An Affair of Poisons(71)
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Ameline crows, wiping tears from her laughing eyes. “Your cock-and-bull story was true,” she says to me and Desgrez.
“We’re not supposed to say damn!” Anne looks at me with worried eyes. Ameline laughs harder, her black hair shaking like a waterfall.
“Let them in already.” Ameline’s husband, étienne, appears behind her in the doorway. “It isn’t proper to keep the king’s daughters waiting in the cold.”
The only dark spot to our otherwise extraordinary progress is that I’m forced to spend far more time with my beloved brother than I’d prefer. Which isn’t surprising, since the amount of time I’d prefer to spend with him is none.
He passes his days either skulking around the sewer complaining about being left behind, or hovering over Mirabelle’s shoulder in the millinery, pretending to take an interest in alchemy. A poorly veiled ruse to nettle me. I wish Mirabelle hadn’t suggested he assist her. The millinery was our safe haven. Where this rebellion began. Where we began. And now Louis is there every waking moment. Driving me within an inch of my sanity.
“It turns out I’ve a natural proficiency for healing,” he tells me late one afternoon when I come to collect the curatives to be delivered to Les Halles that night. He’s working a pestle and mortar, and a sheen of sweat coats his face, making his golden hair stick to his forehead. His real hair. The wig has been tossed to the corner like a wet rag. And he seems oblivious to the smears on his doublet.
I scowl at his insipid act. He may fool the others, but not me. “The only thing you’ve a natural proficiency for is irritating everyone around you.”
“You’re both irritating me.” Mirabelle slams her father’s grimoire down on the counter. “Would it kill you to be civil to each other?”
Louis and I both respond with a zealous “Yes.” The first time in our lives we’ve agreed.
When I return hours later, I’m eager to tell Mirabelle of the rumors swirling through Les Halles: tales of the angel, La Vie, whose phials of antipoison are said to raise the dead; how La Voisin can be heard howling with rage from the Louvre each night; and—most shocking of all—that Shadow Society heralds have been crying from the crowded square of the Palais de Justice, condemning anyone found brewing, distributing, or using antipoison.
Our plan is working. The Shadow Society is losing control.
But before I can utter a word of this good news, Louis launches into an interrogation: “Describe the exact expression on the peasants’ faces when you said my name … Did they seem inspired? Uplifted?”
“If they were inspired and uplifted it was due to the curatives, not you,” I say.
“Yes, but they must have some opinion of me. If only I could go before them—”
“Absolutely not. Even if it wasn’t too dangerous, you would sway them from the cause entirely.”
Louis sets his pestle down and says in a pathetic, warbling voice, “Am I that unbearable?”
“You are worse than unbearable.”
Mirabelle pins us both with an imperious look. “Will the two of you please stop? Or take your quarrels elsewhere. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“I’ll stop squabbling as soon as he stops being …” I can’t even think of the proper word to describe how annoying Louis is so I settle for, “… himself!”
He’s quiet for so long, I silently congratulate myself for winning this bout, but then he speaks, his voice low and hard. “For all you complain about me being insufferable and difficult, you’re just as impossible. I was a selfish, mule-brained puttock when I was blind to the needs of the people. Now, when I am actively trying to help, I’m bothersome and unnecessary. No matter what I do, it’s never good enough for you.”
A punch of disbelieving laughter bursts from my mouth, and the more Louis insists it isn’t funny, the harder I laugh. “Do you expect me to feel sorry for you? I’ve felt that way every minute of my life! You made certain I felt that way! So excuse me if I don’t take pity on you after a few paltry weeks of dithering.”
“When are you going to open your eyes and realize it wasn’t I who ostracized you? Nor Father nor his ministers nor even the courtiers. We didn’t need to. You sabotaged yourself! You made certain no one would ever see you as anything more than a worthless bastard.”
“That’s all I was permitted to be! Father despised me. I had no opportunity—”
“Wrong!” Louis shouts with more vehemence than I’ve ever heard. “In the beginning, he preferred you.”
“No one believes your lies.”
“It’s true. You were more like him in every way—confident and full of swagger, loud and brash and physically capable. Everything I’m not. I overheard him once, when we were twelve years old, complaining to the Grand Condé that he wished you’d been born legitimate, as you’d have made a better king—notwithstanding your rakish ways and boorish behavior.”
I slap both hands down on the table. “Stop! Lying!”
“Stop blaming me, and everyone else, for not living up to your potential. You’ve no one to blame but yourself!”
A high-pitched ringing fills my ears. Dark spots bloom across my vision, devouring the counter and phials and herbs until all I see is black. Until I’m certain I’ll rip the millinery down board by board and bury Louis in the wreckage if I don’t leave this instant.