Chapter Fourteen Marie
Chapter Fourteen
Marie
Less than a week had passed since Mardi Gras, the spelled wine, and already scores of men had died.
The plague ships were becoming full, as they had during the terror yellow fever had set upon the city some years before.
The bodies were piling up, the crematories were working overtime, and the whole city billowed with black smoke as if the sky rained ash.
It was all the work of Voodoo. The strangest kind, one she had never practiced herself, but it mattered not. Jon was one of them.
“We are under attack, Marie.” Sanite Dede sat on her throne, peering into a basin of water in her lap. “I will not have a war at the end of my reign.”
Marie stood before her, readying herself to hear her latest marching orders. “What would you have me do, my queen?”
“Stamp it out now, before the flames become too large to quell. They believe us responsible for these plagues.” Sanite lifted her gaze from her scrying, a certain sharpness in her eyes.
The water had been collected from Lake Pontchartrain near La Sirene’s shrine and consecrated in her name.
She was Sanite’s patron goddess, whose venerable blessing made the Quarter Queen’s foresight strong.
“We are.”
“We? Jon is not one of us.” Sanite spat on the ground, fury alight on her face.
“Isn’t he?” Marie thought of his voice, the delicious thrill that had traveled through her body when she’d heard his declaration.
I will bring this city to its knees, Marie Laveau.
And I want you standing at my side. Whatever Jon had planned for New Orleans would mean war for them all, a risk Sanite Dede thought too great.
“You’ve a soft spot for him.” Sanite pursed her lips, her gaze souring. “Well, you certainly wouldn’t be the first. You need to make him see reason, Marie.”
No, Marie thought. It is you who needs to see reason.
Sanite cocked her head to the side, peering down at her closely. It was the look that always made Marie’s skin crawl. Those filmy eyes had a way of seeing through her as easily as if she were that bowl of water in Sanite’s withered hands.
“Unless, of course, you agree with him, Marie. Tell me, do you agree with his methods too, the kind of terrible magic he is willing to unleash upon us all? The very same kind, need I remind you, that puts us all at risk for torture and death?” Sanite leaned forward, golden bangles on her wrist rattling as she did.
“You were not alive during the First Inquisition. You did not see the carnage, the absolute terror, as these old eyes have.”
Marie did not need to. It was not often that Sanite spoke of the First Holy Inquisition, nor of what horrors had been wrought upon their kind.
But when she did, she made sure to spare no detail, not one bloody memory.
They’d burned the first Quarter Queen, Saloppe, on a pyre, left her to wither slowly like a boar on a spittle for all to see.
“His magic…it is of a different kind of Voodoo,” said Marie. “It is not more powerful than my own. But it is craftier. And I believe that makes it all the more dangerous, does it not? We’d do well to keep him close.”
“Close?” Sanite Dede mused, a hint of dark laughter in her words. “He cannot be brought to heel like some dog. A man like Jon will never be chained again. Heed me well, Marie: Whatever leash you may think you have on his neck, you will soon find on your own.”
Marie took her seat inside the confessional and crossed herself. She knew Father Antoine was on the other side of the latticed divide, could smell the scent of his anointing oil and the myrrh he’d used to bless himself.
“Hello, Marie.” A moment of silence from his side as the priest crossed himself. “How long has it been since your last confession?”
A week, Marie wanted to say but did not.
A week since Jon had returned to New Orleans and wrought a gaping hole in the city, in her life.
And in your heart, priestess, a little voice said.
“Too long,” Marie answered finally. She knew the words, knew them well, but today they did not come easily to her.
Today they tasted bitter in her mouth. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“And for what sins are you confessing?”
Marie wanted to laugh. Oh, there were plenty.
What had Jacques accused her of? Selfishness.
Harboring such great magic for herself, being unwilling to use it to break the rules that kept their kind down.
Murder and cunning plots on behalf of her queen.
Numerous others. But only one sin remained on her mind, seared into every thought.
“I have…coveted another.”
“And whom have you coveted, Marie?”
“Jon.”
A beat of silence. “Tales of the Conjurer’s return have reached even this weary one’s ears. Be that as it may, how did this come to be?”
“Sanite adheres to the rules, Antoine. Even if it means that nothing will change. And Jon? He will break every single one, but with him…everything would change.”
“Is that what you want?”
She did not speak of the Veil, nor of her intention of bringing Jacques back from the dead.
Those sins she could not confess, not to Antoine, least of all to herself.
“I find that I still love him. My husband. Jacques. And yet…I find I may have tempted another into my heart. One whom I have no right to covet.”
“Marie,” Antoine said quietly. “Jacques Paris may never return, my dear child. But that does not mean that your heart holds him any less.”
Tears stung Marie’s eyes. The truth was, sometimes speaking with Antoine brought her more peace than the prayers to her saints. And sometimes, just sometimes, she thought it might be his forgiveness she was seeking more than God’s.
“For your penance, you are to say three Hail Marys, and I want you to sit with yourself, Marie. Examine your own heart. The heart is a fickle creature to us all. It can be full of evil, truly wicked things. But love is not one of them. Do you understand?”
Marie wiped the tears from her eyes, nodding. “Yes.”
“And Marie?”
Silence stretched for a long moment. She sensed these next words were not the words of her priest, but the gentle words of the father she’d never had.
“We all sin, dear child. Some of us more than others. None of us is above temptation,” Father Antoine said quietly. “But no matter how sweet the fruit, it poisons us all the same. Be careful with him, Marie.”
Be careful with him. Marie was still mulling over Antoine’s words when she stepped out from the cathedral.
The roads were mostly vacant, apart from a handful of sailors stumbling drunkenly back to their inns and boarding rooms. Above her, the sky waned to a deep gray.
Black smoke billowed from the crematories, expelling the fumes of the dead into the air.
This was Jon’s work, Marie told herself.
Folks were too scared to wander alone now, nervous that they might meet some Voodoo hex in broad daylight.
There were signs too—official mandates warning of earlier curfews and fines and fees for those who did not abide.
One read By sundown negroes and coloreds to their rooms. Lest they meet the hangman’s doom.
Another one hung above her on a streetlamp, parchment flapping in a gust of warm wind: Magicks Must Be Managed.
Did the Brotherhood of the White Hand face such trivialities?
She had it on good authority that Gailon and his lot could be pettier than even Sanite Dede and had a bad habit of transfiguring those who ran debts with the guild—turning men into toads, whores into one-eyed crones, and whatever else struck their fancies.
A cold wind swept into the road. Marie glanced up—one by one the streetlamps extinguished themselves like candles snuffed out, plunging the path ahead into darkness.
Three alchemists stepped into her path. They all bore the same milky-white hair, marking their status as the Brotherhood’s ascended, those who’d climbed its higher ranks.
And if there were any doubt, there was the Brotherhood’s mark on their cloaks, a moonstone brooch in the shape of that infamous pale handprint.
“I imagine,” started the tallest of the three, “that these new rules make you feel safe, don’t they?” His attention turned, briefly, to the signpost warning of curfew for Les Magiques. “So why aren’t you following them?”
Marie held herself still. She would not be so easily cowed, especially by lesser mages. “Rules have never made my kind feel safe.”
This drew a laugh from the tall one, their leader. “Gailon said you had more sass than a house slave on a holiday. You delight me, Marie Laveau. Which is why it will pain me to do this.” He drew a black wand from the blue folds of his cloak and pointed it directly at her. “Mutatio.”
At the alchemist’s command, a pile of ropes meant for tethering horses uncoiled into six great snakes, slithering toward her, hissing at her from the shadows.
Marie narrowed her eyes and called upon the strength of Ogoun. God of metalsmithing and the sacred forge, his flame could eat through the skies in one breath. Great Ogoun, Marie prayed. Lend me the flames from your forge.
It was quiet, but then came a sound like heavy iron chains, the hiss and pop of fire rising, the sounds of Ogoun tending his swords over his searing forge.
His mighty voice in her ear, fervently mocking.
Marie Laveau. My altars have gone unlit too long.
A lesser god might take offense. But a good priestess knows to only light the candle, should you find yourself in darkness. Let it be so, child.