by T. F. Banks
“I'm sorry, Mr. Hamilton, but I have been charged by my employer to reveal his identity to no one.”
Hamilton raised his eyebrows and blew out a sigh of exasperation. “Let me just say this: If it is Louisa, pray be aware that she is not—” He shook his head and looked down at the carpet in embarrassment. “She has had, in the past, bouts of… distraction, or shall we say… nervous collapse… brought on by grief and loss. She is prone, at such times, to believe that she is persecuted and that there exist plots against her, even among those who care for her most. It is more than distressing. I tell you this, Mr. Morton, because I believe you are a man of character and would not take advantage of a woman in such straits.”
“I am not in the habit of taking advantage of women at any time, Mr. Hamilton,” Morton replied evenly.
“No, of course, Mr. Morton. Of course.”
Peter Hamilton looked off over the crowd. Morton observed that the man's fists were tightly clenched.
“Dr. Bromley is my physician,” Hamilton then said. “He assures me that Halbert expired of aspirating his own gorge.” He took a long breath, as though to calm himself. “It is a sad thing to admit, but I fear it is the truth. As I told you, Halbert could be intemperate at times, and after the stress of that awful day…”
“But he came here from a criminal house, Mr. Hamilton, and the people at that house are most anxious to hide what occurred in their den. I know this, for I have been there.”
Hamilton looked at him. “Mr. Morton, I am only asking you as a man of conscience, to consider my poor sister. She does not need someone stoking her delusions at this time. She needs only the truth.”
“And Mr. Morton is concerned with nothing less,” came a voice from over Morton's shoulder.
He turned to find Arthur Darley approaching.
“Do forgive me, Peter, I could not help but overhear.” Darley nodded graciously to Morton. “I assure you, Peter, that if Mr. Morton believes there was foul play involved in Halbert's death, then you may be confident that this is very likely the case.” He turned to the Runner. “You will excuse me, Mr. Morton, but I have had a very good character of you.”
Morton merely nodded gratefully. What could one say to that?
Hamilton stood a moment, as if unsure how to proceed, and then asked Morton, “But have you found out why Halbert was in this den of iniquity?”
“Not as yet, Mr. Hamilton, but be sure that I will. There is always someone in such places willing to peach on their fellows for a little coin or if the right persuasions are applied.”
Hamilton bowed his head in acquiescence. “Well, I suppose if the thing is to be done,” he sighed, “it is best to press on and do it promptly. Find out for sure. Find out everything. The sooner it is all behind us, the sooner Louisa may begin to forget.” The skin of the man's face drew suddenly tight and he blinked quickly. “The sooner we may all begin to forget.”
The evening's entertainment was over and Morton sat with Darley and Arabella drinking claret in the library, a room Morton coveted. What books! This was how a man should live.
Darley and Arabella both seemed completely at ease and Morton was determined not to be outdone in this. He lounged in a chair, delicately sipping his claret.
For her part, Arabella appeared every inch the lady in these surroundings. Of course she was an actress, adept at her craft, and certainly she had played ladies enough on the stage. But gone was the Arabella that Morton knew. She of the uninhibited laugh, the outlandish wit, the bawdy jest. Morton hardly knew this elegant creature, perched so primly on the edge of her chair.
“It is curious that you both uncovered the identity of Richard Davenant,” Lord Arthur said. “You need merely have asked me.”
“You knew him, then?” Morton said.
“I never had the pleasure of actually meeting him, but his mother was my wife's second cousin. He was a young man with a future, or so it was believed. In the Davenant family, the world revolved around Richard. And what a soldier he was! Do you know, he refused advancement so that he might not be removed from the heat of battle? That is the kind of man he was. Men would follow him through the halls of Hades, I was told. It is difficult to imagine that such a man would break and run from the French.”
“Men do break,” Morton said softly. “Even such men as you describe. But could this all be family myth, do you think? Some families do make heroes of their lost sons.”
Darley shrugged. “I cannot answer that, though I have heard this of Richard Davenant from others as well. Bear in mind also that these charges of cowardice, of fleeing the enemy, were never officially stated. It was a whispering campaign, perhaps by some jealous comrade.”
“Or someone who was competing for the attentions of Louisa Hamilton,” Arabella added. “The poor woman has suffered the rumours of Davenant's cowardice until even she has begun to have doubts—and this has burdened her with a terrible sense of guilt and betrayal.”
Morton nodded agreement at this. “Is it not odd that there are rumours about the characters of both these men Miss Hamilton favoured? Richard Davenant was, in the end, a coward, or so we're told. Glendinning was something worse, if we believe he was in the Otter for the reason that most are there.” He paused to reflect. “It is as though there were someone out to ruin the good name of any man Louisa Hamilton might choose. This might be coincidental, but it might not.”
“Well, it is clear that this vile man Bromley is behind both these campaigns,” Arabella said firmly. “He declared Glendinning dead from choking after drinking himself senseless, and Richard Davenant dead of cowardice.”
“Yes, it does seem so, and he was later the surgeon for Rokeby's regiment, though I cannot quite make the connection there.” Morton turned to Darley, who appeared lost in thought. “Do you know this surgeon, Bromley, well, Lord Arthur?”
“Only vaguely. He is actually a physician, and reputedly a very good one. His practise is largely composed of retired military officers and their families, and these people cannot say enough good about him, apparently. I know a number of people who are his patients and they concur, though I confess, I find him a sour little man. He came that night with someone—I cannot recollect whom—though it was all the same to me. I keep a somewhat open door here at Portman House.”
Yes, Morton thought, how else would you explain a Bow Street Runner and an actress taking their leisure here at this hour?
“Has he known Louisa Hamilton long, do you think?” Morton asked.
Darley regarded him gravely. “You don't really think that Bromley has something to do with this?”
Morton shrugged. “He is a physician, and if I am not wrong and Glendinning was poisoned, then who better than a physician to administer the final draught?”
“But Bromley was here, not at the Otter….Of course, I see—you aren't speaking literally. He might have supplied the poison to some confederate.” Darley looked over at Arabella and raised an eyebrow.
“Does this let Rokeby off, then?” she asked, disappointment clear in her tone.
“I have let no one off,” Morton said, “for I fear we are not near the truth yet. I have been meaning to ask, Lord Arthur: Glendinning's manservant told me that his employer received a note the afternoon of the duel. It was delivered by a boy. This might have had some relevance to Glendinning's later actions. Would it be possible to ask his parents if such a note was found among their son's belongings?”
Darley shook his head. “I hardly think they will cooperate, given their feelings about the matter, but I could ask if you think it important.”
“One can never tell what will be important. Often, in these matters, it is some scrap of knowledge you have had all along that proves the culprit's undoing. Something you have looked at a dozen times and noticed nothing amiss.”
Lord Arthur shook his head, though it was in admiration, Morton suddenly realised. Was Arthur Darley a little bored with his coddled life? Did that explain the risqué company, the stage-actress mi
stress? And now, his apparent interest in the efforts of a Bow Street Runner?
“How will you proceed, Morton?” Darley enquired. “I'm not sure how you make your decisions.”
“Nor is Henry, Arthur,” Arabella added quickly. “Why, I have seen him make decisions that surprise even him.”
Chapter 21
His next decision actually did surprise Morton. He did not pay another visit to the Otter in Spitalfields, as reason might have dictated. He was not yet ready to go there again. Instead, when he rose the next morning it seemed to him there was something else he wanted to know more badly. Something that had its seeds in the conversation with Arabella and Darley the night before.
He rented a handsome bay hack, and was on the road leading south into Sussex by seven.
It was a pleasant day for a ride, with high summer rapidly approaching, and billowing white clouds spotted motionless in the blue sky.
If not for the threat of war that hung over England like dense fog, Morton would have been almost lighthearted. But even among the country-folk he met as he went, there was a palpable anxiety, and when they learned he had come recently from London, they asked what news, and then looked like people bracing themselves for the worst.
Morton could say little. The news of the Prussian defeat had spread out into the surrounding countryside as quickly as a horse could speed.
It seemed to Morton that England was like the country people he encountered along the way, bracing itself for the worst. Bonaparte was like a phoenix—he rose up from the flames of war again and again. Morton wondered if an end could ever be made of him.
Once into Sussex, he began stopping. At every country tavern or inn he asked the same questions, and slowly but surely was pointed in the right direction.
The country-folk, he soon discovered, were intensely, possessively proud of their regiment. This came as rather a surprise to Morton, who had been all too familiar with the cynicism of the metropolis, and it began to become more clear to him how Britain had fought this long, terrible war with French ambition. Londoners had laughed about the common people telling their children that Bony would come and eat them, perhaps believing it themselves. Radicals and poets claimed the humble were being exploited for a struggle that was not their own. But in fact ordinary men and women seemed to have been filled with a fierce, unselfconscious patriotism, a determination to preserve the Britain they knew—that the sophisticates in the capital hardly imagined.
So there was no lack of willingness to talk about the Thirty-fifth. By the end of the day the Runner had been directed to the Queen's Head Inn in the town of Mayfield, where a certain veteran by the unlikely name of Sempronious Stretton was said to hold court on a nightly basis. Stretton had come back from Spain without one of his legs in '12 or perhaps '13, people said, but had been with the regiment for fully thirty years before that. If he couldn't answer Morton's questions, no one could.
By the time Morton reached the place, it was nightfall. He swung from the saddle he had kept for many hours and consigned his horse to a shuffling, apparently speechless ostler. Then, groaning a little in relief and stretching, he walked through into the back garden where the patrons were taking advantage of the warm summer evening to sit out on benches or upturned stumps, drinking their pots of cider and ale and drawing on pipes whose coals glowed and faded in the dusk. The dark shapes of the elms that surrounded the inn rose above them against a deepening azure sky in which the first stars were beginning to glitter.
For a good while Morton smoked and said nothing, enjoying the peacefulness of the garden, the palpable contentment of the place, and the slow rhythms of country speech that rose and fell in the soft evening air, as if time, too, had slowed, and hours such as this would drift on forever and there would never again be any need for fretfulness or impatience. But then finally, in one of the longer lulls, he murmured to his neighbour, asking if he knew Sempronious Stretton.
“Oh, aye, friend. There's he a-lighting his pipe; he of the peg leg.”
He indicated the man who sat near the center of the gathering. Stretton was a greying man of perhaps fifty, his cheeks stubbled, but his chin firm and his blue eyes bright. He had been speaking little, but Morton had already noticed that when he did speak there was immediate deference.
“Sergeant Stretton?” Morton took the opportunity to politely hail him. He had expected, with so strange and seemingly learned a name, that the man might be one of the occasional “gentlemen rankers” whom want or eccentricity had driven to enlist as private soldiers. But when he saw him, he knew that this after all was a man of England's old peasant stock.
“Aye, sir?”
“Am I told aright that you served a captain by the name of Richard Davenant?”
There was a silence, and Morton could feel the curious eyes of the whole gathering upon him while Stretton bent his head a little in what seemed to be deep contemplation. Then, slowly, the old soldier beckoned to Morton to come and join him. The man sitting nearest vacated his place unasked, and Morton made his way through to sit where he had been invited.
“Who art thou who asks?” wondered Sempronious Stretton quietly.
“Henry Morton. I have come from London and am a friend of the lady Davenant was to have wed.”
Stretton stared at him a moment, and though the gaze was not entirely unfriendly it was certainly suspicious.
“There are those up in London-town who have spread lies about my captain and fouled his fine name,” the old soldier said, his voice dark.
“I am not one of them. These rumours have been repeated so often that they have begun to acquire the lustre of truth. I would gladly gainsay them but I was not there, at Albuera. What can you tell me of Richard Davenant and his last hours, that I might tell his lady?”
The man gazed at Morton a moment more, only the insects pulsing in the invisible fields beyond, the gathered men drawing on their pipes and watching. Then Stretton nodded, turning his gaze away.
“Captain Davenant commanded Third Company, First Battalion, for some two years. That was my company, and I did know him, I knew him well. He was a fine officer, the finest I ever served, and most every man he commanded would say just the same. He was a gentleman of true generosity and tested valour, who cared for the lives and comforts of his soldiers. He was the soldiers' friend, sir, and that was not to be said of every man who held a commission. He fought with honour in a dozen engagements in Portugal and in Spain, and he died at Albuera, in May of the year eleven.”
He finished speaking, and a deep quiet fell over the men in the inn yard. Here and there a red glow brightened as men had thoughtful recourse to their pipes.
When Morton felt it proper to break the silence, he asked: “Were you there that day, Sergeant Stretton?”
“I was there,” the man replied, still not looking at Morton.
“Did you see him fall?” Morton asked very softly. Sempronious Stretton took a long breath, then he began to speak again.
“The battle fought at Albuera was a very terrible battle, sir. We were under the command of General Beresford, who was a good soldier, but not so able a field general as the Duke of Wellington, who was in the north at that time. We were facing Marshal Soult, who was the best the French had in Spain. The weather was hot as a smith's forge, and the place where we fought was covered in tall grasses—so dry that the flame from the muzzles of our muskets set the grasses afire. Even as we engaged, the ground was burning, and men who fell were sometimes burned to death before they could be helped—or they died of the smoke, which was harsh and thick. It was here that Colborne's brigade was lost, and where Myers was killed and most of his fusileers destroyed while taking the center. It cost them all but fifteen hundred of their six thousand. We were on the right flank, and we lost close to half, and more than half our officers. All through that terrible afternoon Captain Davenant was calling for us to go forward, and we did go forward. Again and again he rallied us and called to the other captains to bring up their compani
es, even when matters seemed to be going very hard for us. I saw him, sir, before he died, but I did not see him fall. I was in the wing squad, second rank. I saw him go ahead into the smoke, he and all those with him, and be swallowed up in it.”
Silence again left Morton wondering if that was all Stretton had seen. After another long moment, he asked: “Were you amongst those who carried him back?”
“Nay, sir, I was not. I was in ranks all night. I heard later that he had fallen. Like so many others.”
“I am told, Mr. Stretton, that there was a captain and some other soldiers who carried him back to the dressing-post.”
“It may be so. I did not see it nor ever hear of it.”
With reluctance, Morton decided he must press the issue even further.
“The battalion surgeon, Bromley, claims that the men who carried Captain Davenant back said he was shot while fleeing the French.”
“He did not flee,” Stretton said firmly, more than a little menace in his voice. “He did not flee. I know men who were near him at the end—men I would trust with my life and whose word I would never question. They were there, and Captain Davenant was before them.”
Morton gazed quickly about the gathering. Men shuffled their feet and looked down at the earth. Some muttered to their fellows. But he was here to find the truth and he would not leave without it.
“But he received his wound in the back,” Morton said.
“What of it, sir?” Stretton said, his voice clearly angry now. “Many a man is shot while helping another, or turning back to call others forward. Some are shot by their own in the thick of battle, and there was no battle in which such a thing were more likely to happen. The smoke was thick as night at times, and men from both sides shot their own—more times than any would care to know.
“You may tell this man Bromley he'd best not come into Sussex, and repeat his lies here where men know better. And you may also tell Captain Davenant's lady that she should keep his memory bright. You may tell her, and you may tell all of those who have heard the lies, that Richard Davenant was as brave a man as I have ever known—and I have known many. That is all I have to say about it.”
