Bitter Greens (34 page)

When I had some money in hand, I began to play more recklessly. I laid a tall pile of coins on the Queen of Hearts, crying, ‘This is the card for me.’

‘A woman after my own heart,’ the Marquis cried and pushed forward his own tottering pile of coins. ‘Live or die, eh?’

Again I won, and again I left all the money on the table. There was a little stir around the table, and a few people stopped to watch.

‘Bold play,
mademoiselle
,’ the Marquis said admiringly.

‘Why, thank you, kind sir. It must be the company I’m keeping.’

The game continued. I played nonchalantly, as if I did not much care for the vast sum of money I was gambling. The Duc d’Orléans narrowed his eyes and looked at me unpleasantly. ‘Are you sure,
mademoiselle
?’

‘Of course,
monsieur
. I do nothing unless I am sure.’

‘A woman with force of character,’ the Duc d’Orléans sneered.

I smiled at him sweetly. ‘You know me so well,
monsieur
.’ Then I turned to the Marquis. ‘It is my own name that he teases me for, you see. I am Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force.’

‘I remember,’ he answered.

I tilted my head to one side, tapping one finger against my cheek, affecting a frown of puzzlement. Then I let my expression clear. ‘Yes, of course. The man with the very fine roan and the flask of Armagnac.’

‘I’m glad you remember my horse,’ he said with an expression of mock hurt.

‘I remember thinking you were a man of excellent taste,’ I responded with a smile.

The Duc snapped out another card and once again I won. Despite myself, sweat prickled down my spine and in my armpits, and I could hear my pulse in my ears. I could not help my hand shaking as I pushed forward another pile of coins. Once again, the crowd stirred and murmured, and more people came to watch.

‘You are very confident,
mademoiselle
,’ the Duc d’Orléans said through gritted teeth.

‘I feel like tonight is my lucky night,’ I replied and flickered a wink at the Marquis, who grinned and lifted his goblet to me.

‘
Mordieu
, thirty and the go,’ the Marquis said. ‘
Monsieur
, she’ll break your bank!’

‘I doubt it very much,’ the Duc drawled in response. He shook out
his laces and prepared to draw another card. The crowd all drew a deep breath and leant forward, then burst into spontaneous applause as I won. The Duc d’Orléans pretended cool nonchalance as he pushed a great pile of shining coins towards me. There were so many of them that I had to tie them up in half a dozen napkins and give them to the waiters to carry away and lock in a strongbox for me. The Marquis de Nesle helped me while the Duc d’Orléans shrugged his narrow shoulders, rose and sauntered away.

‘Well, you broke his run of luck. What a game! And you were cool as ice. You didn’t even flutter an eyelid.’

‘I was quaking inside. Here, feel my pulse. It’s racing.’ I proffered him my wrist and the Marquis took it between his finger and thumb.

‘It is indeed. I would never have guessed it.’

I bent my head close to him. ‘My heart was pounding so hard I feared it would leap right out of my breast.’

He gave my décolletage an appreciative glance. ‘Well, I wish I could learn to keep so cool during a game. I’m forever cursing and shouting and getting myself in danger of being called out.’

‘Perhaps if we played together,’ I suggested, ‘we could study each other’s techniques.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘What do you like to play?’

‘Let’s play piquet.’ I cast him a smiling look over my shoulder. ‘But let’s make it interesting, shall we? What shall we wager?’

‘How about a kiss?’ the Marquis asked, catching me up eagerly.

‘Let’s take things a little more slowly,’ I reproved him. ‘How about we play for a lock of hair?’

‘Black dust of tomb, venom of toads, powdered mandrake root and dried testicles of a stag,’ the witch La Voisin said, grinding a nasty-looking paste in a black marble mortar. ‘Did you bring some of your monthlies?’

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and passed over a small glass phial containing a sticky sample of menstrual blood.

‘Not much here,’ the fortune-teller said, holding it up to the flame of the candle. ‘I’ll add some dove’s blood.’

I watched, queasy, as she scraped my menstrual blood into the paste and added a few drops from a bowl containing a meaty lump swimming in a pool of blood. Athénaïs sat next to me, her face wrapped in a veil, her form concealed under a heavy dark cloak. I too was cloaked and veiled, and found it hard to see in the small pavilion where we sat. The only light came from hundreds of candles set on the floor and table. They flickered over La Voisin’s broad face, giving her a mysterious, almost demonic look. She wore a long robe of purple velvet embroidered with gold thread, which glittered when she moved. Dark leaves moved restlessly all around the summer house, adding to the sense of unease.

La Voisin took the Marquis’ lock of hair and burnt it in a candle, then brushed the ashes into the mortar, grinding it with a few more drops of blood. The acrid smell of burnt hair lingered in the air, making me feel ill.

La Voisin dipped a quill into the mortar and carefully drew a pentagram within a circle on a piece of parchment, using a ruler and a wax seal as her guides. She then inscribed it with mystical symbols. Every now and again, she slugged down a mouthful from a squat bottle, sighing and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, before refreshing her quill and returning to her task.

From a small jar, she took what looked like toad’s feet, then fished out the small meaty lump from the bowl.

‘What’s that?’ I asked, leaning away from the stench.

‘A dove’s heart.’ Deftly, she rolled it all together in a bat’s wing and tied it with twine. ‘Nothing better for love spells.’ She wrapped the noisome bundle up in the parchment and then sealed it shut with black candle wax. ‘Tie this up in a pretty bag and give it to him to keep about his person.’

I held it away from me, wrinkling my nose. ‘But it stinks.’

‘The smell will pass in a day or two. Stuff the bag with herbs and flowers if you like. Jasmine and elderflowers and rose petals are all good for love spells.’

‘But what possible reason can I offer him for giving such a gift?’

‘Tell him it will give him sweet dreams, or protect him from poison,’ Athénaïs suggested.

I dropped the bundle into my big tapestry purse and drew the drawstrings tight.
I’ll never get the smell out
, I thought.
My bag will have to go to the rubbish dump.

When I paid La Voisin, she bit each coin carefully before hiding it away inside an inner pocket. ‘The spell won’t fail you. Just make sure he never takes the bag off.’

La Voisin led us along a winding path through trees and bushes down the side of a tall house. We emerged in a wide street, lit only by a lantern above La Voisin’s gate. Two more carriages were drawn up beside the road, waiting for us to leave. As the coachman handed us up into a carriage, another dark-veiled woman stepped out of the vehicle behind us and hurried up the path after the fortune-teller.

Athénaïs and I sat in silence as our carriage rattled away over the cobblestones. ‘So, does it really work?’ I whispered after a while.

‘It seems to,’ Athénaïs responded drily.

I was longing to ask her more. When did you first cast a spell on the King? How many times have you ensorcelled him? Have you ever asked La Voisin for other spells? What and where and when and why?

But I didn’t dare ask. The bag seemed to be emanating a dark malignant force. I could feel it pulsating beside me.

‘The King is a lustful man,’ Athénaïs said, so quietly I could hardly hear her over the rattle of the wheels. ‘If I am not in my apartment when he comes, he will fuck one of my maid-servants to kill time while he waits for me. They say it is my temper that makes it hard for me to keep a maid, but the truth is most of them fall pregnant and have to be pensioned off. Mademoiselle des Oeillets has had a daughter by him, but he will not acknowledge it. She is half-mad with anger and despair, though she has sent the child to the countryside and is trying to pretend it was never born.’

I did not speak. Pity and revulsion and fear were knotted together in my heart.

‘He used to have Louise in the morning, me after lunch, make a duty visit to his wife and then expect me to be ready for him again, hot and willing, after supper.’ Athénaïs’s voice was harsh in the darkness. ‘We
could never be sick, or tired, or, heaven forbid, have a headache. He will not wait for me to recover from giving birth. If I am not ready to bed him, he will simply find another woman. Lord knows, the court is full of them, all panting for him. And if I fail to please him … pouf! My chateau, my apartment at court, my jewels, my servants, everything, all gone. He’ll simply give it to some other whore, younger and prettier than me.’

‘But why … why do you stand it?’ I whispered.

‘But what else am I to do? It is all the power I have, the power to please the King. Without that, I am nothing.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s not true.’

‘Yes, it is. You know it is. Why else are you here, buying love spells?’ She gestured towards the bag beside me with one gloved hand.

‘It’s just not right.’

‘It’s the way things are,’ she answered simply.

I knew she spoke the truth. It made me angry and restless. I wished desperately for a world where women were not used as bargaining counters in wars and marriages, a world where they had greater value than as mere brood mares, a world where they could earn their own income, have their own house, choose their own husband, travel where they wished, read and write what they wished, and speak their mind without fear. Such a fever of misery and rage rose up in me that I wanted to hurl the tapestry bag with its terrifying bundle out the window into the night; instead, I clutched it close to me, breathing in its reek of blood and ashes, knowing it could be my only chance to make my mark on the world.

‘You always have the devil’s luck,’ the Marquis grumbled, pushing a pile of coins towards me. ‘I swear I’ll stop playing with you. You’re ruining me.’

‘Lucky at cards, unlucky at love,’ I answered with a shrug.

‘Let me win and I’ll change that for you,’ he said with a wink. ‘I’ve been trying to win a kiss from you for a week now, with no luck at all.’

I thought to myself,
What would Athénaïs say?
I let my lashes drop, looking away from him. ‘I fear that I’ll end up giving you far more than a kiss.’

‘Is that so? Well, then, I fear I will simply need to keep on gambling with you. My luck must turn eventually.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that.’

He laughed and tossed a few more coins onto the table. ‘I already have.’

I laid down my cards. ‘I must admit, sir, my conscience is troubling me. You say I have the devil’s own luck. Well, you see, I have a lucky charm. You know we Gascons are very superstitious and believe in such things. It certainly seems to work.’

He looked up from his cards. ‘A lucky charm?’

‘Would you like me to show you?’

He grinned. ‘Of course.’

I slid my fingers inside my bodice and pulled out the bag of spells that
I had hidden there. ‘I cannot take the pouch off. It needs to lie against my heart at all times. If I was to take it off, the luck would be broken.’ Hastily, I pushed it back inside my bodice.

He stared at my cleavage. ‘I’m jealous of that little satin bag.’

I laughed at him. ‘Because it lies against my heart, or because you’d like my devil’s own luck at cards?’

‘Both,’ he answered with a grin.

I let my lashes fall. ‘I wish … but no, such a thing would be impossible.’

‘Why?’

I laid my hand over my heart. ‘I need my lucky charm because, without my winnings, I cannot afford to stay at court. And if I do not stay at court, I will never find someone to love me. And I long for love.’

He flicked a glance at me, then toyed with his snuffbox. ‘I’m sure there are many eager to love you,
mademoiselle
. You are most intriguing.’

‘No doubt. But I must have a care for my family’s good name.’

He eyed me speculatively, perhaps wondering how much truth there was in the rumours that I had romped about with the actor Michel Baron.

‘So, you see why I keep my lucky charm so close.’ I slid my hand inside my bodice so I could stroke the satin bag of spells. ‘Now, shall we play again?’

Once again, I won. It was easier than I expected, because he was distracted, discarding cards without much thought. He did not ask about my lucky charm again, which surprised and disappointed me. I had been sure he would challenge me to a game, with the bag of spells as the prize. When he rose and bowed and said he would look forward to playing with me again, I felt a spurt of panic. My plan had not worked. He did not want the bag. I only smiled and pretended not to care, however. I was too experienced a gambler to show all my cards at once.

‘Perhaps,’ I replied. ‘Only if we raise the stakes, however. I like a challenge.’