A Desperate Fortune

by Susanna Kearsley

  Madame Roy says it is the particular way of the Highlanders, Mary had put in her journal, who in their own homeland of Scotland do wear a great garment of wool that will serve as a skirt or a cloak or a blanket according to need. She says her own father and brothers oft slept out of doors while they tended the herds, in all weathers, and never knew illness until they were come into France where they all slept inside the house and in their beds.

  Thomson, she’d thought, although Scottish, could not have been bred in the Highlands. She could not imagine him sleeping outdoors in the snow, as Madame Roy had described to her—he was a man who’d spent his life in towns and craved their comforts.

  When they’d passed beneath the high stronghold of Aubenas, he’d gazed up at its towers with great longing in his eyes, but they had passed it in the cold and misty dawning hour before the town had wakened, for their path was crossed here by a road that carried travelers from the west into the mountains of the Cévennes, and MacPherson had determined they should cross that road themselves before another person could be found upon it.

  And then the rains had started, and they’d none of them had comfort after that.

  All winter rains were desolate, but these had a relentless force that wore at Mary’s stamina. Even with her hood up and her head down she’d been wetted through, the lining of her cloak proving no barrier to such an onslaught. She’d been very thankful her journal and penner were safely wrapped up in the portmanteau Mr. MacPherson had charge of, and would not be ruined. He’d seen to that when the rain first had begun to grow fierce, by arranging the cases he carried so they lay beneath his loose horseman’s coat, gaining that extra protection on top of the fact that their leather was already oiled to resist the wet.

  He’d moved Frisque, too. The pocket providing no shelter against the rain, Frisque had been buttoned into the warm space between Mr. MacPherson’s own waistcoat and undercoat, held there with a firm hand while the Scotsman walked.

  Mary had begun to wish he’d carry her, as well, and she’d suspected had she asked he might have tried it, for he seemed to have a strength that knew few limits. But her own strength had been failing by the time they’d finally reached a place where shallow clefts and deeper caves began appearing in the steep rock face beside the path, and when MacPherson had stopped in the mouth of one such cave to rest a moment, she had needed no encouragement to follow.

  Thomson, dark with sarcasm, had said, “Another day of this, and I may turn myself in. Would they render me the thousand pounds, do you think, if I so surrendered?”

  It had been a foolish question asked in jest and not requiring an answer, and so none of them had offered one. He’d peered out at the dismal rain still beating down in torrents, and remarked, “I feel a new appreciation, Mistress Dundas, for your friend the chevalier. This must be how it felt for him the time he had to shelter in that cave, when he went hunting and was caught out in that tempest. You’ll not have heard that tale,” he’d told MacPherson, as the Scotsman’s head had turned, “for she did tell us it in French aboard the diligence d’eau, but it is really most remarkable.”

  He’d urged Mary to tell it again, but she’d shaken her head and declined, not because she was tired—though she was—but because she knew Mr. MacPherson, having read Madame d’Aulnoy’s book of Hypolitus in Lyon, might remember the fairy tale in which the Russian prince had met the West Wind with all of his brothers, and realize it had been her inspiration.

  But Thomson, not put off by her reluctance, had retold the tale himself, lending his own flamboyant style to his description of the Chevalier de Vilbray’s encounter with an aged woman and her sons, one of whom had led him on a great adventure overland.

  MacPherson, to Mary’s relief, had appeared to be only half listening. And when Thomson had ended his story by praising the chevalier’s brave resourcefulness, the Scotsman had but shrugged and said, “He sounds a fool, to me.”

  Mary had stirred to defend her creation. “And why is that?”

  “None but a fool,” he’d replied, “trusts a stranger he meets in a cave.”

  She’d have argued the point with him, but she’d been simply too tired from the day’s walk—indeed from the nearly a week’s worth of walking that had come before it—and so she had leaned her head back on the cold stone and let her eyes close. When she’d opened them, he had been watching her.

  She’d felt him watching her a few times after that, when they had ventured out again into the rain, but she had kept her head down and her own gaze on the ground, to keep from stumbling. It had not been till that ground had changed from rough stones into squared ones that she’d noticed they were climbing a steep winding street into a town.

  And when MacPherson had conducted them into a proper guesthouse where they’d found themselves with rooms and fires and beds with pillows, Mary had been too amazed to speak at all, much less to thank him.

  Madame Roy had set out Mary’s gown to dry before the fire, and had a copper tub filled with hot water for a bath. “You’ve been a fine, strong lass so far, but walking in the wet can raise a fever in those not accustomed to it.”

  Mary had obediently bathed without a protest, feeling all the aches and soreness of her body swirl away within that blissful, steaming water. She had even let Madame Roy wash her hair—a rare indulgence that stirred memories of her childhood and made Mary close her eyes. It was the second time Madame Roy had done something Mary’s mother used to do. The evocation of those memories had grown even stronger when Madame Roy, having combed out Mary’s hair before the fire, had tucked her warm and snug beneath the sheets and blankets of her bed, with Frisque a softly breathing weight beside her feet.

  And Mary’s thoughts had drifted sleepily to Saint-Germain-en-Laye—to happy days and happy evenings, and the voices that surrounded her: the lilting Scottish voices that were strange and yet familiar. Madame Roy’s voice, then, had seemed to fit so well with them that Mary of a sudden had decided that a French name did not suit the older woman near as well as that by which their hostess in Lyon had called her. And so, drowsily, her face half buried in the softness of her pillow, she’d asked, “May I call you Effie?”

  For a moment there’d been silence, then the other woman’s hand had gently stroked the hair from Mary’s face. The Scottish woman had said, just as gently, “Aye.”

  And Effie she had been, to Mary, from that moment on.

  They had set out this morning, Monday morning, fresher in their minds and in their steps, though Thomson soon fell back to grumbling.

  “You do know,” he said to Mary, with a nod ahead to where MacPherson walked now with his long gun in his hand, “why he’s been carrying that gun today? This region, so they told me in the town, is rife with bands of thieves and brigands, who will boldly strike by day to rob and plunder the unwary.”

  “Then it’s a good thing,” she told him, “that Mr. MacPherson is never unwary.”

  It was, she thought, perfectly true. Though his attitude seemed to imply he was merely ignoring them, Mary felt certain he heard and marked well every word that was said, and with her spirits rising today she had found it diverting to try to provoke him to break his unwavering silence. She hadn’t succeeded, though it had been just as diverting to watch that same silence push Thomson to greater impatience.

  When they came to a place where MacPherson desired them to keep to the right, he merely gestured with his hand that gripped the long gun to an outcropping of rock in that direction, causing Thomson—who’d been asking why they hadn’t thought to hire a mule this morning—to stop long enough to ask, “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  Mary quipped it was obvious. “He’s saying we might as well speak to that stone as to him, for in truth it would give us as lively an answer.”

  MacPherson, not breaking stride, half turned his head to glance back at her and looked away in one movement, but Mary thought she glimpsed
the faintest twisting of his mouth in what, incredibly, appeared to be a smile. Even more incredibly, when Effie spoke up from behind her and said something briefly in their Highland language, MacPherson replied with a short sound that came close to being a laugh.

  But he said nothing more until late afternoon, when they came to a river and found it had risen with yesterday’s rain, and the ford where they clearly were meant to cross now lay submerged by a shallow but swift-moving current.

  The river was broad, but the bank on the far side was level with a clearing edged by trees. MacPherson, handing Frisque to Mary, had a brief exchange of words with Effie before he told Thomson, “Turn your back,” and did the same himself.

  Effie bent and stepped out of her shoes and stripped her stockings off, and rolling them together took the little dog from Mary’s arms. “Ye do the same,” she said. “I’ll help ye cross.”

  The men respectfully stayed standing with their backs turned while the women hitched their skirts up past their knees and stepped into the rushing water. It was freezing cold, and Mary could not help but give a little shriek, and then a laugh. Her bare feet slipped a little on the wet stones but Effie, having gathered both her skirts and Frisque into one arm, now linked her other arm with Mary’s and helped her to balance as they crossed together.

  “There,” the older woman said, and set the squirming dog down as they reached the other bank, “go have a run, if ye’ve a mind to.” And he did just that, in circles, snuffling happily at all the new discoveries he was making in the clearing. Mary dried her legs and rolled her stockings on, her fingers feeling numb upon the buckles of her shoes. When she was done and Effie had called over to the men to tell them it was safe for them to turn around, she turned herself and saw that Frisque had ventured near the trees. She called him back.

  But he had found something. His hair was raised, his ears were back, and even while she thought she’d never seen him look like that, he started barking, and it was a fierce and frenzied sound she’d never heard him make.

  She clambered to her feet and looked to where the dog was looking.

  Something colder than the water of the river touched her then.

  She’d never seen a living wolf. She’d seen their pelts, and even once the lifeless corpse of one that had been killed by hunters, but she’d never seen one standing like a predatory shadow with its rough brown coat concealing it amid the trees, its eyes locked with a fixed and hungry purpose on its prey.

  She did not scream. She yelled, and ran for Frisque with all the speed she had, and as the wolf broke from the tree line Mary reached the little dog and snatched him up and wheeled about and went on running, with her lungs on fire.

  MacPherson, from the river, yelled as well, “Get down!”

  She did not understand. Her gaze in panic fell upon him, standing in the water to his knees, the long gun leveled to his shoulder as he sighted down its barrel.

  “Mary!” he called out more strongly. “Down!”

  She did as ordered, dropping with her body curled round Frisque, the wolf so close behind she heard it panting.

  And MacPherson fired.

  Chapter 31

  Send thou the night away in song; and give the joy of grief.

  —Macpherson, “Fingal,” Book One

  The Bas-Vivarais

  March 4, 1732

  Thomson was still speaking of it come the morning. “Flung me,” he repeated, as he told the tale again to the three older children of the family where they had been taken in the night before. “Did not ‘let me go,’ he flung me on my ar—well, on my backside in the middle of the river.”

  “Did you drown?” The littlest boy had asked this question twice already, but appeared distrustful of the answers he’d received before. He was perhaps five years of age, with wide brown eyes. There were two children in the family younger still than him—one barely walking, and an infant in its cradle, but they were not at the table.

  Thomson, having twice denied it, told him now, “I did. I drowned. But as you see, I have recovered.”

  He’d recovered his good humor, Mary noticed, thanks in large part to the generous share of wine their hosts had given him, together with a good hot meal of fish and bread, and a good long sleep that, while it had been on a pallet made for him beside the stove, had nonetheless been in the house and nowhere near a barn or hayloft, so had left him most contented.

  He was speaking French, as they had done since they’d first chanced upon this house a quarter of a league beyond the river, since with Mary all disheveled and a little bruised and leaning hard on Effie it had proved to be much easier to make their explanations all in French, though they had kept to their identities, their English names, asserting they had lived in Paris some years and so learned the language.

  Seeming satisfied at last by Thomson’s answer, the small boy sat back and said, “It was not nice of him to let you drown.”

  “No,” Thomson told him in agreement, “and I thought so at the time. As I was sinking underneath the water, I thought, ‘This is not so very nice of him,’ but—”

  “But,” said Mary, smoothly picking up the story, “Mr. Jarvis needed both his hands to hold his gun, so he could shoot the wolf.”

  The children all looked curiously at the Scotsman sitting in his chair. He took no notice. He’d said nothing yet this morning and indeed had spoken little since the incident itself.

  He’d killed the wolf with one shot, as it leaped. She’d seen it struck and twisted by the impact in midair, and then its body had dropped heavily upon her legs and she had curled more tightly round her dog as all the trembling aftermath of fear coursed through her.

  Effie should have reached her first. She’d been the nearest, and she could run strongly for a woman of her age, but it was not a woman’s boots that kicked the carcass of the wolf aside, nor yet a woman’s legs that knelt beside her.

  “Are ye hurt?” MacPherson’s voice had sounded too rough. “Mary, are ye bitten?”

  “No.” She had not thought her voice would come at all, yet there it was, if weak. And Effie had by then arrived and knelt beside her too.

  MacPherson had said, “Search her and be sure. Be sure.”

  He’d risen and his boots had paced in Mary’s line of vision until Effie, having looked at Mary’s feet and legs and arms and hands, had told him in relief, “She’s not been bitten.”

  He had moved away then and had stood beside the river for some minutes, paying little heed to Thomson who had finished crossing on his own and seemed much taken with the marksmanship of his protector. “Truly, I have never seen a shot like that, sir, not in all my life. Is it the rifling that does make the gun so accurate?”

  MacPherson had not answered, nor said anything at all since then that Mary could remember.

  “Was it a mad wolf?” the elder boy asked. He was not that much older than his little brother, but had, Mary thought, the most serious eyes.

  So she soothed him with, “No, it was only a hungry one. Sometimes, when winters are long, it makes animals desperately hungry.”

  “And would it have eaten Frisque?”

  “It wanted to.” She looked across at where the little dog was lying in the elder boy’s arms, reveling in all the new attention being paid to him.

  This family was a young one, with the parents not yet thirty and the eldest of the children—a small girl with golden hair—no more than ten. The children had been turned out of their bed last night to bundle round their parents on the mattress and the floor, while their bed had been given to Mary and Effie, but they did not seem to feel themselves hard done by, and they’d made a great fuss over Frisque, who had abandoned Mary’s feet last night to sleep among the children.

  Now the elder boy stroked Frisque’s soft ears and said, “I would not let him walk so close beside the river. It’s too dangerous. You should take better care
of him.”

  His mother turned then from the hearth, where she’d been seasoning a pot of soup. She was a tall and straight-backed woman with a pretty face. “You must not speak like that,” she told her son. “It’s very rude. Apologize.”

  He did, but put his face down so it rested on the dog’s smooth head, and Mary gently said, “But you are right, I should take better care of him. He is an old dog now and is not used to such long journeys.”

  “You could leave him here with us,” the boy suggested.

  And his mother turned again. “Why don’t you go and help Papa?”

  “He’s gone to cut more wood. He does not like me helping, when he’s cutting wood.”

  “Then take your brother and your sister and go clean the bedrooms. Go.”

  “Can Frisque come, too?”

  The children’s faces turned with hope to Mary, and she nodded, and in a confusion of scraping chairs and dancing feet they rose and went off to their chores.

  “I apologize, madam,” their mother said, and smiled. “They’ve never seen so small a dog before. They’re very taken with him.”

  Mary said, “And he with them. It’s been a long time since he has had children he could play with.” And she told the woman of Frisque’s history: how he had been raised and loved by her own neighbor’s children, only to be left behind without a backward glance when they had moved away. “This likely brings back happy memories for him, being here. Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps he thinks his children have come back for him.”

  Effie, entering the kitchen, asked, “Whose children?” She had two herself, just then—the tiny infant in her arms, the little toddling girl in tow and clinging tightly to her skirts. When Mary answered, Effie nodded. “Yes, he’ll not wish to leave with us.”