La Voisin

Yolie:
I’m discouraged and depressed. My period lasts for about three to five days and I’ve taken the opportunity to create some distance between Alex and myself.
These days I don't give him to drink. Because I bleed he doesn't want to force me into feeding him lest I end up suffering from anemia.
Today is my period’s third day, and luckily the horrific menstrual cramps that I often suffer from have stopped. Alex is out there, prowling the island, again.
I sigh.

Time to resume my reading of the Grimoire.
**As I left England, sore and discouraged, I made a decision. I would never marry or have children again. To be forced to abandon them later would be to repeat the ordeal I had experienced at Salemsbury.
I settled in France and thanks to the daily application of a special ointment and the bath with a soap that I myself made, I whitenned my skin and hid my face’s features that gave away my race.
I was called Catherine Deshayes, and although I had given up my desire to marry, my intentions were thwarted by the push of a little three-year-old girl.
Marie-Marguerite Monvoisin, had lost her mother at birth while I mourned the loss of my little ones, we found what we needed in each other. Her big blue eyes and angelic smile seemed to heal my wretched heart’s suffering.
Antoine Monvoisin, her father, perplexed by the growing attachment and excessive love his little girl professed for me, proposed marriage to me on two occasions.
He didn't love me. He didn't even know me, but he saw me as a good possible surrogate mother for his daughter. I refused, twice and the little girl swore she would hate me and stop talking to me if I didn't become her new "maman".
The third time, I was the one who proposed marriage to her father.**
I laugh.
*That little girl was quite the scoundrel.*
**As years went by, Antoine's jewelry fell on hard times. To survive in the France of the Sun King, I had to lay hands on my arts again, starting my activities as a healer after the ruin of my husband's jewelry. I supported the family economy with the reading of the future from the facial features and the hands, therefore my fame spread as my spells and incantations had their desired effect.
My knowledge of medicine, herbs and ointments made me famous to the point that a large number of clients, both women and men, came daily for help.**
*Oh, oh.*
**Throughout Paris I was known as '' la Voisin ''. My methods and strange formulas that reportedly made those who made the lives of my desperate clients disappear in incomprehensible circumstances, became too famous. To the point that several women of the high nobility, became the most assiduous visitors to my home.
Back then it was a very common practice to get rid of whoever was pestering you through poisoning. The mysterious deaths that occurred for this reason became so notorious that the police began to suspect it could not be the work of a single person or the result of chance. In 1679, King Louis XIV himself ordered the creation of a special court known as the "Chambre Ardente" or Burning Chamber, directed by Lieutenant Nicolas de LaReyne, who would try to elucidate the roots of those alleged and strange crimes.**

*This doesn't look good at all.*

*That same year, after a few people had been arrested, impassive and unperturbed, I attended the usual Sunday mass, where it was my custom to give a large sum of the money earned with my prescriptions to charity, paying special attention that the funds were destined to the care for homeless widows and orphans.*
My jaw drops.

*Orphans?! She donated money to orphans? That sounds familiar to me. I did, also!*
**At the church's door I was arrested.**
*I knew it!*
**La Reyne suspected me when she found in my house on the rue Beauregard a pavilion with black upholstered walls and an altar decorated with a cross and black candles.
I was accused of having causing a very high number of women abort , having poisoned various people on request, having practiced black magic and having organized satanic rites and sacrilegious masses in the course of which newborns were sacrificed.
Of all this, the only true accusation was my involvement in the abortions. Unfaithful wifes always came to me, who wanted to get rid of the fruits of their adulteries.
During the process of investigations against me, names close to the king's court caused even more problems for the investigators. One of those names was that of the king's own favorite mistress, Madame de Montespan.
This caused a great commotion and a great desire on His Majesty’s part to make disappear all the evidences and people that pointed as his lover’s involvement with witchcraft.**
**My end was clear. I was condemned to be burned alive. On February 22, 1680, the verdict was carried out in the Place de la Grève at the hands of an executioner who many claimed was my own lover. A Lie. While I was married to Antoine I was never unfaithful to him. He and the girl escaped to Australia and I never heard from them again.
Before being burned, I entrusted my soul to my gods and faced the flames with the greatest courage I could moster. I really expected to die and find rest at last, hoping that the years I had not consumed Aqua Vitae had had their desired effect. My ashes were scattered in the River Thames and two hours after being cremated I emerged from the waters of the river four miles from the city of Paris.**
*Very similar to what happened to Gandhi, I suppose.*

**Two years later the Burning Chamber was dissolved, by then all those people who mentioned the name of Athenaïs de Montespan at some point in the process had already been imprisoned or executed.
Said woman was truly one of my most loyal clients. Thanks to a love filter prepared by me, she kept the interest of King Louis XIV for many years. As I disappeared, the effect of the filter diminished and a short time later the king replaced her with Madame de Maintenon, the woman Athenaïs herself had chosen as her children’s governess. The king had finally found his true love, because the monarch even married her.
My trial and that of so many others went down in the annals of history and is still known today as "The matter of poisons." I was simply one of the more than 300 names included in the shameful process, although my case was the most publicized all, not in vain was my legendary memory kept as “queen of witches.”**
I shake my head.
Yoleandra was an adrenaline junkie. Letting herself be roasted at the stake to see if she could die or not. Crazy!