The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination

CATEGORY: Alchemical Explorations

RULE 196.966: Mad Science Is Stranger than Magic

SOURCE: Joan MacKimmie, postulant

VIA: Diana Gabaldon

Devil worship. Alchemy. Witchcraft. The very words conjure up a distant time, a past where superstition ruled and science had yet to be discovered. But historians suggest many of the practices condemned as witchcraft and alchemy were rooted in the beginnings of scientific inquiry. Many of the women decried as witches were simply midwives and herbalists, using time-tested plant-based cures. And although no one ever successfully turned lead into gold, the technology Renaissance alchemists developed in their quest became the tools of doctors and chemists.

In our next story, we give you science through the lens of history and a scientist famed for his paranormal prowess. Here is a tale that explores the space between magic and science, mystery and analysis, ignorance and understanding.

He still didn’t know why the frog hadn’t killed him. Paul Rakoczy, Comte St. Germain, picked up the vial, pulled the cork, and sniffed cautiously for the third time, but then recorked it, still dissatisfied. Maybe. Maybe not. The scent of the dark gray powder in the vial held the ghost of something familiar—but it had been thirty years.

He sat for a moment, frowning at the array of jars, bottles, flasks, and pelicans on his workbench. It was late afternoon, and the late spring sun of Paris was like honey, warm and sticky on his face, but glowing in the rounded globes of glass, throwing pools of red and brown and green on the wood from the liquids contained therein. The only discordant note in this peaceful symphony of light was the body of a large rat, lying on its back in the middle of the workbench, a pocket-watch open beside it.

The Comte put two fingers delicately on the rat’s chest and waited patiently. It didn’t take so long this time; he was used to the coldness as his mind felt its way into the body. Nothing. No hint of light in his mind’s eye, no warm red of a pulsing heart. He glanced at the watch: half an hour.

“Mélisande, you evil bitch,” he murmured, not without affection. “You didn’t think I’d try anything you sent me on myself, would you?”

Still … he himself had stayed dead a great while longer than half an hour, when the frog had given him the dragon’s-blood. It had been early evening when he went into Louis’s Star Chamber thirty years before, heart beating with excitement at the coming confrontation—a duel of wizards, with a king’s favor as the stakes—and one he’d thought he’d win. He remembered the purity of the sky, the beauty of the stars just visible, Venus bright on the horizon, and the joy of it in his blood. Everything always had a greater intensity when you knew life could cease within the next few minutes.

And an hour later, he thought his life had ceased, the cup falling from his numbed hand, the coldness rushing through his limbs with amazing speed, freezing the words I’ve lost, an icy core of disbelief in the center of his mind. He hadn’t been looking at the frog; the last thing he had seen through darkening eyes was the woman—La Dame Blanche—her face over the cup she’d given him appalled and white as bone. But what he recalled, and recalled again now, with the same sense of astonishment and avidity, was the great flare of blue, intense as the color of the evening sky beyond Venus, that had burst from her head and shoulders as he died.

He didn’t recall any feeling of regret or fear; just astonishment. This was nothing, however, to the astonishment he’d felt when he regained his senses, naked on a stone slab in a revolting subterranean chamber next to a drowned corpse. Luckily, there had been no one alive in that disgusting grotto, and he had made his way—reeling and half-blind, clothed in the drowned man’s wet and stinking shirt—out into a dawn more beautiful than any twilight could ever be. So—ten to twelve hours from the moment of apparent death to revival.

He glanced at the rat, then put out a finger and lifted one of the small, neat paws. Nearly twelve hours. Limp, the rigor had already passed; it was warm up here at the top of the house. Then he turned to the counter that ran along the far wall of the laboratory, where a line of rats lay, possibly insensible, probably dead. He walked slowly along the line, prodding each body. Limp, limp, stiff. Stiff. Stiff. All dead, without doubt. Each had had a smaller dose than the last, but all had died—though he couldn’t yet be positive about the latest. Wait a bit more, then, to be sure.

He needed to know. Because the Court of Miracles was talking. And they said the frog was back.

They did say that red hair was a sign of the Devil. Joan eyed her escort’s fiery locks consideringly. The wind on deck was fierce enough to make her eyes water, and it jerked bits of Michael Murray’s hair out of its binding so they did dance round his head like flames, a bit. You might expect his face to be ugly as sin if he was one of the Devil’s, though, and it wasn’t.

Lucky for him, he looked like his mother in the face, she thought critically. His younger brother Ian wasn’t so fortunate, and that without the heathen tattoos. Michael’s was just a fairly pleasant face, for all it was blotched with windburn and the lingering marks of sorrow, and no wonder, him having just lost his father, and his wife dead in France no more than a month before that.

But she wasn’t braving this gale in order to watch Michael Murray, even if he might burst into tears or turn into Auld Horny on the spot. She touched her crucifix for reassurance, just in case. It was blessed by the priest and her mother’d carried it all the way to St. Ninian’s Spring and dipped it in the water there, to ask the saint’s protection. And it was her mother she wanted to see, as long as ever she could.

She pulled her kerchief off and waved it, keeping a tight grip lest the wind make off with it. Her mother was growing smaller on the quay, waving madly herself, Joey behind her with his arm round her waist to keep her from falling into the water.

Joan snorted a bit at sight of her new stepfather, but then thought better and touched the crucifix again, muttering a quick Act of Contrition in penance. After all, it was she herself who’d made that marriage happen, and a good thing, too. If not, she’d still be stuck to home at Balriggan, not on her way at last to be a Bride of Christ in France.

A nudge at her elbow made her glance aside, to see Michael offering her a handkerchief. Well, so. If her eyes were streaming—aye, and her nose—it was no wonder, the wind so fierce as it was. She took the scrap of cloth with a curt nod of thanks, scrubbed briefly at her cheeks, and waved her kerchief harder.

None of his family had come to see Michael off, not even his twin sister, Janet. But they were taken up with all there was to do in the wake of Old Ian Murray’s death, and no wonder. No need to see Michael to the ship, either—Michael Murray was a wine merchant in Paris, and a wonderfully well-traveled gentleman. She took some comfort from the knowledge that he knew what to do and where to go, and had said he would see her safely delivered to the convent of the Angels, because the thought of making her way through Paris alone and the streets full of people all speaking French.… Though she knew French quite well, of course, she’d been studying it all the winter, and Michael’s mother helping her … though perhaps she had better not tell the Reverend Mother about the sorts of French novels Jenny Murray had in her bookshelf, because …

“Eh?” She glanced at him, to see him gesturing toward the hatchway that led downstairs. She turned back, blinking—but the quay had vanished, and her mother with it.

“No,” she said. “Not just yet. I’ll just…” She wanted to see the land so long as she could. It would be her last sight of Scotland, ever, and the thought made her wame curl into a small, tight ball. She waved a vague hand toward the hatchway. “You go, though. I’m all right by myself.”

He didn’t go, but came to stand beside her, gripping the rail. She turned away from him a little, so he wouldn’t see her weep, but on the whole, she wasn’t sorry he’d stayed.

Neither of them spoke, and the land sank slowly, as though the sea swallowed it, and there was nothing round them now but the open sea, glassy gray and rippling under a scud of clouds. The prospect made her dizzy, and she closed her eyes, swallowing.

A small shuffling noise beside her made her open her eyes, to find Michael Murray regarding her with some concern.

“Are ye all right, Miss Joan?” He smiled a little. “Or should I call ye Sister?”

“No,” she said, taking a grip on her nerve and her stomach and drawing herself up. “I’m no a nun yet, am I?”

He looked her up and down in the frank way Hieland men did, and smiled more broadly.

“I have not,” she said, as starchily as she could. “I havena seen God or the Blessed Virgin, either, but I believe in them, too.”

Much to her annoyance, he burst out laughing. Seeing the annoyance, though, he stopped at once, though she could see the urge still trembling there behind his assumed gravity.

“I do beg your pardon, Miss MacKimmie,” he said. “I wasna questioning the existence of nuns. I’ve seen quite a number of the creatures with my own eyes.” His lips were twitching, and she glared at him.

“A figure of speech, nay more, I swear it! Forgive me, sister—I ken not what I do!” He held up a hand, cowering in mock terror. The urge to laugh herself made her that much crosser, but she contented herself with a simple, “Mmphm” of disapproval.

Curiosity got the better of her, though, and after a few moments spent inspecting the foaming wake of the ship, she asked, not looking at him, “When ye saw the nuns, then—what were they doing?”

“Well, I see the Sisters of Notre-Dame who work among the poor all the time in the streets. They always go out by twos, ken, and both nuns will be carrying great huge baskets, filled with food, I suppose—maybe medicines? They’re covered, though—the baskets—so I canna say for sure what’s in them. Perhaps they’re smuggling brandy and lace down to the docks—” He dodged aside from her upraised hand, laughing.

“Oh, ye’ll be a rare nun, Sister Joan! Terror daemonium, solatium miserorum…”

She pressed her lips tight together, not to laugh. Terror of demons, the cheek of him!

“Not Sister Joan,” she said. “They’ll give me a new name, likely, at the convent.”

“Oh, aye?” He wiped hair out of his eyes, interested. “D’ye get to choose the name, yourself?”

“Er … well…” She hadn’t told anyone, but after all, what harm could it do? She wouldn’t see Michael Murray again, once they reached Paris. “Sister Gregory,” she blurted.

“Oh, that’s a good name,” he said. “After Saint Gregory the Great, is it?”

“Well … aye. Ye don’t think it’s presumptuous?” she asked, a little anxious.

“Oh, no!” he said, surprised. “I mean, how many nuns are named Mary? If it’s not presumptuous to be named after the Mother o’ God, how can it be high-falutin’ to call yourself after a mere pope?” He smiled at that, so merrily that she smiled back.

“How many nuns are named Mary?” she asked, out of curiosity. “It’s common, is it?”

“Oh, aye, ye said ye’d not seen a nun.” He’d stopped making fun of her, though, and answered seriously, “About half the nuns I’ve met seem to be called Sister Mary Something—ye ken, Sister Mary Polycarp, Sister Mary Joseph … like that.”

“And ye meet a great many nuns in the course o’ your business, do ye?” Michael Murray was a wine merchant, the junior partner of Fraser et Cie—and from the cut of his clothes, did well enough at it.

“Well, I do, really. Not every day, I mean, but the sisters come round to my office quite often—or I go to them. Fraser et Cie supplies wine to most o’ the monasteries and convents in Paris, and some will send a pair of nuns to place an order or to take away something special—otherwise, we deliver it, of course. And even the orders who dinna take wine themselves—and most of the Parisian houses do, they bein’ French, aye?—need sacramental wine for their chapels. And the begging orders come round like clockwork to ask alms.”

“Really.” She was fascinated; sufficiently so as to put aside her reluctance to look ignorant. “I didna ken … I mean … so the different orders do quite different things, is that what ye’re saying? What other kinds are there?”

He shot her a brief glance, but then turned back, narrowing his eyes against the wind as he thought.

“Well … there’s the sort of nun that prays all the time—contemplative, I think they’re called. I see them in the Cathedral all hours of the day and night. There’s more than one order of that sort, though; one kind wears gray habits and prays in the chapel of St. Joseph, and another wears black; ye see them mostly in the chapel of Our Lady of the Sea.” He glanced at her, curious. “Will it be that sort of nun that you’ll be?”

“No,” she said, with some regret. “That’s maybe the holiest sort of nun, but I’ve spent a good bit o’ my life being contemplative on the moors, and I didna like it much. I think I havena got the right sort of soul to do it verra well, even in a chapel.”

“Aye,” he said, and wiped back flying strands of hair from his face. “I ken the moors. The wind gets into your head after a bit.” He hesitated for a moment. “When my uncle Jamie—your da, I mean—ye ken he hid in a cave after Culloden?”

“For seven years,” she said, a little impatient. “Aye, everyone kens that story. Why?”

“Only thinking. I was no but a wee bairn at the time, but I went now and then wi’ my mam, to take him food there. He’d be glad to see us, but he wouldna talk much. And it scared me to see his eyes.”

Joan felt a small shiver pass down her back, nothing to do with the stiff breeze. She saw—suddenly saw, in her head—a thin, dirty man, the bones starting in his face, crouched in the dank, frozen shadows of the cave.

“Da?” she scoffed, to hide the shiver that crawled up her arms. “How could anyone be scairt of him? He’s a dear, kind man.”

“I have, aye. BUT—” he said, not willing to be distracted, “I didna mean he scared me. It was that I thought he was haunted. By the voices in the wind.”

That dried up the spit in her mouth, and she worked her tongue a little, hoping it didn’t show. She needn’t have worried; he wasn’t looking at her.

“My own da said it was because Jamie spent so much time alone, that the voices got into his head, and he couldna stop hearing them. When he’d feel safe enough to come to the house, it would take hours sometimes, before he could start to hear us again—Mam wouldna let us talk to him until he’d had something to eat and was warmed through.” He smiled, a little ruefully. “She said he wasna human, ’til then … and looking back, I dinna think she meant that as a figure of speech.”

“Well,” she said, but stopped, not knowing how to go on. She wished fervently that she’d known this earlier. Her da and his sister were coming on to France later, but she might not see him. She could maybe have talked to Da, asked him just what the voices in his head were like—what they said. Whether they were anything like the ones she heard.

Nearly twilight, and the rats were still dead. The Comte heard the bells of Notre Dame calling Sext, and glanced at his pocket watch. The bells were two minutes before their time, and he frowned. He didn’t like sloppiness. He stood up and stretched himself, groaning as his spine cracked like the ragged volley of a firing squad. No doubt about it, he was aging, and the thought sent a chill through him.

If. If he could find the way forward, then perhaps … but you never knew, that was the devil of it. For a little while, he’d thought—hoped—that traveling back in time stopped the process of aging. That initially seemed logical, like rewinding a clock. But then again, it wasn’t logical, because he’d always gone back further than his own lifetime. Only once, he’d tried to go back only a few years, to his early twenties. That was a mistake, and he still shivered at the memory.

That particular view of the river had changed barely at all in the last two hundred years; he’d seen it at several different times. He hadn’t always owned this house, but it had stood in this street since 1620, and he always managed to get in briefly, if only to reestablish his own sense of reality after a passage.

Only the trees changed in his view of the river, and sometimes a strange-looking boat would be there. But the rest was always the same, and no doubt always would be: the old fishermen, catching their supper off the landing in stubborn silence, each guarding his space with outthrust elbows, the younger ones, barefoot and slump-shouldered with exhaustion, laying out their nets to dry, naked little boys diving off the quay. It gave him a soothing sense of eternity, watching the river. Perhaps it didn’t matter so much if he must one day die?

“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 open-mouthed. She didn’t understand a word. Not a word!

Michael evidently grasped the situation, for he said something to the woman’s husband that 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 was 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 Île de Notre Dame, 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 judge the safety of asking openly about Mâitre 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 either from amusement or the shock of inadvertent lust. He felt very queer.

“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 aside, 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 on himself 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.”

“Oh!” she gasped, gathering her small 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 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 Sister 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 just 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 in front of 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 young 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 so as to do what needed to be done tonight.

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, señor,” 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?”

“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 Grande, monsieur, à votre service!”

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—Mâitre 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?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But word can be left with Madame Fabienne. You know the place? In the Rue Antoine?”

Doubtless he did, Rakoczy thought. “El Maximo” hadn’t referred to Max’s stature, and probably “Le Grande” 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.

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 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 open, 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 tea-bowl, and before the company could blink, 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.”

“Leopold has two cocks, but I can’t say I’ve ever noticed an arse. Twenty ecus a day. Plus two extra if she needs clothes.”

“I had in mind something longer.” He explained what he had in mind, and had the satisfaction of seeing Fabienne’s face go quite blank with stupefaction. It didn’t stay that way more than a few moments; by the time he had finished, she was already laying out her initial demands.

By the time they came to agreement, they had drunk half a bottle of decent wine, and Leopold had swallowed the rat. It made a small bulge in the muscular tube of the snake’s body, but hadn’t slowed him appreciably; the coils slithered restlessly over the painted canvas floor-cloth, glowing like gold, and Rakoczy saw the patterns of his skin like trapped clouds beneath the scales.

“He is beautiful, no?” Fabienne saw his admiration, and basked a little in it. “Did I ever tell you where I got him?”

“Yes, more than once. And more than one story, too.” She looked startled, and he compressed his lips. He’d been patronizing her establishment for no more than a few weeks, this time. He’d known her fifteen years before—though only a couple of months, that time. He hadn’t given his name then, and a madam saw so many men that there was little chance of her recalling him. On the other hand, he also thought it unlikely that she troubled to recall to whom she’d told which story, and this seemed to be the case, for she lifted one shoulder in a surprisingly graceful shrug, and laughed.

“Oh, well, then.” He smiled, and reaching into the bag, tossed Leopold another rat. The snake moved more slowly this time, and didn’t bother to constrict its motionless prey, merely unhinging its jaw and engulfing it in a single-minded way.

“He is an old friend, Leopold,” she said, gazing affectionately at the snake. “I brought him with me from the West Indies, many years ago. He is a Mystère, you know.”

“I didn’t, no.” Rakoczy drank more wine; he had sat long enough that he was beginning to feel almost sober again. “And what is that?” He was interested—not so much in the snake, but in Fabienne’s mention of the West Indies. He’d forgotten that she claimed to have come from there, many years ago, long before he’d known her the first time.

The afile powder had been waiting in his laboratory when he’d come back; no telling how many years it had sat there—the servants couldn’t recall. Mélisande’s brief note—“Try this. It may be what the frog used.”—had not been dated, but there was a brief scrawl at the top of the sheet, saying “Rose Hall, Jamaica.” If Fabienne retained any connections in the West Indies, perhaps …

“Some call them loa”—her wrinkled lips pursed as she kissed the word—“but those are the Africans. A Mystère is a spirit, one who is an intermediary between the Bondye and us. Bondye is le bon Dieu, of course,” she explained to him. “The African slaves speak very bad French. Give him another rat; he’s still hungry, and it scares the girls if I let him hunt in the house.”

The third rat had made another bulge; the snake was beginning to look like a fat string of pearls, and was showing an inclination to lie still, digesting. The tongue still flickered, tasting the air, but lazily now.

Rakoczy picked up the bag again, weighing the risks—but after all, if news came from the Court of Miracles, his name would soon be known in any case.

“I wonder, Madame, as you know everyone in Paris”—he gave her a small bow, which she graciously returned—“are you acquainted with a certain man known as Mâitre Raymond? Some call him the frog,” he added.

“Somewhat. I should perhaps not tell you, but since you are so accommodating”—she glanced complacently at the purse he had put beside her tea-bowl, a generous deposit on account—“Mâitre Grenouille is looking for you.”

She shook her head and, sniffing distastefully at her cold tea, rang the bell for her maid.

“Monsieur le Comte St. Germain. That is you?” she asked with no more than mild interest; false names were common in her business.

He nodded, mouth suddenly too dry to speak, and pulled the rat from the sack. It squirmed suddenly in his hand, and a piercing pain in his thumb made him hurl the rodent away.

The rat, dazed by impact, staggered drunkenly across the floor toward Leopold, whose tongue began to flicker faster. Fabienne, though, uttered a sound of disgust and threw a silver-backed hairbrush at the rat. Startled by the sudden clatter, the rat leapt convulsively into the air, landed on and raced directly over the snake’s astonished head, disappearing through the door into the foyer, where—by the resultant scream—it evidently encountered the maid before making its ultimate escape into the street.

“Jésus, Marie,” Madame Fabienne said, piously crossing herself. “A miraculous resurrection. Two months past Easter, too.”

It was a smooth passage; the shore of France came into sight just after dawn the next day. Joan saw it, a low smudge of dark green on the horizon, and felt a little thrill at the sight, in spite of her tiredness.

She hadn’t slept, though she’d reluctantly gone below after nightfall, there to wrap herself in her cloak and shawl, trying not to look at the young man with the shadow on his face. She’d lain all night, listening to the snores and groans of her fellow passengers, praying doggedly and wondering in despair whether prayer was all she could do.

She often wondered whether it was because of her name. She’d been proud of her name when she was small; it was a heroic name, a saint’s name, but also a warrior’s name. Her mother’d told her that, often and often. She didn’t think her mother had considered that the name might also be haunted.

Surely it didn’t happen to everyone named Joan, though, did it? She wished she knew another Joan to ask. Because if it did happen to them all, the others would be keeping it quiet, just like she did.

You just didn’t go round telling people that you heard voices that weren’t there. Still less, that you saw things that weren’t there, either. You just didn’t.

She’d heard of a seer, of course, everyone in the Highlands had. And nearly everyone she knew at least claimed to have seen the odd fetch or had a premonition that Angus MacWheen was dead when he didn’t come home that time last winter. The fact that Angus MacWheen was a filthy auld drunkard and so yellow and crazed that it was heads or tails whether he’d die on any particular day, let alone when it got cold enough that the loch froze, didn’t come into it.

But she’d never met a seer; there was the rub. How did you get into the way of it? Did you just tell folk, “Here’s a thing … I’m a seer,” and they’d nod and say, “Oh, aye, of course, what’s like to happen to me next Tuesday”? More important, though, how the devil—

“Ow!” She’d bitten her tongue fiercely as penance for the inadvertent blasphemy, and clapped a hand to her mouth.

“What is it?” said a concerned voice behind her. “Are ye hurt, Miss MacKimmie? Er … Sister Gregory, I mean?”

“Mm! No. No, I justh … bit my tongue.” She turned to Michael Murray, gingerly touching the injured tongue to the roof of her mouth.

“Well, that happens when ye talk to yourself.” He took the cork from a bottle he was carrying and held the bottle out to her. “Here, wash your mouth wi’ that; it’ll help.”

She took a large mouthful and swirled it round; it burned the bitten place, but not badly, and she swallowed, as slowly as possible, to make it last.

“Jesus, Mary, and Bride,” she breathed. “Is that wine?” The taste in her mouth bore some faint kinship with the liquid she knew as wine—just like apples bore some resemblance to horse turds.

“Aye, it is pretty good,” he said modestly. “German. Umm … have a wee nip more?”

She didn’t argue, and sipped happily, barely listening to his talk, telling about the wine, what it was called, how they made it in Germany, where he got it … on and on. Finally she came to herself enough to remember her manners, though, and reluctantly handed back the bottle, now half-empty.

“I thank ye, sir,” she said primly. “’Twas kind of ye. Ye needna waste your time in bearing me company, though; I shall be well enough alone.”

“Aye, well … it’s no really for your sake,” he said, and took a reasonable swallow himself. “It’s mine.”

She blinked against the wind. He was flushed, but not from drink or wind, she thought.

“Well, what I want to ask,” he blurted, and looked away, cheekbones burning red. “Will ye pray for me? Sister? And my … my wife. The repose of … of—”

“Oh!” she said, mortified that she’d been so taken up with her own worries as not to have seen his distress. Think you’re a seer, dear Lord, ye dinna see what’s under your neb, you’re no but a fool, and a selfish fool at that. She put her hand over his where it lay on the rail and squeezed tight, trying to channel some sense of God’s goodness into his flesh.

“To be sure I will!” she said. “I’ll remember ye at every Mass, I swear it!” She wondered briefly whether it was proper to swear to something like that, but after all … “And your poor wife’s soul, of course I will! What … er … what was her name? So as I’ll know what to say when I pray for her,” she explained hurriedly, seeing his eyes narrow with pain.

“Lilliane,” he said, so softly that she barely heard him over the wind. “I called her Lillie.”

“Lilliane,” she repeated carefully, trying to form the syllables like he did. It was a soft, lovely name, she thought, slipping like water over the rocks at the top of a burn. You’ll never see a burn again, she thought with a sudden pang, but dismissed this, turning her face toward the growing shore of France. “I’ll remember.”

He nodded in mute thanks, and they stood for some little while, until she realized that her hand was still resting on his and drew it back with a jerk. He looked startled, and she blurted—because it was the thing on the top of her mind—“What was she like? Your wife?”

The most extraordinary mix of emotions flooded over his face. She couldn’t have said what was uppermost—grief, laughter, or sheer bewilderment—and she realized suddenly just how little of his true mind she’d seen before.

“She was…” He shrugged, and swallowed. “She was my wife,” he said, very softly. “She was my life.”

She’s with God? That was the truth, she hoped, and yet clearly to this young man, the only thing that mattered was that his wife was not with him.

“What happened to her?” she asked instead, baldly, only because it seemed necessary to say something.

He took a deep breath and seemed to sway a little; he’d finished the rest of the wine, she saw, and took the empty bottle from his hand, tossing it overboard.

“The influenza. They said it was quick. Didn’t seem quick to me … and yet, it was, I suppose it was. It took two days, and God kens well that I recall every second of those days—yet it seems that I lost her between one heartbeat and the next. And I … I keep lookin’ for her there, in that space between.”

“She-she was…” The words “with child” came so quietly that she barely heard them.

“Oh,” Joan said softly, very moved. “Oh, a chiusle.” “Heart’s blood,” it meant—and what she meant was that his wife had been that to him—dear Lord, she hoped he hadn’t thought she meant—no, he hadn’t, and the tight-wound spring in her backbone relaxed a little, seeing the look of gratitude on his face. He did know what she’d meant, and seemed glad that she’d understood.

Blinking, she looked away—and caught sight of the young man with the shadow on him, leaning against the railing a little way down. The breath caught in her throat at sight of him.

The shadow was darker in the morning light. The sun was beginning to warm the deck, frail white clouds swam in the blue of clear French skies, and yet the mist seemed now to swirl and thicken, obscuring the young man’s face, wrapping round his shoulders like a shawl.

Dear Lord, tell me what to do! Her body jerked, wanting to go to the young man, speak to him. But say what? You’re in danger, be careful? He’d think she was mad. And if the danger was a thing he couldn’t help, like wee Ronnie and the ox, what difference might her speaking make?

She was dimly aware of Michael staring at her, curious. He said something to her, but she wasn’t listening, listening hard instead inside her head. Where were the damned voices when you bloody needed one?

But the voices were stubbornly silent, and she turned to Michael, the muscles of her arm jumping, she’d held so tight to the ship’s rigging.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasna listening properly. I just … thought of something.”

“If it’s a thing I can help ye with, Sister, ye’ve only to ask,” he said, smiling faintly. “Oh! And speak of that, I meant to say—I said to your mam, if she liked to write to you in care of Fraser et Cie, I’d see to it that ye got the letters.” He shrugged, one-shouldered. “I dinna ken what the rules are at the convent, aye? About getting letters from outside.”

Joan didn’t know that, either, and had worried about it. She was so relieved to hear this that a huge smile split her face.

“Oh, it’s that kind of ye!” she said. “And if I could … maybe write back…?”

A ragged shriek cut through the air, and Joan glanced up, startled, thinking it one of the seabirds that had come out from shore to wheel round the ship, but it wasn’t. The young man was standing on the rail, one hand on the rigging, and before she could so much as draw breath, he let go and was gone.

Michael was worried for Joan; she sat slumped in the coach, not bothering to look out of the window, until a faint waft of the spring breeze touched her face. The smell was so astonishing that it drew her out of the shell of shocked misery in which she had traveled from the docks.

“Mother o’ God!” she said, clapping a hand to her nose. “What is that?”

Michael dug in his pocket and pulled out the grubby rag of his handkerchief, looking dubiously at it.

“Moran taing.” She seized the damp cloth from him and held it over her face, not caring. “Do the French not bury folk in their cemeteries?” Because from the smell, a thousand corpses had been thrown out on wet ground and left to rot, and the sight of darting, squabbling flocks of black corbies in the distance did nothing to correct this impression.

“They do.” Michael felt exhausted—it had been a terrible morning—but struggled to pull himself together. “It’s all marshland over there, though; even coffins buried deep—and most of them aren’t—work their way through the ground in a few months. When there’s a flood—and there’s a flood whenever it rains—what’s left of the coffins falls apart, and…” He swallowed, just as pleased that he’d not eaten any breakfast.

“There’s talk of maybe moving the bones at least, putting them in an ossuary, they call it. There are mine workings, old ones, outside the city, over there”—he pointed with his chin—“and perhaps … but they havena done anything about it yet,” he added in a rush, pinching his nose fast to get a breath in through his mouth. It didn’t matter whether you breathed through your nose or your mouth, though; the air was thick enough to taste.

She looked as ill as he felt, or maybe worse, her face the color of spoilt custard. She’d vomited when the crew had finally pulled the suicide aboard, pouring gray water and slimed with the seaweed that had wrapped round his legs and drowned him. There were still traces of sick down her front, and her dark hair was lank and damp, straggling out from under her cap. She hadn’t slept at all, of course—neither had he.

He couldn’t take her to the convent in this condition. The nuns maybe wouldn’t mind, but she would. He stretched up and rapped on the ceiling of the carriage.

He’d take her to his house, first. It wasn’t much out of the way, and the convent wasn’t expecting her at any particular day or hour. She could wash, have something to eat, and put herself to rights. And if it saved him from walking into his house alone, well, they did say a kind deed carried its own reward.

By the time they’d reached the Rue Trémoulins, Joan had forgotten—partly—her various reasons for distress, in the sheer excitement of being in Paris. She had never seen so many people in one place at the same time—and that was only the folk coming out of Mass at a parish church! While round the corner, a pavement of fitted stones stretched wider than the whole River Ness, and those stones covered from one side to the other in barrows and wagons and stalls, rioting with fruit and vegetables and flowers and fish and meat … she’d given Michael back his filthy handkerchief and was panting like a dog, turning her face to and fro, trying to draw all the wonderful smells into herself at once.

“Ye look a bit better,” Michael said, smiling at her. He was still pale himself, but he too seemed happier. “Are ye hungry, yet?”

“I’m famished!” She cast a starved look at the edge of the market. “Could we stop, maybe, and buy an apple? I’ve a bit of money…” She fumbled for the coins in her stocking-top, but he stopped her.

“Nay, there’ll be food aplenty at the house. They were expecting me this week, so everything will be ready.”

She cast a brief longing look at the market, but turned obligingly in the direction he pointed, craning out the carriage window to see his house as they approached.

“Well … this one’s taller,” she replied. And it was—a good four stories, and a huge roof of lead slates and green-coppered seams, with what must be more than a score of glass windows set in, and …

She was still trying to count the windows when Michael helped her down from the carriage and offered her his arm to walk up to the door. She was goggling at the big yew trees set in brass pots and wondering how much trouble it must be to keep those polished, when she felt the arm under her hand go suddenly rigid as wood.

She glanced at Michael, startled, then looked where he was looking—toward the door of his house. The door had swung open, and three people were coming down the marble steps, smiling and waving, calling out.

“Who’s that?” Joan whispered, leaning close to Michael. The one short fellow in the striped apron must be a butler; she’d read about butlers. But the other man was a gentleman, limber as a willow tree and wearing a coat and waistcoat striped in lemon and pink, with a hat decorated with … well, she supposed it must be a feather, but she’d pay money to see the bird it came off of. By comparison, she had hardly noticed the woman, who was dressed in black. But now she saw that Michael had eyes only for the woman.

“Li—” he began, and choked it back. “L-Léonie. Léonie is her name. My wife’s sister.”

She looked sharp then, because from the look of Michael Murray, he’d just seen his wife’s ghost. Léonie seemed flesh and blood, however—slender and pretty, though her own face bore the same marks of sorrow as did Michael’s, and her face was pale under a small, neat black tricorne with a tiny curled blue feather.

“Michel,” she said, “Oh, Michel!” And with tears brimming from eyes shaped like almonds, she threw herself into his arms.

Feeling extremely superfluous, Joan stood back a little and glanced at the gentleman in the lemon-striped waistcoat—the butler had tactfully withdrawn into the house.

“Charles Pépin, mademoiselle,” he said, sweeping off his hat. Taking her hand, he bowed low over it, and now she saw the band of black mourning he wore around his bright sleeve. “À votre service.”

“Oh,” she said, a little flustered. “Um. Joan MacKimmie. Je suis … er … um…”

Tell him not to do it, said a sudden small, calm voice inside her head, and she jerked her own hand away as though he’d bitten her.

“Pleased to meet you,” she gasped. “Excuse me.” And turning, threw up into one of the bronze yew-pots.

Joan had been afraid it would be awkward, coming to Michael’s bereaved and empty house, but had steeled herself to offer comfort and support, as became a distant kinswoman and a daughter of God. She might have been miffed, therefore, to find herself entirely supplanted in the department of comfort and support—quite relegated to the negligible position of guest, in fact, served politely and asked periodically if she wished more wine, a slice of ham, some gherkins…?—but otherwise ignored. Meanwhile Michael’s servants, sister-in-law, and … she wasn’t quite sure of the position of M. Pépin, though he seemed to have something personal to do with Léonie, perhaps someone had said he was her cousin? They all swirled round Michael like perfumed bathwater, warm and buoyant, touching him, kissing him—well, all right, she’d heard of men kissing one another in France but she couldn’t help staring when M. Pépin gave Michael a big wet one on both cheeks—and generally making a fuss of him.

She was more than relieved, though, not to have to make conversation in French, beyond a simple Merci or S’il vous plait from time to time. It gave her a chance to settle her nerves—and her stomach, and she would say the wine was a wonder for that—and to keep a close eye on Monsieur Charles Pépin.

“Tell him not to do it.” And just what d’ye mean by that? she demanded of the voice. She didn’t get an answer, which didn’t surprise her. The voices weren’t much for details.

She couldn’t tell whether the voices were male or female; they didn’t seem either one, and she wondered whether they might maybe be angels—angels didn’t have a sex, and doubtless that saved them a lot of trouble. Joan of Arc’s voices had had the decency to introduce themselves, but not hers, oh, no. On the other hand, if they were angels, and told her their names, she wouldn’t recognize them anyway, so perhaps that’s why they didn’t bother.

Well, so. Did this particular voice mean that Charles Pépin was a villain? She squinted closely at him. He didn’t look it. He had a strong, good-looking face, and Michael seemed to like him—after all, Michael must be a fair judge of character, she thought, and him in the wine business.

What was it Mr. Charles Pépin oughtn’t to do, though? Did he have some wicked crime in mind? Or might he be bent on doing away with himself, like that poor wee gomerel on the boat? There was still a trace of slime on her hand, from the seaweed.

She rubbed her hand inconspicuously against the skirt of her dress, frustrated. She hoped the voices would stop in the convent. That was her nightly prayer. But if they didn’t, at least she might be able to tell someone there about them without fear of being packed off to a madhouse or stoned in the street. She’d have a confessor, she knew that much. Maybe he could help her discover what God had meant, landing her with a gift like this, and no explanation what she was to do with it.

In the meantime, Monsieur Pépin would bear watching; she should maybe say something to Michael before she left. Aye, what? she thought, helpless.

Still, she was glad to see that Michael grew less pale as they all carried on, vying to feed him tidbits, refill his glass, tell him bits of gossip. She was also pleased to find that she mostly understood what they were saying, as she relaxed. Jared—that would be Jared Fraser, Michael’s elderly cousin, who’d founded the wine company, and whose house this was—was still in Germany, they said, but was expected at any moment. He had sent a letter for Michael, too, where was it? No matter, it would turn up … and La Comtesse de Maurepas had had a fit, a veritable fit at court last Wednesday, when she came face-to-face with Mademoiselle de Perpignan wearing a confection in the particular shade of pea green that was de Maurepas’s alone, and God alone knew why, because she always looked like a cheese in it, and had slapped her own maid so hard for pointing this out that the poor girl flew across the rushes and cracked her head on one of the mirrored walls—and cracked the mirror, too, very bad luck that, but no one could agree whether the bad luck was de Maurepas’s, the maid’s, or La Perpignan’s.

Birds, Joan thought dreamily, sipping her wine. They sound just like cheerful wee birds in a tree, all chattering away together.

“The bad luck belongs to the seamstress who made the dress for La Perpignan,” Michael said, a faint smile touching his mouth. “Once de Maurepas finds out who it is.” His eye lighted on Joan, then, sitting there with a fork—an actual fork! and silver, too—in her hand, her mouth half-open in the effort of concentration required to follow the conversation.

“Sister Joan, Sister Gregory, I mean, I’m that sorry, I was forgetting. If ye’ve had enough to eat, will ye have a bit of a wash, maybe, before I deliver ye to the convent?”

He was already rising, reaching for a bell, and before she knew where she was, a maidservant had whisked her off upstairs, deftly undressed her, and, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the discarded garments, wrapped Joan in a robe of the most amazing green silk, light as air, and ushered her into a small stone room with a copper bath in it, then disappeared, saying something in which Joan caught the word “eau.”

She sat on the wooden stool provided, clutching the robe about her nakedness, head spinning with more than wine. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to put herself in the way of praying. God was everywhere, she assured herself, embarrassing as it was to contemplate Him being with her in a bathroom in Paris. She shut her eyes harder and firmly began the rosary, starting with the Joyful Mysteries.

She’d got through the Visitation before she began to feel steady again. This wasn’t quite how she’d expected her first day in Paris to be. Still, she’d have something to write home to Mam about, that was for sure. If they let her write letters in the convent.

The maid came in with two enormous cans of steaming water, and upended these into the bath with a tremendous splash. Another came in on her heels, similarly equipped, and between them, they had Joan up, stripped, and stepping into the tub before she’d so much as said the first word of the Lord’s Prayer for the third decade.

They said French things to her, which she didn’t understand, and held out peculiar-looking instruments to her in invitation. She recognized the small pot of soap, and pointed at it, and one of them at once poured water on her head and began to wash her hair!

She had for months been bidding farewell to her hair whenever she combed it, quite resigned to its loss, for whether she must sacrifice it immediately, as a postulant, or later, as a novice, plainly it must go. The shock of knowing fingers rubbing her scalp, the sheer sensual delight of warm water coursing through her hair, the soft wet weight of it lying in ropes down over her breasts—was this God’s way of asking if she’d truly thought it through? Did she know what she was giving up?

Well, she did, then. And she had thought about it. On the other hand … she couldn’t make them stop, really; it wouldn’t be mannerly. The warmth of the water was making the wine she’d drunk course faster through her blood, and she felt as though she were being kneaded like toffee, stretched and pulled, all glossy and falling into languid loops. She closed her eyes and gave up trying to remember how many Hail Marys she had yet to go in the third decade.

It wasn’t until the maids had hauled her, pink and steaming, out of the bath and wrapped her in a most remarkable huge fuzzy kind of towel, that she emerged abruptly from her sensual trance. The cold air coalesced in her stomach, reminding her that all this luxury was indeed a lure of the devil—for lost in gluttony and sinful bathing, she’d forgot entirely about the poor young man on the ship, the poor, despairing sinner who had thrown himself into the sea.

The maids had gone for the moment. She dropped at once to her knees on the stone floor and threw off the coddling towel, exposing her bare skin to the full chill of the air in penance.

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” she breathed, knocking a fist against her bosom in a paroxysm of sorrow and regret. The sight of the drowned young man was in her mind, soft brown hair fanned across his cheek, young eyes half closed, seeing nothing—and what terrible thing was it that he’d seen before he jumped, or thought of, that he’d screamed so?

She thought briefly of Michael, the look on his face when he spoke of his poor wife … perhaps the young brown-haired man had lost someone dear, and couldn’t face his life alone?

She should have spoken to him. That was the undeniable, terrible truth. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know what to say. She should have trusted God to give her words, as He had when she’d spoken to Michael.

“Forgive me, Father!” she said urgently, out loud. “Please—forgive me, give me strength!”

She’d betrayed that poor young man. And herself. And God, who’d given her the terrible gift of Sight for a reason. And the voices …

“Why did ye not tell me?” she cried. “Have ye nothing to say for yourselves?” Here she’d thought the voices those of angels, and they weren’t—just drifting bits of bog-mist, getting into her head, pointless, useless … useless as she was, oh, Lord Jesus …

She didn’t know how long she knelt there, naked, half drunk, and in tears. She heard the muffled squeaks of dismay from the French maids who poked their heads in, and just as quickly withdrew them, but paid no attention. She didn’t know if it was right even to pray for the poor young man—for suicide was a mortal sin, and surely he’d gone straight to Hell. But she couldn’t give him up; she couldn’t. She felt somehow that he’d been her charge, that she’d carelessly let him fall, and surely God would not hold the young man entirely responsible, when it was she who should have been watching out for him?

And so she prayed, with all the energy of body and mind and spirit, asking mercy. Mercy for the young man, for wee Ronnie and wretched auld Angus … mercy for poor Michael, and for the soul of Lillie, his dear wife, and their babe unborn. And mercy for herself, this unworthy vessel of God’s service.

“I’ll do better!” she promised, sniffing, and wiping her nose on the fluffy towel. “Truly, I will. I’ll be braver. I will.”

Michael took the candlestick from the footman, said good night, and shut the door. He hoped Sister Joan-Gregory was comfortable; he’d told the staff to put her in the main guest room. He was fairly sure she’d sleep well. He smiled wryly to himself; unaccustomed to wine, and obviously nervous in company, she’d sipped her way through most of a decanter of Jerez sherry before he noticed, and was sitting in the corner with unfocused eyes and a small inward smile that reminded him of a painting he had seen at Versailles, a thing the steward had called La Gioconda.

He couldn’t very well deliver her to the convent in such a condition, and had gently escorted her upstairs and placed her into the hands of the chambermaids, both of whom regarded her with some wariness, as though a tipsy nun was a particularly dangerous commodity.

He’d drunk a fair amount himself in the course of the afternoon, and more at dinner. He and Charles had sat up late, talking and drinking rum punch. Not talking of anything in particular; he had just wanted not to be alone. Charles had invited him to go to the gaming rooms—Charles was an inveterate gambler—but was kind enough to accept his refusal and to simply bear him company.

The candle flame blurred briefly at thought of Charles’s kindness. He blinked and shook his head, which proved a mistake; the contents shifted abruptly, and his stomach rose in protest at the sudden movement. He barely made it to the chamber pot in time and, once evacuated, lay numbly on the floor, cheek pressed to the cold boards.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t get up and go to bed. It was that he couldn’t face the thought of the cold white sheets, the pillows round and smooth, as though Lillie’s head had never dented them, the bed never known the heat of her body.

Tears ran sideways over the bridge of his nose and dripped on the floor. There was a snuffling noise, and Plonplon came squirming out from under the bed and licked his face, whining anxiously. After a little while, he sat up and, leaning against the side of the bed with the dog in one arm, reached for the decanter of port that the butler had left—by instruction—on the table beside it.

The smell was appalling. Rakoczy had wrapped a woolen comforter about his lower face, but the odor seeped in, putrid and cloying, clinging to the back of the throat, so that even breathing through the mouth didn’t preserve you from the stench. He breathed as shallowly as he could, though, picking his way carefully past the edge of the cemetery by the narrow beam of a dark-lantern. The mine lay well beyond it, but the stench carried amazingly, when the wind lay in the east.

The chalk mine had been abandoned for years; it was rumored to be haunted. It was. Rakoczy knew what haunted it. Never religious—he was a philosopher and a natural scientist, a rationalist—he still crossed himself by reflex at the head of the ladder that led down the shaft into those spectral depths.

At least the rumors of ghosts and earth-demons and the walking dead would keep anyone from coming to investigate strange light glowing from the subterranean tunnels of the workings, if it was noticed at all. Though just in case … he opened the burlap bag, still redolent of rats, and fished out a bundle of pitchblende torches and the oiled-silk packet that held several lengths of cloth saturated with salpêtre, salts of potash, blue vitriol, verdigris, butter of antimony, and a few other interesting compounds from his laboratory.

He found the blue vitriol by smell, and wrapped the cloth tightly around the head of one torch, then—whistling under his breath—did three more, impregnated with different salts. He loved this part. It was so simple, and so astonishingly beautiful.

He paused for a minute to listen, but it was well past dark and the only sounds were those of the night itself—frogs chirping and bellowing in the distant marshes by the cemetery, wind stirring the leaves of spring. A few hovels a half mile away, only one with firelight glowing dully from a smoke-hole in the roof.

Almost a pity there’s no one but me to see this. He took the little clay firepot from its wrappings and touched a coal to the cloth-wrapped torch. A tiny green flame flickered like a serpent’s tongue, then burst into life in a brilliant globe of ghostly color.

He grinned at the sight, but there was no time to lose; the torches wouldn’t last forever, and there was work to be done. He tied the bag to his belt and, with the green fire crackling softly in one hand, climbed down into darkness.

He paused at the bottom, breathing deep. The air was clear, the dust long settled. No one had been down here recently. The dull white walls glowed soft, eerie under the green light, and the passage yawned before him, black as a murderer’s soul. Even knowing the place as well as he did, and with light in his hand, it gave him a qualm to walk into it.

Is that what death is like? he wondered. A black void, that you walked into with no more than a feeble glimmer of faith in your hand? His lips compressed. Well, he’d done that before, if less permanently. But he disliked the way that the notion of death seemed always to be lurking in the back of his mind these days.

The main tunnel was large, big enough for two men to walk side by side, and the roof was high enough above him that the roughly excavated chalk lay in shadow, barely touched by his torch. The side-tunnels were smaller, though. He counted the ones on the left, and despite himself, hurried his step a little as he passed the fourth. That was where it lay, down the side-tunnel, a turn to the left, another to the left—was it “widdershins” the English called it, turning against the direction of the sun? He thought that was what Mélisande had called it when she’d brought him here …

The sixth. His torch had begun to gutter already, and he pulled another from the bag and lit it from the remains of the first, which he dropped on the floor at the entrance to the side-tunnel, leaving it to flare and smolder behind him, the smoke catching at his throat. He knew his way, but even so, it was as well to leave landmarks, here in the realm of everlasting night. The mine had deep rooms, one far back that showed strange paintings on the wall, of animals that didn’t exist, but had an astonishing vividness, as though they would leap from the wall and stampede down the passages. Sometimes—rarely—he went all the way down into the bowels of the earth, just to look at them.

The fresh torch burned with the warm light of natural fire, and the white walls took on a rosy glow. So did the painting at the end of the corridor, this one different; a crude but effective rendering of the Annunciation. He didn’t know who had made the paintings that appeared unexpectedly here and there in the mines—most were of religious subjects, a few most emphatically not—but they were useful. There was an iron ring in the wall by the Annunciation, and he set his torch into it.

Turn back at the Annunciation, then three paces … he stamped his foot, listening for the faint echo, and found it. He’d brought a trowel in his bag, and it was the work of a few moments to uncover the sheet of tin that covered his cache.

The cache itself was three feet deep and three feet square—he found satisfaction in the knowledge of its perfect cubicity whenever he saw it; any alchemist was by profession a numerologist as well. It was half full, the contents wrapped in burlap or canvas; not things he wanted to carry openly through the streets. It took some prodding and unwrapping to find the pieces he wanted. Madame Fabienne had driven a hard bargain, but a fair one: two hundred ecus a month times four months, for the guaranteed exclusive use of Madeleine’s services.

Four months would surely be enough, he thought, feeling a rounded shape through its wrappings. In fact, he thought one night would be enough, but his man’s pride was restrained by a scientist’s prudence. And even if … there was always some chance of early miscarriage; he wanted to be sure of the child before he undertook any more personal experiments with the space between times. If he knew that something of himself—someone with his peculiar abilities—might be left, just in case this time …

He could feel it there, somewhere in the smothered dark behind him. He knew he couldn’t hear it now; it was silent, save on the days of solstice and equinox, or when you actually walked into it … but he felt the sound of it in his bones, and it made his hands tremble on the wrappings.

The gleam of silver, of gold. He chose two gold snuffboxes, a filigreed necklace, and—with some hesitation—a small silver salver. Why did the void not affect metal? he wondered, for the thousandth time. In fact, carrying gold or silver eased the passage—or at least he thought so. Mélisande had told him it did. But jewels were always destroyed by the passage, though they gave the most control and protection.

That made some sense; everyone knew that gemstones had a specific vibration that corresponded to the heavenly spheres, and the spheres themselves of course affected the earth—“As above, so below.” He still had no idea exactly how the vibrations should affect the space, the portal … it. But thinking about it gave him a need to touch them, to reassure himself, and he moved wrapped bundles out of the way, digging down to the left-hand corner of the wood-lined cache, where pressing on a particular nailhead caused one of the boards to loosen and turn sideways, rotating smoothly on spindles. He reached into the dark space thus revealed and found the small wash-leather bag, feeling his sense of unease dissipate at once when he touched it.

He opened it and poured the contents into his palm, glittering and sparking in the dark hollow of his hand. Red and blues and greens, the brilliant white of diamonds, the lavender and violet of amethyst, and the golden glow of topaz and citrine. Enough?

Enough to travel back, certainly. Enough to steer himself with some accuracy, to choose how far he went. But enough to go forward?

He weighed the glittering handful for a moment, then poured them carefully back. Not yet. But he had time to find more; he wasn’t going anywhere for at least four months. Not until he was sure that Madeleine was well and truly with child.

“Joan.” Michael put his hand on her arm, keeping her from leaping out of the carriage. “Ye’re sure, now? I mean, if ye didna feel quite ready, ye’re welcome to stay at my house until—”

“I’m ready.” She didn’t look at him, and her face was pale as a slab of lard. “Let me go, please.”

He reluctantly let go of her arm, but insisted upon getting down with her, and ringing the bell at the gate, stating their business to the portress. All the time, though, he could feel her shaking, quivering like a blancmange. Was it fear, though, or just understandable nerves? He’d feel a bit cattywampus himself, he thought with sympathy, were he making such a shift, beginning a new life so different from what had gone before.

The portress went away to fetch the Mistress of Postulants, leaving them in the little enclosure by the gatehouse. From here, he could see across a sunny courtyard with a cloister walk on the far side, and what looked like extensive kitchen gardens to the right. To the left was the looming bulk of the hospital run by the order, and beyond that, the other buildings that belonged to the convent. It was a beautiful place, he thought—and hoped the sight of it would settle her fears.

She made an inarticulate noise, and he glanced at her, alarmed to see what looked like tears slicking her cheeks.

“Joan,” he said more quietly, and handed her his fresh handkerchief. “Dinna be afraid. If ye need me, send for me, anytime; I’ll come. And I meant it, about the letters.”

He would have said more, but just then the portress reappeared, with Sister Eustacia, the postulant mistress, who greeted Joan with a kind motherliness that seemed to comfort her, for the girl sniffed and straightened herself, and reaching into her pocket, pulled out a little folded square, obviously kept with care through her travels.

“J’ai une lettre,” she said, in halting French. “Pour Madame le … pour … Reverend Mother?” she said, in a small voice. “Mother Hildegarde?”

“Oui?” Sister Eustacia took the note with the same care with which it was proffered.

“It’s from … her,” Joan said to Michael, having plainly run out of French. She still wouldn’t look at him. “Da’s … er … wife. You know. Claire.”

“Jesus Christ!” Michael blurted, making both the portress and the postulant mistress stare reprovingly at him.

“She said she was a friend of Mother Hildegarde. And if she was still alive…” She stole a look at Sister Eustacia, who appeared to have followed this.

“Oh, Mother Hildegarde is certainly alive,” she assured Joan, in English. “And I’m sure she will be most interested to speak with you.” She tucked the note into her own capacious pocket, and held out a hand. “Now, my dear child, if you are quite ready…”

“Je suis prest,” Joan said, shaky, but dignified. And so Joan MacKimmie of Balriggan passed through the gates of the convent of Our Lady Queen of Angels, still clutching Michael Murray’s clean handkerchief and smelling strongly of his dead wife’s scented soap.

Michael had dismissed his carriage and wandered restlessly about the city after leaving Joan at the convent, not wanting to go home. He hoped they would be good to her, hoped that she’d made the right decision.

Of course, he comforted himself, she wouldn’t actually be a nun for some time. He didn’t know quite how long it took, from entering as a postulant to becoming a novice, to taking the final vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but at least a few years. There would be time for her to be sure. And at least she was in a place of safety; the look of terror and distress on her face as she’d shot through the gates of the convent still haunted him. He strolled toward the river, where the evening light glowed on the water like a bronze mirror. The deckhands were tired and the day’s shouting had died away. In this light, the reflections of the boats gliding homeward seemed more substantial than the boats themselves.

He’d been surprised at the letter, and wondered whether that had anything to do with Joan’s distress. He’d had no notion that his uncle’s wife had anything to do with the convent of Les Anges—though now that he cast his mind back, he did recall Jared mentioning that Uncle Jamie had worked in Paris in the wine business for a short time, back before the Rising. He supposed Claire might have met Mother Hildegarde then … but it was all before he himself was born.

He felt an odd warmth at the thought of Claire; he couldn’t really think of her as his auntie, though she was. He’d not spent much time with her alone at Lallybroch—but he couldn’t forget the moment when she’d met him, alone at the door. Greeted him briefly and embraced him in impulse. And he’d felt an instant sense of relief, as though she’d taken a heavy burden from his heart. Or maybe lanced a boil on his spirit, as she might one on his bum.

That thought made him smile. He didn’t know what she was—the talk near Lallybroch painted her as everything from a witch to an angel, with most of the opinion hovering cautiously around “faery”—for the Auld Ones were dangerous, and you didn’t talk too much about them … but he liked her. So did Da and Young Ian, and that counted for a lot. And Uncle Jamie, of course … though everyone said, very matter-of-fact, that Uncle Jamie was bewitched. He smiled wryly at that. Aye, if being mad in love with your wife was bewitchment.

If anyone outside the family kent what she’d told them—he cut that thought short. It wasn’t something he’d forget, but it wasn’t something he wanted to think about just yet, either. The gutters of Paris running with blood … he glanced down, involuntarily, but the gutters were full of the usual assortment of animal and human sewage, dead rats, and bits of rubbish too far gone to be salvaged for food even by the street beggars.

He made his way slowly through the crowded streets, past La Chapelle and Montmartre. If he walked enough, sometimes he could fall asleep without too much wine.

He sighed, elbowing his way through a group of buskers outside a tavern, turning back toward the Rue Trémoulins. Some days, his head was like a bramble patch; thorns catching at him no matter which way he turned, and no path leading out of the tangle.

Paris wasn’t a large city, but it was a complicated one; there was always somewhere else to walk. He crossed the Place de la Concorde, thinking of what his uncle’s wife had told them, seeing there in his mind the tall shadow of a terrible machine.

Joan had had her dinner with Mother Hildegarde, a lady so ancient and holy that Joan had feared to breathe too heavily, lest the Reverend Mother fragment like a stale croissant and go straight off to Heaven in front of her. Mother Hildegarde had been delighted with the letter Joan had brought, though; it brought a faint flush to her face.

“From my—er…” Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, what was the French word for stepmother? “Ahh … the wife of my…” Fittens, she didn’t know the word for stepfather, either! “The wife of my father,” she ended, weakly.

“You are the daughter of my good friend Claire!” Mother had exclaimed. “And how is she?”

“Bonny, er … bon, I mean, last I saw her,” said Joan, and then tried to explain, but there was a lot of French being talked very fast, and she gave up and accepted the glass of wine that Mother Hildegarde offered her. She was going to be a sot long before she took her vows, she thought, trying to hide her flushed face by bending down to pat Mother’s wee dog, a fluffy, friendly creature the color of burnt sugar named Bouton.

Whether it was the wine or Mother’s kindness, though, her wobbly spirit steadied. Mother had welcomed her to the community and kissed her forehead at the end of the meal, before sending her off in the charge of Sister Eustacia to see the convent.

Now she lay on her narrow cot in the dormitory, listening to the breathing of a dozen other postulants. It sounded like a byre full of cows, and had much the same warm, humid scent—bar the manure. Her eyes filled with tears, the vision of the homely stone byre at Balriggan sudden and vivid in her mind. She swallowed them back, though, pinching her lips together. A few of the girls sobbed quietly, missing home and family, but she wouldn’t be one of them. She was older than most—a few were nay more than fourteen—and she’d promised God to be brave.

It hadn’t been bad during the afternoon. Sister Eustacia had been very kind, taking her and a couple of other new postulants round the walled estate, showing them the big gardens where the convent grew medicinal herbs and fruit and vegetables for the table, the chapel where devotions were held six times a day, plus Mass in the mornings, the stables and kitchens, where they would take turns working—and the great Hôpital des Anges, the order’s main work. They had only seen the Hôpital from the outside, though; they would see the inside tomorrow, when Sister Marie-Amadeus would explain their duties.

It was strange, of course—she still understood only half what people said to her, and was sure from the looks on their faces that they understood much less of what she tried to say to them—but wonderful. She loved the spiritual discipline, the hours of devotion, with the sense of peace and unity that came upon the sisters as they chanted and prayed together. Loved the simple beauty of the chapel, amazing in its clean elegance, the solid lines of granite and the grace of carved wood, a faint smell of incense in the air, like the breath of angels.

The postulants prayed with the others, but did not yet sing. They would be trained in music, such excitement! Mother Hildegarde had been a famous musician in her youth, it was rumored, and considered it one of the most important forms of devotion.

The thought of the new things she’d seen, and the new things to come, distracted her mind—a little—from thoughts of her mother’s voice, the wind off the moors … She shoved these hastily away, and reached for her new rosary, this a substantial thing with smooth wooden beads, lovely and comforting in the fingers.

Above all, there was peace. She hadn’t heard a word from the voices, hadn’t seen anything peculiar or alarming. She wasn’t foolish enough to think she’d escaped her dangerous gift, but at least there might be help at hand if—when—it came back.

And at least she already knew enough Latin to say her rosary properly; Da had taught her. “Ave, Maria,” she whispered, “gratia plena, Dominus tecum,” and closed her eyes, the sobs of the homesick fading in her ears as the beads moved slow and silent through her fingers.

Michael Murray stood in the aisle of the aging-shed, feeling puny and unreal. He’d waked with a terrible headache, the result of having drunk a great deal of mixed spirits on an empty stomach, and while the headache had receded to a dull throb at the back of his skull, it had left him feeling trampled and left for dead.

His cousin Jared, owner of Fraser et Cie, looked at him with the cold eye of long experience, shook his head, and sighed deeply, but said nothing, merely taking the list from his nerveless fingers and beginning the count on his own.

He wished Jared had rebuked him. Everyone still tiptoed round him, careful of him. And like a wet dressing on a wound, their care kept the wound of Lillie’s loss open and weeping. The sight of Léonie didn’t help, either—so much like Lillie to look at, so different in character. She said they must help and comfort one another, and to that end, she came to visit every other day, or so it seemed. He really wished she would … just go away, though the thought shamed him.

“How’s the wee nun, then?” Jared’s voice, dry and matter-of-fact as always, drew him out of his bruised and soggy thoughts. “Give her a good send-off to the convent?”

“Aye. Well … aye. More or less.” Michael mustered up a feeble smile. He didn’t really want to think about Sister Joan-Gregory this morning, either.

“What did ye give her?” Jared handed the checklist to Humberto, the Italian shed-master, and looked Michael over appraisingly. “I hope it wasna the new Rioja that did that to ye.”

“Ah … no.” Michael struggled to focus his attention. The heady atmosphere of the shed, thick with the fruity exhalations of the resting casks, was making him dizzy. “It was Moselle. Mostly. And a bit of rum punch.”

“Oh, I see.” Jared’s ancient mouth quirked up on one side. “Did I never tell ye not to mix wine wi’ rum?”

“Not above two hundred times, no.” Jared was moving, and Michael followed him perforce down the narrow aisle, the casks in their serried ranks rising high above on either side.

“Rum’s a demon. But whisky’s a virtuous dram,” Jared said, pausing by a rack of small, blackened casks. “So long as it’s a good make, it’ll never turn on ye. Speakin’ of which”—He tapped the end of one cask, which gave off the resonant deep thongk of a full barrel—“what’s this? It came up from the docks this morning.”

“Oh, aye.” Michael stifled a belch, and smiled painfully. “That, cousin, is the Ian Alastair Robert MacLeod Murray Memorial uisge-baugh. My da and Uncle Jamie made it during the winter. They thought ye might like a wee cask for your personal use.”

Jared’s brows rose and he gave Michael a swift sideways glance. Then he turned back to examine the cask, bending close to sniff at the seam between the lid and staves.

“I’ve tasted it,” Michael assured him. “I dinna think it will poison ye. But ye should maybe let it age a few years.”

Jared made a rude noise in his throat, and his hand curved gently over the swell of the staves. He stood thus for a moment as though in benediction, then turned suddenly and took Michael into his arms. His own breathing was hoarse, congested with sorrow. He was years older than Da and Uncle Jamie, but had known the two of them all their lives.

“I’m sorry for your faither, lad,” he said, after a moment, and let go, patting Michael on the shoulder. He looked at the cask and sniffed deeply. “I can tell it will be fine.” He paused, breathing slowly, then nodded once, as though making up his mind to something.

“I’ve a thing in mind, a charaidh. I’d been thinking, since ye went to Scotland—and now that we’ve a kinswoman in the church, so to speak … come back to the office with me, and I’ll tell ye.”

It was chilly in the street, but the goldsmith’s back room was cozy as a womb, with a porcelain stove throbbing with heat and woven wool hangings on the walls. Rakoczy hastily unwound the comforter about his neck; it didn’t do to sweat indoors; the sweat chilled the instant one went out again, and next thing you knew, it would be la grippe at the best, pleurisy or pneumonia at the worst.

Rosenwald himself was comfortable in shirt and waistcoat, without even a wig, only a plum-colored turban to keep his polled scalp warm. The goldsmith’s stubby fingers traced the curves of the octafoil salver, turned it over—and stopped dead. Rakoczy felt a tingle of warning at the base of his spine, and deliberately relaxed himself, affecting a nonchalant self-confidence.

“Where did you get this, Monsieur, if I may ask?” Rosenwald looked up at him, but there was no accusation in the goldsmith’s aged face—only a wary excitement.

“It was an inheritance,” Rakoczy said, glowing with earnest innocence. “An elderly aunt left it—and a few other pieces—to me. Is it worth anything more than the value of the silver?”

The goldsmith opened his mouth, then shut it, glancing at Rakoczy. Is he honest? Rakoczy wondered with interest. He’s already told me it’s something special. Will he tell me why, in hopes of getting other pieces? Or lie, to get this one cheap? Rosenwald had a good reputation, but he was a Jew.

“Paul de Lamerie,” Rosenwald said reverently, his index finger tracing the hallmark. “This was made by Paul de Lamerie.”

“Really?” he said, striving for simple curiosity. “Does that mean something?”

It means I’m a fool, he thought, and wondered whether to snatch the thing back and leave instantly. The goldsmith had carried it away, though, to look at it more closely under the lamp.

“De Lamerie was one of the very best goldsmiths ever to work in London—perhaps in the world,” Rosenwald said, half to himself.

“Indeed,” Rakoczy said politely. He was sweating freely. Nom d’un nom! Wait, though—Rosenwald had said “was.” De Lamerie was dead, then, thank God. Perhaps the Duke of Sandringham, from whom he’d stolen the salver, was dead, too? He began to breathe more easily.

He never sold anything identifiable within a hundred years of his acquisition of it; that was his principle. He’d taken the other salver from a rich merchant in a game of cards in the Low Countries in 1630; he’d stolen this one in 1745—much too close for comfort. Still …

His thoughts were interrupted by the chime of the silver bell over the door, and he turned to see a young man come in, removing his hat to reveal a startling head of dark red hair. He was dressed à la mode, and addressed the goldsmith in perfect Parisian French, but he didn’t look French. A long-nosed face with faintly slanted eyes. There was a slight sense of familiarity about that face, yet Rakoczy was sure he’d never seen this man before.

“Please, sir, go on with your business,” the young man said with a courteous bow. “I meant no interruption.”

“No, no,” Rakoczy said, stepping forward. He motioned the young man toward the counter. “Please, go ahead. M. Rosenwald and I are merely discussing the value of this object. It will take some thought.” He snaked out an arm and seized the salver, feeling a little better with it clasped to his bosom. He wasn’t sure; if he decided it was too risky to sell, he could slink out quietly while Rosenwald was busy with the red-headed young man.

The Jew looked surprised, but after a moment’s hesitation, nodded and turned to the young man, who introduced himself as one Michael Murray, partner in Fraser et Cie, the wine merchants.

“Oh, to be sure, sir! A man of the most exquisite taste and discrimination. I made him a wine-cistern with a motif of sunflowers, not a year past!”

“I know.” The young man smiled, a smile that creased his cheeks and narrowed his eyes, and that small bell of recognition rang again. But the name held no familiarity to Rakoczy—only the face, and that only vaguely. “My uncle has another commission for you, if it’s agreeable?”

“I never say no to honest work, Monsieur.” From the pleasure apparent on the goldsmith’s rubicund face, honest work that paid very well was even more welcome.

“Well, then … if I may?” The young man pulled a folded paper from his pocket, but half-turned toward Rakoczy, eyebrow cocked in inquiry. Rakoczy motioned him to go on, and turned himself to examine a music box that stood on the counter—an enormous thing the size of a cow’s head, crowned with a nearly naked nymph, festooned with the airiest of gold draperies and dancing on mushrooms and flowers, in company with a large frog.

“A chalice,” Murray was saying, the paper laid flat on the counter. From the corner of his eye, Rakoczy could see that it held a list of names. “It’s a presentation to the chapel of des Anges, to be given in memory of my late father. A young cousin of mine has just entered the convent there as a postulant,” he explained. “So M. Fraser thought that the best place.”

“An excellent choice.” Rosenwald picked up the list. “And you wish all of these names inscribed?”

“Monsieur!” Rosenwald waved a hand, professionally insulted. “These are your father’s children?”

“Yes, these at the bottom.” Murray bent over the counter, his finger tracing the lines, speaking the outlandish names carefully. “At the top, these are my parents’ names: Ian Alastair Robert MacLeod Murray, and Janet Flora Arabella Fraser Murray. Now, also, I—we, I mean—we want these two names as well: James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, and Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp Fraser. Those are my uncle and aunt; my uncle was very close to my father,” he explained. “Almost a brother.”

He went on saying something else, but Rakoczy wasn’t listening. He grasped the edge of the counter, vision flickering so that the nymph seemed to leer at him.

Claire Fraser. That had been the woman’s name, and her husband, James, a Highland lord from Scotland. That was who the young man resembled, though he was not so imposing as … but La Dame Blanche! It was her, it had to be.

And in the next instant, the goldsmith confirmed this, straightening up from the list with an abrupt air of wariness, as though one of the names might spring off the paper and bite him.

“That name—your aunt, you say? Did she and your uncle live in Paris at one time?”

“Yes,” Murray said, looking mildly surprised. “Maybe thirty years ago—only for a short time, though. Did you know her?”

“Ah. Not to say I was personally acquainted,” Rosenwald said, with a crooked smile. “But she was … known. People called her La Dame Blanche.”

“Yes, but it was all a long time ago,” Rosenwald said hastily, clearly thinking he’d said too much. He waved a hand toward his back room. “If you’ll give me a moment, Monsieur, I have a chalice actually here, if you would care to see it … and a paten, too. We might make some accommodation of price, if you take both. They were made for a patron who died suddenly, before the chalice was finished, so there is almost no decoration—plenty of room for the names to be applied, and perhaps we might put the, um, aunt and uncle on the paten?”

Murray nodded, interested, and at Rosenwald’s gesture, went round the counter and followed the old man into his back room. Rakoczy put the octafoil salver under his arm and left, as quietly as possible, head buzzing with questions.

Jared eyed Michael over the dinner table, shook his head, and bent to his plate.

“I’m not drunk!” Michael blurted, then bent his own head, face flaming. He could feel Jared’s eyes boring into the top of his head.

“Not now, ye’re not.” Jared’s voice wasn’t accusing. In fact, it was quiet, almost kindly. “But ye have been. Ye’ve not touched your dinner, and ye’re the color of rotten wax.”

“I—” The words caught in his throat, just as the food had. Eels in garlic sauce. The smell wafted up from the dish, and he stood up suddenly, lest he either vomit or burst into tears.

“I’ve nay appetite, cousin,” he managed to say, before turning away. “Excuse me.”

He would have left, but he hesitated that moment too long, not wanting to go up to the room where Lillie no longer was, but not wanting to look petulant by rushing out into the street. Jared rose and came round to him with a decided step.

“I’m nay verra hungry myself, a charaidh,” Jared said, taking him by the arm. “Come sit wi’ me for a bit and take a dram. It’ll settle your wame.”

He didn’t much want to, but there was nothing else he could think of doing, and within a few moments, he found himself in front of a fragrant applewood fire, with a glass of his father’s whisky in hand, the warmth of both easing the tightness of chest and throat. It wouldn’t cure his grief, he knew, but it made it possible to breathe.

“Good stuff,” Jared said, sniffing cautiously, but approvingly. “Even raw as it is. It’ll be wonderful, aged a few years.”

“Aye. Uncle Jamie kens what he’s about; he said he’d made whisky a good many times, in America.”

“Your uncle Jamie usually kens what he’s about,” he said. “Not that knowing it keeps him out o’ trouble.” He shifted, making himself more comfortable in his worn leather chair. “Had it not been for the Rising, he’d likely have stayed here wi’ me. Aye, well…” The old man sighed with regret and lifted his glass, examining the spirit. It was still nearly as pale as water—it hadn’t been casked above a few months—but had the slightly viscous look of a fine strong spirit, like it might climb out of the glass if you took your eye off it.

“Och! I didna mean to say ye were but a poor substitute for Jamie, lad.” He smiled crookedly, and his hooded eyes grew moist. “Not at all. Ye’ve been the best thing ever to come to me. You and dear wee Lillie, and…” He cleared his throat. “I … well, I canna say anything that will help, I ken that. But … it won’t always be like this.”

“Won’t it?” Michael said bleakly. “Aye, I’ll take your word for it.” A silence fell between them, broken only by the hissing and snap of the fire. The mention of Lillie was like an awl digging into his breastbone, and he took a deeper sip of the whisky to quell the ache. Maybe Jared was right to mention the drink to him. It helped, but not enough. And the help didn’t last. He was tired of waking to grief and headache both.

Shying away from thoughts of Lillie, his mind fastened on Uncle Jamie instead. He’d lost his wife, too, and from what Michael had seen of the aftermath, it had torn his soul in two. Then she’d come back to him and he was a man transformed. But in between … he’d managed. He’d found a way to be.

Thinking of Auntie Claire gave him a slight feeling of comfort—as long as he didn’t think too much about what she’d told the family … who—or what—she was, and where she’d been while she was gone those twenty years. The brothers and sisters had talked among themselves about it afterward; Young Jamie and Kitty didn’t believe a word of it, Maggie and Janet weren’t sure—but Young Ian believed it, and that counted for a lot with Michael. And she’d looked at him—right at him—when she said what was going to happen in Paris.

He felt the same small thrill of horror now, remembering. The Terror. That’s what it will be called, and that’s what it will be. People will be arrested for no cause and beheaded in the Place de la Concorde. The streets will run with blood, and no one—no one—will be safe.

He looked at his cousin; Jared was an old man, though still hale enough. He knew there was no way he could persuade Jared to leave Paris and his wine business. But it would be some time yet—if Auntie Claire was right. No need to think about it now. But she’d seemed so sure, like a seer, talking from a vantage point after everything had happened, from a safer time.

For a moment, he entertained the wild fantasy that Lillie wasn’t dead, but only swept away into a distant time. He couldn’t see or touch her, but the knowledge that she was doing things, was alive … maybe it was knowing that, thinking that, which had kept Uncle Jamie whole. He swallowed, hard.

“Jared,” he said, clearing his own throat. “What did ye think of Auntie Claire? When she lived here?”

Jared looked surprised, but lowered his glass to his knee, pursing his lips in thought.

“She was a bonny lass, I’ll tell ye that,” he said. “Verra bonny. A tongue like the rough side of a rasp, if she took against something, though—and decided opinions.” He nodded, twice, as though recalling a few, and grinned suddenly. “Verra decided indeed!”

“Aye? The goldsmith—Rosenwald, ye ken?—mentioned her, when I went to commission the chalice and he saw her name on the list. He called her La Dame Blanche.” This last was not phrased as a question, but he gave it a slight rising inflection, and Jared nodded, his smile widening into a grin.

“Oh, aye, I mind that! ’Twas Jamie’s notion. She’d find herself now and then in dangerous places without him—ken how some folk are just the sort as things happen to—so he put it about that she was La Dame Blanche. Ken what a White Lady is, do ye?”

“Aye, just so. Make any wicked sod with villainy in mind think twice. A White Lady can strike ye blind or shrivel a man’s balls, and likely a few more things than that, should she take the notion. And I’d be the last to say that Claire Fraser couldn’t, if she’d a mind to.”

Jared raised the glass absently to his lips, took a bigger sip of the raw spirit than he’d meant to and coughed, spraying droplets of memorial whisky halfway across the room. Rather to his own shock, Michael laughed.

Jared wiped his mouth, still coughing, but then sat up straight and lifted his glass, which still held a few drops.

“Slainte!” Michael echoed, and drained what remained in his own glass. He set it down with finality, and rose. He’d drink nay more tonight.

“Good night, lad,” said Jared. The fire was burning low, but still cast a warm ruddy glow on the old man’s face. “Fare ye well.”

Michael dropped his key several times before finally managing to turn it in the old-fashioned lock. It wasn’t drink; he’d not had a drop since the wine at supper. Instead, he’d walked the length of the Isle de Paris and back, accompanied only by his thoughts; his whole body quivered and he felt mindless with exhaustion, but he was sure he would sleep. Jean-Baptiste had left the door unbarred, according to his orders, but one of the footmen was sprawled on a settle in the entryway, snoring. He smiled a little, though it was an effort to raise the corners of his mouth.

“Bolt the door and go to bed, Paul,” he whispered, bending and shaking the man gently by the shoulder. The footman stirred and snorted, but Michael didn’t wait to see whether he woke entirely. There was a tiny oil-lamp burning on the landing of the stairs; a little round glass globe in the gaudy colors of Murano. It had been there since the first day he came from Scotland to stay with Jared, years before, and the sight of it soothed him and drew his aching body up the wide, dark stair.

The house creaked and talked to itself at night; all old houses did. Tonight, though, it was silent, the big copper-seamed roof gone cold and its massive timbers settled into somnolence.

He flung off his clothes and crawled naked into bed, head spinning. Tired as he was, his flesh quivered and twitched, his legs jerking like a spitted frog’s, before he finally relaxed enough to fall headfirst into the seething cauldron of dreams that awaited him.

She was there, of course. Laughing at him, playing with her ridiculous pug. Running a hand filled with desire across his face, down his neck, easing her body close, and closer. Then they were somehow in bed, with the wind blowing cool through gauzy curtains, too cool, he felt cold, but then her warmth came close, pressed against him. He felt a terrible desire, but at the same time he feared her. She felt utterly familiar, utterly strange—and the mixture thrilled him.

He reached for her, and realized that he couldn’t raise his arms, couldn’t move. And yet she was against him, writhing in a slow squirm of need, greedy and tantalizing. In the way of dreams, he was at the same time in front of her, behind her, touching, and seeing from a distance. Candle-glow on naked breasts, the shadowed weight of solid buttocks, falling drapes of parting white, one round, firm leg protruding, a pointed toe rooting gently between his legs. Urgency.

She was curled behind him then, kissing the back of his neck, and he reached back, groping, but his hands were heavy, drifting; they slid helpless over her. Hers on him were firm, more than firm, she had him by the cock, was working him. Working him hard, fast and hard. He bucked and heaved, suddenly released from the dream-swamp of immobility. She loosed her grip, tried to pull away, but he folded his hand round hers and rubbed their folded hands hard up and down with joyous ferocity, spilling himself convulsively, hot wet spurts against his belly, running thick over their clenched knuckles.

She made a sound of horrified disgust and his eyes flew open. A pair of huge, bugging eyes stared into his, over a gargoyle’s mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth. He shrieked.

Plonplon leaped off the bed and ran to and fro, barking hysterically. There was a body behind him in bed. Michael flung himself off the bed, tangled in a winding-sheet of damp, sticky bedclothes, fell and rolled in panic.

On his knees, he wiped his hands on the sheet and gaped, rubbed his hands hard over his face, shook his head. Could not make sense of it, couldn’t.

But the woman in his bed, tears running down her face, wasn’t Lillie; he realized it with a wrench that made him groan, doubling up in the desolation of fresh loss.

Plonplon had ceased barking and now came up behind Michael, nosing his bare backside with a blast of hot, moist breath.

Unable to find any words suitable to the situation, he grabbed the dog and muffled it with a handful of sheet. He got unsteadily to his feet, still holding the squirming pug.

“I—” he began. “You—I mean … oh, Jesus Christ!” He leaned over and put the dog carefully on the bed. Plonplon instantly wriggled free of the sheet and rushed to Léonie, licking her solicitously. Michael had thought of giving her the dog after Lillie’s death, but for some reason this had seemed a betrayal of the pug’s former mistress, and brought Michael near to weeping.

“I can’t,” he said simply. “I just can’t. You go to sleep now, lass. We’ll talk about it later, aye?”

He went out, walking carefully, as though very drunk, and closed the door gently behind him. He got halfway down the main stair before realizing he was naked. He just stood there, his mind blank, watching the colors of the Murano lamp fade as the daylight grew outside, until Paul saw him and ran up to wrap him in a cloak and lead him off to a bed in the guest rooms.

Rakoczy’s favorite gaming club was the Golden Cockerel, and the wall in the main salon was covered by a tapestry featuring one of these creatures, worked in gold thread, wings spread and throat swollen as it crowed in triumph at the winning hand of cards laid out before it. It was a cheerful place, catering to a mix of wealthy merchants and lesser nobility, and the air was spicy with the scents of candle wax, powder, perfume, and money.

He’d thought of going to the offices of Fraser et Cie, making some excuse to speak to Michael Murray, and maneuver his way into an inquiry about the whereabouts of the young man’s aunt. Upon consideration, though, he thought such a move might make Murray wary—and possibly lead to word getting back to the woman, if she was somewhere in Paris. That was the last thing he wanted to happen.

Better, perhaps, to instigate his inquiries from a more discreet distance. He’d learned that Murray occasionally came to the Cockerel, though he himself had never seen him there. But if he was known …

It took several evenings of play, wine, and conversation, before he found Charles Pépin. Pépin was a popinjay, a reckless gambler, and a man who liked to talk. And to drink. He was also a good friend of the young wine merchant’s.

“Oh, the nun!” he said, when Rakoczy had—after the second bottle—mentioned having heard that Murray had a young relative who had recently entered the convent. Pépin laughed, his handsome face flushed.

“A less likely nun I’ve never seen—an arse that would make the Archbishop of Paris forget his vows, and he’s eighty-six if he’s a day. Doesn’t speak any sort of French, poor thing—the girl, not the Archbishop. Not that I for one would be wanting to carry on a lot of conversation if I had her to myself, you understand … she’s Scotch, terrible accent…”

“Scotch, you say.” Rakoczy held a card consideringly, then put it down. “She is Murray’s cousin—would she perhaps be the daughter of his uncle James?”

“I don’t really … oh, yes, I do know!” He laughed heartily, and laid down his own losing hand. “Dear me. Yes, she did say her father’s name was Jay-mee, the way the Scotches do, that must be James.”

Rakoczy felt a ripple of anticipation go up his spine. Yes! This sense of triumph was instantly succeeded by a breathless realization. The girl was the daughter of La Dame Blanche.

“I see,” he said casually. “And which convent did you say the girl has gone to?”

“A wager,” he said, with a grin. “If she is as luscious as you say … I’ll bet you five hundred louis that I can get her into bed before she takes her first vows.”

“Oh, never! She’s tasty, but she doesn’t know it. And she’s virtuous, I’d swear it. And if you think you can seduce her inside the convent…!”

She could smell the Hôpital long before the small group of new postulants reached the door. They walked two by two, practicing custody of the eyes, but she couldn’t help a quick glance upward at the building, a three-story château, originally a noble house that had, rumor said, been given to Mother Hildegarde by her father, as part of her dowry when she joined the church. It had become a convent house, and then gradually been given over more and more to the care of the sick, the nuns moving to the new château built in the park.

It was a lovely old house—on the outside. The odor of sickness, of urine and shit and vomit, hung about it like a cloying veil, though, and she hoped she wouldn’t vomit, too. The little postulant next to her, Sister Miséricorde de Dieu (known to all simply as Mercy), was as white as her veil, eyes fixed on the ground, but obviously not seeing it, as she stepped smack on a slug and gave a small cry of horror as it squished under her sandal.

Joan looked hastily away; she would never master custody of the eyes, she was sure. Nor yet custody of thought.

It wasn’t the notion of sick people that troubled her. She’d seen sick people before, and she wouldn’t be expected to do more than wash and feed them; she could manage that easily. It was fear of seeing those who were about to die—for surely there would be a great many of those in a hospital. And what might the voices tell her about them?

As it was, the voices had nothing to say. Not a word, and after a little, she began to lose her nervousness. She could do this, and in fact—to her surprise—quite enjoyed the sense of competence, the gratification of being able to ease someone’s pain, give them at least a little attention. And if her French made them laugh (and it did), that at least took their minds off of pain and fear for a moment.

There were those who lay under the veil of death. Only a few, though, and it seemed somehow much less shocking here than when she had seen it on Vhairi’s lad or the young man on the ship. Maybe it was resignation, perhaps the influence of the angels for whom the Hôpital was named … Joan didn’t know, but she found that she wasn’t afraid to speak to or touch the ones she knew were going to die. For that matter, she observed that the other sisters, even the orderlies, behaved gently toward these people, and it occurred to her that no particular Sight was needed to know that the man with the wasting sickness, whose bones poked through his skin, was not long for this world.

“All right,” she said, taking a deep breath. She had no idea how to comfort anyone, but bathed him, as gently as she could, and coaxed him to take a few spoonsful of porridge. Then she settled him in his bed, straightening his nightshirt and the thin blanket over him.

“Thank you, Sister,” he said, and taking her hand, kissed it. “Thank you for your sweet touch.”

She went back to the postulants’ dormitory that evening feeling thoughtful, but with a strange sense of being on the verge of discovering something important.

Rakoczy lay with his head on Madeleine’s bosom, eyes closed, breathing the scent of her body, feeling the whole of her between his palms, a slowly pulsing entity of light. She was a gentle gold, traced with veins of incandescent blue, her heart deep as lapis beneath his ear, a living stone. And deep inside, her soft red womb, open, soft. Refuge and succor. Promise.

Mélisande had shown him the rudiments of sexual magic, and he’d read about it with great interest in some of the older alchemical texts. He’d never tried it with a whore, though—and in fact, hadn’t been trying to do it this time. And yet it had happened. Was happening. He could see the miracle unfolding slowly before him, under his hands.

How odd, he thought dreamily, watching the tiny traces of green energy spread upward through her womb, slowly but inexorably. He’d thought it happened instantly, that a man’s seed found its root in the woman and there you were. But that wasn’t what was happening, at all. There were two types of seed, he now saw. She had one; he felt it plainly, a brilliant speck of light, glowing like a fierce, tiny sun. His own—the tiny green animalculae—were being drawn toward it, bent on immolation.

“Happy, chéri?” she whispered, stroking his hair. “Did you have a good time?”

“Most happy, sweetheart.” He wished she wouldn’t talk, but an unexpected sense of tenderness toward her made him sit up and smile at her. She also began to sit up, reaching for the clean rag and douching syringe, and he put a hand on her shoulder, urging her to lie back down.

“But—” She was confused; usually he was insistent upon cleanliness. “Do you want me to get with child?” For he had stopped her using the wine-soaked sponge beforehand, too.

“Yes, of course,” he said, surprised. “Did Madame Fabienne not tell you?”

“She did not. What—why, for God’s sake?” In agitation, she squirmed free of his restraining hand and swung her legs out of bed, reaching for her wrapper. “You aren’t—what do you mean to do with it?”

She had the wrapper on, pulled crookedly round her shoulders, and had backed up against the wall, hands plastered against her stomach, regarding him with open fear.

“You’re a magicien, everyone knows that. You take newborn children and use their blood in your spells!”

“What?” he said, rather stupidly. He reached for his breeches, but changed his mind. He got up and went to her instead, putting his hands on her shoulders.

“No,” he said, bending down to look her in the eye. “No, I do no such thing. Never.” He used all the force of sincerity he could summon, pushing it into her, and felt her waver a little, still fearful, but less certain. He smiled at her. “Who told you I was a magicien, for heaven’s sake? I am a philosophe, chérie, an inquirer into the mysteries of nature, no more. And I can swear to you, by my hope of heaven”—this being more or less nonexistent, but why quibble?—“that I have never, not once, used anything more than the water of a man-child in any of my investigations.”

“What, little boys’ piss?” she said, diverted. He let his hands relax, but kept them on her shoulders.

“Certainly. It’s the purest water one can find. Collecting it is something of a chore, mind you—” She smiled at that, good. “But the process does not the slightest harm to the infant, who will eject the water whether anyone has a use for it or not.”

“Oh.” She was beginning to relax a little, but her hands were still pressed protectively over her belly, as though she felt the imminent child already. Not yet, he thought, pulling her against him and feeling his way gently into her body. But soon! He wondered if he should remain with her until it happened; the idea of feeling it as it happened inside her—to be an intimate witness to the creation of life itself!… but there was no telling how long it might take. From the progress of his animalculae, it could be a day, even two.

Why do men never think of that? he wondered. Most men—himself included—regarded the engendering of babies as a necessity, in the case of inheritance, or nuisance—but this … But then, most men would never know what he now knew, or see what he had seen.

Madeleine had begun to relax against him, her hands at last leaving her belly. He kissed her, with a real feeling of affection.

“It will be beautiful,” he whispered to her. “And once you are well and truly with child, I will buy your contract from Fabienne and take you away. I will buy you a house.”

“A house?” her eyes went round. They were green, a deep, clear emerald, and he smiled at her again, stepping back.

She flung her arms around him, and he had some difficulty in extracting himself, laughing, from her embraces. Normally, he left a whore’s bed with no feeling save physical relief. But what he had done had made a connection with Madeleine that he had not experienced with any woman save Mélisande.

Mélisande. A sudden thought ran through him like the spark from a Leyden jar. Mélisande.

He looked hard at Madeleine, now crawling happily naked and white-rumped into bed, her wrapper thrown aside. That bottom … the eyes, the soft blond hair, the gold-white of fresh cream.

“Chérie,” he said, as casually as he might, pulling on his breeches. “How old are you?”

“Ah. A wonderful age to become a mother.” He pulled the shirt over his head and kissed his hand to her, relieved. He had known Mélisande Robicheaux in 1744. He had not, in fact, just committed incest with his own daughter.

It was only as he passed Madame Fabienne’s parlor on his way out that it occurred to him that Madeleine might possibly still be his granddaughter. That thought stopped him short, but he had no time to dwell on it, for Fabienne appeared in the doorway and motioned to him.

“A message, Monsieur,” she said, and something in her voice touched his nape with a cold finger.

“Monsieur Grenouille begs the favor of your company, at midnight tomorrow. In the square before Notre Dame de Paris.”

They didn’t have to practice custody of the eyes in the market. In fact, Sister George-Mary, the stout nun who oversaw these expeditions, warned them in no uncertain terms to keep a sharp eye out for short weight and uncivil prices, to say nothing of pickpockets.

“Pickpockets, Sister?” Mercy had said, her blond eyebrows all but vanishing into her veil. “But we are nuns—more or less,” she added hastily. “We have nothing to steal!”

“Normally, that would be true,” she agreed. “But we—or I, rather—have the money with which to buy our food, and once we’ve bought it, you will be carrying it. A pickpocket steals to eat, n’est-ce pas? They don’t care whether you have money or food, and most of them are so depraved that they would willingly steal from God himself, let alone a couple of chick-headed postulants.”

For Joan’s part, she wanted to see everything, pickpockets included. To her delight, the market was the one she’d passed with Michael, on her first day in Paris. True, the sight of it brought back the horrors and doubts of that first day, too—but for the moment, she pushed those aside and followed Sister George into the fascinating maelstrom of color, smells, and shouting.

Filing away a particularly entertaining expression that she planned to make Sister Philomène explain to her—Sister Philomène was a little older than Joan, but painfully shy and with such delicate skin that she blushed like an apple at the least excuse—she followed Sister George and Sister Mathilde through the fishmonger’s section, where Sister George bargained shrewdly for a great quantity of sand dabs, scallops, tiny gray translucent shrimp, and an enormous sea-salmon, the pale spring light shifting through its scales in colors that faded so subtly from pink to blue to silver and back that some of them had no name at all—so beautiful even in its death that it made Joan catch her breath with joy at the wonder of Creation.

“Oh, bouillabaisse tonight!” said Mercy, under her breath. “Déliceuse!”

“Fish stew … you’ll like it, I promise!” Joan had no doubt of it; brought up in the Highlands during the poverty-stricken years following the Rising, she’d been staggered by the novelty, deliciousness, and sheer abundance of the convent’s food. Even on Fridays, when the community fasted during the day, supper was simple but mouthwatering, toasted sharp cheese on nutty brown bread with sliced apples.

Luckily, the salmon was so huge that Sister George arranged for the fish-seller to deliver it to the convent, along with the other briny purchases, and so they had room in their baskets for fresh vegetables and fruit, and so passed from Neptune’s realm to that of Demeter. Joan hoped it wasn’t sacrilegious to think of Greek gods, but she couldn’t forget the book of myths that Da had read to her and Marsali when they were young, with wonderful hand-colored illustrations.

After all, she told herself, you needed to know about the Greeks, if you studied medicine. She had some trepidation at the thought of working in the hospital, but God called people to do things, and if it was His will, then—

The thought stopped short as she caught sight of a neat, dark tricorne with a curled blue feather, bobbing slowly through the tide of people. Was it … It was! Léonie, the sister of Michael Murray’s dead wife. Moved by curiosity, Joan glanced at Sister George, who was engrossed in a huge display of fungus—dear God, people ate such things?—and slipped around a barrow billowing with green sallet herbs.

She’d meant to speak to Léonie, to ask her to tell Michael that she needed to talk to him. Postulants were permitted to write letters to their families only twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, but he could send a note to her mother, reassuring her that Joan was well and happy.

Surely Michael could contrive a way to visit the convent … but before she could get close enough, Léonie looked furtively over her shoulder, as though fearing discovery, then ducked behind a curtain that hung across the back of a small caravan.

Joan had seen gypsies before, though not often. A dark-skinned man loitered nearby, talking with a group of others; their eyes passed over her habit without pausing, and she sighed with relief. Being a nun was as good as having a cloak of invisibility in most circumstances, she thought.

She looked round for her companions, and saw that Sister Mathilde had been called into consultation regarding a big warty lump of something that looked like the excrement of a seriously diseased hog. Good, she could wait for a minute longer.

In fact, it took very little more than that, before Léonie slipped out from behind the curtain, tucking something into the small basket on her arm. For the first time, it struck Joan as unusual that someone like Léonie should be shopping without a servant to push back crowds and carry purchases—or even to be in a public market. Michael had told her about his own household during the voyage—how Madame Hortense, the cook, went to the markets at dawn, to be sure of getting the freshest things. What would a lady like Léonie be buying, alone?

Joan slithered as best she could through the rows of stalls and wagons, following the bobbing blue feather. A sudden stop allowed her to come up behind Léonie, who had paused by a flower stall, fingering a bunch of white tulips.

It occurred suddenly to Joan that she had no idea what Léonie’s last name was, but she couldn’t worry about politeness now.

“Ah … Madame?” she said tentatively. “Mademoiselle, I mean?” Léonie swung round, eyes huge and face pale. Finding herself faced with a nun, she blinked, confused.

“Er … it’s me,” Joan said, diffident, resisting the impulse to pull off her veil. “Joan MacKimmie?” It felt odd to say it, as though Joan MacKimmie was truly someone else. It took a moment for the name to register, but then Léonie’s shoulders relaxed a little.

“Oh.” She put a hand to her bosom, and mustered a small smile. “Michael’s cousin. Of course. I didn’t … er … how nice to see you!” A small frown wrinkled the skin between her brows. “Are you … alone?”

“No,” Joan said hurriedly. “And I mustn’t stop. I only saw you, and I wanted to ask—” It seemed even stupider than it had a moment ago, but no help for it. “Would you tell Monsieur Murray that I must talk to him? I have something … something important, that I have to tell him.”

“Soeur Gregory?” Sister George’s stentorian tones boomed through the higher-pitched racket of the market, making Joan jump. She could see the top of Sister Mathilde’s head, with its great white sails, turning to and fro in vain search.

“I have to go,” she said to the astonished Léonie. “Please. Please tell him!” Her heart was pounding, and not only from the sudden meeting. She’d been looking at Léonie’s basket, where she caught the glint of a brown glass bottle, half hidden beneath a thick bunch of what even Joan recognized as black hellebores. Lovely, cup-shaped flowers of an eerie greenish-white—and deadly poison.

She dodged back across the market to arrive breathless and apologizing at Sister Mathilde’s side, wondering if … She hadn’t spent much time at all with Da’s wife—but she had heard her talking with Da as she wrote down receipts in a book, and she’d mentioned black hellebore as something women used to make themselves miscarry. If Léonie were pregnant … Holy Mother of God, could she be with child by Michael? The thought struck her like a blow in the stomach.

No. No, she couldn’t believe it. He was still in love with his wife, anyone could see that, and even if not, she’d swear he wasn’t the sort to … but what did she ken about men, after all?

Well, she’d ask him when she saw him, she decided, her mouth clamping tight. And ’til then … Her hand went to the rosary at her waist and she said a quick, silent prayer for Léonie. Just in case.

As she was bargaining doggedly in her execrable French for six aubergines (wondering meanwhile what on earth they were for, medicine or food?), she became aware of someone standing at her elbow. A handsome man of middle age, taller than she was, in a well-cut dove-gray coat. He smiled at her and, touching one of the peculiar vegetables, said in slow, simple French, “You don’t want the big ones. They’re tough. Get small ones, like that.” A long finger tapped an aubergine half the size of the ones the vegetable-seller had been urging on her, and the vegetable-seller burst into a tirade of abuse that made Joan step back, blinking.

Not so much because of the expressions being hurled at her—she didn’t understand one word in ten—but because a voice in plain English in her head had just said clearly, Tell him not to do it.

“I … er … je suis … um … Merci beaucoup, Monsieur!” she blurted, and turning, ran, scrambling back between piles of paper narcissus bulbs and fragrant spikes of hyacinth, her shoes skidding on the slime of trodden leaves.

“Soeur Gregory!” Sister Mathilde loomed up so suddenly in front of her that she nearly ran into the massive nun. “What are you doing? Where is Sister Miséricorde?”

“I … oh.” Joan swallowed, gathering her wits. “She’s—over there.” She spoke with relief, spotting Mercy’s small head in the forefront of a crowd by the meat pie wagon. “I’ll get her!” she blurted, and walked hastily off before Sister Mathilde could say more.

Tell him not to do it. That’s what the voice had said about Charles Pépin. What was going on? She thought wildly. Was M. Pépin engaged in something awful with the man in the dove-gray coat?

Tell him not to do it, the voice repeated in her head, with what seemed like particular urgency. Tell him he must not!

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women…” Joan clutched at her rosary and gabbled the words, feeling the blood leave her face. There he was, the man in the dove-gray coat, looking curiously at her over a stall of Dutch tulips and sprays of yellow roses.

She couldn’t feel the pavement under her feet, but was moving toward him. I have to, she thought. It doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m mad …

“Don’t do it,” she blurted, coming face-to-face with the astonished gentleman. “You mustn’t do it!”

And then she turned and ran, rosary in hand, apron and veil flapping like wings.

Rakoczy couldn’t help thinking of the cathedral as an entity. An immense version of one of its own gargoyles, crouched over the city. In protection, or threat?

Notre-Dame de Paris rose black above him, solid, obliterating the light of the stars, the beauty of the night. Very appropriate. He’d always thought that the Church blocked one’s sight of God. Nonetheless, the sight of the monstrous stone creature made him shiver as he passed under its shadow, despite the warm cloak.

Perhaps it was the cathedral’s stones themselves that gave him the sense of menace? He stopped, paused for a heartbeat, and then strode up to the church’s wall and pressed his palm flat against the cold limestone. There was no immediate sense of anything; just the cold roughness of the rock. Impulsively, he shut his eyes and tried to feel his way into the rock. At first, nothing. But he waited, pressing with his mind, a repeated question: Are you there?

He would have been terrified to receive an answer, and felt something that was much more relief than disappointment when he didn’t. Even so, when he finally opened his eyes and took his hands away, he saw a trace of blue light, the barest trace, glow briefly between his knuckles. That frightened him, and he hurried away, hiding his hands beneath the shelter of the cloak.

Surely not, he assured himself. He’d done that before, made the light happen when he held the jewels he used for travel and said the words over them—his own version of consecration, he supposed. He didn’t know if the words were necessary, but Mélisande had used them; he was afraid not to.

And yet. He had felt something here. The sense of something heavy, inert. Nothing resembling thought, let alone speech, thank God. By reflex, he crossed himself, then shook his head, rattled and irritated.

But something. Something immense, and very old. Did God have the voice of a stone? He was further unsettled by the thought. The stones there in the chalk mine, the noise they made … Was it after all God that he glimpsed, there in that space between?

A movement in the shadows banished all such thoughts in an instant. The frog! Rakoczy’s heart clenched like a fist.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said an amused, gravelly voice. “I see the years have been kind to you.”

Raymond stepped into the starlight, smiling. The sight of him was disconcerting; Rakoczy had imagined this meeting for so long that the reality seemed oddly anticlimactic. Short, broad-shouldered, with long, loose hair that swept back from a massive forehead. A broad, almost lipless mouth. Raymond the frog.

Mâitre Raymond’s brows were black—surely they had been white, thirty years ago? One of them lifted in puzzlement.

“I was told that you were looking for me, Monsieur.” He spread his hands, the gesture graceful. “I came!”

“Thank you,” Rakoczy said dryly, beginning to regain some composure. “I meant, why are you in Paris?”

“Everyone has to be somewhere, don’t they? They can’t be in the same place.” This should have sounded like badinage, but didn’t. It sounded serious, like a statement of scientific principle, and Rakoczy found it unsettling.

“Did you come looking for me?” he asked boldly. He moved a little, trying to get a better look at the man. He was nearly sure that the frog looked younger than he had when last seen. Surely his flowing hair was darker, his step more elastic? A spurt of excitement bubbled in his chest.

“For you?” The frog looked amused for a moment, but then the look faded. “No. I’m looking for a lost daughter.”

“More or less.” Raymond seemed uninterested in explaining further. He moved a little to one side, eyes narrowing as he sought to make out Rakoczy’s face in the darkness. “You can hear stones, then, can you?”

Raymond nodded at the façade of the cathedral. “They do speak. They move, too, but very slowly.”

An icy chill shot up Rakoczy’s spine, at thought of the grinning gargoyles perched high above him and the implication that one might at any moment choose to spread its silent wings and hurtle down upon him, teeth still bared in carnivorous hilarity. Despite himself, he looked up, over his shoulder.

“Not that fast.” The note of amusement was back in the frog’s voice. “You would never see them. It takes them millennia to move the slightest fraction of an inch—unless of course they are propelled or melted. But you don’t want to see them do that, of course. Much too dangerous.”

This kind of talk seemed frivolous, and Rakoczy was bothered by it, but for some reason, not irritated. Troubled, with a sense that there was something under it, something that he simultaneously wanted to know—and wanted very much to avoid knowing. The sensation was novel, and unpleasant.

He cast caution to the wind, and demanded boldly, “Why did you not kill me?”

Raymond grinned at him; he could see the flash of teeth, and felt yet another shock: he was sure—almost sure—that the frog had had no teeth when last seen.

“If I had wanted you dead, son, you wouldn’t be here talking to me,” he said. “I wanted you to be out of the way, that’s all; you obliged me by taking the hint.”

“And just why did you want me ‘out of the way’?” Had he not needed to find out, Rakcozy would have taken offense at the man’s tone.

It was on the tip of Rakoczy’s tongue to tell Raymond that La Dame Blanche still lived, but he himself hadn’t lived as long as he had by blurting out everything he knew—and he didn’t want Raymond thinking that he himself might be still a threat to her.

He had vanished. No puffs of smoke, no illusionist’s tricks, no smell of sulfur … the frog was simply gone. The square stretched empty under the starlit sky; the only thing that moved was a cat that darted mewing out of the shadows and brushed past Rakoczy’s leg.

Rakoczy was so shaken—and so excited—by the encounter that he wandered without knowing where he was going, crossed bridges without noticing, lost his way among the maze of twisting streets and allées on the Left Bank and did not reach his house ’till nearly dawn, footsore and exhausted, but with his mind buzzing with speculation.

Younger. He was sure of it. Raymond the frog was younger than he had been thirty years before. So it could be done—somehow.

He was convinced now that Raymond was indeed a traveler, like him. It had to be the travel: specifically, traveling forward in time. But how? He’d tried, more than once. To go back was dangerous, and the journey depleted you physically, but it was possible. If you had the right combinations of stones, you could even arrive at a certain time—more or less. But you needed also a focus; someone or something upon which to fix the mind; without that, you might still end up at some random point. And that, he thought, was the problem in going forward: it wasn’t possible to focus on something you didn’t know was there.

How, then, to persuade the frog to share the secret? Raymond did not seem to be hostile to him, but neither did he seem friendly; Rakoczy hardly would have expected him to be.

A lost daughter, the frog had said. And he had poisoned Rakoczy to remove him as a threat to the Fraser woman, La Dame Blanche. And the woman had glowed with blue light—because she had touched him, when handing him the cup? He couldn’t remember. But she had glowed, he was positive.

“Merveilleuse,” he whispered. He had already been interested in the woman; now he was possessed. Not only did he want—need—to know what she knew; she was important to Raymond in some way, perhaps connected with the lost daughter—perhaps she was the lost daughter?

If he could but lay hands on her … He had made a few cautious inquiries, but no one in the Court of Miracles, or among his more respectable connections, had heard anything of Claire Fraser in the last thirty years. Her husband had been political, had died, he thought, in Scotland. But if she had gone to Scotland with him, how did Raymond come to be searching for her in Paris?

These thoughts, and many more like them, ran round in his head like a pack of fleas, raising itching welts of curiosity.

The sky had begun to lighten, though the stars still burned dimly above the rooftops. The scent of fresh woodsmoke touched him, and a whiff of yeast: the boulangeries firing their ovens for the day’s bread. A distant clop of hooves, as the farmers’ wagons came in from the country, full of vegetables, fresh meat, eggs and flowers. The city was beginning to stir.

His own house, his own bed. His mind had slowed now, and the thought of sleep was overwhelming. There was a gray cat sitting on the stoop of his house, washing its paws.

“Bonjour,” he said to it, and in his drowsy, exhausted state, almost expected it to answer him. It didn’t, though, and when the butler opened the door it vanished, so quickly that he wondered whether it had ever really been there.

Worn out with constant walking, Michael slept like the dead these days, without dreams or motion, and woke when the sun came up. His valet, Robert, heard him stir and came in at once, one of the femmes de chambre on his heels with a bowl of coffee and some pastry.

He ate slowly, suffering himself to be brushed, shaved, and tenderly tidied into fresh linen. Robert kept up a soothing murmur of the sort of conversation that doesn’t require response, and smiled encouragingly when presenting the mirror. Rather to Michael’s surprise, the image in the mirror looked quite normal. Hair neatly clubbed—he wore his own, without powder—and suit modest in cut but of the highest quality. Robert hadn’t asked him what he required, but had dressed him for an ordinary day of business.

He supposed that was all right. What, after all, did clothes matter? It wasn’t as though there was a costume de riguer for calling upon the sister of one’s deceased wife, who had come uninvited into one’s bed in the middle of the night.

He had spent the last two days trying to think of some way never to see or speak to Léonie again, but really, there was no help for it. He’d have to see her.

But what was he to say to her? he wondered, as he made his way through the streets toward the house where Léonie lived with an aged aunt, Eugenie Galantine. He wished he could talk the situation over with Sister Joan, but that wouldn’t be appropriate, even were she available.

He’d hoped that walking would give him time to come up at least with a point d’appui, if not an entire statement of principle, but instead, he found himself obsessively counting the flagstones of the market as he crossed it, counting the bongs of the public horloge as it struck the hour of three, and—for lack of anything else to count—counting his own footsteps as he approached her door. Six hundred and thirty-seven, six hundred and thirty-eight …

As he turned into the street, though, he stopped counting abruptly. He stopped walking, too, for an instant—then began to run. Something was wrong at the house of Madame Galantine.

He pushed his way through the crowd of neighbors and vendors clustered near the steps, and seized the butler, whom he knew, by a sleeve.

“What?” he barked. “What’s happened?” The butler, a tall, cadaverous man named Hubert, was plainly agitated, but settled a bit on seeing Michael.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said, though a sideways slide of his eyes made it clear that he did. “Mademoiselle Léonie … she’s ill. The doctor…”

He could smell the blood. Not waiting for more, he pushed Hubert aside and sprinted up the stairs, calling for Madame Eugenie, Léonie’s aunt.

Madame Eugenie popped out of a bedroom, her cap and wrapper neat in spite of the uproar.

“Monsieur Michel!” she said, blocking him from entering the room. “It’s all right, but you must not go in.”

“Yes, I must.” His heart was thundering in his ears and his hands felt cold.

“Proper? A young woman tries to make away with herself and you tell me it isn’t proper?”

A maid appeared in the doorway, a basket piled with blood-stained linen in her arms, but the look of shock on Madame Eugenie’s broad face was more striking.

“Make away with herself?” The old lady’s mouth hung open for a moment, then snapped shut like a turtle’s. “Why would you think such a thing?” She was regarding him with considerable suspicion. “And what are you doing here, for that matter? Who told you she was ill?”

A glimpse of a man in a dark robe, who must be the doctor, decided Michael that little was to be gained by engaging further with Madame Eugenie. He took her gently but firmly by the elbows, picked her up—she uttered a small shriek of surprise—and set her aside.

“Who are you?” The doctor looked up, surprised. He was wiping out a freshly used bleeding-bowl, and his case lay open on the boudoir’s settee. Léonie’s bedroom must lie beyond; the door was open, and he caught a glimpse of the foot of a bed, but could not see the bed’s inhabitant.

“She will live. As for the child…” He made an equivocal motion of the hand. “I’ve done my best. She took a great deal of the—”

“The child?” The floor shifted under his feet, and the dream of two nights before flooded him, that queer sense of something half wrong, half familiar. It was the feeling of a small, hard swelling, pressed against his bum; that’s what it was. Lillie had lost their child, but he remembered all too well the feeling of a woman’s body in early pregnancy.

“It’s yours? I beg your pardon, I shouldn’t ask.” The doctor put away his bowl and fleam, and shook out his black velvet turban.

The doctor opened his mouth in automatic protest, but then glanced thoughtfully over his shoulder.

“Well … you must be careful not to—” But Michael was already inside the bedroom, standing by the bed.

She was pale. They had always been pale, Lillie and Léonie, with the soft glow of cream and marble. This was the paleness of a frog’s belly, of a rotting fish, blanched on the shore.

Her eyes were ringed with black, sunk in her head. They rested on his face, flat, expressionless, as still as the ringless hands that lay limp on the coverlet.

“Yes.” Her voice was as dull as her eyes, and he wondered whether the doctor had drugged her.

“His.” The eyes came back to him. “I didn’t want to, Michel. Not—not that I find you disgusting, not that…”

“You were Lillie’s husband. I didn’t envy her you,” she said frankly, “but I envied what you had together. It couldn’t be like that between you and me, and I didn’t like betraying her. But”—her lips, already pale, compressed to invisibility—“I didn’t have much choice.”

He was obliged to admit that she hadn’t. Charles couldn’t marry her. Bearing an illegitimate child was not a fatal scandal in high Court circles, but the Galantines were of the emerging bourgeoisie, where respectability counted for almost as much as money. Finding herself pregnant, she would have had two alternatives: find a complaisant husband quickly, or … he tried not to see that one of her hands rested lightly across the slight swell of her stomach.

The child … He wondered what he would have done, had she come to him and told him the truth, asked him to marry her for the sake of the child. But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t asking now.

It would be best—or at least easiest—were she to lose the child. And she might yet.

“I couldn’t wait, you see,” she said, as though continuing a conversation. “I would have tried to find someone else, but I thought she knew. She’d tell you as soon as she could manage to see you. So I had to, you see, before you found out.”

“The nun,” Léonie said, and sighed deeply, as though losing interest. “She saw me in the market, and rushed up to me. She said she had to talk to you—that she had something important to tell you. I saw her look into my basket, though, and her face … thought she must realize…”

Her eyelids were fluttering, whether from drugs or fatigue, he wasn’t sure. She smiled faintly, but not at him; she seemed to be looking at something a long way off.

“So funny,” she murmured. “Charles said it would solve everything, that the Comte would pay him such a lot for her, it would solve everything. But how can you solve a baby?”

She made a whiny sound of protest. Michael wanted to shake her hard enough to break her neck, but forced himself to withdraw his hands. She settled into the pillow like a bladder losing air, flattening under the bedclothes. Her eyes were closed, but he bent close, speaking directly into her ear.

“St. Germain,” she murmured, scarcely loud enough to be heard. “The Comte St. Germain.”

Michael went instantly to Rosenwald, and by dint of badgering and the promise of extra payment, got him to finish the engraving on the chalice at once. Michael waited impatiently while it was done, and scarcely waiting for the cup and paten to be wrapped in brown paper, flung money to the goldsmith, and made for the convent des Anges, almost running.

With great difficulty, he restrained himself while making the presentation of the chalice, and with great humility, inquired whether he might ask the great favor of seeing Sister Gregory, that he might convey a message to her from her family in the Highlands. Sister Eustacia looked surprised and somewhat disapproving—postulants were not normally permitted visits—but after all … in view of Monsieur Murray’s and Monsieur Fraser’s great generosity to the convent … perhaps just a few moments, in the visitor’s parlor, and in the presence of Sister herself.…

He turned, and blinked once, his mouth opening a little. He looked shocked. Did she look so different in her robe and veil?

“It’s me,” Joan said, and tried to smile reassuringly. “I mean … still me.”

His eyes fixed on her face, and he let out a deep breath and smiled, like she’d been lost and he’d found her again.

“Aye, so it is,” he said softly. “I was afraid it was Sister Gregory. I mean, the … er…” He made a sketchy, awkward gesture indicating her gray robes and white postulant’s veil.

“Well, no,” he said, looking her over carefully, “I dinna think it is, quite. It’s more like a soldier’s uniform, no? Ye’re doing your job when ye wear it, and everybody as sees it kens what ye are and knows what ye do.”

Kens what I am. I suppose I should be pleased it doesn’t show, she thought, a little wildly.

“Well … aye, I suppose.” She fingered the rosary at her belt. She coughed. “In a way, at least.”

Ye’ve got to tell him. It wasn’t one of the voices, just the voice of her own conscience, but that was demanding enough. She could feel her heart beating, so hard that she thought the bumping must show through the front of her habit.

“Whyever not,” she said, half under her breath. She glanced over his shoulder, but Sister Eustacia was on the far side of the room, talking to a very young, frightened-looked French girl and her parents.

“Well, it’s like this, see,” she said, in a determined voice. “I hear voices.”

“Ah … different things. But they now and then tell me something’s going to happen. More often, they tell me I should say thus-and-so to someone.”

“Thus-and-so,” he repeated attentively, watching her face. “What … sort of thus-and-so?”

“I wasna expecting the Spanish Inquisition,” she said, a little testily. “Does it matter?”

“Well, I dinna ken, now, do I?” he pointed out. “It might give a clue as to who’s talkin’ to ye, might it not? Or do ye already know that?”

“No, I don’t,” she admitted, and felt a sudden lessening of tension. “I-I was worrit—a bit—that it might be demons. But it doesna really … well, they dinna tell me wicked sorts of things. Just … more like, when something’s going to happen to a person. And sometimes it’s no a good thing … but sometimes it is. There was wee Annie MacLaren, her wi’ a big belly by the third month, and by six, lookin’ as though she’d burst, and she was frightened she was goin’ to die come her time, like her ain mother did, wi’ a babe too big to be born … I mean, really frightened, not just like all women are. And I met her by St. Ninian’s spring one day, and one of the voices said to me, ‘Tell her it will be as God wills and she will be delivered safely of a son.’”

“Yes. I didna say how I knew, but I must have sounded like I did know, because her poor face got bright all of a sudden, and she grabbed onto my hands and said, ‘Oh! From your lips to God’s ear!’”

“Aye … and a daughter, too.” Joan smiled, remembering the glow on Annie’s face.

Michael glanced aside at Sister Eustacia, who was bidding farewell to the new postulant’s family. The girl was white-faced and tears ran down her cheeks, but she clung to Sister Eustacia’s sleeve as though it were a lifeline.

“I see,” he said slowly, and looked back at Joan. “Is that why … is it the voices told ye to be a nun, then?”

She blinked, surprised by his apparent acceptance of what she’d told him, but more so by the question.

“Maybe so.” He coughed, then looked up, a little shyly. “It’s no my business, but what did make ye want to be a nun?”

“Because of the voices. I thought maybe … maybe I wouldna hear them in here. Or … if I still did, maybe somebody—a priest, maybe?—could tell me what they were, and what I should do about them.”

Sister Eustacia was comforting the new girl, half-sunk on one knee to bring her big, homely, sweet face close to the girl’s. Michael glanced at them, then back at Joan, one eyebrow raised.

“I’m guessing ye havena told anyone yet,” he said. “Did ye reckon ye’d practice on me, first?”

“Maybe.” His eyes were dark, but had a sort of warmth to them, like they drew it from the heat of his hair. She looked down; her hands were pleating the edge of her blouse, which had come untucked. “It’s no just that, though.”

He made the sort of noise in his throat that meant, “Aye, then, go on.” Why didn’t French people do like that? she wondered. So much easier. But she pushed the thought aside; she’d made up her mind to tell him, and now was the time to do it.

“I told ye because … your friend,” she blurted. “The one I met at your house. Monsieur Pépin,” she added impatiently, when he looked blank.

“Aye. When I met him, a voice said, Tell him not to do it. And I didn’t—I was frightened.”

“I would ha’ been a bit disturbed myself,” he assured her. “It didna say what he oughtn’t to do, though?”

“No, it didn’t. And then, two days ago, I saw the man—the comte, Sister Mercy said he was, the Comte St. Germain—in the market, and the voice said the same thing, only a good bit more urgent. Tell him not to do it. Tell him he must not do it!”

“Aye, and it was verra firm about it. I mean … they are, usually. It’s no just an opinion, take it or leave it. But this one truly meant it.” She spread her hands, helpless to explain the feeling of dread and urgency.

“D’ye think it’s the same thing they’re not supposed to do?” He sounded startled. “I didna ken they even knew each other.”

“Well, I don’t know, now, do I?” she said, a little exasperated. “The voices didn’t say. But I saw that the man on the ship was going to die, and I didna say anything, because I couldn’t think what to say. And then he did die, and maybe he wouldn’t, if I’d spoken … so I—well, I thought I’d best say something to someone, and at least ye ken Monsieur Pépin.”

“Aye. All right. I’ll … well, I dinna ken what to do about it either, to be honest. But I’ll talk to them both and I’ll have that in my mind, so maybe I’ll think of something. D’ye want me to tell them, ‘Don’t do it’?”

“I already told the Comte. Just … maybe. If ye think it might help. Now—” Her hand darted under her apron and she passed him the slip of paper, fast. “We’re only allowed to write to our families twice a year,” she said, lowering her voice. “But I wanted Mam to know I was all right. Could ye see she gets that, please? And—and maybe tell her a bit, yourself, that I’m weel and—and happy. Tell her I’m happy,” she repeated, more firmly.

Sister Eustacia had come back, and was standing by the door, emanating an intent to come and tell them it was time for Michael to leave.

“I will,” he said. He couldn’t touch her, he knew that, so bowed instead, and bowed deeply to Sister Eustacia, who came toward them, looking benevolent.

“I’ll come to Mass at the chapel on Sundays, how’s that?” he said rapidly. “If I’ve a letter from your mam, or ye have to speak to me, gie me a wee roll of the eyes or something—I’ll figure something out.”

Twenty-four hours later, Sister Joan-Gregory, postulant of Our Lady Queen of Angels, regarded the bum of a large cow. The cow in question was named Mirabeau, and was of uncertain temper, as evidenced by the nervously lashing tail.

“She’s kicked three of us this week,” said Sister Anne-Joseph, eyeing the cow resentfully. “And spilt the milk twice. Sister Jeanne-Marie was most upset.”

“Well, we canna have that now, can we?” Joan murmured in English. “N’ inquiétez-vous pas,” she added in French, hoping that was at least somewhat grammatical. “Let me do it.”

“Better you than me,” Sister Anne-Joseph said, crossing herself, and vanished before Sister Joan might think better of the offer.

A week spent working in the cowshed was intended as punishment for her flighty behavior in the marketplace, but Joan was grateful for it. There was nothing better for steadying the nerves than cows.

Granted, the convent’s cows were not quite like her mother’s sweet-tempered, shaggy red Hieland coos, but if you came right down to it, a cow was a cow, and even a French-speaking wee besom like the present Mirabeau was no match for Joan MacKimmie, who’d driven kine to and from the shielings for years, and fed her mother’s kine in the byre beside the house with sweet hay and the leavings from supper.

With that in mind, she circled Mirabeau thoughtfully, eyeing the steadily champing jaws and the long slick of blackish-green drool that hung down from slack pink lips. She nodded once, slipped out of the cowshed, and made her way down the allee behind it, picking what she could find. Mirabeau, presented with a bouquet of fresh grasses, tiny daisies, and—delicacy of all delicacies—fresh sorrel, bulged her eyes half out of her head, opened her massive jaw, and inhaled the sweet stuff. The ominous tail ceased its lashing and the massive creature stood as if turned to stone, aside from the ecstatically grinding jaws.

Joan sighed in satisfaction, sat down, and, resting her head on Mirabeau’s monstrous flank, got down to business. Her mind, released, took up the next worry of the day.

Had Michael spoken to his friend Pépin? And if so, had he told him what she’d said, or just asked whether he kent the Comte St. Germain? Because if Tell him not to do it referred to the same thing, then plainly the two men must be acquent with each other.

She had got thus far in her own ruminations, when Mirabeau’s tail began to switch again. She hurriedly stripped the last of the milk from Mirabeau’s teats and snatched the bucket out of the way, standing up in a hurry. Then she saw what had disturbed the cow.

The man in the dove-gray coat was standing in the door to the shed, watching her. She hadn’t noticed before, in the market, but he had a handsome dark face, though rather hard about the eyes, and with a chin that brooked no opposition. He smiled pleasantly at her, though, and bowed.

Michael was in the warehouse, stripped to his shirtsleeves and sweating in the hot, wine-heady atmosphere, when Jared appeared, looking disturbed.

“What is it, cousin?” Michael wiped his face on a towel, leaving black streaks; the crew were clearing the racks on the southeast wall, and there were years of filth and cobwebs behind the most ancient casks.

“Ye haven’t got that wee nun in your bed, have ye, Michael?” Jared lifted a beetling gray brow at him.

“I’ve just had a message from the Mother Superior of the Convent des Anges, saying that one Sister Gregory appears to have been abducted from their cowshed, and wanting to know whether you might possibly have anything to do with the matter.”

“Abducted?” he said stupidly. “Who would be kidnapping a nun? What for?”

“Well, now, there ye have me.” Jared was carrying Michael’s coat over his arm, and at this point, handed it to him. “But maybe best ye go to the convent and find out.”

“Forgive me, Mother,” Michael said carefully. Mother Hildegarde looked fragile and transparent, as though a breath would make her disintegrate. “Did ye think … is it possible that Sister J … Sister Gregory might have … left of her own accord?”

The old nun gave him a look that revised his opinion of her state of health instantly.

“We did,” she said. “It happens. However—” she raised one sticklike finger. “One: there were signs of a considerable struggle in the cowshed. A full bucket of milk not merely spilt, but apparently thrown at something, the manger overturned, the door left open and two of the cows escaped into the herb garden.” Another finger. “Two: Had Sister Gregory experienced doubt regarding her vocation, she was quite free to leave the convent after speaking with me, and she knew that.”

One more finger, and the old nun’s black eyes bored into his. “And three: Had she felt it necessary to leave suddenly and without informing us, where would she go? To you, Monsieur Murray. She knows no one else in Paris, does she?”

“I … well, no, not really.” He was flustered, almost stammering, confusion and a burgeoning alarm for Joan making it difficult to think.

“But you have not seen her since you brought us the chalice and paten—and I thank you and your cousin with the deepest sentiments of gratitude, Monsieur—that would be two days ago?”

Mother Hildegarde nodded, her lips nearly invisible, pressed together amid the lines of her face.

“Did she say anything to you on that occasion? Anything that might assist us in discovering her?”

“I … well…” Jesus, should he tell her what Joan had said about the voices she heard? It couldn’t have anything to do with this, surely, and it wasna his secret to share. On the other hand, Joan had said she meant to tell Mother Hildegarde about them …

“You’d better tell me, my son.” The Mother Superior’s voice was somewhere between resignation and command. “I see she told you something.”

“Well, she did, then, Mother,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face in distraction. “But I canna see how it has anything to do—she hears voices,” he blurted, seeing Mother Hildegarde’s eyes narrow dangerously.

“Voices,” he said helplessly. “They come and say things to her. She thinks maybe they’re angels, but she doesn’t know. And she can see when folk are going to die. Sometimes,” he added dubiously. “I don’t know whether she can always say.”

“Par le sang sacré de Jésus-Christ,” the old nun said, sitting up straight as an oak sapling. “Why did she not … well, never mind about that. Does anyone else know this?”

“She was afraid to tell anyone. That’s why—well, one reason why—she came to the convent. She thought you might believe her.”

“I might,” Mother Hildegarde said dryly. She shook her head rapidly, making her veil flap. “Nom de nom! Why did her mother not tell me this?”

“Yes! She brought me a letter from her mother, very kind, asking after my health and recommending Joan to me—but surely her mother would have known!”

“I don’t think she … wait.” He remembered Joan fishing out the carefully folded note from her pocket. “The letter she brought—it was from Claire Fraser. That’s the one you mean?”

He took a deep breath, a dozen disconnected pieces falling suddenly into a pattern. He cleared his throat, and raised a tentative finger.

“One, Mother: Claire Fraser is the wife of Joan’s stepfather. But she’s not Joan’s mother.”

“And two: My cousin Jared tells me that Claire Fraser was known as a—a White Lady, when she lived in Paris many years ago.”

“She was no such thing. Stuff! But it is true that there was a common rumor to that effect,” she admitted grudgingly. She drummed her fingers on the desk; they were knobbed with age, but surprisingly nimble, and he remembered that Mother Hildegarde had been a famous musician in her youth.

“I don’t know if it has anything to do … Do you know of a man called the Comte St. Germain?”

The old nun was already the color of parchment; at this, she went white as bone and her fingers gripped the edge of the desk.

“I do,” she said. “Tell me—and quickly—what he has to do with Sister Gregory.”

Joan gave the very solid door one last kick, for appearances’ sake, then turned and collapsed with her back against it, panting. The room was huge, extending across the entire top floor of the house, though pillars and joists here and there showed where walls had been knocked down. It smelled peculiar, and looked even more peculiar.

“A Dhia, cuidich mi,” she whispered to herself, reverting to the Gaelic in her agitation. There was a very fancy bed in one corner, piled with feather pillows and bolsters, with writhing corner-posts and heavy swags and curtains of cloth embroidered in what looked like gold and silver thread. Did the Comte—he’d told her his name, or at least his title, when she’d asked—haul young women up here for wicked ends on a regular basis? For surely he hadn’t set up this establishment solely in anticipation of her arrival … the area near the bed was equipped with all kinds of solid, shiny furniture with marble tops and alarming gilt feet that looked like they’d come off some kind of beast or bird with great curving claws.

He’d told her in the most matter-of-fact way that he was a sorcerer, too, and not to touch anything. She crossed herself, and averted her gaze from the table with the nastiest-looking feet; maybe he’d charmed the furniture, and it came to life and walked round after dark. The thought made her move hastily off to the farther end of the room, rosary clutched tight in one hand.

This side of the room was scarcely less alarming, but at least it didn’t look as though any of the big colored glass balls and jars and tubes could move on their own. It was where the worst smells were coming from, though; something that smelled like burnt hair and treacle, and something else very sharp that curled the hairs in your nose, like it did when someone dug out a jakes for the saltpeter. But there was a window near the long table where all this sinister stuff was laid out, and she went to this at once.

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 from getting out?

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 exactly 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 for a moment, leaving her huddled back in the corner of the seat while he thought intently about something, lips pursing in and out. She’d thought of jumping out—had almost got up her nerve to reach for the door handle, though the coach was rattling on at such a pace she was almost sure to be killed—but then his eyes had fastened on her again, pinning her to the seat as though he’d stabbed her through the chest with a knitting-needle.

“Any number of them,” she’d said, thinking that if he was mad, she’d best humor him. “Green ones, mostly.”

His nostrils had flared in sudden anger, and she’d shrunk back into the seat. But then he had snorted, and relapsed into a sort of brooding stare, emerging from this only to say, “The rats didn’t all die,” in a somewhat accusatory tone, as though it were her fault.

Her mouth was so dry that she could barely speak, but had managed to say, “Oh? Did ye try rat’s-bane, then?” But she’d spoken in English, too rattled to summon any French, and he seemed not to take note. 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’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 could 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. But if so, why hadn’t he asked her, instead of dragging her off? And what had he gone off to do now?

She got up again, and explored the room, thinking anyway. 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?

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, Berthe, 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 Berthe, as though for an explanation.

Berthe’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?

“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 Berthe 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 Berthe to Michael and back.

“Leave,” said Berthe 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,” Berthe 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.

Don’t do it. That’s what Joan said the voices had told her. Was this what they’d meant?

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.

Don’t 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.

Michael’s 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. Berthe snorted and looking up, he 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 … Léonie told me yesterday. That was why I came to talk to Charles.” Well, he would certainly have mentioned Léonie. 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!”

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.

“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.

“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, even if he did—or know it was hers. Why should he? All nun’s 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 of the house, 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 the rosary lay in a scatter of glass fragments. At once he looked up, searching, and saw the broken window just as the big door opened.

“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 into 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.

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 Rue St. Andre 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, chérie.” 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.

“The Old 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.”

“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 faery. He smiled at her, though his heart was now thumping audibly in his ears. Two hundred years! For that was what Mélisande—“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 of 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.

Joan’s rosary was also in that pocket; he took it out and wound it round his left hand, holding the beads for comfort—he was too distracted to pray, beyond the words he repeated silently over and over, hardly noticing what he said.

“Tell me,” the Comte asked curiously, “why did you speak to me in the market that day?”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Joan replied briefly. She didn’t trust him an inch; still less, since he’d offered her the brandy. It hadn’t struck her before that he really might be one of the Auld Ones. They could walk about, looking just like people. Her own mother had been convinced for years—and even some of the Murrays thought so—that Da’s wife Claire was one. She herself wasn’t sure; Claire had been kind to her, but no one said the Folk couldn’t be kind if they wanted to.

Da’s wife. A sudden thought paralyzed her; the memory of her first meeting with Mother Hildegarde, when she’d given the Mother Superior Claire’s letter. She’d said, “ma mere,” unable to think of a word that might mean “stepmother.” It hadn’t seemed to matter; why should anyone care?

“Claire Fraser,” she said aloud, watching the Comte carefully. “Do you know that name?”

His eyes widened, showing white in the gloaming. Oh, aye, he kent her, all right!

“No!” Joan said, with great force, and repeated it in French, several times for emphasis. “No, she’s not!”

But she observed, with a sinking heart, that her force had been misplaced. He didn’t believe her; she could tell by the eagerness in his face. He thought she was lying to put him off. Jesus, Lord, deliver me …

“I told you what I did in the market because the voices told me to!” she blurted, desperate for anything that might distract him from the horrifying notion that she was one of the Folk. Though if he was one, her common sense pointed out, he ought to be able to recognize her. Oh, Jesus, Lamb of God … that’s what he’d been trying to do, holding her hands so tight and staring into her face.

“The ones in my head,” she said, heaving an internal sigh of exasperation. “They tell me things now and then. About other people, I mean. You know—” she went on, encouraging him, “I’m a—a…” St. Jerome on a bannock, what was the word?!? “… someone who sees the future,” she ended weakly. “Er … some of it. Sometimes. Not always.”

The Comte was rubbing a finger over his upper lip; she didn’t know if he was expressing doubt or trying not to laugh, but either way, it made her angry.

“So one of them told me to tell ye that, and I did!” she said, lapsing into Scots. “I dinna ken what it is ye’re no supposed to do, but I’d advise ye not to do it!”

It occurred to her belatedly that perhaps killing her was the thing he wasn’t supposed to do, and she was about to put this notion to him, but by the time she had disentangled enough grammar to have a go at it, the coach was slowing, bumping from side to side as it turned off the main road. A sickly smell seeped into the air, and she sat up straight, her heart in her throat.

“Mary, Joseph, and Bride,” she said, her voice no more than a squeak. “Where are we?”

Michael leapt from the coach almost before it had stopped moving. He daren’t let them get too far ahead of him; his driver had nearly missed the turning, as it was, and the Comte’s coach had come to a halt minutes before his own reached it.

“Talk to the other driver,” he shouted at his own, half-visible on the box. “Find out why the Comte has come here! Find out what he’s doing!”

Nothing good. He was sure of that. Though he couldn’t imagine why anyone would kidnap a nun and drag her out of Paris in the dark, only to stop at the edge of a public cemetery. Unless … half-heard rumors of depraved men who murdered and dismembered their victims, even those who ate … his wame rose and he nearly vomited, but it wasn’t possible to vomit and run at the same time, and he could see a pale splotch on the darkness that he thought—he hoped, he feared—must be Joan.

Suddenly, the night burst into flower. A huge puff of green fire bloomed in the darkness, and by its eerie glow, he saw her clearly, her hair flying in the wind.

He opened his mouth to shout, to call out to her, but he had no breath, and before he could recover it, she vanished into the ground, the Comte following her, torch in hand.

He reached the shaft moments later, and below, he saw the faintest green glow, just vanishing down a tunnel. Without an instant’s hesitation, he flung himself down the ladder.

“Do you hear anything?” the Comte kept asking her, as they stumbled along the white-walled tunnels, he grasping her so hard by the arm that he’d surely leave bruises on her skin.

He merely shook his head in a displeased way, but more as though he were listening for something himself than because he was angry with her for not hearing it.

She had some hopes that he’d meant what he said, and would take her back. He did mean to go back himself; he’d lit several torches and left them burning along their way. So he wasn’t about to disappear into the hill altogether, taking her with him to the lighted ballroom where people danced all night with the Fine Folk, unaware that their own world slipped past beyond the stones of the hill.

“Be still,” he said, very quietly, though she wasn’t making any noise. “Listen.”

She listened as hard as possible—and thought she did hear something. What she thought she heard, though, was footsteps, far in the distance. Behind them. Her heart seized up for a moment.

“What—what do you hear?” she thought of asking. He glanced down at her, but not as though he really saw her.

“Them,” he said. “The stones. They make a buzzing sound, most of the time. If it’s close to a fire-feast or a sun-feast, though, they begin to sing.”

“Do they?” she said faintly. He was hearing something, and evidently it wasn’t the footsteps she’d heard. They’d stopped now, as though whoever followed was waiting, maybe stealing along, one step at a time, careful now to make no sound.

“Yes,” he said, and his face was intent. He looked at her sharply again, and this time, he saw her.

“No,” she whispered. Her lips felt stiff. “I don’t—I don’t hear anything.”

He pressed his lips tight together, but after a moment, lifted his chin, gesturing toward another tunnel, where there seemed to be something painted on the chalk.

He paused there to light another torch—this one burned a brilliant yellow, and stank of sulfur—and she saw by its light the wavering shape of the Virgin and Child. Her heart lifted at the sight, for surely faeries would have no such thing in their lair.

Michael caught a glimpse of them as they moved into a side tunnel. The Comte had lit another torch, a red one this time—how did he do that?—and it was easy to follow its glow.

How far down in the bowels of the earth were they? He had long since lost track of the turnings, though he might be able to get back by following the torches—assuming they hadn’t all burned out.

He still had no plan in mind, other than to follow them until they stopped. Then he’d make himself known, and … well, take Joan away, by whatever means proved necessary.

Swallowing hard, rosary still wrapped around his left hand and penknife in his right, he stepped into the shadows.

The chamber was round, and quite large. Big enough that the torchlight didn’t reach all the edges, but it lit the pentagram inscribed into the floor in the center.

The noise was making Rakoczy’s bones ache, and often as he had heard it, it never failed to make his heart race and his hands sweat. He let go of the nun’s hand for a moment, to wipe his palm on the skirts of his coat, not wanting to disgust her. She looked scared, but not terrified, and if she heard it, surely she—. Her eyes widened suddenly.

“What the devil are you doing here?” Rakoczy interposed his body between Raymond and the nun.

“Very likely the same thing you are,” the frog replied. “Might you introduce your petite amie, sir?”

Shock, anger, and sheer confusion robbed Rakoczy of speech for a moment. What was the infernal creature doing here? Wait—the girl! The lost daughter he’d mentioned; the nun was the daughter! Tabernac, had the frog sired this girl on La Dame Blanche? In any case, he’d discovered her whereabouts, and somehow had followed them to this place. He took hold of the girl’s arm again, firmly.

“She is a Scotch,” he said. “And as you see, a nun. No concern of yours.”

The frog looked amused, cool, and unruffled. Rakoczy was sweating, the noise beating against his skin in waves. He could feel the little bag of stones in his coat, a hard lump against his heart. They seemed to be warm, warmer even than his skin.

“I doubt that she is, really,” said Raymond. “Why is she a concern of yours, though?”

“That’s also none of your business.” He was trying to think. He couldn’t lay out the stones, not with the damned frog standing there. Could he just leave with the girl? But if the frog meant him harm … and if the girl truly wasn’t …

“Joan Mac—,” she said. “Er … Sister Gregory, I mean.” She tried to pull away from Rakoczy’s grip. “Um. If I’m not the concern of either of you gentlemen…”

“She’s my concern, gentlemen.” The voice was high with nerves, but firm. Rakoczy looked round, shocked to see the young wine merchant walk into the chamber, disheveled and dirty, but eyes fixed on the girl. At his side, the nun gasped.

“Sister.” The merchant bowed. He was white-faced, but not sweating. He looked as though the chill of the cavern had seeped into his bones, but put out a hand from which the beads of a wooden rosary swung. “You dropped your rosary.”

Joan thought she might faint from sheer relief. Her knees wobbled from terror and exhaustion, but she summoned enough strength to wrench free of the Comte and run, stumbling, into Michael’s arms. He grabbed her and hauled her away from the Comte, half-dragging her.

The Comte made an angry sound and took a step in her direction, but Michael said, “Stop right there, ye wicked bugger!” just as the little froggy-faced man said sharply, “Stop!”

The Comte swung first toward one and then the other. He looked … crazed. Joan swallowed and nudged Michael, urging him toward the chamber’s door, only then noticing the penknife in his hand.

“Let the air out of him,” Michael muttered. He lowered his hand, but didn’t put the knife away, and kept his eyes on the two men.

“Your daughter,” the Comte said hoarsely to the man who called himself Master Raymond. “You were looking for your lost daughter. I’ve found her for you.”

“Mine?” he said, astonished. “She isn’t one of mine. Can’t you tell?”

“Can you not see auras? The electrical fluid that surrounds people,” he elucidated, waving a hand around his own head. The Comte rubbed a hand hard over his face.

“For goodness’ sake, come in here!” Raymond stepped to the edge of the star, reached across and seized the Comte’s hand.

Rakoczy stiffened at the touch. Blue light exploded from their linked hands, and he gasped, feeling a surge of energy such as he had never before experienced. It ran like water—like lightning!—through his veins. Raymond pulled hard, and he stepped across the line into the pentagram.

“I—you—” he stammered, looking at the linked hands, where the blue light now pulsed gently, with the rhythm of a beating heart. Connection. He felt the other. Felt him in his own blood, his bones, and astonished exaltation filled him. Another. By God, another!

“That you were a—” He waved at the pentagram. “I thought you might be.”

“Yours?” Rakoczy looked down again; the blue light was pulsing gently now, surrounding their fingers.

“Everyone has an aura of some kind,” Raymond said. “But only my … people … have this.”

In the blessed silence, it was possible to think again. And the first thing that came to mind was the Star Chamber, the king looking on as they had faced each other over a poisoned cup. And now he knew why the frog hadn’t killed him.

His mind bubbled with questions. La Dame Blanche, blue light, Mélisande, and Madeleine … The thought of Madeleine and what grew in her womb nearly stopped him, but the urge to find out, to know at last, was too strong.

“I mean it.” The frog’s grip tightened on his. “It’s not a safe thing to know, let alone to do.”

Rakoczy laughed, feeling all at once exhilarated, full of joy. Why should he fear knowledge? Perhaps the passage would kill him—but he had a pocket full of gems, and besides, what was the point of waiting to die slowly?

“Tell me!” he said, squeezing the other’s hand. “For the sake of our shared blood!”

Joan stood stock-still, amazed. Michael’s arm was still around her, but she scarcely noticed.

He looked wildly back at the scene before them. The two men stood face-to-face, hands locked together, their mouths moving in animated conversation—in total silence. It was like watching mimes, but even less interesting.

“I dinna care what they are. Loons, criminals, demons, angels … come on!” He dropped his arm and seized her hand, but she was planted solid as an oak sapling, her eyes growing wide and wider.

She gripped his hand hard enough to grind the bones and shrieked at the top of her lungs, “Don’t do it!”

He whirled round just in time to see the front of the Comte’s coat explode in sparks. And then they vanished.

They stumbled together down the long pale passages, bathed in the flickering light of dying torches, red, yellow, blue, green, a ghastly purple that made Joan’s face look drowned.

“Des feux d’artifice,” Michael said. His voice sounded queer, echoing in the empty tunnels. “A conjuror’s trick.”

“Oh.” It seemed too much a struggle to explain, and they went on in silence, hurrying as much as they could, to reach the shaft before the light died entirely.

At the bottom, he paused to let her go first, thinking too late that he should have gone first, she’d think he meant to look up her dress … he turned hastily away, face burning.

“D’ye think he was? That they were?” She was hanging on to the ladder, a few feet above him. Beyond her, he could see the stars, serene in a velvet sky.

“Were what?” He looked at her face, so as not to risk her modesty. She was looking better now, but very serious.

“I suppose they must ha’ been.” His mind was moving very slowly; he didn’t want to have to try to think. He motioned to her to climb, and followed her up, his eyes tightly shut. If they were Auld Ones, then likely so was Auntie Claire. He truly didn’t want to think about that.

He drew the fresh air gratefully into his lungs. The wind was toward the city now, coming off the fields, full of the resinous cool scent of pine trees and the breath of summer grass and cattle. He felt Joan breathe it in, sigh deeply, and then she turned to him, put her arms around him, and rested her forehead on his chest. He put his arms round her and they stood for some time, in peace.

“Ye’d best take me back, then,” she said. “The sisters will be half out o’ their minds.”

He was conscious of a sharp sense of disappointment, but turned obediently toward the coach, standing in the distance. Then he turned back.

“I dinna need a voice to tell me that.” She brushed a hand through her hair, smoothing it off her face. “In the Highlands, if a man’s widowed, he takes another wife as soon as he can get one; he’s got to have someone to mend his shirt and rear his bairns. But Sister Philomène says it’s different in Paris; that a man might mourn for a year.”

“He might,” he said, after a short silence. Would a year be enough, he wondered, to heal the great hole where Lillie had been? He knew he would never forget—never stop looking for her—but he didn’t forget what Ian had told him, either:

“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.”

“It’s a year before a postulant makes up her mind. Whether to stay and become a novice—or … or leave. It takes time. To know.”

“Michael,” she said. “Kiss me, aye? I think I should maybe know that, before I decide.”

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, number one New York Times bestselling Outlander novels, which include Outlander, Dragonfly In Amber, Voyager, Drums Of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath Of Snow And Ashes, and An Echo In The Bone, with twenty million copies in print worldwide. She has also written a graphic novel called The Exile, and a number of novels and novellas about her character, Lord John Grey, the latest of which, The Scottish Prisoner, came out in 2011. The eighth novel in the main series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, will be published in 2013.