The Black Hawk sl-4

by Joanna Bourne

  Doyle got grave and quiet, deep voiced and dead serious. “You’re giving your sister to us?”

  “I give her to Marguerite.” Owl fumbled around for the valise she’d stowed away. That would be clothes for the kid in there. She pulled the bag out and held it, looking at Séverine.

  There was no way to say what he saw in Owl’s face. Once he’d watched a man get knifed in the belly and know he was going to die. It took him a while to get it done. That was how he’d looked the whole time.

  Maggie and Doyle talked low, back and forth. Doyle nodded. Then he put his hand on the sprat’s head. “Séverine is mine. I’ll treat her no differently than a child of my blood, born in wedlock. I’ll set her welfare before my own life. I will love her as a father. You have my word.”

  Back in London, back in the gang he’d lived with, they called that a blood oath.

  Owl knew what she’d done. That flat, black, blank behind her eyes was her knowing exactly what she’d done. No telling how much Séverine understood of all this. Might be a lot. She was a smart little kid.

  Maggie put her hand out toward Owl. “How can I take your sister and leave you behind? Do you think I wouldn’t welcome you? Come with us.”

  Hell. Hell and damn. That wasn’t going to happen. If Owl wasn’t on the rolls of the Police Secrète, she reported to somebody who was.

  He didn’t stay to listen while Doyle told Maggie why Owl couldn’t come to England. Lots of things to do that didn’t involve watching that. The load on the donkeys had to be shifted and balanced and tacked down to take account of a new bag. He had to make a place for Séverine to ride.

  They talked. He tried not to listen too much. After a while, Owl came over, walking like a marionette, stiff and awkward. She lifted the bag to where he’d made a place for it. “I have packed clothing for her. Things she will need. Her . . . doll.”

  “Some people wouldn’t leave this to the last minute. The kid’s going to make them conspicuous.” He wasn’t gentle. Owl didn’t want to break down in front of Séverine. She was close to doing that.

  “What is more inconspicuous than a child? Would anyone suspect a family traveling across the countryside with a small child? No and no. Everyone should take an infant or two with them upon their missions.”

  He shrugged and made a clicking with his lips, which was one of those French noises he was practicing.

  “She is a better companion than you, in fact, because she has been trained to keep her mouth closed and follow orders, which you have not.”

  He’d made her angry. Good. She didn’t look as dead inside. “I follow orders.” He hauled out the blankets, rolled them, and tied them on the donkey, making a sort of half-moon shape where Séverine could ride. “It’s that hair of hers. Might as well attach a red flag. That has to . . . Here.” He took a string of leather and went to braid up the sprat’s hair and tie it. “That’s better. But she’s dressed too well. You should dirty her up. Put some mud on her.”

  “I am pleased to know she will not be in your hands, Citoyen’Awker.”

  That was enough prodding to get her spine stiff. To let her blink back tears. She walked with Maggie, saying good-bye to Séverine without saying it. Touching her sister’s back once.

  Last thing, before she left, she handed over their real name. DeCabrillac. Their father was a count, which it was just as well he hadn’t known when he was shoving her arse out of his way back in the Coach House.

  When Owl left, she walked away fast and didn’t look back.

  Doyle motioned him over. “I wish I could take that girl with me. It’s a shame and a sin sending her back into that shambles.”

  Nothing much to say to that.

  Doyle said, “She’s going to be dangerous in a few years. On their side.”

  “She’s dangerous already.”

  “You go follow her. Make sure she gets back to that damned brothel safely.”

  No hardship. He would have done it anyway.

  He found her two streets away, sitting on a doorstep, her head in her hands. She didn’t look up to see who it was that stopped in front of her. Probably she recognized his boots.

  He said, “We can go get her back if that’s what you want.”

  That was a lie. He wasn’t going to take the sprat away from Maggie. Owl had done the right thing, and she knew it.

  “You know very well there is no going back.” She took her hands away from her face and put them together on her knees, a pair of fists, facing each other.

  “Just so you understand.”

  “I have kept her safe for more than two years. Clean and cared for and well fed. That is not a small thing to do. I was eleven when I started.”

  “You took care of her fine.”

  “I taught her the letters. And to speak some German and English.” Her fists tightened in her lap. “Babette is teaching her . . . Babette was teaching her to cook.”

  “Useful stuff.”

  “It has never been right, never, that the child of my father should grow up in a brothel.”

  “I can see that.”

  “She is not safe in Paris. There could be fighting again. Any disaster at all. If I am killed, there might be no one left to protect her. I have to send her away.”

  He sat down beside her, one step up, so it’d be like he was taller. She needed somebody taller, and he wasn’t yet. There was plenty of room on the step, but he sat close and put his arm across her shoulder. “I know.”

  “There is no one better on this earth than Marguerite to care for her. Séverine will be safe in England. They will have a house for her where everything is pleasant and . . . English. With a dog.”

  “Doyle likes dogs. Big ones.” Not the right thing to say. “And little ones. He’ll get her a . . .” He didn’t know a damn thing about gentlemen’s dogs. He knew about alley dogs and fighting dogs. “. . . hound.”

  She wasn’t paying attention. “It is not possible for me to be with her. You understand that. I will never, never, never permit it that someone points to her and calls her ‘sister of the whore.’ I will not let that happen.”

  “Well, now it won’t. You’ve done what you had to.”

  She gave up on trying not to cry. She put her face against him and shook. She kept it muffled on his shirt. There wasn’t a damn thing he could say.

  Fifteen

  1818

  Meeks Street, London

  THEY WAITED BY HER BED, DRINKING TEA, THEN coffee as it got later. For a few hours, Hawker thought she’d escaped the poison. After sunset, he knew she hadn’t.

  It came over her like cold mist lying down on a hill. The restless, nervous, pained movements stopped. She lay on the bed in a limp, unnatural stillness. Her breathing changed. Caught. Ratcheted. Became shallow gasps. She was dying, and there was nothing he could do.

  A shudder. Then another shudder ran through her. A strangled sound in her throat.

  He put his hand on her chest. This isn’t happening. I won’t let this happen.

  He heard Luke’s footsteps in the hall. At last.

  Luke dropped his medical bag by the door. Strode to the foot of the bed. He stripped the blankets off her in a single motion.

  “She can’t breathe,” Doyle said. “It’s getting worse.”

  “Tremor? Jerking in her muscles? Stiffness in her neck? Her back?”

  “Not that.” Doyle pulled the cover the rest of the way off.

  Luke felt the muscles of her calf. Hooked her ankle up and flexed her foot back and forth. Ran his finger along the bottom of her foot. “Not responsive. Paralysis.”

  Her lips had gone blue. Panicked, half-conscious, she convulsed, trying to suck air in. She gurgled ugly, shallow pants.

  Slowly, painfully, horribly, she was suffocating before his eyes. And she couldn’t move.

  “Help her, damn it.”

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Luke snapped. “Her muscles aren’t working. Not even any reflexes. The diaphragm can’t—”

&nb
sp; She needed air. He’d give her air. He opened her mouth with his fingers and blew air inside her, hard.

  It puffed back out. He blew in again.

  Luke said, “Do that.” He leaned over to look in her face. “Do that again.”

  The air was getting inside her. She was less desperate.

  “There’s a Frenchman.” Luke ran his hands over Justine’s ribs, feeling them expand with the air. “Frenchman. Can’t remember his name. Wrote a monograph. Lay her down.” He put the heels of his hands below her breasts and pressed down all his weight. Air whistled out of her. “Blow in again.”

  She was trying to breathe. Hawker did it for her.

  “This Frenchman talked about doing this for drowning men.” Luke pushed down. Her breath whooshed out. The bed sagged. “I didn’t think it would work.”

  The air had to get out of her, before he could put more in. They needed a hard surface. “The bed’s too soft. Get her down on the floor.”

  She flopped on the rug like a rag doll. He knelt at her head.

  “She’s bleeding under the bandage,” Doyle said. “Bleeding bad.”

  “Then stop it,” he snapped. He gave her air.

  “More. More,” Luke said. “Enough.” He waited a beat. Shoved downward on her chest. “Good. Again. Let me know when you start to feel light-headed.”

  Another breath into her. “Damned if I’ll let you die.” He knelt beside her and breathed for her.

  They took turns keeping her alive. Past midnight, she started taking in air on her own. When she got reliable at it, they lifted her back to the bed and set chairs around it. They just sat there, staring at each other, exhausted and relieved.

  At three in the morning, the fever began.

  * * *

  SHE felt so hot. Her arm ached, sharply. Pain radiated through her body, into her chest. Pain had been in the dreams with her.

  She was on her back, naked and damp. Her skin crawled with heat. Itchy with the heat. The light coming in the window said it was dawn. Still raining.

  Someone had followed her in the rain and stabbed her. She had never been careless. Her attacker must be very, very good.

  “It was one man. I didn’t see his face. Just a glimpse.” Her throat was dry. She made almost no sound. “Water.”

  “Don’t move. I’ll help you drink.”

  “. . . Papers.”

  “Safe. Downstairs. We’re drying them out. Drink this.” She ached hollowly, as if a bell of pain clanged in her chest. He put an arm behind her and let her drink. Then she was flat again, looking up at the ceiling. He looped her hair around his hand and laid it to the side on the pillow, out of the way.

  There was no square foot in the hallways of her body that did not hurt. The covers were hot. Stifling. It was too much trouble to move. Easier to just be too hot. She closed her eyes.

  She was safe. Hawker would not let anything happen to her.

  Sixteen

  DOYLE FOUND PAX IN THE STUDY, SITTING CROSS-LEGGED on the hearthrug, toasting wet newsprint on an ash shovel. Three clippings, dry, crinkled and curling at the edges, lay on the bricks.

  Doyle came over to watch. “Hawk sent me down to see how you’re getting on.”

  “It’s slow. How’s the breathing?”

  “Good. She’s breathing easy. That part looks over with.” Doyle brought a pair of glasses out of his jacket pocket and hunkered down. He pushed the clippings into line and looked at them. “The fever’s worse.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad. She’s out of her head with it.” He rearranged the papers, smallest to largest. “I hope Sévie gets here in time.”

  “She’ll hurry.”

  “I wish Maggie was upstairs, keeping Hawk’s woman alive.” Doyle put on his glasses and picked up the first clipping.

  “I was wishing for Camille. Hell of a time for wives to be working in France. You sent messages?”

  “It’ll be finished, one way or the other, before they get the letters.” Doyle turned a clipping over and then back again. “Looks like this is cut out of the Times. It is the obituary for one Antoine Morreau, bookseller in Paternoster Lane. ‘Dead, suddenly, at his place of business.’ No desolate family is mentioned, so we will assume he is unmarried. A respectable address, so we will assume he is prosperous. Why did our Justine find this particular death of interest?”

  “He got himself murdered, if that’s interesting.” Pax took up the ash shovel and went back to dealing with damp newsprint.

  “Not in and of itself, ’specially.” Doyle took up the next page. “‘Monstrous Crime in Paternoster Lane.’ ‘Shopkeeper murdered in a wanton daylight robbery.’ Our bookseller had his throat slashed and his money box broken. We continue . . .” He picked the last sheet. “It looks like a dark-haired man did the deed and ran off. ‘Neighborhood shocked.’”

  “I read that. More than a week ago. Ten days, I think. You were still in Scotland. I didn’t think it was worth filing, even with the French link.”

  Doyle ran a considering finger along stubble on his chin. “Paternoster Lane. They do not normally stab citizens over their shop counters in that part of town.” He picked up another piece of paper. “This is the Observer, reporting the same thing, the bottom half of which is no doubt interesting but we can’t read it. Felicity can hie herself off to the Strand to their office to make a copy. And I will drop by Bow Street to see what they know about our dead bookseller.”

  “Cummings will be annoyed.” Pax tested wet newsprint with the point of his knife. The top sheet wasn’t ready to separate off. “London murders fall into his territory.”

  “Annoying Military Intelligence and Cummings is jam on the bun.”

  Pax offered a view of the paper he was lifting loose. “Another somebody, bloodily dead.”

  “‘An incident in Finns Alley.’ That’s off Dean Street in Soho. I’d stab somebody in Finns Alley if I was setting about the business. ‘The public is asked to come forward with any information.’ They don’t mention outrage and shock, that being in short supply in Soho. ‘The body is identified as . . .’ Looks like Monsieur something.”

  “A Monsieur Richelet. This is yesterday’s Times.”

  “Justine’s collecting dead Frenchmen. Everybody should have a hobby. This one died late Sunday night. Day before yesterday.” Doyle glanced up to where light was coming through a break in the curtains. “No. Two days ago, now. We’ll still have the paper upstairs.”

  “I’ll catch George before he burns it. It looked like just another random death. Only showed up in the Times because one of the witnesses was an army man of some distinction.”

  “A sad commentary upon the human condition.”

  Pax set the shovel flat on the hearth. The upper sheet was mostly dry. He freed the last corner and eased it away. The page below was still wet. The general gray tinge made it hard to pick out words. He said, “The Courier, I think.”

  “With a more complete account of the same murder. ‘A Stabbing in Soho.’” Doyle took the handle of the shovel and slanted the writing toward the fire to get better light. “And what else do they have to say? ‘Violence in the foreign community. When will it end?’ That is something I ask myself daily. According to eyewitnesses, a slight, dark man of foreign appearance fled the scene.”

  “This,” Pax rested the point of his knife on a line near the bottom of the clipping. “This is what Justine came to tell us.”

  “‘Do sinister Eastern assassins threaten our streets? The curious black knife left in the body—’ ” Doyle stopped. “God’s avenging chickens.”

  “Exactly.”

  Seventeen

  TWENTY-ONE YEARS BEFORE

  1797

  Oxfordshire, England

  FRIQUET WAS SMALL AND BROWN WITH DELICATE hooves and a way of nosing gently among the tangle of grass and weeds that grew along the bank of the stream, taking this plant and leaving another. When Séverine rode out with Pascal the groom, she could not allow Friquet to indulge him
self in weeds. Pascal had strong opinions about what ponies should eat and worried about Friquet’s digestion ceaselessly.

  Pascal was French, though he had no accent. He had a sad history and had been sent here to be healed by Maman, although he did not know it. Eventually he would stop being nervous and angry and go away to school. There had been several such grooms.

  She was not supposed to know that part of his job was to protect her. Papa worked for the government and was very important. He was a spy. Her friend Hawker was also, though he was less important because he was younger. There were always several men working in the garden or the stable who protected everyone.

  Pascal had gone onward to the stable. She was allowed to be by herself once she had crossed the stream and was within sight of the house. Friquet waded into the water and ate his watercress and chickweed in peace. She could pick her own watercress to eat and think about things. Pascal could not say she was not allowed to eat plants from the stream, but he looked disapproving.

  It was raining a small amount, but that did not bother her. She sat under the tree where it was all moss and she would not get her dress muddy. The tree kept most of the rain off. It was an oak and had probably been here when Cromwell burned the manor in Thinch. One night, when she was out with Papa and they were hiking quietly through the woods, finding their way around using the stars, Papa had showed her where Cromwell’s troops marched over Thinch Hill and explained why they had come that way instead of another.

  She ate watercress, putting it leaf by leaf on her tongue. Papa was in France, being clever against Napoleon, although she was supposed to tell anyone who asked that he was in Bristol on business. They didn’t know about Papa in the village.

  Down the stream where the bushes were thick a hand emerged from the greenery, and then a face under a black shawl, and then...