"Why, I do believe you must be hungry. Just look at your hands tremble, and you've turned altogether pale. Let's have the oath now, and we'll celebrate with a bit of something." I was so hungry, I would have sworn to anything at that moment. But as the oath rolled on, conjuring by the puissant prince Rhadamanthus, by Lucifer, by Beelzebub, by Satanas, by Jauconill, and an infinite catalogue of infernal powers, I thought I would faint facedown in her cloven-hoofed censer. Oaths, in my opinion, infernal or not, ought to be short.

Rummaging in one of the cupboards, she produced a large box of fancifully shaped marzipan, a bottle of sweet wine, and two gla.s.ses. "You know how it is," she apologized, "I have to keep it locked up from the children in here, or I simply wouldn't have any. Now, now, not so fast, or you'll get sick. Four pieces are entirely enough." And, refilling my gla.s.s, she took away the box and locked it up again. "Any more, and you'll spoil dinner." The wine had trickled into my insides like liquid fire. I could see two of everything now. The two La Voisins raised their gla.s.ses in a toast; I raised my two, as well. We drank to the ancient art of fortune-telling.

"The art of the fortune-teller!" she exclaimed. "Pleasing, profitable, and entirely legal! Ah, how lucky you are nowadays; the King's own law has declared superst.i.tion obsolete. No more trials for witchcraft, no burnings. Ours is now a new world-of science, of law, of rationality. But even in this new world, men must allow women their little...aberrations, because we poor creatures are too simple to manage without." She got up and put away the bottle and gla.s.ses in the other cupboard, and I could see that the rest of the shelves were lined with strange gla.s.s vials, all neatly labeled. She locked the cupboard again, turning to look at me from where she stood. What was in that cupboard? Something about it made my stomach feel queer.

"What's wrong? You're looking a bit green around the mouth. Oh, dear me. I shouldn't have frightened you with all that talk of burning. Don't worry; my arts have been judged entirely legitimate by the highest court of heresy, the doctors of the Sorbonne. I defended them myself. I was much younger, but even then I knew the power of an elegant gown and a handsome bosom over elderly divines! Pooh! Such prejudice! I imagine they expected some dismal, stupid old crone. I merely pointed out to them that I could hardly be faulted for using the arts of astrology when they taught it on their own faculty. After that, the Rector of the University himself invited me to call on him, and my persecutors in the Company of the Holy Sacrament were foiled. I still dine with the rector every so often-what a dear old pet! And what a table he spreads! Memorable!" I couldn't help but be impressed by her knowledge of the world. I wanted it for myself. What a dull thing I'd been, just living in books!

She reached into her desk and pulled out the contract. She pushed it toward me and pointed to the place I should sign. I could hardly read it, it moved about so, but I managed to hold it still long enough to dip the pen in the inkwell and splatter a signature across the bottom. She took up the paper, looked at it, and laughed.

"I see a splendid future for you," she said. "Water diviners are all the rage right now and travel in all the best circles. Of course, by themselves the images are not worth much; you must learn the art of interpretation from me, the study of physiognomy, the oracular p.r.o.nouncement. But with your educated speech, you will be able to go-anywhere. And I do like a fashionable clientele; they will pay us both so much better." She got up and poked the fire. I wished very seriously that she would open up the cupboard with the marzipan in it again, but she didn't.

"Now, in the course of your work, you will hear very sad stories: a cruel, unfeeling husband, a little, ah, embarra.s.sment, on the way, the desire for a lover who is indifferent. These you will send to me. Your gla.s.s will reveal that in the rue Beauregard they may find a.s.sistance for their problems. Luck at cards, enlargement of the bosom, cures for the diseases of love, the preservation of the body from wounds on the field of battle. I offer a number of little confidential services, without which the world of fashion, of culture, could not flourish."

"Oh, I see," I said to be polite, but my mind was working about as well as my eyes, and I hadn't taken anything in.

"I doubt that you do, just now." She chuckled. "Just do as I say, and we'll be very happy with each other. Now, here is the sign by which you will be known as one of us-the ring finger and thumb together, palm up. Can you do it, or will I have to show you again later? Just remember, you are very far from being initiated into our true mysteries, so don't get proud-and don't try to outguess me, will you, dear? Yes, that's right. Now, let me take your elbow and we'll have dinner served. No, the door's over here, remember?" And so it was all in a morning that I was swept into a secret world that I had never even suspected lay outside my own doorstep.

That day, she saw to everything, disarming my confusion with a large and excellent midday dinner and the ordering of the mending of my dress, which she p.r.o.nounced much too nice to discard, being a rather handsome light mourning gown in fine gray wool, all trimmed with black silk ribbons. All afternoon, somnolent with food, I languished upstairs in one of her immense, tapestry-hung bedrooms in my petticoats, awaiting the return of my dress. These were her hours for receiving clients, and I was not to be seen in her house. I leafed through a dull religious book prominently displayed on the nightstand, Reflections sur la misericorde de Dieu, and then, rather daringly, searched the drawers, to be rewarded with a more interesting volume ent.i.tled Les amours du Palais Royal, a vial of what I took to be sleeping medicine, a number of curious iron implements made like long pins or hooks, and a heavy steel syringe with a long, slender tip. There was a pile of clean, folded linen napkins and a roll of sheep's wool. I couldn't imagine what it was all for. I was about to reward myself for my stay with the excellent book about the Palais Royal when a noise made me start, and I hurriedly put back everything as it had been.

My heart stopped pounding when I saw it was only another of my hostess's ubiquitous cats, a big striped tom, leaping from his perch on top of the armoire, where he had been sleeping. He jumped gracefully onto the huge, curtained bed where I was sitting, purring and rubbing his head on my hand, demanding to be petted. As I played with the cat, I couldn't help noticing how warm the room was on this cold winter afternoon, even though there was no fire in the bedroom grate. Surely there was a stove hidden somewhere. What a clever way to keep a bedroom, ordinarily so frigid, cozy! I got up and looked about the room, hunting about the heavy, dark furniture. I lifted the rich green drapes that kept the cold from seeping in the frosty window and peeked out into the barren garden. Rows of neatly planted, winter-bare trees rose from the snow, and in the center, a cla.s.sical grotto with Greek columns and a fountain held up by nymphs made an ice sculpture, white on white, in the frozen landscape. Incongruously, a narrow chimney rose from the back of the grotto. Even Madame Montvoisin's garden folly was equipped with every comfort.

Giving up my search, I decided to return to the interesting book in the nightstand. But crossing by the great tapestry behind the bed, I felt an unusual source of warmth and smelled something odd. I lifted the tapestry, and there behind it was a little iron oven set into the stone wall, still giving off a fading warmth. An odd place for an oven, I thought, dropping the tapestry as I heard a knock on the door. It was the fortune-teller's stepdaughter, Marie-Marguerite, just my age but rather taller and straighter, and, as I looked her up and down regretfully, prettier, too. She had a tray with biscuits and chocolate sent up by her stepmother.

"I'd rather be here than downstairs just now," she said cheerfully, licking the brown off the corners of her mouth preparatory to devouring another biscuit. "All those dull masked ladies-'tell me this, tell me that.' When I marry Jean-Baptiste, we'll live above his patisserie, and I'll do nothing but drink cocoa and play with my babies all day. You won't find me traveling all over the countryside incognito and letting strangers in my house! I'm going to live the way a real woman should, with my man taking care of me."

"Nice work, if you can get it," I answered, annoyed at her pretty brown curls.

"Oh, well, don't feel bad. You can't help it if men aren't interested. You'll do well enough reading water gla.s.ses, I imagine, though I thought it was awfully boring, myself. Want to play cards?" And she took from her ap.r.o.n pocket a pack of well-thumbed playing cards wrapped in a sc.r.a.p of silk scarf. "Here," she said, dealing them out in an elaborate pattern like a star between us where we sat on the bed. The cards were like nothing I'd ever seen before. They were painted not with hearts and clubs but with knives, towers, faces of the sun, hermits, kings, and queens. "Why, that's a very nice one!" she exclaimed.

"Nice what? How do we play the game?"

"It's not a game, silly; it's your fortune. See the sun there? That's good luck. And that one there means money soon. Now, who else shall we do?"

"What about the cat?" She laughed and dealt the cards again. "Oh, puss, a death's head for you, you old thing. Best not go outside, or you'll be made into stew by the a.s.sistant gardener's family!" So we spent the remainder of the afternoon quite pleasantly, casting fortunes for various family members and grandees at court. "Only you mustn't do it for the King," she cautioned. "That's treason, and they will draw and quarter you in the Place de Greve for it." Clearly, becoming wealthy in the fortune-telling business had more pitfalls than her stepmother had made out.

CHAPTER NINE

"So, Mademoiselle, let's see how quick you are. Here are three cards: ten, queen, king. Now, I lay them out in order on their faces. Where's the queen?" I pointed to the place where the queen lay, facedown, on La Voisin's great, dark dining table. The winter rain rattled at the windows, in a way that made the tall, tapestry-hung room and leaping fire seem all the more cheerful and delightful. "Wrong! Try again! Ha! Wrong again! Look sharp!" The magician's hands, smooth and deft, flashed across the cards. Another of La Voisin's lovers, but one of the chief ones, as far as I could tell from the comings and goings in this most complex of households. An older-looking, rumpled sort of fellow in a rusty wig and homespun, the man who called himself Le Sage seemed almost deceptively clumsy, until you looked into his shrewd eyes and caught sight of the smooth-moving, swift hands, so curiously white, which he usually kept protected in gloves.

"Your eyes need gla.s.ses, Mademoiselle-why, here's the queen, hidden up your own sleeve." The white hand flicked past my own, as he produced the queen with a flourish.

The false shuffle, the break, the false cut, the force, I had learned them all, and now the desired card would slither invisibly to the top of the deck under my hands. Invaluable knowledge for a fortune-teller. But always, Le Sage was the master. Now he shuffled the three cards back into the deck, and the cards leaped between his hands like liquid.

"Show me that, Le Sage," I begged.

"Foolish again, Mademoiselle," he announced. "A card reader should never look too adept at the shuffle. A certain naive sincerity is important. Intensity. Survey each card slowly, as if you were spying an oracle of doom. Watch Madame through the peephole next time she reads for a client." Then, as if to prove his point, he shuffled the cards again, this time with one hand only.

Madame Montvoisin's house was a veritable factory for deception, with peepholes behind tapestries, a speaking tube between the dining room and the reception room, and oiled pulleys in the ceiling that could be worked from the floor above. In the few days I had been there, I had already seen a seance at which a ghostly white hand had appeared, conveniently lowered on a black thread. Yet even then I sensed there were things I was not allowed to see. There was the masked woman, pale and frightened, who was shown upstairs for some unknown purpose. The smoking stove in the garden pavilion and Madame's study with its strange cupboards remained under lock and key. Sometimes Madame would silence jesting among the members of her household with a dark look, saying, "If you understood my powers, you would never say that in my presence."

But for the most part, I was too busy to wonder about the deeper mysteries in the house on the rue Beauregard. I had been plunged into a round of instruction: the signs of the zodiac, the lines of the palm, the interpretation of blobs of candle wax dripped into a bowl of water. Then there was the deciphering of signs and portents and the study of objects, such as stones, and the memorization of which of them restored health, brought luck, or protected against poison. All must be learned, if I were to impress my new clients, for most of the aristocrats who consulted fortune-tellers were themselves students of the occult, and quick to spot an amateur.

"So, Adam, how is the progress? Didn't I tell you she was quick?" La Voisin had bustled in from the reception parlor after the last of a long series of consultations.

"As usual, right, my love. Your powers of discovery are undimmed. And your idea-purest genius. The way she talks-all purse lipped and sharp, with those long words! Marvelous! Who would ever believe she was anything less than a century old?" La Voisin looked pleased with herself. Then nothing would do but to demonstrate my new skills. La Voisin ordered a bit of wine and a plate of cakes from the kitchen and then seated herself in her armchair at the head of the table.

"Ah, excellent," breathed the sorceress. "But you, Mademoiselle, what is this sour look I see? Where is your grat.i.tude for the treasures of knowledge showered on you?"

"I thought I agreed to be transformed into a beautiful object of desire, not a cardsharp," I answered. La Voisin laughed.

"All in time, you spoiled little miss. Why, I've already made the arrangements. It's about time you boarded out, anyway. I don't want to risk my clients getting a glimpse of you before you're done."

"Done? Like a roast?"

"Done like a masterpiece. You will be my crowning achievement."

"Our crowning achievement, my sweet," corrected the magician, finishing his wine. "Have you seen Lemaire yet?"

"Yes, it's all arranged. Consultation with Lemaire, then the dressmaker. Bouchet has been slow with the genealogy-he says court business is so heavy these days. I reminded him of his little...ah...debt to us, and that did seem to make him considerably more attentive."

"Bouchet, the genealogist?" I interrupted. "The one who improves people's ancestors when they want to rise at court?"

"Bouchet, the genius, my dear. You see? I've spared no expense. You must admit a t.i.tle will enhance you. Besides, it opens so many doors. I wish you to have a well-placed clientele. Yes indeed, you'll enjoy your new self-that I can guarantee. How do you like the t.i.tle of the Marquise de Morville, eh? Elegant, isn't it? Get used to the sound of it."

"But...but...I will be pretty, won't I? Like other girls? You promised." La Voisin and Le Sage exchanged glances.

"My dear," responded the sorceress, "I promised to make you beautiful and desired, but I did not promise to make you like other girls. A fortune-teller must never be common. You must have that air of mystery-a G.o.ddesslike distance from all that is ordinary. Adam, did you bring the book?"

With a flourish, Le Sage produced from his pocket a little volume bound in calfskin. I leafed through it. A volume of manners from the time of Henri IV.

"Now, you can study that this evening," announced La Voisin, "after our lesson at the gla.s.s. I want you to pa.s.s for a creature from another century. The Marquise de Morville is a very old lady."

"But I don't want to be old," I protested.

"Not old. Preserved in eternal youth. By the secret arts of alchemy." She waggled her eyebrows humorously. She didn't need to go further. I saw it at once. Mystery. Magnetism. A rare joke. Aristocratic households that would never have considered receiving the financier Pasquier, even in his days of favor and fortune, would vie with one another to receive the most outrageous charlatan ever conceived. Such are the penalties of wealth and boredom. It was delicious.

That night I wrote in my book:

December 12, 1674. The great Plato says that the ma.s.ses are not fit to govern by reason of their gullibility. But what shall we say then of the first families of France, who are equally gullible? How I wish I could discuss this point with Father. I believe he would find the Marquise de Morville as splendid a prank as I do.

The very next evening, after a hilarious celebration in which far too many toasts were drunk to my splendid new career, I was bundled off in a carriage to a concealed location, where I might regenerate like a caterpillar in its coc.o.o.n before I burst on an amazed world.

I awoke in an alien country. Winter light was shining through the open shutters of a narrow little room and making shining patterns on the bare wooden floor by the bed. Repet.i.tive bouquets of stenciled flowers brightened the yellow painted walls under the slanted eaves, and the tiny attic chamber smelled of fresh linen. The pillow felt as if it were filled with bricks. The featherbed weighed a thousand pounds. I had an awful headache. I turned my head. My clothes were hanging on a peg, my notebooks piled neatly beside my shoes. Someone had put a nightgown on me and put me to bed. Why, as long as I don't move my head, the fortune-telling business isn't bad, so far, I thought. There was a knock on the door, and a busy, buxom young woman in a cap and ap.r.o.n entered the room, allowing the smell of chocolate to float up from somewhere in the bowels of the house. I groaned.