by Lana Popovic
“I would agree—save for Bosse’s connection to the alchemist Blessis. He is credited with knowledge of some of the occult substances thought to have been involved in the deaths. And when we conducted an investigation into his affairs, Bosse emerged as his foremost known accomplice.”
“And is this Blessis here in gaol himself?” I ask, dreading the possibility. Though I have had a cordial business relationship with the alchemist, I have no reason to believe he would not yield my name if his own life were at stake.
“No, he seems to have fled the city already.” La Reynie’s tone is bitter with frustration. “We can find neither hide nor hair of him. And thus far, Bosse has been remarkably obstinate in admitting to her own malfeasance.”
“Because I am innocent, you corrupt sous-merde!” Marie growls through chapped lips, spitting at his boots. “A concept with which you seem woefully unfamiliar.”
I bite my lip, hideously torn between wild laughter and tears. Of course she would preserve her high spirits even in this abject place. I have seen nothing that can rattle the core of steel that undergirds Marie.
“That being the case,” La Reynie continues, as if Marie has not spoken, though I can see the dangerous tightening around his mouth, “the king suggested that we enlist your help, Madame La Voisin. Perhaps you can see something in her that might be of use to us.”
“Of course I will try,” I say glibly, inclining my head. “As the king commands.”
“Go ahead, then,” he says, waving his hand vaguely toward the bars. “Do … whatever it is you must.”
“May I touch M—The prisoner?” I ask, stumbling over the last word as I nearly say her name. “Physical contact enhances the sight.”
“Yes, but be careful of her nails. This one has the claws and feral nature of a rabid alley cat.” He eyes Marie askance, his sharply flared nostrils widening even farther. “And take heed, Bosse. Should you be tempted to harm a hair on Madame La Voisin’s head, not even a testament of your innocence from our Lord God himself will save you.”
Marie shifts her eyes balefully to me.
“I promise not to bite, my lady,” she says witheringly. Though I am nearly certain the loathing in her eyes is intended not for me but La Reynie, it makes me quail all the same. I deserve her hatred twice over, for leaving her behind and then landing her in this predicament. “Upon my honor.”
Before La Reynie can change his mind, I draw closer to the bars and slide my hands around her icy fingers, trying to instill her clammy flesh with my own heat. I peer intently into the brown depths of her eyes, partially in an act of concentration for La Reynie’s sake, but mostly to impress upon her my commitment to freeing her.
Though I do not dare mouth anything, I make a silent vow. I will do anything it takes to set you free, I promise silently. I will not let you die in here, even if it means that I must face death for my crimes myself.
From the incremental softening in her face, I gather that she understands.
“This young woman is innocent,” I declare, releasing Marie’s hands and stepping back, massaging my temples to indicate the effort I have expended. “There is no taint of guilt whatsoever on her soul. She has nothing to do with any of your murders.”
I turn to La Reynie, leveling him with an austere look. “In fact, if there is any crime here at all, it is the travesty of the violence that you have visited upon her. And if I do not soon hear news of her release, I will be sure to divulge your methods to the king, the next time he summons me for my counsel.”
I know that goading him this way is dreadfully unwise; it does not take the sight to bespy the violence churning in this man’s depths. But furious as I am, I cannot help myself.
“She will not be released until the chambre has declared her innocent,” he grinds out, blood leaching from his lips. His mouth trembles from the force with which he clenches his teeth. “Especially as she is a criminal nonetheless, a hardened swindler whose very trade is bilking her betters out of their coin. But I, in turn, will be certain to pass on your very great concern for her well-being to the king.”
The heavy-handed subtext—that Marie and I are cut from the same deceptive cloth—hangs in the air between us like some acrid smoke. I stare at him defiantly, bitterly amused at how close to the truth he treads. Turning on his heel and storming ahead, La Reynie barely bothers to wait as he leads me out through the reeking maze of the halls.
And as I follow him out of this abhorrent underworld unfit for Hades himself, I am certain only of two things.
One is that I must ensure Marie’s freedom at any cost.
The other is that I have made an enemy of Gabriel-Nicolas de la Reynie.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Threat and the Divination
I can barely live with myself, knowing that Marie molders in the dungeon in my place, at the mercy of that detestable man.
While Adam is terrified that Marie will cede our names under pain of further torture, I know better than to doubt my friend’s steely resolve. And without Blessis to interrogate, or any other concrete proof at hand, surely the Chambre Ardente’s investigation will die out soon enough, burn itself to ash and cinders like a fiery serpent eating its own tail.
In the meantime, we cannot afford to have our names and “poison” spoken in the same breath. Though Adam had previously drawn up schematics to construct more devil-makers and expand our offerings, we decide to suspend all our upcoming Messes at least until the smoke has cleared, confining ourselves only to private sessions with existing clients.
The rest of my time I spend devising wild stratagems to break Marie out of the gaol.
“But what about your devilmaker?” I harangue Adam one evening, chewing on my knuckles. “We could cast some sort of illusion, convince the guards that the fortress has been breached by demons. And then take advantage of the ensuing chaos to somehow spring her loose!”
“And how do you propose we get inside at all, much less smuggle in the devilmaker and my other tools?” he asks reasonably, by now well accustomed to defusing my hysterical plots. “Even if such a gambit were to succeed, what then? Perhaps one of the guards might oblige us by handing over the key we need to open her cell? Or do you intend to stay hidden there yourself, and saw your friend out with a nail file over the course of several months?”
“Then what do you suggest?” I fling back at him. “Besides more excuses to sit idle and do nothing? Do not pretend that you even care if Marie sees the light of day again!”
Adam comes to his feet and rakes both hands through his hair, darting me an exasperated glance.
“I do not pretend to care about her at all,” he retorts coolly. “But I do care for you—enough, at least, that I would lend my help if I could safely do so, and if I thought it might do any good. But all of your schemes wind up with us imprisoned, or worse. And I will not agree to sentence myself to death to assuage your own guilt.”
“Because you are a coward,” I spit at him.
He heaves a long-suffering sigh, impatience sweeping across his face. “No, Catherine. Because I am not a fool, certainly not enough to meddle in whatever it is that lies between the two of you. So do us both a favor, and do not persist in dragging me into it.”
With that, he stalks out the door, refusing to engage with me any further.
Once he’s gone, I lock myself away in my chambers with my snakes and sink into a sullen fury, enraged by my own impotence. What use is my vaunted sight or my well-honed wiles if neither of them can serve me now that I need them more desperately than ever?
Perhaps I would lose myself entirely to this hopeless lassitude, were the marquise suddenly not in such constant need of me. Though I can barely stand the sight of her face, she besieges me almost every day for new philters with which to ply the king, demanding that I scry incessantly for her.
“What do you see?” she asks me each time, in a desperate sort of fervor. “Tell me, am I still upon the battlements? Do I still wear my almost-crown?�
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“Of course you do, my lady,” I reassure her, though the truth is that I see no such things—and I have not for a while. The marquise’s destiny increasingly forks away from the king’s, twisting from the light and into an ashy darkness I suspect is some tragedy of her own. “You are still with him, and so very beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” she spits bitterly. “Am I, still? For I am almost five and twenty, you know. Soon he will turn away from me, repulsed by my advancing age. Replace me with another, some rosy little apple with unlined skin, not yet shriveling on the vine.”
“This is not true,” I protest, although in truth, it likely is. The marquise is nothing like old, of course, and still amply lovely. But there is always someone younger to be had, and nothing so fickle as noblemen’s taste, when they deem it time to abandon and replace their mistresses. Had the marquise not killed poor Claude, she would likely have been ousted from the king’s bed already. I indulge her only because I am beholden, though I am sick to death of reassuring her that she is the fairest in all the land.
And there is something increasingly savage about her need to cling to Louis’s flagging affections, when it is clearly well past time to let him go.
The next time she calls on me, she storms back and forth across my study in a sweep of damask skirts like some demented hurricane.
“Truly he is no better than a rutting dog, for all the fidelity and regard he has for me,” she forces through clenched teeth, lifting her goblet to her lips. Though it is barely afternoon, she has already quaffed two glasses of my finest burgundy wine, and seems disinclined to stop.
“No matter that I have gone to such lengths on his behalf, showered him with such unrivaled gifts as a Messe Noire and your prophecies. No, it is as if he cannot be bothered to control his own baser impulses.”
I barely manage to hold my tongue, sorely tempted to remind her that the king has been faithless from the very start, given that she displaced both Louise de la Vallière and the queen herself to win his favor.
“And that is the trouble, you see,” she ruminates, twisting her curls around her fingers so tightly, it bleaches her knuckles white. “Even if I were to have you poison every simp that crossed his path, he would still find another one to woo. Even if it meant that he must make do with a pig farmer’s most ill-favored daughter. The relentless pursuit of debauchery is one of his foremost skills.”
“Perhaps it is time, then,” I suggest delicately, aware that I am treading on extremely brittle ice, “to consider breaking with the king?”
“Relinquish him, you mean?” She blinks at me with such shock and incredulity that I may as well have sprouted horns. “Of my own volition? Dieu merci, Catherine, surely you must be jesting. Are you so cruel as to suggest that I should simply resign myself to seeing him content in another’s arms?”
“Then what would you have me do, Marquise?” I ask, struggling to maintain my equanimity rather than giving in to sheer frustration. “There are always new philters we might try, of course. Different formulations.”
“Oh, hang your spells,” she spits, flicking a dismissive hand. “They are clearly no longer enough. No, if the philters have finally failed us, then I have all but lost him. I suspect he already yearns for that flighty twit Anne de Rohan, the Princesse de Soubise. Which leaves me with only one thing left to do.”
I shrink back against my chair, dreading this precipitous new turn. “And what might that be, Marquise?”
She hesitates for a moment, shifting her jaw from side to side, her eyes both wild and distant with some furious deliberation. Then she turns to me like a demon come to roaring life, a dreadful clarity of resolve blazing upon her face.
“He must die himself,” she pronounces. “If I am forced to live without him, then at least I will have been the last to know his love.”
I gape at her, stupefied, thinking I must surely have misheard her.
“You wish to … to kill the king?” I manage to eke out, my voice emerging an undignified squeak. I feel a vertiginous drop deep in my bowels, as if I am somehow falling through my seat. “But, Marquise, you cannot mean it. That is not only murder you are proposing, but the very worst sort of treason!”
“It is also self-preservation,” she says softly, sinking into a damask armchair as if all the weight has left her body now that her decision has been made. “Having known the ardor of his love, the searing glory of it, in his absence I would be left with nothing but cold and ash. I may yet recover from his death—but never from his betrayal. It would spell my own cruel end.”
“We all recover from such losses, at one time or another,” I offer as gently as I can, desperate to find some way to bend her back toward reason. “Even the most shattered heart still knows how to mend.”
“Even if that were true, how am I to stand seeing another bask in all that comes with being his maîtresse?” she demands, throwing up her hands. “After a fashion, France herself was mine while I was with him. How will I return to being only myself again?”
Unhinged as she is, there is some bright pearl of truth nestled deep in the slick flesh of her madness. Having witnessed the king’s dazzling aura for myself, I can understand why she should fear the coming deprivation.
Losing the love of such a gilded, God-touched king must surely be akin to being struck blind after having reveled in the most heavenly color.
And to be stripped of everything she had become, by virtue of being by his side? His love has turned her into something of a demigoddess, a temporary queen. I can almost see how the prospect of losing her status, of shrinking back into the space she previously occupied, might be sufficient to fracture her mind.
That I should understand a madwoman’s motivations so well terrifies me most of all.
“I know this is a tragedy for you,” I try again, shaking my head as if to clear it of such preposterous notions. “Truly, I do. But please, consider your future. Should we ever be found out, we would both pay the price with our own heads. And the risk is greater now than it ever was; the king has already established a commission headed by La Reynie to investigate the other poisonings. Surely nothing passes his royal lips that has not been vetted.”
“Then I expect you will simply need to be more adept and devious than ever,” she says with maddening complacency, as if I have already agreed to help her. “Certainly you have had the requisite practice, wouldn’t you say?”
I grit my teeth at the needling reminder of what she holds over my head. “This is different. This is the king. We would almost certainly be caught.”
“Even so, I trust that you will find a way to administer the poisons and to evade suspicion.” She shrugs, pursing her lips. “You will, because you are nothing if not enterprising. And you will because you must.”
“If you mean to blackmail me again, I assure you any such attempt will fail,” I counter, far more assertively than I feel, my hands clawing into the chair’s wooden arms. “The king will take no heed of your accusations now that you are no longer in his favor, especially as there is no proof of my involvement. I know as much from La Reynie himself.”
“No proof?” She feigns surprise, then lifts an elegant eyebrow almost indulgently, like a mother amused by a precocious child. “Have you forgotten poor, sweet Claude’s demise so soon? I kept every single vial you provided me with, you know. They still smell quite strongly of whatever vile substance it is you used to ruin her.”
I barely manage to keep from dragging a despairing hand over my face, cursing myself for being an utter fool. Of course she would have preserved the means to blackmail me even further, when she has already done so once armed only with supposition.
“And how would you implicate me in her death without also implicating yourself?” I challenge her, grasping for straws.
“You are my divineress, are you not? I would say you gave them to me under the guise of a healthful elixir, that you murdered Claude for your own loathsome ends.” She leans back, steepling her hands in front o
f her chest. “I imagine Louis would not be best pleased to hear it; he was much distraught over her passing. And after that spectacular Messe, surely he knows that you are Satan’s wench.”
She has me cornered, and she well knows it, especially now that I have earned the enmity of La Reynie. All she would need to do is whisper my name to the lieutenant general to have him clap me in chains.
I dangle, caught and helpless, trapped like a half-gnawed fly in Athenais’s odious web.
And though everything in me bridles at the notion of agreeing, of becoming complicit in a plot to kill a king, I can see nothing for it but to at least pretend to acquiesce.
“All right, my lady,” I bite off. “You have won, as you always do. It will take time, but I will devise some stratagem. An untraceable way to give you what you wish.”
“My clever Catherine.” She smiles, madness still sparkling in her azure eyes like sunlight breaking upon the peaks of a storm-tossed sea. Smug as a cat that has glutted on too much cream. “You do always come around. And do not tarry too long, please. My patience is already in tatters, and is only fraying further.”
She is exactly right, I think once she is gone and I have racked my brain for hours, trawling for an answer to no avail. I must indeed become more adept and devious than ever before. And if my own cunning fails to light my way, then perhaps I might use my sight as an oar.
To bail myself out of this predicament before the waters close over my head.
Though I have come a long way since my days of fruitless tinkering with Agnesot’s grimoire, I have never truly succeeded in scrying for myself.
And though my need is immense, caught as I am between Athenais and La Reynie like a ship trapped between Scylla and Charybdis, dwelling on my nemeses does not so much as stir the gift. I consult my scrying sphere and obsidian bowls, using everything from wine to milk to drops of my own blood.