Read Chapter 34: The Testimony

The convent’s chapel smelled of candle wax and old stone, but Claire sat in the last pew like a woman who had forgotten how to pray. Her hands were folded, white-knuckled, over a worn wooden rosary that she turned between her fingers as though it might splinter.

Marguerite knelt beside her, skirts brushing the cold floor. “Claire. You must come with me. The court will hear you.”

Claire’s laugh was hollow. “The court will hang me.”

“No.” Marguerite lowered her voice. “You are a witness. The Comtesse’s own hand is in the damage—Levasseur’s forgery cannot hide what you know. You were her acolyte, not her equal. Tell them what she made you do.”

“I mixed the elixirs.” Claire’s jaw tightened. “I poured the poison into the bottles. My hands did that.”

“Under her orders.”

“I still did it.”

Marguerite reached out and closed her fingers over Claire’s. The girl flinched but did not pull away.

“Listen to me. The Duchesse sits in her apartments as though the life has drained from her. Her mother ordered her poisoned. Her name is being dragged through every anteroom in Versailles. If you do not speak, the Comtesse will send word from Normandy and Levasseur will walk free, and he will find another daughter to destroy.” Marguerite paused. “You are the only one who can end this.”

Claire’s eyes glistened. She looked toward the altar, toward the carved Christ with his outstretched arms, and something in her shoulders shifted.

“I will do it,” she said quietly. “I will testify.”

---

The carriage ride to Versailles was short and suffocating. Claire sat across from Marguerite, clutching a small leather satchel Marguerite had not noticed her retrieve from beneath her cot at the convent.

“What is that?” Marguerite asked.

Claire wet her lips. “Before I fled, I took one thing the Comtesse did not know I had. She kept a final letter—signed, in her own hand. It was meant to be delivered to Levasseur the day the Duchesse died.” She opened the satchel. Inside lay a folded, wax-sealed paper. “She never sent it. She kept it as insurance.”

Marguerite’s heart beat faster. “What does it say?”

“It names the plan. The poison. The date. Levasseur’s fee.” Claire’s eyes met hers. “It is signed ‘S’—for Soissons. There can be no doubt.”

Marguerite exhaled slowly. “Why did you not give this to me before?”

Claire looked away. “Because I was afraid. Once I gave it to you, there was no turning back. I could not pretend I was innocent.”

---

The chamber where the King’s magistrate heard testimony was smaller than the ballroom, but it felt vaster for the silence. The Duchesse sat in a high-backed chair near the window, her face pale as wax, her hands folded in her lap. She had not looked at Marguerite since she entered.

Magistrate Delacroix—a thin man with a face like a ledger—presided from a raised desk. Court clerks scratched at parchment. Beaumont stood near the back wall, arms crossed, his dark coat blending with the shadows.

Claire was led to the center of the room, her convent grey stark against the court’s gilded panels. She stood straight, though Marguerite could see her fingers trembling at her sides.

Delacroix adjusted his spectacles. “You are Marie-Claire Aubert, formerly in service to the Comtesse de Soissons?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“You have come forward with testimony regarding the poisoning of the Duchesse de Montfort.”

Claire’s voice wavered, then steadied. “Yes, Monsieur.”

“Begin.”

Claire spoke. She told them of the Comtesse’s private chambers in the Hôtel de Soissons. Of the locked cabinet behind the tapestry. Of the glass vials and the scent of bitter almonds. She told them of the instructions whispered in the dark—not to kill her daughter, the Comtesse had said, no—to make her ill. To make her weak. To make her dependent. To make her mother indispensable once more.

“She said the Duchesse had grown too independent,” Claire said. “Too attached to her own counsel. She needed to be brought to heel.”

A murmur rippled through the room. The Duchesse’s face drained further, if that were possible.

“And Levasseur?” Delacroix asked.

“The solicitor managed the letters,” Claire said. “He intercepted correspondence and copied it for the Comtesse. He was the one who instructed me on what to mix and when to deliver it. But he was a servant of her will. She was the architect.”

“You have proof of this?”

Claire reached into her satchel. Her hand shook as she set the letter on the magistrate’s desk.

“That is a letter from the Comtesse to Levasseur. In her hand. Signed and sealed. It was never sent because the plan was interrupted, but I took it when I fled.”

Delacroix unfolded the letter. He read it slowly, his thin face tightening. Then he held it up to the light, examining the seal.

“The seal is the Soissons crest,” he said. “The hand—I am familiar with the Comtesse’s correspondence from her years at court.” He set the letter down with the care of a man handling a viper. “This is sufficient.”

The Duchesse let out a sound—half gasp, half sob. She pressed a handkerchief to her mouth. Marguerite saw tears spill over her cheeks, silent and sudden.

From the back of the room, Beaumont stepped forward. “Monsieur Delacroix. I would add the forged ledger recovered earlier. It was meant to implicate the Duchesse’s mother in a separate plot, but the forgery has been proven. This letter corroborates the testimony we have already gathered.”

Delacroix nodded slowly. “Then let the record reflect that the Comtesse de Soissons is implicated as the principal architect of the poisoning attempt on the Duchesse de Montfort. Her solicitor, Levasseur, is to be apprehended and brought before the court. The accusation against the Duchesse herself is formally withdrawn.”

He struck the desk with a small wooden gavel. The sound echoed like a shot.

“This matter is resolved. The court exonerates the Duchesse completely.”

---

The room emptied in a rustle of silk and boots. Marguerite waited until the clerks had gone, until Delacroix had folded the letter and tucked it into his coat with a bow to the Duchesse.

Then she crossed to where the Duchesse sat, still trembling.

“Madame.”

The Duchesse lifted her face. Her eyes were red, but there was something new in them—not despair, but release.

“She did it,” the Duchesse whispered. “My own mother. And I have spent weeks hating myself, thinking I had failed her somehow. That I had driven her to it.”

“You did not,” Marguerite said firmly. “There is nothing you could have done to earn a mother’s poison.”

The Duchesse laughed—a broken, watery sound. “You always know what to say, Marguerite.”

“I have learned from the best,” Marguerite said, and the Duchesse almost smiled.

Claire stood by the door, uncertain. Marguerite caught her eye and nodded once. Claire inclined her head, then slipped out into the corridor.

Beaumont approached Marguerite as the Duchesse rose and made her way toward the window, gazing out at the gardens.

“That was well done,” he said quietly.

“It was Claire who spoke.”

“But it was you who found her. Who convinced her.” He paused. “You are remarkable, Marguerite.”

She felt heat rise to her cheeks. “You have said that before.”

“I will say it again.” His voice was low, warm. “You have given her back her life. You have cleared her name. What will you do now?”

Marguerite touched the pocket of her gown. The letter—her mother’s letter—still lay there, unopened and growing soft at the edges.

“I think,” she said slowly, “I will finally read what my mother wrote to me.”

Beaumont studied her face. “And after that?”

She could not answer. The door of the chamber opened, and a liveried footman entered.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, bowing low, “there is a message for you. Delivered from the prison at the Bastille.”

Marguerite’s blood went cold. “From the Bastille?”

The footman extended a folded paper. She took it, broke the wax—

Her hands stilled.

The note was written in a cramped, hurried hand. It read:

*The apothecary is gone. He escaped the night before his transfer. He has your name. He will come for you. —A friend.*

No signature.

She looked up. The gardens were bright beyond the window, the sun glinting off fountains and trimmed hedges. Versailles was beautiful, immaculate, alive.

And somewhere inside its walls, a man she had helped condemn was walking free.