A Soul of Steel (12 page)

“And your friend, the lieutenant, and those sepoys? Were they there when our troops arrived?” I asked breathlessly.

“They were there,” he answered.

“Alive?” Irene inquired sharply.

“Five sepoys were.”

“And your friend Maclaine?” Godfrey asked.

“There, as promised.” Mr. Stanhope sipped the brandy, then held its forbidding fire in his mouth for long moments before swallowing it in one great gulp. “Except his throat was cut. One long cut that nearly severed the head from the body. The body was still warm when our men got in.”

I gasped, but no one looked at me. Mr. Stanhope stared into the yawning amber eye of his brandy snifter. Godfrey regarded his interlaced fingers; sometime during the tale he had sat forward, supporting his arms upon his legs. Irene drew on her cigarette until the ember at the tip glowed hellishly red, then snuffed it in a small crystal tray as if she found it suddenly distasteful.

“Afghan treachery,” she said, but she was watching Mr. Stanhope carefully.

“No.” He did not even look up. “According to the sepoys, Ayub had left instructions before he retreated that the prisoners were not to be killed. Yet a guard cut Maclaine’s throat and wounded one sepoy who tried to stop it. Why would the Khan secretly countermand his orders in regard to only one man?”

“The only Englishman,” Godfrey reminded him.

“No. Afghanistan breeds fierce fighters, and fiercer palace intrigues, but they are forthright folk in actual battle. Maclaine was of no danger to the Afghans.”

“These five sepoys,” Irene finally said. “Explain to me their part in the battle.”

I was most relieved that she had asked that, as I had no idea what a sepoy was. As far as I was concerned, it could be some rare breed of lapdog.

“Native Indian troops. Noncommissioned,” he said. “Good soldiers.”

“They would have no reason to lie,” Irene said.

“No.”

“Unless—”

“Yes?”

“Unless
they
killed Lieutenant Maclaine. The guards had fled. There is only their word on it.”

“But why?” Godfrey wanted to know.

“Perhaps they were bribed to absolve this Khan, this Ayub, of blame. Perhaps, as Stan’s story implies, someone British wished to prevent Lieutenant Maclaine’s testimony about his actions on the battlefield, about the unreported subsidiary ravine leading straight to the British line.”

“What happened about that?” Godfrey asked, sitting straighter. “Surely there was a military inquiry?”

Mr. Stanhope answered at once. “There were inquiries, and a court-martial. The generals produced their reports, which varied depending on how long after the battle they were written. Much blame was laid on Mac. Of course he was the only one not there to defend himself.”

“And where were you?”

He avoided our eyes. “In the Afghan hills. I didn’t learn of the charges, which came out a full year after the battle, until years later. By then it did not seem to matter.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why did you... retreat so far beyond Kandahar? Into the wilderness? For all those years?”

“I was honorably discharged and free to go where I would. Native tales of treasure buried in the remote mountains intrigued me. Also, I was sickened by the method of Mac’s death. If he had not acted on my information, he might be living today.”

“So you have refused to return to England and live the life you were born to because Lieutenant Maclaine could not, and you felt responsible for that.” Irene spoke as dispassionately as a doctor.

Mr. Stanhope cupped the snifter in both of his bronzed hands and let the silky liquid roil like a brazen sea from side to side. “It is not so simple as that. I had reason to think that my life was wanted, too. So I saved it. By remaining lost in Afghanistan.”

“Where you have been totally untroubled by anything, until—”

“Until I returned to Europe,” he admitted.

Irene leaned forward, her hands taut upon her chair arms. “Why, Mr. Stanhope? Why have you returned? And why now?”

He sighed heavily. “I’ve learned a thing or two. I now believe that the physician who tended me in the field at the retreat from Maiwand survived also. I believe that he may be in danger. I will not have yet another man die on my account!”

“But how will you find him?” Exasperation tinged Irene’s facile voice. She used it as a goad or a lure, that voice, and even when speaking she could imbue her words with all the emotional command of a coloratura soprano. “Ah. You are not quite as lost as you would have us think. You have a clue. You have—his
name!”

He recoiled from her words as from a whip. “What is one name in a world full of so many?”

“A thread, Mr. Stanhope. And from a single thread whole cloth can be woven. Tell me his name.”

“It will mean nothing to you! It is common beyond counting. You have no reason to know.”

“We can search him out if something should befall you.”

“How would you recognize him?”

“How will you, with all that battlefield dust and many years between you two?”

“This is pointless, Madame. I regret I have told you so much as my own name.”

“Do you not see? It was your knowing something and confiding it to so few that may have caused Maclaine’s tragedy! Secrets aid conspirators, not truth-tellers.”

“But this bloody name would mean nothing to you! None of this means anything to you. You are implacable, Madame. You are damn near Afghan.”

“I reserve,” Godfrey put in quietly, “the right to shout at my wife to myself.”

Mr. Stanhope grew immediately silent, then ebbed back into his chair, exhausted. “Do you ever do it?”

Godfrey smiled. “No.”

“I can see why not. She is... not to be denied.”

“No,” Godfrey said.

Mr. Stanhope set his brandy snifter on a side table and threw up his brown hands. “Watson,” he said. “The name was Watson.” He regarded us with weary triumph. “You see! The information is utterly useless. All you have learned is that curiosity can not only kill the cat, but also can be a cul-de-sac, Madame.”

“Good Lord, man,” Godfrey commented in awed tones. “Do you know how many thousands of Watsons there are in England? How many hundreds may be physicians?”

Nevertheless, Irene shut her eyes and clapped her hands together as if just offered a rare gem before inclining her head toward poor unknowing Mr. Stanhope.

“Ah, but you need not despair, my dear sir.”

Irene glanced significantly at me. “I may already know a most excellent place to start our search for the mysterious Dr. Watson.

“And Godfrey,” she almost literally purred in closing the subject, “I believe that I will have some of that excellent brandy now.”

Chapter Ten

KISSMET

Mr. Stanhope
had to be assisted upstairs. The strain of sitting up to tell his tale had weakened a constitution already tested by years of privation and most recently—if Irene was right—an attempted poisoning. And although brandy is reputed to buttress the backbone, in this case it further sapped the system, in my opinion.

At his bedchamber door he thanked Godfrey for his support, wished Irene good night now that her questions had been answered, and requested that I remain a few moments, as he wished to speak with me.

I opened my mouth to decline—morning would do, but Irene rushed to answer for me.

“An excellent idea! You seem pale, sir, after recounting your Afghanistan ordeal. A watchful nurse for a short time would set all our minds at rest.”

Her suggestion was sensible, at least, but to call Mr. Stanhope “pale,” no matter how worn his condition, was a great stretch of the imagination, if not the sympathy.

So the pair of them helped Mr. Stanhope into bed, where he reclined fully dressed upon the feather quilt with a relieved sigh. Godfrey and Irene took a somewhat hasty leave, it struck me.

The paraffin lamp had been turned very low while the chamber was unoccupied—Sophie was a tyrant about saving oil. I was expected to read and sew in a level of lamplight barely sufficient for seeing one’s hands at arm’s length. I went to turn up the light.

“Leave it be,” he said.

At my inquiring look, he gestured to the window. “We don’t wish to be too visible to the world outside.”

“Oh.” My hand darted back from the little brass turnkey as if it had been a viper’s fangs. “Perhaps it is not safe to remain in this chamber.”

“The odds are long that he will try again here, but it’s best not to tempt chance.”

In the dimness of the tapestry bed curtains, his face was unreadable; only the extraordinary pearly glimmer of his teeth and eye whites caught the scant light. I sat on the straight-backed chair that would insure no nodding off and fell into an uneasy silence.

In my father’s parsonage, visiting the sick was an obligation of the highest regard. Since a child I had sat for long hours beside many a sickbed; there I had learned patience and a respect for mortality.

Despite the nobility of the role, I found myself uneasy in Mr. Stanhope’s presence. Perhaps it was the fact that he was fully dressed, oddly enough, although that should allay any notion of impropriety in my sitting up with a man in his bedchamber. Long custom makes clear that only when a man is laid utterly flat by illness can he be regarded as safe enough not to make improper advances to any nearby female.

Mr. Stanhope did not seem sick enough to erase any suggestion of scandal, at least from my mind.

“
He
, you say.” My voice emerged froggy from the long silence.

“He?”

“Your marksman. You know, or suspect, his identity.”

“She did not pursue that.”

“She?”

“Your friend. She cared only about the name of my battlefield rescuer.”

“That is true,” I admitted, “and also odd. Yet  Irene has her instincts, and they will not be denied. Nor can I deny that such apparently wild guesses have served her well. Perhaps it is the artistic temperament.”

He laughed. “Perhaps. I have not a jot of it.”

“Yet you have led quite a... Bohemian life.”

“Not at all, Miss Huxleigh. I have led an irregular life. There is a difference. That is even worse than being a Bohemian,” he added mockingly. “And you... you surprise me. You have led an adventurous life.”

“I? Not at all! I am a complete homebody. Although,” I was compelled to add in all honesty, “I did once travel from London to Bohemia by train unescorted. It was highly improper of me, but the situation was desperate.”

“By train? A woman alone? You see my meaning! That is the civilized equivalent of daring to dwell solitary among the brigands of Afghanistan, my dear Miss Huxleigh.”

“Ah, but I have never been called ‘Cobra.’ “

He sobered at that; at least I no longer glimpsed the pale scimitar of his teeth.

“Although,” I was again compelled to add in all frankness, “I once signed a cablegram by the code name ‘Casanova.’ “

“You! Casanova?” He leaned forward until the light limned his features.

At the time I’d thought the ruse rather clever myself. “The parrot,” I explained modestly.

“Ah, of course. A sagacious old bird. But you see? Coded cablegrams, unescorted train journeys. You have been quite an adventuress.”

“Never! And only because Irene had summoned me to Prague. Even Godfrey—who barely knew her then—advised me against going, but I knew Irene would never call on me for a frivolity.

“And it was a good thing I went, for she trembled upon the verge of a fearsome scandal. I am happy to say that my mere presence insured that no one could speak against her dealings with the King of Bohemia. Quite a nasty little man, that, though he stood several inches over six feet tall.” I shuddered in remembrance of the arrogant monarch.

“A cat may look at a queen,” Mr. Stanhope said in amused tones, “but only a Miss Huxleigh may despise a king. You are so British, my dear Nell, and so innocently charming. I had quite forgotten.”

I froze. “We had not agreed upon using Christian names, Mr. Stanhope.”

“I asked you all below to call me ‘Stan.’ “

“That is a variation of a surname, not a Christian name. And even”—I took a great mental breath before I uttered it —“Emerson... is not a truly ‘Christian’ name.”

“Perhaps I should not confess that my middle name is... Quentin, then.”

“Quentin?” Alas. That, too, struck me as a highly euphonious, if unconventional, pair of syllables. “Quentin is quite—”

“A variation on the Roman Quintus. Quite pagan,” he added, a teasing glint in his cairngorm eyes. “Yet I prefer it to Emerson, and was so called among my family and closest friends before I left for Afghanistan. I prefer it.”

“Quentin is not uncomely,” I admitted, “but it is decidedly un-Christian.”

“So is ‘Penelope,’ “ he shot back with alarming accuracy.

“Well—!” I didn’t know quite how to defend my poor parents’ nonconformist choice of a baptismal name. “True, the name is of classical origin, but my father was highly learned, though a humble Shropshire parson. Penelope was an admirable and virtuous woman, who remained faithful to her roving husband Ulysses despite the clamor of suitors and his twenty-year absence.”