An Affair of Poisons Read online

  With a grunt, I boost Anne higher up my back and tug Françoise toward the nearest window. I’ve never stepped foot inside this wing of the palace—the dauphin has expressly forbidden bastard scum from entering his apartments—but it’s the fastest way to the hidden passage, so I smash my boot through a window and duck past the shards of glass.

  For all I’ve heard of its beauty, Louis’s bedchamber is a scorching, incendiary hell at present. The gold damask walls are spattered with sickening green scars that drip onto the parquet floor, and two gentlemen of the bedchamber lie in the center of the room, their skin greener than leaves and their faces frozen in agony.

  I look away and charge ahead, willing myself not to scream.

  The stairs. Get to the stairs.

  I careen through the door and into a wood-paneled antechamber, where I slam into an intruder. The man is my height but twice as broad, and his face is covered with an intricate black mask. “What luck,” he says with a husky chuckle. “Just the girls I was looking for.” He leans forward in a mock bow and reaches into his scarlet cloak.

  Anne and Françoise scream, and I don’t wait to see what he’s grabbing for. Rage flash-boils the blood in my veins. I have never killed a man, never trained with a sword like Louis, but my time in the kitchen serves me well. Faster than I’ve ever moved, I set Anne down, pull the knife from my boot, and plunge it into the man’s belly. Up and in. Gutting him like a pig. He coughs and sags against me, his blood rushing warm and thick over my hands. I wait for my arms to tremble with horror, for nausea to squeeze my throat, but I only feel fury. A ferocious desire to stab him again for even thinking of harming my sisters.

  I dump him on the ground, return the knife to my boot, and take Françoise and Anne by the hand, cringing at the blood that smears their skin. The smoke thickens as we run through the next antechamber. Servants pour from the dauphin’s library and grand cabinet, screeching and crying as ghostly green flames blaze down the hall. “Everything’s going to be fine,” I call, as much for myself as the girls.

  We burst into the forecourt and the marble staircase comes into view. So close. But a cry pricks my ears as we pass the Diane Salon, and my stomach bottoms out.

  I think I recognize it.

  Clenching my teeth, I take another step. If our roles were reversed, they wouldn’t stop for me. Anne and Françoise are my only responsibility, the only ones I care for in this rutting palace. But the cry comes again, even louder. Wrenching me between the two halves of my life.

  Be strong, Josse, Rixenda’s voice echoes.

  I whirl around and pound on the door. “Marie? Are you in there?”

  The door flies open and my half sister, Madame Royale—the king’s eldest daughter—pokes her face into the hall. Her porcelain complexion is blotchy enough to be poxed, and her eyes are swollen into slits. She’s coughing so hard she’s unable to speak, but silence from her isn’t unusual. In my eighteen years, we’ve only exchanged a handful of words.

  “What are you still doing here?” I demand.

  “There’s nowhere to go. Louis says we simply cannot rush into the fray.”

  “Louis?” I choke on his name. “He’s here? But I saw him at the gates… .”

  “When Father was struck—” she begins, but she collapses in the doorway, weeping. Anne and Françoise burst into tears again, and I scoop them up and step past Marie.

  The Diane Salon is the most decadent of all the sitting rooms, with rich violet hangings and ebony furniture, but like the dauphin’s apartments, it has been transformed into a picture of gory contradiction. Three intruders lie strewn across the glittering tiles, swimming in pools of blood, and the Grand Condé, the most celebrated general in the French army, sags against a divan and clutches his side, a deep red stain spreading through his ivory justaucorps. Beyond him, Louis leans over a table laden with snuffboxes, quills, and decanters arranged in the shape of the palace. He points to a wall on the far end of the table, and Condé shakes his head. His Royal Highness roars a black oath.

  I’m tempted to turn on my heel, grab the girls, and leave the court to sort out their own escape. They will never listen to me, and every moment could be the difference between making it to the passageway. But Marie moans into her palms, and my insides wring like a washrag. Deserving or not, I cannot leave them to die.

  I situate my sisters against the wall and stride toward the men, clearing my throat since neither of them have bothered to acknowledge me. “I know a way out,” I announce.

  They jerk at the sound of my voice, and even though he’s halfway to death, Condé manages to frown down his bulbous nose at me. “Thank the saints! The royal bastard has come to save us.”

  “This is hardly the time for politics,” I bark. “Come.”

  The old general waves a hand. “They’ve posted guards at every gate. They’ll kill us on sight.”

  “Thankfully my way doesn’t require a gate. Follow me. And make haste.”

  Louis’s blue eyes flick up from the table and flay me open like a butcher’s knife. “If myself and the Grand Condé cannot find a way out, you certainly cannot.”

  “Fine. If you have a death wish, I’ll happily leave you to rot.”

  “I would be careful, brother, how you address the King of France,” Louis quips.

  Louis is king? That means our father, the Sun King, is dead. I hardly knew the man, but I still feel the loss deep in my gut. Like the heel of a boot. “The queen?” I whisper.

  Condé glances at Marie, who bursts into another fit of tears, then he quietly says, “Her Majesty is dead on the veranda. I was defending the dauphin and didn’t reach her in time.”

  I toe the masked corpses strewn across the carpet. “Who are they?”

  “Hell if I know,” Condé says, “but the court magician, Lesage, is leading them. Turncoat rat. He’ll burn us all to cinders with his devil magic.”

  A shiver races through me from crown to toe. “Please come.”

  Louis slams his fist against the table and bellows, “Be gone!” At the same moment, the window nearest the door shatters. Bolts of fiery green light shoot into the room and strike the wall a hair’s breadth from where Anne and Françoise stand. Hissing green ashes nip their arms, and they yowl like mice caught in the traps beneath the kitchen cupboards.

  No, no, no.

  I fly across the room, scoop them up, and brush the burning soot from their skin. Then I leap over Marie, who stares at me with a pained expression before rising to her feet and clinging to my tunic. To my surprise, the heavy thump of Condé’s step and Louis’s grumbling about how he should be leading our exodus trail us down the hall.

  Fancy that. Following a bastard is preferable to burning alive after all.

  “This is your brilliant plan?” Louis says when I press the notch on the stair rail and the panel slides. I’ll admit, it looks a bit ominous. The walls are splintered and bowed and the sharp tang of rot makes me cough. Louis hesitates, but thankfully he’s a good deal shorter than me and slender as a bean pole, so I shove him inside, hard enough that he falls to his knees. Without an apology, I push the others in behind him. Then I crowd in and bar the door.

  Blackness swallows us. The air is heavy and sour, and the damp walls soak the sleeves of my tunic as we inch forward. Marie sniffles, Condé groans and lists against the wall, Louis curses as he tries to keep the old general on his feet, and the girls cry silently onto my shoulder. That’s when I notice the specks dotting their skin like freckles. They’re round with raised centers that glow a faint, otherworldly green. My ribs squeeze around my heart, and I hold my breath as I wipe my thumb across a spot on Françoise’s finger. It doesn’t smear.

  Damn.

  No one utters a word as we blunder through the dark. My arms ache from the weight of my sisters. It feels as if we’ve been walking for hours. Days. I take a deep breath and readjust for the hundredth time. Whatever it takes to keep them safe.

  Except you’ve failed already, I think, looking at t
he sores and feeling sick.

  When we reach the hidden door behind the stables, Louis lets out a whoop, but it’s quickly followed by a horrified scream from Marie. As soon as I emerge from the tunnel, I bite back a scream of my own. The south woods are drenched in molten-orange flames. Heat lashes my face, and smoke pours down my throat like gravy. I have led us straight to the gates of Hell.

  Condé’s scowl bores into the side of my face. “Don’t stand there staring while we burn alive, boy! You brought us here.”

  I cast around for the safest route while praying for Rixenda to hobble from the barn or beckon from the forest’s edge. Guilt drags at my feet until they’re heavy as boulders. It was foolish to think an old woman could make it through the chaos.

  “It seems I must lead us to safety.” Louis shoots me a disgusted look as he charges into the north woods. I raise my eyebrows but decide not to mention that the Petit Parc is the nearest thing he’s seen to wilderness—and he gets lost on those manicured paths.

  With one more glance at the barn, I follow the others.

  We tromp through the underbrush, slower and more painfully than a royal procession. Flames crackle through the canopy and fiery leaves rain down atop our heads. They fall faster and hotter as we aimlessly twist and turn, wandering farther from civilization and help. I need to say something, need to do something—I’ve picked mushrooms in these woods hundreds of times; I could have us to the road in minutes.

  Be strong, Josse. Rixenda’s admonition plays in my head so loudly that I whip around, hope banging in my chest. But it’s only the blaze, spitting and snapping at our backs.

  I shake the sweaty strands of hair from my eyes, heft the girls higher, and make my way to the front of the group. “We need to head north along the road and find a carriage out of Versailles, perhaps out of France entirely.”

  Louis glares at me as he mops his forehead with a silver-stitched handkerchief. “The king cannot flee his own country.”

  “You won’t be king if you perish in these woods,” I retort.

  “Watch yourself, boy.” Condé moves a trembling hand to his sword—as if he could cut me down in his condition. But by some miracle, when I stomp off, he and the others follow.

  We pick our way through the burning trees, the fire dying out as we near the road. Gruff voices shout orders, and a chorus of whimpers follow. My heart thuds in my throat as I squint through the branches. Two masked intruders are herding a cluster of bloodied servants and courtiers down the road at sword-point. And there, second from the front, is Rixenda. Her petticoats are charred and her white hair billows around her like a storm cloud.

  Relief crashes through me, and my eyes fill with a blurry wash of tears. She’s alive. But for how long? Desperation blows me forward like a violent gust of wind, and I dodge through the underbrush.

  Momentarily forgetting that I’m carrying my sisters, a twig rakes across Anne’s cheek and she yelps.

  The voices on the road go silent. The line of prisoners grinds to a halt.

  “Show yourself!” one of the masked intruders calls.

  The girls tense in my arms, and Louis mutters an oath.

  Rixenda peers over at the trees, her face pinched with a brazen expression I know all too well. Fingertips of worry trace up and down my spine. I hold every muscle still. The sky is dark and thick with smoke and we’re a good ways back from the road. Look away, I plead. But her pale eyes lock on mine through the bramble.

  One of the men starts toward us.

  Rixenda wipes her palms down the front of her apron and stands taller. Sparks from the fire dance in her eyes, and I know what she’s going to do.

  No, I want to shout, but it’s too late. She hefts her petticoats to her knees, steps out of line, and runs in the opposite direction. Drawing the attention away from us.

  The intruder wheels around to give chase. The man at the head of the group glances at the trees, then back at his line of prisoners. Torn.

  “Go!” Louis whispers as he runs deeper into the forest.

  The others follow, but my feet are rooted to the spot. My throat burns as if I’m screaming, but I’m not making a sound.

  The man overtakes Rixenda in less than ten steps. His sword slashes through the flesh between her shoulder blades, and her shriek raises every hair on my body. Pain shudders through me like an earthquake as I watch her hit the ground. A raw, warbling sound sputters from my lips as her blood seeps across the road.

  Marie clamps a hand over my mouth. “Don’t waste her sacrifice,” she says softly. Then she is dragging me.

  I want to curl into a ball and weep. I want to lie down in the leaves and let the fire devour me. But as Rixenda’s screams fade away, her final words to me linger in my mind.

  Be strong, Josse.

  So I force myself to inhale. Force myself to boost my sisters higher and run. Tears streak my soot-caked cheeks and numbness settles over me—as murky as the charcoal sky. By the time we finally stop to catch our breaths, my bones have turned to jelly.

  Louis leans against a tree and mumbles something about scampering about like godforsaken rats. His words slowly permeate my grief-stricken haze and spark something inside me.

  “Rats …” I repeat.

  “What about them?”

  “If these rebels want to treat us like rats, we might as well oblige.”

  Louis eyes me like I’m out of my mind. And maybe I am.

  With a wave to Condé at the rear, I forge ahead, marking a straight course toward the last place anyone would think to look for royalty.

  3

  MIRABELLE

  Our carriage rumbles away from the smoldering remains of Versailles, trailing a wake of corpses. I sit straight as a lance and stare at the frayed window curtain flapping in the breeze. Each time it billows, an icy gust whips through the compartment, but I am too numb to feel it. My tongue is too raw to form words. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the Sun King’s face fills the blackness: foam dripping from his mouth, fingers clawing at his standing ruff. I see the green glow of Lesage’s désintégrer and the courtiers’ bodies strewn across the manicured lawns, their satin gowns and jewel-encrusted doublets riddled with arrows and seeping scarlet.

  What have we done?

  I grip the edge of the bench, tighter and tighter until my forearms quake. No matter how deeply I inhale, I cannot catch my breath—as if invisible hands are cinching my stays. I know better than to utter a word of objection, but I must look like a cauldron threatening to boil over, for Mother takes my chin in a firm grip and forces me to look at her.

  “Trust me, Mirabelle.”

  I wet my lips and swallow hard. How can I trust you? You deceived me, used me. We poisoned the king.

  Mother makes her voice as smooth as honey and brushes a wayward curl from my face. “This was necessary. For the greater good. We will care for the people of Paris far better than the Sun King ever did. There will be no hungry, no infirm.”

  Everything inside me goes quiet. So still, I can hear the blood pounding in my ears. What does she mean, we will care for the people?

  “As someone with intimate knowledge of our former ruler, I can assure you he deserved this fate,” Lesage adds in a breathy voice. He leans against the carriage wall, so weak from expending his magic that he can hardly keep his eyes open. I glare at the ghoulish green light still radiating from his fingertips, fear and fury scorching through my veins like wildfire. I gave Lesage that power—or, my alchemy enhanced it. He was nothing but a performer, a conjurer, creating illusions that vanished like smoke before I invented a tonic that made his magic tactile. Until I turned him into a sorcerer at Mother’s behest.

  Another bout of nausea surges up my throat, and I lean out the window, retching my sickness down the side of the carriage.

  “Really, Mirabelle. Show some fortitude,” Mother barks, though I notice her own face is as waxen as a tallow candle.

  Marguerite straightens and inclines her chin so she’s looking down at me. “D
o you suppose the great Charlemagne united an empire without some bloodshed?” She sounds as if she’s reciting from historical texts to impress a tutor. It works. Mother’s countenance lightens considerably at the comparison. “It is better that a few might perish in order to help the majority.”

  “And think of all we will accomplish with the royal coffers at our disposal,” Lesage puts in. I cut my eyes at the auburn-haired jackal. Of course the coffers are his primary concern.

  My fingers begin to tingle. My vision shimmers gray and black. Breathe, Mira. The king was a gluttonous, slothful man. An abhorrent leader. Perhaps Mother is right. The people will fare better without him.

  The remainder of the ride passes in silence, though it’s not the somber quiet of a torn battlefield or the reverent stillness of a graveyard. It is a raucous silence. A giddy, rasping hum that grates on my ears and makes my skin crawl with weevils. Fernand and Marguerite continue whispering, as always, and Abbé Guibourg strokes his crucifix, a satisfied smile on his withered lips. Even La Trianon looks pleased, shaking her head and fanning her flushed cheeks.

  Madame de Montespan is the only person other than myself who doesn’t join the silent celebration. I had thought she was in on Mother’s scheme, the instigator even, but when Fernand and Marguerite donned their masks and rushed toward the palace, she collapsed beside me in the dirt and wailed at the top of her voice.

  Now she’s ashen and listless, knocking into the carriage wall whenever we round a bend or rumble over a pothole. She fingers her limp corn-colored curls, and her azure eyes stare through me. She mouths the same two words over and over again: “My girls, my girls.”

  For once, Mother and Lesage do not rush to console her. They purse their lips and shoot her wary glances.

  I was not the only one deceived this day.

  As we pass through the Faubourg Saint-Germain and approach the left bank, the sprawling yellow fields give way to crooked half-timbered houses that teeter and lean like tired old men. The familiar stink of bilge water and the haze of chimney soot coats our throats. Marguerite breaks the silence with a long sigh. “We shouldn’t have burned the palace at Versailles,” she laments, peeling back the curtain to stare longingly at the distant pillar of smoke staining the skyline. “It was so much grander than the reeking city center.”