“Well, in fact, the public response to your duel with Nicholls was quite subdued compared with this. For one thing, it was hushed up as much as possible, and for another, it was only fought over the honor of a lady rather than the honor of the kingdom. Hal said I needn’t forward the letters to you in Canada, so I didn’t.”
“Thank you.” He made to hand the letters back to her. “Here, burn them.”
“If you insist.” She dimpled at him, but took the pile and stood up. “Oh, wait—you haven’t opened this one.”
“I thought you’d read them all.”
“Only the female ones. This looked more like business.” She picked a plain cover from the stack of hued and scented ones and handed it over. There was no return direction upon the cover, but there was a name, written in a neat, small hand. H. Bowles.
A most extraordinary feeling of revulsion came over him at sight of it, and he suddenly lost his appetite.
“No,” he said, and gave it back. “Burn that one, too.”
34
All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By
Hubert Bowles was a spymaster. Grey had met him some years previously, in connection with a private matter, and had hoped never to meet him again. He couldn’t imagine what the little beast wanted with him now and didn’t propose to find out.
Still, the boys’ visit and the meal had restored him to such an extent that when Tom appeared—as he did with the regularity of a cuckoo clock—to ensure that Grey had not managed to die since last inspected, he let Tom shave him and brush out and plait his hair. Then, greatly daring, he stood up, clinging to Tom’s arm.
“Easy, me lord, easy does it now …” The room wavered slightly, but he steadied himself and, after a moment, the dizziness passed. He limped slowly about, hanging on to Tom, until he was reasonably sure that he would neither fall down nor rip the stitching out of his leg—it pulled a bit, but so long as he was careful, it would likely do.
“All right. I’m going downstairs.”
“No, you’re no—er … yes, me lord,” Tom replied meekly, his initial response quelled by a glare from Grey. “I’ll just, ah, go down in front of you, shall I?”
“So that I can fall on you, if necessary? That’s truly noble, Tom, but I think not. You can follow me and pick up the pieces, if you like.”
He made his way slowly down the main stair, Tom behind him muttering something about all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and then along the main hallway to the library, nodding cordially to Nasonby and inquiring after his bad ankle.
Fraser was indeed sitting in a wing chair near the window, a plate of biscuits and a decanter of sherry at his side, reading Robinson Crusoe. He glanced up at the sound of Grey’s footsteps, and his eyebrows went up—perhaps in surprise at seeing him up and about, or perhaps only in astonishment at his banyan, which was silk, with green and purple stripes.
“Are you not going to tell me that had the sword gone between my ribs, I’d be dead? Everyone else does,” Grey remarked, lowering himself gingerly into the matching wing chair.
Fraser looked faintly puzzled.
“I kent it hadna done that. Ye weren’t dead when I picked ye up.”
“You picked me up?”
“You asked me to, did ye not?” Fraser gave him a look of mild exasperation. “Ye were bleeding like a stuck hog, but it wasna spurting out, and I could feel ye breathing and your heart beating all right while I carried ye back to the coach.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Dammit, couldn’t he have waited a few moments longer to pass out?
To distract himself from pointless regret, he took a biscuit and asked, “Have you spoken with my brother lately?”
“I have. Nay more than an hour ago.” He hesitated, a thumb stuck inside the book to keep his place. “He offered me a sum of money. In reward of my assistance, as he was pleased to put it.”
“Well deserved,” Grey said heartily, hoping that Hal hadn’t been an ass about it.
“I told him it had the stink of blood money and I wouldna touch it … but he pointed out that I hadna done what I’d done for money—and that’s true enough. In fact, he said, he’d forced me to do it—which is not entirely true, but I wasna disposed to argue the fine points—and that he wished to recompense me for the inconvenience to which he had put me.” He gave Grey a wry look. “I said I thought this a jesuitical piece o’ reasoning, but he replied that as I’m a Papist, he supposed I could have no reasonable objection on those grounds.
“He also pointed out,” Fraser went on, “that I was under no obligation to keep the money myself; he would be pleased to pay it out to anyone I specified. And, after all, there were still folk who were under my protection, were there not?”
Grey sent up a silent prayer of thanksgiving. Hal hadn’t been an ass.
“Indeed there are,” Grey said. “Who do you propose to help?”
Fraser narrowed his eyes a bit but had plainly been thinking about it.
“Well, there’s my sister and her husband. They’ve the six bairns—and there are my tenants—” He caught himself, lips compressed for a moment “Families who were my tenants,” he corrected.
“How many?” Grey asked, curious.
“Maybe forty families—maybe not so many now. But still …”
Hal must have come well up to scratch on the reward, Grey thought.
Grey didn’t wish to dwell on the matter. He coughed and rang the bell for a footman to bring him a drink. His chances of getting anything stronger than barley water in his bedroom were slim, and he wasn’t fond of sherry.
“Returning to my brother,” he said, having given his order for brandy, “I wondered whether he has said anything to you regarding the court-martial or the progress of … er … the, um, military operation.” The arrest of the incriminated officers of the Irish Brigades, he meant.
The frown returned, this time troubled and somewhat fierce.
“He has,” Fraser replied shortly. “The court-martial is set for Friday. He wished me to remain, in case my testimony is required.”
Grey was shaken; he hadn’t thought Hal would have Fraser testify. If Jamie did, he would be a marked man. The testimony of a general court-martial became by law part of the public record of the Judge Advocate’s court; it would be impossible to hide Fraser’s part in the investigation of Siverly’s affairs or the revelation of Twelvetrees’s treachery. Even if there were no direct linkage made to the quashing of the Irish Brigades’ plot, Jacobite sympathizers—and there were still many, even in London—would draw conclusions. The Irish as a race were known to be vengeful.
A lesser emotion was one of dismay at the thought that Hal might send Fraser back to Helwater so quickly—though in justice there was no reason to keep him in London. He’d done what Hal required of him, however unwillingly.
Was that what Hal was thinking? That if Fraser testified, he could then be quickly sent back to the remote countryside to resume a hidden life as Alexander MacKenzie, safe from retribution?
“As to the … military operation …” The broad mouth compressed in a brief grimace. “I believe it is satisfactory. I am naturally not in His Grace’s entire confidence, but I heard Colonel Quarry telling him that there had been several significant arrests made yesterday.”
“Ah,” Grey said, trying to sound neutral. The arrests couldn’t help but cause Fraser pain, even though he had agreed with the necessity. “Was … er … was Mr. Quinn’s name among them?”
“No.” Fraser looked disturbed at this. “Are they hunting Quinn?”
Grey shrugged a little and took a sip of his brandy. It burned agreeably going down.
“They know his name, his involvement,” he said, a little hoarsely, and cleared his throat. “And he is a loose cannon. He quite possibly knows who some members of the Wild Hunt are. Do you not think he would make an effort to warn them, if he knows they are exposed?”
“He would, aye.” Fraser rose suddenly and went to look out the window, leaning on
the frame, his face turned away.
“Do you know where he is?” Grey asked quietly, and Fraser shook his head.
“I wouldna tell ye if I did,” he said, just as quietly. “But I don’t.”
“Would you warn him—if you could?” Grey asked. He oughtn’t, but was possessed by curiosity.
“I would,” Fraser replied without hesitation. He turned round now and looked down at Grey, expressionless. “He was once my friend.”
So was I, Grey thought, and took more brandy. Am I now again? But not even the most exigent curiosity would make him ask.
35
Justice
The court-martial of Major Gerald Siverly (deceased) was well attended. Everyone from the Duke of Cumberland (who had tried to appoint himself to the board of judges, but been prevented by Hal) to the lowest Fleet Street hack crowded into the Guildhall, this being the largest venue available.
Lord John Grey, pale and limping but steady of eye and voice, testified before the board, this consisting of five officers drawn from various regiments—none of them Siverly’s—and the Judge Advocate, that he had received the papers now presented to the board from Captain Charles Carruthers in Canada, where Carruthers had served under Major Siverly and been witness to the actions described herein, and that he, Grey, had heard such further testimony from Carruthers in person as inclined him to believe the documentary evidence as it stood.
Courts-martial had no set procedure, no dock, no Bible, no barristers, no rules of evidence. Anyone who wished to do so might testify or ask questions, and a number of people did so—including the Duke of Cumberland, who thrust his bulk forward before Grey could sit down and came straight up to him, glowering directly into his face from a distance of six inches.
“Is it not true, my lord,” Cumberland asked, with heavy sarcasm, “that Major Siverly saved your life at the siege of Quebec?”
“It is, Your Grace.”
“And have you no shame at thus betraying your debt to a brother-in-arms?”
“No, I haven’t,” Grey replied calmly, though his heart was thumping erratically. “Major Siverly’s behavior on the field of battle was honorable and valorous—but he would have done the same for any soldier, as would I. For me to withhold evidence of his corruption and his peculations off that field would be a betrayal of the entire army in which I have the honor to serve and a betrayal of all those comrades with whom I have fought through the years.”
“Hear him! Hear him!” shouted a voice from the back of the hall, which he rather thought was Harry Quarry’s. A general rumbling of approval filled the hall, and Cumberland receded, still glaring.
The testimony went on all day, with various officers of Siverly’s regiment coming to offer their own witness, some speaking well of the dead man’s character, but others—many others—recounting incidents that supported Carruthers’s account. Regimental loyalty counted for a great deal, Grey thought—but regimental honor counted for more, and the thought pleased him.
For Grey, the day gradually blurred into a confusion of faces, voices, uniforms, hard chairs, shouts echoing from the huge beams of the ceiling, the occasional shoving match broken up by the sergeant-at-arms … and, at the end of it, he found himself in the street outside, momentarily apart from the tumultuous crowd that had spilled out of the Guildhall.
Hal, who had been the most senior officer on the court, was across the street, talking intently to the Judge Advocate, who was nodding. It was late afternoon, and the chimneys of London were all belching forth as the fires were built up for evening. Grey took a grateful lungful of the smoky air, fresh by comparison with the close atmosphere inside the Guildhall, which was composed in equal parts of sweat, trampled food, tobacco, and the smell of rage—and fear. He’d been aware of that, the tiny thrilling of the nerves among the crowd, the faces that quietly vanished as the testimony mounted.
Hal had been careful to avoid any mention of the Irish Brigades, the Wild Hunt, or the plan to seize the king; there were too many plotters as yet unaccounted for, and no need to alarm the public a priori. He had brought up Edward Twelvetrees, though, and his role as Siverly’s confidant and co-conspirator—and Grey shivered suddenly, recalling the look on Reginald Twelvetrees’s face, the old colonel sitting like a stone near the front of the room, burning eyes fixed on Hal without blinking as the damning words came out, one after another in an overwhelming flood.
Reginald Twelvetrees hadn’t said a word, though. What, after all, could he say? He’d left just before the final verdict—guilty, of course, on all charges.
Grey supposed he should feel victorious, or at least vindicated. He’d kept his promise to Charlie, found the truth—a good deal more of it than he’d expected or wanted—and, he supposed, achieved justice.
If you could call it that, he thought dimly, seeing three or four Fleet Street scribblers elbowing one another in an effort to talk to young Eldon Garlock, the ensign who had been the youngest member of the court and thus first to give his verdict.
God knew what they’d write. He only hoped none of it would be about him; he’d experienced the attentions of the press before, though in an entirely favorable way. Having seen the favors of the printers at close range, he could only hope that God would have mercy on those they didn’t like.
He had walked away from the crowd, but with no real direction in mind, only wanting to put distance between himself and this day. Absorbed in his thoughts—at least Jamie Fraser had not been required to testify; that was something—he failed for some time to realize that he was accompanied. Some faint sense of arrhythmia disturbed him, though, an echo of his own footsteps, and at last he glanced aside to see what might be causing it.
He stopped dead, and Hubert Bowles, who had been walking a half step behind him, came up even and stopped, bowing.
“My lord,” he said politely. “How do you do?”
“Not that well,” he said. “I must ask you to excuse me, Mr. Bowles.” He turned to go on, but Bowles stopped him with a hand on his arm. Affronted by the familiarity, Grey jerked back.
“I must ask your forbearance, my lord,” Bowles said, with a faint lisp that made it almost “forbearanth.” He spoke mildly but with an authority that stopped Grey’s making any protest. “I have something to say that you must hear.”
Hubert Bowles was small and shapeless, with a round head and rounded back, and with his shabby wig and worn coat, no one would have looked at him twice. Even his face was bland as a boiled pudding, with little black-currant eyes put in. Nonetheless, Grey slowly inclined his head in unwilling acknowledgment.
“Shall we take coffee?” he said, nodding toward a nearby coffeehouse. He wasn’t about to invite something like Bowles into any of the clubs where he had membership. He had no notion of the man’s antecedents, but his presence made Grey want to wash.
Bowles shook his head. “I think it better if we merely walk,” he said, suiting his actions to his words and compelling Grey by a touch on the elbow.
“I am most annoyed with you, my lord,” he said in a conversational tone, as they made their way slowly into Gresham Street.
“Are you,” Grey said shortly. “I am concerned to hear it.”
“You should be. You have killed one of my most valued agents.”
“One of—what?”
He stopped, staring down at Bowles, but was urged on by the other’s gesture.
“Edward Twelvetrees hath been for some years involved in the suppression of Jacobite plots.” A shadow of annoyance crossed Bowles’s face at his lisp’s struggle with the word “suppression,” but Grey was too disturbed at Bowles’s statement to take much pleasure in it.
“What, you mean that he has been working for you?” He didn’t even try to stop it sounding rude, but Bowles didn’t react to his tone.
“I mean precisely that, my lord. He had spent a great deal of time and effort in insinuating himself with Major Siverly, once we had determined that Siverly was a person of interest in that regard. Hi
s father had been one of the Wild Geese who flew from Limerick, did you know?”
“Yes,” Grey said. His lips felt stiff. “I did.”
“It is a great inconvenience,” Bowles said reprovingly, “when gentlemen will be conducting their own investigations, rather than leaving such things to those whose profession it is.”
“So sorry to inconvenience you,” Grey said, beginning to grow angry. “Do you mean to tell me that Edward Twelvetrees was not a traitor?”
“Quite the reverse, my lord. He served his country in the noblest fashion, working in secrecy and in danger to defeat her enemies.” For once, there was a note of warmth in that colorless voice, and, glancing down at his unwelcome companion, Grey realized that Bowles was himself angry—very angry.
“Why the devil did he not say something to me privately?”
“Why should he have trusted you, my lord?” Bowles riposted smartly. “You come from a family whose own background bears the shadow of treason—”
“It does not!”
“Perhaps not in fact but in perception,” Bowles agreed with a nod. “You did well in rooting out Bernard Adams and his fellow plotters, but even the clearing of your father’s name will not erase the stain—only time will do that. Time, and the actions of yourself and your brother.”
“What do you bloody mean by that, damn you?”
Bowles lifted one sloping shoulder but forbore to reply directly.
“And to speak of his activities to anyone—anyone at all, my lord—was for Edward Twelvetrees to risk the destruction of all his—all our—work. True, Major Siverly was dead, but—”
“Wait. If what you tell me is true, why did Edward Twelvetrees kill Siverly?”
“Oh, he didn’t,” Bowles said, as though this was a matter of no importance.
“What? Who did, then? I assure you, it wasn’t me!”
Bowles actually laughed at that, a small creaking noise that made his hunched back hunch further.
“Of course not, my lord. Edward told me that it was an Irishman—a thin man with curly hair—who struck down Gerald Siverly. He heard raised voices and, upon coming to see the cause, overheard an Irish voice in a passion, denouncing Major Siverly, saying that he knew Siverly had stolen the money.
The Lord John Series 4-Book Bundle Page 138
