Poison Priestess

by Lana Popovic

  As one of the wolves instead, festooned in finery, my own savagery concealed behind a courtly masque.

  “It is only that I’ve never seen you at any of this season’s fetes,” she wheedles deftly, sensing my indecision. “And I thought perhaps you might enjoy an evening away from these ethereal pursuits. A night to indulge in some more earthbound fare.”

  I waver for another moment, wondering if I am risking my carefully cultivated aura of mystique by agreeing to attend. But I have never been to such a fete, and I find I want to go to this one rather badly.

  And would it truly harm anything to spend one single night as one of them?

  “Perhaps I might at that, Maréchale,” I tell her. “I will think on it.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Prohibition and the Masks

  I attend the maréchale’s masquerade ball as Medusa, unable to resist.

  I’ve dispensed with my signature black, opting instead for a jade-green Grecian gown fastened over one shoulder, and a filigreed silver masque to conceal my face. An intricate jeweled headpiece rests upon my head, crafted on extremely short notice by my very own grateful husband’s hands. It is a wonder, a profusion of gold and silver snakes rendered in lifelike detail, down to the notched ovals of their scales and the glinting gemstones of their eyes. My own copper curls have been shaped by my chambermaid’s clever hand into serpentine coils roped through the headpiece to support its weight.

  I could have worn a sturdy wig beneath it instead, like most of the other guests. I normally strive to avoid stirring the marquise’s jealousy by keeping myself drab, my face unappealingly powdered in heavy white, my bright curls always covered by a shawl.

  But I happen to know that the marquise is unlikely to attend tonight, as she mentioned the possibility of plans with the king himself, so I make this fete an excuse to show myself off just a bit.

  As I step into the palatial ballroom, buxom shepherdesses and sultry Cleopatras whisk obliviously by me in a whirl of color, their male escorts attired as jesters and gods, or in simple Venetian domino masques. The maréchale’s residence is staggeringly huge, and it is clear she has spared no expense. The ballroom has been transformed into an aviary, hung with cages of exotic birds whose cacophonous caws and trills jangle above the tide of music. A tremendous banquet table sprawls along the room’s imposing length, groaning beneath a wealth of food. Glazed peacocks arrayed with their own feathers, massive breads baked into Gordian knots, tiered cakes festooned with sparkling sugared fruit. An ice sculpture dominates the center of the room: Zeus in the form of a colossal swan poised to pillage Leda.

  As I accept a goblet of wine from one of the attendants, I’m overcome with longing for Marie, who will poke ruthless fun at my retelling of all this decadent frivolity the next time we are together. “Can you imagine being both so mad and so debased,” I can almost hear her say, her eyes glittering with gleeful contempt, “that you’re willing to spend your coin on enough ice to carve a gigantic randy goose?”

  Though I spent a night with Marie only last week, a yearning for her and for our simpler nights in the cité caroms painfully through me. For a desperate, aching moment, I wonder if all this has been a terrible mistake. Perhaps I should never even have come to the ball.

  Perhaps I do not belong here at all, marooned among these faithless libertines who know nothing of true friendship.

  The maréchale descends upon me then, and plucks me from my melancholy.

  “Madame La Voisin! You came after all, what magnificent fun!” she exclaims, rushing forward in a flurry of satin and perfume to swoop pecks on my cheeks. She is attired as some bird of paradise, a resplendence of feathers sewn into her scarlet gown and resting on her head. “And, mon Dieu, but you look stunning—I would not have known you, had the doormen not tipped me off! Does she not look incomparable, Geneviève?”

  Madame Leferon fawns over me accordingly. Then the two link arms with me and lead me to the banquet table, chattering with each other like the fast friends they pretend to be. Still engaging in their own private little masquerade, I note wryly to myself, even as they vie to outdo each other in piling assorted delicacies on my plate.

  “You must try the religieuses,” Madame Leferon urges. “Madeleine’s chef procured something called fruit de la passion for the filling, through some sorcery Madeleine will not reveal even upon pain of death, the wretch. The flavor is downright sublime.”

  “It would hardly be special if I were to tell you where I got it, you greedy thing,” Madeleine retorts with a hint of sharpness to her smile. “A sorceress never reveals secrets of her craft—n’estce pas, Madame La Voisin?”

  “It is singular,” I say as a burst of tart sweetness spreads across my tongue, a sunny tang infused into the silky cream. “In keeping with the ball itself, Maréchale.”

  She glows with pride, dancing her shoulders delightedly. “I do try my best for my guests—and of course, once I thought even you might come, I made it my mission to outdo myself!”

  Turning toward the dance floor, she tugs me with her into the fray. “Come now, you must meet everyone! They’ll scarcely believe I’ve managed to entice you here.”

  Half an hour later, I escape to the powder room, my mind overstuffed with the new acquaintances, names I once knew only through Antoine’s most expensive commissions. I feel as if the maréchale has introduced me to half the court, from the Vicomte de Couserans with his roving eyes to the elderly Marquise de Vasse, who plied me with breathless questions of geomantic figures, as if I might lay claim to all possible knowledge of the arcane. And once sufficient wine filled the moat I’d dug around myself, they spoke to me as if I were truly one of them. Regaling me with bawdy jokes and gossip, prevailing upon me to dance, even insisting that I call them by their Christian names.

  Drawing me ever deeper into their fanged fold and tucking themselves around me, like a Venus flytrap furling slyly closed.

  Worse yet, I found myself a bit taken with it all quite despite myself.

  Remember who you are, you little fool, I instruct my candlelit reflection in the powder room mirror, peering sternly at myself. And how far you’ve come to be here. Would you really risk it all just to feel as though they were your friends?

  By the time I’ve gathered myself enough to return to the ball, I find the ballroom much darker than I left it, smothered in an expectant silence. Even the legion of birds seems to have gone abruptly rapt, the glistening beads of their eyes fixed upon the center of the room, where the ice sculpture on the podium has been removed. The crowd chatters excitedly to one another, sneaking glances at the empty podium, as if preparing for some new spectacle.

  I’m wondering what all this may be about when an arm loops through mine, and I’m engulfed in a waft of the Marquise de Montespan’s heady attar-of-roses scent. She wheels me around to face her, arrayed in an azure gown that glints with some iridescent thread, a dramatic peacock masque concealing her dainty features.

  “Madame La Voisin,” she coos in my ear with the slightest edge to her voice. “I had heard you were about, but could not quite bring myself to believe that Madeleine had managed to wheedle you here.”

  “Marquise!” I exclaim, struggling to cover my surprise. “I thought you were otherwise engaged tonight.”

  “I was, but then Marie-Thérèse took ill with the vapors yet again.” She gives a frustrated shrug, as if she finds the queen’s frailty infinitely tiresome. “So I thought I might as well not waste the remainder of my night. And you? How did Madeleine entice you to attend?”

  “She was … quite insistent that I come,” I reply cautiously, knowing I must take care where I tread. “I hope I did not do aught amiss by agreeing, madame. I had no wish to offend one of your closer friends by turning down an invitation.”

  “Oh, not at all, though I do wish you had at least thought to mention it to me.” Beneath her practiced pout, that edge sparkles in her voice again, like the glimmer of a knife blade spotted from the corner of a
n eye. “And since we are speaking of social calls, my dear, I would much prefer that you curtail your visits to the cité. Specifically to that disagreeable friend of yours, what was her name? The one I met, at that loathsome tavern in which I found you.”

  “Marie,” I say through suddenly numb lips, my mind spinning like a whirling top. How did she even know I still visited the cité? Did the coachman report my comings and goings to her? I knew, of course, that all “my” servants were in the marquise’s service, but this confirmation still comes as an unpleasant shock.

  I will have to start slipping coin to the ones that matter, cultivating my own relationships with them.

  “Marie, yes. As you know, my dear, you are part of my image now. A reflection of my own reputation.” Her car-mined lips tighten into an implacable line, and she lowers her voice. “And I cannot have you tarnishing the both of us by traipsing to the cité to mingle with riffraff at your every whim. What if you were seen there by someone not in my employ, hmm? What if it became known that the maîtresse-entitre’s famed sorceress still wallowed in that sorry muck?”

  “But she is my friend, Marquise,” I protest. “My oldest friend. She is … important to me. I can be more discreet in the future, if that is the trouble. I can—”

  She draws me closer, her hand tightening around my arm so abruptly that it cuts me off, her lips hovering near my ear.

  “And is our agreement not likewise important to you, Catherine?” she half whispers, her voice like a coiled whip. “Because if it is, I suggest you find another way to tend to your friendship. Send your mademoiselle Marie heartfelt missives, perhaps—but I had better not hear of you visiting her again. Do we understand each other?”

  I hesitate for a moment, fuming with a quiet, blistering fury. How can she make such a demand of me, as if I am no more than one of the clipped-wing birds that line this room?

  But I clamp down quickly on the rising anger before I have cause to regret myself. As my royal patroness, the marquise reserves the right to shape my conduct. And besides, just because she has my household staff still in her pocket does not mean I cannot find another way, one unbeknownst to her. I could even slip out disguised if I must, make my way to the cité concealed.

  “We do, of course,” I confirm, taking care to keep my tone blithe and compliant even as I simmer with revolt. “It will be as you wish, Marquise.”

  “Will it, though?” the marquise purrs into my ear, as though she can sense the deceit brewing beneath my surface. Her voice feels like a scalpel now, one pressed directly below my chin, where my pulse beats close beneath my skin. “Let me be abundantly clear, Catherine. Should I discover any defiance in this matter—and you can be sure that I would, sooner or later—I would consider our agreement null and void. Which would necessitate an immediate return of the sum advanced to you, of course. Now, I ask again, are we understood?”

  I nod slowly, though my heart is a pocked pebble in my chest. The notion that I am forced to abide by this restriction makes me feel like my skin has shrunk a size too small, but what choice do I have but to agree? The independent life that I am slowly building for myself, and the very roof above Antoine’s head, depend on the marquise’s continuing patronage. I cannot leave Antoine not only without a home but at the mercy of the moneylender’s violent reprisal.

  I will abide by the marquise’s command, I decide, at least for now. Until I manage to devise some safer stratagem to see Marie.

  “Lovely.” The marquise draws back from me, shooting me a glittering smile. “Now, look, the show is about to begin! Do enjoy the rest of your evening, won’t you, Madame La Voisin?”

  She squeezes my arm as though nothing is amiss between us and drifts elegantly away from me on a cloud of that cloying perfume.

  As I turn to face the center of the room, all my former pleasure melting away like snow in early spring, a fresh swell of loneliness rises up within me at the thought of braving this unforgiving new life without the bulwark of my best friend.

  Then a familiar figure clad in black steps onto the podium, jostling me from my thoughts.

  The magician from La Pomme Noir, I think, catching a startled breath.

  A velvet cape, sewn with silver constellations, billows behind him even in the windless room. In light of my conversation with the marquise, there is something unsettling and achingly nostalgic about his presence in this glittering place, so distant from the crumbling courtyard where I last saw him, with my fingers threaded through Marie’s. As if a shadow from my old life has snipped itself loose from its owner’s heels to haunt me here.

  Just as silently as the last time, he transforms handfuls of feathers into a swarm of lace-winged moths that flutter above the crowd, teeming toward the chandeliers. He whisks black rabbits from his cloak before vanishing them away, twists handkerchiefs into orchid bouquets, summons a tittering lady from the crowd to bind his hands with shackles before effortlessly shedding them.

  At the very end he lifts his hands to his face with a perplexed frown, running his fingers over his hairline and around his ears as if searching for some hidden seam. Then, with an anguished grimace, he seems to peel his features off to reveal a grotesque scarlet visage lurking beneath.

  “Étonnant,” the lady beside me breathes to her companion, fanning herself. “Gerard, have you ever witnessed such feats of la magie?”

  “No, indeed,” Gerard replies, sounding both captivated and a touch afraid. “If this Lesage is not truly a devil, he is at least some small god.”

  As wild laughter echoes from the crowd, the demon’s face is peeled back to reveal Lesage’s once again—followed by another, even more diabolic visage. He strips back one after the next in gruesome and gripping succession, a seemingly endless metamorphosis. Letting a litter of used faces fall to his feet like husks.

  Until none of us is certain what is real, the demon or the man.

  Overcome by a tingling dread, I turn on my heel and plunge back into the crowd as they begin chanting for an encore. Weaving between them, I make my way to one of the small balconies that open from the ballroom, secluded alcoves jutting out into the night. Draping my arms over the balustrade, I suck in lungfuls of night air perfumed by the jasmine that grows below. Stifling sudden tears, uncertain why the performance struck such an unsettling chord in me.

  Perhaps because, beneath my serpent masque, I myself wear a checkered history of faces, and all of them beholden by necessity to different masters. The wretched foundling at the orphanage, the indentured servant at the fabrique, Antoine’s window-dressing wife—and now the marquise’s purchased sorceress, forbidden from seeing the one person who truly matters.

  How many faces must I don and peel away before I discover a Cat that belongs only to me?

  “While shock and awe are ever my goal,” a low voice utters almost in my ear, scattering my thoughts like a flock of starlings startled by a fox, “I am not sure what to think of having driven you away before the show was even done.”

  I whirl around, my hand flying by instinct to the knife belt that no longer hangs about my waist. The magician stands behind me in his starry cloak, running a hand through the tousle of his black hair.

  “And is your goal also to petrify a woman enjoying a moment alone?” I force through clenched teeth, pressing a hand to my chest. “Because if so, you are a resounding success, monsieur. Truly, bravo.”

  He pulls a face, then presents me with an ironic bow.

  “I think I had best leave the petrification to you,” he rejoins, quirking a meaningful brow at my Medusa headpiece. “Surely you must be the expert in that regard.”

  At this close distance, I can see that the magician is only three or four years older than myself, twenty-two or twenty-three at most. And we are nearly of a height, though he is even more powerfully built than he appears onstage. His dense black eyebrows arch dramatically above long and narrow eyes, fringed by lashes so thick I nearly envy them. Along with the bold planes of his face, they hint at what must be
an Eastern heritage; Chinois, perhaps, or Japonais.

  “But please, accept my apologies,” he continues. “I didn’t mean to startle you, only to catch you before you absconded. As a token of my contrition …”

  With a flourish, he produces a goblet of wine from behind his back, though I could have sworn both his hands were empty. Still glowering a little, I pluck it from his fingers and take a swig, giving him a grudging nod of thanks.

  “Pax, my lady?” he asks, a smile hovering over his lips. Up close there is something of the wolf to his handsome face, elegant yet a little dangerous. I can almost smell him from here, too, sharp cedar and something smokier and more herbal. Mugwort, perhaps, or maybe myrrh. “I’m Adam. Or, the magician Lesage, at your service, Madame La Voisin. Whichever you prefer.”

  “Adam, then,” I say, turning back to the balustrade. He moves to stand beside me, his eyebrows still pitched in invitation as he slings his arms loosely over the embellished railing. “And Catherine will do. So why chase me out here, when you had the maréchale’s entire retinue eating out of your hand?”

  “They’re a dismally dull lot, I’m afraid, once I’ve pocketed their coin. But you? I could not pass up a chance to meet this divineress of whom I’d heard so much, who foretells the future with the aid of spirits and snakes.”

  Another slice of a smile, and an appraising look that feathers over me like a touch. “Dressed all in black, I might add, and with a violinist in her employ? It all sounded, shall we say, a touch familiar.”

  “And what of it?” I snap, though my cheeks heat at the jab. “Do you perchance have a monopoly on music and the color black?”

  “Please do not mistake me, madame, I’m only too happy to serve as a lowly inspiration to a sorceress of your stature,” he retorts. “If imitation is indeed the highest form of flattery, how could I ever object to being mimicked by the maîtresse-en-titre’s own divineress?”

  I take a furious swig of the wine, my outrage only somewhat dampened by the fact that he’s not wrong. I did pilfer him, lifting my dark garb and musical backdrop directly from his playbook.