"Oh, Jesus, don't shout so. My head's breaking in two. What's the news?"

"How could you not know, when you yourself predicted it? Madame de Montespan has been sent away from court by the King. She's here in Paris, licking her wounds, while her rivals sharpen their claws!"

I groaned and sat up. My head felt like an inflated pig's bladder. Ready to burst. "How...what?" I managed to mutter.

"Oh, it was astonishing. Pere Bossuet denounced the King's sin with Madame de Montespan from the pulpit on Easter. And he refused the King communion, just on the eve of his departure for the front in Flanders. The King can't go into battle unshriven. They say the King begged for a separation only, as he had done once before as a condition to obtain communion. But that was in the days of Pere Lachaise, who was much less exacting. Monsieur Bossuet was adamant. 'Give up the woman,' he said, 'for you are in double adultery, because she is married as well as you.' Now all the unmarried ladies have their hopes up. If I were near the King, I'm sure he'd notice me! But I'll not have the chance, well, not unless..." Oh my, another consumer of love potions and lucky charms. You'd think the people who sell them would know how ridiculous they are. But they're their own best customers.

But once dressed and downstairs, I noticed that my hostess was not as active an enthusiast as Sylvie. Her two youngest boys, neither yet out of girls' gowns and leading strings, were quarreling over a ball; their older brother, all of ten years old, was just being sent to pick up a parcel at La Trianon's laboratory. Her stepdaughter, Marie-Marguerite, gave her an evil stare as she pa.s.sed through the room with breakfast for her father on a tray.

"Well! The marquise has finally decided to get up," she said in a sarcastic tone. "Greetings, O ill.u.s.trious one. Your sun has brightened our horizon at last."

"What's bitten you this morning?" Headaches do not make me sweet.

"How dare you!" she hissed, her eyes dangerous. "When I sent you out into the world to create new business, I did not mean for you to stir up trouble between my clients." My head hurt too much for tact.

"I did exactly what you said. If you don't like it, then maybe you should keep me better informed, instead of always trying to be so devious," I snapped.

"The Countess of Soissons has been my client for many years. How dare you try to steal her business?"

"I didn't-she called me. When I sent her to you, she just laughed." Madame's mouth was clamped in a grim line.

"You had no business predicting Madame de Montespan's downfall." Well, even with a headache, I knew what that meant. The Marquise of Montespan was her client, too. Not two women one would wish to get caught between.

"She asked, and it was in the gla.s.s."

"In the gla.s.s, in the gla.s.s, was it? Don't you remember any of my lessons? Never read someone else's fortune for a client! You miserable little fool; you'll bring them both down on you!" On yourself, you mean, I thought. But by now La Voisin's rage was billowing like storm clouds. Ordinarily, I would have been frightened, but having already considered myself poisoned once, I had lost all fear. I returned her stare so fiercely that she recoiled from me. "Steal my clients! You set yourself up, don't you! Who pulled you from the gutter, eh? Answer me! Answer me!" Everyone in the room had stopped to stare at the battle.

"It was the river, and I wasn't in it anyway," I said in my most precise voice.

"Oh, yes, we've studied philosophy! We're not a poor woman who raised ourself up. We know Latin, we know Greek, like a man. We're not common! We're almost a Matignon on our mother's side. Oh yes, bow to the Matignon blood in the little hussy, if you can find it anywhere!"

"Don't you dare insult my mother, you...you dreadful old witch!"

"A witch, eh? There's more honor among witches than among the Matignons, I can tell you that. I made you, do you understand, I made you! I wanted you, I saved you, I created you, and you're mine! Why do you think the door was unlocked the morning you left home? Why do you think I was there to keep you from the river? Your own loving mother had better plans than that. Ah, the minute they read the will, she was at my door. 'Why pay for a funeral?' I told her. 'Put her out and you'll be rid of her. She'll never be found, and they'll never trace the death to you.' I could see the glint in her eye. The glint of money. 'Take back your fee,' I said. 'You don't need what you came for. You can have it all without cost.' Without cost-that's what made her eyes shine! Money! That's what makes a Matignon act. Money, money, and only money. The money your father left you-she'd stop at nothing to have it. And how much better at a bargain. Oh, what a thrifty little mother you have! An honorable race, the Matignons, like all the other great ones who come to see me. Oh, indeed! But you, you've got G.o.d-given talent, you eat and drink and clothe yourself at my expense..."

My bones felt like ice. It fit, it all fit, like the missing piece of a puzzle. My mind shrank from it.

"Prove it," I said.

The sorceress stood still, looking at me with her dark eyes. "Come with me to my cabinet, and I will show you your mother's entry in my account book," she said in a calm, bitter voice. With a growing numbness, I followed her into her little gilded cabinet room. It was the next to the last entry, at the top of an empty page. "Wishes to purchase inheritance powder for her daughter." The date, after Father's death. The last entry, "Sent away without." Mother hadn't been back since.

"I never knew...I didn't know...any of it...," I whispered, as I leaned against the wall to keep from falling. Oh, truth, how ugly you are, when we meet like this, face-to-face. I would rather never know you.

"No," said the sorceress, lowering her voice and inspecting me with her shrewd, almost malignant black eyes, "you didn't know, did you? Tell me-" And her voice became all honeyed and persuasive. "Tell me, what did you read in the gla.s.s for the Countess of Soissons?"

"She just...asked me what would become of Madame de Montespan, and I looked and saw her leaving court in a hurry, in her carriage with four outriders, on the Paris road." I felt cold all over. My eyes hurt. My face was wet.

"Which she took yesterday...hmm. Blow your nose on this, and then read in the gla.s.s for me." She extended the embroidered handkerchief she had tucked up her sleeve. She took out a water vase from the cupboard and rang for Nanon to come and fill it up. I looked into the gla.s.s that she had set before me. An image formed and shone out of the depths. Madame de Montespan, dressed in cloth of gold embroidered with gold thread, covered with diamonds, sitting regally in an armchair, with other ladies, including the governess I'd seen, standing or sitting on stools about her. A richly dressed man with dark, pockmarked Spanish features entered the room. The King.

"I see Madame de Montespan, all in cloth of gold and diamonds, entertaining the King before the ladies of the court."

"Well, that's better." She looked at me. "Now pull yourself together. You have appointments. And I have business. The carriages are already lining up in the street. Oh, the devil! Lucien is gone; I'll have to send Philippe." And with that she called in her loutish, dough-faced thirteen-year-old son, the one who was far too fat and never did anything, and spoke in a low voice. But I heard anyway, for my ears are good.

"Go to Mademoiselle des Oeillets in the rue Vaugirard immediately. And tell her that I have means within my power to resolve her mistress's future in the most dazzling way. And if you are not there and back by suppertime, I will stop your sweets for a month." As he left, she said disgustedly, "That one is Antoine's. Lazy wretch. My children disappoint me. I expect better from you. Remember, you I chose. And I have made you. You are nothing without me. Go, and wash your face. You look like a fool." As I got up to go, she said calmly, "From now on, pretend you cannot read the futures of those who do not touch the gla.s.s. This will keep you from being forced to read the fortunes of distant enemies of your clients. After all, they may become clients in their turn. And you are not clever enough to extract yourself from the intrigues that result from reading the fortunes of third parties. Now, return in a week. I think I will have good news for you. The vengeance that I have promised you will soon be within your grasp."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"Oh, dear Abbe, you have so relieved my soul on this point." The fine-boned little blonde in the pale-blue satin leaned closer to the society abbe who knelt before her, holding her hand to his lips. The marquise shuddered and pulled her shawl closer around her with her other hand. Was it the chill of the stone bench in the convent garden or some premonition, some tremor of the soul that made the gooseflesh break out on her arms?

"It cannot be sin if two hearts yearn as purely as ours. How long...how long I have admired you from afar, my dear Marquise. To save your soul for G.o.d, even at the cost of my own d.a.m.nation..." The abbe rolled his brown eyes heavenward. How attractive his lean, dark face looked in the twilight. What was the scent that clung about him? Not unlike incense-it reminded the marquise of heavenly things, and somehow at the same time of this latest, divine, pa.s.sion. She clasped both his hands and pulled him up beside her onto the bench.

"Must...must I confess all?"

"Only before G.o.d," whispered the ardent abbe. "No man alive need know. Write it all down; plead for absolution for your sins to Him who sits enthroned above. Then seal the doc.u.ment and bring it to me. We will burn it together, offering up the very smoke with prayers before the seat of the Supremely Merciful One." The abbe pressed her hand to his heart. "Feel my heart," he whispered. "You can never doubt its sincerity; it beats only for you..."

The whites of the marquise's eyes flashed bright, eager, and insane in the rapidly descending dusk. Her powers of love, undimmed, even though she had pa.s.sed forty. Her magnetism, her enchantment, had brought this slender, dark, worldly abbe to her lonely exile across the miles. The s.e.xual and divine, all mixed in a mad brew, rose to her head.

"A kiss," he pleaded.

"Yes," she answered, and the embrace sent fire through her. Her youth, not yet spent. Pa.s.sion, still hers. She felt the old part of her life fleeing from her like a shadow. Yes, she would free herself from it all, confess, and then flee, a new being, washed clean, with this man who made her pulses race like a young girl's.

"Tomorrow," he whispered in her ear, and the soft sensation of his breath made her nerves thrill. "At the Sign of the Castle, on the road from Liege. I cannot live until the moment I hold you in my arms."

That night, the Marquise de Brinvilliers sat up for hours in her convent room. By the light of a candle, she listed the catalogue of her sins: sodomy, incest, murder, attempted murder. She solemnly named the dead: enemies who had offended her, strangers who stood in her way, relatives systematically poisoned for their inheritances. The list covered sixteen pages.

Captain Desgrez returned to the Sign of the Castle.

"So, Captain, how did it go?" asked the policeman disguised as his servant.

"She'll be leaving the convent grounds tomorrow of her own volition, with a written confession in her hand," replied the false abbe. The "servant" whistled through his teeth in appreciation.

"Well done, Captain! Brilliant!"

"I feel like washing," said Desgrez, running his finger under the tight neckline of his soutane.

"You do smell rather like a gigolo. What is that stuff you've got on?"

"Something my wife picked up in the rue Beauregard. Supposed to make the wearer irresistible."

"I have to hand it to you, Captain. You don't overlook anything."

"It's my duty," said Desgrez, as he sat down and stared into the fire.