Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (some good books to read TXT) 📗

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 says 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.”