Still, he’s a man of his time, that time being the second half of the eighteenth century. A time of intellectual ferment, geographic exploration, and wild social upheavals. Who better to deal with such things than the educated younger son of a noble house, who’s taken up the traditional second son’s profession of soldiering?
Lord John appeared for the first time—briefly, but memorably—in Dragonfly in Amber, the second of the main Outlander novels. He was sixteen at the time, a very young soldier on his first campaign with his elder brother’s regiment, in search of Highland rebels.
He finds one, in the person of the notorious “Red Jamie” Fraser. This Highland brigand is engaged in conversation with an obviously well-born Englishwoman, whom the Highlander has presumably kidnapped, either for ransom or immoral purposes—possibly both, the reputation of Hielandmen being what it is.
With no help to hand, the young man determines to kill or disable Fraser and rescue this woman, as is his honorable duty. He hasn’t actually tried to kill anyone before, though, and his first effort is less successful than he anticipates. He ends up with a broken arm, the captive of a disheveled and rather irritated Highlander, who wants answers and wants them now. As a British soldier, Lord John naturally refuses to tell this Jacobite scoundrel anything, though the man threatens him and goes so far as to burn him with the hot blade of a dirk. These are the risks of war, after all.
The man has even less conscience than Grey assumed, though, and declares that he will ravish the Englishwoman right before John’s eyes if John doesn’t start talking. He then ties up the woman and rips the bodice off her shoulders, exposing her breasts.
Dreadfully shocked by this behavior, as well as physically shocked and in pain, John gives the necessary information: who he is (though some instinct of concealment makes him use his first middle name of William, just in case this poltroon has heard of Lord John Grey…), where his brother’s troops are, and what they’re doing—i.e., bringing cannon to the aid of General Cope, who proposes to engage the Highland army in battle.
It then turns out that the Englishwoman is actually Fraser’s wife, and while she does talk Fraser out of killing John, the humiliation of having been hoodwinked into betraying his brother, his regiment, and his king is enough that John would much prefer to have been shot. Fraser, though, directs his men to tie John to a tree along the direction of march of his brother’s regiment, ensuring that he’ll be found in the morning. And while John is thus unavoidably detained and unable to warn anyone, Fraser and his men raid the camp, steal the wheels of the caissons required to transport the cannon, and burn them.
Understandable, then, that the next time we meet John Grey in the context of the main novels (early in Voyager), some ten years later, his feelings toward Jamie Fraser are exigent and hostile. The situation is complicated by the fact that John is now the governor of Ardsmuir Prison, a remote and desolate pile of rock used for the incarceration of Jacobite prisoners—and Jamie Fraser is one of those prisoners.
This is a cleft stick for a man of honor: to have a man for whom he feels the deepest hatred completely at his mercy—but to be prevented by his office and sense of duty from taking revenge on a helpless prisoner, whose care is his responsibility. At first, the situation is eased a bit by Fraser’s apparent lack of recognition of Grey—he is, after all, ten years older, no longer a callow boy—and Grey manages to treat the man with a decent respect as the de facto leader of the Jacobite prisoners. And while Grey keeps Fraser in irons, they develop a wary cooperation, meeting weekly over dinner in Lord John’s quarters to discuss problems and needs of the prisoners.
As his knowledge of and respect for Fraser deepen, though, John is disquietingly aware that something else is deepening, as well. John is homosexual, a condition punishable by death in England at the time, and has in fact been exiled to Ardsmuir as a means of getting him out of London in the wake of a near scandal. He’s almost forgotten George Everett, the man with whom he was involved in London—but his physical attraction to Jamie Fraser is becoming alarmingly intense. The emotional tenor of their relationship has also changed, with Fraser’s revelation that he did indeed recognize John—and that he had honored his bravery and sense of duty when they met those years before, in the darkness of the Carryarrick Pass.
Things come to a head one evening when the atmosphere of congeniality over their usual game of chess leads John to take a major risk:
The bishop made a soft thump as he set the felted base down with precision. Without stopping, his hand rose, as though it moved without his volition. The hand traveled the short distance through the air, looking as though it knew precisely what it wanted, and set itself on Fraser’s, palm tingling, curved fingers gently imploring.
The hand under his was warm—so warm—but hard, and motionless as marble. Nothing moved on the table but the shimmer of the flame in the heart of the sherry. He lifted his eyes then, to meet Fraser’s.
“Take your hand off me,” Fraser said, very, very softly. “Or I will kill you.”
This encounter irrevocably—or so it seems—changes the relationship between the two men. Still, when the prison is closed and the prisoners transported to the sugar plantations of the West Indies, Jamie Fraser is not among them. John Grey arranges a situation for him as groom at a large estate in the Lake District. He will still be a prisoner, kept captive by his word rather than by walls, but at least he will have space, air, decent food, and horses. Jamie fails to appreciate the magnanimity of John’s gesture; he’s deeply depressed by the loss of the men whose care has kept him alive during the last few years. Now they’ve all been sent off to the equivalent of a slow—or not so slow—death sentence, leaving him racked with both survivor’s guilt and loneliness. And an abiding resentment of Lord John Grey.
John, released from his own sentence as governor of Ardsmuir, returns to London—and that is where his own separate story begins:
LORD JOHN AND THE HELLFIRE CLUB
[Author’s Note: Like most of the critical events of my literary life, the Lord John stories began by accident. In this instance, the accidental agency was a British editor named Maxim Jakubowski, who invited me to write a short story for his upcoming anthology of historical crime, this to feature such stars of the genre as Anne Perry, Steven Saylor, and Ellis Peters.
Well, I thought, the company is flattering, and it would be an interesting technical challenge to see if I can write something shorter than 300,000 words. Sure—why not?2 And so I wrote “Hellfire” for the anthology Past Poisons, published in 2001.]
“Hellfire” (later retitled as “Lord John and the Hellfire Club”) begins in 1756, shortly after Lord John’s return to London in the wake of the closing of Ardsmuir Prison. Not surprisingly, Jamie Fraser is still somewhat on his mind, and thus he’s taken by surprise (and an instant sense of attraction) when he glimpses a red-haired man in the hallway of his club, the Society for Appreciation of the English Beefsteak. The man is having a disagreement with an older man, which ends in the red-haired young man turning his back and stamping into the club’s drawing room, where he encounters Lord John and his good friend Harry Quarry, a colonel of his regiment.
The red-haired man is Robert Gerald, Harry’s cousin, and a junior secretary to the prime minister. He pushes aside Harry’s questions regarding his conversation with Bubb-Dodington, the man he was arguing with in the corridor.
“Bubb-Dodington, surely? The man’s a voice like a costermonger.”
“I—he—yes, it was.” Mr. Gerald’s pale skin, not quite recovered from its earlier excitement, bloomed afresh, to Quarry’s evident amusement.
“Oho! And what perfidious proposal has he made you, young Bob?”
“Nothing. He—an invitation I did not wish to accept, that is all. Must you shout so loudly, Harry?” It was chilly at this end of the room, but Grey thought he could warm his hands at the fire of Gerald’s smooth cheeks.
Quarry snorted with amusement, looking around at the nearby chairs
.
“Who’s to hear? Old Cotterill’s deaf as a post, and the General’s half dead. And why do you case in any case, if the matter’s so innocent as you suggest?” Quarry’s eyes swiveled to bear on his cousin by marriage, suddenly intelligent and penetrating.
“I did not say it was innocent,” Gerald replied dryly, regaining his composure. “I said I declined to accept it. And that, Harry, is all you will hear of it, so desist this piercing glare you turn upon me. It may work on your subalterns, but not on me.”
The conversation turns to other matters, but Lord John is aware that Mr. Gerald’s attention is drawn to him—and that the junior secretary is debating some course of action. As the men take leave of each other later, Gerald draws Lord John aside.
“I impose intolerably, sir,” Gerald said, moving close enough to keep his low-voiced words from the ears of the servant who kept the door. “I would ask your favor, though, if it be not entirely unwelcome?”
“I am completely at your command, I do assure you,” Grey said, feeling the warmth of claret in his blood succeeded by a rush of deeper heat.
“I wish—that is, I am in some doubt regarding a circumstance of which I have become aware. Since you are so recently come to London—that is, you have the advantage of perspective, which I must necessarily lack by reason of familiarity. There is no one…” He fumbled for words, then turned eyes grown suddenly and deeply unhappy on Lord John. “I can confide in no one!” he said in a sudden, passionate whisper. He gripped Lord John’s arm, with surprising strength. “It may be nothing, nothing at all. But I must have help.”
“You shall have it, if it be in my power to give.” Grey’s fingers touched the hand that grasped his arm; Gerald’s fingers were cold. Quarry’s voice echoed down the corridor behind them, loud with joviality.
“The ’Change, near the Arcade,” Gerald said rapidly. “Tonight, just after full dark.” The grip on Grey’s arm was gone, and Gerald vanished, the soft fall of his hair vivid against his blue cloak.
Lord John sets about doing necessary errands, awaiting darkness with keen anticipation. However, his anticipation is forestalled; while he and Harry Quarry are having a drink at the Beefsteak, their attention is drawn suddenly to an altercation in the street outside. A snarl of traffic has stranded several sedan chairs, and a man emerging from one of these is attacked, stabbed by someone in the crowd. The victim is Robert Gerald, and while Harry and Lord John rush out to render assistance, their help comes too late. John is only in time to hold the dying man in his arms.
Brown eyes fixed wide on his, a spark of recognition deep behind the shock and pain. He seized the dying man’s hand in his, and chafed it, knowing the futility of the gesture. Gerald’s mouth worked, soundless. A bubble of red spittle swelled at the corner of his lips.
“Tell me.” Grey bent urgently to the man’s ear, and felt the soft brush of hair against his mouth. “Tell me who has done it—I will avenge you. I swear it.”
He felt a slight spasm of the fingers in his, and squeezed back, hard, as though he might force some of his own strength into Gerald; enough for a word, a name.
The soft lips were blanched, the blood bubble growing. Gerald drew back the corners of his mouth, a fierce, tooth-baring rictus that burst the bubble and sent a spray of blood across Grey’s cheek. Then the lips drew in, pursing in what might have been the invitation to a kiss. Then he died, and the wide brown eyes went blank.
John’s quest to discover the truth of Gerald’s death leads him through the tangles of London politics and then into the catacombs of Medmenham Abbey, where the notorious Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hellfire Club holds court—and where the secrets of his own life prove as dangerous as those of the mad monks of Medmenham.
LORD JOHN AND THE PRIVATE MATTER
London, June 1757
The Society for the Appreciation of the English Beefsteak, a Gentlemen’s Club
It was the sort of thing one hopes momentarily that one has not really seen—because life would be so much more convenient if one hadn’t.
What Lord John Grey has just seen (while engaged in a private moment behind the screen that hides the chamber pots) is incontrovertible evidence that the Honorable Joseph Trevelyan is suffering from the French pox—syphilis. While this would ordinarily be reason for mild shock and perhaps sympathy, in the present instance it’s rather a problem for his lordship. Trevelyan is engaged to Grey’s young cousin, Olivia.
While wondering what the devil to do about the situation, Grey runs into Malcolm Stubbs, a member of his regiment, who tells him that he, Stubbs, is on the way to visit the widow of one Sergeant Timothy O’Connell, recently killed in a street brawl. While mildly surprised—knowing O’Connell, Grey would have given long odds on him in a fight that was even halfway fair—his lordship has other things to think about.
He discusses the matter with his good friend Harry Quarry, who has a few suggestions, these of varying appeal:
Quarry raised both brows.
“The first thing is make certain of it, eh, before you stink up the whole of London with a public accusation. I take it you don’t want to make overtures to the man yourself, in order to get a better look.”
Quarry grinned widely, and Grey felt the blood rise in his chest, washing hot up his neck. “No,” he said shortly. Then he collected himself and lounged back a little in his chair. “Not my sort,” he drawled, flicking imaginary snuff from his ruffle.
Quarry guffawed, his own face flushed with a mixture of claret and amusement. He hiccuped, chortled again, and slapped both hands down on the table.
“Well, whores ain’t so picky. And if a moggy will sell her body, she’ll sell anything else she has—including information about her customers.”
Grey stared blankly at the Colonel. Then the suggestion dropped into focus.
“You are suggesting that I employ a prostitute to verify my impressions?”
“You’re quick, Grey, damn quick.” Quarry nodded approval, snapping his fingers for more wine. “I was thinking more of finding a girl who’d seen his prick already, but your way’s a long sight easier. All you’ve got to do is invite Trevelyan along to your favorite convent, slip the lady abbess a word—and a few quid—and there you are!”
What with one thing and another, Lord John is not much in the habit of visiting brothels—at least, not the sort in which female flesh is purveyed. Still, he’s reluctant to cause a huge scandal without absolute certainty…
The discovery that Sergeant O’Connell was murdered comes as almost a relief—though the concomitant revelations of spying and the theft of secret military requisitions are worrying. They become much more so when Grey is charged with investigating both matters. Distracted by such urgencies, Grey is reluctantly reminded that he must do Something about Olivia’s fiancé.
“Speakin’ of Cornishmen, what have you done about your putative cousin-in-law? Arranged to take him to a brothel yet?”
“He says he doesn’t go to brothels,” Grey replied tersely, recalled unwillingly to the matter of his cousin’s marriage. Christ, weren’t spies and suspected murder enough?
“And you’re letting him marry your cousin?” Quarry’s thick brows drew down. “How d’ye know he’s not impotent, or a sodomite, let alone diseased?”
“I am reasonably sure,” Lord John said, repressing the sudden insane urge to remark that, after all, the Honorable Mr. Trevelyan had not been watching him at the chamber pot.
He had called on Trevelyan earlier in the day, with an invitation to supper and various libidinous “amusements” to bid a proper farewell to Trevelyan’s bachelorhood. Trevelyan had agreed with thanks to a cordial supper, but claimed to have promised his mother upon her deathbed to have nothing to do with prostitutes.
Quarry’s shaggy brows shot up.
“What sort of mother talks about whores on her deathbed? Your mother wouldn’t do that, would she?”
“I have no idea,” Grey said. “The situation has fortunately not arisen
. But I suppose,” he said, attempting to divert the conversation, “that surely there are men who do not seek such recreation….”
Quarry gave him a look of jaundiced doubt. “Damn few,” he said. “And Trevelyan ain’t one of ’em.”
“You seem sure of it,” Grey said, slightly piqued.
“I am.” Quarry settled back, looking pleased with himself. “Asked around a bit—no, no, I was quite discreet, no need to fret. Trevelyan goes to a house in Meacham Street. Good taste; been there meself.”
Aided by his new valet, a resourceful young gent named Tom Byrd (who has his own reasons for wanting to find out more about the Honorable Mr. Trevelyan), a fourteen-year-old whore named Agnes (who appreciates a man who’d rather sleep with her than fornicate with her), Harry, and young Malcolm Stubbs, Lord John sets out boldly to learn the truth—and as so often happens in such cases, learns a great deal more than he’s bargained for.
There’s the heel print on Sergeant O’Connell’s face, for starters—and the black eyes and split lip on Mrs. O’Connell’s face. Then there’s the dead woman in a green velvet dress, found in St. James’s Park—and later found to be a man. In the end, money and love are at the root of things—but a very unexpected love indeed.
LORD JOHN AND THE SUCCUBUS
[Author’s Note: In 2003, I was invited to write a novella for an anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, titled Legends II: New Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy. I had slight reservations—as my World of Warcraft–playing son asked, seeing the contract, “Since when are you a master of modern fantasy, Mom?”—but a) was very flattered to be asked to share a volume with George R. R. Martin, Terry Brooks, and Orson Scott Card, and b) I’m inclined to regard the notion of literary genres in the same light as a Chinese menu, and c) if I had a family motto, it would probably be “Why Not?” (The accompanying coat of arms being a stone circle quartered on a field of azure and crimson with rampant hippogriffs.) So I did.
The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 38
