I remembered how the millions of tiny bubbles had rushed into the narrow neck when the bottle was opened, smaller and finer than the bubbles of champagne, bursting joyous in the air. I laid one hand very gently on my abdomen, just above the womb.
There it was. There was no sense of him, or her, as I had thought there might be—but there was certainly a sense of Someone. I wondered whether perhaps babies had no gender—physical characteristics aside—until birth, when the act of exposure to the outside world set them forever as one or the other.
"Jamie," I said. He was tying back his hair, gathering it into a thick handful at the base of his neck and winding a leather lace about it. Head bent in the task, he looked up at me from under his brows and smiled.
"Awake, are ye? It's early yet, mo duinne. Go back to sleep for a bit."
I had been going to tell him, but something stopped me. He couldn't feel it, of course, not yet. It wasn't that I thought he wouldn't care, but there was something about that first awareness that seemed suddenly private; the second shared secret between me and the child—the first being our knowledge of its existence, mine a conscious knowing, the embryo's a simple being. The sharing of that knowledge linked us close as did the blood that passed through both of us.
"Do you want me to braid your hair for you?" I asked. When he went to the docks, sometimes he would ask me to plait his ruddy mane in a tight queue, proof against the tugging winds on deck and quay. He always teased that he would have it dipped in tar, as the sailors did, to solve the problem permanently.
He shook his head, and reached for his kilt.
"No, I'm going to call on His Highness Prince Charles today. And drafty as his house is, I think it wilna be blowing my hair in my eyes." He smiled at me, coming to stand by the bed. He saw my hand lying on my stomach, and put his own lightly over it.
"Feeling all right, are ye, Sassenach? The sickness is better?"
"Much." The morning sickness had in fact abated, though waves of nausea still assailed me at odd moments. I found I could not bear the smell of frying tripe with onions, and had had to ban this popular dish from the servants' menu, since the smell crept from the basement kitchen like a ghost up the back stairs, to pop out at me unexpectedly when I opened the door of my sitting room.
"Good." He raised my hand, and bent over to kiss my knuckles in farewell. "Go back to sleep, mo duinne," he repeated.
He closed the door gently behind him, as though I were already sleeping, leaving me to the early morning silence of the chamber, with the small busy noises of the household safely barred by paneled oak.
Squares of pale sunlight from the casement window lay bright on the opposite wall. It would be a beautiful day, I could tell, the spring air ripening with warmth, and the plum blossoms bursting pink and white and bee-rich in the gardens of Versailles. The courtiers would be outside in the gardens today, rejoicing in the weather as much as the barrowmen who wheeled their wares through the streets.
So did I rejoice, alone and not alone, in my peaceful cocoon of warmth and quiet.
"Hello," I said softly, one hand over the butterfly wings that beat inside me.
PART THREE
Malchance
18
RAPE IN PARIS
There was an explosion at the Royal Armory, near the beginning of May. I heard later that a careless porter had put down a torch in the wrong place, and a minute later, the largest assortment of gunpowder and firearms in Paris had gone up with a noise that startled the pigeons off Notre Dame.
At work in L'Hôpital des Anges, I didn't hear the explosion itself, but I certainly noticed the echoes. Though the Hôpital was on the opposite side of the city from the Armory, there were sufficient victims of the explosion that a good many of them overflowed the other hospitals and were brought to us, mangled, burned, and moaning in the backs of wagons, or supported on pallets by friends who carried them through the streets.
It was full dark before the last of the victims had been attended to, and the last bandage-swathed body laid gently down among the grubby, anonymous ranks of the Hôpital's patients.
I had dispatched Fergus home with word that I would be late, when I saw the magnitude of the task awaiting the sisters of des Anges. He had come back with Murtagh, and the two of them were lounging on the steps outside, waiting to escort us home.
Mary and I emerged wearily from the double doors, to find Murtagh demonstrating the art of knife-throwing to Fergus.
"Go on then," he was saying, back turned to us. "Straight as ye can, on the count of three. One…two…three!" At "three," Fergus bowled the large white onion he was holding, letting it bounce and hop over the uneven ground.
Murtagh stood relaxed, arm drawn back at a negligent cock, dirk held by the tip between his fingers. As the onion spun past, his wrist flicked once, quick and sharp. Nothing else moved, not so much as a stir of his kilts, but the onion leaped sideways, transfixed by the dirk, and fell mortally wounded, rolling feebly in the dirt at his feet.
"B-bravo, Mr. Murtagh!" Mary called, smiling. Startled, Murtagh turned, and I could see the flush rising on his lean cheeks in the light from the double doors behind us.
"Mmmphm," he said.
"Sorry to take so long," I said apologetically. "It took rather a time to get everyone squared away."
"Och, aye," the little clansman answered laconically. He turned to Fergus. "We'll do best to find a coach, lad; it's late for the ladies to be walking."
"There aren't any here," Fergus said, shrugging. "I've been up and down the street for the last hour; every spare coach in the Cité has gone to the Armory. We might get something in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, though." He pointed down the street, at a dark, narrow gap between buildings that betrayed the presence of a passageway through to the next street. "It's quick through there."
After a short, frowning pause for thought, Murtagh nodded agreement. "All right, lad. Let's go, then."
It was cold in the alleyway, and I could see my breath in small white puffs, despite the moonless night. No matter how dark it got in Paris, there was always light somewhere; the glow of lamps and candles seeped through shutters and chinks in the walls of wooden buildings, and light pooled around the stalls of the street vendors and scattered from the small horn and metal lanterns that swung from cart tails and coach trees.
The next street was one of merchants, and here and there the proprietors of the various businesses had hung lanterns of pierced metal above their doors and shopyard entrances. Not content to rely upon the police to protect their property, often several businessmen would join together and hire a watchman to guard their premises at night. When I saw one such figure in front of the sailmaker's shop, sitting hunched in the shadows atop a pile of folded canvas, I nodded in response to his gruff "Bonsoir, Monsieur, mesdames."
As we passed the sailmaker's shop, though, I heard a sudden cry of alarm from the watchman.
"Monsieur! Madame!"
Murtagh swung round at once to meet the challenge, sword already hissing from its scabbard. Slower in my reflexes, I was only halfway turned as he stepped forward, and my eye caught the flicker of movement from the doorway behind him. The blow took Murtagh from behind before I could shout a warning, and he went sprawling facedown in the street, arms and legs gone loose and nerveless, sword and dirk flying from his hands to clatter on the stones.
I stooped quickly for the dirk as it slid past my foot, but a pair of hands seized my arms from behind.
"Take care of the man," ordered a voice behind me. "Quickly!"
I wrenched at my captor's grip; the hands dropped to my wrists and twisted them sharply, making me cry out. There was a billow of white, ghost-like in the dim street, and the "watchman" bent over Murtagh's prone body, a length of white fabric trailing from his hands.
"Help!" I shrieked. "Leave him alone! Help! Brigands! Assassins! HELP!"
"Be still!" A quick clout over the ear made my head spin for a moment. When my eyes stopped watering, I could make out a long, white sausage-shape in the gutter; Murtagh, shrouded and neatly secured in a canvas sail-bag. The false watchman was crouched over him; he rose, grinning, and I could see that he was masked, a dark strip of fabric extending from forehead to upper lip.
A thin strip of light from the nearby chandler's fell across his body as he rose. In spite of the cold evening, he was wearing no more than a shirt that glowed momentarily emerald green in the passing light. A pair of breeches, buckled at the knee, and what amazingly appeared to be silk hose and leather shoes, not the bare feet or sabots I had expected. Not ordinary bandits, then.
I caught a quick glimpse of Mary, at one side. One of the masked figures had her in a tight grip from behind, one arm clasped across her midriff, the other rummaging its way under her skirts like a burrowing animal.
The one in front of me put a hand ingratiatingly behind my head and pulled me close. The mask covered him from forehead to upper lip, leaving his mouth free for obvious reasons. His tongue thrust into my mouth, tasting strongly of drink and onions. I gagged, bit it, and spat as it was removed. He cuffed me heavily, knocking me to my knees in the gutter.
Mary's silver-buckled shoes were kicking dangerously near my nose as the ruffian holding her unceremoniously yanked her skirt above her waist. There was a tearing of satin, and a loud screech from above as his fingers plunged between her struggling thighs.