Cynthia Bailey Pratt (26 page)

Jocelyn peered at the shining blade of the bread knife. Her image wavered, here short, there elongated, but visible. Rather than allowing her friend’s hair to curl madly all over her head, Helena had drawn it smoothly back from her forehead and set a peach ribbon to hold the massy waves behind her small ears. A few errant strands escaped, springing charmingly over Jocelyn’s forehead. “Oh, that is nice! I look almost ...”

Arnold made a gagging sound and, wiggling over onto his back, expired.

“You look lovely,” Helena said defiantly. “And everyone who sees you will think so, too.” A nearby clock chimed the hour. The girls listened, counting. “You’d better fly!”

On the street Jocelyn looked up at her cousin’s rooms. Helena stood, framed above her in the many-paned window. Jocelyn waved her gloved hand and smiled, though she knew her friend could not see the expression on her face.

“Jocelyn!”

She turned around. Arnold came toward her out of the arched door. “You can’t come, Arnold,” she said impatiently.

“I don’t want to,” he answered. “But . . . they said there wouldn’t be anything to eat or drink for you. It might be hours before you get back, they said.”

“That’s right.”

“Well . . . here.” He shoved something into her hand. “It’s the rest of the citron drops you gave me. You take them.”

“Thank you.” Jocelyn looked at the torn and dirty paper and then at Arnold. Perhaps he saw in her eyes that she wanted to embrace him, for he turned on his heel and bolted away. With a smile Jocelyn tucked the hard candies into her coat pocket. They were undoubtedly filthy from being in his pockets with dirt, objects of interest, and various livestock, and she could not imagine ever eating one. Still, it was kind of Arnold, and his kind impulses were rare.

Jocelyn took the opportunity to look more closely at Oxford. She did not want to walk through the streets which, after all, would not be so much different from Libermore. Therefore, Tom gave her simple directions on how to reach the Radcliffe Camera by passing through several yards and something called the Old Quad, although from Tom’s description it did not sound so much-older than the place in which he lived.

Jocelyn enjoyed walking at her own pace through the green courts. When she had come through with Hammond, he had been in too much of a hurry to permit more than hasty admiration. Entering what she thought must be the Old Quad, she could see at once the golden brick of a tall round building just over the ivy-grown wall. She began to walk more quickly, keeping her eyes on the Camera. A large woman, strangely familiar, walked past her on the graveled path, and Jocelyn nodded vaguely to her.

Through the darkly painted gate ahead was the building where, in less than an hour, the Prince Regent and Czar Alexander would be dining. Jocelyn wouldn’t have felt more excited if she were about to meet the Prince Regent in person, her spirits only a little dampened by the thought of her former vicar. How she wished she and Helena could have shared this evening equally. It was just one more black mark against Nicholas Fain, that he’d made his stepsister so unhappy.

The noise of the crowd faintly penetrated the thick stone wall. She realized she’d been listening to it for some minutes before she’d known what it was. There must be thousands of people just the other side of the wall. For a moment they grew silent as a nearby bell began to toll the half-hour, answered by a faint chorus throughout the city.

With a cry Jocelyn fell to her knees, her head jerked back by a hand in her curls. A knife ground its teeth against her neck. Her eyes blurring with tears, she was forced to look up. A face appeared over her, upside down. Disoriented, she stared at it. It had no eyebrows and there was something else wrong with the bonneted head. She tried to understand what it was. For a moment, she forgot her hurts. That face! Greatly altered, it was still Nicholas Fain’s.

Mr. Fain pushed Jocelyn to the ground. She landed hands first on the brick walk, small stones puncturing the palms of her gloves. Her mouth closed with a jar she could feel through her entire body. She was rattled. Turning onto her hip, she saw Mr. Fain. His head turned to either side, scanning the empty windows facing the quad.

Looking for witnesses, Jocelyn thought, and a fear indistinguishable from physical pain touched her. Her brain was paralyzed. She screamed. But the constant drumlike sound of the crowd beat on the other side of the wall, and she knew no one noticed one more cry.

Fain pulled her upright by the slack of her collar and ran with her into the shadows of the arch in the wall. She caught at his wrists as she strangled in his grasp.

“One more sound and I’ll kill you.” The words, grunted in her ear, froze her.

“I suppose you had a hand in planning this,” he said, in a tone more like the one she was accustomed to hearing from him. A gentle sadness, like a reproof never quite stated, made him popular among the older ladies. Now his eyes were half-starting from his head in madness.

Fain shoved Jocelyn’s head nearer the peeling paint of the gate, forcing her to look through a gap between two boards. The students had been joined by soldiers in red and blue, though Hammond still stood just before the entrance to the rotunda, inspecting every person that passed.

“I knew about it.” In a rush she said, “You can’t get in there. You can’t—”

“I’ve gotten into more closely guarded palaces than this one. It’s not even a palace. Just a library.” Fain clicked his tongue against his teeth. “This plan must have been made today. I saw you arrive . . . you didn’t know that! There must be a flaw in it.”

Fain spun Jocelyn around. Within the rim of his ridiculous bonnet, his eyes burned in a whitened face. Their intensity contrasted with the gentle smile that curved his lips. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re my loophole. Why are you here?” He sniffed. “Perfume. Ribboned and gloved. You’re going in there . . . to gaze upon Their Royal Countenances!” The knife once more pricked at her throat. “Get me into the gallery. I’ll do it from there.”

Jocelyn could not speak. She moved her head a fraction of an inch from side to side, feeling the blade like a sliver of ice under her chin.

“Take me in or I’ll kill the dark-haired man where he stands. And your cousin.” He bared his teeth in a smile like the grimace of a skull. Fain stepped back, holding his knife upright in the air. “Come now, Jocelyn,” he said. “Who is more important? Tom and a man I think you perhaps care for? Or some wretched tyrant you don’t even know?”

“I . . .”

He lunged at her again, pressing her against the gate with his body. She could not prevent a whimper of terror from escaping her throat. He chuckled and somehow that was worse than the threat that followed. “If you give me away, by a word, a look, a breath, I’ll kill both of them before I’m stopped. Their blood will be on your head, Jocelyn.”

* * * *

Jocelyn walked up the street, her arm linked with that of the tall and heavy woman by her side. Jocelyn was laughing and whispering in the woman’s ear, which was covered by a scooplike white bonnet, decorated with pinkish roses that clashed with the heavy red of her gown. The woman’s shoes were dumpish and ugly.

A party of six, a harried father and five beautiful daughters, stood in line ahead of them, the father grumbling at the delay. Their chatter broke like the shrill cries of birds through the sea-sound of the crowd. Hammond let them pass.

“Oh, Captain Hammond,” Jocelyn said, upon reaching the man who stood sentinel between the crowd and the Camera. “I’m sorry to be late. I met an old friend in the street on the way here. This is Mrs. Brewster. Imagine! She’s a spectator, too!”

Hammond smiled. “I wish I were His Highness. All the beauties of England are here tonight.” His eyes flickered over her companion, winced, and then went past her, to the next group approaching. “Go on inside, Jocelyn,” he said, waving her in.

“Come, Mrs. Brewster.” It was difficult to walk with a lump of lead sheathed in fear inside her and a knife pressed against her side.

“Mrs. Brewster” forced her along, with a squeeze of Jocelyn’s arm that looked friendly but made the girl’s eyes suspiciously bright. No one noticed.

The heavy door under the Grecian pediment stood open. Jocelyn sighed in relief and would have sagged from the release of tension. The knife in her side kept her upright. Whatever else happened, Tom and Hammond were safe.

Inside, the entrance was dark, save for shafts of light that fell through the windows above. Two guards were marking off names on a sheet of paper. Jocelyn could only perspire while three of the daughters in the party ahead searched themselves for their fans.

“Miss Helena Fain and Miss Jocelyn Burnwell,” Mr. Fain fluted in falsetto upon reaching the man with the guest list.

“I’m sorry . . .” He began to say and Jocelyn breathed once more. The other one broke in. “Yes, they’re here. Up the stair to your right, please.”

. Many people had already climbed the curving stairs to the gallery. Most of them crowded against the rail of marble running around the circuit of the rotunda, staring excitedly down at the scene below. The air was hot, for candles burned brightly below them. There were no chairs.

Mr. Fain dragged Jocelyn forward. The curses he used to get through the crowd sounded more horrible in Fain’s parody of a woman’s voice. The rest of the spectators drew away from Fain and Jocelyn as he pushed her up to the balustrade, her back against a marble pillar. Jocelyn’s desperate eyes sought those of the men near her. They looked away or turned aside. No one would help her.

Fain looked down onto the main floor of the rotunda. “Look,” he said, pointing down with one hand while the other kept the knife close against her. The rays of the descending sun struck flames from glimmering plates and brilliant crystal. Tables draped in white spread like a gold-chased fan across the circular floor. To her right she saw a more elaborately laid table with a scarlet cloth edged in gold like an altar in a church. Fresh flowers in a huge arrangement stood behind two large armed chairs raised higher than any other seats in the Camera. Fain stared at those two chairs. He smiled and began whistling tunelessly.

After a few moments he whispered hoarsely, “It is strange to consider, is it not, that you alone should be privileged not only to see but to understand my apotheosis.”

“I don’t understand,” Jocelyn said. “How—”

“Softly, girl, softly, lest one of these brave English gentlemen come to your aid.” Mr. Fain turned his head, but the people nearby remained pointedly oblivious to his presence. “You shall be my witness, you shall understand. Be quiet and patient only a little time more. You who have made a practice and an art of being quiet and patient.”

Jocelyn said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I am not blind, Jocelyn. You are always meek, and yet I think you crave the excitements of a wider life. I did, at your age, and I achieved it.”

“You’re wrong about me, Mr. Fain.”

“I should have said the same, then. I found a life in the service of a great leader. Today I shall prove that service is indeed my life.”

Slowly, incautiously, Jocelyn said, “I think you are mad.”

“I?” The knife against her shook. “You do not know me yet. Look down again and tell me who is madder. Those fretful popinjays worrying no doubt at this moment whether their sashes and furbelows hang to a nicety—or I. My master will with one final blow destroy these mean princes and set himself in his rightful place. I—I have been chosen to go before him to clear his way.”

Mr. Pain’s eyes glittered as he looked down upon the elaborately dressed tables. His words rushed forth. Caution remained even as his blood grew hot. He never spoke above a confidential whisper. Jocelyn could only think his egotistical madness would have been worse if Napoleon’s letter had ever reached him.

“I do understand, Mr. Fain,” she said calmly.

“No! I can see that you do not. You shall be my witness nevertheless. I will make you famous. As famous as Corday or Judith. Yes, every bit as famous.”

Behind them the crowd swirled and parted. Mr. Fain pressed Jocelyn into the angle between pillar and balustrade, looking over his right shoulder. Two elderly gentlemen made their slow but insistent way forward. One carried a cane of polished black wood, the other stood as straight as a tree, old and hollow, that might topple in any sudden breeze. They made directly for the spot next to Jocelyn and the disguised Mr. Fain, urging one another on with word and gesture.

“To your left, Mr. Crowley. Between the woman in the bright purple dress and the fat man,” the tall gentleman bellowed in the flat tone peculiar to the deaf.

“Indeed, Mr. McMasters. Slip ye along. Mind the female in the turban. Silly thing nearly put my eye out.” The other gentleman was not above poking those in his way with his stick.

Jocelyn heard one woman say, “The class of people here is not at all as I hoped it might be!” Her husband tried to resurrect her pleasure in seeing the Czar and the Prince.

Another woman, more kindly, stepped forward to whisper and to point in warning against the foul-mouthed woman Mr. Fain appeared to be.

“What did she say, Mr. Crowley?”

The bent man shook his head and continued to press forward. “Come along, Mr. McMasters, come along.”

Jocelyn felt her captor jump as the cane struck him on the elbow. The two elderly men pressed against the balustrade. “Old fools,” Fain said loudly in his hideous falsetto. “Fall over the railing and have done.”

Neither man paid any attention. Jocelyn felt her heart sink. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the silver head of the bent man’s stick. If only it were possible to hit Mr. Fain more effectively with it! She knew just where to strike, thanks to Regin. How long ago it seemed that he fell at her hands.

Somehow, as Jocelyn thought about her position, the sight of these two indomitable old men made her feel as if there were unrealized possibilities in the situation if only she could find them. She thought hard about everything she knew about Mr. Fain.

Brightly she said, “You will be pleased to know that I left Helena in excellent spirits. Of course, Cocker’s setting fire to the vicarage was—” Mr. Fain grunted. “Fortunately, Helena and I flung ourselves out the window.”