Lord John and the Hand of Devils

  "Oh, ja, Major," said the soldier obligingly. "This morning. They came across the bridge, six wagons with mules. They go back and forth. We've seen them before."

  With a little effort, Grey kept his voice calm.

  "Indeed?" He turned to the lieutenant. "Does it not seem possible that they may have dealings with the French?"

  "Of course." The lieutenant looked mildly surprised, then grinned. "What are they going to tell the French? That we're here? I think they know that, Major."

  He gestured toward a gap in the trees. Through it, Grey could see the English soldiers of Ruysdale's regiment, perhaps a mile away, their ranks piling up on the bank of the river like driftwood as they flung down their packs and waded into the shallows to drink, hot and mud-caked from their run.

  It was true; the presence of the English and Hanoverian regiments could be a surprise to no one; anyone on the cliffs with a spyglass could likely count the spots on Colonel Ruysdale's dog. As for information regarding their movements...well, since neither Ruysdale nor Hicks had any idea where they were going or when, there wasn't any great danger of that intelligence being revealed to the enemy.

  He smiled, and took gracious leave of the lieutenant, though privately resolving to speak to Stephan von Namtzen. Perhaps the gypsies were harmless--but they should be looked into. If nothing else, the gypsies were in a position to tell anyone who cared to ask them how few men were guarding that bridge. And somehow, he thought that Ruysdale was not of a mind to consider Sir Peter's request for reinforcement.

  He waved casually to the artillerymen, who took little notice, elbow-deep in blood and pig guts. The boy was by himself, chopping green wood for the spit.

  Leaving the artillery camp, he rode up to the head of the bridge and paused, reining Karolus in as he looked across the river. The land was flat for a little way, but then broke into rolling hills. Above, on the cliffs, the French presumably still lurked. He took a small spyglass from his pocket, and scanned the clifftops, slowly. Nothing moved on the heights; no horses, no men, no swaying banners--and yet a faint gray haze drifted up there, a cloud in an otherwise cloudless sky. The smoke of campfires; many of them. Yes, the French were still there.

  He scanned the hills below, looking carefully--but if the gypsies were there, as well, no rising plume of smoke betrayed their presence.

  He should find the gypsy camp and question its inhabitants himself--but it was growing late, and he had no stomach for that now. He reined about and turned the horse's head back toward the distant town, not glancing at the copse that hid the cannon and its crew.

  The boy had best learn--and quickly--to hide his nature, or he would become in short order bumboy to any man who cared to use him. And many would. Wulf had been correct; after months in the field, soldiers were not particular, and the boy was much more appealing than a sheep, with those soft red lips and tender skin.

  Karolus tossed his head, and he slowed, uneasy. Grey's hands were trembling on the reins, gripped far too tightly. He forced them to relax, stilled the trembling, and spoke calmly to the horse, nudging him back to speed.

  He had been attacked once, in camp somewhere in Scotland, in the days after Culloden. Someone had come upon him in the dark, and taken him from behind with an arm across his throat. He had thought he was dead, but his assailant had something else in mind. The man had never spoken, and was brutally swift about his business, leaving him moments later, curled in the dirt behind a wagon, speechless with shock and pain.

  He had never known who it was: officer, soldier, or some anonymous intruder. Never known whether the man had discerned something in his own appearance or behavior that led to the attack, or had only taken him because he was there.

  He had known the danger of telling anyone about it. He washed himself, stood straight and walked firmly, spoke normally and looked men in the eye. No one had suspected the bruised and riven flesh beneath his uniform, or the hollowness beneath his breastbone. And if his attacker sat at meals and broke bread with him, he had not known it. From that day, he had carried a dagger at all times, and no one had ever touched him again against his will.

  The sun was sinking behind him, and the shadow of horse and rider stretched out far before him, flying, and faceless in their flight.

  Chapter 5

  Dark Dreams

  Once more he was late for dinner. This time, though, a tray was brought for him, and he sat in the drawing room, taking his supper while the rest of the company chatted.

  The princess saw to his needs, and sat with him for a time, flatteringly attentive. He was worn out from a day of riding, though, and his answers to her questions brief. Soon enough, she drifted away and left him to a peaceful engagement with some cold venison and a tart of dried apricots.

  He had nearly finished, when he felt a large, warm hand on his shoulder.

  "So, you have seen the gun crew at the bridge? They are in good order?" von Namtzen asked.

  "Yes, very good," Grey replied. No point--not yet--in mentioning the young soldier to von Namtzen. "I told them more men will come, from Ruysdale's regiment."

  "The bridge?" The dowager, catching the word, turned from her conversation, frowning. "You have no need to worry, Landgrave. The bridge is safe."

  "I am sure it will be safe, madam," Stephan said, clicking his heels gallantly as he bowed to the old lady. "You may be assured, Major Grey and I will protect you."

  The old lady looked faintly put out at the notion.

  "The bridge is safe," she repeated, touching the religious medal on the bodice of her gown, and glancing pugnaciously from man to man. "No enemy has crossed the bridge at Aschenwald in five hundred years. No enemy will ever cross it!"

  Stephan glanced at Grey, and cleared his throat slightly. Grey cleared his own throat and made a gracious compliment upon the food.

  When the dowager had moved away, Stephan shook his head behind her back, and exchanged a brief smile with Grey.

  "You know about that bridge?"

  "No, is there something odd about it?"

  "Only a story." Von Namtzen shrugged, with a tolerant scorn for the superstition of others. "They say that there is a guardian, a spirit of some kind that defends the bridge."

  "Indeed," Grey said, with an uneasy memory of the stories told by the gun crew stationed near the bridge. Were any of them local men, he wondered, who would know the story?

  "Mein Gott," Stephan said, shaking his massive head as though assailed by gnats. "These stories! How can sane men believe such things?"

  "I collect you do not mean that particular story?" Grey said. "The succubus, perhaps?"

  "Don't speak to me of that thing," von Namtzen said gloomily. "My men look like scarecrows and jump at a bird's shadow. Every one of them is scared to lay his head upon a pillow, for fear that he will turn it and look into the night hag's face."

  "Your chaps aren't the only ones." Sir Peter had come to pour himself another drink. He lifted the glass and took a deep swallow, shuddering slightly. Billman, behind him, nodded in glum confirmation.

  "Bloody sleepwalkers, the lot."

  "Ah," said Grey thoughtfully. "If I might make a suggestion...not my own, you understand. A notion mentioned by Ruysdale's surgeon..."

  He explained Mr. Keegan's remedy, keeping his voice discreetly low. His listeners were less discreet in their response.

  "What, Ruysdale's chaps are all boxing the Jesuit and begetting cockroaches?" Grey thought Sir Peter would expire from suffocated laughter. Just as well Lieutenant Dundas wasn't present, he thought.

  "Perhaps not all of them," he said. "Evidently enough, though, to be of concern. I take it you have not experienced a similar phenomenon among your troops...yet?"

  Billman caught the delicate pause and whooped loudly.

  "Boxing the Jesuit?" Stephan nudged Grey with an elbow, and raised thick blond brows in puzzlement. "Cockroaches? What does this mean, please?"

  "Ahhh..." Having no notion of the German equivalent of this expression,
Grey resorted to a briefly graphic gesture with one hand, looking over his shoulder to be sure that none of the women was watching.

  "Oh!" Von Namtzen looked mildly startled, but then grinned widely. "I see, yes, very good!" He nudged Grey again, more familiarly, and dropped his voice a little. "Perhaps wise to take some such precaution personally, do you think?"

  The women and the German officers, heretofore intent on a card game, were looking toward the Englishmen in puzzlement. One man called a question to von Namtzen, and Grey was fortunately saved from reply.

  Something occurred to him, though, and he grasped von Namtzen by the arm, as the latter was about to go and join the others at a hand of favo.

  "A moment, Stephan. I had meant to ask--that man of yours who died--Koenig? Did you see the body yourself?"

  Von Namtzen was still smiling, but at this, his expression grew more somber, and he shook his head.

  "No, I did not see him. They said, though, that his throat was most terribly torn--as though a wild animal had been at him. And yet he was not outside; he was found in his quarters." He shook his head again, and left to join the card game.

  Grey finished his meal amid cordial conversation with Sir Peter and Billman, though keeping an inconspicuous eye upon the progress of the card game.

  Stephan was in dress uniform tonight. A smaller man would have been overwhelmed by it; Hanoverian taste in military decoration was grossly excessive, to an English eye. Still, with his big frame and leonine blond head, the Landgrave von Erdberg was merely...eye-catching.

  He appeared to have caught the eye not only of the Princess Louisa, but of three other young women. These surrounded him like a moony triplet, caught in his orbit. Now he reached into the breast of his coat and withdrew some small object, causing them to cluster round to look at it.

  Grey turned to answer some question of Billman's, but then turned back, trying not to look too obviously.

  He had been trying to suppress the feeling Stephan roused in him, but in the end, such things were never controllable--they rose up. Sometimes like the bursting of a mortar shell, sometimes like the inexorable green spike of a crocus pushing through snow and ice--but they rose up.

  Was he in love with Stephan? There was no question of that. He liked and respected the Hanoverian, but there was no madness in it, no yearning. Did he want Stephan? A soft warmth in his loins, as though his blood had begun somehow to simmer over a low flame, suggested that he did.

  The ancient bear's skull still sat in its place of honor, below the old prince's portrait. He moved slowly to examine it, keeping half an eye on Stephan.

  "Surely you have not eaten enough, John!" A delicate hand on his elbow turned him, and he looked down into the princess's face smiling up at him with pretty coquetry. "A strong man, out all day--let me call the servants to bring you something special."

  "I assure you, Your Highness..." But she would have none of it, and tapping him playfully with her fan, she scudded away like a gilded cloud, to have some special dessert prepared for him.

  Feeling obscurely like a fatted calf being readied for the slaughter, Grey sought refuge in male company, coming to rest beside von Namtzen, who was folding up whatever he had been showing to the women, who had all gone to peer over the card player's shoulders and make bets.

  "What is that?" Grey asked, nodding at the object.

  "Oh--" Von Namtzen looked a little disconcerted at the question, but with only a moment's hesitation, handed it to Grey. It was a small leather case, hinged, with a gold closure. "My children."

  It was a miniature, done by an excellent hand. The heads of two children, close together, one boy, one girl, both blond. The boy, clearly a little older, was perhaps three or four.

  Grey felt momentarily as though he had received an actual blow to the pit of the stomach; his mouth opened, but he was incapable of speech. Or at least he thought he was. To his surprise, he heard his own voice, sounding calm, politely admiring.

  "They are very handsome indeed. I am sure they are a consolation to your wife, in your absence."

  Von Namtzen grimaced slightly, and gave a brief shrug.

  "Their mother is dead. She died in childbirth when Elise was born." A huge forefinger touched the tiny face, very gently. "My mother looks after them."

  Grey made the proper sounds of condolence, but had ceased to hear himself, for the confusion of thought and speculation that filled his mind.

  So much so, in fact, that when the princess's special dessert--an enormous concoction of raspberries, brandy, sugar, and cream--arrived, he ate it all, despite the fact that raspberries made him itch.

  He continued to think, long after the ladies had left. He joined the card game, bet extensively, and played wildly--winning, with Luck's usual perversity, though he paid no attention to his cards.

  Had he been entirely wrong? It was possible. All of Stephan's gestures toward him had been within the bounds of normalcy--and yet...

  And yet it was by no means unknown for men such as himself to marry and have children. Certainly men such as von Namtzen, with a title and estates to bequeath, would wish to have heirs. That thought steadied him, and though he scratched occasionally at chest or neck, he paid more attention to his game--and finally began to lose.

  The card game broke up an hour later. Grey loitered a bit, in hopes that Stephan might seek him out, but the Hanoverian was detained in argument with Kaptain Steffens, and at last Grey went upstairs, still scratching.

  The halls were well lit tonight, and he found his own corridor without difficulty. He hoped Tom was still awake; perhaps the young valet could fetch him something for itching. Some ointment, perhaps, or--he heard the rustle of fabric behind him, and turned to find the princess approaching him.

  She was once again in nightdress--but not the homely woolen garment she had worn the night before. This time, she wore a flowing thing of diaphanous lawn, which clung to her bosom and rather clearly revealed her nipples through the thin fabric. He thought she must be very cold, in spite of the lavishly embroidered robe thrown over the nightgown.

  She had no cap, and her hair had been brushed out but not yet plaited for the night; it flowed becomingly in golden waves below her shoulders. Grey began to feel somewhat cold, too, in spite of the brandy.

  "My Lord," she said. "John," she added, and smiled. "I have something for you." She was holding something in one hand, he saw; a small box of some sort.

  "Your Highness," he said, repressing the urge to take a step backward. She was wearing a very strong scent, redolent of tuberoses--a scent he particularly disliked.

  "My name is Louisa," she said, taking another step toward him. "Will you not call me by my name? Here, in private?"

  "Of course. If you wish it--Louisa." Good God, what had brought this on? He had sufficient experience to see what she was about--he was a handsome man, of good family, and with money; it had happened often enough--but not with royalty, who tended to be accustomed to taking what they wanted.

  He took her outstretched hand, ostensibly for the purpose of kissing it; in reality, to keep her at a safe distance. What did she want? And why?

  "This is--to thank you," she said, as he raised his head from her beringed knuckles. She thrust the box into his other hand. "And to protect you."

  "I assure you, madam, no thanks are necessary. I did nothing." Christ, was that it? Did she think she must bed him, in token of thanks--or rather, had convinced herself that she must, because she wanted to? She did want to; he could see her excitement, in the slightly widened blue eyes, the flushed cheeks, the rapid pulse in her throat. He squeezed her fingers gently and released them, then tried to hand back the box.

  "Really, madam--Louisa--I cannot accept this; surely it is a treasure of your family." It certainly looked valuable; small as it was, it was remarkably heavy--made either of gilded lead or of solid gold--and sported a number of crudely cut cabochon stones, which he feared were precious.

  "Oh, it is," she assured him. "It has
been in my husband's family for hundreds of years."

  "Oh, well, then certainly--"

  "No, you must keep it," she said vehemently. "It will protect you from the creature."

  "Creature. You mean the--"

  "Der Nachtmahr," she said, lowering her voice and looking involuntarily over one shoulder, as though fearing that some vile thing hovered in the air nearby.

  Nachtmahr. "Nightmare," it meant. Despite himself, a brief shiver tightened Grey's shoulders. The halls were better lighted, but still harbored drafts that made the candles flicker and shadows flow like moving water down the walls.

  He glanced down at the box. There were letters etched into the lid, in Latin, but of so ancient a sort that it would take close examination to work out what they said.

  "It is a reliquary," she said, moving closer, as though to point out the inscription. "Of St. Orgevald."

  "Ah? Er...yes. Most interesting." He thought this mildly gruesome. Of all the objectionable popish practices, this habit of chopping up saints and scattering their remnants to the far ends of the earth was possibly the most reprehensible.

  She was very close, her perfume cloying in his nostrils. How was he to get rid of the woman? The door to his room was only a foot or two away; he had a strong urge to open it, leap in, and slam it shut, but that wouldn't do.

  "You will protect me, protect my son," she murmured, looking trustfully up at him from beneath golden lashes. "So I will protect you, dear John."

  She flung her arms about his neck, and glued her lips to his in a passionate kiss. Sheer courtesy required him to return the embrace, though his mind was racing, looking feverishly for some escape. Where the devil were the servants? Why did no one interrupt them?

  Then someone did interrupt them. There was a gruff cough near at hand, and Grey broke the embrace with relief--a short-lived emotion, as he looked up to discover the Landgrave von Erdberg standing a few feet away, glowering under heavy brows.

  "Your pardon, Your Highness," Stephan said, in tones of ice. "I wished to speak to Major Grey; I did not know anyone was here."

  The princess was flushed, but quite collected. She smoothed her gown down across her body, drawing herself up in such a way that her fine bust was strongly emphasized.