The Moonless Night (23 page)

“Oh no!” David assured him at once. No more than his father would he touch a link of its length. The chain of Bolt Hall was inviolable.

He returned to his room, half convinced he ought to resume drinking the brandy, if Benson were the real agent after all. Reviewing the confusing events of the past days, he decided it would take a wizard to figure them out. One of the two men was an agent, and the other might be anyone from a suitor for Marie’s hand to an out-and-out anarchist.

He began to see his position was an extremely tricky one. He must craftily play the two of them along, being as silent and sly as they both were themselves, and give away none of his suspicions. For the first time in his life, he didn’t quite trust even his own father. A command from Bathurst for secrecy might prevent him from opening his budget to his son and heir.

It was clearly his bounden duty to get to know Madame Monet better too—there was a vital piece in the puzzle.
Cherchez la femme
. She was soon the only piece being thought of at all. As he crawled into bed and blew out his candle, his future plans centered around Madame exclusively, around getting her alone and making love to her, while she broke down and told him all her terrible confusion and doubt. How she was being used by the enemy, forced to take a hand in this business against her will, and hoping against hope that someone would rescue her. Some younger man she could trust.

Marie Boltwood’s mind was not much more gainfully employed. They finally had two single gentlemen staying at Bolt Hall, neither of whom was at all satisfactory to her. The one who had always had a large edge was slipping back into the same rear position as the other. His lack of a fortune she could forgive, considering what had occasioned its loss, but for him to be making up to Madame was less easily forgivable. No point pretending he was sweet-talking Madame for the cause. That shaking finger under her nose bespoke familiarity. No, he liked her, like all the other men—there was jealousy in that look. His duplicity in liking her was worse than the others, for he pretended he hated her, called her vulgar and so on. Sanford had at least come right out and said she was charming from the start.

Then, too, while Sanford was certainly suspected of making love to her, he had not been caught doing it. She hardly bothered her head about their relative positions in the campaign of guarding the General. If David thought Sanford was innocent, then probably he was innocent of anything worse than admiring Napoleon. His judgment she already knew to be impaired, so that didn’t surprise her. What did occasion surprise was that she felt so little sensation of loss at Mr. Benson’s defection as a lover. Her pride was a little stung, but she sustained only a mild bout of anger, no wrenching heartbreak. Before her eyes closed, she had directed her thoughts to the approaching ball. David thought she must open it with Lord Sanford. She found herself wondering if he were a good dancer, and suspecting that he was.

Chapter 15

David Boltwood realized as soon as he opened his eyes the next morning that he must leave off brandy. Due to its pernicious influence he had been grossly negligent in going to sleep without waiting to clock in Benson and Sanford. He dashed downstairs to discover what they had been doing, to find neither one of them at the table.

A message had reached them earlier in the morning that Lord Sanford had spent the night with Mr. Hazy and would not be back till noon, but of Mr. Benson nothing was said. When still he had not come down at ten o’clock, David went up to his room to see what was keeping him. The man’s appearance did much to return him to his former eminence. He had a black eye and a red bruise on his cheek. He had obviously been out fighting with wrong-doers all night long, and if only he had included David in his scrape, there wouldn’t have been a thread of rancor felt for any mediocrity in other areas.

“There must have been a dozen of them,” David said, smiling with envy at the various marks of valor. “Where did it happen?”

“A little tussle arose in Plymouth,” Benson replied, making little of it.

Unless Benson had made a very late return to Plymouth he was lying, for he had turned his mount towards Bolt Hall when he left Madame’s. David remembered his resolution to play a close hand, and pretended to accept this.

“What happened exactly?”

“Nothing of much interest. After I left Rawlins I went down to the Hoo, and fell into an argument with an officer about whether Bonaparte should be sent to Saint Helena. There are some who think Scotland is far enough away. Such nonsense. The fellow was a Whig like Sanford, and our words soon turned to blows. He had a few friends with him,” Benson finished up, implying that had it been one to one, the outcome would have been different.

Not even a good liar, David thought. As though officers, who were gentlemen, would gang up on a fellow! He did not indicate by any more than a narrowing of his eyes, an incredulous stare and a skeptical voice that he disbelieved this tale. “Ah, yes, what had Rawlins to say?” he asked.

“He feels the message Sanford got ahold of is about the masquerade, but we are alerted to it, and will keep our eyes open. I do feel, David, that you ought to go up to the telescope and…”

“Impossible,” David answered firmly. No
Ev’s
today. He would keep his distance and work his way into confidence by being as stiff as a rod and as unhelpful as possible. Why, wasn’t it Sanford himself who had stood right there and ordered Rawlins to send Maitland the message about the masquerade? Benson took him for a fool.

“Have you other plans?” Benson asked.

“Yes, I must help Father today,” he answered, not choosing to reveal to Benson his real activities, which to be sure he didn’t know himself yet.

“Rawlins was saying last night that as a number of the officers have been invited to the ball, they might all come aboard one of the smaller navy vessels. A sort of semi-official show of support for your father’s excellent work in the cause,” Benson said. “The
Phoebe
, he mentioned bringing. I shall speak to Sir Henry about it, but first I must tend to these little wounds.”

“I’ll send Biddy right up,” David promised happily, finding it impossible to treat the bearer of such good news with the scorn he merited. An official navy vessel sitting right at Bolt’s Dock, cheek by jowl with
Fury
.

“I’ll go down,” Benson said, “but I would appreciate a plaster for this grazed cheek.”

“Need a patch for that mouse, too,” David informed him, looking once more with envy at the black eye.

Biddy was pleased to have a patient; Sir Henry delighted to have official recognition of his volunteer service, and Miss Marie Boltwood not entirely unhappy that Benson had got what was coming to him. The plasters and basilicum were brought out, and before Benson got away there was also an eye patch under construction, made of black felt from an old hat, and held on by an elastic band. Soon there would be an order sent off for proper eye patches. How had she come not to think of it?

The day was going well for all the residents of Bolt Hall, with the exception perhaps of Mr. Benson, till Mrs. Hazy dropped by. She sometimes called on her visits to Plymouth. The woman had not been five minutes in the saloon till she inquired after Lord Sanford.

“What, is he not with you?” Biddy asked, startled. “He went to see your husband yesterday afternoon, and we received a note this morning that he had decided to stay overnight. Odd, he didn’t let us know in advance, not that we were worried about a fully grown man, of course.”

“We have not seen him for three days,” she answered. This told them what some of them had been wondering—whether he was in touch with Hazy on the sly—but did not inform them where he had gone yesterday, nor where he had spent the night.

Marie, who sat with them, had her own views regarding where he had spent the night, but the evening she knew he had not passed in Madame Monet’s company, and she too was curious to know what he was up to.

Biddy mentioned that he had his yacht at Sinclair’s, and had likely been there. This was of course said only to lend a hue of respectability to their guest’s actions. Certainly he had not gone back there. Unaware of Monet’s true activities, Biddy supposed he had been dallying with the French hussy. Better he than Henry. She neatly switched the conversation to recipes and gowns, and before too long Mrs. Hazy was off.

It was another few hours before Lord Sanford returned, and when he did, it turned out he had been not at Mr. Hazy’s at all. He had changed his mind and gone back to Sinclair’s, wading for leeches. He drove round to the stables with a large kettle of brackish water holding a couple of dozen leeches, and asked for Biddy to come to him. She went, full of curiosity, and Marie accompanied her, full of disbelief.

“Your leeches here in Plymouth are so much finer than ours in Devon I have decided to collect up a bunch of them for Mama,” he told her. “I wish you will look these over, Biddy, and tell me if I have chosen well.”

“Where did you get them?”

“In Sinclair’s pond. We made a raft and used liver for bait.”

She shook her head in satisfaction that wore the guise of sorrow at his ignorance. “Summer is a poor time for gathering leeches, and using liver or decayed vegetable matter is the wrong way to set about it. It is harmful to the leeches’ health—infects them. No, leeches must be gathered in spring in shallow water, before they go out into the deep. That deep brackish water produces a perfectly useless leech.”

“The shallow water looked more brackish,” Sanford pointed out.

“This time of the year it is! August—much too late. Catch them by hand—never use bait. If they are frolicsome and plump in the water, you have a good leech.”

“These fellows look mighty plump to me,” he said, holding one up by the tail, a huge fellow.

“A horse leech, Lord Sanford,” she smiled condescendingly. “They will not take blood at all. They feed on worms. Let us see what else you have.”

Those of his specimens that were not worm-eating horse leeches were languorous infected fellows from brackish water. She consigned the lot of them to the burial ground, to prevent their causing harm in the stables.

“I have wasted my morning then,” Sanford said. “And here I had hoped I had a surprise for Mama.”

“Come along to my reservoir, Sanford, and I’ll show you my little setup. I’ll send a dozen to your mother, and show you how I get them to propagate.”

She was never happier than when she had an admirer of her reservoir. Marie had seen it a dozen times, and went indoors, while Sanford was taken out behind the stable to see a large natural pond that had been heavily improved upon by Biddy.

“I have had clay sides put in—for the cocoons to be deposited on, you see. And the bottom must be of turf and rushes. The pond had to be pumped out first to do the job properly. Make sure you give yourself a goodish area, for a leech won’t survive in a little tank. Mine is eighteen feet square.”

“How deep would it be?” Sanford asked, observing all this with the keenest interest, real or well simulated.

“Not more than three feet. Deepness is not a necessity. Indeed it is very hard to get them out if you make it too deep. I get them when they are young and raise them here. That is how I started, I mean. Till a leech is mature—five years—he is a poor drawer.”

“Tell me, Biddy, about this propagating—ah, how do I know I am getting the proper ratio of the sexes? I hope you won’t take the question amiss, but unless I have males and females…” He tossed up his hands and hunched his shoulders.

“There is no need to be embarrassed with me, Lord Sanford. It is an excellent point. In medicine, you know, mating is as common as eating or sleeping, but it is no problem in the least. Leeches are hermaphroditic. They look after all that messy business of sex all by themselves—each one by itself, I mean. The only thing to watch for is that you don’t take out a leech that has its young clinging to its underside. When first they hatch from the cocoons, they do that.”

“Now isn’t that interesting!” he said, pretending not to notice that she was as red as a beet, despite her injunction to him not to be embarrassed.

She looked to her reservoir to avoid looking at him. The water was by no means clear. No leeches could actually be seen, but she discerned the telltale ripple on the surface, put in her hand and swept up an ugly leech, its convex, segmented back a drab olive green, with six red long stripes, dotted with black. “I’ll send some of these with you when you go.”

“When
we
go. You have not forgotten you are to come with me to Wight.”

“Wight—I wonder how the leeches are there. It would be interesting to gather a few and compare,” she said, musing.

“Don’t let me detain you, Biddy,” he said. “I want to take a good long look at your setup here. I’ll have those horse leeches buried as you suggested.”

Biddy went off reluctantly while Sanford had his groom get a shovel and bury his useless catch. But when she had been inside no more than fifteen minutes, she found she could spare another while to Lord Sanford to explain the turf and rush bottom—best interwoven loosely and held down by rocks so that it not break free and float to the surface. She heard a muted splash as she rounded the corner of the barn.

“You never threw your horse leeches into my reservoir!” she exclaimed in horror.

“No, certainly not! They have been buried.”

“I thought I heard a splash.” She looked around for his pail, but it was nowhere in view.

“You did,” he said at once. “I wanted to gauge the depth, and threw in a rock. It won’t harm your leeches, will it?”

“No, but the depth I told you is about three feet.”

“I wasn’t sure whether you had said feet or yards,” he confessed. “What I would like, if you wouldn’t mind too terribly, is to get a little drawing of it from you. With the scale marked, you know, and the best shape. I wonder if a circular reservoir wouldn’t be better, Biddy. It would cut out the corners that must be useless for the cocoons.”

She was distracted by the hastily posed question from asking Sanford where he had got such a large rock to throw in the reservoir. There was nothing but little stones in this area, and the splash had seemed to be caused by a much larger object. “The corners are the best place. I usually find half the cocoons in the corners,” she said. “But you mustn’t disturb them!” She went on to reveal other arcane matters in the care and breeding of leeches.