A Burial at Sea (3 page)

“Darling,” he said.

“I know I’m foolish!”

“You’re not. Shall I stay with you? We can go back to London this evening if you prefer.”

“No! No, you must go. I know it’s important, oh, in every sort of way. And I know you want to go! But it will be hard to be alone for two months, and just when I’m with child.”

The landlady came in now, carrying a tray laden with tea cakes, biscuits, sandwiches, mugs, a milk jug, a sugar pot, and a teakettle. She avoided looking at them as she transferred the tray’s contents to their small table with rapid precision. “And take your time,” she said before she hurried out.

When they had discovered Jane was pregnant, a week or so after Lenox had committed to this trip for his brother, both had been immensely happy. Strangely it wasn’t the chattering, social sort of happiness their marriage had been: both found in the next days that more than anything they would prefer to sit on the sofa together, not even talking much, perhaps reading, eating now and then, holding hands. It was a joy both of them preferred to experience almost silently, perhaps because it was so overwhelming.

When it occurred to Lenox that leaving might mean missing two months of that joy, he had immediately decided that he wouldn’t do it. In fact it had been she who convinced him he still must, after he told her the reason Edmund had asked. Since then she had always been staunchly in favor of the voyage. This was the first hint to Lenox that she felt otherwise.

Sitting at the table, looking despondent, not touching the steaming cup of tea in front of her, Jane said, “This is silly—we’ll be late. We should go.”

“I’d rather sit here,” he answered. “Will you eat something?”

“No.”

“I should, then.”

He picked up a sandwich with butter and tomato on it, no crusts, and took a bite. He found that he was hungry—the orange was still in his jacket pocket, half peeled—and when he had finished the sandwich he took a tea cake too and started to butter it.

Through her tears she smiled. “You can always eat, can’t you?”

He stopped chewing his cake in the middle of a bite and, with a look of surprised innocence, said, “Me?”

“You, Charles Lenox. I remember you as a seven-year-old, stuffing your face with slices of cold cottage pie when you thought nobody was looking, on hunt days.”

They laughed. Tenderly, he put his hand to her stomach. “I’ll be back soon, you know.”

“I worry you won’t come back at all. What do you know about a ship, Charles?”

“Ever so much now. How many sails it has, what it’s made of, who all the officers are, what the midshipmen do, where one sleeps and eats…”

“I don’t mean that. I mean you’re liable to fall off and vanish into the ocean because you thought you could lean on the railing…” She trailed off and gave him a miserable look.

“You can’t think how careful I’ll be, Jane,” he said, and again grasped her hand.

“I’ll worry myself sick, is all I know.”

“I’ll write to you.”

She rolled her eyes. “That will do me no good—you’ll beat your letters home, I’m sure.”

“It’s not a far sail, and the weather is calm. Captain Martin has a great deal of experience. She’s a good ship.”

“Oh, I know all that! Am I not allowed to be irrational once in a while?”

“You are, to be sure you are.”

To his sorrow their conversation progressed this way and ended inconclusively, as he promised again and again to be safe and avowed his disappointment at missing two months of her company, and as she said again and again that well, it was all right, even though plainly it wasn’t.

Just as they absolutely had to leave, however, she reached up for his cheek and gave him a swift kiss. “It’s only because I love you, Charles,” she whispered.

“And I you.”

They went out and walked the final street that slanted sharply down to the docks, which were loud with bickering voices and smelled of heat, fish, salt, wood, and rope.

He took some mild solace in thinking of the letter he had left behind on her pillow in London: it was a very good sort of letter, long and full of thoughts and declarations of love and speculation about what their child would be like and ideas for what they might do when he returned to London. She would be comforted by that at least. He hoped.

They found the sailors with Lenox’s effects, and then Lady Jane pointed off to the right.

“Look, there they are—your brother and Teddy. The poor boy looks green with fear.” She looked up at him. “I still find it difficult to believe you and your nephew will be novices aboard the same ship, don’t you?”

CHAPTER FOUR

This was indeed the case. Lenox had discovered it during the course of his fateful conversation with Edmund two months before. On that snowy evening the older brother had offered the younger an explanation of his request.

“We’ve had a disaster, Charles. That’s why I’ve been in these meetings with the prime minister.”

“What happened?”

Edmund sighed and rubbed his eyes, weary from long days and worry. He took a deep sup of whisky. “What do you know of our intelligence systems?”

“Very little. What they say in the papers, perhaps a bit more.”

“Our officers are all across Europe, of course, Charles,” said Edmund, “and despite this peace—this tenuous peace—many of them are still concentrated in and around France. The prospect of another war is very real, you should know.

“Eight days ago an Englishman named Harold Rucks, resident in Marseille, was found dead in a bedroom above a brothel near the docks. He had been stabbed in the heart, and the woman who worked from that room—a new recruit to her work, you’ll note—was nowhere to be found.”

“I take it he was one of your men?” said Charles.

“Yes. In Marseille he was considered a simple expatriate drunk, but that was merely the façade he had adopted. He was quite a competent man, if violent-tempered. At first we considered the possibility that he had died in an argument over something personal—money, let’s say, or indeed what he was paying for—but the next day another Englishman died, this time in Nîmes. His name was Arthur Archer. He was garroted in an alleyway. Nasty death.”

“I see.”

“You can guess what happened then. Three more men, two in Paris, one in Nice. All dead. Five of ours.”

“How were their identities discovered?”

Edmund sighed and stroked his cheek pensively, looking for all the world like a farmer anxious over crops. But these were higher stakes.

“A list went missing from our ministry. Eight names on it. The three who weren’t killed were fortunate: two were back in England, one who just managed to get out of Paris with his life, though he left all of his possessions behind. He was fired upon as he got into the ferry.”

“The French mean business.”

“You can see that the peace is … a complex one,” said Edmund with a wry smile. He took another sip of his drink. “What’s fortunate is that none of them were tortured for information. There’s some evidence that Archer was to be kidnapped, but struggled enough that they simply killed him. The same may be true of one of our men in Paris, Franklin King.”

“Does this mean that someone in our government is working for the French?”

“I fear it does. We’re looking into it, you may rely on that.”

“Treason.”

“Yes. We haven’t found the man yet, but we will, and in the meantime all of our activities—our intelligence activities—have been suspended.” Edmund looked uneasy then. “Well. Except for one.”

“Egypt.”

The brothers sat in silence for a moment. Charles, for his part, was knocked backwards, though through some ancient childhood wish to seem strong to his older brother, he acted calm. But he had had no idea that such arcane and troubling matters fell within his brother’s bailiwick. Edmund had been a good member of the party, but devoted his time (as far as anyone knew at least) to broader public issues like voting or the colonies.

Worse still, he saw that it was taking a toll on Edmund, who looked tired and dogged with worry.

As if sensing Charles’s thoughts, Edmund said, “I didn’t ask for the responsibility, but I couldn’t decline it, could I?”

“No. Of course not.”

“You see the problem.”

“Well, tell me,” said Charles.

“We don’t know how much information the French have. Is it everything, every name? Are they sticking to this list of eight men to make it seem that they know less than they do? Or do they really know nothing beyond those eight names?”

“We need to find out what they have, then.”

Edmund rolled his eyes. “They need ice water in hell, too, but I doubt they get much of it.”

“Tell me about Egypt.”

“In our disarray we’ve accepted that we must sacrifice certain knowledge we had hoped to acquire about the French munitions, their navy, so forth and so on. Rucks was particularly well placed to study their navy, being in a port city, but so be it. Still, there’s one thing we must know.”

“Yes?”

“Whether the French mean to strike at us preemptively. To start another war.”

“They wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be in their interests, would it?” said Charles.

As Edmund pondered how to answer this question the fire shifted, a log breaking in half. Both men stood up and started to fiddle with it, one with the poker and the other with a sort of long iron claw that could pick up bits of wood.

“We’ve still the finest navy that has ever gone afloat,” Edmund said at last, “but the margin is shrinking, I can tell you frankly, and on land they may be just as strong as we are. The colonies have spread us a bit thin. If they have any ambitions of greater power … let’s say it’s not impossible.”

“I see.”

“Making matters worse, of course, is that we still don’t know quite where we are with this government. Napoleon the Third has been gone for three years now—and for that matter died in January—and this third republic is unpredictable. We can never be sure whose voice matters there. We had thought these
bouleversements
might cease, but the deaths of our men … this is where we need you to step in.”

“How?”

“We have a man in place in the French Ministry of War, working directly under Cissey, their secrétaire d’état de la guerre. This fellow is very high up, very clever, but rather poor. Despite the death of the empire it’s mostly the aristocrats who work in their government as I understand.”

“How unfamiliar,” said Lenox.

Edmund laughed. “Well, quite so. Not all that different from here, I suppose. This chap is no aristocrat. He’s clever, though, and he’s a mercenary. For money he’ll tell us all we need to know about the new government’s intentions.”

“How much?”

Edmund quoted a figure that made Charles whistle. “It’s not ideal. A man you have to pay is much less reliable than a man who burns with patriotic fervor, but so be it.”

“How do you know he’s not acting under orders, Ed? Playing a double game?”

“We have other informants, men who would know if that were the case. But they’re not at so high a level as this gentleman.”

Charles sat down again and for a moment brooded over all this. “You’re in disarray, then,” he said at last, “and need someone the French couldn’t possibly have on any … any list of names?”

“Precisely. We need someone who can go to Egypt in a public guise.”

“Why Egypt?”

“We don’t dare send anyone to France, because of course they’ll be on guard at such a tense, decisive moment. But this French gentleman, the one who can pass us information, has business he may plausibly conduct in Suez.”

Charles saw all now. “And you thought you would send me to the canal as a member of Parliament—but in fact to meet this gentleman?”

Edmund nodded, and then, with a look of eagerness that made his younger brother nearly smile, said, “What do you think?”

“I’ll do it, of course.”

“Excellent. What a relief that is.”

This puzzled Charles. “Why?”

“Well—because we need someone we trust.”

“There are other men in Parliament who would do it, I imagine.”

“But we don’t want a man without any special loyalty to Gladstone and the current government to have this information—this power over the leadership of the party, you see. You’re my brother, and it’s our luck that on top of that you’re a clever and discreet member.”

“Thank you, then.”

A brief pause. “There one thing I’ve omitted, however.”

Lenox had felt it coming. “Oh?”

“We would ask that you go on the
Lucy
. Does the name ring a bell?”

“Vaguely.”

Edmund looked uncomfortable now. “It will be Teddy’s first ship, you see.”

Indignation filled Lenox.

Teddy was his—very beloved—nephew, Edmund’s second son, who had been groomed, like many of his mother’s clan, which had seemingly a hundred admirals lurking in its family tree, to enter the navy at a young age. He had recently turned fourteen, and was just now ready to become a midshipman.

“So there’s no special task,” said Charles. “You don’t need me. You simply want a babysitter.”

“No, no!” Edmund, to his credit, looked horribly unhappy. “I feared you would take it this way.”

“I don’t mind, of course. I’ll do it. But I wish you had been honest.”

“Charles, no! I view this as nothing more than a lucky coincidence. Your primary job will be to meet our French contact in Egypt, and make some sort of trumped-up speech we give you as cover for that job.”

“Oh, is that to be my ‘primary’ job?” Charles said, hearing the bitterness in his own voice.

“Listen, Charles—if this doesn’t convince you nothing will. It wasn’t I who brought your name up. Gladstone did.”

This gave Lenox pause. “The prime minister? Asked for me?”

“Yes. And he had no idea that Teddy would be on our next ship to Egypt, either.” Edmund looked hopefully up at Charles, who was pacing toward the snow-covered window. “He likes you. And to be certain, it helped that you were my brother—someone we could trust. But he wouldn’t send an incompetent for loyalty’s sake.”

“Hmm.”

“Charles, listen to reason. England needs you. This may be the most important thing you do, you know.”