Dragonfly in Amber, Page 56

  Pastor Laurent laid a hand on mine. It was grimy with crusted dirt, and his nails were broken and black-edged, but I didn’t draw away. I expected platitudes or a homily, but he didn’t speak, either; just held my hand, very gently, for a long time, as the sun moved across the floor and the flies buzzed slow and heavy past our heads.

  “You had better go,” he said at last, releasing my hand. “You will be missed.”

  “I suppose so.” I drew a deep breath, feeling at least steadier, if not better. I felt in the pocket of my gown; I had a small purse with me.

  I hesitated, not wanting to offend him. After all, by his lights I was a heretic, even if not a witch.

  “Will you let me give you some money?” I asked carefully.

  He thought for a moment, then smiled, the light-brown eyes glowing.

  “On one condition, Madame. If you will allow me to pray for you?”

  “A bargain,” I said, and gave him the purse.

  27

  AN AUDIENCE WITH HIS MAJESTY

  As the days passed at Fontainebleau, I gradually regained my bodily strength, though my mind continued to drift, my thoughts shying away from any sort of memory or action.

  There were few visitors; the country house was a refuge, where the frenetic social life of Paris seemed like one more of the uneasy dreams that haunted me. I was surprised, then, to have a maid summon me to the drawing room to meet a visitor. The thought crossed my mind that it might be Jamie, and I felt a surge of dizzy sickness. But then reason reasserted itself; Jamie must have left for Spain by now; he could not possibly return before late August. And when he did?

  I couldn’t think of it. I pushed the idea into the back of my mind, but my hands shook as I fastened my laces to go downstairs.

  Much to my surprise, the “visitor” was Magnus, the butler from Jared’s Paris house.

  “Your pardon, Madame,” he said, bowing deeply when he saw me. “I did not wish to presume…but I could not tell whether perhaps the matter was of importance…and with the master gone…” Lordly in his own sphere of influence, the old man was badly discomposed by being so far afield. It took some time to extract a coherent story from him, but at length a note was produced, folded and sealed, addressed to me.

  “The hand is that of Monsieur Murtagh,” Magnus said, in a tone of half-repugnant awe. That explained his hesitance, I thought. The servants in the Paris house all regarded Murtagh with a sort of respectful horror, which had been exaggerated by reports of the events in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré.

  It had come to the Paris house two weeks earlier, Magnus explained. Unsure what to do with it, the servants had dithered and conferred, but at length, he had decided that it must be brought to my attention.

  “The master being gone,” he repeated. This time I paid attention to what he was saying.

  “Gone?” I said. The note was crumpled and stained from its journey, light as a leaf in my hand. “You mean Jamie left before this note arrived?” I could make no sense of this; this must be Murtagh’s note giving the name and sailing date of the ship that would bear Charles Stuart’s port from Lisbon. Jamie could not have left for Spain before receiving the information.

  As though to verify this, I broke the seal and unfolded the note. It was addressed to me, because Jamie had thought there was less chance of my mail being intercepted than his. From Lisbon, dated nearly a month before, the letter boasted no signature, but didn’t need one.

  “The Scalamandre sails from Lisbon on the 18th of July” was all the note said. I was surprised to see what a small, neat hand Murtagh wrote; somehow I had been expecting a formless scrawl.

  I looked up from the paper to see Magnus and Louise exchanging a very odd kind of look.

  “What is it?” I said abruptly. “Where’s Jamie?” I had put down his absence from L’Hôpital des Anges after the miscarriage to his guilt at the knowledge that his reckless action had killed our child, had killed Frank, and had nearly cost me my life. At that point, I didn’t care; I didn’t want to see him, either. Now I began to think of another, more sinister explanation for his absence.

  It was Louise who spoke at last, squaring her plump shoulders to the task.

  “He’s in the Bastille,” she said, taking a deep breath. “For dueling.”

  My knees felt watery, and I sat down on the nearest available surface.

  “Why in hell didn’t you tell me?” I wasn’t sure what I felt at this news; shock, or horror—fear? or a small sense of satisfaction?

  “I—I didn’t want to upset you, chérie,” Louise stammered, taken aback at my apparent distress. “You were so weak…and there was nothing you could do, after all. And you didn’t ask,” she pointed out.

  “But what…how…how long is the sentence?” I demanded. Whatever my initial emotion, it was superseded by a sudden rush of urgency. Murtagh’s note had arrived at the Rue Tremoulins two weeks ago. Jamie should have left upon its receipt—but he hadn’t.

  Louise was summoning servants and ordering wine and ammoniac spirits and burnt feathers, all at once; I must look rather alarming.

  “It is a contravention of the King’s order,” she said, pausing in her flutter. “He will remain in prison at the King’s pleasure.”

  “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I muttered, wishing I had something stronger to say.

  “It is fortunate that le petit James did not kill his opponent,” Louise hastened to add. “In that case, the penalty would have been much more…eek!” She twitched her striped skirts aside just in time to avoid the cascade of chocolate and biscuits as I knocked over the newly arrived refreshments. The tray clanged to the floor unregarded as I stared down at her. My hands were clasped tightly against my ribs, the right protectively curled over the gold ring on my left hand. The thin metal seemed to burn against my skin.

  “He isn’t dead, then?” I asked, like one in a dream. “Captain Randall…he’s alive?”

  “Why, yes,” she said, peering curiously up at me. “You did not know? He is badly wounded, but it is said that he recovers. Are you quite well, Claire? You look…” But the rest of what she was saying was lost in the roaring that filled my ears.

  * * *

  “You did too much, too soon,” Louise said severely, pulling back the curtains. “I said so, didn’t I?”

  “I imagine so,” I said. I sat up and swung my legs out of bed, checking cautiously for any residual signs of faintness. No swimming of head, ringing of ears, double vision, or inclination to fall on the floor. Vital signs all right.

  “I need my yellow gown, and then would you send for the carriage, Louise?” I asked.

  Louise looked at me in horror. “You are not meaning to go out? Nonsense! Monsieur Clouseau is coming to attend you! I have sent a messenger to fetch him here at once!”

  The news that Monsieur Clouseau, a prominent society physician, was coming from Paris to examine me, would have been sufficient grounds to get me on my feet, had I needed them.

  The eighteenth of July was ten days away. With a fast horse, good weather, and a disregard for bodily comfort, the journey from Paris to Orvieto could be made in six. That left me four days to contrive Jamie’s release from the Bastille; no time to fiddle about with Monsieur Clouseau.

  “Hmm,” I said, looking round the room thoughtfully. “Well, call the maid to dress me, at any rate. I don’t want Monsieur Clouseau to find me in my shift.”

  Though she still looked suspicious, this sounded plausible; most ladies of the Court would rise from a deathbed in order to make sure they were dressed appropriately for the occasion.

  “All right,” she agreed, turning to go. “But you stay in bed until Yvonne arrives, you hear?”

  The yellow gown was one of my best, a loose, graceful thing made in the modish sacque style, with a wide rolled collar, full sleeves, and a beaded closure down the front. Powdered, combed, stockinged, and perfumed at last, I surveyed the pair of shoes Yvonne had laid out for me to step into. I turned my head this way an
d that, frowning appraisingly.

  “Mm, no,” I said at last. “I don’t think so. I’ll wear the others, the ones with the red morocco heels, instead.”

  The maid looked dubiously at my dress, as though mentally assessing the effect of red morocco with yellow moiré silk, but obediently turned to rummage in the foot of the huge armoire.

  Tiptoeing silently up behind her in my stockinged feet, I shoved her headfirst into the armoire, and slammed the door on the heaving, shrieking mass beneath the pile of fallen dresses within. Turning the key in the door, I dropped it neatly into my pocket, mentally shaking hands with myself. Neat job, Beauchamp, I thought. All this political intrigue is teaching you things they never dreamt of in nursing school, no doubt about it.

  “Don’t worry,” I told the shaking armoire soothingly. “Someone will be along to let you out soon, I imagine. And you can tell La Princesse that you didn’t let me go anywhere.”

  A despairing wail from inside the armoire seemed to be mentioning Monsieur Clouseau’s name.

  “Tell him to have a look at the monkey,” I called over my shoulder, “It’s got mange.”

  * * *

  The success of my encounter with Yvonne buoyed my mood. Once ensconced in the carriage, rattling back toward Paris, though, my spirits sank appreciably.

  While I was no longer quite so angry at Jamie, I still did not wish to see him. My feelings were in complete turmoil, and I had no intention of examining them closely; it hurt too much. Grief was there, and a horrible sense of failure, and over all, the sense of betrayal; his and mine. He should never have gone to the Bois de Boulogne; I should never have gone after him.

  But we both did as our natures and our feelings dictated, and together we had—perhaps—caused the death of our child. I had no wish to meet my partner in the crime, still less to expose my grief to him, to match my guilt with his. I fled from anything that reminded me of the dripping morning in the Bois; certainly I fled from any memory of Jamie, caught as I had last seen him, rising from the body of his victim, face glowing with the vengeance that would shortly claim his own family.

  I could not think of it even in passing, without a terrible clenching in my stomach, that brought back the ghost of the pain of premature labor. I pressed my fists into the blue velvet of the carriage seat, raising myself to ease the imagined pressure on my back.

  I turned to look out the window, hoping to distract myself, but the sights went blindly by, as my mind returned, unbidden, to thoughts of my journey. Whatever my feelings for Jamie, whether we would ever see each other again, what we might be, or not be, to one another—still the fact remained that he was in prison. And I rather thought I knew just what imprisonment might mean to him, with the memories of Wentworth that he carried; the groping hands that fondled him in dreams, the stone walls he hammered in his sleep.

  More importantly, there was the matter of Charles and the ship from Portugal; the loan from Monsieur Duverney, and Murtagh, about to take ship from Lisbon for a rendezvous off Orvieto. The stakes were too high to allow my own emotions any play. For the sake of the Scottish clans, and the Highlands themselves, for Jamie’s family and tenants at Lallybroch, for the thousands who would die at Culloden and in its aftermath—it had to be tried. And to try, Jamie would have to be free; it wasn’t something I could undertake myself.

  No, there was no question. I would have to do whatever I must to have him released from the Bastille.

  And just what could I do?

  I watched the beggars scramble and gesture toward the windows as we entered the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré. When in doubt, I thought, seek the assistance of a Higher Authority.

  I rapped on the panel beside the driver’s seat. It slid back with a grating noise, and the mustached face of Louise’s coachman peered down at me.

  “Madame?”

  “Left,” I said. “To L’Hôpital des Anges.”

  * * *

  Mother Hildegarde tapped her blunt fingers thoughtfully on a sheet of music paper, as though drumming out a troublesome sequence. She sat at the mosaic table in her private office, across from Herr Gerstmann, summoned to join us in urgent council.

  “Well, yes,” said Herr Gerstmann doubtfully. “Yes, I believe I can arrange a private audience with His Majesty, but…you are certain that your husband…um…” The music master seemed to be having unusual trouble in expressing himself, which made me suspect that petitioning the King for Jamie’s release might be just a trifle more complicated than I had thought. Mother Hildegarde verified this suspicion with her own reaction.

  “Johannes!” she exclaimed, so agitated as to drop her usual formal manner of address. “She cannot do that! After all, Madame Fraser is not one of the Court ladies—she is a person of virtue!”

  “Er, thank you,” I said politely. “If you don’t mind, though…what, precisely, would my state of virtue have to do with my seeing the King to ask for Jamie’s release?”

  The nun and the singing-master exchanged looks in which horror at my naiveté was mingled with a general reluctance to remedy it. At last Mother Hildegarde, braver of the two, bit the bullet.

  “If you go alone to ask such a favor from the King, he will expect to lie with you,” she said bluntly. After all the carry-on over telling me, I was hardly surprised, but I glanced at Herr Gerstmann for confirmation, which he gave in the form of a reluctant nod.

  “His Majesty is susceptible to requests from ladies of a certain personal charm,” he said delicately, taking a sudden interest in one of the ornaments on the desk.

  “But there is a price to such requests,” added Mother Hildegarde, not nearly so delicate. “Most of the courtiers are only too pleased when their wives find Royal favor; the gain to them is well worth the sacrifice of their wives’ virtue.” The wide mouth curled with scorn at the thought, then straightened into its usual grimly humorous line.

  “But your husband,” she said, “does not appear to me to be the sort who makes a complaisant cuckold.” The heavy arched brows supplied the question mark at the end of the sentence, and I shook my head in response.

  “I shouldn’t think so.” In fact, this was one of the grosser understatements I had ever heard. If “complaisant” was not the very last word that came to mind at the thought of Jamie Fraser, it was certainly well down toward the bottom of the list. I tried to imagine just what Jamie would think, say, or do, if he ever learned that I had lain with another man, up to and including the King of France.

  The thought made me remember the trust that had existed between us, almost since the day of our marriage, and a sudden feeling of desolation swept over me. I shut my eyes for a moment, fighting illness, but the prospect had to be faced.

  “Well,” I said, taking a deep breath, “is there another way?”

  Mother Hildegarde knitted her brows, frowning at Herr Gerstmann, as though expecting him to produce the answer. The little music master shrugged, though, frowning in his turn.

  “If there were a friend of some importance, who might intercede for your husband with His Majesty?” he asked tentatively.

  “Not likely.” I had examined all such alternatives myself, in the coach from Fontainebleau, and been forced to conclude that there was no one whom I could reasonably ask to undertake such an ambassage. Owing to the illegal and scandalous nature of the duel—for of course Marie d’Arbanville had spread her gossip all over Paris—none of the Frenchmen of our acquaintance could very well afford to take an interest in it. Monsieur Duverney, who had agreed to see me, had been kind, but discouraging. Wait, had been his advice. In a few months, when the scandal has died down a bit, then His Majesty might be approached. But now…

  Likewise the Duke of Sandringham, so bound by the delicate proprieties of diplomacy that he had dismissed his private secretary for only the appearance of involvement in scandal, was in no position to petition Louis for a favor of this sort.

  I stared down at the inlaid tabletop, scarcely seeing the complex curves of enamel that swept
through abstractions of geometry and color. My forefinger traced the loops and whorls before me, providing a precarious anchor for my racing thoughts. If it was indeed necessary for Jamie to be released from prison, in order to prevent the Jacobite invasion of Scotland, then it seemed that I would have to do the releasing, whatever the method, and whatever its consequences.

  At last I looked up, meeting the music master’s eyes. “I’ll have to,” I said softly. “There’s no other way.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Herr Gerstmann glanced at Mother Hildegarde.

  “She will stay here,” Mother Hildegarde declared firmly. “You may send to tell her the time of the audience, Johannes, once you have arranged it.”