Poison Priestess Read online

“From what you have told me of her, I expect she means to tantalize the king,” Adam responds.

  He is much less troubled than I am by this turn of events, so excited he can barely sit still. He drums his elegant fingers impatiently along his thighs, vigor snapping in his eyes. Unlike me, this summons has only ignited his ambitions.

  “Perhaps she can sense him tiring of her, and she seeks to revitalize their spark with a taste of the forbidden,” he suggests. “And what better curiosity to present him with than Satan’s own priestess and priest?”

  “But do you not think she might be setting some kind of snare for us?” I ask, my chest tight with disquiet. “The king is a self-proclaimed devotee of the sciences. What interest could he possibly have in a Devil’s Mass? Remember, he even had his police storm the cité’s havens back in the fall. Why would he allow something of this ilk under his own roof?”

  “Perhaps he is only indulging his maîtresse,” Adam offers with a shrug. “Stranger things have been done in the name of love. Or he may even be approaching this with a skeptic’s eye, the better to debunk our claims of devilish communion.”

  “I expect the consequences of failing to divert him would be steep in either case,” I mutter to myself. “A fine predicament.”

  “Dieu merci, Cat, what does it matter why he calls for us?” Adam demands with a hint of sharpness. “Is this not what we have been waiting for—an opportunity to ensnare the king himself, to make him our audience? How are we to garner his good graces if we never even perform for him?”

  I nibble on my knuckle, unconvinced.

  “Perhaps,” I say uncertainly. “Though you are right in any case; it is not as if we could have told him no.”

  “Are you still comfortable with what we discussed?” Adam asks, fixing me with an intent gaze. “My devilmaker will serve us well, but the pièce de résistance must depend on you.”

  “Do not worry about me,” I say shortly, turning to the window.

  “But, Cat, you are certain you will be able to do it?” he demands. For the first time, his composed aspect betrays a hint of anxiety. Perhaps that is what his frenetic animation truly is, nerves masquerading as zeal. “I know the tension will run high, but—”

  “It will run higher still if you do not cease pestering me,” I snap, rounding on him. “I said I could do it, and I will. Now let us concentrate on making this an evening His Majesty will not soon forget.”

  Adam opens his mouth as though he wishes to add something else, then thinks better of further provoking my ire. He is right; we both know that tonight’s success largely depends on me. There is nothing to be gained by thinning my nerve before we even arrive.

  We lapse instead into a tense silence, each lost to our own thoughts. It is just past the early winter sunset when our carriage draws through Versailles’s soaring gates.

  The gold leaves are wrought into fantastical shapes; curling fleurs-de-lis, overflowing cornucopias, Apollo’s masks, and entwined L’s honoring the king’s Christian name. They make me feel as though we are entering not just the château’s marbled cour d’honneur, but le paradis itself.

  I had thought myself prepared for the sight of the château, after all the stories I have heard of its delights. I know its extraordinary gardens contain more than a thousand sparkling fountains, and a cruciform canal large enough to host a sailing ship flotilla. And the marquise has rhapsodized over its pleasures to me many times, telling me of torchlit picnics in the parks beneath bursting fireworks, gondola trips on the canals by night, and even nocturnal theaters held in the orangery, with its miniature trees and pillars of lapis lazuli.

  But I could not have conceived of Versailles’s colossal expanse, nor of its snow-limned splendor.

  Under a sky still flushed from recent sunset, the château glows like a tremendous jewel. The sun’s last, lingering rays light the facade’s golden embellishments with an almost holy fire, and a candle flickers in each of its countless windows. Doubtless fragrant beeswax to the last, as the Sun King surely does not skimp when it comes to his own light. How much such an extravagance must have cost, I cannot begin to fathom. It is wondrous beyond all words, this château the size of a small city. An otherworldly palace fit more for god than king.

  “Pour l’amour du ciel, it is amazing,” I whisper to Adam, half undone by wonder. “Notre Dieu himself would not be ashamed to make it his home.”

  “Is our king not divine, then?” Adam responds wryly. “Such blasphemy, Cat. Consider his name: Louis Dieudonné, the God-given. A gift to France from le Dieu himself.”

  When we alight, we are escorted inside by guards liveried in the House of Bourbon’s royal blue and white. There is no fanfare to our arrival; quite the opposite, as it would not do to have rumor spread of Adam’s and my presence here. This Messe Noire will be a secret one, as befits a Christian king. I barely have time to drink in the palatial marvels—towering columns, frescoed ceilings, mosaics of starbursts inlaid into the gleaming marble floors—before we are rushed through the crowd of courtiers and common supplicants milling around the halls. More than a thousand nobles make Versailles their home, and the palace is open to the public, too, allowing even the lowborn to catch a glimpse of their lord and liege.

  We are shown to a room small and simple by the château’s standards. Which means only that the floor is not marble but a shining caramel parquet, and that the statues of seraphim peering reproachfully from their alcoves are not quite as tall as me.

  “This will do quite well,” Adam says quietly to me, running an appraising eye over the room. “It will require a slightly different angle, but to excellent effect.”

  I nod curtly, chill tendrils of foreboding creeping up around my chest, afraid that speaking will only betray my anxiety. I desperately wish I could have brought my snakes; I feel nearly naked without at least Alecto around my neck.

  But we have performed alongside each other enough times now, and tangled together in my bed, that Adam has grown as sensitive as a weathervane to the gusts of my emotions. He ventures closer and gently uncrosses my arms, waiting to see if I will resist. When I do not, he pulls me flush against him, cheek to cheek.

  “You are always spectacular, my diabolic priestess,” he whispers, a smile hiding in his voice. “But tonight you will be incomparable—a dark star to put Lucifer himself to shame.”

  I bite my lip, stirred by his support; tenderness between us is not our wont. But before I can respond, servants come bustling in with our accoutrements.

  “You have two hours until your esteemed visitor arrives,” the most officious of them tells us with a meaningful look, avoiding outright mention of the king. “Be sure that your preparations are complete by then.”

  And then there is no further time to fret.

  When the servants withdraw, Adam and I fling ourselves into a whirlwind of activity. While Adam tends to the devilmaker and prepares his other tricks, I get down on my hands and knees to set out candles, paint the floor with runes, and arrange the provided claw-foot table as our altar centerpiece. I also tuck macabre curiosities into every corner of the room: little bouquets of black hollyhock and raven feathers tied with scarlet ribbon, clusters of sharp avian skulls, and my obsidian scrying bowls filled with red wine and pigeon blood.

  Usually we would also have my snakes and at least one ceremonial knife, but we were ordered to bring nothing that might be construed as a threat. And though we were not forbidden the use of scents, we forgo incense as well. We cannot have our reasoned king growing giddy, perhaps fearing that we mean to poison him. The Sun King has enough enemies that his taster not only samples all his food but also rubs the king’s silverware and royal toothpick on bread, in case the utensils themselves are somehow befouled. It is a testament to Athenais’s unswerving dedication that she ever managed to dose his wine at all.

  When the appointed hour strikes, we stand waiting in our hooded robes, Adam poised and empty-handed, me with a flickering candle clasped between my sweaty palms. My bre
ath nearly stutters when the gilded door swings open.

  But it reveals only a slight young herald, whose eyes flare wide as he takes in the room’s dark delights. He clears his throat, struggling mightily to master himself.

  “Bow before Louis, ah, Louis XIV,” he stammers, sweat pearling on his brow. I imagine it must be nerve-racking to introduce a king under the best of times, much less to a magician and a sorceress. “Par la grâce de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre. And his maîtresse-en-titre, Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan.”

  Adam and I exchange a meaningful glance—so this was indeed Athenais’s handiwork—before the pair glide into the darkened room. As Adam bows beside me, I drop into a curtsy so deep that by the time I rise, the king has already been seated on the gold-leaf armchair that is to serve in place of a throne. The marquise sits beside him on a lower and much simpler seat, and the king’s two stone-faced captains of the guard stand at their backs.

  The king himself wears no crown, nor any of the splendid garments he is known to favor. Both he and the marquise are in hooded black, for discretion as well as ceremony. Yet even without any royal raiment, there is no mistaking Louis. Beneath his hood, his famed curls tumble dark and abundant, framing a face so fine-boned and elegant it is no wonder he has broken such a wealth of hearts. With his hands laced loosely in his lap, his eyes bolt the both of us in place like flung javelins.

  And though only I can see it, the Sun King radiates an extraordinary burnished glow, the likes of which my sight has never shown me outside the confines of a vision.

  It reminds me of when I first saw his silhouette, the outline of his gloire blazing in the marquise’s misty future; though that glimpse could never compare to witnessing him in the flesh. The aura of his power sears through me like liquid lightning, singeing every nerve. I have performed our Messes for nobles of every stripe and color, but this is no mere vicomte, no louche marquis.

  This is le Roi Soleil himself, Louis XIV, reigning scion of the Bourbon dynasty.

  Despite his solar emblem and allegiance to the god Apollo, this king is nothing so simple as the sun. He is both sun and moon at once, the eclipse that blots the heavens out. A beacon of burning darkness set against a ravening light.

  And I find myself desperately short of breath at what I aim to do for him tonight.

  He flicks his fingers at us, idly imperious. “Proceed,” he says in a knelling voice that makes even the single word sound like an edict.

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” Adam says, inclining his head. “But before we begin, let us see whether the augurs remain auspicious.”

  The king nods impatiently, surveying us with heavy-lidded eyes verging perilously on boredom. I get the sense that he anticipates only another overwrought diversion he must sit through, one more sordid spectacle that he is willing to endure for his maîtresse’s sake.

  As if she can divine as much herself, the marquise reaches over and clasps his hand.

  “Just wait, mon bien-aimé,” she coos to him, brushing her lips over his cheek. “The sorceress La Voisin is my personal divineress, well versed in matters of the arcane. And Lesage is her magician consort.”

  When the king’s gaze rakes over me, I nearly feel its fiery brush across my skin. “No doubt I will be suitably impressed by their … skills,” he says, his dry tone belying the sentiment.

  Something about his flippancy, this preemptive dismissal, grates at me. My stage fright all but forgotten, I set my teeth and lift my eyes to his.

  “No doubt you will, Your Highness,” I echo, the ringing authority of my tone startling a frown from him. “Prêtre Lesage, let us consult the Morningstar’s will.”

  Adam nods solemnly, though I catch the twitching of a muscle in his jaw, the wicked cast of his lips as he restrains a dangerous grin. No doubt he is just as irked as I am at being treated like some inept jester, when we are both performers of unparalleled ilk.

  And neither of us came here to disappoint or bore a king.

  “Bend your eye to us, O Lucifer,” Adam booms, stepping forward and spreading his hands. “And reveal your will in these blackest blossoms, these darkest of all blooms.”

  As he speaks, he whisks a wild bouquet from nowhere, an extravagant posy of black dahlia and hellebore that seems much too huge to have been concealed. Before the king and the marquise can even register the shock of it, he flings the flowers above his head—where they disperse, transforming into bats with chittering voices and flapping wings.

  “He is with us!” I intone with a touch of manic glee, loud enough to register over the king’s cry of shock and the marquise’s delighted squeals. “The dread lord has shown his presence here!”

  The bats flap about the room’s domed ceiling, circling and diving, before swooping down to roost in the dark recesses that house the marble seraphim. The king watches their progress slack-jawed, clearly confounded but still unafraid. I let out a breath, sending silent thanks to whatever watches over me that Adam managed to get them properly trained.

  “Join me, Your Highness, in this prayer to our shadow sire,” I say, hearkening back to one of my favorite openings. “In which we call on the prince of darkness by his many names. Mephistopheles, Belial, Asmodeus, Legion. Le Diable, and daystar of the damned.”

  I lead us through a poetic prayer I penned just for this occasion, though unlike the marquise, the king does not indulge me by echoing the words. Then I turn to face Adam, who takes the candle from my hands and draws me close. We share a very deliberate kiss, slow and lingering, and I know just how beautiful we look together—mouth to parted mouth, black hair to red, his hand beneath my chin. We have practiced this in the mirror, honed the sacrilege of our candlelit communion.

  Adam and the demon goddess Lilith in place of Eve, stealing a moment under the forbidden tree.

  “Dread lord and shadow sire, we offer you our flesh,” I say against Adam’s mouth. “Along with our blood, and the darkest of our passions. We offer you all the storms that pass our lips.”

  I turn away from Adam, breaking the kiss. Then, slowly and with care, I lift my hands to the robe’s hem and slide it off my shoulders, letting it whisper to the floor.

  The stunned silence that falls across the room is unlike anything I have ever felt.

  I stand before the king, naked and unflinching. Poised as one of the marble seraphim despite the frantic thrashing of my heart. A stolen glance at the marquise shows me the flash of her narrowed eyes, her gritted teeth. I know I am incurring a tremendous risk by provoking her thus, appearing in my full youth and beauty before the king.

  But should our gambit succeed, any danger will have been worth it.

  I can see the shock scrawled across the Sun King’s features as Adam takes me by the hand, leading me to the altar at a stately pace. I lie down upon it with aching slowness, uncoiling my limbs along its length with a snake’s languorous grace.

  “Tonight, Your Highness, I offer you my body,” I say, tipping my head back so that my curls flow off the table and pool along the floor. “As a sacred, living altar. As Lucifer’s own avatar. As the Sorceress La Voisin, Priestess of Snakes.”

  At that, Adam fetches one of the scrying bowls and tips its contents over my body, bathing me in a scarlet sluice of wine and pigeon blood. When he withdraws into the deep darkness beyond the candlelit altar, I count the prearranged number of seconds under my breath, giving him time enough to prepare his part. Then I arch my back against the table and fling out a beckoning hand.

  “Would you come to me, le Roi Soleil?” I call out. “Would you come and see your glorious future dancing in my eyes?”

  The silence stretches for long enough that I wonder if he will not deign to come, if setting me out as bait has failed. I wait for him with bated breath, the room’s chill air stippling gooseflesh onto my wet skin.

  Then I hear the click of the king’s high-heeled shoes on the parquet, and a moment later his face hovers into view above. His skin is so p
ale and smooth, his lashes swooping against his cheeks like a little boy’s. With all his grace and grandeur, it is so easy to forget that our Sun King is only twenty-four years old.

  “What would you have me hear, La Voisin?” he whispers, thoroughly rapt, yet still unafraid. One of his curls slips loose and tickles my cheek, shedding a floating trace of his renowned perfume. Lavender and ambergris, coriander and marjoram, along with subtle hints of some musk I cannot name. “You strange and lovely siren of the damned?”

  Just then, Adam’s lanterna magica flares into life high above us, carefully obscured behind the strung-up damask screen that conceals both him and the device. It bathes me in a lurid crimson glow, casting an image of the devil’s visage over my features, superimposing it across my face. It also projects pictures of painted snakes that writhe along my limbs, lent the clever illusion of movement by Adam’s own design.

  As the king’s face contorts into a rictus of pure fear, I reach up and clasp his cheeks between my bloodied hands.

  This is, by far, the most dangerous of all our stratagems; one does not lay so much as a finger upon the king without his consent. Though I cannot afford to break our gaze by looking, I hear his captains crying out, the clattering racket of their swift approach.

  “No!” he calls out sharply, waving them off. “Noailles, Rochefort, stay back! She is not causing me any harm, and I will not have her interrupted!”

  The relief that tramples through me is so tremendous it is a wonder that I do not come unraveled. I struggle to compose myself, not speaking until the king’s captains have withdrawn. Then I gently tug the king’s face down closer to my own, and lean into the sight harder than I have ever dared.

  Fiery images streak across my mind’s eye like a brace of comets, blazing fragments speeding by so quickly I can barely capture them. I see death and rampant warfare and the murderous gleam of bayonets; an ever-churning cascade of coin, glittering inside a soaring vault; the clever glass and bristling instruments of an observatory swimming in a sea of stars. It is so easy to scry for this king when nothing I have ever felt could match the roaring force of his need.