"The devil it doesn't," he murmured to himself, and glanced up at the sky. Venus shone bright. He should go.
Pausing conscientiously to place his fingers on each rat's body and ensure that no spark of life remained, he passed down the line, then swept them all into a burlap bag. If he was going to the Court of Miracles, at least he wouldn't arrive empty-handed.
*
Joan was still reluctant to go below, but the light was fading, the wind getting up regardless, and a particularly spiteful gust that blew her petticoats right up round her waist and grabbed her arse with a chilly hand made her yelp in a very undignified way. She smoothed her skirts hastily and made for the hatchway, followed by Michael Murray.
Seeing him cough and chafe his hands at the bottom of the ladder made her sorry; here she'd kept him freezing on deck, too polite to go below and leave her to her own devices, and her too selfish to see he was cold, the poor man. She made a hasty knot in her handkerchief, to remind her to say an extra decade of the rosary for penance, when she got to it.
He saw her to a bench and said a few words to the woman sitting next to her, in French. Obviously he was introducing her, she understood that much--but when the woman nodded and said something in reply, she could only sit there openmouthed. She didn't understand a word. Not a word!
Michael evidently grasped the situation, for he said something to the woman's husband, which drew her attention away from Joan, and engaged them in a conversation that let Joan sink quietly back against the wooden wall of the ship, sweating with embarrassment.
Well, she'd get into the way of it, she reassured herself. Bound to. She settled herself with determination to listen, picking out the odd word here and there in the conversation. It was easier to understand Michael; he spoke slower and didn't swallow the back half of each word.
She was trying to puzzle out the probable spelling of a word that sounded like "pwufgweemiarniere" but surely couldn't be, when her eye caught a slight movement from the bench opposite, and the gurgling vowels caught in her throat.
A man sat there, maybe close to her own age, which was twenty-five. He was good-looking, if a bit thin in the face, decently dressed--and he was going to die.
There was a gray shroud over him, the same as if he were wrapped in mist, so his face showed through it. She'd seen that same thing--the grayness lying on someone's face like fog--seen it twice before and knew it at once for death's shadow. Once it had been on an elderly man, and that might have been only what anybody could see, because Angus MacWheen was ill, but then again, and only a few weeks after, she'd seen it on the second of Vhairi Fraser's little boys, and him a rosy-faced wee bairn with dear chubby legs.
She hadn't wanted to believe it. Either that she saw it or what it meant. But four days later, the wean was crushed in the lane by an ox that was maddened by a hornet's sting. She'd vomited when they told her, and couldn't eat for days after, for sheer grief and terror. Because could she have stopped it if she'd said? And what--dear Lord, what--if it happened again?
Now it had, and her wame twisted. She leapt to her feet and blundered toward the companionway, cutting short some slowly worded speech from the Frenchman.
Not again, not again! she thought in agony. Why show me such things? What can I do?
She pawed frantically at the ladder, climbing as fast as she could, gasping for air, needing to be away from the dying man. How long might it be, dear Lord, until she reached the convent, and safety?
*
The moon was rising over the Ile de la Cite, glowing through the haze of cloud. He glanced at it, estimating the time; no point in arriving at Madame Fabienne's house before the girls had taken their hair out of curling papers and rolled on their red stockings. There were other places to go first, though: the obscure drinking places where the professionals of the court fortified themselves for the night ahead. One of those was where he had first heard the rumors--he'd see how far they had spread and would judge the safety of asking openly about Maitre Raymond.
That was one advantage to hiding in the past, rather than going to Hungary or Sweden--life at this court tended to be short, and there were not so many who knew either his face or his history, though there would still be stories. Paris held on to its histoires. He found the iron gate--rustier than it had been; it left red stains on his palm--and pushed it open with a creak that would alert whatever now lived at the end of the alley.
He had to see the frog. Not meet him, perhaps--he made a brief sign against evil--but see him. Above all else, he needed to know: had the man--if he was a man--aged?
"Certainly he's a man," he muttered to himself, impatient. "What else could he be, for heaven's sake?"
He could be something like you, was the answering thought, and a shiver ran up his spine. Fear? He wondered. Anticipation of an intriguing philosophical mystery? Or possibly ... hope?
*
"What a waste of a wonderful arse," Monsieur Brechin remarked in French, watching Joan's ascent from the far side of the cabin. "And, mon Dieu, those legs! Imagine those wrapped around your back, eh? Would you have her keep the striped stockings on? I would."
It hadn't occurred to Michael to imagine that, but he was now having a hard time dismissing the image. He coughed into his handkerchief to hide the reddening of his face.
Madame Brechin gave her husband a sharp elbow in the ribs. He grunted but seemed undisturbed by what was evidently a normal form of marital communication.
"Beast," she said, with no apparent heat. "Speaking so of a Bride of Christ. You will be lucky if God himself doesn't strike you dead with a lightning bolt."
"Well, she isn't his bride yet," Monsieur protested. "And who created that arse in the first place? Surely God would be flattered to hear a little sincere appreciation of his handiwork. From one who is, after all, a connoisseur in such matters." He leered affectionately at Madame, who snorted.
A faint snigger from the young man across the cabin indicated that Monsieur was not alone in his appreciation, and Madame turned a reproving glare on the young man. Michael wiped his nose carefully, trying not to catch Monsieur's eye. His insides were quivering, and not entirely from either amusement or the shock of inadvertent lust. He felt very queer.
Monsieur sighed as Joan's striped stockings disappeared through the hatchway.
"Christ will not warm her bed," he said, shaking his head.
"Christ will not fart in her bed, either," said Madame, taking out her knitting.
"Pardonnez-moi ..." Michael said in a strangled voice, and, clapping his handkerchief to his mouth, made hastily for the ladder, as though seasickness might be catching.
It wasn't mal de mer that was surging up from his belly, though. He caught sight of Joan, dim in the evening light at the rail, and turned quickly, going to the other side, where he gripped the rail as though it were a life raft and let the overwhelming waves of grief wash through him. It was the only way he'd been able to manage, these last few weeks. Hold on as long as he could, keeping a cheerful face, until some small unexpected thing, some bit of emotional debris, struck him through the heart like a hunter's arrow, and then hurry to find a place to hide, curling up in mindless pain until he could get a grip of himself.
This time, it was Madame's remark that had come out of the blue, and he grimaced painfully, laughing in spite of the tears that poured down his face, remembering Lillie. She'd eaten eels in garlic sauce for dinner--those always made her fart with a silent deadliness like poison swamp gas. As the ghastly miasma had risen up round him, he'd sat bolt upright in bed, only to find her staring at him, a look of indignant horror on her face.
"How dare you?" she'd said, in a voice of offended majesty. "Really, Michel."
"You know it wasn't me!"
Her mouth had dropped open, outrage added to horror and distaste.
"Oh!" she gasped, gathering her pug-dog to her bosom. "You not only fart like a rotting whale, you attempt to blame it on my poor puppy! Cochon!" Whereupon she had begun to shake
the bedsheets delicately, using her free hand to waft the noxious odors in his direction, addressing censorious remarks to Plonplon, who gave Michael a sanctimonious look before turning to lick his mistress's face with great enthusiasm.
"Oh, Jesus," he whispered, and, sinking down, pressed his face against the rail. "Oh, God, lass, I love you!"
He shook silently, head buried in his arms, aware of sailors passing now and then behind him, but none of them took notice of him in the dark. At last the agony eased a little, and he drew breath.
All right, then. He'd be all right now, for a time. And he thanked God, belatedly, that he had Joan--or Sister Gregory, if she liked--to look after for a bit. He didn't know how he'd manage to walk through the streets of Paris to his house, alone. Go in, greet the servants--would Jared be there?--face the sorrow of the household, accept their sympathy for his father's death, order a meal, sit down ... and all the time wanting just to throw himself on the floor of their empty bedroom and howl like a lost soul. He'd have to face it, sooner or later--but not just yet. And right now he'd take the grace of any respite that was offered.
He blew his nose with resolution, tucked away his mangled handkerchief, and went downstairs to fetch the basket his mother had sent. He couldn't swallow a thing himself, but feeding Joan would maybe keep his mind off things for that one minute more.
"That's how ye do it," his brother Ian had told him, as they leant together on the rail of their mother's sheep pen, the winter's wind cold on their faces, waiting for their da to find his way through dying. "Ye find a way to live for that one more minute. And then another. And another." Ian had lost a wife, too, and knew.
He'd wiped his face--he could weep before Ian, while he couldn't with his elder brother or the girls, certainly not in front of his mother--and asked, "And it gets better after a time, is that what ye're telling me?"
His brother had looked at him straight on, the quiet in his eyes showing through the outlandish Mohawk tattoos.
"No," he'd said softly. "But after a time, ye find ye're in a different place than ye were. A different person than ye were. And then ye look about and see what's there with ye. Ye'll maybe find a use for yourself. That helps."
"Aye, fine," he said, under his breath, and squared his shoulders. "We'll see, then."
*
To Rakoczy's surprise, there was a familiar face behind the rough bar. If Maximilian the Great was surprised to see him, the Spanish dwarf gave no indication of it. The other drinkers--a pair of jugglers, each missing an arm (but the opposing arm), a toothless hag who smacked and muttered over her mug of arrack, and something that looked like a ten-year-old girl but almost certainly wasn't--turned to stare at him but, seeing nothing remarkable in his shabby clothing and burlap bag, turned back to the business of getting sufficiently drunk as to do what needed to be done tonight.
He nodded to Max and pulled up one of the splintering kegs to sit on.
"What's your pleasure, senor?"
Rakoczy narrowed his eyes; Max had never served anything but arrack. But times had changed; there was a stone bottle of something that might be beer and a dark glass bottle with a chalk scrawl on it, standing next to the keg of rough brandy.
"Arrack, please, Max," he said--better the devil you know--and was surprised to see the dwarf's eyes narrow in return.
"You knew my honored father, I see, senor," the dwarf said, putting the cup on the board. "It's some time since you've been in Paris?"
"Pardonnez," Rakoczy said, accepting it and tossing it back. If you could afford more than one cup, you didn't let it linger on the tongue. "Your honored ... late father? Max?"
"Maximiliano el Maximo," the dwarf corrected him firmly.
"To be sure." Rakoczy gestured for another drink. "And whom have I the honor to address?"
The Spaniard--though perhaps his accent wasn't as strong as Max's had been--drew himself up proudly. "Maxim Le Grand, a su servicio!"
Rakoczy saluted him gravely and threw back the second cup, motioning for a third and, with a gesture, inviting Maxim to join him.
"It has been some time since I was last here," he said. No lie there. "I wonder if another old acquaintance might be still alive--Maitre Raymond, otherwise called the Frog?"
There was a tiny quiver in the air, a barely perceptible flicker of attention, gone almost as soon as he'd sensed it--somewhere behind him?
"A frog," Maxim said, meditatively pouring himself a drink. "I don't know any frogs myself, but should I hear of one, who shall I say is asking for him?"
Should he give his name? No, not yet.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "But word can be left with Madame Fabienne. You know the place? In the Rue Antoine?"
The dwarf's sketchy brows rose, and his mouth turned up at one corner.
"I know it."
Doubtless he did, Rakoczy thought. "El Maximo" hadn't referred to Max's stature, and probably "Le Grand" didn't, either. God had a sense of justice, as well as a sense of humor.
"Bon." He wiped his lips on his sleeve and put down a coin that would have bought the whole keg. "Merci."
He stood up, the hot taste of the brandy bubbling at the back of his throat, and belched. Two more places to visit, maybe, before he went to Fabienne's. He couldn't visit more than that and stay upright; he was getting old.
"Good night." He bowed to the company and gingerly pushed open the cracked wooden door; it was hanging by one leather hinge, and that looked ready to give way at any moment.
"Ribbit," someone said very softly, just before the door closed behind him.
*
Madeleine's face lighted when she saw him, and his heart warmed. She wasn't very bright, poor creature, but she was pretty and amiable and had been a whore long enough to be grateful for small kindnesses.
"Monsieur Rakoczy!" She flung her arms about his neck, nuzzling affectionately.
"Madeleine, my dear." He cupped her chin and kissed her gently on the lips, drawing her close so that her belly pressed against his. He held her long enough, kissing her eyelids, her forehead, her ears--so that she made high squeaks of pleasure--that he could feel his way inside her, hold the weight of her womb in his mind, evaluate her ripening.
It felt warm, the color in the heart of a dark crimson rose, the kind called sang de dragon. A week before, it had felt solid, compact as a folded fist; now it had begun to soften, to hollow slightly as she readied. Three more days? he wondered. Four?
He let her go, and when she pouted prettily at him, he laughed and raised her hand to his lips, feeling the same small thrill he had felt when he first found her, as the faint blue glow rose between her fingers in response to his touch. She couldn't see it--he'd raised their linked hands to her face before and she had merely looked puzzled--but it was there.
"Go and fetch some wine, ma belle," he said, squeezing her hand gently. "I need to talk to Madame."
Madame Fabienne was not a dwarf, but she was small, brown, and mottled as a toadstool--and as watchful as a toad, round yellow eyes seldom blinking, never closed.
"Monsieur le Comte," she said graciously, nodding him to a damask chair in her salon. The air was scented with candle wax and flesh--flesh of a far better quality than that on offer in the court. Even so, Madame had come from that court and kept her connections there alive; she made no bones about that. She didn't blink at his clothes, but her nostrils flared at him, as though she picked up the scent of the dives and alleys he had come from.
"Good evening, Madame," he said, smiling at her, and lifted the burlap bag. "I brought a small present for Leopold. If he's awake?"
"Awake and cranky," 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 of 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 when you called.
"Leopold! Monsieur le Comte has brought you a treat!" Fabienne reached across to an enormous wicker cage and flicked the door opened, withdrawing her hand with sufficient speed as to indicate just what she meant by "cranky."
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 teabowl, and before the company could blink, he 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."