Then one day, after nearly two weeks had pa.s.sed, the inevitable happened. Shortly before noon I felt myself being shaken awake. I looked up to see the witch of the rue Beauregard towering above the bed like an evil dream, with Sylvie hovering guiltily in the background.

"Get up, get up, there's business to be done! Do you think I established you so that you could lie in bed all day? The King's attention wanders like a weatherc.o.c.k; every woman at court is running to have her fortune told. It's high tide, and you catch no fish!" I mumbled something, but that only set her off worse.

"It's the height of stupidity to mope about what can't be undone. Make money, buy her a monument, and get on with it. You have servants to pay, a household to run, and a debt to me! And as far as I'm concerned, if you've gone and rotted your brain out on that wretched opium elixir of La Trianon's so that you can't work anymore, why, then, you might as well make an end of it, you little fool. Drink down the whole bottle, I say!" Sylvie, her eyes wide with horror, tried to grab the bottle, but La Voisin froze her with a single stare.

"My brain is not rotted, you-you witch! It's twice what anyone else's is, even if I drank a hundred bottles!" In a rage, I pulled myself up to sitting.

"As you probably already have-"

"I'll have you know, I'm tapering off! And at least I don't sit up every night drinking wine until I'm red in the face, singing filthy drinking songs with the executioner!"

"So now you're claiming opium is more genteel, eh? My lovers are my own choice; I've had comtes and vicomtes, I'll have you know. If a man pleases me, I take him. I am powerful enough to make my own choices. Whereas you are too cowardly to make yourself a d.u.c.h.ess. But oh, I forget; you're an aristocrat...I suppose that's why you keep your s.e.xual adventures in the family?"

"I'll kill you for that!" I shrieked, and leaped out of bed to attack her. She stepped back and pulled a vicious little knife from her sleeve.

"Ha! Come closer, sweetheart, and see who kills whom," she said, her black eyes commanding.

"I swear, I will."

"An entire waste of time," she announced calmly. "You'd do better to kill your uncle, who introduced your sister into the life she led for his pocket money and tried to destroy you to get his hands on what your father left you."

"How do you know about Uncle?"

"You forget, little ferret, that he's a client, too. I know all my client's secrets. But he paid badly. I don't miss him. Send him a charitable basket of my little pates in prison and be done with it." She put the knife back in her sleeve. It made an odd sound as it slid home in the hidden sheath. A businesslike sound. d.a.m.n, I thought, as my head cleared. Once more, I've just danced like a puppet on her string. She knew exactly how to get me up and working again. She must have planned it all, the confrontation, the quarrel, before she came. When will I learn not to be used by her?

"You...you're horrible..."

"And you are not?" she taunted, as she c.o.c.ked her head to one side and put her hands on her hips. "But at least now you're out of bed. Sylvie, get her dressed-the gray silk-while I see if Nanon is finished in the kitchen." As I watched her vanish through the bedroom door, I felt totally annoyed. d.a.m.n her, anyway. Oh, d.a.m.n again; I forgot she was already d.a.m.ned. Double d.a.m.n, then.

A curious odor of burned cork was wafting upstairs. "Sylvie, what's that I smell...is it coffee?" A rustle of taffeta petticoats announced the return of the sorceress, and her voice answered from beyond the dressing screen.

"Turkish coffee. I've been much taken by it lately. I have brought Nanon along to brew you a potful. You are going to drink it. I may have a little myself. I am very fond of it."

"But...but isn't it expensive?" I asked. She had come behind the screen now to inspect the progress Sylvie had made with my stays and petticoats.

"Of course it is. But it makes the mind powerful. Yours is pretty much reduced to mush. I've used an entire quarter pound. Don't worry, I'll just add it to your bill." Sylvie was now engaged in hooking the dozens of b.u.t.tons on my gray silk dress.

"My hair..." I said, clapping a hand to the disaster on my head.

"For now, just knot it in back, Sylvie," La Voisin commanded. "The lace cap is sufficient. The marquise does not need to go out today; she will be receiving callers at home..." The taffeta bustled officiously as she left us alone behind the screen to complete my toilette. I could hear a clatter as La Voisin's chambermaid, Nanon, set down a little tray on the table beyond the screen. I emerged to see two steaming pots, two white china cups, and La Voisin, who had just seated herself in my best armchair.

"You don't understand," I said as I seated myself opposite her. "My sister's dead..." Nanon poured hot milk and hot coffee together from the little pots with a practiced hand. "...my beautiful sister. And she was killed by-"

"I know, I know. The Duc de Vivonne. Not the first, not the last. Don't imagine you can take vengeance on him-he's not only powerful, he knows too many people of the wrong sort." Odd words from La Voisin, considering she wasn't exactly the right sort herself.

The sorceress set her coffee cup back on the saucer with a clatter. The noise made the parrot poke his head out of his feathers. He made a soft noise, like "urk, urk, urk." He stretched out first one yellow foot, then the other. Then he tilted his head and peered at La Voisin with his ancient black eyes, and she returned the stare with black eyes that suddenly seemed just as ancient. "Drink, drink," said the bird. La Voisin looked amused, stood up suddenly, and flicked a few drops of coffee into the little water bowl at the end of his perch. The bird stretched out his green head and put his heavy orange beak into the water. The witch queen chuckled, "Leave Vivonne to his wife, my dear. She has been wanting her liberty for some time." I stared at the sorceress with new eyes. She smiled benignly and folded her hands across her stomach. I took another cup of coffee.

"So now," she announced briskly, "on to business. You'll find it's mightily restorative. The news at court is that the King is feeling old, now that he is nearly forty. He thinks a change of women will restore his vanished youth. Most men do at that age. So his attention wanders once again from La Montespan. Until now, she has maintained her hold by keeping his affairs within her household. But now her lady-in-waiting, La des Oeillets, has come to bore His Majesty. No, no, she's nothing-he hasn't even acknowledged his children by her."

"h.e.l.lfire and d.a.m.nation!" announced the parrot, bobbing up and down on his perch. The sorceress smiled approvingly at him.

"So now he is fascinated by Madame la Princesse de Soubise. Her family is poor; she repairs their fortunes with the collusion of her husband. The prince goes out for the night; she wears her emerald earrings to signal the King that he will be gone. But lately the earrings have not been seen. It is clear: either the King or the husband is tiring of the affair. So the game begins afresh-you may expect a number of consultations."

"You didn't read this in the cards."

"No, I didn't. But this afternoon Madame de Ludres will be consulting you. Sylvie, who looks after both our interests, took the precaution of accepting for you and notifying me. I want you to tell me exactly what you see for Madame de Ludres."

"In short, she is a leading contender and La Montespan is consulting you."

"Good. Your brain is working again. The stars tell me that this is a critical time, and there is an immense sum of money to be made if we triumph. And if Madame de Montespan comes to you, I must know her reading immediately. Now, admit this is amusing, and your mind is now occupied fully with calculations."

"My mind is, but my heart isn't."

"Then discount the heart," she said, leaning forward and depositing her empty cup on the saucer with a clatter. "It's only a burden in today's world. Here. I will leave you the two pots and the cups. Take my advice and take up coffee drinking. Give up opium before it kills you. Only coffee is brain food."

"Coffee! Coffee!" gurgled the bird, marching up and down his perch with his big yellow claws. The sorceress flicked another drop into his water dish.

"I suppose you've already added the crockery to my bill as well?"

"Of course. What else? Good-bye. And remember, I want a complete report this evening. I'll be expecting you after the theatre hour. I'm going to the Hotel de Bourgogne tonight. While you've been mooning about, Lamotte has surprised us all with a new tragedy. Some Greek woman who stabs herself on a precipice overlooking the sea, they say. There wasn't a dry eye when he read the last act at the d.u.c.h.esse de Bouillon's salon. So she has hired a claque to support him, and I have taken a box to go incognito with the Vicomte de Cousserans, Coton, and a few other friends. The Comte d'Aulnoy, whose wife, they say, was once seduced by Lamotte, has hired a claque to shout down the play. It promises to be an amusing evening."

Lamotte. And he hadn't even invited me to a reading. d.a.m.n La Voisin, anyway. She certainly knew how to keep me irritated.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Madame de Ludres was not married but an unmarried demoiselle of the court, who had the t.i.tle of "Madame" because she had taken religious vows as a canoness, which gave her a considerable income from a distant convent to spend on pleasure and amorous dalliance. The minute her arrogant little satin-shod feet crossed my threshold, I hated her. I hated the way her powdered little nose turned up; I hated the way she covered the spots on her complexion with tiny black velvet crescent mouches. I hated the footman who carried her train and the waiting woman who carried her little lapdog. Marie-Angelique's little finger was more beautiful than her entire body. For her ambition, my sister's bones were on display at the College Saint-Come. Vivonne's maitresse en t.i.tre; what a pretty and convenient step up for her. But it was only a footstool to poise her for the higher climb: to the supreme power of maitresse en t.i.tre to His Majesty, the Sun King. I'll see you in h.e.l.l first, I thought.

The reading was clear. I saw her at court in an antechamber I did not recognize. The courtiers rose to her as she entered the room. Though the women were in the glistening summer dress ordered by the King, I could tell by the way they shivered, and the heavy wool uniforms of the lackeys, that it was midwinter. In the shimmering reflection, Madame de Montespan, in her notorious "floating gown" of advanced pregnancy, raged soundlessly behind the wall of courtiers, whose gaze was fixed on the new favorite.

"You will not attain the supreme favor immediately," I said calmly. "Madame de Montespan has been reconciled with her august lover and will soon become pregnant by him. When the pregnancy is advanced, his fancy will stray again, and you will achieve the highest recognition."

"When?" she asked, her hard little eyes intense with avarice and ambition. I wished that I, too, had a garden of bones and that she were its chief occupant.

"It looks like midwinter," I answered. "Possibly the beginning of the New Year."

"And Mademoiselle de Thianges, what of her?"

"That will require another reading," I said in a bland voice. "It is very difficult to read for a person not present in the room. I require a double fee and can guarantee nothing." Grudgingly, she doled out the money. "Have you brought me anything that belongs to her?" I asked.

"I have bribed her maid for a rosette from her shoe," she said, producing a limp pink satin rosette. Clearly, she had heard of my methods. So what if I'd promised La Voisin to avoid these third-party readings? I consulted the oracle gla.s.s again, with great show, holding the rosette against the gla.s.s.

"Mademoiselle de Thianges is negligible. She will never enjoy more than pa.s.sing favor and will soon be married off."

I was happy to be rid of the despicable little canoness and her entourage.