Angelique said with a warmth that belied her anxiety. "You're very punctual. All's well with you?"
He nodded, closed the door of the small ground-floor room adjoining her bedroom that served as her boudoir in the French Legation, once more astonished that she appeared so calm and could make small talk. Politely he bent over her hand and kissed it, then sat opposite her.
The room was drab with old chairs and chaise and writing desk, plaster walls with a few cheap oils by current French painters, Delacroix and Corot. "The army taught me, Punctuality is next to Godliness."
She smiled at the pleasantry. "La! I didn't know you had been in the army."
"I had a commission in Algeria for a year when I was twenty-two, after university--nothing very grand, just helping to crush one of the usual rebellions. The sooner we really stamp out the troublemakers and annex all North Africa as French territory the better." He waved absently at the flies, and studied her. "You look more beautiful than ever. Your, your state suits you."
Her eyes lost their color and became flinty.
Last night had been bad for her, the bed here in the untidy, seedy bedroom uncomfortable. During the dark time her anxieties had overridden her confidence and she had become increasingly nervous about leaving her suite next to Struan and all her comfort, so hastily. In the dawn her humor had not improved and again the all-consuming idea pervaded her: men caused all her woes. Revenge will be sweet. "You mean my marriage state to be, no?"
"Of course," he said after the barest pause, and she wondered, aggravated, what was the matter with him and why he was so boorish and distant like last night when the music had gone on and on, without his usual touch. He had dark rings under his eyes and his features seemed sharper than usual.
"Is anything wrong, my dear friend?"
"No, dear Angelique, nothing, nothing at all."
Liar, she thought. Why is it men lie so much, to others and to themselves? "You were successful?"
"Yes and no."
He knew that she was twisting on the spit andofa sudden he wanted to make her squirm, wanted to fan the flames to make her scream and pay for Hana.
You're mad, he thought. It's not Angelique's fault. That is true but because of her, last night I went to the Three Carp and saw Raiko and while we talked in our mixture of Japanese and English and pidgin I suddenly felt that the other had just been a rotten nightmare and that any moment Hana would appear, the laugh in her eyes, and my heart would swirl as always and we would leave Raiko and bathe together, play there, eat in private and love without haste. And when I realized the truth, with Hana gone forever, my entrails and brain crawled with spawning worms, I almost vomited. "Raiko, got to know who three clients were."
"So sorry, Furansu-san, I said before: her mama-san is dead, people of house scattered, Inn of Forty-seven Ronin dead."
"There must be some way to find th--"' "None. So sorry."
"Then tell me the truth... the truth, of how she died."
"With your knife in her throat, so sorry."
"She did it? Hara-kiri?"' Raiko had answered with the same patient voice, the same voice that had told the same story and given the same answer to the same questions a dozen times before: "Hara-kiri is the ancient way, honorable way, the only way atone a wrong. Hana betrayed you and us, owners, patrons and herself--that was her karma in this life.
There is nothing more say. So sorry, let her rest. Her fortieth day after her death day, her kami day when a person is reborn or becomes a kami has passed now. Let her kami, her spirit, rest. So sorry, not speak of her again.
Now, what other thing can I do for you?"' Angelique was sitting straight in her chair as she had been taught from childhood, disquieted, watching him, one hand in her lap, the other fanned against the flies. Twice she had said, "What do you mean, yes and no?"' but he had not heard her, seemingly in a trance. Just before she had left Paris, her uncle had been the same and her aunt had said, "leave him be, who knows what devils inhabit a man's mind when troubled."
"What trouble is he in, Aunt-mama?"' "Ah, cherie, all life is a trouble when what you earn won't pay for what is needed.
Taxes crush us, Paris is a cess pit of greed and without morals, France is rumbling again, the franc buys less every month, bread has doubled in half a year. Leave him be, poor man, he does his best."
Angelique sighed. Yes, poor man. Tomorrow I will do my best and talk to Malcolm, he will arrange to pay his debts. Such a good man should not be in Debtor's Prison. What can his debts amount to? A few louis...
She saw Andr`e come back into himself and look at her. "Yes and no, Andr`e? What does that mean?"
"Yes they have such a medicine, but no you cannot have it yet because y--"
"But why, why ha--"
"Mon Dieu, be patient, then I can tell you what the mama-san told me. You can not have it yet because it cannot be taken until the thirtieth day, then again on the thirty-fifth day, and also because the drink--an infusion of herbs--must be prepared freshly each time."
His words had ripped the simplicity of her plan apart: Andr`e was to have given her now the drink or powder that he had obtained last night, she would take it at once and go to bed saying she had the vapors. Voila! A small stomachache and in a few hours, a day at the most and everything perfect.
For a moment she felt her whole world twisting but again managed to put on the brakes: Stop it!
You're alone. You are the heroine whom the forces of evil have ensnared. You must be strong, you have to fight alone and you-can-beat-them! "Thirty days?" She sounded strangled.
"Yes, and you repeat it on the thirty-fifth.
You must be accurate and th--"
"And what happens then, Andr`e? Is it fast, what?"
"For God's sake let me finish. She said it's, it usually works at once. The second draft isn't always necessary."
"There's nothing I can take immediately?"
"No. There isn't anything like that."
"But this other, she said it's successful every time?"
"Yes." Raiko's answer to his same question had been, "Nine times in ten. If the medicine does not work, there are other ways."
"You mean a doctor?"' "Yes. The medicine usually works but is expensive. I must pay medicine maker before he will give it to me. He must buy herbs, do you understand..."
Andr`e concentrated on Angelique again. "The mama-san said it was effective--but expensive."
"Effective? Every time? And not dangerous?"
"Every time and not dangerous. But expensive. She has to pay the apothecary in advance, he has to obtain fresh herbs."
"Oh," she said airily, "then please pay her for me, and shortly I will repay you three times."
His lips went into a thin line. "I've already advanced twenty louis. I'm not a rich man."
"But what can a little medicine cost, Andr`e, such an ordinary medicine? It can't be expensive surely?"
"She said, for such a girl wanting such help, secret help, what does the cost matter?"
"I agree, dear Andr`e." Angelique brushed this problem aside with warmth and friendliness, her heart hardening against him for being so mercenary.
"In thirty days I can pay whatever it is out of the allowance Malcolm has promised, and anyway I'm sure, I know you'll be able to arrange it, a good, wise man like you. Thank you, my dear friend. Please tell her it is exactly eight days from when I should have had my period. When do you get the medicine?"