"The writer of this letter is a short man, almost hunchbacked, with an ill-fitting wig and clothes that seem very expensive, but of a provincial cut. He has an extremely large, aquiline nose, and a small, tight mouth set back in his face. Not much chin, either." The King smiled at my description. Evidently others recognized it, too, for they smiled as well. "He is apparently standing in a private chapel...he is...appears to be...getting married."

"To whom?" whispered His Majesty.

"I don't know the woman, either. She is evidently a very wealthy lady, quite young, pretty to look at, dark haired, and extremely tall. The man is hardly up to her shoulder. But she towers over her ladies-in-waiting and several other men in the room." The King looked furious.

"Your impudence, Madame de Morville, exceeds even Monsieur Primi's."

"I am deeply sorry if I have offended Your Majesty, but I have no idea of who the people in the image are."

"No idea at all?" The King fixed his eyes on me-he was doubtless accustomed to shocking the truth out of people with that fixed stare.

"None whatsoever," I answered.

"Then perhaps, Madame de Morville, I need to speak to you apart from the others-Primi, quit following me; I would speak to Madame de Morville alone." He led me behind an immense, ornate screen that sheltered the room from breezes that would blow through the double doors when they were opened. "My secretary tells me that the Marquisate of Morville is extinct these last two hundred years." A test of truth.

"It is, Your Majesty."

"Your lineage, then, is it genuine?"

"It was drawn up by Monsieur Bouchet, the genealogist. It is as genuine as many others at court."

"I did not ask that, Madame. Come, I will have the truth. Answer me honestly, and I will give you a pension of two thousand livres. Try to deceive me, and I'll have you burned alive in the Place de Greve." I looked at him. Two thousand livres was not an amount to sneeze at, but I was clearing better than two thousand livres a month. Accepting his generosity seemed like a rather extravagant sacrifice. Still, the alternative was worse. "How old are you really?" he asked.

"Your Majesty, I am nineteen years old." He looked deeply relieved.

"And your true name and origin?"

"My name is Genevieve Pasquier, and I was born here in Paris. My father was the financier Matthieu Pasquier, who was ruined in 1661. He died without leaving me a dowry, and I have since made my living by my wits." His eyes narrowed. He did not approve of n.o.bodies. "On my mother's side, the family is related to the Matignons." At this news, his eyes changed, filling with genuine curiosity.

"Why doesn't your mother pet.i.tion for a pension, to prevent her daughter from sinking into dishonor?"

"Your Majesty, she is dead." The King pondered a moment.

"Tell me, who is your informant about my letters and my affairs?"

"No one, Your Majesty. In the course of my fortune-telling, I learn many secrets from women, but they are about love, not statecraft."

"Yes, yes, that must be so," he strode about and muttered. "You still say you have no idea who wrote the letter?"

"None, Your Majesty."

"Then see this." He held the letter up briefly so I could see the signature. It was from the Protestant prince, William of Orange, the Stadtholder of Holland, Louis XIV's greatest enemy and rival. I had only a glimpse of it before he put it back in his pocket, but it was clear it was a refusal of the King's offer of his illegitimate daughter by Madame de Montespan as a bride. The phrase that caught my eye was this: "The Princes of Orange are accustomed to marry the legitimate daughters of great princes, and not their b.a.s.t.a.r.ds." Oh, my.

"The woman you describe could be no other than the Princess Mary of England, who is as well known for her beauty as for her height." Oh, dear. Even worse. Gossip was that the King had intended the English princess for his own heir, the Dauphin, thus securing another kingdom in his...o...b..t and returning it to the Catholic fold. I could not have made a more insulting or dangerous prediction. The King was watching my face. "So, now you appear to understand. Either you are the most impudent woman in this kingdom, or you have correctly predicted that my worst enemy will become, someday, King of England." And either way I'm in trouble, I thought. "Either way," he went on, "you deserve to be shut up for life. But I have promised you a pension. Now, tell me honestly, do you make up what you claim to see in the oracle gla.s.s?"

"Your Majesty, most water diviners are false. It is easy to post a confederate who gives secret hand signals concerning the persons who lay their hands on the gla.s.s. In my own case, however, the images come up from the water like little dreams made up of fragments of reflections. I interpret them as best I can, just the way you can see pictures in the clouds. And I must tell you, too, that for me, the images are enhanced by opium." He nodded as if that last bit of information explained everything. "Mostly, the images are meaningless, and I interpret them to please my clients."

"And did you make this particular prediction by interpretation?"

"No, Your Majesty. I saw the scene: the man, the woman, the priest, the witnesses."

"Then you have earned your pension, Mademoiselle Pasquier, for you had my promise, the promise of a King. But if at any time I hear that you have ever again made any political predictions by looking in water, I will have you shut up for life in the Pignerol. Incommunicado. And that, too, is the promise of a King."

The evening was over. But as I was escorted from the hall, Primi stopped me.

"Out of my way, Monsieur Visconti. You have set me up for this," I snapped.

"Ha-He offered you the fortune-teller's bargain, there behind the screen, didn't he?" I tried to push Primi aside, but he evaded me and reappeared in my path.

"I don't know what you mean," I answered.

"He offered me eight thousand livres to tell him how I did my handwriting a.n.a.lysis."

"Eight thousand? He only offered me two thousand!" I was indignant.

"That's because you're a woman, Marquise."

"It's all very well for you to gloat, you wretched Italian; you've put me out of business."

"Why, that's entirely unfair. After all, it's an honor to be put out of business by the King himself."

"I don't want to see you again, Primi." I stalked past him to the chair that waited for me in the outer corridor. Quite an honor, I thought, as the bearers took me to my waiting carriage. The cold wind of an autumn night hit my face as I mounted into the carriage to return to my inn. First he ruined Fouquet and father, now he has taken my living. For the second time in my life, I have been ruined by Louis Quatorze, I thought.

A new thought: one must beware the generosity of kings nearly as much as their wrath.

But by far the greater surprise was waiting for me when I returned home, almost as pale with sleeplessness as if I had used a double layer of my white makeup. The police seals had been placed on my front door. And as I inspected them, unbelieving, Captain Desgrez stepped out from a sheltering doorway nearby with three quite large-looking foot sergeants.

"Madame de Morville, we would like you to come with us," he announced. And before I knew it, I had been hurried, satchel and all, into a waiting carriage for the trip to the Chatelet.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Desgrez sat silently observing me as I sat between the two sergeants on the seat opposite him. Facing backward, I could not see the boucherie as we approached the Chatelet, but I could smell it. Piles of offal, the alleys running with animal blood and filth-the slaughterhouses of Paris made bad neighbors, except for a prison. I started counting the possible reasons for being detained. They certainly were numerous, now that I thought about it. What I hadn't done, I'd seen or heard about. I knew enough about the underground life of Paris to vanish for life. And they'd sealed the house. I doubted they'd find my coffer and cache of forbidden books in their hiding place behind the wall panels. But the last of my coded "account books" had been left in the drawer of my nightstand. I racked my brains trying to remember what was in it. Had I been careful enough? And then there was all that dreadful business with the King. Suppose he'd decided to put an end to my political fortune-telling by imprisoning me for life with a lettre de cachet? In that case, I'd never even know why I was held. I'll be silent until they read the charges, I thought. Then perhaps I can think of something.

A covered cart-the Chatelet hea.r.s.e-pa.s.sed us going in the opposite direction. The smell of it was so foul that the driver and attendants had tied kerchiefs over their faces. The unclaimed dead, being hauled to the order of Les Filles Hospitalieres de Sainte-Catherine, where the nuns as a holy duty prepared the rotting bodies for burial in the Cimitiere des Innocents. An image arose in my mind-d'Urbec, following my coffin-and my eyes stung. Would he ever find out what had become of me when he returned? My nose seemed runny, and my hands were unsteady. Desgrez had taken out his handkerchief to cover his face. Even the man who could sit impa.s.sively all night by a burning corpse was choking on the stench of the lost souls of Paris. My mind seemed to flicker like a candle in a draft. Perhaps I'm getting sick, I thought.

I had expected the carriage to enter the dark underpa.s.sage and deposit us by the prison entrance. But instead we turned, pa.s.sing by the twin towers and their central arch, incongruously surmounted by a statue of the Virgin, and entered the judicial side, where the courts and guardrooms for the watch and the huissiers were located. I staggered as I got out of the carriage in the courtyard. Desgrez smiled as the sergeants had to steady me on our march up the stairs into the cavernous old fortress. Our war of nerves has begun, he seemed to announce, and you are losing.

After pa.s.sing through a long, dank corridor, I was shown into an antechamber where several clerks sitting at high desks were transcribing records into ledgers. Rows of muskets and pikes were mounted on the walls, and men in the blue suits and white-plumed hats of the police were lounging on wooden benches. The center of the police hive, I thought. But there was a center within a center. We pa.s.sed through a hidden corridor into a narrow room, richly paneled, with a high seat and heavy table behind a low wooden barrier. The secret interrogation chamber for suspects of high degree. "Wait," said Desgrez. "The session in the chambers is not yet finished."

A moment later, an inner door opened, and La Reynie himself appeared, wearing the pale, heavy wig, long red judicial robe, and white linen bands of a Lieutenant General of the Police. He was followed by a clerk.

"Monsieur de La Reynie." Desgrez took off his hat and addressed his chief, who looked at me a long time with his hard, intelligent eyes. The man who had supervised the torture of the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Not someone to play games with, especially on his own territory.