“I do not have to listen to this,” he said, rising.
“No, but before you go, you should recall that not only do I come with a fortune greater than all but a royal dowry, but that, unlike a dowry, this fortune of mine is renewed and grows daily. I wish to be a duchess; you wish to be rich—it is entirely rational to form a business partnership in the guise of marriage.”
“You—you are not a woman; you are a cold-blooded monster.”
“And you a hot-blooded one.”
“I could destroy you for these insults.”
“Why, yes, and then you’d lose your last chance at a fortune.”
“I can find a dozen better brides.”
“Good. Go try, and when you are tired of being rejected, return to me. I will of course be richer then. My terms may not be as easy.”
“Your terms? Your terms? How dare you! It is my terms you must deal with, you unnatural crone. Brissac’s terms!”
I found it hard not to laugh at him as he turned on his heel and stormed out, the very picture of deflated pomposity. An excellent outcome, I thought. I’ve made the offer that will please La Voisin and he has declined it, thus displeasing her. And while she has hope of him, she cannot rage at me. My soup remains wholesome, and I am unbothered by Brissac. An excellent outcome.
“Ah, there you are, after your little tête à tête. Tell me, how did it go?” The rustle of my patroness’s taffeta underskirts had announced her presence long before her voice did so.
“He did not want marriage; I let him know that marriage was the price of my fortune. He said I was too deformed and obscure for a duchess. He will seek elsewhere, fail, and then return. That I can predict without the glass.” Her mouth drew into a grim line.
“If he has been playing with me, I swear—”
“Oh, take into account that he is a man and, therefore, hot-blooded, illogical, and changeable. He must be handled delicately if you want him to…behave.”
“Ha! You are coming along nicely, my dear. Your brain is developing admirably.” She looked almost benign as she accompanied me out through the now-crowded dance floor.
At the refreshment table, we met La Lépère, who was putting candied fruits into the sagging pockets of the old jacket that she wore over her shabby gown.
“Do take some of the rolls, too, my dear; they will make a lovely breakfast,” said La Voisin as the old woman whirled around and tried to conceal what she was doing.
“You—you smile at me so. Your guests would not be so content with you if they knew what makes your garden so green,” she said, thrusting her hands into her pockets as if to prevent anyone from snatching back the concealed delicacies.
“So now you begrudge me my gardeners? Come, come. There was a time you thought more generously than that.”
There was a shrill laugh from a masked court lady who had overheard us. “Oh, my, yes, your gardeners are miracle workers! I begrudge you them myself. Look at those roses, still blooming so lushly, and those lilies! And chrysanthemums! Twice the size of mine! Oh, what is your secret?” The chemists of the rue Forez, La Trianon and La Dodée, who had stopped at the wine fountain, turned their heads toward us and nodded and smiled.
“It’s what you feed them,” La Voisin said archly.
“And what is that?” the masked court lady asked.
“Have your gardeners compost spoiled fish from the market. They work miracles,” replied the sorceress with her strange, pointed little smile, and she turned away. La Lépère followed us into a grape arbor lit with hanging lanterns and draped with lush vines, heavy with fruit.
“Catherine,” she said, “it was not always like this. Take my advice as an old friend—get rid of this garden full of bones.”
“Get rid of it? Ridiculous! I’m very fond of it. They keep my oven running day and night, these courtiers, in the good season, and my garden—exquisite. And I like them there—all those little marquises and counts and chevaliers and whatnot who make my flowers bloom. And how delightful a spectacle to see their high-born parents dancing on them without a care in the world—Oh, Margot, what? The wine fountain needs renewing already? Use the cheaper Bordeaux. They’ve been drinking long enough not to know the difference. Yes, do hurry along now. Where was I? Oh yes, my garden. I like it this way. I have no intention of digging it up.” Insects swarmed around the lanterns, battering themselves on the glass.
“Catherine, it cannot end well. This…this…the way you mock the world. You should give it up.”
“And be poor? Va, va, I have ten mouths to feed…and I do it rather well, too, not even counting the fact that I’m supporting people like you. My business is no different from half the world’s. I just do it better, that’s all.”
“Better—or worse—depending on how you look at it,” muttered La Lépère, as the violins struck up a pavane.
***
It was on the Wednesday following the party that I received a note from Monsieur Geniers, my silent partner in vengeance. My uncle, the Chevalier de Saint-Laurent, had refused, it seems, to make good on his debts and, after the appropriate legal processes, had been thrown into debtors’ prison, where he wrote pitiful letters begging Monsieur Geniers for money to pay the jailers for food and blankets. Good, I hope he stays locked up forever, I thought, and felt indescribable relief that I no longer risked crossing his path and being recognized. Things seem to be working out for me, for Marie-Angélique. Now I’ll end my day by dropping in on Marie-Angélique to see how she is. I wonder what would be a nice gift for the baby? Half daydreaming, I mounted into the carriage, hardly noticing that it had pulled out into the street. Perhaps the baby will be a girl. That will be easy to choose for. I’ll get her a dress and a little silver spoon with her name on it. The carriage paused, halted by a crowd of pedestrians, chairs, and a dray wagon at the corner of the rue de Picardie. An aunt? That will be odd, to be an aunt. All memories of Uncle flew out of my mind with the agreeable notion of aunthood. Outside, my driver was shouting insults, but I didn’t really notice. Suddenly I thought of d’Urbec’s busybody aunt and how her mind was all formed by romance novels. Perhaps the brain softens when one becomes an aunt. I’ll borrow Marie-Angélique’s copy of Clélie and see if it seems any less silly. Then I’ll know. The odd notion amused me, and I laughed out loud. I could feel the stares of strangers at the eerie old crone who laughed alone in the carriage caught in the midst of a street quarrel.
THIRTY
“I declare, Sister, I will never get over the new way you look,” exclaimed Marie-Angélique as we kissed each other in greeting. “My, my, haven’t we come a long way from the time we’d peek from behind the curtain at the cavaliers in the street! Remember the one with the mandolin? And the poor fellow with all the ribbons, who brought his friends to give him courage?” The silk of her gown rustled as she poured a cordial from an ornate crystal-and-gold decanter. Her face looked puffy under its layers of rouge and powder. But not a hair was out of place beneath her elegant jeweled combs.
“You look tired, Marie-Angélique. Is something wrong?”
“Oh, Geneviève,” she said, sitting down and wiping her eyes, “I told Monsieur de Vivonne last night about the baby. He…he doesn’t want it. He looked so cold, Sister. He said there is something ugly and puffy about pregnant women, and that explained why I’d had a…a distinctly lower class look about me lately. He said…if I truly loved him, I’d keep myself attractive for him.”
“But, Marie-Angélique, you’re beautiful! You haven’t changed at all!”
“He says I have. And I’ve heard he’s seeing Madame de Ludres, that awful, rich, snotty little canoness. She’s ambitious, she has the rank…the elegance. And…and she’s not…puffy. I have to keep his love, or I’m ruined, Sister.”
“Marie-Angélique, this doesn’t sound very honest to me. He just doesn’t want to acknowledge the c
hild and end up supporting it. If you want your baby, you should just have it.”
Marie-Angélique bowed her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing black eye shadow and white powder together in a muddy trail. Her voice was low. “He said that if I didn’t care enough for our love to please him and get it taken care of, he’d sooner see me in a convent—or in the Sâlpetrière like a common prostitute—than flaunting his bastard around town. He has power, Sister, great power. I’d never see my child again—What would happen then? Oh, God, Sister, what shall I do? The cast-off little mistress, locked up for life to pray for forgiveness for her sins! And my baby—Without a mother, what would happen to my poor child? I can’t live; I swear, I can’t! God wishes me to die for my sins—” I held her to me as she doubled over with weeping.
“Don’t cry, Sister, don’t cry,” I pleaded. “It will all be all right. God means you to live and have your baby and be happy.” Strands of Marie-Angélique’s hair came loose from her combs, shining all golden, a trail of light across the somber black silk of my dress. Even with her beauty, she, too, had been betrayed by Mother, just as surely as I had been.
“Marie-Angelique,” I said, “I’ve got a house, I’ve got money put away. You could stay with me and have your baby secretly. He’d never know. You could fool him. Tell him you can’t make up your mind. Tell him it’s risky early on. Then when it’s time, tell him you’re visiting an abortionist. I’d keep the baby for you, and you could visit. It…it would be nice for me. And it would be almost like keeping it yourself.”
“Oh, Geneviève, if I only could. But he won’t wait anymore. If I put him off, I’ll lose him. There are dozens of women who want him. Women of rank, women of wealth and beauty. I’ve…I’ve stepped into a world that’s beyond me, Sister. All I have is my beauty. I must renew our love before it is lost. It is the only way open to me. I must.” Her eyes, as she stared at my face, were full of desperation. Her face was pale and twisted with anxiety beneath the gaudy spots of rouge and muddy splashes of smeared powder. “Tell me,” she whispered, “in all your, ah, business, have you ever heard of the Comte de Longueval?”
“Longueval?” I asked again just to make sure. My heart stood still for a moment. I knew Longueval all too well.
“Yes. Longueval. I have…been given his name. He…he can fix things.”
“Longueval has a poor reputation, Sister. He’s ignorant and money hungry.”
“He says he’ll pay…”
“You mean, the duke will pay Longueval for you to…?”
“Yes,” she whispered and averted her face from me. “Don’t hate me for it. I already hate myself.” Her voice was sick with shame.
“Marie-Angélique, Longueval has his servants dump the bodies of his mistakes in the back alleys behind the Bîcetre and the Hôpital de la Charité.”
“Don’t shame me more, my poor child…”
“Marie-Angelique,” I said as gently as I could, “do you think I’m speaking of infants here? Most of the time, it is the women who see him who end up in the alley.”
“But Monsieur le Duc said—” Her eyes opened wide. “Geneviève, what proof have you?”
“Sister, I live a different life now. So different you can hardly imagine it. I know the secrets of the world. The women who rise high on men’s favors, the unfaithful wives, they pay a visit…sometimes several a year, to…well, a place that I know. It doesn’t give them a pin’s worth of worry, and they live to return the next time that love inconveniences them. In the right hands, it’s far safer than being cut for the stone. Believe me, I’ve seen them all—actresses, noblewomen, unfaithful wives. Women like that, they know how to take care of themselves. Marie-Angelique, let me arrange it for you. But don’t go to Longueval. Swear to me you won’t.”
“I…I don’t know,” she answered. “I wasn’t raised to know these things,” she equivocated.
“Listen to me,” I said firmly. “Promise me you won’t go to that man. I’ll fix everything for you. You’re all I have left in this world. You can get another child, but I can’t get another sister. And if the duke demands to take you, tell him you insist on seeing La Voisin.”
“The fortune-teller…” She drew in her breath. “So that was her real business all along.”
“One of them,” I answered, thinking of the garden of bones. “But she’s quick, quiet, and safe.” But Marie-Angélique had begun to tremble all over.
“I’m so afraid, Geneviève. I’ll burn in hell for this.”
“Then you’ll have the most fashionable people at the court for company. Goodness, the Princesse de Tingry alone could keep Madame in business with her annual…offerings.”
“Annual? Oh, I could never—Dreadful!” Marie-Angélique looked shocked.
“Marie-Angelique, you want to keep this man. That is the price. If you weep and mope, you will bore him. Whatever you do, do it boldly.”
“But I have to keep him, I have no way to live otherwise. And…and he loves me. He says so. Our love is precious, he said. This is the only way.”
With regret I felt the state of aunthood slipping away. No knitting, no visits, no silver spoon. The oven still warm with incinerated hope. All for this worthless old roué. What liars men are, and here’s the proof. Marie-Angelique promised me so many times, first with tears and then with renewed resoluteness, that I believed her. And though it was not my day to visit, I went straight to the rue Beauregard.
***
Antoine Montvoisin, in his old, food-stained dressing gown and moth-eaten wool slippers, let me in by the side door.
“They’re all upstairs. They’ve got business,” he announced, as if that explained everything. “I’m drinking her Beaujolais,” he said, and a conspiratorial tone entered his voice. “She forgets to lock it up when they’re all upstairs with a client. Do you want some?”
“Not just now; my stomach’s weak today. But thank you, anyway,” I added, noting the dejected look on his face.
“Oh, there you are, Antoine. Into my good wine again, eh? Well, pour yourself another drink and then get dressed. I have a delivery for Guibourg today.” Margot came downstairs with a wrapped package neatly tied with string. I knew now what was in it. This one was big, near term. Madame might well have had to drown it in the big brass bowl she kept at the bedside in case the fetus emerged living. “Oh, good—” La Voisin turned and spied me. “Why, Marquise, to what do we owe the honor? It’s not even your accounting day.”
“I’ve come to arrange for your…services for…female embarrassment—”
“Ha! Not you? Who on earth was it? D’Urbec, after all?”
“Not for me, for my sister.”
“Oho, the beautiful Marie-Angélique Pasquier. She’s flown high. But Vivonne is changeable. You’d be surprised who’s been purchasing love powders to sprinkle in his food. She’d do well to consult me in other matters, too, your sister. Who is paying? Vivonne?”
“I am. Vivonne wants her to go to Longueval.”
“Then, in my opinion, he’s either a fool or wants her out of the way. Knowing him, the latter. Longueval is an incompetent.”
“That’s what I told her.” As I negotiated the price, I felt deadly calm.
“Come, sit down, Marquise. Just how far along is she?” We sat together on two big brocade armchairs, and she propped her feet on a stool. Her ankles, in scarlet silk stockings, looked more swollen than I remembered.
“It doesn’t really show yet,” I answered.
“Oh, a pity. If it were big enough to send to Guibourg, I could offer a discount. There’s a shortage these days, and he pays well.”
“Pays? For what?”
“Oh, don’t be so particular. They’re already dead when I send them over. He baptizes them, of course, though he says it’s second rate if they’re not alive. And then he…reu
ses them. After all, they would just go to waste otherwise.”
“Oh yes, of course. It’s silly to waste,” I said in a distant manner. The only use for a dead baptized baby I could imagine was in the Black Mass, one of Guibourg’s specialties. The Shadow Queen’s jet black eyes looked inscrutable as she watched my mind absorb this information. She seemed businesslike, calm, as if she were testing me. We watched Antoine, all wrapped in his rusty old cloak, stump out the door with the package, and I turned to her. Marie-Angélique betrayed to this. Knowingly. By her own mother, who had used her salon to launch her into this life just as clearly as if she had auctioned her off. Should I add the baby to the list of deaths Mother had to her account? The Shadow Queen must have seen the look in my eye. She stared back evenly at me. Now, somehow, when I had placed my sister and myself in her hands, it was time to ask the question I had not dared to before.
“Tell me,” I said, my voice calm and precise, “did you sell my mother the poison with which she killed my father?”
“I wondered when you’d be asking that. You certainly took your time figuring it out.”
“It only just now came to me,” I lied.
“Really, for a person who reads the future so well, you are a bit dense in reading the past. The answer is no. I didn’t. La Bosse did.”
“Then it’s true. He was murdered, and you knew all along.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked at me a long time. “You must understand there are certain types of women to whom I do not sell poison. I am an artist. I create death in undetectable ways. The laughing death, oil of vitriol, distillation of toad—they are not for me. I require a customer who is brave, patient, and subtle. Someone who has suffered great wrong and is willing to follow my instructions exactly to even the score. You, for example, would be ideal.” She paused. I didn’t say anything. “This little…business of mine was built by the revolutionaries of the Fronde. No, not in the way you think, by political conspiracy, but by women who had managed households while their husbands were away at war. They return, those lords, they take away the purse strings, they are brutal, they leave bruises, they threaten with imprisonment in the cloister. Poison—it evens the score. My little services, they keep women from slavery. Isn’t that so? In a better world, I would have to sell perfume and beauty powder. But this wicked world of ours needs its witches, and so I am wealthy.”
The Oracle Glass Page 30