White Silence (2 page)

The man stopped in front of him.

“Duncan MacLeod …” he said. His eyes were cold, cautious, “… of the Clan MacLeod.”

Danny swallowed. “Daniel Patrick O’Donal of—uhh—the city of New York?”

The man was about to speak again when his eyes grew even colder. Danny felt it, too. Another Immortal. He thought—he hoped—he knew who.

He’d half turned as a clatter of footsteps sounded from the stairs to the foyer below. A familiar figure strode in, a full smile on his face, his mop of curly hair damp from the night mist.

Danny grinned hugely in relief, and from behind him, he heard Duncan MacLeod exclaim:

“Fitzcairn, ye worthless piece of British offal. What in blazes are ye doing here?”

“She was blond. Golden blond with the softest, downiest …” Hugh Fitzcairn noticed that Amanda had paused at the top of the staircase and was glaring back at him. She had been not at all pleased to have her plans for the night interrupted by their arrival, and had made that clear to him, if not to his young companion. Ah, it was a good thing that heads did not roll with a look, or the simple wishing of it! He chuckled. “Well, Danny, let’s just say I was in a position to know how blond. ’Twas the wench we met in Versailles who had hair like autumn leaves, MacLeod.”

The three men sat in a dim comer of the Queen of Spades, at a table littered with empty glasses, empty bottles of brandy and champagne, and a heavy brass ashtray holding the stubs of Duncan’s cigars.

Filthy things,
Fitz thought, as he drew on his pipe. It was one he’d had now for almost a hundred years, and he felt it was almost properly broken in.

A door slammed below. Duncan flinched slightly. Danny, who had spent several hours almost speechless in the actual presence of “the lady in the painting,” raised his head at the sound. Fitz grinned.

“A thing of beauty. A joy forever.”

“If you think so,” Duncan said, draining his glass, “then why have you never turned your eyes her way?”

“Don’t you recall, laddie, you asked me that once, long ago?” Fitz leaned back in his chair and blew out a stream of aromatic smoke. “We were drinking in a wayside inn that was hardly more than a sty. Somewhere near Heidelberg, it was, and though the ale was swill, we were much less discriminating then. It went down hard, but we managed to consume a vast quantity.” He paused. “I don’t quite remember how the subject of the fair Amanda came up—”

“Well, I don’t remember any of it,” Duncan interrupted. “It may be I’m getting forgetful in my old age. Tell me again. In the past three hundred fifty years, I’ve been witness to your wooing of all manner of women, from scullery maids to at least one princess I could name. So why not the fair Amanda?”

Fitz smiled, and leaned forward across the table. He nodded toward Danny. “Listen, my boy, and learn. A man must have standards in his life. Mortals have only so much time to find things out.” He tapped a champagne bottle with the stem of his pipe, then a bottle of brandy. “Do I like wine, or spirits? Do I”—he tilted back and examined the crotch of his pants—“dress right or left? Do I prefer my women”—he leaned in again—“with some flesh on their bones, or as slender as lily stalks?

“However, those of us gifted with Immortality can, over the span of our years, refine our standards to the pure, clear essentials. I”—he pointed his pipe at Duncan, and used it to sketch lines in the air—“have three requirements in a woman. That she be beautiful”—a stroke of the pipe—“mortal”—a second—“and compliant.” A third.

“Amanda is for certain beautiful, Hugh,” Danny said, looking toward the painting above the bar.

“Ah, but one out of three just won’t do,” Fitzcairn replied.

MacLeod shook his head. “It’s all coming back to me. The inn. The ale. The pain the next morning. Yes, I have heard this before. I remember it now. And”—he rose from his chair—“I also remember a time or two when you have compromised those refined standards.”

“Sometimes, Highlander,” Fitz responded with great assumed dignity, “I am presented with occasions to which I must arise.”

Duncan laughed. “And someday, Englishman, some stubborn, plain Immortal lass will hold your heart at sword’s point. I can but hope that I’ll be there to see it.”

“We’re going to live forever, Duncan MacLeod, so you may well see that, and much else besides. But even if you live to be the One, you’ll not see the day come when I risk heart or head with the lady in white.” As he spoke, Fitz gestured toward the stairs.

MacLeod laughed again. Danny, after asking the whereabouts of the jakes, excused himself to make use of it. He paused on the way out to steal another long look at the portrait above the bar.

After he left, MacLeod poured more champagne for the two of them. Danny’s glass sat, still half-full. Duncan hesitated.

“The lad’s not much of a drinker, at least not these days,” Fitz said.

“You’ve known him long, then?” MacLeod asked.

Well, Fitz thought, there was a long and a short answer to that question. And since the hour was late, he’d give out the short.

“We met in New Orleans about five years past. I was visiting a friend in an—establishment, in a part of the city where the gentry seldom go.” He drank a swallow of the champagne. “I had a drop or two—though nothing as fine as this—and I got into a rather violent disagreement with another patron of the place. A much larger patron.”

“One of us?”

“No, the brute carried no sword. But he did carry a nasty short club, studded with nails. And I was by way of getting the worst of it when Danny stepped in. He was working at the place as what a colorful fellow I met in Philadelphia called hired muscle.” He paused, noting a fleeting look on MacLeod’s face.

“Make no mistake, Highlander. The lad is on the small side, but he is strong and quick. He kept his head for quite a few years, pretty much on his own. Taught himself to use a sword, practiced by himself, faced a few Challenges. And I’ve taught him a thing or three since we met.”

“Head-butting?” Duncan asked, innocently.

Fitz ignored him. “As I was saying, Danny put himself between the large fellow and me, at some risk to his own person.”

“But he must have known what you are—that you weren’t really in any grave danger.”

“Of death, not. Of damage, oh my yes! So he stopped the fight, and got me back to my lodging. And lost his job over it, since the large gentleman was a regular customer, and I was not. And his bed, which was in the establishment.” Fitz shrugged. “I owed him then, a meal at least. And a few lessons, to add some finesse to his swordwork. And a bit of advice about improving his position in the world.”

“So you’ve been traveling together then—what—five years, you said?”

Fitz nodded. For tonight at least, he hoped that MacLeod would settle for the basics. For Fitz, man of words that he was, was not certain that he could find the exact words to tell his friend how he surprised himself when he had realized that he had—with no intention to do so—become Danny O’Donal’s teacher.

Danny’s return saved him the need to give the Highlander further details. Duncan then left himself, to attend to his own needs. The young Immortal did not immediately rejoin Fitzcairn. He roamed the room, running his fingers over polished wood, green felt, and brass railings. The place was spotless except for their table, cleaned after closing every night by instructions of the owner.

“When shall you ask him, Hugh?” the young man questioned. “Are you still thinking he’ll agree? I’d wonder at that. To my mind, this seems a good place to be.”

Fitz shifted in his chair; his pipe was out again. He found a match in his vest pocket, carefully played the flame over the bowl, and drew in deeply, as the tobacco glowed once more.

Of course Danny would think that the Queen of Spades was a good place to be. A lot of men, mortal or not, would find little to object to in living in a thriving city. Living well, judging by Duncan’s clothes and the thickness of the stack of banknotes in his money clip, living with a woman as beautiful and successful and wealthy as Amanda.

But Duncan MacLeod was Hugh Fitzcairn’s oldest friend, and Immortals measured friendships in centuries. Fitz knew that the Immortality that he savored for all the possibilities that it offered him—an attitude he was attempting to share with young Danny O’Donal—sometimes weighed on Duncan. The Highlander was prone to introspective musings, periods when his sense of honor and duty drained his life of joy.

Hugh Fitzcairn was an honorable man, as honorable as any Englishman ever born could be, Duncan would say. And if he took on a responsibility, he fulfilled it. But for him, Immortality was not about the Game, though he had fought and taken heads when he had to. Hugh did want to live forever—but he didn’t actually expect to.

No, Fitzcairn thought, as fragrant smoke curled from his pipe, for him Immortality was an adventure. The extra time that he and his kind were given was to be used, was to be filled with new experiences, with exploring all the places on the earth that a simple English boy—called Hugh by the farmer’s wife who found him in a rock-strewn field—would never have known existed, had he not died, struck down by a jealous husband, his body dumped into a storm-swollen river where he drowned, water filling his aching lungs, as darkness closed around him. Until, who knew how long after, far downstream, he sputtered back to life, and was pulled from the waters by a member of the King’s Guard named Henry Fitzmartin. So he lived again, lived to become—to learn to become—the Immortal Hugh Fitzcairn.

Over the last few hours, Fitz had watched MacLeod closely, and listened to the words beneath the words. The Highlander was feeling restless. He was thinking too much. About his friend Alec Hill. About a woman named Sarah he’d known before he came to San Francisco. Something had happened between them that MacLeod wasn’t easy with. He was thinking about his relationship with Amanda and his life here with her. It was as plain as could be. As his oldest friend, it was his obligation to save Duncan from himself. The man was in desperate need of a change, of a new experience, of—an adventure.
Hugh Fitzcairn, at your service!
he thought.

“Danny, boy, fetch a fresh lamp. The light is almost gone. And MacLeod”—he called to his friend, who had just reentered the saloon—“come here now. I’ve something to show you.”

Danny brought the lamp, and Fitz cleared a space on the table, moving the brass ashtray and several glasses aside. The three men sat once more, as Fitz reached into the inside breast pocket of the jacket that hung on the chair behind him. He drew out a small leather pouch. Opening the drawstrings, he spilled the contents into the empty space before them.

Duncan whistled softly. “All that glitters …” he said.

“Actually, laddie, it
is
gold in this case.” Fitz fleetingly thought of the two illiterate swordsmen they had been when they first met. Now they could quote one of Will Shakespeare’s plays with ease.

The five nuggets, each about the size of the last joint in a man’s thumb, did actually glitter in the light of the fresh lamp.

Fitz nudged one to the side with his pipe stem. “This is for our passage. We’d take ship from here to Seattle, and then another from there to Alaska.”

A second.

“And this for lodging, and such, when we arrive. There are hotels there, I’ve heard, as fancy as any in this city. And places where a man can find entertainment, of all shapes and sizes.”

A third and fourth.

“These for outfitting, gear. Food. A guide, I would think. There’ll be those already there who will know what we need.”

“And the last”—he picked up the nugget and held it between his thumb and forefinger—“for luck. One—what is it the kiddies say at birthdays?—one to grow on. There’s many more like this there, just lying around, there for the taking, I’ve heard.”

Duncan sat silent. Fitz watched him closely. Danny fidgeted, reached out to touch one of the nuggets, and drew back, as though it were somehow dangerous to handle.

Finally, the Highlander began fumbling at his watch pocket.

“MacLeod, ye thickheaded Scot,” Fitz grumbled, “it’s not the time to check the time.” He tossed the fifth nugget back on the table.

“That would be two to grow on,” Duncan stated as he withdrew a sixth nugget and tossed it on the table.

Danny gasped in surprise, as Fitzcairn, blue eyes sparkling, threw his head back and laughed aloud.

“A gift from the lady in white?” he guessed.

Duncan smiled. “After the
Excelsior
docked, this place was packed with men just come down from the north, with their suitcases full of gold. More than a few nuggets were gambled away that night. Amanda gave this one to me to work into a watch fob. But I guess it will be put to a different use now.”

“So, you’ll join us then, Highlander?”

“I’m thinking that I might regret this after a cup or two of coffee, but, yes, I’ll join you.”

Fitzcairn whooped with delight. He rose, grabbed a half-full bottle of champagne, long since gone flat, and a glass.

“Bring glasses, lads, and follow me.”

Duncan and Danny trailed after the capering figure who, golden curls flying, danced across the Queen of Spades, down the stairs, and out the front door.

The sky was not yet light, but that gray that comes before the glow of the dawn. Fitz took a minute to get his bearings, then filled their glasses to overflowing, laughing as Duncan stepped back to save his boots from a splash of warm champagne.

Fitz positioned them and raised his glass for a toast in—he hoped—the right direction.

“North,” he cried, “to Alaska.”

Chapter 2

The next morning had brought a second thought or two. But Fitz went about booking their passage to Seattle while Duncan considered how best to broach the matter with Amanda.

The moment seemed right a few nights later, as they lay together in Amanda’s bed, tangled in peach satin. But before he could turn the subject, a knock on the door summoned them to the disaster that ended Amanda’s newfound pleasure in her identity as mistress of the Queen of Spades.

The saloon had burned down, reduced to blackened, smoldering ruins. Amanda wandered through the devastation, raging at fate—and at Kit, whom she somehow held responsible. Duncan had rarely seen her so distressed. His first instinct was to change plans and stay with her in San Francisco.