38

A BARGAIN WITH THE DEVIL

Catarrh settled on Edinburgh like the cloud of cold rain that masked the Castle from sight on its hill. Water ran day and night in the streets, and if the cobbles were temporarily clean of sewage, the relief from stench was more than made up for by the splatter of expectorations that slimed every close and wynd, and the choking cloud of fireplace smoke that filled every room from waist-height to ceiling.

Cold and miserable as the weather was outside, I found myself spending a good deal of time walking the grounds of Holyrood and the Canongate. A faceful of rain seemed preferable to lungfuls of woodsmoke and germ-filled air indoors. The sounds of coughing and sneezing rang through the Palace, though the constraint of His Highness’s genteel presence caused most hawking sufferers to spit into filthy handerchiefs or the Delft-lined fireplaces, rather than on the polished Scotch oak floors.

The light failed early at this time of year, and I turned back, halfway up the High Street, in order to reach Holyrood before dark. I had no fear at all of assault in the darkness; even had I not been known by now to all the Jacobite troops occupying the city, the prevailing horror of fresh air kept everyone indoors.

Men still well enough to leave their homes on business completed their errands with dispatch before diving thankfully into the smoke-filled sanctuary of Jenny Ha’s tavern, and stayed there, nestled cozily into warm airlessness, where the smell of damp wool, unwashed bodies, whisky, and ale nearly succeeded in overcoming the reek of the stove.

My only fear was of losing my footing in the dark and breaking an ankle on the slippery cobbles. The city was lit only by the feeble lanterns of the town watchmen, and these had a disconcerting habit of ducking from doorway to doorway, appearing and disappearing like fireflies. And sometimes disappearing altogether for half an hour at a time, as the lantern-bearer darted into The World’s End at the bottom of the Canongate for a life-saving draught of hot ale.

I eyed the faint glow over the Canongate kirk, estimating how much time remained ’til dark. With luck, I might have time to stop at Mr. Haugh’s apothecary’s shop. While boasting nothing of the variety to be found in Raymond’s Paris emporium, Mr. Haugh did a sound trade in horse chestnuts and slippery-elm bark, and usually was able to provide me with peppermint and barberry, as well. At this time of year, his chief income was derived from the sale of camphor balls, considered a sovereign remedy for colds, catarrh, and consumption. If it was no more effective than modern cold remedies, I reflected, it was no worse, and at least smelled invigoratingly healthy.

Despite the prevalence of red noses and white faces, parties were held at the palace several nights a week, as the noblesse of Edinburgh welcomed their Prince with enthusiasm. Another two hours, and the lanterns of servants accompanying ball-goers would start to flicker in the High Street.

I sighed at the thought of another ball, attended by sneezing gallants, paying compliments in phlegm-thickened voices. Perhaps I’d better add some garlic to the list; worn in a silver pomander-locket about the neck, it was supposed to ward off disease. What it actually did do, I supposed, was to keep disease-ridden companions at a safe distance—equally satisfactory, from my point of view.

The city was occupied by Charles’s troops, and the English, while not besieged, were at least sequestered in the Castle above. Still, news—of dubious veracity—tended to leak in both directions. According to Mr. Haugh, the most recent rumor held that the Duke of Cumberland was gathering troops south of Perth, with the intent of marching north almost immediately. I hadn’t any idea whether this was true; I doubted it, in fact, recalling no mention of Cumberland’s activities much before the spring of 1746, which hadn’t arrived. Still, I could hardly ignore the rumor.

The sentry at the gate nodded me in, coughing. The sound was taken up by the guards stationed down the hallways and on the landings. Resisting the impulse to wave my basket of garlic at them like a censer as I passed, I made my way upstairs to the afternoon drawing room, where I was admitted without question.

I found His Highness with Jamie, Aeneas MacDonald, O’Sullivan, His Highness’s secretary, and a saturnine man named Francis Townsend, who was lately much in His Highness’s good graces. Most of them were red-nosed and sneezing, and splattered phlegm smeared the hearth before the gracious mantel. I cast a sharp look at Jamie, who was slumped wearily in his chair, whitefaced and drooping.

Accustomed to my forays into the city, and eager for any intelligence regarding the English movements, the men heard me out with great attention.

“We are indebted greatly to you for your news, Mistress Fraser,” said His Highness, with a gracious bow and a smile. “You must tell me if there some way in which I might repay your generous service.”

“There is,” I said, seizing the opportunity. “I want to take my husband home to bed. Now.”

The Prince’s eyes bulged slightly, but he recovered himself quickly. Not so restrained, Aeneas MacDonald broke out into a fit of suspiciously strangled coughing. Jamie’s white face blazed suddenly crimson. He sneezed, and buried his countenance in a handkerchief, blue eyes shooting sparks at me over its folds.

“Ah…your husband,” said Charles, rallying gallantly to the challenge. “Um…” A soft pink blush began to tint his cheeks.

“He’s ill,” I said, with some asperity. “Surely you can see that? I want him to go to bed and rest.”

“Oh, rest,” murmured MacDonald, as though to himself.

I searched for some sufficiently courtly words.

“I should be sorry to deprive Your Highness temporarily of my husband’s attendance, but if he isn’t allowed to take sufficient rest, he isn’t likely to go on attending you much longer.”

Charles, recovered from his momentary discomposure, seemed now to be finding Jamie’s patent discomfiture entertaining.

“To be sure,” he said, eyeing Jamie, whose complexion had faded now into a sort of mottled pallor. “We should dislike exceedingly the contemplation of such a prospect as you wish, Madam.” He inclined his head in my direction. “It shall be as you wish, Madam. Cher James is excused from attendance upon our person until he shall be recovering. By all means, take your husband to your rooms at once, and, er…undertake what cure seems…ah…fitting.” The corner of the Prince’s mouth twitched suddenly, and pulling a large handkerchief from his pocket, he followed Jamie’s example and buried the lower half of his face, coughing delicately.

“Best take care, Highness,” MacDonald advised somewhat caustically. “You may catch Mr. Fraser’s ailment.”

“One could wish to have half Mr. Fraser’s complaint,” murmured Francis Townsend, with no attempt at concealing the sardonic smile that made him look like a fox in a hen coop.

Jamie, now bearing a strong resemblance to a frostbitten tomato, rose abruptly, bowed to the Prince with a brief “I thank ye, Highness,” and headed for the door, clutching me by the arm.

“Let go,” I snarled as we swept past the guards in the anteroom. “You’re breaking my arm.”

“Good,” he muttered. “As soon as I’ve got ye in private, I’m going to break your neck.” But I caught sight of the curl of his mouth, and knew the gruffness was only a facade.

Once in our apartment, with the door safely shut, he pulled me to him, leaned against the door and laughed, his cheek pressed to the top of my head.

“Thank ye, Sassenach,” he said, wheezing slightly.

“You’re not angry?” I asked, voice somewhat muffled in his shirtfront. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“Nay, I’m no minding it.” he said, releasing me. “God, I wouldna ha’ cared if ye’d said ye meant to set me on fire in the Great Gallery, so long as I could leave His Highness and come to rest for a bit. I’m tired to death of the man, and every muscle I’ve got is aching.” A sudden spasm of coughing shook his frame, and he leaned against the door once more, this time for support.

“Are you all right?” I stretched up on tiptoe to feel his forehead. I wasn’t surprised, but was somewhat alarmed, to feel how hot his skin was beneath my palm.

“You,” I said accusingly, “have a fever!”

“Aye well, everyone’s got a fever, Sassenach,” he said, a bit crossly. “Only some are hotter than others, no?”

“Don’t quibble,” I said, relieved that he still felt well enough to chop logic. “Take off your clothes. And don’t say it,” I added crisply, seeing the grin forming as he opened his mouth to reply. “I have no designs whatever on your disease-ridden carcass, beyond getting it into a nightshirt.”

“Oh, aye? Ye dinna think I’d benefit from the exercise?” He teased, beginning to unfasten his shirt. “I thought ye said exercise was healthy.” His laugh turned suddenly to an attack of hoarse coughing that left him breathless and flushed. He dropped the shirt on the floor, and almost immediately began to shiver with chill.

“Much too healthy for you, my lad.” I yanked the thick woolen nightshirt over his head, leaving him to struggle into it as I got him out of kilt, shoes, and stockings. “Christ, your feet are like ice!”

“You could…warm them…for me.” But the words were forced out between chattering teeth, and he made no protest when I steered him toward the bed.

He was shaking too hard to speak by the time I had snatched a hot brick from the fire with tongs, wrapped it in flannel, and thrust it in at his feet.

The chill was hard but brief, and he lay still again by the time I had set a pan of water to steep with a handful of peppermint and black currant.

“What’s that?” he asked, suspiciously, sniffing the air as I opened another jar from my basket. “Ye dinna mean me to drink it, I hope? It smells like a duck that’s been hung ower-long.”

“You’re close,” I said. “It’s goose grease mixed with camphor. I’m going to rub your chest with it.”

“No!” He snatched the covers protectively up beneath his chin.

“Yes,” I said firmly, advancing with purpose.

In the midst of my labors, I became aware that we had an audience. Fergus stood on the far side of the bed, watching the proceedings with fascination, his nose running freely. I removed my knee from Jamie’s abdomen and reached for a handkerchief.

“And what are you doing here?” Jamie demanded, trying to yank the front of his nightshirt back into place.

Not noticeably disconcerted by the unfriendly tone of this greeting, Fergus ignored the proffered handkerchief and wiped his nose on his sleeve, meanwhile staring with round-eyed admiration at the broad expanse of muscular, gleaming chest on display.

“The skinny milord sent me to fetch a packet he says you have for him. Do all Scotsmen have such quantities of hair upon their chests, milord?”

“Christ! I forgot all about the dispatches. Wait, I’ll take them to Cameron myself.” Jamie began to struggle up in bed, a process that brought his nose close to the site of my recent endeavors.

“Phew!” He flapped the nightshirt in an effort to dispel the penetrating aroma, and glared accusingly at me. “How am I to get this reek off me? D’ye expect me to go out in company smellin’ like a dead goose, Sassenach?”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I expect you to lie quietly in bed and rest, or you’ll be a dead goose.” I uncorked a fairly high-caliber glare of my own.

“I can carry the package, milord,” Fergus was assuring him.

“You will do nothing of the kind,” I said, noting the boy’s flushed cheeks and overbright eyes. I put a hand to his forehead.

“Don’t tell me,” said Jamie sarcastically. “He’s got a fever?”

“Yes, he has.”

“Ha,” he said to Fergus with gloomy satisfaction. “Now you’re for it. See how you like bein’ basted.”

A short period of intense effort saw Fergus tucked up in his pallet by the fire, goose grease and medicinal hot tea administered lavishly all round, and a clean handkerchief deposited beneath the chin of each sufferer.

“There,” I said, fastidiously rinsing my hands in the basin. “Now, I will take this precious packet of dispatches across to Mr. Cameron. You will both rest, drink hot tea, rest, blow your nose, and rest, in that order. Got it, troops?”

The tip of a long, reddened nose was barely visible above the bedclothes. It oscillated slowly back and forth as Jamie shook his head.

“Drunk wi’ power,” he remarked disapprovingly to the ceiling. “Verra unwomanly attitude, that.”

I dropped a kiss on his hot forehead and swung my cloak down from its hook.

“How little you know of women, my love,” I said.

Ewan Cameron was in charge of what passed for intelligence operations at Holyrood. His quarters were at the end of the west wing, tucked away near the kitchens. On purpose, I suspected, having witnessed the man’s appetite in action. Possibly a tapeworm, I thought, viewing the officer’s cadaverous countenance as he opened the packet and scanned the dispatches.

“All in order?” I asked after a moment. I had to repress the automatic urge to add “sir.”

Startled from his train of thought, he jerked his head up from the dispatches and blinked at me.

“Um? Oh!” Recalled to himself, he smiled and hastened to make apologies.

“I’m sorry, Mistress Fraser. How impolite of me to forget myself and leave you standing there. Yes, everything appears to be in order—most interesting,” he murmured to himself. Then, snapping back to an awareness of me, “Would you be so kind as to tell your husband that I wish to discuss these with him as soon as possible? I understand that he is unwell,” he added delicately, carefully avoiding my eye. Apparently it hadn’t taken Aeneas MacDonald long to relay an account of my interview with the Prince.

“He is,” I said unhelpfully. The last thing I wanted was Jamie leaving his bed and sitting up poring over intelligence dispatches all night with Cameron and Lochiel. That would be nearly as bad as staying up dancing all night with the ladies of Edinburgh. Well, possibly not quite as bad, I amended to myself, recalling the three Misses Williams.

“I’m sure he will attend upon you as soon as he’s able,” I said, pulling the edges of the cloak together. “I’ll tell him.” And I would—tomorrow. Or possibly the next day. Wherever the English forces presently were, I was positive they weren’t within a hundred miles of Edinburgh.

A quick peek into the bedroom upon my return showed two lumps, immobile beneath the bedclothes, and the sounds of breathing—slow and regular, if a trifle congested—filled the room. Reassured, I removed my cloak and sat down in the sitting room with a preventative cup of hot tea, to which I had added a fair dollop of medicinal brandy.

Sipping slowly, I felt the liquid heat flow down the center of my chest, spread comfortably through my abdomen, and begin working its steady way down toward my toes, quick-frozen after a dash across the courtyard, undertaken in preference to the circuitous inside passage with its endless stairs and turnings.

I held the cup below my chin, inhaling the pleasant, bitter smell, feeling the heated fumes of the brandy clarify my sinuses. Sniffing, it occurred to me to wonder exactly why, in a city and a building plagued with colds and influenza, my own sinuses remained unclogged.

In fact, aside from the childbed fever, I had not been ill once since my passage through the stone circle. That was odd, I thought; given the standards of hygiene and sanitation, and the crowded conditions in which we frequently lived, I ought surely to have come down at least with a case of sniffles by this time. But I remained as disgustingly healthy as always.

Plainly I was not immune to all diseases, or I would not have had the fever. But the common communicable ones? Some were explainable on the basis of vaccination, of course. I couldn’t, for example, catch smallpox, typhus, cholera, or yellow fever. Not that yellow fever was likely, but still. I set down the cup and felt my left arm, through the cloth of the sleeve. The vaccination scar had faded with time, but was still prominent enough to be detectable; a roughly circular patch of pitted skin, perhaps a half-inch in diameter.

I shuddered briefly, reminded again of Geillis Duncan, then pushed the thought away, diving back into a contemplation of my state of health in order to avoid thinking either of the woman who had gone to a death by fire, or of Colum MacKenzie, the man who had sent her there.

The cup was nearly empty, and I rose to refill it, thinking. An acquired immunity, perhaps? I had learned in nurses’ training that colds are caused by innumerable viruses, each distinct and ever-evolving. Once exposed to a particular virus, the instructor had explained, you became immune to it. You continued to catch cold as you encountered new and different viruses, but the chances of meeting something you hadn’t been exposed to before became smaller as you got older. So, he had said, while children caught an average of six colds per year, people in middle age caught only two, and elderly folk might go for years between colds, only because they had already met most of the common viruses and become immune.

Now there was a possibility, I thought. What if some types of immunity became hereditary, as viruses and people co-evolved? Antibodies to many diseases could be passed from mother to child, I knew that. Via the placenta or the breast milk, so that the child was immune—temporarily—to any disease to which the mother had been exposed. Perhaps I never caught cold because I harbored ancestral antibodies to eighteenth-century viruses—benefiting from the colds caught by all my ancestors for the past two hundred years?

I was pondering this entertaining idea, so caught up in it that I hadn’t bothered to sit down, but was sipping my tea standing in the middle of the room, when a soft knock sounded on the door.

I sighed impatiently, annoyed at being distracted. I didn’t bother to set the cup down, but came to the door prepared to receive—and repel—the expected inquiries about Jamie’s health. Likely Cameron had come across an unclear passage in a dispatch, or His Highness had thought better of his generosity in dismissing Jamie from attendance at the ball. Well, they would get him out of bed tonight only over my dead and trampled body.

I yanked open the door, and the words of greeting died in my throat. Jack Randall stood in the shadows of the doorway.

The wetness of the spilled tea soaking through my skirt brought me to my senses, but he had already stepped inside. He looked me up and down with his usual air of disdainful appraisal, then glanced at the closed bedroom door.

“You are alone?”

“Yes!”

The hazel glance flickered back and forth between me and the door, assessing my truthfulness. His face was lined from ill health, pale from poor nutrition and a winter spent indoors, but showed no diminution of alertness. The quick, ruthless brain had retreated a bit further back, behind the curtain of those ice-glazed eyes, but it was still there; no doubt of that.

Making his decision, he grasped me by the arm, scooping up my discarded cloak with his other hand.

“Come with me.”

I would have allowed him to chop me in pieces before I made a sound that would cause the bedroom door to open.

We were halfway down the corridor outside before I felt it safe to speak. There were no guards stationed within the confines of the staff quarters, but the grounds were heavily patrolled. He couldn’t hope to get me through the rockery or the side gates without detection, let alone through the main palace entrance. Therefore, whatever he wanted with me, it must be a business that could be conducted within the precincts of Holyrood.

Murder, perhaps, in revenge for the injury Jamie had done him? Stomach lurching at the thought, I inspected him as closely as I could as we walked swiftly through the pools of light cast from the candleholders on the wall. Not intended for decoration or for graciousness, the candles in this part of the palace were small and widely spaced and the flames feeble, meant only to provide sufficient light to assist visitors returning to their chambers.

He wasn’t in uniform, and appeared completely unarmed. He was dressed in nondescript homespun, with a thick coat over plain brown breeks and hose. Nothing but the straightness of his carriage and the arrogant tilt of his unwigged head gave evidence of his identity—he could easily have slipped inside the grounds with one of the parties arriving for the ball, posing as a servant.

No, I decided, glancing warily at him as we passed from dimness to light, he wasn’t armed, though his hand clamped around my arm was hard as iron. Still, if it was strangling he had in mind, he wouldn’t find me an easy victim; I was nearly as tall as he was, and a good deal better nourished.

As though he sensed my thought, he paused near the end of the corridor and turned me to face him, hands tight above my elbows.

“I mean you no harm,” he said, low-voiced but firm.

“Tell me another one,” I said, estimating the chances of anyone hearing me if I screamed here. I knew there would be a guard at the foot of the stair, but that was on the other side of two doors, a short landing, and a long staircase.

On the other hand, it was stalemate. If he couldn’t take me farther, neither could I summon aid where I was. This end of the corridor was sparsely populated, and such residents as there were would undoubtedly be in the other wing now, either attending the ball or serving at it.

He spoke impatiently.

“Don’t be idiotic. If I wished to kill you, I could do it here. It would be a great deal safer than taking you outside. For that matter,” he added, “if I meant you harm, inside or out, why should I have brought your cloak?” He lifted the garment from his arm in illustration.

“How the hell should I know?” I said, though it seemed a definite point. “Why did you bring it?”

“Because I wish you to go outside with me. I have a proposal to make to you, and I will brook no chance of being overheard.” He glanced toward the door at the end of the corridor. Like all the others in Holyrood, it was constructed in the cross-and-Book style, the upper four panels arranged to form a cross, the lower two panels standing tall, forming the likeness of an open Bible. Holyrood had once been an abbey.

“Will you come into the church? We can speak there without fear of interruption.” This was true; the church adjoining the palace, part of the original Abbey, was abandoned, rendered unsafe by lack of maintenance over the years. I hesitated, wondering what to do.

“Think, woman!” He gave me a slight shake, then released me and stood back. The candlelight silhouetted him, so that his features were no more than a dark blur facing me. “Why should I take the risk of entering the palace?”

This was a good question. Once he had left the shelter of the Castle in disguise, the streets of Edinburgh were open to him. He could have lurked about the alleys and wynds until he caught sight of me on my daily expeditions, and waylaid me there. The only possible reason not to do so was the one he gave; he needed to speak to me without risk of being overseen or overheard.

He saw conclusion dawn in my face, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. He spread the cloak, holding it for me.

“You have my word that you will return from our conversation unmolested, Madam.”

I tried to read his expression, but nothing showed on the thin, chiseled features. The eyes were steady, and told me no more than would my own, seen in a looking glass.

I reached for the cloak.

“All right,” I said.

We went out into the dimness of the rock garden, passing the sentry with no more than a nod. He recognized me, and it was not unusual for me to go out at night, to attend to an urgent case of sickness in the city. The guard glanced sharply at Jack Randall—it was usually Murtagh who accompanied me, if Jamie could not—but dressed as he was, there was no hint of the Captain’s real identity. He returned the guard’s glance with indifference, and the door of the palace closed behind us, leaving us in the chill dark outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For my brother.”

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

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

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

“Tell me about it,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He looked faintly surprised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He told me. Everything.”

He made a small sound, half a sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was still there, patient in the cold dark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I laughed once more, this time genuinely.

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

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

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

Rage, I had said. Sickness. Horror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I undressed slowly, standing by the bed, looking down at him. He had turned onto his side and curled himself up against the cold. His lashes lay long and curving against his cheek; they were a deep auburn, nearly black at the tips, but a pale blond near the roots. It gave him an oddly innocent air, despite the long, straight nose and the firm lines of mouth and chin.

Clad in my chemise, I slid into bed behind him, snuggling against the wide, warm back in its woolen nightshirt. He stirred a little, coughing, and I put a hand on the curve of his hip to soothe him. He shifted, curling further and thrusting himself back against me with a small exhalation of awareness. I put my arm around his waist, my hand brushing the soft mass of his testicles. I could rouse him, I knew, sleepy as he was; it took very little to bring him standing, no more than a few firm strokes of my fingers.

I didn’t want to disturb his rest, though, and contented myself with gently patting his belly. He reached back a large hand and clumsily patted my thigh in return.

“I love you,” he muttered, half-awake.

“I know,” I said, and fell asleep at once, holding him.