Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (classic books for 7th graders txt) 📕

call upon him to consult with the police. No, the golden weight of Louis’s regard clearly rests solely on me.

“Bien sûr,” I say, spreading my hands. “I am at your service, Lieutenant General. What would you have me do?”

“Accompany me to the fortress, if you please,” he says, hefting his bulk cumbersomely from the love seat. “It would be best if we went now.”

The fortress of Vincennes sits to the city’s east, near the lush forest of the Bois de Vincennes, almost an hour’s carriage ride away from the Villeneuve. Despite the golden pour of sunshine over its towers and battlements, which hint of its stately past as the royal family’s ancestral home, the grimness of its stone exterior leaves no doubt as to its dire purpose now.

And if its outsides are forbidding, the dungeon proper is far, far worse.

As I trail La Reynie through the rank passageways that tunnel beneath the château, I feel as though I am traipsing through some nightmarish terrain. Sepulchral voices wail from each barred cell, and the cold, dank air crowds into my nose, reeking of rotting wood and sweating stone. I keep my eyes averted from the rusting spikes of the bars, having no wish to witness the misery of those trapped behind them.

But for the grace of notre Dieu, or whatever more diabolic deity watches over me instead, I could very well be chained up here myself.

“No place for a woman, to be sure,” La Reynie remarks, though his easy tone indicates he is unfazed by the captives’ distress. “Which makes what follows an even more thankless task.”

Before I can ask him what he means, he draws to a halt in front of a corner cell. “Bosse,” he orders briskly. “Come forth, will you, and let us see your treacherous face.”

I nearly choke on my own suddenly deadened tongue, feeling as though a blade has pierced my gut at the mention of Marie’s name.

But it cannot compare to the devastation that tears through me at the sight of her face, when she shambles out of the darkness and closer to the light shed by La Reynie’s torch, wrapping her frail hands around the bars. Her wrists are chafed to bleeding from the manacles clapped around them, their long chains looping back to the crumbling walls. She wears some coarse gray scrap barely long enough to cover her thin legs, and her beautiful dark hair has tangled into a wooly snarl, littered with shafts of the dirty straw that line her cell.

And she has been beaten almost beyond recognition, the flesh around the slits of her eyes taut and glossy as a split plum.

“What do you want now, you misbegotten putain de batard?” she spits at La Reynie, not yet noticing me behind him. “Do you not tire of hearing my thoughts on your maman?”

I nearly double over at the injustice of our respective lots—her consigned to this barbaric place, and me free on the other side of the bars. The worst of what she feared for me has come to pass, and yet it has been inflicted on her instead. I can think of no greater punishment for myself than to have damned her in this way. And though I rack my brain, I cannot even fathom why she should be in here at all.

Though she must be in an agony of pain, I am slightly heartened to see that her eyes still glint with their usual clarity. As her glare locks with mine, burning with banked intensity, I can almost hear an echo of her unspoken command:

If you value either of our lives, do not dare to recognize me.

“And who is this … this unfortunate?” I ask, barely containing the quaver in my voice.

“Mademoiselle Marie Bosse,” he replies, instilling “mademoiselle” with an acidic twist. “A minor grifter and fortune-teller who plies her illicit trade in the cité. Her name was already known to us from the raids on the occult havens; we suspect she may be the mastermind behind the spate of recent noble deaths.”

“A lowly grifter from the cité, to have orchestrated the murders of those in the highest ranks?” I ask, pitching my voice high with incredulity. “You would understand such things better than I, of course. But I’m afraid it sounds rather far-fetched.”

“I would agree—save for Bosse’s connection to the alchemist Blessis. He is credited with knowledge of some of the occult substances thought to have been involved in the deaths. And when we conducted an investigation into his affairs, Bosse emerged as his foremost known accomplice.”

“And is this Blessis here in gaol himself?” I ask, dreading the possibility. Though I have had a cordial business relationship with the alchemist, I have no reason to believe he would not yield my name if his own life were at stake.

“No, he seems to have fled the city already.” La Reynie’s tone is bitter with frustration. “We can find neither hide nor hair of him. And thus far, Bosse has been remarkably obstinate in admitting to her own malfeasance.”

“Because I am innocent, you corrupt sous-merde!” Marie growls through chapped lips, spitting at his boots. “A concept with which you seem woefully unfamiliar.”

I bite my lip, hideously torn between wild laughter and tears. Of course she would preserve her high spirits even in this abject place. I have seen nothing that can rattle the core of steel that undergirds Marie.

“That being the case,” La Reynie continues, as if Marie has not spoken, though I can see the dangerous tightening around his mouth, “the king suggested that we enlist your help, Madame La Voisin. Perhaps you can see something in her that might be of use to us.”

“Of course I will try,” I say glibly, inclining my head. “As the king commands.”

“Go ahead, then,” he says, waving his hand vaguely toward the bars. “Do … whatever it is you must.”

“May I touch M—The prisoner?” I ask, stumbling over the last word as I nearly say her name. “Physical contact enhances