The Price of Glory (18 page)

But of course it would be entirely out of character for Imlay to obey the rules. He would find them absurd. And he was probably right.

Nathan laid the pistol back in its case, next to its twin, and put the case back in the wardrobe until he needed it. He took out the flute instead. No dishonour in practising upon the flute, so far as he knew, though it might wake the rest of the house.

He leafed through the sheet music that was there and after some thought he chose the “Aria of the Shepherd” from La Liberazione di Ruggiero by Francesca Caccini, the only female composer he knew.

Unfortunately there was no music-stand but he laid the sheets on the small table by the window and weighted them with the glass of wine and the half-empty bottle. Then he assembled the flute. He had not played for some time and there were several false starts, but after a while he felt his old skills return to him, though in truth he had never entirely mastered the instrument. He aimed it at the window out of consideration for the sleeping women in the rooms below, though he flattered himself that the music was so enchanting it would not awaken them. Indeed, he did not think he had ever played better. After a few minutes a dog began to howl mournfully from the darkness in the streets below and soon it was joined by another, but he took this rather as a compliment than a criticism. Then a drunken voice was raised in angry rebuke—at the dogs, he thought, rather than his playing—but it rather spoiled his mood so he set the flute down and sat in the armchair dozing a little or looking out at the stars. And surprisingly he drifted into a heavy sleep, waking with a start to find the sky had turned from black to grey.

He moved quickly then, fearing to hear the doorbell, dressing in a clean shirt and stock with a plain black jacket instead of his uniform coat. Then he crept down the creaking stairs with his boots in his hand and the case of pistols tucked under his arm.

The brewer was waiting for him in his carriage across the square but he climbed down at Nathan's approach and looked him over.

“I was about to come for you,” he said. And then doubtless realising that this might imply reluctance on Nathan's part, he added hastily: “You slept well I trust?”

“Overslept,” Nathan could not resist informing him. He yawned, though not from affectation—he always yawned when nervous. The brewer's face was composed with care, as if he had dressed it for the occasion, following the guidelines in the Code Duello. They climbed into the carriage and Nathan gave him back his pistols.

“You have tested them? I mean, the weight.”

Nathan nodded silently and his companion rushed on again as if to disguise some error of etiquette. He was more nervous than Nathan. “A fine pair. Very well balanced. Good grip. Did you find?”

“Very good.”

“And a sound lock. I have never known them misfire.”

How often had he fired them?

“They were a gift from my father.”

“I will try not to return them in as pristine a condition as they are now.”

“Ha, ha. Quite. Quite. Let us hope it.”

But this seemed to quieten him and they drove the rest of the journey in silence.

There was a fog upon the fields, rising from the wet grass and climbing a little way up the trees so they appeared to be rising out of a bog. It was still not quite light and the fog blurred the edges of things but Nathan discovered his senses to be remarkably alert. Every sound appeared exaggerated. When the coach stopped he heard the creaking of the harness and the springs as they settled, the horses chewing upon their bits, the slow drip of water from the trees. They climbed out of the coach and he noticed an extraordinary number of magpies strutting about the grass and quarrelling shrewishly, clacking their beaks. He did not count them but there were more than in the verse: a multitude of sorrows. A squirrel looked down at him from a low branch and appeared to be studying him intently. The sky was brighter and he heard the first birdsong, tentative at first and then, as if in response to some hidden heavenly baton, swelling to the full dawn chorus. It sounded too loud to Nathan—frantic, almost hysterical.

The other coaches were there already. One for Imlay and his second; the other for the referee and another man, presumably the doctor. There was some conferring. They began to load and check the weapons. Imlay stood a little apart, looking back towards the city as if he were expecting someone, but most likely lost in his thoughts.

Did he deserve to die? Probably not. Not for what he had brought Mary to, for it was impossible to tell what had happened between them.

There are two sides to every story
.

For being a French spy, then?

Well, yes, for it would have served to hang him, if proven, or have him shot before a firing squad. But
was
he a French spy ? Nathan was no longer sure. Certainly the Admiralty appeared to have given him the benefit of the doubt, else he would not be walking freely about the streets of London.

It occurred to Nathan now that if he was a double agent, which seemed likely, it would go some way towards explaining his difficulties with Mary, for how could he have an honest relationship with someone when his entire character was cloaked in deception.

He was getting nowhere with this. He had killed many who did not deserve to die. Why make an exception for Imlay ?

Save that the others had been in the heat of battle and this was in cold blood.

And he had never really thought of himself as a cold-blooded killer. Whitbread was coming back with the referee, Colonel Dowling, a retired officer of marines. They had brought Imlay's pistols for Nathan to examine. He took one of them from the case. It was heavier than his own, made by Samuel Nock of Fleet Street. Probably .75 calibre, which would make a sizeable hole in him if he was hit. He noted that it was fitted with sights but doubted if it would make much difference given the range and the size of the targets, unless Imlay intended to take his time and aim for something in particular. He looked down the bore but knew before he did so that it would not be rifled; nor was it. He handed it back.

“One thing you may not have noticed,” murmured Whitbread, “is that it has a hair trigger.”

Nathan inclined his head courteously, but he was more interested than he appeared. If you were the slightest bit nervous a hair trigger could be far more dangerous to the man who fired as he who was fired upon. A man had been known to shoot his own foot off with a hair trigger. Nathan suddenly found the possibility of Imlay's shooting off his own foot quite hilarious and he felt the first bubbling of an unforgivable mirth. He recognised the symptoms for this had been a familiar affliction since childhood. Whenever it was least appropriate, he would be seized by an irresistible fit of the giggles. It had been an agony for him at many a church service for the slightest thing could set him off and he would be reduced to a helpless quivering bundle of weeping laughter during a sermon, despite the certain knowledge that he would be punished by going without his dinner or handed over to the Angel Gabriel for more physical chastisement. It would certainly be inappropriate now and he choked it back by reflecting that the choice of a hair trigger indicated that Imlay was a cool customer who had fought many a duel in the past, though it was far more likely that he had borrowed the pistols, sight unseen, as had Nathan.

He tried to concentrate as Colonel Dowling explained the rules of engagement but his mind kept wandering. He was impatient to get on with it. And indeed the instructions seemed unnecessarily complicated.

“Should one person fire and miss, or hit and injure the other duellist before that duellist has also fired, then the person who has so fired must wait, without moving, until his fellow has also fired, if he is capable of so firing. Is that clear to you, sir?”

Nathan nodded but he was not really taking it all in.

“If both shots miss, Captain Imlay as the offended party, will be asked if he is satisfied. If he is not, I will instruct your seconds to hand you the other pistol and you will be invited to fire again. And so on, until Mr. Imlay announces that he has had satisfaction—or one or other of you is incapable of continuing.”

Captain
Imlay ? But of course, it was the rank he claimed he had attained in Washington's army, in the first year of the Independence War. Captain and paymaster in Colonel Forman's regiment of the Continental Line, though Nathan had been informed that he had never advanced beyond the rank of lieutenant before finding employment that was more to his taste, doubtless taking the regimental funds with him.

“Very well. Then take up your positions.”

And so the farce began in earnest, if you could have an earnest farce. The two men stood back to back, pistols at the ready. Suddenly it came upon Nathan that within the next half minute he stood a very good chance of being killed or maimed, and to his intense alarm he felt a stirring in his bowels. By God, he was never going to fart, not while standing back to back with Imlay! He was able to check the process before he was disgraced but the thought of it, and Imlay's reaction, brought a return of the earlier affliction. And this time he was unable to suppress a snort of laughter.

“Excuse me,” he said, wiping his nose with his free hand.

“Are you ready, Captain?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Nathan, “but I think I am about to sneeze. May I trouble someone for a handkerchief?”

This caused something of a problem. They had pistols, powder and shot, bandages, sutures, probes, but not, it appeared, a handkerchief; until Imlay, who had clearly been holding himself back, reluctantly produced one from his sleeve.

Nathan wiped his nose. “Thank you,” he said, handing it back. Imlay took it with distaste and handed it to his second.

“You are quite ready now, Captain?”

“I am,” said Nathan. “I do beg your pardon.”

And so once more they took up their positions back to back, and this time Nathan managed to control both extremities of his anatomy for the ten paces necessary to reach the firing position.

He turned, still holding his pistol at his cheek, and for the first time that morning looked Imlay straight in the eye.

“Take aim!” the colonel announced.

Nathan stretched out his arm and aimed at Imlay's head. He thought that he saw a flicker of alarm cross Imlay's face but it might have been in his imagining. He felt nothing now but a deadly calm.

“Fire!”

Very deliberately, Nathan swung his arm to the right and fired. High and wide. He did not know until that instant that this was what he was going to do. When the smoke cleared he saw that Imlay was still standing motionless, his pistol at the ready. He still had not fired. This surprised Nathan. It seemed to surprise Imlay too, for he looked upon Nathan as if he had not expected to see him there. And so they stood, in this same identical pose, for a second or two. It cannot have been longer. The smoke from Nathan's pistol still hung in the air, mingling with the mist from the ground. The magpies had risen from the ground in a patchwork quilt of white and black. Nathan's arm still pointed at an angle from his body, like a frozen lookout, four points off the starboard bow. He gazed steadily back at his opponent, partly in defiance, but mostly by way of a challenge.
Kill me and see how it will profit you.
And it was possible that this thought also occurred to Imlay: that it would not profit him at all and might even occasion a serious loss. Or possibly, he had made his mind up long before, for he too fired wide. Though not so wide that Nathan did not feel the wind of its passing and to his eternal shame flinched, though the ball had long gone.

“Are you satisfied, sir?” the referee called out to Imlay.

Nathan did not hear the reply, his ears being slightly deafened by the report of the pistol, but it must have been in the affirmative, for the seconds were nodding as if they, at least, were satisfied, and shaking each other's hands and taking turns to shake hands with the referee, and the doctor was packing up his bags and the magpies were swooping back to earth with ribald cries, as if they had seen it all before and would again and it never amounted to much more than this, for all the arduous preparation, and the squirrel had resumed its diligent accumulation of wealth among the branches of the trees, or more likely had never ceased. And Nathan sighed.

But the farce was not yet over. For from out of the mist, hanging still in the direction of the city, came another coach. And although it might have been the continuing problem with his ears, it seemed to Nathan that it travelled in a ghostly silence, the rags of mist parting before it. A black coach with four black horses. He half expected it to contain the spectre of Death, come to complain that he was robbed and to insist the duel continued until
he
had satisfaction and at least one corpse to take away with him. But it was only the gentlemen of the Watch—the Holborn Day Watch in their smart blue coats and their black hats, come to bring a halt to the proceedings, though as usual far too late, and to arrest Captain Peake on a warrant for disturbing the peace.

I
FIND
IT
REMARKABLE
, quite remarkable, that having a great many charges and complaints levelled against you …” his lordship consulted the list that lay before him and blinked in affected wonderment at its length and variety, “and being summoned to answer for them to your superiors, you embarked upon a course of action which, had it proved fatal, would have rendered your country and your sovereign an even greater disservice than anything you had previously contemplated.” He raised his eyes from the multitude of reports and regarded their subject coolly. “And when I say fatal, I mean, of course, to your adversary.”

Nathan acknowledged this distinction with a small bow and pointed out that he had not meant to kill, or indeed, even wound, his opponent; that he had, in fact, deliberately fired wide.