TITLE: Nota Bene (7/7) Fas Est Et Ab Hoste Doceri (Even Our Enemies May Teach Us)
AUTHOR: Blue Fenix
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: the_blue_fenix@yahoo.com
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: AuroraVernealis, Aurora Journals, and Fanfiction.net only
CATEGORY: Het; adventure
SPOILERS: Cardinal's Design, Cardinal's Revenge, Southern Comfort
RATINGS/WARNINGS: R for consensual heterosexual activity
MAIN CHARACTER(S): Phileas Fogg, Passepartout, Rebecca Fogg, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas pere, Cavois, special guest villain
SUMMARY: The conflict with Cavois reaches its climax.
DISCLAIMERS: the usual. Borrowed characters, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I've got no money to sue for.
"Miss Rebecca, please. Important waking up now." Rebecca Fogg sat bolt upright in the armchair, getting her bearings. The voice was Passepartout's, and he sounded terrified.
"What is it?" she asked. The valet stood out of arm's reach. He had long since grasped the hazards of startling a Fogg awake. Rebecca tried to estimate the time. Her body's clock came up with nothing more specific than 'damned late.' She'd already taken her first shift in the other room, a few hours' catnap on a sofa before trading places with Phileas. This could be the next change of watch ... but that wouldn't frighten Passepartout. She sighed. "Where is he?"
"Gone." He looked ashamed. "And alone, this time -- Passepartout not hearing him go out. Only closing eyes a moment..."
"It's not your fault." Rebecca went to the table near Dumas' bed. The two-shot derringer was gone from where she'd left it. That was one glimmer of hope, at least. Phileas was angling to survive whatever mad scheme he'd planned. He can't die if it would leave Verne unprotected. And maybe he wants to live more, now. She cut off that line of thought ruthlessly. One of them had to keep a clear head.
"We have to think." Rebecca's hands twitched at the seams of her skirt, where she would normally carry throwing knives. "He hasn't had any message from Cavois. Phileas has been in your sight or mine every minute since Jules was kidnapped -- no letters, no cables, no notes by private messenger. He certainly hasn't been to that thrice-damned post office in the Rue Sante Rochelle. And it would do him no good to go there now. They'll be locked up tight as a drum until tomorrow morning. Unless the post office itself is the site of their meeting, and the business about picking up a message pure camouflage."
"Thinking that, Miss Rebecca," the valet said. "Finding master gone, just now, Passepartout went to the cab stand in front of the hospital. The drivers there, no one see nor pick up tall Englishman wanting the post office in Rue Sante Rochelle."
"That doesn't help us. He could easily have walked," Rebecca said irritably.
"They tell me more," Passepartout said. "No such place as post office in Rue Sante Rochelle. Is street, yes. Little street in Latin Quarter. But nowhere on it a post office at all. Cabmen, they make their living knowing the city; I believe them."
Profanity was inadequate to the moment. Rebecca froze, forbidding any muscle to move until she'd mastered her temper. She stared hard at the far wall. Passepartout flinched all the same, as if she'd started throwing things. "Now that I think about it," she shaped each syllable carefully, slowly, "I didn't have a chance to read the soi-disant note from our friend Cavois. Phileas waved it about a bit, but he never let me read for myself." The chance was gone now. She remembered her cousin flinging a scrap of paper into the fire while they were talking of love. Even then, he had the presence of mind to hide it from me. To lie to me, by implication. "And you, Passepartout?" She was getting better at making her voice sound normal.
The valet's comical speech patterns hid a keen mind; he understood and gave the question real thought. "Saw a note, yes. And a few lines written, not a blank page. But seeing close, to read ... no. Master put up the note in his pocket, only repeat what it says."
"Or rather, invent it. I don't trust a word he said." Rebecca's mind leaped ahead. "Newspapers."
Passepartout stared at her. "Miss?"
The valet had re-folded the day's papers into a stack on the larger table. Rebecca sidestepped past him and pounced on it. "Newspapers," she repeated. "Phileas may be a liar and a scoundrel, but he doesn't waste time. If Cavois had merely named a rendezvous in that note, Phileas would have been getting ready for him well ahead of time. Instead, he cooled his heels with us in this hospital room for twelve hours or more -- and he kept calling for all the latest papers."
"Master always particular about newspapers," Passepartout said. "To receive them at the London house even when not staying there, to have ironed before he reads them..."
"He's particular about the temperature of his shaving water, too, but did he complain about missing that this morning?" Rebecca set the whole top half of the stack aside. "Not the morning editions. After he'd read them, he still needed the evening ones. I only hope he wasn't bright enough to guess that I might unravel his game, and take the relevant page with him."
She flung the older newspapers onto the nearest flat surface. It happened to be Alexandre Dumas' hospital bed. The older man groaned and tried to sit up.
Rebecca moved fast. She caught him by one elbow before he fell out of bed. "Hush, Alexandre. You need to rest."
He shook his big head, and winced. "Jules."
"Jules will be safe. You have my word, mine and my cousin's." She couldn't think about the odds that Phileas would die tonight, keeping that promise. Rebecca had to keep her fears in check if there was the slightest chance of helping either of them. "Listen to me. You must be resting and getting better when Jules gets back. He'll be furious with us, if he thinks we haven't taken care of you."
"Impudent youngster," Dumas said hazily. Rebecca wasn't sure if he meant Jules or herself; she didn't like to ask. "I've slept a year already, it feels like. At least tell me what you're doing."
Rebecca spread the first evening paper out across the bedclothes. It seemed the safest way of keeping him quiet. "Phileas followed a secret message to a rendezvous. The newspaper seems the only way he could have received the message. In London, I'd suspect the agony columns. I assume the Paris papers work the same way." She flipped toward the back of the paper.
"What is the agony?" Passepartout asked.
"Personal advertisements." Rebecca reached a double set of pages full of small and unevenly spaced blocks of text. "The seedier side of human nature, airing itself in public. Wives appealing to runaway husbands, fathers disowning runaway sons. Any number of young lovers plotting their elopements without the risk of letters that might be intercepted. And the occasional spy communicating with his masters, hiding in the debris. That's why the Service keeps an eye on it." She tapped the page. More than half the notices were coded in some way, with cryptic initials and the occasional Bible citation standing in place of important words. "This will take a while." Too long, she feared. A smaller proportion of the entries were complete jumbles of letters or numbers, suggesting the relative sophistication of a wheel cipher. She reached for pen and paper to focus on those first.
Dumas squinted at the page, which was angled sideways from his place on the bed. Rebecca wondered if the blow to the head had affected his vision. "There." He laid a thick finger on one of the jumbled advertisements, fourth from the top of the page. "My book. The code from my book, that Cavois killed for."
"Good Lord. I think you're right." Rebecca cast her mind back to their first meeting, months ago, with Dumas and with the assassin Cavois. The Prussian secret service had been using a code based on an English translation of Dumas' masterwork "The Three Musketeers." Cavois, in the Prussian's pay, had killed the British cryptographer Goodes in an attempt to keep the code secret. He had failed at that larger task just as he'd failed to kill the two Foggs. The code, broken by Goodes with some finishing touches from Dumas himself, was no longer secure for intelligence work. But it would pass well enough under these circumstances. "Cavois could be certain none of us would forget that cipher," Rebecca said.
"You are reading it?" Passepartout asked anxiously.
"Rectangular matrix, a simplified Vigenère with Alexandre's novel as a reference." Rebecca drew rough notes on a less vital part of the newspaper. "If Phileas can do it, I can." She tasked her memory -- she hadn't used the nota bene technique on the code system, as they hadn't needed to encode anything themselves -- and slowly copied one character after another. Neither she nor Phileas had ever had the patience for serious codebreaking, but they could both follow a known system easily enough. The text was short. That would be a hindrance if she'd been trying to break the code from scratch, but since she already held its key it was a decided convenience.
The words that took shape under her pen were English. "'Midnight. Alone.' Phileas would choose this occasion to start taking orders literally. A promise of Jules' safety, which Rebecca didn't believe a word of. And the location: Quai d'Oran." She'd reached the end of the coded characters. "Good. Alexandre, stay here and rest -- no arguments. Or I'll set the nurses on you. Passepartout, you're with me. One of your friendly cabmen will get us there, I expect." She missed her combat suit acutely. Rebecca hated fighting in dresses, and still more coming to a battle unarmed. But she could claw through a stone wall to be at Phileas' side for this, and still have the energy to slap him senseless when the danger was overcome. "Come on."
Passepartout had frozen, staring at the wall. "Yes." He shook himself. "Yes, at once we are going. But Miss Rebecca..."
She glared at the valet. "Now what?"
"Is gone past midnight already," Passepartout said. Rebecca turned. Passepartout had been staring at a clock. All the color drained from Rebecca's face.
-----
The most annoying part, Phileas Fogg thought, was that he wasn't even comfortable. He'd last bathed and changed clothes in his own London house, before the time trip. Between stale clothing and two days without a shave, he was turning decidedly seedy. This time tomorrow, he'd be taken for a beggar rather than a gentleman. But this time tomorrow the problem would be resolved, one way or another.
The location he'd been given was down by the Seine, a disused section of river port. Any little-frequented location would be convenient for privacy, but this one -- the old warehouse actually extended partway over the river on piers, to facilitate cargo loading -- was unbeatable as a place to dispose of bodies by water. Phileas Fogg noted the fact with interest rather than fear. He had some hope of making use of it himself. He checked the little derringer hidden up his left sleeve. Its effective range was short, but both shots together or even a single one would be adequate to take a man's life. He'd given no word of honor to follow the rules of a duel this time. He had no intention of wasting time bandying words with Cavois. If he had to exchange his life for Jules', he would. He owed his young friend too much, cared for him too much. But with even a little luck, he could spray Cavois' brains over the nearest wall and have the best of both worlds.
The old warehouse was rimmed with high windows, a few still unbroken. A low moon outside cast enough light through them to paint the interior in shades of gray and black instead of leaving it pitch dark. Layers of dust told that the building was long-abandoned, but it was far from empty. Stacks of wooden crates and rusting machinery, probably not worth the effort of throwing them away, defined aisles in the echoing space. There was one halo of warmer light inside the building, toward a back corner. Phileas moved toward it, taking his time and preserving his night vision. Lamplight. A mistake, if Cavois expected to see him coming. He might yet be able to use assassin's techniques on the assassin without putting his own life at any great risk.
He could see them now, at the end of the aisle of crates. Fogg moved into the shadow of a wall for better cover. The lamp rested on a table-high crate. Jules was beside it, sprawled back in an old wooden chair. The young man's skin was free of blood and bruises. Fogg breathed a little easier. But Verne was far from his normal self. In full possession of his faculties he would have snapped defiance at his captors, struggled to escape. Instead his head lolled loosely sideways. His eyes were blank and dark with hugely dilated pupils. Drugged. Probably laudanum. Steel handcuffs bound Verne's wrists together in front of him, but they seemed more a formality than a serious precaution. Fogg doubted the boy could rise from the chair on his own. His face hardened. The drug would wear off, but it seemed a crueler violation than a beating. Jules himself valued his wits above his physical safety. Cavois stood close to the chair in faultless evening dress, a heavy pistol in his hands. He loomed over the helpless young man like a spider.
The derringer slid smoothly from Phileas' sleeve. He moved silently forward, gun extended. Better to try the shot at extreme range than leave Jules like that a second longer. He crossed a darker patch of shadow. Before he could move another step, Phileas felt a cold circle of metal at the back of his neck. "Let's not do anything hasty."
Fogg was poised to spring sideways. There was a good chance he could evade a bullet in the brain and fight back. But Cavois had moved at the same instant, responding to some signal he'd neither seen nor heard. Jules had a gun against his head too, a gun in Cavois' hands, and no chance in hell of saving himself. "Come, now," Cavois addressed the darkened room at large. "We really must talk this over."
Phileas spread his hands in surrender. The derringer was plucked from his fingers, while the larger gun remained pressed against his neck. "What else are you carrying?" a voice demanded. English, well educated ... nearly familiar, damn it.
"Nothing." Fogg didn't try to hide his chagrin. "Most of our gear went up in the fire."
A light chuckle. "M. Cavois has the decorum of a battering ram, but he's surprisingly effective at times. You'll pardon if I don't take your word." Steel closed on Phileas' right wrist. "Put your hands above your head a moment." Fogg complied. A tug on his wrist, and the other half of the handcuffs closed on his left. "That should do. Lower them, if you like."
I am dead. And probably Jules along with him. But Fogg couldn't have chosen differently, with a gun to his friend's head. Nor could Rebecca, if she'd been here. She'll plan better when she comes hunting them. It was a little comfort, not enough.
Cavois' ally stepped around him. He was a big man, not much shorter than Fogg and stockier. He wore black, suit and long coat and the leather gloves still holding a gun aimed at Fogg. His headgear ... Fogg paused. It was a close-fitting helmet, of a design he knew. Phileas had seen it in America. He had even worn the helmet, after its original owner had been captured. Odd-sized round goggles covered the man's eyes; Phileas knew now how he'd moved so nimbly in near-total darkness. "So Cavois has been working for the League of Darkness after all."
"Our alliance of mutual goals is quite a recent one." The man's voice was normally inflected, even humorous, but the pale face showing below the helmet was motionless and dead. "It seemed important to exert some control over the situation. I'm afraid, Mr. Fogg, that you should no longer rely on your bloodline to protect you from our order's most extreme sanctions. Your immunity has been lifted."
What immunity? What bloodline? Phileas let none of it show on his face. He'd played too much poker to show his cards without a pressing reason. "I know you. Count Gregory called you the Observer."
A nod of acknowledgement. "That is my office, but I am not the Observer you knew." The free hand touched the side of the helmet. "These are wired directly into the brain. When you tore it from him, you wounded him in a way that he could not long survive." The Observer's voice turned chill.
Saratoga Browne had died in that same conflict, shot in cold blood for no better reason than malice. "My condolences," Phileas returned, hard as ice.
"We may yet find leisure to discuss the matter." The Observer's voice was still hauntingly familiar. Phileas felt sure that he could give it a face and name, a human face. If he lived long enough. "My ally has the prior claim." A motion of the Observer's gun encouraged Phileas into the circle of lamplight.
Jules' chin came up a little, fuzzy recognition, when Fogg stepped in front of him. "No." he tried to sit up, failed. "Don't be here. Don't..."
"Hush." Phileas turned both bound hands to feel the temperature of Jules' clammy cheek, checked the pulse in the side of his neck. It was natural to move in close. Fogg arranged himself, in as natural a motion, between his friend and Cavois' gun. The renegade Frenchman hated him, not Jules. If he shot Fogg dead first there was a slight chance he might not bother shooting Verne as well. He turned smoothly to face Cavois, keeping the same relative positions. The Observer had laid down his own revolver beside the lamp -- tempting, but in practical terms as far away as the Moon. The Observer hung back, watching all three men as if they were staging a mildly entertaining play.
Cavois made a show of consulting his pocket watch. "You were nearly late for our appointment. That would have been very unfortunate."
"Crosstown traffic." Fogg had no intention of groveling. For a start, it would do no good. "You wanted me; I'm here. Your coded message said you'd release Jules unharmed in exchange for me."
Cavois smiled. "You do keep walking into these things, don't you?"
So. Phileas stared stonily into the man's eyes. "I notice you didn't bother with the pretense of a fair fight this time." His glance flickered momentarily to the Observer. "And that you didn't dare face me alone. What a pleasant memory that will be for you."
Cavois laughed out loud. "Save the playing fields of Eton for someone who believes in them. I'll be remembering it while worms nibble your bones. And you may not be alone for long. The lady will want to avenge you. I like enemies possessed by righteous rage. They make so many mistakes."
Rebecca won't. Phileas didn't want to speak her name, not here. Thinking of her was a comfort, and a fresh source of pain. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt a fear of death for the sake of what life had to offer, instead of mere animal reflex. It really could have happened this time. We could have been together. I could have grown old with her, like that other fellow...
He had time to satisfy his curiosity, at least. "Why did you kill -- why did you plan to kill Alexandre Dumas? At the tavern the other night. It was to draw me and Rebecca into a trap at a time and place of your choosing, wasn't it?"
"So you did see me in the Eight Horses. I'd wondered." Cavois bared his teeth. "I knew you had a sentimental attachment to the old souse. Did you expect me to just die quietly, after you'd started hunting me?"
Phileas stared back in genuine confusion. "I don't understand."
"Don't play me for a fool, Agent Fogg. Or an amateur. I spotted you on my trail in Brussels. That white wig wouldn't deceive a child."
"You saw me, with white hair." Phileas brought both hands up to his left cheek. "And a scar, here?"
"I've warned you once." Cavois' fist clutched on his handgun. He circled to the right, so that Phileas was no longer between him and Jules Verne.
Phileas flung his hands out forward and ducked into the line of fire again. "I meant no offense. I ... didn't realize it was that poor a disguise." That answered one question, at least. The elder Phileas Fogg had felt compelled to undo Dumas' murder because his own mistake had killed Dumas the first time. Phileas wondered what his other self had been doing in Brussels. There was no way to know. Unless I survive to be him. "You have me," Fogg said, trying to calm his murderer into something short of a frenzy. "Let Verne go. You don't need him."
"He's no use as a corpse," the Observer remarked. "And he's certainly no danger to us as a witness, in this state. We could send him back to the girl."
"I am not here to take your orders," Cavois said irritably. "And he is useful, dead. I want Fogg to see him die. A dear friend's blood splashed across his face ... just the mood I want him in when he tumbles down to Hell." His gun came up again.
No more chances. Phileas shoved blindly backward, felt Jules and the chair overbalance. He shifted his weight forward again and charged, aiming his torso at the muzzle of Cavois' gun. His chained hands clawed for Cavois' throat. One belly wound at point-blank range would be as fatal as the whole gun emptied into him, but neither would be an instant death. If he could catch and hold, if he could keep his grip long enough living or dead to strangle Cavois, Jules would live. I'm sorry, Rebecca.
A gunshot. Another. He'd expected white-hot pain smashing him in half. It didn't hurt. Fogg had thought he was beyond fear but the lack of pain now terrified him. He must be in shock, dying too fast. He sank both thumbs into the softness of Cavois' throat, felt the small flat bone in the larynx shatter. The assassin couldn't survive that. It was enough; Phileas could die now. Triumph gave him fresh strength, and it still didn't hurt. Cavois was limp under his hands like a broken rat in the teeth of a terrier ...
Phileas sat back on his heels, slowly. Cavois lay still when he released his throat, not even a reflex twitch. Fogg looked down at himself. The white linen that had been an expensive dress shirt a few days ago was unmarked by blood or bullet holes. He tugged Cavois' corpse onto its side. A slow trickle of blood seeped from under the assassin's head when it turned, blood coming from two small bullet holes at the base of Cavois' skull. The heavy revolver, unfired, lay at his side.
"For what it's worth, you might have gotten him." The Observer tossed Phileas' own derringer, empty and smoking, to the floor beside the body. "I do hate a cheat."
Fogg tried to regain his composure. "Kind of you."
The Observer shrugged. "Don't take it personally. I did warn you not to place further reliance on the protection of your blood. Your claim to the sang real is perhaps the best of this generation. Given the appropriate marriage, your son's could be even better. But there are other candidates with more acceptable views on the structure of society. It wasn't to spare you that I acted."
Phileas suddenly understood. "Verne."
The Observer nodded. "Verne."
The young Frenchman was sprawled on his face a yard or so behind Fogg. Alive. When Phileas raised him by one arm, he shifted and moaned.
The Observer stepped in and raised Verne's other side, with surprising gentleness, until the young man was sitting upright against Phileas' shoulder. "My instructions were to insure that Monsieur Cavois did no permanent harm to your friend Jules Verne," he said. "Our order has nothing but the best intentions toward him. You might assure him of that. His talents are literally irreplaceable."
"He's encountered your 'order's' opinion of his talents before," Fogg said stonily. "He loathes everything you stand for."
"We're used to being misunderstood." The Observer sounded amused. Again, his voice was hauntingly familiar. "Accommodation is still possible. But I advise you to stop drawing him into dangerous situations. Lest we be pressed to extreme measures for his defense."
"Verne goes where he likes. I believe he feels safer with us than open to your tender mercies."
The Observer made a gesture of resignation with both hands. "The young are often rash; it's excusable." His voice hardened. "You are not young."
It was the word 'young' that did it. Let me see your face. But Phileas didn't need to see it now; he'd seen it before. Visiting Cambridge while his brother was reading history there, a gaggle of undergraduate boys punting on the river and shouting at each other. And Erasmus' best friend in the center of it all, the Honorable Edward Prosser.
Phileas didn't let the slightest hint of recognition change his face. "You're coming in a little late with your concern about blood lines," he said. "The League was willing enough to kill my brother."
"Not willing." The Observer -- Prosser -- sounded genuinely sad. Phileas wondered if he'd said too much, if his moment of recognition would in turn be recognized. But the Observer went on, "We had some hope of salvaging the line through him, if not through you. It seemed for a while that he might be open to reason. Certainly we would not have disposed of him so ruthlessly, if he'd been captured alive. We try not to waste resources."
"Resources." The wet, heavy snow on that Austrian mountain would have been enough alone to kill many travelers on foot. But they'd been exhausted, trying to outrun well-rested men on horseback, and Erasmus already wounded. Erasmus had let himself fall to his death to buy Phileas a chance to escape. And this half-human creature called it a waste of resources ...
Some of the rage must have shown on his face. The Observer moved, not too fast, toward the other gun on the table. Phileas had Jules to think of. He forced himself back under control.
"Ruthlessness seems to be the defining trait of your branch of the family," the Observer said quietly. "Including ruthlessness toward yourselves. I ... would have preferred a different outcome."
It was almost sympathy; it was almost human. And Phileas had to hear it without showing any outrage at his brother's betrayal. The real identity of a League of Darkness member was too rare and valuable a clue to waste. "What do you want?"
The Observer glanced from cooling Cavois to unconscious Verne, and shrugged. "Nothing now, I think. I have no specific mandate to kill you myself. Not today, at least. Perhaps this is an apt moment to bid you good night." He touched the side of his helmet, at the temple. The goggles glowed an eerie green. The Observer stepped into the dark and was gone.
-----
The first thing Rebecca Fogg saw inside the abandoned warehouse was the lamp burning low at the far end. The second was the bodies on the floor, and the blood. She gripped the hospital fire axe tighter -- there'd been no time to acquire guns -- and stepped into the circle of light. "Phileas!"
Passepartout, beside her, had a chair leg with nails hammered into it. "Master?"
Fogg was on his hands and knees on the floor. Not in his death throes, as Rebecca had thought in her first instant of panic, but searching the pockets of a corpse lying flat. He moved clumsily. Rebecca saw the glint of chain between his wrists. "I could do with a hand. Or a lockpick, if you've one about your person." Phileas tugged at the dead man's coat. Rebecca widened her focus a little and recognized the corpse as Cavois. Phileas was grumbling under his breath. "What kind of imbecile would carry two pairs of handcuffs and not bring the keys along?"
The other body, Rebecca recognized, was Jules Verne. She could see in the same instant that he was alive. He'd curled up on his side, snoring faintly, deeply asleep.
She set down her weapon. "See to him, Passepartout." The valet was already moving, helping Jules to a sitting position. The youth mumbled faintly and let his head drop to Passepartout's shoulder.
Rebecca knelt close to her cousin. "Give me your wrists." The cuffs were a pattern she knew. She set to work. She had a moment's attention to spare for Cavois' shattered skull, and the empty gun lying beside it. "You must tell me sometime how you managed."
"Not me. One of the League of Darkness -- their alliance was on a less stable footing than Cavois thought. I have things to tell you about that." A wry twist of the mouth; no one could have mistaken it for a smile. "If you let me live until dawn, that is." He squared his shoulders as if facing a firing squad.
Rebecca was focused closely on her hands, working with the lock. "You left me," she remarked.
"You did agree to let me deal with Cavois alone," Phileas offered. "When we last encountered him, in the business of the codes."
Rebecca held back a curse word, with difficulty. Is this the future? Can you not abide a romance and a partnership at the same time? But he would have done the same if he'd been working with a man. "You could have died," she said, making the remark as level and neutral as she could.
He nodded slowly. "Either of us could die, the lives we lead."
This, then, was how Phileas felt when she lept into the line of fire. His persistent efforts to keep her safe seemed less like personal insults now. "That's true enough." Rebecca aligned the last moving part within the handcuffs. The steel fell from her cousin's wrists.
He rubbed one wrist absently, his eyes never leaving Rebecca's face. "It's your decision. It always was."
It was hers because his own choice, keeping close to her in spite of his nominal resignation from the service, had never wavered. Phileas always had been Rebecca's for the taking. Accepting his suit had seemed foolish recklessness. Rejecting it, she knew now, was foolish pride. Her choice, Rebecca thought, was what kind of fool she wanted to be. She'd always expected the decision, on the long-dreaded day when she stopped evading it, would be hard. There was no easy choice, in the sense of an option without risks or sacrifices. But that didn't mean, now that the moment was on her, that the choice of futures itself was difficult.
She'd expected her hands to shake, too. They were steady, as she rested them lightly on the front of Phileas' shoulders. "You might give me a fairer chance at the coded message next time," Rebecca said conversationally. She leaned close to him.
He shook his head solemnly. "No. You'd have gotten to him first."
"Then be quicker off the mark, if you expect to win. I'm done coddling you."
"Are you?" Phileas' arms were around her, fingers lacing together behind her waist. He drew her in.
-----
The dose of laudanum that Cavois had administered to Jules wore away in natural sleep by the middle of the next morning. Alexandre Dumas showed marked signs of recovery as well, his spirits buoyed by Jules' presence and the news of Cavois' demise. The four spent a quiet day in his hospital room, keeping him company. They talked for the most part of strategy and time travel; little of romance, though Phileas and Rebecca were rarely out of arm's reach of one another. Toward sunset Dumas' son, notified by a telegram, arrived to take his prodigal father home.
With the danger of Cavois gone Jules preferred to spend the night in his own bed in his garret, and said so. He'd said nothing further which directly addressed the new closeness between the two Foggs, but he didn't make even a token offer to take the other three home with him to his lodgings. His cramped quarters were reason enough for the omission, by normal standards, but normal standards hardly applied after all they'd been through together. Phileas insisted on loaning him a few francs for cab fare. The Foggs and Passepartout, with no further need to linger at the hospital, walked the young man to the hansom cab stand at the nearest street corner. Verne bid them goodbye tersely, unsmiling, and disappeared into a cab without looking back.
"He won't be able to hold a grudge for long," Rebecca said quietly when the cab was out of sight. "Poor Jules does wear his heart on his sleeve, but he also has some considerable reserves of common sense. He'll come around in time."
Phileas winced. "If you don't mind, my dear cousin, I'd appreciate the avoidance of metaphors like 'in time' for a while. Sensitive subject."
Rebecca smiled. "I shall do my best. In the mean time, do you have any constructive suggestions?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. I suggest that by this point, I'm fully prepared to kill for a bath and a decent change of clothes. I further suggest that with Cavois no longer a factor, there's no reason we shouldn't have those things. A draft on my bank should easily provide us with the means for a return to decency; long before it reaches the London office our temporal troubles," he scowled again, "should be well over. The Hotel Lyonesse, I think. They know us, so there shouldn't be trouble over our lack of luggage. And Passepartout should be able to acquire a few necessities before the shops close. Would you like to see civilized standards re-established, Passepartout?"
A broad grin covered the valet's expressive face. "Of the absoluteness, master. Saying before, the Phoenix is very bad way of travel. What is the use to arrive somewhere without trunks and the other trappings? Very happy having the suite in the good hotel, with the bath of hot water and the bedroom ..." He flushed bright red. "Meaning of course the two bedrooms. Passepartout shall be not in the same room. Sleeping like lumber, me; always never hearing anything unless bell is ringing."
Rebecca was close by Phileas' side, with her arm in his. He turned to her a moment, searching her face. "In fact, I believe you mean three bedrooms," Fogg said quietly. "Rebecca?"
Scamp. So he proposed to keep her waiting in revenge for the chase she'd led him? Rebecca could play that game. "Three seems the proper number," she said calmly, with sparkling eyes.
-----
Rebecca woke before dawn, luxuriating in newfound comfort. The Lyonesse had provided for them on a royal scale. Her sore muscles from sleeping on wooden benches and narrow sofas had been soothed away in a huge, steaming copper bathtub. A night's sleep in a decent bed, with clean linen sheets and a clean cotton nightdress, had completed the cure. She was just awake enough, and just hungry enough, that the prospect of ringing for breakfast when she felt good and ready was an additional pleasure. She turned over, closer to the edge of the bed, and became aware of a faint scent of flowers mixed with a pleasantly masculine musk. So you feel amorous first thing in the mornings, then? She sat up languorously, aware of how the thin gown outlined her upper body, and opened the bed curtains.
The chair beside the bed was empty. The entire room, from the standpoint of darkly handsome male cousins, was empty. The window, opening onto a miniscule balcony, stood wide open with a fresh morning breeze ruffling the curtains. Rebecca went to the window, her bare feet silent on the carpet. She wasn't surprised, in the event, to see a familiar rope-slung platform resting on the balcony floor. She craned her neck; the golden Aurora rode at anchor above the hotel.
Rebecca glanced around the room with more attention. The floral scent came from a small round table in the corner. A long-stemmed scarlet rose, so fresh that beads of dew still clung to its petals, lay on the table atop a folded sheet of paper. She opened it.
Rebecca --
Please exercise all required caution not to return to the neighborhood of London before 7:17 p.m. this evening London time. You will find that this is the latest that any of the four of you were in contact with outsiders in the original time line.
There are so many more things I could wish to write to you -- but that is self-indulgence. You will create your own future in your own way. I only want to tell you, as I will tell you again when I come home, that if your future leads you to my present then I can imagine no better fate.
Eternally yours,
Phileas
Rebecca found her new dressing gown and wrapped it around her. She folded the letter, with great care, and put it deep in the dressing gown's pocket. She would share it with her own Phileas, but not yet. They would, it seemed, be granted enough time; she saw no need to prod the courtship along using his fancied rivalry with his elder self. She crossed the sitting room of their suite and tapped on another bedroom door.
"Phileas," she called, "do you feel up to climbing ten yards or so of rope before breakfast?"
-FIN-
----
Author's Notes: there's an academic joke that stealing from one person is plagiarism, but stealing from dozens is research. The words "nota bene" are not only a Latin phrase but the name of a DOS-based word processing program which a co-worker only recently abandoned with the switch to Win98. I owe the late Rex Stout (and his hero, the incomparable Archie Goodwin) for the concept of verbatim memory which I hooked up to that Latin phrase and twisted to my own ends. The gimmick of having Latin chapter titles, which initially seemed like such a hot idea, got fairly difficult toward the later sections. I am in debt to the members of the Lois McMaster Bujold Mailing List (www.dendarii.com) for their assistance.
I owe the various members of the SAJV and AuroraVernealis mailing lists thanks for their kind attention and feedback in the course of this story. I also owe them for, in many cases, writing better SAJV fiction at a faster rate so that I was forced time and again to get off my butt and finish the next chapter. I also owe several list members for the loan of ideas (including the work-in-progress posting format itself) which were originally developed in their own fics. I hope all those 'fanon' ideas were handled lightly enough not to count as copying, and I certainly intend to put them back when I'm done.
My intention now, Real Life permitting, is to launch almost immediately into a direct sequel to "Nota Bene," to be called "Sang Real," which I also expect to post in WIP format. The rest of Nota Bene will be lightly re-edited (mostly for typos, a little for content) and posted on my web site and on Fanfiction.net in the near future.