Dragonfly in Amber, Page 32

  “Ah, dinna worry yourself.” The tension of the last half-hour released, he squeezed my shoulder affectionately. “You couldna have any idea. Neither did I, for that matter,” he added reflectively. “I suppose he thought I’d dismiss him, and he’d be back in the streets…poor little bugger. No wonder he thought himself lucky to take a beating instead.”

  I shuddered briefly, remembering the streets through which Monsieur Forez’s carriage had traveled. Beggars dressed in rags and sores clung stubbornly to their territories, sleeping on the ground even on the coldest nights, lest some rival steal a profitable corner from them. Children much smaller than Fergus darted through the market crowds like hungry mice, eyes always watching for the dropped crumb, the unguarded pocket. And for those too unhealthy to work, too unattractive to sell to the brothels, or simply too unlucky—it would be a short life indeed, and far from merry. Little wonder if the prospect of being thrust from the luxury of three meals a day and clean clothes back into that sordid stew had been sufficient to send Fergus into paroxysms of needless guilt.

  “I suppose so,” I said. My manner of intake had declined from gulps to a more genteel sipping by this time. I sipped genteelly, then handed the bottle back, noting in a rather detached manner that it was more than half empty. “Still, I hope you didn’t hurt him.”

  “Weel, nay doubt he’ll be a bit sore.” His Scots accent, usually faint, always grew more pronounced when he drank a lot. He shook his head, squinting through the bottle to judge the level of spirit remaining. “D’ye know, Sassenach, I never ’til tonight realized just how difficult it must ha’ been for my father to beat me? I always thought it was me had the hardest part of that particular transaction.” He tilted his head back and drank again, then set down the bottle and stared owl-eyed into the fire. “Being a father might be a bit more complicated than I’d thought. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Well, don’t think too hard,” I said. “You’ve had a lot to drink.”

  “Och, don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “There’s another bottle in the cupboard.”

  15

  IN WHICH MUSIC PLAYS A PART

  We stayed up late with the second bottle, going over and over the latest of the abstracted letters from the Chevalier de St. George—otherwise known as His Majesty, James III—and the letters to Prince Charles from Jacobite supporters.

  “Fergus got a large packet, bound for His Highness,” Jamie explained. “There was a lot of stuff in it, and we couldna copy it all quickly enough, so I kept some to go back the next time.”

  “See,” he said, extracting one sheet from the pile and laying it on my knee, “the majority of the letters are in code, like this one—‘I hear that the prospects for grouse seem most favorable this year in the hills above Salerno; hunters in that region should find themselves successful.’ That’s easy; it’s a reference to Manzetti, the Italian banker; he’s from Salerno. I found that Charles had been dining with him, and managed to borrow fifteen thousand livres—apparently James’s advice was good. But here—” He shuffled through the stack, pulling out another sheet.

  “Look at this,” Jamie said, handing me a sheet covered with his lopsided scrawls.

  I squinted obediently at the paper, from which I could pick out single letters, connected with a network of arrows and question marks.

  “What language is that?” I asked, peering at it. “Polish?” Charles Stuart’s mother, the late Clementina Sobieski, had been Polish, after all.

  “No, it’s in English,” Jamie said, grinning. “You canna read it?”

  “You can?”

  “Oh, aye,” he said smugly. “It’s a cipher, Sassenach, and no a verra complicated one. See, all ye must do is break the letters up into groups of five, to start—only ye don’t count the letters Q or X. The X’s are meant as breaks between sentences, and the Q’s are only stuck in here and there to make it more confusing.”

  “If you say so,” I said, looking from the extremely confusing-looking letter, which began “Mrti ocruti dlopro qahstmin…” to the sheet in Jamie’s hand, with a series of five-letter groups written on one line, single letters printed in carefully above them, one at a time.

  “So, one letter is only substituted for another, but in the same order,” Jamie was explaining, “so if you have a fair amount of text to work from, and you can guess a word here or there, then all ye need do is to translate from one alphabet to the other—see?” He waved a long strip of paper under my nose, with two alphabets printed one above the other, slightly offset.

  “Well, more or less,” I said. “I gather you do, though, which is what’s important. What does it say?”

  The expression of lively interest with which Jamie greeted all manner of puzzles faded a bit, and he let the sheet of paper fall to his knee. He looked at me, lower lip caught between his teeth in introspection.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s what’s odd. And yet I dinna see how I can be mistaken. The tone of James’s letters overall tend one way, and this ciphered one spells it out clearly.”

  Blue eyes met mine under thick, ruddy brows.

  “James wants Charles to find favor with Louis,” he said slowly, “but he isna looking for support for an invasion of Scotland. James has no interest in seeking restoration to the throne.”

  “What?” I snatched the sheaf of letters from his hand, my eyes feverishly scanning the scribbled text.

  Jamie was right; while the letters from supporters spoke hopefully of the impending restoration, James’s letters to his son mentioned no such thing, but were all concerned with Charles’s making a good impression upon Louis. Even the loan from Manzetti of Salerno had been sought to enable Charles to live with the appearance of a gentleman in Paris; not to support any military end.

  “Well, I’m thinking James is a canny wee man,” Jamie had said, tapping one of the letters. “For see, Sassenach, he’s verra little money of his own; his wife had a great deal, but Uncle Alex told me that she left it all to the church when she died. The Pope has been maintaining James’s establishment—after all, he’s a Catholic monarch, and the Pope is bound to uphold his interests against those of the Elector of Hanover.”

  He clasped his hands around one knee, gazing meditatively at the pile of papers now laid between us on the sofa.

  “Philip of Spain and Louis—the Old King, I mean—gave him a small number of troops and a few ships, thirty years ago, with which to try to regain his throne. But it all went wrong; bad weather sank some of the ships, and the rest had no pilots and landed in the wrong place—everything went awry, and in the end, the French simply sailed off again, with James not even setting foot upon the soil of Scotland. So perhaps in the years since, he gave up any thought of getting back his throne. But still, he had two sons coming to manhood, and no way to see them properly settled in life.

  “So I ask myself, Sassenach”—he rocked backward a bit—“what would I do, in such a situation? The answer being, that I might try and see if my good cousin Louis—who’s King of France, after all—might maybe see one son established in a good position; given a military appointment, maybe, and men to lead. A General of France is no bad position in life.”

  “Mm.” I nodded, thinking. “Yes, but if I were a very smart man, I might not just come to Louis and beg, as a poor relation. I might send my son to Paris, and try to shame Louis into accepting him at Court. And meanwhile keep alive the illusion that I was actively seeking restoration.”

  “For once James admits openly that the Stuarts will never rule Scotland again,” Jamie added softly, “then he has no more value to Louis.”

  And without the possibility of an armed Jacobite invasion to occupy the English, Louis would have little reason to give his young cousin Charles anything beyond the pittance that decency and public opinion would force him to provide.

  It wasn’t certain; the letters Jamie had been able to get, a few at a time, went back only as far as last January, when Charles had arrived in France. And, couched in
code, cipher, and guarded language generally, the situation was far from clear. But taken all in all, the evidence did point in that direction.

  And if Jamie’s guess as to the Chevalier’s motives was correct—then our task was accomplished already; had never in fact existed at all.

  * * *

  Thinking over the events of the night before, I was abstracted all the next day, through a visit to Marie d’Arbanville’s morning salon to hear a Hungarian poet, through a visit to a neighborhood herbalist’s to pick up some valerian and orris root, and through my rounds at L’Hôpital des Anges in the afternoon.

  Finally, I abandoned my work, afraid that I might accidentally damage someone while wool-gathering. Neither Murtagh nor Fergus had yet arrived to escort me home, so I changed out of my covering gown and sat down in Mother Hildegarde’s vacant office to wait, just inside the vestibule of the Hôpital.

  I had been there for perhaps half an hour, idly pleating the stuff of my gown between my fingers, when I heard the dog outside.

  The porter was absent, as he often was. Gone to buy food, no doubt, or run an errand for one of the nuns. As usual in his absence, the guardianship of the Hôpital’s portals was given into the capable paws—and teeth—of Bouton.

  The first warning yip was followed by a low, burring growl that warned the intruder to stay where he was, on pain of instant dismemberment. I rose and stuck my head out of the office door, to see whether Father Balmain might be braving the peril of the demon once more, in pursuit of his sacramental duties. But the figure outlined against the huge stained-glass window of the entry hall was not the spare form of the junior priest. It was a tall figure, whose silhouetted kilts swayed gracefully around his legs as he drew back from the small, toothed animal at his feet.

  Jamie blinked, brought up short by the assault. Shading his eyes against the dazzle from the window, he peered down into the shadows.

  “Oh, hallo there, wee dog,” he said politely, and took a step forward, knuckles stretched out. Bouton raised the growl a few decibels, and he took a step back.

  “Oh, like that, is it?” Jamie said. He eyed the dog narrowly.

  “Think it over, laddie,” he advised, squinting down his long, straight nose. “I’m a damn sight bigger than you. I wouldna undertake any rash ventures, if I were you.”

  Bouton shifted his ground slightly, still making a noise like a distant Fokker.

  “Faster, too,” said Jamie, making a feint to one side. Bouton’s teeth snapped together a few inches from Jamie’s calf, and he stepped back hastily. Leaning back against the wall, he folded his arms and nodded down at the dog.

  “Well, you’ve a point there, I’ll admit. When it comes to teeth, ye’ve the edge on me, and no mistake.” Bouton cocked an ear suspiciously at this gracious speech, but went back to the low-pitched growl.

  Jamie hooked one foot over the other, like one prepared to pass the time of day indefinitely. The multicolored light from the window washed his face with blue, making him look like one of the chilly marble statues in the cathedral next door.

  “Surely you’ve better things to do than harry innocent visitors?” he asked, conversationally. “I’ve heard of you—you’re the famous fellow that sniffs out sickness, no? Weel, then, why are they wastin’ ye on silly things like door-guarding, when ye might be makin’ yourself useful smelling gouty toes and pustulant arseholes? Answer me that, if ye will!”

  A sharp bark in response to his uncrossing his feet was the only answer.

  There was a stir of robes behind me as Mother Hildegarde entered from the inner office.

  “What is it?” she asked, seeing me peering round the corner. “Have we visitors?”

  “Bouton seems to be having a difference of opinion with my husband,” I said.

  “I don’t have to put up wi’ this, ye ken,” Jamie was threatening. One hand was stealing toward the brooch that held his plaid at the shoulder. “One quick spring wi’ my plaid, and I’ll have ye trussed like a—oh, bonjour, Madame!” he said, changing swiftly to French at sight of Mother Hildegarde.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Fraser.” She inclined her veil gracefully, more to hide the broad smile on her face than in greeting, I thought. “I see you have made the acquaintance of Bouton. Are you perhaps in search of your wife?”

  This seeming to be my cue, I sidled out of the office behind her. My devoted spouse glanced from Bouton to the office door, plainly drawing conclusions.

  “And just how long have ye been standin’ there, Sassenach?” he asked dryly.

  “Long enough,” I said, with the smug self-assurance of one in Bouton’s good books. “What would you have done with him, once you’d got him wrapped up in your plaid?”

  “Thrown him out the window and run like hell,” he answered, with a brief glance of awe at Mother Hildegarde’s imposing form. “Does she by chance speak English?”

  “No, luckily for you,” I answered. I switched to French for the introductions. “Ma mère, je vous présente mon mari, le seigneur de Broch Tuarach.”

  “Milord.” Mother Hildegarde had by now mastered her sense of humor, and greeted him with her usual expression of formidable geniality. “We shall miss your wife, but if you require her, of course—”

  “I didn’t come for my wife,” Jamie interrupted. “I came to see you, ma mère.”

  * * *

  Seated in Mother Hildegarde’s office, Jamie laid the bundle of papers he carried on the shining wood of her desk. Bouton, keeping a wary eye on the intruder, lay down at his mistress’s feet. He laid his nose upon his feet, but kept his ears cocked, lip raised over one eyetooth in case he should be called upon to rend the visitor limb from limb.

  Jamie narrowed his eyes at Bouton, pointedly pulling his feet away from the twitching black nose. “Herr Gerstmann recommended that I consult you, Mother, about these documents,” he said, unrolling the thick sheaf and flattening it beneath his palms.

  Mother Hildegarde regarded Jamie for a moment, one heavy brow raised quizzically. Then she turned her attention to the sheaf of papers, with that administrator’s trick of seeming to focus entirely on the matter at hand, while still keeping her sensitive antennae tuned to catch the faintest vibration of emergency from the far-off reaches of the Hôpital.

  “Yes?” she said. One blunt finger ran lightly over the lines of scribbled music, one by one, as though she heard the notes by touching them. A flick of the finger, and the sheet slid aside, half-exposing the next.

  “What is it that you wish to know, Monsieur Fraser?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, Mother.” Jamie was leaning forward, intent. He touched the black lines himself, dabbing gently at the smear where the writer’s hand had carelessly brushed the staves before the ink had dried.

  “There is something odd about this music, Mother.”

  The nun’s wide mouth moved slightly in what might have been a smile.

  “Really, Monsieur Fraser? And yet I understand—you will not be offended, I trust—that to you, music is…a lock to which you have no key?”

  Jamie laughed, and a sister passing in the hallways turned, startled by such a sound in the confines of the Hôpital. It was a noisy place, but laughter was unusual.

  “That is a very tactful description of my disability, Mother. And altogether true. Were you to sing one of these pieces”—his finger, longer and more slender, but nearly the same size as Mother Hildegarde’s, tapped the parchment with a soft rustling noise—“I could not tell it from the Kyrie Eleison or from ‘La Dame fait bien’—except by the words,” he added, with a grin.

  Now it was Mother Hildegarde’s turn to laugh.

  “Indeed, Monsieur Fraser,” she said. “Well, at least you listen to the words!” She took the sheaf of papers into her hands, riffling the tops. I could see the faint swelling of her throat above the tight band of her wimple as she read, as though she was singing silently to herself, and one large foot twitched slightly, keeping time.

  Jamie sat very still upon
his stool, good hand folded over the crooked one on his knee, watching her. The slanted blue eyes were intent, and he paid no attention to the ongoing noise from the depths of the Hôpital behind him. Patients cried out, orderlies and nuns shouted back and forth, family members shrieked in sorrow or dismay, and the muted clang of metal instruments echoed off the ancient stones of the building, but neither Jamie nor Mother Hildegarde moved.

  At last she lowered the pages, peering at him over the tops. Her eyes were sparkling, and she looked suddenly like a young girl.

  “I think you are right!” she said. “I cannot take time to think it over carefully just now”—she glanced toward the doorway, momentarily darkened by the form of an orderly dashing past with a large sack of lint—“but there is something odd here.” She tapped the pages on the desk, straightening them into an orderly stack.

  “How extraordinary,” she said.

  “Be that as it may, Mother—can you, with your gift, discern what this particular pattern is? It would be difficult; I have reason to suppose that it is a cipher, and that the language of the message is English, though the text of the songs is in German.”