Dragonfly in Amber

  It had been raining earlier, but the storm was breaking up. Thick clouds shredded and flew overhead, driven by a wind that whipped aside my cloak and plastered my skirt to my legs.

  “This way.” I clutched the heavy velvet close around me, bent my head against the wind, and followed Jack Randall’s lean figure through the path of the rockery.

  We emerged at the lower end, and after a pause for a quick look around, crossed rapidly across the grass to the portal of the church.

  The door had warped and hung ajar; it had been disused for several years because of structural faults that made the building dangerous, and no one had troubled to repair it. I kicked my way through a barrier of dead leaves and rubbish, ducking from the flickering moonlight of the palace’s back garden into the absolute darkness of the church.

  Or not quite absolute; as my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see the tall lines of the pillars that marched down each side of the nave, and the delicate stonework of the enormous window at the far end, glass mostly gone.

  A movement in the shadows showed me where Randall had gone; I turned between the pillars and found him in a space where a recess once used as a baptismal font had left a stone ledge along the wall. To either side were pale blotches on the walls; the memorial tablets of those buried in the church. Others lay flat, embedded in the floor on either side of the central aisle, the names blurred by the traffic of feet.

  “All right,” I said. “We can’t be overheard now. What do you want of me?”

  “Your skill as a physician, and your complete discretion. In exchange for such information as I possess regarding the movements and plans of the Elector’s troops,” he answered promptly.

  That rather took my breath away. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. He couldn’t possibly mean…

  “You’re looking for medical treatment?” I asked, making no effort to disguise the mingled horror and amazement in my voice. “From me? I understood that you…er, I mean…” With a major effort of will, I stopped myself floundering and said firmly, “Surely you have already received whatever medical treatment is possible? You appear to be in reasonably good condition.” Externally, at least. I bit my lip, suppressing an urge toward hysteria.

  “I am informed that I am fortunate to be alive, Madam,” he answered coldly. “The point is debatable.” He set the lantern in a niche in the wall, where the scooped basin of a piscina lay dry and empty in its recess.

  “I assume your inquiry to be motivated by medical curiosity rather than concern for my welfare,” he went on. The lanternlight, shed at waist height, illuminated him from the ribs downward, leaving head and shoulders hidden. He laid a hand on the waistband of his breeches, turning slightly toward me.

  “Do you wish to inspect the injury, in order to judge the effectiveness of treatment?” The shadows hid his face, but the splinters of ice in his voice were tipped with poison.

  “Perhaps later,” I said, as cool as he. “If not yourself, for whom do you seek my skill?”

  He hesitated, but it was far too late for reticence.

  “For my brother.”

  “Your brother?” I couldn’t keep the shock from my voice. “Alexander?”

  “Since my elder brother William is, so far as I know, virtuously engaged in stewardship of the family estates in Sussex, and in need of no assistance,” he said dryly. “Yes, my brother Alex.”

  I spread my hands on the cold stone of a sarcophagus to steady myself.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  * * *

  It was a simple enough story, and a sad one. Had it been anyone other than Jonathan Randall who told it, I might have found myself prey to sympathy.

  Deprived of his employment with the Duke of Sandringham because of the scandal over Mary Hawkins, and too frail of health to secure another appointment, Alexander Randall had been forced to seek aid from his brothers.

  “William sent him two pounds and a letter of earnest exhortations.” Jack Randall leaned back against the wall, crossing his ankles. “William is a very earnest sort, I’m afraid. But he wasn’t prepared to have Alex come home to Sussex. William’s wife is a bit…extreme, shall we say? in her religious opinions.” There was a wisp of amusement in his voice that suddenly made me like him for a moment. In different circumstances, might he have been like the great-grandson he resembled?

  The sudden thought of Frank so unsettled me that I missed his next remark.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?” I clutched my left hand with my right, fingers pinching tight on my gold wedding ring. Frank was gone. I must stop thinking of him.

  “I said that I had procured rooms for Alex near the Castle, so that I might look in on him myself, as my funds did not stretch far enough to allow of employing a proper servant for him.”

  But the occupation of Edinburgh had of course made such attendance difficult, and Alex Randall had been left more or less to his own devices for the past month, aside from the intermittent offices of a woman who came in to clean now and then. In ill health to start with, his condition had been worsened by cold weather, poor diet, and squalid conditions until, seriously alarmed, Jack Randall had been moved to seek my help. And to offer for that help, the betrayal of his King.

  “Why would you come to me?” I asked at last, turning from the plaque.

  He looked faintly surprised.

  “Because of who you are.” His lips curved in a slight, self-mocking smile. If one seeks to sell one’s soul, is it not proper to go to the powers of darkness?”

  “You really think that I’m a power of darkness, do you?” Plainly he did; he was more than capable of mockery, but there had been none in his original proposal.

  “Aside from the stories about you in Paris, you told me so yourself,” he pointed out. “When I let you go from Wentworth.” He turned in the dark, shifting himself on the stone ledge.

  “That was a serious mistake,” he said softly. “You should never have left that place alive, dangerous creature. And yet I had no choice; your life was the price he set. And I would have paid still higher stakes than that, for what he gave me.”

  I made a slight hissing noise, which I muffled at once, but too late to stop him hearing me. He half-sat on the ledge, one hip resting on the stone, one leg stretched down to balance him. The moon broke through the scudding clouds outside, backlighting him through the broken window. In the dimness, head half-turned and the lines of cruelty around his mouth erased by darkness, I could mistake him again, as I had once before, for a man I had loved. For Frank.

  Yet I had betrayed that man; because of my choice, that man would never be. For the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children…and thou shalt destroy him, root and branch, so that his name shall no more be known among the tribes of Israel.

  “Did he tell you?” the light, pleasant voice asked from the shadows. “Did he ever tell you all the things that passed between us, him and me, in that small room at Wentworth?” Through my shock and rage, I noticed that he obeyed Jamie’s injunction; not once did he use his name. “He.” “Him.” Never “Jamie.” That was mine.

  My teeth were clenched tight, but I forced the words through them.

  “He told me. Everything.”

  He made a small sound, half a sigh.

  “Whether the idea pleases you or not, my dear, we are linked, you and I. I cannot say it pleases me, but I admit the truth of it. You know, as I do, the touch of his skin—so warm, is he not? Almost as though he burned from within. You know the smell of his sweat and the roughness of the hairs on his thighs. You know the sound that he makes at the last, when he has lost himself. So do I.”

  “Be quiet,” I said. “Be still!” He ignored me, leaning back, speaking thoughtfully, as though to himself. I recognized, with a fresh burst of rage, the impulse that led him to this—not the intention, as I had thought, to upset me, but an overwhelming urge to talk of a beloved; to rehearse aloud and live again vanished details. For after all, to whom migh
t he speak of Jamie in this way, but to me?

  “I am leaving!” I said loudly, and whirled on my heel.

  “Will you leave?” said the calm voice behind me. “I can deliver General Hawley into your hands. Or you can let him take the Scottish army. Your choice, Madam.”

  I had the strong urge to reply that General Hawley wasn’t worth it. But I thought of the Scottish chieftains now quartered in Holyroodhouse—Kilmarnock and Balmerino and Lochiel, only a few feet away on the other side of the abbey wall. Of Jamie himself. Of the thousands of clansmen they led. Was the chance of victory worth the sacrifice of my feelings? And was this the turning point, again a place of choice? If I didn’t listen, if I didn’t accept the bargain Randall proposed, what then?

  I turned, slowly. “Talk, then,” I said. “If you must.” He seemed unmoved by my anger, and unworried by the possibility that I would refuse him. The voice in the dark church was even, controlled as a lecturer’s.

  “I wonder, you know,” he said. “Whether you have had from him as much as I?” He tilted his head to one side, sharp features coming into focus as he moved out of the shadow. The fugitive light caught him momentarily from the side, lighting the pale hazel of his eyes and making them shine, like those of a beast glimpsed hiding in the bushes.

  The note of triumph in his voice was faint, but unmistakable.

  “I,” he said softly, “I have had him as you could never have him. You are a woman; you cannot understand, even witch as you are. I have held the soul of his manhood, have taken from him what he has taken from me. I know him, as he now knows me. We are bound, he and I, by blood.”

  I give ye my Body, that we Two may be One…

  “You choose a very odd way of seeking my help,” I said, my voice shaking. My hands were clenched in the folds of my skirt, the fabric cold and bunched between my fingers.

  “Do I? I think it best you understand, Madam. I do not beseech your pity, do not call upon your power as a man might seek mercy from a woman, depending upon what people call womanly sympathy. For that cause, you might come to my brother on his own account.” A lock of dark hair fell loose across his forehead; he brushed it back with one hand.

  “I prefer that it be a straight bargain made between us, Madam; of service rendered and price paid—for realize, Madam, that my feelings toward you are much as yours toward me must be.”

  That was a shock; while I struggled to find an answer, he went on.

  “We are linked, you and I, through the body of one man—through him. I would have no such link formed through the body of my brother; I seek your help to heal his body, but I take no risk that his soul shall fall prey to you. Tell me, then; is the price I offer acceptable to you?”

  I turned away from him and walked down the center of the echoing nave. I was shaking so hard that my steps felt uncertain, and the shock of the hard stone beneath my soles jolted me. The tracery of the great window over the disused altar stood black against the white of racing clouds, and dim shafts of moonlight lit my path.

  At the end of the nave, as far as I could get from him, I stopped and pressed my hands against the wall for support. It was too dark even to see the letters of the marble tablet under my hands, but I could feel the cool, sharp lines of the carving. The curve of a small skull, resting on crossed thigh bones, a pious version of the jolly Roger. I let my head fall forward, forehead to forehead with the invisible skull, smooth as bone against my skin.

  I waited, eyes closed, for my gorge to subside, and the heated pulse that throbbed in my temples to cool.

  It makes no difference, I told myself. No matter what he is. No matter what he says.

  We are linked, you and I, through the body of one man…Yes, but not through Jamie. Not through him! I insisted, to him, to myself. Yes, you took him, you bastard! But I took him back, I freed him from you. You have no part of him! But the sweat that trickled down my ribs and the sound of my own sobbing breath belied my conviction.

  Was this the price I must pay for the loss of Frank? A thousand lives that might be saved, perhaps, in compensation for that one loss?

  The dark mass of the altar loomed to my right, and I wished with all my heart that there might be some presence there, whatever its nature; something to turn to for an answer. But there was no one here in Holyrood; no one but me. The spirits of the dead kept their own counsel, silent in the stones of wall and floor.

  I tried to put Jack Randall out of my mind. If it weren’t him, if it were any other man who asked, would I go? There was Alex Randall to be considered, all other things aside. “For that cause, you might come to my brother on his own account,” the Captain had said. And of course I would. Whatever I might offer him in the way of healing, could I withhold it because of the man who asked it?

  It was a long time before I straightened, pushing myself wearily erect, my hands damp and slick on the curve of the skull. I felt drained and weak, my neck aching and my head heavy, as though the sickness in the city had laid its hand on me after all.

  He was still there, patient in the cold dark.

  “Yes,” I said abruptly, as soon as I came within speaking distance. “All right. I’ll come tomorrow, in the forenoon. Where?”

  “Ladywalk Wynd,” he said. “You know it?”

  “Yes.” Edinburgh was a small city—no more than the single High Street, with the tiny, ill-lit wynds and closes opening off it. Ladywalk Wynd was one of the poorer ones.

  “I will meet you there,” he said. “I shall have the information for you.” He slid to his feet and took a step forward, then stood, waiting for me to move. I saw that he didn’t want to pass close by me, in order to reach the door.

  “Afraid of me, are you?” I said, with a humorless laugh. “Think I’ll turn you into a toadstool?”

  “No,” he said, surveying me calmly. “I do not fear you, Madam. You cannot have it both ways, you know. You sought to terrify me at Wentworth, by giving me the day of my death. But having told me that, you cannot now threaten me, for if I shall die in April of next year, you cannot harm me now, can you?”

  Had I had a knife with me, I might have shown him otherwise, in a soul-satisfying moment of impulse. But the doom of prophecy lay on me, and the weight of a thousand Scottish lives. He was safe from me.

  “I keep my distance, Madam,” he said, “merely because I would prefer to take no chance of touching you.”

  I laughed once more, this time genuinely.

  “And that, Captain,” I said, “is an impulse with which I am entirely in sympathy.” I turned and left the church, leaving him to follow as he would.

  I had no need to ask or to wonder whether he would keep his word. He had freed me once from Wentworth, because he had given his word to do so. His word, once given, was his bond. Jack Randall was a gentleman.

  * * *

  What did you feel, when I gave my body to Jack Randall? Jamie had asked me.

  Rage, I had said. Sickness. Horror.

  I leaned against the door of the sitting room, feeling them all again. The fire had died out and the room was cold. The smell of camphorated goose grease tingled in my nostrils. It was quiet, save for the heavy rasp of breathing from the bed, and the faint sound of the wind, passing by the six-foot walls.

  I knelt at the hearth and began to rebuild the fire. It had gone out completely, and I pushed back the half-burnt log and brushed the ashes away before breaking the kindling into a small heap in the center of the hearthstone. We had wood fires in Holyrood, not peat. Unfortunate, I thought; a peat fire wouldn’t have gone out so easily.

  My hands shook a little, and I dropped the flint box twice before I succeeded in striking a spark. The cold, I said to myself. It was very cold in here.

  Did he tell you all the things that passed between us? said Jack Randall’s mocking voice.

  “All I need to know,” I muttered to myself, touching a paper spill to the tiny flame and carrying it from point to point, setting the tinder aglow in half a dozen spots. One at a time, I add
ed small sticks, poking each one into the flame and holding it there until the fire caught. When the pile of kindling was burning merrily, I reached back and caught the end of the big log, lifting it carefully into the heart of the fire. It was pinewood; green, but with a little sap, bubbling from a split in the wood in a tiny golden bead.

  Crystallized and frozen with age, it would make a drop of amber, hard and permanent as gemstone. Now, it glowed for a moment with the sudden heat, popped and exploded in a tiny shower of sparks, gone in an instant.

  “All I need to know,” I whispered. Fergus’s pallet was empty; waking and finding himself cold, he had crawled off in search of a warm haven.

  He was curled up in Jamie’s bed, the dark head and the red one resting side by side on the pillow, mouths slightly open as they snored peacefully together. I couldn’t help smiling at the sight, but I didn’t mean to sleep on the floor myself.

  “Out you go,” I murmured to Fergus, manhandling him to the edge of the bed, and rolling him into my arms. He was light-boned and thin for a ten-year-old, but still awfully heavy. I got him to his pallet without difficulty and plunked him in, still unconscious, then came back to Jamie’s bed.