The Mercenary Major (21 page)

“Letty,” shouted Dorward as she touched the doorknob, “you . . . ape-leader. You’ve been taken in by a handsome face. I am rescuing you from your own folly.”

Slowly she turned. “Walter, did you think meanness would deter me from supporting Jack? I turn down offers of every sort from men each Season. I wanted Helen’s son to take his place in society. I have found him and he has taken it.”

She stepped out.

The fire hissed, and a smell of singed wool filled the room. Lord Dorward threw his hat down and began to struggle with his coat, but Ned Carr drew himself up.

“Dorward,” Ned said, “I am going to make your sister an offer.” Victoria let out a small delighted “Oh,” and her father smiled at her. “If Letty accepts me, as I hope she will, then I will have to ask you never to speak to her again as you have here tonight.” He added, “Not that I think she will let you.”

“Victoria,” said her father. He held out his arm to her. She squeezed Katie’s hand and went to him. He opened the door and allowed Victoria to precede him into the hall. The door closed behind them with a small click. The Mercenary Major had been denounced. How little satisfaction it gave her.

**** 17 ****

B
ertram’s father, Lord Montford, secured Jack’s release from Bow Street shortly after dawn, and Jack found the bite in the frosty air outside the station welcome after the close rooms and stale odors inside. Even more welcome was the freedom to move. He rolled his shoulders to get the stiffness out. The law seemed to thrive on delay, and he suspected there were prisoners willing to confess any crime just to get on with it. He stepped aside for a detachment of marshals leaving the station. Their activity confirmed the snatches of conversation he and Bertram had overheard during Jack’s questioning.

As they stood, drawing on gloves and buttoning their coats against the cold, Jack thanked Montford for his assistance. His lordship waved a negligent hand, dismissing his efforts on Jack’s behalf.

“Give Dorward time, Major, he does not know what he has found in you,” Lord Montford advised in parting, glancing at his son. Jack nodded. Later he would think about the family that did not want him.

A hackney brought Jack and Bertram to an inn in the neighborhood of Snow Hill, where Bertram insisted they have coffee and something to eat before finding Gilling.

At seven they met Gilling under a portico across and down the street from Wallen’s gun shop. Gilling cast a questioning glance at Jack and Bertram, who still wore clothes from Letty’s ball.

“You missed the drama, Gilling,” Bertram began. “Lord Dorward showed up at Lady Letitia’s and denounced Jack as a fraud. We’ve been at Bow Street since two.”

“You should have sent for me, sir,” said Gilling, looking militant at the news.

Jack shook his head. “Bow Street has your name, Gilling. You’ll be called in if they decide to investigate further.” He paused. “I don’t think they will. Bertram’s father used his influence to get me out. Besides, it’s lucky we were there. We found out something of what Bow Street officially knows.”

Briefly Jack explained what he and Bertram had overheard as they waited for the Runner to complete his questioning and a magistrate to attend to Jack’s situation.

“They expect something,” Bertram concluded. “They are stationing magistrates around the fields with extra marshals on hand. They’ve put up notices of the Riot Act.”

“Any mention of gun shops?” Gilling asked.

Jack shook his head. “They seem to think the danger lies at Spa Fields itself. Did you hear of more locations last night?”

“Russell Street and Aldgate,” said Gilling.

Bertram whistled. “Gun shops?”

Gilling nodded. “Both. I checked.”

“What’s happened at Wallen’s?” Jack asked. “Are they waiting for him to open?”

“Think so, sir. There’s two fellows I’ve seen before at the Swan across the way in the taproom at the Arms.” Gilling pointed to the inn. “Probably others about, too.”

“Hengrave?”

“Haven’t seen him.”

Jack swore. They had gone as far as they could without notifying the authorities. If they alerted Bow Street or the Home Office without knowing where Hengrave was, they could be sending their friend to the gallows. And if their information got to whoever gave the spy orders, they were likely to be regarded as part of the conspiracy themselves. But if they said nothing, if they did nothing, the city would be threatened by dozens, maybe hundreds of desperate, armed men. Jack had no illusions that such men acting in the heat of the moment would bring justice to the oppressed.

“We have to get word about these gun shops to somebody that’s not part of it. Who?”

He explained what Felicidad had told him of Sidmouth’s knowledge of the plot, and Sidmouth’s sending the Regent out of London.

Carts rumbled up and down from Fleet Market. Sturdy Welsh girls passed, carrying pails of milk from a diary. Shop assistants emerged to sweep patches of sidewalk, and a man drove a few cows past them toward Smithfield. A parade of Londoners going about their business.

‘“The Lord Mayor,” said Jack. “That’s who we tell. Gilling, can you get to him?”

“Where? The Mansion House?”

Jack looked to Bertram, who nodded confirmation. Gilling strode away in search of a hackney, but Jack called after him, “And get a message to Lady Letitia that I got out of Bow Street.”

Jack and Bertram positioned themselves in the opening of a lane from which they could watch Wallen’s gun shop unobserved. They paced back and forth to keep warm and debated a plan of action. The goal was nothing less than to persuade a group of desperate men to abandon violence against their own city.

At nine a man opened the shop, setting a card in the window, unlocking the door, and coming outside to admire the shop front with its two bow windows. Within minutes a pair of men in sailors’ uniforms appeared from a shop just opposite and slipped inside the gunsmith’s. Another man entered shortly after.

“Sprats?” Bertram asked.

Jack nodded. He had seen the first pair at the Swan. It was time for the plan they’d worked out. Bertram would allow Jack a quarter of an hour to get in position at the back entrance of the gunsmith’s. Then they’d go in, Bertram from the front as if he were a Sprat reporting for duty, Jack from the back.

“We have no guns, Bandit,” Bertram pointed out at the last minute.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “The object is to avoid guns, Bertram. There will be plenty inside.”

Bertram nodded and looked at his watch. Jack set off. To get to Wallen’s rear door, he turned off from the passage to an inn yard and followed a lane that jagged past the staggered ends of three buildings. He could hear the rattle of coach wheels from the yard and the hostlers shouting as they went about their business. On his side of the wall, the lane was silent, damp, and dirty. The back of the gun shop faced a tall grime-covered brick wall, a warehouse of some sort with no windows or access to the sooty alley.

The door to Wallen’s shop was up two brick steps, on either side of which was a dirt-coated basement window, one tightly closed against the winter air, the other gaping wide with a missing pane. Jack tried the door, found it locked, and lowered himself through the basement window, no doubt following the path of someone who had broken in ahead of him. The weak light from the missing pane showed him a laundry and a flight of stairs to the upper regions of the shop. He shed his greatcoat and gloves.

From the top of the stairs he could see across a narrow hall and hear the sound of men’s voices raised in argument—Bertram and Hengrave. At least they’d come to the right place to find the sergeant. He stepped into the hall and found himself confronted by one of the sailors he’d seen earlier.

The sailor swung a pistol around to point at Jack. “Hey, who the bloody hell are you?” he yelled.

“A Sprat,” said Jack.

The sailor wrinkled his brow, but he held the pistol very steady. “Not bloody likely, not in those togs.”

Jack resisted the temptation to laugh. Mistaken for a gentleman again, but the fellow did not look like the sort who would appreciate the irony. “Friend of Hengrave’s,” Jack said, hoping the name meant something to the man.

“Oh, why didn’t you say so,” the sailor complained, looking aggrieved. “In the shop,” he said with a jerk of his head toward the front of the building.

“Guarding the back door?” Jack asked.

“Keeping Wallen and the others upstairs,” the sailor confided.

Jack nodded. He hoped Mr. Wallen and his family would have the sense to stay out of sight. He passed the sailor and followed the hall to the large front room of Wallen’s shop.

“Hengrave, this is madness,” Bertram was yelling. “You’ve got to stop, man.”

“Shut him up, Hengrave,” another man said.

“Lost your nerve, have you, Captain?” taunted a third.

Jack counted three men in sailors’ uniforms and Hengrave. One of the sailors was using a ring of keys to open the cases containing Wallen’s guns. The others, following with grim efficiency, were loading the weapons. Hengrave was holding a rifle on Bertram. The sergeant darted rapid unsettled glances at Bertram and the men. Jack stared. It was difficult to recognize his old friend in the ragged, frenzied man holding the gun.

Bertram, seeing Jack, shifted his gaze, and Hengrave pivoted to see what had drawn Bertram’s attention. “Tell him, Jack,” Bertram urged.

“You should not be here, Bandit,” said Hengrave tightly.

Jack took in the tormented expression on Hengrave’s face and the whiteness of his knuckles where his hands gripped the rifle.

“Gilling and I have been looking for you, Sergeant,” he said quietly.

The other men looked up at the sound of Jack’s voice. “Don’t try to talk me out of this, Bandit,” Hengrave warned. He motioned with the rifle for Jack to move farther into the shop. Jack complied with a small step. The three sailors exchanged glances.

“Why are you in it?” Jack asked Hengrave. “Thought you were the next poet laureate.”

“You know why.” The sergeant turned his head from side to side with the restless, unseeing look of a caged animal. “Spat upon. I’ve been spat upon, Bandit. By fellows that were warm in their beds when we were in the ditch at Badajoz. Got no use for you here, they say. Not employable, they say.”

“Hengrave,” said Bertram, moving a step closer to the sergeant, his eyes on the rifle in the man’s hands. ‘The plot’s known.”

Hengrave looked wildly from Bertram to Jack.

“It is,” said Jack. “There’s a spy at the Swan. Reports to Bow Street and Lonville.”

The voice in Jack’s head spoke then
—Run, Jack—
and he swung around to his right, coming face-to-face with the guard from the hall, who leapt back, upraised butt of a pistol in hand. The guard’s face registered surprise at Jack’s sudden move. Jack feinted, then scissor-kicked, his right foot coming up high and knocking the gun from the man’s hand. It hit the floor and discharged. Somewhere above them in the upper stories of the shop a woman screamed.

Then behind Jack came a blow, and he whirled to see Bertram crumple to the ground.

“Best knock him, too, Hengrave,” said the sailor standing over Bertram.

Jack turned to Hengrave. “How many gun shops are the Sprats waiting in, Hengrave? Fifteen? Twenty?” He kept his eyes fixed on Hengrave’s and kept talking. “Sidmouth knows. He sent the Regent out of town yesterday. Probably knows which gunsmiths are targets.”

“Who is this fellow, Hengrave?” asked the sailor who had been unlocking the cabinets. He studied Jack.

“Shut up, Bandit,” warned Hengrave. Then to the others he said, “Bind him.” One of the sailors stopped loading guns and came toward Jack, removing the rope belt he wore around his waist. The hall guard moved warily forward.

“Watch his feet,” Hengrave warned.

Jack shifted his stance but kept talking. It was a fight he could not win. If he let himself be bound, Hengrave would know Jack was counting on him. “Think, man,” he urged. “Who’s behind this? What’s the target? What happens when the guns go out that door?” The men were closing in on him. “Remember Badajoz. This will be a sack, a sack of London, by Englishmen.”

Hengrave’s eyes stopped shifting about the room. He met Jack’s gaze, and Jack saw that he had planted a seed of doubt in the sergeant’s mind.

As the sailor with the rope belt moved in, Jack held out his arms. Bound in front of him, his hands would be a weapon. But the man yanked Jack’s hands around behind him and pulled his coat off. He tossed the black coat to the second sailor, who tangled the sleeves around Jack’s feet, hobbling him. Jack kept talking, talking about the back room, about Bow Street, about the spy.

Victoria awoke shaking from a dream in which she had been pursuing Jack Amberly down endless dark twisting streets. She sat up abruptly. Gray light streamed through her window. When her heart stopped pounding, she was prepared to admit to herself that she loved him. It was a discovery so stunning, it banished the aching weariness she had felt at the end of Letty’s ball.

She could not with certainty conclude that he loved her, but she understood him better. He would not speak of love while an inequality of fortune existed between them. So far from pursuing her for her fortune, he was obviously determined to deny any feeling between them while they were unequal in the world’s eyes. Two courses appeared open to her. Either she must help him secure the modest inheritance to which he was entitled as Helen Faverton’s son, or she must abandon her own fortune and come to him as a penniless bride. The second alternative had definite dramatic appeal, like something out of an opera, and she pictured herself prostrate at his feet in rags. But she supposed she would be a fool not to pursue the first.

Having resolved to come to Jack Amberly’s aid, Victoria discovered she did not know how to do it. How did a lady visit a man who had been taken up, and where would she find him? Bow Street was somewhere in the vicinity of Covent Garden and, therefore, not in the usual haunts of a lady. Clearly, she needed advice. She made short work of her toilet and went in search of Letty.