Poison Priestess Read online

  “This is the place?” I exhale, nearly pressing my nose against the carriage window like an overeager child. “Marquise, surely not.”

  “Just wait until you see inside,” she replies, tipping me a wink.

  It is a proper hôtel particulier on the Rue Beauregard, a graceful stone townhouse claiming an entire block and presiding over a pristine garden, encircled by a wrought-iron fence topped with spearhead finials. I can barely keep from gaping as the footmen help us from the carriage, escorting us to the gleaming double doors.

  “You like it, then,” the marquise remarks as my eyes rove hungrily all around. “I thought you might.”

  “How could I not?” I breathe as we cross into the soaring foyer, our heels clicking on the crimson-veined marble floor. The walls are paneled in mahogany and hung with gilt-framed Pouissins, Le Bruns, and Lorrains, so beautiful and egregiously expensive I can imagine Antoine quaking at the very sight of them. “It is astonishing!”

  “Astonishingly befitting of my new devineresse-entitre, you mean,” she corrects playfully, looping her arm through mine and patting my hand. “Come, meet your staff—if you will have them, that is.”

  In the great hall, she’s had the house’s score of servants arrange themselves in two rows for us to pass between. The chatelaine dips into a curtsy at the sight of us, the rest of the staff crisply following suit, bobbing their pert heads. Even their uniforms are cut so well, embroidered with the silver and blue of the House of Montespan, that the servants themselves seem intended as adornments to the hôtel. I cannot quite wrap my mind around such a multitude of help when I’ve only ever had Suzette and considered myself fortunate.

  From there we take the swooping double staircase upstairs, my fingers trailing over the rosewood banister’s silken finish.

  “Is this your property?” I ask the marquise as she leads me from room to spectacular room, all carpeted with sumptuous mulberry rugs and hung with chandeliers intricate as tiny airborne palaces. Even the wallpaper captivates me, cut velvet worked with an arabesque of bees and roses.

  Mine, mine, mine, my heart clamors. All this could be mine.

  “It’s so lovely,” I continue. “I cannot imagine why you would not live here yourself.”

  “Oh, no,” she replies with a tinkling laugh. “This is not at all to my taste. It was one of my husband’s properties, signed to me as part of my wedding gift. But I’ve never lived in it myself—nor do I plan to, now that I am ensconced in the maîtresse-en-titre’s suite at Versailles. So you may as well enjoy it for the both of us, for so long as you serve as my divineress. Think of it as a symbol of the agreement between us—a guarantee that your services will belong primarily to me, until you earn back your debt.”

  I am not such a fool that I cannot imagine how easily she could whisk the ground out from beneath me, should I displease her in some way. But once I have established myself, found steady purchase with others at court, I can always renegotiate the terms. Perhaps, eventually, even buy this fairy tale of a house outright and snip myself free of her puppetmaster’s strings.

  My heart rises at the thought of such an independence, fluttering beneath my throat like a dove trapped inside a belfry. To be the mistress of my own homestead, the only Fate in charge of spinning out the fabric of my life.

  Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos all merged into one.

  The sole weaver of my own destiny.

  “But you will not attempt to influence how I ply my trade here otherwise?” I press. “As long as we agree that your needs will always be seen to first, in service to your loan?”

  “Of course I would not presume to infringe upon your freedom, Madame Monvoisin. When I do not require your sight, you would be free to work your talents as you see fit, and to be compensated as per your arrangements with others.”

  She smiles enticingly at me, lifting her eyebrows in invitation. “Now, shall I show you the rest?”

  She guides me through the expanse of the banquet room and the skylit library, through a conservatory equipped with a harpsichord, a lute, and a collection of lustrous violins. The master suite is next, and its expanse fairly strips me of breath. Antoine’s and my entire home could fit within its walls with space left over to spare.

  As we walk, I imagine myself here alone. Drifting through these airy corridors with my snakes slung about my shoulders, or sitting in the spacious study refurbished to meet my darker needs. On the topmost floor, the marquise and I pause before the grand Venetian window at the end of the hall. It overlooks the flawless green expanse of the garden below, the clustered rooftops of Villeneuve shimmering beyond, against a cotton-clouded sky.

  Watching it all, an unexpected calm settles over me like the finest satin cloak.

  After my turmoil, there is no true choice here at all, only a decision I find I’ve already made.

  I cannot forfeit this opportunity to move up in the world, not even for Marie’s sake. Not when another such may never come around again. And it is not as if I will lose her altogether, I reassure myself. Though I know the marquise would not countenance my inviting Marie here, I will still visit her as often as I can, of course, and write to her whenever I cannot come in person.

  “So, what do you think?” the marquise asks, mildly enough. But I can feel the trembling needle of her need tugging at me like a compass. Though our acquaintance has been brief, I understand her well enough already to feel the fire raging just beneath her skin, to know that her desires are colossal and implacable. And this time, what she wants above all else is my skill. “Do you need more time to consider? Or will this suit?”

  I draw a breath, granting myself one last chance to think. I understand the gamble that I am making here, throwing in my lot with a scheming noblewoman who does not tolerate rejection—but though Marie may be right to fear for me, I trust myself to see this through.

  And I see no advantage in not playing the boldest hand I hold.

  I turn to the marquise slowly and extend my hand, unable to suppress the tiny, triumphant smile that curls my lips. “Oh, yes, my lady. I do believe it will.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Spirits and the Maréchale

  August 23, 1667

  “And you are quite sure they will not bite during the ritual?” Maréchale Madeleine de la Ferté asks me yet again, her eyes flicking warily to where Megaera surges around my left wrist. “It is only that they look rather hungry. The one around your neck has not stopped glaring at me askance since I sat.”

  The Maréchale de la Ferté is here at the marquise’s recommendation, as one of her coveted inner circle. Which means only that the marquise finds this lady’s company acceptably diverting, without excusing her from any of the jockeying for favor that the noblesse engage in as their daily fare. The maréchale is plump and mildly pretty, popular among the male courtiers and a favorite of Queen Marie-Thérèse, though I see little of her alleged charm on display tonight. She’s skittish and wide-eyed as a cornered deer, her powdered ringlets quivering atop her head.

  It likely does not help that she’s terrified of snakes.

  “They have not bitten one of my callers yet,” I reply, biting back my own amusement. “I have no reason to think they will not continue to demonstrate restraint.”

  The maréchale blanches in the candlelight, swallowing audibly. Her eyes dart to the invitingly lit windows of my home, where the rest of her coterie are enjoying a lavish salon while they await their turn with me. As the marquise’s sorceress, I do all my readings in my pavilion in the garden. Rain or wind or bracing night, I make all my callers come outside to me like supplicants, always one at a time.

  It is not only that I enjoy making these spoiled aristocrats leap through hoops, though that is surely part of it. It is also that I would not be privy to half of their vile secrets, were they not assured of total privacy.

  Sometimes they object to my rules, but even the most peevish of them quiet once they reach my pavilion, its pillars almost obscured by the clinging
rush of ivy, the cupola limned by moonlight. I wait for them within, always swathed in black, with snakes coiled up my arms and twined over my bare shoulders. I’ve also stolen a page from that magician I saw in the cité, and the haunting strains of a violin emanate all around me. I make sure my violinist always stays well out of sight, playing from a grove tucked behind the pavilion where my clients cannot spy him. A busker I discovered in Montmartre, Pascal costs me next to nothing but plays like magic made sound, his harmonies burrowing beneath the skin and snagging in the soul.

  I could have engaged one of my acquaintances from the cité, rife as it is with bawdy minstrels. But the marquise has made clear that she wishes my guests to witness nothing that might sully her reputation by linking her mystical divineress to Catherine Monvoisin’s own seedy past in the cité. As far as the rest of the court is concerned, I have only ever been the Sorceress La Voisin: the marquise’s mysterious and eldritch creature, my origin as secretive and other-worldly as my gift.

  And it is true that though I have only been gone two months, my grateful husband and our house at Pont Marie, the house I saved for him, feel very far away already. Everything of that old life seems distant now, somehow tarnished and dim, drawn away from me. Like the memory of the sun, when one wakes into the black depths that mark the dead of night.

  Everything but Marie, that is, whom I still steal off to see whenever I can. Marie, who still glows steadily on my horizon.

  I lean forward, taking just a little pity on the maréchale. “Don’t fret, madame. I assure you my girls are only here to help. Snakes are halfway creatures, you see, straddling the divide between this life and the next. Their presence draws the spirits closer to us, thereby thinning the veil. Allowing me to peer into the future for you that much more clearly.”

  The maréchale glances around uneasily, as if she expects to see a tiny ghoul perching on her shoulder. “There are truly spirits here with us?” she says nervously. “At this very moment?”

  If there are indeed spirits here, I cannot feel them any more than she can, but that is beside the point. The same holds true for the instruments of magic scattered across the table: the scrying ball with a scorpion suspended in its center, a sinister-looking ceremonial knife that I actually use to trim my wicks, a gilded Marseille deck that I have no intention of consulting. I still rely on the clever runes from Agnesot’s grimoire to help me clarify the more elusive aspects of a vision, but these more elaborate occult trappings are only a performance meant for the maréchale. I have very little need for such scrying tools. My sight only grows keener with constant practice, especially once I latch on to the hook of a client’s hidden need.

  But the marquise’s chosen come for the spectacle as much as for a reading—for a taste of the forbidden with which to intrigue their fickle friends. They thrill at curved blades and decks and milky scrying balls, and so that is what I give to them.

  I nod curtly, lifting an imperious hand to silence her. Then I let my head fall back and eyes slide closed, my lips parting as if I am gripped by some otherworldly sensation.

  “By the Moon Mother Selene and Asteria of the Stars, I call upon you lingering souls to gather ’round,” I intone, the phrase that Pascal knows signals a transition. A swell of music skirls around us as if from everywhere at once, both enchanting and discordant, hanging like smoke in the sweet night air. “Be welcome among us, fantômes. Seethe and teem, cluster and swarm, and know that we are grateful for your presence.”

  I open my eyes and reach for the maréchale’s hand with both of mine. She offers it up readily enough, but barely refrains from snatching it away with a muffled squeak when Megaera and Tisiphone come coiling down my arms. Extending their heads curiously over the cup of her palm, tasting it with their tongues.

  “Madame La Voisin,” she gasps, squinching her eyes shut and giving an agonized squeal when Megaera ventures higher over her wrist. “Are you absolutely sure there isn’t another way … Ah, mon Dieu, she is cold. And slimy.”

  I could swear that Megaera, who has never been slimy a day in her life, stiffens with affront before withdrawing indignantly back up my arm.

  “Hush, Maréchale, please. It can be dangerous to disturb a gathering of spirits once underway,” I warn as I bend over her hand. I keep my voice low and somber, verging on sepulchral, though I am sorely tempted to laugh at her distress. “And there is no other way—not if you truly want to know which of your so-called friends is plotting to oust you from the queen’s favor by claiming the seat of honor to her left at the next banquet.”

  “What?” She half screeches, her eyes flying wide open, both spirits and snakes all but forgotten. “Oh, but I knew it! Tell me, is it Geneviève? Is she the adder in my bosom?”

  “I’m afraid she is,” I say gravely, though the hazy vision I’ve glimpsed so far does not actually reveal the culpable lady’s face. But no matter, because I scarcely need it—not when I had Madame Geneviève Leferon in the maréchale’s chair not a week ago, seeking advice on how to best supplant her friend. “Though it pains me greatly to compromise your friendship, I cannot deceive you.”

  I also happen to know that several other ladies wish the maréchale ill for her conquest of their husbands, along with a spurned lover who plots his own revenge against her. But since that is not the need that has brought her here tonight, I keep it tucked away for future use. After all, now that she has impaled herself upon my fishhook, the one thing I know for certain is that she will be back.

  With ever more coin in hand for me to stash away.

  Fuming, the maréchale chews on the inside of her lip, her doe eyes turned calculating.

  “To hell with our friendship,” she sneers, “if that petite salope schemes to take my place. And after all I’ve done for her. Such effrontery! Can you see whether she will succeed?”

  I tilt my head back and forth, considering.

  “Not as of yet,” I allow, though in truth I have not even bothered to look. “But I do see how you might regain the upper hand, with a little help.”

  She nods eagerly, urging me on. “How might I do it?”

  “It is an audacious solution, madame.” I hesitate, as if reluctant to even share it. “One that I would never offer lightly—or at all, if I did not think you singularly bold.”

  And utterly unscrupulous, I think but do not add.

  She flushes with pleasure, tossing her ringleted head. “I’m glad to know we understand each other so well already. Dis-moi, what sort of solution do you have in mind?”

  I cant my head thoughtfully, lifting an eyebrow. “Madame Leferon cannot very well court the queen’s favor at the next banquet if she is indisposed, can she? And I have just the thing. Not to worry, it will cause her only temporary discomfort. The sort of griping in the bowels that incapacitates but passes quickly.”

  I smile conspiratorially at her, as though we are partners in collusion. “Lasting just long enough to allow you to cement your rightful place.”

  The maréchale’s eyes light like candles at the thought. “Perfect,” she breathes. “How much?”

  More than poor Madame Geneviève Leferon paid for the reading in which I encouraged her to attend the banquet and seek the queen’s favor for herself—but less than Geneviève will have to pay for a “counterspell” to lift the enemy’s “curse” that will now keep her from attending.

  The counterspell I plan to sell her the next time she comes to call, and which will be a simple tisane to calm her roiling belly.

  “Forty louis,” I reply blithely, as if it is no great sum to ask for a tincture of castor oil and bearberry that will barely cost me a pistole to brew.

  “Forty …” The maréchale blinks rapidly at the exorbitant number, then recovers her composure. “They do say anything worth having is worth the price, do they not? I will take it.”

  “Lovely.” I lean back in my chair, the matter settled. “You shall have it on the morrow.”

  Though I would still never sell the noblesse any d
eadly draught, I run a brisk trade in equipping them with pricey but less lethal things. And though I peddle potions to cause unsightly boils, aphrodisiacs for unrequited lovers, and tonics for inflicting and lifting curses of my own invention, my conscience has yet to prick. Most of the noblesse are even worse than I imagined when I whispered curses into their candles, more ruthless and depraved than I could have conceived of for such a cosseted lot. Ever battering themselves against each other and thrusting blades into their own friends’ backs, so desperate are they to curry favor with the king and queen. To gain entry to their sphere of influence, to win their own hearts’ desires at any cost.

  Their envy and ambition twists them into shallow parodies, like the pantheon of spoiled and ever-feuding Olympian gods. And if they are staunchly determined to trick and undermine each other, why should I not line my pockets with the coin they spend so readily on their own malice?

  The maréchale moves to stand, then thinks the better of it and resettles into her seat.

  “You know, I am hosting a fete a fortnight from now, a bal masqué in honor of my birthday,” she says, lacing her hands and eyeing me speculatively over them. “Do tell me if I overstep, Madame La Voisin, but … perhaps you would like to attend?”

  “I’m afraid I only do my readings here,” I demur, shaking my head. “As I’m sure you are aware.”

  “Oh, no, no! I did not mean for you to come in any professional capacity.” She casts me a fawning smile, but I can see the stratagems whirling like a cloud of midges behind her eyes. “Merely for your own amusement, if you were so inclined. As my honored guest.”

  Although I know that this overture serves a purpose—that she would be enhancing her own standing by hosting the maîtresse-en-titre’s sorceress at a private event—I feel a simple spike of pleasure at the notion of being feted on my own account, as more than the glorified help.