Poison Priestess Read online

  “How bad is it, Antoine?” I can barely bring myself to ask. “How much do we owe?”

  “Well, as to the exact amount, it isn’t, ah, as clear as that,” he fumbles, mopping at his brow with a frilly handker-chief. Of the very finest linen, no doubt, I think venomously. Yet another frivolous expenditure that has paved our path to here. “I would have to revisit the ledgers, take the interest into account, and then there is the matter of the lateness penalty—”

  “How much, Antoine?” I shriek at him like a fishwife, my hands balled into fists, nails slicing into my palms with a sharp sear of pain. “Just tell me how bad it is!”

  He closes his eyes. “Well over twelve thousand livres,” he whispers, biting down on the inside of his cheek. “I … I’m sorry, Catherine.”

  Twelve thousand livres, I repeat silently to myself, mouthing the words with numb lips. A staggering sum, a pit so deep it may as well tunnel all the way down to l’enfer. The contents of my strongbox could not even begin to fill it.

  “So we have nothing.” I close my eyes against a hot well of tears, my heart threatening to trample my ribs. “Less than nothing, soon. What next, Antoine? Will we … Will we lose the house as well?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies, raking a hand through his rumpled hair, no longer even bothering to conceal his despair. “I’ve friends I might approach for a loan. Or I could see if I might transfer our debts to another moneylender.”

  One of the louts overhears us and pauses in his pillaging, hefting a rug more comfortably across his bulging shoulders. His eyes trawl over me speculatively, lingering on my curls and the curve of my hips.

  “It needn’t be as dismal as all that, you know,” he remarks to Antoine, jutting his coarse chin at me. “Not while you still have her to sell. I’d wager she’d fetch a pretty penny for you, mon frère.”

  The breath dies in my lungs. I go cold all at once, as if the blood in my veins has chilled into a slush. Not because I cannot fathom what this jackal means, but because I can, and with terrible ease. At the fabrique, the maître ran a lively trade in women’s bodies as a secondary business. While I was fortunate enough to be sold into marriage rather than a brothel, there is no guarantee that my former luck will hold.

  While Antoine does not yet view me as chattel, how can I be sure that he will not change his mind?

  “I am not your brother, you buffoon,” my husband rails at the man, who gives a nonplussed shrug and carries on with his deplorable business. “How dare you imply something so tawdry and foul, as if I am some whoremaster? As if I would ever even think to barter away my own wife!”

  “No need to fall into a fit about it, eh?” the man tosses over his shoulder on his way out. “I was only saying. So’s you’d know that you have options.”

  Antoine continues sputtering in outrage at the man’s retreating back, even as he vanishes through the door with our rug in tow.

  “Catherine!” he cries, ashen-faced and beseeching as he turns to me. “You know, you must know that I would never …”

  He trails away as I retrieve my basket and climb wordlessly up the stairs. I have nothing to say to him. Because while I would love to believe my husband, I know no such thing for certain.

  And if I am to claw my way out of this, I will need to gamble even more boldly on myself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Prayer and the Proposal

  That night, as I brew the philter for the Marquise de Montespan, I do something to which I am quite unaccustomed.

  I pray.

  Feverishly, above hands clasped so hard it bleaches my knuckles white. To whom, I am not certain. Whatever dark deities preside over Agnesot’s grimoire, perhaps. Or maybe to no gods at all, but something altogether else; fallen angels burning darkly, or the prancing denizens of hell. The demons who were once my solace in the fabrique, when I comforted myself by imagining becoming one of them.

  Though I doubt that any of them bother to listen, I cannot help but try. Because this philter is no longer just a potion but my hope distilled into liquid form.

  A symbol of the only salvation I can imagine for myself.

  Over a fortnight spins by before I hear from the marquise again.

  I sit at the Pomme with Marie, drowning my woes in wine after a disappointingly thin night at the havens. Too much drink has made me a touch maudlin, treading closer to despair than I usually allow myself.

  “Should worse come to worst and Antoine loses the house, you can come live with me, Cat,” Marie says to me, her voice pitched low beneath the tavern’s raucous hubbub, her warm hand resting on my shoulder. “It’s true I practically share my tiny garret roost with the pigeons. But there is always room for you, and coin enough.”

  “If Antoine does not yet sell me to cover his debts,” I respond darkly, taking another swallow. “Though I do not truly think he—”

  I cut myself off as a cloaked figure whisks out the third chair at our table and takes a seat with us. Marie and I exchange outraged glances, and I see her hand creep down toward her boot, ready to flick out a blade. My own hand hovers above my knife belt just in case.

  Then the hood is twitched back to reveal the Marquise de Montespan’s fluted features, a satisfied smile hovering on her lips.

  “Pardon the intrusion, mesdames,” she drawls into our bemused silence. “I went searching for you at the haven first, Madame Monvoisin. But I was told that, at this hour, I might find you here instead.”

  She sweeps her gaze over the tavern’s buckling rafters and water-splotched walls, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

  “Though I confess I haven’t the slightest idea why you would choose such a tasteless den of ill repute in which to while away the hours. Surely you have better choices, even in such a cesspool as the cité.”

  “Cesspool,” Marie mutters under her breath. “Oh, that’s rich, coming from a strumpet of Versailles.”

  Fortunately, the marquise does not hear her over the din. I glance around the room for the marquise’s armed escort, should Marie think to take even more pointed umbrage; surely a grande dame would not have ventured into the cité’s depths unchaperoned. Three flinty pairs of eyes meet mine from the corners of the room, laden with warning. Despite the deliberate insouciance she projects, the lady is clearly not so heedless as she seems.

  “Had we known to expect the pleasure of your company, my lady,” I respond a trifle archly, turning back to her, “we might have arranged for a more suitable venue.”

  “Oh, I know, I should have sent ahead.” She waves a dismissive hand. “But I simply could not wait another moment to share the good news with you, not when I am fairly bursting with it.”

  She glances over at Marie, flicking up her eyebrows with pronounced distaste, as though she approves of Marie and her flamboyantly colored, oft-mended skirts no more than she does of our surroundings.

  “Perhaps your … friend could afford us a moment alone to speak?”

  At my nod, Marie rises only reluctantly, her face set in a mask of stony fury. Once she’s gone, the marquise scrapes her chair closer to mine and seizes both my hands, exuberant as a high-spirited child.

  “I must tell you, it all worked beautifully,” she breathes, widening her eyes at me. “Exactly as you said! I poured the philter into his wine, and not a week later I was warming his bed. Such lust, too, as I have never seen—the man positively could not get enough of me!”

  “I am pleased to hear it,” I respond quickly, hoping to spare myself the sordid details of her conquest even as my heart soars at my success. If the marquise is pleased with the philter’s performance, that means she will soon require more—which means more coin with which to line my pockets, and to build the rampart between me and ruin.

  “But it gets even better! Today he acknowledged me before all the court assembled. I am no longer just the Marquise de Montespan, you see—but Athenais de Rochechouart de Mortemart, maîtresse-en-titre to le Roi himself.” She draws herself up smugly, preening, her eyes lu
strous with triumph. “The official mistress of our own lord and liege.”

  I gape at her, shock rolling through me like great tumbling boulders. Her lover, the shining man I spied in the vision of her future—could that truly have been Louis Dieudonné, le Roi Soleil? The Sun King himself?

  “Mon Dieu,” I whisper, feeling the first flush of a crackling delight, as if her elation is catching as brushfire. “That … certainly warrants congratulations, my lady. It is quite the coup.”

  “To have replaced Louise de la Vallière in the king’s affections, pried free her stranglehold on him? I should say it is.” She squeezes my hands, blinking languorously, like a cat sated with cream. “I move into the maîtresse’s apartments next week. And I owe it all to you.”

  “I only shed light on what was already there, my lady,” I protest, but in a perfunctory fashion. I want to preserve her high spirits, keep her half mad with glee and indebted to me. “But I am very glad to know the philter won the day for you.”

  “But what is won must be kept, n’est-ce pas? And I have no intention of ever being ousted by some upstart as poor Louise was by me.” She leans forward until her azure eyes glitter not an inch away from mine. “Not when I could have your sight to guide my every step. To ensure that my ascent continues undeterred.”

  “I am always here to advise and assist you,” I respond, inclining my head demurely, though my mind teems with the potential of what else I might sell her. “The philter must be administered regularly, of course, to bolster His Majesty’s lust and guarantee his devotion. And there are helpful spells, cantrips to ensure that his eye never strays from you—”

  “But surely you can see that is only the beginning for us,” she cuts me off, and I catch a sudden flash of her as I saw her in my vision. Gloriously ablaze on the ramparts, head unbowed by the weight of her extravagant almost-crown. A self-forged queen aflame with ambition. “Court is a pit of vipers beyond anything you could fathom, Madame Monvoisin. I mean to surround myself with allies, to instill those closest to me with unshakable loyalty—and for such a feat, I will require your ongoing assistance.”

  As my mind whirls with the implications, she favors me with a complicit smile. So suggestive and beguiling I catch a glimpse of what the king himself must see when he looks at her.

  “As my very own official sorceress, bien sûr,” she says, spreading her hands. “My devineresse-en-titre, so to speak. Shall we discuss the terms?”

  “To begin, she will advance me a sum sufficient to save the house, so that my wastrel husband does not wind up without a home—but she won’t formalize our arrangement unless I agree to live at a residence of her choosing,” I explain to Marie some time later, once the marquise has taken her leave. My skin still swarms with excitement at the prospect of such salvation, my problems solved in one fell swoop.

  “Apparently the cité is too disreputable for the illustrious personages she means to send my way,” I continue. “Not to mention that the king’s maîtresse-en-titre cannot be seen here sullying her skirts.”

  “Incroyable,” Marie murmurs, shaking her head. “What a schemer that woman is. Be careful of her, ma belle. She may be grateful to you now, but such outsized ambition knows neither lasting loyalty nor bounds.”

  I frown at her, a little irritated by her lack of enthusiasm when triumph still pours so headily through my veins.

  “But I thought you would be thrilled for me,” I protest. “She’s offering to be my patroness, and even more than that. To furnish me with a house of my own. What could be better?”

  “Perhaps if she were a patroness on your terms, Cat,” Marie replies, shaking her head. “Someone of lower rank than the marquise, and with a weaker will than yours. Not a manipulator of her ilk, who might easily grind a commoner to dust between the gears of her own stratagems.”

  “Do you really believe I cannot master her?” I ask, bridling that she should think me so feeble. “After my years of slaving at the fabrique, everything I endured to survive that place? You are forever saying that I always wrest things my way, by hook or by crook. Why would that not hold true with her, too?”

  Marie moistens her lips, a grave expression falling over her face. “It isn’t that I doubt you, ma belle. But you cannot trust someone like her. I know her type well. They are all vile backstabbers at court, underhanded and corrupt, starting with our unscrupulous brute of a king himself.”

  She says the last with such unwonted bitterness that I recoil a little, staring at her.

  “What do you mean?” I ask her in a gentler tone. “What is it that you know of the king’s corruption, Marie?”

  “You know as well as I do that France has not known a moment’s peace since our so-called Sun King took up the scepter,” she replies, flashing me a bleak look. “Always another campaign. More rampant bloodshed and depravity, all in the name of his insatiable gloire. And what he cannot accomplish by force alone, he achieves by more insidious means. Such as the use of children for intrigue and espionage.”

  “Children?” I whisper back, aghast. It is difficult to conceive of our urbane king, with his renowned fondness for perfumes and ballet, sending children off to die for France. “Marie, surely not.”

  “Oh, yes.” Her voice has fallen so low I would not have been able to make it out had the tavern not lapsed into late-night torpor around us. “And me among them. That was where I went first, you know, when les bonnes soeurs indentured you to the fabrique. To Les Pays Bas, to serve in the king’s interminable Dutch war.”

  “What?” I ask, shocked down to the bone. “But you could not have been more than eleven years old!”

  “Perhaps the king’s procurer saw in me the requisite wiles, even at that tender age.” She smiles, faintly and bitterly, shrugging a shoulder. “Guttersnipe orphans like me are both innocuous and cunning, ma belle. As well as dispensable. I was there for nearly two years, gathering intelligence for the crown. And the things I saw done there by our own officers, Cat, the violations visited upon the Dutch women, the butchering of their children …”

  She shakes her head, remembered darkness swimming like ink in her eyes.

  “Such a monstrous carelessness for life as I could not have conceived. No villainy that transpires in the cité could possibly compare.”

  “Why have you never spoken to me of this, Marie?” I ask, appalled.

  “I do not speak of it to anyone,” she replies with a shudder. “Not if I wish to keep my soul intact. I still have nightmares of it, such cauchemars as you cannot imagine. But this is not about me, ma belle. What I mean to make you understand is that the king’s courtiers emulate him in every aspect, follow his ruthless lead. They are no more than barbarians with beautiful faces. The lot of them.”

  She leans closer to me, fixing me with her eyes. “And if you choose to tread this path, they will savage you without a moment’s regret should your demise ever come to suit them.”

  “Then what would you suggest I do instead?” I demand. “I need a way out, Marie. How else am I to keep the house for Antoine, or fend for myself?”

  “Leave Antoine to his own devices, then, and come live with me,” she exhorts, her face more ardent than I have ever seen it. “This is his mess, not yours! And it is true that we would not be wealthy, and betimes we might even struggle—but on the whole, we could be happy. I would take care of us, ma belle. You know I would.”

  “Of course I know, chère, and I promise I will think on it,” I reply, pinching the bridge of my nose. Even if I could bring myself to abandon Antoine, I fear that were I to live with Marie things between us would change perforce. Perhaps deepen into something for which I am yet unready.

  And though it shames me to admit it, I do not wish to risk poverty again. Not even the kind made merrier by my friend’s company.

  “The marquise is taking me to see a residence in the Villeneuve tomorrow morning, before I make my choice,” I add. “Perhaps I will still decide against it.”

  “Perhaps,” Marie sa
ys flatly, taking up her wine again. My heart sinks to see her so dimmed with disappointment, but there is nothing I can do for it, save lie outright. And I will not lie to Marie. “But if it is all the same to you, I will not hold my breath.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Contract and the Hôtel

  I barely manage to snatch a tattered scrap of sleep that night.

  Turmoil roils just beneath my eyelids in a muddy swirl. I thrash from side to side like an animal in a trap as I consider what future path might suit me best. Though under the proposed arrangement I would be indebted to the marquise for twelve thousand livres, I would also have my own residence for the first time in my life. Yes, she will not pay me anything more until I have earned back the sum advanced; we have agreed to set the worth of each scrying session at thirty livres. But I’ve no doubt that once she introduces the glittering novelty of her sorceress to friends at court, I would soon secure a stream of additional income to stash away for myself.

  But becoming the marquise’s sorceress would mean bidding farewell to Marie, and losing our nights together in the haven of the cité. The dark sun of a world that we have made into our own domain.

  Yet if I were to do as Marie urges, how could I live with abandoning Antoine in his hour of need? Feckless though he can be, he has also shown me so much kindness. Without him I might never have left the fabrique, or left it for somewhere incalculably worse. Without him, I would never even have learned to read, and Agnesot’s grimoire might have remained forever locked to me.

  After everything he’s done for me, could I truly give up this chance to rescue him in kind?

  By morning, I’ve yet to come to terms with myself. Sensing my disquiet, the marquise leaves me to my pensive silence after collecting me in her carriage, a lavish cream-and-gold affair drawn by two splendid snowy geldings. But when we reach the Villeneuve, a refined suburb outside the city walls, the residence she has chosen stuns me out of my introspection, replacing it with a pure, wonder-struck awe.