Chapter 10
Salle des Armes
He returned in the evening, to discover that the dowager countess had likewise come back from her excursion. He went to her boudoir to pay his respects, and found her cheerful, if a little pale from her journey, and with a few lines of worry round her eyes. These, he took to be the natural effects of her discovery of the extent of Olivia’s ambitions as a wedding planner.
He did his best to distract her, therefore, with the story of the afternoon’s fitting, nobly sacrificing his own dignity in order to include his stained breeches and Percy’s drawers.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear—poor Tom!” The countess made small snorting noises. “He does take his position very seriously, God help the poor lad. I think you must be a very great trial to him.”
“Yes, he was in hopes that Percy Wainwright might be a macaroni—you could quite see visions of embroidered waist coats and clocked silk stockings dance in his head—but I was obliged to dash his hopes, alas.”
The countess smiled afresh at that, but her voice was serious.
“Do you like Percy Wainwright?”
“Yes,” he answered, rather surprised that she would ask. “Yes, we get on quite well together. Common interests, and the like.” He trusted that no hint of just how common those interests were showed on his face. He cleared his throat and added, “I like the general, too, Mother—very much.”
“Oh, do you?” Her face softened. “I’m glad of that, John. He’s a very fine man—and so kind.” She pursed her lips then, though still with a look of amusement. “I am not sure your brother is quite as taken with him. But then, Hal is always so suspicious, poor boy. I really think sometimes that he trusts no one but you and his wife. Well, and Harry Quarry, to be sure.”
The mention of his brother reminded Grey. In the flurry of his return from Helwater, the preparations for the wedding, and the regiment’s new orders, he had momentarily forgotten. But surely Hal had had sufficient time to speak with her by now.
“Mother—did Hal mention to you the page from Father’s journal that we discovered in his office?”
If he’d thought her slightly pale before, he’d been mistaken. He’d seen her pale with fatigue and white with fury. Now, though, the blood washed from her face in an instant, and the look of fear in her eyes was unmistakable.
“Did he?” he repeated, trying to sound casual. “I rather wondered whether perhaps you had had one, too. Delivered by post, perhaps?”
She looked up at him, her eyes quick and fierce.
“What makes you think that?”
“The way you spoke of James Fraser when I departed for Helwater,” he told her frankly. “Something must have disturbed you quite suddenly, for you to take such note of the man; you have known of him for years. But since the only thing you do know of him is that he was once a prominent Jacobite…?” He paused delicately, but she said nothing. Her eyes were still blazing like a burning glass, but she wasn’t looking at him any longer. Whatever she was looking at lay a good way beyond him.
“Yes,” she said at last, her voice remote. She blinked once and looked at him, her gaze still sharp, but no longer burning. “Your father always said you were the cleverest of the boys.” This wasn’t said in a complimentary tone. “As for ‘was once a prominent Jacobite’—there is no ‘was’ about it, John. Believe me, once a Papist, always a Papist.”
He forbore pointing out that “Papist” and “Jacobite” were not invariably the same thing. When politics entered the room, principle often flew out the window. While most Papists had indeed supported the Stuart cause, there were not a few Protestants who had as well, either from personal opportunism or from a sincere conviction that James Stuart was the divinely appointed sovereign of Great Britain, his religion notwithstanding.
“So you did receive a page from that journal,” he said, making it a statement, rather than a question. “May I see it?”
“I burnt it.”
“What for?” He all but barked at her, and she blinked again, startled. She eyed him then, obviously choosing her words.
“Because,” she said evenly, “I did not wish to keep it. Have you heard the expression, John, ‘Let the dead bury the dead’? What’s past is past, and I shan’t cling to its remnants.”
He struggled for a moment against the impulse to say something regrettable—but then his eye fell upon the miniature on her dressing table. It had stood there since the day Gerard Grey had given it to her, and it was years since John Grey had ceased to notice it. Noticing it now, he was taken aback to see just how much the portrait resembled the image he saw in his shaving mirror. His father had been darker in coloring, but otherwise…So much for his mother’s chance of forgetting the past, then, even if she wanted to.
“Really, Mother,” he said mildly, “you are the most atrocious liar. What are you afraid of?”
“What? What the devil do you mean by that?” she exclaimed indignantly. She didn’t curse often, and he invariably found it amusing when she did, but he suppressed his smile.
“I mean,” he said patiently, gesturing at the miniature, “that if you wish to convince the world that you have lost all thought for my father, you ought to remove that from sight. And when you tell people you have destroyed something,” he added, nodding at her secretary, “you ought not to glance at the place where you’ve hidden it.”
She opened her mouth, but found nothing to say, and closed it again. She looked at him, eyes narrowed.
“If you don’t want that journal page,” he said, “I do.”
“No,” she said at once.
“Does it contain something so dangerous, then? Have you shown it to Hal?” Despite himself, a tinge of anger was creeping into his words. “I’m no longer twelve, Mother.”
She looked at him for a long moment, the oddest expression of regret flitting across her face.
“More’s the pity,” she said. Her shoulders sagged then, and she bowed her head and turned away, rubbing two fingers between her brows.
“I’ll think about it, John,” she said. “More, I can’t promise you. Now leave me, do; I’ve a dreadful headache.”
“Liar,” he said again, but without heat. “I’ll send your maid, shall I?”
“Please.”
He went out, then, but at the door turned back and stuck his head through.
“Mother?”
“Yes?”
“If you wish to convince someone that you aren’t afraid—look them in the eye. Good night.”
Percy Wainwright, it transpired, had never so much as touched a sword, let alone used one with violent intent. In order to remedy this shocking lack, he agreed amiably enough, upon his return from Bath, to go with Grey and Melton to their usual weekly practice, for the purpose of basic instruction.
The salle des armes favored by the Greys was in Monmouth Street, a small, dingy building wedged between a pawnbroker’s and a mercer’s shop near St. Giles, and run by a small Sicilian gentleman whose skill with the blade was surpassed only by the individuality of his idiom.
“Gets you fat-fat,” Signor Berculi said without preamble, rudely poking Hal in his very flat stomach. “No practice, two weeks! Some pidocchio do the business on you, stick a rapier up you fat arse.”
Hal, quite accustomed to Signor Berculi, ignored this pleasantry and introduced Mr. Wainwright as a new addition to the family and to the regiment.
The Signor circled Percy, shaking his head and biting his finger in dismay. Percy looked mildly apprehensive, but the glance he shot Grey was filled with amusement.
“So old, so old!” Signor Berculi mourned, halting in front of Percy and prodding him critically in the upper arm. He waved a small, callused hand at Grey. “That one, sword in cradle. You? Pah!” He spat, shook himself violently, then crossed himself.
“Come,” he said, resigned, and seized Percy by the sleeve. “You lunge. No stick you foot, all right?”
While Percy was rapidly stripped to his shirt and breeches, given a battered rapier with no point, and set to lunging, the Greys stripped for action.
“En garde.” Hal fell naturally into his stance, knee bent, rapier forward, the side of his body turned toward Grey, left hand held gracefully up behind his head.
“J’ai regardé.” Grey tapped his blade lightly against Hal’s, and held it crossed. Signor Berculi, circling them with beady eyes narrowed for flaws in form, shouted, “Commencez!” and they began.
It was an exhibition of form to begin with, neither man seeking actual advantage but only an opening in which to try a coupé or passe avant, circling slowly as their muscles loosened.
Grey saw Percy’s eyes upon them, interested, until Signor Berculi spotted his distraction and drove him back to his lunging with a bark.
He breathed deep, intoxicated by the smell of sweat, old and fresh, the metal tang of the swords, and the rub of the hilt on the heel of his hand. He loved to fight with the rapier; it was so light, he was barely conscious of it as anything more than an extension of his body.
He and his brother were evenly matched physically, being of a height, with Hal having a few pounds the advantage in weight, and Grey perhaps an inch more in reach. Despite this evident equality—and the fact that Hal was a fine swordsman—Grey knew himself to be better.
He seldom demonstrated that knowledge in their practice bouts, knowing equally well that Hal hated to lose and would be in bad temper if he did. Now, though, he found himself pressing, ever so slightly, and realized with a glance at Percy and a small tingling of his flesh that he meant to win today, no matter what the consequence.
“Have you any further news of the conspirators?” Grey asked, as much in order to distract his brother as from curiosity.
Hal met his thrust with a strong riposte, beat, and went for a thrust in quarte, which failed.
“They go to trial this week,” he said briefly.
“I have”—a beat, beat back, feint in prime, and he touched Hal’s shoulder, barely, and smiled—“have not seen mention of it in the papers.”
“You will.” Grunting, Hal lunged, and he barely turned aside in time.
“They”—Hal was beginning to breathe hard by now, and the words emerged in brief bursts—“decided to—do as I said—they would.”
“To suppress the political aspects of the case?” Grey was still breathing easily. “Say ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’”
“She sells—sea shells—by the frigging seashore! Damn your eyes!” A fusillade of beats and a vicious thrust that missed his chest so narrowly that Grey felt the blade glide along his shirtfront.
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Peter Piper picked a peck of pippled pickers, Peter P—” Laughing—and beginning to gasp himself—he left off, and fought.
Beat, beat, feint, a half skip back as Hal’s point lunged past his face, another, Hal was leaning too far forward—no, he’d caught himself, jumped back in the nick of time as Grey’s blade came up. A lunge in tierce, in tierce again without let, and dust flew up from the stamp of his foot on the boards.
Hal had caught what he was about; he could feel Hal’s thoughts as though they were inside his own head, feel the edge of astonished annoyance change, anger rising, then the jerk as Hal caught himself, forced himself to restraint, to something colder and more cautious.
Grey himself had no such restraint. He was happily off his head, drunk with the lust of fighting. His body felt like oiled rope, tensile and slippery, and he was taking dangerous chances, completely confident that he could elude Hal’s point, regardless. He saw an opening, dropped into a flattened lunge with a yell, and his buttoned point struck Hal’s thigh and skidded across the fabric of his breeches.
“Jesus!” said Hal, and swung at his head.
He ducked, laughing, and popped up like a jack-in-the-box, grabbing the point of his rapier so the blade bowed between his hands, then let go and snapped it off Hal’s, making the metal ring and the sword jump in Hal’s hand.
He heard Berculi swear in Italian, but had no attention to spare. Hal was fighting back in earnest now, beating at his blade fit to break them both. He skipped in at once, his arm running up Hal’s and taking him by surprise, so they ended in embrace, sword arms linked and blades entangled, bodies pressed together.
He grinned at Hal, baring his teeth, and saw the spark leap in his brother’s eye. He was faster, though, and the first to jerk loose, leaving Hal for an instant off balance. He dropped by instinct into a perfect Passata-sotto, and his button pressed against Hal’s throat.
“Touché,” he said softly.
Hal’s hands fell away, his rapier dangling, and he stood for a moment, chest heaving for breath, before he nodded.
“Je me rends,” he said gruffly. I yield.
Grey took away his point and bowed to his brother, but his eyes were on Percy. Percy had left off his lunging altogether in order to watch, and stood against the wall, eyes wide in shock and what Grey hoped was admiration.
Signor Berculi had snatched off his wig and was kneading it with excitement.
“You!” he said, brandishing the object in Grey’s face. “Never you do that! Is no proper that what you do! You insano! But good,” he added, standing back a little and surveying Grey from head to toe as though he had never seen him before. He nodded, pursing his lips judiciously. “Very good.”
Hal was rubbing his head and neck with a towel. He was flushed, but for a wonder, seemed amused rather than angry.
“What brought that on?” he asked.
“Showing off for the new brother,” Grey replied flippantly, with a casual wave at Percy. He wiped a sleeve across his jaw. He was soaked; his shirt and breeches stuck to him, and his muscles jumped and quivered. “Want another go?”
Hal gave him a look.
“Oh, I think not,” he said. “I’ve a meeting.” He looked at Percy, and tossed the rapier to him. “Here, you have a go, Wainwright. I’ve taken the edge off him for you.”
Percy’s mouth fell open, and Signor Berculi burst into sardonic laughter. Percy turned the sword slowly round in his hands, not taking his eyes off Grey.
“Shall I?”
Grey’s pulse was still hammering in his ears, and something exhilarating ran up his spine like champagne bubbles rising in a glass.
“Of course, if you like. You needn’t worry,” he said, and bowed deep to Percy, rapier politely extended. “I’ll be gentle.”
An hour later, Grey and Wainwright bade farewell to Signor Berculi and the salle des armes, and turned toward Neal’s Yard, where one of Grey’s favorite chophouses did a bloody steak with roast potatoes and the proprietor’s special mushroom catsup—an appealing prospect to ravenous appetites.
Grey was entirely aware that more than one appetite had been stimulated by the recent exercise. The art of swordsmanship obliged one to pay the closest attention to the body of one’s opponent, reading intent in the shift of weight, the narrowing of an eye, looking for a weakness that might be taken advantage of. He’d been attuned to every breath Percy Wainwright had taken for the last hour, and he knew damned well where Percy’s weakness was—and his own.
Blood thrummed pleasantly through his veins, still hot from the exercise. The day was sunny, with a chilly breeze that dried the sweat and felt good on his heated skin, and the afternoon lay alluringly before them, empty of obligation. He was meant to be taking Percy on a tour of the barracks, the storerooms, the parade ground, and introducing him to such officers and men as they ran across in the course of it. The devil with that, he thought. Time enough.
“Did you really have a sword in your cradle?” Percy asked, with a sidelong smile.
“Of course not. No good having a sword if you haven’t got any sense of balance,” Grey said mildly. “I believe I had reached the advanced age of three years before my father trusted me to stay solidly on my feet.”
He was gratified by the disbelieving look Percy gave him, but raised his hand in affirmation.
“Truly. If you ever become intimate with my—with our brother,” he corrected with a smile, “ask him to show you the scar on his left leg. Hal was very kind in teaching little brother to use a sword, but carelessly gave me his own rapier to try. It wasn’t buttoned, and I ran him through the calf with it. He bled buckets, and limped for a month.”
Percy hooted with laughter, but quickly sobered.
“Is it terribly important, do you think? That I know how to use a sword, I mean. Signor Berculi seemed to think I lack any natural ability whatever, and I must say I’m forced to agree with him.”
This was patently true, but Grey did not say so, merely moving a gloved hand in equivocation.
“It’s always a good thing to be adept with weapons, especially if the fighting is close, but I know any number of officers who aren’t. Much more important to act like an officer.”
“How do you do that?” Percy seemed sincerely interested, which was the first step, and Grey told him so.
“Have a care for your men—but also for their purpose. They will look to you in battle, and in some cases, your strength of will may be the only thing enabling them to go on fighting. At that point, their physical welfare ceases to be a concern, either to them or to you. All that matters is to hold them together and see them through. They must trust you to do that.”
Seeing the look of concern knitting Percy’s dark brows, he altered his plan for the afternoon.
“After luncheon, we’ll go to the parade ground, and I’ll explain the general order of drills. That’s why you have drills and discipline; the men must be in the habit of looking to you at all times, of following your orders without hesitation. And then,” he said, rather diffidently, “perhaps we might take a little supper. Your rooms are convenient to the parade ground, I believe. If you did not mind…we might fetch a bit of bread and cheese and eat there.”
Percy’s face lightened, the frown of concern replaced by a slow smile.
“I should like it of all things,” he said. He coughed then, and took up another subject.
“What was Melton saying to you during your bout? About a conspiracy of sodomites?” There was a hint of incredulity in his voice. “A conspiracy to do what?”
“Oh…create scandal, subvert the public morality, seduce children, bugger horses”—he smiled blandly into the face of an elderly gentleman passing, who had caught this and was staring at him, pop-eyed—“you know the sort of thing.”
Percy made snorting noises and pulled him along by the arm.
“I do,” he said, still snorting. “I grew up Methodist, remember.”
“I didn’t think Methodists even admitted the possibility of such things.”
“Not out loud, certainly,” Percy said dryly. “But why is your brother concerned with this particular affair?”
“Because—” he said, and got no further. A man jostled him rudely, shoving him into a wall so hard that he staggered.
“What the devil do you—” He put a hand to his bruised shoulder, indignant, then saw the look on the man’s face and dodged. He hadn’t seen the knife, but heard the scrape of it as it dragged across the brick wall where he had been standing an instant before.
The man was already recovering, turning. He kicked at the footpad, aiming for the knee, but got him square in the shin, hurting his own foot. The man yowled nonetheless, and drew back. Grey seized Percy by the sleeve.
“Run!”
Percy ran, Grey after him, and they pelted down the street, ducking hot-chestnut stands, orange sellers, and a throng of slow-moving women who shrieked and scattered as the men plowed through them. Footsteps rang on the pavement behind; he glanced back over his shoulder and saw two men, burly and determined, pursuing.
He’d left his rapier at the salle des armes, God damn it. He had his dagger, though, and ducking aside into an alley, ripped open his waistcoat and scrabbled frantically to get hold of it. He had no more than a second before the first of the men rushed in after him, reaching for him with a gap-toothed grin. Too late, the footpad saw the dagger and dodged aside; the point scored his abdomen, ripping his shirt and the flesh beneath. Grey glimpsed blood, and pressed the attack, shouting and jabbing.
The man danced backward, looking alarmed, and shouted, “Jed!”
Jed arrived promptly, popping up behind his fellow with a blackthorn walking stick. He slammed this across Grey’s forearm, numbing it, than bashed it at his hand. The dagger spun away into the piles of refuse. Grey didn’t wait to look for it.
He dodged another blow, and ran down the alley, looking for egress or shelter and finding neither.
They were both after him. He’d no time to wonder where Percy was. The brick wall of a building loomed up in front of him. Dead end.
A door—there was a door, and he threw himself against it, but it didn’t yield. He banged on it, kicked it, shouting for help. A hand grabbed his shoulder, and he swung round with it, striking out with a fist. The footpad grimaced, drew back, slapping at him like a baited bear.
Jed and his frigging stick were back, wheezing with the run.
“Do ’im,” said the first footpad, falling back to make room, and Jed promptly seized the blackthorn in both hands and drove the head of it into Grey’s ribs.
The next blow got him in the balls and the world went white. He dropped like a bag of tossed rubbish and curled up on himself, barely conscious of the wet cobbles under his face. He realized dimly that he was about to die, but was unable to do anything about it. Kicks and blows from the stick thudded into his flesh; he barely felt them through the fog of agony.
Then it stopped, and for a moment of blessed relief, he thought he’d died. He breathed, though, and discovered he hadn’t, as pain shot through him, sudden and searing as the spark from a Leyden jar.
“It is you,” said a gruff Scottish voice from somewhere above. “Thought so. Are ye hurt bad, then?”
He couldn’t answer. Enormous hands grabbed him beneath the armpits and sat him up against the wall. He made a thin breathy noise, which was all he could manage in the way of a scream, and felt bile flood his throat.
“Oh, like that, is it?” said the voice, sounding resigned, as Grey bent to the side and vomited. “Aye, well, bide a wee, then. I’ll fetch my jo wi’ the chair.”
The very young apothecary squinted earnestly at Grey’s forearm and prodded it gingerly.
“Oh, bad, is it?” he said sympathetically, at the resulting hiss of breath.
“Well, it’s not good,” Grey said, ungritting his teeth with some effort. “But I doubt it’s broken.” He turned his wrist very slowly, tensed against the possible grating of bone ends, but everything moved as it should. It hurt, but it moved.
“Tellt ye it wasnae more than bruises.” Rab MacNab shifted his bulk, uncrossing his arms and leaning forward from his post against the wall. “Agnes wouldnae have it but we get a doctor to ye, though. Tellt her ’twas a waste of money, aye?”
Despite his words, the big chairman cast a fond glance at his diminutive wife, who sniffed at him.
“I dinna mean to have his lordship die on my premises,” she said briskly. “Bad for business, aye?” She nudged the apothecary aside, and bent to peer earnestly at Grey’s face. Bright brown eyes scanned his battered features, then creased with her grin.
“Enjoy the ride, did ye?”
“I was much obliged to your husband, ma’am,” he said. While he was naturally relieved to have been discovered and rescued by an acquaintance, being thrown into MacNab’s sedan chair and carried at the trot for a mile had been very nearly as excruciating as the original injury.
“My congratulations on your new premises,” he added, wishing to change the subject. He struggled upright and swung his legs off the divan, forcing the young apothecary—the boy couldn’t be fifteen, surely—to let go of his arm.
“Thank ye kindly,” Nessie said, looking gratified. He couldn’t help but think of her as “Nessie,” as he had first met her under this name, before her apotheocis from whore to madam—and wife. She patted the respectable white kerch that bound her mass of curly dark hair, and looked contentedly round the tiny salon. It was furnished with a few bits of ramshackle furniture, all showing signs of heavy use—but it was scrupulously clean, and a good wax candle burned in a solid brass chamber stick.
“Small it is, but a good place. Three girls, all clean and willing. Ye’ll recommend us to your friends, I hope. Not but what we’d be pleased to accommodate your friend here gratis,” she added, turning graciously to Percy. “If ye’d care to pass the time, until his lordship’s fettled? Janie will be free in no time.”
Percy, who had been listening to the noises behind the wall—presumably involving Janie, as the gentleman with her was panting that name repeatedly—with patent interest, bowed to Nessie with grave decorum.
“I do appreciate the offer, ma’am. I’d not wish to tire Mistress Jane unduly, though. Surely she must have some rest.”
“Och, no. Go all day and night, oor Janie will,” MacNab assured him proudly, though he seemed relieved at Percy’s further polite refusal.
“I’ll be off, then. But shall I come again?” the chairman inquired, straightening up. “To carry his lordship home, once he’s fit?”
“No, no,” Grey said hastily. “I believe I am quite recovered. Mr. Wainwright and I will walk.”
Percy’s brows rose, and everyone in the room looked askance at Grey, causing him to think that the damage to his face must be worse than he’d thought.
“You really should be bled, my lord,” the apothecary said earnestly. “’Twould be dangerous to go out into the cold without, and you injured. A terrible strain upon your liver. You might take a chill. And the bruises on your face—a good leeching would do the world of good, my lord.”
Grey hated being bled, and disliked leeches more.
“No, I am quite well, I assure you.” He shoved himself to his feet and stood swaying, brilliant dots of light blinking on and off at the corners of his vision. A chorus of dismayed exclamations informed him that he was falling, and he put out his hands just in time to catch himself as he plumped back down on the divan.
Anxious hands grasped his shoulders and eased him down into a supine position. Cold sweat had come out on his forehead, and a gentle hand wiped it away with a cloth as his vision cleared.
To his surprise, the hand was Percy’s, rather than Nessie’s.
“You stay and be bled like a good boy,” Percy said firmly. One corner of his mouth tucked back, repressing a smile. “I’ll go and find a coach to take us home.” He straightened up and bowed to Nessie and MacNab.
“I am so much obliged to you both for your kind assistance and hospitality. Do allow me to take care of this gentleman’s fee.” He nodded at the apothecary, his hand going to his purse.
“That’s all right.” Grey groped for his coat, which someone had folded tidily and put under his head. “I’ve got it.”
“Ye do?” MacNab’s heavy brows rose in surprise. “I made sure yon thugs would ha’ made awa’ wi’ your purse.”
“No, it’s here.” It was; so far as he could tell, everything was still in his pockets that should be.
“Errr…” The apothecary had reddened, casting an agonized look at Nessie. “That’s all right, gentlemen. I mean—my fee—that’s—”
An ecstatic shriek burst through the wall beside Grey’s ear.
“I promised him an hour wi’ Susan,” Nessie said, looking amused. “But if ye’d care to cover her fee, your lordship…”
“With pleasure.” He fumbled his purse open and extracted a handful of coins.
“Ahhh…”
He looked at the apothecary, now a bright scarlet.
“Could I have Janie instead?” the boy blurted.
Grey sighed and added another florin to the coins in Nessie’s hand.
It was only as he lay back and allowed the apothecary to fold back his sleeve that it occurred to him to wonder. He, too, had assumed the motive of the attack to be robbery. But it must have been plain to the footpads that he was incapable of resistance after that second blow. And yet they had not rifled his pockets and run—they’d beaten him until MacNab’s timely appearance frightened them away.
Had they meant to murder him? That was a thought as cold as the fleam pressed into the bend of his elbow. He grimaced at the sting of the blade and shut his eyes.
No, he thought suddenly. They had a knife. The first attempt had been with a knife; there was no mistaking the grating of metal on brick. If they’d meant to murder him, they might have cut his throat without the slightest difficulty. And they hadn’t.
There was a feeling of warmth as the blood welled and trickled over his arm; it felt almost soothing.
But if they had meant only to administer a beating…why? He did not know them. If it was meant as warning…of what?