The Oracle Glass Part 38

"Yes. Longueval. I have...been given his name. He...he can fix things."

"Longueval has a poor reputation, Sister. He's ignorant and money hungry."

"He says he'll pay..."

"You mean, the duke will pay Longueval for you to...?"

"Yes," she whispered and averted her face from me. "Don't hate me for it. I already hate myself." Her voice was sick with shame.

"Marie-Angelique, Longueval has his servants dump the bodies of his mistakes in the back alleys behind the Bicetre and the Hopital de la Charite."

"Don't shame me more, my poor child..."

"Marie-Angelique," I said as gently as I could, "do you think I'm speaking of infants here? Most of the time, it is the women who see him who end up in the alley."

"But Monsieur le Duc said-" Her eyes opened wide. "Genevieve, what proof have you?"

"Sister, I live a different life now. So different you can hardly imagine it. I know the secrets of the world. The women who rise high on men's favors, the unfaithful wives, they pay a visit...sometimes several a year, to...well, a place that I know. It doesn't give them a pin's worth of worry, and they live to return the next time that love inconveniences them. In the right hands, it's far safer than being cut for the stone. Believe me, I've seen them all-actresses, n.o.blewomen, unfaithful wives. Women like that, they know how to take care of themselves. Marie-Angelique, let me arrange it for you. But don't go to Longueval. Swear to me you won't."

"I...I don't know," she answered. "I wasn't raised to know these things," she equivocated.

"Listen to me," I said firmly. "Promise me you won't go to that man. I'll fix everything for you. You're all I have left in this world. You can get another child, but I can't get another sister. And if the duke demands to take you, tell him you insist on seeing La Voisin."

"The fortune-teller..." She drew in her breath. "So that was her real business all along."

"One of them," I answered, thinking of the garden of bones. "But she's quick, quiet, and safe." But Marie-Angelique had begun to tremble all over.

"I'm so afraid, Genevieve. I'll burn in h.e.l.l for this."

"Then you'll have the most fas.h.i.+onable people at the court for company. Goodness, the Princesse de Tingry alone could keep Madame in business with her annual...offerings."

"Annual? Oh, I could never-Dreadful!" Marie-Angelique looked shocked.

"Marie-Angelique, you want to keep this man. That is the price. If you weep and mope, you will bore him. Whatever you do, do it boldly."

"But I have to keep him, I have no way to live otherwise. And...and he loves me. He says so. Our love is precious, he said. This is the only way."

With regret I felt the state of aunthood slipping away. No knitting, no visits, no silver spoon. The oven still warm with incinerated hope. All for this worthless old roue. What liars men are, and here's the proof. Marie-Angelique promised me so many times, first with tears and then with renewed resoluteness, that I believed her. And though it was not my day to visit, I went straight to the rue Beauregard.

Antoine Montvoisin, in his old, food-stained dressing gown and moth-eaten wool slippers, let me in by the side door.

"They're all upstairs. They've got business," he announced, as if that explained everything. "I'm drinking her Beaujolais," he said, and a conspiratorial tone entered his voice. "She forgets to lock it up when they're all upstairs with a client. Do you want some?"

"Not just now; my stomach's weak today. But thank you, anyway," I added, noting the dejected look on his face.

"Oh, there you are, Antoine. Into my good wine again, eh? Well, pour yourself another drink and then get dressed. I have a delivery for Guibourg today." Margot came downstairs with a wrapped package neatly tied with string. I knew now what was in it. This one was big, near term. Madame might well have had to drown it in the big bra.s.s bowl she kept at the bedside in case the fetus emerged living. "Oh, good-" La Voisin turned and spied me. "Why, Marquise, to what do we owe the honor? It's not even your accounting day."

"I've come to arrange for your...services for...female embarra.s.sment-"

"Ha! Not you? Who on earth was it? D'Urbec, after all?"

"Not for me, for my sister."

"Oho, the beautiful Marie-Angelique Pasquier. She's flown high. But Vivonne is changeable. You'd be surprised who's been purchasing love powders to sprinkle in his food. She'd do well to consult me in other matters, too, your sister. Who is paying? Vivonne?"

"I am. Vivonne wants her to go to Longueval."

"Then, in my opinion, he's either a fool or wants her out of the way. Knowing him, the latter. Longueval is an incompetent."

"That's what I told her." As I negotiated the price, I felt deadly calm.

"Come, sit down, Marquise. Just how far along is she?" We sat together on two big brocade armchairs, and she propped her feet on a stool. Her ankles, in scarlet silk stockings, looked more swollen than I remembered.

"It doesn't really show yet," I answered.

"Oh, a pity. If it were big enough to send to Guibourg, I could offer a discount. There's a shortage these days, and he pays well."

"Pays? For what?"

"Oh, don't be so particular. They're already dead when I send them over. He baptizes them, of course, though he says it's second rate if they're not alive. And then he...reuses them. After all, they would just go to waste otherwise."

"Oh yes, of course. It's silly to waste," I said in a distant manner. The only use for a dead baptized baby I could imagine was in the Black Ma.s.s, one of Guibourg's specialties. The Shadow Queen's jet black eyes looked inscrutable as she watched my mind absorb this information. She seemed businesslike, calm, as if she were testing me. We watched Antoine, all wrapped in his rusty old cloak, stump out the door with the package, and I turned to her. Marie-Angelique betrayed to this. Knowingly. By her own mother, who had used her salon to launch her into this life just as clearly as if she had auctioned her off. Should I add the baby to the list of deaths Mother had to her account? The Shadow Queen must have seen the look in my eye. She stared back evenly at me. Now, somehow, when I had placed my sister and myself in her hands, it was time to ask the question I had not dared to before.

"Tell me," I said, my voice calm and precise, "did you sell my mother the poison with which she killed my father?"

"I wondered when you'd be asking that. You certainly took your time figuring it out."

"It only just now came to me," I lied.

"Really, for a person who reads the future so well, you are a bit dense in reading the past. The answer is no. I didn't. La Bosse did."

"Then it's true. He was murdered, and you knew all along."

She leaned back in her chair and looked at me a long time. "You must understand there are certain types of women to whom I do not sell poison. I am an artist. I create death in undetectable ways. The laughing death, oil of vitriol, distillation of toad-they are not for me. I require a customer who is brave, patient, and subtle. Someone who has suffered great wrong and is willing to follow my instructions exactly to even the score. You, for example, would be ideal." She paused. I didn't say anything. "This little...business of mine was built by the revolutionaries of the Fronde. No, not in the way you think, by political conspiracy, but by women who had managed households while their husbands were away at war. They return, those lords, they take away the purse strings, they are brutal, they leave bruises, they threaten with imprisonment in the cloister. Poison-it evens the score. My little services, they keep women from slavery. Isn't that so? In a better world, I would have to sell perfume and beauty powder. But this wicked world of ours needs its witches, and so I am wealthy."

"My mother-"

"Your mother was a poor client. Vengeful, rageful. Such women do not spread out the dose. In their haste, they give it all at once. Then they are detected. Under torture, they name the source. Then I couldn't give my lovely garden parties, could I? I sent her to Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle with powders pa.s.sed under the chalice. When she became dissatisfied with Ma.s.ses to Saint Rabboni, I turned her away. Besides, I did not like her." I could feel the coldness stealing toward my heart.

"Then she did do it, after all. Why? It has brought her nothing."

"That is what I told her. 'Never poison a perfectly good husband on a promise of marriage alone,' I advised her. 'At the very least, find out what your husband's true finances are and the amount you can expect in widowhood, and don't just go burbling on about hidden wealth abroad, or you'll end up worse than ever. Poor, and without your lover as well, for a man like the Chevalier de la Riviere will leave you if you have no money.' The woman was incapable of seeing logic. She left in a rage, and I sent to La Bosse to warn her. La Bosse...forgets herself sometimes. She's getting old. Her good sense leaves her when she sees gold. And if one of us is lost, all will be lost." La Bosse. The archrival but a collaborator, too. And La Voisin. Her hands were not clean of this thing, either. Through her, Mother's flowing river of resentment had found an outlet.

"What did La Bosse sell her?"

"La Bosse was crafty. She sold her a very weak compound. But your mother was shrewd. She tried it out on the patients at the hospital and came back shrieking she'd been cheated. 'You see?' I told La Bosse. 'You should never have entangled yourself with a woman like that.' So La Bosse followed my suggestion and sold her a.r.s.enical soap for was.h.i.+ng his s.h.i.+rts in. It sets up skin sores like the Italian disease. Then the physician is called and usually finishes the job by bleeding the person to death, all the while speaking Latin. So, properly speaking, your father was killed by his doctor, thanks to a process set in motion by your mother. Remember that and beware of physicians." She laughed, a sharp little laugh.