‘Awake and irritable,’ she said, eyeing the bag with interest. ‘He’s just shed his skin – you don’t want to make any sudden moves.’
Leopold was a remarkably handsome – and remarkably large – python; an albino, quite rare. Opinion of his origins was divided; half Madame Fabienne’s clientele held that she had been given the snake by a noble client – some said the late king himself – whom she had cured of impotence. Others said the snake had once been a noble client, who had refused to pay her for services rendered. Rakoczy had his own opinions on that one, but he liked Leopold, who was ordinarily tame as a cat and would sometimes come when called – as long as you had something he regarded as food in your hand.
‘Leopold! Monsieur le Comte has brought you a treat!’ Fabienne reached across to an enormous wicker cage and flicked the door open, withdrawing her hand with sufficient speed as to indicate just what she meant by ‘irritable’.
Almost at once, a huge yellow head poked out into the light. Snakes had transparent eyelids, but Rakoczy could swear the python blinked irritably, swaying up a coil of its monstrous body for a moment before plunging out of the cage and swarming across the floor with amazing rapidity for such a big creature, tongue flicking in and out like a seamstress’s needle.
He made straight for Rakoczy, jaws yawning as he came, and Rakoczy snatched up the bag just before Leopold tried to engulf it – or Rakoczy – whole. He jerked aside, hastily seized a rat and threw it. Leopold flung a coil of his body on top of the rat with a thud that rattled madame’s spoon in her tea-bowl, and before the company could blink, had whipped the rat into a half-hitch knot of coil.
‘Hungry as well as ill-tempered, I see,’ Rakoczy remarked, trying for nonchalance. In fact, the hairs were prickling over his neck and arms. Normally, Leopold took his time about feeding and the violence of the python’s appetite at such close quarters had shaken him.
Fabienne was laughing, almost silently, her tiny sloping shoulders quivering beneath the green Chinese silk tunic she wore.
‘I thought for an instant he’d have you,’ she remarked at last, wiping her eyes. ‘If he had, I shouldn’t have had to feed him for a month!’
Rakoczy bared his teeth in an expression that might have been taken for a smile.
‘We cannot let Leopold go hungry,’ he said. ‘I wish to make a special arrangement for Madeleine – it should keep the worm up to his yellow arse in rats for some time.’
Fabienne put down her handkerchief and regarded him with interest.
‘Leopold has two cocks, but I can’t say I’ve ever noticed an arse. Twenty écus a day. Plus two extra if she needs clothes.’
He waved an easy hand, dismissing this.
‘I had in mind something longer.’ He explained what he had in mind, and had the satisfaction of seeing Fabienne’s face go quite blank with astonishment. It didn’t stay that way more than a few moments; by the time he had finished, she was already laying out her initial demands.
By the time they came to agreement, they had drunk half a bottle of decent wine, and Leopold had swallowed the rat. It made a small bulge in the muscular tube of the snake’s body, but hadn’t slowed him appreciably; the coils slithered restlessly over the painted canvas floor-cloth, glowing like gold, and Rakoczy saw the patterns of his skin like trapped clouds beneath the scales.
‘He is beautiful, no?’ Fabienne saw his admiration, and basked a little in it. ‘Did I ever tell you where I got him?’
‘Yes, more than once. And more than one story, too.’ She looked startled, and he compressed his lips. He’d been patronising her establishment for no more than a few weeks, this time. He’d known her fifteen years before – though only a couple of months, that time. He hadn’t given his name then, and a madam saw so many men that there was little chance of her recalling him. On the other hand, he also thought it unlikely that she troubled to recall to whom she’d told which story, and this seemed to be the case, for she lifted one shoulder in a surprisingly graceful shrug, and laughed.
‘Yes, but this one is true.’
‘Oh, well, then.’ He smiled, and reaching into the bag, tossed Leopold another rat. The snake moved more slowly this time, and didn’t bother to constrict its motionless prey, merely unhinging its jaw and engulfing it in a single-minded way.
‘He is an old friend, Leopold,’ she said, gazing affectionately at the snake. ‘I brought him with me from the West Indies, many years ago. He is a Mystère, you know.’
‘I didn’t, no.’ Rakoczy drank more wine; he had sat long enough that he was beginning to feel almost sober again. ‘And what is that?’ He was interested – not so much in the snake, but in Fabienne’s mention of the West Indies. He’d forgotten that she claimed to have come from there, many years ago, long before he’d known her the first time.
The afile powder had been waiting in his laboratory when he’d come back; no telling how many years it had sat there – the servants couldn’t recall. Mélisande’s brief note – ‘Try this. It may be what the frog used.’ – had not been dated, but there was a brief scrawl at the top of the sheet, saying ‘Rose Hall, Jamaica.’ If Fabienne retained any connections in the West Indies, perhaps . . .
‘Some call them loa,’ her wrinkled lips pursed as she kissed the word, ‘but those are the Africans. A Mystère is a spirit, one who is an intermediary between the Bondye and us. Bondye is le bon Dieu, of course,’ she explained to him. ‘The African slaves speak very bad French. Give him another rat; he’s still hungry, and it scares the girls if I let him hunt in the house.’
The third rat had made another bulge; the snake was beginning to look like a fat string of pearls, and was showing an inclination to lie still, digesting. The tongue still flickered, tasting the air, but lazily now.
Rakoczy picked up the bag again, weighing the risks – but after all, if news came from the Court of Miracles, his name would soon be known in any case.
‘I wonder, madame – as you know everyone in Paris – ’ he gave her a small bow, which she graciously returned, ‘are you acquainted with a certain man known as Maître Raymond? Some call him “the frog”,’ he added.
She blinked, then looked amused.
‘You’re looking for the frog?’
‘Yes. Is that funny?’ He reached into the sack, fishing for a rat.
‘Somewhat. I should perhaps not tell you, but since you are so accommodating . . .’ she glanced complacently at the purse he had put beside her tea-bowl, a generous deposit on account, ‘Maître Grenouille is looking for you.’
He stopped dead, hand clutching a furry body.
‘What? You’ve seen him?’
She shook her head, and setting down her empty glass, rang the bell for her maid.
‘No, but I’ve heard the same from two people.’
‘Asking for me by name?’ Rakoczy’s heart beat faster.
‘Monsieur le Comte St Germain. That is you?’ She asked with no more than mild interest; false names were common in her business.
He nodded, mouth suddenly too dry to speak, and pulled the rat from the sack. It squirmed suddenly in his hand, and a piercing pain in his thumb made him hurl the rodent away.
‘Sacrebleu! It bit me!’
The rat, dazed by impact, staggered drunkenly across the floor toward Leopold, whose tongue began to flicker faster. Fabienne, though, uttered a sound of disgust and threw a silver-backed hairbrush at the rat. Startled by the sudden clatter, the rat leapt convulsively into the air, landed on and raced directly over the snake’s astonished head, disappearing through the door into the foyer, where – by the resultant scream – it evidently encountered the maid before making its ultimate escape into the street.
‘Jésus Marie,’ Madame Fabienne said, piously crossing herself. ‘A miraculous resurrection. Two months past Easter, too.’
It was a smooth passage; the shore of France came into sight just after dawn next day. Joan saw it, a low smudge of dark green on the horizon, and felt a little thrill at the s
ight, in spite of her tiredness.
She hadn’t slept, though she’d reluctantly gone below after nightfall, there to wrap herself in her cloak and shawl, trying not to look at the young man with the shadow on his face. She’d lain all night, listening to the snores and groans of her fellow-passengers, praying doggedly and wondering in despair whether prayer was the only thing she could do to help.
She often wondered whether it was because of her name. She’d been proud of her name when she was small; it was a heroic name, a saint’s name, but also a warrior’s name. Her mother’d told her that, often and often. She didn’t think her mother had considered that the name might also be haunted.
Surely it didn’t happen to everyone named Joan, though, did it? She wished she knew another Joan to ask. Because if it did happen to them all, the others would be keeping it quiet, just like she did.
You just didn’t go round telling people that you heard voices that weren’t there. Still less, that you saw things that weren’t there, either. You just didn’t.
She’d heard of a seer, of course; everyone in the Highlands had. And nearly everyone she knew at least claimed to have seen the odd fetch or had a premonition that Angus MacWheen was dead when he didn’t come home that time last winter. The fact that Angus MacWheen was a filthy auld drunkard and so yellow and crazed that it was heads or tails whether he’d die on any particular day, let alone when it got cold enough that the loch froze, didn’t come into it.
But she’d never met a seer; there was the rub. How did you get into the way of it? Did you just tell folk, ‘Here’s a thing . . . I’m a seer,’ and they’d nod and say, ‘Oh, aye, of course; what’s like to happen to me next Tuesday?’ More important, though, how the devil—
‘Ow!’ She’d bitten her tongue fiercely as penance for the inadvertent blasphemy, and clapped a hand to her mouth.
‘What is it?’ said a concerned voice behind her. ‘Are ye hurt, Miss MacKimmie? Er . . . Sister Gregory, I mean?’
‘Mm! No. No, I justh . . . bit my tongue.’ She turned to Michael Murray, gingerly touching the injured tongue to the roof of her mouth.
‘Well, that happens when ye talk to yourself.’ He took the cork from a bottle he was carrying and held the bottle out to her. ‘Here, wash your mouth wi’ that; it’ll help.’
She took a large mouthful and swirled it round; it burned the bitten place, but not badly, and she swallowed, as slowly as possible, to make it last.
‘Jesus, Mary, and Bride,’ she breathed. ‘Is that wine?’ The taste in her mouth bore some faint kinship with the liquid she knew as wine – just like apples bore some resemblance to horse turds.
‘Aye, it is pretty good,’ he said modestly. ‘German. Umm . . . have a wee nip more?’
She didn’t argue, and sipped happily, barely listening to his talk, telling about the wine, what it was called, how they made it in Germany, where he got it . . . on and on. Finally she came to herself enough to remember her manners, though, and reluctantly handed back the bottle, now half-empty.
‘I thank ye, sir,’ she said primly. ‘’Twas kind of ye. Ye needna waste your time in bearing me company, though; I shall be well enough alone.’
‘Aye, well . . . it’s no really for your sake,’ he said, and took a reasonable swallow himself. ‘It’s mine.’
She blinked against the wind. He was flushed, but not from drink or wind, she thought.
She managed a faint interrogative, ‘Ah . . . ?’
‘Well, what I want to ask,’ he blurted, and looked away, cheekbones burning red. ‘Will ye pray for me? Sister? And my— my wife. The repose of— of—’
‘Oh!’ she said, mortified that she’d been so taken up with her own worries as not to have seen his distress. Think you’re a seer, dear Lord, ye dinna see what’s under your neb; you’re no but a fool, and a selfish fool at that. She put her hand over his where it lay on the rail and squeezed tight, trying to channel some sense of God’s goodness into his flesh.
‘To be sure I will!’ she said. ‘I’ll remember ye at every Mass, I swear it!’ She wondered briefly whether it was proper to swear to something like that, but after all . . . ‘And your poor wife’s soul, of course I will! What . . . er . . . what was her name? So as I’ll know what to say when I pray for her,’ she explained hurriedly, seeing his eyes narrow with pain.
‘Lilliane,’ he said, so softly that she barely heard him over the wind. ‘I called her Lillie.’
‘Lilliane,’ she repeated carefully, trying to form the syllables like he did. It was a soft, lovely name, she thought, slipping like water over the rocks at the top of a burn. You’ll never see a burn again, she thought with a sudden pang, but dismissed this, turning her face toward the growing shore of France. ‘I’ll remember.’
He nodded in mute thanks, and they stood for some little while, until she realised that her hand was still resting on his, and drew it back with a jerk. He looked startled, and she blurted – because it was the thing on the top of her mind – ‘What was she like? Your wife?’
The most extraordinary mix of emotions flooded over his face. She couldn’t have said what was uppermost, grief, laughter, or sheer bewilderment, and she realised suddenly just how little of his true mind she’d seen before.
‘She was . . .’ He shrugged, and swallowed. ‘She was my wife,’ he said, very softly. ‘She was my life.’
She should know something comforting to say to him, but she didn’t.
She’s with God? That was the truth, she hoped, and yet clearly to this young man, the only thing that mattered was that his wife was not with him.
‘What happened to her?’ she asked instead, baldly, only because it seemed necessary to say something.
He took a deep breath and seemed to sway a little; he’d finished the rest of the wine, she saw, and took the empty bottle from his hand, tossing it overboard.
‘The influenza. They said it was quick. Didn’t seem quick to me – and yet, it was, I suppose it was. It took two days, and God kens well that I recall every second of those days – yet it seems that I lost her between one heartbeat and the next. And I— I keep lookin’ for her there, in that space between.’
He swallowed.
‘She— she was . . .’ The words ‘with child’ came so quietly that she barely heard them.
‘Oh,’ Joan said softly, very moved. ‘Oh, a chiusle.’ ‘Heart’s blood’, it meant – and what she meant was that his wife had been that to him— dear Lord, she hoped he hadn’t thought she meant— no, he hadn’t, and the tight-wound spring in her backbone relaxed a little, seeing the look of gratitude on his face. He did know what she’d meant, and seemed glad that she’d understood.
Blinking, she looked away – and caught sight of the young man with the shadow on him, leaning against the railing a little way down. The breath caught in her throat at sight of him.
The shadow was darker in the morning light. The sun was beginning to warm the deck, frail white clouds swam in the blue of clear French skies, and yet the mist seemed now to swirl and thicken, obscuring the young man’s face, wrapping round his shoulders like a shawl.
Dear Lord, tell me what to do! Her body jerked, wanting to go to the young man, speak to him. But say what? You’re in danger, be careful? He’d think she was mad. And if the danger was a thing he couldn’t help, like wee Ronnie and the ox, what difference might her speaking make?
She was dimly aware of Michael staring at her, curious. He said something to her, but she wasn’t listening, listening hard instead inside her head. Where were the damned voices when you bloody needed one?
But the voices were stubbornly silent, and she turned to Michael, the muscles of her arm jumping, she’d held so tight to the ship’s rigging.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasna listening properly. I just— thought of something.’
‘If it’s a thing I can help ye with, Sister, ye’ve only to ask,’ he said, smiling faintly. ‘Oh! And speak of that, I meant to say – I said to your mam, if
she liked to write to you in care of Fraser et Cie, I’d see to it that ye got the letters.’ He shrugged, one-shouldered. ‘I dinna ken what the rules are at the convent, aye? About getting letters from outside.’
Joan didn’t know that, either, and had worried about it. She was so relieved to hear this that a huge smile split her face.
‘Oh, it’s that kind of ye!’ she said. ‘And if I could – maybe write back . . . ?’
He smiled, the marks of grief easing in his pleasure at doing her a service.
‘Anytime,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll see to it. Perhaps I could—’
A ragged shriek cut through the air, and Joan glanced up, startled, thinking it one of the sea-birds that had come out from shore to wheel round the ship. But it wasn’t. It was the young man, standing on the rail, one hand on the rigging, and before she could so much as draw breath, he let go and was gone.
Paris
Michael was worried for Joan; she sat slumped in the coach, not bothering to look out of the window, until a faint waft of the spring breeze touched her face. The smell was so astonishing that it drew her out of the shell of shocked misery in which she had travelled from the docks.
‘Mother o’ God!’ she said, clapping a hand to her nose. ‘What is that?’
Michael dug in his pocket and pulled out the grubby rag of his handkerchief, looking dubiously at it.
‘It’s the public cemeteries. I’m sorry, I didna think—’
‘Moran taing.’ She seized the damp cloth from him and held it over her face, not caring. ‘Do the French not bury folk in their cemeteries?’ Because from the smell, a thousand corpses had been thrown out on wet ground and left to rot, and the sight of darting, squabbling flocks of black corbies in the distance did nothing to correct this impression.
‘They do.’ Michael felt exhausted – it had been a terrible morning – but struggled to pull himself together. ‘It’s all marshland over there, though; even coffins buried deep – and most of them aren’t – work their way through the ground in a few months. When there’s a flood – and there’s a flood whenever it rains – what’s left of the coffins falls apart, and . . .’ He swallowed, just as pleased that he’d not eaten any breakfast.
A Trail of Fire Page 25