"Get back in, I say. What good is your sentimental wailing? Pure hypocrisy! You wouldn't carry on so if it had happened out of your sight! It's not as if my postillions didn't warn him. Everyone knows that a woman in my position drives fast-my equipage cleaves the wind." One woman wiped her nose; the other started to wail even louder at this speech. "Oh, do be quiet!" the woman in the coach shouted at this new impertinence. "It was his own imprudence that he did not remove himself from my path. One has a right to continue in such circ.u.mstances."

"That's Madame de Montespan," whispered my maid. Ah, the King's newest maitresse en t.i.tre, promoted from her position as maitresse en delicat by the forced retirement of the former official mistress, La Valliere, who had been driven by a thousand humiliations into a convent.

"Your servants are at fault, and you don't even blame them?" one of the women on the ground, the dark-clad, weeping one, said. She stood up beside the body and addressed the blue-and-silver-clad lackeys fiercely. "If you belonged to me, I would soon settle you."

"That's the Duc de Maine, Madame de Montespan's oldest son, in the carriage, and that's Madame de Maintenon there, in the black and gray, on the ground. She's the children's governess. And the other woman-she's the Marquise d'Hudicourt." The Marquise d'Hudicourt continued to wail and wring her hands, as the growing crowd applauded Madame de Maintenon's fierce speech.

"Vive Madame de Maintenon!" they cried.

"Be good enough to get in, Mesdames. Will you have me stoned?" the woman in the carriage commanded. But the weeping ladies would not be dissuaded until the King's mistress had given them her purse to hand to the poor relations of the dead man. With that, they remounted, and the carriage clattered off in a spatter of spring mud.

"Oh my goodness," said the lady-companion, "the man's eyes were entirely out of his head. I shall require a cup of chocolate when we arrive; it is simply too painful otherwise."

"Surely, Mademoiselle, such sentiment is misplaced on a stranger. After all, it was not a premeditated a.s.sa.s.sination," said Madame d'Elbeuf coolly.

I sat silently for the rest of the ride.

At Versailles I was shown into the Queen's presence by Mademoiselle d'Orleans, Princesse de Montpensier. "I want to know whether my coming child will be a girl or a boy," the Queen announced in her heavy Spanish accent. I looked at her. She was seated in a large, brocade-covered armchair with gold fringes and gilt-silver legs, a fan of carved ivory half open in her hand. She was about forty, with the prematurely aged look of a weak, inbred const.i.tution. So many lines of princes culminating in this short, sallow blond woman with the bulging eyes and strange features-almost like a gargoyle-that her flattering portraits never quite recorded. I couldn't but marvel. She had several severe, dark-clad Spanish ladies with her, three of her favorite dwarves-two men shorter than myself but very square, with huge heads, and a perfectly formed, tiny, wrinkled woman-and a good half dozen flat-faced, hairy little lapdogs of great ugliness.

"I pray daily for another son," she went on. She didn't look pregnant to me, but then, I wasn't experienced in these matters. I'd have to trust the gla.s.s. I looked about the immense, airy room for a suitable table. Gold on gold, panels of rare inlaid wood, heavy, elaborately formed furniture of precious metals-despite every luxury, the room seemed cold and devoid of soul. At last I realized why. These were rooms through which wit and learning never pa.s.sed. The Spanish queen was one of the stupidest women in the entire realm, her conversation dismal and spiritless. My eye lit on a table of solid silver that sat beneath a huge, dark Spanish tapestry. I gestured to it, and they brought a heavy little cushioned stool, made of gold inlaid on silver, for me to sit on. I'd brought one of my nicest orbs with me and requested that they fill it with water. I rolled out my little cabalistic cloth and set out a nice selection of rods. Her Majesty looked on approvingly as I chanted and stirred with the gla.s.s rod. Suddenly I understood why. The ladies that crowded around me were all wearing old-fashioned Spanish farthingales, not unlike my own. Half the people in the room were shorter than I, and the rest not much taller. I fit right in with the freaks of the Spanish court that she still kept around her after all these years in France.

The reflection was clear. She was not pregnant. I didn't dare tell her. I did a second reading and had her put her hand on the gla.s.s. I saw an illness and a vase of late-spring flowers in the room. Quickly, my mind worked.

"Your Majesty, I regret to say that in the late spring you will have a serious illness and lose the child."

"Lose the child? Lose the child? I must have another child. That dreadful woman, that odious La Montespan, holds him with her youth, her children. It is I who am Queen, not she, and yet she would rule in my place. Ah, G.o.d, too late I regret La Valliere, who was at least ashamed of what she was doing. But now, this sin with a married woman-this shameless harlot with the brazen tongue...I tell you, this wh.o.r.e will be the death of me-" She broke off into Spanish, which I did not understand, and her ladies rushed to console her. I shall never make my fortune here, I thought. I can't give her good news. With deep curtseys I retreated from the royal presence.

I stalked from the entrance to the Queen's apartments in what I hoped was a dramatic manner, thumping my tall walking stick with each step. My black gown whispered and rustled about me as I descended the extraordinary staircase of multicolored inlaid marble that led from the Queen's apartments and entered the wide marble corridor beneath it. There I met with a press of lackeys, chairs, and tourists exactly as if I were in the main street of a large town. The only difference was that at Versailles, the avenues were paved with marble and decorated with gold, like the streets of paradise.

In fact, the palace at Versailles was exactly like a city, with the corridors serving as streets. Porters carried the courtiers in chairs from place to place, for the women, at least, were incapable of walking twenty feet in their heavily corseted court gowns and flimsy satin shoes. Besides, the corridors were not always clean enough to tread safely while wearing a gown whose cost represented the annual income of a thousand peasant families, for impatient courtiers often relieved nature in the corners or against the walls. The chairs threaded their way through a crowd of lackeys of every description, of sightseers and foreigners come to see the public rooms of the chateau, of pet.i.tioners, soldiers, and mountebanks. It was hard to imagine that all of it-the furniture, swarms of courtiers, curiosity seekers, servants, cooks, theatrical troupes-everything, could be packed up in the twinkling of an eye and put on the road for another of the King's palaces whenever he had a mind to change residences. Yet for all his seasonal moving about, he did not return to Paris, the ancient capital, and he had ceded the Palais-Royal to his brother. And so the ostlers of Paris gave special feed to the new breed of vicious, heavy coach horse that could keep the carriages rumbling at top speed to Versailles, to Saint-Germain, to Marly, to Fontainebleau. Grandmother said it was a sin, and Kings should live in the Louvre, among the people of their princ.i.p.al city, as the monarchs of old did. It was a highly unfashionable idea that I did not borrow for the Marquise de Morville.

The marquise was getting to be an old friend of mine. She lived in my head, offering comments on my daily life, bothering me at night when I didn't find sleep easy. A shrewd, sharp-tempered old lady, she coined aphorisms and told lies about her girlhood to me. She bothered me with horrid observations on my character and activities, denounced courtiers with impunity, and cackled at my annoyance. When I was placed into the heavy corset and the preposterous bell-shaped petticoat of hoops was lowered over my head, she shut Genevieve in the closet with a firm "There, now! Waiting will be good for you. In my day, we waited a lot more than young people now-and we were polite about it, too!" And she would stalk off thumping her tall walking stick to tell the world a thing or two, by way of setting it straight.

Now she stalked down the corridors of Versailles, a shriveled-up, disapproving little figure in the black of a previous century, a mysterious black veil concealing her features. She disapproved of the smell in the corridors, peered through her veil in an offended fashion at the bared bosoms of two ladies-in-waiting who were hurrying past, sniffed at the suit of a rustic-looking lordling fresh from the provinces in a manner that made him blush.

"In my day, a man took off his hat to a lady of rank, not merely touched it as if it had grown into his hair," she said to a slender, olive-skinned gentleman in baggy black velvet trousers and embroidered gray silk jacket. The man looked back at her with a steady gaze. Visconti, the fortune-teller. The marquise was not bothered by other fortune-tellers. Especially Visconti, who lacked at least one hundred and twenty-five years of her experience.

"Good day, Monsieur Visconti. You have fully repaired my estimation of you with your second attempt." Visconti had taken off his hat with several complex flourishes, making an elaborate court bow.

"My dear Marquise, I am delighted to have met you by this happy coincidence. My powers tell me that you have just been consulted by the Queen in the matter of her pregnancy."

"How odd. My powers tell me the same about yourself. I presume you predicted the son she wanted."

"No, because I wish to retain my reputation at court after her miscarriage in April."

"That was wise. You will go far, Visconti."

"I already have, little vixen. Last night I was taken to the King's pet.i.t coucher. Consume yourself with envy. Though why the greatest n.o.bles in the land would pay a hundred thousand ecus for the privilege of seeing the King sit upon his chaise percee before he retires, I cannot imagine. You French are an insane nation, are you not? And the King is obliged to sit on it whether nature requires it or not because it is expected of him; there he conducts business."

"Monsieur Visconti, you presume upon being a foreigner. Everything our monarch does is perfection itself, including sitting upon his chaise percee at the ceremony of the pet.i.t coucher."

"I never said it was not perfection. Tell me, have you sold any more of your youth ointments now that you have risen to such rarefied heights?" Our conversation had carried us to the corridor before the cour des princes. On the far side, great doors opened into the garden. Two lackeys were holding open the door for their master to escort a woman outside to a waiting caleche for a tour of the gardens.

"Here I do readings; it is more in demand-Oh, who is that?" I was glad I was veiled. The Marquise de Morville fled in confusion, leaving Genevieve rooted to the spot, her mouth open.

"The Duc de Vivonne, La Montespan's brother. She has made him a powerful man. Surely, you must know him-or perhaps you mean the girl who has just been helped into the caleche? She is lovely, isn't she? That's La Pasquier, his latest unofficial mistress. Quite a find, isn't she? I hear she came from nowhere-a baker's daughter, some say, but then, they may be jealous. Have you heard how he stole her from the Chevalier de la Riviere? Scandal itself. He won her in a card game-and I know for a fact he cheated! I suppose he's brought her to see the sights. He is renowned as a connoisseur of beauty. They say he's given her a carriage and horses and a little villa in the rue Vaugirard."

It was Marie-Angelique, my sister. La Voisin had predicted it all that long time ago, that steaming hot summer day in her tall black fortune-telling parlor. But the thing that had shaken me was that Monsieur le Duc had on a sky-blue brocade coat and an immense, curling blond wig.

Now that I had told the Queen's fortune, my readings became all the rage at court. The bored, the worried, the ambitious-they all sought me out, men and women, chambermaids and counts. Their fears, their pa.s.sions, their avarice-I heard it all. Rumors started that I knew a secret that would cause the owner to win at cards; I was besieged. "The secret has a curse; to reveal it is death," I whispered mysteriously and watched in awe as they promised to p.a.w.n their jewelry and face sure death just to own it anyway. Another rumor started that I was in fact immortal and dated from the Roman empire. I suppose I had quoted Juvenal once too often. Now strange whispers accompanied my travels up and down the corridors, and at the sight of my shrunken, black-clad figure and tall walking stick, even battle-tried soldiers drew back. Even my saucy, roving-eyed maid had fallen in with the game, walking deferentially behind me carrying my things, as if my power horrified her. Behind my back, she took bribes from people anxious to gain my secrets. It was a good thing I was at least a hundred and thirty years older than she, otherwise she'd have tried to run everything. My little philosophical notebooks and my cash went into a locked coffer, and I never let the key leave my person. Now the word went around that I kept the key to a secret chamber in a castle in the Holy Land, where the secret of the philosopher's stone was kept.

I kept my secrets to myself. Each night in the tiny rented room in the attic of an overcrowded inn in the village of Versailles, I wrote out my coded list of clients and my predictions, still searching for the true meaning of the pictures in the oracle gla.s.s.

"Why do you sit up writing accounts every night?" Sylvie, my maid, would ask when she brushed my hair. "If I had a racket half as good as yours, you wouldn't find me sitting up and writing. I'd be dancing, or making the bed bounce with that good-looking fellow that came to you for the secret of the cards yesterday."

"That's just the sort of thing that would ruin my image. My stock in trade depends on mystery and terror. People who go dancing and flirting have neither."

"But what do you write?" she wheedled.

"I intend to become very rich someday, and one must start with the correct foundation, records and logic. The Romans-"

"Oh, bother the Romans. Sometimes I actually believe you're as old as they say. Who else but an old lady would come to a place full of beautiful young men and rich old ones and spend her nights doing accounts? The best way to become rich is the easy way: marry a man with money. Or find a buried treasure. A woman can't get rich by herself-that's a law of nature."

She unlaced my corset and helped me on with my nightgown. It was exquisite. A waterfall of fine embroidery and lace on linen as thin and pale as if it had been woven of spiders' webs. All my things were nice now. The truth was, I was indifferent to Madame de Morville's clothes, as long as I had my books, but La Voisin encouraged the wearing of luxurious things; it impressed my clients and was supposed to be the lure that drew me deeper into the fortune-telling business. She never understood that for me the best lure was watching the extraordinary a.s.sortment of human characters that revealed itself to me each day. It was my reward for a solitary childhood hidden in corners when the guests came.

The only dress I really wanted I was having made in secret; Monsieur Leroux, the draper, had procured the silk for me at a great bargain. But it was not a dress for the old Marquise, and that is why it had to be made secretly, safe from La Voisin's spies. It was a dress for a young girl, not yet twenty. It had a rose bodice and skirts, turned back to show an ivory taffeta petticoat and a stomacher embroidered with flowers like a garden in spring. La Voisin would have hated it. I wanted to walk with Andre Lamotte in the orangerie in it. I wanted to smell the heavy perfumed blossoms and hear him say "I never understood it before; you are really very beautiful. All that time I was looking at the wrong face in the window." I knew I was a fool, but I couldn't bear not to be. It had to happen. It just had to. With magic, with money, I would make it happen.

"Just how rich do you intend to be?" Sylvie's voice broke into my thoughts.

"Unbelievably rich. I intend to repeal that law of nature of yours." Rich enough to revenge myself on Uncle and the world for making me what I had become, I thought silently.

"Well, you can start tomorrow with the Countess of Soissons. She ought to be a repeat client, the way she runs to fortune-tellers. She sent the most delicious little page, all covered with ribbons, when you were gone this afternoon. If you could have seen him blush when I pretended to pull up my garter!"

Olympe Mancini, the Countess of Soissons-another of the nieces of the late Cardinal Mazarin, and said to be a widow by her own hand.

"Don't get yourself in trouble, Sylvie, teaching pages about nature."

"Trouble? There's no problem with that. Madame Montvoisin arranges everything."

"I hope you don't mean what I think you do-"

"Goodness, where have you been living-the moon? Madame Montvoisin provides the best service in the city. I recommend her to everyone. Safe and silent. Not like those others. They make a mistake, and voila! Your body is dumped in the river. Madame does not make mistakes. You're safer with her than with the King's own surgeon. Her organization includes all the best ones in the city; they work on commission. All the society ladies go to her. How else could they live the gallant life at court? You ought to know; you've sent her enough business yourself."

Oh, Genevieve, how could you have been so simple? La Voisin is not like you, enchanted with playing the game of deception. How could you have ever believed for a minute she didn't offer real services, not flimflam, for all the money she gets? Here it was, as plain as could be before my very nose, and I hadn't recognized it. She was an angel maker, a high-society abortionist, and the fortune-telling was a cover. The penalty was torture and death-for her, for her a.s.sociates, for the women who employed her services. Suddenly I saw it all clearly. The secret signals, the terrified faces. A silent network of women, all tied together by fear and the possibility of mutual blackmail, was hidden behind the shining facade of gallantry and jewels, of elegant gowns and velvet masks. Hairdressers, perfumers, ladies' tailors, all organized into a secret business cartel that covered the city like a web. "Have you a problem, my dear? I know the cleverest woman who can fix it. No one ever need know." And I was in the center of it all. As I blew out the candle, I asked, "And La Bosse?"