Lord John And The Hand Of Devils

Page 36

Marcus Fanshawe was an expert, raised in the shadow of a gunpowder mill, fearless in the making and handling of the dangerous energy.
“What is it the Good Book says—The guilty flee when no man pursueth? I thought that if he died that way, people would wonder, ask questions. Anne”—there was a bitter pain in his voice at the name—“she might suspect.”
And so he had begun the manufacture of high-grade powder, even finer than that required for rifle cartridges. An experimental batch; everyone knew about it, knew the potential risks of dealing with it. If that powder were to suddenly explode, no one would be surprised.
“I thought, you see, I knew what I was doing. I’d handled black powder since I was a lad; knew it all. And, in fact, I did. We’d made the powder, corned it with great care, got a number of the special cartridges made up, the rest mostly kegged. Not the slightest difficulty. And then a workman dropped a scraper.”
Not a wooden scraper, which would have done no harm; one of the heavy stone scrapers, whose weight was needed for the fine grinding. It should have made no difference; the granite used was inert. But some small inclusion in the stone was flint; it struck an iron fitment of a horse’s harness, and made a spark.
“There was that one deadly instant when I saw it, saw the air filled with powder dust, and knew we were all dead,” Fanshawe said. “And then the shed went up.”
“I see,” Grey said, dry-mouthed. He worked his tongue and swallowed. “And the second accident?”
Fanshawe sighed.
“That one wasn’t mine. Half the experimental batch was outside, packed in kegs, standing near the shed, where I’d carefully placed it—for Philip. But the explosion went the other way; the kegs didn’t explode. And the overseer was one of the men killed in the explosion; the kegs weren’t marked specially yet—someone simply loaded them onto the barge with the others. It was weeks before I recovered enough to speak, let alone act. By then, the high-grade powder had already gone to market, so to speak.”
“And Anne Thackeray had married Philip Lister.”
The peaked cap bent toward him in a nod.
“Eloped,” he corrected. “They never had a chance to marry; Philip was called back to his regiment and sent to Prussia. He had just time to send a note to me, asking me to look after Anne. Idiot,” he added reflectively. “Philip never could see what was under his nose.”
“Evidently not.” The brick wall was hard; Grey shifted his buttocks a little, seeking a more comfortable position, but none was to be found. “But you didn’t look after her.”
“No.” Fanshawe’s voice had lost its momentary passion, gone back to its colorless normality. “He died. I knew Philip wouldn’t have left her well provided for—couldn’t. And her father … Well, you’ve met him. So I waited.”
Waited, with the cold-blooded patience of one accustomed to handling explosive substances. Waited until Anne Thackeray had exhausted her resources.
“She wrote to that fool, Coles, who of course came bleating to me, money in hand. I took it, kept it.” And waited.
Anne, pregnant and destitute, had pawned her jewelry, bit by bit. And Marcus Fanshawe, following discreetly in her wake, had bought it, bit by bit.
“I meant, you see, to keep it for her,” he explained. “When she had reached a state of complete desperation—then I should come to her, and she would have no choice but to accept me, even as I am. Something she would never do,” he added bitterly, “save to escape from utter degradation.”
The grenadier was by now wreathed with floating smoke from the burning slow match at his waist, and Grey caught the whiff of brimstone as he moved. Fanshawe drew a length of the slow match from its tube and blew thoughtfully on it; the black silk fluttered, and the end of the slow match brightened like a spark.
“I waited too long, though,” he said. “She gave birth, and I should have come then—but I was afraid that she wasn’t yet so desperate that she’d have me. She’d taken refuge in a brothel, but with her belly big, they hadn’t yet put her to work. I thought after that had happened once or twice …”
Grey felt incredulous revulsion form a ball in the pit of his stomach.
“That is the most … You—you are—” he said, but speech failed him.
“You cannot tell me anything about myself that I do not already know, Major.” Fanshawe bent and took what looked like an authentic grenade from the neck of his rucksack. He stood, tossing the small clay sphere casually in one hand.
“I waited too long,” he repeated, matter-of-factly. “She took a fever and died. So there it is. Bloody Philip’s won again.”
With an air of absolute calm, he held the slow match to the fuse of the grenade.
“What in the name of God do you expect to accomplish with this bit of theatrics?” Grey asked, contemptuous. “And what of the child? Did the child live? If so—where is it?”
Fanshawe’s head was bent, watching the slow creep of fire through the burning fuse. What was the maniac about? It couldn’t be a real grenade.
Could it?
Uneasy, Grey got off the wall. His backside was chilled and his legs stiff.
“The child,” he repeated, more urgently. “Where is the child?”
Fanshawe lifted the grenade, weighing it in his hand, and seemed to consider the burning fuse. How long did it take to burn down? Not more than seconds, surely.…
“Catch!” he said suddenly, and tossed the sphere at Grey.
Grey fumbled madly, the slippery thing bouncing off his hands, his chest, his stomach, finally trapped precariously against his thighs. Blood hammering in his ears, he carefully took a double-handed grip of the grenade and straightened up.
Fanshawe was laughing, his shoulders shaking silently.
“God damn you for a frigging buffoon!” Grey said, furious, and turning, flung the thing over the garden wall, toward the river.
The night flared red and yellow, blinding him, and a blast of hot air singed his cheeks. The sound of it was mostly drowned in the racket of music and conversation, but he heard a few voices near him, raised in awe or curiosity.
“Oh, fireworks!” someone exclaimed in rapture. “I didn’t know there were to be fireworks tonight!”
He sat down suddenly, all the strength in his legs gone to water. The place on his breast where the splinter had come out throbbed in time to his heart, and black-and-yellow spots floated before his eyes.
“Me lord! Are you all right?” He blinked, making out Tom Byrd’s anxious face among the spots. Tom had acquired a comic hat somewhere, a huge thing of shoddy red sateen, equipped with a curling feather. This brushed against Grey’s face as Byrd bent over him, and he sneezed.
“Yes,” he said, and swallowed, tasting sulfur. “Where—” But the grenadier was gone, the space beneath the tree dark and empty.
Not quite empty.
“He’s left his sack behind.” Tom bent, reaching for it, before Grey could shout a warning. He flung both hands over his head, curling into a ball in a futile attempt at self-protection.
“Oh,” said Tom, in tones of astonishment. He was holding up the flap of the bag, peering inside. “Oh, my!”
“What?” Uncurling, Grey made his way on hands and knees to the sack. “What is it?”
Tom reached gently into the sack and drew out the contents. A small baby, perhaps a month old, stirred in its wrappings and opened its amiably popping eyes.
“Oh,” said Grey, bereft of words. He held out his arms, and Tom Byrd carefully handed him the child, which was sopping wet but appeared not otherwise the worse for its recent adventures.
Somewhere in the night, there was a sudden, tearing sound above the music, and the air beyond the hedge flashed red and yellow. Grey paid no attention to the screams, the shouts of dismay. His whole being was focused on the bundle in his arms, for he was sure this would be his last vision of the face of Philip Lister.
It was very late, but John Grey was not yet asleep. He sat by the fire in his quarters in the barracks, the distant sounds of the night watch outside his window, writing steadily.
… and so it is ended. You may imagine the difficulties of discovering a wet-nurse in an army barracks in the middle of the night, but Tom Byrd has arranged matters and the child is cared for. I will send to Simon Coles tomorrow, that he may undertake the business of bringing the boy to his family—perhaps such an ambassage will pave the way for him in his courtship of Miss Barbara. I hope so.
I cling to the thought of Simon Coles. His goodness, his idealism—foolish though it may be—is a single bright spot in the dark quagmire of this wretched business.
God knows I am neither ignorant nor innocent of the ways of the world. And yet I feel unclean, so much evil as I have met tonight. It weighs upon my spirit; thus I write to cleanse myself of it.
He paused, dipped the pen, and continued.
I do believe in God, though I am not a religious man such as yourself. Sometimes I wish I were, so as to have the relief of confession. But I am a rationalist, and thus left to flounder in disgust and disquiet, without your positive faith in ultimate justice.
Between the cold consciencelessness of the government and the maniac passion of Marcus Fanshawe, I am left almost to admire the common, ordinary, self-interested evil of Neil Stapleton; he is so nearly virtuous by contrast.
He paused again, hesitating, bit the end of the quill, but then dipped it and went on.
A strange thought occurs to me. There is of course no point of similarity between yourself and Stapleton in terms of circumstance or character. And yet there is one peculiar commonality. Both you and Stapleton know. And for your separate reasons, cannot or will not speak of it to anyone. The odd result of this is that I feel quite free in the company of either one of you, in a way that I cannot be free with any other man.
You despise me; Stapleton would use me. And yet, when I am with you or with him, I am myself, without pretense, without the masks that most men wear in commerce with their fellows. It is … He broke off, thinking, but there really was no way to explain further what he meant.
… most peculiar, he finished, smiling a little despite himself.
As for the army and the practice of war, you will agree, I think, with Mr. Lister’s assertion that it is a brutal occupation. Yet I will remain a soldier. There is hard virtue in it, and a sense of purpose that I know no other way of achieving.
He dipped the pen again, and saw the slender splinter of metal that lay on his desk, straight as a compass needle, dully a-gleam in the candlelight.
My regiment is due to be reposted in the spring; I shall join them, wherever duty takes me. I shall, however, come to Helwater again before I leave.
He stopped, and touched the metal splinter with his left hand. Then wrote, You are true north.
Believe me ever your servant, sir,
John Grey
He sanded the letter and shook it gently dry, folded it, and taking the candlestick, dripped wax upon the edge and pressed his ring into the warm soft wax to seal it. The smiling crescent moon of his signet was sharp-cut, clear in the candlelight. He set down the candlestick, and after weighing the letter in his hand for a moment, reached out and touched the end of it to the flame.
It caught, flared up, and he dropped the flaming fragment into the hearth. Then, standing, shucked his banyan, blew out the candle, and lay down, naked in the dark.