The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley Page A

swear to keep secret our arrangement, and whatever you hear in this house or during your training.” I was very hungry. My hands started to shake, and I could feel the blood leaving my face.
    â€œNervous?” She laughed. “Perhaps you imagine you must sign the contract in blood? No, the time to be nervous was when you were standing on the bridge. Don’t you know the penalties for suicide? Did you really want your corpse to be exposed in the basement of the Châtelet for identification, then hung by the leg from the gibbet until nothing but bones were left? Why, that would make me nervous. Instead, you will be part of my secret family.” She leafed through the green ledger labeled P until she found a series of blank pages. At the top of the first one, she wrote “Pasquier, Geneviève,” and the date, December 3, 1674. Then she leaned forward confidentially.
    â€œA family requires loyalty…gratitude…discretion. And in our trade, we hear so many secrets. It is a kind of confessional; we are almost like priests. People bring their little tragedies to us—often different people want the same thing, and we mustn’t reveal it. Confidentially, you must understand, is part of the fortune-teller’s trade—” I started to slump off the stool. She looked at me with renewed interest.
    â€œWhy, I do believe you must be hungry. Just look at your hands tremble, and you’ve turned altogether pale. Let’s have the oath now, and we’ll celebrate with a bit of something.” I was so hungry, I would have sworn to anything at that moment. But as the oath rolled on, conjuring by the puissant prince Rhadamanthus, by Lucifer, by Beelzebub, by Satanas, by Jauconill, and an infinite catalogue of infernal powers, I thought I would faint facedown in her cloven-hoofed censer. Oaths, in my opinion, infernal or not, ought to be short.
    Rummaging in one of the cupboards, she produced a large box of fancifully shaped marzipan, a bottle of sweet wine, and two glasses. “You know how it is,” she apologized, “I have to keep it locked up from the children in here, or I simply wouldn’t have any . Now, now, not so fast, or you’ll get sick. Four pieces are entirely enough .” And, refilling my glass, she took away the box and locked it up again. “Any more, and you’ll spoil dinner.” The wine had trickled into my insides like liquid fire. I could see two of everything now. The two La Voisins raised their glasses in a toast; I raised my two, as well. We drank to the ancient art of fortune-telling.
    â€œThe art of the fortune-teller!” she exclaimed. “Pleasing, profitable, and entirely legal! Ah, how lucky you are nowadays; the King’s own law has declared superstition obsolete. No more trials for witchcraft, no burnings. Ours is now a new world—of science, of law, of rationality. But even in this new world, men must allow women their little…aberrations, because we poor creatures are too simple to manage without.” She got up and put away the bottle and glasses in the other cupboard, and I could see that the rest of the shelves were lined with strange glass vials, all neatly labeled. She locked the cupboard again, turning to look at me from where she stood. What was in that cupboard? Something about it made my stomach feel queer.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? You’re looking a bit green around the mouth. Oh, dear me. I shouldn’t have frightened you with all that talk of burning. Don’t worry; my arts have been judged entirely legitimate by the highest court of heresy, the doctors of the Sorbonne. I defended them myself. I was much younger, but even then I knew the power of an elegant gown and a handsome bosom over elderly divines! Pooh! Such prejudice! I imagine they expected some dismal, stupid old crone. I merely pointed out to them that I could hardly be faulted for using the arts of astrology when they