Lord John and the Hand of Devils

  "Fuck me!" the lieutenant had said, in wonderment.

  Mr. Lister was so much overcome with emotion that he made little protest at the brandy, and while he coughed and spluttered, Grey managed to pour sufficient into him as to induce a semblance of calm at last.

  He had had it in mind, seeing his guest's distress, to compose some suitably noble speech in lieu of Philip Lister's actual exit line, but found that he could not bring himself to do this.

  "I saw your son for the first time only moments before his death," he said, as gently as he could. "There was no time for talk. But I can assure you, sir, that he died instantly--and he died bravely, as a soldier of the king. You--and your wife, of course--may be justly proud of him."

  "May we?" The brandy had calmed Mr. Lister, and had the salutary effect of relieving his stammer, but had also brought a hectic flush to his pale cheeks.

  "I thank you for your words, sir. And seeing that you share the profession of arms, I suppose you mean them."

  "I do," Grey said, somewhat surprised.

  Lister mopped at his face with the handkerchief Tom had discreetly provided, and looked directly at Grey for the first time.

  "You will think me ungrateful, my lord, and I assure you I am not. But I must tell you that we--my wife and I--were completely opposed to Philip's choice of career. We--fell out over the matter, I regret to say. In f-fact..." He swallowed heavily. "We had not spoken to Philip since he took up his commission."

  And now he was dead, as a direct result of having done so. Grey took a deep breath and nodded.

  "I see, sir. You have my sympathy. A bit more brandy, perhaps? Purely for medicinal purposes."

  Mr. Lister looked at the bottle with a certain longing, but shook his head.

  "No, my lord. I...no."

  He fell silent, looking down at the sword, which he now clutched tightly, one hand wrapped around the scabbard.

  "May I ask a great favor of you, my lord?" he said abruptly.

  "Certainly," Grey replied, willing to do almost anything, firstly to relieve Lister's distress, secondly to get him out of Grey's sitting room.

  "I said that we were opposed to Philip's pursuing a career with the army. He bought his commission with a small inheritance, and left almost immediately for London." The hectic flush had faded a little; now it came back, washing up Mr. Lister's throat in a tide of shame. "He--he t-took..." The words dried in his throat, and he looked down, fumbling with the ring of the scabbard.

  Took what? Grey wondered. The family silver? Was he to be asked to comb pawnshops for bartered heirlooms? With a sense of resignation, he poured more tea, picked up the brandy bottle and added a healthy dollop, then firmly handed the cup to Mr. Lister.

  "Took what?" he asked bluntly.

  Mr. Lister took the tea with trembling hands and, with an obvious effort, went on, looking down into its aromatic depths.

  "He had formed an...attachment. To the daughter of our minister--a most suitable young woman; my wife and daughters were terribly fond of her."

  The minister had been, if not fond of Philip Lister, at least amenable to the match--until Philip had declared his intention of becoming a soldier.

  The upshot of this had been that the minister had broken off the attachment--evidently it had not reached the stage of betrothal--and forbade Philip the house. Whereupon the new lieutenant, inflamed, had come round by night with a ladder, and in the best romantic tradition, induced his love to elope with him.

  The little he had heard from Quarry of Philip Lister had already convinced Grey that perhaps the son was not so religious in outlook as were his parents; thus this revelation was not quite the shock to him that it plainly had been to his family.

  "The scandal," Mr. Lister whispered, and, gulping tea, shuddered convulsively. "The disgrace of it nearly killed m-my wife. And the Reverend Mr. Thackeray, of course...The things he preached..."

  Familiar with the ways of scandal, Grey had no difficulty in envisioning the aftermath of Lieutenant Lister's elopement. The religious aspects of the matter had--as they usually did, he reflected--merely magnified the damage.

  The Lister family had been summarily dismissed from the congregation, even though they had already publicly disowned Philip. Their dismissal had in turn caused dissent and schism in the congregation--which had, naturally, spread throughout the village of which Mr. Lister was squire, resulting in general bad feeling, fisticuffs in the pub, the burning of someone's hayrick, and specific and personal denunciation of the Listers and their supporters from the pulpit.

  "It is not that I consider the practice of arms immoral in itself, you understand," Mr. Lister said, wiping his nose--which had gone bright red with emotion and brandy--with a napkin. "Only that we had hoped for better things for Philip. He was our only son."

  Grey was conscious of Tom Byrd on the opposite side of the room, prickling like a hedgehog, but was careful not to catch his eye.

  "I quite understand, sir," he said, meaning only to be soothing.

  "Do you, my lord?" Lister gave him a look of puzzled anguish. He seemed intent that Grey should understand. His brow drew down and he turned the sword over in his hand, seeming to search for some means of making himself clearer.

  "It is such--such a brutal occupation, is it not?" he burst out at last.

  Grey stared at him, thinking, Yes. And so?

  Before he could formulate something polite in reply, Tom Byrd, bending over the table to retrieve the seed cake, leapt in.

  "I daresay," he said hotly. "And if it wasn't, you'd be saying what you just said in bleedin' French, wouldn't you?"

  Lister regarded him, openmouthed. Grey coughed and motioned Tom hastily out of the room. The young valet went, with a last glower of disapproval at their guest.

  "I must apologize for my valet, sir," Grey said, feeling a terrible urge to laugh. "He is..." A faint rattle from the cup and saucer he held made him realize that his hands had begun to shake, and he set them carefully down, grasping his knees with both hands.

  "He is honest," Lister said bleakly.

  Outspoken honesty was not a virtue generally prized in a valet, but it was a virtue for all that--and Grey prized it. He nodded, and cleared his throat.

  "A, um, favor, I believe you said?"

  "Yes, my lord." The recounting of his woes--and the recollection of the Reverend Mr. Thackeray's most iniquitous sermon--had revived Mr. Lister more than brandy. He sat bolt upright, cup clutched to his bosom, his dead son's sword across his knees, and fixed Grey with a burning gaze.

  "I wish your help, my lord, in finding the girl. Anne Thackeray. I have some reason to suppose she was with child--and if so, I want the babe."

  I am completely insane."

  "You've a very kind heart, me lord," Tom Byrd said reprovingly. "Not the same thing at all."

  "Oh, I am reasonably sure that it is--at least in this instance. Kind of you to give me the benefit of the doubt, though, Tom."

  "Of course, me lord. Lift your chin a bit, if you please." Tom breathed heavily through his nose, frowning in concentration as he drew the razor delicately up the side of Grey's neck.

  "Not as I know why you said you'd do it, mind," Byrd remarked.

  Grey shrugged one shoulder, careful not to move his head. He wasn't sure why he'd said he'd do it, either. In part, he supposed, because he felt some guilt over not having made an effort to return Lister's sword to his father sooner. In part because the Listers' village was no more than an hour's ride from his brother Edgar's place in Sussex--and he anticipated that having some excuse to escape from Maude might be useful.

  And, if he were honest, because the prospect of dealing with other people's trouble was a welcome distraction from his own. Of course, he reflected, none of these considerations proved that he was not insane.

  Tom Byrd's considerations were of another sort, though.

  "Brutal occupation, is it?" he muttered. Lister's words of the day before had clearly rankled. "I'll brutalize him and he don
't mind his manners summat better. To say such a thing to you, and half a minute later ask you a bleedin' great favor!"

  "Well, the man was upset. I daresay he didn't think--"

  "Oh, he thought, all right! Me lord," Tom added as an afterthought. "Reckon he's done nothing but think since his son was killed," he added, in less vehement tones.

  He laid down the razor and subjected Grey's physiognomy to his usual searching inspection, hazel eyes narrowed in concentration. Satisfied that no stray whisker had escaped him, he took up the hairbrush and went round to complete the chore of making his employer fit for public scrutiny.

  He snorted briefly, pausing to work out a tangle with his fingers. Grey's hair was like his mother's--fair, thick and slightly wavy, prone to disorder unless tightly constrained, which it always would be, if Tom Byrd was given his way. Actually, Tom would be best pleased if Grey would consent to have his head polled and wear a good wig like a decent gentleman, but some things were past hoping for.

  "You've not been sleeping proper," Byrd said accusingly. "I can tell. You've been a-wallowing on your pillow; your hair's a right rat's nest!"

  "I do apologize, Tom," Grey said politely. "Perhaps I should sleep upright in a chair, in order to make your work easier?"

  "Hmp," Byrd said. And added, after a few moment's strenuous brushing, "Ah, well. P'r'aps the country air will help."

  Tom Byrd, always suspicious of the countryside, was not reassured by his first sight of Mudling Parva.

  "Rats," he said darkly, peering at the charmingly thatched rooves of the cottages they passed. "I'll wager there's rats up in them thatches, to say nothing of bugs and such nastiness. My old granny come from a village like this. She told stories, how the rats would come down from the thatch at night and eat the faces off babies. Right in their cradles!" He looked accusingly at Lord John.

  "There are rats in London," Lord John pointed out. "Probably ten times more of them than in the countryside. And neither you nor I, Tom, are babes."

  Tom hunched his shoulders, not convinced.

  "Well, but. In the city, you can see things coming, like. Here..." He glanced round, his disparaging look taking in not only the muddy lane of the village and the occasional gaping villager, but also the tangled hedgerows, the darkly barren fallow fields, and the shadowed groves of leafless trees, huddled near the distant stream. "Things might sneak up on you here, me lord. Easy."

  Part II

  Family Matters

  Blackthorn Hall, Sussex

  Grey knew that his mother's first husband, Captain DeVane, had been a most impressive man to look at--tall, handsome, dark, and dashing, with an aristocratically prominent nose and hooded gray eyes that gave him the aspect of a poet; Grey had seen several portraits.

  Edgar, like his elder brother, Paul, exhibited these same characteristics, to a degree that caused young women to stare at him in the village, their mouths half open, despite the fact that he was well into his forties.

  Filial respect caused Grey to hesitate in passing ex post facto opinions on his mother's judgment, but after half an hour in the company of either Paul or Edgar, he could not escape a lurking suspicion that a just Providence, seeing the DeVanes so well endowed with physical beauty, had determined that there was no reason to spoil the work by adding intelligence to the mix.

  "What?" Edgar frowned at him in incomprehension. "Somebody thinks I might have blown up a cannon? Bloody cheek!"

  Of course, Grey reflected with an inner sigh, his mother had been only fifteen when she married DeVane.

  "Not you, personally, no," he assured Edgar. "The question--"

  "Wasn't even there, was I?" Edgar's high cheekbones flushed with indignation.

  "I'm sure I should have noticed if you had been," Grey assured him gravely. "The question--"

  "Who's this Marchmont fellow, anyway? Piddling Irish title, not more than two generations out of the muck, what does he think he's about, insulting me?" The DeVanes boasted nothing more than the odd knighthood, but could--and Maude often tiresomely did--trace their lineage back to well before the Conquest.

  "I'm sure no insult was--" Well, actually, he was convinced of exactly the opposite; Marchmont's purpose had been specific and blatant insult--and he did wonder why. Was it only to rattle Grey himself--or had he been meant to convey Marchmont's remarks to Edgar, all along? Well, that was a question to be turned over later.

  For the moment, he dropped any further attempts at soothing his half brother and asked bluntly, "Who oversees your powder mill, Edgar?"

  Edgar looked at him blankly for an instant, but then the mist of anger in the hooded eyes lifted. Cleverness and intuition were not his strongest suits, but he could be depended on for straightforward facts.

  "William Hoskins. Bill, he goes by. Decent man, got him from Waltham, a year ago. You think he's something to do with this?"

  "As I've never heard of the man 'til this moment, I've no idea, but I should like very much to speak with him, if you have no objection."

  "Not the slightest." They were standing in the orchard behind the manor house; Grey had waited for an opportunity to speak to Edgar in privacy after breakfast.

  "Come now," said Edgar, turning with an air of decision. "We'll cut across the fields; it's quicker than fetching horses and going round by the road."

  It was rough going across the autumn fields, some already turned under by the plow, some still thick with stubble and the sharp, ragged ends of cornstalks, but Grey didn't mind. The day was cold and misty, the sky gray and very low, so the air seemed still around them, wrapping them in silence, unbroken save for the occasional whir of a pheasant rising, or the distant calling of crows among the furrows.

  It was a good two miles from the house to the powder mill, located on a bend of the river, and the brothers kept to their own thoughts for some time. At a stile, though, Grey caught his foot coming down and twisted awkwardly to save himself falling. The movement sent a sharp hot wire lancing through his chest, and he froze, trying not to breathe. He had made an involuntary noise, though, and Edgar turned, startled.

  Grey lifted a hand, indicating that he would be all right--he hoped he would--but couldn't speak.

  Edgar's brow creased with concern, and he put out a hand, but Grey waved him off. It had happened several times before, and generally the pain passed within a few moments; Dr. Longstreet's irritation of the nerves, quite harmless. There was always the possibility, though, that it might indicate a shift of the sliver of iron embedded in his chest, in which case he might be dead within the next few seconds.

  He held his breath until he felt his ears ring and his vision gray, then essayed the slightest breath, found it possible, and slowly relaxed, the nightmare feeling of suffocation vanishing as his lungs expanded without further incident.

  "Are you quite all right, John?" Edgar was surveying him with an expression of worried concern that moved him.

  "Yes, fine." He straightened himself, and gave Edgar a quick grimace of reassurance. "Nothing. Just...taken queer for a moment."

  Edgar gave him a sharp look that reminded him for an unsettling instant of their mother.

  "Taken queer," he repeated, eyes passing up and down Grey's body as though inspecting him for damage, like a horse that had come up suddenly lame. "Melton's wife wrote to Maude that you'd been injured in Germany; she didn't say it was serious."

  "It isn't." Grey spoke lightly, feeling pleasantly giddy at the realization that he wasn't going to die just this minute.

  Edgar eyed him for a moment longer, but then nodded, patted him awkwardly and surprisingly on the arm, and turned toward the river.

  "Never could understand why you went to the army," Edgar said, shaking his head in disapproval. "Hal...well, of course. But surely there was no need for you to take up soldiering."

  "What else should I do?"

  Grey wasn't offended. He felt suffused with a great lightness of being. The stubbled fields and clouded sky embraced him, immeasurably beautiful. Even
Edgar seemed tolerable.

  Oddly enough, Edgar seemed to be considering his question.

  "You've money of your own," he said, after a moment's thought. "You could go into politics. Buy a pocket borough, stand for election."

  Just in time, Grey recalled his mother mentioning that Edgar himself had stood for Parliament in the last by-election, and refrained from saying that personally, he would prefer to be shot outright than to have anything to do with politics.

  "It's a thought," he said agreeably, and they spoke no more, until the powder mill came in sight.

  It was a brick building, a converted grain mill, and outwardly tranquil, its big waterwheel turning slowly.

  "That's for the coarse grinding," Edgar said, nodding at the wheel. "We use a horse-drawn edge runner for the finer bits; more control."

  "Oh, to be sure," Grey replied, having no idea what an edge runner might be. "A very aromatic process, I collect?"

  A gust of wind had brought them an eye-watering wave of feculent stink, and Edgar coughed, pulling a handkerchief from his coat and putting it over his nose in a practiced manner.

  "Oh, that. That's just the jakesmen."

  "The what?" Grey hastily applied his own handkerchief in imitation.

  "Saltpeter," Edgar explained, taking obvious satisfaction in knowing something that his clever-arse younger brother did not. "One requires brimstone--sulfur, you know--charcoal, and saltpeter for gunpowder, of course--"

  "I did know that, yes."

  "--We can produce the charcoal here, of course, and sulfur is reasonably cheap; well, saltpeter is not so expensive, either, but most of it is imported from India these days--used to get it from France, but now--Well, so, the more of it we can obtain locally--"

  "You're digging it out of your tenants' manure piles?" Grey felt a strong inclination to laugh.

  "And the privies. It forms in large nuggets, down at the bottom," Edgar replied seriously, then smiled. "You know there's a law, written in Good Queen Bess's time, but still on the books, that allows agents of the Crown to come round and dig out the jakes of any citizen, in time of war? A local lawyer found it for me; most useful."

  "I should think your tenants might find having their privies excavated to be a positive benefit," Grey observed, laughing openly.