Beauty Like the Night

by Joanna Bourne

  She said, “It’s near the bottom. The quartermaster corps.”

  “Carlington,” Raoul said.

  Hawker looked disgusted. “Is it going to be Carlingtons? Do I have to believe the Carlingtons are racketing around London killing people?”

  It’s not a real connection,” she said warily. “It’s certainly not proof. But—”

  “It’s three times,” Hawk said. “Anything that happens three times stops being a coincidence.”

  They all heard it and turned to the door, silent. Footsteps on the stair. In a hurry. Not surreptitious. Lighter than a man’s, but not Peter’s feet, either.

  The door opened. Bart stood there.

  Some effort had been made to straighten him up. His hair was slicked back. He’d put on clean clothes.

  But he was everywhere dusted in flour. His eyebrows and eyelashes were white. He had flour in every crease of his skin. And his hair, despite some effort to remove the flour, was still white from the scalp outward.

  He blinked from white-rimmed eyes. He carried the distinct odor of gunpowder.

  He held on to the knob and looked from her to Papa. He said, “Nobody’s hurt.”

  That was what Bart always said. The incident of the flying machine. The homemade boat. The trebuchet and the clock tower. The chickens. Oh Lord, the chickens. They’d cleaned up feathers till spring. Fortunately, no chickens were injured. Terrified, of course, and they didn’t lay for weeks, but not injured.

  She said, “Tell me exactly how nobody was hurt.”

  Papa took a deep, slow breath.

  Eventually Bart wound down to, “It didn’t do any actual damage. I mean, flour doesn’t do any actual damage. But I had to drag Anson and Anna out of it and they got covered with flour. And all the other kids on the street came out and they got covered with flour.”

  He looked guilty. “Oh. And the dogs. All the dogs. I think it was a friction fuse. There’s a tie-down on the bench.”

  Papa was calm enough to say, “A friction fuse?”

  “I think so,” Bart said.

  “I’ll send Fletcher out to have a look at it. He may be able to tell.”

  “There are some people angry about the park bench,” Bart said. “I mean, they’re angry about the whole thing but especially the park bench. They want to talk to you.”

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” Papa said.

  Eventually Hawker took Bart down to put him back into his hackney and send him to Meeks Street. A phalanx of Service agents would take over guarding the kids till Papa could get them into hiding.

  She liked to think she’d looked calm in front of Bart, but she was still shaking. Papa sat heavily in his chair.

  “I was slow,” he said after a while. “Too slow. I should have taken better care of them.”

  “Nobody was hurt,” she said, just in Bart’s way. “It’s a warning.”

  That got an honest smile from Papa. But he said, “I didn’t see this coming,” and there was no smile when he said it.

  “Nobody could have. Papa, if it had been a real bomb, everybody would still have been safe. Safe because you trained Bart from the time he could walk. He made good decisions from beginning to end.”

  “He did well,” Papa said.

  Raoul was taking off his sling, trying movement with his arm. “If we’re talking about mistakes, I led your daughter into an ambush last night. I almost got her killed.”

  He hadn’t led her anywhere and it wasn’t the first time people had tried to kill her. Nothing to do with him, really, except that he saved her life.

  He went on, “I should have known. It’s the spot I would have chosen.”

  “It’s the spot anyone could choose.” Hawker came in. Having been silent up the stairs, he was now silent walking across the room. To Papa he said, “The idea that you’re responsible for everything that happens is a particularly boring form of conceit.” That sounded like a quote.

  Papa looked up from frowning at the rug. “I taught you that. You don’t have to toss it back at me.”

  “I’m passing the wisdom along to Mr. Deverney here. And while I’d like to blame him for getting Sévie shot at, I’m sure she managed that all on her own.”

  It was always gratifying, the trust and support her family had for her.

  She picked up Smithson’s report. This was the story of one day in Spain, one exact location, and Carlington was there. What had he done that put him in Sanchia’s hands?

  Papa and Hawker were at the cupboard to the side of her office, taking out rolled maps. Looking for the Spanish ones. Raoul hung his sling over the back of the chair and bent his arm cautiously, testing it.

  A thought had been knocking on the back door of her mind for a while. Finally it made itself heard. She said, “Where’s Peter?”

  • • •

  SHE ran down the hall and they followed her. She didn’t bother to search the rooms on either side, just went straight to Peter’s sleeping place under the stair.

  She flung the door open. The mat was neatly spread, the blankets tight across it. A small, narrow roll of yellowed paper rested on top. Next to that, a scrap of her own notepaper.

  She folded herself down cross-legged on the floor beside Peter’s mat. The note read,

  Miss Séverine,

  I thank you for the sanctuary you provided and for the many interesting things I have learned while in your employ. I leave the contents of the amulet for you. I will return the amulet itself to Monsieur Deverney at some future time.

  I go to administer justice. Do not worry about me, dear mademoiselle. I can take care of myself.

  Pilar Gavarre (Peter)

  Wordlessly, she passed the note to Raoul.

  “She didn’t use my name,” Raoul said.

  “No.” The girl had signed the note as a bastard signs. Raoul would have to deal with that eventually.

  She considered the thin coil of paper.

  Here was the cause of several deaths. Sanchia’s death. This little paper and what it represented. She began, “I need a—” and Papa had it in her hand before she finished. His quizzing glass. Not a foppish toy, a fine optical lens. She took up a pinch of her skirt and polished it, though Papa kept it polished clean at all times.

  Delicately, she set the rolled paper on the floor and crouched over it. It was narrow, less than two inches wide, and long. Crinklingly thin. Tightly rolled. Cracked in places because it was so brittle and Pilar had been in a hurry. She held her breath while she worked with it. Raoul set a lantern, lit to a bright flame, on the floor beside her.

  The ink was faded. She read aloud in case the paper was damaged and she would be the last one to see it clearly.

  It was written in French, but from the spelling mistake and the little awkwardness, she thought it had been written by an Englishman. Colonel Carlington speaks French abominably.

  She translated. “They go south May 9 toward Cuevas del Valle by the Calle Real. They should come to the bridge across the Rio Pasaderas about noon. Twenty-two mules and carts with drivers. Arms and munitions. Gold. Seven officers with guns. And then the initial C.”

  Gently, she let the paper roll up again, which it wanted to do. Papa picked it up and wrapped it carefully in his handkerchief. The Service would want to keep it safe.

  Hawker said, “You and Raoul were in that area, Sévie. You’d remember. What happened to that convoy?”

  “There were so many convoys lost.” She could have named most of them. “But not that one. A convoy that size? I would have heard about it from the French, if not the English.”

  “They got through safely.” Raoul took her arm and helped her up. He saw it at once, faster than she did. The guerrilleros were experts in taking French supply trains. “That was the fish that got away. The amulet was lost before the message was delivered. It was sto
len or dropped or the messenger was killed. This convoy lived. The ones before it didn’t.”

  Spain hadn’t been Hawker’s part of the war, but some things were universal. “It’s not the first ambush.”

  “Too well planned, too smoothly executed,” Raoul said. “It’s not . . . tentative. They’ve sent messages like this before.”

  “Smithson’s report gave Sanchia the name of the quartermaster who would have sent this convoy and convoys before this. She blackmailed him.”

  “Colonel Carlington,” Hawker murmured. “My, my, my. What a very evil man you have been. And now you’re trying to kill my family. That was a mistake.”

  “The blackest treason,” Raoul said, “is putting supplies and guns into enemy hands before battle. The drivers and the soldiers who guarded those shipments died.”

  “Wellington would bring this to trial, even after this many years,” Papa said.

  “Wellington’s going to reorganize transport when he becomes Master-General of Ordnance. He said he’d study what was done in Spain and improve on it. Lost convoys, all from the same quartermaster, is exactly the sort of thing he’ll uncover. Carlington’s doomed.”

  “How much did Peter . . . Pilar hear of what we said?” Papa asked.

  “Everything.” So they knew exactly where Pilar was going.

  “Damn.” Hawker headed for the stairs, just behind Papa.

  She stopped to get her gun on the way out, the new one that she’d chosen out of Justine’s shop. She wasn’t used to it yet, but this wouldn’t call for sharpshooting.

  A new thought hit her. She ran to the bedroom across the hall and opened the drawer beside the bed. She stood a long moment considering the empty spot.

  “She’s taken my gun.”

  Raoul was at her shoulder looking down. “You keep it loaded.”

  “Every day, with fresh powder.”

  “Then, whatever she has to face, she’s armed.” Raoul picked up the second pistol she kept in the drawer. “I’ll borrow this if I may, since Pilar didn’t make off with it. What a redoubtable girl she is turning out to be.”

  He followed her down the hall, making acquaintance with the pistol as he walked, handling firearms with the nonchalance of someone who knew exactly what he was about, which did not surprise her in the least.

  At the top of the stairs he kissed her, emphatic about it but not lingering. He let her help him down. She wasn’t sure whether he needed the help but it was tactful of him to accept it.

  At the first-floor landing, she said, “This is to avenge her mother. Everything she’s done for the last three months is for that. I hope she doesn’t get killed doing it.”

  “So do I,” Raoul said.

  Three steps farther on she said, “She could have asked me for help. She could have walked in the door three months ago and told me everything.”

  “You wouldn’t have handed her a gun and sent her off to kill Carlington.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have given her what she wanted. Revenge.” Raoul kept a hand on the bannister. His face held the calm of men going into battle. He was stripped to essentials. Single-minded. “I understand her.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “You’re not a Deverney.” They’d reached the ground floor. Clerks in the offices watched them pass, curious. He was serious again when he said, “You wish she’d come to you. Think how much more I wish she’d come to me when I arrived in London. It’s my fault she didn’t.” He opened the front door for her. “Now she’s alone, twelve years old, with a stolen gun, going to face her enemy. It’s magnificent.”

  “It’s madness.”

  “I would do the same,” he said.

  • • •

  WILLIAM Doyle whistled for the Service hackney. His greatcoat was on the seat, a pistol in the right pocket. He took half a minute to check that the powder was dry in the pan.

  “Don’t carve your initials in this one,” he said, meaning Raoul. “I think Sévie’s going to keep him.”

  “It looks that way,” Hawker said.

  “He has a sense of humor. He’s competent with a killing knife. He makes wine.”

  “I’ll leave him alive, then. God knows how long it’d take her to find somebody else.” Hawker frowned. “Why doesn’t she have more guns about the place?”

  Doyle closed the pan and slid the gun into its accustomed place in his pocket. “She tells me her work is peaceful as a lending library.”

  “All books and tea cakes.” Hawker grinned a nice, feral, born-in-the-rookeries-of-London grin. “Let’s go kill the man who set a bomb for the kids, shall we?”

  Forty-six

  THE hackney clattered wildly over the stones and jostled them all together at every turn. Raoul braced himself against the side of the coach, using his good arm. Hawker remained unfazed by a little shaking. Papa, arms folded, in the corner, let himself be jounced about. All of them watched the street, looking for Peter.

  Fletcher was on the box, unconcerned with the safety of pedestrians and other traffic on the road. British Service coach horses were chosen for their ability to round a corner at speed. Luckily most folks on the street at this hour were honest working people, spry enough and wise enough to get themselves out of the way of a hurtling coach. The leisurely and self-absorbed were still in bed.

  Peter—Pilar—couldn’t be far ahead of them.

  “Maybe the colonel left town last night,” she said. “I would. Maybe he’s halfway to Dover and we’ll catch him up in Canterbury.”

  “I think not,” Raoul said.

  When they got to Carlington House, the street dozed, empty of traffic and pedestrians. Behind each curtained window, housemaids and footmen scrubbed and polished, lit fires, dusted, and generally got on with their work in hushed quiet.

  Except for one household. A traveling coach and four horses stood at the door. Piled luggage on the pavement said somebody was leaving for an extended journey.

  Fletcher pulled up the hackney with a jerk, there in the middle of the road. She grabbed the door as it swung open, rode with it, and dropped to the street. Raoul was behind her, so close she felt him breathing.

  On the pavement ahead, drama unfolded. Pilar faced Colonel Carlington over the barrel of a pistol.

  She slowed. Any word, any incautious movement, any threat might send this scene spilling into violence. The trigger on that pistol was so sensitive a sharp intake of breath might set it off and Pilar would commit murder.

  Raoul was at her side, easy and unruffled as if he escorted her onto a dance floor. As if the possibility of gunfire and death did not exist, never had existed, never would exist. At a greater distance, inconspicuously, Hawker circled the Carlington coach and took a position blocking the colonel’s escape. Fletcher stayed up on the seat of the coach where he could see everything, his gun pointed in a useful direction.

  And Papa walked through the stunned Carlington house servants, being authoritative and reassuring, sending them inside, out of the way. They trickled off in twos and threes, reluctantly, taking their comment and confusion with them. Papa, who could be a bear of a commander, chivvied the stragglers onward with a formidable glare.

  Robin Carlington was left behind when the servants departed, backed against the palings of the fence, apprehensive as hell. At least he was silent.

  The air had the transparent clarity that meant a lovely day was coming. The breeze kicked up little eddies of swirling bits of paper and broken leaves. It was quiet in the houses up and down the street because nobody had shot anybody yet.

  Peter faced Colonel Carlington. No. Pilar. In some indefinable way she had become female. She still wore the same ragged, oversized clothing she’d worn all these weeks. The floppy hat. The man’s coat that was too long for her. The sagging trousers. But it was a woman inside those clothes now.r />
  Pilar didn’t turn to look at the new arrivals. She said, “You shouldn’t have come, but I’m glad you did. This act requires witnesses.”

  The gun Pilar had taken from the bedside table pointed unwaveringly at Colonel Carlington. Fortunately, she had a few things to say before she killed the colonel, which gave everyone time to deal with the situation.

  The colonel did not acquit himself well for a military man. He was extensively groomed, freshly shaved, hair neatly arranged, cravat tied in a neat, grave knot. His clothing was spotless. His boots, highly polished. He could have been leaving to attend church if not for the pile of luggage and the gun pointing at him.

  And his fear. He was quite terrified. His ruddy face had gone white. The flapping tongue that had wrapped around so many foolish words stumbled and fumbled. “I’m not— I have never—”

  “Committed murder?” Pilar said quietly. “But you did.”

  “Never. I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a dreadful mistake. Miss de Cabrillac, I beg you to put a stop to this. I promise you—”

  He’d retreated till he was against the big rear wheel. He edged sideways as if he could scuttle aside and disappear behind the coach. The gun followed him hungrily and he changed his mind.

  “I wasn’t sure I had the right man till I heard you speak.” Pilar supported the gun upon her other forearm. Guns were heavy if you weren’t used to them.

  “I’m not—”

  “I recognized you then,” Pilar went on. “I knew your voice. You were one of the men in the front room, killing my mother. I heard you and the other man threaten her and hit her. When she was choking and gasping and begging, I heard you tell her to answer your questions or you would hurt her more.”

  “My dear young woman—”

  “I am not your dear young woman.” Pilar’s chin lifted. “I am the daughter of Maria Sanchia Adelita Fidelia Gavarre y Vega, the woman you killed. I am your death.”

  A calm voice. One believed her entirely.