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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Grégoire de Fronsac/James Norrington, Norrington/Sparrow, Grégoire/Jean-François.
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, etc.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: PotC/Brotherhood of the Wolf crossover; post-movie for both. Am following the general history of 1766 in New Orléans, when the city was turned over to the Spanish amid protests by its mostly French citizenry, but am not sticking strictly to the timeline, so slight AU in respect to that. Supernatural aspects.
Summary: Opportune meetings, perhaps.
***
By now James was able to sense the oncoming of a particularly bad bout. He gulped down the last traces of his water, unheeding of how much he spilled, and then handed off the glass to Grégoire. His hands were already jerking so much he couldn’t make them still no matter how hard he pressed them against the blankets, and he was praying that the slow leak of acid into the back of his throat didn’t signal yet another vomiting spell. If he couldn’t manage to keep down something, then he might yet fight off the fever but lack the strength for recovery.
Someone knocked at the door and Grégoire went to answer it. James laid down, curling himself high on the bed so he could watch the man waking on the floor. Beaumont was dressed like a common roustabout from the streets, but he woke like a thief: slow, not moving very much, and regaining alertness in a heartbeat. The only way James could tell the man was lifting his head was by the slight shift of his hair. His eyes were slivers of nerves darting about the room, finally landing on James and then Grégoire, who had returned with an armful of things. Among them were James’ wig, a few bags leaking strange scents so pungent they made James’ eyes water, and a large, thin leather-bound case.
“I had a man bring our things, since it doesn’t seem like we’ll be leaving soon.” Grégoire deposited most of his burden on a nearby armchair, but retained the case. He set that aside on the table beside the bed with unusual care before methodically going through the rest. “Seems he believed my warning that I’ve been collecting cursed Indian artifacts. Damn. I’ll have to pay him the whole fee now.”
Once Beaumont had spotted Grégoire, his caution had fallen away and he’d sat up with an indignant sound. Now he yanked at his bound hands—the bed shook and James hastily suppressed the urge to vomit—and threw back his head to level a mortally offended look at Grégoire. He yanked at the gag till it was loose enough for some muffled speech and barked something in the gutter-French of New Orléans, to which Grégoire made no reply except to turn his back on Beaumont. The color rapidly mounted in Beaumont’s cheeks.
The housekeeper poked her head and hand past the door, beaming when she saw Grégoire. In return he gave her an absent smile and a few coins, into which she bit in a matter-of-fact way. He chuckled and tossed her another coin that she dropped into the front of her dress as she withdrew.
“What on earth did you tell her?” James asked. The sweat on his forehead and neck was drying and leaving behind a sharp chill. He shivered and pulled up the blankets as best he could.
“Not much. Though she told me quite a bit about her master and mistress.” Shaking his head, Grégoire resumed rummaging through his belongings. He extricated an oil-cloth-wrapped bundle, which he unrolled to briefly show two sheathed long knives. They quickly disappeared up his sleeves and poked snake-heads out of his collar.
James rolled his eyes; if the fever-dreams were always that patently ridiculous, he wouldn’t have a thing to fear.
“Fear the woman scorned?” Beaumont had dragged out the remainder of the gag, and now he contemptuously returned their stares. “What? English sailors come here, even if their flag does not.”
He had a heavy accent, but his English was surprisingly good. There was no way he’d picked it up from the odd deserter or trapper that would have made it to this outpost of the French frontier. It seemed that the same thought had struck Grégoire, for the man was now watching Beaumont with an intense, wary gaze.
If the air in the room was chilly, the look in Beaumont’s eyes when he jerked his head towards James was positively glacial. He shot off another long string of Creole French, most of which sounded highly insulting and which probably had to do with whatever he assumed Grégoire’s relationship to James was. Grégoire’s response was a careless shrug and a short, curt comment that James thought might translate to a jeer about envy. It was rather unlike Grégoire, who up until now had been extraordinarily polite and tactful, considering the circumstances.
Something silver flashed, drawing James’ eye to Grégoire’s wrist. But the other man had pulled down his sleeve before anything more could be seen. He raised an eyebrow at James and pointed his chin at Beaumont, who had apparently been rendered speechless by fury. “If he’s right, they won’t come anywhere near this side of the Cabildo. Even pirates don’t foul their eating-places.”
“Of course I’m right. And what do I have in return? This?” Beaumont yanked at his hands so hard he moved the bed.
Caught off-guard, James was flung backwards. His stomach went the other way and suddenly the world wanted to wring him from inside-out. He scrabbled desperately for the edge of the mattress, twice mistaking a fold in the sheets for it before finding the real one, and then hung his head over the side. A white round blur violently clattered down before him just as the first thick clotted mouthful of vomit forced itself through his lips.
He had hardly anything left in his belly to empty out, so it didn’t take long. What landed in the bowl was a disturbing rusty shade that sickened him to look at; he knew he should be checking for fresh blood instead of dried clots, but a single dry heave convinced him that between courage and prudence, the latter was the better choice.
“Yellow fever? And you’re leaving me with a dead man?”
“He is very much alive and I expect to return to see him that way.” There was a hand on James’ back. It rubbed from between his shoulderblades to the incurve of his spine while he tried to work up the strength and motivation to lean backwards. “If you’ve never been out of the city, then you should have nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, I had the damned fever. But he’s throwing up red bile. He’s done for.”
Grégoire muttered something about backwoods superstitions and quack medical theories. “He’s throwing up clots. If that were bright red, then I’d order him a coffin.”
A handkerchief, worn and frayed at the corners, was passed to James. Despite its raggedness, he could still tell that it had originally been an expensive piece of cloth and he was a little loathe to waste it on himself. But he wasn’t in any condition to reach for a rag, so he hesitantly began to dab at his mouth with it.
“Funny what you say about superstition. You believe those are real loup-garoux running around, don’t you? Not just rabid dogs or madmen?” It sounded as if Beaumont was coming closer. “Why do you care if there’s dagoes dying? Is it because you’re afraid they’ll blame your English friend?”
“Anyone with the slightest particle of sense would know neither I nor any of my crew is in any shape to climb out of bed, much less kill someone,” James muttered, wishing he were in a position to lift his head and glare as well. He took a last swipe at his mouth before letting Grégoire pull him back onto the mattress and take away the handkerchief. “Reprisals against men like you are far more likely.”
Something small and hard pressed against his lips—a vial, perhaps, though it was strangely cold and had the wrong texture. The stuff in it registered as smoky and revolting, but the communication between James’ senses and mind seemed to have stretched very, very thin. Trying to send a message from one to the other was probably much like passing on news by shouting from hilltop to hilltop.
The water that followed afterward was nevertheless very welcome. James had the vague impression he was embarrassing himself by loudly sucking it down, but as he’d temporarily forgotten what he should do in such a situation, he did nothing.
“I’m trying to help—mmph! Mmmph!” Beaumont’s strident, skull-paining voice was abruptly, wonderfully cut off. It was replaced by the scuffling of heels and angry grunts, but those were much more tolerable.
Grégoire snapped some Creole at Beaumont, which temporarily stilled the newly-gagged man, though the air around him positively vibrated with wounded rage. Then he bent over James, backs of fingers lightly brushing away the sweat-matted hair from James’ forehead. “I’ll have Annette bring up some soup for you.”
As he left, his long coat swung around and up to transform him into a billowing sail. The corners of James’ eyes stung and he had to blink twice to banish the hurt.
* * *
New Orléans at night could be a wild wolf-girl, a debauched princess, a hungry old hag or a cringing ghost, depending on the district and the season. Arguably Grégoire’s stay in the city had shown him the whole spectrum of her personality, but he had not yet seen any mood remotely resembling tonight’s.
Once the streets had started to empty, they had done so with great rapidity. Women and children whisked away before the sun had even touched the horizon. Men lingered longer, but they did so in groups of at least four, huddled around a lantern or a crude torch. Their faces were gaunt and sallow to begin with, and in the yellow-orange light they resembled incarnations of pestilence come to roost.
At last there was only Grégoire, stationed at the window of a small nearly chapel, and the shadowed figures of the Spanish guard on the Cabildo. He sat himself on the sill and braced a leg against the opposite side, letting his other foot dangle down.
The chapel was otherwise empty, and from the looks of things had been so for a while: the flowers were either withered or pulpy brown rot, and the dust on the pews was thick enough for him to be able to write readable words in it. He’d borrowed a Bible from one to help pass the time, but he had to give up on that long before the light grew too dim. Someone had gone through and underlined every passage about plagues and disease, and they’d also scribbled unintelligible commentary over the pages of Revelations. The frantic spikes and the shuddering trail at the end of every word said enough without the content needing to be understood.
Deep mournful bells tolled the hours once, twice, three times as Grégoire waited. The city grew black as hell, the only light a few straggling pinpricks in the canopy of the sky. Or perhaps they were nicks in the sooty underside of a pot lid, which held in all the heat and mugginess so the humans beneath would stew in their own foulness.
Grégoire lifted his hand to tug open his shirt-collar and found his fingers twitching. He irritably smacked them against the wall, then stifled a curse at the pain in his knuckles.
Perhaps ten minutes later, he caught himself glancing towards the house in which James and Jean-François were, which was only visible as a thin vertical slice of a corner. This time, he pressed his head to the cool windowpane in the hopes that it would chill his thoughts into sensible form.
Norrington appeared to have been a man in his prime before he’d caught the fever, and even now he was shockingly self-aware, so he shouldn’t lack for strength or will to fight off the disease. And he wasn’t alone in the house; the housekeeper had promised to check on him every hour, and given how she’d admired his face, she probably would keep that promise. If brute force was needed, there were the two watchmen, who were some sort of kin to her.
Though Grégoire doubted they’d ever need to leave their morose vigil playing cards in the kitchen; Jean-François struck him as an intelligent, if dramatic, man and life would have taught him better than to strike out of spite. There was no profit in it.
For that matter, there was barely a man in it—he really couldn’t be over twenty. He cursed and snarled like his self-proclaimed background, but there was a strange…not innocence, but an incomprehension of long-term consequences. His insults rose from the passion and the knowledge of the street, but he hadn’t yet been made weary or bitter by it.
He could be acting for someone, though in that case Grégoire was finding it increasingly improbable that Jean-François necessarily knew into what he was trying to draw Grégoire. Possibly a cat’s-paw. Or possibly he was acting alone—Grégoire hadn’t seen anyone trailing them, else he wouldn’t have risked taking Jean-François into the house. In which case he could be trying to lie his way into a softer berth, or he could be telling the truth.
The more Grégoire thought on it, the more he failed to think and saw instead: a man on a horse, hunter’s red and silver moon. And then he had to cut himself off and stare hard at the soldiers shivering in the hot night.
It was only a face. It wasn’t the manners or the accent or the air.
Perhaps it was the guilt. Not for, may God continue to keep her and her son, Marianne, though the mere thought of her made an ache press wistfully against the inside of Grégoire’s chest. He had loved her, did still love her, but she was dead and he, despite his grief, was not. Mani had once told Grégoire people were to him like wolves were to Mani, and he’d cheerfully agreed with his friend. He still did agree, though his reasons for doing so were far more studied and somber.
Then perhaps it was for Mani, and for all that Mani had been: a failure to see all that Grégoire should have until it was far too late. He was not an altruist by any measure, but he did pride himself on his ability to discern patterns in the world where others merely saw untamed wilderness. Yes, the loup-garou existed, and so did many other strange things, but they were knowable and could be observed and studied and understood. They were not excluded from reason, and reason was the only real bulwark against horror and hysteria and all the other dark shades of humanity.
Grégoire found the corners of his mouth dragging upward into a humorless smile. Somehow he thought he’d had this conversation before, in one form or the other.
Across the road, a slight-bodied silhouette stole from building to building. It seemed to move with some purpose, always circling within a few yards of the soldiers.
And it’d been spotted. One soldier suddenly yelped and pointed his musket; his comrades quickly took up the cry and they went from trembling frightened line to yelling half-insane mob within seconds. They weren’t going to leave behind anything even remotely useful once they’d gotten started.
Grégoire snatched up his hat and jammed it down on his head as he raced out. His knee glanced off some woodwork protrusion as he did and he muffled a curse in his upturned coat-collar. It was not bad enough to make him limp, but it did pain him as he dodged through alleys and twisted past heaps of debris.
The soldiers were now shooting, but it had been some time since the age of the conquistador and they had no order. Their bullets knocked out window-panes, rattled shutters and triggered at least one scream, but none of them hit the shadow, which had leapt for the rooftops and was now dancing madly from house to house. A likely pile of crates and a sagging eave presented itself; Grégoire grabbed for the edge, hooked his fingertips over it and hauled himself onto the tiles.
He cut across one roof and jumped for the next before he’d quite gotten a look at the gap. His feet hit the opposite side just as his mind told him that he’d never been able to jump that far. Thanking ignorance, Grégoire dropped low to the tiles and continued forward. He was nearly upon the other man now, and as the Spanish soldiers seemed to have lost track of the intruder, Grégoire didn’t need to worry so much about drawing the attention of their muskets toward himself.
The other man stopped to catch his breath and finally noticed Grégoire. He jerked up and started to scramble away, but by then Grégoire was close enough to grab a wrist and draw a knife. He had intended to merely tap the blade-point against the man’s shoulder, but instead his knife loudly grated against a sword.
“Bonne nuit,” said the other man. He macerated French much less than James did. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to talk this over a few mugs of rum?”
Part of being a member of the aristocracy was a reflexive evaluation of certain details of dress, which had long preceded any interest of Grégoire in naturalist studies. He didn’t have to think about the fact of the man’s hilt; he merely knew. “You have Norrington’s sword!”
“Norrington?” The man suddenly snapped to attention, less grinning apology and much more…menacing pirate. Pirate. Tattered coat, kohl-rimmed eyes and outlandish jewelry. Pirate.
Grégoire pushed himself back, struggling for footing on the loose tiles, and reached for his other knife. “Why do you—”
A scream. A long, shrill, raw shriek of violently-dying terror. Both Grégoire and the other man froze, staring at each other. Somewhere nearby, a fusillade of shots rang out; the Spanish had finally remembered they were an infantry unit, not a panicked horde.
“I’m thinking we were both waiting for that,” the other man finally said. He cocked his entire body, teeth gleaming white and gold and eyes coldly watching Grégoire. “Ain’t in my interest to have dead Spanish, either.”
“You’ll have to do better than that to persuade me. The pirates would have the most to gain from a lack of government here.” More screams filtered up and Grégoire’s feet were twitching with his need to go investigate, but he didn’t dare turn his back on this man. The pirate had…no, he didn’t have James’ sword. The tassel on it was longer and the wrist-guard was a slightly different shape. But if it wasn’t made by the same man, then Grégoire would give up on the world and enter a monastery. “And what’s your involvement with Norrington?”
The pirate’s grin flickered sour, but the next burst of shouting made him flinch as well. He lowered his sword a handspan. “We’d have the most to lose from a fleet scouring these waters, too. And I could ask you the same about the good commodore.”
Then, before Grégoire could even reply, the pirate stepped backward off the roof and dropped out of sight. Grégoire rushed to the edge and peeked over, but he saw nothing. He hadn’t even heard the thud of the man landing on the ground…
…yelling. The Spanish seemed to be moving away, but they were still audibly present; Grégoire swore at the pirate and hurried towards the commotion of which he could make some use.
* * *
“Grégoire’s not here to hold the bowl for me, so if you keep moving the bed, I’ll probably have to vomit on your head.” James weakly pushed his aching head further beneath the pillow, trying to drown out the scraping of Beaumont’s nails on the bed-post. The noise was like an iron file taken to his eardrums. If he closed his eyes and tried to block it out, he heard a loud, nauseating sloshing that he suspected was the soup Annette had dribbled down his throat.
The other man paused for a moment. One blissful moment before he resumed trying to untie himself.
Somehow James had to make the man stop moving the bed. He willed away enough of the headache to think about why Beaumont had paused. “Grégoire de Fronsac. That’s his name.”
Beaumont ceased attacking his bonds and sat up, intently looking at James. After a moment, he scooted close to the bed to rest his chin on it. His eyebrows jumped and his shoulders wriggled as he tried to communicate something without hands or mouth.
James blinked. It hurt, as his eyes had apparently decided to swell up and press against the sockets caging them.
The skeleton in front of him rattled a frustrated tattoo on the floor with its bony heels. Though the gag blocked its yellow gaping grin from sight, James’ imagination was perfectly capable of filling in the missing details. He gasped and flung himself backward, then promptly fell forward onto the mattress, ears ringing and eyes searing with pain. Grinding the heels of his hands against his eyelids did little to relieve the excruciating pressure, but even that small degree of relief was palpable to him.
The bed rattled and he jerked up his head, staring wildly about the room. Eventually his eyes settled on Beaumont, who was making even more frantic gestures. The man repeatedly rubbed his mouth against his shoulder…the gag? But where was the skeleton?
Why was there supposed to be a skeleton, for that matter? There shouldn’t be.
The thought stuck in James’ head: there shouldn’t be.
He snapped his hands together and dug his nails into his skin, using that pain to work past the other one, the one that was slowly and softly dragging his reason into fetid depths. Then he took a deep breath and edged a hand towards Beaumont, who was now watching him slantwise, the way one would a dog that might be mad. But the other man held still long enough for James to scrape his shaking fingers in between the cloth and Beaumont’s cheek.
Once the rag was out, Beaumont yawned wide and unashamed as a cat, then worked his jaws a bit as if they were stiff. “You seeing things yet?”
“I don’t know as if that’s any of your business,” James muttered, feeling vestiges of his old self creep back. For the moment, it seemed that the fever had retreated.
“You are.” Beaumont was carelessly knowing and unconcerned with the situation, putting up a knee for his chin so he could insouciantly stare at James. It was most likely how he operated under normal circumstances.
James ventured a quick glance further over the bed and noted that Beaumont was restlessly twisting and untwisting his fingers in the ropes. So not so far from the earlier panic, after all.
He had that much in common with James, who had managed to dredge up enough memories that felt genuine to convince himself the skeletons were long gone. On the other hand, they were also enough to tell him why the skeletons were important. “And I keep seeing Sparrow…”
Beaumont twitched. “Who are you?” he asked, all studied nonchalance.
“I assumed you knew, given your comments to Grégoire.” It was a shot in the dark, but James was pleased to see it hit home in the other man’s eyes. No, he hadn’t really understood any of their conversation, but now Beaumont couldn’t be quite so sure of that. Hopefully it would make him less likely to drop confidential information in Creole French; if Grégoire continued to leave so abruptly, it was doubtful whether James would ever have the time to press him for explanations. “James Norrington, commodore in the British Navy. If you require a formal introduction.”
His voice cracked on the last word, too parched to bear the weight of the sound. When he attempted to lift a hand towards the water pitcher, he could only move it a few inches before he had to stop and rest. The lassitude that had taken him was not merely confined to his body; his mind was temporarily free of delusions, only to lack the strength to carry out any extended line of thought.
Grégoire, James reminded himself. Werewolves. Pirates. He would not be left with burials and no answer to the widows and orphans—and to his cabin mirror—this time. Thinking took less effort than moving, and it kept him from fretting about being away from his ship. “I take it you’re acquainted with Sparrow.”
“Any pirate whose name is worth telling comes to New Orléans sooner or later.” Beaumont gave James the hungry, laughing smile of the beast that is just beyond the rifle’s range and who knows it. He raised himself on his knees, peering closely at James, and then sat back. “Your tongue’s flaming red. Like a whore’s dress.”
More like fire, considering how much it burned. Staying rational took up a good deal of James’ attention, so it was surprisingly easy to ignore Beaumont’s tries at baiting him. A small advantage and not one bought at a price he’d care to pay again, but at the moment James had to settle for what he had. “Your city’s not particularly kind to newcomers. Perhaps that would be why Grégoire is so loathe to believe you.”
Personally, James had the vague notion that a better explanation for Grégoire’s reaction involved the strange way he’d spoken of his wife’s brother, but he preferred not to speculate on that idea. It sounded peculiar enough to him now, and he would not make uncharitable assumptions about a man who’d offered so much help…and comfort.
The use of Grégoire’s first name seemed to irk Beaumont. “Why would I lie? What’s there for me in that? Telling the truth’s more dangerous, especially when it’s pirates who’d like the secret kept.”
From outside drifted the sounds of a low, urgent conversation that crested into distinguishable French just beneath James’ window, then faded away. The discussion hadn’t ended; it had shifted location.
James tried to move towards the window to see, but he’d barely gone a foot before he had to lie down and curl around himself. He was panting and every breath raked heated knives down his throat.
“You need water,” Beaumont muttered. “Lots of it; that’s why most die. They shrivel up and lose blood.”
The housekeeper, James thought. He should call for her. And he attempted to, but the only sound he could produce was a ghastly croaking, which exacerbated the hurt in his throat. He sank to the mattress and desperately stared at the water pitcher, less than a yard away but for all intents and purposes as far from James as Port Royal was.
“I could…”
James wearily looked at Beaumont, expecting to see cold calculation. But surprisingly enough, the other man seemed to have genuine sympathy in his eyes that was not quite masked by his hesitant use of leverage. “If I called, she’d think I’d gotten loose and panic. I could get you the glass like I am,” Beaumont finished saying, again cocking his head so he was watching James through wisps of hair. The effect was something like a fox hiding behind a grass tuft. “But to get the pitcher, I’d need my hands.”
“I don’t have a knife, and that’s the only way I could free you.” Holding up a hand made James’ point clear enough. He put it back down, paused, and then heaved himself around to fully face the table. After a little rest, he’d try to move forward.
“I hate fever summers. It happens every year, you know. People dying like flies, and you feel like you’re getting it all over again even though you lived.” Speaking with unexpected heat, Beaumont wrenched himself around and wove his feet between the table legs. He shot a defensive, resigned look at James as he grabbed for the bedframe. “Don’t throw up on me.”
Then he hooked his knees around one leg, his ankles around another and slowly dragged the table towards James. After a few inches, Beaumont stopped to worm beneath the table and come out the other side, where he resumed pushing till James could stretch out and touch the top.
The pitcher was only half-full, so it hadn’t slopped any water on the table. On the other hand, it therefore also wasn’t possible for James to simply duck down and lap up water. He struggled up on his elbows and put one hand through the handle. The other one he used to try and steady the pitcher as he tilted it.
He angled it too steeply and his trembling hands made water splash into his nose, where it burned out snorts and stifled sneezes from him. But enough water flowed down his throat for his thirst to fade out that annoyance and make him eagerly gulp at it. He had to will himself to slow down so as not to make himself sick.
When his throat felt like a part of himself again and not a rebel trying to free itself, James carefully tipped the pitcher back onto the table. His chin was wet, and dribbles had dampened his shirt, but he found that he couldn’t quite care about such small details. He wiped off his chin and began to thank Beaumont, only to find the other man engrossed in studying the thin leather case Grégoire had left on the table. Apparently it’d fallen to the floor.
James bent down and managed to scoop it up. Before his unreliable hands could fail him, he dropped it onto the mattress. “Thank you for the help. And I’d thank you to leave others’ possessions alone…”
Beaumont had worked open the fastening for it, but hadn’t had the time to open the case. In trying to shut it again, James slid his fingers beneath one half; his hand spasmed and he accidentally flipped it open. Papers rustled and fluttered, some falling half-out of the…portfolio.
“Quoi? Laissez-moi…” Undeterred by James’ reprimand, the other man had twisted about and stretched himself over the edge of the mattress to see. Then he fell silent.
Another reprimand was due, but James failed to give it because he was entranced. Page after page of fine sketching and colored pencil-work was contained within the case: strangely-garbed people that he thought might be the Indians of North American, a few animals he recognized and many that he didn’t, a magnificent drawing of a Spanish galleon and of a sloop charging a reef. He knew he should shuffle them all together and shove them back in their portfolio, but James instead found himself pulling out more pages for a look.
Further in the back were a series of studies; several drawings devoted to one particular person appeared in quick succession before the subject changed. There were a few caricatures of noblemen embarrassing themselves—Beaumont muffled his snickers in the edge of the mattress—but the treatment soon turned…almost melancholy. Some pages of a handsome, well-built North American Indian that seemed to have been very close to Grégoire. Two of a slim youth with a naïve if good-natured air, and then a long string of portraits of a beautiful young woman, which seemed to have been done over at least a year. The first was a profile of her aiming a rifle, defiant with a touch of frail innocence—much like Elizabeth before her marriage. Then the sketches showed her adventuring against an exotic backdrop, but with an air of a broken back about her. She stared out of the paper as if she were just about to ask to be cradled within the viewer’s arms.
The last sketch was quite different, all jagged angry lines that somehow formed a more peaceful, serene picture than that produced by any of the more delicately-drawn pieces.
“She’s dead,” Beaumont whispered. He saw James’ puzzled look and pointed with his chin. “See? The way the shawl’s folded around her? Living women don’t hold it like that; the Indians wrap their dead like that just before they burn them.”
Marianne the wife, then. James quickly turned over the sheet, swearing to himself that the next would be the last he looked at before he put them all away.
It certainly was. He heard a gasp beside him as if it were coming from a long, long way through a thick mist. His eyes scanned the portrait once, twice, and then he started to face the only explanation for it. But as he did, his gaze crossed the date.
He had to look at that twice as well, and then point it out to Beaumont. The other man promptly turned white, which proved that James was not suffering another hallucination. The sketch was indeed of Beaumont, or someone extremely like him, and it was dated three years ago.
***