The Oracle Glass (10 page)

Again, philanthropy. Surely, I had never met so many charitable souls in my life as in the last few days. We were interrupted by a silvery tinkle of a bell, from the front room, which was actually a shop front, done up as an occultist's parlor and decorated with astrological signs. La Dodée hurried through the parlor to the front door. “Oh, that must be Monsieur Jordain, the apothecary, with his delivery,” I heard her cry as she vanished into the front room. “Thank goodness. We were all out, and we have so many orders.”

She came back escorting a benign-looking elderly gentleman carrying a number of carnation pots all tied up with twine, which he put on the biggest of the worktables.

“Here you are, ladies—still fresh and lively. What's that I smell? Chocolate?”

“It's all gone,” snapped La Trianon, cutting the twine and peeking into one of the pots suspiciously to judge the quality of the merchandise. I couldn't help getting a glimpse inside myself.

The pots were full of live toads.

***

My transformation was accomplished in a series of visits to the back room of the shop of a fashionable
coiffeuse-bouquetière
near the Porte Saint-Denis: yet another establishment tied to Madame's “philanthropic society.” There I was poked and prodded and passed judgment upon until I wept: my face, my walk, my posture were unforgivable in a woman of fashion. A failed ballet master in Madame's debt was consulted and found that one leg was shorter than the other. He sent for a shoemaker, to make a padded shoe with a built-up sole, then squinted down my spine and sent for the
corsetière
. This worthy constructed to his order a hideous instrument of torture with steel stays that ran straight up to my shoulders.

“There,” he said, as I was sewed into it so tightly that the tears squeezed from my eyes. “‘Change her so her own mother wouldn't recognize her.' That's what the old witch said, and by God, that's what I'll do!”

“But how do I get out of it?” I asked desperately.

“You don't,” he said calmly. “All of my pupils are sewn into their corsets night and day until they achieve court posture. Don't worry—the bones are still soft.”

“Your eyebrows—ugh, they grow like weeds,” said the
coiffeuse-bouquetière
as she plucked the hairs from the bridge of my nose.

“Why can't you do anything that isn't painful?” I asked, my mind on my aching back and sore ribs.

“Haven't you ever heard the old adage ‘One must suffer to be beautiful'? You're lucky to have good skin. Not marked by the smallpox, though in a man a little marking is considered distinguished. The King, for example, is marked by the smallpox, and he is the
model
of elegance.”

It made a certain sort of bizarre sense. What is a flaw in a common person is merely spice in an aristocratic one. Suddenly I knew that the Marquise de Morville, if she became rich enough, powerful enough, could redefine beauty. That was La Voisin's trick. She had no magic potion to make me truly beautiful. She would simply change the way the world saw me. It was brilliant, like a magician's illusion.

The same dilapidated hired fiacre that always took me to and from these appointments was waiting to return me to La Trianon's establishment. I'd grown used to the idea that the coachman, a one-eyed man in a rusty black cloak, never asked for payment. But this afternoon, something splendid happened. The one-eyed man hesitated to help me into the little carriage, squinting up and down as if I were a stranger.

“Well, well, well,” cackled the ancient driver. “Same clothes…must be the same girl, after all. Looks considerably less like a gargoyle.” As the old horse ambled off, I could hear him muttering to himself, “Not bad, not bad at all.”

But at the cross street, we had to pull suddenly to a halt at the cry of the postillions of an elaborately painted and gilded heavy carriage, drawn by six horses at a fast trot, whose passage sent pedestrians scampering and splattered slushy mud on everything nearby.

“Make way! Make way!” We could hear new voices from the opposite direction as a second equipage, pulled by four heavy bays at full speed, careened out of the narrow street opposite. There was a scream of horses, wild oaths, and a crunching sound as the fast-moving carriages locked wheels and the lackeys from each equipage swarmed down to avenge the insult done to their masters' honor.

“Well, here's fun,” grumbled the driver. “We're trapped here until they clear the street.” The uniformed lackeys had drawn their swords, and we could hear them shrieking insults as they attacked each other. Then a cheer went up from the gathering crowd of gawkers, as the master of the first carriage leaped from his vehicle and forced open the door of the second carriage, pulling out its occupant to give him a good drubbing with his walking stick.

“You fool, you'll pay. I am the English ambassador,” gasped the second man.

“Then take that, treacherous English,” we could hear the first man cry as he struck a heavy blow with his stick. Both were soon lost to view amid their struggling servants, and interspersed with the cries of “
A
moi! A moi!
” and “Damned lunatic!” we could hear the slither of drawn steel.

“Oh, my God, the police,” said my driver. “And we're wedged in here tight. Draw the curtain.” I saw the driver shrink into his cloak and pull his old, wide-brimmed hat low. Sure enough, peeping from behind the curtain, I spied the baggy blue suits and white-plumed hats of the Paris police. Their sergeant, distinguished by his red stockings, ran behind them as they waded into the mêlée. As they cleared a path to the wreckage, a wiry dark man of medium height with a sharp profile, wearing the decent suit of a bourgeois of good standing, moved toward the carriages with a commanding air. He doffed his hat humbly and bowed low before the wrangling gentlemen, one of whom, in his foreign-cut doublet and expensive-looking but provincial coat, seemed somewhat the worse for wear. In the fashion of such quarrels, they both turned on the newcomer and threatened him. The wiry gentleman beat a hasty retreat, bowing backward, leaving his police to take care of the lackeys.

“Driver, driver, are you free?” a man's voice inquired from the crowd. It was the police officer. I dropped the curtain.

“I've got a passenger just now.”

“Then he can walk home. Desgrez of the police requires your services.”

“It's a lady,” said my driver.

“Oho, a lady, Latour?” The policeman had recognized my driver. “Then I'm sure your ‘lady' won't mind a detour by the Châtelet now, will she?” The rickety little carriage swayed as he stepped in.

“Well, well—a lady, indeed; quite a pretty little lady, too. Not your usual type, eh, Latour, to judge by her blushes? Mademoiselle, may I present myself. I am Captain Desgrez, of the Paris police. I trust your detour will not be too far out of the way. Just where were you bound?”

Without a thought, I answered in the patois of the Paris shop girl apprentice. “I'm returning to my mistress, Madame Callet. You know 'er, don't you? Fine linens for the gentry? I was makin' a delivery to the Hôtel Tubeuf.” As the fiacre finally jolted into motion, he took out a notebook and a little pencil and began to write up his report of the accident. Once finished, I saw he was inspecting me closely.

“That's a rather handsome dress for the apprentice of a
lingère
,” he remarked in an offhand way.

“Ain't it fine, now? I got it hardly worn in a used-clothing stall at the Halles.” I was no fool. I knew where the servants and the poor of Paris get their grand, grimy, and mismatched things.

“Do you remember which
fripier
it was?” The quiet voice sounded definitely sinister. Squashed into the tiny carriage with him as I was, I feared he could hear my heart pounding.

“Why, the one near the column, with the sign of the monkey and the mirror.” He looked a long time at my face. I opened my eyes and looked back. He had a narrow, intelligent face with dark, severe eyes. He wore his own black hair, cut short at the collar. If I had not known him for a policeman, I might have taken him for a seminarian—or an inquisitor.

“Might be true,” I could hear him mutter to himself. “It doesn't seem to fit well. Still, light mourning, gray with black and gray silk ribbons…” He inspected the dress carefully. I could feel him looking at the long mended gash to the waist, where the ribbons and trim had been moved to conceal as much of the neat patching as possible. Aha, I thought. A man of logic. The most dangerous kind. We were approaching the judicial side of the great prison-fortress by the rue Pierre-à-Poisson, where the long tables of the fish sellers that were built against the fortress wall were covered with thousands of goujons, carp, and other river fish. An army of fish sellers gutted fish and shouted their wares to crowds of customers who pressed around the carriage, oblivious of it in their search for the perfect fish. The stink was unbearable. Heaps of rotting fish offal lay beneath the tables, and rats ran freely through the foul mounds of garbage.

“Tell me, Mademoiselle. Did it show signs of having been damp when you got it?”

“Damp? Oh, no. Dry as a bone. See? The ribbons ain't run a bit, and the wool's not stained.” I held out a sleeve to him. My God, I thought. They gave my description to the police when I vanished. Famille Pasquier—important enough to be a scandal, to be remembered by the police. But somewhere inside me, a voice was singing, “He doesn't recognize me; I look different; he called me pretty.”

“Hmm. Interesting…,” he said, as the little carriage pulled up in the great courtyard of the Châtelet.

“Is there somethin' wrong with my clothes?” I asked, making my voice sound alarmed.

“Why, not at all,” Desgrez replied smoothly. “They are absolutely perfect.
Au
revoir
, little
lingère
. Perhaps I will have the pleasure of meeting you again someday.”

Captain Desgrez strode purposefully through the guardroom of the Châtelet to the inner door at the far end of the great stone hall. He scarcely acknowledged the greeting of the group of officers who stood as he passed, laying aside the muskets they were cleaning.

“What's wrong with him?” asked one of the officers, putting aside his long brush and pulling a pack of cards from his pocket.

“Don't bother him. When he's got that look on his face, he's on the scent of something,” replied the sergeant.

“On the scent? Then too bad for the something,” announced the first man, as he shuffled and dealt the cards.

Through the open door, they could hear the captain shouting at the chief records clerk in the rooms beyond the guardroom. Presently, Desgrez came out with a folder tied with string under his arm and vanished in the direction of Monsieur de La Reynie's chambers.

“Ah, Desgrez, do come in. I was about to send a boy in search of you.” The Lieutenant General of Police, wearing his crimson robe of office, was as courtly as always, although he did not rise from his seat. Behind him the wall was lined with law books. Before him on the desk lay the transcript of the confrontation of two false coiners, who had previously been interrogated separately. La Reynie had marked the conflicting testimony and made note of it in the little red notebook that never left his side. It was a big case, one that involved the treasury and possibly even treason. Louvois, the royal minister to whom he reported, would be impressed. Desgrez removed his hat and bowed.

“Monsieur de La Reynie—”

“I can tell by the look in your eye, Desgrez, that you are on the track of something. Tell me, does it relate to the papers under your arm?”

“Monsieur de La Reynie, Latour the forger is back in town.” La Reynie put aside his notebook.

“That gallows bait?” the chief of police responded.

“And he was driving a girl wearing a dead woman's dress.” Desgrez opened the folder: “Pasquier, Geneviève, Disappearance Of.” A scrap of costly deep gray wool fluttered out as Desgrez laid a dressmaker's sketch before his chief. “The identical garment, badly torn, neatly mended.”

“The case is closed, Desgrez. The body was found in the river.”

“But the dress, Monsieur, showed no signs of ever having been soaked. The braid had not run. It could have been new, apart from the mending.”

“And so you have come to request that the case be reopened, as—”

“As murder, Monsieur de La Reynie. Relatives disappear entirely too easily in this city, especially when an inheritance is involved. As I recall, the girl involved had just been left a rather choice country property the son had expected to come to him. I wish to make further inquiries.”

“Very well; your zeal is commendable. But I will have to request that you delay your work on this case in favor of a much greater matter. I have just received word that Madame de Brinvilliers has fled from her hiding place in England at last. The scandal of her escape from France was laid at our door, Desgrez.” La Reynie looked suddenly bitter.

“But…her rank…surely Louvois knows…she was assisted at the highest level…”

“They are blinded by rank, Desgrez. They believe there should be two laws, these courtiers, one for them, one for everyone else. But rank does not dazzle
me
, I assure you. This kingdom must have one justice, or perish. Her rank does not change the facts; the woman poisoned her family systematically to get money to support her lovers. If she were a commoner, her ashes would already have been blowing in the wind. I want you to find her, wherever she is, and bring her back for execution.”

“Where was she last sighted?”

“At Dover,” answered the Lieutenant General of Police, handing Desgrez the report of his English spies that he had taken from the desk drawer. “I have here the name of the ship. You can begin by questioning the master of the
Swallow
. There are also the names of several passengers here. My suspicion is that she will go to ground in a convent—foreign, but French-speaking. In which case we will eventually receive notification from the church authorities. The King himself has ordered that the most notorious poisoner in the history of the kingdom cannot be allowed to escape us.”

“There is, however, the matter of religious asylum…”

“A small matter for a man as skilled as you, Desgrez. Just leave no traces—nothing that would embarrass His Majesty. I am putting you in charge of the case. You must bring her back here at any cost.”

Desgrez bowed in assent, but deep in his memory he filed away the image of the shopgirl in the gray dress. And before he returned the folder to the records room he scrawled on it, “Callet—
lingère
” to remind himself of where to begin the inquiry anew.