Lord John and the Hand of Devils (20 page)

“Of course it is,” Grey agreed cordially. “And when His Majesty likes to ask me for it, I shall be quite happy to give it to him. For the moment, though, I shall keep it safe.”

Taking a deep breath in preparation, he wrapped the edges of his cloak around himself, pulled his hat well down, and dived into the rain. Jones didn’t follow.

H
e had a decent sense of direction and was used to finding his way through foreign towns and open country alike. Keeping in mind the directions Gormley had given him as they sped through the Warren, he was able to find his way back past the maze of the proving grounds to the foundry, pausing only now and then to take his bearings.

The din in the foundry seemed almost welcoming, a cheerful, self-absorbed racket that was completely uninterested in Major Grey and his experiences on the battlefield at Crefeld. He paused for a moment to watch a moulder beating with an iron rod at a great heap of clay that sat on a bench before him, while an assistant shoveled handsful of horse dung and wool clippings into the mix, counting as he did so.

In the next bay, men were winding rope carefully round a tapered wooden spindle, some ten feet long, that sat in a sort of large trough, suspended in notches at either end—the cannon mould to which the clay would be applied, he supposed.

“Beg pardon, sir.” A young man appeared out of nowhere, pushing him politely aside in order to retrieve a bucket of soft soap, which he then rushed back and began daubing onto the tight-packed grooves of the rope with a large brush.

He would have liked to loiter and watch, but he was clearly in the way; already, men were glancing at him, curiosity mingled with a mild hostility at his unuseful presence.

The rain had at least slackened; he walked out of the main foundry building, his hand curled round the fragment of brass in his pocket, thinking of that missing sliver.

For the most part, he was unaware of it, and often forgot its presence altogether. Now and then, though, some postural shift would send a brief, piercing pain through his chest, freezing him in place. The English surgeon, Dr. Longstreet, had told him that there might remain some harmless irritation of the nerves, but that the spasms would eventually pass.

The German surgeon, evidently unaware of Grey’s fluency in that language, had agreed, but remarked in his own tongue that there was of course a slight possibility of the sliver’s turning suddenly, in which case it might pierce the pericardium, whatever that was.

But no need to think of that,
he had concluded cheerfully,
as if so, he will be dead almost at once.

He had recalled Gormley’s directions aright; directly ahead was what the young man had called Dial Arch. Beyond that lay Dial Square, and beyond that in turn he should find the exit he sought to Bell Street, where, no doubt, his long-suffering valet was still waiting for him.

He smiled wryly at thought of Tom Byrd. He had insisted that there was no need for his valet to accompany him all the way out to Woolwich—it was ten miles, at least—but Byrd would not hear of his going out alone. Tom, bless him, had scarcely let him go anywhere alone since his return from Germany, fearing—and with some reason, Grey was grudgingly forced to admit—that he might collapse on the street.

He was much better now, though; quite restored, he told himself firmly. Hand still curled round the tiny leopard’s head, he paused under the arch to brush and shake himself into order before facing the critical eye of Tom Byrd, aged eighteen.

A huge stone sundial lay in the center of the square, giving it its name. It was of course not working at the moment, but it did remind Grey of time. He had been engaged to his mother and step-father, General Stanley, for supper, but it was already growing dark; there was no hope of making the long and dangerous carriage ride in time. He’d have to spend the night in Woolwich.

Unpleasant as that prospect was, it carried with it a sense of relief. He’d seen the general since the “unfortunate occurrence,” as Hal so tersely termed it, but only briefly. He hadn’t been looking forward to a long tête-à-tête.

A movement on the other side of the sundial made him look up. A man was standing there, regarding him with a faintly puzzled, somewhat offended look, as though considering his appearance exceptionable in some way.

Grey might have been offended in turn, were he not taken aback in his turn by the other’s appearance, which was most certainly exceptionable.

He wore an unfamiliar uniform, old-fashioned in appearance, of a regiment that Grey did not recognize. The hilt of a dress sword showed beneath his coat—this a full-skirted garment, blue with scarlet facings, and two antique pistols were thrust through his belt. Below were breeches of a grossly unfashionable cut, baggy at the knee and so loose through the leg as to swim about his figure, stocky as it was. His wig, though, was the most remarkable thing, this being unpowdered, long, and curled upon his shoulders in a glossy profusion of dark brown. It was a most unmilitary sight, and Grey frowned at the man.

The soldier appeared no more impressed with Grey; he turned upon his heel without a word and walked toward the opening at the other side of the square. Grey opened his mouth to hail the fellow, then stood with it open. The soldier was gone, the archway empty. Or, no—not empty. A young man was there, looking into the square. Another soldier, an artillery officer by his dress—but certainly not the gentleman in the old-fashioned wig.

“Did you see him?” A voice at Grey’s elbow turned him; it was a short, middle-aged man in uniform, faintly familiar. “Did you see him, sir?”

“The strange gentleman in the ancient wig? Yes.” He frowned at the man. “Do I know you?” Memory supplied the answer, even as the soldier knuckled his forehead in salute.

“Aye, sir, though little wonder should you not recognize me. We met—”

“At Crefeld. Yes. You were part of the gun crew serving Tom Pilchard, were you not? You were—yes, you were the rammer.” He was sure of it, though the neat soldier before him bore little resemblance to the black-stained, sweat-soaked wretch whose half-toothless savage grin was the last image he recalled of the battle of Crefeld.

“Aye, sir.” The rammer appeared less interested in picking up the threads of past acquaintance, though, than in the old-fashioned gentleman who had so abruptly departed. “Did you see him, sir?” he repeated, clearly excited. “It was the ghost!”

“The what?”

“The ghost, sir! ’Twas the Arsenal ghost, I’m sure it was!” The rammer—Grey had never known his name—looked at once terrified and thrilled.

“Whatever are you talking about, Private?” Grey asked sharply. His tone brought the rammer up short, and he stood stiff at attention.

“Why, sir, it’s the Arsenal ghost,” he said, and despite his pose, his eyes sought the opposite side of the square, where the apparition—if that’s what it was—had vanished. “Everybody knows about the Arsenal ghost—but damn few has seen it!”

He sounded almost gloating, though his face was still pale.

“Folk say as he’s the ghost of an artillery officer was killed on the proving ground, fifty years or more ago. It’s good luck, they say, for an artilleryman to see him—not so good, maybe, was you not of his h’occupation.”

“Good luck,” Grey repeated, a little bleakly. “Well, and I’m sure we can all use a bit of that. Come to that, Private, how do you come to be here?”

The ghost—if that’s what he was—had raised not a hair on Grey’s head, but the rammer’s presence had set the back of his neck to prickling.

“Oh.” The man’s look of avid interest faded a little. “I’m summoned, sir. They’s a Commission of Inquiry, regarding the h’explosion. Poor old Tom Pilchard,” he said, wagging his head mournfully. “’E were a noble gun.”

The rammer glanced at the sundial, gleaming with rain.

“But I come
here,
sir, for to see was there enough light to tell the time by the dial, see, sir, not to be late.”

A sense of movement on the other side of the square made Grey look up quickly. It was not the ghost, though—if it had been a ghost—but the small, black-coated functionary who had taken him before the commission, wearing a large handkerchief spread over his wig against the rain, and an annoyed expression.

“I believe this will be your summons now,” Grey said, nodding toward the functionary. “Good luck!”

The rammer hurriedly straightened his hat, already moving across the square.

“Thank’ee, sir!” he called. “The same to you!”

Grey lingered for a moment after the rammer’s departure, looking into the walkway beyond the square. It was growing late in the afternoon, and the light was beginning to darken, but the space beyond was perfectly visible—and perfectly empty.

Grey found himself profoundly uneasy, and seized of a sudden urge to be gone. The artilleryman’s ghost—if that’s what it was—had not disturbed him in the slightest. What troubled him was the glimpse he had had of the other artilleryman, the young soldier standing in the walkway, watching.

He had told Oswald that he had had no opportunity of studying Philip Lister’s face, and that was true enough. He
had,
however, seen it, in the instant before the cannonball struck. And he suffered now from a most unsettling conviction that he had just seen it again.

Drawing his cloak more closely round him, he crossed the square and went to find Tom Byrd, feeling a certain coldness near his heart.

T
om Byrd was waiting patiently for him in Bell Street, sheltering from the rain in a doorway.

“All right, me lord?” he inquired, putting on his broad-brimmed hat.

“Yes, fine.”

Byrd narrowed his eyes at Grey, who reflected—not for the first time—that Byrd’s round and essentially guileless young face did not in any way prevent his exhibiting the sort of penetrating suspicion more suitable to an officer in charge of a court-martial—or to a nanny—than to a valet.

“Fine,” Grey repeated, more firmly. “Mere formalities. As I said.”

“As you said,” Byrd echoed, with a trifle more skepticism than was entirely becoming. “Covering their arses, I expect.”

“Certainly that,” Grey agreed dryly. “Let us find a little food, Tom. And we must find a bed, as well. Do you know anywhere suitable?”

“To be sure, me lord.” Tom squinted in consideration, and after a moment’s consultation with the detailed map of London he carried in his head, pointed off toward the east.

“The Lark’s Nest; decent house round the corner,” he suggested. “Do a nice oyster pie, and the beer’s good. Dunno about the beds.”

Grey nodded.

“We’ll chance the fleas for the sake of the beer.”

He gestured to Tom to lead the way, and pulled down his hat against the steady drizzle. He
was
hungry—ravenous, in fact—having eaten neither breakfast nor dinner, his appetite suppressed by thought of the coming interview.

He had been pushing that interview to the back of his mind, in hopes of distancing the Commission’s remarks sufficiently to deal rationally with them later. Now relieved of other distraction, though, there was no escape, and the Commission’s questions replayed themselves uncomfortably in his mind as he splashed through darkening puddles after Tom.

He was still angered by Marchmont’s insinuations regarding his own possible culpability in the explosion—but not so angered as not to try to examine them honestly.

The baffling taradiddle regarding Edgar he dismissed, seeing no way to make sense of it, save to suppose that Marchmont had intended to goad him and thus perhaps to drive him into unwary admission of fault.

Could
the explosion have been in any way his fault? He felt a natural resistance to the suggestion, strong as the involuntary jerk of a knee. But he could not dismiss Marchmont’s insinuations—or deal with them, if they could not be dismissed—if he was not clear in his own mind about the matter.

Be the devil’s advocate,
he told himself, hearing his father’s voice in memory.
Assume that it
was
your fault—in what way might it have happened?

Only two possibilities that he could see. The most likely, as Marchmont had implied, was that the gun crew might, in the excitement of the moment, have double-loaded the cannon, not pausing for the first round to be touched off. When the linstock was put to the touchhole, both rounds would have exploded together, thus blowing the cannon apart.