THREE ARROWS
Grey sat up suddenly, narrowly avoiding cracking his head on the low beam that passed above his bed. His heart was pounding, his neck and temples wet with sweat, and he had no notion for a moment where he was.
“The third arrow,” he said aloud, and shook his head, trying to match the words to the extraordinarily vivid dream from which he had so abruptly emerged.
Was it dream, memory, or something partaking of the nature of both? He had been standing in the main salon of Trois Flèches, looking at the very fine Stubbs hanging to the right of the baroque mantelpiece. The walls were crowded with pictures—hung above, below, crammed in without regard to subject or merit.
Was that how it had been? He remembered vaguely a sense of oppression at the abundance of ornament, but had the paintings truly crowded in so, portraits leering from above, below, faces in every direction?
In the dream, the Baron Amandine had stood to one side of him, the solid shoulder touching his; they were much of a height. The Baron was speaking of one of the paintings, but Grey could not remember what he was saying—something about the technique employed by the painter, perhaps.
On his other side stood Cecile Beauchamp, the baron’s sister, standing equally close, a bare shoulder brushing Grey’s. She wore powder in her hair and a perfume of jasmine; the baron, a feral cologne of bergamot and civet. He remembered—for surely dreams had no smell?—the mingling of the thick fragrances with the bitterness of wood ash in the stifling warmth of the room, and the faint feeling of nausea this mingling induced. Someone’s hand had cupped one of his buttocks, squeezed it familiarly, and then commenced to stroke it in an insinuating fashion. He didn’t know whose hand it was.
That hadn’t been part of the dream.
He lay back slowly on his pillow, eyes closed, trying to recapture the images from his sleeping mind. The dream had changed after that to something erotic, someone’s mouth on his highly responsive flesh; it was the sensations associated with this, in fact, that wakened him. He didn’t know whose mouth it was, either. Dr. Franklin had been somewhere in this dream, as well; Grey recalled the white buttocks, slightly sagging, still firm, as the man walked down a corridor in front of him, long gray hair straggling down a bony back, loose rolls of skin around the waist, talking with complete unconcern about the pictures, which lined the walls of the corridor, as well. It was a vivid recollection, charged with feeling. Surely he hadn’t—not with Franklin, even in a dream. But it was something to do with the paintings …
He tried to recall some of the paintings but was no longer sure what was real, what emerged from the bourne of dreams. There were landscapes … a thing purporting to be an Egyptian scene, though he took leave to doubt that the painter had ever set foot south of the Breton coast. The usual family portraits—
“Yes!” he sat up abruptly and this time did smack the crown of his head on the beam, hard enough that he saw stars and emitted a grunt of pain.
“Uncle John?” Dottie’s voice came clearly from the other bed, startled, and a rustling of bedclothes from the floor indicated that her maid had likewise wakened. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing, nothing. Go back to sleep.” He swung his legs out of bed. “Just … going to the privy.”
“Oh.” Flouncings and mutterings from the floor, a sternly rebuking shush! from Dottie. He found the chamber door by feel, for the shutters had been put up and the room was black as sin, and made his way downstairs by the dim light from the banked fire in the inn’s main room.
The air outside was fresh and cool, scented with something he didn’t recognize but that tugged at his memory. It was a relief to let go the struggle with his obstinate dream and submerge himself in this purely sensory remembrance. It brought back long rides in Virginia, muddy roads, fresh leaves, the sense of a horse beneath him, the kick of a gun, the feel of a deer’s blood spilling hot over his hand … of course, hunting with William.
He felt the immediacy of the wilderness wash over him, that strong, strange sense so peculiar to America: the sense of something waiting among the trees—not inimical, but not welcoming, either. He had loved those few years in Virginia, away from the intrigues of Europe, the constant sociality of London. Valued them mostly, though, for the closeness that had grown between him and his son in those years in the wilderness.
He had not yet seen fireflies on this journey. He glanced into the thick grass as he walked, but it was probably too late; fireflies came out mostly in the early evening. He looked forward to showing them to Dottie. William had been enchanted by his first sight of them when they came to live in Virginia—had caught them in his hand, cupping one gently and exclaiming as it lit the darkened hollow of his palm. Had greeted their return each summer with joy.
Relieved in body and at least superficially soothed in mind, he sat slowly down on the chopping block in the innyard, unwilling to return yet to the frowsy darkness above.
Where was Henry? he wondered. Where did he sleep tonight? Housed in some dungeon? No, the Colonies really had no such thing. Even common houses were remarkably comfortable and airy. Perhaps his nephew was held in a gaol, a barn, some cellar—and yet he had, so far as they knew, survived the winter in spite of what must be a serious wound. He would have had money, though; perhaps he had been able to pay for better housing, perhaps a doctor’s care.
God willing, they would find him soon. They were no more than two days’ ride from Philadelphia. And he had the letters of introduction Franklin had given him—Franklin again! Damn the man and his air-bathing. Though Grey had joined him in this process once, from curiosity, and found it oddly pleasant, if a little unnerving, to be sitting mother-naked in a room equipped with elegant furniture, potted plants in the corners, paintings on the—
No. No, there were no paintings in the solar at Trois Flèches, of course not.
There it was. The tail of his elusive dream, twitching tantalizingly at him from under a rock. He closed his eyes, filled his lungs with the scent of the summer night, and purposely forced his mind to go blank.
Trois Flèches. Three arrows. Who is the third? The words of Hal’s letter appeared on the inside of his eyelids, sufficiently startling that he opened his eyes. Used as he was to Hal’s oblique thought processes, he hadn’t made much of this at the time. Evidently it had taken root in his subconscious, though, only to emerge in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, out of the depths of an absurd dream. Why?
He rubbed gently at the crown of his head, which was sore from his collision with the beam, but not broken. His fingers unconsciously moved down, fingering the spot where Jamie Fraser’s wife had covered the trephine hole in his skull with a silver sixpence hammered flat. She had stitched the skin over it quite cleverly and the hair had grown again, but it was easy to feel the small hard curve under it. He seldom noticed or thought of it save in cold weather, when the metal grew markedly cold and sometimes caused headache and made his nose run.
It had been cold, very cold, when he visited Trois Flèches. The thought floated through his head like a moth.
There were sounds behind the inn. The clop of hooves on packed dirt, the murmur of voices. He sat very still.
The moon was halfway down; it was late, but hours yet ’til dawn. No one should have business at this hour, save it was a dark business. The sort of business he had no desire to witness—let alone to be seen witnessing.
They were coming, though; he couldn’t move without being seen, and instead stilled even his breathing to the barest wisp of air.
Three men, quiet, purposeful, on horseback, one leading a laden mule. They passed no more than two paces from him, but he didn’t move, and the horses, if they sensed him, found him no threat. They turned onto the road that led to Philadelphia. Why this secrecy? he wondered—but didn’t waste time in much wondering. He had noticed it at once upon his return to North Carolina the year before: a morbid excitement, an uneasiness in the air itself. It was more pronounced here; he had been aware of it since they had landed.
People were wary in a way that they hadn’t been. They don’t know who to trust, he thought. And so they trust no one.
The thought of trust conjured an immediate and vivid recollection of Percy Wainwright. If there is anyone in the world I trust less …
And just like that, he had it. The picture of Percy, dark-eyed and smiling, thumb running over the surface of his wineglass as though he stroked Grey’s prick, saying casually, “I married one of the sisters of the Baron Amandine …”
“One of the sisters,” Grey whispered aloud, and the dream crystallized in his mind, the sense of cold from the stones of Trois Flèches so vivid that he shivered, though the night was not cold at all. Felt the warmth of those two lascivious, vicious bodies pressing on him from either side. And on the wall to one side, disregarded among the careless profusion, a small painting of three children, two girls, one boy, posed with a dog, and the outer wall of Trois Flèches recognizable behind them.
The second sister. The third arrow, whom Hal, with his unerring sense of oddity, had never seen but had noticed nonetheless.
The Beauchamps were a noble, ancient family—and like most such families, they referred often, if casually, to themselves. He had heard during his visit of the doings of cousins, uncles, aunts, distant connections … but never of the second sister.
She might have died in childhood, of course; such things were common. But in that case, why would Percy have said …?
Now his head was beginning to ache. With a sigh, he rose and went inside. He had no notion where or when—but he was going to have to speak to Percy again. He was appalled to find that the prospect did not alarm him.