*
“That’s a little melodramatic isn’t it?” asked Pierce following Tiberius’ pronouncement of Colonel Bufford’s London adventures.
“Descent into Darkness,” Liam mimicked Tiberius’ voice perfectly. “Sounds like a melodrama.”
“One day he’s a down on his luck teenager in the Docklands,” continued Tiberius unfazed by the commentary. “Then he boards a ship bound for the States. Only it takes a quick African stop on the way and it wasn’t for the scenery.”
“Slavers,” spat MacDuff, ever the freedom loving Scotsman.
“The file does not indicate if he knew the real purpose of the ship’s journey, but sufficed to say he rejoined the ship after a brief visit to the family plantation. For the next three years he worked his way up the trade, eventually owning his own ship.”
“This must have been before the war,” added Pierce to Tiberius’ account. “We know he was a Confederate Colonel, I guess he wasn’t fighting against federal encroachment.”
“He spent the first year of the war running arms from the Continent to the South in a cutter he stole with his slaver crew.”
“When did he join the army?” asked Sean now fully intrigued by the tale.
“He returned from sea one day and had a message waiting for him,” Tiberius continued, slowly answering the question. “It informed him that there had been a hasty uprising at some of the nearby plantations, including his families’. He raced home to find everything back in order, but with his eldest brother dead. Nathan, now a grown man, lashed out with a cruel fury.”
“What did he do?” whispered Pierce, unsure he wanted the answer.
“He paid his respects to his dead brother’s body, still out for viewing. He grabbed a silver coin that was placed over the right eye and went to the slave’s quarters. He and his crew lined them all up, men on the left and women on the right. He started with the women and flipped a coin in front of each one. Heads they were safe, tails and they were raped in front of everyone. Then he went to the men, only this time those with tails were hung.”
Everyone in the room was silent, but there was a growing tension that Pierce could feel. He himself felt conflicting feelings, all rambling around in his head and his soul. Rage, sadness, sickness, they all vied for prominence within him.
“It never changes does it?” uttered Sean with distaste.
“Watch the bastard?” Liam growled rising up from his seat. “I’ll bloody kill him and that will make it easier on everyone.”
“And then the Grey Pack will kill Patrick in retribution and we’ve solved nothing,” countered MacDuff calmly, signalling him to retake his seat.”
“What’s a man like Bufford even doing here?” Sean asked after regaining his composure.
With a heavy heart and without any interruptions, Tiberius gave the same speech to Liam and Sean that he gave the others the night before. They remained silent when he was finished. Both felt a tinge of shame in having been a part of everything. In their minds they could have pleaded ignorance; however in their hearts they had always known something was not quite right at the Manor.
Tiberius softly cleared his throat to regain their attention.
“As heinous as his act was, it was the act of a calculating criminal. From all accounts he was still in full control of his faculties.”
“So what tipped him over the edge?”
“The death of his second brother. Not long after he regained control of the plantation he decided to raise his own regiment of cavalry to fight for the Confederacy. Apparently this was normal in the early days of the war.
“They might have worn the grey uniform, but they were soldiers in appearance only. They were actually raiders and they were good at it. With the military knowledge he learned in school he organized the usual guerrilla tactics of such troops and was moderately successful at disrupting the enemy’s supplies and communications.”
“So what happened to his brother?” Pierce inquired fully engrossed in the story.
“His brother was an officer fighting with an artillery regiment, which befitted his wealthy status. However he lacked the cunning and survival instincts of his younger brother. He was killed in a brothel by Union forces when they broke through the line nearby.”
“Helluva way to go,” commented Liam with a hint of admiration.
“Not in his case,” Tiberius replied soberly. “When the Confederates retook the town the next day they discovered him and his comrades in the brothel. They were all found naked and in the beds they had been killed in, their weapons outside the rooms.”
“Killed without a chance to defend themselves,” Pierce observed.
“Defenceless were they? Rubbish,” snorted MacDuff. “You defend yourself by not getting blind drunk in a brothel a mile away from the front lines in a war.”
“Well the Colonel didn’t see it like that and he proceeded to lose his mind after he heard the news. Like before he showed up at the brothel and demanded to know what had happened. Some believed the brothel owner had been paid off or was pro-union. Unlike the plantation, he didn’t give any of the workers the generosity of a coin toss. He and his men set fire to the brothel and shot anyone who was able to make it out of the smoking carnage.”
“I assume he and his men changed their raiding tactics after that?” MacDuff asked knowingly, having seen the worst sides of war.
“Indeed. The Grey Raiders, as they became known, continued to hit supply lines as before. But they also started indiscriminate killings through out the battle areas. They would search out field hospitals and Prisoner of War trains, killing the defenceless. Just like his brother had been.”
“Why did nobody stop him? It goes against all of the rules of war,” Pierce admonished no one in particular.
“There are no rules in war,” countered Tiberius. “The Union couldn’t find him and the Confederates had enough problems of their own. The war had turned against them and they needed every able bodied man to fight. Anyway that’s what we’re dealing with.”
“A skilled sailor, soldier, and tactician who is cunning, ruthless, and slightly crazed,” Pierce summed up for the gathered group. “What were we saying about not underestimating your opponent?”
“I’m not sure I feel better knowing this new information,” admitted Sean. “I liked him better when I thought he was a little mad and eccentric.”
“So what’s our next move?” Liam asked Pierce. Everyone followed his gaze towards the Lord of the Brown Pack.
Pierce had been thinking about that very question as Tiberius had been regaling them on Colonel Bufford’s past. He was glad he’d done it; otherwise he probably would have disappointed them with silence.
“We follow Lord Lodge’s instructions. We stay alert to Bufford and his pack’s actions. We try and find out what he is doing or what his goal is. Hopefully we’ll be able to find Lord Lodge first and gain more insight. Is there a chance he has something ongoing in the real world?”
“Possibly,” acknowledged MacDuff. “But he’d need the keys to whichever portal he was using and be forewarned to plan anything. Excursions and hunts are kept secret, so it’s unlikely he’s relying on that avenue.”
“Kept secret by whom?” interjected Pierce sensing a flaw in his Whip’s reasoning.
“Drummond and the Hunt staff,” Tiberius replied, realizing the implication.
“So we take nothing for granted. If we go through a portal, we follow Bufford and his pack.”
A knock at the door sounded throughout the room just as he finished. Liam automatically rose and went to answer it without being prompted. He returned immediately with Melrose in tow behind him.
“A letter for you my Lord,” announced Melrose as he handed a folded piece of parchment with the black wax seal of the Hunt on it.
“Looks like we’re going to start the operation sooner than we’d anticipated,” Pierce said after reading the document. “The next hunt is set, we leave tomorrow.”
Ch
apter 16
A Malevolent Manner (Patrick Pierce #1) Page 58
