"Wait, Madame, another image is coming up. You are-It must be a foreign place, the clothes are strange...they don't seem French. You are at Ma.s.s in a strange church..."

"Then I am saved-"

"Wait! Two men are in the back of the church, one with a large sack. The first-I believe I recognize him-signals by dropping his hand. The second...Oh, and there is a third, on the other side of the church...open their sacks. Goodness! The sacks are full of black cats. They run pell-mell through the church. The crowd is turning on you-they appear to think the cats are devils brought by you...They are shouting, threatening. They drag at your gown, trying to tear you to bits...your lackeys beat them off as you flee to your carriage outside."

"The man who does this-you say you recognize him?"

"An agent of the Paris police, Madame." To be precise, Desgrez. The man who had lured Madame de Brinvilliers out of her sanctuary in a foreign convent.

"They will kill me! They incite the mob against me! Oh, what a convenient death-and no one is to blame! The low-born villains dare not attack a Mancini directly, so they use craft. I swear it is Louvois. He hates me. He hates us all, we who are above him in breeding. I know him; he will use his creature La Reynie to pursue his vengeance under cover of law. That is how he is-devious-and he bides his time. No one is safe, not even the Mancinis. Tell me, my death..."

"That will require payment in advance, Madame." I took the fee and looked again. "You die old," I said. The air in the chilly room was shattered by the countess's mad laughter.

She stood up suddenly, stretching her arms above her head, shrieking, "Old, old, I shall live despite you, Louvois!" Then she remembered I was there and, looking at me with glowing, insane eyes, she said, "Louvois, what do I care for him? Ha! He is nothing, not even this-" She snapped her fingers to show his insignificance. "Oh, the ugly little bourgeois man; I swear, I'll have my vengeance on him!"

As my carriage pulled into the rue de Picardie I leaned back into the cushions, nearly ill with the fatigue that comes from too many readings close together. A few more like that will kill me, I thought. I think I might even have dozed off, for I felt as if I awoke with a shudder when the carriage stopped in the rue Forez. My final errand of the day. To get my last cordial made up at one-quarter strength.

La Dodee met me at the door. Her ordinarily cheerful face was long with worry beneath her white linen house cap. She wiped her damp hands on her ap.r.o.n as she said, "Oh, you've come, after all! It's all made up, your order, but not in the bottles yet. La Trianon wants you in the back. She's been worried to death and needs a reading." I groaned.

"I don't have it in me. I've been doing readings all afternoon and feel as if I will faint if I even look at the gla.s.s again."

"Come into the laboratory and put your feet up. We'll make you coffee, and your strength will come back. Terrible things are happening. The lightning is striking all around us, and we must know where it will fall next."

They put an armchair by the fire, and as I sank back into it, my eyes closed. One of the girls must have brought a footstool, for the last thing I felt before oblivion was someone propping up my feet.

"Wake up! Wake up!" La Trianon's voice was urgent. She was shaking my shoulders.

"Why, I wasn't asleep at all-just resting my eyes."

"A curious way of resting. It must be your eyes that snore, then."

"Me? Snore? Never!" I sat up straight. La Trianon stood beside me, hands on her hips, the sleeves of her black dress rolled up to the elbow as if she had just left her worktable.

"I thought that would rouse you. Now, restore your strength with this-we must have a reading. It is life or death." The Turkish coffee was heavy and sweet, better than medicine. I held the little cup in my hands, warming them, as I breathed in the dark, strong scent.

"Ah, excellent. You definitely look more alert. We have the water set up on the worktable by the athanor." I looked across the room to see the water vase shimmering in the fading light from the window. One of the girls was sweeping the floor; a cat was nursing its kittens in a box behind the athanor. La Dodee and another girl were finishing pouring the last of my cordial into bottles with a funnel and sealing the corks.

"Oh, look at that; your harpy is coming unraveled-it must be the moths," I observed.

"More than the harpy is coming unraveled these days. Those who can are going into hiding. But we can't hide-our livelihood is here. But all may yet be mended. Madame has planned a great coup that will save us all. She is taking a pet.i.tion to the King. But we must know how it goes, so we can lay our plans."

"A pet.i.tion? Whatever for?"

"It is poisoned," whispered La Trianon. "Even La Dodee does not know. Next week she goes to present it at Saint-Germain. She was overwhelmed by the crowd around the King last time and returned with it. But next time she will not fail. And now, now...it is essential to us that she succeed."

"But how can poison go from paper to the eyes of a reader?"

"Not to the eyes, to the pocket. The pet.i.tion is covered with a fine powder. The King habitually places pet.i.tions, unread, in the pocket where he keeps his handkerchief. When he is dead, his ministers will fall; no one will think to pursue this case in the turmoil, and this dreadful inquiry will stop before we are all implicated."

"And if she fails?"

"Then we are all dead-you, me, Madame de Montespan, the Mancinis, and all the rest."

"Very well, then, let me do the reading." I pulled a stool up to the high worktable. La Trianon shooed away the girls, and even La Dodee, with a tense, "Later...later. You mustn't disturb the little marquise. It must be a perfect reading."

The water seemed to darken, as if it were absorbing the falling dusk from outside. Then in the center, I could see an orange glow, first small, then larger, until it filled the vase.

"What is it you see?"

"A fire-Wait, I see something more." Above the flames, the end of a heavy stake. In the center of the flames, a living figure, chained sitting. A face, distorted, screaming silently in the orange heart of the fire.

"Sitting...someone who has been tortured...legs broken-It is...Wait, I can't quite make out..." I peered closely, so closely my breath dimpled the water. The image wobbled and swayed. I pulled back. It was certain.

"It is Madame, being burned alive."

"Are you certain?"

"Certain. Her hair is a cinder. Her face is black-but I would know it anywhere. The executioner's a.s.sistants...are pulling the body apart with hooks-but...I don't think she's dead...the limbs are moving..." The weakness was terrible. I swayed as the ceiling, harpy and all, began to rotate above me.

"Come quick! Come quick!" La Trianon held me up as the others came back to help me into the armchair. "It is the worst, the worst. Marie, call a vinaigrette from the corner. I must go to Madame tonight. I must dissuade her. She must not go to Saint-Germain next week; she must flee-" One of the girls had already brought La Trianon her wide black felt hat and her dark cloak, but as another went for the door, I called out to her to halt.

"My carriage is waiting outside. We'll go together. If Madame is to be stopped, I must tell her myself. Just send a message to my house that I shall be late. They are expecting me." La Trianon wrinkled up her nose.

"You mean that man you're sleeping with is waiting there. Let him wait-it's good for them."

"Not him-he'll go in search of me; he may uncover your plans."

"Not only a man, but a clever one. You have let yourself in for trouble," announced La Trianon.

"Enough, enough. There's not much time." And I had just enough presence of mind to scoop up my bottles from the counter before we hurried to my waiting carriage.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

"Well, well," said the Shadow Queen, "to what do I owe the honor?" She stood before her great tapestry of the Magdalen, her hands on her hips, regarding us with her head to one side, as if we were a tradesman with a late delivery. Near the hearth, a nursemaid held her youngest child on leading strings while he played with a little wooden bird on the end of a stick, making its wings flap up and down with a clatter in imitation of flying. One of Madame's tabby cats was rubbing itself on my ankles. Old Montvoisin and his daughter stared suspiciously at us from the corner.

"Catherine, we must speak with you alone." La Trianon's voice was urgent. I noticed Antoine Montvoisin's eyes follow us as La Voisin led the way to her cabinet, and I heard the creak of a floorboard behind us as he trailed behind to try to overhear our business. La Voisin shut the cabinet door behind the two of us, then lit the candles in the wall sconces from the glowing embers in the grate. Then she pulled the heavy crimson curtains across the narrow little window.

"Now," she said, "we are entirely private. I hope you have not come to try to dissuade me from my great work." In the light of the candles, her black eyes glowed like burning coals. The glow made my skin crawl. It seemed like madness.

"Catherine, the little marquise has seen a vision in the gla.s.s. You will burn."

"A vision? You miserable little thing, who told you to interfere with my business?" Her face shone with the flickering rage of insanity.