“I don’t see why the devil you’re taking his side.” Holt looked startled and a little hurt by Curtis’s defection. Curtis felt somewhat startled himself, but a fact was a fact.
“He beat you fair and square, and not for money either. He’s a damned good player, which leaves the rest of us to be good losers.” Curtis let that sink in; a poor loser was a much-despised creature. Holt pressed his lips together. “Now, do you want to try and win back some of that fiver you owe me?”
They played two more games, and Curtis lost a fair amount of his notional winnings. It smoothed Holt’s ruffled feathers somewhat, but he still seemed aggrieved. Curtis couldn’t blame him.
He couldn’t really blame da Silva either. Holt hadn’t said anything much out of the ordinary, and one might have thought da Silva would be used to that sort of banter. He would hear it often enough, after all. But Curtis had fought the Boers, a handful of ill-equipped farmers who had almost defeated the British Empire through sheer obstinate pride, and he had recognised the flash in da Silva’s dark liquid eyes. A Latin tag that he’d learned as a schoolboy came to mind, along with its doggerel translation. Nemo me impune lacessit. If you cross me, you’ll regret it.
He went off to seek the subject of his thoughts and succeeded on the first try: the library, where Misses Merton and Carruth were exploring the shelves. Da Silva sat at the desk, hair slicked back into place, intent on his work.
Curtis came up, aware of the women. “Good game. You’re a fine player.”
“Years of practice.” Da Silva didn’t look up. He had two dictionaries and a pile of manuscript sheets in front of him, which he seemed to be annotating. Curtis came over to look. The original handwriting was execrable; da Silva’s additions were in a looping, elaborate hand and, regrettably, maroon ink. Curtis squinted to read them upside down.
“Editing Levy is not a spectator sport.” Da Silva’s pen scratched. He didn’t seem inclined to pay Curtis any attention.
“Who’s Levy?”
“The leading Fragmentalist. One of England’s greatest living poets.” Da Silva contemplated the word he’d written, crossed it out again, and added, “If you mention Alfred Austin, I shall strike you.”
“Mr. da Silva!” Fenella Carruth giggled. “Mr. Austin is the Poet Laureate.”
“Which demonstrates the artistic void of that appalling institution.” As da Silva, spoke, he wrote in clear print, on the paper, and the right way up for Curtis to read, Folly—1hr. The pen tapped the words to call Curtis’s attention, paused for just a few seconds and then scratched the message out. “Kindly leave me to my labours. I find the military stance unconducive to the pursuit of the Muse.”
“Sorry to interrupt you,” murmured Curtis, exchanging glances with Miss Merton, and went to see if the house would supply him with oilskins.
Chapter Seven
He arrived at the folly somewhat damp after a lengthy but refreshing tramp in the rain. His leg wasn’t paining him as much as usual. The doctors had long insisted that the kneecap had suffered no grave damage, and seemed to think he should have made a full recovery by now. Curtis had not let himself believe it, then or more recently. The wounds of Jacobsdal weren’t the kind that healed. But as he approached the ridiculous medieval tower on the brow of the hill, he was not thinking about the pain, or the blood on dry earth that it brought back, but about the ugly truths that lay under Peakholme’s smooth facade like the thing in da Silva’s fishponds, and the dark, slender man he was going to meet.
He let himself into the folly and shook the wet off his borrowed oilskins.
“Up here,” came a voice from above, making Curtis rear back like a startled horse. “Bar the door.”
Curtis dumped the oilskins on a chest, dropped the heavy oak bar into place in its big iron holders—one couldn’t fault Sir Hubert or his architect’s attention to detail there, the thick door would hold a small army out—and rounded the stairs. The mezzanine floor took up about half the breadth of the round tower, its thick oak warmer on the feet than the flagstones of the ground floor. Da Silva stood, away from the windows, shoulders propped against the wall and arms folded. He had his large fur-collared overcoat draped around his shoulders.
“It’s quite warm in here,” Curtis observed, shedding his own overcoat. “Solid construction.”
“One would hardly want a ruin to be inhospitable, would one? We should speak of last night.”
Curtis swallowed. “Yes.”
“Blackmail and treason. We need to get our information to the proper authorities without anyone here twigging what we’re up to, and we need to remove any evidence of last night’s efforts at alleviating suspicion.”