An Echo in the Bone

  came for me to leave …

  “Mother Claire!”

  I had been feeling pleasantly invisible and, startled out of this delusion, now glanced across the room to see Willie, his disheveled head sticking out from the red-crossed tabard of a Knight Templar, waving enthusiastically.

  “I do wish you could think of something else to call me,” I said, reaching his side. “I feel as though I ought to be swishing round in a habit with a rosary at my waist.”

  He laughed at that, introduced the young lady making goo-goo eyes at him as Miss Chew, and offered to get us both an ice. The temperature in the ballroom was rising eighty, at least, and sweat darkened not a few of the bright silks.

  “What an elegant gown,” Miss Chew said politely. “Is it from England?”

  “Oh,” I said, rather taken aback. “I don’t know. But thank you,” I added, looking down at myself for the first time. I hadn’t really noticed the gown, beyond the mechanical necessities of getting into it; dressing was no more than a daily nuisance, and so long as nothing was too tight or chafed, I didn’t care what I wore.

  John had presented me with the gown this morning, as well as summoning a hairdresser to deal with me from the neck up. I’d shut my eyes, rather shocked at how enjoyable the man’s fingers felt in my hair—but still more shocked when he handed me a looking glass and I saw a towering confection of curls and powder, with a tiny ship perched in it. Full-rigged.

  I’d waited ’til he left, then hurriedly brushed it all out and pinned it up as simply as I could. John had given me a look, but said nothing. Concerned with my head, though, I hadn’t taken any time to look at myself below the neck, and was vaguely pleased now to see how well the cocoa-colored silk fit me. Dark enough that it might not show sweat stains, I thought.

  Miss Chew was watching William like a cat eyeing up a fat, handsome mouse, frowning a little as he stopped to flirt with two other young ladies.

  “Will Lord Ellesmere be remaining long in Philadelphia?” she asked, eyes still on him. “I believe someone told me that he is not to go with General Howe. I do hope that is the case!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “He surrendered with General Burgoyne; those troops are all on parole and are meant to go back to England, but there’s some administrative reason why they can’t embark just yet.” I knew William was hoping to be exchanged, so that he could fight again, but didn’t mention it.

  “Really,” she said, brightening. “What splendid news! Perhaps he will be here for my ball next month. Naturally, it will not be quite so good as this one”—she arched her neck a little, tilting her head toward the musicians who had begun to play at the far end of the room—“but Major André says he will lend his skill to paint the backdrops so we may have tableaux, so it will be—”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “did you say Major André? Major … John André?”

  She glanced at me in surprise, half-annoyed at my interruption. “Of course. He designed the costumes for the joust today and has written the play they will do later. Look, there he is, speaking with Lady Clinton.”

  I looked where she pointed with her fan, feeling a sudden chill wash through me, despite the heat in the room.

  Major André was the center of a group, men and women both, laughing and gesturing, plainly the focus of everyone’s attention. He was a handsome young man in his late twenties, his uniform tailored to perfection and his face vivid, flushed with heat and pleasure.

  “He seems … very charming,” I murmured, wanting to look away from him, but unable to do so.

  “Oh, yes!” Miss Chew was enthusiastic. “He and I and Peggy Shippen did almost all of the work for the mischianza together—he’s a marvel, always with such good ideas, and he plays the flute just delightful. So sad that Peggy’s father would not let her come tonight—quite unfair!” I thought there was an underlying tone of satisfaction to her voice, though; she was quite pleased not to have to share the limelight with her friend.

  “Do let me present him to you,” she said suddenly, and folding her fan, slipped her arm through mine. I was taken entirely by surprise and couldn’t think of a way to extricate myself before I found myself towed into the group around André, with Miss Chew chattering brightly to him, laughing up at him, her hand familiarly on his arm. He smiled at her, then switched his gaze to me, his eyes warm and lively.

  “I am enchanted, Lady John,” he said, in a soft, husky voice. “Your servant, madame.”

  “I—yes,” I said abruptly, quite forgetting the usual form. “You—yes. Glad to meet you!” I pulled my hand out of his before he could kiss it, disconcerting him, and backed away. He blinked, but Miss Chew reclaimed his attention at once, and I turned away, going to stand near the door where there was at least a little air. I was covered in cold sweat and vibrating in every limb.

  “Oh, there you are, Mother Claire!” Willie popped up beside me, two half-melted ices in his hands, sweating freely. “Here.”

  “Thank you.” I took one, noting absently that my fingers were nearly as cold as the misted silver cup.

  “Are you quite all right, Mother Claire?” He bent down to look at me, concerned. “You look quite pale. As though you’d seen a ghost.” He winced in brief apology at this clumsy reference to death, but I made an effort to smile back. Not a terribly successful effort, because he was right. I had just seen a ghost.

  Major John André was the British officer with whom Benedict Arnold—hero of Saratoga and still a legendary patriot—would eventually conspire. And the man who would go to the gallows for his part in that conspiracy, sometime in the next three years.

  “Had you better sit down for a bit?” Willie was frowning in concern, and I made an effort to shake off my cold horror. I didn’t want him offering to leave the ball to see me home; he was plainly having a good time. I smiled at him, barely feeling my lips.

  “No, that’s all right,” I said. “I think … I’ll just step outside for some air.”

  A BUTTERFLY IN A BUTCHER’S YARD

  ROLLO LAY UNDER a bush, noisily devouring the remains of a squirrel he’d caught. Ian sat on a rock, contemplating him. The city of Philadelphia lay just out of sight; he could smell the haze of fire, the stink of thousands of people living cheek by jowl. Could hear the clop and rattle of people going there, on the road that lay only a few hundred yards away. And somewhere, within a mile of him, hidden in that mass of buildings and people, was Rachel Hunter.

  He wanted to step out on the road, stride down it into the heart of Philadelphia, and begin taking the place apart, brick by brick, until he found her.

  “Where do we begin, a cú?” he said to Rollo. “The printshop, I suppose.”

  He’d not been there, but supposed it would not be hard to find. Fergus and Marsali would give him shelter—and food, he thought, feeling his stomach growl—and perhaps Germain and the girls could help him hunt for Rachel. Perhaps Auntie Claire could … Well, he knew she wasn’t a witch or a fairy, but there was no doubt at all in his mind that she was something, and perhaps she would be able to find Rachel for him.

  He waited for Rollo to finish his meal, then rose, an extraordinary sense of warmth suffusing him, though the day was overcast and cool. Could he find her that way? he wondered. Walk through the streets, playing the children’s game of “warmer, colder,” growing steadily warmer as he approached her more closely, coming to her at last just before he burst into flame?

  “You could help, ye know,” he said reproachfully to Rollo. He’d tried getting Rollo to backtrack to her at once when the dog had found him, but the dog had been so berserk with joy at Ian’s return that there was no speaking to him. That was a thought, though—if they somehow ran across her trail, Rollo might take it up, now that he was more sober-minded.

  He smiled crookedly at that thought; the bulk of the British army was encamped at Germantown, but there were thousands of soldiers quartered in Philadelphia itself. As well ask the dog to follow the scent of a butterfly through
a butcher’s yard.

  “Well, we won’t find her, sitting here,” he said to Rollo, and stood up. “Come on, dog.”

  LADY IN WAITING

  I WAS WAITING FOR THINGS to make sense. Nothing did. I had lived in John Grey’s house, with its gracious stair and crystal chandelier, its Turkey rugs and fine china, for nearly a month, and yet I woke each day with no idea where I was, reaching across an empty bed for Jamie.

  I could not believe he was dead. Could not. I shut my eyes at night and heard him breathing slow and soft in the night beside me. Felt his eyes on me, humorous, lusting, annoyed, alight with love. Turned half a dozen times a day, imagining I heard his step behind me. Opened my mouth to say something to him—and more than once really had spoken to him, realizing only when I heard the words dwindle on the empty air that he was not there.

  Each realization crushed me anew. And yet none reconciled me to his loss. I had, with shrinking mind, envisioned his death. He would so have hated drowning. Of all ways to die! I could only hope that the sinking of the ship had been violent, and that he had gone unconscious into the water. Because otherwise … he couldn’t give up, he wouldn’t have. He would have swum and kept swimming, endless miles from any shores, alone in the empty deep, swum stubbornly because he could not give up and let himself sink. Swum until that powerful frame was exhausted, until he could not lift a hand again, and then …

  I rolled over and pressed my face hard into my pillow, heart squeezing with horror.

  “What a bloody, bloody waste!” I said into the feathers, clenching handfuls of pillow in my fists as hard as I could. If he’d died in battle, at least … I rolled back over and shut my eyes, biting my lip until the blood came.

  At last my breathing slowed, and I opened my eyes on darkness again, and resumed waiting. Waiting for Jamie.

  Some time later, the door opened, and a slice of light from the hallway fell into the room. Lord John came in, setting a candle on the table by the door, and approached the bed. I didn’t look at him, but knew he was looking down at me.

  I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Or, rather, looking through it to the sky. Dark, full of stars and emptiness. I hadn’t bothered to light a candle, but I didn’t curse the darkness, either. Only looked into it. Waiting.

  “You are very lonely, my dear,” he said, with great gentleness, “and I know it. Will you not let me bear you company, for a little time at least?”

  I said nothing, but did move over a little and did not resist when he lay down beside me and gathered me carefully into his arms.

  I rested my head on his shoulder, grateful for the comfort of simple touch and human warmth, though it didn’t reach the depths of my desolation.

  Try not to think. Accept what there is; don’t think about what there is not.

  I lay still, listening to John breathe. He breathed differently than Jamie, shallower, faster. A very slight catch in his breath.

  It dawned on me, slowly, that I was not alone in my desolation or my loneliness. And that I knew all too well what had happened last time this state of affairs had become obvious to both of us. Granted, we were not drunk, but I thought he couldn’t help but remember it, as well.

  “Do you … wish me to … comfort you?” he said quietly. “I do know how, you know.” And, reaching down, he moved a finger very slowly, in such a place and with such exquisite delicacy that I gasped and jerked away.

  “I know you do.” I did have a moment’s curiosity as to how exactly he had learned, but was not about to ask. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought—I do,” I assured him, and felt my cheeks flush hotter. “It’s—it’s only—”

  “That you would feel unfaithful?” he guessed. He smiled a little sadly. “I understand.”

  There was a long silence then. And a sense of growing awareness.

  “You wouldn’t?” I asked. He lay quite still, as if asleep, but wasn’t.

  “A standing cock is quite blind, my dear,” he said at last, eyes still shut. “Surely you know that, physician that you are.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I do know that.” And taking him gently but firmly in hand, I dealt with him in tender silence, avoiding any thought of whom he might see in his mind’s eye.

  COLENSO BARAGWANATH ran as though his boot heels were on fire. He burst into the Fox tavern near the foot of State Street, and barreled through the taproom into the cardroom at the back.

  “They found him,” he panted. “The ol’ man. Ax. With the ax.”

  Captain Lord Ellesmere was already rising to his feet. To Colenso, he looked some eight feet tall, and awful in aspect. The place where the doctor had stitched his head was bristly with new hair, but the black stitching still showed. His eyes might have been shooting flames, but Colenso was afraid to look too closely. His chest heaved from running and he was out of breath, but he couldn’t have thought of a thing to say, even so.

  “Where?” said the captain. He spoke very softly, but Colenso heard him and backed toward the door, pointing. The captain picked up the pair of pistols he had laid aside, and putting them in his belt, came toward him.

  “Show me,” he said.

  RACHEL SAT ON the tall stool behind the printshop’s counter, head on her hand. She’d wakened with a sense of pressure in her head, probably from the impending storm, and it had ripened into a throbbing headache. She would rather have gone back to Friend John’s house, to see if Claire might have a tea that would help, but she’d promised Marsali that she would come and mind the shop while her friend took the children to the cobbler to have their shoes mended and Henri-Christian fitted for a pair of boots, for his feet were too short and wide to fit his sisters’ outgrown shoes.

  At least the shop was quiet. Only one or two folk had come in, and only one of those had spoken to her—asking the way to Slip Alley. She rubbed her stiff neck, sighing, and let her eyes close. Marsali would be back soon. Then she could go and lie down with a wet rag on her head, and—

  The bell above the printshop door went ting! and she straightened up, a welcoming smile forming on her face. She saw the visitor and the smile died.

  “Leave,” she said, scrambling off the stool, measuring the distance between her and the door into the house. “Leave this minute.” If she could get through, and out the back—

  “Stand still,” said Arch Bug, in a voice like rusty iron.

  “I know what thee means to do,” she said, backing up a step. “And I do not blame thee for thy grief, thy rage. But thee must know it is not right what thee intend, the Lord cannot wish thee to—”

  “Be quiet, lass,” he said, and his eyes rested on her with an odd sort of gentleness. “Not yet. We’ll wait for him.”

  “For … him?”

  “Aye, him.” With that, he lunged across the counter and seized her arm. She screamed and struggled but could not get loose, and he flipped up the flap in the counter and dragged her through, pushing her hard against the table of books so that the stacks wobbled and fell with papery thumps.

  “Thee cannot hope to—”

  “I have nay hope,” he interrupted, quite calm. The ax was in his belt; she saw it, bare and silver. “I need none.”

  “Thee will surely die,” she said, and made no effort to keep her voice from trembling. “The soldiers will take thee.”

  “Oh, aye, they will.” His face softened a little then, surprisingly. “I shall see my wife again.”

  “I could not counsel suicide,” she said, edging as far away as she could get. “But if thee does intend to die in any case, why does thee insist upon—upon staining thy death, thy soul, with violence?”

  “Ye think vengeance a stain?” The beetling white brows lifted. “It is a glory, lass. My glory, my duty to my wife.”

  “Well, certainly not mine,” she said heatedly. “Why should I be forced to serve thy beastly vengeance? I have done nothing to thee or thine!”

  He wasn’t listening. Not to her, at least. He had turned a little, his hand going to his ax,
and smiled at the sound of racing footsteps.

  “Ian!” she shrieked. “Don’t come in!!”

  He came in, of course. She grasped a book and flung it at the old man’s head, but he dodged it easily and grabbed her by the wrist once more, his ax in hand.

  “Let her go,” said Ian, hoarse with running. His chest heaved and sweat was running down his face; she could smell him, even above the old man’s musty reek. She jerked her hand out of Arch Bug’s clasp, speechless with horror.

  “Don’t kill him,” she said, to both of them. Neither of them listened.

  “I told ye, did I not?” Arch said to Ian. He sounded reasonable, a teacher pointing out the proof of a theorem. Quod erat demonstrandum. Q.E.D.

  “Get away from her,” Ian said.

  His hand hovered above his knife, and Rachel, choking on the words, said, “Ian! Don’t. Thee must not. Please!”

  Ian gave her a look of furious confusion, but she held his eyes, and his hand dropped away. He took a deep breath and then a quick step to the side. Bug whirled to keep him in range of the ax, and Ian slid fast in front of Rachel, screening her with his body.

  “Kill me, then,” he said deliberately to Bug. “Do it.”

  “No!” Rachel said. “That is not what I—no!”

  “Come here, lass,” Arch said, and put out his good hand, beckoning. “Dinna be afraid. I’ll make it fast.”

  Ian shoved her hard, so she slammed into the wall and knocked her head, and braced himself before her, crouched and waiting. Unarmed, because she’d asked it.

  “Ye’ll fucking kill me first,” he said, in a conversational tone.

  “No,” said Arch Bug. “Ye’ll wait your turn.” The old eyes measured him, cold and clever, and the ax moved a little, eager.

  Rachel shut her eyes and prayed, finding no words but praying all the same, in a frenzy of fear. She heard a sound and opened them.

  A long gray blur shot through the air, and in an instant, Arch Bug was on the ground, Rollo on top of him, snarling and snapping at the old man’s throat. Old he might be but still hale, and he had the strength of desperation. His good hand seized the dog’s throat, pushing back, holding off the slavering jaws, and a long, sinewy arm flung out, ax gripped in a maimed fist, and rose.

  “No!” Ian dove forward, knocking Rollo aside, grappling for the hand that held the ax, but it was too late; the blade came down with a chunk! that made Rachel’s vision go white, and Ian screamed.

  She was moving before she could see, and screamed herself when a hand suddenly seized her shoulder and hurled her backward. She hit the wall and slid down it, landing winded and openmouthed. There was a writhing ball of limbs, fur, clothes, and blood on the floor before her. A random shoe cracked against her ankle and she scuttled away crabwise, staring.

  There seemed to be blood everywhere. Spattered against the counter and the wall, smeared on the floor, and the back of Ian’s shirt was soaked with red and clinging so she saw the muscles of his back straining beneath it. He was kneeling half atop a struggling Arch Bug, grappling one-handed for the ax, his left arm hanging limp, and Arch was stabbing at his face with stiffened fingers, trying to blind him, while Rollo darted eellike and bristling into the mass of straining limbs, growling and snapping. Fixed on this spectacle, she was only dimly aware of someone standing behind her but looked up, uncomprehending, when his foot touched her bum.

  “Is there something about you that attracts men with axes?” William asked crossly. He sighted carefully along his pistol’s barrel, and fired.

  REDIVIVUS

  I WAS PINNING up my hair for tea when there was a scratch at the bedroom door.

  “Come,” John called, in the act of pulling on his boots. The door opened cautiously, revealing the odd little Cornish boy who sometimes served as William’s orderly. He said something to John, in what I assumed to be English, and handed him a note. John nodded kindly and dismissed him.

  “Could you understand what he said?” I asked curiously, as he broke the seal with his thumb.

  “Who? Oh, Colenso? No, not a word,” he said absently, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle at whatever he was reading.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A note from Colonel Graves,” he said, carefully refolding it. I wonder if—”

  There was another knock at the door, and John frowned at it.

  “Not now,” he said. “Come back later.”

  “Well, I would,” said a polite voice in a Scottish accent. “But there’s some urgency, ken?”

  The door opened, and Jamie stepped in, closing it behind him. He saw me, stood stock-still for an instant, and then I was in his arms, the overwhelming warmth and size of him blotting out in an instant everything around me.

  I didn’t know where my blood had gone. Every drop had left my head, and flickering lights danced before my eyes—but none of it was supplying my legs, which had abruptly dissolved under me.

  Jamie was holding me up and kissing me, tasting of beer and his beard stubble rasping my face, his fingers buried in my hair, and my breasts warmed and swelled against his chest.

  “Oh, there it is,” I murmured.