Shakespeare's Spy Read Online Free Page A

palm. “Tell mine again.”
    “As you wish.” While she peered into the ball, I sat weighing the words she had directed at me. A fortune? How could I possibly come into a fortune? I could hardly inherit it. My mother had died in the poorhouse, and I had no notion who my father was. Perhaps, as Sam implied, the cunning woman gave more or less the same prediction to everyone. After all, folk were more likely to come back, and to bring their friends, if she told them what they wanted to hear.
    La Voisin lifted her head but said nothing. “Well?” Sam prompted her.
    “You are certain you wish to hear it?”
    “Of course. What is it? What did you see?”
    The cunning woman turned toward him, and I caught for the first time a glimpse of her visage. The skin of her face was as thickly covered with warts as a pox victim’s is with scars. “I see that you will turn traitor.”
    Sam gaped at her for a moment before he found his voice. “That’s not a prediction! That’s an accusation!”
    “You said you wished to hear it.”
    “And now I wish to have my penny back! I didn’t pay good money to be insulted!”
    “I am not responsible for what the future holds; I merely say what I see.”
    Sam got to his feet, grumbling under his breath, “Yes, well, if you ask me, you need spectacles.” He waved Sal Pavy toward the stool. “It’s your turn.”
    “I—I don’t believe I—” Sal Pavy started to say.
    Sam cut him off. “Come, now, stop your whingeing and take it like a man. Your future couldn’t possibly be any worse than mine.” Reluctantly, Sal Pavy perched on the edge of the stool. “You’ve got to give her a penny,” Sam reminded him. “Though perhaps you’d do well to make it tuppence; you might get a better reading.” He turned to me. “Not to forget, you owe me a penny. You can well afford it,” he added, with a secret wink, “seeing as how you’re coming into a fortune, and all.”
    “Silence!” hissed La Voisin. She gazed into the ball even longer than before. I nearly strangled, trying to keep from coughing as the coal smoke wafted about me. When the cunning woman spoke at last, she sounded puzzled. “I see … I see
nothing
.”
    Sal Pavy laughed. “What does that mean? That I have no future?”
    La Voisin gave him a look that erased his skeptical smile. “Perhaps,” she said. “I will look again.”
    “That’s not necessary.” Sal Pavy started to rise. “You may keep the penny.”
    “
Sit
,” said the woman. Sal Pavy’s knees seemed to bend of their own accord. “I will look again.” She hunched over the ball, her nose nearly pressed against it. After a long minute or two, her voice broke the silence, but only barely. She seemed to breathe the words, rather than speak them, as though they came forth without her willing them to, or even wishing themto. “I see … a rough hand gripping you … a knife … at your neck … “She sat back abruptly and, snatching up the cloth, draped it over the globe. “It has gone dark.”
    “But … what did all that mean?” Sal Pavy demanded.
    “I do not interpret. I only see.”
    Sal Pavy got to his feet, obviously angry, but just as obviously shaken. “What a lot of bilk! I know what you’re trying to do! You believe that if you make only half a prediction, I’II give you money to hear the rest! Well, you’re not as good at seeing the future as you imagine for, by my troth, you’ll have not so much as a brass farthing from me!” He spun about and pushed through the tent flap.
    Sam cleared his throat and, with uncharacteristic meekness, said, “I—um—I’d like to apologize for our friend’s behavior. He’s a bit of a hothead, is all. While I’m at it, I apologize for anything I might have said that … that might have …”
    “You need not bother with your false contrition,” said La Voisin. “I am not going to call down a curse upon your heads. That is Fate’s task, not mine.” She pointed toward the flap of the