Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (4 page)

Hal was still watching the open door. Grey couldn’t tell whether he was merely on the alert, or avoiding meeting Grey’s eyes. Hal was a good liar when he needed to be, but Grey knew his brother extremely well—and Hal knew him. He took a deep breath, ordering his thoughts. The smell of burnt paper was sharp in his nose.

“Clearly it wasn’t burnt,” Grey said slowly. “So we must assume, first, that it was stolen, and then that whoever took it has kept it until now. Who, and why? And why does he—whoever he is—inform you now that he has it? And why did Mother—”

“Damned if I know.” Hal did look at him then, and Grey’s anger faded as he saw that his brother was indeed telling the truth. He saw something else that disquieted him extremely—his brother was afraid.

“It is a threat of some sort?” he asked, lowering his voice still further. There had been nothing on the page he had read to suggest such a thing; it had been part of an account of a meeting his father had had with a longtime friend and their discussion of astronomy, quite innocuous. Therefore, the page had plainly been meant only to inform Hal of the existence of the journal itself—and whatever else it might contain.

“God knows,” Hal said. “What the devil could it—well.” He rubbed a knuckle hard across his lips, and glanced at Grey. “
Don’t
speak to Mother about it. I’ll do it,” he added, seeing Grey about to protest.

The sound of boots and voices along the passage prevented further conversation. Captain Wilmot, with his sergeant and a company clerk. Hal reached out and quietly closed the door; they waited in silence as the noise died away.

“Do you know a man named Melchior Ffoulkes?” Hal asked abruptly.

“No,” Grey replied, wondering whether this had to do with the matter at hand, or was a change of subject. “I am reasonably sure I’d recall him, if I did.”

That provoked the ghost of a smile from Hal.

“Yes, you would. Or a private soldier named Harrison Otway? From the Eleventh Foot.”

“What a ridiculous name. No, who is he?”

“Captain Michael Bates?”

“Well, I’ve heard of him, at least. Horse Guards, is he not? Flash cove, as Tom Byrd puts it. What, may I ask, is the purpose of this catechism? Do sit down, Hal.” He sat himself, and after a moment’s hesitation, Hal slowly followed suit.

“Have you ever met Captain Bates?”

Grey was becoming annoyed, but answered flippantly.

“Not to remember, certainly. I couldn’t swear that I’ve never shared a bed with him in an inn, of course—”

Hal’s hand gripped his forearm, so hard that he gasped.

“Don’t,” Hal said, very softly. “Don’t make jokes.”

Grey stared into his brother’s eyes, seeing the lines of his face cut deep. The journal page had shocked him, but he had already been disturbed.

“Let go,” Grey said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

Hal slowly withdrew his hand.

“I don’t know. Not yet.”

“Who are these men? Have they anything to do with—” He glanced at the fireplace, but Hal shook his head.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so—but it’s possible.” The sound of footsteps echoed in the hallway, and Hal stopped speaking abruptly. The footsteps were distinctive, the sound of a heavy man with a decided limp. Ewart Symington, the second regimental colonel, Harry Quarry’s opposite number.

Hal grimaced and John nodded understanding. Neither one of them desired to speak with Symington at the moment. They stood silent, waiting. Sure enough, the steps came to a halt, and a fist thundered on the panels of the door. Symington was as brutal of manner as of appearance, resembling nothing so much as a dyspeptic boar.

Another thunderous assault on the door, a moment’s pause, and Symington uttered a muffled oath and limped off.

“He’ll be back,” Hal said, under his breath, and took his cloak from its peg by the door. “Come with me to White’s; we’ll talk on the way.”

Grey thrust his arms into his greatcoat and a moment later they had escaped into the street, Hal having instructed Mr. Beasley to tell Colonel Symington that Lord Melton had gone to Bath.

“Bath?” Grey asked, as they exited. “At this time of year?” It was no more than half-past three, yet twilight was louring. The pavement was dark with wet and the air thick with the scent of oncoming snow.

Hal waved off his waiting carriage, and turned the corner.

“Anywhere closer, and he’d follow me there. Say what you will of the man, he’s damned persistent.” That was said with grudging respect; persistence was Symington’s chief military virtue, and not a mean one. In more social situations, it was somewhat trying.

“What does he want?”

Grey asked only for the sake of delaying discussion, and was not surprised to receive only a moody shrug from Hal. His brother appeared no more eager to resume their conversation than he was, and they walked for half a mile or so in silence, each alone with his thoughts.

Grey’s own thoughts were a jumble, veering from anticipation and curiosity at the thought of Percy Wainwright to concern at his brother’s obvious agitation. Over all of it, though, was the image of the page he had held so briefly in his hands.

He forced all other thought from his mind, concentrating on remembering, committing the words he had read to memory. He still felt the shock of Hal’s throwing the paper into the fire, and could not bear the thought that those words of his father’s, pedestrian as they might be, should be lost to him. The duke’s journals were no secret, and yet he had read them secretly, abstracting one at a time and smuggling each volume to his room, returning them to their shelf, careful that no one should see.

He could not have said why it seemed important to keep this postmortem relationship with his father private. Only that it had been.

He had more or less succeeded in fixing at least the substance of the vanished page in memory, when Hal finally hunched his shoulders and spoke abruptly.

“There has been talk. Regarding conspiracies.”

“When is there not? Which particular conspiracy concerns you?”

“Not me, so much.” Hal settled his hat more firmly, bending his head into the wind. “And it has not yet blown up into open scandal, but it almost certainly will—and soon.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Grey observed caustically. “There hasn’t been a decent scandal since Christmas. Who does this one involve?”

“A sodomite conspiracy to undermine the government by assassination of selected ministers.”

Grey felt a tightening of the belly, but replied casually. It was not the first time he had heard of such a notion; sodomitical associations and conspiracies were a standby of street criers and Fleet Street hacks whenever news became too slow.

“And why does this concern you?”

Hal fixed his eyes on the slimy cobbles.

“Us. It is a thing that was said. Of—of Father.” The word struck Grey in the pit of the stomach, like a pebble from a sling. He was not sure he had ever heard Hal use the word “Father” any time in the last fifteen years.

“That he was a sodomite?” Grey said, incredulous. Hal drew a deep breath, but seemed to relax a bit.

“No. Not in so many words. Nor was it—thank God—a popular rumor. Only random accusations at the time of his death, made by members of the Society—such accusations were common, thrown at almost every man of any visibility connected with the South Sea Bubble. The scandal was blamed on ‘companies of sodomites’—though God knows it was blamed on every other group, interest, or person anyone could think of, as well. But the Society was prominent at the time, and sodomitical conspiracies were their particular obsession.”

“The Society?” Grey said blankly. “Which Society is this?”

“I forgot. You would not have been old enough to hear much at the time—”

“Damned little, in Aberdeen.” Grey made no attempt to keep an edge of bitterness from his voice, and his brother glanced sharply at him.

“Which is precisely why you were sent there,” Hal said, his voice level. “In any case, it is the Society for the Reformation of Manners to which I refer; you
have
heard of them?”

“I have, yes.” Angry and unsettled, Grey was making no effort to hide his feelings, and let distaste and contempt show in his voice. “Prigs and puritans, who will not acknowledge their own base urges, but find delight—and release, no doubt—in accusations of corruption, in blackening the characters of innocent men. They are—”

Hal put a restraining hand on his arm again—no more than a touch, this time—to keep him from speaking further, as two chairmen went by at the trot, their heads wreathed in white smoke from their panting breath.

The cold and twilight kept many folk indoors, but there were those whose livelihoods compelled them to the streets, and as they approached St. James Street, there began to be more of them. A balladeer, chestnut sellers, apple-women crying the virtues of their wizened fruit. Grey saw his brother scrutinize each person they passed, as though he suspected them of something.

“Captain Michael Bates is thought to be deeply involved,” Hal said at last. “The general told me of the matter after you and Wainwright had left yesterday; Bates’s father is General Ezekial Bates—long retired, but an intimate of General Stanley’s.”

“Ah,” Grey said. “I see.” He felt unsettled still, vaguely alarmed, pointlessly angry—but this intelligence relieved his mind a little. At least now he knew why the matter had come to Hal’s attention. “And the other men you mentioned—Otway and Ffoulkes?”

“Otway is a private soldier in the Eleventh Infantry, a nobody. Ffoulkes is a reasonably well-known solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn.”

“How are these men connected?”

“Through Bates.”

Captain Bates and Ffoulkes had met, according to General Stanley, when Ffoulkes had handled a minor matter of business for the captain’s family. Otway had evidently met Bates in a tavern near Temple Stairs, formed an unwholesome connexion with him, and then later been introduced to Ffoulkes, though the general did not know the circumstances.

“Indeed,” said Grey, thinking of the bog-houses near Lincoln’s Inn, a spot much patronized by both lawyers and mollies. “This…association is what they refer to as a ‘company of sodomites’? It seems lacking in both membership and organizing principles, I think.”

Hal snorted a little; his breath purled white in the winter air.

“Oh, there’s more. Our friend Ffoulkes, it seems, has a French wife. Who in turn has two brothers. One of these brothers is a notorious pederast—notorious even by French standards—while the other is a colonel in the French army.”

Grey grunted in surprise.

“And is there any evidence of—I suppose it must be treason?”

“It is. And there is. The War Office got wind of something, and has been quietly pursuing the matter for some months. Bates—he was General Stanley’s chief aide-de-camp for some time before joining the Horse Guards, by the way—”

“Christ.”

“Precisely. He apparently had been passing secret materials to Otway, who in turn delivered these to Ffoulkes in the course of their assignations. And from there, of course…”

Grey drew the evening air deep into his lungs. The last of his defensive anger chilled, leaving him cold. It
was
a personal matter—but not directly personal. Hal’s concern was for the general, of course—and for their family, lest the old rumors be resurrected in light of fresh scandal, stimulated by their mother’s new marriage.

“What has been done?” he asked. “I have heard nothing of it in the streets, read nothing in the periodicals.”

Hal’s shoulders hunched a little; they were passing a gate where torches burned, and Grey saw his brother’s shadow, foreshortened and shrunk, the image of an old man.

“It has been kept as quiet as possible. Bates and Otway were both arrested yesterday, though.”

“And Ffoulkes?”

Hal’s head lifted, and he blew out a long white breath.

“Ffoulkes shot himself this morning.”

Grey walked on, mechanically, no longer feeling chill or cobble.

“May God have mercy on his soul,” he said at last.

“And ours,” Hal said, without humor.

H
al could not or would not say more, and they walked the rest of the way in silence. Disturbed in mind though he was, Grey was jerked out of his thoughts as they turned into St. James Street.

Candlelight streamed welcomingly through the windows of White’s, illuminating what appeared to be the body of a man lying on the pavement by the door. As they approached the building, Grey saw a head pop out of the club’s open door, survey the body, then pop back in, only to be succeeded by a different head, which repeated this procedure.

“Do you know him?” Grey asked his brother, as they came up to the body. “Is he a member?” Grey was of course a member of White’s, as well, but seldom patronized the club, finding the cozy shabbiness and excellent food of the Beefsteak more appealing.

Hal squinted at the body, and shook his head.

“No one I know.”

The body lay prone, legs sprawled apart beneath a greatcoat of decent quality. The man’s hat was also a good one; it had fallen off and rolled against the wall, resting on edge there like a tipsy beggar.