“Not personally, no.”
“So one of his servants? Is that what you’re suggesting?” The schoolmaster rubbed the toe of his boot in thoughtful silence. “Why would he?”
“I suppose that would depend on why Emma Chance was here.”
Flanagan was no fool; he understood immediately what Sebastian was suggesting. “You’re saying she could have been sent to spy on him?”
“It’s possible.”
Flanagan shifted his attention to the boot’s heel, his jaw set hard. “Me, I wish the French bastard had never come within a hundred miles of Shropshire. I’ve had more than enough of the French and their killing to last me a lifetime—and then some.”
Technically, Bonaparte was Corsican, not French. But Sebastian simply said, “How well do you know Lady Seaton?”
Flanagan’s face creased with amusement. “How well you think I know her, then? Her being a grand lady, and me a poor Irish schoolmaster? Or were you thinking she invites me out to Sunday mass at her little private chapel there at Northcott Abbey?”
“You’re Catholic?”
“I was. My father used up all his savings to send me to the seminary to be trained as a priest.”
“What happened?”
“The Revolution happened.”
At the time of the French Revolution, Catholic seminaries were illegal in Great Britain and Ireland; as a result, anyone wanting to become a priest was forced to study on the Continent. Sebastian said, “I take it your seminary was in France?”
Flanagan reached for his second boot and said simply, “Nantes.”
Sebastian studied the Irishman’s inscrutable profile. He now understood Flanagan’s earlier passing comment about the French and their killing.
A beautiful, ancient city at the mouth of the Loire River, Nantes had been the site of one of the most horrific episodes of the Revolution. The revolutionaries had slaughtered so many of the city’s inhabitants that Madame Guillotine quickly proved inadequate. In the end, thousands of men, women, and children—most guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time—were stripped naked and thrown into the river to drown.
“You managed to escape before the worst of the Terror?” said Sebastian.
“No, I wasn’t that wise. But I was one of the lucky ones: the troop of soldiers they sent to our seminary gave us a choice: renounce our religious vows and join the army, or be drowned in the river.” Flanagan’s eyes narrowed with something that looked like amusement but was not. “Guess which I chose?”
“I doubt anyone could blame you for that.”
“You don’t think so? M’father never forgave me. Died cursing me, or so I’ve been told. Having a son who was a priest—or at least a martyr—was supposed to be his ticket into heaven, and I let him down. I’ve always wondered what he’d done that was so bloody awful he figured he needed my help staying out of hell.”
“How long were you with the French army?”
“Two endless years. I suppose I could have tried to make a break for it sooner, but I figured all I’d succeed in doing would be to get myself shot as a deserter. So I waited until we were down by the Swiss border, then just walked across it one dark night. Almost starved to death before I found an English family in Geneva willing to take me on as a tutor for their son.”
“Did you ever go back to Ireland?”
“Never did, no.”
“Because your father was dead?”
Flanagan gave a short laugh. “No. Because my mother is still very much alive. Would break her heart, it would, to know I’ve lost my faith. And I couldn’t hide it from her. I suppose there are some as can witness such things and retain their belief in a benevolent, all-wise God. But I fear I’m not one of them.”
Flanagan had given up on his boots. For a long moment the two men simply shared a silence, their thoughts lost in a painful past.
Flanagan said, “Course, the French are all good Catholics again, now that Napoléon’s been cozying up to the Pope.” He eased his right foot into its boot. “Amazing what a difference twenty years and a shift in official policy can make.”
Sebastian watched Flanagan reach for his second boot and asked again, “Who do you think killed Emma Chance?”
The schoolmaster hesitated, that pinched look back around his eyes. “I knew one of the men in charge of the drownings in Nantes: a lawyer by the name of Renard. If anyone had asked before the Revolution what manner of man I thought he was, I’d have said he was gentle, devout, kind. Yet he personally supervised the murder of thousands of men, women, and children. Thousands—some no more than babes in arms. He herded them naked and begging for mercy onto barges, and then he towed them out into the middle of the river and drowned them. I’m told it’s a hideous way to die, drowning.”