An Echo in the Bone, Page 46

  named Robert Isaacs, a merchant in Bristol. He’s still alive, too, and has a half interest in a warehouse in Brest. Denys is one of your damned politicals, got ties to Germain, but I can’t find out more than that without being too overt for your tastes. Can’t find out anything in bloody Bath.

  Don’t know much about Richardson, but will find out directly. Sent letters to some people in America. Yes, I am discreet, thank you, and so are they.

  John Burgoyne is here, taking the cure. Very cock-a-hoop, as Germain has approved his scheme to invade from Canada. I have mentioned William to him, as his French and German are good and Burgoyne is to have a number of Brunswickers. Still, tell Willie to be careful; Burgoyne seems to think he is to be commander-in-chief of the army in America—a notion that I daresay will come as rather a surprise both to Guy Carleton and Dick Howe.

  Trois Flèches. Three arrows. Who is the third?

  London

  March 26, 1777

  The Society for the Appreciation of the

  English Beefsteak, a Gentleman’s Club

  Who is the third?” Grey repeated in astonishment, staring at the note he had just opened.

  “The third what?” Harry Quarry handed his sopping cloak to the steward and sank heavily into the chair beside Grey’s, sighing with relief as he held his hands out to the fire. “God’s teeth, I’m frozen solid. You’re going to Southampton in this?” He flung one big cold-blanched hand at the window, which framed a dismal prospect of icy sleet, driven almost horizontal by the wind.

  “Not ’til tomorrow. It may have cleared by then.”

  Harry gave the window a look of deep suspicion and shook his head. “Not a chance. Steward!”

  Mr. Bodley was already tottering toward them under the weight of a tea tray laden with seedcake, sponge cake, strawberry jam, marmalade, hot buttered crumpets in a basket wrapped in white linen, scones, clotted cream, almond biscuits, sardines on toast, a pot of beans baked with bacon and onion, a plate of sliced ham with gherkins, a bottle of brandy with two glasses, and—perhaps as an afterthought—a steaming teapot with two china cups and saucers alongside.

  “Ah!” said Harry, looking happier. “I see you expected me.”

  Grey smiled. If not on campaign or called away by duty, Harry Quarry invariably entered the Beefsteak at four-thirty on a Wednesday.

  “I thought you’d need sustenance, with Hal on the sick list.” Harry was one of the two regimental colonels—as distinct from Hal, who was Colonel of the Regiment, it being his own regiment. Not all colonels took an active hand in the operations of their regiments, but Hal did.

  “Malingering bugger,” Harry said, reaching for the brandy. “How is he?”

  “Quite his usual self, to judge from his correspondence.” Grey handed Quarry the unfolded letter, which the latter read with a burgeoning grin.

  “Aye, Minnie will have him sorted like a hand of whist.” He put down the letter, nodding at it as he raised his glass. “Who’s Richardson and why do you want to know about him?”

  “Ezekiel Richardson, Captain. Lancers, but detached for intelligence work.”

  “Oh, intelligence laddie, eh? One of your Black Chamber lot?” Quarry wrinkled his nose, though it was not clear whether this was a response to the notion of intelligence laddies or the presence of a dish of grated horseradish accompanying the sardines.

  “No, I don’t know the man well personally,” Grey admitted, and felt the same pang of deep unease that had been afflicting him with increased frequency ever since his receipt of William’s letter from Quebec a week before. “I had been introduced to him by Sir George, who knew his father, but we didn’t talk much on that occasion. I had heard a few things to his credit—in a quiet sort of way—”

  “That being, I suppose, the only way one wants to hear anything about a man in that line of business. Huuuuuh!” Harry drew a tremendous gasp of air through his open mouth and up into his sinuses, by the sound of it, then coughed once or twice, eyes watering, and shook his head in admiration. “Fresh horseradish,” he croaked, taking another large spoonful. “Very … huuuuuuh … fresh.”

  “Quite. Anyway, I met him again in North Carolina, we talked a bit more, and he asked my permission to approach William with a proposition regarding intelligencing.”

  Quarry stopped, a slice of sardine-laden toast halfway to his mouth.

  “You don’t mean to say you’ve let him lure Willie off into the weeds?”

  “That was certainly not my intent,” Grey said, nettled. “I had some reason to feel that the suggestion would be good for Willie; for one thing, it would get him out of North Carolina and end with him attached to Howe’s staff.”

  Quarry nodded, masticating with care, and swallowed thickly.

  “Aye, right. But now you have doubts?”

  “I do. The more so because I can find very few people who actually know Richardson well. Everyone who recommended him to me in the first place did so by reason of someone else’s recommendation, it seems. Except for Sir George Stanley, who is presently in Spain with my mother, and old Nigel Bruce, who’s rather inconveniently died in the meantime.”

  “Thoughtless.”

  “Yes. I imagine I could root out more information, had I time, but I haven’t. Dottie and I sail day after tomorrow. Weather permitting,” he added, with a glance at the window.

  “Ah, this would be where I come in,” Harry observed, without animus. “What shall I do with any information I find? Tell Hal, or send it to you?”

  “Tell Hal,” Grey said with a sigh. “God knows what the post may be like in America, even with the Congress sitting in Philadelphia. If anything seems urgent, Hal can expedite matters here far more easily than I can there.”

  Quarry nodded and refilled Grey’s glass. “You’re not eating,” he observed.

  “I lunched late.” Quite late. In fact, he hadn’t had luncheon yet. He took a scone and spread it desultorily with jam.

  “And Denys Wossname?” Quarry asked, flicking the letter with a pickle fork. “Shall I inquire about him, too?”

  “By all means. Though I may make better progress with him on the American end of the matter. That’s at least where he was last seen.” He took a bite of scone, observing that it had achieved that delicate balance between crumbliness and half-set mortar that is the ideal of every scone, and felt some stirrings of appetite return. He wondered whether he should put Harry onto the worthy Jew with the warehouse in Brest, but decided not. The question of French connections was more than delicate, and while Harry was thorough, he was not subtle.

  “Right, then.” Harry selected a slice of sponge cake, topped it with two almond biscuits and a dollop of clotted cream, and inserted the whole into his mouth. Where did he put it? Grey wondered. Harry was thickset and burly, but never stout. No doubt he sweated it off during energetic exercise in brothels, that being his favorite sport despite advancing age.

  How old was Harry? he wondered suddenly. A few years older than Grey, a few years younger than Hal. He’d never thought about it, no more than he had with reference to Hal. The two of them had always seemed immortal; he had never once contemplated a future lacking either one of them. But the skull beneath Harry’s wig was nearly hairless now—he had, in his usual way, removed it to scratch his head at some point and set it casually back without regard to straightness—and the joints of his fingers were swollen, though he handled his teacup with his usual delicacy.

  Grey felt of a sudden his own mortality, in the stiffening of a thumb, the twinge of a knee. Most of all, in the fear that he might not be there to protect William, while he was still needed.

  “Eh?” said Harry, raising a brow at whatever showed on Grey’s face. “What?”

  Grey smiled and shook his head, taking up his brandy glass once more.

  “Timor mortis conturbat me,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Quarry thoughtfully, and raised his own. “I’ll drink to that.”

  THE PLOT THICKENS

  2
8 February, A.D. 1777

  London

  Major General John Burgoyne,

  to Sir George Germain

  … I do not conceive any expedition from the sea can be so formidable to the enemy, or so effectual to close the war, as an invasion from Canada by Ticonderoga.

  April 4, 1777

  on board HMS Tartar

  HE’D TOLD DOTTIE that the Tartar was only a twenty-eight-gun frigate and that she must therefore be modest in her packing. Even so, he was surprised to see the single trunk—granted, a large one—two portmanteaux, and a bag of needlework that comprised her entire luggage.

  “What, not a single flowered mantua?” he teased. “William won’t know you.”

  “Bosh,” she replied with her father’s talent for succinct clarity. But she smiled a little—she was very pale, and he hoped it wasn’t incipient seasickness—and he squeezed her hand and went on holding it all the time until the last dark sliver of England sank into the sea.

  He was still amazed that she’d managed it. Hal must be more frail than he’d let on, to be bamboozled into allowing his daughter to take ship for America, even under Grey’s protection and for the laudable purpose of nursing her wounded brother. Minnie, of course, would not be parted from Hal for a moment, though naturally worried sick for her son. But that she had uttered no word of protest at this adventure …

  “Your mother’s in on it, is she?” he asked casually, provoking a startled look through a veil of windblown hair.

  “On what?” Dottie pawed at the blond spiderweb of her hair, escaped en masse from the inconsequent snood in which she’d bound it and dancing over her head like flames. “Oh, help!”

  He captured her hair, smoothing it tight to her head with both hands, then gathering it at her neck, where he plaited it expertly, to the admiration of a passing seaman, clubbed it, and tied it up with the velvet ribbon that was all that remained from the wreck of her snood.

  “On what, forsooth,” he told the back of her head, as he finished the job. “On whatever the dreadful enterprise is on which you’ve embarked.”

  She turned round and faced him, her stare direct.

  “If you want to describe rescuing Henry as a dreadful enterprise, I agree entirely,” she said with dignity. “But my mother would naturally do anything she could to get him back. So would you, presumably, or you wouldn’t be here.” And without waiting for a reply, she turned smartly on her heel and made for the companionway, leaving him speechless.

  One of the first ships of the spring had brought a letter with further word of Henry. He was still alive, thank God, but had been badly wounded: shot in the abdomen, and very ill in consequence through the brutal winter. He had survived, though, and been moved to Philadelphia with a number of other British prisoners. The letter had been written by a fellow officer there, another prisoner, but Henry had managed to scribble a few words of love to his family at the bottom and sign his name; the memory of that straggling scrawl ate at John’s heart.

  He was encouraged somewhat by the fact that it was Philadelphia, though. He had met a prominent Philadelphian while he was in France and had formed an immediate liking for him that he thought was returned; there might be something of use in the acquaintance. He grinned involuntarily, recalling the instant of his meeting with the American gentleman.

  He hadn’t paused long in Paris, only long enough to make inquiries after Percival Beauchamp, who was not there. Retired to his home in the country for the winter, he was told. The Beauchamp family’s main estate, a place called Trois Flèches, near Compiègne. And so he had bought a fur-lined hat and a pair of seaboots, wrapped himself in his warmest cloak, hired a horse, and set grimly off into the teeth of a howling gale.

  Arriving mud-caked and frozen, he had been greeted with suspicion, but the quality of his accoutrements and his title had gained him entrance, and he had been shown to a well-appointed parlor—with, thank God, an excellent fire—to await the baron’s pleasure.

  He’d formed an expectation of the Baron Amandine on the basis of Percy’s remarks, though he thought Percy had likely been practicing upon him. He also knew how futile it was to theorize in advance of observation, but it was inhuman not to imagine.

  In terms of imagining, he’d done a good job of not thinking of Percy during the last… was it eighteen years, nineteen? But once it became obvious that thinking of him was now a professional as well as a personal necessity, he was both surprised and disconcerted to find just how much he remembered. He knew what Percy liked and therefore had evolved a mental picture of Amandine in accordance.

  The reality was different. The baron was an older man, perhaps a few years Grey’s senior, short and rather plump, with an open, pleasant face. Well dressed, but without ostentation. He greeted Grey with great courtesy. But then he took Grey’s hand, and a small electric shock ran through the Englishman. The baron’s expression was civil, no more—but the eyes held a look of interest and avidity, and despite the baron’s unprepossessing appearance, Grey’s flesh answered the look.

  Of course. Percy had told Amandine about him.

  Surprised and wary, he gave the brief explanation he had prepared, only to be informed that, hélas, Monsieur Beauchamp was not at home but had gone with Monsieur Beaumarchais to hunt wolves in Alsace. Well, there was one supposition confirmed, Grey thought. But surely his lordship would condescend to accept the hospitality of Trois Flèches, for the night at least?

  He accepted this invitation with many expressions of unworthy thanks, and having doffed his outer clothes and replaced his seaboots with Dottie’s garish carpet slippers—which made Amandine blink, though he at once praised them exceedingly—he was propelled down a long corridor lined with portraits.

  “We will take some refreshment in the library,” Amandine was saying. “Plainly, you are perishing of cold and inanition. But if you do not mind, allow me to introduce you en route to my other guest; we will invite him to join us.”

  Grey had murmured acquiescence, distracted by the light pressure of Amandine’s hand, which rested on his back—slightly lower than was usual.

  “He is an American,” the baron was saying, as they reached a door toward the end of the corridor, and his voice conveyed considerable in the way of amusement in that word. He had a most unusual voice—soft, warm, and somehow smoky, like oolong tea with a lot of sugar.

  “He enjoys to spend some time each day in the solar,” the baron went on, pushing open the door and gesturing Grey ahead of him. “He says it keeps him in a state of robust health.”

  Grey had been looking politely at the baron during this introduction, but now turned to speak to the American guest and so was introduced to Dr. Franklin, reclining comfortably in a padded chair, lit by a flood of sunlight, stark naked.

  In the subsequent conversation—conducted with the greatest aplomb on the part of all parties—he learned that it was Dr. Franklin’s invariant practice to bathe in air every day when possible, as skin breathed quite as much as did lungs, taking in air and releasing impurities; thus the ability of the body to defend itself from infection was substantially impaired if the skin were constantly suffocated in insanitary clothing.

  Throughout the introductions and conversation, Grey was acutely aware of Amandine’s eyes upon him, full of speculation and amusement, and of the cumbersome feel of his own insanitary clothing upon his doubtless suffocating skin.

  It was an odd feeling, to meet a stranger and know that said stranger was already privy to his deepest secret, that he in fact—if Percy were not altogether lying, and Grey didn’t think he had been—shared it. It gave him a feeling of danger and vertigo, as though he leaned out from some sharp precipice. It also bloody excited him, and that alarmed him very much.

  The American (now speaking pleasantly about an unusual geological formation he had seen on his journey from Paris; had his lordship noticed it?) was an elderly man, and his body, while in fair condition aside from patches of some purplish eczema about the lower limbs,
was not an object of sexual consideration. Nonetheless, Grey’s flesh was tight on his bones, and not enough of his blood was in his head. He could feel Amandine’s eyes on him, frankly evaluating him, and recalled all too clearly the exchange with Percy regarding Percy’s wife and his brother-in-law the baron: Both, on occasion. Together? Had the baron’s sister accompanied her husband, or was she perhaps at home? For one of the few times in his life, Grey wondered seriously whether he might be a pervert.

  “Shall we join the good doctor in his beneficial practice, my lord?”

  Grey jerked his eyes away from Franklin, to see the baron beginning to peel off his coat. Fortunately, before he could think of anything to say, Franklin rose, remarking that he felt he had had sufficient benefit for the day. “Though of course,” he said, meeting Grey’s eyes directly, with an expression of the deepest interest—and not a little amusement, too, “you must not allow my departure to prevent your own indulgence, messieurs.”

  The baron, impeccably polite, at once resumed his coat, and saying he would join them for un aperitif in the library, disappeared into the corridor.

  Franklin had a silk dressing gown; Grey held it for him, watching the white, slightly sagging—but remarkably firm and unwrinkled—buttocks disappear as the American slowly worked his arms into the sleeves, remarking as he did so upon a touch of arthritis in his shoulder joints.

  Turning and tying the sash, he fixed an open gray gaze upon Grey.

  “Thank you, my lord,” he said. “I take it you were not previously acquainted with Amandine?”

  “No. I knew his… brother-in-law, Monsieur Beauchamp, some years ago. In England,” he added, for no particular reason.

  Something flickered in Franklin’s eyes at the name “Beauchamp,” causing Grey to ask, “You know him?”

  “I know the name,” Franklin replied equably. “Is Beauchamp an Englishman, then?”

  A number of astonishing possibilities had flashed through Grey’s mind at that simple remark “I know the name,” but an equally rapid evaluation of them decided him upon the truth as safest, and he merely said, “Yes,” in a tone indicating that this was simple fact, no more.

  Over the next few days, he and Franklin had had a number of interesting conversations, in which the name of Percy Beauchamp was conspicuous by its absence. When Franklin returned to Paris, though, Grey was left both with a genuine liking for the elderly gentleman—who upon learning that Grey was bound for the Colonies in the spring had insisted upon giving him letters of introduction to several friends there—and a conviction that Dr. Franklin knew precisely what Percy Beauchamp was and had been.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” said one of the Tartar’s hands, elbowing Grey un-gently out of the way and breaking his reverie. He blinked, coming back to find that his ungloved hands had turned to ice in the wind and his cheeks were numb. Leaving the sailors to their freezing task, he went below, feeling a peculiar small and shameful warmth at the memory of his visit to Trois Flèches.

  3 May, 1777

  New York

  Dear Papa,

  I have just received your Letter about Cousin Henry, and hope very much that you will be able to discover his Whereabouts and obtain his Release. If I can hear Anything of him, I will do my best to let you know. Is there anyone to whom I should address Letters to you in the Colonies? (If I hear of no Alternative, I shall send them in care of Mr. Sanders in Philadelphia, with a Copy for Safety to Judge O’Keefe in Richmond.)

  I hope you will excuse my own sad Delinquency in corresponding. It does not—alas—stem from any press of urgent Activity on my Part, but rather from ennui and lack of anything of Interest about which to write. After a tedious Winter immured in Quebec (though I did considerable Hunting, and shot a very vicious Thing called a Glutton), I finally received my new orders from General Howe’s Aide-de-camp in late March, when some of Sir Guy’s people came back to the Citadel, and I returned to New York in consequence of them.

  I never received any Word from Captain Randall-Isaacs, nor have I been able to hear anything of him since my Return. I fear very much that he may have been lost in the Blizzard. If you know his people, perhaps you would send them a Note with my Hopes for his Survival? I would do so myself, save that I am not sure where to find them, nor how to phrase my Sentiments delicately, in case they are also in Doubt of his Fate, or worse, are not in Doubt. You will know what to say, though; you always do.

  I was somewhat luckier in my own Travels, having suffered only minor Shipwreck on my way downriver (we came to Grief during the Portage at Ticonderoga, being fired upon by a Party of American Sharpshooters from the Fort. No one was harmed, but the Canoes were peppered with Shot and some Holes were unfortunately not discovered before we put back into the Water, whereupon two of them sank abruptly), this followed by waist-deep Mud and the reemergence of carnivorous Insects when I took to the Roads. Since my Return, though, we have done little of interest, though there are constant rumors of what we may do. Finding that Inactivity chafes more in what you may call a civilized Setting (though none of the Girls in New York can dance at all), I volunteered to ride Dispatches, and have found some Relief in that.

  Yesterday, however, I received Orders sending me back to Canada, there to join General Burgoyne’s Staff. Do I detect your fine Italian Hand in this, Papa? If so, thank you!

  Also, I have seen Captain Richardson again; he came to my Rooms last Night. I had not seen him for nearly a Year, and was much surprised. He did not ask for an Account of our Journey into Quebec (not surprising, as the Information would be sadly out-of-date by now), and when I asked after Randall-Isaacs, only shook his Head and said he did not know.

  He had heard I had an Errand to carry special Dispatches to Virginia, before going to Canada, and while of course Nothing must delay me in that Errand, had thought of asking me to do a small Service for him as I returned northward. Somewhat wary as a Result of my long Sojourn in the frozen North, I asked what this might be, and was told that it was no more than the Delivery of a cipher Message to a group of Loyalist gentlemen in Virginia, something that would be simple for me, owing to my Familiarity with the Terrain; the job would not delay