Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [174]
I could see him hesitating in how much to tell me. I kept my eyes on the bottle in my hand, to give him time to make up his mind. The contents rolled with a pleasant sensation as the little vial twisted in my palm. It was oddly heavy for its size, and had a strange, dense, fluid feel to it, as though it was filled with liquid metal.
“It’s quicksilver,” Master Raymond said, answering my unspoken question. Apparently whatever mind-reading he had been doing had decided him in my favor, for he took back the bottle, poured it out in a shimmering silver puddle on the table before us, and sat back to tell me what he knew.
“One of His Highness’s agents has made inquiries in Holland,” he said. “A man named O’Brien—and a man more inept at his job I hope never to employ,” he added. “A secret agent who drinks to excess?”
“Everyone around Charles Stuart drinks to excess,” I said. “What was O’Brien doing?”
“He wished to open negotiations for a shipment of broadswords. Two thousand broadswords, to be purchased in Spain, and sent through Holland, so as to conceal their place of origin.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked. I wasn’t sure whether I was naturally stupid, or merely fuddled with cherry brandy, but it seemed a pointless undertaking, even for Charles Stuart.
Raymond shrugged, prodding the puddle of quicksilver with a blunt forefinger.
“One can guess, madonna. The Spanish king is a cousin of the Scottish king, is he not? As well as of our good King Louis?”
“Yes, but…”
“Might it not be that he is willing to help the cause of the Stuarts, but not openly?”
The brandy haze was receding from my brain.
“It might.”
Raymond tapped his finger sharply downward, making the puddle of quicksilver shiver into several small round globules, that shimmied wildly over the tabletop.
“One hears,” he said mildly, eyes still on the droplets of mercury, “that King Louis entertains an English duke at Versailles. One hears also that the Duke is there to seek some arrangements of trade. But then it is rare to hear everything, madonna.”
I stared at the rippling drops of mercury, fitting all this together. Jamie, too, had heard the rumor that Sandringham’s embassage concerned more than trade rights. What if the Duke’s visit really concerned the possibilities of an agreement between France and England—perhaps with regard to the future of Brussels? And if Louis was negotiating secretly with England for support for his invasion of Brussels—then what might Philip of Spain be inclined to do, if approached by an impecunious cousin with the power to distract the English most thoroughly from any attention to foreign ventures?
“Three Bourbon cousins,” Raymond murmured to himself. He shepherded one of the drops toward another; as the droplets touched, they merged at once, a single shining drop springing into rounded life as though by magic. The prodding finger urged another droplet inward, and the single drop grew larger. “One blood. But one interest?”
The finger struck down again, and glittering fragments ran over the tabletop in every direction.
“I think not, madonna,” Raymond said calmly.
“I see,” I said, with a deep breath. “And what do you think about Charles Stuart’s new partnership with the Comte St. Germain?”
The wide amphibian smile grew broader.
“I have heard that His Highness goes often to the docks these days—to talk with his new partner, of course. And he looks at the ships at anchor—so fine and quick, so…expensive. The land of Scotland does lie across the water, does it not?”
“It does indeed,” I said. A ray of light hit the quicksilver with a flash, attracting my attention to the lowering sun. I would have to go.
“Thank you,” I said. “Will you send word? If you hear anything more?”
He inclined his massive head graciously, the swinging hair the color of mercury in the sun, then jerked it up abruptly.
“Ah! Do not touch the quicksilver, madonna!” he warned as I reached toward a droplet that had rolled toward my edge of the table. “It bonds at once with any metal it touches.” He reached across and tenderly scooped the tiny pellet toward