Thomson asked, “Who told you this?” His tone was friendly, even sympathetic, but she could no longer freely give her trust. However amiable he’d been as a companion these past days, he was a stranger to her, as were both the others. And it seemed they’d all been keeping secrets from her, too.
She answered without answering. “The person who did send me.”
“Well, that person did not tell you all,” said Thomson, “for there always was a larger plan in place to put to use if we should be discovered, as we have been. But I can assure you you’ll be safe with us. Mr. MacPherson is a most efficient guard. The very best, I’m told.” His tone altered subtly from calming to curious. “Who was it that sent you, may I ask? Sir Redmond Everard? It was Sir Redmond, was it not? Or was it General Dillon?”
Mary held her tongue, and Madame Roy reminded both the men, “The lass has had a trying day.”
The Scotsman had observed this whole exchange with an impassive face so empty of expression Mary could not guess at what he might be thinking. When he moved, it was to leave the room and pass into the one beyond, returning in a moment with a pewter cup, his fingers lightly holding it suspended by the rim.
He stopped in front of Mary, holding out the cup to her. Whatever was inside it had a scent so strong the vapors on their own were like to set her eyes to watering.
Madame Roy said something that to Mary sounded much like “Oushki-bah”—strange words indeed, but spoken with approval; and the older woman added, “That will heal the evil that does ail you.”
Mary could not look above the level of the cup.
The Scotsman’s hands were clean. It struck her odd that they should be so clean when he’d just killed a man, and yet they were. The hand that held the cup was strong and square with well-formed fingers. But beneath the broad cuff of his gray wool coat, along the ruffle of his sleeve, she saw the spattered stains of blood.
They held her gaze transfixed. She was aware of Thomson asking, “How the devil did you come by whisky in this place?”
The Scotsman, true to form, ignored him. Mary watched that clean hand and the bloodstained sleeve come closer still to offer her the cup, insistent.
“Take it,” he instructed her. “The day’s not over yet.”
* * *
They left in the dead hours of night, in the dark, slipping over the Seine by a bridge that allowed her a view of the towers of Notre Dame, looming above them and seeming alive with a thousand stone eyes she could never escape. Her own shadow changed form with the sway of the glass-enclosed candle lamps strung in a line down the larger streets, and at her back came the larger black shadow of Mr. MacPherson, who’d changed all his clothes but his hat and his boots and had traded his cloak for a brown horseman’s coat with its collar turned down like a cape at his shoulders and full pleats that made the coat swing when he walked. He looked none the less menacing, Mary decided—not even when weighted with most of their traveling gear, for he carried the straps of their two leather portmanteaus over his shoulders together with a long cylindrical case that he’d slung in between them, and this with the already cumbersome burden of his two crossed sword belts that carried a regular sword in one scabbard and one in the other that looked like none Mary had seen, with a hilt woven much like a basket of silver that would have completely enveloped his hand.
Where the longer, lethal knife was Mary did not know, but she knew well that he did have it, for she’d watched him clean it; watched him wipe the crusting smudges from the blade and make the steel gleam sharp again with oil, until Madame Roy gently had distracted her attention. Mary did not wish to ever see that knife again.
She drew the softness of her cloak more tightly round herself and Frisque. The dog’s warmth in her arms was of great use now as she only wore one gown, the other being packed with all her extra things into one of the portmanteaus Mr. MacPherson had supplied. He’d seemed so well prepared for revision of their plans that Mary would not have been in the least surprised to find he had already hired a coach and driver for them.
Thomson had expected that as well, a fact made clear by his reaction to the news of where they now were headed. “But,” he’d told the Scotsman as they’d earlier prepared to leave the shelter of his rooms, “it would be safer for us, surely, were we in a private coach, perhaps with you as driver?”
“Aye, they’ll think the same. And they’ll be watching for us.”
Mary, with a frown, had said, “But you seemed sure that we had naught to fear from the police.”
“We don’t.” He had not said another word till now, as they came within sight of a marvelous building trapped tightly between narrow streets, a medieval château with a round stone-walled turret at one corner and great doors that stood open to give a view into the courtyard beyond.
In a low voice that could not be overheard by others but themselves, MacPherson said, “Wait there.” And then he was gone.
Madame Roy looked at Mary’s face and smiled slightly. “This is the Hotel de Sens,” she said, speaking in French as they took up their places where they had been told to stand, beside the open doorway. “It was built for archbishops and once housed a queen and her lovers, and though that was a long, long time ago, this still has the look of a castle, do you not think?”
Mary was not in a state to admire the building as she might have otherwise done. It had clearly been repurposed as the office for the public coaches traveling to all the parts of France, for even at this hour of the night—or early morning, rather, since it was approaching four o’clock—the streets and courtyard bustled with activity, with torchlight and the call of voices, mostly male; the fall of booted footsteps on the cobblestones, the grind and roll of wheels, and restless stamping of the horses.