Honor's Kingdom

Owen Parry

[Ralph Peters]

STACKPOLE
BOOKS

Books by Ralph Peters

Nonfiction

Lines of Fire
Endless War
Looking for Trouble
Wars of Blood and Faith
New Glory
Never Quit the Fight
Beyond Baghdad
Beyond Terror
Fighting for the Future

Fiction

Cain at Gettysburg
The Officer’s Club
The War After Armageddon
Traitor
The Devil’s Garden
Twilight of Heroes
The Perfect Soldier
Flames of Heaven
The War in 2020
Red Army
Bravo Romeo

Writing as Owen Parry

Faded Coat of Blue
Shadows of Glory
Call Each River Jordan
Bold Sons of Erin
Rebels of Babylon
Our Simple Gifts
Strike the Harp

Copyright © 2002 by Owen Parry

Published by

STACKPOLE BOOKS

5067 Ritter Road

Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

www.stackpolebooks.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania 17055.

Printed in the United States

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover photo of Thomas Annan’s “High St from College Open” courtesy of the Mitchell Library

Cover design by Tessa Sweigert

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parry, Owen.

Honor’s kingdom / Owen Parry.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-1132-6 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-8117-1132-3 (pbk.)

1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. 2. Jones, Abel (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Undercover operations—Fiction.
I. Title.

PS3566.A7637H66 2012

813'.54—dc23

2012003813

eBook ISBN: 978-0-8117-4876-6

To that blessed young man from the blacking factory,
and to all his inky confederates.

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.

—Shakespeare,
Henry V

ONE

THEY FOUND THE DEAD FELLOW IN LONDON, BALLED up in a basket of eels. Chewed upon he was, and most unsightly. The Good Lord knows I have seen worse. In war and, once, in a church. But bad enough that one looked. Now, eels are nibblers and burrowers, so he did not lack great bits of himself as a corpse will that has been got at by vultures or pigs. To say nothing of dogs or jackals. No, he still had the proper shape of a man, if a bit whittled down and perforated. He would go in the ground almost complete. As for his soul, that is a separate matter. But he was not handsome on the butcher’s table, even though the blood was long since out of him.

The body reeked of fish. A great stink filled the cellar room where the coroner’s folk had laid him out, overpowering the smell of the lamps and lye soap. Twas mid-day, with the great city rumbling and grumbling beyond the damp walls, but within the morgue the hour might have been midnight. Young Mr. Adams looked as though his last meal had begun a revolution in his stomach and his pallor come near the typhoid.

“That,” the elder Mr. Adams began, in a voice as calm as a Welsh Sunday, “is the Reverend Mr. Campbell, of Cleveland, Ohio. He called upon me at the legation some months ago. I believe he had come here to proselytize.”

“Begging your pardon, sir?” the police inspector, a black-whiskered fellow named Wilkie, asked.

“To preach,” Mr. Adams explained. “And to convert. It was a private undertaking, as I recall, conducted among the poor. He asked for a donation.”

The United States Minister to Britain was not a tall man—though larger than myself—but he carried his shoulders like a grenadier and his face possessed the self-control of a veteran sergeant regulating a pack of young officers. A laurel wreath of hair wrapped round his baldness and a neat beard grew back of his chin. His collar was white and high, and cutting stiff. You would have thought him a high-born Englishman himself, for all the wintry dignity he wore. His eyes were hard as jewels. I had barely presented myself to him when the young swell from the Foreign Office appeared, police inspector in tow, to ask Mr. Adams to visit the morgue in his company.

And now we stood over the body, in the quiet the dead compel.

“Lord Russell will be dismayed,” the Foreign Office lad intoned, in a voice one degree too haughty. Unwilling to steady his eyes upon the corpse, he was. His name was Pomeroy and he had feathery brown hair and a bare wish of whiskers. He was not the sort of Englishman who is permanently ruddy from sport and scented with hounds. More the club-room champion, Pomeroy seemed all narrowness, with eyes that lacked resolve, but his speech betrayed the impatience and expectations of a man who has never had to labor for his wages.

We were seven down in the morgue, not counting the dead man: the elder Mr. Adams and his son, Mr. Henry Adams, who looked the parlor sort himself and was suffocating a gag with a handkerchief pressed to his mustache; the young diplomatic fellow, Pomeroy; Inspector Wilkie, whose burst of whiskers rounded canine features; a brass-buttoned constable fingering his truncheon as if the dead man might rise up and attack us; a crooked-over coroner’s assistant, happy in his work; and my Christian self.

When his utterance failed to draw a response, young Pomeroy added, “There will be questions, sir. Indeed, Lord Russell may be
extremely
dismayed.”

Mr. Adams glanced at the boy, just for a twinkle, and said without emotion, “I appreciate Earl Russell’s interest.”

“In fact, sir,” the Foreign Office boy pushed on, with more than a hint of petulance, “Lord Russell may be
extraordinarily
dismayed.”

“Earl Russell’s concern never disappoints,” Mr. Adams said. “Please extend my cordial regards to the Foreign Secretary.” A gas lamp flared. By a table of tools, the coroner’s assistant gnawed furtively at a bun, for the hour had arrived for the midday meal and some men cannot regiment their appetites.

“Sir,”
Pomeroy insisted, “I
mean
to say that Lord Russell will expect me to carry back an explanation. A letter addressed to you was found upon the person of this . . . this—”

“Upon the Reverend Mr. Campbell,” Mr. Adams said helpfully.

“A letter, sir! Addressed to you, to the American Minister credentialed to Her Majesty’s Government! Alluding to the gravest matters. Insinuating violations of . . . of diplomatic protocol!”

“I find that curious,” Mr. Adams replied.

I almost began to suspect our representative of enjoying the exchange, for the young fellow was not his match, twas clear at once. Mr. Charles Francis Adams was the son and grandson of American presidents, see. America’s answer to high breeding, that one. Formed out of New England’s bitter winters, and firm as a block of ice.

“Her Majesty’s Government will expect clarification,” Pomeroy sulked.

Mr. Adams hinted a smile, as if the young fellow had been complimenting him steadily. “We shall all expect clarification of this particular matter, Mr. Pomeroy.” He turned to the coroner’s man. “When may the body be released for burial, sir?”

The crooked-over fellow lowered his bun and looked across the body to the police inspector.

Inspector Wilkie drew himself up in that rooster’s posture that will pass for authority. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he began, “seeing as it’s murder clear enough, what with the back of ’is ’ead all crushed in for the eels to go in and out, and the poor parson a most evident victim of the criminal class amongst us, we shall ’ave to partake of the benefits of science a bit longer. To do up the inquest all proper, sir.”

The inspector wiped a hand down the left side of his face, then repeated the gesture on the right. As his fingers smoothed over his whiskers, the fur bristled right back up as an animal’s will. “My, my, sir, weren’t it a sight, though? With them eels going in and out of ’im like worms through a cheese. Just dripping off ’im, they was, sir. Til a body would think ’e was a great eel pie, all baked up alive. But I doesn’t wish to be morbid, sir, and I think we’s got the last of the devils out of ’im now. Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Archibald?”

The coroner’s man nodded briskly.

“Couldn’t tell the eels from ’is brains at first, sir,” the inspector continued. “The way they was all squirmed up together. But, speaking officially, sir, I doesn’t expects as ’ow you couldn’t ’ave the good reverend all to yourselves in the morning. Would that be in order, then, Mr. Archibald?”

“Oh, I should think so, I should, Inspector Wilkie,” the coroner’s fellow told him. “Yes, indeed. Tomorrow’s all right. There ain’t so much science to a feller once the back of ’is noggin’s been bashed away. It’ll be a disappointment to the medical college, though, for we’ve a shortage of paupers come in this week. The poor are fed up fat these days, and spoilt til they dies all reluctant.”

“You’ll want to be careful of the eels, sir,” the inspector said, turning back to Mr. Adams. “In the event as there’s one or two left in ’im. Sharp little teeth they ’as, sir, the bigger ones.”