To Kingdom Come (10 page)

“Do you really think you can train me in a week?”

“Well enough,” van Rhyn said. “If you can show them a few simple tricks, they will take you for a genius. My impression is that the slightest thing will impress them. Here we are.”

We were at the gate near the entrance to the drive. I had driven through in the cart before.

“Is this where you stop?” I asked.

“
Ja.
They do not use the word ‘prisoner’ around me, Mr. Llewelyn, but I cannot exactly walk about freely. The English are not so stupid as to let a German bomber go anywhere he wishes. Tomorrow morning, then. Be early. And bring some schnapps, if you can find some. All I can find here is English beer and Scotch whiskey.”

“Schnapps, then. Good day, sir. Thank you for the lesson.”

As the train steamed out of the station back toward London, I wondered to myself what would happen if I couldn’t remember all the instructions that were to be given to me during this all too brief week of training. Could I carry out such complex instructions, in the midst of trying times? Then, a worse thought gripped me. What would happen if I could?

8

I
CAME HOME TIRED FROM MY DAY AT ALDERSHOT.
The work itself hadn’t been strenuous, but emotionally I’d been conscious the entire afternoon that any moment I might be atomized. It did not make for a relaxing day, and I still had four more to go.

Having the cab drop me in the alleyway, I lifted the small ornamental latch and opened the moon gate. I always liked going from the rather ugly and prosaic alleyway into a miniature Eden. The latch clicks home and one is in another world entirely: a stream mutters, a small windmill turns. Birds come from miles around to congregate in our garden.

Using one of the little tricks Barker taught me, I inhaled slowly through my nose, then exhaled through my mouth, mentally sloughing off all the details and distractions that had mounted since breakfast. I’m not as good at it as Barker, of course. It took me a couple of times before I got it all out. I passed by an archipelago of black basalt rocks in a sea of white stones. One of the rocks stirred and looked at me. It was Harm, of course. He had a way of blending in among the elements of the
garden, as he had the first day I’d seen him, when he’d impersonated a bush. I wondered if it was accidental, or if Barker had trained him—if in fact the little creature was able to be trained at all.

I came into the dining room just as Barker was finishing his meal, a feast consisting of roasted capon, potatoes with chives, an asparagus salad, rolls and butter, and lemon curd tarts. Barker’s little teapot sat on the end of the table, and my own silver coffeepot had been swathed in a linen towel, to keep it hot.

“Ah, Thomas,” my employer said. “Tuck in, lad. How was your training?”

“Good, I think, sir,” I said, helping myself to a slice of breast from the platter. “You knew what you were about when you said van Rhyn was eccentric. He realizes the need to stick to the schedule, however. I believe I can bear it for a week.”

“Good. A week is all we’ll get, I’m afraid. You shall be interested to learn that I have eliminated one suspect today. It is Rossa. He is on a liner bound for New York at the moment. He’s booked for a lecture tour. Davitt is doing much the same thing in Scotland, but with the railways as fast and efficient as they are, he could be here in a matter of hours.”

Barker charged one of his little handleless cups with green gunpowder tea, and sipped while I ate. Just then, there was a knock at our door. Barker got up, as if he’d been expecting a visitor.

Maccabee answered it, but the Guv was no more than a few steps behind him. I thought it might be Inspector Poole, but when Barker raised his voice, I distinctly heard him say “Pierre.” I put down my fork and turned around, expecting our visitor to be shown into the sitting room behind me. Instead, they all seemed to vanish. I wiped my mouth and put my head out into the hallway. It was empty. My ear told me they hadn’t gone upstairs. I walked to the end of the hall, but the back door was bolted and the kitchen and library empty. That left only one place where
they could be. I opened the narrow door that led to the basement and crept downstairs.

Barker was waiting impatiently in our basement room, skirting the mat where we often practiced our physical culture throws. He was alone. I was about to make some comment when the door to our lumber room opened and a man stepped out. He was about my own size but a great deal more muscular. His hair was brilliantined to a high gloss, and his black mustache waxed to points, as Le Caron’s had been. There was nothing absurd about this fellow, however, and he wore a leather coat much like a fencing master’s tunic.

“Pierre, Thomas Llewelyn, my assistant,” Barker said. “Thomas, Pierre Vigny, of the Swiss Army, attached to the military college at Aldershot.”

“At your service, sir,” the Swiss said with a sharp bow and a click of his heels.

“At yours,” I responded.

He looked me over speculatively, as if I were a horse he was considering buying. I cast an enquiring glance toward my employer.

“All the faction cells are trained in stick fighting, lad, and I thought it possible we might have to defend ourselves. I couldn’t find an Irishman willing to teach his art to us, but Pierre here is the leading expert in the next best thing,
la canne.
”

“Cyrus,” Vigny chided with a wounded air. “You make it sound as if what I teach is inferior. Besides, you know I have made many improvements in the art of
la canne.
”

“My apologies,
maître,
” Barker said, bowing.

“Accepted. Leave this little fellow to me.”

“I do have something to attend to,” Barker said. “Thomas, I shall see you in the morning.”

“Go, go,” Vigny said impatiently, waving him away.

To think I should live to see the day when Barker was dismissed
in his own home like a schoolboy. Whoever this little fellow was, he was big enough to have my employer defer to him. I watched the man I’d seen order half London about bow almost meekly and climb the stairs, leaving us alone. He didn’t even issue the grumble he generally did when he felt put upon.

“Mr. Llewelyn.” Vigny called me out of my reverie. “I do not think you realize how fortunate you are to have been chosen to learn my art. I have reserved it solely for the officers of the Swiss and the British armies. Only a friend of your employer’s caliber could have prevailed upon me to give you private instruction. It is unfortunate that we have less than a week for something which should logically take a lifetime to learn, but as I have trained your employer, I hope the two of you will continue to practice together. He tells me you have had some experience in fencing and singlestick.”

“Just a little in school, sir,” I told him. “I never progressed beyond foil.”

“That is good. I do not want you to bring bad fencing habits into our
La Canne
training. Take this,” he said, placing a slender walking stick in my hand. “What do you suppose this wood is?”

I turned the stick over in my hands and examined it. It was made of some sort of light-colored wood with a silver knob at one end. When I held it in both hands, it flexed. “Willow, perhaps?”

“Very close, sir. It is actually malacca from Malaysia. Very strong and flexible, as you can see. One can lean upon it and it remains rigid, but one flick with the ball and it curves around a sword or another stick enough to deliver a sound thrashing. Like so.” He took up a second, identical one, and began to swing it by the bare tip back and forth; it hummed like an angry bee. I thought I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that silver head, which was just what happened next.

“Ow!” I cried, holding a hand over my waistcoat pocket, where it felt as if he’d just broken one of my ribs.

“My apologies,” the little Swiss said. “It is necessary to feel the effects of the stick firsthand before one can learn. It stings, no? Rub your hand across the wound several times, swiftly. It will pass. From the day the earliest man picked up a fallen branch to defend himself, it has been his boon companion. A pity that it is only now, with the advent of the pistol, that Pierre Vigny was born, to turn stick fighting into an art.”

I let the last remark pass without comment, though inwardly I smiled at the conceit.

“But come, sir,” he continued. “Time is precious, and we have much to do. Take the position on the floor, as I do, with your feet at a ninety-degree angle. Step forward with your right foot, but keep most of your weight on the back one.”

By the end of the lesson two hours later, I had shed my jacket and was perspiring freely, unlike my leather-clad companion, who looked fresh enough to go on for several more hours. I’d had a long day at Aldershot and had been looking forward to a tranquil night, studying the books Barker had given me. Instead, I was remarking to myself that while I was well paid, as far as my employer was concerned, my time belonged to him. I would sleep well that night, provided he didn’t have yet another instructor waiting somewhere in the wings. What was left to teach me, Irish Gaelic?

Gradually, as my blocks got lower and weaker, Vigny saw that my arms were growing tired, not to mention sore. One of my hands was swollen from a sound whack, an ear was stinging, and I lost count of the number of blows he’d administered to my ribs or the top of my head, which would now interest a phrenologist.

“That is all for tonight.” Maître Vigny stood in the formal stance, holding his stick vertically in front of his face. I did the same. He swished it forcefully down and away, and bowed.

“Your arms will be a trifle tired in the morning, Mr. Llewelyn. I suggest you do not coddle them. A few choice strokes with the
cane in the air to improve the circulation will be beneficial. I give you the malacca stick from my personal collection as a present.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, surprised he’d give away such a beauty.

“Now, go take a hot bath in Cyrus’s bathhouse and go to bed…. Well, go! Don’t take all night.”

“Yes, sir.”

I awoke the next morning feeling like one of those bodies that had been unearthed from Pompeii: calcified, hard as stone. “A trifle tired” were not the words I would have used myself. I felt my exercises since becoming injured two months before had all been for naught. I was back to where I had started, unable to wave my arms.

Lying there immobile for the rest of the day seemed an excellent plan, but Mac had other ideas. He was throwing open curtains and welcoming the day in a rather loud voice.

“I’ve brought you some liniment, sir. I made it myself. It should do the trick for those sore muscles.”

I pushed myself into an upright position. There was a fresh cup of coffee next to an unlabeled blue bottle. I pulled the cup and saucer off the desk. They felt as heavy as a bucket of water, and I nearly dropped them.

“It will be warm today, I think. Your train leaves the station in about ninety minutes.”

“Thank you, Mac,” I said, hobbling to the window. It was nearly six. I watched the activity in the garden in my nightshirt while drinking the coffee. There were over half a dozen Chinese men toiling with rakes and hoes and clippers.

“Shall I set out your clothes?” Mac asked solicitously. Ordinarily I thought him as solicitous as a landlord on rent day. He was enjoying seeing me in pain.

“I’ll get my own clothes, thank you,” I said.

In the four days since the bombing, the only success I could
see in this case was the progress of Barker’s beard. With the thick stubble on his chin, he looked less the successful London detective and more the convict or pirate.

“That you, lad?” Barker called from his rooftop aerie as soon as I closed the door to my room behind me. He may have had no ear for music, but his hearing was keen enough. I climbed the stairs and found him, as usual, sitting in front of his fireplace, though the grate was empty and all the dormer windows open to the warm June sun.

“How did your training go last night?” he asked. He was feeding a saucer full of tea to Harm. Barker doted on that dog, who was living a life of idle leisure, while I was being sent hither and yon and being trained in lethal arts by foreign masters.

“Good, sir, but I strained my arms a little. They are sore this morning.”

“Shake them out,” he said. “Lift the Indian clubs for five minutes before you leave.”

Harm had finished the tea and was panting a little in the warm room, but for a moment, I swore that the dog was laughing at me.

“Yes, sir. How was your errand yesterday?”

“Er … it was fine, lad,” Barker said, looking a little uncomfortable.

“Learn anything new?”

“My errand did not involve the case,” he answered a trifle frostily. “Dummolard had just put on coffee, when I was downstairs a few minutes ago. You mustn’t forget your breakfast and your Indian clubs before you leave.”

Dummolard had taken over his kitchen again. He was smoking one of his short French cigarettes and transferring the contents of a pan into a waiting piecrust.

“What are you making?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee. “It smells wonderful.”