The Space Between

  The big river--the Seine, Michael had called it--was right there, and the sight of boats and people made her feel a bit steadier. She put a hand on the table to lean closer but set it on something sticky and jerked it back. She swallowed and leaned in more gingerly. The window was barred on the inside. Glancing round, she saw that all the others were, too.

  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 in?

  There was a fairly normal-looking stool; she sank down on this and, closing her eyes, prayed with great fervor. 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 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, apologized 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, leaving her huddled in the corner of the seat while he thought intently about something, lips pursing in and out. 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 thought that she wasn't really afraid of him, and that seemed odd. Surely she should be?

  But she'd believed him when he said he meant her no harm. He hadn't threatened her or tried to frighten her. But if that was true ... what did 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.

  She got up again and explored the room, thinking. She couldn't tell him any more than she had, though; 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, Eulalie, was in the small parlor, 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 Eulalie, as though for an explanation.

  Eulalie's eyes were red but dry. She looked as though she had been dried in an oven, all the moisture and color 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?

  Eulalie'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 Eulalie 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 parlor 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 gray was sitting by the table, weaving more wreaths from a basket of leaves and grasses; she glanced up, her eyes going from Eulalie to Michael and back.

  "Leave," said Eulalie 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," Eulalie 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.

  "Tell him not to do it."

  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 he'd 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.

  "Tell him not to 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.

  His 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. Eulalie snorted, and, looking up, Michael 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 Babette?" Her lips curled away from the name. "His other mistress?"

  "I--no. I mean ... Leonie told me yesterday. That was why I came to talk to Charles." Well, he wo
uld certainly have mentioned Leonie. 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!"

  "Tell him not to 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.

  Eugenia 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 humor.

  "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 ...

  The comte sighed a little but bent and took her by the elbows, lifting her straight up, her knees still absurdly bent. He was really very strong. She put her feet down, and there she was, her hand tucked into the crook of his elbow, being led across the room toward the door, docile as a cow on its way to be milked! She made her mind up in an instant, yanked free, and ran to the smashed window.

  "HELP!" she bellowed through the broken pane. "Help me, help me! Au secours, I mean! AU SECOU--" The comte's hand clapped across her mouth, and he said something in French that she was sure must be bad language. He scooped her up, so fast that the wind was knocked out of her, and had her through the door before she could make another sound.

  *

  Michael didn't pause for hat or cloak but burst into the street, so fast that his driver started out of a doze and the horses jerked and neighed in protest. He didn't pause for that, either, but shot across the cobbles and pounded on the door, a big bronze-coated affair that boomed under his fists.

  It couldn't have been very long but seemed an eternity. He fumed, pounded again, and, pausing for breath, caught sight of the rosary on the pavement. He ran to catch it up, scratched his hand, and saw that it lay in a scatter of glass fragments. At once he looked up, searching, and saw the broken window just as the big door opened.

  He sprang at the butler like a wildcat, seizing him by the arms.

  "Where is she? Where, damn you?"

  "She? But there is no 'she,' monsieur.... Monsieur le Comte lives quite alone. You--"

  "Where is Monsieur le Comte?" Michael's sense of urgency was so great, he felt that he might strike the man. The man apparently felt he might, too, because he turned pale and, wrenching himself loose, fled into the depths of the house. With no more than an instant's hesitation, Michael pursued him.

  The butler, his feet fueled by fear, flew down the hall, Michael in grim pursuit. The man burst through the door to the kitchen; Michael was dimly aware of the shocked faces of cooks and maids, and then they were out into the kitchen garden. The butler slowed for an instant going down the steps, and Michael launched himself at the man, knocking him flat.

  They rolled together on the graveled path, then Michael got on top of the smaller man, seized him by the shirtfront, and, shaking him, shouted, "WHERE IS HE?"

  Thoroughly undone, the butler covered his face with one arm and pointed blindly toward a gate in the wall.

  Michael leapt off the supine body and ran. He could hear the rumble of coach wheels, the rattle of hooves--he flung open the gate in time to see the back of a coach rattling down the allee and a gaping servant paused in the act of sliding to the doors of a carriage house. He ran, but it was clear that he'd never catch the coach on foot.

  "JOAN!" he bellowed after the vanishing equipage. "I'm coming!"

  He didn't waste time in questioning the servant but ran back, pushing his way through the maids and footmen gathered round the cowering butler, and burst out of the house, startling his own coachman afresh.

  "That way!" he shouted, pointing toward the distant conjunction of the street and the allee, where the comte's coach was just emerging. "Follow that coach! Vite!"

  *

  "Vite!" The comte urged his coachman on, then sank back, letting fall the hatch in the roof. The light was fading; his errand had taken longer than he'd expected, and he wanted to be out of the city before night fell. The city streets were dangerous at night.

  His captive was staring at him, her eyes enormous in the dim light. She'd lost her postulant's veil, and her dark hair was loose on her shoulders. She looked charming but very scared. He reached into the bag on the floor and pulled out a flask of brandy.

  "Have a little of this, cherie." He removed the cork and handed it to her. She took it but looked uncertain what to do with it, nose wrinkling at the hot smell.

  "Really," he assured her. "It will make you feel better."

  "That's what they all say," she said in her slow, awkward French.

  "All of whom?" he asked, startled.

  "The Auld Ones. I don't know what you call them in French, exactly. The folk that live in the hills--souterrain?" she added doubtfully. "Underground?"

  "Underground? And they give you brandy?" He smiled at her, but his heart gave a sudden thump of excitement. Perhaps she was. He'd doubted his instincts when his touch failed to kindle her, but clearly she was something.

  "They give you food and drink," she said, putting the flask down between the squab and the wall. "But if you take any, you lose time."

  The spurt of excitement came again, stronger.

  "Lose time?" he repeated, encouraging. "How do you mean?"

  She struggled to find words, smooth brow furrowed with the effort.

  "They ... you ... one who is enchanted by them--he, it? No, he--goes into the hill, and there's music and feasting and dancing. But in the morning, when he goes ... back, it's two hundred years later than it was when he went to feast with the ... the Folk. Everybody he knew has turned to dust."

  "How interesting!" he said. It was. He also wondered, with a fresh spasm
of excitement, whether the old paintings, the ones far back in the bowels of the chalk mine, might have been made by these Folk, whoever they were.

  She observed him narrowly, apparently for an indication that he was a faerie. He smiled at her, though his heart was now thumping audibly in his ears. Two hundred years! For that was what Melisande--Damn her, he thought briefly, with a pang at the reminder of Madeleine--had told him was the usual period when one traveled through stone. It could be changed by use of gemstones or blood, she said, but that was the usual. And it had been, the first time he went back.

  "Don't worry," he said to the girl, hoping to reassure her. "I only want you to look at something. Then I'll take you back to the convent--assuming that you still want to go there?" He lifted an eyebrow, half-teasing. It really wasn't his intent to frighten her, though he already had, and he feared that more fright was unavoidable. He wondered just what she might do when she realized that he was in fact planning to take her underground.

  *

  Michael knelt on the seat, his head out the window of the coach, urging it on by force of will and muscle. It was nearly full dark, and the comte's coach was visible only as a distantly moving blot. They were out of the city, though; there were no other large vehicles on the road, nor likely to be--and there were very few turnings where such a large equipage might leave the main road.

  The wind blew in his face, tugging strands of hair loose so they beat about his face. It blew the faint scent of decay, too--they'd pass the cemetery in a few minutes.

  He wished passionately that he'd thought to bring a pistol, a smallsword--anything! But there was nothing in the coach with him, and he had nothing on his person save his clothes and what was in his pockets: this consisting, after a hasty inventory, of a handful of coins, a used handkerchief--the one Joan had given back to him, in fact, and he crumpled it tightly in one hand--a tinderbox, a mangled paper spill, a stub of sealing wax, and a small stone he'd picked up in the street, pinkish with a yellow stripe. Perhaps he could improvise a sling with the handkerchief, he thought wildly, and paste the comte in the forehead with the stone, a la David and Goliath. And then cut off the comte's head with the penknife he discovered in his breast pocket, he supposed.