* * *
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,” I observed. “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum.”
Jamie gave me a look.
“Oh, aye?” he said.
“The Duke being the dead man,” I explained. “Do you think the seals’ treasure was really his?”
“I couldna say for sure, but it seems at least likely.” Jamie’s two stiff fingers tapped briefly on the table in a meditative rhythm. “When Jared mentioned Mayer the coin dealer to me, I thought it worth inquiring—for surely the most likely person to have sent the Bruja to retrieve the treasure was the person who put it there.”
“Good reasoning,” I said, “but evidently it wasn’t the same person, if it was the Duke who put it there. Do you think the whole treasure amounted to fifty thousand pounds?”
Jamie squinted at his reflection in the rounded side of the decanter, considering. Then he picked it up and refilled his glass, to assist thought.
“Not as metal, no. But did ye notice the prices that some of those coins in Mayer’s catalogue have sold for?”
“I did.”
“As much as a thousand pound—sterling!—for a moldy bit of metal!” he said, marveling.
“I don’t think metal molds,” I said, “but I take your point. Anyway,” I said, dismissing the question with a wave of my hand, “the point here is this; do you suppose the seals’ treasure could have been the fifty thousand pounds that the Duke had promised to the Stuarts?”
In the early days of 1744, when Charles Stuart had been in France, trying to persuade his royal cousin Louis to grant him some sort of support, he had received a ciphered offer from the Duke of Sandringham, of fifty thousand pounds—enough to hire a small army—on condition that he enter England to retake the throne of his ancestors.
Whether it had been this offer that finally convinced the vacillating Prince Charles to undertake his doomed excursion, we would never know. It might as easily have been a challenge from someone he was drinking with, or a slight—real or imagined—by his mistress, that had sent him to Scotland with nothing more than six companions, two thousand Dutch broadswords, and several casks of brandywine with which to charm the Highland chieftains.
In any case, the fifty thousand pounds had never been received, because the Duke had died before Charles reached England. Another of the speculations that troubled me on sleepless nights was the question of whether that money would have made a difference. If Charles Stuart had received it, would he have taken his ragged Highland army all the way to London, retaken the throne and regained his father’s crown?
If he had—well, if he had, the Jacobite rebellion might have succeeded, Culloden might not have happened, I should never have gone back through the circle of stone…and I and Brianna would likely both have died in childbed and been dust these many years past. Surely twenty years should have been enough to teach me the futility of “if.”
Jamie had been considering, meditatively rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“It might have been,” he said at last. “Given a proper market for the coins and gems—ye ken such things take time to sell; if ye must dispose of them quickly, you’ll get but a fraction of the price. But given long enough to search out good buyers—aye, it might reach fifty thousand.”
“Duncan Kerr was a Jacobite, wasn’t he?”
Jamie frowned, nodding. “He was. Aye, it could be—though God knows it’s an awkward kind of fortune to be handing to the commander of an army to pay his troops!”
“Yes, but it’s also small, portable, and easy to hide,” I pointed out. “And if you were the Duke, and busy committing treason by dealing with the Stuarts, that might be important to you. Sending fifty thousand pounds in sterling, with strongboxes and carriages and guards, would attract the hell of a lot more attention than sending one man secretly across the Channel with a small wooden box.”
Jamie nodded again. “Likewise, if ye had a collection of such rarities already, it would attract no attention to be acquiring more, and no one would likely notice what coins ye had. It would be a simple matter to take out the most valuable, replace them with cheap ones, and no one the wiser. No banker who might talk, were ye to shift money or land.” He shook his head admiringly.
“It’s a clever scheme, aye, whoever made it.” He looked up inquiringly at me.
“But then, why did Duncan Kerr come, nearly ten years after Culloden? And what happened to him? Did he come to leave the fortune on the silkies’ isle then, or to take it away?”
“And who sent the Bruja now?” I finished for him. I shook my head, too.
“Damned if I know. Perhaps the Duke had a confederate of some sort? But if he did, we don’t know who it was.”
Jamie sighed, and impatient with sitting for so long, stood up and stretched. He glanced out the window, estimating the height of the sun, his usual method of telling time, whether a clock was handy or not.
“Aye, well, we’ll have time for speculation once we’re at sea. It’s near on noon, now, and the Paris coach leaves at three o’clock.”
* * *
The apothecary’s shop in the Rue de Varennes was gone. In its place were a thriving tavern, a pawnbroker’s, and a small goldsmith’s shop, crammed companionably cheek by jowl.
“Master Raymond?” The pawnbroker knitted grizzled brows. “I have heard of him, Madame”—he darted a wary glance at me, suggesting that whatever he had heard had not been very admirable—“but he has been gone for several years. If you are requiring a good apothecary, though, Krasner in the Place d’Aloes, or perhaps Madame Verrue, near the Tuileries…” He stared with interest at Mr. Willoughby, who accompanied me, then leaned over the counter to address me confidentially.
“Might you be interested in selling your Chinaman, Madame? I have a client with a marked taste for the Orient. I could get you a very good price—with no more than the usual commission, I assure you.”
Mr. Willoughby, who did not speak French, was peering with marked contempt at a porcelain jar painted with pheasants, done in an Oriental style.
“Thank you,” I said, “but I think not. I’ll try Krasner.”
Mr. Willoughby had attracted relatively little attention in Le Havre, a port city teeming with foreigners of every description. On the streets of Paris, wearing a padded jacket over his blue-silk pajamas, and with his queue wrapped several times around his head for convenience, he caused considerable comment. He did, however, prove surprisingly knowledgeable about herbs and medicinal substances.
“Bai jei ai,” he told me, picking up a pinch of mustard seed from an open box in Krasner’s emporium. “Good for shen-yen—kidneys.”
“Yes, it is,” I said, surprised. “How did you know?”
He allowed his head to roll slightly from side to side, as I had learned was his habit when pleased at being able to astonish someone.
“I know healers one time,” was all he said, though, before turning to point at a basket containing what looked like balls of dried mud.
“Shan-yü,” he said authoritatively. “Good—very good—cleanse blood, liver he work good, no dry skin, help see. You buy.”
I stepped closer to examine the objects in question and found them to be a particularly homely sort of dried eel, rolled into balls and liberally coated with mud. The price was quite reasonable, though, so to please him, I added two of the nasty things to the basket over my arm.
The weather was mild for early December, and we walked back toward Jared’s house in the Rue Tremoulins. The streets were bright with winter sunshine, and lively with vendors, beggars, prostitutes, shopgirls, and the other denizens of the poorer part of Paris, all taking advantage of the temporary thaw.
At the corner of the Rue du Nord and the Allée des Canards, though, I saw something quite out of the ordinary; a tall, slope-shouldered figure in black frock coat and a round black hat.
“Reverend Campbell!” I exclaimed.
He whirled about at being so addressed, then, recognizing me, bowed and removed his hat.
“Mistress Malcolm!” he said. “How most agreeable to see you again.” His eye fell on Mr. Willoughby, and he blinked, features hardening in a stare of disapproval.
“Er…this is Mr. Willoughby,” I introduced him. “He’s an…associate of my husband’s. Mr. Willoughby, the Reverend Archibald Campbell.”
“Indeed.” The Reverend Campbell normally looked quite austere, but contrived now to look as though he had breakfasted on barbed wire, and found it untasty.
“I thought that you were sailing from Edinburgh to the West Indies,” I said, in hopes of taking his gelid eye off the Chinaman. It worked; his gaze shifted to me, and thawed slightly.
“I thank you for your kind inquiries, Madame,” he said. “I still harbor such intentions. However, I had urgent business to transact first in France. I shall be departing from Edinburgh on Thursday week.”
“And how is your sister?” I asked. He glanced at Mr. Willoughby with dislike, then taking a step to one side so as to be out of the Chinaman’s direct sight, lowered his voice.
“She is somewhat improved, I thank you. The draughts you prescribed have been most helpful. She is much calmer, and sleeps quite regularly now. I must thank you again for your kind attentions.”
“That’s quite all right,” I said. “I hope the voyage will agree with her.” We parted with the usual expressions of good will, and Mr. Willoughby and I walked down the Rue du Nord, back toward Jared’s house.
“Reverend meaning most holy fella, not true?” Mr. Willoughby said, after a short silence. He had the usual Oriental difficulty in pronouncing the letter “r,” which made the word “Reverend” more than slightly picturesque, but I gathered his meaning well enough.
“True,” I said, glancing down at him curiously. He pursed his lips and pushed them in and out, then grunted in a distinctly amused manner.
“Not so holy, that Reverend fella,” he said.
“What makes you say so?”
He gave me a bright-eyed glance, full of shrewdness.
“I see him one time, Madame Jeanne’s. Not loud talking then. Very quiet then, Reverend fella.”
“Oh, really?” I turned to look back, but the Reverend’s tall figure had disappeared into the crowd.
“Stinking whores,” Mr. Willoughby amplified, making an extremely rude gesture in the vicinity of his crotch in illustration.
“Yes, I gathered,” I said. “Well, I suppose the flesh is weak now and then, even for Scottish Free Church ministers.”
At dinner that night, I mentioned seeing the Reverend, though without adding Mr. Willoughby’s remarks about the Reverend’s extracurricular activities.
“I ought to have asked him where in the West Indies he was going,” I said. “Not that he’s a particularly scintillating companion, but it might be useful to know someone there.”
Jared, who was consuming veal patties in a businesslike way, paused to swallow, then said, “Dinna trouble yourself about that, my dear. I’ve made up a list for you of useful acquaintances. I’ve written letters for ye to carry to several friends there, who will certainly lend ye assistance.”
He cut another sizable chunk of veal, wiped it through a puddle of wine sauce, and chewed it, while looking thoughtfully at Jamie.
Having evidently come to a decision of some kind, he swallowed, took a sip of wine, and said in a conversational voice, “We met on the level, Cousin.”
I stared at him in bewilderment, but Jamie, after a moment’s pause, replied, “And we parted on the square.”
Jared’s narrow face broke into a wide smile.
“Ah, that’s a help!” he said. “I wasna just sure, aye? but I thought it worth the trial. Where were ye made?”
“In prison,” Jamie replied briefly. “It will be the Inverness lodge, though.”
Jared nodded in satisfaction. “Aye, well enough. There are lodges on Jamaica and Barbados—I’ll have letters for ye to the Masters there. But the largest lodge is on Trinidad—better than two thousand members there. If ye should need great help in finding the lad, that’s where ye must ask. Word of everything that happens in the islands comes through that lodge, sooner or later.”
“Would you care to tell me what you’re talking about?” I interrupted.
Jamie glanced at me and smiled.
“Freemasons, Sassenach.”
“You’re a Mason?” I blurted. “You didn’t tell me that!”
“He’s not meant to,” Jared said, a bit sharply. “The rites of Freemasonry are secret, known only to the members. I wouldna have been able to give Jamie an introduction to the Trinidad lodge, had he not been one of us already.”
The conversation became general again, as Jamie and Jared fell to discussing the provisioning of the Artemis, but I was quiet, concentrating on my own veal. The incident, small as it was, had reminded me of all the things I didn’t know about Jamie. At one time, I should have said I knew him as well as one person can know another.
Now, there would be moments, talking intimately together, falling asleep in the curve of his shoulder, holding him close in the act of love, when I felt I knew him still, his mind and heart as clear to me as the lead crystal of the wineglasses on Jared’s table.
And others, like now, when I would stumble suddenly over some unsuspected bit of his past, or see him standing still, eyes shrouded with recollections I didn’t share. I felt suddenly unsure and alone, hesitating on the brink of the gap between us.
Jamie’s foot pressed against mine under the table, and he looked across at me with a smile hidden in his eyes. He raised his glass a little, in a silent toast, and I smiled back, feeling obscurely comforted. The gesture brought back a sudden memory of our wedding night, when we had sat beside each other sipping wine, strangers frightened of each other, with nothing between us but a marriage contract—and the promise of honesty.
There are things ye maybe canna tell me, he had said. I willna ask ye, or force ye. But when ye do tell me something, let it be the truth. There is nothing between us now but respect, and respect has room for secrets, I think—but not for lies.
I drank deeply from my own glass, feeling the strong bouquet of the wine billow up inside my head, and a warm flush heat my cheeks. Jamie’s eyes were still fixed on me, ignoring Jared’s soliloquy about ship’s biscuit and candles. His foot nudged mine in silent inquiry, and I pressed back in answer.
“Aye, I’ll see to it in the morning,” he said, in reply to a question from Jared. “But for now, Cousin, I think I shall retire. It’s been a long day.” He pushed back his chair, stood up, and held out his arm to me.
“Will ye join me, Claire?”
I stood up, the wine rushing through my limbs, making me feel warm all over and slightly giddy. Our eyes met with a perfect understanding. There was more than respect between us now, and room for all our secrets to be known, in good time.
* * *
In the morning, Jamie and Mr. Willoughby went with Jared, to complete their errands. I had another errand of my own—one that I preferred to do alone. Twenty years ago, there had been two people in Paris whom I cared for deeply. Master Raymond was gone; dead or disappeared. The chances that the other might still be living were slim, but still, I had to see, before I left Europe for what might be the last time. With my heart beating erratically, I stepped into Jared’s coach, and told the coachman to drive to the H?pital des Anges.