Rogue Spy

by Joanna Bourne

  “I lied,” she said. “I wasn’t bored. I had curs yapping at my heels. Now look at this . . .” She held her hand out flat, palm up, knowing Pax would understand what she wanted.

  He did. He slapped the hilt of his knife on her palm. She said, “If you will pay attention . . .” to Mr. Hawker and began marking alleys and side streets, gently, precisely, with the tip of the knife. “The man we followed went like this. And this. And this.” She looked up and smiled at Hawker as one might smile at a large, mean dog who was safely on the other side of a fence. “Look at where he crosses his own path.”

  “Staying in territory he knows,” Pax murmured.

  “That’s good. I see it. Yes.” Hawker, the trail in front of him, forgot to be angry. “We have more. Wait.” He swung away from the table and came back with two of the china comfit boxes. One with small violet pastilles. One with lemon drops. “We have early reports from the men out walking sketches around.”

  Pax said, “Anything solid?”

  Hawker shuffled a dozen pastilles into his hand. “It is a wonder and an amazement how many shifty-eyed Frenchmen were lurking around this city last week. Doyle sieved out a few reports from the dross. And these are . . .” Rapidly, Hawker set seven pastilles in place. After a pause he added another two, further south.

  “The henchman died here.” She took a lemon drop and set it in place. “The livery stable where someone rented the wagon . . . here.” More lemon drops. “The taverns he visited.”

  “The alleys he stopped to piss in.” Hawker started placing more lemon drops down.

  She said, “I doubt—”

  “Men don’t just use any old alley.”

  Pax sprinkled flour and drew in streets and alleys ahead of them. They were wandering off the map a bit, outside Soho proper.

  “It’s not simple.” But there were patterns. Men always made patterns.

  Pax drew back and watched them place the last markers. There was a concentration about him now, a driving, intent focus. She imagined him in some Piedmontese farm kitchen, surrounded by rough, hardened men, all of them tired and dirty, armed with a mix of old muskets and new rifles stolen from the French. She could see him listening to reports. Pax was a man who’d listen more than he talked. He’d be totally absorbed, seeing every detail, the way he did now.

  Maybe he’d make a map like this on the farmhouse table, using corn meal that could be scattered and erased in an instant. Maybe he’d stand and stare down at it and his men would get quiet.

  “This”—she set down her last marker—“is the hat shop where Lilith remembers seeing that hat.”

  Pax stood frowning.

  Patterns. She let herself stop thinking. When her mind wasn’t yelling at her, she could see them. “Look here. The man we were following didn’t go here. He went around it.” She circled a space on the map.

  “Inns? That’s what he’s not going near.” Hawker was talking to himself. He leaned close, absorbed. “The Angel? But you have to go through the central court to get to the rooms. Everybody can see you. The Boar’s Head?”

  “Fielding’s Inn,” Pax said suddenly. “Large, rambling, disorganized. That’s what he’d choose.”

  Hawker said, “They may already be gone.”

  Pax was already running for the door and didn’t slow down for them to catch up.

  Thirty-six

  We know what we value by what we spend to purchase it.

  A BALDONI SAYING

  When Pax climbed the stairs at Meeks Street, Grey was waiting for him. Grey held the door open, not saying anything.

  The Head of Section for England didn’t answer the door at Meeks Street. Pax followed him through the ugly front parlor, where none of the reds matched, into the white, calm hallway.

  They went six paces in silence. “The Merchant got away,” Pax said. “We found the rooms he’d been using, but he was gone. We missed him by an hour.”

  Grey said, “Hawker told us.”

  “The Merchant has a woman and three or four men with him. Stillwater and Tenn are asking questions, house to house, up and down the street. We haven’t found where he stored the gunpowder. Probably a good ways from where he was living.”

  Grey turned and blocked the hall. “You lied to me. From the beginning. Every day.”

  There was no part of returning to Meeks Street that was easy. This meeting was harder than most. “For years.”

  “You lied to men who trusted you. Any hour of the day or night you could have walked into my office and told the truth.”

  “I have no excuse.”

  Grey had been a major of infantry before he came to the Service. He didn’t smile much. He wasn’t smiling now. He looked like a man about to convene a court-martial.

  Grey said, “I didn’t think you were a coward.”

  “I did it to stay in the Service.” The Service was all I had.

  The fist came out of nowhere. Pain hit like lightning—big, bright, white, and sudden. Black spilled down over everything.

  When the world came back, he was on his arse, his back against the wall. His jaw stabbed agony. His head was solid pain from one side to the other. He leaned his head on the plaster and waited for the hall to stop tilting sideways.

  Grey said, “Is there anything else you’re lying about?”

  “Yes. At least, there’s things I’m not saying.”

  “Damn you for that. But at least it’s honest.” Grey reached a hand down.

  He took the hand and got pulled to his feet. The trick was keeping his head level. His brains would stay in the braincase if he kept his head level.

  “If you ever lie to me again,” Grey said, “I will kick you into Northumberland. You’re holding on to a place in the Service by the skin of your teeth, Mr. Paxton. Don’t repeat your mistakes. And now we have kegs of gunpowder to deal with. Galba’s office. Now.”

  Grey walked away and left him holding on to the wall.

  That clears the air, doesn’t it? He’d been dreading the meeting with Grey. Turned out he didn’t have to say much of anything at all.

  He’d take a brief rest against the wall here. Yes. That’s the ticket.

  He didn’t open his eyes when boots came down the stairs. That was Doyle’s walk.

  Doyle said, “Galba’s waiting for you.”

  “Grey told me.” It hurt to talk. He fingered along his jawbone, but nothing seemed to be broken. Grey was an expert when it came to unarmed fighting. “I may be just a minute getting into motion.”

  “Grey’s annoyed.”

  “I have figured that out.”

  “He’s kicking himself he didn’t notice one of his agents was in trouble.”

  “We’re spies. We’re secretive.” The edges of his sight were no longer fading into black. Now he’d walk down the hall to Galba’s office. That was next on his list of challenges for this afternoon.

  “A senior officer’s responsible for his junior officers.” They started walking the hall. Doyle was in no hurry. Just as well. “It’s the army way.”

  “Another reason to stay out of the army.” He tasted blood, but when he swiped across his mouth none came off on his hand. No split lip. Grey had delivered a clean, precise blow, making his point with skill and economy. “I lost the Merchant.”

  “You found him in the first place, with all of London to sieve through.”

  “We won’t find him again. He’s in his final retreat, safe and secret. And the gunpowder’s somewhere safe. He may already have planted it. We have one more chance at him. Hawk gave you the details?”

  “Semple Street, Number Fifty-six, eleven in the morning on Monday,” Doyle said. “I tortured it out of him.”

  “I hope you used thumbscrews.” They passed the framed map of medieval Florence. He liked Florence. For a while he’d kept rooms over a bakery there. “I need five or six men, preferably men the Merchant won’t recognize.”

  They’d come to Galba’s office. Doyle set his hand on the doorknob. “Pax, the pla
nning for Monday is no longer your job.”

  A lifetime of control kept his voice calm. “Whose job, then?”

  “Mine. You won’t be there. You won’t be in England. Giles is packing a trunk for you.”

  “You’re taking this operation away from me?”

  “Galba’s decision.”

  “Why?”

  Doyle paused fractionally. He didn’t open the door. He seemed to come to a decision. “How accurate are your sketches of the Merchant?”

  It came to this. Again. The unbreakable, unendurable connection with the monster. “Very.”

  “Pax, is the man your father?”

  “No.” And then, “Maybe.” It was as close as he could come to admitting it. “He claimed to be sometimes. He lied about so many things, he could have lied about that, too.”

  “You look like him,” Doyle said.

  And the mirror here at the end of the hall said the same thing. He’d watched his face become the monster’s face, year by year. “If it’s the truth, it’s a random accident. A dark joke of the gods. A technicality.”

  “A significant technicality,” Doyle said, very quietly. “Galba’s not going to send one of his agents to perform heinous actions.”

  “He’s not sending me. If I kill the Merchant, it’s because I’ve been planning it since I was ten years old. It’s taken me this long to get close to him with a gun in my hand.”

  “Makes no difference. A man doesn’t kill his father.”

  “He’s not my father.” He said it too loud. Galba and Grey would hear it inside the office. “I purged his blood from my veins. I repudiate him.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Doyle said. “God knows, a lot of us wish it were.”

  “Then I accept the blood guilt.” He forced himself to meet his own eyes in the mirror. Then Doyle’s eyes. “I’ll kill him and let the Furies do their worst.”

  “Then you and Galba are going to disagree on some major decisions over the next couple of days.”

  Doyle opened the door. Galba and Grey were inside. Galba, at his desk. Grey, standing by the window, studying one of the sketches of the Merchant.

  Doyle said, “Did you know the Merchant’s real name is Peter Styles? He comes from Northumbria and he has a title.”

  “He attended Cambridge,” Galba said calmly. “Come join us, Mr. Paxton. You will not be permitted to kill the man, whatever good cause you have to do so.”

  “Lots of people want the Merchant dead,” Doyle said.

  Not as much as I do. He followed Doyle into Galba’s office.

  Thirty-seven

  The pleasures of old age are power and wisdom. The pleasures of youth are everything else.

  A BALDONI SAYING

  Violet Leyland laid the spyglass across her lap and stretched as well as the low roof of the hackney coach allowed. She straightened her legs and rolled her shoulders. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  Lily said, “Neither of us is young,” without moving or opening her eyes. She was curled on the opposite seat with her coat rolled under her head, dozing. In a long and varied career, they’d spent many days and nights like this, on duty, on watch, taking turns sleeping.

  Violet said, “Morte magis metuenda senectus.”

  “Old age is indeed more to be feared than death.” Lily sighed. “There was a time Anson would not have sent us off to mind our knitting.”

  From where she sat in the hackney, Violet could see the whole length of Meeks Street and everyone who came to the door of Number Seven. It was not a perfect way to understand what was going forward at headquarters, but it would serve.

  “He’s protecting us,” Lily said.

  “He’s making sure we won’t interfere in his operation.”

  “That, too. Oh, look. There’s Mr. Paxton just going up the stairs,” Violet said. “I would say he looks calm, but determined. He has a forceful stride, I think. Matters must be developing.”

  “He’ll be in the center of it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we will follow him when he leaves,” Lily said, pleased. “I haven’t followed a handsome young man for ever so long.”

  “The life of the mind, dear. We have chosen the life of the mind.”

  “Of course. And very satisfying it is.” Lily lay down on the seat again, making herself reasonably comfortable.

  “I hate getting old,” Violet said.

  “I do, too. But the alternative is worse.”

  Thirty-eight

  Find peace and prosperity in a house and you will find a woman ruling.

  A BALDONI SAYING

  The family gave her a small, pretty room at the back of the house. The clothing bundled onto the seat of the chair would fit somebody about twelve and the handwriting in the half-finished letter on the desk was the hand of a young girl.

  She told them, “I don’t mean to push someone—is it Maria?—from her room. I can sleep on a trundle bed somewhere.”

  “For this first little time, you are guest as well as kinswoman.” Great-Aunt Fortunata herself stuffed a feather pillow into a clean pillowcase.

  “Maria is beside herself with excitement to give you her room. ‘Puffed up,’ as they say in English.” Aunt Grazia, comfortable and maternal, made the bed and pulled a coverlet over the top. “I sent her to the park with a clutch of children so you may bathe in peace. The house will be quieter for a while.”

  “Sleep if you can,” Aunt Fortunata said. “Sleep through supper. There will be food in the kitchen even in the middle of the night.”

  They keep feeding me. “I’ll be fine.” A fire the size of a spaniel dog burned in the grate, lit there as much for company as for warmth. Tea was made and set upon the table. A kettle vibrated on the hob. At the edge of the mantelpiece, little cakes were neatly stacked on a plate. There seemed nothing they would not do to welcome her here.

  “The boys will be back late,” said Aunt Grazia, “clattering in, talking at the top of their voices, and starving. You need not worry about waking the household. They will do that.”

  By “the boys” she meant Tonio, Giomar, and Alessandro, who’d gone out to wander the neighborhood of Semple Street in picturesque guises.

  “I won’t even hear them.” Her heart and mind were stretched tight as twisted string, yet she must sleep. She was so desperately tired. Maybe, in dreams, she’d see a way to close her fist around the Merchant and snatch the human bait from the trap he would set.

  I renounced the lessons I learned in the Coach House. I resolved that I would not kill. I would not spy. Maybe I became too ordinary.

  The curtain at the window was pulled back to show sunset, a high wooden wall, and the three large sheds in the complicated kitchen yard. The roof of the nearest shed was directly below the window, a nothing to get to. Perhaps young Maria wriggled out this window and went wandering London at night. There was a certain look of devilment in Maria’s eye that argued the possibility.

  Aunt Grazia held up a night shift. “You’re much of a size, you and Amalia. We’re making this for her trousseau, but there’s plenty of time to make her another. The embroidery is not quite finished.”

  “Because Lucia does not tend to her needle.” But Aunt Fortunata sounded indulgent.

  Aunt Grazia draped the night shift over the back of a chair, absentmindedly stroking it smooth. “Amalia has a blue dress she will lend you for tomorrow. It will be most becoming. And for Monday, a dark green, inconspicuous and easy to run in. Would you like a gun? A second gun, I mean.”

  “One cannot carry too many guns when going to meet an enemy.” Fortunata plumped the pillow on the bed and centered it carefully. “There.”

  “Let me lend you one of mine,” Grazia said. “A lovely little Austrian cuff pistol my oldest brought back from the battle of Millesimo.”

  “After having been told to keep well away from the fighting.” Fortunata clucked her tongue. “Headstrong.”

  “The payroll funds were simply too tempting.” Au
nt Grazia laid a round ball of soap in the dish beside the towels. “She is Baldoni, after all.”

  Thirty-nine

  Before a great enterprise, talk the plan over with friends.

  A BALDONI SAYING

  “. . . not so different from the way you placed your men in Italy. Your street is an ambush in a ravine. Those houses have upper stories. That means snipers.”

  Always good advice from Doyle, Pax thought. “If he wants Cami dead, he can reach out and do it. A sniper won’t stop him.”

  “Sniper fire from our side closes off an escape route. Traps the Merchant in that canyon of a street,” Doyle said.

  “Good point.” If I let him live that long.

  Deep midnight and the smell of the Thames. Pervasive damp and the rustle and slap of water against the pilings. Doyle and Hawker didn’t hurry in this stroll along the nighttime docks of London, down to the ship that was supposed to take him to Italy. They were lax and lackadaisical guards. It was clear they expected him to escape before they got to the Pretty Mary.

  “Complication with fighting in a city, though,” Doyle went on, “is you got civilians popping out of every doorway, just asking to be taken hostage.”

  Cami would be a hostage the minute she stepped out onto the pavement. No comfort to know she’d be armed.

  “Or they’re leaning out the windows trying to get themselves shot.” Hawker had helped himself to a handful of gravel a few streets back, stealing it out of a potted plant on somebody’s front steps. He’d been shying it, stone by stone, into the street as they walked along, hearing it skip and clatter, watching it when there was light enough from some lamp in a window. “I don’t know why they do that. If you asked a hundred citizens of London, ‘What should you do when people start shooting off guns?’ not one of them would say, ‘Go stand at the window and pretend to be a pheasant.’”