A Desperate Fortune (32 page)

It
was
cold outside, and clear, the waxing moon just past its quarter in the starry bowl of black night sky. She’d heard the ax fall when she stepped outside, but now she only heard the murmur of the dark wind through the trees that rose around the edges of this little patch of field and farmland. She could see the stump, and all the chips of wood around it, but she could not see MacPherson.

When the furtive sound came close behind her, Mary reacted as anyone might who had just been attacked by a wolf, and wheeled suddenly round.

“Do not strike me.” MacPherson gave the warning in a calm tone not unlike the one he’d used to tell her those same words the morning he’d first said them to her, when he had surprised her in the kitchen of the house in Paris. Now, as then, she let her raised hand fall, dismayed to find that in her sudden movement she had spilled a good part of the wine upon the ground.

Carrying on past her, he set the short section of log he was carrying on its cut end on the stump, and adjusting his grip on the ax handle swung the ax round in a sure, measured blow. He had taken off his coat and was in shirt and waistcoat, and his white sleeves had a ghostly appearance. He glanced at the cup in her hand and asked, “Was that for me?”

“It was.” Mary looked down. “I can fill it again.”

But he held out his hand for it as it was, acknowledging her action with the curt nod that was also, so she’d learned, how he expressed his thanks. Which nudged her to remember her own manners.

“I’ve not thanked you yet for what you did. For saving me and Frisque,” she told him. “Thank you.”

He drained the cup. Handed it back to her. “Do it again and I’m shooting the dog,” he advised her. “I telt ye that he would be trouble.”

“You did.” Crossing her arms to keep off the chill wind she confided, “I’m thinking of leaving him here.”

She knew that MacPherson, who did not speak French, would have not heard Frisque’s story on either occasion she told it, and so she repeated it now for him, adding, “He loves being here with the children. He thinks he’s come home.”

He said nothing. Another log splintered and split on the stump underneath the strong force of his ax.

“Anyway,” Mary said, “he’s an old dog, I’ve no right to drag him around for my own sake. He will be much safer and happier here. And these people are good. They will care for him.”

“And if he pines for ye?”

“No fear of that. I am easy to leave.” Mary looked skyward, at all the innumerable stars in the blackness. “And easier still to forget.” She wasn’t sure why she had said that. It sounded so small and so sad, and she hastened to hide what it might have revealed by diverting his focus. “Which way is your home from here?”

“What?”

She said, “Scotland. Where is it?”

He stopped work a moment and holding the ax at his side turned his own head up, searching the stars with the eyes of a man long accustomed to finding his way by them. “There.” With his free arm he pointed and Mary looked too, to the land that her father had left long ago, long before he’d left her for the same cause—to follow his king.

“Do you miss it?” she asked.

It was so long before he replied that she thought he was simply ignoring the question, as he often did, but at last in a level voice he said, “There’s nothing to miss.” Then he turned. “You are cold. Go inside.”

Mary knew he was cold as well, cold to the core, and whatever he’d seen in his youth was the cause of it, and in that moment she wanted to tell him how sorry she was for whatever he’d lost. That she knew what it was to be lonely. But nothing in his face or stance was inviting compassion, and Mary well knew there were some things so broken they could not be mended with words.

So she nodded and turned and went in.

She did not know when he came in, for she was in her bed already and asleep, but in the night she woke and turned and felt the blankets cold beside her feet where Frisque was wont to sleep, and realized that the dog was with the children once again, and as she lay there feeling empty at the knowledge she had lost the one companion she had thought would never leave her, and yet trying to be happy for his happiness, she heard the fall of footsteps in the kitchen and the now familiar sound MacPherson’s swords made when he took them from their belts and laid them to the side.

Next morning when she woke she found MacPherson sleeping upright in a chair, his head leaned back against the kitchen wall, his legs outstretched in front of him. A stump of candle sat within a small dish on the table, and on the kitchen mantel sat the clock, now ticking rhythmically. And on the hour, to the delight of all the children and their mother, it began to chime.

“We could have had the mule for nothing, after that,” said Thomson, as they gathered their things after breakfast, preparing to leave. But they’d paid fairly for the mule, enough to let the family buy another to replace it in the spring, when they would need it for their plowing. And standing saddled at the door and waiting for them patiently, it was a welcome sight to Mary, for her ankle had begun to ache.

Her heart ached more. She watched the children gathering round Frisque to say good-bye to him, and saw his joyful, wagging tail, and she was well aware of what she ought to do and say, and of the choice she ought to make, but it was very difficult.

She felt MacPherson watching her, his hard gaze steady on her face. He slung the gun case on his back and looked from Frisque to Mary, and he told her simply, “Call him.”

Mary looked at him, not understanding, knowing that her anguish must be showing in her eyes.

He said again, more slowly, “Call him.”

Mary could have told him that it was no use, that she had called her father back and it had made no difference, that if something once desired to leave you it was lost already and forever. But she yielded to the pressure of those unrelenting eyes, and cleared her throat, and called out, “Frisque.”

The dog’s ears perked, and his head turned towards her, and he left the children and came bounding over happily to paw the hemline of her skirt and ask to be picked up. She could not do it, for her eyes had filled quite suddenly and foolishly, and she feared if she moved at all those tears would fall and shame her. Without words, MacPherson scooped the spaniel up and placed him safe in Mary’s arms and lifted both of them to sit upon the mule.

Then taking the bridle into his strong hand he remarked, “Not so easy to leave after all, it appears.”

And they started to walk.

Luc bent forward from where he was standing behind my chair, leaning his hands on the armrests and bringing his cheek close to mine as he read the transcribed pages over my shoulder. It usually bothered me when people hovered, invading my personal space, but with Luc it felt…nice.

It was comforting, actually, having the warmth of him there at my back like a shield, and the press of his arms against mine was surprisingly pleasant. I might balk at the more random contact and touching that most people took in their stride as a matter of course every day, but I liked being held by the people I liked to be held by, and how Luc was touching me now felt a lot like a hug. I relaxed deeper into it, resting my head in the strong hollow curve of his shoulder and liking the freshly ironed scent of his smooth cotton shirt.

Luc said, “He’s taking care of her.”

“He
is
their bodyguard.”

“Well, technically he’s Mr. Thomson’s bodyguard, but here you see he’s starting to care more about protecting her than Thomson.”

He pointed a few entries back to the lines that read:

We are to spend another night here. Mr. M— claims it is to confound any who have sought to follow us, but I believe it is because I slightly hurt my ankle in my fall and he would let me rest a little longer before I must face a full day’s walk on it. In truth he seems to disapprove my smallest movement, and when I stepped outside on waking to dip water from the barrel there so I could wash, he came behind and took the bucket from my hands and would not let me carry it. And yet for all he shows concern, he has today been more withdrawn than I have seen him, and more sullen. Truly, never have I met a man more difficult to fathom.

Luc maintained it wasn’t difficult at all. “She’s his Achilles’ heel. He’s fallen for her.”

“I’m sorry?”

He smiled at my skeptical face. “It’s OK, you won’t see it because you’re a woman. A woman can start with a man she might find unattractive and slowly begin to see good in him, grow into love with him, but this is not how it happens with men. We’re much simpler,” he told me. “We see and we want.”

I was still unconvinced, so my tone sounded dry. “Really?”

“Really. This bodyguard would have found Mary attractive the first time he saw her in Paris, I promise you, and he’d have wanted her right from that moment, those feelings won’t change. But how
much
he wants her, the strength of his feelings—he may not have realized this till he was watching her run from that wolf.”

I sorted this out. “So he’s been in love with her all along, but he didn’t know he was in love with her until the moment he thought he might lose her?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re saying men aren’t complicated?”

“We see and we want,” he repeated and shrugged. “Very basic.”

“And what do you do when you get what you want?”

“We look after it.” He turned his head and I felt the warm brush of his kiss at my temple. “What’s this over here?” he asked, reaching to pick up a page to the side of my stack of transcribed ones. “It looks like Noah’s writing.”

“It is Noah’s writing.” He’d been in my room earlier, at first just sitting quietly and playing with the cat. So very quietly, in fact, it hadn’t bothered me or hindered me from working. I hadn’t even been aware how closely he’d been watching me until I’d stopped to stretch and he had asked an intelligent series of questions. “I gave him some samples of ciphers to work through.”

“You’re teaching my son cryptanalysis?”

“Yes, and he’s teaching me how to play Robo Patrol, so it’s a fair exchange.”

“Hardly.” He studied the page for a moment. “You made up these samples yourself?”

“Yes, why?”

“So you don’t just break ciphers, you write them as well?”

“Only simple ones, like what I’m working with here. Why?”

“Have you ever done any proper encryption,” he asked, “with computers?”

“A very long time ago, just as a hobby. Why?”

Luc shrugged. “No reason.” And then he said, “Well, that’s not true. There’s a reason. You remember I mentioned my brother?”

“Fabien, who lives in California and works for the same company you do only his job is more senior.”

“So you remember.” He sounded amused. “Well, his job is more senior than mine because he’s actually in charge of the development of all of Morland’s tactical and sonar systems—a lot of high-level defense contracts—and he just called me this morning to say he was coming to Paris next week to hold interviews for his department here. I don’t know all the positions he’s filling, but some have to do with creating encryption solutions and cyber security for different clients, and I thought…”

“That’s very specialized work. I don’t have the experience.”

“Fabien trains people all the time. Well, not in person, but he makes arrangements to have them trained. I think he cares more about someone’s aptitude, how their mind works, than their years of experience. And your mind works well at
this
.” He set the paper down again. “You said you wanted to find a job that let you work on your own, and I know for a fact some of his people do that. From home, even. I can’t guarantee that he’d hire you, but I’m pretty sure I could get you an interview.”

I angled my head in the warm cradle of his strong shoulder to gain a clear view of his face. He looked innocent. I wasn’t fooled. I said, “You’re taking care of me.”

“Actually, I’m being selfish. Finding a job for you here means you’ll stay close to me. But it’s your choice. If you’d rather I not interfere, that’s fine too.”

As I studied his face I remembered the words that MacPherson had spoken to Mary, affecting her strongly enough she had written them down:
Not
so
easy
to
leave
after
all
. And they struck a strong chord with me, too. Luc Sabran wasn’t easy to leave.

So a job in France, close to him, working alone on encryption and cyber security, sounded fantastic.

Except, “I’m not all that impressive in interviews.”

“Fabien never does anything formal, it isn’t his style. We could go into Paris and meet him for lunch if you like, if you’d find it more comfortable.”

“At Les Éditeurs?”

“Sure.”

“Could we take the Ducati?”

He smiled. “Of course.”

“Then I’d like that,” I said. “But I’m paying. I still owe you lunch.”

I expected an “OK.” Instead, he leaned lower and kissed me. I didn’t complain.

It seemed almost too quiet a few minutes later when he left me sitting alone at my desk with the diary. It was new for me, but I’d discovered I didn’t mind having Diablo and Noah and Luc hanging round while I worked.

And I no longer minded transcribing the fairy tales Mary kept writing. In fact, I’d begun to enjoy them.

I worked all the rest of that day on the one she’d told Thomson and Mr. MacPherson and Madame Roy several days after the wolf had been shot, and this time I could see, as Denise had explained, how the fairy tale fit with the rest of her narrative:

There once was a good and wise king who ruled over a prosperous land, with a son—the crown prince—and two daughters. The crown prince and his younger sister had good hearts and wise heads as well, but the elder daughter was envious and cruel, and thought it most unfair her brother’s birth had robbed her of her chance to rule the kingdom. Calling on a fairy who was practiced in the darker ways of magic, she went about clearing her path to the throne. First she had her brother kidnapped in the night and taken far away into a distant land, from which there would be no returning. Then she had her sister, who was gifted with a rare and lovely voice, changed to a little bird and locked within a golden cage that hung beside the window. And with none to bar her way, the elder sister had her father turned into a small defenseless hare and set him to be chased at that day’s hunt. But her father was clever and swift. He outwitted the hounds and the hunters and ran at great speed to a far distant forest of thorns, where he knew he’d be safe. Incensed by this, the elder sister—who had now been crowned the queen—instructed her dark fairy to pursue the hare, her father, to the forest and ensure that he was killed.

This vengeful order was by good luck overheard by the young princess, trapped now as a bird within a hanging cage, and using all her own brave ingenuity she freed herself and flew off through the open window in the same direction the dark fairy had just taken, hoping she might find her father first and somehow warn him. She found the forest made of thorns, and found her father also, in great peril—unaware that to his one side he was being stalked and threatened by a wolf, and to the other stood a huntsman with his long gun to his shoulder.

The princess sang a warning to him, but he could do no more than lie still, for time in this strange forest passed more quickly and the hare-king had already grown too old to run with all the speed he’d once possessed. The princess, to protect him, swooped down hastily and perched atop his back, and from this vantage point she saw now that the huntsman was none other than her brother the crown prince, changed as well from all his wanderings so far from friends and home, his heart grown hard and cold and merciless.

The wolf—who was of course the evil fairy in disguise—had failed to recognize the crown prince, but was quick to spot a way to deal with both the king and younger princess. Stopping her advance, the fairy cast a spell upon the “huntsman” that would make him in a single shot kill bird and hare together.

But before the spell had fully taken hold, the princess sang.

She sang a tune the prince and she had sung when they were children, and the warbling notes began to thaw his frozen heart until they became words within his mind that told him: “Save your shot, dear brother. Do not let your heart grow cold enough to kill without a cause.”

And so he’d changed his aim and killed the wolf instead, and with the evil fairy dead the whole enchantment ended and the king and princess were restored to their true selves, and with the prince they left the forest and set off along the path they knew would lead them home.

* * *

“That’s not a proper ending,” was Jacqui’s opinion, when I read the tale to her over the phone.

“Why not?”

“She never does say if they made it home safely. Most readers,” she said, “like a little more closure.”

“Why?”

“They just do. It’s human nature, I suppose. We want things to end tidily—especially with fairy tales. We want our happily ever afters.”

“Not every story has one.”

“Yes, I know.” My cousin’s voice reminded me that she, with her two less-than-wonderful marriages, knew from experience frogs sometimes stayed frogs no matter how often you kissed them. “But that’s the beauty of my business, darling. We can manufacture them.”

In honesty I didn’t mind an open ending, one that left some room for my imagination to continue with the story line and end it where I chose, or let the characters keep living on within my mind like distant friends I could look in upon from time to time. But I deferred to Jacqui when it came to knowing readers’ preferences. I did, though, feel the need to point out, “Mary’s fairy tales aren’t really meant to stand alone, though. Denise says back in those days women’s fairy tales were woven into novels, so you’re not supposed to read them on their own—you have to read them in the context of the narrative around them. That’s why this one makes more sense when you know what’s going on in Mary’s diary, with MacPherson and the wolf attack, and when you can see how she’s pulling in the other themes dealing with King James and the Jacobites.”

My cousin tried rewinding me a notch. “Denise says this?”

“She studied it at uni.”

“Ah. And how are you two getting on?”

“Denise and I? We’re getting on just fine. I really like her. Why?”

“She doesn’t mind that you and her ex-husband are…” Jacqui paused, as though in search of the right phrase.

I waited, curious to see what she’d select.

“…together?” was her final choice.

“She doesn’t mind at all. She’s said so.” Several times, I could have added. Clearly. Unequivocally.
You’re good for him
, she’d said to me this morning, when we’d stood together at the kitchen window watching Luc come up the path from the back garden.
He’s so happy. Look at him.
He made me happy too, and she had commented on that as well.

My cousin said, “I see,” though I suspected that she didn’t. “And just how ‘together’ are you?”

“Sorry?”

Bluntly, because she had learned the blunt approach was best with me, she asked me, “Are you sleeping with him?”

“No.”

“Oh.” There was no way on the phone that I could try to sort the blend of vocal tones in that one word. I couldn’t tell if she was pleased or disapproving or surprised. “Why not?”

She wasn’t being rude. She knew my pattern; knew that normally I’d meet a man and have him in my bed and out the door again within a week. I shrugged and said, “I don’t feel any rush, with Luc. I feel like we have time.”

She didn’t answer straightaway. And then she only said, “That’s good. I hope it lasts.”

I knew
that
tone. “But you don’t think it will.”

“I didn’t say that. Does he know that you have Asperger’s?”

“No. Not unless you told him.”

Jacqui reassured me with, “You know I’d never do that.”

“Good. So, getting back to Mary and the diary…”

“Yes. Where are they now?”

“Just outside Nîmes.” I named the city in Provence, just south of Avignon, where Mary and the others had been forced to break their journey. “They’ve been stuck there for a while now. Mr. Thomson’s ill in bed. He has a fever.”

“All that walking in the rain, no doubt. Or else his dunking in the river.”

“Mary walked in rain too, and she isn’t ill.” I knew it wasn’t logical for me to feel such pride in the resilience of a woman I would never meet, but I was growing close to Mary through her words and so I felt it anyway. I liked her sense of humor and her strength and her tenacity, and her determination to let nothing keep her down. She’d had no liking for the rooms they’d lodged in outside Nîmes, and Mr. Thomson with his fever had apparently not been an easy patient, yet she’d made the best of things and done her part to entertain him and Madame Roy and MacPherson in the evenings with her stories, having noted in her diary her amusement that MacPherson, when she’d told them all the story of the huntsman and the wolf, had replied with his opinion the crown prince would have done well to shoot the lot of them and gain himself a kingdom he could rule alone in peace.