The Oracle Glass

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “Madame, I saw you in the flames.”

  “But when did you see me in the flames? Tomorrow, next year, or perhaps a decade from now? Your visions are flawed—they show too much and too little all at once. For all you know, I won’t be burned for this great undertaking at all, but for something entirely different. Why should I fight my fate? No, I embrace it, and my eternal fame.”

  “But, Madame, the pictures can be changed. Take a new path. God does not only give us fate but free will; there is a choice—”

  “Bah! What is this drivel? No wonder the demon wouldn’t have you. You live in books, Mademoiselle, and not in life. God, indeed! And now you are an expert in theology, as well as everything else! No, I will press on with this great deed, and I will have—”

  “Death, Madame.”

  “No, you little fool. Respect.” The sorceress stood at her full height, head thrown back, her nostrils flared and eyes glowing. The word resonated in the stillness.

  “‘Respect’?” broke in La Trianon. “For that you risk us all?”

  La Voisin smiled conspiratorially and waved her hand as if to dismiss our doubts. “Come, come, there’s a fortune in it as well.” Once again she sounded like her old self, a practical, mocking housewife turning a penny on soap or candles bought at a bargain. “Times are hard—I have ten mouths to feed. Do you think I can feed a family on air? On philosophy? On good intentions? No, I’ll look after them—and you, too. The milord waits for me when this is done. La Montespan’s money will smooth my exile—”

  “You mean, you will flee when we cannot?” La Trianon’s voice was horrified at the betrayal.

  “Please, I think of it as retirement. They will send their hounds after me when I flee and never notice you, crouching in the burrow. But the foreign king and his great nobles will protect me. Then the police will give up. The Dauphin, that great, stupid mound of lard, will reign, and the investigation will end. Politics will change. No, I will not burn for this. And besides, once I’m retired abroad, there will be plenty of time to change the image.” She looked pleased with herself. Then she looked at me and shook her head. “Once again,” she said, “the little marquise has made a hash of things.”

  “Then there is nothing more I can say to persuade you?” La Trianon’s voice was plaintive.

  “Nothing. Go home, go to bed. Your nerves are overwrought. You were never one to have the strength of mind to plan great enterprises. And you, Mademoiselle—go home to your opium and your soft featherbed with that useless gambler and quit bothering me with your visions. Now out, both of you. I have plans to make.” She opened the door of her cabinet and shooed us out as one would chase away chickens. Then she shut the door behind us and remained alone in her cabinet.

  “You didn’t convince her,” whispered old Montvoisin, pulling at my sleeve from his hiding place outside the door of her cabinet.

  “No,” I answered. La Trianon looked annoyed at the crumpled little man and sailed out to the great parlor to wait for me.

  “Then we are lost. My daughter, my grandson. I haven’t a sou of ready cash. She has locked up everything for fear we will betray her to the police and flee. Betray her? How could I think of it? But flee, yes I would. With my child, to a safe place in the country. My wife is a madwoman who will destroy us. Are you sure you don’t have money? One hundred livres? I’ll borrow it from you—I have unset jewels as security. Emeralds, diamonds. They’re worth more than the cash, I assure you.” Something about him, his pitifulness, made my skin crawl.

  “I haven’t that amount now, but I’ll see if I have it when I go home. I’m not as prosperous as I used to be—” I had to get away from his whining. Anything, just to get him to let go of my sleeve.

  “You will? Oh, bless you, bless you. Come to the house tomorrow. Sunday morning—she’ll be at Mass. She’ll never know.” I pried his dirty old claws off me and fled to the carriage with La Trianon.

  ***

  “Oof, you were so late, Madame. Your…er…husband was going to send us after you. But we told him you usually know what you are doing.” Sylvie had finished undoing my corset and was now brushing my black gown before putting it away. D’Urbec lounged on the bed, pretending not to listen, while he read Tacitus by the light of a candle.

  “Oh, Sylvie, I have such a headache! It was horrid. I saw Madame being burned alive, as clear as clear. We went to warn her, La Trianon and I, but she said, ‘nonsense’ and shooed us out. And that horrid old Antoine, he held me by the sleeve so I couldn’t leave. He wants a hundred livres to leave her and take his daughter and grandson into the provinces to hide. I told him I’d think about it just to get rid of him, and he slobbered on my dress, kissing my hand in gratitude.”

  “Well, no wonder you washed your hands so when you got home.”

  “So,” spoke up Florent, putting down his book and rising from the bed, “you persist in claiming you see visions? Geneviève, Geneviève, give up that dreadful opium. If you’re not afraid of death, at least stop and think: it will steal your mind long before it takes your life.” He stood beside me, put his hands on my shoulders, and stared directly into my face. His eyes were pleading. “Remember whom you would leave behind. If you can’t think of yourself, think of me.”

  “Florent, I’m trying—for your sake, for mine.” He looked dubious.

  “These headaches of yours, they get worse all the time…and you see things, you act frantic—”

  “Florent, I had to fool even myself. I’ve been having the formula made weaker each time I replenish my stock. I’m down to a quarter strength now. In a month, perhaps, I’ll be free of it. But the headaches—cutting back just spreads out the pain, so I can bear it.”

  His face was tender, concerned. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you try to bear it all yourself, in secret? Why didn’t you ask me to help you?”

  “I…I was afraid you’d quit loving me if you knew how much I was taking—I knew you hated it. La Reynie, he mocked me for it. A genteel vice, he called it. He took it away and nearly killed me—that’s…that’s how…” I was overwhelmed with shame at the memory of how quickly La Reynie had broken me. Florent put his arms around me.

  “And so now you think I’m La Reynie? What an insult,” he said, but his voice was kind, and the warmth of his body comforted me. I put my arms around his neck and rested my head on his wide shoulder.

  “Florent, I love you so much. I wish I were perfect, just for your sake. I’m trying…” He kissed me gently, as if to tell me that words weren’t necessary.

  “You are perfect, for me,” he said softly.

  “Good night, Monsieur, Madame,” said Sylvie, and the door closed as Florent blew out the candle.

  ***

  The next morning Florent rose and dressed early, as the sound of Sunday bells rolled across the city. It was March 12, 1679.

  “Florent,” I called lazily from the bed. “Mass? I thought twice a year was enough for you.”

  “Not Mass, business,” he answered. “I have a few things in my rooms, and some errands for my valet.” Somehow, I didn’t believe him. Still, it was not my habit to question his odd business. Sometimes he burned letters to ashes after receiving them. And he had a curious brass wheel with two rows of moving letters that he sometimes set on the desk when he was writing. The less I know, I thought, the less I can tell. But as he approached the head of the stairs, I heard Sylvie call to him in an odd, deep voice:

  “Stay, mortal, Astaroth has plans for you.”

  “Oh, bother,” I heard him respond. “Just a moment, you tiresome old devil. I’m in a hurry.”

  “You will be in even more of a hurry, once Astaroth has advised you.” I was annoyed. It was all very well for Florent to hurry off without breakfast, but I wanted some, and Astaroth might just be too snobbish to bring it up.

  That, of course, turn
ed out to be exactly the problem, so I summoned Gilles and went downstairs in my robe to see what was in the kitchen cupboard. No butter. Yesterday’s bread. Half a cheese turning moldy. A dried sausage. A pot of preserves with a suspicious-looking scum across the top. I scraped off the scum, scooped out a dollop of the preserves, and cut a piece of the bread.

  “The coffee, Madame. I’ll grind it.” Gilles looked mournful.

  “And no milk? Very well, then, I’ll have it Turkish style.”

  “Astaroth is a great trial,” said Gilles.

  “You’d better check the cistern, too,” announced Mustapha from his seat on the kitchen bench. “Astaroth doesn’t haul water, either.” I lifted the lid on the kitchen cistern and peered down into its green depths.

  “There’s plenty—” But even as I spoke, I could see an image coming, all slippery and dark, in the water.

  “Madame, I have the dipper—”

  “Shh, Gilles. Look at her face. It’s another image,” Mustapha whispered.

  A black carriage stood by the open double doors of a church. Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle. A woman was being forced into the carriage while a half dozen archers kept the crowd away. As the man pushed her in and sat down opposite her, I saw their faces. Desgrez. And La Voisin.

  “It’s today,” I whispered. “I must warn her. She must not go to Mass. They’re waiting for her at the church.” I stood up suddenly, all thought of breakfast forgotten. “Bring the carriage. Sylvie! I need to dress!”

  “Madame, Monsieur d’Urbec has taken the carriage.”

  “Oh, damn! Then call me anything you can find. Oh, it’s Sunday! It’s hopeless. Find someone; do something! I must get to Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle before late Mass!” Gilles disappeared out the kitchen door.

  “Astaroth does not lace up women,” came the impudent voice from the next room.

  “Plague take you, Sylvie, and Astaroth, too!” I shouted as I hurried upstairs. I struggled into my shift and buttoned on a loose sacque of indigo wool that I wore only indoors. Then I pinned my hair back untidily and hid the mess under a white linen cap. “There,” I said as I settled my wide brimmed hat over the cap, “at least that appears decent.” I fastened my heavy cloak and fled to the front door, where I found a vinaigrette waiting accompanied by an apologetic Gilles.

  “I told them it was a holy duty to take a poor, infirm woman to Mass,” he said.

  “Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle,” I told them. “If you get me there before the late Mass, I’ll double your fee.”

  But we reached the rue de Bonne Nouvelle just as the bells were pealing. As I paid the man and told him to wait, the doors of the church were thrown open, and the first Mass goers strolled out, talking. But as I tried to pass by them into the church, the black carriage drove up and halted in the street before the church door. I shrank back behind an immense woman in half mourning as the archers stationed themselves nearby and Desgrez and a companion strode purposefully toward the doors.

  Madame was elegantly dressed in her green gown, covered by a fur-trimmed mantle and hood. Her hands were concealed in a matching fur muff, and she wore a pair of cleverly made wrought-iron pattens to save her handsome kid shoes from the mud. She never paused when she saw Desgrez but raised up her chin and looked down her nose as a housewife might when she sees a mouse run through another woman’s kitchen. The crowd had stopped to watch the scene unfolding before us.

  “Madame Montvoisin, I believe?” asked Desgrez.

  “I am she,” responded La Voisin.

  “I arrest you in the name of the King,” announced Desgrez.

  But the crowd began to mutter. Then a woman’s voice cried, “What are you doing? She is an honest woman!”

  “Yes! Yes!” shouted someone else. “She supports her old mother!”

  “Arrest your own mother, police dog!” cried a man.

  “Archers!” called Desgrez. “Disperse, all of you, before you are shot as rebels. You interfere with the King’s justice!” As the archers forced the crowd back, Desgrez and his companion forced La Voisin into the carriage. I stood paralyzed. How could it all end so quickly, so surely? La Reynie had won. Montespan had lost. There would be human bonfires on the Place de Grève. Desgrez, his face like cold iron, would sit on horseback beside them until the blackened cinders floated away on the wind. The greatest sorceress the world had ever known was finished.

  Suddenly fear seized me. The account books: the thought burned through my brain. I fought my way through the crowd and found that my conveyance had vanished at the first sign of the police. Limping rapidly through the spring muck, oblivious of my shoes, I raced for the house on the rue Beauregard. Too late. The seals had been placed. Two guards stood at the front door. As I tried to go round to the side door, someone powerful grabbed me from behind, covering my mouth and dragging me into an alley.

  “Quiet, you idiot. I knew you’d be here.”

  “Florent,” I tried to mumble, but his hand stopped me.

  “Don’t mention my name,” he hissed. “The police are everywhere. The carriage is hidden in the next street. This way, and quietly.”

  We hurried through the narrow alley and out onto the rue de la Lune, where he pushed me into the carriage and swung in beside me.

  “The books, Florent…the contract…I’m lost.”

  “Never mind. We’ll leave anyway.”

  “I can’t, Florent. The police know me; my description is at the barriers. For all I know, they have orders to arrest me already. There’s only one way. Take everything, and go without me. God knows, I won’t be needing any of it anymore.”

  “Geneviève, what are you saying?” His voice was shocked.

  I clutched at him and wept. “Go right away. Don’t lose your life for me. And when you marry again, name a daughter after me, and remember that I loved you—”

  “Geneviève, my darling,” he said tenderly, embracing me, “I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, leave without you. I have the contract, and the P volume of her account ledgers. I went away this morning to buy them from Antoine Montvoisin for a hundred livres. When I heard you talking last night, I knew it was my best chance.”

  “You bought them? You have them?” My heart began to beat hard, and I looked up at his face, unbelieving.

  “Well, more or less bought. I bribed him and then broke into the cupboard. The locks weren’t hard—remember, I’m a clockmaker’s son, and have plenty of experience with mechanisms.”

  “Then Montvoisin—he’s fled? And Marie-Marguerite?” He shook his head.

  “Both taken, I’m afraid. He was keeping watch outside her cabinet. When I heard the knock at the front door, I tied the stuff into my shirt and dropped out the window. I barely fit—and nearly broke both legs in the bargain. But it was just as well. It turned out the police were at the front, back, and side doors. The place was surrounded. I climbed over the neighbor’s garden wall and left through the alley. See here? I’ve ruined my breeches.”

  “Oh, Florent.” Even hearing of his narrow escape made my heart stop.

  “Then as I was about to depart, I reflected: the way you’ve been claiming to see things lately, you might well try to come to the house to talk her out of the contract yourself—”

  “I came to warn her—I saw her taken after Mass—”

  “Same thing. Two equally foolish endeavors, and both the sort of thing you’d try, if you flew into a panic. What would have happened if you’d kept her from Mass? They’d have just arrested her at home. You can’t change fate—Oh, look at this; we’re almost home.”

  Upstairs, I found Sylvie packing, while Mustapha sat in my big chair and criticized: “Too much, Sylvie, too much. We’re not taking a wagon.”

  “Two small trunks only, and the little chest with Madame’s jewels. You need to leave room for the bird cage,” announced Flore
nt.

  “But Madame’s dresses—”

  “Leave all the Marquise de Morville’s things, Sylvie. Just pack my linens, my court gowns, the rose dress, the crimson velvet, and the new one with the pretty blue stripes and flowers. I will just have to leave my old age behind me.”

  “Very well, Madame.” She began to unpack the widow’s weeds, the Spanish farthingale, the ruffs, and black veils. She shook her head; a pity, she seemed to say. All that money.

  “Sylvie, has the message come from the Chevalier de la Motte yet?”

  “Not yet, Monsieur.” Florent began to pace and fume.

  “Florent, what’s wrong?” I asked him.

  “Nothing, nothing. Come away and I’ll explain.” He took me into the antechamber and shut the door. “My plans have been disrupted, but Lamotte has vowed to do his best.”

  “Lamotte?”

  “Yes, Lamotte, who rises in favor daily, and who owes me rather more than he can repay. Oh, he had tears in his eyes when he promised. It’s just that Lamotte’s tears are plentiful and dramatic, but never quite reliable—Damn! If we could have waited until Easter, it would have been easy. His new play will be presented at court. He will have to leave Paris to supervise the arrangements, and he has been granted the use of one of the carriages from the stable of the Hôtel Bouillon for the trip to court.”

  “Why, it’s perfect. Carriages with the arms of great houses are never stopped or searched like common vehicles. They wouldn’t even think to ask that the window curtains be opened. They never ask who’s inside.”

  “Exactly. But we have bought only a few days at best by absconding with La Voisin’s records. We need to be far gone from here before her interrogation under torture begins.”

  “But it’s Lent—there are no plays.”

  “I know. I have begged Lamotte to think of an excuse, and now I wait for his answer.” But that evening, a boy arrived at the door with a letter.