The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  Again, for a moment, it seemed that his wits had gone away too.

  “We charged uphill, ye’ll recall. On our right flank there was a hedge, with Okey’s Dragoons (poor devils) a-sputtering and spitting at us with muskets that dropped scarce a man from the saddle. When we struck Ireton’s line,” and now a kind of glory shone in his eyes, “we broke it like a china plate; like a thunderbolt on a rotted tree; like …”

  His lifted hand dropped slowly to the table, and he awakened.

  “But these are old things,” he declared wryly; “and, when all’s said, we lost the battle. Lad, in the dust fog I saw your father’s sword—that one on the wall—cleave through a lobster-tail helmet with one overarm cut. That night, when all was over, we lurked together beyond the campfires; we saw the pious Roundheads slit the noses of our women camp followers …”

  Again, with hard effort, he stopped.

  “Come; enough of that! But have I no interest in my friend’s son? What strange malady is on you I know not. But, if you’ll not help yourself, I swear I’ll help you notwithstanding!”

  Then George completely lost his head.

  “You?” he shouted contemptuously, and looked at the patched, ragged clothes. “Worn-out tosspot? Soldier, yet spy? Who are you to help anyone?”

  And at last Mr. Reeve was stung from his silence.

  Slowly he pushed back his chair. Slowly he rose to his feet, towering half a head over George.

  “I am the Earl of Lowestoft,” he said, with terrible clarity in that quiet room.

  He groped down for his ancient hat, but straightened up again.

  “I was born to that title, and twelve generations before me, as I was born to my name of Jonathan Reeve. Rascals may filch away title and estate; I use them not; but they are mine.” The strong voice hesitated and faltered. “I much fear, young sir, that the remainder of what you say is true. But there are some few who still remember.”

  Again, in deathly silence, he groped for and found his hat. A man of great age sees clearly only the past; that is green, that is bright; and he sees, with helpless clarity, the man he might have been. Perhaps, if you add old thin blood, that is why his emotions are so close to the surface. A thing happened which horrified him: tears appeared in his eyes, threatening to trickle down old cheeks.

  “Under favour,” he said, hastily turning his head away. “I must take leave. I—I have work to do.”

  Fenton threw his arm round the old man’s shoulders, slapping awkwardly at his far shoulder.

  “My lord,” he said, with so deep a courtesy that it almost stung tears again, “allow me to escort you. This matter of title and estate shall be set right, I promise you!—whether I use the law or the sword, it shall be set right!”

  “Nay, don’t trouble. Nay, I beg of you! Yet ’tis God’s truth I can help you. I go never to the court. But there are friends, the sons and grandsons of friends. They well know I won’t pocket their money, and they tell me every whisper that’s bruited from the matted gallery to the council chamber. You shall hear all; and thereby be at guard.”

  George, who knew the old Bacchus had been a man of title and had merely blurted out any words that came to his mind, was in an agony of remorse.

  “Stay!” cried George. “I am but slow of wit; I meant no hurt!”

  “And d’ye think,” said the eighty-year-old, who had secretly got rid of tears for chuckles, “I was not sensible of that? You are young, lad, you scorn weakness. Nay, I’ll ride wi’ ye. Give me leave to go a little first. My foot is grown unseemly to the stirrup, and my right leg something painful in the heaving over. I would have it seen only by a stableboy.”

  Then he added the old form of the salutation.

  “God b’ye,” said Jonathan Reeve, Earl of Lowestoft, Viscount Stowe, lumbering from the room, with a sting still behind his eyes, but as proudly as though he went to meet Prince Rupert.

  Fenton detained George with a fierce gesture. No man on earth could look quite as guilty as George.

  “And who are you,” asked Fenton, “to call any man tosspot, drunkard, or the like?”

  “Nick, I spoke wildly … ’twas in you own interest, because you would not see danger, and spoke like a Bedlamite!”

  “Well, well! Let be. But, when we returned from the King’s Head for a carouse at the Swan, you swore you would seek Meg and with honeyed words carry her away.”

  “Nick, I did but endeavour to advance my courage, and took a step too far.”

  Fenton gnawed at his underlip.

  “I … the matter is not of import; but have you communicated with her since?”

  “Ay; the next day, as I forgot to tell you. You’ll recall the man-lass, Captain Duroc, the be-painted giant, the led captain you struck so hard he flew over the balustrade and fell downstairs. Well, yon tapster was right. He did break his left leg; and hath been since retained at the chiurgien’s, a-raving in boards and bandages, but not yet well.”

  “And Meg?”

  “Meg is installed alone in his lodgings—fine lodgings, I hear, with a Madam Somebody to preside—and Meg is pleased. I sent her a note, pleading; ay, pleading! She replied that she was prepared to admit only …”

  “Captain Duroc?”

  “Nay; yourself,” growled George, his face darkening. If he had not been Honest George, Fenton sensed, George might have hated him. “I’ll dally no more with her: here’s a thousand jillflirts to be had for the rent of a pretty house and a few gowns! But Nick, Nick! A word of advice!”

  “I am desirous to hear it, George.”

  “You are besotted with Lydia! You are as overfond, as doting, as old Pinchwife in the play! You spend so much time a-pleasuring her that ’tis wonder you have strength left to hold a knife at table. I say no word against Lydia; but ’ware your enemies. My Lord Shaftesbury will depart from town; but he can’t be kept away. You lose your wits, as I heard with my own two ears a moment gone. Take care you don’t lose your eye for swordplay.”

  And George, in his heavy-lined red silk, with his sword scabbard tilting up the skirt of his coat, stamped away in a huff.

  “Your eye for swordplay.”

  Though Fenton was far from unaware of the dangers about him, still one matter lurked in his mind and forever scratched there. It was simply this: that he had never handled a true sword. Sooner or later he must fight. In his heart he knew he feared no wound, not even a bad one, but he would not show himself a blunderer, fool, incompetent.

  Well, how far would his long experience with a feather-light foil avail against a heavier weapon, hard driven in a skilled hand? He must test that.

  Hence that same evening, as he stood at the wall of his back garden, looking out over the Park, he sent word to fetch Giles Collins. Westwards, after sunset, the sky was a clear bright yellow, stretching lower to the south amid long low clouds.

  “If I don’t know it,” thought Fenton, “I must somehow learn it. Somehow!”

  The garden was broad and very long, of close-cropped grass, and shut away from the stables by high yew hedges. Along each narrow side ran a line of beech trees in bloom. Fenton now understood how the back of Pall Mall, as he knew it in the twentieth century, could go down so easily to the Mall below. One drop of ground floor was added by the kitchen of a house. A very long garden added length; and its wall dropped down in a brick wall to a shady walk beneath.

  From this, grassy terraces sloped down to the reddish-yellow stretch of the Mall, along which by day lumbered leather-slung coaches of gilt or lacquer, and horsemen showing off their prances to pretty ladies at coach windows.

  “You desired my presence, sir?” inquired Giles behind him.

  Fenton started slightly as he turned round. Giles, hands folded, with white turn-back sleeves and white collar spreading down over his coat, stood lean in the yellow evening light.

  “From certain r
emarks you have passed, carrot-top,” said Fenton, “I hazard a guess you are, or were, a good swordsman?”

  “Sir,” Giles asked slowly, with the beginning of an impudent smile fading to dead seriousness, “did your father never tell you who truly I am?”

  “No; never.”

  “Then keep the riddle; don’t read it. As for the rest, I accounted myself—ay, and still do!—among the very masters of fence.”

  “That’s well. For I have it in mind to try for a little practice …”

  Fenton knew it could not be foils, since the buttoned foil would not be invented for more than a hundred years from now. A glitter of joy leaped into Giles’s eyes; but it died dismally away

  “Sir, that has been thought on before. If you put great corks on the swords, the corks fly wide in play or the point pierces through. If you would blunt the point with masses of soft stuff in a glued binding, then play becomes ill and cumbersome. A wooden sword …”

  “What do you say to breastplates?” Fenton demanded.

  “Breastplates?”

  “Yes! Sure there are many old breastplates in the lumber-room. True, we may thrust only between shoulder and waist, yet—”

  “Ecod, sir, have done!” said Giles, somewhat upset. “Aside from saying the point will be dulled or the sword broken against a steel breastplate …”

  “Then we grind a new point or buy a new blade!”

  “Sir, ’tis not that. The blade, striking, will fly wide. Even though there be a gorget,” and Giles ran his finger round the upper part of his throat, “the point may fly upwards into the throat or face. Or into an arm. Or,” here the corners of his mouth went down, “it may strike downwards, with most unhappy result of all.”

  “Giles, I command you! Fetch the breastplates! I have the Clemens Hornn here; choose what blade you like from among mine.”

  Giles hesitated, bowed, and hurried away.

  Since Giles was only an inch or more shorter than Fenton’s present height, they soon found that several tolerably clean and polished breastplates would fit them. But how to fasten them to the body was different. They were compelled to wear a useless backplate as well, since each was a part of the other and the plates buckled together. It would interfere somewhat with lunging, but …

  Kicking aside useless armour and discarded swords, they stood up and faced each other.

  Under the still-fading yellow sky, Giles stood with his back to the tall thick hedge which fenced off the stable yard. The gleam of the breastplate seemed grotesque against Giles’s black clothes and long face. Giles had chosen a blade of just the same length and weight as Fenton’s, but with round convex guard of steel wrought to lace pattern.

  The cropped green turf was firm under their feet. On either side of them stretched a line of beech trees. There was not a sound, not even from the stable yard. Then up went Giles’s voice, not loudly, but with a queer raspy sound Fenton had never heard there.

  “Sir, I would warn you,” Giles said. “The moment we fight, we are no longer master and servant. I will hit you, and hit you as many times as I can.”

  Fenton’s throat felt dry to the lips. His heart beat far more heavily than it had done when he stood before my Lord Shaftesbury.

  “Agreed!” he said.

  There existed, as yet, no formal business of saluting and engaging. They moved towards each other, blades feeling out.

  Instantly Giles, very quick on his feet, darted out to lunge in low tierce. Fenton, as he caught the blade close to his guard and swept his hand to the left, automatically and without thinking gave a slight turn of his wrist to send Giles’s blade wider. Back went Fenton’s return lunge in quarte, aimed at an imaginary spot on the breastplate to represent the heart.

  The point struck steel with a slurred thud, dead on the mark he had chosen. At the same instant his blade bent, hissed sideways, and flew wide without touching Giles’s arm. Fenton had barely time to parry the return thrust.

  “Not bad,” he was thinking. “Not bad. Steady!”

  On Giles’s breastplate he had put in imagination a number of points in a shape like an X. He was fighting in regulation style, not closed-up like Sir Nick. Drawing a deep breath, he drove in to attack.

  Fifteen minutes later, when the light grew so dim that play was dangerous, both lowered points and sat down. The play had gone in short, sharp bursts, of course, with intervals for breathing between. But Giles was very pale; new lines seemed to be carved deeply in his face, and he was panting.

  Fenton, though not much winded, was so dazed with amazement that the grass, the beech trees, the whole garden seemed slowly to revolve round him, as in a dance. He still could not understand. Giles Collins, a highly skilled and dangerous swordsman, had not once touched his breastplate. And yet, after he had set a series of points drawn in the form of an X, he had scored dead to the mark on more than half of them.

  This was fantastic! In his brain he could still hear the thud-slither, or only the sharpened thud, as his point struck. But, in a swift bout, men’s minds grow confused. …

  “Giles, Giles!” he said in hurried contrition, really seeing Giles for the first time. “I had forgot you were not a young man! You must go and lie on your bed!”

  “Faugh!” answered Giles, with something like a sneer. He held himself propped at seated position until his breathing slowed. “Look to yourself! You have done me no mischief.”

  Fenton’s mind circled, as so often his blade had swiftly circled Giles’s.

  “Giles,” he stammered, “I regret that my swordplay today was not … not …”

  “Hark to me, Sir Nick Fenton,” said Giles, pointing a finger. “I am no flatterer, as you can testify. Rather am I a wasp to sting you, as your father wished. But, sir! You were today as swift of foot as ever. Your eye, perhaps, was a thought less than its best. But I have in my whole life never seen swordplay so good or so deadly!”

  “What?”

  Again Giles pointed. Incredibly something like pride glittered in his eye.

  “This also I tell you. I would lay a thousand guineas, if I had ’em, that not a man in London could stand against you for twenty seconds! —Now enough of praise, sot and sinner!”

  “Giles, you must take rest. Pay no heed to these bits of armour or swords thrown aside. Go.”

  Giles rose up stiffly, and tottered away.

  Fenton, his sword still in his hands, walked at a dull step towards the low brick wall at the back of the garden. A single yellow line lay low and murkily along the sky.

  And suddenly he realized the great blunder he had made.

  In this present year of 1675, the art of fence was still in its age of clumsy development. It would not attain near-perfection until the end of the eighteenth century, a hundred and twenty-odd years from now. Present-day parries were mere slaps, though Sir Nick must be more skilled at this. Thrusts were unsubtle; in many lines but easy to parry. Feints were childish to anticipate. These people had never heard of wrist-turn in parry, or many sword tricks except those of foul play. Their guards were almost wide open.

  Against this he could set his thirty-odd years’ experience of foil play (a very competent man in any salle d’armes), together with the knowledge of several hundred years, in the catfooted and vigorous body of a young man. Some authorities maintained the lightness of the foil as of no value. But others pointed out that long practice counted most; that any stroke learned deeply and done with agility, all the craft of fence, could beat the duelling sword.

  And they were right. What Fenton had believed his greatest danger was, in fact, his greatest strength. He was a better swordsman than Sir Nick.

  Drawing deeply into his lungs the sweet-scented air of grass and trees, Fenton stood back. His bewilderment fell away. For some time Sir Nick had been completely quiescent; there was not even the rattle of a coffin lid. And he rested now, in fleshless sa
tisfaction.

  But across Fenton’s lips went a curious smile, which was not like—at least, only very faintly like—the murderous smile of Sir Nick. It vanished; Fenton forgot it. Nevertheless he held out the sword blade sideways, so that the dim yellow light gave it a last glitter.

  “Who comes at me now,” Fenton said aloud, “is delivered into my hands!”

  CHAPTER XII

  THE JILLFLIRTS OF SPRING GARDENS

  AGAIN, WITHIN TEN DAYS, the enemy struck twice. The first attack began so mildly, amid such melody and even frolic with Lydia, that he scarcely knew when it began.

  Often, with something like a laugh, he would recall George’s bitter words:

  “You are besotted with Lydia. You are as overfond, as doting, as old Pinchwife in the play.”

  Well, and why not? He was always with her, save when Judith Pamphlin stood guard while he sat in the study or walked alone in the remoter stretches of the Park: southwards, for instance, near the slums of Westminster.

  The study enchanted him. To your true booklover, even the scent of old books is as heady wine. Sometimes the day would be wet; and, with a small coal fire burning, Fenton would sit before it with his long pipe drawing and five branches of candles at his elbow.

  Again, a true booklover requires only that the book be old and full of good-for-nothing lore. Fenton had ceased to trouble his head with more changes to the house, even in its sanitary arrangements.

  Therefore it delighted him to find the folio volume written by Sir John Harrington in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, over a hundred years ago. The nimble-minded Sir John, with as much sauciness as description, had invented the first w.c., with full plans and diagrams so that it might easily be constructed. He had the volume printed, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, and presented the first copy to Her Majesty.

  Queen Elizabeth, nothing if not progressive, had ordered the new apparatus to be installed in a room at Windsor, with a copy of Sir John’s book hung on a nail beside it. But the apparatus never attained favour, even among the ladies, who preferred the old-style indoor accommodation. Fenton, musing over this while relighting his pipe about every minute with a glowing coal held in a tongs, decided against it.