The Shadow Queen A Novel (33 page)

CHAPTER 55

I
was in the kitchen helping Gaby salt the Martlemas beef when I heard their dog, Bruno, barking, followed by the sound of horses and wagon wheels.

“Who could that be?” Gaby asked, tucking a stray curl under her crisp white bonnet. Monsieur de Maisonblanche had gone to the horse market early that morning and wouldn’t be back until sundown.

We rarely had callers; it was one of the things I loved about my visits to Suisnes. After leaving Court—leaving Athénaïs—more than three years before, I’d sold my jewels and gowns. With that, and living sparely, I’d been able to get by, coming as often as I could to spend time in the country with my daughter, Gaby, and her husband … especially of late. Madame Catherine’s arrest and horrifying execution had plunged Paris into an endless inquisition. The air of the city was foul with the scent of burning flesh.

La sorcellerie, daemonomania.
In our enlightened times, witchcraft was no longer a punishable offense—but murder certainly was. The revelations, one upon another, had been shocking. It was as if a stone had been lifted, revealing a mass of maggots feeding on rot. Who could have believed that there were hundreds in Paris selling poison, and often to the
nobility,
members of the Court.

In spite of my hermetic life, I’d been suffering queasy fears. So many had been arrested, tried, and convicted. Who was exempt? Rumor had it that even Racine was to be tried, accused of poisoning Thérèse du Parc.

“Maybe it’s Père Petit,” my daughter said, sprawled on the stone floor with her wood dolls.

The cheerful village priest was a welcome visitor. “I don’t think so,” I said, lifting the child and setting her onto a chair. She’d turned four that summer and was growing tall as a maypole, her smocks already in need of lengthening. “He always comes on his mule,” I explained, kissing my daughter’s russet curls and setting the three dolls on the table in front of her.

Bruno barked again and a horse whinnied. “I’ll go see who it is,” I told Gaby, taking off my apron and hanging it over the back of a wooden spindle chair. I slipped outside and closed the door behind me to keep in the heat of the fire. A gust of bitter wind cut into my cheeks, making my eyes water. I wound my shawl around my neck.

A rooster crowed. Bruno had stopped barking. As I rounded the corner of the château, I saw that it
was
a carriage. The driver, a pudgy man in livery, was petting the dog, his matched team of four handsome blacks looking on warily.

“He gave my horses a fright,” he said.

“He’s big, but gentle,” I said, taking Bruno by his rope collar. “Are you lost, Monsieur? May I help?”

“I’m looking for—” He withdrew a note from the cuff of his jacket and squinted at it. “Mademoiselle Claude des Oeillets.”

Sun glinted off the official seal. “That’s me.”

“You’re wanted.”

It was a document from the office of Louvois, the Secretary of State for War. I struggled to control my voice, my sudden urge to run. Madame Catherine had been arrested at the doors of her parish church, having just attended Mass. “What’s this about?”

“All I know is that you’re to come with me,” he said, almost apologetically.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Kindly inform the Secretary of State that he may have the pleasure of my company in ten days, when I plan to be back in Paris.”

“Mademoiselle …” The driver pressed his gloved hands together. “This isn’t an invitation; it’s a command.”

From the Secretary of State. From
Louvois,
who was in charge of the poison trials. “May I have a moment?” I asked, overtaken by an inner trembling.

Tugging on Bruno, I headed back to the service entrance of the château, trying to compose myself. “I’m needed back in Paris,” I announced, descending into the basement kitchen. The warmth of the blazing fire made my skin burn. I sighed dramatically—as if it were a mere annoyance. It wouldn’t do to alarm Gaby or my daughter.

“Something to do with your brother?” Gaby asked, wiping her hands on her hemp smock.

“In a way,” I answered vaguely. “I have to go to the city,” I told Sweet Pea, unable to stop the catch in my voice. I pressed my cheek against her soft locks. “I’ll be back soon,” I said, wanting to believe it was true.

Calm! I admonished myself. “I’ll bring you a toy,” I promised. A spinning top.

THE HôTEL DE LOUVOIS
on the rue de Richelieu in Paris comprised an impressive block of stone houses. The iron-studded gates opened to let the carriage in. Guards were in evidence everywhere—it looked like a military encampment.

“Bonne chance,” my driver said kindly, opening the carriage door and letting me down.

An officious valet and two guards—their hands on the pommels of their swords—showed me through a series of stately but unornamented rooms bustling with activity. Clerks stooped over documents and maps, ignoring us as we passed.

I came to an antechamber where three people—a man and two women—were standing. The valet scratched on the oak door, then slipped inside, the door closing behind him.

One of the women, a young sort with a rakish air, looked me over. I stared down at the floor.

“Mademoiselle des Oeillets,” a clerk called out.

I was led through yet another series of rooms to a chamber at the back.

“Monsieur,” I said on entering Louvois’s cabinet, where he was seated at a tiny desk. “Monseigneur,” I added, recalling something Athénaïs had said, about his vain insistence on the feudal title.

His considerable girth, lascivious lips, and small, appraising eyes always reminded me of a pig. I’d seen him many times at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Versaie, but even here, where he ruled, he seemed not in his element. There was something of the sloven in him.

Athénaïs had often mocked Louvois’s boorish manners. Because of his insistence on being addressed as “Monseigneur,” the nobility jokingly referred to him as “
Illustrissimus
” behind his back. Over the years I had heard other things about him as well, things that weren’t laughable in the least: that he had no scruples, that his temper could turn violent, that he preyed on women, that he openly bedded the wife of one of his clerks. Players had always been wary of him, even when he was young.

Louvois pulled out a thick portfolio.

I stood before him, my hands clasped. I suspected he had his eyebrows plucked and colored. The chamber was lavishly furnished, yet nothing in it—not even the quill stand—had aesthetic merit. I recalled, with revulsion, the story of his killing a cat.

He cleared his throat, studying the papers. Reading, he reached over and rang a bell. A clerk popped into the room. “Was there not something in Voisin’s confession?” Louvois demanded.

La Voisin.
I was alarmed at the mention of Madame Catherine’s name. It was rumored a register of all her customers had been discovered.

“Only that of the daughter,” the clerk said.

Young, wily Marie Marguerite …?

Louvois made a dismissive motion with his hand and the clerk backed out. “Mademoiselle des Oeillets, in my
discussions
”—he said the word with irony—“with several of the prisoners, your name has been mentioned.” His voice was high and thin, nasal. Four of his teeth were capped with gold.

“
My
name, Monseigneur?”

“They say they have had dealings with you.”

A chill came over me. “Monseigneur, respectfully, I believe there must be some mistake.”

“The mistake is in jumping to conclusions.” He made a tent of his fingers. His rings glittered with diamonds—gifts from the King, no doubt.

I smiled submissively. (Gritting my teeth.) I’d always gone to Madame Catherine disguised as a man and under a false name. There could be no way—

“The Voisin girl—” Louvois riffled through the pages in the file, settling on one. “She has stated that you came to see her mother on a number of occasions.”

Fear alerted me to play my part well. “I did consult Madame Voisin,” I admitted in an intentionally confessional tone, “but only once, to get my fortune told.”

Details made a fiction true. Who had told me that? Ay me.
Father.

“This was … oh?” I looked upward. “Twenty years ago? She had a stand on the Pont Marie, before it was swept away by the flood. I was curious to know my future. She read my hand and told me I would marry, which I never did, so it was four sous wasted.”

But Louvois wasn’t listening; he was going through the papers in the file. Why were there so many? “And then there is the statement of Madame de Villedieu. She claims to have been your friend for more than fifteen years.”

“That’s interesting, Monsieur—Monseigneur—given that I don’t know Madame de Villedieu,” I said in all truthfulness.

“This was before you joined Madame de Montespan at Court.”

I caught my breath at the mention of Athénaïs’s name.

“You were mentioned by another prisoner as well. Monsieur Lesage, sometimes known as Monsieur du Buisson, or Monsieur Adam Coeuret.” He stared at me.

“I do not know this man,” I said with more emotion than was wise. Whatever I said must come from intentional devising. I must await my cue.

“He’s a charming sort of charlatan, a man of many tales, many lives.”

“A man of many lies!” I said heatedly, in spite of my resolve.

Louvois smirked. (Finally: a response.) “And then there is the statement by a priest—Abbé Guibourg.”

I had never heard the name.

“A man whose eyes go—” Louvois pointed his two fingers in opposite directions.

A sick feeling came over me: I remembered. I shook my head.

“No recollection? Nothing at all?” Louvois leaned forward; he was enjoying himself. “Curious, don’t you think, given these testimonials”—he thumbed through the papers—“made under oath, accusing you of procuring poisons for Montespan, partaking in an amatory Mass.”

I felt tears pressing. It was all there, in that thick file.
How
was that possible?

Louvois crossed his arms and sat back. “You even stand accused, Mademoiselle, of plotting to poison His Majesty.”

Deus! “On my
life,
” I cried out, “put me before these people and you will see: they do not know me!”

CHAPTER 56

T
here were two carriages in the courtyard, as well as six guards on horseback. Louvois and two clerks climbed into the coach at the front. A guard handed me up into the smaller, mud-spattered coach and then climbed in beside me. I sat looking out the window as we pulled onto the rue de Richelieu, en route to the fortress at Vincennes, where many of those suspected of dealing in poison were being held.

The guards riding alongside made a clatter. People stopped to gawk. I averted my eyes, knowing what they must think: that I was under arrest, that I was being taken to Vincennes … to prison.

I wiped away tears. Hundreds had been executed. That summer a woman had been sent directly from a hearing to the torture chamber, only to burn on the pyre the very next day.

The guard beside me shifted, leaning his head against the window. I was going to confront my accusers, I reminded myself—
not
be locked up.

Outside the city walls, we headed into open country. The horses were fast, the roadway covered with leaves. Soon, the towers of Vincennes appeared above the treetops. We stopped on the bridge over the moat as the massive doors opened. The coaches entered the vast courtyard and rolled to a stop in front of the fortress. There were cries from above. I looked up to see faces in the barred tower windows, both men and women, their hands reaching out. Madame Catherine had been held in this prison.

“Don’t be stirring them up,” the guard warned.

Following Louvois and his two clerks, the guard escorted me over another fetid moat and into the fortress. We descended narrow stone stairs. A thick stench permeated the air—the smell of people in chains. We entered one chamber and then another and another, finally coming to a large, dank room with benches in front of a plank table. A fire was smoldering; even so, it was cold. We were in the dungeons.

I was put in a dark chamber. A guard reappeared with a candle for the wall sconce. It illuminated a stained chamber pot set in a corner. “Merci,” I said, gripping my trembling hands. Why was I being treated like a prisoner? The stench brought back memories of the flood—and Gaston’s frightening imprisonment.

After a time, I heard men’s voices, the clanking of chains, creaking benches. The door opened. Come out, the guard motioned.

I emerged into the room. Louvois was seated at the trestle table, his two clerks standing by, backed by five guards. Before him on a bench was a misshapen man in a matted, mud-red wig. Slowly, he turned to stare at me.

I vaguely recalled his pockmarked face. Then it came to me: he’d been a magician on the Pont Neuf. One of his tricks was to write a request to the “Spirit” on a note, which he enclosed in a ball of wax and threw into a fire. Then he would somehow bring forth the note with an answer from the “Spirit” scrawled on it. I had watched his act several times, trying to figure how it was done, but he was swift with his hands, and I could never devise the deception.

“Do you know this woman?” Louvois’s nails made a scratching sound on the table.

The man stared at me, looking me up and down. I could not understand why there were no other women present. Why was I the only one? To be fair, a number should be present and the accuser should be asked to identify one.

“I do,” he said.

I pulled in my chin, surprised.

“She’s Mademoiselle Claude des Oeillets,” he said, grinning at Louvois.

THE SECOND TIME
I was brought out, there was a woman on the bench, and she was unable to name me. The third time, it was Madame Catherine’s daughter, Marie Marguerite. Her eyes were wild in her small face, her nose and chin inflamed with pustules. Not long before her mother had been burned alive at the stake, and now the girl was herself in chains. She’d had a wandering wit at the best of times, and now … now she was verily lunatic, I feared, watching as she stuttered and gasped, trying desperately to answer Louvois’s questions: “No, Monseigneur, no, this is not the woman, Monseigneur, no, it was another, a short woman who came with the Englishman who spent his seed into a vial mixed with her monthly blood, the man who vowed to murder His Majesty.”