A cold sweat beads across my face, and my legs twitch. I want to go to her, pick her up, and tell her how sorry I am. I knew the Shadow Society would be hunting for Louis and my sisters, but I didn’t know it would involve banging down doors and accosting innocent people. How many are suffering in our stead?
Mirabelle touches my shoulder gently. Her dark eyes lock on mine and she tugs my cloak. Woodenly, I take up the cart and follow her the final block to the rue du Temple. But then another wave of horror knocks me upside the head the moment we enter the encampment. The reek of excrement and unwashed bodies is so intense, I have to clench my teeth so as not to gag, and the few ramshackle shelters are naught but piles of rotted wood and crumbling stone. Most people lie sprawled out in the gutters, their tattered clothes revealing gaunt ribs and bone-thin limbs.
The conditions are too squalid for rats, let alone people.
How could Father have been so heartless and unseeing? How could he allow people to live in such squalor? But then a more sobering thought comes: I am hardly better. I was content to hide away in the palace, raising hell and feeling sorry for myself, instead of considering what might be happening beyond the gates. I may be a bastard, but I am infinitely more privileged than some.
“I-I didn’t know.” I turn a slow circle, sickness rising in my throat.
“It’s a lot to take in at first.” Mirabelle casts me an encouraging smile and urges me down the street. We veer toward a pile of pallets burning in the center of the road—it seems to be the center of activity. Old men warm their hands over the flames while middle-aged women dry their sodden petticoats. A group of teenage girls cook unidentifiable scraps of meat on sticks.
I can feel their eyes on us—on the cart specifically.
“We’ve come to help,” Mirabelle says, removing a jar and holding it aloft. “We’ve brought hunger tonic and other curatives.” Without a trace of hesitation, she turns to the nearest man, uncorks the bottle of watery green hunger tonic, and offers him a spoonful.
He leans forward and sniffs. Then he slowly, slowly brings his lips to the spoon. The people shift as he swallows, their muscles coiling and bunching as if they are cats readying to pounce.
The man smacks his lips and sighs. Tears run down his face, cutting channels through the filth. “’Tis hunger tonic indeed.”
That’s all it takes. The decrepit hovels groan, and scores of people scurry toward us like termites out of the woodwork.
“Ready yourself.” Mirabelle shoves a phial of coughing syrup into my right hand and hunger tonic into the left.
“I don’t know how—”
“It’s easy. Just help them.”
In the next instant, we’re swarmed. People rush around us like a raging river, and I struggle to keep my head above the current. A thousand different hands grasp at me; a hundred voices plead. The night is freezing but I am suddenly drenched in sweat.
Where do I even begin?
Wide-eyed, I look over at Mirabelle, and the sight makes me pause. The crowd is shoving and shouting and waving all around her as well, but her face is serene. Her hands are sure and steady as she leans forward to offer a mud-caked child a spoonful of hunger tonic. She turns to them one by one, caressing their cheeks and taking their outstretched hands. She’s so slight that she should be lost in the clamor of the teeming street, but she burns brighter than them all. A candle flaring in the dark.
She looks over, as if she can feel me watching, and flashes a smile filled with such overwhelming joy, it knocks something loose inside of me. She gives me a quick nod of encouragement and turns back to the people. I swallow and do the same.
I’m tentative at first, but I cast around until I find a face that looks almost familiar—an old, toothless woman with white snowstorm hair. It isn’t Rixenda, of course, but the similarity makes it easier to be bold. She’s clutching her chest and hacking into a sodden handkerchief, so I pull her close and administer the coughing syrup with a timid smile.
She smiles back and plants a sloppy kiss on my cheek. I still for the briefest moment, then burst out laughing and return the kiss. The crowd roars their approval, and I turn to the woman directly to her right—a mother holding two squalling babies. And then to a bearded man easily twice my size. On and on and on, until my bottles are empty and I wish, more than anything, I could somehow conjure more.
Mirabelle was right when she said her work would never be finished. There are so many who need help. So many I hadn’t considered until now.
The shame of it drags at my shoulders.
When I first suggested we use Mirabelle’s curatives to unite the peasants and nobility, I was thinking solely of my sisters, determined to keep them safe. I didn’t care about the poor and downtrodden. I was no better than my father.
“We’ll brew more remedies and return straight away,” I call to the scores of people still waiting. “You have my word.”
My promise is met with a chorus of cheers. “Our thanks to La Voisin,” a voice shouts. Others take up the cry, and I have to climb atop the milk cart to get them to quiet down.
“This goodwill is not from La Voisin,” I declare. “She and her Shadow Society have proven no better than the former king, forgetting their duty to the people as soon as they gained control.”
The people whisper back and forth for a moment, then “Ayes” of agreement ripple through the throng.
“These curatives are from the royal family.”
Someone barks a derisive laugh. “Sure they are. Do they also wish to dress us in silks and put us up in their palaces?”
A dozen other shouts and scoffs join in.
