Dragonfly in Amber

  I dipped automatically, struggling to keep my eyes on the floor and wondering where I would look when I bobbed up again. Madame Nesle de la Tourelle was standing just behind Louis, watching the introduction with a slightly bored look on her face. Gossip said that “Nesle” was Louis’s current favorite. She was, in current vogue, wearing a gown cut below both breasts, with a bit of supercedent gauze which was clearly meant for the sake of fashion, as it couldn’t possibly function for either warmth or concealment.

  It was neither the gown nor the prospect it revealed that had rattled me, though. The breasts of “Nesle,” while reasonably adequate in size, pleasant in proportion, and tipped with large brownish areolae, were further adorned with a pair of nipple jewels that caused their settings to recede into insignificance. A pair of diamond-encrusted swans with ruby eyes stretched their necks toward each other, swinging precariously in their gold-hooped perches. The workmanship was superb and the materials stunning, but it was the fact that each gold hoop passed through her nipple that made me feel rather faint. The nipples themselves were rather seriously inverted, but this fact was disguised by the large pearl that covered each one, dangling on a thin gold chain that looped from side to side of the main hoop.

  I rose, red-faced and coughing, and managed to excuse myself, hacking politely into a handkerchief as I backed away. I felt a presence in my rear and stopped just in time to avoid backing into Jamie, who was watching the King’s mistress with no pretense whatever of tactful obliviousness.

  “She told Marie d’Arbanville that Master Raymond did the piercing for her,” I remarked under my breath. His fascinated gaze didn’t waver.

  “Shall I make an appointment?” I asked. “I imagine he’d do it for me if I gave him the recipe for caraway tonic.”

  Jamie glanced down at me at last. Taking my elbow, he steered me toward a refreshment alcove.

  “If you so much as speak to Master Raymond again,” he said, out of the corner of his mouth, “I’ll pierce them for ye myself—wi’ my teeth.”

  The King had by now wandered off toward the Salon of Apollo, the space left by his passage quickly filled by others coming from the supper room. Seeing Jamie distracted into conversation with a Monsieur Genet, head of a wealthy shipping family, I looked surreptitiously about for a place in which to remove my shoes for a moment.

  One of the alcoves was at hand and, from the sounds of it, unoccupied. I sent a lingering admirer off to fetch some more wine, then, with a quick glance round, slid into the alcove.

  It was furnished rather suggestively with a couch, a small table, and a pair of chairs—more suitable for laying aside garments than for sitting upon, I thought critically. I sat down nonetheless, pried my shoes off, and with a sigh of relief, propped my feet up on the other chair.

  A faint jingling of curtain rings behind me announced the fact that my departure had not been unnoticed after all.

  “Madame! At last we are alone!”

  “Yes, more’s the pity,” I said, sighing. It was one of the countless Comtes, I thought. Or no, this one was a Vicomte; someone had introduced him to me earlier as the Vicomte de Rambeau. One of the short ones. I seemed to recall his beady little eyes gleaming up at me in appreciation from below the edge of my fan.

  Wasting no time, he slid adroitly onto the other chair, lifting my feet into his lap. He clasped my silk-stockinged toes fervently against his crotch.

  “Ah, ma petite! Such delicacy! Your beauty distracts me!”

  I thought it must, if he was under the delusion that my feet were particularly delicate. Raising one to his lips, he nibbled at my toes.

  “C’est un cochon qui vit dans la ville, c’est un cochon qui vit…”

  I jerked my foot from his grasp and stood up hastily, rather impeded by my voluminous petticoats.

  “Speaking of cochons who live in the city,” I said, rather nervously, “I don’t think my husband would be at all pleased to find you here.”

  “Your husband? Pah!” He dismissed Jamie with an airy wave of the hand. “He will be occupied for some time, I am sure. And while the cat’s away.…come to me, ma petite souris; let me hear you squeak a bit.”

  Presumably intending to fortify himself for the fray, the Vicomte produced an enameled snuffbox from his pocket, deftly sprinkled a line of dark grains along the back of his hand, and wiped it delicately against his nostrils.

  He took a deep breath, eyes glistening in anticipation, then jerked his head as the curtain was suddenly thrust aside with a jangling of brass rings. His aim distracted by the intrusion, the Vicomte sneezed directly into my bosom with considerable vigor.

  I shrieked.

  “You disgusting man!” I said, and walloped him across the face with my closed fan.

  The Vicomte staggered back, eyes watering. He tripped over my size-nine shoes, which lay on the floor, and fell headfirst into the arms of Jamie, who was standing in the doorway.

  * * *

  “Well, you did attract a certain amount of notice,” I said at last.

  “Bah,” he said. “The salaud’s lucky I didna tear off his head and make him swallow it.”

  “Well, that would have provided an interesting spectacle,” I agreed dryly. “Sousing him in the fountain was nearly as good, though.”

  He looked up, his frown replaced with a reluctant grin.

  “Aye, well. I didna drown the man, after all.”

  “I trust the Vicomte appreciates your restraint.”

  He snorted again. He was standing in the center of a sitting room, part of a small appartement in the palace, to which the King, once he had stopped laughing, had assigned us, insisting that we should not undertake the return journey to Paris tonight.

  “After all, mon chevalier,” he had said, eyeing Jamie’s large, dripping form on the terrace, “we should dislike exceedingly for you to take a chill. I feel sure that the Court would be deprived of a great deal of entertainment in such a case, and Madame would never forgive me. Would you, sweetheart?” He reached out and pinched Madame de La Tourelle playfully on one nipple.

  His mistress looked mildly annoyed, but smiled obediently. I noticed, though, that once the King’s attention had been distracted, it was Jamie on whom her gaze lingered. Well, he was impressive, I had to admit, standing dripping in the torchlight with his clothes plastered to his body. That didn’t mean I liked her doing it.

  He peeled his wet shirt off and dropped it in a sodden heap. He looked even better without it.

  “As for you,” he said, eyeing me in a sinister manner, “did I not tell ye to stay away from those alcoves?”

  “Yes. But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” I asked politely.

  “What?” He stared at me as though I had lost my mind on the spot.

  “Never mind; it’s a bit out of your frame of reference. I only meant, did you meet anyone useful before you came to defend your marital rights?”

  He rubbed his hair vigorously with a towel plucked from the washstand. “Oh, aye. I played a game of chess with Monsieur Duverney. Beat him, too, and made him angry.”

  “Oh, that sounds promising. And who’s Monsieur Duverney?”

  He tossed me the towel, grinning. “The French Minister of Finance, Sassenach.”

  “Oh. And you’re pleased because you made him angry?”

  “He was angry at himself for losing, Sassenach,” Jamie explained. “Now he won’t rest until he’s beaten me. He’s coming round to the house on Sunday to play again.”

  “Oh, well done!” I said. “And in the process, you can assure him that the Stuarts’ prospects are exceedingly dim, and convince him that Louis doesn’t want to assist them financially, blood kin or not.”

  He nodded, combing back his wet hair with both hands. The fire had not yet been lit, and he shivered slightly.

  “Where did you learn to play chess?” I asked curiously. “I didn’t know you knew how.”

  “Colum MacKenzie taught me,” he said. “When I was si
xteen, and spent a year at Castle Leoch. I had tutors for French and German and mathematics and such, but I’d go up to Colum’s room for an hour every evening to play chess. Not that it usually took him an hour to beat me,” he added ruefully.

  “No wonder you’re good,” I said. Jamie’s uncle Colum, the victim of a deforming disease that had deprived him of most of his mobility, made up for it with a mind that would have put Machiavelli to shame.

  Jamie stood up and unbuckled his swordbelt, narrowing his eyes at me. “Dinna think I don’t know what you’re up to, Sassenach. Changing the subject and flattering me like a courtesan. Did I not tell ye about those alcoves?”

  “You said you didn’t mean to beat me,” I reminded him, sitting a bit farther back in my chair, just to be on the safe side.

  He snorted again, tossing the swordbelt onto the chest of drawers and dropping his kilt next to the sodden shirt.

  “Do I look the sort of man would beat a woman who’s with child?” he demanded.

  I eyed him doubtfully. Stark naked, with his hair in damp red snarls and the white scars still visible on his body, he looked as though he had just leaped off a Viking ship, rape and pillage on his mind.

  “Actually, you look capable of just about anything,” I told him. “As for the alcoves, yes, you told me. I suppose I should have gone outside to take my shoes off, but how was I to know that idiot would follow me in and begin nibbling on my toes? And if you don’t mean to beat me, just what did you have in mind?” I took a firm grip on the arms of my chair.

  He lay down on the bed and grinned at me.

  “Take off that whore’s dress, Sassenach, and come to bed.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I canna wallop you, or drench ye in the fountain.” He shrugged. “I meant to give ye a terrible scolding, but I dinna think I can keep my eyes open long enough.” He gave a terrific yawn, then blinked and grinned at me again. “Remind me to do it in the morning, eh?”

  * * *

  “Better, is it?” Jamie’s dark-blue eyes were clouded with worry. “Is it right for ye to be sick so much, Sassenach?”

  I pushed the hair back from my sweaty temples and dabbed a damp towel over my face.

  “I don’t know whether it’s right,” I said weakly, “but at least I believe it’s normal. Some women are sick all through.” Not a pleasant thought at the moment.

  Jamie glanced, not at the gaily painted clock on the table, but as usual, out the window at the sun.

  “Do ye feel well enough to go down to breakfast, Sassenach, or ought I to tell the chambermaid to bring up something on a tray?”

  “No. I’m quite all right now.” And I was. In the odd way of morning sickness, once the inexorable nausea had had its way with me, I felt perfectly fine within a moment or two. “Let me just rinse my mouth.”

  As I bent over the basin, sluicing cool water over my face, there was a rap at the door of the appartement. Likely the servant who had been dispatched to the house in Paris to bring us fresh clothes, I thought.

  To my surprise, though, it was a courtier, with a written invitation to lunch.

  “His Majesty is dining today with an English nobleman,” the courtier explained, “newly arrived in Paris. His Majesty has summoned several of the prominent English merchants from the Cité to lunch, for the purpose of providing His Grace the Duke with the company of some of his countrymen. And someone pointed out to His Majesty that Madame your wife is an English lady, too, and thus should be invited to attend.”

  “All right,” Jamie said, after a quick glance at me. “You may tell His Majesty that we will be honored to remain.”

  Soon thereafter, Murtagh had arrived, dour as ever, bearing a large bundle of fresh clothes, and my medicine box, which I had asked for. Jamie took him into the sitting room to give him instructions for the day, while I hastily struggled into my fresh gown, for the first time rather regretting my refusal to employ a lady’s maid. Always unruly, the state of my hair had not been improved by sleeping in close embrace with a large, damp Scot; wild tangles shot off in several directions, resisting all attempts to tame them with brush and comb.

  At length I emerged, pink and cross with effort, but with my hair in some semblance of order. Jamie looked at me and murmured something about hedgehogs under his breath, but caught a searing glance in return and had the good sense to shut up.

  A stroll among the parterres and fountains of the palace gardens did a good bit to restore my equanimity. Most of the trees were still leafless, but the day was unexpectedly warm for late March, and the smell of the swelling buds on the twigs was green and pungent. You could almost feel the sap rising in the towering chestnuts and poplars that edged the paths and sheltered the hundreds of white marble statues.

  I paused beside a statue of a half-draped man with grapes in his hair and a flute at his lips. A large, silky goat nibbled hungrily at more grapes that were cascading from the marble folds of the draperies.

  “Who’s this?” I asked, “Pan?”

  Jamie shook his head, smiling. He was dressed in his old kilt and a worn, if comfortable coat, but he looked much better to me than did the luxuriously clad courtiers who passed us in chattering groups.

  “No, I think there is a statue of Pan about, but it isna that one. That’s one of the Four Humors of Man.”

  “Well, he looks fairly humorous,” I said, glancing up at the goat’s smiling friend.

  Jamie laughed.

  “And you a physician, Sassenach! Not that sort of humor. Do ye not know the four humors that make up the human body? That one’s Blood”—he motioned at the flute-player, then pointed down the path—“and there’s Melancholy.” This was a tall man in a sort of toga, holding an open book.

  Jamie pointed across the path. “And over there is Choler”—a nude and muscular young man, who certainly was scowling ferociously, without regard to the marble lion that was about to bite him smartly in the leg—“and that’s Phlegm.”

  “Is it, by Jove?” Phlegm, a bearded gent with a folded hat, had both arms crossed on his chest, and a tortoise at his feet.

  “Hum,” I remarked.

  “Do physicians not learn about humors in your time?” Jamie asked curiously.

  “No,” I said. “We have germs, instead.”

  “Really? Germs,” he said to himself, trying the word over, rolling it on his tongue with a Scottish burr, which made it sound sinister in the extreme. “Gerrrms. And what do germs look like?”

  I glanced up at a representation of “America,” a nubile young maiden in a feathered skirt and headdress, with a crocodile at her feet.

  “Well, they wouldn’t make nearly such picturesque statues,” I said.

  The crocodile at America’s feet reminded me of Master Raymond’s shop.

  “Did you mean it about not wanting me to go to Master Raymond’s?” I asked. “Or do you just not want me to pierce my nipples?”

  “I most definitely dinna want ye to pierce your nipples,” he said firmly, taking me by the elbow and hurrying me onward, lest I derive any untoward inspiration from America’s bare breasts. “But no, I dinna want ye to go to Master Raymond’s, either. There are rumors about the man.”

  “There are rumors about everyone in Paris,” I observed, “and I’d be willing to bet that Master Raymond knows all of them.”

  Jamie nodded, hair glinting in the pale spring sunshine.

  “Oh, aye, I expect so. But I think I can learn what’s needful in the taverns and drawing rooms. Master Raymond’s said to be at the center of a particular circle, but it isna Jacobite sympathizers.”

  “Really? Who, then?”

  “Cabalists and occultists. Witches, maybe.”

  “Jamie, you aren’t seriously worried about witches and demons, are you?”

  We had arrived at the part of the gardens known as the “Green Carpet.” This early in the spring, the green of the huge lawn was only a faint tinge, but people were lounging on it, taking advantage of the rare balmy day.
/>
  “Not witches, no,” he said at last, finding a place near a hedge of forsythia and sitting down on the grass. “The Comte St. Germain, possibly.”

  I remembered the look in the Comte St. Germain’s dark eyes at Le Havre, and shivered, in spite of the sunshine and the woolen shawl I wore.

  “You think he’s associated with Master Raymond?”

  Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know. But it was you told me the rumors about St. Germain, no? And if Master Raymond is part of that circle—then I think you should keep the hell away from him, Sassenach.” He gave me a wry half-smile. “After all, I’d as soon not have to save ye from burning again.”

  The shadows under the trees reminded me of the cold gloom of the thieves’ hole in Cranesmuir, and I shivered and moved closer to Jamie, farther into the sunlight.

  “I’d as soon you didn’t, either.”

  The pigeons were courting on the grass below a flowering forsythia bush. The ladies and gentlemen of the Court were performing similar activities on the paths that led through the sculpture gardens. The major difference was that the pigeons were quieter about it.