Dragonfly In Amber

My gasp of recognition made Danton look up sharply, one step below the landing. The next instant, he was grasped by the neck and flung against the wall of the landing with a force that sent the candlestick flying through the air.

Mary had seen him too.

“That’s him!” she exclaimed, in her shock forgetting either to whisper or to stutter. “The man in Paris!”

Jamie had the feebly struggling valet squashed against the wall, held by one muscled forearm pressed across his chest. The man’s face, fading in and out as the light ebbed and flooded with the passing clouds, was ghastly pale. It grew paler in the next moment, as Jamie laid the edge of his blade against Danton’s throat.

I stepped onto the landing, not sure either what Jamie would do, or what I wanted him to do. Danton let out a strangled moan when he saw me, and made an abortive attempt to cross himself.

“La Dame Blanche!” he whispered, eyes starting in horror.

Jamie moved with sudden violence, grasping the man’s hair and jerking his head back so hard that it thumped against the paneling.

“Had I time, mo garhe, ye would die slow,” he whispered, and his voice lacked nothing in conviction, quiet as it was. “Count it God’s mercy I have not.” He yanked Danton’s head back even further, so I could see the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed convulsively, his eyes fixed on me in fear.

“You call her ‘Dame Blanche,’ ” Jamie said, between his teeth. “I call her wife! Let her face be the last that ye see, then!”

The knife ripped across the man’s throat with a violence that made Jamie grunt with the effort, and a dark sheet of blood sprayed over his shirt. The stench of sudden death filled the landing, with a wheezing, gurgling sound from the crumpled heap on the floor that seemed to go on for a very long time.

The sounds behind me brought me finally to my senses: Mary, being violently sick in the hallway. My first coherent thought was that the servants were going to have the hell of a mess to clean up in the morning. My second was for Jamie, seen in a flash of the fleeting moon. His face was spattered and his hair matted with droplets of blood, and he was breathing heavily. He looked as though he might be going to be sick, too.

I turned toward Mary, and saw, far beyond her down the hall, the crack of light behind an opening door. Someone was coming to investigate the noise. I grabbed the hem of her nightrobe, wiped it roughly across her mouth, and seized her by the arm, tugging her toward the landing.

“Come on!” I said. “Let’s get out of here!” Starting from his dazed contemplation of Danton’s corpse, Jamie shook himself suddenly, and returning to his senses, turned to the stair.

He seemed to know where we were going, leading us through the darkened corridors without hesitation. Mary stumbled along beside me, puffing, her breath loud as an engine in my ear.

At the scullery door, Jamie came to a sudden halt, and gave a low whistle. This was returned immediately, and the door swung open on a darkness inhabited by indistinct forms. One of these detached itself from the murk and hastened forward. A few muttered words were exchanged, and the man – whichever it was – reached for Mary and pulled her into the shadows. A cold draft told me there was an open door somewhere ahead.

Jamie’s hand on my shoulder steered me through the obstacles of the darkened scullery and some smaller chamber that seemed to be a lumber room of some sort; I barked my shin against something, but bit back the exclamation of pain.

Out in the free night at last, the wind seized my cloak and whirled it out in a exuberant balloon. After the nerve-stretching trek through the darkened house, I felt as though I might take wing, and sail for the sky.

The men around me seemed to share the mood of relief; there was a small outbreak of whispered remarks and muffled laughter, quickly shushed by Jamie. One at a time, the men flitted across the open space before the house, no more than shadows under the dancing moon. At my side, Jamie watched as they disappeared into the woods of the park.

“Where’s Murtagh?” he muttered, as though to himself, frowning after the last of his men. “Gone to look for Hugh, I suppose,” he said, in answer to his own question. “D’ye ken where he might be, Sassenach?”

I swallowed, feeling the wind bite cold beneath my cloak, memory killing the sudden exhilaration of freedom.

“Yes,” I said, and told him the bad news, as briefly as I could. His expression darkened under its mask of blood, and by the time I had finished, his face was hard as stone.

“D’ye mean just to stand there all night,” inquired a voice behind us, “or ought we to sound an alarm, so they’ll know where to look first?”

Jamie’s expression lightened slightly as Murtagh appeared from the shadows beside us, quiet as a wraith. He had a cloth-wrapped bundle under one arm; a joint from the kitchens, I thought, seeing the blotch of dark blood on the cloth. This impression was borne out by the large ham he had tucked beneath the other arm, and the strings of sausages about his neck.

Jamie wrinkled his nose, with a faint smile.

“Ye smell like a butcher, man. Can ye no go anywhere without thinkin’ of your stomach?”

Murtagh cocked his head to one side, taking in Jamie’s blood-spattered appearance.

“Better to look like the butcher than his wares, lad,” he said. “Shall we go?”

The trip through the park was dark and frightening. The trees were tall and widely spaced here, but there were saplings left to grow between them that changed abruptly into the menacing shapes of gamekeepers in the uncertain light. The clouds were gathering thicker, at least, and the full moon made fewer appearances, which was something to be grateful for. As we reached the far side of the park, it began to rain.

Three men had been left with the horses. Mary was already mounted before one of Jamie’s men. Plainly embarrassed by the necessity of riding astride, she kept tucking the folds of her nightrobe under her thighs, in a vain attempt to hide the fact that she had legs.

More experienced, but still cursing the heavy folds of my skirt, I plucked them up and set a foot in Jamie’s offered hand, swinging aboard with a practiced thump. The horse snorted at the impact and set his ears back.

“Sorry, cully,” I said without sympathy. “If you think that’s bad, just wait ’til he gets back on.”

Glancing around for the “he” in question, I found him under one of the trees, hand on the shoulder of a strange boy of about fourteen.

“Who’s that?” I asked, leaning over to attract the attention of Geordie Paul Fraser, who was busy tightening his girth next to me.

“Eh? Oh, him.” He glanced at the boy, then back at his reluctant girth, frowning. “His name’s Ewan Gibson. Hugh Munro’s eldest stepson. He was wi’ his da, seemingly, when the Duke’s keepers came on ’em. The lad got awa’, and we found him near the edge o’ the moor. He brought us here.” With a final u

“D’ye ken where the lad’s da is?” he asked abruptly.

I nodded, and the answer must have been plain in my face, for he turned to look at the boy. Jamie was holding the boy, hugged hard against his chest, and patting his back. As we watched, he held the boy away from him, both hands on his shoulders, and said something, looking down intently into his face. I couldn’t hear what it was, but after a moment, the boy straightened himself and nodded. Jamie nodded as well, and with a final clap on the shoulder, turned the lad toward one of the horses, where George McClure was already reaching down a hand to him. Jamie strode toward us, head down, and the end of his plaid fluttering free behind him, despite the cold wind and the spattering rain.