TWENTY

I left court shortly before Easter and returned to Paris, for while the fortune-telling business vanished during Holy Week at Versailles, it remained as good as ever in the city, where the austerities of the season had never interfered with the main business of life, which was to have a good time. The night that we packed, Sylvie got a glimpse of the heap of gold louis in my locked coffer and sucked in her breath.

“Oh my,” she said, in her sharp little voice. “That’s a fortune. I could retire on that.”

“It goes to La Voisin,” I replied, locking the box.

“And not a bit to us, for some nice new clothes, or a trip to Vichy to take the waters and meet some good-looking men? She sure has a racket, she does. I wish I was her. I been figuring. I been watching. I calculate, just from what I know about who works for her, she must bring in maybe a hundred thousand écus a year—straight profit.” Sylvie’s eyes narrowed as she savored the sum. A greater income than all but the mightiest noble families in the kingdom. It dwarfed the modest sum in the box, the annual income of an ordinary family of the provincial aristocracy.

“A contract is a contract,” I said, as we departed down the rickety outer staircase.

“Sometimes I think that for an old lady you’re kind of simple,” she answered, puffing beneath her burden of bundles as she followed behind me.

We arrived after Mass on Easter Sunday at the villa on the rue Beauregard. The mingled smell of a dozen meat dishes to break the long season of fasting penetrated every room from the inner fastness of the kitchen. The whole house had been newly cleaned for the holiday. The heavy silver plate, all freshly polished, glinted down from the sideboard. The carpets were beaten, the rich, dark furniture dusted, down to the last knob and carving. Marie-Marguerite bustled by in a new dress and cap, with a fresh little linen-and-lace apron that once would have sent my sister into an ecstasy. Only Antoine Montvoisin was not to be seen in new clothes. He was upstairs, sick in bed. Sylvie followed me into La Voisin’s little cabinet, carrying the locked coffer.

“You look sour this week. Come, wasn’t life pleasant? Imagine, you might live like that always if you are guided by me. Remember that I made you,” the sorceress added, counting up the money on her writing desk and opening her great ledger. The little cat’s face winked up at me from atop a sheaf of papers with cabalistic drawings on them. “Is it all here?” she asked in a suspicious voice.

“Everything. I have an accounting, if you wish.” Sylvie held out the open coffer. A sudden look of concern crossed La Voisin’s face as she snatched up the top notebook, to be replaced with one of relief as she glanced through the pages.

“All in code. Excellent,” she said. “Occasionally, you have a sensible instinct after all. I never let my books leave this cabinet, and it is steel lined, with the finest locks in the kingdom. Remember, our first duty is to protect our clients. We go silent to the grave. That is what protects our business.”

“The business of fortune-telling or the business of abortions?” I asked.

“My, a taste of the great life, and we become Frondeurs and rebels, don’t we? Those who are raised the highest are the most ungrateful, aren’t they? Consider this, you are young and without obligations: I support ten mouths.”

“You make more than most ministers of state.”

“But with much more difficulty and struggle, my dear. Learn from me, and I’ll teach you how to become mistress of great enterprises. One day, you’ll be as wealthy as I am.” She closed her ledger and stood to lock up the money in her strongbox. One of her big cats rose from dozing by the fire and rubbed at her ankles. It was odd, I reflected. She didn’t have any black cats. You’d think a witch would have all black cats. Instead she had tabby and tortoiseshell, orange, gray, white, and even one that was sort of pinkish. But the black ones seemed to have vanished, if they had ever been there at all. Then she turned to me, as if she’d just thought of something, but somehow, the gesture seemed contrived. “Now, I’ve been thinking,” she said in a somewhat forced-sounding voice. “You are rising and need a better address. The front room of a cheap boarding house is hardly the place for the sensation of Versailles to operate her business. What about a splendid little apartment? Or better, a town house? So private, you know. The higher clients like privacy. The greatest of my clients are only content with my little garden pavilion. There is a charming little house coming free in the Marais…” So soon, a house? I thought. This is not entirely beneficence. Is she afraid I’m flying so high that I may soon leave her?

“Now the house is a bit narrow,” La Voisin was saying, “but it’s the best of addresses, and a very private back way out. And a footman—yes, you’ll need a footman, and I’m sure I could find you a splendid one. Why, you’re almost ready to move up! I’d planned to wait a year, but you’re so talented! And Easter, that’s sort of the start of a new year, isn’t it? So, now, you’ll celebrate your new elevation with us, by having dinner here.”

Something about her manner sent a shudder through me. I’ve offended her, I thought. She’s angry. I’ll never live to see that town house. The whole story is just a ruse to get me to eat here. Didn’t old Montvoisin warn me? Why didn’t I control myself better and bide my time? Why did I have to blurt out that I knew about those abortions, like a fool? A few years, and I’d have been free. Now, dinner. A cold sweat broke out on my temples as I answered, “Oh, yes, let’s celebrate.” Easy, easy. Smile and don’t show you know anything, Geneviève. Maybe it will go by. Maybe she’ll forget what I said, and her anger will pass.

By then the guests had begun to arrive, crowding into the black reception room and the richly furnished dining room beyond, exclaiming and greeting one another. Le Sage, the magician, wrapped in his gray cape, the pharmaceutical specialists La Trianon and La Dodée in bright new gowns that sprouted ribbons at every seam, La Lépère complaining and wiping her nose with a spring cold, the Abbé Mariette, an elegantly dressed young society priest, La Pelletier all in violet taffeta, the same stuff she used for her love sachets, La Debraye, La Delaporte, La Deslauriers, witches all, and more: men and women, priests, tradesmen, nouvellistes, diabolists, alchemists, and all sorts of titled folk of dubious origins. Last of all, a strange, hunched-over old man in a cassock, with a debauched face and a swollen nose covered with purple veins, was shown in. He was accompanied by his mistress, a woman with a lined face and hollow eyes. It was the Abbé Guibourg, Master of the Black Mass, who paid in gold for abortionists’ fetuses and newborn infants from the orphanages of Paris. At the sight of him, people drew back in the crowded rooms to let them both pass, as if some mysterious cold wind had accompanied them in.

“Has Madame Brunet come to you yet?” La Pelletier said, and laughed. “She wants Philibert, the flute player, at any cost!”

“He’s in great demand in this city—I have two clients who want him as well; I imagine we’ve sold all three the same poudre d’amour. Oh well, someone will be happy out of it, so between us, we’ll retain partial credit.” La Trianon chuckled.

“Either that, or mine will be proved definitively the most powerful,” said La Pelletier with a certain professional calm.

“As long as you depend so much on essence of cock’s testicles, you needn’t count on it,” sniffed La Trianon.

“But, my dear, he should have worn a glass mask…it’s no surprise he was asphyxiated…that process creates so many fumes…” I could hear from across the room.

“She does such a business in poudres de succession, but I don’t imagine for long. She is careless. And so vulgar…” The words flitted through my head, barely making sense as the terror mounted.

“Well, La Bosse is slipping, you know…she really should retire…”

“…and so it all goes to show, that strategy is everything, my dear. It’s everything—” I realized with a start that La Trianon was addressing me.

“Oh yes, oh yes, I can see that. It’s very clever,” I answered, hoping I made sense. My voice was thin with fright, and I was sure everyone in the room could hear the pounding of my heart.

The soup was clear. It must be all right. Wouldn’t it be cloudy if something were in it? Margot brought it in from the kitchen and served it from a big tureen on the sideboard. How close she was to her mistress. Did I see her hand hover a moment over one of the soup bowls as it passed by her?

“Do eat your soup, dear. You look pale. Soup is good for the pallor,” remarked my hostess. Yes, good for it. Eliminates it entirely, along with any other health worries you might have. I took a spoonful.

“Delicious,” I said. My sense of taste was abnormally active. Was that a metallic aftertaste? Was it salt?

The first ragout came from the kitchen ready served. Rabbit poached in wine sauce. Onions. And—I could see them—mushrooms. Wasn’t there a Roman emperor poisoned by a mushroom? Messalina, that’s who did it.

“Oh, the flavor is exquisite,” sighed the Abbé Mariette from across the table. “Your cook is truly an artist.” I started. La Voisin cast a piercing look at me. All but the mushrooms, I thought. The acute flavoring that fear gives a dish is indescribable. Never in my life have I tasted with such precision the delicately mingled flavors of garlic and herbs, the subtle aromatic savor of wine. The brilliant, heightened flavor was unbelievably delicious. Almost intoxicating. Intoxicating? Something in the sauce? Never mind, it was done now. Enjoy the flavors, Geneviève; you might as well. It’s your last dinner on earth.

“The mushrooms…​chanterelles…​so delicate…” someone was saying. Death’s heads. Are they what had imparted the subtle and unique flavor to the sauce? No wonder I had never tasted it before.

“Do try the mushrooms, dear Marquise. They are especially in your honor.” Did I hear a hint of sly amusement in her voice? Was the little smile too fixed?

“Oh yes, they are lovely.” Definitely. It had to be the mushrooms. The taste was exquisite, elegant, incapable of being described. What were those prayers I’d daydreamed through at Mass? They’d flown out of my mind. The Paternoster, was that the right order? It didn’t work if it wasn’t in the right order. Did I even have a soul? Oh, I wished I had one now, or even that I believed I had one, even if I didn’t. I didn’t want to die. Wine. A toast. To the arts of Le Sage. To my triumph. Drink, drink. It’s your last night on earth.

“My, success has quite gone to your head, Madame. Le Sage, Mariette, carry her upstairs.” I was deposited on the bed in the great room with the sinister tapestry. The heavy canopy, draped in rich green and gold brocade, swam in circles above my head. The dark red wall swayed and whirled. Good. Let death come here. I couldn’t pick up my head. As my eyes closed and I drifted away, I said the only prayer I could muster. God, if you are, take my soul, if I have one.

I drifted in and out of consciousness as the late afternoon faded into dusk. In a far corner of the now dim room, I could make out whispers.

“Quiet. Is she listening?” A bare scratch of a voice.

“She’s dead drunk. She won’t hear a thing.” Le Sage.

“He grows weaker by the day. His eyes are sunken in. He coughs. I can’t bear it.”

“Only a short while, then, until we marry, my love.”

“I tell you, I can’t stand it. It’s tearing me apart.”

“Love and yearning for me, O sublime queen, or regrets for that miserable weakling you married? What’s wrong? Why do you turn coward now? You wanted it; I cast it.”

“The spell. It’s too ghastly. You must reverse it.” At last, I recognized the voice. Hers. La Voisin’s.

“Reverse the spell on a ram’s head? It’s never been done.”

“Dig it up, dig it up, I say. I can’t stand it anymore, seeing him waste so terribly!” The shriek of despair made my eyes fly open. Luckily I had the presence of mind to close them again and lie there, stiff, without moving.

“You don’t love me if you dare not risk even this little. I have been loved by greater women than you. Together, we could rule Europe. By yourself, what have you got?”

“Far more than you have ever achieved, you ungrateful, inconsequential man. Whose influence rescued you from the galleys? What convict ever left the galleys except in a shroud? Only you! My high influence at court saw you put ashore at Genoa. Did you think it was an accident? I created you, I can destroy you! Go, go now and dig it up, wherever you buried it out there, and bring it to me in this room! I’ll reverse the spell myself. What has he ever done, that man you despise so, but fail me? It’s you, you who have betrayed me, time and again—and I come back and beg to be betrayed again. Isn’t that love? Love to the point of blindness? Don’t try me, Adam, or you’ll pay dearly for it.” I could hear the scraping of a chair and the sound of footsteps.

“Very well. If you think so little of me, I’ll bring it to you. But don’t expect cooperation from my associates for your…little supplies.”

“There are other alchemists in this city…I don’t need you, you…mountebank.” My mind was still foggy. The walls turned gray and vanished.

I awoke in the dark. A candelabrum at the opposite end of the room shed a feeble light that did not fill the dark corners. The smell of something rotten being burned came from the oven behind the tapestry. On the table beneath the candelabrum lay an open grimoire, the witches’ book of spells.

“So, you’re finally stirring, are you? I’ve never seen a human being drunker. You thought I was going to poison you, didn’t you? Never fear. The day I decide to poison you, you’ll never know it.” La Voisin was wearing a somber black gown that I’d never seen before. The light flickered across her face where she sat beside the candles. Her even features had a frightening beauty beneath the dark coils of her hair.

“You stand to make me a fortune. I never destroy the sources of fortune,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “After that, we will be friends. Only women can be friends. We know how to help each other. When a man and a woman are friends, the man always uses the woman. She must feed his pride, his pocketbook. Not so with us, eh? We who have nothing must raise each other up. But then, only women can be enemies. Men, they don’t think a woman is worth the trouble. And that is their weak spot, isn’t it? That is how we rule the world of men, we witches. Through their blind spot. Do you have a headache yet?”

The thin coils of smoke above the candles ascended into the eerie darkness that hovered beneath the ceiling. I felt horribly ill.

“I feel as if I’m going to die.”

“Good. It will teach you not to drink too much in company. How would you have had the wit to take the antivenom if in fact you had been poisoned? Even a cat has the sense to come in out of the rain.” Hearing himself mentioned, the largest of her cats, the gray tom, leaped upon her lap. “You aren’t ready yet,” I thought I heard her say. The last I remember was the rumbling rise and fall of a cat’s purring.

I awoke the next morning on a cot in the low gray room under the eaves that housed the servants. Sylvie was shaking me.

“Wake up, wake up! All Paris is ablaze with the news. And with your prediction. You’re famous! We have three appointments today in the city, and more at court! Oh, there are dozens of hopefuls now, all of the highest rank. What they’ll pay! Consultations with you, powders from Madame. We’ll all be rich!”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t shout so. My head’s breaking in two. What’s the news?”

“How could you not know, when you yourself predicted it? Madame de Montespan has been sent away from court by the King. She’s here in Paris, licking her wounds, while her rivals sharpen their claws!”

I groaned and sat up. My head felt like an inflated pig’s bladder. Ready to burst. “How…what?” I managed to mutter.

“Oh, it was astonishing. Père Bossuet denounced the King’s sin with Madame de Montespan from the pulpit on Easter. And he refused the King communion, just on the eve of his departure for the front in Flanders. The King can’t go into battle unshriven. They say the King begged for a separation only, as he had done once before as a condition to obtain communion. But that was in the days of Père Lachaise, who was much less exacting. Monsieur Bossuet was adamant. ‘Give up the woman,’ he said, ‘for you are in double adultery, because she is married as well as you.’ Now all the unmarried ladies have their hopes up. If I were near the King, I’m sure he’d notice me! But I’ll not have the chance, well, not unless…” Oh my, another consumer of love potions and lucky charms. You’d think the people who sell them would know how ridiculous they are. But they’re their own best customers.

But once dressed and downstairs, I noticed that my hostess was not as active an enthusiast as Sylvie. Her two youngest boys, neither yet out of girls’ gowns and leading strings, were quarreling over a ball; their older brother, all of ten years old, was just being sent to pick up a parcel at La Trianon’s laboratory. Her stepdaughter, Marie-Marguerite, gave her an evil stare as she passed through the room with breakfast for her father on a tray.

“Well! The marquise has finally decided to get up,” she said in a sarcastic tone. “Greetings, O illustrious one. Your sun has brightened our horizon at last.”

“What’s bitten you this morning?” Headaches do not make me sweet.

“How dare you!” she hissed, her eyes dangerous. “When I sent you out into the world to create new business, I did not mean for you to stir up trouble between my clients.” My head hurt too much for tact.

“I did exactly what you said. If you don’t like it, then maybe you should keep me better informed, instead of always trying to be so devious,” I snapped.

“The Countess of Soissons has been my client for many years. How dare you try to steal her business?”

“I didn’t—she called me. When I sent her to you, she just laughed.” Madame’s mouth was clamped in a grim line.

“You had no business predicting Madame de Montespan’s downfall.” Well, even with a headache, I knew what that meant. The Marquise of Montespan was her client, too. Not two women one would wish to get caught between.

“She asked, and it was in the glass.”

“In the glass, in the glass, was it? Don’t you remember any of my lessons? Never read someone else’s fortune for a client! You miserable little fool; you’ll bring them both down on you!” On yourself, you mean, I thought. But by now La Voisin’s rage was billowing like storm clouds. Ordinarily, I would have been frightened, but having already considered myself poisoned once, I had lost all fear. I returned her stare so fiercely that she recoiled from me. “Steal my clients! You set yourself up, don’t you! Who pulled you from the gutter, eh? Answer me! Answer me!” Everyone in the room had stopped to stare at the battle.

“It was the river, and I wasn’t in it anyway,” I said in my most precise voice.

“Oh, yes, we’ve studied philosophy! We’re not a poor woman who raised ourself up. We know Latin, we know Greek, like a man. We’re not common! We’re almost a Matignon on our mother’s side. Oh yes, bow to the Matignon blood in the little hussy, if you can find it anywhere!”

“Don’t you dare insult my mother, you…you dreadful old witch!”

“A witch, eh? There’s more honor among witches than among the Matignons, I can tell you that. I made you, do you understand, I made you! I wanted you, I saved you, I created you, and you’re mine! Why do you think the door was unlocked the morning you left home? Why do you think I was there to keep you from the river? Your own loving mother had better plans than that. Ah, the minute they read the will, she was at my door. ‘Why pay for a funeral?’ I told her. ‘Put her out and you’ll be rid of her. She’ll never be found, and they’ll never trace the death to you.’ I could see the glint in her eye. The glint of money. ‘Take back your fee,’ I said. ‘You don’t need what you came for. You can have it all without cost.’ Without cost—that’s what made her eyes shine! Money! That’s what makes a Matignon act. Money, money, and only money. The money your father left you—she’d stop at nothing to have it. And how much better at a bargain. Oh, what a thrifty little mother you have! An honorable race, the Matignons, like all the other great ones who come to see me. Oh, indeed! But you, you’ve got God-given talent, you eat and drink and clothe yourself at my expense…”

My bones felt like ice. It fit, it all fit, like the missing piece of a puzzle. My mind shrank from it.

“Prove it,” I said.

The sorceress stood still, looking at me with her dark eyes. “Come with me to my cabinet, and I will show you your mother’s entry in my account book,” she said in a calm, bitter voice. With a growing numbness, I followed her into her little gilded cabinet room. It was the next to the last entry, at the top of an empty page. “Wishes to purchase inheritance powder for her daughter.” The date, after Father’s death. The last entry, “Sent away without.” Mother hadn’t been back since.

“I never knew…I didn’t know…any of it…,” I whispered, as I leaned against the wall to keep from falling. Oh, truth, how ugly you are, when we meet like this, face-to-face. I would rather never know you.

“No,” said the sorceress, lowering her voice and inspecting me with her shrewd, almost malignant black eyes, “you didn’t know, did you? Tell me—” And her voice became all honeyed and persuasive. “Tell me, what did you read in the glass for the Countess of Soissons?”

“She just…asked me what would become of Madame de Montespan, and I looked and saw her leaving court in a hurry, in her carriage with four outriders, on the Paris road.” I felt cold all over. My eyes hurt. My face was wet.

“Which she took yesterday…hmm. Blow your nose on this, and then read in the glass for me.” She extended the embroidered handkerchief she had tucked up her sleeve. She took out a water vase from the cupboard and rang for Nanon to come and fill it up. I looked into the glass that she had set before me. An image formed and shone out of the depths. Madame de Montespan, dressed in cloth of gold embroidered with gold thread, covered with diamonds, sitting regally in an armchair, with other ladies, including the governess I’d seen, standing or sitting on stools about her. A richly dressed man with dark, pockmarked Spanish features entered the room. The King.

“I see Madame de Montespan, all in cloth of gold and diamonds, entertaining the King before the ladies of the court.”

“Well, that’s better.” She looked at me. “Now pull yourself together. You have appointments. And I have business. The carriages are already lining up in the street. Oh, the devil! Lucien is gone; I’ll have to send Philippe.” And with that she called in her loutish, dough-faced thirteen-year-old son, the one who was far too fat and never did anything, and spoke in a low voice. But I heard anyway, for my ears are good.

“Go to Mademoiselle des Oeillets in the rue Vaugirard immediately. And tell her that I have means within my power to resolve her mistress’s future in the most dazzling way. And if you are not there and back by suppertime, I will stop your sweets for a month.” As he left, she said disgustedly, “That one is Antoine’s. Lazy wretch. My children disappoint me. I expect better from you. Remember, you I chose. And I have made you. You are nothing without me. Go, and wash your face. You look like a fool.” As I got up to go, she said calmly, “From now on, pretend you cannot read the futures of those who do not touch the glass. This will keep you from being forced to read the fortunes of distant enemies of your clients. After all, they may become clients in their turn. And you are not clever enough to extract yourself from the intrigues that result from reading the fortunes of third parties. Now, return in a week. I think I will have good news for you. The vengeance that I have promised you will soon be within your grasp.”