Killigrew and the Sea Devil

by Jonathan Lunn

  Lips locked together, the two of them sank on to the chaise longue. The next few minutes were spent kissing and caressing, until Killigrew had forgotten all about Araminta. Barely able to contain himself, he struggled with the fastening at the back of the countess’s gown, until at last she pushed him back down and stood up, patting her tousled hair back into place.

  He looked up at her, wondering if he had done something wrong.

  She smiled at him. ‘Wait here. I’ll be two minutes.’ She left the room.

  Killigrew braced himself for what he suspected were going to be two of the longest minutes of his life. He clapped a hand to his forehead and blew his cheeks out. He was feeling dizzy… damn, that woman could kiss!

  He needed to cool off a little, and glanced across to where his empty glass stood on the table next to the bottle in the ice bucket. He stood up, intending to cross the room to refill it, but the room really was spinning round him now. He must have had more to drink than he had realised. He managed to lurch as far as the next armchair, but then his legs crumpled beneath him and he sank to his knees. He tried to focus on the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, and saw two of them.

  A couple of glasses of champagne did not do this to him. Even as he felt his own brain turn to mush, some part of him still had sense enough to realise he had been drugged. The hoariest trick in the book, and he had fallen for it like rain falling in a monsoon. Before long he would be helpless, alone in the house of a woman he should have known he could not trust…

  Soon… but not yet. With a supreme effort of will, he managed to force himself to his feet and staggered across to the table where the butler had left the ice bucket. Sober, he would have needed a second or two to brace himself, but with fear joining forces with the drug coursing through his veins now, the imperative to clear his head overruled any hesitation. He doused his face until he could hardly breathe. It helped a little. He picked up the bucket and tipped it over his head, with scant regard for Prince Polyansky’s Persian rug. That helped even more. Blinking through the icy water running down from his hairline, he staggered across to the door. It was tricky, as he could see two of them, but after much tumbling he managed to find the right one and get it open.

  He stumbled out on to the landing, leaning on to the banister, and managed to grope his way to the top of the stairs. There was no sign of Countess Vásáry, or whoever the deuce she was. All he had to do was get out of the house…

  He stared down the stairs. They swayed from side to side like a rope bridge across a yawning chasm. He put one foot out, missed the step, and tumbled head over heels to the bottom.

  He sprawled on the marble floor for a moment, wondering if he was dead. How many bones had he broken in that fall? The easiest way to find out seemed to be to get up and walk to the door. As ideas went, that one was a non-starter: his limbs would not obey him, his bones, far from being broken, seemed to have turned to India rubber. But by dint of experimentation he managed to crawl on his hands and knees. The unforgiving marble floor hurt his knees, but he liked the pain; it was like a stinging slap to his brain, keeping unconsciousness at bay for a few precious seconds longer.

  He was moving… but where to? Door, door, get to the door! Got to get out! He squinted at the door ahead of him, a few feet away… a few feet that looked like a hundred miles. There were three doors now. He squeezed his eyes shut. They were deceiving him, it was best not to trust them.

  He knew he was pointed in the right direction. He crawled on until his groping hands reached something cylindrical and rough… it felt like an elephant’s foot. Not that Killigrew had ever touched an elephant’s foot, but he had a pretty clear idea that this was what an elephant’s foot felt like. Why in the world was there an elephant in Prince Polyansky’s hallway? (Not enough room for it in the pantry, ha ha ha.)

  Umbrella stand! And… yes… there, next to it, an iron doorstop. He must be getting close now. A few more feet, and he banged his head against something. Soft wood after cold plaster… the door! He groped for the handle. He could hear a voice in the house behind him now, footsteps thundering down the stairs, just when he was so close to getting outside. He grasped the handle and turned it, but the door would not open. Raging, he tugged on it in vain, but the door was jammed.

  Bolt! The countess would have bolted the door. He found the bolt, snicked it, heaved on the doorknob one more time, and it swung inwards until his knees were in the way.

  The footsteps were on the floor behind him, getting louder and louder. Somehow he managed to twist his body to one side so he could open the door a couple more feet. The cold night air slapped him in the face, granting him a few more seconds of consciousness. He opened his eyes. It seemed to be very foggy all of a sudden, and the dark street spun around him. He flopped out on to the stone steps, and was aware of shouts, and footsteps pounding up the steps towards him. He felt hands lifting him, more voices… talking in Russian? Even if they had spoken English, he would not have understood a word of it. All he was aware of now was…

  …nothing.

  * * *

  Killigrew had never been drugged before, but he had been knocked over the head a few times, so he was not entirely unused to waking up in unfamiliar and potentially dangerous territory. The throbbing in his skull, the churning in his guts, the dry sensation in his mouth as if his tongue had turned to cotton wool and swollen… yes, he had been here before.

  At first he lay still, keeping his eyes shut — wanting to put off as long as possible the moment when stinging light invaded his aching head – but also straining to listen past the Anvil Chorus in his brain to try to work out if there was anyone else in the room with him. The only sounds were hoofs on cobbles, and someone shouting orders in a foreign language, but both were so muffled that they hardly troubled him.

  He lay on something soft too, and a pillow cushioned his head. He moved his arms experimentally, as if stirring in his sleep, and was surprised to find they were not bound behind his back. Given how foolish he had been in gulping down the countess’s champagne like that, he knew he could count himself lucky to be waking up at all.

  The moment could not be put off any longer. He opened his eyes. There was a slight twinge, but nothing a glass of Dr James’s Powders – or whatever the Russian equivalent was – would not cure. He opened his eyes wider and found himself staring across a dimly lit room towards some plush velvet curtains.

  He lay in a four-poster bed. When he thought of some of the rude awakenings he had suffered over the years, this one could only be described as the epitome of courtesy. Wherever he was, it was not a cell in the dungeons of the Kochubey Mansion: that was some consolation. All that was lacking was for a dulcet-toned flunkey to enter bearing a bowl of scented rosewater and to murmur that the sun awaited his pleasure.

  But the dulcet-toned flunkey did not seem to be in any hurry. Killigrew, on the other hand, knew he was running out of time to find the Sea Devil, if time had not run out already. It was bad enough to be working to a deadline at the end of which hundreds of sailors might die, worse when he had no clue when that deadline was due. But one thing he did know: he did not have time to be lying in bed all morning.

  He eased himself up into sitting position and pressed a palm to his forehead with a low groan. After a few moments the pain subsided sufficiently for him to find the strength to swing his legs out of bed so that his bare feet touched the rug. He fumbled for his fob watch, but it was not there. In fact, neither was his fob pocket, or the rest of the waistcoat, or any of the clothes he had been wearing. Now he was dressed in a cotton nightshirt: not his own, yet a good enough fit that it might have been bought for him.

  Using one of the bedposts for support, he pulled himself on to his feet. His most pressing concern was for a chamber pot, and he found one under the bed. Having used it, he made his way groggily to the window, drawing aside the curtains to let sunlight flood into the room, making him wince. The barred window looked out over a courtyard in the middle of the bu
ilding where he could see some men loading barrels into a dray-cart several floors below. There was no getting out that way, and no shouting for help either; although, if the room had looked out on to one of St Petersburg’s streets, he would have been forced to reserve judgement on the advisability of that course of action, given some of the questions he might have been expected to answer if such cries had, by some miracle, brought help from the local gendarmerie.

  He tested the bars anyway, largely as a reflex action. They were solid. Still, stone walls did not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. He was about to try the door when he heard footsteps outside, and a moment later the door opened for him. Or rather, for a pretty blonde maid who had brought him a glass of something effervescent. On reflection, she was more welcome than a dulcet-toned flunkey with a bowl of rosewater; only the burly ruffian who stood on guard in the doorway while she was in the room marred the moment. He wore the black frock-coat and black-and-yellow-striped waistcoat of a butler, but he had the cauliflower ears and scarred knuckles of a pugilist.

  ‘Vvpeite,’ the maid urged him, smiling.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked her, remembering to use his Yankee accent. ‘Dr Jamesky’s Powders, or just good old-fashioned hemlock?’

  She just smiled at him, not understanding.

  Reasoning that if his captors wanted him dead, they would simply have poisoned him rather than go to the trouble of drugging him, bringing him here, taking his evening clothes off and dressing him in a nightshirt first, he took a tentative sip of the liquid. It certainly tasted as foul as Dr James’s Powders. Best to knock it back in one go, he told himself; the craving to replenish the fluids in his dehydrated body would not be denied.

  He gasped once it was all down, and put the empty glass back on the tray. She retreated, still smiling, and the burly ruffian motioned with a pistol for him to come out of the bedroom. Killigrew did not bother to ask where he was, or who his hosts were: doubtless he would be taken to learn for himself presently. Besides, the ruffian did not strike him as the chatty type.

  Killigrew gestured at the nightshirt. ‘Shouldn’t I get dressed first?’

  The ruffian shook his head, and gestured with the pistol again.

  Killigrew stepped out of the bedroom, and the ruffian motioned for him to precede him. He padded barefoot along the carpeted corridor. It was another grand house, as far as he could tell; or an unfamiliar part of one of the grand houses he had already visited.

  The ruffian gestured to a door. Killigrew opened it and stepped into a small, bare room with a tiled floor and a wooden bench with clothes piled on it.

  ‘Razden ’te!’ ordered the ruffian.

  Killigrew searched his groggy mind to remember what that meant, and was shocked when it came to him. ‘Now hold your hosses, pardner! I ain’t getting undressed in front of you—’

  The ruffian pulled back the hammer of the pistol and levelled it at his head. ‘Razden ’te!’

  ‘Oh-kay, oh-kay!’ Killigrew conceded. ‘But no funny stuff, understand?’ He pulled the nightshirt off over his head and stood there with his hands on his hips.

  The ruffian gestured through the other door.

  Killigrew opened it. A cloud of hot, dry steam hit him in the face.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there with the door open!’ a half-remembered voice called to him – in English, but with a Scots burr. ‘You’re letting the steam out!’

  Killigrew closed the door behind him and peered through the mist to see Mscislaw Wojtkiewicz sitting in the middle of some tiered wooden benches. He was as naked as Killigrew. So was the blonde woman who sat behind him, her thighs straddling his hips as she massaged his shoulders. Her physique was… well, suffice to say that, given how vulnerable his modesty was at that moment, he was grateful that Wojtkiewicz’s torso concealed the more distracting parts of her anatomy from him.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Bryce.’ Wojtkiewicz gestured to the benches opposite. ‘If that is your real name, which I very much doubt. Oh, you can speak freely: Jadwiga here doesn’t speak a word of English.’

  ‘May I compliment you on yours?’

  ‘When I was four years old, I watched as my parents were slaughtered by Cossacks when the Russians put down the Polish insurrection. After that I was adopted by a Scottish merchant who had known my parents well. I was raised in Edinburgh until I was fifteen.’

  ‘That explains the slight accent.’

  ‘Aye, people often wonder about that.’

  ‘You’re a very trusting man, if I may say so, Mr Wojtkiewicz,’ said Killigrew.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You don’t know me – and I know you don’t trust me – yet you’re prepared to sit in here with me, naked and unarmed.’

  ‘As are you. That’s why I like to do business in my steam bath: no concealed weapons.’

  ‘Yes, but… I do have the advantage of youth on my side.’

  ‘You think so?’ Wojtkiewicz grinned. ‘You’re welcome to try to kill me, if that’s why you’re here. I’ll pit my age and experience against your youth any day of the week.’

  Looking at the Pole’s body – in the presence of the blonde lovely massaging him, it helped to avert any embarrassing tumescence on Killigrew’s part – he could well believe it. Wojtkiewicz was in good shape for a man of his years. The most recent Polish insurrection Killigrew knew of had been a quarter of a century ago; if Wojtkiewicz had been four at the time, it would have made him even younger than Killigrew. More likely the Pole was referring to the insurrection of 1794, which would have made him sixty-five now; but he had the body of a forty-year-old, and a fairly fit forty-year-old at that.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ he told Wojtkiewicz. ‘It’s far too early in the morning to be killing anyone.’

  ‘And I thought the British always attacked at dawn?’

  ‘I’m an American,’ Killigrew reminded him.

  Wojtkiewicz grinned. ‘Yes, I must compliment you on your Yankee accent. Most Englishmen trying to pass themselves off as Americans try for a nondescript transatlantic twang, but I’d say you’ve got the New England accent off pat.’

  ‘I should do: I was raised there.’

  ‘And I’m Richard the Lionheart!’ snorted Wojtkiewicz. ‘Stand up and turn to face the wall. Well, go on, man! What, you think I’m going to creep up behind you and hit you?’

  ‘The thought had occurred to me.’

  ‘Relax, boy. If I wanted you dead, you’d be at the bottom of the Neva already.’

  Killigrew stood up and turned to face the wall.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Wojtkiewicz, and Jadwiga asked something in Polish, giggling.

  Killigrew turned back to face them. ‘Seen everything you want to see?’

  ‘More than enough. Jadwiga here wants to know how you got those five parallel scars on your shoulder blade. Souvenir of a jealous woman?’

  ‘Yes… but I haven’t turned my back on one since.’

  ‘I seem to have heard that one somewhere before,’ Wojtkiewicz said drily. ‘If you got those scars from a jealous lover, my advice is to stop sleeping with polar bears and stick to women in future, Commander Killigrew.’

  When Killigrew opened his mouth to protest, Wojtkiewicz raised a hand to silence him. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence by denying it. I’ve got a complete set of the Illustrated London News downstairs, and one of them has a good likeness of you in it. You’d better hope the Third Section doesn’t have a copy of the same edition. They don’t take kindly to British spies.’

  In a way, Killigrew was relieved. And at least he could drop the accent.

  ‘Naval officer, Arctic explorer, and now a spy,’ mused Wojtkiewicz. ‘You’re a man of many parts, Mr Killigrew.’

  ‘Jack of all trades, master of none. So now what? You’re going to turn me in?’

  ‘Don’t think I’m not tempted. I know Count Orloff regards me with suspicion. In fact, the only reason he hasn’t had me in the cellars of the Kochubey Mansion already is that some o
f my business contacts are… shall we say, useful to him? If I were to give him a British spy, it might allay some of his suspicions.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘My sons. One of them killed fighting in Chechnya, one executed for refusing to fight against the Hungarians, and the third murdered by his fellow soldiers in an act of senseless, drunken brutality. Then there’s the small matter of the years I spent in a Siberian salt mine after the second insurrection, and the wife I buried out there. I have no reason to love the Russians.’ He grinned again. ‘Besides, you still owe me eight hundred roubles, Mr Killigrew, and I have every intention of collecting. “Go Johnny Go-Go-Go-Go” indeed!’

  Killigrew coughed awkwardly: that was a subject he preferred to skirt around, for now.

  ‘Come on,’ said Wojtkiewicz. ‘I think we’ve broiled long enough.’

  They left the sauna and entered the next room, where they were able to continue talking while dousing themselves in a couple of shower baths that stood side by side, working the pedals up and down with their feet to keep the stinging cold water squirting over their heads.

  ‘For a man who doesn’t like the Russians, Mr Wojtkiewicz, you have an interesting choice of address.’

  ‘You think I should live in Poland? There is no Poland, Mr Killigrew. It was torn apart by the Russians and the Prussians. These days, a Pole is safer living in St Petersburg than he is in Warsaw.’

  ‘You mean, it’s easier for a Tsar to order brutality against his own subject peoples in towns and cities that are hundreds – if not thousands – of miles away.’

  Wojtkiewicz nodded. ‘They don’t like to see it on their own doorstep: it reminds them of what they really are. Besides, I’m a businessman, and in a country as backwards as Russia – where the telegraph lines are still optical, and there are only two railway lines – a good businessman needs to be close to the seat of government. For now, my country is ruled from St Petersburg. But mark my words, Mr Killigrew: Poland will rise again.’

  ‘Easier to undermine the tsarist government from the heart of the empire, you mean? No wonder you make common cause with the Countess Vásáry.’