The Oracle Glass (15 page)

“Monsieur Visconti, how could you offer such an insult to my dead husband's honor? Trade, indeed! Think of your mother when you say a dreadful thing like that,” I said, in my best owlish-old-lady manner.

“The rest,” he announced, “I will tell her in secret, since it is not my business to embarrass venerable ladies. But from the lineaments of your face, Madame la Marquise, I will give you a warning: Beware the company you keep.”

“Ah,” sighed the onlookers, deeply impressed.

“And be careful of accepting food and drink from strangers.” Well, that's pretty general, I thought. A triumph for Visconti. Now he won't be angry. Then he stood up and leaned across the little table and whispered in my ear:

“Little minx, I haven't the heart to give you away. I think I'm half in love with you already. And as a rule I prefer tall, golden-haired women, I'll have you know. But you—you're as bold a little girl as any cavalier who ever tried to seize a throne.”

I could feel the blush spreading under my white powder and hear the company shout with laughter, thinking he had made an indecent proposition.

“This is a wicked world, a world of sinners nowadays,” I cried, shaking my tall walking stick at Visconti.

“Why are old people always so ill-tempered?” he asked with a lazy smile. “Of what use is an alchemical remedy for the skin if there's none for bad humor?”

I told a number of fortunes that night and recommended to the mother of a girl who'd been gotten pregnant by her lover just before her engagement to the man the family had chosen that she go and consult with La Voisin. Just exactly what my patroness did with cases like that I didn't know, but I had begun to suspect of late that it might involve more than doling out talismans and powders made of dried pigeons' hearts. But just what went on with the tense, pale, masked women who avoided one another's eyes in her waiting room I could not imagine.

At the end of the evening, the Duc de Nevers had a purse of silver pressed on me in appreciation of my services. The servant who delivered it wanted some, Rabel wanted some, but there was still a tidy bit left, especially because I had tucked half of it away before he counted it. I wasn't surprised at all when I received a message a week later to attend Madame la Maréchale de Clérambaut, the governess of the children of Monsieur, the King's younger brother, and an astrologer of some repute, at the Palais-Royal.

***

“I am tired of black,” I said to myself as I looked in the tiny square of a mirror on my dressing table that evening. Tired of playing at being an old lady, tired of peering in the water glass until my eyes ached, tired of telling lies. I could be pretty, I thought, if I had a dress the color of springtime. The right dress—yes. Cut just so, to show an embroidered petticoat, but hide my shoes. These ladies of fashion, they weren't all so pretty, most of them. It was the clothes they had. And I looked almost straight, maybe even entirely straight in the dim light of the single candle that stood on the table beside the mirror. I wasn't that thin; I wasn't that small. Not really.

Now is the time I miss Marie-Angélique most, I thought. “You actually want a new dress, Sister?” she'd say. “Oh, do let's go look at the fashion drawings at Au Paradis on the Pont au Change. And they have the prettiest linens there, all made up. When I'm rich, I'll have a dressing gown from there, in that lovely painted Indian cotton, and some little velvet slippers just like I saw in the boutique across the way.” Even without money, she lived for shopping. If I were with her, I'd feel the fun and excitement of new things and forget metaphysical worries. “Sister, you fret too much. A nice pair of earrings always makes a girl feel entirely new,” she'd say if she were with me now. Maybe there was something to Marie-Angélique's philosophy of life, after all. I imagined her at home, playing the clavecin, admired by men. How lucky to be born beautiful, to have the luxury of carefree happiness.

The fatigue of an evening of readings made my bones feel all watery. I took a spoonful of my sleeping medicine and stared into the mirror again. Beware, said my mind. Remember the witches' warning. If you lose control of the images, they will possess you, and you will lose your mind. In the depths of the glass, figures seemed to be moving unbidden. But still I didn't look away. I wanted to drown myself in the shapes that had appeared. I could see Lamotte, sitting in his shirt on the side of a massive, brocade draped bed. His shirt was open at the neck, and I could see the white skin across his collarbone, the pulse of blood at his neck. He leaned forward and took off the shirt. God, he was beautiful. The fine dusting of hair across his chest, its rise and fall as his breath moved in and out. I put my face closer to the mirror, fogging it with my own breath. There was movement in the bed, and I could make out a strange woman's white arm, a round shoulder, a tumble of pale hair. Why did I need to know this? Is this how the images brought destruction, by breaking one's heart with the knowledge of what one was?

I could feel the tears making tracks through the heavy powder on my face. Had I frightened him that day, being too clever? Had he ever meant anything more than condescending gallantry, the way he had charmed me? Poor plain sister, what else could it have been? You were never anything but a means to get to the beautiful, unreachable face he saw in the window. Suppose I saw him again and I looked like a queen? Suppose I did get a
poudre
d'amour
from La Voisin and put it in his cup? Suppose I laughed and chattered about charming nothings and rolled my eyes, like other women—oh, suppose on, Geneviève, you fool. André Lamotte will never be yours, no matter what you do. I took another big spoonful of the cordial, and the image vanished.

“Madame.” Brigitte stood at the door, waiting to help me undress. The rows of tiny buttons, the pins in the bodice, the heavy hooped petticoat were impossible to negotiate alone. At last we were down to the steel corset, the front, flat filigree, hinged in the middle, the back, rods and laces to the neck.

“Brigitte, unlace it. I want it off.”

“But, Madame, you have been tightening it every week.”

“Off, I say, or I will die. I must be myself again, no matter what it costs.” When she had it off, the thin shirt beneath showed the marks of rust where my sweat had eaten at the merciless steel.

“Oh, my God, help me!” I cried, as I collapsed onto the floor. The steady support of the steel had caused the muscles of my torso to lose all their strength. I could not stand or sit upright. I had the backbone of a worm. Brigitte, her eyes wide with alarm, called for her mother, and together the two women managed to drag me to bed. There I lay, staring at the ceiling in the dark, as the fever rushed through my body in fiery waves, and mad images of past, present, and future swarmed like hobgoblins in the air.

***

“I've seen snails with more backbone.” I was having a strange dream. La Voisin, thousands of feet tall, was towering over my bedside in her dusty traveling cloak and wide, plumed gray hat. “No sooner do I return on the diligence from Lyon than I discover that all hell has broken loose. La Filastre has held back money. Guibourg is raising his fee. Who does the man think he is? It is
I
who send him his business! And that ungrateful Le Sage is trying to steal my clients for himself. At least La Pasquier has kept her good sense, I said to myself, only to discover that you are rolled in a ball dying of fever from unrequited love. Surgeon, how many more bleedings to reduce the fever?”

“Another one ought to do it,” I could hear the answer from somewhere far away.

“Good. Take it from the heel this time. I don't want her wrists marked.” I could feel the bedclothes being lifted up, and hear other people moving in the room. “And now, Mademoiselle, the name of this
man
who robs me of my investment?”

The dream was very strange. I was not in my bed at Madame Bailly's. “Where am I?” I thought I might have said.

“Don't begin to annoy me with the remembrance of the trouble I have had getting you here without that police snoop of a widow knowing where you were going. The name, the name, Mademoiselle. I know it's André. André what? Speak up. Lamotte? Lamotte, the playwright? Oh, how foolish! You'll build no fortune with
him
! He's a nobody! Listen, you silly, sick rabbit, and take my advice. Brissac is ripe for the picking. He quarrels with Nevers; he has a title; he will advance your interests. And he's hungry. When he sees the money you earn, he'll take up with you in a flash. He can give you as good a tumble as Lamotte, anytime. And he's an alchemist. He can supply us with…Ha! You've fallen for the most ambitious gigolo in Paris. Fall in love with Brissac, I say. We'll get something out of
that
!”

“Brissac's disgusting,” I whispered.

“So you think you can be choosy? Listen closely, little Marquise, there is no room for squeamishness in this business. Once you have entered our world, there is no going back. If you are ever discovered, your closest male relative has a right to everything you own. You'll go straight to the prison-convent on his petition for what you've done already. A girl from a respectable family living on her own? Making money as a fortune-teller? The authorities would be scandalized. As long as they think you're a widow, as long as you have our protection, they'll leave you alone. But don't ever think you can cut and run; once you're beyond our reach, you'll never see the sun again, I can assure you.”

As the blood flowed into the surgeon's bowl, I could feel weakness, weakness and sanity filling me. A patch of blue sky shone through a tiny window. A slanted ceiling reached almost to the floor beside the bed. I was in the tiny attic bedroom under the eaves in La Voisin's house.

“And now, I say, you will get up tomorrow, you will lace up that corset again, and you will keep your appointment at the Palais-Royal. Remember this: if you make your fortune, you can buy Lamotte for a toy. If you fail, your uncle will piss on your grave. You have no place to go but up.”

“I hate it; I can't wear it anymore,” I whispered to the towering dream-figure.

“Can't? There's no such word. But from now on, you may take it off at night. You need considerably more spine than you have at present. And you're looking straighter, even now, without it.”

Straighter? The room seemed to fall away as my eyes grew heavier. I could see myself like a lady, all straight, in the garden of a château, gathering roses. I could hear a man calling my name. I could be beautiful. I could be rich. I could be beloved. Roses. Yes. I needed the rose-colored dress.

***

The light of hundreds of candles multiplied itself in the mirrors and shone again from the gilt paneling of the small reception room in the Palais-Royal. The ranking guests were seated in brocade-covered armchairs; lesser figures had to content themselves with heavy, fringed stools. The small fry stood, or, rather, oozed gently between the armchairs, listening deferentially and offering flattery as required. I could hear the light laughter of the maréchale behind her fan, for, winter or summer, no court lady was without a fan, as she teased, “…but, my dear Countess, they say the Marquis de Seignelay is absolutely
besotted
with you!”

“It is not my fault who looks at me. The question is whether I look at him. And you must admit that the marquis has an unmistakable
je
ne
sais
quoi
de
bourgeois
about him.”

“That, of course, is the fault of his father, Colbert. It is such a great shame that the King raises his ministers from
nowhere
. But you can't deny that he is a perfectly darling-looking young man, and of course, exceptionally rich—”

But, of course, the almost invisible stain on his manners, a careless turn of speech, or a tiny flaw in his appearance or dress would deny him entrance to the most exclusive circles. That was the one good thing I had taken away with me from the rue des Marmousets. The look, the speech of good blood. It couldn't be bought; it couldn't be counterfeited. La Voisin could not do without me. The salons could not uncover me. I felt flooded with satisfaction. I was back at work again.

“Whatever you think of Colbert, you must admit that Louvois is far worse.” One minister of state versus another.

“Ah, Louvois!” the lady exclaimed with a laugh. “He has the air of a
valet
de
chambre
.”

“I hear,” said a gentleman in green velvet and the especially high, red-heeled shoes made popular by Monsieur, “that he seeks desperately to repair his appearance, and takes hours dressing, asking advice from men of fashion as to where he should place his ribbons.” The ladies all laughed at the image of Louvois before his mirror. Louvois the vengeful, whose word destroyed, and whose minion, La Reynie, carried out the arrests required by the secret
lettres
de
cachet
Louvois secured from the King. Were he here, with what ironic politeness would he be greeted! How low the bows, how wide the smiles! And how great the laughter when he had made his exit. How could the man not suspect?

But this evening belonged to the occultists, amateur and professional, that had gathered to astonish and amaze one another.

“Why,” said an elderly gentleman I did not recognize, “I have even heard of a horoscope being drawn upon handwriting alone!”

“And who could ever have managed such a thing?” The Comtesse de Gramont's accent still betrayed her English origin. Tall and blond, she moved with the confidence of one who knew that half the men in the room were in love with her. Her husband, they said, was a rake with the nose of a Harlequin, and a bitterly jealous man.

“I do believe it was Primi Visconti,” responded the Abbé de Hacqueville.