Lord John and the Private Matter Read online

  I went myself to inquire, Magruder wrote, but the man was unable to be sure of the rank or regiment of this Irishman--and I were loath to press him, for fear of his recollection transforming the man into a Welsh lance-corporal or a Cornish grenadier, under the pressure of forced recollection. For what the observation be worth, he believed the man to be selling an old coat of his own.

  Impatient as he was for more detail, Grey was forced to admit the soundness and delicacy of Magruder's instinct. Press questions too far, and a man would tell you what he thought you wanted to hear. It was much better to ask questions briefly, in a number of short sessions, rather than to bombard a witness with interrogation--but time was short.

  Still, Magruder had got what he could be sure of. While all insignia and buttons had naturally been stripped from the coat, it was identifiable as having belonged to a sergeant of the 47th. While the government dictated certain specifics of army dress, those gentlemen who raised and financed their own regiments held the privilege of designing the uniforms for said regiments. In the case of the 47th, it was Hal's wife who had patterned the officers' coats, with a narrow buff stripe up the outside of the sleeve, which helped to draw the eye when an arm was waved in command. A sergeant's coat, poorer in material and less stylish in cut, still bore that stripe.

  Grey made a mental note to have someone check the other regimental sergeants, to be sure that none had sold an old coat--but this was merely for the sake of thoroughness. Magruder had not only described the coat and included a brief sketch of the garment, but noted also that the lining of the coat had been unstitched at one side, the stitches appearing to have been cut, rather than torn.

  Well, that explained where O'Connell had been keeping his booty, if not where it was now. Grey took a bite of cold toast and reached for the second note, sporting Harry Quarry's bold black scrawl. This one was still more brief.

  Meet me at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, tomorrow at six o'clock, it read, the signature rendered merely as a large, slapdash "Q . . ." P.S. wear old uniform.

  He was still frowning at this terse communication when Tom Byrd's round head poked into the room, looking apologetic.

  "Me lord? Sorry, sir, but you did say as how if a big Scotchman was to come--"

  Grey was already on his feet, leaving Olivia open-mouthed behind him.

  Rab the chairman was tall and solid, with a stupid, sullen face that barely brightened into dourness at Grey's greeting.

  "Agnes said ye'd pay for a word," he muttered, not quite able to keep from staring at the bronze orrery that stood upon the table by the library window, its graceful arms and swooping orbs catching the morning sun.

  "I will," Grey said promptly, wanting to dispose of the man before his mother should come downstairs and start asking questions. "What is the word?"

  Rab's bloodshot eyes met his, displaying a bit more intelligence than did the rest of his countenance.

  "Ye dinna want to know the price first?"

  "Very well. How much do you want?" He could hear the Countess's voice upstairs, raised in song.

  The man's thick tongue poked out, touching his upper lip in contemplation.

  "Two pound?" he said, trying to sound indifferently truculent, but unable to conceal the tentative note in his voice. Obviously, two pounds was a nearly unthinkable fortune; he had no faith that it might actually be forthcoming, but was willing to hazard the chance.

  "How much of that does Agnes get?" Grey asked pointedly. "I shall see her again, mind, and I'll ask to make certain that she's had her share."

  "Oh. Ah . . ." Rab struggled with the problem of division for a moment, then he shrugged. "Half, then."

  Grey was surprised at this generosity--and surprised further that Rab was able to discern his response.

  "I mean to marry her," the chairman said gruffly, fixing him with a stare and narrowing one eye as though daring him to make something of this statement. "When she's bought free of her contract, aye?"

  Grey bit his tongue to forestall an incautious response to this startling revelation, merely nodding as he dug into his pocketbook. He laid the silver on the desk, but kept his hand over it.

  "What are you to tell me, then?"

  "A house called 'Lavender,' in Barbican Street. Near to Lincoln's Inn. Big place--not so much to look at from outside, but verra rich within."

  Grey felt a sudden cold weight in the pit of his stomach, as though he had swallowed lead shot.

  "You have been inside?"

  Rab moved one burly shoulder, shaking his head.

  "Nah, then. Only to the door. But I could see as there were carpets like that"--he nodded at the silk Kermanshah on the floor by the desk--"and pictures on the wall." He lifted a chin like a battering ram, indicating the painting over the mantelpiece, of Grey's paternal grandfather seated on horseback. The chairman frowned with the effort of recall.

  "I could see a bit into one of the rooms. There was a . . . thing. No quite like that thing"--he nodded at the orrery--"but along the same lines, ken? Bits o' clockwork, like."

  The sensation of cold heaviness was worse. Not that there could have been any doubt about it from the beginning of Rab's account.

  "The . . . woman you fetched from this place," Grey forced himself to ask. "Do you know her name? Did you deliver her there, as well?"

  Rab shook his head, indifferent. There was no sign on his oxlike face that he knew that the person he had transported was not indeed a woman, nor that Lavender House was not merely another wealthy London house.

  Grey essayed a few more questions, for form's sake, but received no further information of value, and at last he removed his hand and stood back, nodding to indicate that Rab might take his pay.

  The chairman was likely a few years younger than Grey himself, but his hands were gnarled, frozen in a curve, as though in permanent execution of his occupation. Grey watched him fumble, thick fingers slowly pinching up the coins one by one, and curled his own hands into fists among the folds of his banyan, to restrain the impulse to do it for him.

  The skin of Rab's hands was thick as horn, the palms yellow with callus. The hands themselves were broad and bluntly powerful, with black hairs sprouting over knobbled joints. Grey saw the chairman to the door himself, all the while imagining those hands upon Nessie's silken skin, with a sense of morbid wonder.

  He shut the door and stood with his back against it, as though he had just escaped from close pursuit. His heart was beating fast. Then he realized that he was imagining Rab's brutal grasp upon his own wrists, and closed his eyes.

  A dew of sweat prickled on his upper lip and temples, though the sense of inner cold had not diminished. He knew the house near Lincoln's Inn, called "Lavender.'' And had thought never to see or hear of it again.

  Chapter 9

  Molly-Walk

  The horses clip-clopped through the darkened square at a good rate, but not so fast that he couldn't make out the row of bog-houses--or the vague figures that surrounded them, dim as the moths that flitted through his mother's garden at nightfall, drawn by the perfume of the flowers. He drew a deep, deliberate breath through the open window. Quite a different perfume reached him from the bog-houses, acrid and sour, and under it the remembered smell of the sweat of panic and desire--no less compelling in its way than the scent of nicotiana to the moths.

  The bog-houses of Lincoln's Inn were notorious; even more so than Blackfriars Bridge, or the shadowed recesses of the arcades at the Royal Exchange.

  A little distance farther on, he rapped on the ceiling with his stick, and the carriage drew to a halt. He paid the driver and stood waiting until the carriage had quite disappeared before turning into Barbican Street.

  Barbican Street was a curving lane, less than a quarter mile long, and interrupted by the passage through it of the Fleet Ditch. Covered over for part of its length, the remnants of the river were still open here, spanned by a narrow bridge. The street was various, one end of it a mix of tradesmen's shops and noisy taverns, thes
e yielding place gradually to the houses of minor City merchants, and terminating abruptly beyond the bridge in a small crescent of large houses that turned their backs upon the street, facing superciliously inward to a small private park. One of these was Lavender House.

  Grey could as easily have arrived at the crescent by carriage, but he had wanted to begin at the far end of Barbican Street, approaching his goal more slowly afoot. The journey would give him time to prepare--or so he hoped.

  It had been nearly five years since he had last set foot in Barbican Street, and he had changed a great deal in the interim. Had the character of the neighborhood altered as well?

  It had not, judging by his first impressions. The street was a dark one, lit only by random spills of window-light and the wash of a cloudy half-moon, but it bustled with life, at least at the near end of the street, where numerous taverns insured traffic. People--mostly men--strolled up and down, brushing shoulders and shouting greetings to friends, or lounged in small gangs around the entrances to the public houses. The smell of ale rose sweet and pungent on the air, mixed with the scents of smoke, roast meat--and bodies, hot with drink and the sweat of a day's labor.

  He had borrowed a suit of rough clothes from one of his mother's servants, and wore his hair tied back in a heavy tail, bound with a scrap of leather, with a slouch hat to hide its fairness. There was nothing to distinguish him outwardly from the dyers and fullers, smiths and weavers, bakers and butchers whose haunt this was, and he walked anonymous through the churning throng. Anonymous unless he spoke--but there should be no need for speech, until he reached Lavender House. Until then, the swirl of Barbican Street rose round him, dark and intoxicating as the beer-drenched air.

  A trio of laughing men brushed by him, leaving a smell of yeast, sweat, and fresh bread in their wake--bakers.

  "D'ye hear what that bitch said to me?" one was demanding in mock outrage. "How he dares!"

  "Ah, come on, then, Betty. Ye don't want 'em smackin' your sweet round arse, don't wave it about!"

  "Wave it--I'll wave you, you cheeky cull!"

  They disappeared into the dark, laughing and shoving each other. Grey walked on, feeling suddenly more comfortable, despite the seriousness of his errand.

  Mollies. There were four or five molly-walks in London, well-known to those so inclined, but it had been a long time since he had entered one past dark. Of the six taverns on Barbican Street, three at least were molly-houses, patronized by men who sought food and drink and the enjoyment of one another's companionship--and one another's flesh--unashamed in like company.

  Laughter lapped round him as he passed unnoticed, and here and there he caught the "maiden names" many mollies used among themselves, exchanged in joke or casual insinuation. Nancy, Fanny, Betty, Mrs. Anne, Miss Thing . . . he found himself smiling at the boisterous badinage he overheard, though he had never been inclined to that particular fancy himself.

  Was Joseph Trevelyan so inclined? He would have sworn not; even now, he found the notion inconceivable. Still, he knew that almost all his own acquaintance in London society and army circles would swear with one voice on a Bible that Lord John Grey would never, could not possibly . . .

  "Would you look at our Miss Irons tonight?" A carrying voice, raised in grudging admiration, made him turn his head. Holding riotous court in the torchlit yard of the Three Goats was "Miss Irons"--a stout young man with broad shoulders and a bulbous nose, who had evidently paused with his companions for refreshment en route to a masquerade at Vauxhall.

  Powdered and painted with joyous abandon, and rigged out in a gown of crimson satin with a ruffled headdress in cloth of gold, Miss Irons was presently seated on a barrel, from which perch she was rejecting the devotions of several masked gentlemen, with an air of flirtatious scorn that would have suited a duchess.

  Grey came up short at the sight, then, recollecting himself, faded hastily across the road, seeking to disappear into the shadows.

  Despite the finery, he recognized "Miss Irons"--who was by day one Egbert Jones, the cheerful young Welsh blacksmith who had come to repair the wrought-iron fence around his mother's herb garden. He rather thought that Miss Irons might recognize him in turn despite his disguise--and in her current well-lubricated mood, this was the last thing he desired to happen.

  He reached the refuge of the bridge, helpfully shadowed by tall stone pillars at either end, and ducked behind one. His heart was thumping and his cheeks flushed, from alarm rather than exertion. No shout came from behind, though, and he leaned over to brace his hands upon the wall, letting the cool air off the river rise over his heated face.

  A pungent smell of sewage and decay rose, too. Ten feet below the arch of the bridge, the dark and fetid waters of the Fleet crawled past, reminding him of Tim O'Connell's sordid end, and he straightened, slowly.

  What had that end been? A spy's wages, paid in blood to prevent the threat of disclosure? Or something more personal?

  Very personal. The thought came to him with sudden certainty, as he saw once more in memory that heelprint on O'Connell's forehead. Anyone might have killed the Sergeant, for any of several motives--but that final indignity was a deliberate insult, left as signature to the crime.

  Scanlon's hands were unmarked; so were Francine O'Connell's. But O'Connell's death had come at the hands of more than one, and the Irish gathered like fleas in the city; where you found one, there were a dozen more nearby. Scanlon doubtless had friends or relations. He should very much like to examine the heels of Scanlon's shoes.

  There were several men standing, as he was, near the wall; one turned aside, tugging at his breeches as though to make water, another sidling toward him. Grey felt the nearness of someone at his own shoulder, and turned his back sharply; he felt the hesitation of the man behind him, and then the small huff of breath, an audible shrug, as the stranger turned away.

  Best to keep walking. He had barely resumed his journey, though, when he heard a startled exclamation from the shadows a few feet behind him, followed by a brief scuffling noise.

  "Oh, you bold pullet!"

  "What are--hey! Mmph!"

  "Oh? Well, if you'd rather, my dear . . ."

  "Oy! Leggo!"

  The agitated voice raised the hairs on the nape of Grey's neck in recognition. He whirled on his heel and was moving toward the altercation by reflex, before his conscious mind had realized what he was about.

  Two shadowy figures swayed together, grappling and shuffling. He seized the taller of these just above the elbow, gripping hard.

  "Leave him," he said, in his soldier's voice. The steel of it made the man start and step back, shaking off Grey's grip. Pale moonlight showed a long face, caught between puzzlement and anger.

  "Why, I wasn't but--"

  "Leave him," Grey repeated, more softly, but with no less menace. The man's face changed, assuming an air of injured dignity, as he did up his breeches.

  "Sorry, I'm sure. Didn't know he was your cull." He turned away, rubbing ostentatiously at his arm, but Grey paid no attention, being otherwise concerned.

  "What in Christ's name are you doing here?" he said, keeping his voice low.

  Tom Byrd appeared not to have heard; his round face was open-mouthed with amazement.

  "That bloke come straight up to me and put his pego into me hand!" He stared into his open palm, as though expecting to find the object in question still within his grasp.

  "Oh?"

  "Yes! I swear as a Christian, he did! And then he kissed me, and went for to put his hand into me breeches and grabbed me by the bollocks! Whatever would he want to do that for?"

  Grey was tempted to reply that he had not the slightest idea, but instead took Byrd by the arm and towed him out of earshot of the interested parties on the bridge.

  "I repeat--what are you doing here?" he asked, as they reached the refuge of a residence whose gate was sheltered by a pair of flowering laburnums, white in the moonlight.

  "Oh, ah." Byrd was recovering rapidly fr
om his shock. He rubbed the palm of his hand on his thigh and stood up straight.

  "Well, sir--me lord, I mean--I saw you go out, and thought as how you might have need of someone at your back, as it was. I mean"--he darted a quick glance at Grey's unorthodox costume--"I thought you must be headin' to somewhere as might be dangerous." He looked back over his shoulder at the bridge, obviously feeling that recent events there had confirmed this suspicion.

  "I assure you, Tom, I am in no danger." Byrd was; while most mollies were simply looking for a good time, there was rough trade to be found in such places and persons who would not take no for an answer--to say nothing of simple footpads.

  Grey glanced down the street; he could not send the boy back past the taverns, not alone.

  "Come with me, then," he said, making up his mind upon the moment. "You may accompany me to the house; from there, you will go home."

  Byrd followed him without demur; Grey was obliged to take the young man's arm and draw him up beside--otherwise the boy fell by habit into step behind him, which would not do.

  A middle-aged man in a cocked hat strolled past them, giving Byrd a penetrating glance. Grey felt the boy meet the glance, then jerk his eyes away.

  "Me lord," he whispered.

  "Yes?"

  "These coves hereabouts. Are they . . . sodomites?"

  "Many of them, yes."

  Byrd asked no further questions. Grey let go the boy's arm after a bit, and they walked in silence through the quieter end of the street. Grey felt all his earlier tension return, made the more uncomfortable for the brief interlude before Byrd's appearance had recalled him to himself.

  He had not remembered. Hardly surprising; he had done his best to forget those years after Hector's death. He had sleepwalked through the year after Culloden, spent with Cumberland's troops as they cleansed the Highlands of rebels, doing his soldier's duty, but doing it as in a dream. Returning at last to London, though, he could no longer keep from waking to the reality of a world in which Hector was not.

  He had come here in that bad time, looking for surcease at best, oblivion at worst. He had found the latter, both in liquor and in flesh, and realized his luck in surviving both experiences unscathed--though at the time, survival had been the least of his concerns.