What Darkness Brings

Chapter 10



S

ebastian had first learned of the existence of another dark, lean young man with yellow eyes from a Chelsea doctor who’d lost his watch and pocketbook to such a man at the point of a gun one stormy night on Hounslow Heath. And then, just that August, Sebastian and the man had come face-to-face.

His name was Jamie Knox, and he’d once served as a rifleman with the 145th. A crack shot with an almost mythical reputation for accuracy over long distances and in the dark, he was discharged when his unit was reduced after the disastrous defeat of the English forces under Wellington at Corunna. What he’d done after that was a matter of dispute. Sebastian was inclined to believe the tales that said he’d taken to the high toby and become a highwayman, a legendary figure in black who preyed on the coaches of those foolish enough to venture unescorted across the wasteland of Hounslow Heath after dusk.

Aided by what was reputed to be an animal-like sense of hearing and a preternatural ability to see in the dark, Knox had quickly accumulated the resources to purchase a Bishopsgate public house known as the Black Devil. Although there were others who said Knox had in fact stolen the pub—and murdered its previous owner.

Sebastian had never discovered which version of the tale was true. But he had it on reliable authority that the French wine and brandy in Knox’s cellars found its way across the Channel in the holds of darkened ships that plied their dangerous trade on moonless nights. . . .

And that one of Knox’s associates in that shadowy world was a certain aristocratic ex-privateer named Russell Yates.

The Black Devil was a half-timbered relic from an earlier age, built against one of the few remaining stretches of London’s old Roman walls. Popular with Bishopsgate’s shopkeepers, clockmakers, and tailors, it was marked by a faded wooden sign depicting a black devil dancing against a background of flames. Like its exterior, the inside of the house had changed little over the centuries. The heavily beamed ceiling hung low; the flagged floor was uneven and covered with sawdust to catch spills; a heavy, smoke-blackened stone hearth took up a significant portion of one wall. When Sebastian pushed open the taproom door, he found the public room crowded with a typical noontime assortment of journeymen and apprentices from the surrounding streets.

A few of the nearest men glanced up, curious, then went back to their beer. Caught in the midst of drawing a tankard of ale, the young woman behind the counter froze as Sebastian walked toward her.

“Bleedin’ hell,” she said, tossing her head to shake back a heavy lock of dark hair that had fallen into her face. “Not you again.”

Sebastian gave her a smile that showed his teeth. “Where is he?”

Setting aside the tankard, she rested one hand on her hip and hardened her jaw. Her mouth was wide and full, her cheekbones high, her dark eyes almond shaped and exotically tilted. She was beautiful and voluptuous, and she knew it. “Think I’d tell ye?”

A low laugh came from behind him. “Pippa has a tendency to hold grudges, I’m afraid,” said Knox. “She somewhat resents your threat to see me hanged.”

“Only if I discover that you’re guilty,” said Sebastian, turning.

The tavern owner stood with one hand propped against the frame of a doorway that opened off the end of the taproom. He might have left the high toby behind, but he still dressed all in black, like the devil that danced before the flames of hell on the sign hanging outside his tavern. Black coat and waistcoat, black trousers and boots, black cravat. Only his shirt was white.

He was older than Sebastian by a few years, darker, and perhaps a shade taller. But he had the same leanly muscled frame, the same fine-boned face, the same feral yellow eyes. As far as Sebastian knew, the two men were not related; yet Knox looked enough like Sebastian to be his brother.

Or at least a half brother.

“I didn’t kill your damned Frenchman,” said Knox. The smile on the man’s face remained, but his eyes had hardened. Just six weeks before, Sebastian had accused Knox of killing a paroled French officer named Philippe Arceneaux. Knox denied it. But Sebastian was never completely convinced of the man’s innocence.

“How about a diamond merchant named Daniel Eisler?”

The faintest flicker of surprise crossed the tavern owner’s features, then disappeared. It could have meant anything. “You’ve been busy, haven’t you? From what I hear, the man’s barely been dead twelve hours.” His gaze shifted, significantly, to a nearby table of leatherworkers who were suddenly looking interested. Pushing away from the doorframe, he took a step back. “Pippa? If you’ll bring us a couple of pints?”

Following him into the inner room, Sebastian found himself in a small, neat office sparsely furnished with the unpretentious functionality of a campaign tent.

“Please, sit,” said Knox, indicating the plain gateleg table that stood near a window overlooking the cobbled rear yard.

Sebastian sat and waited while the woman, Pippa, banged two foaming tankards down on the tabletop, threw him a malevolent glare, then slammed the door behind her as she returned to the taproom. He said, “Somehow, I expected you to deny knowing Eisler.”

Knox came to sprawl in the opposite chair. “Why should I? Because he’s dead? Are you imagining I killed him too?”

“Where were you last night around eight or nine?”

Knox took a long, slow sip of his ale and set it down before answering. “Here, at the Black Devil. And damn you to hell for asking.”

Sebastian looked at the dark, handsome face of the man across from him and said, “You went to see Eisler last week. Why?”

“How do you know I went to see him?”

“His butler remembered you.”

For a long moment, the other man stared back at him. Then he pushed up from his chair and crossed the room to unlock a small chest. He withdrew a flat rectangular object wrapped in oilcloth, locked the chest again, and came to lay the article on the table before Sebastian.

Roughly bound with cord, the bundle was some fifteen inches long, slightly less wide, and two or three inches thick. “What is it?” asked Sebastian.

“Open it.”

Sebastian untied the cord that held the oilcloth in place and peeled it back to reveal a crumbling brown calf-bound book. Opening the tattered cover, he found himself staring at a handwritten script that was neither Roman nor Greek, but something at once strange and vaguely familiar. Puzzled, he ran his fingertips over the page. The book was definitely made of paper rather than vellum, yet it had been written by hand, not printed on a press.

“How old is it?” he asked.

“Late sixteenth century, I’m told,” said Knox, resuming his seat.

“It’s in Hebrew?”

“So they say.”

Carefully turning the brittle, foxed pages, Sebastian studied the cramped script illustrated with curious geographical shapes and strange images. He looked up. “What does this old manuscript have to do with Eisler?”

Knox reached for his tankard, but he didn’t drink from it. Instead, he turned his head to stare out the window beside them. Watching him, Sebastian had the impression he gazed beyond the cobbled yard and the shady elms of the ancient churchyard that bordered it. Far beyond, to a distant, sun-blasted land, dry and stony and ravaged by war. In Sebastian’s experience, most ex-soldiers carried their past with them always, like a dark vision of hell that, once glimpsed, is never forgotten.

“To men like you and me,” said Knox, his voice rough, “war means burned villages, dead women and children, and fields plowed by cannonballs. It means fruit rotting in orchards because there’s no one left alive to pick it, and wells fouled by the stinking bodies of pigs and goats and dogs. It means men with their bellies ripped open and their faces shot off. But that’s because we’re just the poor sods who fight and bleed and die. For some men, war is an opportunity.”

“You’re saying Eisler was one of those men?”

A faintly derisive smile curled the tavern owner’s lips. “There were very few opportunities Daniel Eisler missed.”

“I’m told he kept agents on the Continent to buy the jewels of families that found themselves in strained circumstances.”

“So I’ve heard, although I never dealt with them myself. But Eisler also had another man in his employ, a defrocked Spanish priest by the name of Ferdinand Arroyo. Arroyo’s mission was to acquire a certain type of manuscript of interest to Eisler—mainly in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but sometimes in Old French, Italian, or German.”

Sebastian stared down at an age-mottled page half-filled by a curious representation of a winged angel holding what looked like Saturn and breathing fire. “This being an example?”

“Yes.”

“So how does it come to be in your possession?”

“It was brought to London by gentlemen with whom I do business. I was to deliver it to Eisler today.”

“Why show it to me?”

Knox hesitated. “Let’s just say I consider Russell Yates something of a friend.”

Sebastian studied the other man’s hard, sun-darkened face. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Knox had a damned good reason for showing him the manuscript, although he suspected friendship wasn’t part of it. But all he said was, “Who do you think killed Eisler?”

Knox leaned back in his seat and crossed his outthrust boots at the ankles. “I’d say there’s probably somewhere between five hundred and a thousand men—and women—in this town who wanted to see that bastard dead. With odds like that, it’s inevitable that he was eventually going to run up against someone willing to do more than just wish. But if you’re asking me for names . . . I haven’t any.”

“Except for Señor Ferdinand Arroyo?”

Knox brought his tankard to his lips and drank. “Last I heard, Arroyo was in Caen.”

Sebastian closed the aged manuscript’s fragile cover and rose to his feet. “Thank you.”

“Take it,” said Knox, leaning forward to push the manuscript across the table toward him. “I’ve no use for it. It’s not like I read Hebrew.”

“You could sell it.”

“The old-book business never appealed to me. Take it. If you can find someone to read it for you, you might find it . . . useful.”

Sebastian wondered what a three-hundred-year-old manuscript could tell him about last night’s murder of a diamond merchant. But he wrapped the aged volume in its oilcloth covering again and tucked it beneath his arm. “I’ll see it’s returned to you.”

Knox shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Sebastian had almost reached the door when Knox stopped him. “You said Eisler’s butler remembered me.”

Sebastian paused to look back at him. “That’s right.”

“I never gave him my name.”

“He didn’t know your name. But he remembered what you looked like.”

Knox widened his eyes. “His powers of description must be something to be wondered at.”

“He said you looked enough like me to be my brother.”

“Ah.”

The two men’s gazes met and held. Neither spoke, for there was no need. One might be the son of the beautiful, faithless Countess of Hendon, while the other was the bastard child of a Ludlow barmaid, but the resemblance between them was as undeniable as it was inexplicable.