The Spymaster's Lady

Fifteen

THE FIRE HAD BURNED DOWN TO EMBERS. THE wall of the chapel protected her back, and she held Adrian close to her to keep warmth between them. One cloak, like a blanket, spread over them both.

“There are pictures on the walls,” Adrian said. “I’ve been lying here looking at them. Where the plaster’s left, it’s painted with…I guess you’d call it a meadow. Flowers all over. Thirty or forty different kinds. The columns have vines of blue flowers running right up ’em.”

“It sounds pretty.”

“It is. Right above us on the ceiling, there’s a white bird with the sun behind it. That’s up there getting smoky from the fire.”

“I think we have been sacrilegious. I did not remember this was a house of God when I was roasting apples.”

“The gods moved out of here a long time ago.” Adrian hesitated. “You can’t see what happened here. Believe me, cooking apples is nothing compared to what was done in this place.”

“Do not tell me, then. I have seen enough elsewhere that I can imagine it.”

“We both have.” He moved restlessly, with a crackling in the bedding beneath them. “I wish you’d go to sleep. Unless you’ve decided to pull all these damp clothes off and make wild, passionate love.”

“No, Adrian.”

“I was afraid not. Be a good girl, then, and try to sleep. It’s not your watch. It’s too soon to expect them back. Much too soon.”

“How long will we wait for them?”

There were many things they did not need to say out loud to each other. “The rest of today. Tonight. Till tomorrow at noon. If Grey hasn’t come by then, we’ll leave.”

Rain dripped persistently at the far end of the chapel, near the door. There was a leak there, and a wide puddle of water. “He will not come, will he?”

“He’s been in worse corners than this. You French don’t know half the things he’s done.”

The cloud of misery that had been weighing upon her lightened somewhat. She must remember that Grey was no ordinary man. He had been in many dangerous snarls, and always he had untangled them and escaped. Perhaps he and Doyle were even now enacting some fiendishly clever plan, and he would come looking for her again as he promised. She would not put it past him.

“I know almost nothing of Grey. I have not interested myself in the British, as there are any number of other nations to spy upon. It is a grave lack in my education. You, little brother, I know something of, from the time you worked in Milan.”

“When did I become your little brother? I thought we were twins.”

“We are, but you are seventeen minutes younger. Because of this, I have always bullied you unmercifully. I work these things out when I am playing a role, you see. I used to blackmail all your candy from you when we were children in Grafing, and I told tales on you and got you into trouble. Even now I tell my friends about your mistresses so the young ladies are all shocked with you. I am a terrible person when I’m your twin.”

He chuckled weakly. “You’re a terrible person even when you aren’t, did you know that?”

“I have several terrible people to be, within me, when I need them.” Twigs scratched her annoyingly as she stretched. “What does he look like? I have not seen him, you know.”

“Skin like shoe leather. Wide across the shoulders. Big barrel of a chest…”

“Not Doyle, as you understand quite well. I have seen Monsieur Doyle several times in Vienna when we were with great attention not noticing each other. What does Grey look like?”

“He is the Head of Section for the British Intelligence Service. He is not for you, my child.”

“Bien sûr. I am also, you understand, not for him. But I would still like to know what he looks like.”

“Tall and battered around some. Not handsome.” That was all he had to say.

“I hope you are more eloquent in reporting to your superiors, for of a certainty I am no wiser than I was three minutes ago.” She grimaced toward the unseen ceiling. “Which was doubtless your intention. You are right, though. It does not matter.”

There was no picture of Grey in her mind. He was strong arms to harbor in and broad hands with calloused palms that had touched her everywhere. He was sternness and great certainty in deciding what must be done, so much certainty that the air around him was charged with it. He was the cleverest of spymasters, frightening when he was one’s enemy. He was the smell of clean soap and a roughness of his chin when he had not shaved for several hours. Those things, and a voice speaking the French of Toulouse, were all she had. Strange to know so much about him and not to know what he looked like.

Adrian said, “Have you fallen in love with Grey? That wasn’t wise of you.”

Sometimes, she was not wise. There were many people who could have told him this.

He said, “You aren’t going to deny it, are you? Not to your twin.”

She listened to the fire for a while. “When one says, ‘I will not let myself feel anything for that man,’ it is already too late.”

“Why, Annique?”

“I do not think such stupidity can have a reason.” She had most assuredly been stupid. “To love…it is a great madness for those in our profession.”

“You’re right about that.” He shifted again, uncomfortably. “It was a woman who put that bullet in me. Did you know?”

“One cannot tell from looking at the wound, as it happens.”

“A remarkable girl. Something like you, in a way. A great player in the Game.”

“You should still not let her shoot holes in you. You are also very good at this Game you play.”

“We’re all daunting as demons. Did Grey get to you yet, or are you still a virgin?”

She should not have been surprised. There was nothing this one would not say. “You make numberless assumptions, many of them wrong.”

“I don’t think so. Has he?”

“Has no one told you that you are nosy beyond belief?”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“But you will speculate upon this endlessly, whatever I say or do not say. And you will do it aloud. There is no shame in you, Adrian.”

“None.” She heard the smile in his voice.

She sighed. “Tiens. Your Monsieur Grey has done nothing at all to me, except that kiss which you saw, and perhaps some other careless bagatelles in these last few days, which I do not remember very well. It does not matter much, one way or the other, whether one has performed that particular act or not…And you may stop your foolish laughing, which will only make your shoulder ache.”

“If Grey doesn’t hurry up and take you to bed, I swear I will. You should find out what you’ve missed.”

“Very little, I suspect. This business of man and woman is not a club with secret passwords. Me, I know all there is to know of these things and—”

“That’s what I thought. You’ve done nothing. Grey is six or seven kinds of a fool.”

“This is a very indelicate conversation, and I do not believe I will have it with you any longer.”

“If you get the chance, make love to him. He’s not a master of the art, like me, but—”

“You may keep watch, you, in a more serious manner. And do not pander. It is unbecoming.” She pulled the cloak up so it covered him more securely.

“I’m warm enough.”

“Then you shall stay so. I am glad I did not make love to Grey. He annihilates any common sense I have, which is disturbing to me as a Frenchwoman, for we are a logical race. I am more a Frenchwoman than a spy. Did I tell you I am decided to retire from spying?”

“Really? Governments all over Europe breathe a sigh of relief. Will you do it any time soon?”

“The moment I deliver you to safety and perform one small final task I have set myself, I shall slip away to become obscure and harmless as a dormouse. Probably in your own England. It is a big place, according to the maps. I do not think your Service will find me.”

“It’s hard for a blind woman to hide.” He was warning her. Always, just an inch beyond their conversation, hovered the uncomfortable truth—that they were enemies.

“I shall manage. When we leave here, I shall take you to my smuggler friend up the coast, if he is not in prison again. He can be trusted utterly. We are here in his very domain, which is most fortunate for us. I do not think we could travel far, we two.”

“You know where we are.” He was amused.

“If this is the monastery of St. Honoré, I do. I hold many good maps within my head, little brother. It is a talent of mine. Also, I know the coast here well. When I was a child, we came to visit just this smuggler. He is an Englishman like you. One of my mother’s lovers. I have a picture of Englishmen not quite accurate, perhaps, from having met only spies and smugglers in my—”

A sound that was not wind or the fall of rain or the faint rumble of the surf slipped into the pattern of the night. A distant pounding. She stopped talking instantly.

Horses. They came from the direction of the coast. In a single surge of motion, Adrian was up, kicking the fire apart, smothering it.

The beat of hooves grew louder and slowed. The riders turned aside, coming into the monastery.

“It is better if we go separately,” she whispered. I will be his death. Adrian must abandon me and run. “You will go first. Out the back. I have cleared an escape route as far as the wall.”

“Of course. An escape route. In between picking apples, you cleared an escape route. I’d expect no less.” Laughter rippled in his voice. For Adrian, disaster would always be a game.

The monastery courtyard filled with clatter and men talking between themselves. They had come to search the buildings. The metallic scrape beside her said Adrian had gathered up the pistol and was checking it. Then came a small miscellany of sounds as he rooted through his bag. His knives would be finding their way to their accustomed spots about his person. One, in a sheath, landed in her lap.

“Take that and put it away,” he said. “This is what we’re going to do—”

“We will run. You go through the garden. I will—”

“Shut up, Cub, and listen. I leave first. I’m going to take these Frenchmen for a stroll in the woods. No telling what accidents might befall them there.” He could have been talking of a pleasant evening’s entertainment—stopping at a café, then on to the theater. “You, ma petite, will keep your head down and stay put till they’ve gone after me.”

If he walked silently into the rain, he would be safe. Instead, he would lead the hunters away from her. “Do not—”

“Money.” He snaked a smooth, cool purse into her bodice, between her breasts. “Buy something pretty. When you get to England…” He was fitting his boots on, fast. “…forget about hiding. Go to the British Service and turn yourself in. They’ll make a deal with you for the Albion plans. And they’ll keep you safe from Leblanc.”

“I will not, of course.”

“Listen carefully. In London, go to Number Seven Meeks Street, not far from Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Meeks Street, off Braddy. Remember that.”

“My memory is excellent. But I will not do it.”

“I’ll see you there. Stay alive. Grey will kill me if you don’t.” He pulled his coat from the bracken, awkward and rustling as he put it on, because one of his arms was not working.

He was most probably going to his death, so she used his true name. “Good luck, my Hawker.”

“Why are all the best women French spies? Bad planning on somebody’s part.” He set his open hand, briefly, on her hair. “I would kiss you good-bye, sister mine, but I don’t think I could stand the comparison with Grey. When I’m gone, count to fifty, get out the window behind you, and take that escape route you’ve laid out through the garden. I’ll be headed the other way. You have a chance, I think.”

Men approached the chapel. She could hear them. She took his sleeve to hold him one last minute and whispered, “The village of St. Grue is five miles north, up the coast. The smugglers are run by an Englishman named Josiah. The password is jasmine, like the flower. Tell him you are from me.”

“That’s where I’ll aim. Good luck, Annique mia.”

She heard his footsteps down the length of the chapel, then a scuffle as he climbed through one of the empty windows. A moment later, shots came. Two. Three. Four of them. He had showed himself to the men in the courtyard. Somehow, weak as he was, he must have made it over the wall. Men shouted and ran, yelling that he had escaped. Horses set steel on stones, riding for the gate.

She stayed quietly where she was and listened. Perhaps they would all be fools…

Sadly, they were not. One horse still shuffled on the stones outside. One man had remained behind to finish the search.

So. She would deal with him. She lifted her cosh and took her staff from where it leaned across the top of the altar. She had swept the floor clean in the path she must take. It was entirely silent to creep the length of the chapel and press herself flat against the wall behind the door. The searcher was in no hurry. Long minutes passed before she heard boots on the stones outside. The latch lifted and the door creaked. He crossed the threshold.

Paving stones crashed to the floor as the snare fell. He yelled. She was on him at once, using the cosh. It took only two blows to make him most thoroughly immobile.

She and Adrian had discussed at length where a man would fall, tangled and fighting in the web that came down upon him. It was a pleasure to discover how correct they had been. He was sprawled unconscious upon the doorsill itself. Her prize was breathing, so it was not even a murder on her conscience.

Altogether satisfactory. That was one man less to hunt Adrian. It had been worth the hour it had taken her to weave her trap.

She knew him by the smell of his clothing before she felt his features. How remarkably persistent Henri was turning out to be. She cut strips of his shirt with Adrian’s knife and tied him up before she extracted him from the strings of her trap. Then she dragged him the length of the chapel to the pillar she had picked out. He carried a useful knife, which she collected from him. She also helped herself to his money, of which there seemed to be a good deal. There is no rain which does not water someone’s turnips.

When she had finished, she wiped her hands on her dress—truly, she did not like touching Henri—and considered her alternatives. Should she go…or stay? Adrian might return. Grey would come, or Doyle, if either lived. Or Henri’s comrades might come looking for him. There would be visits from everyone, in fact, who was not lying in his blood out in the woods. This would be a most busy place, this chapel, if anyone survived.

Most certainly she should leave immediately. She had Henri’s horse. Within a few miles of this spot were fifty friends who would help her go to England. She was ruled by grave responsibilities. Whether she gave the Albion plans to England or remained loyal to France, she must not let them fall into Leblanc’s hands. It was stupidity beyond measure to stay in this chapel on such an eventful night.

If Grey came, he might be wounded. He might need help.

And so her decision was made. There were various small businesses to attend to. She walked outside into the cold density of rain, to lead Henri’s horse to an inconspicuous spot in the briar jungle behind the chapel. It tried, several times, to bite her and succeeded once. Then there was her trap to set once more, with rocks and rope, above the door. It was Ovid, after all, who said that one’s hook should always be cast, for there will be fish in the pool where one least expects it.

HAWKER crouched in the sand, feral and silent. They were closing in—not Leblanc’s men, but a gaggle of dragoons on patrol. Nowhere to hide. He was too weak to run.

But somebody else was out here in the dunes tonight. Smugglers. The sound of gunfire had flushed them out. They had as much to fear from the dragoons as he did. And they had a boat.

He flogged his body into motion, staggering toward the breakers. Mushy sand dragged at his feet. Nothing to see in this black fog. Nothing.

Follow the sound. Annique walked around like this all the time. He could do it for a hundred yards.

The boat was already yards out in the water, oars stroking with a regular slap. He splashed after it. “Attendez. Aidez-moi.” Damn cold stuff, seawater.

Clomping and shouting their way over the crest of the dunes, came the dragoons. Gunshot skipped across the water. He should have learned to swim. It couldn’t be hard. Dogs did it.

Waves knocked him down. His clothes weighed like lead. The ground disappeared beneath his feet, and he sank like a stone. He barely felt the arms that pulled him on board.

“Ain’t one of ours, Josiah,” an English voice said. Sharp corners bit in as they rolled him over. A bullet pinged into the side of the boat.

“Frenchie by the look of ’im.”

“Throw ’im back.” Sussex voices reached a consensus. He was lifted roughly and shoved to the gunnels.

“Slime-gut, buggering pus-suckers.” He skimmed back to consciousness. “Password’s…jasmine.”

“That’s the king’s English, that is. Stow ’im aboard, lads, I won’t leave even a Cockney drown.” The voice of command was an older man with a Yorkshire accent. Someone leaned close. “Cover ’im up and let’s get out of here.”

He was pushed into the bottom of the boat and became limp and unknowing as a fish.

BIRDS chittered back and forth, discussing the coming day to see if they liked it, which was something they did before it became truly light. She sat beside Henri, listening to him grunt and thrash. He was trying to get out of the knots she’d tied. He would not succeed.

When a single horseman entered the courtyard, she took up the cosh and got into position.

The second fish in her net fought more strongly than the first. She was not gentle with her cosh. This man, returning so soon, meant the hunt for Adrian was over. He must be dead, somewhere out in those trees. She was crying when she tied the man’s hands behind him.

Then she checked to see whether she had crushed his skull, subduing him. He was unconscious but breathing. He was Grey.

She did not often have a chance to indulge in her extensive collection of swear words. She did so now. Did Grey have no care for himself at all? Did he not know how dangerous she was? Nothing could be stupider than for Grey to come to this place, sneaking about, wearing another man’s coat so that she did not know him. She would tell him so when he woke up.

She went quickly to wet a cloth in the nearest puddle. By the time she got back, he was groaning. She had not hurt him lethally, then, doubtless because his head was of solid, stupid rock. She washed his face with the cloth to bring him fully awake and as repayment for the several wet cloths he had slapped across her.

“Annique? My God. You’re the one who set that trap?”

“But of course. My friend, I must tell you. More than two hours ago, men rode into this monastery. Leblanc’s men. Adrian led them away, except for Henri, who is over there.” She waved in the general direction of Henri, who was wriggling noisily by the pillar she had attached him to. “Adrian has not come back. There were shots…He is so weak. And there were at least three of them.”

“He’ll make it. He’s the sneakiest man alive. The men chasing us are great blundering dolts in the woods. City men. Untie me.”

“Doyle is…?” She couldn’t finish the question.

“Leading them in circles. They won’t get Doyle. He’s been doing this longer than you’ve been alive. And we killed a couple. Get these ropes off my hands.”

“I do not think so.” She did run her finger over the ties she had made, but it was to check that they were quite secure. “I wish Doyle very well. You also, Grey. I wish you the good luck in your travels.” She spoke to him, this last time, in the intimate form of the language, the one used between friends and lovers. “I part company with you now, as has been my intention for some while. This should not amaze you.”

“Don’t do this, Annique. Let me loose.”

Oh, but Grey was furious. He did not like to be helpless, this one. But there were other things in his voice…Worry for her. Caring. She could not be completely mistaken about that. She would not hurt like this if he did not care at all.

“I cannot stay long,” she said. “Leblanc’s men may become bored with chasing the excellent Doyle and return. And there will be gendarmes, before many hours pass, who will ask themselves why this wood is completely full to the brim with dead bodies everywhere. Do you need money? I will give you some of Henri’s, if you like.”

“Let me get you across the Channel. I’ll set you free on the other side, I promise. I’ll give you a head start. Whatever you want. Don’t do this on your own. You don’t have a chance.”

She smoothed the coat on his shoulder, where there were admirable muscles. She could indulge herself also in stroking his cheek. That was even better—the touch of skin upon skin. “Do you know, when I am with you I am not afraid at all. It is a magic altogether curious that happens inside the heart. I wish I could take it with me when I leave.”

She should not waste her time sitting and talking to him. They both had numerous tasks to accomplish before dawn. But she had not engaged in so many dissipations in her life, after all. She could allow herself a few minutes. “I am frightened of this next journey. The noise of the sea makes it hard to hear what is around me. I must go a long way through this desolation, which is chaotic and full of men trying to kill me. I would avoid it, if I could. I am not an idiot.”

“Think. Just stop and think. If by some miracle you get to England, you’re going to fall into my hands anyway. You’re just delaying the inevitable.” He was working very hard to get free, but she was no amateur at the craft of tying people. “I’m not going to hurt you. I swear it.”

“It is sad, my Grey. We are constrained by the rules of this Game we play. There is not one little place under those rules for me to be with you happily. Or apart happily, which is what makes it so unfair.” She sat more comfortably, pulling her knees up, resting her arms across them. “I have discovered a curious fact about myself. An hour ago I was sure you were dead, and it hurt very much. Now you are alive, and it is only that I must leave you, and I find that even more painful. That is not at all logical.”

In all the time she had known Grey—well, it was not so very long after all—she had never searched his face with her hands to know what he looked like. She could do it now. His hair was short, but soft to hold between her fingers. He had strongly marked bones in his nose—it had been broken once, she thought—and skin of an uncivilized roughness. The ridge of his eyebrows was most pronounced. Not pretty, Monsieur Grey. She had not thought he would be.

“I shall leave you the knife of Henri,” she said, “though I could use it myself. It is in apology for those bumps I have given you with this useful small cosh of mine. You must cut your way free when I am gone. I shall gift you also with Henri, who, I must tell you, I am beginning to find boring in the extreme in his attentions. I have still not murdered him, as you see. I am all benevolence.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed out there.”

“It is very possible.” She had one last minute to stroke his body, to hold on to the warmth of him. He was strong and worthy of respect, and gentle, and her enemy. Her choice of him seemed as inevitable as tides in the ocean. One drowns in the ocean. “Do you know the Symposium, Grey?” She set her palm against the stubble on his cheek. Men were not like women at all, to the touch. “The Symposium of Plato.”

“I’ll find you, wherever you go. You know that. I’ll never give up.”

“You will not find me. You shall not know at all where to look for me. Pay attention. Plato says that lovers are like two parts of an egg that fit together perfectly. Each half is made for the other, the single match to it. We are incomplete alone. Together, we are whole. All men are seeking that other half of themselves. Do you remember?”

“This isn’t the goddamned time to talk about Plato.”

That made her smile. “I think you are the other half of me. It was a great mix-up in heaven. A scandal. For you there was meant to be a pretty English schoolgirl in the city of Bath and for me some fine Italian pastry cook in Palermo. But the cradles were switched somehow, and it all ended up like this…of an impossibility beyond words.”

“Annique…”

Swiftly, softly, she leaned to him and covered his mouth and kissed him. It seemed to surprise him.

“I wish I had never met you,” she whispered. “And in all my life I will not forget lying beside you, body to body, and wanting you.”

“For God’s sake…”

She stood up and jammed the knife in a crack between two stones some distance away, where it would take him a while to get to it. “Adrian was right. I should have made love to you when I had the chance.”

She walked out of the chapel, ignoring his words behind her, which were angry in the extreme, and taking care not to trip on the bits and pieces of her trap that were strewn around the entryway.

Henri’s horse was glad to see her. It did not like being so enclosed by briars. There was less trouble than she would have thought to mount, and no one in this dead monastery would see that her dress was hiked up far beyond decency. She gave the horse its head to find a way out of the courtyard and onto the road. Then all she could do was point toward the sound of the sea, hold on to rein and mane very tightly, and kick hard. It would be dawn soon. There was enough light for a horse to see. At the water’s edge she could follow the line of surf north.

She had come a mile when the road straightened and sloped downward. Henri’s horse picked up speed.

A blow slammed her. Shock. Pain. Falling. She had an instant to know it was a tree branch, hanging over the road, that had hit her. That the horse had done this on purpose.

She fell. Cried out in fear. Her head hit the ground, and the world exploded.

Then, nothing.

The horse, having demonstrated the vicious streak that allowed Henri to buy him cheaply, gave a satisfied grunt and trotted off in the direction of St.-Pierre-le-Proche. Annique lay in a ditch by the side of the road, her face upturned into the drizzle.

SHE hurt. Tendrils of pain reached into the nothing and gave it shape and form. She was pulled unwillingly to a place where pain knifed into her. Her head, in particular, hurt.

It is better to be unconscious. That was her first thought.

Pain filled her head like fire. Like fire. Like…

That was her second thought. Between one instant and the next, she knew.

Light. Light diffused through her closed eyelids. In terror and awe, she opened her eyes and saw pale dawn in the sky. Light everywhere. Light across a whole mass of swirling clouds.

So it had happened. The doctor in Marseilles, with his unnecessary Latin, was right. The horrible bit of something in her skull had shifted off her optic nerve and was now wandering about, preparing to kill her.

She lay, getting ready to die, as the doctor had said she would.

It was entirely typical she should have a view of stubby pine trees to look at for her last minutes of life. Typical she should be stretched flat in soggy, cold mud. She tried to compose her mind to a nobility suitable for such a serious moment. What she thought upon, however, was her stupidity in trusting Henri’s horse and how uncomfortable she was and how hungry her belly felt and how radiant were those tiny drops that quivered down the needles of the pines…the drops that slid along the pine needles and fell one by one onto her face.

She waited. Minutes passed. Nothing happened, except that she became more wet.

It came to her that she was not going to die. Or at least, not just immediately. She sat up. In ordinary times, the ache in her skull would have occupied her attention to the exclusion of all else.

“But this is bizarre.” She found herself looking down at her hands, so automatically did her eyes go to where she’d rested them when she was blind. Amazing to see her own hands again. To see this dress she wore—pale green, smudged with dirt. To see…

She could see. She was no longer the blind, ridiculous worm. She was herself. She was Annique, the Fox Cub. Spy extraordinaire. “I can…see.” She felt hollow with amazement, a shell containing only joy. “I can do anything.” She scrambled to her feet. She wanted to dance. To fly.

The ditch was full of pinecones, which had been uncomfortable to lie among. She found five of them, tightly curled, heavy, and palm-sized.

One. Two. Three. She tossed the simple circle she’d learned from Shandor, when she was eight…that first night she’d come to the Rom and been so lonely.

Catching was easy as breathing. The Two and Two. The Half Shower. The Fountain. So beautiful. She craned her neck far back, swaying to keep under her catches. Her head ached like blazes, but it did not matter in the least.

Bon Dieu, but she was stiff. There had been a time she could sometimes juggle five. Today she was happy to keep a circle of four in the simplest of patterns, a child’s juggling.

She wanted…oh, how she wanted Grey at this moment. She wanted to show him this. Her juggling. Her little art. The trick she had mastered only for the joy of it.

The pinecones were bright and happy in her hands. Nothing lost after all these empty months. Hands and eyes working together. The wonderful eyes that could see for her.

Grey would never see her juggle. Never.

She became clumsy suddenly and missed a cone, so she let the others go. They landed, left and right, hitting neatly on each other, as juggled things do.

She set her face against the tree trunk. It was the same tree that had knocked her into the ditch. In the thick, muzzy silence of the wood, her breath caught in her throat and tears slipped from her eyes. She cried, sad and unspeakably happy.