TWENTY-THREE

“Now,” exclaimed La Voisin, “you may take your hands off your eyes and look out the window. It’s the little house in the middle. I want you to be utterly surprised with how perfect it is.” Her carriage, which had turned down the rue Chariot, halted, and I looked out to see a neat little two-story town house with a stone facade and a peaked slate roof that concealed an attic.

“And it comes already so nicely furnished, too. The owner had to leave town suddenly and was delighted when I could take it off his hands. Of course, I do wish it were on a street with a bit more tone; this area has both been built up and come down since old Chariot’s day. But no one will deny that the quarter in general is very elegant. So this will have to do for now.” La Voisin’s footman handed us out of her carriage before the front door. It was made of heavy oak, ornamented and studded with brass, as if to stop a battering ram. An incongruously delicate knocker shaped like a loop of brazen rope between two bunches of preposterous cast-iron flowers sat on this fortress gate. Heavy metal shutters were sealed across the two first-floor windows that faced the street. They were such an odd contrast to the airy lightness of the ornamented yellow stone, high roof, and tall chimneys of the upper floor that Sylvie and I couldn’t help looking at each other.

“That knocker, of course, must go,” announced the sorceress, tilting her head to one side as she inspected it thoughtfully. “It does nothing for your reputation. A dragon, now, would be ideal…a skull…hmm, no, not tasteful. And a hundred conveniences for your peace of mind. The previous owner retired rather suddenly from the smuggling business…and you benefit…the shutters, for example; some lovely additions to the cellar, an excellent steel-lined compartment concealed behind the paneling in the ruelle…” She put a huge key into the front-door lock. A smell of dust greeted us. The downstairs reception room showed signs of hasty departure: a rubble of odds and ends, tipped carelessly from drawers, sat in corners and was strewn across the floor.

“There’s no carriage gate,” La Voisin went on. “That one belongs to the house next door. But there’s a scrap of garden in the back. And you should be leasing your carriage, anyway, for the convenience of having the horses stabled for you.” A single shoe, a man’s, with a hole in the sole, lay on the tiled floor. The sorceress kicked it aside. “You will, of course, have to redo this room. I envision an oriental decor—rich, dark, mysterious. You’ll need an excellent carpet. Your clients will notice a cheap one. You can put your reading table…there. And…hmm, black walls, do you think?”

“Blood red, in the ancient style, with gilt stenciled designs,” I answered, getting into the spirit of things. Sylvie beamed.

“Oh, what a lovely touch!” exclaimed the sorceress. “How Henri Quatre! What a pleasure to work with someone who isn’t simpleminded. Yes, I said to myself when I first saw you, that girl has potential.”

The rooms in the house were few but large and high, even the servants’ antechamber. In the half-bare reception room, an immense fireplace with a richly carved mantel that rose to the ceiling formed the chief feature of interest. Light sifted through the back windows from a heavily overgrown, unkempt strip of a garden in back of the house. Behind the great reception room, there was a kitchen with a high hearth and a huge spit operated by a geared wheel with weights like a clockwork. Upstairs, the wide bed-sitting room was in chaos. The dining table was overturned, and the armoire doors hung unlatched. The open blanket chests, pulled from beneath the bed, gaped like hungry mouths. The bed hangings were askew and the featherbed dumped unceremoniously on the floor. Whoever had this house before hid things under the mattress, I thought.

“Now, look at this,” the sorceress broke into my reverie. “A perfectly charming ruelle.” She stood back to look at my face, her black eyes fathomless. The pretty carved wood railing before the bed marked off the space, and the alcove behind the bed, lit by a tall, narrow window, contained not only a writing desk but also a splendid bookshelf perched on the wall above it. A philosopher’s study. I was enchanted. I looked at her, holding my face impassive, but I knew she’d known she had me from the minute I’d seen the bookshelf.

“I suppose you’ll add it to my contract?” I asked.

“Of course. But at the rate you’re succeeding, you’ll have it paid off very quickly. After all,” she added, smoothing down her skirt, “every woman of business needs a home of her own. And I’ve found you the ideal footman, quite strong, and admirably silent. I’ll lend you Margot for a day or two to help put it right before you move in—all at no extra charge.”

“Then it’s done,” I said. “Let’s discuss price. What interest are you charging?” The sorceress’s smile was enigmatic.

The actual move did not take long, for I had few possessions to bring from the widow Bailly’s. Rendering the house habitable was a considerable task, however, requiring all the extra help that Madame Montvoisin could spare, including the immense new footman that she placed in my employ. From the “philanthropic society,” was my first thought as his vast bulk first loomed in the doorway. From the evident strength of his hands and shoulders and the way his shaved head was hidden under an old hat, I could tell that Gilles was an escaped galérien, the dregs of the earth. For the rest of his life, he would use every excuse to hide the galley brand under his shirt. No work in the ordinary world for such as he, and a swift return with an amputated foot if he was ever caught. No wonder he could keep confidences. I might have felt nervous about him, but there was something so large and peaceful about the way he lit his long pipe when the furniture had all been moved and moved again that instead I was reassured.

“One’s not enough,” he observed, as if to no one in particular.

“Pardon, Gilles? What was that you said?” I had just finished arranging my few books on the shelves several different ways, to see which way would show the bindings to advantage.

“One’s not enough. I told Madame. One to guard the house, one to travel with you. Two for trouble. A house of women is no good.” He sucked on the pipe as if that were the end of it. The bluish smoke rose and encircled his head as he stared out the window.

“Madame, there’s…ah, someone…um, at the door. He says Madame Montvoisin has sent him.” Sylvie had come up from her work in recivilizing the kitchen. She seemed oddly distracted. Gilles turned slowly, and as he looked at her, a strange, slow smile crossed his face.

“No good,” he said.

“What do you mean, no good? Of course I’m good. I’ll have you remember that I’m Madame’s most trusted confidant and have been with her ever so much longer than you. No good, indeed!”

“Sylvie, I don’t think that’s what he meant. It has to do with needing a personal bodyguard. Could that be the person whom Madame Montvoisin has sent?”

“I’m not sure, Madame. The man is very hard to explain.”

“Then show him up, Sylvie. Madame never does anything without a good reason.”

But when at last she threw open the bedchamber door once more, the space behind her, where a massive bravo should have loomed, was empty.

“Madame, this is Monsieur…ah…Mustapha.” I stared in amazement and dismay. Monsieur Mustapha was even shorter than I, a dwarf scarcely three feet tall. He looked like a decayed, perverse, debauched child. Several days’ worth of whiskers and a pair of ancient dark eyes were all that appeared to distinguish him from a rather undergrown five-year-old boy. He was holding a bundle on his shoulder, as if he planned on moving in. I couldn’t stop staring.

“If you goggle at me any longer, you’ll have to glue your eyeballs back in,” he said in a queer, hoarse old man’s voice.

“Pardon, Monsieur Mustapha. I was told a bodyguard was coming—I expected someone larger.” He calmly perched on my best chair and crossed his legs, swinging them because they did not reach the floor.

“I must say, I expected someone larger myself,” he answered, inspecting my person with an impertinent eye. “Snuff?”

“You are very rude,” I said, not concealing my annoyance.

“My rudeness makes me large. You can’t overlook me then.”

“Reasonable enough,” I observed. “I’ve tried a bit of that, myself. But aside from rudeness, what qualifications do you have?”

“Qualifications? Dozens. Why, hundreds. I come equipped with a splendid Turkish costume, courtesy of the Marquise de Fresnes, whose train I once carried, when blackamoor dwarves were all the rage. Ah, those were the days. A little walnut stain, a turban—what a soft job it was. Just eat and drink and go to the opera, the court theatre—” Here he broke off and began to recite verses from Corneille in the voice of a classical tragedian. “Sois désormais le Cid; qu’à ce grand nom tout cède; Qu’il comble d’épouvante et Grenade et Tolède…” He gestured broadly, extending his arms. “I was meant by the size of my soul, Madame, to play kings on the stage. But my body has led me to other roles. Before the Moorish bit, I made the rounds of the fairs, dressed as a precocious child. Ha! Somewhat the opposite of you, old lady. ‘Tiny Jean-Pierre, the child marvel’…”

“So why did you quit the marquise?” I stood before him, my arms folded. Sylvie puttered about, pretending to be busy, the way she always did when she wanted to listen in.

“Didn’t quit. I was packed off, all of a sudden, by her husband. The Queen had a black baby, and the demand for Moorish dwarves fell off considerably. All over town, dwarves were out of work. I suppose I might have turned to drink, like the others—but I had my carnival skills to fall back on.”

“Just what are they?” The talkative little creature was beginning to irritate me considerably.

“This,” he said. The tiny hands moved rapidly over his body. I hardly had time to watch the hidden knives flash by my nose before they were embedded in the wall in a pattern resembling the points of the compass. “When I wear the turban, I can conceal a half dozen more,” he said calmly. Sylvie’s eyes were wide with astonishment. Even Gilles had removed the pipe from his mouth.

“You’re engaged,” I said.

“Good. I’ll carry your train when you go out. I’ll add considerable style to your appearance. And when I’m not needed, I’m good at concealing myself in corners and overhearing things. I carry letters unseen and remove the contents of purses from below. All at your service, Madame.”

“Mustapha, I apologize for misjudging you.”

“A polite marquise? Madame, your origins are showing.”

“You are a horrid little person, Mustapha, but then, so am I. I think we’ll get on.”

The next morning, a page in blue and silver delivered a note on heavy, crested stationery to my door. It was an invitation to attend the Marquise de Montespan, the King’s official mistress and La Voisin’s prize client, at her house on the rue Vaugirard the following day. It was a command performance, not to be refused. I dared not tell La Voisin, who might well have exploded with jealousy at the thought that I might steal her favorite client. As Sylvie did my hair, she filled me with information for the visit: the great house on the rue Vaugirard was where Madame de Montespan’s children by the King were kept—for years in secret, and now openly. The widow Scarron, a poor friend of Madame de Montespan’s, had been engaged as their governess and elevated to the rank of the Marquise of Maintenon for her service. “But if you can imagine,” observed Sylvie, “she had to appear to be living elsewhere, all the time that she was in fact at the rue Vaugirard raising all those babies.” It was there, in her Paris house with her children, that Madame de Montespan had gone to earth when the King dismissed her the month previous. I looked into my dressing-table mirror as my untidy locks were transformed into the ancient hairstyle of the Marquise de Morville and pondered my delicate position.

“But, Sylvie, you won’t tell La Voisin about this visit, will you? I know that she herself was planning to pay a call on Madame de Montespan, and you know how angry she gets if she thinks anyone is stealing her business. You know I received a summons; I didn’t seek this out.”

“Oh, she was enraged enough yesterday when I told her, but I said, ‘Better my mistress than that horrid La Bosse and her cards, or some palm reader from heaven-knows-where. This way it’s all in the family, so to speak, and it will all come back to you.’ And she cooled down right away. So, you see? I look after your interests. The higher you rise, the better I’ll do. I wish I had a gift like yours. I wouldn’t be a maid for another day, I’ll tell you. But La Voisin, she read in my palm I’m not destined to stay a servant. Someday I’ll be mistress of hundreds, like her, and ride in a carriage, and eat and drink nothing but the choicest things. So I’m helping you now, for the day when I am great. I’ve learned from her that that is how it’s done. Look after people, and they look after you. Do you want the jeweled combs today?”

“Get out everything from the coffer, Sylvie. These court ladies don’t believe in modesty. They rank your competence by your clothes. Yes, the pearls, and the brooch, too, along with the silver crucifix.”

“My, that does look nice: just like an old portrait.” She stood back to admire her handiwork. The Marquise de Morville looked critically in the mirror and snapped: “The lace ruff will do better than the linen one today, Sylvie. I expect you’ve starched it fresh. That is, if the starch is any good. Ah, in my day, starch was better made…”

“I honestly think you enjoy being that horrid old lady, Madame,” observed Sylvie.

“Sylvie, I’ll have no familiarity. I am that horrid old lady. Don’t ever forget. The Marquise de Morville is a formidable monster.”

A short while later, the eerie old woman who was the fright of the neighborhood stalked out the door, veiled, her heavy stick thumping on the pavement. A Turkish dwarf held her train above the mud, and her lackey, who looked every bit like the escaped criminal that he was, rushed to open the carriage door, and the unmarked equipage rattled off through the light spring mist to the rue Vaugirard.

The reception rooms in the house in the Vaugirard district were elegant, as befits a house that might be visited at any time by a king. Even the antechambers were hung with silk tapestries and furnished with chairs and tables of rare inlaid woods. Massive gilt torchières that burned a dozen candles at a time stood in the corners. As I was shown upstairs, I took note of the paintings in their heavy, gilded frames that hung on the walls of the principal salle: Venus being arrayed by cupids before her mirror, Europa and the bull, a portrait of the King in the place of honor. Beyond, we passed up another marble staircase and through a high-ceilinged schoolroom, where I saw two little boys at writing desks. The older of the two, who looked about six or seven, was the boy I had seen in the carriage that day I had first traveled to Versailles. The younger, perhaps only three or four, was already dressed in a miniature version of the embroidered robes and crucifix of the abbé of the great monastery whose income his father had already given him. As the bigger boy got up to show his work to the somberly clad governess, I could see that he limped.

The mother of these children and the others up in the nursery was lying on an immense gilded bed in a darkened bedroom, the very picture of prostrated grief. A cold compress was laid across her forehead, and her dark blond hair lay all damp around her neck.

“Madame, it is the fortune-teller.”

“Ah, the monster who foretold my banishment. Bring her closer, that I may see her.” She had herself propped up, and the compress taken away. She stared at me a long time with her curiously colored aquamarine eyes. I could see in them a calculating and malicious intelligence, reinforced by the narrow, cold little mouth above the slightly receding chin. I curtseyed deeply, as if to a queen.

“How dare you make me a laughingstock with the Countess of Soissons.” The aquamarine eyes turned hard, like the jewels in the head of a basilisk.

“I am deeply sorry, Madame. It was never my intention. I only read in the glass and say truthfully what I see.”

“The Countess of Soissons is a jealous, scheming bitch. An ugly little used-up Italian who thinks she can win the favor of the king. A Mancini. What are the Mancinis but upstarts? My blood, the blood of the Mortemarts, is more ancient than that of the Bourbons. To my family, the royal family themselves are nothing but upstarts. Do you understand your crime?” She sat up on the bed in a sudden surge of wrath. “You have held a Mortemart up to the ridicule of a Mancini.” Her voice sneered at the very word. “How dare you play into her hands? How dare you offend me? I still have the power to destroy you. Do you have any idea of my power, you miserable nobody? I tell you, I shall return in gold and diamonds, and I’ll have you burned alive on the Place de Grève!” Her face had turned all pink with anger, and her words came faster and faster. Oh, my goodness, I thought. One of Madame de Montespan’s notorious rages. She was usually as good as her word, too. My mind began to work swiftly.

“Of course you will return, for it is I who made that prophecy as well. My glass never lies, as every other fortune-teller in Paris knows. Wouldn’t it be better to have my glass at your service than my body at the Place de Grève?”

For some reason she hesitated, and her arrogant face paled. “You know La Voisin,” she said, raising a heavily jeweled hand to her face. I pursued my advantage.

“Yes, I know her.”

“How well do you know her?” Her voice was unnaturally calm. I sensed danger.

“I am…a sort of…um…business partner,” I answered.

“What was her purpose, then, in revealing this to the Countess of Soissons before she revealed it to me?”

“She had no purpose. I was asked to read in the glass, and I did.”

“La Voisin always has a purpose.”

“I can read for you now, if you wish it.” Madame de Montespan got up and began to prowl around the room, the train of her negligee trailing behind her on the carpet. She turned suddenly.

“That was her purpose! She wished to remind me of her power! Oh, my God, she is subtle. She has cast a spell to make me desire to bring you here. The spell, the spell is powerful. Why else would you haunt my mind, you little nobody? Why would I hear the Countess of Soissons’s mocking laughter in my dreams? La Voisin has sent you, sent you with her diabolical enchantments, to read my future. She knows what I know—the dark walls of the prison convent are waiting for me, the discarded mistress!” She paused and looked out the window onto the street, and her face sagged suddenly, like that of an old woman.

“To never take the air, never ride in my carriage or see my children again. My hair—my beautiful hair—I have made so many elegant hairstyles fashionable—gone. My jewels, my gowns, my cards—the amusement of the theatre. I have embellished his court with my good taste. The Mortemart taste. The Mortemart wit.” She turned suddenly on me, as if I were the cause of her misfortune.

“How many poets and painters have I made?” she cried. “How many sculptures have I commissioned? I have surrounded myself, and him, with beauty! All this to vanish! Surrounded by harpies who tell me to repent. Repent! Why should I repent? Why shouldn’t he repent as well? Is not our sin double? In our seven years, I have borne him five children. I provided him with other women when he wanted variety. I amused him with my wit when he was bored—which he is most of the time! Has he ever thought that perhaps he is bored because he is boring?” She turned and stared at me suddenly, as if I could understand how she despised men of little wit. “If this were Turkey, and he were the Sultan, I would be the second wife. I would be honored! I should have known—when he refused to make me a duchess. My future is doomed. I shall be entombed alive, I know it, and La Voisin has sent you to tell me my fate. Take out your glass and read it, read it, you horrible little corpse in black!”

“I’ll need to sit,” I said. She had not yet requested that I do so. She was famous for that. In a world where the rank of guests was instantly rated by whether they were offered an armchair, a plain chair, or a stool, she had once made duchesses take stools and marquises remain standing. Now she had nothing but her airs.

“If you must. My God, to have a creature like you sit in my presence. I am brought low.”

I put my things out: the cabalistic towel, dragon rod, short candles that gave off a strange aroma, and a round, stoppered jar of water. I had her touch the glass to “bring out the image” and did all the pleasing little tricks I’d devised to make it seem more than it was. But the picture in the glass was hard to make out. A man in full clerical garb was celebrating Mass in an unfamiliar chapel. On the wall above his head was a cross—no—it was upside down. He turned briefly, and I saw his face in profile. The hideous blue-veined nose of the sinister Abbé Guibourg, who had come to dinner at La Voisin’s. He set down the chalice on a towel, and by the dim light of the tall, flickering black candles that framed him, I could see that the altar on which the towel was laid was the bare groin of a naked woman. Various figures I couldn’t quite make out were clustered around the human altar and the celebrant. A woman stepped from the shadows holding a premature stillborn child. Guibourg slit its throat and drained its blood into the chalice, then gutted it like a fish, reserving its entrails.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered softly, “the Black Mass.” My breath had stopped at the vile sight. I could hear my heart. The woman in the shadows who had brought the little corpse turned from the altar, and I could see her face. It was La Voisin.

“What is it? What do you see?” The eager, anxious voice behind me interrupted my thoughts.

“Don’t breathe on the glass. You’ll fog the picture,” I snapped, and I could feel her withdraw from her post close by my shoulder.

The hideous abbé was completing the ceremony with an indecent intimacy carried out upon the woman on the altar. As I watched her pale, doughy body writhing in the light of the candles, her hair fell away from her face, and I recognized her. The woman who had commissioned the Black Mass and who lay upon the altar was Madame de Montespan.

I looked up from the glass to see Madame de Montespan’s face over mine, trying to peer into the water with me. Her eyes were eager, greedy, her mouth pulled into a tight little knot. Her lips seemed redder to me, like a cannibal’s who has just tasted blood.

“Madame is taking part in a ceremony…” I began.

“Will I be a duchess?” she whispered.

“…it is a…private…ceremony leading to her reinstatement…” I continued delicately, and Madame de Montespan nodded with understanding. She knew. She had done it before. I took a deep breath. Somehow, fortune-telling wasn’t any fun at that moment. I had gotten in too far. Court intrigue, poison, and now Black Masses. The life of a rabbit in a snake pit. Suddenly I wanted to go take a bath.

“Let me view further,” I said, and I was sure the pounding of my heart must be heard in the room. Again, I saw Madame de Montespan entertaining the King, her bodice blazing with diamonds. Then I saw her pour wine from a silver decanter on the sideboard, delicately moving her hand across one of the goblets so that an unknown powder sifted into it. I saw them drinking and laughing together, and the King’s face suddenly grow red with desire…

“Madame will regain the full favor of the King. She entertains him in her chambers. He showers her with new gifts and influence. He is mad with desire for her body—”

“Yes, yes,” I could hear her sinister whisper. “How soon? How long must I wait?”

“I can only tell from the foliage and flowers I see in the image…Let me stir again…It looks to be…about midsummer, when the King returns from his campaign in Flanders.” Another image rose the surface: Madame de Montespan in the notorious “robe battante,” the elegant waistless gown she had popularized and with which she announced her pregnancies and the renewal of her power to the court. “Never fear,” I said. “You shall taste supreme power again, and bear the King a child in token of your reconciliation.”

“Ah, little fortune-teller, you are a messenger sent from heaven. My highest desire—”

A messenger from the gates of hell, you mean. The King of France is a poor fool in the thrall of the creatures of night and superstition, who have placed a woman at the height of power through the Black Mass, and who have convinced her to drug him regularly with aphrodisiacs. They have only to say the word and the aphrodisiacs can be replaced by more fatal stuff. The supreme lever of power, La Voisin had said. We rule through their weaknesses. The sorceress of the rue Beauregard held the entire kingdom of France in her hands.