That was a tricky point, actually. Anyone who feared how the gang would react to his—or her—withdrawal from the trade would hardly make a public complaint and draw even more attention to him – or herself. Would they all be in danger of reprisal? It was a risk he had chosen to take.
“I will speak openly of this wherever I go over the next few days,” Percy said, returning to his place by the door and letting his eyes move from face to face along the rows. There was absolutely nothing to be read in any of them. “I will make sure it is clearly understood that this is my rule and that everyone in my employ is required to live by it or lose his or her position. Are there any questions?”
“Mr. Crutchley,” he said when no one spoke up, “you will send the servants about their business, if you please. James Mawgan, I will see you in the library as soon as you have been dismissed.”
The head gardener’s face turned in sharp surprise and became almost instantly blank again.
The morning room that seemed more like a library to him was unoccupied by any human, Percy was happy to discover. It was, however, occupied by the remnants of the menagerie. The bulldog—Bruce?—had claimed the hearth, and was flanked by his usual cohorts, two of the cats. The new one was beside the coal scuttle, cleaning his paws with his tongue. Hector sat erect and alert beside the chair Percy usually occupied. He was neither cowering nor hiding, an interesting development. The other two dogs—the long and the short—had been taken yesterday to the Kramer house, where apparently they had been given an effusive welcome and a large bowl of tasty tidbits apiece. All of Fluff’s kittens had now been spoken for, though they were not to leave their mother for a while yet.
Percy wondered if he had just set the cat among the pigeons, or stepped on a hornet’s nest, or awakened a sleeping dog, or otherwise done what it would have been altogether better for him not to do. Time would tell.
“Come,” he called when someone tapped on the door.
Mawgan stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and stood with his arms hanging at his sides and his gaze fixed on the carpet two feet in front of him.
“You were the late Viscount Barclay’s batman for almost two years, Mawgan?” Percy said.
“Yes, my lord.”
“You did not like the life of a fisherman?” Percy asked.
“I did not mind it,” Mawgan said.
“How did it come about, then? Did Barclay not have a valet?” He surely would have been the obvious choice for the position of batman. He might have been elderly, of course, but it was unlikely when Barclay himself had been a very young man.
“He died, my lord.”
“The valet?”
“He drowned,” Mawgan explained. “He was on a day off and wanted to go out fishing in my father’s boat. He fell in. He couldn’t swim. I jumped in and tried to save him, but he fought me in his panic and we went under the boat and I got knocked on the head. Someone pulled me out, but I didn’t come round for two whole days after. He didn’t make it, poor bugger—begging your pardon, my lord.”
Percy stared at him. Mawgan had not changed posture at all. He was still staring at the carpet.
“Your appointment was in the nature of being a reward, then, for trying to save the valet’s life?” he asked. “You are the great-nephew of Mr. Ratchett, I believe?”
“I think he put in a word for me, my lord,” Mawgan said, “after Bains would not let his boy go. But his lordship called at our house to see me after I came around, and I asked myself.”
“You saw him and the viscountess being captured by a French scouting party?” Percy asked.
“I did, my lord,” Mawgan said. “There were nothing I could do to stop it. There were six of them, and I did not even have my musket with me. It would have been suicide if I had tried. I thought the best thing to do was get back to the regiment as fast as I could and fetch help. But it was a long way and I got lost in the hills in the night. It took me more than a day.”
“You assumed, did you,” Percy asked, “that they had both been killed?”
“They was obviously not French,” Mawgan said, “and his lordship was not in uniform and had nothing on him to prove he was an officer. I thought they were for sure both dead. I would have stayed on in the Peninsula if I had believed there was any hope. But I was not even allowed to go with the party that went looking for them. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, that was, but I wanted to go all the same. It would have been something to do. It is worst of all to have nothing to do.”
And yet, Percy thought, his head gardener seemed to be making a career of doing just that. “And so you came home,” he said.
“I wish I had stayed, my lord,” Mawgan assured him. “I felt that bad when I knew her ladyship was still alive and had been released and brought home all out of her mind like. I might have been some comfort to her, a familiar face.”
... all out of her mind like.
Imogen!
“Thank you,” Percy said briskly. “I wish I had known Viscount Barclay. He was a distant cousin of mine and a brave man. A hero. You were privileged to know and serve him.”