Lord John and the Hand of Devils

by Diana Gabaldon

  The din in the foundry seemed almost welcoming, a cheerful, self-absorbed racket that was completely uninterested in Major Grey and his experiences on the battlefield at Crefeld. He paused for a moment to watch a moulder beating with an iron rod at a great heap of clay that sat on a bench before him, while an assistant shoveled handsful of horse dung and wool clippings into the mix, counting as he did so.

  In the next bay, men were winding rope carefully round a tapered wooden spindle, some ten feet long, that sat in a sort of large trough, suspended in notches at either end--the cannon mould to which the clay would be applied, he supposed.

  "Beg pardon, sir." A young man appeared out of nowhere, pushing him politely aside in order to retrieve a bucket of soft soap, which he then rushed back and began daubing onto the tight-packed grooves of the rope with a large brush.

  He would have liked to loiter and watch, but he was clearly in the way; already, men were glancing at him, curiosity mingled with a mild hostility at his unuseful presence.

  The rain had at least slackened; he walked out of the main foundry building, his hand curled round the fragment of brass in his pocket, thinking of that missing sliver.

  For the most part, he was unaware of it, and often forgot its presence altogether. Now and then, though, some postural shift would send a brief, piercing pain through his chest, freezing him in place. The English surgeon, Dr. Longstreet, had told him that there might remain some harmless irritation of the nerves, but that the spasms would eventually pass.

  The German surgeon, evidently unaware of Grey's fluency in that language, had agreed, but remarked in his own tongue that there was of course a slight possibility of the sliver's turning suddenly, in which case it might pierce the pericardium, whatever that was.

  But no need to think of that, he had concluded cheerfully, as if so, he will be dead almost at once.

  He had recalled Gormley's directions aright; directly ahead was what the young man had called Dial Arch. Beyond that lay Dial Square, and beyond that in turn he should find the exit he sought to Bell Street, where, no doubt, his long-suffering valet was still waiting for him.

  He smiled wryly at thought of Tom Byrd. He had insisted that there was no need for his valet to accompany him all the way out to Woolwich--it was ten miles, at least--but Byrd would not hear of his going out alone. Tom, bless him, had scarcely let him go anywhere alone since his return from Germany, fearing--and with some reason, Grey was grudgingly forced to admit--that he might collapse on the street.

  He was much better now, though; quite restored, he told himself firmly. Hand still curled round the tiny leopard's head, he paused under the arch to brush and shake himself into order before facing the critical eye of Tom Byrd, aged eighteen.

  A huge stone sundial lay in the center of the square, giving it its name. It was of course not working at the moment, but it did remind Grey of time. He had been engaged to his mother and step-father, General Stanley, for supper, but it was already growing dark; there was no hope of making the long and dangerous carriage ride in time. He'd have to spend the night in Woolwich.

  Unpleasant as that prospect was, it carried with it a sense of relief. He'd seen the general since the "unfortunate occurrence," as Hal so tersely termed it, but only briefly. He hadn't been looking forward to a long tete-a-tete.

  A movement on the other side of the sundial made him look up. A man was standing there, regarding him with a faintly puzzled, somewhat offended look, as though considering his appearance exceptionable in some way.

  Grey might have been offended in turn, were he not taken aback in his turn by the other's appearance, which was most certainly exceptionable.

  He wore an unfamiliar uniform, old-fashioned in appearance, of a regiment that Grey did not recognize. The hilt of a dress sword showed beneath his coat--this a full-skirted garment, blue with scarlet facings, and two antique pistols were thrust through his belt. Below were breeches of a grossly unfashionable cut, baggy at the knee and so loose through the leg as to swim about his figure, stocky as it was. His wig, though, was the most remarkable thing, this being unpowdered, long, and curled upon his shoulders in a glossy profusion of dark brown. It was a most unmilitary sight, and Grey frowned at the man.

  The soldier appeared no more impressed with Grey; he turned upon his heel without a word and walked toward the opening at the other side of the square. Grey opened his mouth to hail the fellow, then stood with it open. The soldier was gone, the archway empty. Or, no--not empty. A young man was there, looking into the square. Another soldier, an artillery officer by his dress--but certainly not the gentleman in the old-fashioned wig.

  "Did you see him?" A voice at Grey's elbow turned him; it was a short, middle-aged man in uniform, faintly familiar. "Did you see him, sir?"

  "The strange gentleman in the ancient wig? Yes." He frowned at the man. "Do I know you?" Memory supplied the answer, even as the soldier knuckled his forehead in salute.

  "Aye, sir, though little wonder should you not recognize me. We met--"

  "At Crefeld. Yes. You were part of the gun crew serving Tom Pilchard, were you not? You were--yes, you were the rammer." He was sure of it, though the neat soldier before him bore little resemblance to the black-stained, sweat-soaked wretch whose half-toothless savage grin was the last image he recalled of the battle of Crefeld.

  "Aye, sir." The rammer appeared less interested in picking up the threads of past acquaintance, though, than in the old-fashioned gentleman who had so abruptly departed. "Did you see him, sir?" he repeated, clearly excited. "It was the ghost!"

  "The what?"

  "The ghost, sir! 'Twas the Arsenal ghost, I'm sure it was!" The rammer--Grey had never known his name--looked at once terrified and thrilled.

  "Whatever are you talking about, Private?" Grey asked sharply. His tone brought the rammer up short, and he stood stiff at attention.

  "Why, sir, it's the Arsenal ghost," he said, and despite his pose, his eyes sought the opposite side of the square, where the apparition--if that's what it was--had vanished. "Everybody knows about the Arsenal ghost--but damn few has seen it!"

  He sounded almost gloating, though his face was still pale.

  "Folk say as he's the ghost of an artillery officer was killed on the proving ground, fifty years or more ago. It's good luck, they say, for an artilleryman to see him--not so good, maybe, was you not of his h'occupation."

  "Good luck," Grey repeated, a little bleakly. "Well, and I'm sure we can all use a bit of that. Come to that, Private, how do you come to be here?"

  The ghost--if that's what he was--had raised not a hair on Grey's head, but the rammer's presence had set the back of his neck to prickling.

  "Oh." The man's look of avid interest faded a little. "I'm summoned, sir. They's a Commission of Inquiry, regarding the h'explosion. Poor old Tom Pilchard," he said, wagging his head mournfully. "'E were a noble gun."

  The rammer glanced at the sundial, gleaming with rain.

  "But I come here, sir, for to see was there enough light to tell the time by the dial, see, sir, not to be late."

  A sense of movement on the other side of the square made Grey look up quickly. It was not the ghost, though--if it had been a ghost--but the small, black-coated functionary who had taken him before the commission, wearing a large handkerchief spread over his wig against the rain, and an annoyed expression.

  "I believe this will be your summons now," Grey said, nodding toward the functionary. "Good luck!"

  The rammer hurriedly straightened his hat, already moving across the square.

  "Thank'ee, sir!" he called. "The same to you!"

  Grey lingered for a moment after the rammer's departure, looking into the walkway beyond the square. It was growing late in the afternoon, and the light was beginning to darken, but the space beyond was perfectly visible--and perfectly empty.

  Grey found himself profoundly uneasy, and seized of a sudden urge to be gone. The artilleryman's ghost--if that's what it was--had not disturbed hi
m in the slightest. What troubled him was the glimpse he had had of the other artilleryman, the young soldier standing in the walkway, watching.

  He had told Oswald that he had had no opportunity of studying Philip Lister's face, and that was true enough. He had, however, seen it, in the instant before the cannonball struck. And he suffered now from a most unsettling conviction that he had just seen it again.

  Drawing his cloak more closely round him, he crossed the square and went to find Tom Byrd, feeling a certain coldness near his heart.

  Tom Byrd was waiting patiently for him in Bell Street, sheltering from the rain in a doorway.

  "All right, me lord?" he inquired, putting on his broad-brimmed hat.

  "Yes, fine."

  Byrd narrowed his eyes at Grey, who reflected--not for the first time--that Byrd's round and essentially guileless young face did not in any way prevent his exhibiting the sort of penetrating suspicion more suitable to an officer in charge of a court-martial--or to a nanny--than to a valet.

  "Fine," Grey repeated, more firmly. "Mere formalities. As I said."

  "As you said," Byrd echoed, with a trifle more skepticism than was entirely becoming. "Covering their arses, I expect."

  "Certainly that," Grey agreed dryly. "Let us find a little food, Tom. And we must find a bed, as well. Do you know anywhere suitable?"

  "To be sure, me lord." Tom squinted in consideration, and after a moment's consultation with the detailed map of London he carried in his head, pointed off toward the east.

  "The Lark's Nest; decent house round the corner," he suggested. "Do a nice oyster pie, and the beer's good. Dunno about the beds."

  Grey nodded.

  "We'll chance the fleas for the sake of the beer."

  He gestured to Tom to lead the way, and pulled down his hat against the steady drizzle. He was hungry--ravenous, in fact--having eaten neither breakfast nor dinner, his appetite suppressed by thought of the coming interview.

  He had been pushing that interview to the back of his mind, in hopes of distancing the Commission's remarks sufficiently to deal rationally with them later. Now relieved of other distraction, though, there was no escape, and the Commission's questions replayed themselves uncomfortably in his mind as he splashed through darkening puddles after Tom.

  He was still angered by Marchmont's insinuations regarding his own possible culpability in the explosion--but not so angered as not to try to examine them honestly.

  The baffling taradiddle regarding Edgar he dismissed, seeing no way to make sense of it, save to suppose that Marchmont had intended to goad him and thus perhaps to drive him into unwary admission of fault.

  Could the explosion have been in any way his fault? He felt a natural resistance to the suggestion, strong as the involuntary jerk of a knee. But he could not dismiss Marchmont's insinuations--or deal with them, if they could not be dismissed--if he was not clear in his own mind about the matter.

  Be the devil's advocate, he told himself, hearing his father's voice in memory. Assume that it was your fault--in what way might it have happened?

  Only two possibilities that he could see. The most likely, as Marchmont had implied, was that the gun crew might, in the excitement of the moment, have double-loaded the cannon, not pausing for the first round to be touched off. When the linstock was put to the touchhole, both rounds would have exploded together, thus blowing the cannon apart.

  The second possibility was that a faulty round might have been loaded, and properly touched off, but failed to explode. It should by rights have then been cleared from the barrel before a fresh load was inserted--but it was far from uncommon for this step to be overlooked in the heat of battle. If the aim did not require to be adjusted, the process of loading and firing developed an inexorable, mindless rhythm after a time; nothing existed save the next motion in the complex process of serving the gun.

  It would be simple; no one would notice that the charge had not gone off, and a fresh load would simply be tamped in on top of the faulty one. Stimulated by the explosion of the second, fresh charge, the faulty one might then explode, as well. He'd seen that happen once, himself, though in that instance, the cannon had merely been damaged, not destroyed.

  Neither instance was rare, he knew. It was therefore the responsibility of the officer commanding the gun to see that every member of the crew performed each step of his duty, to discover such errors in process and correct them before they became irrevocable. Had he done that?

  For the hundredth time since he heard of the Commission of Inquiry, he reviewed his memories of the battle of Crefeld, looking for any indication of an omission, any half-voiced protest by some member of the gun crew...but they had been completely demoralized by the sudden death of their lieutenant, in no frame of mind to concentrate. They might so easily have made an error.

  But the Commission had called the rammer. Had they already interviewed the other surviving members of the gun crew, he wondered suddenly? If so...but if some member of the gun crew had testified to double-loading, Grey would have been facing more than insinuations.

  "Here we are, me lord!" Tom called over his shoulder, turning in to a sturdy, half-timbered house.

  They had arrived at the Lark's Nest, and the smell of food and beer drew him momentarily from his broodings. Even oyster pie, sausage rolls, and good beer, though, could not keep recollection at bay. Once summoned, Crefeld remained with him, the smell of black powder, slaughtered pigs, and rain-soaked fields overpowering the scents of tobacco smoke and fresh-baked bread.

  He had so many impressions of the day, the battle, many of them sharp as crystal--but able, like broken bits of crystal shaken in a dish, to fall suddenly into new and baffling patterns.

  What, exactly, had he done? He recalled some things clearly--seizing the sword from Lister's fallen body, beating the crew back to the gun--but later? He could not be sure.

  Neither could he be sure of the Commission's motives. What in bloody hell had Marchmont meant by dragging Edgar in? Twelvetrees's hostility was more understandable; there was bad blood between the Royal Artillery Regiment and his brother Hal, a feud of long standing, that had not been improved by last month's--Christ, was it only a month past? It seemed years--revelations.

  And Oswald...he had seemed sympathetic by contrast with Marchmont and Twelvetrees, but Grey knew better than to trust such spurious sympathy. Oswald was an elected politician, hence by definition untrustworthy. At least until Grey knew more about who owned him.

  "You are going to eat that, me lord, aren't you?" He looked up to find Tom Byrd focusing a stern look upon the neglected sausage roll in his hand.

  And beyond Tom Byrd, at a table in the corner, sat a uniformed artilleryman, talking with two friends over pint-pots of the excellent beer. The man looked familiar, though he knew he did not know him. Another member of Tom Pilchard's crew?

  "I haven't an appetite," he said abruptly, laying down the roll. "I believe I'll chance the fleas."

  The next morning, he and Tom returned to London by the post coach, arriving at his rooms--officers' quarters at the regimental barracks--by mid-afternoon. He sent a note of apology to his mother, looked at a pile of unopened mail, decided that it could continue in that state indefinitely, picked two or three random lice from his body, bathed, shaved, and then, dressed in a fresh suit of clothes, set out on foot for the Beefsteak Club in Curzon Street.

  He hadn't set foot in the Beefsteak in months. In part, it was a simple disinclination for society; he had needed time apart to heal, before facing the companionship and curiosity--no matter how kindly meant--of his fellows.

  The greater reason, though, was one which he scarcely admitted to himself. He had wished the Beefsteak to remain what it had always been for him--a place of peace and refuge. He could withstand the buffeting of circumstance, comforted by the thought that there was somewhere to which he could retire, if the pressures of the world became too much to bear.

  If he did not go to the Beefsteak, his sense of it wou
ld be unchanged; his refuge was safe. But to go was to risk discovering that it was not, and he stepped across the threshold with a racing heart.

  For an instant, he suffered the delusion that the dark red medallions of the Turkey runner in the entrance hall were blotches of blood, that some unsuspected catastrophe had befallen the place, and that he would enter the library to find bodies strewn in careless butchery.

  He closed his eyes, and put out a hand to the doorjamb to steady himself. Breathed deep, and smelt the incense of tobacco and brandy, aged leather and the musk of men, spiced with the scents of fresh linen, lavender, and bergamot.

  "My lord?" It was the chief steward's voice. He opened his eyes to find the man squinting at him in consternation, the library behind him its usual soft brown self, glowing like paradise in the late-afternoon light that filtered through the lace curtains of the tall windows and suffused the rising wisps of pipe smoke from the smoking room.

  "Will you take a glass of brandywine, my lord?" the steward asked, stepping back to open the way to his favorite chair, a wing-backed object upholstered in a dark-green damask, sagging in the seat and much worn about the arms.

  "If you please, Mr. Bodley," he said, and peace filled his soul.

  He returned to the Beefsteak again the next day, and spent a pleasant hour sipping good brandy in the Hermits' Corner--a trio of chairs set apart, facing the windows, backs turned to the room, for the use of those who had no appetite for company. One of the other chairs was occupied by a man he knew slightly, named Wilbraham; they nodded to each other as Grey sat down, and then studiously ignored each other's presence.

  Behind them came the soothing murmur of masculine conversation, punctuated by laughter and suffused with the odors of linen, sweat, cologne, and brandy, spiced with a hint of tobacco from the smoking room down the hall. Fiber by fiber, Grey felt his clenched muscles relax.

  As he had known it must, though, his tranquillity came to an abrupt end with the descent of a large, meaty hand on his shoulder. He turned to look into Harry Quarry's grinning face, smiled despite himself, and rose, leaving Wilbraham in solitary contemplation of Curzon Street.