But today, not even Alecto can tip me over the edge. The milky water remains obstinately inert, speckled with herbs and on its way to curdling.
With a sigh, I stand and gather Alecto up, carrying her back to the immense glass vivarium she shares with Megaera and Tisiphone. Antoine built it for me as a birthday gift, and installed it close to the fireplace so my snakes might bask in its heat. As I lower Alecto into its mossy depths, the sight of its clever compartments tempers my disappointment and reminds me of my new life’s many blessings. I am now a jeweler’s wife with a stately home near the Pont Marie, wed to a husband who loves me in his way. Enough, anyway, to permit me my snakes and cabinet of occult treasures, when another man might have had me clapped in brodequins or even burned at the stake.
But we understand each other well, Antoine Monvoisin and I. Well enough to know that certain forbidden desires must be given their head.
This life is so much more than I could have imagined during my years of drudgery, that I cannot help but believe in the magic of Agnesot’s grimoire. Out of all the girls desperate to escape their indenture, Antoine chose me to wed. Which means that wherever she is now, Agnesot managed at least part of what she swore to do; she sprang me free from the fabrique, set me loose to pursue my own power. The power that she predicted would one day surpass even hers.
And if the spells in her grimoire yet fail to corral the wild tempests of my visions, to bring them fully under my control, then I must only work the harder. Perhaps, once I have come into my own as Agnesot predicted, the true freedom she promised me will also follow suit.
A freedom far beyond the small one I have now, ever hinging on my husband’s continued beneficence.
A light knock sounds at my door, followed by a courteous pause. Enough time for me to clear the scrying bowl away, tuck the grimoire behind the more innocuous books that line my shelves, and sit back down by the fireplace with embroidery spread across my lap. I trust Antoine, but not enough to have him entirely privy to my doings.
A moment later, the door creaks open to admit my husband.
“Bonsoir, Catherine,” he says mildly, crossing over to blandly buss my cheek. Though we’ve been man and wife for almost three years now, he has never laid a hand on me in passion. When he came to Prudhomme’s fabrique to avail himself of an amenable young wife, it was not the allure of the marital bed he wished to purchase, but the outward trappings of marriage. A respectable veneer. “Am I interrupting?”
“Oh, not at all.” I set aside the embroidery, which has not progressed beyond the odd thread in well over a year. I cannot abide such insipid pursuits, not when I can always feel the grimoire’s tidal pull. “Are you finished at the atelier, then? Shall I see to dinner with Suzette?”
“Ah, no, actually.” He pulls a regretful face, stroking his silver-shot beard. “I’m meeting with my colleague Sebastien for dinner again tonight. I … I expect it will go late. I’m sorry, I should have thought to tell you earlier.”
My practiced eye runs over his hair, neatly clubbed and pomaded away from his silvering temples, his dove-gray satin justaucorps and crisply tied cravat. Though we leave each other quite unmoved, Antoine can be handsome when he tries. And not only has he put effort into his appearance, but this makes three times that he has seen Sebastien this week. Their romance must be flourishing indeed.
Though I reap the benefit of his false life, it still gives me a pang that they must steal this time together, that my husband cannot simply have the love he truly wants. Especially when the king’s own brother, the duc d’Orléans, rides into battle bejeweled and rouged, and it is widely known that the Chevalier du Lorraine shares his bed.
But while the noblesse dally as they please, such latitude does not apply to common folk, especially not when it comes to any love beyond the pale.
“Do not trouble yourself over it, cher,” I tell him, waving a hand. “Perhaps I will meet a friend tonight as well.” My heart lifts joyfully at the prospect of seeing Marie, a light fluttering like a lacewing swarm tickling in my belly. I have been so consumed with studying the grimoire that over a week has somehow flown by since I last spent time with her. “See you in the morning?”
Antoine’s face slackens with relief at the lack of judgment in my voice, as though I would ever see fit to condemn his predilections when they are not so unlike my own.
“Bien sûr, we’ll have breakfast together,” he says. “But you will be careful tonight, yes? Colbert has hiked the taxes yet again; it seems the Sun King’s Dutch war has gnawed the royal treasury so thin that the peasantry must yield ever more of their meager earnings to replenish it. I wouldn’t have you assailed by some malcontent staggering about after drowning his woes.”
I smile at Antoine, moved by his concern, even though I have no fear of the city’s restive streets, no matter how many times Louis XIV’s royal comptroller sees fit to turn the screw yet tighter. Anyone fool enough to cross me and Marie would soon live to regret it. I always carry a knife belt on our outings, while Marie wears vicious little stilettos strapped about her person at all times, along with hollow rings
