Kiri grinned. “I found it when researching ancient European scents. The story goes that during the Black Death, some thieves were caught robbing the dying and dead. In return for their lives, they offered the formula that allowed them to commit their crimes without catching the disease. There are different recipes, but they’re usually based on an herb vinegar infused with other herbs like lemon and clove and rosemary. Herbal vinegars are traditional remedies, so that’s a good start.”

“Fascinating,” Cassie said. “Does it work?”

“I have no idea. Perhaps it might prevent someone from coming down with more usual ailments like coughs and colds. Since I’m usually healthy, I don’t know if the thieves’ oil is making a difference. The version I settled on is pungent but not unpleasant, and it smells like it ought to do some good. Perfect for a peddler who won’t be around if it doesn’t work.”

“I’d love to have some,” Cassie said. “I’ll use it myself. Traveling through the French countryside with a pony cart in the dead of winter is a recipe for catching colds. I’ll let you know if the thieves’ oil keeps me healthy.”

“I’ll send some tomorrow, along with my surplus perfumes.” Kiri foraged in her bag again and produced an exquisite bottle of scarlet glass with a delicately twisted stopper. “One last thing. For when you return to England and can be yourself again.”

Warily Cassie opened the bottle and placed a drop on her wrist. One sniff and she became still as stone. The fragrance was an exquisite layering of lilac and roses, frankincense and moonlight, vanished sunshine and lost dreams. And underneath, the shadows of darkest night. It caught at her heart with painful intensity.

“Now that I know you better, I decided to create a personal perfume,” Kiri explained. “What do you think?”

“It’s superb.” Cassie reinserted the stopper with rather more force than necessary. “But I’m not sure when I’ll have occasion to wear anything like this.”

“You hate it,” her friend said sadly. “I thought you might.”

Cassie gazed at the lovely little bottle resting on her palm. “I don’t hate it. I … just don’t want to wear this much truth.”

“Perhaps someday you will.”

“Perhaps.” But Cassie doubted that.


Chapter 4

Castle Durand, Summer 1803

Once he realized Durand didn’t want him dead, Grey fought at every opportunity. Resistance didn’t get him killed, though he acquired numerous bruises and lacerations.

If he’d known what lay ahead, he might have tried harder to get killed.

Durand’s men were well trained and brutally efficient. As soon as Grey was captured, one of the guards appropriated his finely tailored garments, gave him coarse peasant clothing and shoes, and ordered him to put them on.

After Grey dressed, he was shackled, gagged, blindfolded, and tossed into a smelly cart. Foul straw was thrown over him. He struggled frantically for breath as the cart began rumbling over the cobbled Parisian streets. When he fell into agonized unconsciousness, he was sure he would never wake again.

But he did. When he recovered his senses, he learned that he could breathe if he didn’t move too much or allow panic to flood his mind.

As cobblestones became roads and then rutted rural lanes, he thought he would go mad from terror and anguish. Grey had always loved sunshine and bright lights and good company. Now he could not see, could not speak, could not even howl with despair.

He lost track of how long he rattled around the cart. Several days, but it was devilish hard to tell how much time passed when he was in constant darkness.

Morning and evening, he was fed and watered and allowed to relieve himself. His body was so stiff from its bindings that he could barely walk. Chilling spring rain sometimes fell, but his damnable good health spared him from lung fever.

At last the nightmare ended. The cart clattered into a stone courtyard, the ropes securing his ankles were unshackled, and he was marched into a building.

Being blindfolded sharpened his senses. He recognized that the building was large and old and mostly stone. A castle, perhaps. He stumbled down narrow stairs with uneven stone treads that supported that theory.

The guards he had come to know through their scent and voices were joined by another man with a guttural voice, strange footsteps, and a sour smell of garlic. A door squealed and Grey was shoved through. He barely managed to avoid crashing to the stone floor.

The gag and blindfold were jerked off. He flinched backward from the torchlight, which stung his eyes after days in darkness. The guards who had brought Grey there stood silently in the doorway while a broad man with cruel features and a wooden peg leg stood directly in front of him. The man leaned on a cane that had leather streamers falling from the brass head.

“I am Gaspard, your jailer,” the man said, menace in his guttural voice. He spoke the French of Paris’s worst stews. “Durand orders me to keep you alive.” He gave an ugly smirk. “I fear you will not find the accommodations what you are used to, my little goddam lordling.”

Grey had to strain to understand. He’d learned the French of the well born when he was a boy, but he hadn’t been taught the coarse dialects of the poor and the provinces. That was changing rapidly. He wondered if he would ever hear English spoken again.

He remembered that the French had called the English “goddams” since at least the time of Joan of Arc. The name came from the constant profanity of the soldiers of the English army. Resigning himself to being a goddam, he said, “If you wish to keep me alive, food and water would be helpful.”

Gaspard gave a bark of laughter. “In the morning, boy. I have other concerns now.” He glanced at the guards. “Take off the goddam’s coat and shirt.”

The two guards silently moved forward and obeyed. Grey was too cramped and bruised to fight well, and he couldn’t prevent them from stripping off his ragged, oversized coat and shirt. He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

There was worse to come. While the two guards immobilized him, Gaspard began whipping Grey’s back. Dimly Grey realized that the leather streamers on the cane were the lashes of a whip and the cane itself was the handle.

After a dozen or two agonizing blows, Grey sagged to the floor between the guards. “Let him fall,” Gaspard said contemptuously. “Remove the shackles. They aren’t needed. There is no way the goddam will escape this cell.”

Grey lay on the floor, barely aware of a key unlocking his wrist manacles. The guards rose and followed Gaspard as the jailer limped from the cell, his wooden leg tapping ominously. They took the torch with them.

After the heavy door was closed and locked, Grey was left in darkness. Even the sliver of light at the bottom of the door disappeared as his jailers walked away.

Grey felt panic rising at the thought of being trapped in darkness until he died screaming. What did the French call the ultimate prison, a oubliette? But that was a pit, wasn’t it, with the prisoner at the bottom of a deep shaft? The name meant forgotten, for prisoners were forgotten and left to die.

He had the mad thought that the guillotine might be better. At least death took place in open air and was quick, if ugly.

But he wasn’t dead yet. Now that he was free of gag, blindfold, and chains, he could breathe and move freely. As for the darkness—it hadn’t destroyed him on the endless journey to this place, and he wouldn’t let it destroy him just yet.

He pushed himself up on his knees and fumbled for his shirt and coat, which had been dropped nearby. The heavy fabric inflicted a fresh wave of pain on his lacerated back, but he needed protection against the biting chill.

Then he listened. Absolute silence except for the faint sound of trickling water somewhere quite close. Given the dampness around him, that was unsurprising.

What had he seen of his cell before Gaspard left? Stone walls, stone floor, damp and solid. The room wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t tiny, either. Perhaps eight paces square, with a very high ceiling. There was something in a corner to his left. A pallet, perhaps?

Swaying, he got to his feet, then moved to his left with his arms outstretched to prevent collision. He still managed to sideswipe a wall by coming at it from an angle, but a few more bruises made no difference.

He stumbled on something soft. Kneeling, he explored by touch and found a pallet of straw and a pair of coarse blankets. Luxury compared to what he’d endured since his capture.

Standing, he skimmed one hand along the wall so he could discover the dimensions of his cell. Down the side wall to the back, opposite the door. He turned and moved along the back wall. About what he estimated as the midpoint of the wall, he stumbled on a rocky obstacle and fell heavily.

More bruises, damned painful ones, but nothing broken, he decided after he recovered his breath and tested the new injuries. He explored with his hands and identified two irregular blocks of stone.

One was chair height, so he hauled himself up and sat, though he couldn’t lean against the wall because of his injured back. As the throbbing in his knees faded, he realized he had never properly appreciated the convenience of chairs before.

The second block of stone was about a foot and a half away, roughly rectangular, and around table height. He felt positively civilized.

After the pain diminished, he resumed his exploration, moving even more slowly. At the far corner, he felt a film of water seeping down the stones. It wasn’t a lot, but perhaps enough to keep him from dying of thirst if other drink wasn’t offered.

There were no more stone blocks. The only other feature he located was the massive wooden door and its frame. He circled again even more slowly. This time in the back corner where the moisture dripped down, he sensed the movement of air. He knelt and found a hole about the size of two fists. The water dripped down into it and there was a faint scent of human waste.