“That will happen to you, Fraser. Just a few more hours, and you’ll feel the noose.” The voice laughed, pleased with itself. “You’ll go to your death with your arse burning from my pleasure, and when you lose your bowels, it will be my spunk running down your legs and dripping on the ground below the gallows.”
He made no sound. He could smell himself, crusted with filth from his imprisonment, acrid with the sweat of fear and anger. And the man behind him, the rank stench of the animal breaking through the delicate scent of the lavender toilet water.
“The blanket,” he said. His eyes were closed, face strained in the moonlight. “It was rough under my face, and all I could see were the stones of the wall before me. There was nothing there to fix my mind to… nothing I could see. So I kept my eyes closed and thought of the blanket under my cheek. It was all I could feel besides the pain… and him. I… held to it.”
“Jamie. Let me hold you.” I spoke quietly, trying to calm the frenzy I could feel running through his blood. His grip on my arms was tight enough to numb them. But he wouldn’t let me move closer; he held me away as surely as he clung to me.
Suddenly he freed me, jerking away and turning toward the moon-filled window. He stood tense and quivering as a bowstring just fired, but his voice was calm.
“No. I willna use ye that way, lassie. Ye shallna be part of it.”
I took a step toward him, but he stopped me with a quick motion. He turned his face back to the window, calm now, and blank as the glass he looked through.
“Get ye to bed, lassie. Leave me to myself a bit; I’ll be well enough presently. There’s naught to worry ye now.”
He stretched his arms out, grasping the window frame, blotting out the light with his body. His shoulders swelled with effort, and I could tell that he was pushing against the wood with all his might.
“It was only a dream. Jack Randall is dead.”
I had at length fallen asleep, with Jamie still poised at the window, staring out into the face of the moon. When I woke at dawn, though, he was asleep, curled in the window seat, wrapped in his plaid, with my cloak dragged over his legs for warmth.
He woke to my stirring, and seemed his normal, irritatingly cheerful morning self. But I was not likely to forget the happenings of the night, and went to my medicine box after breakfast.
To my annoyance, I lacked several of the herbs I needed for the sleeping tonic I had in mind. But then I remembered the man Marguerite had told me about. Raymond the herb-seller, in the Rue de Varennes. A wizard, she had said. A place worth seeing. Well, then. Jamie would be at the warehouse all the morning. I had a coach and a footman at my disposal; I would go and see it.
A clean wooden counter ran the length of the shop on both sides, with shelves twice the height of a man extending from floor to ceiling behind it. Some of the shelves were enclosed with folding glass doors, protecting the rarer and more expensive substances, I supposed. Fat gilded cupids sprawled abandonedly above the cupboards, tooting horns, waving their draperies, and generally looking as though they had been imbibing some of the more alcoholic wares of the shop.
“Monsieur Raymond?” I inquired politely of the young woman behind the counter.
“Maître Raymond,” she corrected. She wiped a red nose inelegantly on her sleeve and gestured toward the end of the shop, where sinister clouds of a brownish smoke floated out over the transom of a half-door.
Wizard or not, Raymond had the right setting for it. Smoke drifted up from a black slate hearth to coil beneath the low black beams of the roof. Above the fire, a stone table pierced with holes held glass alembics, copper “pelicans” – metal cans with long noses from which sinister substances dripped into cups – and what appeared to be a small but serviceable still. I sniffed cautiously. Among the other strong odors in the shop, a heady alcoholic note was clearly distinguishable from the direction of the fire. A neat lineup of clean bottles along the sideboard reinforced my original suspicions. Whatever his trade in charms and potions, Master Raymond plainly did a roaring business in high-quality cherry brandy.
The distiller himself was crouched over the fire, poking errant bits of charcoal back into the grate. Hearing me come in, he straightened up and turned to greet me with a pleasant smile.
“How do you do?” I said politely to the top of his head. So strong was the impression that I had stepped into an enchanter’s den that I would not have been surprised to hear a croak in reply.
For Master Raymond resembled nothing so, much as a large, genial frog. A touch over four feet tall, barrel-chested and bandy-legged, he had the thick, clammy skin of a swamp dweller, and slightly bulbous, friendly black eyes. Aside from the minor fact that he wasn’t green, all he lacked was warts.
“Madonna!” he said, beaming expansively. “What may I have the pleasure of doing for you?” He lacked teeth altogether, enhancing the froggy impression still more, and I stared at him in fascination.
“Madonna?” he said, peering up at me questioningly.
Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been staring, I blushed and said without thinking, “I was just wondering whether you’d ever been kissed by a beautiful young girl.”
I went still redder as he shouted with laughter. With a broad grin, he said “Many times, madonna. But alas, it does not help. As you see. Ribbit.”
We dissolved in helpless laughter, attracting the notice of the shopgirl, who peered over the half-door in alarm. Master Raymond waved her away, then hobbled to the window, coughing and clutching his sides, to open the leaded panes and allow some of the smoke to escape.
“Oh, that’s better!” he said, inhaling deeply as the cold spring air rushed in. He turned to me, smoothing back the long silver hair that brushed his shoulders. “Now, madonna. Since we are friends, perhaps you will wait a moment while I attend to something?”
Still blushing, I agreed at once, and he turned to his firing shelf, still hiccupping with laughter as he refilled the canister of the still. Taking the opportunity to restore my poise, I strolled about the workroom, looking at the amazing array of clutter.
A fairly good-sized crocodile, presumably stuffed, hung from the ceiling. I gazed up at the yellow belly-scutes, hard and shiny as pressed wax.
“Real, is it?” I asked, taking a seat at the scarred oak table.
Master Raymond glanced upward, smiling.
“My crocodile? Oh, to be sure, madonna. Gives the customers confidence.” He jerked his head toward the shelf that ran along the wall just above eye height. It was lined with white fired-porcelain jars, each ornamented with gilded curlicues, painted flowers and beasts, and a label, written in elaborate black script. Three of the jars closest to me were labeled in Latin, which I translated with some difficulty – crocodile’s blood, and the liver and bile of the same beast, presumably the one swinging sinisterly overhead in the draft from the main shop.
I picked up one of the jars, removed the stopper and sniffed delicately.
“Mustard,” I said, wrinkling my nose, “and thyme. In walnut oil, I think, but what did you use to make it nasty?” I tilted the jar, critically examining the sludgy black liquid within.
“Ah, so your nose is not purely decorative, madonna!” A wide grin split the toadlike face, revealing hard blue gums.
“The black stuff is the rotted pulp of a gourd,” he confided, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “As for the smell… well, that actually is blood.”
“Not from a crocodile,” I said, glancing upward.
“Such cynicism in one so young,” Raymond mourned. “The ladies and gentlemen of the Court are fortunately more trusting in nature, not that trust is the emotion that springs immediately to mind when one thinks of an aristocrat. No, in fact it is pig’s blood, madonna. Pigs being so much more available than crocodiles.”