The Oracle Glass (27 page)

“Before we go farther, you must understand a few things. The…ah…Chevalier de la Motte did not tell you the entire truth.”

“They never do, when it's a matter of those high intrigues of court,” announced his mother. “I intend to stick like a burr until I have discovered the whole truth.” As she wagged her finger in my face, I knew with a sinking heart that she might very well do exactly that.

The Shadow Queen had pulled the curtains against the searing afternoon sun. She had abandoned her stays entirely beneath her India-cotton robe. I could see the sweat running from beneath the turban that hid her hair. She sat limply in her big armchair, her feet, in embroidered Turkish slippers, propped up in front of her on a footstool. She motioned with a listless hand to the chair that stood opposite hers in the tapestried room behind the black reception parlor. Her youngest children could be heard making a racket with a toy drum and tin horn somewhere upstairs. In a corner, old Montvoisin dozed quietly, an open book dropping from between his fingers.

“Orange water?” La Voisin asked, dabbing a little of the sickly sweet cologne on her sweating temples to refresh them, and then handing me the bottle.

“Yes, thank you,” I answered, sponging the cool, alcoholic stuff on my face as the sorceress in turn picked up her fan and worked it busily beneath her chin.

“So,” she said, “they're in your house…oh, those children, they have given me a headache—Antoine, Antoine! Yes, you! Wake up and go tell Louise to take the children into the garden. I have business with the marquise, here, and I can't even hear myself think.”

“Invaded is a better word,” I responded glumly, opening my own fan.

“‘Invaded'? Just what are they doing?”

“At this very moment? Boiling down calves' feet to make beef jelly. The very day they arrived, they went off and rented themselves furniture and charged it to me. Then they commandeered Gilles and the carriage and filled the kitchen with groceries…you know I like to send out for meals. Either that or attend open tables. Now my reception parlor smells of garlic—”

“Calves'-foot jelly is very good for sick people. What does
he
say?”

“He's mortified. He said he's perfectly capable of getting well without calves'-foot jelly and it's just the sort of thing that
would
happen to him—”

“When he'd gone to all that trouble to get himself trapped in a fascinating single woman's house, eh?” The Shadow Queen's fan stopped its motion and covered the lower half of her face, but I could hear her suppressed snort of laughter. “So, tell me, why haven't you got rid of them?”

“They threatened to turn me in to the police under the prostitution statutes.”

The Shadow Queen looked grim and shut her fan with a snap. “They don't know whom they're playing with,” she said quietly. “‘Young women of the town who try to entrap men of good family into marriage,' eh?” she quoted. “With a word, I can change that.”

“I don't want him destroyed,” I said.

“Then you
are
fond of him, despite everything you say.”

“I love no man. But I've paid the surgeon, and I don't like to lose an investment.” She nodded approvingly. Then her thoughts changed, and she smiled her little pointed smile.

“No man but Lamotte,” she observed, just to watch my face turn all red with embarrassment. “Ha! Don't hide your face behind your fan. Every woman in Paris loves Lamotte these days. I wouldn't mind having him myself for a night or two, though there would be no advantage to me in it. Of course, at this point, any woman who crosses the Duchesse de Bouillon would be taking a considerable risk. She's enjoying advancing Lamotte's career, and she's one of my better customers.” A warning.

“I imagine Lamotte himself has to be very careful these days, too,” I observed.

“It is the price of celebrity. To be loved—passionately—on alternate Tuesdays when Monsieur de Vendôme is at the front. There are many who envy him.”

“I hope not all of them are your customers, as well.”

“Only some, my dear. But do not pry into what does not concern you. We have business at hand. I think it best for your career to marry.” She picked up a little silver bell that lay on the table beside the heavy blue glass bottle of orange water.

“Margot, bring some lemonade for the marquise and me. It is perishingly hot.” My stomach made a knot. Whether over the lemonade or marriage, I could not say. “And plenty of sugar,” she called after Margot. “You know I like it sweet.” She did seem to be putting on more weight these days. She must have a lot of things sweet. “You see, my dear,” she went on, “as long as everyone thought you were a hundred-and-fifty-year-old virgin, you ran no risks. As soon as it is known that you have kept a man at your house, you will be open to blackmail, and by far more dangerous sorts of people than these two silly women. But once you are married, you are safe from that and can do as you please.”

She dabbed a bit more orange water on the inside of her wrists and onto the back of her neck, reopened her fan with a brisk shake of her hand, poised it at the level of her bosom, and set it in motion once again. “I can arrange you something very advantageous where you can go your own way. Yes, when you decide you need to get rid of d'Urbec would be the best time. A wedding will shed him nicely.”

I smiled and nodded. Better to have her think I didn't mind this wedding thing than have her decide to get rid of d'Urbec on her own. I did owe him that much.

“Yes,” she went on in a self-satisfied tone, “I think you should marry. Anyone would do. But a woman should not waste herself when there is something to be gained. An alchemist is always a good match for a fortune-teller. Or an ex-priest who's kept his canonicals can be very good for business.”

If your business is being a witch, I thought. It's always convenient to have the Black Mass in the family. The silver lemonade cups clinked invitingly on the tray as Margot brought them in. Old Montvoisin, who had completed his errand and returned to somnolence in his chair, sat up and looked about at the sound. Margot served her mistress first, then me, then Montvoisin, who took a large gulp and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“But you, you can aim higher.” La Voisin's voice, like the lemonade, was sticky sweet. “You should consider a man of position…someone like…Brissac. Yes, Brissac would be perfect.”

“
Brissac?
” My lemonade nearly overturned into my lap. “Why on earth Brissac? What makes you think he would be open to such an arrangement?”

“Brissac has always lived apart from his duchesse. She has cut him off; he is an encumbrance. Do you understand?” She leaned toward me with a strange, intense smile. “Now he is destitute. His attitude softens daily, as he grows more desperate. He has quarreled with Nevers and is now homeless. Temporarily, he has moved in with
hmm
…shall we say, another gentleman…who will tire of him soon enough. Just now, however, I have them both in my hand. Their apartment and furniture are rented at my expense. I consider Brissac an…investment. And when I consider your future, I see an excellent way to get repayment for my foresight. If you play your cards right, my dear, his cold little duchesse can be made to vanish. And he has, after all, a more or less genuine title, though he is now brought so low he will prostitute it for your money. You could help him at the tables—and, best of all, you do not have to sleep with him. Just as well, for he is said to smell even worse in bed than Louvois. He will go his way, you will go yours, you will grow rich in partnership, and…you will be protected from the police. It's ideal.”

This is Brissac's idea, I thought. What has blinded her to the danger of this idea? Is it cash? How much money will change hands between them when this marriage is completed? “Brissac…” The word tasted nasty in my mouth. “It's such a shock—You…you must allow me to think it over…”

“Don't think too long. He may not be poor forever. Just now he has a fancy to win at the tables, so his interest turns to you.”

I didn't like the sound of it. I don't need the glass to show me how this marriage will work, I thought. Once I make him rich, he'll want another bride, one from a great family. Then he'll visit the Shadow Queen for a little something from her locked cupboard, and I'll have to start watching what I drink. Unless, of course, I move first.

“Don't worry, my dear,” La Voisin said, patting my hand almost as if she had read my thoughts. “A titled widow can do almost as well for herself as a wife. And you'd have risen too high through your marriage for the courts to touch you. I always have your interests at heart first. After all, I regard you almost as a daughter.”

“I couldn't trust my own mother more,” I said, looking at her with innocent, wide eyes over my fan.

***

The wave of garlic mingled with the steamy smell of boiling beef overwhelmed me when I entered my own front parlor. “Any invitations, Mustapha?” I asked hopefully.

“No, just a visitor with a crate for Monsieur d'Urbec.” Mustapha took a fan from his wide Turkish sash and began lazily stirring the sultry air into a breeze about his face. “Enjoy yourself upstairs, Madame,” his sarcastic voice followed me up the staircase. Entering my once-beautiful rooms, now crammed with alien furniture, I was entrapped by one of my uninvited guests.

“At last, my poor nephew has spoken from his bed of pain…” I had a vision of d'Urbec turning his face to the wall, deadly silent with pure annoyance, for hours at a time. “…and the first words through his pale, fevered lips were to exonerate you.”

“Exonerate me?”

“Oh, how could I have ever suspected your charity? To risk a woman's most precious asset, her reputation, to rescue a hero from a hideous cabal of assassins. You are a saint.” How interesting, I thought. D'Urbec has come to the obvious conclusion that once a story has been started, there is no way to dislodge it except with another, even better, one. “It is exactly like a romance…” His aunt clasped her hands before her heart.

“Why, yes, it is, now that you mention it,” I couldn't help responding. An irritated growl came from the antechamber, which made us both turn our heads.

“I tell you, Mother, I can't have another sip of it! I'm sloshing in beef broth.”

“Florent, what's the big box here by the door? Is it yours?” I poked my head into the antechamber to see d'Urbec propped up on pillows; his mother, with a large bowl of soup in her lap, was sitting on the bed beside him, holding an immense spoon. An altogether droll situation for the hero of a court cabal to be in. When he spied me, he blushed. Obviously, he'd heard everything.

“You seem embarrassed, Monsieur d'Urbec,” I observed rather pointedly.

“Only that I cannot rise to greet you as befits your rank, my dear Marquise,” he responded, his voice weak, but ironic.

“Who brought the crate?” I asked. “Is it more food?”

“Griffon came by to see how I was doing—to wish me well, and say good-bye. Didn't he, Mother?” The little woman on the bed looked up with singular annoyance and set the spoon back into the bowl with a clank.

“It is commendable loyalty that you maintain an old friendship, but why you needed to accept as a parting gift a crateful of scandalous publications, I do not know. The bottom of the river is the proper place for things like that,” she said firmly.

“Parting gift?” My eyebrows went up.

“Griffon is selling out. Every day, he says, he runs more risks and makes less money. He found a publisher of Jansenist tracts to buy his press and he's emigrating to Rotterdam, where he says a man can print whatever he likes. He brought me a gift—the stuff he can't risk leaving or smuggling over the border.”

“Some gift,” I said. “I thought he was your friend.”

“That's exactly what I said,” sniffed Madame d'Urbec, with a righteous nod in my direction. “Imagine bothering a sick man with things like that.”

“He meant well,” answered d'Urbec, defending his friend. “It's an entire stock-in-trade…” Griffon had left him an income, for when he recovered. My eyes met d'Urbec's. Neither of us could say more, for fear of disillusioning his mother about her son's current occupation.

“I suppose Lamotte…ah…de la Motte told him where to find you.”

“He's been very active on my behalf lately.” D'Urbec sighed.

“Now
that
is the friend you should cultivate,” said his mother. “Someone who can do things for you. You must curb your taste for low company, Florent. As I've always said, it takes no more effort to maintain a friendship with a
significant
person than an insignificant one. I mean it for your good, Florent. You waste your talent. Besides, you have no more room for mistakes.”

“Yes, Mother,” he said with resignation.

“And don't use that tone with me. You don't know what it is, facing your uncle's stuck-up wife, that barren old stick, after that last little…misunderstanding of yours. Her airs, her fancy hat, the way she steps in those silk slippers, as if her feet were too good for the ground, unlike everybody else's! Oh, how I want to see her face when you are great. Why, the last time I saw her at the draper's, even the lackey carrying her train snubbed me! ‘I hope you understand, dear sister, that we can no longer associate with your son after…what has happened. Believe me, no one regrets it more than I. The years we sponsored his education—a pity—I suppose we had no right to expect
gratitude
. But our position, you know.' Her
position
!” she snorted indignantly.

But she was cut short by Mustapha, who had barely time to announce “The Chevalier de la Motte,” with an ironic flourish before Lamotte himself bounded in, filled with a genuine enthusiasm that seemed altogether unconquered by the oppressive heat and garlic.

“So much joy to see you better, d'Urbec!” he announced. “A mother's love—the all-powerful curative. Why, it's a miracle!” D'Urbec glared up at Lamotte while his mother accepted the compliment with a grateful blush. D'Urbec seemed irritated.

“And what is that that smells so delightfully of garlic downstairs?” Lamotte's charm filled the room like a scent.