Dragonfly in Amber, Page 58

  I rather dimly recalled that St. Augustine had indeed looked into astrology, and had rather scornfully dismissed it as a load of rubbish. Still, I doubted that Louis had read Augustine’s Confessions, and this line of argument was undoubtedly a good one for an accused sorcerer; star-gazing seemed fairly harmless, by comparison with infant sacrifice and nameless orgies.

  I was beginning to wonder, with considerable apprehension, just what I was doing in this assemblage. Had someone seen Master Raymond with me in the Hôpital after all?

  “We have no quarrel with the proper use of knowledge, nor the search for wisdom,” the King went on in measured tones. “There is much that can be learned from the writings of the ancient philosophers, if they are approached with proper caution and humility of spirit. But it is true that while much good may be found in such writings, so, too, may evil be discovered, and the pure search for wisdom be perverted into the desire for power and wealth—the things of this world.”

  He glanced back and forth between the two accused sorcerers once more, obviously drawing conclusions as to who might be more inclined to that sort of perversion. The Comte was still sweating, damp patches showing dark on the white silk of his coat.

  “No, Your Majesty!” he said, shaking back his dark hair and fixing burning eyes on Master Raymond. “It is true that there are dark forces at work in the land—the vileness of which you speak walks among us! But such wickedness does not dwell in the breast of your most loyal subject”—he smote himself on the breast, lest we have missed the point—“no, Your Majesty! For the perversion of knowledge and the use of forbidden arts, you must look beyond your own Court.” He didn’t accuse Master Raymond directly, but the direction of his pointed gaze was obvious.

  The King was unmoved by this outburst. “Such abominations flourished during the reign of my grandfather,” he said softly. “We have rooted them out wherever they have been found; destroyed the threat of such evil where it shall exist in our realm. Sorcerers, witches, those who pervert the teachings of the Church…Monsieurs, we shall not suffer such wickedness to arise again.”

  “So.” He slapped both palms lightly against the table and straightened himself. Still staring at the Raymond and the Comte, he held out a hand in my direction.

  “We have brought here a witness,” he declared. “An infallible judge of truth, of purity of heart.”

  I made a small, gurgling noise, which made the King turn to look at me.

  “A White Lady,” he said softly. “La Dame Blanche cannot lie; she sees the heart and the soul of a man, and may turn that truth to good…or to destruction.”

  The air of unreality that had hung over the evening vanished in a pop. The faint wine-buzz was gone, and I was suddenly stone-cold sober. I opened my mouth, and then shut it, realizing that there was precisely nothing I could say.

  Horror snaked down my backbone and coiled in my belly as the King made his dispositions. Two pentagrams were to be drawn on the floor, within which the two sorcerers would stand. Each would then bear witness to his own activities and motives. And the White Lady would judge the truth of what was said.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” I said, under my breath.

  “Monsieur le Comte?” The King gestured to the first pentagram, chalked on the carpet. Only a king would treat a genuine Aubusson with that kind of cavalier disregard.

  The Comte brushed close to me as he went to take his place. As he passed me, I caught the faintest whisper: “Be warned, Madame. I do not work alone.” He took up his spot and turned to face me with an ironic bow, outwardly composed.

  The implication was reasonably clear; I condemned him, and his minions would be round promptly to cut off my nipples and burn Jared’s warehouse. I licked dry lips, cursing Louis. Why couldn’t he just have wanted my body?

  Raymond stepped casually into his own chalk-limned space, and nodded cordially in my direction. No hint of guidance in those round black eyes.

  I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do next. The King motioned to me to stand opposite him, between the two pentagrams. The hooded men rose to stand behind the King; a blank-faced crowd of menace.

  Everything was extremely quiet. Candle smoke hung in a pall near the gilded ceiling, wisps drifting the languid air currents. All eyes were trained on me. Finally, out of desperation, I turned to the Comte and nodded.

  “You may begin, Monsieur le Comte,” I said.

  He smiled—at least I assumed it was meant to be a smile—and began, starting out with an explication of the foundation of the Cabbala and moving right along to an exegesis on the twenty-three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and the profound symbolism of it all. It sounded thoroughly scholarly, completely innocuous, and terribly dull. The King yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth.

  Meanwhile, I was turning over alternatives in my mind. This man had threatened and attacked me, and tried to have Jamie assassinated—whether for personal or political reasons, it made little difference. He had in all likelihood been the ringleader of the gang of rapists who had waylaid me and Mary. Beyond all this, and beyond the rumors I had heard of his other activities, he was a major threat to the success of our attempt at stopping Charles Stuart. Was I going to let him get away? Let him go on to exert his influence with the King on the Stuarts’ behalf, and to go on roaming the darkened streets of Paris with his band of masked bullies?

  I could see my nipples, erect with fright, standing out boldly against the silk of my dress. But I drew myself up and glared at him anyway.

  “Just one minute,” I said. “All that you say so far is true, Monsieur le Comte, but I see a shadow behind your words.”

  The Comte’s mouth fell open. Louis, suddenly interested, ceased slouching against the table and stood upright. I closed my eyes and laid my fingers against my lids, as though looking inward.

  “I see a name in your mind, Monsieur le Comte,” I said. I sounded breathless and half-choked with fright, but there was no help for it. I dropped my hands and looked straight at him. “Les Disciples du Mal,” I said. “What have you to do with Les Disciples, Monsieur le Comte?”

  He really wasn’t good at hiding his emotions. His eyes bulged and his face went white, and I felt a small fierce surge of satisfaction under my fear.

  The name of Les Disciples du Mal was familiar to the King as well; the sleepy dark eyes narrowed suddenly to slits.

  The Comte may have been a crook and a charlatan, but he wasn’t a coward. Summoning his resources, he glared at me and flung back his head.

  “This woman lies,” he said, sounding as definite as he had when informing the audience that the letter aleph was symbolic of the font of Christ’s blood. “She is no true White Lady, but the servant of Satan! In league with her master, the notorious sorcerer, du Carrefours’s apprentice!” He pointed dramatically at Raymond, who looked mildly surprised.

  One of the hooded men crossed himself, and I heard the soft whisper of a brief prayer among the shadows.

  “I can prove what I say,” the Comte declared, not letting anyone else get a word in edgewise. He reached into the breast of his coat. I remembered the dagger he had produced from his sleeve on the night of the dinner party, and tensed myself to duck. It wasn’t a knife that he brought out, though.

  “The Holy Bible says, ‘They shall handle serpents unharmed,’ ” he thundered. “ ‘And by such signs shall ye know the servants of the true God!’ ”

  I thought it was probably a small python. It was nearly three feet long, a smooth, gleaming length of gold and brown, slick and sinuous as oiled rope, with a pair of disconcerting golden eyes.

  There was a concerted gasp at its appearance, and two of the hooded judges took a quick step back. Louis himself was more than slightly taken aback, and looked hastily about for his bodyguard, who stood goggle-eyed by the door of the chamber.

  The snake flicked its tongue once or twice, tasting the air. Apparently deciding that the mix of candle wax and incense wasn’t edible, it turned and made an attempt to burrow b
ack into the warm pocket from which it had been so rudely removed. The Comte caught it expertly behind the head, and shoved it toward me.

  “You see?” he said triumphantly. “The woman shrinks away in fear! She is a witch!”

  Actually, compared to one judge, who was huddling against the far wall, I was a monument of fortitude, but I must admit that I had taken an involuntary step backward when the snake appeared. Now I stepped forward again, intending to take it away from him. The bloody thing wasn’t poisonous, after all. Maybe we’d see how harmless it was if I wrapped it round his neck.

  Before I could reach him, though, Master Raymond spoke behind me. What with all the commotion, I’d rather forgotten him.

  “That is not all the Bible says, Monsieur le Comte,” Raymond observed. He didn’t raise his voice, and the wide amphibian face was bland as pudding. Still, the buzz of voices stopped, and the King turned to listen.

  “Yes, Monsieur?” he said.

  Raymond nodded in polite acknowledgment of having the floor, and reached into his robe with both hands. From one pocket he produced a flask, from the other a small cup.

  “ ‘They shall handle serpents unharmed,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘and if they drink any deadly poison, they shall not die.’ ” He held the cup out on the palm of his hand, its silver lining gleaming in the candlelight. The flask was poised above it, ready to pour.

  “Since both milady Broch Tuarach and myself have been accused,” Raymond said, with a quick glance at me, “I would suggest that all three of us partake of this test. With your permission, Your Majesty?”

  Louis looked rather stunned by the rapid progress of events, but he nodded, and a thin stream of amber liquid splashed into the cup, which at once turned red and began to bubble, as though the contents were boiling.

  “Dragon’s blood,” Raymond said informatively, waving at the cup. “Entirely harmless to the pure of heart.” He smiled a toothless, encouraging smile, and handed me the cup.

  There didn’t seem much to do but drink it. Dragon’s blood appeared to be some form of sodium bicarbonate; it tasted like brandy with seltzer. I took two or three medium-sized swallows and handed it back.

  With due ceremony, Raymond drank as well. He lowered the cup, exhibiting pink-stained lips, and turned to the King.

  “If La Dame Blanche may be asked to give the cup to Monsieur le Comte?” he said. He gestured to the chalk lines at his feet, to indicate that he might not step outside the protection of the pentagram.

  At the King’s nod, I took the cup and turned mechanically toward the Comte. Perhaps six feet of carpeting to cross. I took the first step, and then another, knees trembling more violently than they had in the small anteroom, alone with the King.

  The White Lady sees a man’s true nature. Did I? Did I really know about either of them, Raymond or the Comte?

  Could I have stopped it? I asked myself that a hundred times, a thousand times—later. Could I have done otherwise?

  I remembered my errant thought on meeting Charles Stuart; how convenient for everyone if he should die. But one cannot kill a man for his beliefs, even if the exercise of those beliefs means the death of innocents—or can one?

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the Comte was guilty, I didn’t know that Raymond was innocent. I didn’t know whether the pursuit of an honorable cause justified the use of dishonorable means. I didn’t know what one life was worth—or a thousand. I didn’t know the true cost of revenge.

  I did know that the cup I held in my hands was death. The white crystal hung around my neck, its weight a reminder of poison. I hadn’t seen Raymond add anything to it; no one had, I was sure. But I didn’t need to dip the crystal into the bloodred liquid to know what it now contained.

  The Comte saw the knowledge in my face; La Dame Blanche cannot lie. He hesitated, looking at the bubbling cup.

  “Drink, Monsieur,” said the King. The dark eyes were hooded once more, showing nothing. “Or are you afraid?”

  The Comte might have a number of things to his discredit, but cowardice wasn’t one of them. His face was pale and set, but he met the King’s eyes squarely, with a slight smile.

  “No, Majesty,” he said.

  He took the cup from my hand and drained it, his eyes fixed on mine. They stayed fixed, staring into my face, even as they glazed with the knowledge of death. The White Lady may turn a man’s nature to good, or to destruction.

  The Comte’s body hit the floor, writhing, and a chorus of shouts and cries rose from the hooded watchers, drowning any sound he might have made. His heels drummed briefly, silent on the flowered carpet; his body arched, then subsided into limpness. The snake, thoroughly disgruntled, struggled free of the disordered folds of white satin and slithered rapidly away, heading for the sanctuary of Louis’s feet.

  All was pandemonium.

  28

  THE COMING OF THE LIGHT

  I returned from Paris to Louise’s house at Fontainebleau. I didn’t want to go to the Rue Tremoulins—or anywhere else that Jamie might find me. He would have little time to look; he would have to leave for Spain virtually at once, or risk the failure of his scheme.

  Louise, good friend that she was, forgave my subterfuge, and—to her credit—forbore to ask me where I had gone, or what I had done there. I didn’t speak much to anyone, but stayed in my room, eating little, and staring at the fat, naked putti that decorated the white ceiling. The sheer necessity of the trip to Paris had roused me for a time, but now there was nothing I must do, no daily routine to support me. Rudderless, I began to drift again.

  Still, I tried sometimes to make an effort. Prodded by Louise, I would come down to a social dinner, or join her for tea with a visiting friend. And I tried to pay attention to Fergus, the only person in the world for whom I had still some sense of responsibility.

  So, when I heard his voice raised in altercation on the other side of an outbuilding as I dutifully took my afternoon walk, I felt obliged to go and see what was the matter.

  He was face to face with one of the stable-lads, a bigger boy with a sullen expression and broad shoulders.

  “Shut your mouth, ignorant toad,” the stable-lad was saying. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “I know better than you—you, whose mother mated with a pig!” Fergus put two fingers in his nostrils, pushed his nose up and danced to and fro, shouting “Oink, oink!” repeatedly.

  The stable-lad, who did have a rather noticeably upturned proboscis, wasted no time in idle repartee, but waded in with both fists clenched and swinging. Within seconds, the two were rolling on the muddy ground, squalling like cats and ripping at each other’s clothes.

  While I was still debating whether to interfere, the stable-lad rolled on top of Fergus, got his neck in both hands, and began to bang his head on the ground. On the one hand, I rather considered that Fergus had been inviting some such attention. On the other, his face was turning a dark, dusky red, and I had some reservations about seeing him cut off in his prime. With a certain amount of deliberation, I walked up behind the struggling pair.

  The stable-lad was kneeling astride Fergus’s body, choking him, and the seat of his breeches was stretched tight before me. I drew back my foot and booted him smartly in the trouser seam. Precariously balanced, he fell forward with a startled cry, atop the body of his erstwhile victim. He rolled to the side and bounced to his feet, fists clenched. Then he saw me, and fled without a word.

  “What do you think you’re playing at?” I demanded. I yanked Fergus, gasping and spluttering, to his feet, and began to beat his clothes, knocking the worst of the mud clumps and hay wisps off of him.

  “Look at that,” I said accusingly. “You’ve torn not only your shirt, but your breeches as well. We’ll have to ask Berta to mend them.” I turned him around and fingered the torn flap of fabric. The stable-lad had apparently gotten a hand in the waistband of the breeches, and ripped them down the side seam; the buckram fabric drooped from his slender hips, all
but baring one buttock.

  I stopped talking suddenly, and stared. It wasn’t the disgraceful expanse of bare flesh that riveted me, but a small red mark that adorned it. About the size of a halfpenny piece, it was the dark, purplish-red color of a freshly healed burn. Disbelievingly, I touched it, making Fergus start in alarm. The edges of the mark were incised; whatever had made it had sunk into the flesh. I grabbed the boy by the arm to stop him running away, and bent to examine the mark more closely.

  At a distance of six inches, the shape of the mark was clear; it was an oval, carrying within it smudged shapes that must have been letters.