Part 71 (2/2)
”I suppose I should apologize, Marquise. The King's favorite sport is unmasking fortune-tellers, magicians, and mountebanks.”
”Next time unmask yourself, Primi, you charlatan. I've half a mind to burn a f.a.ggot against you and give you a dreadful curse, just to teach you a lesson.”
”Ah, I always said you were a witch-not that it matters anymore,” he said, sighing.
”So what have you to be sad about? He made you a favorite, but he ruined me.”
”We are all ruined now, little marquise. I would flee, but I am in love. So I'll stay, and risk everything.”
”I'll be frozen long before I'm starved. Let's stand in the doorway.”
”Better to freeze, in this case. We shouldn't be overheard.” He gestured to the Swiss guard in livery standing at the great double doors of the mansion. The cold wind seemed to want to blow us apart as we stood together on the wide stone staircase. ”The rumor has been about town in the last few days that the fortune-tellers of Paris have enhanced the quality of their predictions by poison. Some dreadful old woman I never heard of was arrested. Marie Bosse, they called her. She implicated a fortune-teller called La Vigoreux. I met this woman once at Madame de Va.s.se's-she read my palm. Now she is at the Chateau de Vincennes, and they say she is giving the names of her accomplices under torture.”
”Primi, you are morbid-one little palm reading? They'll find you innocent, just like all the other silly women who had their palms read by her.” But the barb went wild. Primi was too upset to notice.
”If that were only so,” he said, looking frantic. ”But Marquise, for me it is worse than you can imagine. The woman I love-oh, Marquise, you should see her! She is a divinity!” His mood s.h.i.+fted just as suddenly as it had collapsed. He kissed his fingers at the mere thought of this woman, then went on. ”We met when she called me to read her palm. One look, and I was immediately in love. Those eyes! That adorable waist! I just had to win her! I read her fortune. I predicted that she would soon fall pa.s.sionately in love with me and be my bride. Unfortunately, she was already married. Doubly unfortunately, her husband has fallen ill and died, putting me under suspicion that I poisoned him with the aid of this La Vigoreux.”
”So you have given her up?”
”Give her up? What madness! Of course not. We make pa.s.sionate love every evening. I am bound by Cupid's chains-it is my destiny to perish of love...”
”Primi, you are a madman.”
”Of course. What other way is there to be in this insane world? Adieu, Marquise. We may only meet again in the next world-”
”Primi, wait-” I cried into the wind, as he started down the stairs. He turned, and the wind blew his words back to me.
”No more; it's all finished, our world. Over. Go console the countess, but be sure you get your payment on the spot.” I watched the slender figure of the Italian as he climbed into the waiting carriage. As the coachman gathered the reins and drove off, I could see Primi slumped in back, his hat pulled over his eyes.
I waited for a long time in the cold, marble-floored antechamber of the countess's rooms. The gla.s.s panes rattled in the tall windows, and I could feel the drafts blowing under the gilt-paneled doors. What could she want, the countess? She was consulting fortune-tellers-something must have happened at court. She'd heard something that had sent her once again to the occult. Either something she wanted, or something she was afraid of. But what?
The countess's face was drawn; she had tried to conceal the new lines that crossed her ravaged cheeks with heavy white makeup. Her eyes darted from side to side in her narrow little face; her smile was so strangely pulled out that it looked like some sort of soundless scream. This time, it isn't because she wants the King for a lover, I said to myself. This is fear.
”Madame de-well, whatever you call yourself now, I know you read true. Visconti, he saw a break in my line of fate; he saw disgrace, a fall, in the cards. A secret of my past will emerge from darkness into the light.” Ah, that was it. The rumors swarming around the arrest of La Bosse and La Vigoreux that Visconti had warned me about. But he didn't know what I knew, that the investigation had stopped short. The arrests had gathered in only La Bosse's people, and no one had touched La Voisin or her close a.s.sociates. Had the countess gotten the poison with which she had removed her husband from La Bosse? If so, she had a right to be worried. La Bosse had been under torture for several weeks now and might well have been made to produce a list of her clients. And now through the gossipy magistrates, some sort of news had escaped La Reynie's secret inquiry into the families of the robe, and thence to court. And if it wasn't a matter of her husband, what other persons had left this earth by the countess's little white hand? Perhaps enough to condemn even a woman of her rank.
”You wish to know your future,” I announced, unrolling my cloth.
She leaned over the gla.s.s as I stirred, the diamonds on her bosom reflecting little rainbows into the water.
”Madame, please-the colors of your gown, your jewels, they interfere with the image.”
”I must know,” she said, moving back slightly.
”I see the same image I saw for you many years ago: your carriage at night, your footmen in plain gray, your horses at full speed, hurrying through the dark. The Marquise d'Alluye is with you. You are not speaking...your faces are tense.”
”Not an a.s.signation after all-no, flight. And to think that for years I have supposed that reading to be your one failure! Oh, how bitter! You saw it all along. Why didn't you warn me?”
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