handed him and read from it:

  “‘The marquise maintains a cold and arrogant front, but there are moments when her eyes glow like a demon’s, and another voice snarls from her throat. She has still confessed nothing to me, though I have assured her it will guarantee her salvation—’” Desgrez broke off reading. “I suppose, Monsieur de La Reynie, that she has had her fill of abbés these days,” he added. La Reynie’s hard face remained unchanged at the little joke. He leafed again through the pages of the confession, checking again some notes he had taken in his little red leather-bound notebook.

  “You needn’t worry that she will escape the executioner, Monsieur de La Reynie,” Desgrez observed.

  “It is not that which worries me,” answered La Reynie in a preoccupied voice. “It is the unanswered questions that consume me. Who supplied her with the poisons she used? Whom else did her supplier supply? What other people have shared in these appalling crimes? Paris is full of rumors. We may only have grasped the tail of a much larger conspiracy. And yet she will not talk, and tomorrow she will be beyond all answers.”

  “Then I may assume that you will conduct the question extraordinaire personally?”

  “It is Louvois’s express wish. His Majesty takes a personal interest. I have prepared a list of questions myself from this…document…you acquired so brilliantly.”

  ***

  Deep below ground level, the stone walls oozed damp. Even in July, the room was perpetually cold. A fire burned on the hearth, and next to it was a mattress on which to revive a failing victim for the next round of questioning. A physician sat ready with brandy and restoratives on the bench next to the table at which the clerk made the official transcript of the interrogation.

  “Troisième coin,” ordered La Reynie in a passionless voice, and the executioner’s assistant poured the third immense jug of water through a funnel into the marquise’s mouth. Stripped and stretched across a trestle, she was already bloated beyond recognition.