Outlander 03 - Voyager

by Diana Gabaldon

  “Eef ze men want to lie wiz a feesh, zey would go to ze docks; eet ees more cheap,” Peggy intoned, in what was patently meant to be an imitation of Madame Jeanne. The table erupted in giggles, which were rapidly quelled by the sudden appearance of Madame herself, who entered through a door at the end of the room.

  Madame Jeanne was frowning in a worried fashion, and seemed too preoccupied to notice the smothered hilarity.

  “Tsk!” murmured Mollie, seeing the proprietor. “An early customer. I hate it when they come in the middle o’ breakfast,” she grumbled. “Stop ye digesting your food proper, it does.”

  “Ye needn’t worry, Mollie; it’s Claire’ll have to take him,” Peggy said, tossing her dark plait out of the way. “Newest lass takes the ones no one wants,” she informed me.

  “Stick your finger up his bum,” Dorcas advised me. “That brings ’em off faster than anything. I’ll save ye a bannock for after, if ye like.”

  “Er…thanks,” I said. Just then, Madame Jeanne’s eye lit upon me, and her mouth dropped open in a horrified “O.”

  “What are you doing here?” she hissed, rushing up to grab me by the arm.

  “Eating,” I said, in no mood to be snatched at. I detached my arm from her grasp and picked up my ale cup.

  “Merde!” she said. “Did no one bring you food this morning?”

  “No,” I said. “Nor yet clothes.” I gestured at the quilt, which was in imminent danger of falling off.

  “Nez de Cleopatre!” she said violently. She stood up and glanced around the room, eyes flashing daggers. “I will have the worthless scum of a maid flayed for this! A thousand apologies, Madame!”

  “That’s quite all right,” I said graciously, aware of the looks of astonishment on the faces of my breakfast companions. “I’ve had a wonderful meal. Nice to have met you all, ladies,” I said, rising and doing my best to bow graciously while clutching my quilt. “Now, Madame…about my gown?”

  Amid Madame Jeanne’s agitated protestations of apology, and reiterated hopes that I would not find it necessary to tell Monsieur Fraser that I had been exposed to an undesirable intimacy with the working members of the establishment, I made my clumsy way up two more flights of stairs, and into a small room draped with hanging garments in various stages of completion, with bolts of cloth stacked here and there in the corners of the chamber.

  “A moment, please,” Madame Jeanne said, and with a deep bow, left me to the company of a dressmaker’s dummy, with a large number of pins protruding from its stuffed bosom.

  Apparently this was where the costuming of the inmates took place. I walked around the room, quilt trailing, and observed several flimsy silk wrappers under construction, together with a couple of elaborate gowns with very low necks, and a number of rather imaginative variations on the basic shift and camisole. I removed one shift from its hook, and put it on.

  It was made of fine cotton, with a low, gathered neck, and embroidery in the form of multiple hands that curled enticingly under the bosom and down the sides of the waist, spreading out into a rakish caress atop the hips. It hadn’t been hemmed, but was otherwise complete, and gave me a great deal more freedom of movement than had the quilt.

  I could hear voices in the next room, where Madame was apparently haranguing Bruno—or so I deduced the identity of the male rumble.

  “I do not care what the miserable girl’s sister has done,” she was saying, “do you not realize that the wife of Monsieur Jamie was left naked and starving—”

  “Are you sure she’s his wife?” the deep male voice asked. “I had heard—”

  “So had I. But if he says this woman is his wife, I am not disposed to argue, n’est-ce pas?” Madame sounded impatient. “Now, as to this wretched Madeleine—”

  “It’s not her fault, Madame,” Bruno broke in. “Have you not heard the news this morning—about the Fiend?”

  Madame gave a small gasp. “No! Not another?”

  “Yes, Madame.” Bruno’s voice was grim. “No more than a few doors away—above the Green Owl tavern. The girl was Madeleine’s sister; the priest brought the news just before breakfast. So you can see—”

  “Yes, I see.” Madame sounded a little breathless. “Yes, of course. Of course. Was it—the same?” Her voice quivered with distaste.

  “Yes, Madame. A hatchet or a big knife of some sort.” He lowered his voice, as people do when recounting horrid things. “The priest told me that her head had been completely severed. Her body was near the door of her room, and her head”—his voice dropped even lower, almost to a whisper—“her head was sitting on the mantelpiece, looking into the room. The landlord swooned when he found her.”

  A heavy thud from the next room suggested that Madame Jeanne had done likewise. Gooseflesh rippled up my arms, and my own knees felt a trifle watery. I was beginning to agree with Jamie’s fear that his installing me in a house of prostitution had been injudicious.

  At any rate, I was now clad, if not entirely dressed, and I went into the room next door, to find Madame Jeanne in semi-recline on the sofa of a small parlor, with a burly, unhappy-looking man sitting on the hassock near her feet.

  Madame started up at the sight of me. “Madame Fraser! Oh, I am so sorry! I did not mean to leave you waiting, but I have had…” she hesitated, looking for some delicate expression “…some distressing news.”

  “I’d say so,” I said. “What’s this about a Fiend?”

  “You heard?” She was already pale; now her complexion went a few shades whiter, and she wrung her hands. “What will he say? He will be furious!” she moaned.

  “Who?” I asked. “Jamie, or the Fiend?”

  “Your husband,” she said. She looked about the parlor, distracted. “When he hears that his wife has been so shamefully neglected, mistaken for a fille de joie and exposed to—to—”

  “I really don’t think he’ll mind,” I said. “But I would like to hear about the Fiend.”

  “You would?” Bruno’s heavy eyebrows rose. He was a big man, with sloping shoulders and long arms that made him look rather like a gorilla; a resemblance enhanced by a low brow and a receding chin. He looked eminently suited to the role of bouncer in a brothel.

  “Well,” he hesitated, glancing at Madame Jeanne for guidance, but the proprietor caught sight of the small enameled clock on the mantelpiece and jumped to her feet with an exclamation of shock.

  “Crottin!” she exclaimed. “I must go!” And with no more than a perfunctory wave in my direction, she sped from the room, leaving Bruno and me looking after her in surprise.

  “Oh,” he said, recovering himself. “That’s right, it was coming at ten o’clock.” It was a quarter-past ten, by the enamel clock. Whatever “it” was, I hoped it would wait.

  “Fiend,” I prompted.

  Like most people, Bruno was only too willing to reveal all the gory details, once past a pro forma demur for the sake of social delicacy.

  The Edinburgh Fiend was—as I had deduced from the conversation thus far—a murderer. Like an early-day Jack the Ripper, he specialized in women of easy virtue, whom he killed with blows from a heavy-bladed instrument. In some cases, the bodies had been dismembered or otherwise “interfered with,” as Bruno said, in lowered voice.

  The killings—eight in all—had occurred at intervals over the last two years. With one exception, the women had been killed in their own rooms; most lived alone—two had been killed in brothels. Hence Madame’s agitation, I supposed.

  “What was the exception?” I asked.

  Bruno crossed himself. “A nun,” he whispered, the words evidently still a shock to him. “A French Sister of Mercy.”

  The Sister, coming ashore at Edinburgh with a group of nuns bound for London, had been abducted from the docks, without any of her companions noticing her absence in the confusion. By the time she was discovered in one of Edinburgh’s wynds, after nightfall, it was far too late.

  “Raped?” I asked, with clinical interest.

&nb
sp; Bruno eyed me with considerable suspicion.

  “I do not know,” he said formally. He rose heavily to his feet, his simian shoulders drooping with fatigue. I supposed he had been on duty all night; it must be his bedtime now. “If you will excuse me, Madame,” he said, with remote formality, and went out.

  I sat back on the small velvet sofa, feeling mildly dazed. Somehow I hadn’t realized that quite so much went on in brothels in the daytime.

  There was a sudden loud hammering at the door. It didn’t sound like knocking, but as though someone really were using a metal-headed hammer to demand admittance. I got to my feet to answer the summons, but without further warning, the door burst open, and a slender imperious figure strode into the room, speaking French in an accent so pronounced and an attitude so furious that I could not follow it all.

  “Are you looking for Madame Jeanne?” I managed to put in, seizing a small pause when he stopped to draw breath for more invective. The visitor was a young man of about thirty, slightly built and strikingly handsome, with thick black hair and brows. He glared at me under these, and as he got a good look at me, an extraordinary change went across his face. The brows rose, his black eyes grew huge, and his face went white.

  “Milady!” he exclaimed, and flung himself on his knees, embracing me about the thighs as he pressed his face into the cotton shift at crotch level.

  “Let go!” I exclaimed, shoving at his shoulders to detach him. “I don’t work here. Let go, I say!”

  “Milady!” he was repeating in tones of rapture. “Milady! You have come back! A miracle! God has restored you!”

  He looked up at me, smiling as tears streamed down his face. He had large white perfect teeth. Suddenly memory stirred and shifted, showing me the outlines of an urchin’s face beneath the man’s bold visage.

  “Fergus!” I said. “Fergus, is that really you? Get up, for God’s sake—let me see you!”

  He rose to his feet, but didn’t pause to let me inspect him. He gathered me into a rib-cracking hug, and I clutched him in return, pounding his back in the excitement of seeing him again. He had been ten or so when I last saw him, just before Culloden. Now he was a man, and the stubble of his beard rasped against my cheek.

  “I thought I was seeing a ghost!” he exclaimed. “It is really you, then?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” I assured him.

  “You have seen milord?” he asked excitedly. “He knows you are here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh!” He blinked and stepped back half a pace, as something occurred to him. “But—but what about—” He paused, clearly confused.

  “What about what?”

  “There ye are! What in the name of God are ye doing up here, Fergus?” Jamie’s tall figure loomed suddenly in the doorway. His eyes widened at the sight of me in my embroidered shift. “Where are your clothes?” he asked. “Never mind,” he said then, waving his hand impatiently as I opened my mouth to answer. “I havena time just now. Come along, Fergus, there’s eighteen ankers of brandy in the alleyway, and the excisemen on my heels!”

  And with a thunder of boots on the wooden staircase, they were gone, leaving me alone once more.

  I wasn’t sure whether I should join the party downstairs or not, but curiosity got the better of discretion. After a quick visit to the sewing room in search of more extensive covering, I made my way down, a large shawl half-embroidered with hollyhocks flung round my shoulders.

  I had gathered only a vague impression of the layout of the house the night before, but the street noises that filtered through the windows made it clear which side of the building faced the High Street. I assumed the alleyway to which Jamie had referred must be on the other side, but wasn’t sure. The houses of Edinburgh were frequently constructed with odd little wings and twisting walls, to take advantage of every inch of space.

  I paused on the large landing at the foot of the stairs, listening for the sound of rolling casks as a guide. As I stood there, I felt a sudden draft on my bare feet, and turned to see a man standing in the open doorway from the kitchen.

  He seemed as surprised as I, but after blinking at me, he smiled and stepped forward to grip me by the elbow.

  “And a good morning to you, my dear. I didn’t expect to find any of you ladies up and about so early in the morning.”

  “Well, you know what they say about early to bed and early to rise,” I said, trying to extricate my elbow.

  He laughed, showing rather badly stained teeth in a narrow jaw. “No, what do they say about it?”

  “Well, it’s something they say in America, come to think of it,” I replied, suddenly realizing that Benjamin Franklin, even if currently publishing, probably didn’t have a wide readership in Edinburgh.

  “Got a wit about you, chuckie,” he said, with a slight smile. “Send you down as a decoy, did she?”

  “No. Who?” I said.

  “The madam,” he said, glancing around. “Where is she?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Let go!”

  Instead, he tightened his grip, so that his fingers dug uncomfortably into the muscles of my upper arm. He leaned closer, whispering in my ear with a gust of stale tobacco fumes.

  “There’s a reward, you know,” he murmured confidentially. “A percentage of the value of the seized contraband. No one would need to know but you and me.” He flicked one finger gently under my breast, making the nipple stand up under the thin cotton. “What d’ye say, chuck?”

  I stared at him. “The excisemen are on my heels,” Jamie had said. This must be one, then; an officer of the Crown, charged with the prevention of smuggling and the apprehension of smugglers. What had Jamie said? “The pillory, transportation, flogging, imprisonment, ear-nailing,” waving an airy hand as though such penalties were the equivalent of a traffic ticket.

  “Whatever are you talking about?” I said, trying to sound puzzled. “And for the last time, let go of me!” He couldn’t be alone, I thought. How many others were there around the building?

  “Yes, please let go,” said a voice behind me. I saw the exciseman’s eyes widen as he glanced over my shoulder.

  Mr. Willoughby stood on the second stair in rumpled blue silk, a large pistol gripped in both hands. He bobbed his head politely at the excise officer.

  “Not stinking whore,” he explained, blinking owlishly. “Honorable wife.”

  The exciseman, clearly startled by the unexpected appearance of a Chinese, gawked from me to Mr. Willoughby and back again.

  “Wife?” he said disbelievingly. “You say she’s your wife?”

  Mr. Willoughby, clearly catching only the salient word, nodded pleasantly.

  “Wife,” he said again. “Please letting go.” His eyes were mere bloodshot slits, and it was apparent to me, if not to the exciseman, that his blood was still approximately 80 proof.

  The exciseman pulled me toward himself and scowled at Mr. Willoughby. “Now, listen here—” he began. He got no further, for Mr. Willoughby, evidently assuming that he had given fair warning, raised the pistol and pulled the trigger.

  There was a loud crack, an even louder shriek, which must have been mine, and the landing was filled with a cloud of gray powder-smoke. The exciseman staggered back against the paneling, a look of intense surprise on his face, and a spreading rosette of blood on the breast of his coat.

  Moving by reflex, I leapt forward and grasped the man under the arms, easing him gently down to the floorboards of the landing. There was a flurry of noise from above, as the inhabitants of the house crowded chattering and exclaiming onto the upper landing, attracted by the shot. Bounding footsteps came up the lower stairs two at a time.

  Fergus burst through what must be the cellar door, a pistol in his hand.

  “Milady,” he gasped, catching sight of me sitting in the corner with the exciseman’s body sprawled across my lap. “What have you done?”

  “Me?” I said indignantly. “I haven’t done anything; it’s Jamie’s pet Chinaman.” I n
odded briefly toward the stair, where Mr. Willoughby, the pistol dropped unregarded by his feet, had sat down on the step and was now regarding the scene below with a benign and bloodshot eye.

  Fergus said something in French that was too colloquial to translate, but sounded highly uncomplimentary to Mr. Willoughby. He strode across the landing, and reached out a hand to grasp the little Chinaman’s shoulder—or so I assumed, until I saw that the arm he extended did not end in a hand, but in a hook of gleaming dark metal.

  “Fergus!” I was so shocked at the sight that I stopped my attempts to stanch the exciseman’s wound with my shawl. “What—what—” I said incoherently.

  “What?” he said, glancing at me. Then, following the direction of my gaze, said, “Oh, that,” and shrugged. “The English. Don’t worry about it, milady, we haven’t time. You, canaille, get downstairs!” He jerked Mr. Willoughby off the stairs, dragged him to the cellar door and shoved him through it, with a callous disregard for safety. I could hear a series of bumps, suggesting that the Chinese was rolling downstairs, his acrobatic skills having temporarily deserted him, but had no time to worry about it.

  Fergus squatted next to me, and lifted the exciseman’s head by the hair. “How many companions are with you?” he demanded. “Tell me quickly, cochon, or I slit your throat!”

  From the evident signs, this was a superfluous threat. The man’s eyes were already glazing over. With considerable effort, the corners of his mouth drew back in a smile.

  “I’ll see…you…burn…in…hell,” he whispered, and with a last convulsion that fixed the smile in a hideous rictus upon his face, he coughed up a startling quantity of bright red foamy blood, and died in my lap.

  More feet were coming up the stairs at a high rate of speed. Jamie charged through the cellar door and barely stopped himself before stepping on the excise officer’s trailing legs. His eyes traveled up the body’s length and rested on my face with horrified amazement.

  “What have ye done, Sassenach?” he demanded.