Dragonfly in Amber

  “No. Yes. It’s all right, Sassenach. I’ve been writing letters all the morning, and my head’s fit to burst. Dinna worry yourself.” He waved me away, pressing his forehead against the cold pane of the window, eyes tight closed. He went on speaking, as though to distract himself from the pain.

  “Then, if you—and Frank—knew that Jack Randall would die at Culloden, but we know that he shall not…then it can be done, Claire.”

  “What can be done?” I hovered anxiously, wanting to help, but not knowing what to do. Clearly he didn’t want to be touched.

  “What you know will happen can be changed.” He raised his head from the window and smiled tiredly at me. His face was still white, but the traces of that momentary spasm were gone. “Jack Randall died before he ought, and Mary Hawkins will wed another man. Even if that means that your Frank wilna be born—or perhaps will be born some other way,” he added, to be comforting, “then it also means that we have a chance of succeeding in what we’ve set ourselves to do. Perhaps Jack Randall didna die at Culloden Field, because the battle there will never happen.”

  I could see him make the effort to stir himself, to come to me and put his arms around me. I held him about the waist, lightly, not moving. He bent his head, resting his forehead on my hair.

  “I know it must grieve ye, mo duinne. But may it not ease ye, to know that good may come of it?”

  “Yes,” I whispered at last, into the folds of his shirt. I disengaged myself gently from his arms and laid my hand along his cheek. The line between his eyes was deeper, and his eyes slightly unfocused, but he smiled at me.

  “Jamie,” I said, “go and lie down. I’ll send a note to the d’Arbanvilles, to say we can’t come tonight.”

  “Och, no,” he protested. “I’ll be fine. I know this kind of headache, Sassenach; it’s only from the writing, and an hour’s sleep will cure it. I’ll go up now.” He turned toward the door, then hesitated and turned back, half-smiling.

  “And if I should call out in my sleep, Sassenach, just lay your hand upon me, and say to me, ‘Jack Randall’s dead.’ And it will aye be well wi’ me.”

  * * *

  Both food and company at the d’Arbanvilles were good. We came home late, and I fell into a sound sleep the instant my head hit the pillow. I slept dreamlessly, but waked suddenly in the middle of the night, knowing something was wrong.

  The night was cold, and the down quilt had slithered off onto the floor, as was its sneaky habit, leaving only the thin woolen blanket over me. I rolled over, half-asleep, reaching for Jamie’s warmth. He was gone.

  I sat up in bed, looking for him, and saw him almost at once, sitting on the window seat, head in his hands.

  “Jamie! What is it? Have you got headache again?” I groped for the candle, meaning to find my medicine box, but something in the way he sat made me abandon the search and go to him at once.

  He was breathing hard, as though he had been running, and cold as it was, his body was drenched with sweat. I touched his shoulder and found it hard and cold as a metal statue.

  He jerked back at my touch and sprang to his feet, eyes wide and black in the night-filled room.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  I wondered briefly if he were sleepwalking, for his expression didn’t change; he looked straight through me, and whatever he saw, he didn’t like it.

  “Jamie!” I said sharply. “Jamie, wake up!”

  He blinked then, and saw me, though his expression stayed fixed in the desperate lines of a hunted beast.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m awake.” He spoke as though wanting to convince himself of the fact.

  “What is it? Did you have a nightmare?”

  “A dream. Aye. It was a dream.”

  I stepped forward and put a hand on his arm.

  “Tell me. It will go away if you tell me about it.”

  He grasped me hard by the forearms, as much to keep me from touching him as for support. The moon was full, and I could see that every muscle of his body was tensed, hard and motionless as stone, but pulsing with furious energy, ready to explode into action.

  “No,” he said, still sounding dazed.

  “Yes,” I said. “Jamie, talk to me. Tell me. Tell me what you see.”

  “I canna…see anything. Nothing. I can’t see.”

  I pulled, turning him from the shadows of the room to face the bright moonlight from the window. The light seemed to help, for his breathing slowed, and in halting, painful bits, the words came out.

  It was the stones of Wentworth Prison that he dreamed of. And as he spoke, the shape of Jonathan Randall walked the room. And lay naked in my bed, atop the woolen blanket.

  There had been the sound of hoarse breathing close behind him, and the feel of sweat-drenched skin, sliding against his own. He gritted his teeth in an agony of frustration. The man behind him sensed the small movement and laughed.

  “Oh, we’ve some time yet before they hang you, my boy,” he whispered. “Plenty of time to enjoy it.” Randall moved suddenly, hard and abrupt, and he made a small involuntary sound.

  Randall’s hand stroked back the hair from his brow and smoothed it around his ear. The hot breath was close to his ear and he turned his head to escape, but it followed him, breathing words.

  “Have you ever seen a man hanged, Fraser?” The words went on, not waiting for him to reply, and a long, slim hand came around his waist, gently stroking the slope of his belly, teasing its way lower with each word.

  “Yes, of course you have; you were in France, you’ll have seen deserters hanged now and then. A hanged man looses his bowels, doesn’t he? As the rope tightens fast round his neck.” The hand was gripping him, lightly, firmly, rubbing and stroking. He clenched his good hand tight around the edge of the bed and turned his face hard into the scratchy blanket, but the words pursued him.

  “That will happen to you, Fraser. Just a few more hours, and you’ll feel the noose.” The voice laughed, pleased with itself. “You’ll go to your death with your arse burning from my pleasure, and when you lose your bowels, it will be my spunk running down your legs and dripping on the ground below the gallows.”

  He made no sound. He could smell himself, crusted with filth from his imprisonment, acrid with the sweat of fear and anger. And the man behind him, the rank stench of the animal breaking through the delicate scent of the lavender toilet water.

  “The blanket,” he said. His eyes were closed, face strained in the moonlight. “It was rough under my face, and all I could see were the stones of the wall before me. There was nothing there to fix my mind to…nothing I could see. So I kept my eyes closed and thought of the blanket under my cheek. It was all I could feel besides the pain…and him. I…held to it.”

  “Jamie. Let me hold you.” I spoke quietly, trying to calm the frenzy I could feel running through his blood. His grip on my arms was tight enough to numb them. But he wouldn’t let me move closer; he held me away as surely as he clung to me.

  Suddenly he freed me, jerking away and turning toward the moon-filled window. He stood tense and quivering as a bowstring just fired, but his voice was calm.

  “No. I willna use ye that way, lassie. Ye shallna be part of it.”

  I took a step toward him, but he stopped me with a quick motion. He turned his face back to the window, calm now, and blank as the glass he looked through.

  “Get ye to bed, lassie. Leave me to myself a bit; I’ll be well enough presently. There’s naught to worry ye now.”

  He stretched his arms out, grasping the window frame, blotting out the light with his body. His shoulders swelled with effort, and I could tell that he was pushing against the wood with all his might.

  “It was only a dream. Jack Randall is dead.”

  * * *

  I had at length fallen asleep, with Jamie still poised at the window, staring out into the face of the moon. When I woke at dawn, though, he was asleep, curled in the window seat,
wrapped in his plaid, with my cloak dragged over his legs for warmth.

  He woke to my stirring, and seemed his normal, irritatingly cheerful morning self. But I was not likely to forget the happenings of the night, and went to my medicine box after breakfast.

  To my annoyance, I lacked several of the herbs I needed for the sleeping tonic I had in mind. But then I remembered the man Marguerite had told me about. Raymond the herb-seller, in the Rue de Varennes. A wizard, she had said. A place worth seeing. Well, then. Jamie would be at the warehouse all the morning. I had a coach and a footman at my disposal; I would go and see it.

  A clean wooden counter ran the length of the shop on both sides, with shelves twice the height of a man extending from floor to ceiling behind it. Some of the shelves were enclosed with folding glass doors, protecting the rarer and more expensive substances, I supposed. Fat gilded cupids sprawled abandonedly above the cupboards, tooting horns, waving their draperies, and generally looking as though they had been imbibing some of the more alcoholic wares of the shop.

  “Monsieur Raymond?” I inquired politely of the young woman behind the counter.

  “Maître Raymond,” she corrected. She wiped a red nose inelegantly on her sleeve and gestured toward the end of the shop, where sinister clouds of a brownish smoke floated out over the transom of a half-door.

  Wizard or not, Raymond had the right setting for it. Smoke drifted up from a black slate hearth to coil beneath the low black beams of the roof. Above the fire, a stone table pierced with holes held glass alembics, copper “pelicans”—metal cans with long noses from which sinister substances dripped into cups—and what appeared to be a small but serviceable still. I sniffed cautiously. Among the other strong odors in the shop, a heady alcoholic note was clearly distinguishable from the direction of the fire. A neat lineup of clean bottles along the sideboard reinforced my original suspicions. Whatever his trade in charms and potions, Master Raymond plainly did a roaring business in high-quality cherry brandy.

  The distiller himself was crouched over the fire, poking errant bits of charcoal back into the grate. Hearing me come in, he straightened up and turned to greet me with a pleasant smile.

  “How do you do?” I said politely to the top of his head. So strong was the impression that I had stepped into an enchanter’s den that I would not have been surprised to hear a croak in reply.

  For Master Raymond resembled nothing so, much as a large, genial frog. A touch over four feet tall, barrel-chested and bandy-legged, he had the thick, clammy skin of a swamp dweller, and slightly bulbous, friendly black eyes. Aside from the minor fact that he wasn’t green, all he lacked was warts.

  “Madonna!” he said, beaming expansively. “What may I have the pleasure of doing for you?” He lacked teeth altogether, enhancing the froggy impression still more, and I stared at him in fascination.

  “Madonna?” he said, peering up at me questioningly.

  Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been staring, I blushed and said without thinking, “I was just wondering whether you’d ever been kissed by a beautiful young girl.”

  I went still redder as he shouted with laughter. With a broad grin, he said “Many times, madonna. But alas, it does not help. As you see. Ribbit.”

  We dissolved in helpless laughter, attracting the notice of the shopgirl, who peered over the half-door in alarm. Master Raymond waved her away, then hobbled to the window, coughing and clutching his sides, to open the leaded panes and allow some of the smoke to escape.

  “Oh, that’s better!” he said, inhaling deeply as the cold spring air rushed in. He turned to me, smoothing back the long silver hair that brushed his shoulders. “Now, madonna. Since we are friends, perhaps you will wait a moment while I attend to something?”

  Still blushing, I agreed at once, and he turned to his firing shelf, still hiccupping with laughter as he refilled the canister of the still. Taking the opportunity to restore my poise, I strolled about the workroom, looking at the amazing array of clutter.

  A fairly good-sized crocodile, presumably stuffed, hung from the ceiling. I gazed up at the yellow belly-scutes, hard and shiny as pressed wax.

  “Real, is it?” I asked, taking a seat at the scarred oak table.

  Master Raymond glanced upward, smiling.

  “My crocodile? Oh, to be sure, madonna. Gives the customers confidence.” He jerked his head toward the shelf that ran along the wall just above eye height. It was lined with white fired-porcelain jars, each ornamented with gilded curlicues, painted flowers and beasts, and a label, written in elaborate black script. Three of the jars closest to me were labeled in Latin, which I translated with some difficulty—crocodile’s blood, and the liver and bile of the same beast, presumably the one swinging sinisterly overhead in the draft from the main shop.

  I picked up one of the jars, removed the stopper and sniffed delicately.

  “Mustard,” I said, wrinkling my nose, “and thyme. In walnut oil, I think, but what did you use to make it nasty?” I tilted the jar, critically examining the sludgy black liquid within.

  “Ah, so your nose is not purely decorative, madonna!” A wide grin split the toadlike face, revealing hard blue gums.

  “The black stuff is the rotted pulp of a gourd,” he confided, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “As for the smell…well, that actually is blood.”

  “Not from a crocodile,” I said, glancing upward.

  “Such cynicism in one so young,” Raymond mourned. “The ladies and gentlemen of the Court are fortunately more trusting in nature, not that trust is the emotion that springs immediately to mind when one thinks of an aristocrat. No, in fact it is pig’s blood, madonna. Pigs being so much more available than crocodiles.”

  “Mm, yes,” I agreed. “That one must have cost you a pretty penny.”

  “Fortunately, I inherited it, along with much of my present stock, from the previous owner.” I thought I saw a faint flicker of unease in the depths of the soft black eyes, but I had become oversensitive to nuances of expression of late, from watching the faces at parties for tiny clues that might be useful to Jamie in his manipulations.

  The stocky little proprietor leaned still closer, laying a hand confidentially on mine.

  “A professional, are you?” he said. “I must say, you don’t look it.”

  My first impulse was to jerk my hand away, but his touch was oddly comfortable; quite impersonal, but unexpectedly warm and soothing. I glanced at the frost riming the edge of the leaded-glass panes, and thought that that was it; his ungloved hands were warm, a highly unusual condition for anyone’s hands at this time of year.

  “That depends entirely upon what you mean by the term ‘professional,’ ” I said primly. “I’m a healer.”

  “Ah, a healer?” He tilted back in his chair, looking me over with interest. “Yes, I thought so. Anything else, though? No fortune-telling, no love philtres?”

  I felt a twinge of conscience, recalling my days on the road with Murtagh, when we had sought Jamie through the Highlands of Scotland, telling fortunes and singing for our suppers like a couple of Gypsies.

  “Nothing like that,” I said, blushing only slightly.

  “Not a professional liar, at any rate,” he said, eyeing me in amusement. “Rather a pity. Still, how may I have the pleasure of serving you, madonna?”

  I explained my needs, and he nodded sagely as he listened, the thick gray hair swinging forward over his shoulders. He wore no wig within the sanctum of his shop, nor did he powder his hair. It was brushed back from a high, wide forehead, and fell straight as a stick to his shoulders, where it ended abruptly, as though cut with a blunt pair of scissors.

  He was easy to talk to, and very knowledgeable indeed about the uses of herbs and botanicals. He took down small jars of this and that, shaking bits out and crushing the leaves in his palm for me to smell or taste.

  Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of raised voices in the shop. A nattily-dressed footman was lean
ing across the counter, saying something to the shopgirl. Or rather, trying to say something. His feeble attempts were being thrown back in his teeth by a gale of withering Provençale from the other side of the counter. It was too idiomatic for me to follow entirely, but I caught the general drift of her remarks. Something involving cabbages and sausages, none of it complimentary.

  I was musing on the odd tendency of the French to bring food into virtually any kind of discussion, when the shop door banged suddenly open. Reinforcements swept in behind the footman, in the guise of a rouged and flounced Personage of some sort.

  “Ah,” murmured Raymond, peering interestedly beneath my arm at the drama unfolding in his shop. “La Vicomtesse de Rambeau.”

  “You know her?” The shopgirl evidently did, for she abandoned her attack on the footman and shrank back against the cabinet of purges.

  “Yes, madonna,” said Raymond, nodding. “She’s rather expensive.”