An Affair of Poisons(50)
“Good. Go borrow it.”
“You mean steal it!”
“It isn’t stealing if we plan to return it.”
“And what if I’m caught?”
Mirabelle shoots me an exasperated look. “You’ve been begging to help for a week, and when I finally give you a duty, you complain. It’s the dead of night and the cart’s sitting out there for the taking. If you bungle that, you deserve to be caught.”
I suppose she has a point. I slink out the door, creep down the moonlit street, and return a few minutes later with the creaking cart in tow. Mirabelle describes the contents of each bottle as she adds them to the cart. “Does this mean I’ll actually be permitted to touch them in order to distribute the medications?”
“If you’re lucky.” She flashes me a goading smile. “Now keep quiet and stay close.” She clips down the street, clinging to the shadows as we scurry from building to building.
I heave the rattling cart forward and try to keep up. The sky is beginning to gray at the edges—so late that the revelers have finally retired, but early enough that the fishermen have yet to set their traps. The cool spring air ruffles my hair and whispers across my neck, sending chills dancing down my limbs. Or perhaps they are chills of excitement.
“How much farther?” I whisper.
Mirabelle peeks around a corner, then waves me forward. “The encampment is just up ahead, on the rue du Temple. It’s where we originally began healing the poor and sick and establishing the Shadow Society’s reputation. We’ve been helping them for years.”
“Then won’t their loyalty be to La Voisin?”
“You’ve never been hungry, have you?” She looks at me as if I’m sporting Louis’s jewel-encrusted doublet and powdered wig. “Their loyalty belongs to whoever has aided them most recently. And, lucky for us, Mother’s been too busy putting down rebellions to distribute any kind of relief.”
We dash down two more blocks. The lights of dozens of tiny fires prick the darkness, but just before we cross the final intersection, a group of Society soldiers round the corner.
I leave the cart and dive into an impossibly small gap between townhouses. Mirabelle smashes in behind me. The space is too narrow to be considered an alley, and her wild heartbeat pounds against my chest. Her hot breath races across my neck. My hands are pressed into the bricks on either side of her face, and she squeezes her eyes shut, digging her fingernails into the grout.
“That house there,” one of the soldiers says, and the others rumble a reply. Every muscle in my body tightens and I draw my fingers into a fist. They won’t take us without a fight. I watch the entrance to the alleyway for their crimson cloaks and masked faces, but a door bangs open several houses away and a woman screams.
“Where are the royals?” they shout at her. “Your neighbor reported hooded figures coming and going at odd hours of the night. And a fleur-de-lis pendant flies from your back window.”
“Lies!” she wails. “I haven’t heard or seen anything of the sort!”
The soldiers continue shouting and the woman continues crying until, finally, their footsteps thump, thump, thump down the street.
When I peek around the wall, the woman is sprawled across the threshold of her door, sobbing and clutching the frame.
A cold sweat beads across my face, and my legs twitch. I want to go to her, pick her up, and tell her how sorry I am. I knew the Shadow Society would be hunting for Louis and my sisters, but I didn’t know it would involve banging down doors and accosting innocent people. How many are suffering in our stead?
Mirabelle touches my shoulder gently. Her dark eyes lock on mine and she tugs my cloak. Woodenly, I take up the cart and follow her the final block to the rue du Temple. But then another wave of horror knocks me upside the head the moment we enter the encampment. The reek of excrement and unwashed bodies is so intense, I have to clench my teeth so as not to gag, and the few ramshackle shelters are naught but piles of rotted wood and crumbling stone. Most people lie sprawled out in the gutters, their tattered clothes revealing gaunt ribs and bone-thin limbs.
The conditions are too squalid for rats, let alone people.
How could Father have been so heartless and unseeing? How could he allow people to live in such squalor? But then a more sobering thought comes: I am hardly better. I was content to hide away in the palace, raising hell and feeling sorry for myself, instead of considering what might be happening beyond the gates. I may be a bastard, but I am infinitely more privileged than some.
“I-I didn’t know.” I turn a slow circle, sickness rising in my throat.
“It’s a lot to take in at first.” Mirabelle casts me an encouraging smile and urges me down the street. We veer toward a pile of pallets burning in the center of the road—it seems to be the center of activity. Old men warm their hands over the flames while middle-aged women dry their sodden petticoats. A group of teenage girls cook unidentifiable scraps of meat on sticks.
I can feel their eyes on us—on the cart specifically.
“We’ve come to help,” Mirabelle says, removing a jar and holding it aloft. “We’ve brought hunger tonic and other curatives.” Without a trace of hesitation, she turns to the nearest man, uncorks the bottle of watery green hunger tonic, and offers him a spoonful.
He leans forward and sniffs. Then he slowly, slowly brings his lips to the spoon. The people shift as he swallows, their muscles coiling and bunching as if they are cats readying to pounce.