by Lana Popovic
But my sight does not budge an inch, sitting tucked and quiet in the very back of my skull like a scorpion concealed beneath a stone.
And so, as I have always done in trying times, I turn to my snakes.
Along with Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I have acquired so many others that I have not bothered giving them all names. They live along the walls of my banquet hall, kept safely in the series of vivariums I asked Antoine to build for me. I walk among them for a while, trying to match each species with its name.
“King snake, emerald pit viper, coral snake, rosy boa,” I whisper to myself, trailing my fingers along the glass. “Regal ringneck, jaguar carpet python, sunbeam, yellow-headed calico.”
The hypnotic motion of their bodies, as they weave silkily around one another, captivates my eye. It tickles the gift awake as well, if only just a whit, like a feather run teasingly along its length.
But it is not quite enough to bring forth any real revelations.
“But what if I could see you better?” I muse to myself, pressing my palm against the glass, where a corn snake lifts its little head to flick a searching tongue over the pane. “What if you were free?”
As I envision lifting them from their captivity, letting them slide their way unfettered across the banquet hall parquet, I am rewarded with a brief flash of vision.
My gloved hand tucked into the Sun King’s own arm as we meander through the wintry paradise of Versailles.
“Yes,” I mutter, lifting one of the vivarium lids as a frenetic excitement pulses to life inside my belly. “Yes, this will be it.”
A quarter of an hour later, I stand barefoot amid a shifting sea of snakes.
Most of them are not venomous, as I have no intention of dying in my pursuit of a solution. The ones that are, are also my favorites; specimens I have handled time and again, so often they have become familiar with and fond of the scent of my skin. I let them curl around my ankles and even slither up my calves if they so choose, though most of them are not inclined, content instead to inscribe their winding paths across the floor like runes. I let my eyes go soft and hazy as they seethe around me, a great writhing mass of captivating color.
As if I am some dark pupil, floating in the center of a colossal iris.
When the visions come upon me, they are nothing like what I see for others.
Instead of showing me the future rendered with the hazy texture of a dream, they assail me with a violent mixture of symbolism and sensation. I see blood spiraling through water, a glinting knife raised high above an altar, a brief snatch of Adam’s painted devil’s face leering against moonlit clouds. There is snow sparkling against a mesh of dark and lacy lashes, a barred door swinging open, a blazing fleur-de-lis tumbling from the sky like a comet run amok.
All of it is shot through with elation and reinforced by a column of cataclysmic fear. And there is a sanctity to it as well, as though I am praying without so much as uttering an imploring word.
Praying to the snakes themselves, and to whatever slit-eyed deity claims them as their own patron.
By the time I lie down among them and let them course coolly over my limbs, I know exactly how I must proceed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Stratagem and the King
I arrive at Versailles two days later for a private audience with the king.
Despite my posturing for La Reynie, I am stunned that the king would receive me so readily upon my request. As the marquise said, Louis knows me now for Satan’s wench. That he would open his doors to me again so willingly is telling.
Though I do not yet know whether it bodes ill or well.
When I arrive, I am escorted at once to the château’s famed Galerie des Glaces. The decision to receive me here is revealing, too; this is the château’s central and largest gallery, reserved for greeting the brightest of visiting luminaries. With the heavy glass chandeliers still unlit, the gallery glitters with frosty light streaming from the arcaded windows, reflected by the bank of mirrors on the hall’s other side. Frescoes of Louis XIV’s many triumphs adorn the vaulted ceiling, should a guest be willing to part their eyes from the grandeur of the walls to look up.
The effect is spectacular, as if one stands between the facets of a jewel set into the château’s very heart.
As I walk along this corridor of wintry light, I catch glimpses of myself in the partitioned glass of the arched mirrors set between slim marble pilasters. They reflect my curls’ foxy sheen, vivid against the pallor of the light; my profile, picked out in sharp silhouette; the swirl of my emerald manteau over the intricate lattice of the parquet. I have taken great care with my appearance, remembering that the king called me a siren of the damned. Today is not a day for drab cloaks nor covered hair.
Today I must present only the very brightest of myself.
At the great hall’s end sits the king, in a resplendence of blue silk and cloth-of-gold, ruffles pouring forth like cream from his neck and wrists. His two captains of the guard stand at his shoulders, gimlet-eyed and at the ready.
I dip into a deep curtsy before him, taking care that my face betrays nothing but serenity.
“Sorcière jolie,” he says when I rise, his mild tenor surprisingly approachable. Much softer than it was during the ritual. “Welcome back. Has le Diable perhaps sent you to me himself, with some message from the nether realms?”
“No, Your Majesty,” I respond. “Nothing so otherworldly as that. I come to warn you of a very earthly plot to end your life.”
The captains stir behind him into even greater vigilance, their already stern faces hardening, as though I might be not just a messenger but the threat itself. But the king looks far more curious than afraid, lifting a pensive finger to his cheek.
“Nothing terribly new, I fear—though it has been some time since the last such scheme sprang up.” He appraises me, drawing his lower lip through his teeth. “And pray tell, who lurks behind this one?”
“The Marquise de Montespan, I regret to say,” I reply. “She fears that you mean to throw her over for the Princesse de Soubise. And she would sooner wish you dead than lost to her.”
The king closes his eyes, heaving a long-suffering sigh.
“Pardieu, can the accursed wanton not do without her melodramas for so much as a moment?” he murmurs to himself, pressing his fingertips to his temples, closed lids quivering with strain. “My gorgeous, bedamned Athenais. Ever setting her sights too high, and then overshooting her mark. And I suppose this explains why she has grown so withdrawn and dark.”
I hesitate, taken aback by this cavalier reaction, his readiness to believe me without even a desultory doubt. The king seems not only unfazed by my news but oddly unsurprised.
“I would take some air,” he says, opening his eyes again. He abruptly seems so weary, for one so gold-touched and young. “I have been cloistered in this gilded cage too long. You will join me on a stroll in the gardens, Madame La Voisin. We have some questions to consider, you and I.”
With my gloved hand tucked into his elbow just as I foresaw, I walk with the Sun King alongside the château’s frozen canal. Feathery tufts of snow whirl past our faces, as though some celestial bird is shedding its downy coat. The captains of the guard trail us at a healthy distance, far enough behind to be entirely out of earshot.
Part of me is nearly giddy, wonderstruck at being here, strolling with none other than the lord and liege of France. How inconceivably far I have come since my days of toil in the fabrique.
The rest of me is consumed with fear at the audacity of what I attempt.
“So that is it, then, between me and Athenais,” he says in a rueful tone, his breath puffing into a cloud before spinning away. “Well past time, but still. I shall miss all that unbridled passion, and her lashing wit. No one else could flay with a backhanded compliment half so well as she.”
He speaks with genuine regret, as though his maîtresse is merely leaving his side rather than scheming toward his death.
/> Perhaps the prospect of being surrounded by murderous intent is truly not so alien to him.
“It must be difficult,” I comment. “To know that someone once beloved wishes you so ill.”
“Oh, who wishes a king well, save for those who would curry his favor?” he replies with a shrug, ruffling his heavy cape’s ermine trim. “And even that is only ever temporary. Each time I elevate someone to a vacant position, I make one ingrate and ten new enemies. It is ever the way of things.”
“It sounds rather lonely,” I say without thinking, then clap my hand to my mouth at my presumption, horrified. “Forgive me, Sire, I did not mean to imply that your life is … inadequate in some way.”
“Do not trouble yourself over it,” he replies, casting me an amused and slightly wry half smile. “As you are not wrong. My life is well-nigh miraculous—dazzling and delicious in most respects. Having been born to its savor, I would not be content with any other. But there must always be a price. And I pay the tithe by never quite trusting anyone.”
I think of what Marie has told me of his ruthless campaigns, his willingness to resort to child espionage. Such brash cruelty is difficult to square with the reality of this refined and sharply self-aware young king.
“Tell me, what is it that she plans?” he inquires, glancing over at me with one eyebrow raised. “Something elaborately vengeful, I’m sure. She would not miss the opportunity to play the role of the scorned woman to the hilt.”
I hesitate, knowing that here I must be subtler and more cunning than I have ever been.
“She approached me to craft a deathly spell,” I lie, omitting any mention of poison. If La Reynie has not yet identified me as a suspect in the affair, I certainly will not volunteer myself. “A satanic ritual meant to strip you of your vigor and drain you of life over the course of several months. I do not have any such power, of course; I am only a gifted seer, a priestess of the Devil’s Mass. But I could see she was in earnest when she asked.”
“I see,” he says, nodding. “I imagine she must have offered you a goodly sum as well. And yet you walked away from it, and here you are instead. It would seem I am in your debt, madame.”
I suppress a relieved sigh, grateful I did not even have to broach the matter of recompense myself.
“Of course you are not, Sire,” I say, dipping my head. “You are my king. And as your loyal subject, it was only my duty to warn you.”
He waves my humility away with an impatient hand. “That is all very well, but I cannot abide the indignity of an outstanding debt. It is an unseemly position for a king to occupy. Tell me, what would you have of me?”
“I need nothing for myself, truly. But there is a young woman at Vincennes …” Again I gloss over the truth, choosing not to mention that Marie is known to me at all, much less a dear friend. “I met her when the lieutenant general requested my help in ascertaining her involvement in some sort of poison affair. She had been badly mistreated at his hands, and yet when I examined her with my sight, I found her innocent. It would please me greatly to know that she was freed, that my scrying was not in vain.”
“Easily done,” he says with a decisive nod. “You have my word that she will be released. La Reynie has made no headway with her in any case. There is little sense to keeping her jailed when she can shed no useful light on the affair, if one even exists.”
“Thank you, Your Highness,” I whisper, my knees nearly buckling under the weight of my gratitude. “Truly. I could not be more grateful.”
“And now we are left with the outstanding matter of Athenais,” he muses, resuming our walk. “Tell me, sorcière jolie, what am I to do with her?”
I frown, wondering why he should bring up the nature of her punishment with me.
“Surely she will be tried for treason?” I say. “To be followed by some form of public execution?”
He shakes his head briskly, pursing his lips.
“Oh, I think not,” he says with a sudden icy deliberation that nearly steals my breath. “It would hardly do to have it known that the king is vulnerable to the stratagems of his own maîtresse. What would my enemies think of such a weakness? No, she must be removed much more quietly and swiftly. Her death must appear to have been an unfortunate accident.”
He pauses on the path, turning me around until we stand face-to-face. I see a snowflake trembling in the trap of his dark lashes—another fragment lifted from my vision. A runnel of chill trickles down my spine at the cold rage that consumes his face.
Here, then, is Louis XIV as Marie has known him. The one who lays merciless waste to Les Pays Bas, and ruthlessly scourges the cité.
The one who would bring the whole world to its knees.
“And I intend for there to be pain as well,” he says softly, barely above a breath. “A sharp punishment for such ultimate treachery. She will be made sorry in her final moments, for having schemed against me while sharing my bed.”
“Your Majesty,” I force through trembling lips. “Why do you speak to me of this at all? I fear that knowing such things is not my place.”
Slowly, he peels the gloves off both his hands, then gently cups his palms around my face. The warmth of his touch spirals through me, radiating outward like a slug of liquor burning down my throat. I even feel a little dizzy, as if I am truly drunk.
“Do you know, before seeing your Messe, that I despised all things eldritch and arcane?” he says huskily, tilting my face back and forth as if to inspect me. “The last time a comet’s passage stirred up the peasantry, I commissioned an astronomer to strip it of its status as some dread portent. Such vulgar beliefs are only fodder for the coarse and narrow-minded, I have always felt. Reason is what must reign supreme.”
His dark eyes shift silkily between mine, and he draws the bright ringlets that frame my face through his fingers. My scalp tingles furiously at the touch, as though he is stroking my skin rather than my hair.
He tugs at me like a lodestone, exuding an irresistible compulsion. A magnetic pull unlike anything I have ever felt.
“But you, sorcière jolie,” he murmurs, narrowing his eyes. “I believe that you are the exception that proves the rule. Though much of the Messe may have been no more than your compatriot’s exceedingly clever illusions, I believe some genuine magic courses through your veins.”
“Are you …” I must stop and clear my throat before I speak again. “Are you saying I might be of some use to you, Your Majesty?”
With a slow finger, he traces a path between my eyes and down my nose, over the crests of my lips and under my chin.
“I am saying that you fascinate me, and that I would know more of you,” he murmurs as he slowly closes the distance between our lips. “I am also saying that, from what I have heard from Athenais, your rituals are typically much more savage than the one I witnessed. And that they also rely upon the use of blades.”
I think again of my vision, of the raised knife and the droplet of blood corkscrewing through water, the painted devil’s visage with its silent, leering laugh.
And as I yield to the king’s kiss, I understand what it is he asks of me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Plot and the Dream
“So the king wishes you to kill the marquise for him during a Black Mass,” Adam says, firelight picking out the luster in his short hair.
We sprawl in front of the fireplace in my study, having reconvened upon my return from Versailles.
“In a way that can be construed as an accident,” he continues. “An unfortunate consequence of dancing with the devil.”
“Exactly. And he wishes us to invite the foremost peerage, so that her demise becomes something of a public secret. An incident to be swiftly covered up for everyone’s benefit.” I swallow the salted truffle I am eating, licking the crystals off my fingers. “After all, who would want it to be known that the marquise died at a Devil’s Mass, especially one with such an illustrious gathering of guests?”
“Ingenious,” Adam b
reathes. “Who would have thought we had such a devious king?”
“He is … remarkable.” I struggle to find a better word to capture his mercurial essence, the strange charisma that emanates from him. But I cannot properly describe what I do not even understand. “As though there is more to him than can be seen with the eye alone.”
“And you can do what he asks?” Adam inquires more soberly. “I know the marquise is no Claude, certainly far from innocent. But I also know you seem … somewhat averse to causing women’s deaths.”
“It was not so much a request as a command,” I reply, though disquiet stirs within me at the question. “And as you say, the marquise is easily as bad as the men whose ends we’ve hastened. Besides, what choice do I have? I certainly cannot defy the king without risking my head.”
“And once she is gone, it sounds as though the king aims to make you his new maîtresse.” Adam shakes his head, awed at the prospect of such influence. “Pardieu, this is even better than we planned. Think of what we could accomplish behind the scenes, with you whispering in his royal ear.”
“Are you truly not made even a little jealous by the prospect of sharing me with him?” I half tease, reaching out to run my fingers through his spiky hair. To my surprise, I find I want him to say yes.
“Jealous?” His brow creases with genuine consternation. “What a notion, Catherine. Why in the world would I be?”
I swallow against the unexpected pain that swells in my throat like a mouthful gone awry. It is not really that I want him to feel possessive of my affections; in truth, I would not care either if he were to woo someone else, even become another’s steadfast lover. The cool respect between us is no closer to the heat of love than it ever was.
But perhaps Marie would have cared, before I ruined everything between us, razed it down to its foundations.
And however she feels about me now that I have at least secured her freedom, I still miss her so terribly.
“Of course you would not,” I reply, forcing a smile. “I was only jesting. Now, let us decide how we shall proceed.”