Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

  Spatters of rain passed over him, but toward sunset, the clouds overhead began to thin and drift apart.

  A conclusion is simply the point at which you give up thinking. He gave up, and as he rose stiffly to his feet, found that a conclusion had indeed formed itself in his mind, much as a pearl forms inside an oyster.

  He had been confessor to Longstreet. It was time he sought his own.

  Chapter 32

  The Path of Honor

  I did as you asked, Lord John," Dunsany said, his voice lowered, as though someone might overhear--though they were quite alone in the library.

  "As I--oh!" Grey recollected, belatedly, his request that James Fraser might be afforded the opportunity to write letters. "I thank you, sir. Was there...any result from the experiment, do you know?"

  Dunsany nodded, his narrow brow furrowed in concern.

  "He did send a number of letters--ten in all, I believe. As you specified, I did not open them"--his expression indicated that he thought this a grave mistake--"but I did take note of the directions upon them. Three were sent to a place in the Highlands, to a Mrs. Murray, two to Rome, and the remainder to France. I kept a list of the names...." He fumbled with the drawer of his desk, but Grey stopped him with a gesture.

  "I thank you, sir. Perhaps later. Did he receive any reply to these missives?"

  "Yes, several." Dunsany seemed expectant, but Grey only nodded, without asking for details.

  The question of hidden Jacobites, which had once seemed so vital, was eclipsed. What had his mother said? Let the past bury its dead. It had to, he supposed; the present was all he could deal with.

  He went on conversing with Dunsany, expressing interest in the affairs of Helwater, and later, listening to the county gossip of Lady Dunsany and Isobel, but without actually noticing any of it. He did see that relations seemed to have healed between Lord and Lady Dunsany; they sat close together at teatime, and their hands touched now and then over the bread and butter.

  "How does your grandson fare?" Grey inquired at one point, hearing wailing overhead.

  "Oh, wonderfully well," Lord Dunsany assured him, beaming.

  "He's teething, poor lad," Lady Dunsany said, though not seeming distressed at her grandson's pain. "He's such a comfort to us."

  "He has six teeth, Lord John!" Isobel told him, with the manner of one imparting vital and exciting intelligence.

  "Indeed?" he said politely. "I am staggered."

  He thought the meal would never end, but it did, and he was at last allowed to escape to his room. He did not stop there, though, but went quietly down the back stair and out. To the stable.

  One of the other grooms was working in the paddock, but Grey sent him away with a brief sign. He didn't care whether anyone thought his desire to speak to Jamie Fraser in private was peculiar--and the other grooms were accustomed to it, in any case.

  Fraser was pitching hay into the mangers, and barely glanced at Grey when he entered the stable.

  "I shall be finished in a moment," he said. "Ye wish to hear about the letters, I suppose."

  "No," Grey said. "Not that. Not now, in any case."

  Fraser glanced sharply at him, but at Grey's motion to continue, shrugged and went on with his task, returning when all the mangers were filled.

  "Will you speak with me, as man to man?" Grey asked, without preamble.

  Fraser looked startled, but considered for a moment, and nodded.

  "I will," he said warily, and it occurred to Grey that he thought Grey had come to speak of Geneva.

  "It is a matter of my own affairs," Grey said, "not yours."

  "Indeed." Fraser was still guarded, but the wariness in his eyes relaxed. "What affairs are these, sir? And why me?"

  "Why you." Grey sighed, and sitting down on a stool, indicated that Fraser should do the same. "Because, Mr. Fraser, you are an honest man, and I trust that you will give me an honest opinion. And because, God damn it, you are the only person in this world to whom I can speak frankly."

  Fraser's look of wariness returned, but he sat down, leaned his pitchfork against the wall, and said only, "Speak, then."

  He had rehearsed the words a hundred times on the journey from London, rendering the tale as succinctly as possible. No need for details, and he gave none. No doorknobs.

  "And that is my dilemma," he ended. "I am the only witness. Without my testimony, he will not be convicted, nor condemned. If I lie before the court-martial, that is the end of my own honor. If I do not--it will be the end of his life or freedom."

  To speak so openly was an overwhelming relief, and Grey remembered, with a pang, that the same feeling had come to him when he told Percy the story of his father's death. To talk in this way did more good than hours of thinking; laying out the pieces of the matter for Fraser made the choice clear in his own mind.

  Fraser had listened closely throughout this recital, ruddy brows drawn in a slight frown. Now he looked at the ground, still frowning.

  "This man is your brother, your kin," he said finally. "But kin by law, not blood. Have ye feeling for him, beyond the obligation of kin? Kindness? Love?" There was no marked emphasis on the last word; Grey thought Fraser meant only the love that existed within family.

  Grey rose from his seat and strode restlessly up and down.

  "Not love," he said finally. "And not kindness." There was some of both left, yes, but in the end neither of these would compel him sufficiently.

  "Will it be honor, then?" Fraser said quietly. He stood up, silhouetted by the lantern light.

  "Yes," Grey said. "But what is the path of honor, here?"

  Fraser shrugged slightly, and Grey saw the glint of his red hair, caught by a stray beam of light that struck down from a chink in the boards of the loft overhead.

  "What is honor for me may not be honor for you, Major," he said. "For me--for us--our honor is our family. I could not see a close kinsman condemned, no matter his crime. Mind," he added, lifting one brow, "infamous crime would be dealt with. But by the man's chief, by his own kin--not by a court."

  Grey stood still, and let the jumbled pieces fall.

  "I see," he said slowly, and did. Grey understood now what Fraser meant by honor. In the end, it was simple, and the relief of reaching the decision overwhelmed his realization of the difficulties still to be faced.

  "It is honor--but not the honor of my reputation. The end of it," Grey said slowly, seeing it at last, "is that I cannot in honor see him hanged for a crime whose guilt I share--and from whose consequences I am escaped by chance alone."

  Fraser stiffened slightly. "A crime whose guilt ye share." His voice was careful, realization--and distaste--clear in the words. He stopped, clearly not wishing to say more, but he could scarcely leave the matter there.

  "This man. He is not only your stepbrother, but...your..." He groped for a word. "Your catamite?"

  "He was my lover, yes." The words should have been tinged with bitterness, but were not. Sadness, yes, but most of all, relief at the admission.

  Fraser made a brief sound of contempt, though, and Grey turned upon him, reckless.

  "You do not believe that men can love one another?"

  "No," Fraser said bluntly. "I do not." His mouth compressed for an instant, and then he added, as though honesty compelled him, "Not in that fashion, at least. The love of brothers, of kin--aye, of course. Or of soldiers. We have--spoken of that."

  "Sparta? Yes." Grey smiled without humor. They had fought the battle of Thermopylae one night, in his quarters at Ardsmuir Prison, using salt cellars, dice, and cuff buttons on a map scrawled with charcoal on the top of his desk. It had been one of their evenings of friendship.

  "The love of Leonidas for his men, they for each other as warriors. Aye, that's real enough. But to--to...use a man in such fashion..." He made a gesture of repudiation.

  "Think so, do you?" Grey's blood was already high; he felt it hot in his chest. "You've read Plato, I know. And scholar that you are, I would suppose that y
ou've heard of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Perhaps?"

  Fraser's face went tight, and in spite of the dim light, Grey saw the color rise in him, as well.

  "I have," he said shortly.

  "Lovers," Grey said, realizing suddenly that he was gloriously angry. "All soldiers. All lovers. Each man and his beloved. Who would desert his beloved, or fail him in the hour of danger?" He gave Fraser stare for stare. "And what do you say to that, Mr. Fraser?"

  The Scot's eyes had gone quite black.

  "What I would say," he said, counting out the words like coins, "is that only men who lack the ability to possess a woman--or cowards who fear them--must resort to such feeble indecencies to relieve their lust. And to hear ye speak of honor in the same breath...Since ye ask, it curdles my wame. And what, my lord, d'ye say to that?"

  "I say that I do not speak of the indecencies of lust--and if you wish to speak of such things, allow me to note that I have seen much grosser indecencies inflicted upon women by men, and so have you. We have both fought with armies. I said 'love.' And what do you think love is, then, that it is reserved only to men who are drawn to women?"

  The color stood out in patches across Fraser's cheekbones.

  "I have loved my wife beyond life itself, and know that love for a gift of God. Ye dare to say to me that the feelings of a--a--pervert who cannot deal with women as a man, but minces about and preys upon helpless boys--that this is love?"

  "You accuse me of preying upon boys?" Grey's fingers curled, just short of his dagger hilt. "I tell you, sir, were you armed, you would answer for that, here and now!"

  Fraser inhaled through his nose, seeming to swell with it. "Draw on me and be damned," he said contemptuously. "Armed or no, ye canna master me."

  "You think not? I tell you," Grey said, and fought so hard to control the fury in his voice that it emerged as no more than a whisper, "I tell you, sir--were I to take you to my bed--I could make you scream. And by God, I would do it."

  Later, he would try to recall what had happened then. Had he moved, reflex and training cutting through the fog of rage that blinded him? Or had Fraser moved, some shred of reason altering his aim in the same split second in which he swung his fist?

  Hard as he tried, no answer came. He remembered nothing but the shock of impact as Fraser's fist struck the boards an inch from his head, and the sob of breath, hot on his face. There had been a sense of presence, of a body close to his, and the impression of some irresistible doom.

  Then he was outside, gulping air as though he were drowning, staggering blind in the glare of the setting sun. He had no balance, no bearings; stumbled and put out a hand for anchor, grasped some piece of farm equipment.

  His vision cleared, eyes watering--but he saw neither the paddock, the wagon whose wheel he grasped, nor the house and lawns beyond. What he saw was Fraser's face. When he had said that--what demon had given him that thought, those words? I could make you scream.

  Oh, Christ, oh, Christ. Someone had.

  A feeling welled up in him like the bursting of blood vessels deep within his belly. Liquid and terrible, it filled him within moments, swelling far beyond his power to contain it. He must vomit, or--

  He ripped at his flies, gasping. A moment, two, of desperate fisting, and it all came out of him. Remorse and longing, rage and lust--and other things that he could put no name to under torture--all of it ran like quicksilver down his spine, between his legs, and erupted in gouts that drained him like a punctured wine sack.

  His legs had no strength. He sank to his knees and knelt there, swaying, eyes closed. He knew nothing but the sense of a terrible relief.

  In minutes--or hours--he became aware of the sun, a dark red blur in the blackness of his closed lids. A moment later, he realized that he was kneeling in the puddled dirt of the yard, forehead pressed to a wagon wheel, his breeches loose and his member still tightly clutched in his hand.

  "Oh, Christ," he said, very softly, to himself.

  The door to the barn stood still ajar behind him, but there was no sound from the darkness within.

  He would have left at once, save for the demands of courtesy. He sat through a final supper with the Dunsanys, replying automatically to their conversation without hearing a word, and went up afterward to tell Tom to pack.

  Tom had already begun to do so, delicately alert to his employer's mood. He looked up from his folding when Grey opened the door, his face showing an alarm so pronounced that it penetrated the sense of numb isolation Grey had felt since the events of the afternoon.

  "What is it, Tom?"

  "Ah...it's nothing, me lord. Only I thought mebbe you were him again."

  "Him?"

  "That big Scotchman, the groom they call Alex. He was just here." Tom swallowed, manfully suppressing the remnants of what had plainly been a considerable shock.

  "What, here?" A groom would never enter the house proper, unless summoned by Lord Dunsany to answer some serious charge of misconduct. Still less, Fraser; the household were terrified of him, and he had orders never to set foot further than the kitchen in which he took his meals.

  "Yes, me lord. Only a few minutes ago. I didn't even hear the door open. Just looked up from me work and there he was. Didn't half give me a turn!"

  "I daresay. What the devil did he say he wanted?" His only supposition was that Fraser had decided to kill him after all, and had come upon that errand. He wasn't sure he cared.

  The Scotchman had said nothing, according to Tom. Merely appeared out of nowhere, stalked past him like a ghost, laid a bit of paper on the desk, and stalked out again, silent as he'd come.

  "Just there, me lord." Tom nodded at the desk, swallowing again. "I didn't like to touch it."

  There was indeed a crumpled paper on the desk, a rough square torn from some larger sheet. Grey picked it up gingerly, as though it might explode.

  It was a grubby bit of paper, translucent with oil in spots and pungent, clearly used originally to wrap fish. What had he used for ink, Grey wondered, and brushed a ginger thumb across the paper. The black smudged at once, and came off on his skin. Candleblack, mixed with water.

  It was unsigned, and curt.

  I believe your lordship to be in pursuit of a wild goose.

  "Well, thank you very much for your opinion, Mr. Fraser!" he muttered, and crumpling the paper into a ball, crammed it in his pocket. "Can you be ready to leave in the morning, Tom?"

  "Oh, I can be ready in a quarter hour, me lord!" Tom assured him fervently, and Grey smiled, despite himself.

  "The morning will do, I think."

  But he lay awake through the night, watching the early autumn moon rise above the stables, large and golden, growing small and pale as it rose among the stars, crossed over the house, and disappeared at last from view.

  He had his answer, then--or one of them. Percy was not going to die, nor to live whatever remained of his life in prison, if Grey could prevent it. That much was decided. He was also decided that he himself could not lie before a court-martial. Not would not; could not. Therefore, he would find another way.

  Precisely how he meant to accomplish this was not yet quite clear to him, but in the circumstances, he found his visit with Captain Bates at Newgate returning repeatedly to his mind--and in those memories, began to perceive the glimmerings of an idea. The fact that the idea was patently insane did not bother him particularly; he was a long way past worrying over such things as the state of his own mind.

  While he considered the specifics of his emerging plan, though, he had another answer to deal with.

  His first impulse, upon seeing Fraser's one-line note, had been to assume that this was mockery and dismissal. And, given the manner of their final meeting, was willing to accept it.

  But that disastrous conversation could not be expunged from memory--not when it held the answer to his quandary regarding Percy. And whenever some echo of it came back to him, it bore with it Jamie Fraser's face. The anger--and the terrible nakedness of that last mome
nt.

  That note was not mockery. Fraser was more than capable of mocking him--did it routinely, in fact--but mockery could not disguise what he had seen in Fraser's face. Neither of them had wanted it, but neither could deny the honesty of what had passed between them.

  He had fully expected that they would avoid each other entirely, allowing the memory of what had been said in the stable to fade, so that by the time he next returned to Helwater, it might be possible for them to speak civilly, both aware of but not acknowledging those moments of violent honesty. But Fraser hadn't avoided him--entirely. He quite understood why the man had chosen to leave a note, rather than speak to him; he himself couldn't have spoken to Fraser face to face, not so soon.

  He had told Fraser that he valued his opinion as an honest man, and that was true. He knew no one more honest--often brutally so. Which drove him to the inescapable conclusion that Fraser had very likely given him what he asked for. He just didn't know what it bloody meant.

  He couldn't return to Helwater; there was no time, even had he thought it would be productive. But he knew one other person who knew Jamie Fraser. And so he went to Boodle's for supper on a Thursday, knowing Harry Quarry would be there.

  "I've found a ring, Harry," Grey said without preamble, sitting down beside Quarry in the smoking room where his friend was enjoying a postprandial cigar. "Like yours."

  "What, this?" Quarry glanced at his hand; he wore only one ring, a Masonic emblem.

  "That one," Grey said. "I found one like it; I'd meant to ask if you knew whose it was."

  Quarry frowned; then his face cleared.

  "Must be Symington's," he said, with the air of a magician pulling colored scarves from his sleeve. "He said he'd lost his--but that's months ago! D'you mean to say you've had it all this time?"

  "I suppose so," Grey said apologetically. "I just found it in my pocket one day--must have picked it up accidentally."

  He put his hand into his pocket and, leaning over, emptied the contents onto the small table between their chairs.