The Shadow of Albion (8 page)

cock for just this moment. Wessex waited patiently while he did so. The Duke had

no intention of grappling with him for the firearm – not while he was trying to avoid

the attention that pistol-fire would surely draw.

„My dear Grillot, now that you have discovered all, there is one question I should

like to have answered,“ Wessex said – in English and a voice quite unlike „Citoyen

Reynard’s.“

He spoke to cover the soft clicking sound as he pressed down on a hidden button

on the shaft of the quizzing-glass held between his fingers. A snap of the wrist, and

the lens hung free, connected to the ornate golden handle only by a thin cord of

braided silk. It was not meant for the work he was about to put it to, but it would

have to serve.

„Soon you will answer questions, English cochon – not ask them,“ Grillot snarled

theatrically.

There was a crash from the house and the man turned toward it, forgetting, in that

fatal moment, to beware of his companion. As Grillot turned, Wessex flung the

invisible coil of silk about his neck and jerked it tight, pulling the smaller man back

against him and muffling Grillot’s death-struggles with his own long limbs.

„Nevertheless, I shall ask,“ he breathed softly in Grillot’s ear as the Frenchman

died. „Did you actually believe that you might sentence an Englishman to death with

impunity? It is not done, my dear Grillot; you must hold me your preceptor in this.“

Wessex spoke to cover the bitterness in his own soul – clean death on deck or

battlefield might be any man’s fate, but this sneaking soft-handed game of shadows,

fought with weapons that were not even honest steel –!

Grillot went limp, and Wessex lowered Grillot’s dead body to the ground. He

drew the silk cord back into the shaft of his quizzing-glass once more, then dragged

the body into the cover of some of the Princesse’s ornamental shrubbery, stripping

off the gaudy coat and waistcoat of the Chevalier de Reynard once he’d done so.

With a few deft motions he turned the waistcoat inside out, concealing the lurid

vermilion of the embroidered Chinese silk behind a veil of dully respectable ecru

satin.

The outcry from the house was louder now. There was a sound of breaking glass

and a woman’s squeal. The Jacks were quite as crude in their methods as their

predecessors at the height of the Terror had been; their motto one that all the world

knew: Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. Wessex wished their

countrymen much joy of them.

As he listened, Wessex pulled out the whalebone stays that had given his coat its

fantastic shape, tossed them into the bushes, and shrugged himself back into a coat

of dull brown velvet that had only a faint acquaintance with fashion. The five gold

napoleons that were concealed in the heel of each slipper should be enough to see

him through to the inn on the Calais road where new clothes, identification papers,

and a fast horse awaited him – if the Jacks had not discovered the hideout already.

But deMorrissey – if the late M. Grillot could be believed – lay a prisoner in the

house beyond. It might be possible – just – to go in and extract him while the Red

Jacks were smashing the teacups in the parlor.

Without any pause for thought Wessex was running lightly toward the house. He

avoided the pools of light spilling from the open doors and windows of the function

rooms, and skirted the edge of the house until he reached the side door that led

down into the servant’s quarters beneath. One flat-footed thrust at the door gained

him entrance – along with Wessex’s fervent wish that he had been able to wear his

hunting boots upon this expedition, instead of dancing slippers – and then he was

within.

In the midst of such an entertainment as was taking place elsewhere, one would

expect the servants’ quarters to be filled with activity, but the kitchen in which

Wessex found himself was entirely deserted. An overturned bottle of wine, its lees

still dripping slowly into a scarlet puddle spreading on the wooden floor, gave mute

testimony to the abruptness of the evacuation. It seemed that what the Underground

had surmised was true: that if the Red Jacks had spies in every kitchen in France,

every kitchen in France also had advance word of the Jacquerie’s movements.

There was the thunder of proletarian boots upon the stairs. Swiftly Wessex

identified the green baize door that separated the world of service from the elegant

damask of Madame la Princesses drawing rooms. An immense oak dresser was the

nearest article of furniture; Wessex ran to it and shoved, the long muscles of his

elegant lean frame bunching with the sudden exertion.

There was a rattle of dishes as the massive piece began slowly to shift away from

the wall. The oak dresser slid slowly forward, and just as it did so the door to the

kitchen began to swing inward. With one last desperate heave Wessex thrust with all

his might, and the dresser teetered, tipped… and toppled gracefully backward into

the door with a musical breaking of glass. There was a roar of thwarted anger from

the other side of the door – to which Wessex responded, genially, in an even fouler

gutter argot.

Wessex smiled faintly as the faint sound of determined battery came distantly to

him through the barricaded door. Best to hope that the late M. Grillot was to be

believed regarding deMorrissey’s whereabouts, as Wessex had just sealed the

kitchen off from direct communication with the house above.

It seemed, however, that at least in that much Grillot had been truthful. His

Majesty’s Captain Avery Richard Harriman deMorrissey, most recently of Verdun,

lay facedown upon a pallet in the butler’s pantry, trussed like a prize Christmas fowl.

The disheveled state of the Captain’s borrowed clothes gave eloquent witness to the

difficulty of his capture, and when his eye fell upon Wessex his color deepened

alarmingly.

„I pray you, my good man,“ drawled Wessex in the most well-bred of Pall Mall

accents, „that when I release you, you will confine your martial ardor to our mutual

enemies. I am Wessex, and we were to meet this evening under slightly different

circumstances.“

„The King must be told!“ gasped deMorrissey as soon as the gag was removed

from his mouth. „There is a plot!“

„There is always a plot,“ Wessex murmured absently. His fingers were busy on

the knotted cords that bound deMorrissey’s hands and feet. They were bound so

tightly together that he did not dare to use the tiny knife he carried, and the knots

were difficult. And surely it could not be so very long until the Jacks realized that the

kitchen had two entrances.

„Saint-Lazarre is to be killed!“ deMorrissey gasped. „In England – an assassin is

on his way.“

„Who?“ Wessex demanded sharply. Victor Saint-Lazarre, that loyal French

expatriate and able courtier, seemed to be the only man who could hold the

squabbling French Royalist factions together. Without Saint-Lazarre to unite the

various Royalist cabals in support of the English war effort, King Henry’s hopes of

sparking a continental counterrevolution to restore a member of the legitimate

Bourbon line to the throne of France would suffer a fearful blow. The man’s

assassination would be a magnificent coup for the Republicans, as well as touching

off a wildfire of terror throughout the country once it was learned that the Corsican

Beast’s reach stretched to murder in England itself.

„Don’t know. The courier we retrieved knew only that Saint-Lazarre was to be

killed on sixteen Germinal“

„The Gazette places Saint-Lazarre at the Marchioness of Roxbury’s country seat

until Parliament resumes. That is where the assassin will strike. If we are separated,

you must do your utmost to reach England with the news,“ Wessex said quickly.

Sixteen Germinal in the Revolutionary Calendar translated to the twentieth of April

by civilized reckoning. Eight days from now. To reach London in time to warn those

in power would take superhuman luck and inhuman speed.

The last knot came free beneath Wessex’s expert fingers just as the door leading

to the kitchen garden burst inward with a clash. DeMorrissey rolled from the pallet

and stretched cramped limbs; a young John Bull in the flower of his manly strength.

His white teeth gleamed in the half-light as he smiled.

„You may depend upon me, sir.“

And then there was no more time for talk. The first Red Jack through the

doorway took a bullet in the throat from Wessex’s tiny pistol and fell to the floor in

a bloody thrashing of limbs. DeMorrissey seized the Red Jack’s truncheon of office

from the dead man’s hand and used it to great effect upon the jaw of the next,

gaining Wessex not only a truncheon of his own but a matchlock pistol primed and

cocked.

„Who wishes next to die?“ Wessex’s tone seemed to hold genuine curiosity as he

regarded the three men he faced. None of them, it seemed, was willing to give him

his answer.

From the corner of his eye Wessex saw deMorrissey edge around him and out

through the kitchen door. And that was well enough, save that in his disheveled

condition and lacking identity papers, deMorrissey would soon enough be seized by

any of the Citizen’s Safety Committees that roamed the city with vigilante

watchfulness. And deMorrissey, still, did not have a single word of French.

The Jacks’ scarlet caps were dyed even bloodier by the light from the stove, and

with admonitory gestures from his borrowed weapon Wessex herded them

backward until they stood in an untidy clump before it. They shuffled uncertainly,

mesmerized by the darkness at the end of his pistol, but in truth the advantage was

theirs and soon enough they would realize it.

„Come on!“ deMorrissey urged from the doorway in a strangled whisper.

Wessex raised the pistol and fired.

The ball struck none of the three men, but the Red Jacks had not been Wessex’s

target. He had been aiming at an object upon the shelf above the stove, and his ball

had flown true. Oil from the shattered jar his bullet had struck dripped down onto

the hot iron surface of the stove.

Dripped –

Smoked –

Ignited.

With a sizzling flare, the iron surface of the stove burst into bright hot light In their

scramble to evade the flames one of the Jacks was flung into the midst of the fire by

his companions, and another fell to a blow from Wessex’s cudgel. His Grace did

not remain to see the end of the play; he was out the door upon the instant, grabbing

deMorrissey by the shoulder as he passed and running fleet as any fox before the

hounds. Together the two men fled through the moonlight garden and into the street

of what until quite recendy had been a quiet respectable Paris neighborhood.

Wessex knew the city of Paris well; it was his business to know such things.

Soon he and his charge were several streets away, and had, temporarily at least, lost

their pursuers.

„What now?“ deMorrissey panted.

„A fast horse and the Calais road,“ Wessex replied. „It seems I have an

engagement at the Marchioness of Roxbury’s – and I should so hate to disappoint a

lady.“

Chapter 5

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

(April 20th, 1805)

It was April 20th – four days since the crash of the mail coach on its way to

London.

The young woman in the massive four-poster bed tossed fretfully, trying to throw

off the heavy embroidered velvet coverlet that insulated her from the April chill. But

each time she managed to do so, the quiet woman who sat in the chair by the fire

would get to her feet and replace the coverlet over the young woman’s restless

body. Her name was Gardner, and not so many years ago she had been the young

Marchioness of Roxbury’s nurse, just as she had nursed Roxbury’s mother, and her

mother before her.

Gardner’s skin had the frail porcelain color of extreme old age, but her spine was

still poker-straight and her mismatched eyes – one blue, one brown – were bright

and intelligent.

„How does she?“

Dame Alecto’s entry into the room had been as silent as that of any of Sarah

Cunninghams’s Cree companions. The Dowager Duchess of Wessex’s trusted

emissary glanced toward the bed where the woman the world knew as the

Marchioness of Roxbury – a Roxbury mysteriously restored to vibrant health – lay

in laudanum-induced dreams. In her hands, Dame Alecto – this world’s Alecto

Kennet – held a small carved wooden box inlaid with silver long since darkened to

soft black by the passage of uncounted years.