The Oracle Gla.s.s.

by Judith Merkle Riley.

CHAPTER ONE

"What, in heaven's name, is that?" The Milanese amba.s.sador to the court of His Majesty, Louis XIV, King of France, raised his lorgnon to his eye, the better to inspect the curious figure that had just been shown into the room. The woman who stood on the threshold was an extraordinary sight, even in this extravagant setting in the year of victories, 1676. Above an old-fashioned Spanish farthingale, a black brocade gown cut in the style of Henri IV rose to a tight little white ruff at her neck. Her ebony walking stick, nearly as tall as herself, was decorated with a bunch of black silk ribbons and topped with a silver owl's head. A widow's veil concealed her face. The hum of voices at the marechale's reception was hushed for a moment, as the stiff little woman in the garments of a previous century threw back her black veil to reveal a beautiful face made ghastly pale by layers of white powder. She paused a moment, taking in the room with an amused look, as if fully conscious of the sensation that her appearance made. As a crowd of women hurried to greet her, the Milanese amba.s.sador's soberly dressed companion, the Lieutenant General of the Paris Police, turned to make a remark.

"That, my dear Amba.s.sador, is the most impudent woman in Paris."

"Indeed, Monsieur de La Reynie, there is obviously no one better fitted than you to make such a p.r.o.nouncement," the Italian responded politely, tearing his eyes with difficulty from the woman's fiercely lovely face. "But tell me, why the owl's-head walking stick? It makes her look like a sorceress."

"That is exactly her purpose. The woman has a flair for drama. That is why all of Paris is talking about the Marquise de Morville." The chief of the Paris police smiled ironically, but his pale eyes were humorless.

"Ah, so that is the woman who has told the Queen's fortune. The Comtesse de Soissons says she is infallible. I had thought of consulting her myself, to see if she would sell me the secret of the cards."

"Her mysterious formula for winning at cards-another of her pieces of fakery. Every time someone wins heavily at lansquenet, the rumor goes about that the marquise has at last been persuaded to part with the secret of the cards. Secret, indeed..." said the chief of police. "That shameless adventuress merely capitalizes on every scandal in the city. I believe in this secret about as much as I believe her claims to have been preserved for over two centuries by alchemical arts."

Hearing this, the Milanese amba.s.sador looked abashed and put away his lorgnon.

La Reynie raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me, my dear fellow, that you were considering purchasing the secret of immortality as well?"

"Oh, certainly not," the amba.s.sador said hastily. "After all, these are modern times. In our century, surely only fools believe in superst.i.tions like that."

"Then half of Paris is composed of fools, even in this age of science. Anyone who loses a handkerchief, a ring, or a lover hastens to the marquise to have her read in the cards or consult her so-called oracle gla.s.s. And the d.a.m.ned thing is, they usually come away satisfied. It takes a certain sort of dangerous intelligence to maintain such deception. I a.s.sure you, if fortune-telling were illegal, she's the very first person I'd arrest."

The Marquise de Morville was making her way through the high, arched reception hall as if at a Roman triumph. Behind her trailed a dwarf in Moorish costume who carried her black brocade train, as well as a maid in a garish green striped gown who held her handkerchief. Around her crowded pet.i.tioners who believed she could make their fortunes: impecunious countesses, overspent abbes and chevaliers, t.i.tled libertines raddled with the Italian disease, the society doctor Rabel, the notorious diabolist Duc de Brissac and his sinister companions.

"Ah, there is someone who can introduce us," cried the amba.s.sador, as he intercepted a slender, olive-skinned young man on his way to the refreshment table. "Primi, my friend here and I would like to make the acquaintance of the immortal marquise."

"But of course," answered the young Italian. "The marquise and I have been acquainted for ages." He waggled his eyebrows. It was only a matter of minutes before the chief of police found himself face-to-face with the subject of so many secret reports, being appraised with almost mathematical precision by the subject's cool, gray eyes. Something about the erect little figure in black irritated him unspeakably.

"And so, how is the most notorious charlatan in Paris doing these days?" he asked the fortune-teller, annoyance overcoming his usual impeccable politeness.

"Why, she is doing just about as well as the most pompous chief of police in Paris," the marquise answered calmly. La Reynie noted her perfect Parisian accent. But her speech had a certain formality, precision-as if she were somehow apart from everything. Could she be foreign? There were so many foreign adventurers in the city, these days. But as far as the police could tell, this one, at least, was not engaged in espionage.

"I suppose you are here to sell the secret of the cards," he said between his teeth. Even he was astonished at how infuriated she could make him feel, simply by looking at him the way she did. The arrogance of her, to dare to be amused by a man of his position.

"Oh, no, I could never sell that," replied the devineresse. "Unless, of course, you were considering buying it for yourself..." The marquise flashed a wicked smile.

"Just as well, or I would have you taken in for fraud," La Reynie found himself saying. Himself, Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie, who prided himself on his perfect control, his precise manners-who was known for the exquisite politeness he brought even to the interrogation of a prisoner in the dungeon of the Chatelet.

"Oh, naughty, Monsieur de La Reynie. I always give full value," he could hear her saying in answer, as he inspected the firm little hand that held the tall, black walking stick. A ridiculous ring, shaped like a dragon, another, in the form of a death's-head, and yet two more, one with an immense, blood red ruby, overburdened the narrow, white little fingers. The hand of a brilliant child, not an old woman, mused La Reynie.

"Your pardon, Marquise," La Reynie said, as she turned to answer the desperate plea of an elderly gentleman for an appointment for a private reading. "I would love to know where you are from, adventuress," he muttered to himself.

As if her ear never missed a sound, even when engaged in mid-conversation elsewhere, the marquise turned her head back over her shoulder and answered the chief of police: "'From'?" She laughed. "Why, I'm from Paris. Where else?"

Lying, thought La Reynie. He knew every secret of the city. It was impossible for such a prodigy to hatch out, unseen by his agents. It was a challenge, and he intended to unravel it for the sake of public order. A woman should not be allowed to annoy the Lieutenant General of the Paris Police.

CHAPTER TWO

My first appearance in the world gave little hint of the splendor that I was to attain as the Marquise de Morville. At the very least, there should have been a comet or a display of Saint Elmo's fire. I have, of course, remedied this defect in my official biography, adding as well a thunderstorm and an earthquake. In the narrative before you, however, the truth will have to suffice.

My birthday was, in fact, a very ordinary gray winter's morning in Paris, early in the year 1659. My mother had labored the day and night previous, and her life was despaired of. But at the very last minute, when the surgeon had already removed from its case the long hook by which, as a last resort, the mother alone might be saved, his midwife-a.s.sistant cried out. Inserting her hand, she brought forth the shriveled product of the premature labor, gasping at the blood that poured onto the sheets.

"Madame Pasquier, it is a healthy girl," announced the surgeon, peering severely at the tiny cause of his difficulties as the midwife extended me, howling, for my mother's inspection. My foot was twisted; I was covered with black hair.

"Oh, G.o.d, but she's ugly," replied my mother-and, with that, she turned her pretty face to the wall and wept with disappointment for the next two days. And so, within the week, I had been bundled off with a cart full of howling newborn Parisians to be nursed in the country near Fontenay-aux-Roses. I was not to return for the next five years, and then, only because of an accident. I had remained at home just long enough for my father to remark that I had gray eyes.

When I had just turned five, a great coach, all shining black with gold trim and high red wheels, arrived in Fontenay-aux-Roses. In those days, when coaches were less common even in Paris, an elephant could not have aroused more interest in the tiny village. Heads peeped out of every window, and even the village priest came to stare. The carriage was pulled by two immense bays in jingling, bra.s.s-trimmed harness. There was a coachman on the box with a long whip, three men behind in blue livery with bright bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, a maidservant in a snow-white cap and ap.r.o.n, and also my father, gray faced and bent with worry. A letter addressed to Mother had come into the hands of his bankers, demanding more money for my care, and now he had come to fetch me home. He knew me right away because of my bad foot. The black hair, they tell me, had fallen out within a few weeks of my birth. He pointed me out with his walking stick as I scuttled along with the running children who had come, shouting, to admire the stranger's carriage. Then the maidservant leaped out and washed me and dressed me in fine clothes brought from the city, and my father gave a purse full of coins to Mere Jeannot, the baby-nurse, who wept.

The coach was hot and uncomfortable inside. The leather seats were slippery, and the fine clothes stiff and scratchy and tight. Mere Jeannot was gone. The strange man in the old-fashioned traveling suit and wide, plumed hat sat on the seat opposite me all by himself, looking at me. His eyes were full of tears, and I imagined at the time that it was because he, too, missed Mere Jeannot. Finally he spoke.

"And your mother told me you had died," he said. He shook his head slowly, as if he couldn't believe it. I stared at his sad face for a long time. "I am your father, Genevieve. Don't you know me at all?"

"I know you," I answered. "You are the kindest father in the whole world. Mere Jeannot told me so." Then the tears ran down his face and he embraced me, even at the risk of spoiling the beautiful embroidery on his long-sleeved vest.

"What a cold-hearted little thing you've brought to me," said Mother, fixing me with a sharp glance from her china-hard green eyes. She was sitting in an armchair in her reception room, dressed in a sacque of yellow silk, inspecting samples of material sent by the ladies' tailor she frequented. Fresh from my trip, I stood across the room and looked at her for a long time. She was very pretty, but I remember that I did not wish to touch her. The fires were out and there was a chill in the tall, blue-and-white paneled room. I didn't notice for several years, until it was pointed out to me, the barrenness of the parquet floor, where the carpet had been removed, or the light squares on the wall, where the paintings by Vouet and Le Sueur no longer hung.

The house to which my father had brought me was an old mansion built in the days of Jean le Bon, located in the Quartier de la Cite in the heart of Paris. Above a reception and dining room rebuilt in the new fashion, its narrow old rooms were compressed around a courtyard with a tower at one corner and a well at its center. On the ground floor, the kitchen and the stable let into the courtyard. There Cesar and Brutus, the bay geldings, put their long faces out into the sun, dogs and cats lounged in the muck and searched for sc.r.a.ps, and cook shouted insults at the kitchen maid as she dumped dirty water out on the cobblestones. Above was the elegant floor, with gilt-paneled walls and nymphs painted on the ceiling, from which the music of violins could be heard when Mother entertained. Beyond this lay all that was ancient and unplanned, curious rooms of various sizes running almost at random into twisted staircases, and a maze of interconnected chambers.

The front of the house, a wide, low Gothic arch and heavy door to the street, revealed little of the complex life within: the maids kneeling to dust the heavy furniture while my mother locked the silver-laden sideboards; the manservant lowering the chandelier to replace the candles; my older sister playing the clavichord; father's valet hurrying upstairs with a cup of cocoa; and high, high above, Grandmother's parrot pacing and squawking while the old lady read the court news in the Gazette de France. Above this all-concealing door were carved in the stone arch those little Gothic grotesques called marmousets; and from this, not only was the house known as the House of the Marmousets, but the narrow winding street beyond it, which ran from the rue de la Juiverie to the cloister of Notre Dame itself, was called the rue des Marmousets.

Father, as I was to learn much later, had risen rapidly as a financier under the protection of Nicolas Fouquet, the surintendant des finances, only to lose his fortune and his freedom in Fouquet's fall. Father's face never lost the pallor of the Bastille, nor his heart a disgust for the court and its intrigues. He had been forced to sell his offices and now had only the income from a tiny country property left to him by an uncle. His years in prison had left him caring only for philosophy and with no interest whatsoever in returning to high finance. Rumors abounded that he had hidden money abroad, safe from Colbert, the King's controleur-general des finances, but Father kept his secrets.

Mother had had several horoscopes cast indicating the return of good fortune, but it was not returning fast enough to suit her. She still resented the fact that the royal pardon had not returned Father's fortune, which had been gobbled up into the maw of the ever-hungry Colbert. The King, she said, should have taken into account the fact that she was practically a Matignon on her mother's side and granted her an allowance.

"After all," she would announce, "it is inconceivable that a family such as mine, no matter in what straits, would have arranged my marriage to a poor man of your name, and now your mismanagement has left me in most inappropriate circ.u.mstances. It's entirely improper for a Matignon to live this way. I deserve to live better. Besides, you have quite spoiled my Wednesdays."

"What's a Wednesday, Grandmother?" I asked some weeks after my arrival, when I had climbed the stairs from the kitchen to Grandmother's room. Grandmother was always there. She never left her immense bed, all hung about with heavy green curtains. Whenever I knocked at the door, Grandmother's parrot repeated her "Come in!," stepping back and forth on its tall perch with its dry, yellow feet and peering at me over its curved orange beak with its little black eyes. If it had had a pink face instead of a green one, and wore a little cap, it would have looked not altogether unlike Grandmother.

"Ah, you've brought my chicory water, have you? Come and sit here on the bed and tell me what's going on downstairs." The walls of the room were painted in the old style, in dark red, the color of dried blood, with geometric designs in gilt around the edges. The curtains were always pulled across the windows; Grandmother thought the sun unhealthful.

"Grandmother, why does mother say she has a Wednesday, when they belong to everybody?"

"'Wednesday,' ha! That's the afternoon that whorish daughter-in-law of mine displays her bosom to the world and flirts with strangers. She calls it her 'salon' and demands that people call her 'Amerinte' instead of by her Christian name. Genteel, indeed-it's nothing but cards and court gossip...that, and an occasional bad poet who can't make a name for himself somewhere better. Oh, it was a ruinous day when that poverty-stricken family of parasites attached themselves to my son! Hand me my Bible from that nightstand, Genevieve, and I'll read to you about Jezebel, and what happens to wicked women." And so I heard something very interesting and lurid from the Bible, about the dogs eating up Jezebel except for her hands and feet. For Grandmother had been a Huguenot before her family had been forced to convert, and she'd kept the Protestant habit of Bible reading-to the scandal of the rest of the family.

On my way back downstairs, I crossed through Uncle's room, where he'd been sleeping all morning because he never went to bed at night. I saw his head and a strange woman's peeking out from under the covers. Uncle, my mother's brother, called himself the Chevalier de Saint-Laurent, although Grandmother always said the t.i.tle was as false as he is, and it is what one could expect of a worm who made his living sinning at the gaming tables and borrowing from women. Uncle was accounted handsome by many, but there was something about his narrow, foxy face and arrogant, pale eyes above the high, slanting cheekbones that I did not like. Still, women thought him dashing.

So I peeked into the tall, gilt reception room on Wednesdays, hoping to see some interesting sinning like Jezebel and the hands and feet, but it was just grown-ups calling one another by pretend names and saying sharp things to one another and drinking from the good gla.s.ses, while Mother laughed her special, silvery little laugh that she saved for Wednesdays. She wore her tight dress in violet silk that was cut very low in front and her gold bracelets with the diamonds on them. This was the time she would glance sideways under her lashes at the men, who would praise her green eyes and perhaps recite an impromptu verse on the subject of her nose or lips. There were only a few ladies, and those not as pretty as she was, and a lot of men who dressed like my uncle in baggy pants with lace hanging down their shins and embroidered doublets and short jackets all in silk. They talked a lot about luck at ba.s.sette or hoca, and whom the King had looked at last Friday, and pretended to be interested in Mother until, at a signal from her, my big sister, Marie-Angelique, would glide through, blushing. Then she was the only person they'd look at. Everyone knew she had no dowry because Father had no money-or, rather, had to save it so that my older brother, etienne, could stay at the College de Clermont and become an avocat and get rich again for the sake of the family. But Mother hoped my sister might "meet someone important" on her Wednesdays, someone who could launch her into society on account of her beauty.

On Wednesdays Father shut himself up in his study to read about the Romans. That, and take snuff from a little silver box Monsieur Fouquet had once given him. He never really wanted to talk to anyone, except sometimes me.