Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [243]
“What do you think you’re playing at?” I demanded. I yanked Fergus, gasping and spluttering, to his feet, and began to beat his clothes, knocking the worst of the mud clumps and hay wisps off of him.
“Look at that,” I said accusingly. “You’ve torn not only your shirt, but your breeches as well. We’ll have to ask Berta to mend them.” I turned him around and fingered the torn flap of fabric. The stable-lad had apparently gotten a hand in the waistband of the breeches, and ripped them down the side seam; the buckram fabric drooped from his slender hips, all but baring one buttock.
I stopped talking suddenly, and stared. It wasn’t the disgraceful expanse of bare flesh that riveted me, but a small red mark that adorned it. About the size of a halfpenny piece, it was the dark, purplish-red color of a freshly healed burn. Disbelievingly, I touched it, making Fergus start in alarm. The edges of the mark were incised; whatever had made it had sunk into the flesh. I grabbed the boy by the arm to stop him running away, and bent to examine the mark more closely.
At a distance of six inches, the shape of the mark was clear; it was an oval, carrying within it smudged shapes that must have been letters.
“Who did this to you, Fergus?” I asked. My voice sounded queer to my own ears; preternaturally calm and detached.
Fergus yanked, trying to pull away, but I held on.
“Who, Fergus?” I demanded, giving him a little shake.
“It’s nothing, Madame; I hurt myself sliding off the fence. It’s just a splinter.” His large black eyes darted to and fro, seeking a refuge.
“That’s not a splinter. I know what it is, Fergus. But I want to know who did it.” I had seen something like it only once before, and that wound freshly inflicted, while this had had some time to heal. But the mark of a brand is unmistakable.
Seeing that I meant it, he quit struggling. He licked his lips, hesitating, but his shoulders slumped, and I knew I had him now.
“It was…an Englishman, milady. With a ring.”
“When?”
“A long time ago, Madame! In May.”
I drew a deep breath, calculating. Three months. Three months earlier when Jamie had left the house to visit a brothel, in search of his warehouse foreman. In Fergus’s company. Three months since Jamie had encountered Jack Randall in Madame Elise’s establishment, and seen something that made all promises null and void, that had formed in him the determination to kill Jack Randall. Three months since he had left—never to return.
It took considerable patience, supplemented by a firm grip on Fergus’s upper arm, but I succeeded at last in extracting the story from him.
When they arrived at Madame Elise’s establishment, Jamie had told Fergus to wait for him while he went upstairs to make the financial arrangements. Judging from prior experience that this might take some time, Fergus had wandered into the large salon, where a number of young ladies that he knew were “resting,” chattering together and fixing each other’s hair in anticipation of customers.
“Business is sometimes slow in the mornings,” he explained to me. “But on Tuesdays and Fridays, the fishermen come up the Seine to sell their catch at the morning market. Then they have money, and Madame Elise does a fine business, so les jeunes filles must be ready right after breakfast.”
Most of the “girls” were in fact the older inhabitants of the establishment; fishermen were not considered the choicest of clients, and so went by default to the less desirable prostitutes. Among these were most of Fergus’s former friends, though, and he passed an agreeable quarter of an hour in the salon, being petted and teased. A few early clients appeared, made their choice, and departed for the upstairs rooms—Madame Elise’s house boasted four narrow stories—without disturbing the conversation of the remaining ladies.
“And then the Englishman came in, with Madame Elise.” Fergus stopped and swallowed, the large Adam’s apple bobbing uneasily in his skinny throat.
It was obvious to Fergus, who had seen men in every state of inebriation and arousal,