La Voisin looked across the writing table at me, and her face sagged with weariness and disgust.

"I still have need of you-and yet the demon rejected you. Why? You were fully prepared. I myself led you to the required deed of power. I put the vial of poison in your hand myself. You were the perfect offering: brilliant, educated. You would have been one of us. The greatest among us. Merciless. And yet the demon wouldn't have you." She shook her head slowly in disbelief. "What is it that is wrong with you? Something lacking-it must be because you are one of them," she said softly. "An enemy of our kind. One of La Reynie's betrayers." She tilted her head and looked slyly at me out of the corner of her eye. "Tell me why I shouldn't get rid of you," she said.

"Because I didn't betray you. It was you who tried to betray me to the demon. Besides, you wouldn't have asked me that if you intended to kill me."

La Voisin sighed. "You grow too old. You grow too clever. I needed your mind, your position, your access to society for my great work, but now it has all slipped beyond me. Have you never understood why I created you? You could have been the mightiest of our queens in your turn. Now who will you be? A gambler's fleeting amour. Dead. Wasted."

"I'll be my own person."

"Then you are truly lost. No human can live without a master, and you serve neither heaven nor h.e.l.l. What power is it that has stolen you from me? What is it that rules you?"

"Truth. Reason. Whatever is beyond cannot be found without them. I am still searching."

"Pure lunacy," she said, sighing. "All this has cracked your mind. No wonder the demon didn't want it. Still, you are the best water reader in the kingdom, and I need your gla.s.s. The great work I have planned must go forward, with or without you, and with all my powers, I cannot see its end. Read here for me," she said, indicating a tall water vase that sat among the curious objects on her desk.

"Concentrate," I said.

The sorceress began to speak in a low voice, almost to herself. "I am engaged in a mighty deed. The powers of the earth a.s.sist me. When I am finished, I will sit beside kings, the equal of princes. The shadows will rule the sun." I looked up from the water to see that her eyes had grown strange. What did she mean? She must have breathed too much of her own smoke last night. Whom was she plotting against? Who were her allies? No wonder La Reynie had acted so strangely. "What is the future of this kingdom?" she asked. I looked at the vase; it was drenched in blood.

"Blood," I answered. "Blood and more blood, running like a river over the stones in the Place Royale. An ocean of blood."

"Good," she said, in a voice almost as if she were in a trance. "This is La Voisin's revenge."

"Madame, you go too far. Give up vengeance. Ignore the gla.s.s. You don't know when it will happen, or if you yourself will be pulled into it. Let it go."

"Oh, yes," she said in a mocking voice. "Do good, love G.o.d, bless those who push you into the mud, die poor, and go to heaven. Little Marquise, I will let you leave with your life because I now know you are too much of a fool ever to betray me." The last thing Sylvie and I heard as the door closed behind us was the sorceress's bitter laughter.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

As the wine went around the table again, Maitre Perrin, avocat and dabbler in the occult, helped himself to another immense slice of the leg of lamb. "And some more of that excellent sauce, please, Madame Vigoreux!" he exclaimed happily, patting his mouth with his napkin. A splendid supper, the guests p.r.o.nounced it, uniting good food, good wine, and those intelligent souls who had an interest in treasure hunting by occult means. So many fortunes, buried in the earth and forgotten during the Fronde, just waiting for the correct incantation, magnetic dousing rod, or diabolical a.s.sistance to cause them to rise to the surface! It was a topic of near-universal interest. Maitre Perrin himself, although an avocat au parlement, expected to enrich his patrimony considerably during the next few months, but by means of a rare parchment recently purchased from a woman called Marie Bosse, who seemed to have many valuable connections.

La Bosse herself had become quite red in the face with wine, and her son the soldier was becoming ever more raucous. The little tailor who was his host was quietly drunk at one end of the table, humming a tune to himself. Even Maitre Perrin was decidedly more mellow than usual.

"Ah, Madame Vigoreux, what a wonderful table you set!" he cried. "Who could be a finer hostess than you. Such lavish hospitality! I bow to your knowledge of the occult!" He stood and bowed to the accompaniment of much laughter.

"Here's to wealth without work!" Monsieur Mulbe raised his gla.s.s.

"What do you amateurs know about that?" La Bosse said, to the general amus.e.m.e.nt of the guests. Someone had spilled wine on the white tablecloth; the candles were burning down. It had been a long night already. "Why, if you knew what a racket I've got!" boasted the old witch. "And what a cla.s.sy clientele! d.u.c.h.esses, marquises, princes! Why, only three more poisonings and I plan to retire with my fortune made!"

La Vigoreux cast a warning glance across the table, which Maitre Perrin intercepted. A convulsion seemed to pa.s.s through his midsection. With whom, and with what, had he become a.s.sociated? All thought of buried treasure fled from his mind. The company laughed heartily, as if it were all a joke, and Maitre Perrin laughed too. When the party ended, he departed in a flurry of cheerful compliments. And even though it was past midnight, he went directly to the house of Captain Desgrez of the Paris Police. As Desgrez's wife and servants bustled about lighting candles, Desgrez himself, still clad in nightshirt and slippers, showed Maitre Perrin to his private study. He did not seem to mind being awakened at all.

"Well," said Monsieur de La Reynie the following morning, "I find your scent much improved. To what do we owe this honor?" The Marquise de Morville, clad in black silk and onyx mourning jewelry, had taken an armchair at the far end of a table in the Lieutenant General of Police's book-lined study. With a flick of her wrist, she snapped open her ebony-and-black-lace fan. Somehow, the gesture irritated La Reynie. Maybe he preferred the fishwife disguise after all.

"To your sergeant there, who dragged me from a card reading at the marechale's in the most precipitous manner," she answered in a sharp-edged tone.

"Our business would not wait," said La Reynie, gesturing to Desgrez and two grim-looking undercommissioners who sat at the other end of the table. "We have a few questions about the, ah, fortune-telling industry, if we may call it that." The Marquise de Morville nodded slightly, as if to say, Go ahead, if you are capable of asking anything intelligent.

"Let us skip the preliminary formalities. First of all, who is the finest fortune-teller in the city?"

"Myself, of course." The jewels on the marquise's hand caught the light as she gave her fan a little flourish.

"Ah, of course. And where would you place Marie Bosse?"

"La Bosse? She is a dreadful, vulgar, illiterate woman who has a certain skill at deceiving people with cards. That is all. Nice people don't go to her." The undercommissioners leaned forward with uncharacteristic interest.

"A rival," muttered Desgrez.

"Evidently. That's good-we'll hear more," responded an undercommissioner in a low tone.

"And who is the woman known as La Vigoreux?"

"Another fortune-teller-her specialty is reading palms."

"Do you know her?"

"Yes, of course. She is the wife of the ladies' tailor where I'm having a dress made up. But I wouldn't a.s.sociate with a woman like that professionally. She's an amateur." A narrow smile appeared beneath La Reynie's moustache when he caught the condescension in the marquise's voice.

"Well, well, it seems that every housewife with a need for pocket money tells fortunes." La Reynie's voice was vaguely genial, but his eyes were cold and probing.

"That's about right," answered the marquise, resettling the train of her long black gown around her feet with a rustle of expensive silk. "But most of them are no good. Washerwomen taking in each other's laundry."

La Reynie looked at Desgrez, and Desgrez nodded grimly.

"Do La Bosse and La Vigoreux know each other?"

"Of course. They are good friends." The marquise appeared utterly calm.

"Do they dine often together? Who, would you say, attends their typical dinner parties?" Behind the marquise's cool gray eyes, the watchers at the table could sense a strong intelligence working. They looked at each other. No, she could not be allowed to leave the building until the business was done.

"I'm sure they do dine often together, but I'm not acquainted with the others of their set: second-cla.s.s magicians, cardsharps, forgers, false coiners-that sort of people. Not the sort I wish to a.s.sociate with." The marquise's answer was clear and without hesitation. No, she could not be one of those involved, thought La Reynie. But still, he distrusted her command of herself. That alone was suspicious. One of the undercommissioners leaned forward across the table with his own question:

"Would you say that fortune-tellers have...ah...corporations, like the more respectable trades?"

"More or less; the trade tends to be pa.s.sed down in families, exactly like any other. The difference is that there are even fewer outsiders taken as apprentices, and also, the a.s.sociation is run by women."

"And what, Madame de Morville, do you know about poudres de succession?" Desgrez broke in smoothly. The marquise, entirely self-possessed, answered without turning a hair.

"What all of Paris knows, that they are rumored to be everywhere." Her voice was calm and even. "Whenever a death is unexpected, it is said to be caused by poison. I do a good trade in discovering enemies for people fearful of poison, as you know from our...ah...previous discussions. I believe, of course, that this fear is entirely exaggerated, but I certainly would never say so to my clients." The men at the table looked at each other again.

"And what would you say about the character of La Bosse?" La Reynie continued. "Would you say she is...boastful?"

"I don't know much about it. Occasionally I see her on the street, but she is not of my type. She is, after all, the widow of a horse dealer." The marquise's voice dripped sn.o.bbery.