A Trail of Fire (48 page)

What in the name of the Blessed Virgin did that man expect would try to get in?
Gooseflesh raced right up the curve of her spine and spread down her arms, her imagination instantly conjuring a vision of flying demons hovering over the street in the night, beating leathery wings against the window. Or –
dear Lord in heaven!
–
was it to keep the furniture from getting out
?

There was a fairly normal-looking stool; she sank down on this and, closing her eyes, prayed with great fervour. After a bit, she remembered to breathe, and after a further bit, began to be able to think again, shuddering only occasionally.

He hadn’t
exactly
threatened her. Nor had he hurt her, really – just put a hand over her mouth and his other arm round her body, and pulled her along, then boosted her into his coach with a shockingly familiar hand under her bottom, though it hadn’t been done with any sense that he was wanting to interfere with her.

In the coach, he’d introduced himself, apologised briefly for the inconvenience –
inconvenience? The cheek of him
– and then had grasped both her hands in his, staring intently into her face as he clasped them tighter and tighter. He’d raised her hands to his face, so close she’d thought he meant to smell them or kiss them, but then had let go, his brow deeply furrowed.

He’d ignored all her questions and her insistence upon being returned to the convent. In fact, he almost seemed to forget she was there for a moment, leaving her huddled back in the corner of the seat while he thought intently about something, lips pursing in and out. She’d thought of jumping out – had almost got up her nerve to reach for the door-handle, though the coach was rattling on at such a pace she was almost sure to be killed – but then his eyes had fastened on her again, pinning her to the seat as though he’d stabbed her through the chest with a knitting-needle.

‘The frog,’ he’d said, intent. ‘You know the frog, don’t you?’

‘Any number of them,’ she’d said, thinking that if he was mad, she’d best humour him. ‘Green ones, mostly.’

His nostrils had flared in sudden anger, and she’d shrunk back into the seat. But then he had snorted, and relapsed into a sort of brooding stare, emerging from this only to say, ‘The rats didn’t all die,’ in a sort of accusing tone, as though it were her fault.

Her mouth was so dry that she could barely speak, but had managed to say, ‘Oh? Did ye try rat’s-bane, then?’ But she’d spoken in English, too rattled to summon any French, and he didn’t seem to take any note.

And then he had lugged her up here, told her briefly that she wouldn’t be hurt, added the bit about being a sorcerer in a very offhand sort of a way, and locked her in!

She was terrified, and indignant, too. But now that she’d calmed down a wee bit . . . she’d believed him when he said he meant her no harm. He hadn’t threatened her or tried to frighten her. Well, he’d frightened her, all right, but didn’t seem like he’d meant to. But if that was true . . . what could he want of her?

He likely wants to know what ye meant by rushing up to him in the market and telling him not to do it
, her common sense – lamentably absent to this point – remarked.

‘Oh,’ she said aloud. That made some sense. Naturally, he’d be curious about that. But if so, why hadn’t he asked her, instead of dragging her off? And what had he gone off to do now?

He had something in mind, and she didn’t want to think what.

She got up again, and explored the room, thinking anyway. She couldn’t tell him any more than she had, that was the thing. Would he believe her, about the voices? Even if so, he’d try to find out more, and there wasn’t any more to find out. What then?

Don’t wait about to see
, advised her common sense.

Having already come to this conclusion, she didn’t bother replying. She’d found a heavy marble mortar and pestle; that might do. Wrapping the mortar in her apron, she went to the window that overlooked the street. She’d break the glass, then shriek ’til she got someone’s attention. Even so high up, she thought someone would hear. Pity it was a quiet street. But—

She stiffened like a bird-dog. A coach was stopped outside one of the houses opposite, and Michael Murray was getting out of it! He was just putting on his hat – no mistaking that flaming red hair.

‘Michael!’ she shouted at the top of her lungs. But he didn’t look up; the sound wouldn’t pierce glass. She swung the cloth-wrapped mortar at the window, but it bounced off the bars with a ringing
clang!
She took a deep breath and a better aim; this time, she hit one of the panes and cracked it. Encouraged, she tried again, with all the strength of muscular arms and shoulders, and was rewarded with a small crash, a shower of glass, and a rush of mud-scented air from the river.

‘
Michael!
’ But he had disappeared. A servant’s face showed briefly in the open door of the house opposite, then vanished as the door closed. Through a red haze of frustration, she noticed the swag of black crepe hanging from the knob. Who was dead?

Charles’s wife, Berthe, was in the small parlour, surrounded by a huddle of women. All of them turned to see who had come, many of them lifting their handkerchiefs automatically in preparation for a fresh outbreak of tears. All of them blinked at Michael, then turned to Berthe, as though for an explanation.

Berthe’s eyes were red, but dry. She looked as though she had been dried in an oven, all the moisture and colour sucked out of her, her face paper-white and drawn tight over her bones. She too looked at Michael, but without much interest. He thought she was too much shocked for anything to matter much. He knew how she felt.

‘Monsieur Murray,’ she said tonelessly, as he bowed over her hand. ‘How kind of you to call.’

‘I— offer my condolences, madame, mine and my cousin’s. I hadn’t . . . heard. Of your grievous loss.’ He was almost stuttering, trying to grasp the reality of the situation. What the devil had happened to Charles?

Berthe’s mouth twisted.

‘Grievous loss,’ she repeated. ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Then her dull self-absorption cracked a little and she looked at him more sharply. ‘You hadn’t heard. You mean— you didn’t know? You came to
see
Charles?’

‘Er . . . yes, madame,’ he said awkwardly. A couple of the women gasped, but Berthe was already on her feet.

‘Well, you might as well see him, then,’ she said, and walked out of the room, leaving him with no choice but to follow her.

‘They’ve cleaned him up,’ she remarked, opening the door to the large parlour across the hall. She might have been talking about a messy domestic incident in the kitchen.

Michael thought it must in fact have been very messy. Charles lay on the large dining table, this adorned with a cloth and wreaths of greenery and flowers. A woman clad in grey was sitting by the table, weaving more wreaths from a basket of leaves and grasses; she glanced up, her eyes going from Berthe to Michael and back.

‘Leave,’ said Berthe with a flip of the hand, and the woman got up at once and went out. Michael saw that she’d been making a wreath of laurel leaves, and had the sudden absurd thought that she meant to crown Charles with it, in the manner of a Greek hero.

‘He cut his throat,’ Berthe said. ‘The coward.’ She spoke with an eerie calmness, and Michael wondered what might happen when the shock that surrounded her began to dissipate.

He made a respectful sort of noise in his throat, and touching her arm gently, went past her to look down at his friend.

Don’t do it
. That’s what Joan said the voices had told her. Was this what they’d meant?

The dead man didn’t look peaceful. There were lines of stress in his countenance that hadn’t yet smoothed out, and he appeared to be frowning. The undertaker’s people had cleaned the body and dressed him in a slightly worn suit of dark blue; Michael thought that it was probably the only thing Charles had owned that was in any way appropriate in which to appear dead, and suddenly missed his friend’s frivolity with a surge that brought unexpected tears to his eyes.

Don’t do it
. He hadn’t come in time.
If I’d come right away, when she told me – would it have stopped him?

He could smell the blood, a rusty, sickly smell that seeped through the freshness of the flowers and leaves. The undertaker had tied a white neckcloth for Charles – he’d used an old-fashioned knot, nothing that Charles himself would have worn for a moment. The black stitches showed above it, though, the wound harsh against the dead man’s livid skin.

Michael’s own shock was beginning to fray, and stabs of guilt and anger poked through it like needles.

‘Coward?’ he said softly. He didn’t mean it as a question, but it seemed more courteous to say it that way. Berthe snorted and looking up, he met the full charge of her eyes. No, not shocked any longer.

‘You’d know, wouldn’t you,’ she said, and it wasn’t at all a question, the way she said it. ‘You knew about your slut of a sister-in-law, didn’t you? And his other mistresses?’ Her lips curled away from the word.

‘I— no. I mean . . . Léonie told me yesterday. That was why I came to talk to Charles.’ Well, he would certainly have mentioned Léonie. And he wasn’t going anywhere near the mention of Babette, whom he’d known about for quite some time. But Jesus, what did the woman think he could have done about it?

‘Coward,’ she said, looking down at Charles’s body with contempt. ‘He made a mess of everything –
everything!
– and then couldn’t deal with it, so he runs off and leaves me alone, with children, penniless!’

Don’t do it.

Michael looked to see if this was an exaggeration, but it wasn’t. She was burning now, but with fear as much as anger, her frozen calm quite vanished.

‘The . . . house . . .’ he began, with a rather vague wave around the expensive, stylish room. He knew it was her family house; she’d brought it to the marriage.

She snorted.

‘He lost it in a card game last week,’ she said bitterly. ‘If I’m lucky, the new owner will let me bury him before we have to leave.’

‘Ah.’ The mention of card games jolted him back to an awareness of his reason for coming here. ‘I wonder, madame, do you know an acquaintance of Charles’s – the Comte St Germain?’ It was crude, but he hadn’t time to think of a graceful way to come to it.

Berthe blinked, nonplussed.

‘The comte? Why do you want to know about
him
?’ Her expression sharpened into eagerness. ‘Do you think he owes Charles money?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ll certainly find out for you,’ Michael promised her. ‘If you can tell me where to find Monsieur le Comte.’

She didn’t laugh, but her mouth quirked in what might, in another mood, have been humour.

‘He lives across the street.’ She pointed toward the window. ‘In that big pile of— where are you going?’

But Michael was already through the door and into the hallway, bootheels clattering on the parquet in his haste.

There were footsteps coming up the stairs; Joan started away from the window, but then craned back, desperately willing the door across the street to open and let Michael out. What was he
doing
there?

That door didn’t open, but a key rattled in the lock of the door to the room. In desperation, she tore the rosary from her belt and pushed it through the hole in the window, then dashed across the room and threw herself into one of the repulsive chairs.

It was the comte. He glanced round, worried for an instant, and then his face relaxed when he saw her. He came toward her, holding out his hand.

‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, mademoiselle,’ he said, very courtly. ‘Come, please. I have something to show you.’

‘I don’t want to see it.’ She stiffened a little and tucked her feet under her, to make it harder for him to pick her up. If she could just delay him until Michael came out! But he might well not see her rosary – or, even if he did, know it was hers. Why should he? All nuns’ rosaries looked the same!

She strained her ears, hoping to hear the sounds of departure on the other side of the street – she’d scream her lungs out. In fact . . .