Grey admitted to a reluctant admiration for Quinn's sangfroid. He behaved precisely as though they were all jolly companions, joking and telling stories, and such was his skill that in fact the atmosphere in the dank little shelter was relaxed and pleasant, in spite of what Grey either knew or suspected of the Irishman.
"And what of you, lad?" Quinn was saying to Tom. "D'ye have a tale to tell, to pass the time?"
Tom blushed visibly, despite the darkness.
"I'm no hand with a tale, sir," he said, deprecating. "I, um, could maybe read a bit, though?"
Tom had, for reasons best known to himself, brought along as light recreational reading for the journey a shabby volume borrowed from Hal's library, entitled The Gentleman Instructed. This was a treatise on deportment, etiquette, and general behavior, dating roughly from the year of Grey's birth, and, while extremely entertaining in spots, was perhaps a trifle obsolete in its advice.
"Oh, by all means, Tom," Grey said. "I'm sure all profit from a bit of elevating discourse."
Tom looked pleased and, after a bit of thumbing, cleared his throat and read:
"Dueling is a Great Evil, which a Christian Gentleman should strive always to avoid. Should appeal to Reason fail to resolve Conflict and Honor prevent gracious Capitulation, a Gentleman should then seek the Assistance of Friends, who by dint of Persuasion may bring your Opponent to a sense of Christian Obligation and Responsibility. However ..."
Someone must have given it to Grey's father--his name was inscribed on the flyleaf--but Grey couldn't imagine his father having actually purchased such a book himself.
Still, Grey reflected, he'd take The Gentleman Instructed any day in preference to Tom's usual favorite, Arbuthnot's Ailments, from which he was accustomed to regale Grey, in tones of gloomy relish, with descriptions of exactly what happened to persons so reckless as to neglect the proper balance of their humors. Allowing one's phlegm to get the upper hand was particularly dire, he understood, and cleared his throat in reflex at the thought, spitting neatly into the fire, which hissed and sizzled at the insult.
"Should Armed Conflict prove unavoidable, the Gentleman should give his Opponent every Opportunity for Withdrawal without loss of Reputation. To this end, such Epithets as 'Coward,' 'Seducer,' 'Fop,' or most particularly 'Dog' are strongly discouraged to be used."
Grey was beginning to wonder whether perhaps his mother had given the book to his father as a joke. It would be quite like her.
He relaxed against the backstop of his portmanteau and, with belly pleasantly full and lulled by Tom's reading, fell into a half dream in which he called Siverly out. A duel would be so much more straightforward, he reflected drowsily. "Have at you, sir!" And a straight thrust through the heart ... Well, no, better through the guts; the poltroon didn't deserve a clean, uncomplicated death.
He'd been out a few times, mostly with swords. Inconsequential encounters--both parties drunk, hasty words, perhaps a blow--that neither one could find enough coherence to apologize for while preserving any countenance.
The advantage to dueling while drunk, he'd found, was that there wasn't any sense of fear or urgency about it; it was an elevated sort of feeling, literally--he felt as though he stood a little above himself, living at a faster pace, so that he saw every move, every thrust, as though performed in exquisite slow motion. The grunt of effort, the tickle of sweat, and the smell of his opponent's body were vivid punctuations of their dance, and the sense of being intensely alive was intoxicating in itself.
He always won; it didn't occur to him that he might not. A decent fight, a simple stab, a quick slash that drew a little blood, honor satisfied, and they stood together, chests heaving, often laughing and leaning on each other, still drunk. He hadn't had that sort of duel in years, though.
"Ye've been out now and then yourself, haven't ye, Jamie?"
Distracted by memory, Grey hadn't noticed that Tom had stopped reading, but was pulled from his thoughts by Quinn's interjection. Grey looked up and caught a most peculiar expression on Jamie's face.
"Once or twice," Jamie muttered, averting his eyes. He picked up a stick and poked the fire unnecessarily, making the peats crumble and glow.
"In the Bois de Boulogne, wasn't it? With some Englishman. I recall hearing about it--a famous fight! And did ye not end in the Bastille for it?" Quinn laughed.
Fraser glanced round with a truly awful look in his eyes, and had Quinn been watching him, he would either have been turned to stone on the spot or leapt up and run for his life.
John himself leapt in, wanting above all to disrupt the conversation.
"I once killed a man by accident during a duel--or thought I had. It was the last duel I fought; I think it might be the last altogether. A most distressing experience."
That duel had been with pistols. He hadn't been drunk then. He'd been suffering the aftereffects of being electrocuted by an electric eel, and the entire experience had been so unreal that he still didn't trust his memories of it. He had no idea how it had begun, still less how it had finished.
His opponent had died, and he regretted that--though not very much, he admitted to himself; Nicholls had been a boor and a waste to society, and, besides, he'd asked for it. Still, his death had been an accident, and Grey really preferred to kill on purpose, when it was necessary.
Interrupted, but not offended, Tom shut the book with his finger in it to hold his place and leaned forward, face wary. That duel had sent him and Lord John to Canada; he hadn't been there when Grey killed Nicholls but certainly remembered the occasion, and it occurred to Grey to wonder whether Tom had chosen the Gentleman's admonition against dueling on purpose.
Quinn's interest had shifted from Fraser to Grey, though, which was what Grey had intended, so he answered when Quinn inquired what he meant by saying he thought he'd killed the man by accident.
"I meant to delope--to fire up into the air?" Quinn nodded impatiently, familiar with the term. "But my man fell and sat bleeding on the grass--he was quite alive, though, and didn't seem much hurt. The bullet had gone up and more or less fallen on him from a height but hadn't struck him on the head or anything. He walked off, in fact, in the company of a surgeon who happened to be there--it was following a party. I was therefore entirely shocked to hear the next morning that he'd died."
"An accident, sure. But are ye saying that really wasn't the way of it, at all?"
"I am, indeed. It was months later that I received a letter from the surgeon, informing me that the man had had a congenital weakness of the heart--an aneurysm, he called it--that had burst as a result of the shock. It wasn't my shot at all that had killed him--or only indirectly--and Dr. Hunter said that he might have died at any time."
"Dr. Hunter?" Quinn sat up straight and crossed himself. "John Hunter, is it--him they call the Body-Snatcher?"
"Dr. John Hunter, yes," Grey said warily, suddenly on dicey ground. He hadn't meant to mention Hunter by name--and hadn't expected either of the men to know that name, either. Hunter did indeed have a most unsavory reputation, being rapacious in the collection of bodies for dissection. And the question as to just how Dr. Hunter knew of Nicholls's aneurysm ...
"God between us and evil," Quinn said, shuddering visibly. His usual breezy manner had quite vanished. "Think of it! To be taken off and anatomized like a criminal, skinned like an animal and your flesh cut into bloody bits ... God and all angels preserve me from such a fate!"
Grey coughed and, glancing to the side, caught Tom's eye. He hadn't shown Tom Dr. Hunter's letter, but Tom was his valet and knew things. Tom coughed, too, and neatly closed his book.
"It's a nightmare I have sometimes," Quinn confided, rubbing his hands together as though he were cold. "The anatomists have got me, and they've boiled up me bones and strung me up as a skellington, left hanging there grinning in some medical bugger's surgery for all eternity. Wake from that in a cold sweat, I tell ye truly."
"I shall keep a lookout, Quinn," Jamie said, making a decent attem
pt at a grin. "Should I see a skeleton wi' a missing eyetooth, I promise I'll buy it and see it given decent burial, just in case."
Quinn reached for his cup and raised it to Jamie.
"It's a bargain, Jamie dear," he said. "And I shall do the same for you, shall I? Though I'm not sure I should be able to tell the difference between your skeleton and that of a gorilla, now."
"And where would ye ever have seen a gorilla, Quinn?" Jamie leaned forward to pour himself another mug of ale.
"In Paris, of course. King Louis's zoo. The King of France is most generous to his subjects," Quinn explained to Tom, who had come to put more fuel on the fire. "On certain days, his collection of outrageous animals is open to the public--and a boggling sight they are, to be sure. Ever seen an ostrich, have ye, lad?"
Grey drew breath, relaxing slightly as the conversation turned safely away from dangerous topics. He wondered briefly about the famous duel in the Bois de Bologne and who the Englishman had been that Fraser fought. That would have been before the Rising; Fraser had mentioned being in Paris then, during a conversation about French novels that they had had at Ardsmuir.
Quite suddenly--and with a yearning that astonished him with its strength--he thought of those rare evenings of friendship, for they had been friends, in spite of their uneasy relationship as prisoner and gaoler; had shared conversation, humor, experience, a commonality of mind that was rare indeed. If he had only had more control, had not made his feelings known ... Well, a good many regrettable things wouldn't have happened, and he had cursed himself on many occasions since, for his bad judgment. And yet ...
He watched Fraser through his lashes, the glow of the burning peat shining red along the long, straight bridge of the Scotsman's nose and across the broad cheekbones, the light molten bronze in the loose tail of hair pulled back with a leather thong and dripping wet down his back. And yet ... he thought.
He had sacrificed their easiness together, and that was a great loss. Fraser, in his turn, had reacted with such revulsion to the revelation of Grey's nature as had led to terrible exchanges between them--and Grey still didn't wish to think about the revelation that had come to him regarding just why--but in the final analysis, he had not lost everything. Fraser knew. And that was in itself a remarkable thing.
There was not easiness between them any longer--but there was honesty. And that was a thing he had had--ever would have--with precious few men.
Quinn was telling some tale now, but Grey paid no great attention.
Tom had been humming under his breath as he went about the business of supper and now escalated to whistling. Absorbed in his own thoughts, Grey hadn't noticed what he was whistling but suddenly caught a phrase that echoed in his head with its words: Down among the dead men, let him lie!
He jerked, with a quick, reflexive glance at Fraser. "Down Among the Dead Men" was a popular song, originally from Queen Anne's time, but, in the way of popular songs, with words often adapted to current feeling. The patrons of this afternoon's pub had been singing a blatantly anti-Catholic version, and while Fraser had given little outward sign of offense, Grey was well enough accustomed to his facial expressions--or lack of them--as to have detected the attention to his ale cup that hid the smolder of his eyes.
Surely he would not think Tom's absentminded whistling a reference to--
"Sure, he'll not be troubled," said Quinn casually. "He doesn't hear music, the creature, only words. Now, when it came time to--"
Grey smiled and pretended courteous attention to the rest of Quinn's tale, but was deaf to its details. He was startled not only by the Irishman's acuity--as to have noticed both his wary glance at Fraser and to have deduced the cause of it--but by the casual revelation that Quinn knew that Fraser was tone-deaf.
Grey himself knew that, though he had momentarily forgotten it. In the time at Ardsmuir when he and Fraser had dined together regularly, Fraser had told him--as the result of a question regarding which was his favorite composer--that in consequence of an ax blow to the head some years before, he had quite lost the ability to distinguish one note from another.
True, Jamie might have mentioned this disability to Quinn in passing sometime during the last two days--but Grey doubted it extremely. Jamie was an extraordinarily private man, and while capable of extreme civility when he wanted to be, his cordiality was often used as a shield to keep his conversant at arm's length.
Grey flattered himself that he knew Fraser better than most people did--and paused for an instant to ask himself whether he was perhaps only discomfited to think that Fraser might have shared this personal bit of information with a stranger. But he dismissed that possibility at once. Which left the logical, if equally discomfiting, conclusion that Quinn had known Fraser before he joined their company. Long before London. With a sudden jolt, he recalled Quinn's remark about ostriches and the King of France's zoo. He, too, had been in France. And by the mathematical principle of equality, if A equaled B ... then B equaled A. Fraser had known Quinn before--intimately. And had said nothing.
19
Quagmire
THE MONASTERY OF INCHCLERAUN STOOD ON THE EDGE OF A small lake, a cluster of small stone buildings surrounding the church. There had once been a surrounding wall and a tall, circular tower, but these had crumbled--or been knocked down--and the stones lay tumbled, half sunk in the soft soil and mottled with lichens and moss.
Despite the signs of past depredation, the monastery was unquestionably inhabited and lively. Jamie had heard the bell from the far side of the lake and now saw the monks coming out of the church, scattering to their labors. There was a fenced pasture behind the buildings, where a small flock of sheep was grazing, and a stone archway showed the ordered rows of a vegetable garden, where two lay brothers hoed weeds in the resigned manner of men who had long since accepted their Sisyphean lot.
One of these directed him to the largest of the stone buildings, where a long-nosed clerk took his particulars, then left him in an anteroom. The atmosphere of the place was peaceful, but Jamie wasn't. Besides the conflict between Grey and Quinn--one more remark from either one, and he was seriously tempted to crack their heads together--there was the looming confrontation with Siverly to be thought about, and the duchess's cryptic warnings about Twelvetrees ... and, somewhere far down underneath the more pressing concerns, an uneasy awareness that Quinn's Druid cup was presumably here, and he had not quite made up his mind whether to ask about it or not. And if it was here, what then?
Despite these agitations, his first sight of the abbot made him break into a smile. Michael FitzGibbons was a leprechaun. Jamie recognized him at once from Quinn's description of the race.
The man came up perhaps to Jamie's elbow but stood straight as a sawn-off arrow, a stiff white beard bristling pugnaciously from the edges of his jaw and with a pair of green eyes, bright with curiosity.
These eyes had fixed upon Jamie at once, and lit with cordiality when he introduced himself and mentioned his uncle by way of bona fides.
"Alexander's nephew!" Abbot Michael exclaimed, in good English. "Aye, I mind you, boy. I heard a good deal of your adventures, years agone--you and your English wife." He grinned in his beard, displaying small, even white teeth.
"She turned St. Anne's finely upon its ear, from what I heard. Is she with you now, by chance? In Ireland, I mean."
Jamie could tell from the sudden look of awareness and horror on the abbot's face what his own must look like. He felt the abbot's hand on his forearm, amazingly strong for its size.
"No, Father," he heard his own voice say, calm and remote. "I lost her. In the Rising."
The abbot drew a breath of audible pain, clicked his tongue three times, and drew Jamie toward a chair.
"May God rest her soul, poor dear lady. Come, lad, sit. You'll have a tint of whiskey."
This wasn't phrased as an invitation, and Jamie made no argument when a sizable dram was poured and shoved into his hand. He lifted the glass mechanically toward the abbot in acknow
ledgment, but didn't speak; he was too busy repeating over and over within himself, Lord, that she might be safe! She and the child! as though fearing the abbot's words had indeed sent her to heaven.
The shock of it waned quickly, though, and soon enough the icy ball in his wame began to thaw under the gentle flame of the whiskey. There were immediate things to be dealt with; grief must be put away.
Abbot Michael was talking of neutral things: the weather (unusually good and a blessing for the lambs), the state of the chapel roof (holes so big it looked as though a pig had walked across the roof, and a full-grown pig, too), the day (so fortunate that it was Thursday and not Friday, as there would be meat for dinner, and of course Jamie would be joining them; he would enjoy Brother Bertram's version of a sauce; it had no particular name and was of an indistinct color--purple, the abbot would have called it, but it was well known he had no sense of color and had to ask the sacristan which cope to wear in ordinary time, as he could not tell red from green and took it only on faith that there were such colors in the world, but Brother Daniel--he'd have met Brother Daniel, the clerk outside?--assured him it was so, and surely a man with a face like that would never lie, you had only to look at the size of his nose to know that), and other things to which Jamie could nod or smile or make a noise. And all the time, the green eyes searched his face--kind but penetrating.
The abbot saw the moment when Jamie felt once more in command of himself and sat back a little, inviting him by posture more than words to state his business.
"If I might ask a moment of your time, Father ..." He drew the folded sheet of paper out of his bosom and handed it across. "I know ye've a reputation for learning and history, and I ken my uncle said ye've a rare collection of tales of the Auld Ones. I should value your opinion of this bit of verse."
Abbot Michael's brows were thick and white, with long hairs curling wildly in the manner of old men. These perked up, vibrating with interest, and he bent his attention to the paper, eyes flicking from line to line like a hummingbird in a flower patch.
Jamie's own eyes had been traveling round the room as Abbot Michael talked. It was an interesting place--any place where work was done interested him--and he stood up with a murmured excuse and went to the bookshelves, leaving the abbot to his close inspection of the poem.