“I still have need of you—and yet the demon rejected you. Why? You were fully prepared. I myself led you to the required deed of power. I put the vial of poison in your hand myself. You were the perfect offering: brilliant, educated. You would have been one of us. The greatest among us. Merciless. And yet the demon wouldn’t have you.” She shook her head slowly in disbelief. “What is it that is wrong with you? Something lacking—it must be because you are one of them,” she said softly. “An enemy of our kind. One of La Reynie’s betrayers.” She tilted her head and looked slyly at me out of the corner of her eye. “Tell me why I shouldn’t get rid of you,” she said.
“Because I didn’t betray you. It was you who tried to betray me to the demon. Besides, you wouldn’t have asked me that if you intended to kill me.”
La Voisin sighed. “You grow too old. You grow too clever. I needed your mind, your position, your access to society for my great work, but now it has all slipped beyond me. Have you never understood why I created you? You could have been the mightiest of our queens in your turn. Now who will you be? A gambler’s fleeting amour. Dead. Wasted.”
“I’ll be my own person.”
“Then you are truly lost. No human can live without a master, and you serve neither heaven nor hell. What power is it that has stolen you from me? What is it that rules you?”
“Truth. Reason. Whatever is beyond cannot be found without them. I am still searching.”
“Pure lunacy,” she said, sighing. “All this has cracked your mind. No wonder the demon didn’t want it. Still, you are the best water reader in the kingdom, and I need your glass. The great work I have planned must go forward, with or without you, and with all my powers, I cannot see its end. Read here for me,” she said, indicating a tall water vase that sat among the curious objects on her desk.
“Concentrate,” I said.
The sorceress began to speak in a low voice, almost to herself. “I am engaged in a mighty deed. The powers of the earth assist me. When I am finished, I will sit beside kings, the equal of princes. The shadows will rule the sun.” I looked up from the water to see that her eyes had grown strange. What did she mean? She must have breathed too much of her own smoke last night. Whom was she plotting against? Who were her allies? No wonder La Reynie had acted so strangely. “What is the future of this kingdom?” she asked. I looked at the vase; it was drenched in blood.
“Blood,” I answered. “Blood and more blood, running like a river over the stones in the Place Royale. An ocean of blood.”
“Good,” she said, in a voice almost as if she were in a trance. “This is La Voisin’s revenge.”
“Madame, you go too far. Give up vengeance. Ignore the glass. You don’t know when it will happen, or if you yourself will be pulled into it. Let it go.”
“Oh, yes,” she said in a mocking voice. “Do good, love God, bless those who push you into the mud, die poor, and go to heaven. Little Marquise, I will let you leave with your life because I now know you are too much of a fool ever to betray me.” The last thing Sylvie and I heard as the door closed behind us was the sorceress’s bitter laughter.
FORTY-NINE
As the wine went around the table again, Maître Perrin, avocat and dabbler in the occult, helped himself to another immense slice of the leg of lamb. “And some more of that excellent sauce, please, Madame Vigoreux!” he exclaimed happily, patting his mouth with his napkin. A splendid supper, the guests pronounced it, uniting good food, good wine, and those intelligent souls who had an interest in treasure hunting by occult means. So many fortunes, buried in the earth and forgotten during the Fronde, just waiting for the correct incantation, magnetic dousing rod, or diabolical assistance to cause them to rise to the surface! It was a topic of near-universal interest. Maître Perrin himself, although an avocat au parlement, expected to enrich his patrimony considerably during the next few months, but by means of a rare parchment recently purchased from a woman called Marie Bosse, who seemed to have many valuable connections.
La Bosse herself had become quite red in the face with wine, and her son the soldier was becoming ever more raucous. The little tailor who was his host was quietly drunk at one end of the table, humming a tune to himself. Even Maître Perrin was decidedly more mellow than usual.
“Ah, Madame Vigoreux, what a wonderful table you set!” he cried. “Who could be a finer hostess than you. Such lavish hospitality! I bow to your knowledge of the occult!” He stood and bowed to the accompaniment of much laughter.
“Here’s to wealth without work!” Monsieur Mulbe raised his glass.
“What do you amateurs know about that?” La Bosse said, to the general amusement of the guests. Someone had spilled wine on the white tablecloth; the candles were burning down. It had been a long night already. “Why, if you knew what a racket I’ve got!” boasted the old witch. “And what a classy clientele! Duchesses, marquises, princes! Why, only three more poisonings and I plan to retire with my fortune made!”
La Vigoreux cast a warning glance across the table, which Maître Perrin intercepted. A convulsion seemed to pass through his midsection. With whom, and with what, had he become associated? All thought of buried treasure fled from his mind. The company laughed heartily, as if it were all a joke, and Maître Perrin laughed too. When the party ended, he departed in a flurry of cheerful compliments. And even though it was past midnight, he went directly to the house of Captain Desgrez of the Paris Police. As Desgrez’s wife and servants bustled about lighting candles, Desgrez himself, still clad in nightshirt and slippers, showed Maître Perrin to his private study. He did not seem to mind being awakened at all.
***
“Well,” said Monsieur de La Reynie the following morning, “I find your scent much improved. To what do we owe this honor?” The Marquise de Morville, clad in black silk and onyx mourning jewelry, had taken an armchair at the far end of a table in the Lieutenant General of Police’s book-lined study. With a flick of her wrist, she snapped open her ebony-and-black-lace fan. Somehow, the gesture irritated La Reynie. Maybe he preferred the fishwife disguise after all.
“To your sergeant there, who dragged me from a card reading at the maréchale’s in the most precipitous manner,” she answered in a sharp-edged tone.
“Our business would not wait,” said La Reynie, gesturing to Desgrez and two grim-looking undercommissioners who sat at the other end of the table. “We have a few questions about the, ah, fortune-telling industry, if we may call it that.” The Marquise de Morville nodded slightly, as if to say, Go ahead, if you are capable of asking anything intelligent.
“Let us skip the preliminary formalities. First of all, who is the finest fortune-teller in the city?”
“Myself, of course.” The jewels on the marquise’s hand caught the light as she gave her fan a little flourish.
“Ah, of course. And where would you place Marie Bosse?”
“La Bosse? She is a dreadful, vulgar, illiterate woman who has a certain skill at deceiving people with cards. That is all. Nice people don’t go to her.” The undercommissioners leaned forward with uncharacteristic interest.
“A rival,” muttered Desgrez.
“Evidently. That’s good—we’ll hear more,” responded an undercommissioner in a low tone.
“And who is the woman known as La Vigoreux?”
“Another fortune-teller—her specialty is reading palms.”
“Do you know her?”
“Yes, of course. She is the wife of the ladies’ tailor where I’m having a dress made up. But I wouldn’t associate with a woman like that professionally. She’s an amateur.” A narrow smile appeared beneath La Reynie’s moustache when he caught the condescension in the marquise’s voice.
“Well, well, it seems that every housewife with a need for pocket money tells fortunes.” La Reynie’s voice was vaguely genial, but his eyes were cold and probin
g.
“That’s about right,” answered the marquise, resettling the train of her long black gown around her feet with a rustle of expensive silk. “But most of them are no good. Washerwomen taking in each other’s laundry.”
La Reynie looked at Desgrez, and Desgrez nodded grimly.
“Do La Bosse and La Vigoreux know each other?”
“Of course. They are good friends.” The marquise appeared utterly calm.
“Do they dine often together? Who, would you say, attends their typical dinner parties?” Behind the marquise’s cool gray eyes, the watchers at the table could sense a strong intelligence working. They looked at each other. No, she could not be allowed to leave the building until the business was done.
“I’m sure they do dine often together, but I’m not acquainted with the others of their set: second-class magicians, cardsharps, forgers, false coiners—that sort of people. Not the sort I wish to associate with.” The marquise’s answer was clear and without hesitation. No, she could not be one of those involved, thought La Reynie. But still, he distrusted her command of herself. That alone was suspicious. One of the undercommissioners leaned forward across the table with his own question:
“Would you say that fortune-tellers have…ah…corporations, like the more respectable trades?”
“More or less; the trade tends to be passed down in families, exactly like any other. The difference is that there are even fewer outsiders taken as apprentices, and also, the association is run by women.”
“And what, Madame de Morville, do you know about poudres de succession?” Desgrez broke in smoothly. The marquise, entirely self-possessed, answered without turning a hair.
“What all of Paris knows, that they are rumored to be everywhere.” Her voice was calm and even. “Whenever a death is unexpected, it is said to be caused by poison. I do a good trade in discovering enemies for people fearful of poison, as you know from our…ah…previous discussions. I believe, of course, that this fear is entirely exaggerated, but I certainly would never say so to my clients.” The men at the table looked at each other again.
“And what would you say about the character of La Bosse?” La Reynie continued. “Would you say she is…boastful?”
“I don’t know much about it. Occasionally I see her on the street, but she is not of my type. She is, after all, the widow of a horse dealer.” The marquise’s voice dripped snobbery.
“Has this horse dealer’s widow a taste for the bottle, or for something a little more genteel—say, opium?” La Reynie asked smoothly. He was rewarded with an irritated glance from the marquise. Her fan snapped shut. La Reynie’s eyes glinted with secret pleasure: at last he had broken through that damned woman’s iron self-control.
“If she is like the rest of her type, she probably drinks like a fish.” The marquise bristled.
“That is all, Madame de Morville. I am afraid we will have to ask you to remain in my reception hall with the sergeant here for the rest of the day. But perhaps I can find another volume of edifying sermons to help you pass the time.”
“Monsieur de La Reynie, you are always so graciously hospitable,” replied the marquise.
“And as usual, you may speak to no one about this,” La Reynie responded.
“You know I can’t. Not if I wish to stay in business,” the marquise snapped. La Reynie’s smile was strangely sensual, his eyes caressing.
As the marquise was shown through the door, Desgrez said in a low voice to his chief, “Yes, monsieur, immediately. I’ll have Lebrun send his wife to her.” Madame de Morville paused in the hall, then continued as if she had heard nothing. That afternoon, as the marquise stared out of a back window in the Hôtel La Reynie in utter boredom, Marie Bosse sold a vial of white arsenic to a policeman’s wife who had come to complain of her husband’s brutality.
***
“You say they were all in bed when you arrested them? How convenient for you, Desgrez.” La Reynie looked up from his desk, where he had just put his signature on his weekly report to the King. Desgrez was standing, holding his hat.
“In the same bed, Monsieur. La Bosse, her grown son, the whole lot of them. It proves—”
“That the race of sorcerers is perpetuated by incest? Desgrez, I do not care in the least about sorcerers; it is poisoners I am seeking. I wish to get to the root of this conspiracy.”
“You will find a good beginning in the contents of these women’s cupboards. There is hardly a poison they don’t possess. That does not even count the black candles, wax figurines, a medallion of the King—”
“The King?” Even La Reynie was taken aback. In this setting, an image of the King could be used for only one purpose. A sorcery to encompass his death.
“Desgrez,” he said quietly, “I believe we have found them.”
FIFTY
It was not until late afternoon that I was able to send for my carriage and escape my afternoon of unwanted hospitality. I was not much concerned about La Bosse or La Vigoreux, who surely were intelligent enough to recognize a policeman’s wife, but La Reynie’s insult rankled and festered for hours. Once free, I went straight to La Trianon’s little laboratory in the rue Forez. I was fired with fury and resolve. In the street, a group of giddy girls in aprons and wooden clogs had just left the shop, giggling to each other and hiding something. A love potion, no doubt.
The little black reception room in front was more magnificently decorated than ever. The ladies were clearly prospering. On the mantel, a candle on a cat’s skull stood before a complex drawing of the circles of heaven and hell, and the consultation table held several mysterious bottles, as well as the coffer with the tarot cards and a book on the science of physiognomy. In the alcove, the curtain was discreetly drawn over the portrait of the Devil, and Uncle was getting a nice patina where he hung, suspended from a wire. There is something impersonal about a skeleton; I had found in the course of many visits here that I could view him without any feelings whatsoever, except, perhaps, a vague sense of contentment.
“Ah,” said La Trianon, summoned by the shop bell from her laboratory, “it’s the little marquise! My dear, to what do we owe the honor? Surely, you are not out of nerve medicine yet?”
“It’s about the cordial I needed to see you. I need to give it up.”
“Oh, you’ve said that before. What’s happened now? Another physician says you’ll die of it? We told you as much ourselves, you know. You take more of it than any living being I’ve seen.”
“It’s a weakness. It makes me vulnerable. Times are dangerous. I don’t want to be vulnerable.”
La Trianon’s eyes narrowed. “You know,” she said. Know what? I thought. This must be something quite bad. “Has she told you?” asked La Trianon in a whisper. “I should have known it couldn’t be hidden from you—not while you read the oracle glass.” I acted smooth. If I asked questions, I might reveal my ignorance.
“I don’t pry,” I answered, “but I can’t help knowing something. Still, I’m here for other business. I want you to dilute the opium in my cordial, but make the solution taste just as strong. I’ll pay you the same, but each week you reduce the opium by a quarter. That way I can deceive myself as I cut down.” La Dodée, having come to fetch some papers from the front room, smiled in greeting as she saw me seated with her friend before the fire. She had obviously overheard my proposal.
“Just so you don’t end up vomiting blood, like last time. Madame will think we’ve poisoned you,” she broke in cheerfully. I noticed that La Trianon became very quiet in the presence of the younger woman. So, she hasn’t even told her partner about this. La Voisin must be up to something very serious indeed. As La Dodée left, La Trianon stood and put one hand on the mantel, motioning me close with the other.
“I need to talk to you—confidentially,” she whispered. “I cannot get La Voisin to understand me, and she ha
s always had a weak spot for you. Maybe she will listen to a warning, if I say it comes from you.”
“Tell me everything. I swear secrecy.”
“Last week she came to me for a poison that could penetrate material. She wished to poison a footstool so that whoever rested his feet on it would die. I told her it was impossible. ‘Don’t sell it in Paris, if you want to keep your reputation. Sell it to someone who is leaving the country,’ I advised her, ‘so if it fails, you won’t have an infuriated customer returning for revenge.’ ‘I need it for here,’ she said, ‘I mustn’t fail.’ She sounded remote, strange—almost mad.” La Trianon’s voice was soft, hurried.
“This could only be for La Montespan,” I whispered.
“I cast the cards yesterday. The Queen of Wands was crossed by the King of Swords. I cast death, and the shattered tower. I am sure it is Montespan. She wants revenge.”
“I know that; I’ve heard it from her own lips.”
“But what you may not know is that since the King has withdrawn his favor from Madame de Montespan, La Voisin has put Romani on the trail of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, the new mistress.” La Trianon’s voice was low. Suddenly, I could see the whole pattern of the plot. La Voisin’s greatest conspiracy. There must be money in it, too. Immense sums from foreign treasuries, more than just La Montespan’s money. It was clear to me at that very instant that it was not only a woman that the sorceress intended to pursue to the death.
“But the King, though he no longer eats or drinks with Madame de Montespan, still pays her a brief formal visit each week, surrounded by his courtiers. In her apartments, he sits in the big armchair she keeps for him, and puts his feet on the special footstool that is reserved only for him,” I said to La Trianon.
“Exactly,” she whispered, “and the cards say that if La Voisin continues on the path she has chosen, she will die, and bring everything down with her. The only question in my mind is whether the shattered tower is our own ‘society’ or the entire kingdom.”
The Oracle Glass Page 51