Opinion had been likewise divided as to the schism in the local Methodist congregation that had culminated in the Listers being ousted. Comment had been prolonged and colorful, but there appeared to be no useful kernels of information in it.
News exhausted, silence fell between them. The sun had long since set, and cold darkness crept up from the fallow fields on either side. Tom Byrd was no more than a shadow, pacing by his stirrup, patient as de—Grey drew himself up in the saddle, shaking his head to drive off the thought.
“You all right, me lord?” Tom asked, suspicions at once aroused. “You’re not a-going to fall off that nag, are you?”
“Certainly not,” Grey said crisply. In fact, he was desperately tired, hunger and unaccustomed exertion weighting his limbs.
“You been overdoing. I knew it,” Tom said, with gloomy relish. “You’d best go straight to bed, me lord, with a bit o’ bread and milk.”
Grey did not, of course, go to bed, dearly as he would have liked to.
Instead, hastily washed, brushed, and changed by a disapproving Tom Byrd, he went down to supper to meet the consortium, all hastily summoned by Edgar at his request.
Matters did not proceed as smoothly as he had hoped. For one thing, Maude was present, and loud in her disbelief that anyone could suppose that the sacred name of DeVane could be disparaged in this wanton fashion.
Edgar, bolstered by support from the distaff side, kept thwacking a metaphorical riding crop against his leg, clearly imagining the prospect of thrashing Lord Marchmont or Colonel Twelvetrees with it. Grey admitted the charming nature of the notion, but found the repetition of the sentiment wearing.
As for Fanshawe and Trevorson, both appeared to be exactly as described—an honest, rather dull farmer, and a slightly reckless country squire, given to ostentatious waistcoats. Both were bugeyed with shock at news of what had been said at the Commission of Inquiry, and both professed complete bewilderment at what the commission could possibly have been thinking.
Ignorance did not, of course, prevent their speculating.
“Marchmont,” Trevorson said, in tones of puzzlement. “I confess I do not understand this at all. If it had been—you did say Mortimer Oswald was a member of this … body?”
“Yes,” Grey said, though he forbore nodding, fearing that his head might fall off. “Why?”
Trevorson humphed into his claret cup.
“Snake,” he said briefly. “No doubt he put Marchmont up to it. Feebleminded collop.”
Grey tried to form some sensible question in response to this information, but could make no connexion between Marchmont’s feeblemindedness, Oswald’s presumably serpentlike nature, and the problem at hand. The hell with it, he decided, glassy-eyed. He’d ask Edgar in the morning.
“Ridiculous!” Fanshawe was saying. “What idiocy is this? Explode a cannon by loading it with tricky powder? A thousand times more likely that the gun crew made some error.” He smacked a hand down on the table. “I’ll wager you a hundred guineas, some arsehole panicked and double-loaded the thing!”
“What odds?” Trevorson drawled, making the table rock with laughter. Grey felt the muscles near his mouth draw back, miming laughter, but the words echoed in the pit of his stomach, mixing uneasily with the roast fowl and prunes.
Some arsehole panicked …
“John, you haven’t touched the trifle! Here, you must have some, it is my own invention, made with gooseberry conserve from the gardens.…” Maude waved the butler in his direction, and he could not find will to protest as a large, gooey mass was dolloped onto his plate.
Exercised by his revelations, the members of the consortium kept him late, the brandy bottle passing up and down the table as they argued whether they should go in a body to London to refute this monstrous allegation, or send one of their membership as representative, in which case ought it be DeVane, as the largest mill owner—
“I believe that to make such a formal representation would merely inflame a matter that is at present not truly serious,” Grey said firmly, suffering nightmare visions of Edgar striding into Parliament, armed with a horsewhip.
“A letter, then!” Fanshawe suggested, red-faced with brandy and indignation. “We cannot let such scurrilous insinuations pass unaddressed, surely!”
“Yes, yes, must compose a letter of complaint.” Trevorson was slurring his words, but his oxlike eyes swiveled toward Grey. “You would take it, aye? She … see”—he wiped a dribble of saliva from the corner of his mouth—“that it is delivered to this iniqui-tous Commission of In-qui-ree.”
That motion passed by acclamation, Grey’s attempts at reason being shouted down and drowned in bumpers of brandy.
At last, he dragged himself upstairs, leaving the consortium to the amiable exercise of composing insulting epithets amid shouts of laughter, Edgar—as the only one still sober enough to write—being charged with committing these to paper.
Head pounding and clothes reeking of tobacco smoke, he pushed open the door to his room, to find Tom reclining in a chair by the hearth, immersed in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. The young valet hopped up at once, put by his book, and came to take Grey’s coat and waistcoat.
Having briskly stripped his master and draped him in a clean nightshirt, he went to retrieve Grey’s banyan, which had been hung to warm on the fire screen. He held this ready, peering closely at Grey in concern.
“You look like …” he said, and trailed off, shaking his head as though the prospect before him was too frightful for words. This matched Grey’s own impression of the situation, but he was too exhausted to say so, and merely nodded, turning to thrust his arms into the comforting sleeves.
“Go to bed, Tom,” he managed to say. “Don’t wake me in the morning. I plan to be dead.”
“Very good, me lord,” Tom said, and lips pressed tight, went out, holding Grey’s wine-stained, sweat-damp, tobacco-smelling shirt at arm’s length before him.
He had intended to fall directly upon his bed, but found that he could not. He was in that irritating state where one is exhausted beyond bearing, but so frayed of nerve as to find the mere thought of sleep unimaginable.
He sat down by the fire and picked up Tom’s book, but found the words swim before his eyes and put it down again. Liquor surged through his veins, weariness clung to his limbs like spring mud, and it seemed an impossible effort to rise. Still, he did it, and wandered slowly round the room, touching things at random, as though in hopes of anchoring his thoughts, which—in distinct contrast to his body—were scuttling round in circles at a high rate of speed.
He opened the window; fresh air might clear his head. The smell of dark, cold earth rushed in, chilling him with its menace, and he shut the window hastily, fumbling at the catch. He leaned his head against the cold glass then for a time, staring at the moon, which was at the half, large and yellow as a cheese.
Below, the raucous shouts of the consortium came through the floor. Now they were arguing over the date of their putative letter, as to whether it must be dated today or tomorrow, and whether today was the twenty-first or the twenty-second of November.
November. He was late. Normally, if he was not in the field or on duty, he made his quarterly visit to Helwater in late October, before the roads in the Lake District began to succumb to the autumn rains.
But of course, after what had happened … Quite without warning, he found himself back in the stable at Helwater, blood pounding through his body and the sound of his own unforgivable words ringing in his ears.
Seized by impulse, he went to the secretary, snatched a sheet of paper, and flipped open the inkwell.
Dear Mr. Fraser,
I write to inform you that I shall not visit Helwater this quarter; official affairs detain me.
Your servant
He frowned at the paper. He could not possibly sign a letter to a prisoner Your servant, no matter that the prisoner in question had once been a gentleman. Something more formal … yet this was the usual formal closure, between gentlemen—and whether Jamie Fraser was now a groom or not …
“Are you insane?” Grey asked himself, aloud. Why should he think to send a letter, something he had never done, something that would cause no end of curiosity and unwelcome attention at Helwater … and how could he contemplate the possibility of writing to Fraser at all, given the enormity of what had happened between them at their last meeting?
He rubbed hard at his brow, took the sheet of paper in his hand, and crumpled it. He turned to throw it into the fire, but instead stopped, holding the ball of paper in his hand … and then sat slowly down again, smoothing the paper upon the desk.
The simple act of writing Fraser’s name had given him a sense of connexion, and he realized that the desperate need for such connexion was what had driven him to write it. He realized now that he would never send a letter. Yet that sense lingered—and if such sense was the product only of his need, still it was there.
Why not? If it was no more than talking to himself, perhaps the act of writing down his thoughts would bring them into better order.
“Yes, you are insane,” he muttered, but took up his quill. Firmly crossing out Your servant, he resumed.
These affairs concern an inquiry into the explosion of a cannon in Germany, June last. I was summoned before an official Commission of Inquiry, which …
He wrote steadily, pausing now and then to compose a sentence, and found that the exercise did seem to bring his seething thoughts to earth.
He wrote of the commission, Marchmont, Twelvetrees, and Oswald, Edgar and his consortium, Jones, Gormley, the corpse of Tom Pilchard …
At this point, he was writing so quickly that the letters scrawled across the page, barely legible—and his thoughts, too, had deteriorated as badly as his penmanship. What had begun as a calm, well-reasoned analysis of the situation had become incoherent.
He flung down the quill and resumed his circuit of the room. Pausing before the looking glass, he glanced at it, then away—then back.
Frozen in place, he stared into the silvered glass, and seemed to see his own features overlaid by Marcus Fanshawe’s ruined face. His stomach heaved, and he clapped a hand to his mouth to keep from vomiting. The illusion vanished with the movement, but a ripple of horror ran over him from crown to sole.
He whirled, hand fumbling at his side for an invisible sword, but there was nothing there.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said softly. He had—he was sure of it—seen something else in the glass: the vision of Philip Lister, standing behind him.
He closed his eyes, trembling, then opened them, afraid of what he might see. But the room was vacant, quiet save for the hissing of the fire and the rumble of laughter from below.
He had a sudden impulse to dress and go downstairs, even the company of Edgar and his partners seeming welcome. But his legs were trembling, too, and he sat down abruptly in the chair at the desk, obliged to put his head in his hands, lest he faint.
He breathed, eyes shut, for what seemed a very long time, trying not to think of anything. When he opened them again, the scrawled sheets of his unfinished letter lay before him.
His hands were shaking badly, but he took up the quill and, ignoring blots and scratches, began doggedly to write. He had no idea what he wrote, only wanting to find some escape in the words, and found after a time that he was recounting Mr. Lister’s visit and that gentleman’s remarks anent the profession of arms.
It is a brutal occupation, he wrote, and God help me, if I am no hero, I am damned good at it. You understand, I think, for I know you are the same.
The quill had left marks on his fingers, so tightly as he’d gripped it. He laid it down briefly, rubbing his hand, then took it up again.
God help me further, he wrote, more slowly. I am afraid.
Afraid of what?
Some arsehole panicked.…
I am afraid of everything. Afraid of what I may have done, unknowing—of what I might do. I am afraid of death, of mutilation, incapacity—but any soldier fears these things, and fights regardless. I have done it, and—
He wished to write firmly, and will do it again. Instead, the words formed beneath his quill as they formed in his mind; he could not help but write them.
I am afraid that I might find myself unable. Not only unable to fight, but to command. He looked at that for a moment, and put pen tentatively to the paper once more.
Have you known this fear, I wonder? I cannot think it, from your outward aspect.
That outward aspect was vivid in his mind; Fraser was a man who would never pass unnoticed. Even during their most relaxed and cordial moments, Fraser had never lost his air of command, and when Grey had watched the Scottish prisoners at their work, it was plain that they regarded Fraser as their natural leader, all turning to him as a matter of course.
And then, there had been the matter of the scrap of tartan. He felt hot blood wash through him and his stomach clench with shame and anger. Felt the startling thud of a cat-o’-nine-tails on bare flesh, felt it in the pit of his stomach, searing the skin between his shoulders.
He shut his eyes in reflex, fingers clenching so tightly on the quill that it cracked and bent. He dropped the ruined feather and sat still a moment, breathing, then opened his eyes and reached for another.
Forgive me, he wrote. And then, hardly pausing, And yet why should I beg your forgiveness? God knows that it was your doing, as much as mine. Between your actions and my duty … But Fraser, too, had acted from duty, even if there was more to the matter. He sighed, crossed out the last bit, and put a period after the words Forgive me.
We are soldiers, you and I. Despite what has lain between us in the past, I trust that …
That we understand one another. The words spoke themselves in his mind, but what he saw was not the understanding of the burdens of command, nor yet a sharing of the unspoken fears that haunted him, sharp as the sliver of metal next his heart.