Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [352]
He saw conclusion dawn in my face, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. He spread the cloak, holding it for me.
“You have my word that you will return from our conversation unmolested, Madam.”
I tried to read his expression, but nothing showed on the thin, chiseled features. The eyes were steady, and told me no more than would my own, seen in a looking glass.
I reached for the cloak.
“All right,” I said.
We went out into the dimness of the rock garden, passing the sentry with no more than a nod. He recognized me, and it was not unusual for me to go out at night, to attend to an urgent case of sickness in the city. The guard glanced sharply at Jack Randall—it was usually Murtagh who accompanied me, if Jamie could not—but dressed as he was, there was no hint of the Captain’s real identity. He returned the guard’s glance with indifference, and the door of the palace closed behind us, leaving us in the chill dark outside.
It had been raining earlier, but the storm was breaking up. Thick clouds shredded and flew overhead, driven by a wind that whipped aside my cloak and plastered my skirt to my legs.
“This way.” I clutched the heavy velvet close around me, bent my head against the wind, and followed Jack Randall’s lean figure through the path of the rockery.
We emerged at the lower end, and after a pause for a quick look around, crossed rapidly across the grass to the portal of the church.
The door had warped and hung ajar; it had been disused for several years because of structural faults that made the building dangerous, and no one had troubled to repair it. I kicked my way through a barrier of dead leaves and rubbish, ducking from the flickering moonlight of the palace’s back garden into the absolute darkness of the church.
Or not quite absolute; as my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see the tall lines of the pillars that marched down each side of the nave, and the delicate stonework of the enormous window at the far end, glass mostly gone.
A movement in the shadows showed me where Randall had gone; I turned between the pillars and found him in a space where a recess once used as a baptismal font had left a stone ledge along the wall. To either side were pale blotches on the walls; the memorial tablets of those buried in the church. Others lay flat, embedded in the floor on either side of the central aisle, the names blurred by the traffic of feet.
“All right,” I said. “We can’t be overheard now. What do you want of me?”
“Your skill as a physician, and your complete discretion. In exchange for such information as I possess regarding the movements and plans of the Elector’s troops,” he answered promptly.
That rather took my breath away. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. He couldn’t possibly mean…
“You’re looking for medical treatment?” I asked, making no effort to disguise the mingled horror and amazement in my voice. “From me? I understood that you…er, I mean…” With a major effort of will, I stopped myself floundering and said firmly, “Surely you have already received whatever medical treatment is possible? You appear to be in reasonably good condition.” Externally, at least. I bit my lip, suppressing an urge toward hysteria.
“I am informed that I am fortunate to be alive, Madam,” he answered coldly. “The point is debatable.” He set the lantern in a niche in the wall, where the scooped basin of a piscina lay dry and empty in its recess.
“I assume your inquiry to be motivated by medical curiosity rather than concern for my welfare,” he went on. The lanternlight, shed at waist height, illuminated him from the ribs downward, leaving head and shoulders hidden. He laid a hand on the waistband of his breeches, turning slightly toward me.
“Do you wish to inspect the injury, in order to judge the effectiveness of treatment?” The shadows hid his face,