An Affair of Poisons(77)
“That’s enough.” She pulls back suddenly and taps the tip of my nose. “We can’t spend all night kissing, princeling. There’s work to be done.”
“But—”
“Perhaps if we work quickly, there will be time for more of this“—she pecks me again, the barest brush of her lips—“later. But for now …” She claps and motions me up.
“You’re killing me.”
“No, my mother is trying to kill you—and everyone who disagrees with her.” She winks and marches back to the millinery. I follow with a shake of my head.
We spend the better part of that night and the following morning strapped in goggles and masks, producing the flame-resistant powder. Instead of working in the millinery, we join Ameline and the fishwives in their homes on the Quai de la Grève so Mirabelle can trek from kitchen to kitchen to check the consistency and potency.
The powder is extraordinary—a shimmery silver substance composed of salts of ammonia and phosphate. I haven’t a clue how it works, but when combined, they knit into a sparkling sheet of gossamer that’s supposedly impervious to flame.
“This twinkly powder is going to protect the fields?” Gavril holds up a jar and inspects it with a frown.
“Do you doubt me?” Mirabelle’s huff is only partly in jest.
“Not exactly …” he says, “but I think the lot of us would feel better if we tested it first.”
“Very well.” Mirabelle tugs a string from the ratty hem of Gavril’s tunic, rolls it through the powder, then holds it directly over a candle. We gather round, leaning in to better see.
The string ripples and spins, glowing white and hot, but not a puff of smoke escapes into the air. And when Mirabelle removes it from the flame and tosses it at Gavril’s face, his horrified cry quickly transforms into laughs. He waves the scrap overhead.
“It’s not even warm! Does it work on larger things?” Before anyone can stop them, the orphans are sprinkling powder over everything—snippets of parchment, the window curtains, a dead mouse they find beneath the cupboards—and holding candles to them.
“Enough of that!” Ameline cuffs Gavril over the head. “You’re making a mess.”
By the morning of the third day, three separate kitchens are stacked floor to ceiling with bottles, and the stationers are loading them onto carts.
“This should hopefully be enough to cover the fields,” Mirabelle says, stepping away from her cauldron to offer encouragement to the fishwives working near her. Once she’s spoken to each of them, she joins Desgrez and Louis and the Marquis de Cessac to discuss our route through the city. But midway through her sentence, she peeks over at me, somehow sensing my gaze.
Her goggles are pushed high on her forehead, making her short curls stand in every direction. Her cheeks are smudged with streaks of silver. And the smile that steals across her lips sets my heart to racing. We haven’t had another moment alone since the alley, but the memory teases and tempts me every time I close my eyes: the heat of her lips, the soft curve of her body, the heady scent of her corkscrew curls.
Maybe … if our plan is successful and Louis is restored to the throne … maybe there could be a future for us beyond all of this.
“You’re not very discreet.” Marie appears at my side, smirking.
I cough to mask my surprise. “I haven’t a clue what you mean.”
“It looks to me like you’re in love with her.”
“Josse is in love with Mirabelle?” Anne pops out from behind Marie and grins up at me. Fran?oise materializes on my other side, giggling hysterically.
“Josse is in love with Mirabelle!”
“Keep your voices down,” I hiss. “Mirabelle and I are allies, nothing more.”
Marie rolls her eyes. “Your words say one thing, but your actions say otherwise.”
“You mustn’t lie, Josse,” Fran?oise says with a tut. “Madame Lemaire says lying is a mortal sin, and you’ll surely burn in Hell for it. Though I think she’d also condemn you for loving one of them, so either way, you’re doomed.”
“I’m not in love with her!” I say again, nearly shouting.
“Not in love with whom?” Mirabelle strolls up behind us at the worst moment possible, and she’s grinning like she knows precisely whom. I want to crawl into one of the cauldrons and die.
“This isn’t the time nor place for love.” Desgrez shoots me and Mirabelle a ridiculous google-eyed look that sends Anne and Fran?oise into another bout of giggles. Then he calls the group to attention. “We have only until sundown to distribute the powder—the razing will take place after dark so there’s no missing the blaze—which means we must focus and work quickly.”
As promised, he passes out disguises. I don’t know where he finds them, but today they’re drab, faded farmers’ rags, patched and pieced with crooked stitching. Mirabelle wears a brown scarf over her shorn hair and an oversized apron. My shirt has a yellow sweat stain around the collar that smells as if the previous wearer keeled over from exhaustion.
“If anyone should ask, we are farmers leaving Les Halles with our unsold wares,” he announces.
When we pass Madame Bissette’s, I kiss Anne and Fran?oise on the head and tell them to behave for Marie, and then we follow Louis and the Marquis de Cessac across the bridge and down the left bank, our haggard party bumping along like a convoy of swaybacked mules. For the most part, no one pays us any mind. We blend in to the dusty bustle of these outlying streets. The few people who do notice us either turn up their noses or yell at us to get out of the way. Swift carriages haven’t the patience for a weary procession like ours.