The Oracle Glass (48 page)

“Madame de Morville, we would like you to come with us,” he announced. And before I knew it, I had been hurried, satchel and all, into a waiting carriage for the trip to the Châtelet.

Desgrez sat silently observing me as I sat between the two sergeants on the seat opposite him. Facing backward, I could not see the
boucherie
as we approached the Châtelet, but I could smell it. Piles of offal, the alleys running with animal blood and filth—the slaughterhouses of Paris made bad neighbors, except for a prison. I started counting the possible reasons for being detained. They certainly were numerous, now that I thought about it. What I hadn't done, I'd seen or heard about. I knew enough about the underground life of Paris to vanish for life. And they'd sealed the house. I doubted they'd find my coffer and cache of forbidden books in their hiding place behind the wall panels. But the last of my coded “account books” had been left in the drawer of my nightstand. I racked my brains trying to remember what was in it. Had I been careful enough? And then there was all that dreadful business with the King. Suppose he'd decided to put an end to my political fortune-telling by imprisoning me for life with a
lettre
de
cachet
? In that case, I'd never even know why I was held. I'll be silent until they read the charges, I thought. Then perhaps I can think of something.

A covered cart—the Châtelet hearse—passed us going in the opposite direction. The smell of it was so foul that the driver and attendants had tied kerchiefs over their faces. The unclaimed dead, being hauled to the order of Les Filles Hospitalières de Sainte-Catherine, where the nuns as a holy duty prepared the rotting bodies for burial in the Cimitière des Innocents. An image arose in my mind—d'Urbec, following my coffin—and my eyes stung. Would he ever find out what had become of me when he returned? My nose seemed runny, and my hands were unsteady. Desgrez had taken out his handkerchief to cover his face. Even the man who could sit impassively all night by a burning corpse was choking on the stench of the lost souls of Paris. My mind seemed to flicker like a candle in a draft. Perhaps I'm getting sick, I thought.

I had expected the carriage to enter the dark underpassage and deposit us by the prison entrance. But instead we turned, passing by the twin towers and their central arch, incongruously surmounted by a statue of the Virgin, and entered the judicial side, where the courts and guardrooms for the watch and the
huissiers
were located. I staggered as I got out of the carriage in the courtyard. Desgrez smiled as the sergeants had to steady me on our march up the stairs into the cavernous old fortress. Our war of nerves has begun, he seemed to announce, and you are losing.

After passing through a long, dank corridor, I was shown into an antechamber where several clerks sitting at high desks were transcribing records into ledgers. Rows of muskets and pikes were mounted on the walls, and men in the blue suits and white-plumed hats of the police were lounging on wooden benches. The center of the police hive, I thought. But there was a center within a center. We passed through a hidden corridor into a narrow room, richly paneled, with a high seat and heavy table behind a low wooden barrier. The secret interrogation chamber for suspects of high degree. “Wait,” said Desgrez. “The session in the chambers is not yet finished.”

A moment later, an inner door opened, and La Reynie himself appeared, wearing the pale, heavy wig, long red judicial robe, and white linen bands of a Lieutenant General of the Police. He was followed by a clerk.

“Monsieur de La Reynie.” Desgrez took off his hat and addressed his chief, who looked at me a long time with his hard, intelligent eyes. The man who had supervised the torture of the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Not someone to play games with, especially on his own territory.

“Captain Desgrez—I see you have brought the so-called Madame de Morville. Excellent,” La Reynie replied, motioning Desgrez to sit on one of the armless chairs that lined the room, but leaving me still standing. As I stood there, I realized I was developing a splitting headache, so bad that I could hardly think. I could feel the cold sweat starting to run down my temples. Then a fine tremor began to run down my limbs. Damn, damn! I wasn't ill at all. I'd missed my dose of cordial. And here I needed all my wits about me. I could almost see the lovely little green bottle lying there in the bottom of my satchel, in the grasp of that big lout of a sergeant.

“Madame, you look pale,” said La Reynie. “Do you need to sit?” I didn't like the tone of his voice, all that false sympathy that shrouded something quite the opposite. Tell him you want the stuff, cried my body, shouting through the throbbing headache. Keep quiet, shouted my mind. Do you want to put yourself entirely at his mercy? I sat down suddenly on the little wooden stool reserved for those being interrogated. The body, which usually tends to win these internal arguments, set my mouth to talking:

“Monsieur de La Reynie, Monsieur Desgrez, your pardon, but I am suffering from an old infirmity and must have a few drops of my, ah, heart medicine, which is in my satchel over there.” By now the tremors were visible. The two of them looked at each other, then at me. La Reynie made a gesture to one of the sergeants, who began to unpack my bag onto a nearby bench. As the cabalistic cloth, the rods with the strange figures, the round glass vase were unpacked, Desgrez could not resist picking them up and inspecting them. Then the sergeant handed him the green glass bottle and the tiny cordial glass.

“Poison?” Desgrez asked, turning to La Reynie.

“Hand the bottle to me,” answered the Lieutenant General of Police. Unsealing the bottle, he ran it under his nose, and a strange little smile crossed his face.

“Not poison, Desgrez. Madame is an opium eater. Look there, at how eagerly she pours the precise dose. This makes our job even easier.” La Reynie's voice was even, his faint smile ironic. Body, you do it to me every time. Now he has you, I thought. But the trembling was fading, the pain passing, and I felt self-possessed again.

“Madame de Morville, we have had our eye on you for a long time. You are a charlatan; you are posing as a person of aristocratic birth, and you have grown wealthy on deception—No, don't protest. We have the records. The Marquisate of Morville is long defunct. The only way you could lay claim to the title is if you were, in fact, over a century old. Do not take me for a superstitious woman, Madame. I find your claims to longevity preposterous, although not illegal. However, your other activities, Madame de Morville, are a different matter altogether.” The clerk handed him a little green notebook, the one I had put in my own nightstand drawer the night before. La Reynie took it up in his hand and, with a pleasant expression, leafed casually through it, well aware of the desperate search I was now conducting in my mind, trying to remember what was in it: clients' names, dates, fees—a calculation of La Voisin's percentage…

“French written in Greek letters—not difficult for an educated man to penetrate, though doubtless confusing enough to the kind of people you associate with. Why do you keep your book in code, Madame?”

“To protect the names of my clients from gossip and my, ah, personal observations—”

“Personal observations that might be construed as heretical in some quarters, eh?” La Reynie set the book down on the table and smoothed down a page, reading aloud: “‘If the nature of God is both all-powerful and good, then why would He create a world so full of evil? Either He is not all-powerful, or he is not good. In the first case, He could not then be God as defined, or, in the second case, in the creation of evil, He would be difficult to distinguish from the Devil. Therefore, a geometrical proof of the existence of God must depend first upon the precise definition of evil—' Have you heard enough?”

“My thoughts were not for publication.”

“Ah, but they are written evidence of a most impious state of mind. Are you aware of the penalties reserved for freethinkers? I could send you to the block. Good. Shall I go on to other matters? Murder, perhaps?” He paused and stared into my eyes. Now I know how a bird feels when it is frozen in the stare of a viper, I thought. He wants to know about Uncle, or the procurement of abortion. Either one could be my death, even if he didn't have proof of freethinking. He knows everything. But I'll give him nothing. I won't let him startle a confession from me. He'll have to go the whole way to get any information from me.

“Why are you playing with me like this?” I asked. “You want something of me. What is it?”

“Ah, very clever, Madame de Morville. I felt your reputation as a fortune-teller must rest on a certain native intelligence. And somewhere you have been tutored, though I found many errors in your Latin. Yes, I want something of you. And I want you to understand that your life is in my hands, so that you will not hesitate to provide the information I seek.”

“What information is that?”

“Madame de Morville, it is my job to secure the tranquility of this tumultuous city. I deal daily in cabals, conspiracies, assassinations. For this I need information about the actions of suspicious persons.” He paused and leaned back in his chair, the better to inspect my reactions. “I have a number of informers among the confessors of this city, but their information is so often after the fact—the deed has been done, the crime committed, the criminal eventually feels guilt and runs to the confessional to confide in God. But a fortune-teller”—he leaned forward across the table and stared at me—“a fortune-teller hears the secret desires of the city before they become deeds, at the very moment of their planning. A fortune-teller with a high clientele is perfectly placed to find conspiracy
before
it is enacted.”

He paused and turned the pages of my account book. “Here”—and he again began to read aloud, hesitating only slightly over the alien letters—“‘Madame de Roure wishes for the return of her lover, visit on April 13 last, v. prediction, 100 francs. Madame Dufontet desires the Duc de Luxembourg to give a position to her husband, n.v., she vows she will have it anyway. The Comtesse de Soissons, desires a lover of the highest rank—' The King, I believe? The writing of this alone could send you to the Bastille for life, if it were made known in the correct circles. Need I read more?” I was silent.

“Not only do you know the secrets of the city before they become action, you can, by your predictions, shape action,” he went on. “‘v.' stands for ‘I see,' doesn't it? And ‘n.v.' for ‘I don't see'? ‘
Non video
,' or ‘
ne vois
.' Transparent.” He raised a supercilious eyebrow. “Your predictions in each case, aren't they? I want to know these passions, these predictions, these vendettas.” I didn't like the look on his face. Hard, unpleasant, superior, as if he held a spider in his hand and would as soon smash it as anything else. I looked about the dark paneled room with the unlit candles in the heavy iron sconces on the walls. I could see the same expression on the face of Desgrez, the clerk, and the sergeants.

“You want me to become a police informer? And if I don't?”

“Then you will find the punishment for murder is very swift and sure here. I pride myself on the fact that my reforms have made justice a matter of days in this city.”

“And just what murder is that?” I asked. Best to know how far they've gone, and what they know.

“Ha, I see you require a tight leash. You are bold as well as intelligent. But I think we are coming to understand each other. From this moment on, if you try to deceive me even once, I'll see you hanged for the murder of Geneviève Pasquier.” He paused for effect. Desgrez's eyes narrowed. I couldn't believe it. Of all that I'd done, of all that I'd witnessed or been a party to, they wanted me for the murder of myself! I began to laugh. The sound of it clattered eerily in the near-empty chamber. I doubled over, and tears ran down my face. I was nearly choking with hilarity. I could feel my face all hot and fevered with it, and could hardly breathe. La Reynie stood up, furious, and clenched his fists.

“Madame, if you cannot control yourself, I'll shut you up in La Griesche until you can.”

As the fit passed, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. The laughter had turned into hiccups.

“Your pardon…Monsieur de La Reynie…
hic
…you see, it's not possible…
hic
…because I myself…
hic
…am Geneviève Pasquier.”

“This changes nothing,” snapped Desgrez. Ah, Desgrez, so
that
was your pet theory. Too bad, I thought.

“Of course, Desgrez, though it complicates things slightly. Tell me, Madame, what proof do you have of your claim?” La Reynie's voice was bland, sinister.

“Proof? Why His Majesty himself knows. When I appeared before him he demanded to know my true identity and then promised he'd have me executed if he ever heard of me reading fortunes in water again. You're too late, Monsieur de la Reynie. The Sun King has already put me out of business.” La Reynie looked annoyed.

“I am afraid we shall have to hold you until we have verified what you have said, Madame, or Mademoiselle, as it may be.”

“Leave me my cordial then, I beg you.”

“Your cordial, and a volume of Père Clement's excellent sermons, to mend your fractious spirit. And I assure you, if you have practiced the least deception, I will have your opium taken away and let you writhe until you've revealed the entire truth to me. In fact, it's not a bad idea to do that anyway. Take her away, Desgrez. I want her in solitary confinement, with orders that she is not allowed to speak to anyone.”

***

I emerged two weeks later considerably lighter of purse, for it is the custom of Parisian jails to charge for accommodations, just as if they were a sort of diabolical inn. My only company was an eye that peered in from time to time through a peephole in the door, a sliver of sunlight that crept along the floor during the afternoon hours, and an assortment of insects. Alone and silent, my mind was haunted by terrible thoughts. Suppose I was never released? What if Florent never found out what happened to me? Would he think I had abandoned him? Would he hate me then? Then a new thought crossed my mind. Suppose when they verified my identity, the King ordered that I be returned to my family? God knows what Étienne would do. Would a prison-convent be worse than this? Could Florent find me there?