Poison Priestess Read online

  “Pardieu, that was marvelous,” Marie crows beside me, breathless with shocked laughter. “Would you look at them, ma belle, they are real, they are still flying—”

  Surely that was the finale, I think wildly, turning back to the stage with my heart still throbbing in my throat. For what could possibly follow such a coup?

  Except there is still more; the magician no longer stands alone. A spectral skeleton has appeared beside him, all rictus grin and spindly, fleshless limbs, as though conjured up from beyond the grave. Against the clouds of smoke that billow across the stage, it flickers in and out of substance like a ghostly apparition, as though made of mist instead of bone.

  A claw of fear scrapes in my gut even as Marie’s hand clamps down hard on mine. A blanketing hush falls over the crowd, so encompassing I hear the rasp of breath catching in her throat.

  “Mother of mercy, what is this?” I whisper to her through my own dry lips. “Surely it is not real, but how is it done?”

  “Mirrors, perhaps?” she hazards. “Somehow positioned to reflect an accomplice in costume? Hand to heart, I could not say.”

  A rippling whisper of “necromancy” snakes its way through the throng like a needle pulling thread, only to tie itself off as the magician and his bony companion launch into a dreadful dance. They shuffle along in jerky lockstep, a morbid pantomime of the sarabande so popular at court. It reminds me of paintings I’ve seen of the danse macabre, in which a skeletal Death whirls victims from all walks of life into a frightful jig. Evoking the final reaping that awaits all of us in the end.

  And yet this is different and somehow almost worse, more chilling and enthralling all at once. Because it is the skeleton that dances at the magician’s behest, as though this mortal man can not only call up the dead but demean them at his command. Like some cruel king or puppet-master, a despot of the damned.

  From the wolfish grin that plays on his face, I gather that this is exactly the impression the magician Lesage wishes to convey.

  When the whirling music reaches a crescendo, the skeleton removes its skull with a flourish, holding it aloft as the magician takes a triumphant bow—then the man turns on his heel and vanishes, engulfed by a shower of violet sparks.

  Once he has gone, the skeleton winks out of existence as well. The music dies completely just as the last of the smoke fades, licked away by the rough cat’s tongue of the breeze. When everything has cleared, I see the musicians have also disappeared, and the ensuing silence leaves the stage deserted and somehow bereft, as if we have all suffered an unexpected loss.

  As if the eerie miracle we have all just witnessed was never truly there at all.

  Afterward, Marie and I sit at the Pomme for hours, drowning more tankards of wine and speculating feverishly on how Lesage’s magic was made. By the time we stumble out into the smallest hours, we may be no closer to unraveling the magician’s secrets, but we are well and truly drunk. We trip together through the cité’s echoingly empty streets, the summer night folding in luxuriantly all around us, soft as a mink stole rubbed against the skin. The crescent of the moon above glints like a cunning cat’s eye in the dark. My heartbeat roars in my ears in a thunderous rush, the savor of cheap wine still lingering on my tongue. Marie’s sandalwood and citron scent wreaths up all around me, stealing into my lungs.

  It all merges into a singular sensation, throbbing and insistent as some voracious hunger.

  A rising passion born of the night.

  I am not sure which of us begins it. But suddenly we are pressed together in one of the Pont Neuf’s half-moon alcoves, my back hitched up against the stones and Marie’s plush lips sliding over mine. I can hear the slap of the water far below us, hear the forlorn calls of some lost bird wheeling in the dark. Perhaps even one of Lesage’s impossible ravens. My hands tangle in Marie’s silken hair as she kisses me like a succubus, tasting of red wine and almonds and just a trace of salt.

  We have kissed each other many times before, in greeting and in parting, sometimes out of sheer affection bordering on something beyond a friendly fondness. But I have always been the one to draw back, too afraid to linger over it; afraid of what it would lead to, of the sweeping change that it might bring upon us both. Afraid of losing her to the upheaval and misery that would surely follow, should any romance between us ever fracture down the middle.

  And afraid that pledging my love to Marie, binding my heart to hers even in such sweet and voluntary servitude, might somehow render me even less free than I am.

  Even now, with my head awhirl with lust, the same tangle of fears rears up within me like a restive wyrm trapped inside my chest. Sensing my uncertainty, Marie pulls back to smile at me, her eyes a liquid glitter against the dark. She reaches up to cup my cheek and brush a gentle thumb across my cheekbone.

  “What’s the matter, ma belle?” she murmurs, soft as a breath, leaning forward to tip her forehead against mine.

  “I am afraid,” I say simply. “Of us. I need you, chère, as you are now. As my best friend. What if we ruin it, with … this? Whatever this is, whatever it might yet become?”

  “I will be your best friend until my dying day, ma belle,” she responds, trailing her fingertips down my throat. My skin heats under her touch like tinder catching flame. “No matter what else comes to pass. But if it feels too much, to consider anything more between us … then for now, let us savor this for what it is. No more than a dalliance between friends.”

  “Then we are of a mind,” I reply, a sweet, vast relief washing over me as I slide my hands down her corseted waist. “So why waste any more breath with words?”

  She laughs softly against my mouth, twining her arms around my neck and nipping at my bottom lip.

  And it is a long time until we find the need to speak again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Philter and the Marquise

  Before I became one of its regulars, I thought I knew the cité reasonably well. Enough to be welcome in its choicest establishments, and to avoid the cutthroats and rookers that slink about its back-road nooks.

  But I knew nothing of its hidden heart, the secret province of magicians and sorcerers.

  The cité’s network of occult havens marked by sigils, in which diviners peddle past and future alike.

  Some are more tumbledown than the chiromancy haven, far seedier and less ostentatiously arcane. Marie takes me to all of them nonetheless, introducing me to adepts who practice physiognomy and tarot, or bespy the future via the movement of celestial bodies. Their mystical trappings are of little use to me, when it is the sheer force of a client’s need that most reliably summons up the sight. The chiromancy haven remains my favored haunt, and in a handful of weeks I amass a tidy little clientele; apparently the irate nobleman chose not to speak ill of me after all.

  Not all my clients are wealthy, nor do they need to be. Modest tradesmen and even peasants prove more than capable of mustering coin, when it comes to pressing matters like a child’s illness or the roving of a spouse’s eye. And with each night the contents of my strongbox swell, my stash of pistoles and louis d’or heaping steadily up.

  Should the repossession men return, Antoine and I may still come out of it all right.

  “You know, you are not at all as I expected,” Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart informs me languidly, soon after she has seated herself for our assignation.

  Unlike my more bashful clients, who balk at so much as looking me in the eye, the Marquise de Montespan seems unafraid to take my measure. Just as unfazed as she was to provide me with her name and rank, if it meant I would make time for an earlier session.

  It seems very little in life gives the marquise any great pause.

  “No?” I respond, lifting my eyebrows with cool curiosity. “And if I may, madame, what did you expect?”

  She furrows her forehead, knitting fine blond brows. The marquise is exquisite, as clear-featured as a cameo and blessed with larkspur eyes, a rosebud mouth, and a soft swoop of honeyed curls.
Under her brushed velvet cloak her décolletage is cut fashionably low, exposing rounded shoulders and a milky expanse of bosom. Everything about her appears delicately wrought, like the spun-sugar confections I’ve heard they prize so highly at the Sun King’s court.

  But I recognize hers for a bayonet sort of beauty, shining with a dangerous edge. As inviting as it is likely to gut a careless lover.

  “I confess I am not even sure,” she says in a conspiratorial tone, resting her chin on interlaced hands. “Someone … more wizened, I suppose. Perhaps more sagacious in appearance.”

  “Is my lady implying that I do not seem clever?” I counter. “Perhaps I should consider taking offense.”

  She bursts into a silvery peal of laughter, uncaring of the looks it draws in the haven’s hush.

  “Come now, that is hardly necessary,” she drawls with a dismissive wave of the hand. “I suppose I only thought you would be much older, and less fetching. More crone than maypole maiden. What are you, barely eighteen?”

  “Nineteen, my lady.”

  “Such a lovely age, as I recall,” she says, a touch wistfully, as if she is a great deal more than five or six years older than me. “Do savor the youthful blush of your beauty, my dear. It will vanish in a wink.”

  Though she says this in a flattering tone, there is a certain asperity to the words, a coolness to her scrutiny she cannot quite conceal. I make a note to myself; should I see the marquise again, it would be preferable to render myself more the dowdy divineress and less the alluring sibyl.

  “May I ask what has brought you here tonight?” I ask, brushing past any further discussion of my appearance.

  “Why don’t you tell me what might have brought me to this charmless place?” she responds, giving a dainty shudder as she glances around the haven’s incense-roiled expanse. “Surely an oracle can scry as much for herself. Believe me, I never would have ventured here at all had I not heard elusive little whispers of a talented divineress. Someone of a wholly different breed than the grifter scum that have the run of this place.”

  “Then perhaps we had best begin,” I say, reaching for her hand. She obliges, still exuding that air of indolent hauteur. Yet I can feel her need writhing just below the surface almost as soon as I touch her, wriggling like an earthworm surfacing after a heavy rain.

  There is something the marquise very badly wants to know.

  “Someone stands in your path,” I begin, tracing my finger tips over her palm in the intricate pattern of a clarifying rune from Agnesot’s grimoire. Tonight it dredges up the hazy outline of a man, burning at the edges with a burnished glow, like the silhouette of the moon when it slides across the sun’s radiant face.

  “A powerful man,” I continue, schooling my surprise. I have never before been visited by a vision quite so bright. “With a mantle of vast influence gathered about his shoulders. He seeks you out not only for your beauty, but for your esprit, your incomparable wit and lively tongue. You have been growing closer for some time now, but it seems something even more tender has recently come to pass between you.”

  I glance up at her, raising a teasing eyebrow. “It seems, madame, you have fallen in love.”

  She casts me a wide-eyed, girlish look, suppressing a grin. Of course I am right, I think, barely refraining from rolling my eyes. For this much, I scarcely needed the sight. She radiates new love, shining like a freshly minted coin.

  “Oh, c’est vrai,” she exhales, fastening her lower lip with her pearly little teeth. “I cannot deny it. Though I have often thought myself impervious to Cupid’s bow, it appears my heart has finally bestirred itself.”

  Her gaze grazes over the wedding jewel on her left hand, her joy dimming a shade with guilt. But, I think wryly, only a shade. The man is not her husband, then, which comes as no great surprise. As I have heard it told, court is a den of vice and infidelity, in which romance flourishes most unabashedly between those not wed to each other.

  “What more can you see of him?” she demands. “Does he love me, too?”

  I frown, sifting the obscuring mists for a clearer picture.

  “It seems he does, though with some trepidation,” I allow. “But should he choose to forge ahead nevertheless, the love between you will grow into the stuff of legend. It will elevate you far above your station, set you high above your envious peers.”

  Every word is true, though not quite so clear as I make it sound. Visions of the future often unfold like a gauzy dream rather than any concrete depiction. In this one, I see the marquise standing on some high-flung battlement gilded by fiery sunrise, a towering headpiece akin to a crown set upon her head. A grand habit sewn from cloth-of-gold billows around her like a royal pennant.

  And she looks triumphant, overjoyed, glutted with newfound power.

  A newborn queen in all but name.

  When a gasp tears free of her lips, I realize I have said the last aloud.

  “A queen in all but name,” she repeats, awestruck, having shed the last of her nonchalant veneer. “Yes. That is it, that is what I want! And now you must help me seize it, make certain that it comes to pass.”

  I cock my head in question, unsure what she means. “But I have seen all that I can. What further help would you have of me?”

  She leans across the table, flinty determination hardening her delicate face. “You said that Lou—That he has some trepidation,” she replies. “About loving me. Alors, we must sweep any such hesitation to the side, ensure that he becomes just as besotted as he wishes. Surely there are draughts for such things, non? Philtres d’amour and the like?”

  Ah. I sit back against my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. So the marquise is angling for a love potion, an aphrodisiac. Thus far I have summarily refused all such requests. Though love philters are a far cry from poison, I have steered studiously clear of tangling myself in my clients’ affairs by offering anything that might demand a guarantee of certain success.

  “I’m afraid I am no quacksalver, madame,” I reply, shaking my head. “I do not claim to influence the future, only to bespy it.”

  “And why ever not?” she demands, her nostrils flaring with consternation. “You are obviously a sorceress of considerable power, else you could never have known what you just told me. Surely if anyone could craft the future, it would be a skillful divineress such as yourself.”

  “Meddling with love is a risky business, madame,” I warn. “Perhaps it would be best if you allowed these matters of the heart to unfold of their own natural accord.”

  “Hang what’s best,” she snaps, her eyes glittering with fervor. “We are meant to be, he and I, I know it in my bones. And I deserve his love, Madame Monvoisin—for all I am, and all that I can offer him.”

  She places both palms flat on the table, lips pursing with conviction. “I will not falter now, not when I am so very close. Not when I have more than earned his love.”

  It is this that sways me, the high esteem in which she holds herself. It appeals to me, somehow, that she should be so convinced of her own worth. And if a love philter is evil at all, it is certainly only the small sort of evil Agnesot instructed me to nurture, nowhere near the league of deathly poison. I think of one of the love concoctions detailed in the grimoire: a disturbing little mélange of dove’s blood, ground peacock bones, and crushed iris petals. I have never had the cause or inclination to test it, so I cannot be certain of its potency. But even if it promotes ardor only weakly, its very presence may bolster the marquise’s efforts to win the luminous man’s heart.

  And given the fever pitch of her desire, I’ve no doubt I can charge her an exorbitant sum for its preparation.

  “There is something,” I concede. “I will have it ready for you two days hence.”

  “Oh, marvelous,” she purrs as she settles back in her seat, aglow with satisfaction. “And tell me, have you any suggestion on how I should dose him with it? He is … often surrounded by a fawning entourage. A great many attentive eyes that rarely stray from
him. The delivery must be a subtle thing.”

  I think of the magician Lesage, his nimble hands and engaging face, and of Marie’s hollow rings. Surely I could procure one such for the marquise.

  “I’ll send a clever little trinket along with the philter, and instructions on how to use it,” I say. “All you must do is ensure that his attention is occupied elsewhere when you doctor his drink. If you practice enough to do it deftly, he won’t notice a thing.”

  “Oh, I think I can manage as much,” she muses, trailing idle fingertips over her collarbone, her eyes sparkling like polished gems with anticipation. “Thank you, Madame Monvoisin. And I assure you, you will have no cause to regret this. To the contrary—I believe you have made the future a great deal brighter for us both.”

  When I come home from Les Halles the following day with fresh flowers for the marquise’s potion, the repossession men have returned en masse.

  They troop past me as if I scarcely exist, lugging our paintings and fine furniture out the door like a conquering army’s spoils, heaving them into dray carts that await on the street. Swarming over our maison like corpse beetles over carrion.

  “Antoine!” I cry out, dropping my basket as I rush into a sitting room picked down to its bones. “What is the meaning of this? I thought you said it would only be a few pieces to tide us over! But they, they are taking everything!”

  My husband cowers in one of the room’s newly empty corners, barely able to meet my eyes.

  “It is somewhat worse than I feared,” he admits, giving a helpless shrug. Revulsion at his weakness burns like nettles in my throat. “Last week the duc withdrew his order, which would have gone a ways toward restoring our means. And without his commission I was stalled, unable to procure the raw material for the vicomtesse’s necklace.”