FIFTY-ONE

“Pretty bird! Clever Lorito! Awk!” Grandmother’s parrot paced up and down, inspecting himself in his New Year’s gift: a little mirror attached to the end of his perch. Trust d’Urbec to know what a bird would like for a present. He had come back so laden with good things from his latest trip abroad that even Astaroth had vanished for several days after Sylvie had tried on the pretty new cap with silk ribbons on it.

“Florent, since you’ve returned, that bird has become as vain as a peacock! Aren’t you even ashamed, for having corrupted him so?”

“Vain bird. Pretty bird,” announced the parrot, preening before the mirror.

Still in his dressing gown, with his feet propped up in front of him on a footstool, d’Urbec set down his cup on the table beside him and looked up at the parrot with a self-satisfied, proprietary air. “Parrots and lapdogs—they can’t resist me. Only cats and I have difficulties. Don’t you find that significant?”

“Do you mean that’s why you and Madame can’t stand each other? I think it’s more than cats. And you still haven’t told me why she had you thrown out of her house right in front of Madame de Poulaillon.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t hear about it. That shows I should never underestimate you.”

“I want to know, Florent. I need to know just in case I get any strange gifts. Perfumed gloves, for example, or a bottle of wine. And you might have to send your shirts to another laundress.”

“Oh, don’t worry so. I just showed her my hand, is all. I tried to buy out your contract. You’d think she’d want to sell it; after all, the value has declined recently. But then, she does blame me. She refused, and there was quite a scene. She warned me I’d better not be entertaining any notion of marrying you. But I talked legalities until my mission was accomplished. She got the contract out to show me that it was legitimate. And I found out where it was kept.”

“Florent,” I said, shocked, “for God’s sake, don’t try to break in to get it—it’s worth your life. It’s bad enough that she thinks we are having an affair.”

“Sylvie, more chocolate please—the first was excellent.” D’Urbec gave the order nonchalantly and, as she left the room, signaled caution. “Now,” he said quietly, “you will have to take it on faith that I can outwit the Shadow Queen. If I can fool Desgrez and those police hounds and get you beyond the ramparts of Paris, I can certainly retrieve a few papers.”

“Florent, I beg you, don’t do rash things—it’s not important.”

“On the contrary, it’s quite important—and you know it. It is the only written connection between you and La Voisin. The rest is all rumor. Half of Paris has been to her house, and even La Reynie will not track down half of Paris. I want the contract, and I want the ledger I saw on the shelf above it—the one labeled P.” I was horrified. How could he love me anymore if he saw what was in it?

“You know about the ledger?” I gasped.

“It’s my business to know things that might lead to losing you forever, Geneviève. I have waited too long to lose everything.”

“But see here; it can’t be urgent. La Bosse and La Vigoureux were taken over a month ago, and they haven’t even bothered Madame, or any of hers. It’s like when they took the Chevalier de Vanens for false coining two years ago. They found he was a poisoner, but it went no further. The cloud passes, Florent. It would be better to sell my paintings than waste time trying to get your hands on a book she won’t give up.” Florent nodded, and I thought he’d forgotten.

February passed, and even though the first winds of March were raw, one could feel a hint of spring in the air. Not long, not long, said the wind, and soon there will be flowers, and fish will be banished to its proper place of exile on the menu. Florent was progressing handsomely with the sale of my paintings, which I did regret, and with the disposal of a rather large and heavy sideboard which had no more purpose since it no longer contained silver plate.

Late one morning, when my only client had departed, I noticed Sylvie dusting and humming. It was a salutary change. Astaroth didn’t like dusting because he refused to bend over.

“Sylvie, you are very cheerful this morning. Where’s Astaroth?”

“Astaroth? Oh, he’s gone off to visit his family.”

“Demons have families?”

“Of course. If you were possessed by one, you’d know. Astaroth has dozens of wives, and even more mistresses, to say nothing of children, cousins, brothers, uncles, and aunts, and, of course, he has a very important position to maintain—he is master of absolute legions of devils. You can’t keep up all that without work, you know—even if he does prefer Paris.”

“Everyone sensible prefers Paris,” I answered. “Have you got the black taffeta laid out? This afternoon I go for a private reading at the Hôtel Soissons.”

“It’s a sign of spring—everyone will be wanting a new lover and a reading. You’ll grow prosperous again. You’d be prosperous now if you’d quit supporting that professional gambler—not, mind you, that I don’t like him. But really! Your painting that you liked so well! You’ve become a regular love slave. If Madame weren’t so busy, she’d have words.”

“Well, I shall have words if you don’t answer the door. Mustapha! Where is he when I need him?” I turned back from the kitchen door to see that Sylvie had shown in a pair of sober-looking citizens, lawyers, by the look of their long gowns and heavy wigs. One of them had his back to me; he was evidently inspecting the furniture. The other was running his fingers along the faded spot where the painting had hung. He turned his hand to inspect his fingertips for dust.

“There seems to have been a painting removed from this spot. Evidently, you were informed just in time, Maître Pasquier.” At the sound of the name, my blood froze. The second man turned from his appraisal of the furniture to look at me. After only five years, he looked much older. His face was fatter, his eyes quite dead with righteousness, like two turnips that have been too long in winter storage. His complexion reminded me of those bloated pink worms that one finds drowned above ground after a rainstorm. Evidently his profession had agreed with him.

“Well, well, it is Étienne, the bloodsucker. To what do I owe the honor of this visit, Brother? Have you run through your profits from your sale of our sister?” I enjoyed watching the rage rise in him.

“At least she didn’t deny her identity,” said his companion, as he restrained him.

“You always had a shrewish tongue, Sister. I’d recognize you by that even if no other part of you were the same. Enforced silence in a solitary cell in a convent will do your soul good. Doubtless you will even come in time to thank me for saving you from a life so disgraceful.”

“Thank you? For what? For interrupting my business and inspecting my house like a pair of pawnbrokers?” Now it was Étienne’s turn to restrain his companion.

Behind me, I could hear Sylvie whisper, “Mustapha, run to the art gallery on the Pont Notre-Dame and get Monsieur d’Urbec. Tell him there’s terrible trouble.”

“Leave her alone. We’ve proved that our informant was right. She can’t go anywhere. And soon enough, I’ll be able to conceal this…this horrible disgrace to the family honor.”

I took a step forward and stared into his corrupt face like a basilisk. He took a step back. “Who informed you I was here?” I said, in a cold voice.

“I have my means. Informants among the police. La Reynie protects you, but La Reynie has enemies.” Yes, I thought. Enemies among the great, who don’t want him discovering their corrupt activities with the occultists of the city. Someone on their side with access to police records had wanted me quietly put away to cut off La Reynie’s investigation. They must have passed my name to my brother. “And of what did these informers inform you? That Mademoiselle Pasquier lived in the rue Chariot, that she was rich, and you owed it to your honor to seize her goods and lock her up in a convent?”

“I was informed that my runaway sister had disgraced the family name by setting herself up as a fortune-teller and was now engaged in a ruinous affair with a gambler.”

“And spending everything before you could get your hands on it, eh? What unseemly haste, Brother.”

“Your insults only dig your own grave, Sister.” He folded his arms and stared at me arrogantly.

“And my marriage means nothing either, I suppose?” He drew back. Sylvie seemed shocked. Her eyes got a strange, faraway, calculating look in them.

“Marriage? You lie. Who would have a disgraceful monster like you?” Safe in my fashionable gown and costly lace, I laughed at him.

“Why, any number of fortune hunters would. Didn’t your informant tell you that? I think he owes you a refund on your bribe. Poor Brother, you came at the end of the line. You’re too late. My fortune has escaped you. And now you insult a married woman in her own home.” I sat down in my own crimson-brocade cushioned armchair, barricaded behind the big gilded desk that held my water vase in the dragon stand.

“You little shrew,” he cried, approaching the desk, “you’d say anything just to put me off, wouldn’t you? But you can’t deceive me. I’ll believe you the day I see the marriage contract, and no sooner. I’ll get an order to have you seized, and as for that adventurer, I’ll have him arrested—” He had begun to shout, as if loudness could make up for lack of logic. Gilles had moved to stand behind them at the foot of the staircase, his immense arms folded, in case of trouble.

“And interfere with the sanctity of the family so beloved by our monarch?” I answered, my voice dripping sarcasm. “Perhaps you do not know; I have read for him personally…” At the very mention of the King, the second lawyer got a strange, deferential look in his eyes, but nothing stopped Étienne, so fiercely did he desire the furniture he had been stroking. “Be careful, you hypocrite,” I hissed. “If you continue to bother me, there will be questions raised about your own conduct that you will not enjoy answering—”

But both men turned suddenly at the sound of the front door opening and heavy boots at the entrance. Étienne’s companion pulled at his sleeve, trying to get him to leave.

“Oh, do stay, gentlemen. I’d so like you to meet my husband,” I said, rolling the word around in my mouth with suppressed triumph. Sylvie ran to take Florent’s cloak, and I noticed she had the oddest expression on her face. Mustapha was behind him. Florent’s dark, intelligent eyes took in the entire scene in a moment. A strange smile crossed his face.

“My, what an honor,” he said mildly. “Lawyers. Could they be relatives? I think not. There is no family resemblance. If they claim to be of the family, they must be illegitimate.” He paused to enjoy the effect. Étienne’s face turned most satisfactorily red.

“You lying bastard—” Étienne exclaimed. Mustapha’s hand went unobtrusively to the sash at his waist, but I stopped him with a glance.

“My dear husband,” I addressed Florent, “my brother has been so kind as to bring a witness with him. Sweetheart, what would you say to owning a distinguished residence in the Cité? My inheritance, now that my brother has so kindly confirmed my identity.”

“The Hôtel Pasquier? But isn’t it a little dreary, my love?” answered Florent, fully in the spirit of the thing.

“Never mind, precious. We could redecorate it with the money from the sale of the lovely little country property my grandmother left to me. I do hope you have looked after it well for me, Brother.”

“You bitch!” Étienne exclaimed. I looked at Florent, and he looked at me. The thought flashed through both our minds. Check and mate in two moves.

‘‘Maître Pasquier, is this true?” asked Étienne’s companion.

“Never…I…”

“Étienne,” I broke in, “you cannot have it both ways: either I am your sister, and you conspired to rob me of my inheritance, or I am not your sister, and you are attempting to rob me now of my property. Do, please, decide in front of this obviously respectable witness whom you have so conveniently brought with you.”

‘‘Maître Pasquier, my reputation—you have deceived me…”

“So you still can’t make up your mind, Brother dear? Then let me help you. The police are fully informed of this case. Perhaps they even suspect you of having murdered that poor girl you went and identified as me. Mustapha, I would like you to take a message to Monsieur de La Reynie…”

“Come away, come away—you can settle the claim later.” Étienne’s companion tugged at his sleeve.

“What, going so soon? Just when our conversation has become so charming?” asked Florent as Étienne’s companion dragged him to the door. “What a pity. Perhaps another time? Farewell, gentlemen.”

As the door shut behind them, Sylvie applauded and exclaimed, “Bravo, bravo! Just like at the theatre, magnificent!” Florent and I grinned at each other.

“But unfortunately, unlike the theatre, in real life the curtain does not come down,” announced Florent. “He may be back. And if he investigates your claims, the very least that will happen is that our marriage will be revealed to the wrong parties. It’s not good. I hadn’t planned for this.” He began to pace up and down, and his brow was drawn up in a frown. “Damn him! Damn him! If he’d come a month later…! Now I’ll have to think of something else.”

“Astaroth says he will arrange everything,” Sylvie announced.

“Will you and that wretched demon shut up? I’m thinking!” exclaimed d’Urbec in pure annoyance. Sylvie burst into tears.

“Now, now, Sylvie,” I consoled her, “Monsieur d’Urbec is just upset. He didn’t mean any insult to the Prince of Demons, I’m sure.” Suddenly, I needed to sit down. Étienne had brought a train of ugly memories with him, memories of Uncle, of Father dying in his great bed, of Mother, blind and insane, staggering into the furniture. I did not dare to speak of them, or even to think them for long. I wanted to hide from memory. I sat, putting my hands to my face. I felt transparent with exhaustion. A wraith, a wisp of vapor. “Oh, how will I manage the Comtesse de Soissons’s reading this afternoon?” I leaned my head on the back of the chair. “I’m simply too drained to read in the glass.”

“What?” asked Florent. “The comtesse is in town? Why isn’t she at court in this season? Everyone who is anyone is at Saint-Germain. Something serious is going on. I only wish I knew what.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. With that woman, it could be anything from indigestion to a new lover,” I answered.

But I was wrong. As I was helped out of my carriage at the foot of the great stairs in the carriage court at the Hôtel Soissons, I saw Primi Visconti descending them. He was hunched against the sharp March winds, his cloak pulled tightly around him, his head bent down, the picture of despondency.

“Hey, Monsieur Primi!” I called into the wind, and he tilted his head up and assumed a jaunty expression as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“Why, hello, Madame de Morville. My congratulations: you look younger every day.”

“No thanks to you, Primi. Tell me, what is it today? Another duel of the fortune-tellers? Or shall I be put on exhibit with a clockwork figure and a dancing bear?”

“I suppose I should apologize, Marquise. The King’s favorite sport is unmasking fortune-tellers, magicians, and mountebanks.”

“Next time unmask yourself, Primi, you charlatan. I’ve half a mind to burn a faggot against you and give you a dreadful curse, just to teach you a lesson.”

“Ah, I always said you were a witch—not that it matters anymore,” he said, sighing.

“So what have you to be sad about? He made you a favorite, but he ruined me.”

“We are all ruined now, little marquise. I would flee, but I am in love. So I’ll stay, and risk everything.”

“I’ll be frozen long before I’m starved. Let’s stand in the doorway.”

“Better to freeze, in this case. We shouldn’t be overheard.” He gestured to the Swiss guard in livery standing at the great double doors of the mansion. The cold wind seemed to want to blow us apart as we stood together on the wide stone staircase. “The rumor has been about town in the last few days that the fortune-tellers of Paris have enhanced the quality of their predictions by poison. Some dreadful old woman I never heard of was arrested. Marie Bosse, they called her. She implicated a fortune-teller called La Vigoureux. I met this woman once at Madame de Vassé’s—she read my palm. Now she is at the Château de Vincennes, and they say she is giving the names of her accomplices under torture.”

“Primi, you are morbid—one little palm reading? They’ll find you innocent, just like all the other silly women who had their palms read by her.” But the barb went wild. Primi was too upset to notice.

“If that were only so,” he said, looking frantic. “But Marquise, for me it is worse than you can imagine. The woman I love—oh, Marquise, you should see her! She is a divinity!” His mood shifted just as suddenly as it had collapsed. He kissed his fingers at the mere thought of this woman, then went on. “We met when she called me to read her palm. One look, and I was immediately in love. Those eyes! That adorable waist! I just had to win her! I read her fortune. I predicted that she would soon fall passionately in love with me and be my bride. Unfortunately, she was already married. Doubly unfortunately, her husband has fallen ill and died, putting me under suspicion that I poisoned him with the aid of this La Vigoureux.”

“So you have given her up?”

“Give her up? What madness! Of course not. We make passionate love every evening. I am bound by Cupid’s chains—it is my destiny to perish of love…”

“Primi, you are a madman.”

“Of course. What other way is there to be in this insane world? Adieu, Marquise. We may only meet again in the next world—”

“Primi, wait—” I cried into the wind, as he started down the stairs. He turned, and the wind blew his words back to me.

“No more; it’s all finished, our world. Over. Go console the countess, but be sure you get your payment on the spot.” I watched the slender figure of the Italian as he climbed into the waiting carriage. As the coachman gathered the reins and drove off, I could see Primi slumped in back, his hat pulled over his eyes.

I waited for a long time in the cold, marble-floored antechamber of the countess’s rooms. The glass panes rattled in the tall windows, and I could feel the drafts blowing under the gilt-paneled doors. What could she want, the countess? She was consulting fortune-tellers—something must have happened at court. She’d heard something that had sent her once again to the occult. Either something she wanted, or something she was afraid of. But what?

The countess’s face was drawn; she had tried to conceal the new lines that crossed her ravaged cheeks with heavy white makeup. Her eyes darted from side to side in her narrow little face; her smile was so strangely pulled out that it looked like some sort of soundless scream. This time, it isn’t because she wants the King for a lover, I said to myself. This is fear.

“Madame de—well, whatever you call yourself now, I know you read true. Visconti, he saw a break in my line of fate; he saw disgrace, a fall, in the cards. A secret of my past will emerge from darkness into the light.” Ah, that was it. The rumors swarming around the arrest of La Bosse and La Vigoureux that Visconti had warned me about. But he didn’t know what I knew, that the investigation had stopped short. The arrests had gathered in only La Bosse’s people, and no one had touched La Voisin or her close associates. Had the countess gotten the poison with which she had removed her husband from La Bosse? If so, she had a right to be worried. La Bosse had been under torture for several weeks now and might well have been made to produce a list of her clients. And now through the gossipy magistrates, some sort of news had escaped La Reynie’s secret inquiry into the families of the robe, and thence to court. And if it wasn’t a matter of her husband, what other persons had left this earth by the countess’s little white hand? Perhaps enough to condemn even a woman of her rank.

“You wish to know your future,” I announced, unrolling my cloth.

She leaned over the glass as I stirred, the diamonds on her bosom reflecting little rainbows into the water.

“Madame, please—the colors of your gown, your jewels, they interfere with the image.”

“I must know,” she said, moving back slightly.

“I see the same image I saw for you many years ago: your carriage at night, your footmen in plain gray, your horses at full speed, hurrying through the dark. The Marquise d’Alluye is with you. You are not speaking…your faces are tense.”

“Not an assignation after all—no, flight. And to think that for years I have supposed that reading to be your one failure! Oh, how bitter! You saw it all along. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Wait, Madame, another image is coming up. You are—It must be a foreign place, the clothes are strange…they don’t seem French. You are at Mass in a strange church…”

“Then I am saved—”

“Wait! Two men are in the back of the church, one with a large sack. The first—I believe I recognize him—signals by dropping his hand. The second…Oh, and there is a third, on the other side of the church…open their sacks. Goodness! The sacks are full of black cats. They run pell-mell through the church. The crowd is turning on you—they appear to think the cats are devils brought by you…They are shouting, threatening. They drag at your gown, trying to tear you to bits…your lackeys beat them off as you flee to your carriage outside.”

“The man who does this—you say you recognize him?”

“An agent of the Paris police, Madame.” To be precise, Desgrez. The man who had lured Madame de Brinvilliers out of her sanctuary in a foreign convent.

“They will kill me! They incite the mob against me! Oh, what a convenient death—and no one is to blame! The low-born villains dare not attack a Mancini directly, so they use craft. I swear it is Louvois. He hates me. He hates us all, we who are above him in breeding. I know him; he will use his creature La Reynie to pursue his vengeance under cover of law. That is how he is—devious—and he bides his time. No one is safe, not even the Mancinis. Tell me, my death…”

“That will require payment in advance, Madame.” I took the fee and looked again. “You die old,” I said. The air in the chilly room was shattered by the countess’s mad laughter.

She stood up suddenly, stretching her arms above her head, shrieking, “Old, old, I shall live despite you, Louvois!” Then she remembered I was there and, looking at me with glowing, insane eyes, she said, “Louvois, what do I care for him? Ha! He is nothing, not even this—” She snapped her fingers to show his insignificance. “Oh, the ugly little bourgeois man; I swear, I’ll have my vengeance on him!”

As my carriage pulled into the rue de Picardie I leaned back into the cushions, nearly ill with the fatigue that comes from too many readings close together. A few more like that will kill me, I thought. I think I might even have dozed off, for I felt as if I awoke with a shudder when the carriage stopped in the rue Forez. My final errand of the day. To get my last cordial made up at one-quarter strength.

La Dodée met me at the door. Her ordinarily cheerful face was long with worry beneath her white linen house cap. She wiped her damp hands on her apron as she said, “Oh, you’ve come, after all! It’s all made up, your order, but not in the bottles yet. La Trianon wants you in the back. She’s been worried to death and needs a reading.” I groaned.

“I don’t have it in me. I’ve been doing readings all afternoon and feel as if I will faint if I even look at the glass again.”

“Come into the laboratory and put your feet up. We’ll make you coffee, and your strength will come back. Terrible things are happening. The lightning is striking all around us, and we must know where it will fall next.”

They put an armchair by the fire, and as I sank back into it, my eyes closed. One of the girls must have brought a footstool, for the last thing I felt before oblivion was someone propping up my feet.

“Wake up! Wake up!” La Trianon’s voice was urgent. She was shaking my shoulders.

“Why, I wasn’t asleep at all—just resting my eyes.”

“A curious way of resting. It must be your eyes that snore, then.”

“Me? Snore? Never!” I sat up straight. La Trianon stood beside me, hands on her hips, the sleeves of her black dress rolled up to the elbow as if she had just left her worktable.

“I thought that would rouse you. Now, restore your strength with this—we must have a reading. It is life or death.” The Turkish coffee was heavy and sweet, better than medicine. I held the little cup in my hands, warming them, as I breathed in the dark, strong scent.

“Ah, excellent. You definitely look more alert. We have the water set up on the worktable by the athanor.” I looked across the room to see the water vase shimmering in the fading light from the window. One of the girls was sweeping the floor; a cat was nursing its kittens in a box behind the athanor. La Dodée and another girl were finishing pouring the last of my cordial into bottles with a funnel and sealing the corks.

“Oh, look at that; your harpy is coming unraveled—it must be the moths,” I observed.

“More than the harpy is coming unraveled these days. Those who can are going into hiding. But we can’t hide—our livelihood is here. But all may yet be mended. Madame has planned a great coup that will save us all. She is taking a petition to the King. But we must know how it goes, so we can lay our plans.”

“A petition? Whatever for?”

“It is poisoned,” whispered La Trianon. “Even La Dodée does not know. Next week she goes to present it at Saint-Germain. She was overwhelmed by the crowd around the King last time and returned with it. But next time she will not fail. And now, now…it is essential to us that she succeed.”

“But how can poison go from paper to the eyes of a reader?”

“Not to the eyes, to the pocket. The petition is covered with a fine powder. The King habitually places petitions, unread, in the pocket where he keeps his handkerchief. When he is dead, his ministers will fall; no one will think to pursue this case in the turmoil, and this dreadful inquiry will stop before we are all implicated.”

“And if she fails?”

“Then we are all dead—you, me, Madame de Montespan, the Mancinis, and all the rest.”

“Very well, then, let me do the reading.” I pulled a stool up to the high worktable. La Trianon shooed away the girls, and even La Dodée, with a tense, “Later…later. You mustn’t disturb the little marquise. It must be a perfect reading.”

The water seemed to darken, as if it were absorbing the falling dusk from outside. Then in the center, I could see an orange glow, first small, then larger, until it filled the vase.

“What is it you see?”

“A fire—Wait, I see something more.” Above the flames, the end of a heavy stake. In the center of the flames, a living figure, chained sitting. A face, distorted, screaming silently in the orange heart of the fire.

“Sitting…someone who has been tortured…legs broken—It is…Wait, I can’t quite make out…” I peered closely, so closely my breath dimpled the water. The image wobbled and swayed. I pulled back. It was certain.

“It is Madame, being burned alive.”

“Are you certain?”

“Certain. Her hair is a cinder. Her face is black—but I would know it anywhere. The executioner’s assistants…are pulling the body apart with hooks—but…I don’t think she’s dead…the limbs are moving…” The weakness was terrible. I swayed as the ceiling, harpy and all, began to rotate above me.

“Come quick! Come quick!” La Trianon held me up as the others came back to help me into the armchair. “It is the worst, the worst. Marie, call a vinaigrette from the corner. I must go to Madame tonight. I must dissuade her. She must not go to Saint-Germain next week; she must flee—” One of the girls had already brought La Trianon her wide black felt hat and her dark cloak, but as another went for the door, I called out to her to halt.

“My carriage is waiting outside. We’ll go together. If Madame is to be stopped, I must tell her myself. Just send a message to my house that I shall be late. They are expecting me.” La Trianon wrinkled up her nose.

“You mean that man you’re sleeping with is waiting there. Let him wait—it’s good for them.”

“Not him—he’ll go in search of me; he may uncover your plans.”

“Not only a man, but a clever one. You have let yourself in for trouble,” announced La Trianon.

“Enough, enough. There’s not much time.” And I had just enough presence of mind to scoop up my bottles from the counter before we hurried to my waiting carriage.