"Pontchartrain sent no fewer than three messages here this morning, requesting the latest news," said Eliza, "but I did not know the contrôleur-général had also contacted you, my lady."
"His curiosity on the matter presumably reflects that of the King."
"It does not surprise me that the King should be so keen to know the whereabouts of his Grand Admiral. But would it not be more proper for such inquiries to be routed through the Secretary of State for the Navy?"
The Duchess of Oyonnax had paused by one of the open casements and levered it mostly closed, making of it a sort of horizontal gun-slit through which she could peer at the street. But she turned away from it now and peered at Eliza for a few moments, then announced: "I am sorry. I supposed you might have known. Monsieur le marquis de Seignelay has cancer. He is very ill of it, and no longer able to fulfill his obligations to his majesty's Navy."
"No wonder the King is so intent on this, then—for they say that the Duke of Marlborough has landed in force in the South of Ireland."
"Your news is stale. Marlborough has already taken Cork, and Kinsale is expected to fall at any moment. All of this while de Seignelay is too ill to work, and d'Arcachon is off in the south on some confusing adventure of his own."
From out in the courtyard, beyond the rear doors of the chapel, Eliza heard a muffled burst of feminine laughter: the Duchess of Arcachon and her friends. It was curious. A few paces in one direction, the most exalted persons in France were donning ribbons and perfume and swapping gossip, getting ready for a Duke's birthday party. Beyond the confines of the Arcachon compound, France was getting ready for nine months' starvation, as the harvest had been destroyed by frost. French and Irish garrisons were falling to the onslaught of Marlborough in chilly Ireland, and the Secretary of State for the Navy was being gnawed to death by cancer. Eliza decided that this dim, chilly, empty room, cluttered with gruesome effigies of our scourged and crucified and impaled Lord, was not such a bad place after all to have a meeting with Oyonnax. Certainly Oyonnax seemed more in her element here than in a gilded and ruffled drawing-room. She said: "I wonder if it is even necessary for you to kill Monsieur le duc. The King might do it for you."
"Do not talk about it this way, if you please!" Eliza snapped.
"It was merely an observation."
"When le duc planned tonight, it was summer, and everything seemed to be going perfectly. I know what he was thinking: the King needs money for the war, and I shall bring him money!"
"You sound as though you are defending him."
"I believe it is useful to know the mind of the enemy."
"Does le duc know your mind, mademoiselle?"
"Obviously not. He does not rate me an enemy."
"Who does?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Someone wishes to know your mind, for you are being watched."
"I am well aware of it. Monsieur Rossignol—"
"Ah, yes—the King's Argus—he knows all."
"He has noticed that my name crops up frequently, of late, in letters written by those at Court who style themselves Alchemists."
"Why are the chymists watching you?"
"I believe it has to do with what Monsieur le duc d'Arcachon has been up to in the south," said Eliza. "Assuming that you have been discreet, that is."
Oyonnax laughed. "You and I associate with two entirely different sorts of chymists! Even if I were indiscreet—which I most certainly am not—it is inconceivable that a brewer of poison, working in a cellar in Paris, should have any contact with a noble practitioner of the Art, such as Upnor or de Gex."
"I did not know that Father Édouard was an Alchemist as well!"
"Of course. Indeed, my divine cousin perfectly illustrates the point I am making. Can you phant'sy such a man associating with Satanists?"
"I cannot even phant'sy myself doing so."
"You aren't."
"What are you then, if I may inquire?"
Oyonnax, in a strangely girlish gesture, put a gloved hand to her lips, suppressing a laugh. "You still do not understand. Versailles is like this window." She swept her arm out, directing Eliza's eye to a scene in stained glass. "Beautiful, but thin, and brittle." She opened the casement below to reveal the street beyond: a wood-carrier, looking like a wild man, had dropped his load to have a fist-fight with a young Vagabond who had taken offense because the wood-carrier had bumped into a whore that the Vagabond was escorting into an alley. A man blinded by smallpox was squatting against a wall releasing a bloody phlux from his bowels. "Beneath the lovely glaze, a sea of desperation. When people are desperate, and praying to God has failed, they begin to look elsewhere. The famous Satanists that Maintenon is so worried about wouldn't recognize the Prince of Darkness if they went down to Hell and held a candle at his levée! Those necromancers are just like the mountebanks on the Pont-Neuf. You can't make a living as a mountebank by offering to trim people's fingernails, because the clientele is not desperate enough. But you can make a living as a tooth-puller. Have you ever had a tooth go bad, mademoiselle?"
"I am aware that it hurts."
"There are people at Court who suffer from aches of heart and spirit that are every bit as intolerable as a toothache. Those who prey on them, are no different from tooth-pullers. The emblems of the devil are no different from the pliers brandished by tooth-pullers: visual proof that these people are equipped to ply their trade, and satisfy their customers."
"You are so dark! Is there anything you believe in?"
Oyonnax closed the casement. The gruesome images outside were gone. "I believe in beauty," she said. "I believe in the beauty of Versailles, and in the King who created it. I believe in your beauty, mademoiselle, and in mine. The darkness beyond has power to break through, just as those people out there could throw rocks through this window. But behold, the window has stood for centuries. No one has thrown a rock through it."
"Why not?"
"Because there is a balance of powers in the world, which can only be perceived by continual attention, and can only be preserved by—"
"By the unceasing and subtile machinations of persons such as you," Eliza said; and the look in the green eyes of Oyonnax told her that her guess was true. "Is that why you have involved yourself in my vendetta against the Duke?"
"I am certainly not doing so out of any affection for you! Nor out of sympathy. I don't know, and don't wish to, why you hate him so, but the stories told about him make it easy to guess. If le duc were a great hero of France—a Jean Bart, for example—I should poison you before suffering you to harm him. But as matters stand, Monsieur le duc is a poltroon, absent for months when he is most needed. Wise was le Roi in subordinating him to Monsieur le marquis de Seignelay. But now that de Seignelay is dying, the duc d'Arcachon will try to reassert his former eminence, which shall prove a disaster to the Navy and to France."
"So you see yourself as doing the King's work."
"I see myself as serving the King's ends." Madame la duchesse d'Oyonnax removed from her waistband a pale-green cylinder, scarcely bigger than a child's finger, and displayed it on the palm of her gloved hand. She was standing several paces away, which forced Eliza to approach her. Eliza did so in spite of a sudden horripilation that had spread over her scalp like a slick of burning oil. Her hands were clasped together in front of her stomach, in part to keep them warm—but in part to keep them close to a slim dagger that she was in the habit of hiding at the waist of her dress. Which was a queer thing to be thinking about, here and now; but she would not put anything past the Duchess, and wanted to be ready in the event that Oyonnax tried to throw something in her face or jab her with a poisoned needle.