The Oracle Glass Part 30

"It has to be tight, so it won't open up again," said Gilles, inspecting his handiwork. I could feel d'Urbec's eyes on me as Sylvie brought a bowl of water and I washed my hands.

"I must apologize for imposing myself upon you so abruptly," he said.

"It is just as well you guessed correctly about me, Monsieur d'Urbec. What would you have done if you were wrong?"

"I never guess, Mademoiselle. I calculate. Think of it as a proof in geometry." His eyes caught mine. They seemed jet black in the candlelight. I looked away hastily.

"Well, if you calculate so well, why did you need to follow me about?"

"Ah. Scientific theory requires verification. And you must admit that it is not often that one sees a decayed body laid in the grave brought back to life under such spectacular circ.u.mstances."

"You...you saw my funeral?"

"And quite a shabby one it was. You were thrown shrouded into a ma.s.s grave for suicides with scarcely a prayer. Only your sister attended-with a rather dubious priest." I was suddenly touched. Why had he, of all people, attended my burial?

"Madame, I knew you were old...but you were...dead...too?" Sylvie shuddered.

"Oh, quite dead," I answered. D'Urbec fixed her with his cynical stare.

"There is nothing beyond the reach of modern alchemy. We live in an age of miracles," he said, but his voice seemed weaker.

"No wonder you conceal your past...The abbe...he must have been a powerful necromancer." Sylvie sounded awed.

"No, in all fairness, it was Madame who brought me back to life, though I don't really like to speak of it."

"Madame," Sylvie whispered, her eyes wide in the candlelight. The pupils were immense, as black as night. Then her eyelids narrowed, and she tipped her head on one side, as if thinking.

"Tell me, is it painful, being dead?"

"The least thing in the world, once the dying part is over...no, it is the resurrection that is difficult. And the mildewed grave clothes are so offensively odorous."

D'Urbec's eyes glittered, and one corner of his mouth turned up. But even in the dim light, he seemed to be growing more pallid.

"Monsieur d'Urbec, are you sure you are entirely well?" I ventured.

"The thrill of besting both the aristocracy and the police has worn off, Athena, and I seem to feel the pain more. Tell me, have you room here for the night?" His voice had faded to a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"That and more, Monsieur d'Urbec. I have a cordial that will take the pain right off." I retrieved the bottle from my night table, and he took a large dose from the medicine gla.s.s I offered.

"Ah, this is excellent stuff," he said, looking at the gla.s.s as if it were metamorphosing into a snake. "My mind feels quite woolly, and the walls of the room s.h.i.+mmer. I take it that it mends the undead as well?" I gave him a hard stare, but it was wasted on him. His eyes had shut, and he was slowly slumping in the chair. I suppose I'd overdone the cordial. His face in repose took on an air of deep melancholy. Suddenly, like a fool, I felt terribly sorry for him.

"Gilles...?" I didn't need to say more.

"For a fellow galerien, yes. Accommodations were no less crowded aboard La Fidele." He picked up the limp figure and laid him in his own narrow bed, foot to head, so there would still be room for himself. As he inspected the body in the bed, he observed, "That cordial of yours felled him like an ox. You must be made of iron, Madame, to go through so much of it in a day."

"I am, Gilles. The undead are more powerful in that respect than the living." He shot me a shrewd glance, then inspected Sylvie's awed face with an odd look and bade me good night.

"Madame, is there something wrong that you still sit up? You're not feeling ill again, are you?" Sylvie's voice came floating out of the dark from her little trundle bed at the foot of my huge, curtained one. I was looking at the solitary candle flame in the little silver candlestick on the nightstand beside my bed. An eternity of blackness stretched from the dark shadows of the bed curtains into the sky, the universe. What a tiny circle the light made in that vast dark. A single leaping tendril, as bright and frail as hope.

"My heart's beating too much, Sylvie. I can feel it jumping and pounding. Hand me my cordial."

"You don't need any more. You can't have it."

"But I want it. Who is mistress here?"

"You are, Madame." Then she added brightly, as if to distract a child, or a senile old woman, "But do you know...you've forgotten to write in your account books, what with all that's gone on tonight. You always do that-it ought to make you sleepy. If I did accounts, I'd be out like a candle." Again a candle. Why light them at all, when the darkness is so permanent, and we must sleep anyway? There was a rustle as Sylvie got up and searched the room.

"Look, Madame. Here is your coffer and your bag with the key in it. Your account books-you know you never miss a day."

"Very well, then, I'll have them," I sighed, and emptied my bag onto the bed to hunt for the key that never left my person. I could hear Sylvie's breathing grow regular. She was lucky. She could sleep anywhere, anytime. She didn't have a conscience. She didn't have worries. I found the string of the key entangled with the little books I'd bought that afternoon. The word Cato on the spine of one caught my eye. Sure enough. I had acquired not the work of the Roman but the effusions of Griffon's underground press. Observations on the Health of the State, the book d'Urbec had disowned. I looked at Parna.s.se Satyrique, supposedly printed in Rotterdam. The same chipped e's and wobbly f's. Griffon's cheap type couldn't be mistaken. I opened the broadside. Yes, the same type again. Griffon was still in business, and d'Urbec was writing for him. Libelles because they sell better, I thought. No one wants to know about the health of the state. Everyone wants to know about the s.e.x life of the n.o.bility, especially if it's perverse. My mind went back to when I'd s.n.a.t.c.hed up the books. He'd been there, minding the box, ready for a quick retreat. No hope if he'd been caught a second time. This stuff would see him hanged. I'd lifted my veil and he had recognized me and followed me. Why had he done that? D'Urbec never did anything on impulse. And he'd gone to my burial, too. My own brother hadn't bothered. But then, why should he? Monsieur Respectable, the rising avocat. My brother wouldn't let himself be tainted by witnessing a suicide's burial. Had my funeral been before or after d'Urbec had turned libelliste? His interest had to be professional. That was it. What a silly predicament, Genevieve. You don't even know when your own funeral was. Had he wept? I wondered suddenly. Why did it seem so important to me to know? No, I couldn't imagine d'Urbec weeping. He was probably taking notes, as cold as a clockwork. How stupid you are, Genevieve. He obviously doesn't even see Lamotte anymore. Lamotte was fas.h.i.+onable now, too fas.h.i.+onable to be seen with a libelliste, an ex-convict, even a pardoned one. Lamotte was the darling of wealthy women; he probably did readings in the salons. I could imagine him drinking wine in the ruelle of some modish lady, laughing at her jokes, flattering her friends. Beautiful, charming Lamotte. Forever beyond me.

Sometimes, Genevieve, you outsmart yourself. You still haven't gotten any closer to Lamotte. So much for cleverness and daydreams. And what's more, you have that calculating d'Urbec stuck in your house instead of the gorgeous cavalier. And worse yet, you feel too guilty to throw him out because you're sorry he was hurt on your doorstep. And he knows it, too. Oh, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n. He's managed the whole thing somehow. And for all you know, he was planning another libelle. I could see it as if I'd already purchased it from Griffon. b.u.mpy type with bad e's, a nasty woodcut set about with snakes and skulls. Secrets of the Infamous Devineresse, the Marquise de Morville, Revealed; h.e.l.lish Horrors on the Rue de Chariot. He'll up and leave tomorrow, then straight to the printer's. That's what you get for opening doors, Genevieve. And he had it all figured out ahead of time. Oh, d.a.m.n again! It stung me to be outsmarted. And by a man, too.

The candle was burning lower. I poured myself a bit of cordial and waited for the warm ooze to work its way through my body as I picked up the broadside on Madame de Brinvilliers that had been folded between the books. The ink had smeared, and the woodcut of the execution, depicting Samson in the act of swinging the sword, had doubled itself. Two Samsons, two kneeling women. The scaffold depicted floating, without legs, to make it easier to carve in the figures of the guards on horseback that surrounded it. Two executions, one a ghostly reverse. Reality and dream, face-to-face. Ah, the cordial must be working. The doggerel verses beneath the ill.u.s.tration were scarcely legible. "...from grasping pride and greed for gold, poison'd husband, brother, and father old..." plus sisters-in-law and her own daughter, rhymed just as badly. Surely not d'Urbec's effort; he couldn't turn a verse that bad. The marquise had had a lover, an alchemist named Saint-Croix, who'd provisioned her with all sorts of interesting poisons. This fellow Saint-Croix must have been a hardy soul-imagine, contemplating marrying a woman when you knew she'd become rich by dropping your own a.r.s.enic in the soup.

A vision floated into my mind. Violins in livery playing at supper. The marquise, tiny, exquisite, in yellow silk cut low on her shoulders, leaning across the table to whisper something tender to Saint-Croix, all splendid in blue silk and lace, an immense curling court wig making his features look narrow and refined.

"Some more wine, precious?" A delicate, pale little finger signals to the lackey at the sideboard. With her own hands she pa.s.ses him the newly filled goblet.

"It seems to have cork bits in it. Do sip a bit off the top and see what you think." Saint-Croix, with a look of adoration, extends the chased silver drinking cup to her.

"Ah, but I'm feeling a bit faint. The joy of the wedding, you understand. First I must have my drops, my love." A slender white hand fumbles for the secret vial of antipoison.

"How odd; I do myself. It must be the heat in the room. Lackey, open the window." His lace-bedecked hand reaches for an inner pocket.

Grandmother, I would like to tell you about this. I would laugh out loud to hear you cackle as I imitated the voices for you. And then your bird would cackle, too, just like you, and bob up and down shrieking "h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation! Fire and brimstone!" while you said, "Didn't I tell you, Genevieve? Only the wicked get rich nowadays. It's not like the old days in the Fronde. There were heroes then. Have you read this pa.s.sage about d.a.m.nation in Revelations?" And she'd take up her Bible from the nightstand to read about h.e.l.lfire to the bobbing dance of the parrot crying "d.a.m.nation!"

But the parrot had cried "Drink, drink!" there in the death room.

Suddenly I felt cold. I could see it in my mind so clearly. The thought I had not allowed myself to think. The rolling cordial gla.s.s. The heart seizure. The mocking parrot had heard someone shout, "Drink! Drink!" Someone who considered Grandmother a deaf old fool. Someone in desperate haste, who pried open Grandmother's stubborn, hard-clenched jaw to pour the contents of the cordial gla.s.s down her throat as the feeble old lady struggled in vain. Someone who s.n.a.t.c.hed a letter addressed to the Lieutenant General of Police from a tightly clenched fist. Someone who knew the carriage was waiting below, who heard my foot on the stair, and hurried away with a rustle of taffeta.

Grandmother, with her shrewd eyes and wizened face, Grandmother, bedridden among her libelles, broadsides, and court journals, had discovered what everyone else had missed. Father's illness had been no illness. He must have been slowly poisoned; Grandmother had suspected how and was sending her suspicions to the police. And the proof that Grandmother was right was that someone-someone with a taffeta petticoat-had forced her to drink poison to cover up the crime. My mind fled from the thought. But the image of the death room, the parrot flapping wildly from the curtain rod to the bed canopy, was fixed like a mad dream in front of my eyes. How many little vials of white a.r.s.enic, of h.e.l.lsbore, of wolfsbane, of "mort aux rats" did Mother keep among the rouge pots and beauty powders in the little cupboard in her ruelle? Stop, stop. Logic. The rational mind must have logic. But there was only one question that logic was left to resolve. Had Mother procured the poison from the rue Beauregard? I felt chilled through. I dared ask no one.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

"Madame." Sylvie's whisper woke me. It was barely light. "We have the blood off the doorstep. The trail leads from the center of the street to the corner and vanishes now. You'd think that's where he went, not where he came from."

"Excellent, Sylvie. We'll hire a chair and send him to his people this afternoon, and there's no harm done." My head was beginning to ache, and strange pains seemed lodged in my stomach.

"That's clever-let them call the surgeon and run the risk. Let's hope the police don't listen to those gentlemen they hauled in and conduct a house search of the neighborhood, or we'll surely be arrested for harboring a fugitive."

"It's just a pity La Reynie takes his new streetlights so seriously." I sighed. "Though if he didn't, the streets would be as black as pitch before the month was out."