An Affair of Poisons Read online

  After some time, Mother peeks out the curtained window and I catch a glimpse of the enormous red and white palace at the end of the road, the golden crenellations and blue roof shimmering like pearls in the sun. The palace at Versailles. A tiny thrill courses through me and I lean forward to get a better look. The king’s new residence is said to outshine the Louvre the way the sun outshines the moon. It is swiftly becoming the beating heart of his royal court.

  Which shouldn’t interest you, I remind myself before Mother has to scold me. I sit back and stare straight ahead. The palace is nothing but a lavish den of iniquity. A mockery to the people.

  The footman drops us in front of the sprawling château, where a massive crowd of petitioners writhe before the gilded gates. On the last Friday of each month, King Louis comes to the courtyard fronting the palace to receive petitions from his people, but I cannot fathom why we would come now. It will be far more difficult to slip inside and poison the Duc de Barra during such a disturbance.

  We gather in a tight circle at the back of the crowd. “Is everyone in place?” Mother says softly, though no one could hear us over the cries of the petitioners.

  Marguerite and Fernand nod.

  “What do you mean, ‘everyone’?” I ask, looking at our small group.

  “Quiet, Mira,” Marguerite snaps.

  “Excellent. Wish me luck,” Mother says, “though I shan’t be needing it.” She dons a pair of gloves, uncorks the phial of poison, and sprinkles it into a roll of parchment that Abbé Guibourg procures from his robes. Then she disappears into the rabble, pushing toward the gate.

  “What is she doing?” I demand. “I thought …”

  “Watch and see.” Madame de Montespan points to the palace.

  A queer feeling rises in my gut, as if I’ve eaten spoiled meat. I fan my face furiously, but I’m sweating like a smith at the forge. There are so many petitioners making so much noise. I try to fall back, but Marguerite and Fernand grip my wrists and drag me forward.

  “We need a better view,” Lesage mutters, bludgeoning people out of our way.

  The Abbé squints his tiny eyes. “Where is she? Do you see her?”

  “There, there!” Madame de Montespan points to the left, where the crowd is thickest around the gate, and I catch a glimpse of Mother’s blue cap. Hundreds of people thrust their arms through the gilt swirls and flourishes, waving their petitions wildly, and Mother joins them.

  She’s naught but a single stalk of wheat amid a vast and rolling field, but I see the exact moment the Sun King notices her parcel. It’s as if he’s bewitched. His eyes contract and he strides purposefully down the fence line, his cape billowing like a banner behind him. The dauphin, in sky blue velvet, tugs his father’s arm and whispers in his ear, but the king shrugs him off and continues on his course. Straight to Mother.

  “She isn’t. We wouldn’t …” I babble, looking for someone to confirm I am mistaken, that this isn’t what it seems. “We came to poison the Duc de Barra!”

  “Did we?” Marguerite says with a laugh.

  Time slows as Louis XIV reaches for the scroll. His gold and silver rings flash in the sunlight. The ruffles at his wrist dance in the chilly breeze. A scream builds in my throat as his fingertips brush the tainted parchment. Stop! I want to shout, but my clenched teeth are a prison, trapping the word.

  The poison is deadly quick—just as Mother ordered. As soon as he unfurls the missive, a high-pitched wail spills from the Sun King’s lips. He staggers to his knees, and my own lungs burn as I watch him rip open his doublet and claw at his lace collar. His face turns purple then blue, and for a terrible moment, everything is frozen. Silent. Then the dauphin bellows—the low, guttural keen of a dying animal—and the stillness shatters like a broken pane of glass.

  Mon Dieu.

  The petitioners rear back, dashing about the courtyard like a flock of chickens with a fox in the coop, and I watch in horror as the dauphin yells his father’s name, shouting for help, crying for a healer.

  All too late.

  The king collapses face-first to the cobbles. His immaculate wig topples from his head and his crimson cape pools around him like blood.

  An invisible fist slams into my stomach, and I vomit all over my shoes.

  “Better steel your nerves, girl,” Lesage says. Then he flings his arms into the air and emerald fire bolts crackle from his fingertips. A deadly living fire called désintégrer.

  The fire smashes against the palace gates, and amid the screech of rending metal, figures in jewel-toned cloaks and velvet masks race past, appearing from nowhere and spreading throughout the crowd—like a swarm of flies, a descending plague.

  The whole of the Shadow Society.

  Marguerite and Fernand don velvet masks of their own and shout as they rush into the fray. They probably expect me to join them, but my shaking legs refuse to cooperate. Another wave of nausea drops me to my knees. This is madness and all my fault.

  I haven’t rid the world of one abhorrent duc.

  I have murdered the King of France.

  2

  JOSSE

  There are a good many chores I should be doing. Rixenda’s list is endless: peel the turnips, scour the pots, sweep the scullery, harvest the leeks. On and on and on. Sneaking over to the royal château and hiding in the hedge beneath the second-floor window, third from the left, is decidedly not on that list. But I can’t be blamed. Not really. I was headed to the garden to dig up the leeks when the morning sunlight struck the path in such a way I couldn’t help but notice how round and smooth the pebbles were, shining like precious drops of silver.

  The perfect size for tossing at windows.

  A thrill shivers through me as I lob the first stone, picturing Madame Lemaire up there, coiled like a dragon inside the keep. The old governess is far uglier than a serpent, and her tongue is sharp enough to spit flames, which is precisely why I must rescue my sisters.

  Plink, plink, plink.

  The rocks bounce off the gilded shutters like bullets. A few more go unanswered, but I am nothing if not persistent.

  Come on, you old crone.

  Three more and the shutters fly open.

  Without waiting to hear her bray like a donkey or watch her wrinkles flap like a turkey’s wattle, I grip the trellis and scamper up. I’ve had loads of practice climbing. Mostly trees in the garden to avoid tumbles with the courtiers’ brats when I was young, and now the curtain wall surrounding the maids’ quarters for a different sort of tumble.

  Madame Lemaire spots me immediately, but before she can call me a flea-bitten bastard hog and slam the shutters, I dive through the window and nearly knock her on her backside. She screams and crashes into the cream and pink papered wall, and her curled wig plummets to the floor. It looks so much like one of Madame de Montespan’s miniature poodles, I half expect it to bark. Or bite me.

  Anne and Françoise shriek with laughter—the best greeting I could have hoped for—and I rush across the room and snatch them from their chairs. Their teacups clatter to the floor and I stomp through the steaming brown liquid, making an even bigger mess. Madame Lemaire is right: I’m quite like a pig, sullying the rich mulberry rugs with my muddy boots, shaking leaves and twigs from my hair. I do it on purpose. First, because it’s amusing to watch Madame Lemaire clutch her chest and sputter. And second, because it’s easier to blow around like a tornado and make a wreckage of everything rather than stare at the mahogany bed frames and silk-threaded coverlets and try not to compare them to my thin straw mat in the servants’ quarters.

  “How are my girls?” I ask, balancing one on each hip. At five and seven, they’re almost too big to carry, especially with their full satin skirts, but I grit my teeth and boost them higher so we can rub our noses back and forth. Our special greeting.

  “Better now that you’re here,” Françoise, the elder of my half sisters, says. She pats my cheek and my heart melts like a warm pot de crème. “These lessons are awfully dull.”

&n
bsp; “We hoped you would come for us,” Anne says behind her hand. Only she hasn’t quite mastered how to whisper, so Madame Lemaire hears every word.

  The old woman smashes her wig onto her head and advances on us, arms outstretched to the girls. “Come along, sweetings. Lessons may be dull, but they are necessary. Children who ignore their studies end up like him.”

  I gasp and crumple my face so it looks like a crab apple and, coincidentally, a good deal like Madame Lemaire’s. “We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

  My sisters giggle and shake their heads. Their silky auburn curls brush my cheeks and tickle my nose. They smell of honeysuckle and rose water. Like happiness and home. I squeeze them tighter because despite incessant conditioning from their maîtresse-en-titre mother and their snub-nosed tutors, they do want to be like me. They want to see me, and not just to laugh at my expense. They’re the only ones who give a piss about me—besides Rixenda, I suppose.

  “You cannot take them.” Madame Lemaire folds her arms and positions herself before the door. “We are in the middle of an important etiquette lesson. You would do well to sit in on a few such lessons yourself, Josse.”

  “Ah, but then I might be expected to act princely, and we can’t have that. I am, after all, just a kitchen boy.”

  I see no point in trying to win the king’s affection when my fate will be the same as my mother’s: cast aside like rubbish as soon as the novelty fades. As soon as he tires of watching his ministers drop their forks to stare at me—his spitting image—pouring wine and serving mutton in the great hall. I am a trifling form of entertainment, like a dancing monkey.

  “Release the girls this instant,” Madame Lemaire demands.

  Smirking, I dodge the sweep of her arm and hold my sisters tighter. “One hour,” I beg. “Look at their faces—so wan and melancholy. They need sunlight, exercise. It’s unhealthy for young girls to have so many lessons.”

  “I’ve had a terrible headache all morning,” Françoise adds with a dramatic sniff.

  “What they need is to be kept away from scoundrels like you. Their mother has forbidden it.” Madame Lemaire puffs out her chest, making herself as large as possible. I will have to tackle her to get through the door, and she likely outweighs me.

  “It seems we’re out of luck, ladies,” I say.

  Anne whimpers and blinks tears to her eyes, but Françoise squares her shoulders and levels a steady finger at their governess. “You will stand aside, Madame Lemaire, unless you wish to be dismissed. I am a daughter of France and you are nothing but a lowly retainer who has been sent to serve me. Father will be most displeased to hear of my unhappiness.”

  Madame Lemaire’s cheeks pale. Her perpetually frowning mouth drops open but not a sound escapes. I almost feel sorry for her as she bobs a shaky curtsy and removes herself from the door, tripping across the room like a brittle, wind-tossed leaf.

  Françoise tips her head and laughs. “That’s how it’s done, brother. Proceed.”

  I steal a glance back at Madame Lemaire—even though I know she doesn’t want my apologetic shrug—and carry the girls into the hall. They’re chattering away as if nothing is amiss, but the bravado I felt before, the laughter and excitement and warm sense of belonging, curdle in my belly like sour milk. I’m all for riling the old bat, but that was cruel and demeaning. I like to think my girls are different from the other nobles, but Françoise sounded so like Louis or Father or their mother, Madame de Montespan.

  A current of ice trickles through my bones. How long until she says those things to you? Until they realize you are the son of a scullery maid? Even lower than Madame Lemaire?

  Technically, the girls are bastards like me, but the daughters of the royal mistress are a far cry from the son of a servant.

  I don’t realize I’ve stopped walking until Anne pokes her finger into the side of my face. “Josse? Are you ill?”

  I blink and force a smile. “There was a stitch in my side, but it’s better now.”

  “Then let’s go,” Françoise says. “I’m desperate to visit Rixenda. She promised to let us pluck chickens.”

  I raise a brow. “You want to pluck chickens?”

  “Oh, yes,” Françoise says, and both she and Anne bob their heads energetically. “We’ve been dying to try it for ages. Madame and Mother never let us have any fun.”

  Fun. Not the word I would choose to describe my chores, but I swallow my annoyance.

  “Then to the kitchens we go,” I say, raining kisses on their cheeks. They clutch my neck and giggle in my ears and I feel both better and worse. I hate myself for ever thinking poorly of them. They are nothing like the others. Will never be, if I have any say in it.

  We race down the spiral staircase and out of doors, past the guardhouses where the ceaseless petitioners batter against the golden gates, and burst into the smoky galley. A dozen maids in plain gray dresses flit about, stirring pots and tending the ovens, but none of them acknowledge me. They never do. No matter that I’ve been slaving beside them all my life. To them, I’m half prince. To the courtiers, I’m half commoner. Which makes me one hundred percent invisible to everyone besides Rixenda.

  “It’s about time you showed up, you worthless bag of bones!” she crows, slapping her floured hands on her apron. “You’d best have harvested the entire crop of leeks for how long you were gone.”

  “I brought you something even better.” The girls peek out from behind me, and Rixenda’s smile broadens until her wrinkles cover the better part of her eyes. How I love that ugly, crinkled grin. My antics usually make her frown and fret—she says I’m the reason her hair’s gone so white—so it’s good to do something right every now and again.

  She leads us into the courtyard and the girls attack the waiting barrow of chickens like starving weasels. I thump to the ground beside them and shiver. The spring breeze still has the frosty chill of winter on its breath, and it slices through my tunic like a knife. Anne and Françoise don’t seem to notice—they’re too busy blowing smelly feathers at each other. And it clearly hasn’t deterred the petitioners. There are twice as many as usual, and their fervent cries carry back to where we work.

  “What do you think it is this time?” I ask Rixenda, nodding at the commotion. “Are they as greedy and ungrateful as Father claims? Or is he as callous and condescending as the broadsides report?”

  “The riot at the gate has naught to do with us, Josse, and thank the Lord for it. And you shouldn’t be reading those treasonous pamphlets.” Rixenda tweaks my nose.

  I squint at Father and Louis pacing the fence line, their heads tilted together in official business. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be included in their diplomacies. How it would feel to wear Louis’s pearl-embroidered doublet or Father’s silken cape. But most of the time I want to march over there in my feather-specked tunic, knock the massive wigs off their heads, and force them to see, to really look, at the peasants dressed in rags.

  Rixenda’s withered hand pats my knee. “His Majesty thinks it best you work with me for now.”

  Of course he thinks it best to banish me to the kitchen, where he doesn’t have to lay eyes on me unless he needs a laugh. I am an embarrassment. An unsightly stain on his otherwise pristine line.

  With a touch more vigor than necessary, I slam the plucked chicken into the barrow and am reaching for another when a blood-curdling cry erupts from the gate. A second later, a wave of ungodly heat hurls me to the ground. My head collides with the cobbles, bits of plaster and brick pelting my back like hailstones. Vibrant green sparks rain from the cloudless sky, and the gate clatters and clangs like shattering dishes. I press my palms against my ears, but it does little to block out the noise; the entire world is screaming.

  My sisters loudest of all. Their high-pitched voices rake across my skin like claws. A surge of panic lifts me to my knees, and I crawl to where they’re huddled safely beneath Rixenda—thank God. Beyond them, it’s utter chaos. The palace gate collapses with a crash so
violent that the ground shudders beneath me, and a cloud of dust plumes into the air, thick enough to devour the sun. The petitioners stream onto the grounds and run for cover, pointing at cloaked figures flying toward the palace like bats in the night.

  Where’s my father? The musketeers? His porters? Anybody?

  “What’s happening?” Françoise shouts.

  I haven’t a clue, but we need to move. Now. I swing Anne onto my back and yank Françoise up by her hand. “This way,” I yell, but Rixenda hobbles in the opposite direction. I catch her elbow and spin her around. “What are you doing?”

  “Go on! I’ll only slow you down.”

  I shake my head and tighten my hold.

  “Go! Get the girls out. I’ll meet you outside the palace.” She presses the knife she brought to debone the chickens into my hand and shoves me off with far more strength than a woman her age should possess. “Be strong, Josse,” she calls as she skitters around the curtain wall.

  I stare after her, my eyes watering, my heart screaming. Another flash of emerald lightning smashes into the palace, and Anne shrieks in my ear, “Run, Josse!”

  I tuck the knife in my boot and spin toward the outer wall, but the gatehouses are overrun with figures in purple and green cloaks. Arrows assail the courtiers attempting to flee, putting them down like deer on the hunt. I look back to the grand château, but hordes of intruders are charging up the steps. Inside the palace, eerie green light streaks through the hallways, setting the draperies aflame.

  There’s no way out. Nowhere safe.

  Think, Josse.

  I close my eyes and imagine each hall, each level of the palace, until my attention snags on the hidden passage beneath the stairs outside the Venus Salon. My best friend, Luc Desgrez, and I discovered it years ago, when I was desperate to evade my chores and he wanted nothing to do with the Latin lessons his scholar father taught Louis. It used to be a discreet entrance for carpenters and masons during construction—my father couldn’t have commoners traipsing across the cour d’Honneur—and it leads from the main château to the stables and into the woods beyond. Brilliant.