The Shadow of Albion (10 page)

real name, or whether he actually had any hand in the coats Wessex occasionally

ordered from his shop – came forward to greet his noble patron, his mien perfectly

that of a most superior tailor who might pick and choose his customers from among

the Pinks of the Ton. „We had heard you were to rusticate upon the country for

some weeks yet.“

Wessex smiled grimly to himself. The man could hardly say that he thought

Wessex was still in France, now, could he?

„I am afraid I have come upon a most urgent commission, Flowers. The

French-cut velvet turns out to have some unique difficulties.“

„If Your Grace would be so good as to step into the fitting room?“ Flowers said

smoothly. He led Wessex past the cutting room, with its mannequins and

half-finished coats, into a small cubicle at the back of the shop and left him there,

closing the open side of the booth with a brass-ringed, curtain of faintly dusty green

velvet.

Wessex pushed down upon a certain section of the paneling of the back of the

booth and waited a moment until he heard the click of the inside lock being released.

The panel slid back, and Wessex walked through into a foyer that would not have

been out of place in any Piccadilly townhouse.

The impeccably-liveried butler Charteris was standing ready to greet him, and

flanking the entrance Wessex had used were two strapping footmen, whose slightly

archaic staves of office could be turned ta formidable weapons at need.

„I need to see Misbourne,“ Wessex said curtly, his weariness breaking through

his speech at last.

„I shall enquire if my lord is at home,“ Charteris said austerely, just as if this

secret sanctuary were the townhouse it so thoroughly resembled. Wessex repressed

once again the irreverent impulse to send his card up with the perfect butler. „If Your

Grace would care to wait in the Blue Parlor?“

There were four small rooms on the ground floor of the premises; in his years

with the White Tower, Wessex had waited, in all of them at one time or another.

Except for the colors for which they were named – Red, Yellow, Violet, Blue – and

which were carried out in their decoration and appointments, the four rooms were

virtually identical. Wessex had never discovered any rhyme or reason for his

assignment to one room or another. However, the color of the room was a small

matter compared to the selection of well-filled decanters on each room’s sideboard.

After so long without sleep, Wessex bypassed the claret and filled a cut-crystal

tumbler halfway to the brim with smuggled French brandy. The heady kick of me

neat spirit revived his flagging energy, and he made what repairs to his bedraggled

appearance he could in the moments before Charteris returned.

„If you will accompany me, Your Grace,“ the butler said impassively.

Wessex followed Charteris up the curving staircase to me first floor. The door at

the end of the corridor was covered in padded red learner, and Charteris did not

scratch at the door before pushing it open and allowing Wessex to pass through.

From long habit, Wessex stopped just inside the door to give his eyes a chance to

adjust to the dimness. The room was lit by several cobbler’s lanterns; the candle

flames reflected through flasks of spirits, filling the room with a warm, diffuse,

brandy-scented glow. There were no windows in this room, which was otherwise

lined with books and curiosities much as any gentleman’s library might be. The

drawn curtains to his left gave the apartment the look of an ordinary room, but their

folds concealed only a plain brick wall.

Lord Misbourne had been sitting at his desk; he stood when Wessex entered, a

pale and patient spider, waiting for information to drift into his nets.

Jonathan Milon Arioch de la Forthe, third Baron Misbourne, had begun his life in

the shadow of three great disadvantages: he had been born a Catholic, he had been

born an albino, and he had been born a brilliant mathematician. It was this third

defect that was perhaps the greatest of all, for his preoccupation with pure numbers

in the days of his youth had kept him from working to erase the twin stigma of a

suspect foreign faith and a freakish appearance. Instead, he had allowed his

ostracism to push him deeper into his studies, and he used his studies to blot out the

whole of the world beyond.

It was time that had played Lord Misbourne the cruellest trick of all, for

Mathematics, Queen of the Pure Sciences, is a fickle mistress, taking up her lovers

early and leaving them while they are still young. The Baron awoke one day in his

early thirties to discover himself master of an ancient name and a dilapidated estate,

and very little more.

But his time had not been entirely wasted, at least in the eyes of the world. A

byproduct of his interest in numbers had been an interest in codes, a freakish

puzzle-solving ability that had always brought him admirers from among a certain

segment of society. Barred by his albinism from outdoor pursuits – for even the

gentle winter sun of England could dazzle his pale eyes to blindness – and by his

religion from any public office, he could not easily find a new outlet for the energy

that had once been funneled into the fervid pursuit of pure knowledge. But as his

precocious brilliance had faded, an interest in more temporal puzzles had risen in its

place, and guided by the friends he had made in a youth now half-a-century gone,

Misbourne had come to test his theories with men instead of numbers, and play out

his gambits upon the chessboard-of Europe. It was to Misbourne that Wessex

reported, and from Misbourne that Wessex took his orders.

Wessex had never been able to formulate the least idea of the man’s age.

Misbourne had looked much as he did now for as long as Wessex had known him:

his gaunt scarecrow form the despair of his tailor; his brilliant colorless eyes taking

up the color from the cobbler’s lamps and glowing almost coal-crimson in the

dimness.

„Wessex.“ Misbourne’s greeting was understated as always. „We had feared you

lost; our politicals in Paris suspected a trap was being laid for one of our agents

there.“

He gestured toward the deep armchair before his desk; Wessex shook his head

regretfully. „I am too many hours on the road,“ he explained. It would not do to find

himself asleep in his master’s presence. Misbourne reseated himself and gazed at

Wessex expectantly.

„A trap of sorts; I fear that the Chevalier de Reynard is dead,“ Wessex said with

faint regret at abandoning so useful a persona, „and Monsieur Grillot most certainly

is dead. But it was no trap – or if it was, the bait was genuine. DeMorrissey’s

information seems sound enough – and whether it is or no, we dare not refrain from

acting upon it.“

Omitting information Misbourne knew as well as he – the problem of the internally

divided and quarrelsome Royalist factions – Wessex explained that Victor

Saint-Lazarre – who had renounced his aristocratic tides when King Louis XVI had

been executed in 1793, vowing to resume them only at the coronation of the next

Bourbon King – was attending a pre-Season houseparty at the house of the

Marchioness of Roxbury, where an assassin would seek him out in not quite two

days’ time.

„And did our good Captain deMorrissey explain how he had come by this

information?“ Misbourne asked, with pardonable skepticism.

„The assassin boasted of his coup-to-be at a party deMorrissey attended while

interned. They do have a certain amount of society in Verdun.“ Wessex sighed – as

much in exasperation as from weariness. It was not impossible. Who would believe

that a prisoner interned in the heart of Republican France had any hope of

communicating anything he might learn to France’s enemies? Under various names,

Wessex had made a number of clandestine pilgrimages to the walled city where the

French interned foreign nationals, and he knew its ways from personal experience.

„At least,“ Wessex amended, „it passes for society.“

„I see. And was Captain deMorrissey able to provide any sort of description of

this putative assassin?“ Misbourne’s tone was professionally resigned.

Wessex’s mouth quirked in mocking sympathy. „He said the man was short, my

lord. With brown hair – or, as it may have been, a wig. Rather ordinary, in fact.“

„Thus describing half of France and three-fifths of England.“ Misbourne sighed.

„I take it we may not pursue the simpler course of simply whisking Saint-Lazarre to

safety?“

Misbourne was baiting him and at the moment, Wessex’s temper could not

support such stress. „And lose the chance to question one of Talleyrand’s

confidential agents?“ he snapped. „Or to find out who else may be implicated in

such a plot?“

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord – the butcher with the face of an angel

and the manners of Satan himself – was the head of Bonaparte’s secret police. Even

General Savary reported to him. Talleyrand had been born into the French nobility

half a century before and had been nearly as oppressed by it as any impoverished

peasant. Lamed by a careless wet-nurse, disinherited by callous parents in favor of a

younger brother, and forced into the Church that he loathed, Talleyrand had

championed the Revolution that had freed him from spiritual vows. He had risen high

in the Revolution’s bloody councils, and had managed to persuade the then-First

Consul – Napoleon Bonaparte – to give him even greater power. Now Talleyrand

was the poisoned thorn in the English lion’s paw, his reach was as long as his

ambition was vast.

„Peace, Your Grace.“ Misbourne raised his delicate white hands in capitulation.

„You are quite right: the assassin must be taken, and alive if such a feat can be

managed. The only question remaining is who I may send who will have the congés

such circles. It would not do to twist Roxbury’s tail without need – she is a

connection of yours, if I recall correctly?“

„The Marchioness is my grandmother’s goddaughter, and my betrothed.

suppose I shall marry her someday, if both of us live long enough,“ Wessex said

briefly. He shrugged. Futile to think that Misbourne would not remember that small

fact; the man had the encyclopedic grasp of minutia that had spelled the difference

between defeat and victory in a thousand shadow tourneys. „Let me go to her. I

suppose I must have the right to call upon Roxbury if anyone does.“

„You must be at Roxbury’s by tomorrow night – and today would be better,“

Misbourne pointed out. And Mooncoign was in County Wiltshire, almost a day’s

journey by coach from London.

But the thought that his family name might be compromised – however obliquely

– made Wessex, exhausted as he was, unwilling to leave the completion of this hunt

to others.

„Give me a coach and driver and I can be there by sundown,“ Wessex said. „I

would back myself to be there sooner, but I rode Hirondel from Dover and there is

nothing left in him, poor lad.“

„Someday you will kill yourself, and not just your horses,“ Misbourne said. „Very

well – go to Wiltshire and catch me a Frenchman. And then let us see what other

game we may flush.“

Misfortune had plagued every stage of Wessex’s journey, beginning with a lame

wheeler a dozen miles outside London and ending in a broken axle, and so it was the

morning after and not the night before that saw Wessex’s arrival at Mooncoign – on

a hired horse, and far in advance of his luggage.

He had stopped at the Green Maiden in the village of Moonfleet long enough to

ask directions that he did not really need and collect gossip that he did. There he had

discovered that the Marchioness’s usual spring entertainment went on as usual, with

lavish displays of fireworks and other entertainments of a havey-cavey nature.

Though Lady Roxbury had suffered an illness that had seemed serious for a time,

and not a week past had been involved in a smash-up with the Bristol Mail that had

killed her famous team of match bays, her ladyship was now reported to be in

excellent health. This very night, in fact, her ladyship was hosting a masked ball – an

intelligence that did nothing to relieve his grace’s feelings. Anyone might choose to

appear at a masked ball, and with nearly all the County invited and many guests

arriving from Town, one more interloper would scarcely be remarked, even if he

happened to be a French assassin.

Had this been Roxbury’s plan?

Loyalty to his class rather than any particular feeling for his betrothed kindled

Wessex’s anger. As much as he wished to take the killer in hand, he wished even

more to settle, at least in his own mind, all question of the Marchioness’s guilt or