Touchstone

by Laurie R. King

  (Carstairs didn’t believe in the bomb, until his men found the evidence.)

  (But he went ahead as if he did. Why?)

  (Because it kept me happy while he worked on Grey?)

  Another gate fell to the fenders, then another—

  (He thinks the bomb is Bunsen’s. Grey thinks it’s Laura’s. Are the two doing it together?)

  —the last of which bent metal back into the tire, making steering almost impossible—

  (But why the chapel this morning and not the dinner last night?)

  —and sending a scream that put his teeth on edge until the rubber shredded and the car tried to dig itself into the field—

  (The Duke wasn’t at the dinner last night.)

  —but there was the gate to the Hurleigh woods—

  (two ounces could level a room)

  —so he abandoned the crippled car—

  (propaganda by act)

  —at the top of the path and ran.

  (The assassination of a Prime Minister? Or the murder of a Duke?)

  (A human Zinoviev letter, a last-minute blow to swing the weight of public opinion.)

  A martyr for the cause.

  Stuyvesant ran.

  Down the winding path he flew, crashing through the trees to cut past loops and nearly coming to grief a dozen times, until ahead he caught the gleam of the white gravel path.

  Only when the chapel bell tower came into view did his steps falter.

  He wouldn’t trust Aldous Carstairs’ claim that the sun was rising in the east, yet here he was, about to draw his gun on some of the most important people in England, based on Carstairs’ evidence.

  But if there was a bomb—he had no choice, did he? Christ, he wished Grey really was a mind-reader, it would make life a hell of a lot easier.

  As he came near, he heard singing, a hymn accompanied by an organ. A man stood outside of the chapel’s porch; he saw Stuyvesant coming and moved down the white path towards him: Gwilhem Jones, he was glad to see, rather than Exeter or one of the other government men—long discussions would not be necessary.

  When Jones was close enough to hear, Stuyvesant started to talk, but kept trotting towards the chapel. Jones fell in beside him.

  “There may be a bomb, no details but with everyone gathered together like this, I think we need to clear the church. I need you to back me up, and be ready to shoot anyone who makes any sudden move. Can you do that?”

  “The Prime Minister’s in there. And the Duke and Duchess.”

  “I know. Try not to hit one of them.”

  The Welshman looked queasy, but he reached under his coat-tails to loosen his gun, which Stuyvesant took as answer enough.

  He paused for an instant in the porch, hand on the latch, and looked at Jones. (If Carstairs is shitting me around on this, I’ll murder him.) “We’re particularly concerned about Bunsen’s party. And Lady Laura.”

  Jones’s eyebrows shot up, and he opened his mouth, but then he gave a sideways shrug as if to say, It’s your neck, Yank. Stuyvesant opened the door.

  Inside the chapel lay a Sunday image of men in suits punctuated by a very few ladies’ hats. Candles burned, the windows glowed, and a boy in a white robe was settling a cross into a holder up near the altar. This hymn was the processional, and the service had not yet begun. The priest, who had been watching the boy for mistakes, turned away in satisfaction to face the congregation, only to have his gaze outraged by a wind-blown, red-faced individual dressed in rough, mud-spattered tweed, crashing down the center aisle. When his eyes traveled down to the revolver in the intruder’s hand, he took a step back and his jaw dropped open.

  The congregation did not notice at first, since the hymn had just ended and they were fussing to trade their hymnals for prayer books, but the priest gaped at Stuyvesant, clearly expecting to be shot dead by a madman.

  Stuyvesant rounded the pews and came to a halt with his back to the priest and altar, directly in front of the family. The Hurleighs were in the front row, behind a solid wooden divider that held prayer books and needlework cushions for kneeling. Laura Hurleigh sat between her father and the Prime Minister. Richard Bunsen sat in the pew behind them, next to Herbert Smith; the Duchess was on the Duke’s other side.

  “What is the meaning of this?” The outraged voice belonged to the Duchess.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Stuyvesant said. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. I need you, the Duke, and Mr. Baldwin to leave immediately. Everyone else keep very, very still, and by that I mean do not move except to breathe. We don’t want any accidents here.”

  Jones was at the front of the other row of pews, his gun out and pointing over the heads of the congregation. Faces went slack with shock, but as far as Stuyvesant could tell, no faces showed more nervousness than others. Baldwin stood up, his only sign of uncertainty the prayer book he still clasped in his hand. Julian Exeter, seated in the back, rose, as well.

  “Mr. Exeter, could you take everyone down to the view-spot, please?”

  Neither Baldwin nor the Duke would go before the Duchess, and she stood her ground, ripe with indignation, until Stuyvesant snapped, “Now. Please, Your Grace.”

  He could feel the burn of her eyes, threatening the wrath of the Hurleighs, but in the end she turned and marched out of the chapel. Baldwin followed, and the Duke allowed himself to be removed, as well.

  The moment Hurleigh had cleared the door, Stuyvesant said, “Now Mr. Branning and Lord Stalfield—just the two of you.” The two mine owners scurried out, dignity cast to the winds. “Now, Jones, if you would be so good as to accompany Mr. Bunsen and Mr. Smith outside, we can begin to clear the decks here. And, Jones? Pat them all down before you let them go to the house. Every one of them except the first three.”

  Jones looked a bit ill at the idea of taking indignities with the men who had just walked out, but he summoned resolution and followed the miners’ representatives outside. Stuyvesant drew what seemed to be his first breath since he’d entered the building.

  “Now the rest of you can leave,” Stuyvesant said. The others—assistants, servants, and a couple of people who looked like farmers, shot up and jostled for the exit.

  Not Laura Hurleigh. Stuyvesant’s eyes held her in her place.

  She looked up at him, and he knew.

  “I think you lot should go now,” Jones said over Stuyvesant’s shoulder. The priest and the choirboys fluttered out, until the chapel was occupied by two men and a woman.

  “Jones, you need to supervise out there. Make sure everyone is searched. Then take them down to the house and give them all a drink.”

  “Righto,” he said.

  God bless career soldiers, Stuyvesant thought. No questions, no arguments.

  He and Laura Hurleigh were alone in the chapel.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  STUYVESANT WALKED AROUND the low divider to the end of Laura’s pew and settled onto it. On his knee was a gun; on hers, an oversized Book of Common Prayer.

  “You and I have not been properly introduced,” he told her. “You know my name, but the fact is, I don’t actually work for the Ford company. I’m an agent with the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation. At least, I was. I’ve botched this so badly, they’ll probably fire me.

  “I’ve been really stupid, haven’t I? Under my nose the whole time, and all I saw was Bunsen. I looked at him and saw a bomber. I looked at you and saw…”

  “Beauty?” she said, with just a touch of bitterness.

  “Oh, honey, you’re way more than beautiful. You’re…extraordinary.”

  “Thank you. Although I honestly don’t know what you’re—”

  “Margery Anne Wallingford,” he said. “Killed jumping out of a Chicago fire, last July.”

  Her face shifted; for the first time, he could see a resemblance to her mother. “Margery Wallingford,” she whispered. Her thumb traced the lettering on the book on her lap. “That poor child.”

  “And the riot afterwards?”


  “People were hurt, yes, and property damaged. No one else died.”

  “My brother was hurt. Timothy Allen Stuyvesant. Frankly, death would have been a mercy.”

  Her dark eyes came up to his. “Oh, Harris,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  The terrible thing was, he believed her. Even now, seeing the guilt in her eyes, he could hear her sorrow. His finger twitched on the trigger, but he caught himself.

  “July in Chicago. November in Scranton. January in New York. Although that last one turned out to be a dud. It wouldn’t have gone off even if the bottle was lifted.”

  “Yes, I know. The wire wasn’t touching.”

  He stared at her. “That was deliberate?”

  “My only mistake was Margery Wallingford.”

  She watched him calmly while he worked it out. “Terror without bloodshed?” he said at last. “Was that what you were after?”

  “It started back in July, when Richard and I were in America and he was asked to talk to the Chicago group. They were losing their cohesiveness, their authority. His response was a series of tutorials. Mine was an act that would galvanize the city around them. I put on one of his suits and a fake moustache, and made a bomb. They are simple mechanisms, really.”

  “And put it in a box of groceries. But at least one of the Reds must have been in on it. Who?”

  Her lips tightened, and she shook her head.

  “And in November?”

  “In November, Richard and I had had a bit of a falling-out. He and some friends snuck off to Monte Carlo, which annoyed me. So I packed a suitcase full of his clothing and went to America again, under his name. Booking a second-class cabin, and staying in it the whole time. I enjoyed it, truth to tell—one achieves a remarkable freedom, dressed in male clothing. And while I was there, I heard about this judge, and decided he should be my second demonstration.”

  “If he hadn’t been driving hims—” He stopped. “You’re saying you knew? That the driver would be out that day, and the back seat would be unoccupied?”

  “I suggested to friends that the driver might be drawn into a night on the town, which went on rather longer than he had anticipated. I achieved my goal without resorting to murder.”

  “But he went on to decide his case against the Unions.”

  “The case would have been decided that way even if he had died. Perhaps especially if he died. Now, judges across America are looking over their shoulders.”

  “Terror, pure and simple.”

  “I don’t know that I’d call it simple.”

  “And January?”

  “January’s materials I’d brought with me, instead of having to scrape things together there. And actually, I intended to set it in one of the houses to which we had received invitations—a Duke’s daughter is a popular addition to parties, you know. There was even talk of the White House. But I heard of this meeting from one of the local Communists, something overheard by a sympathizer who worked as a maid in the hotel. I paid her fare home, to her own country, and she gave me her key. I set the defective device in place, and the very next day the entire town was talking about it. None of those men will ever go into a meeting without wondering what awaits them.”

  That much was sure as hell true.

  “Why there? Why not here, on home ground?”

  “Richard wouldn’t let me. I almost think that if I’d proposed to kill people, he might have gone along with it, but the idea of creating terror from nothing more than mirrors and smoke was an innovation he couldn’t approve, not on his own territory. I thought that two more incidents in America would do the job. The press would have the entire country seeing terrorists in every tree-limb, which would bring the serious issues of workers’ rights back into debate.”

  “And once you’d proven it there?”

  “Then perhaps it would be time to open negotiations here.”

  “And Bunsen agreed with this?”

  “Richard knew nothing about it. I wasn’t going to tell him until it was finished.”

  “He taught you how to build a bomb.”

  “There’s nothing illegal in teaching.”

  “Laura, they found where the bombs were made,” he told her. “If your prints are there, they’ll know, very soon.”

  She smoothed her palm against the book in her lap, and Stuyvesant noticed that she was wearing a crude ring on her wedding finger, something a child might have made. After a minute, she gave a small nod.

  “What was the point?” he asked, his voice nearly pleading. “In another three hours you’d have had an agreement, signed and approved. Now it’s all gone to hell.”

  “I didn’t want an agreement. An agreement would have indicated support for a system that is corrupt and wicked to its very core. A system that corrupts everyone it touches. Some structures are beyond mending. One can only knock them down and begin anew.”

  “By assassinating a Prime Minister? They’d have blamed the unions, the mine owners would have won, and Labour would never have a say in government, ever again.”

  “Not just by assassinating a Prime Minister. By a Hurleigh assassinating a Prime Minister.”

  “An attentat.”

  “A Hurleigh, bearing witness to the injustices of her age. What man here, knowing what I—I, Laura Hurleigh—have done these past two days, would be able to belittle my act, explain it away as the gesture of a madwoman? The Spartans giving their lives at Thermopylae paved the way for the victory at Salamis. A hundred hunger-strikes and trials brought women the vote. Sometimes all it takes is one. One act to catch the conscience of a king. Or to stop up the sand in the throat of an hour-glass.”

  “Your mother will never forgive you for this.”

  The smile she gave him would have bewitched a stone. “But my father will understand.”

  “Don’t know about that. So,” he began, but the door at the back of the chapel opened, and a Cockney voice said, “There’s a chap here says he has to talk to you. Blond hair, green eyes.”

  For the first time, Laura’s face showed fear.

  “No,” she said.

  That was enough for Stuyvesant. “Send him in.”

  “He’s got a girl with him,” the man added. Before Stuyvesant could stop him, he’d opened the door and the two Greys swept into the chapel.

  They’d clearly left on Stuyvesant’s heels, for Bennett wore a suit coat over his pajama shirt with bare ankles peeping between trousers and shoes, and his sister had on a well-buttoned overcoat and bedroom slippers. Sarah darted down the aisle, her brother came more slowly behind.

  Sarah slid into the pew behind the one where Laura and Stuyvesant were sitting, stopping directly behind Laura. She perched on the edge of the bench, one hand on Laura’s shoulder. Laura had eyes only for Bennett. He followed his sister, sitting where Richard Bunsen had been.

  “I hope you didn’t wreck the car as badly as I did Carstairs’,” Stuyvesant said.

  “I hit a rock in that last field and there was a horrid crack and the steering went,” Sarah rattled out, without so much as a glance at him. “Laura, dear, what is going on?”

  The little chapel waited for Laura’s answer, silence wrapping around the congregation of four. Laura sighed, but said nothing.

  “Hell,” Stuyvesant said—ignoring his mind’s idiotic reproach for swearing in church—and told them. “Your friend here decided to assassinate a Prime Minister, as a demonstration of her solidarity with the oppressed classes.”

  Sarah stared. “Laura?”

  The first born of the Hurleighs just looked into Grey’s eyes, and said nothing.

  “Okay,” Stuyvesant said. “There’ll be time to sort it all out later. Where is it?”

  “Where is what?” Laura asked.

  “Laura, you know who I mean by Aldous Carstairs?” She said nothing, but her face grew pinched. “About twenty minutes ago, I knocked Carstairs out, in Bennett’s room at the Dog and Pony. He’ll be coming around about now, and organizing himself some tra
nsportation. When he gets here, he’d love nothing better than to push me aside and take you to a small room and make you tell him absolutely every detail about your whole life. If you want me to keep you out of his hands, we need to move fast. And we need to start with where the bomb is.”

  She looked down at the ring on her finger then, and started to twist it back and forth. Her lovely Renaissance mouth stayed firmly shut, until Bennett Grey leaned forward to run one finger down the side of her face. Stuyvesant took his eyes off her long enough to glance at Grey’s face, to see how he was taking it. To his astonishment, he saw a man who looked strong and whole, a Bennett Grey he’d only caught glimpses of up to now. The heaviness had left him, and his love for the woman in front of him filled the chapel like incense.

  Touchstone had found his gold.

  “Is there a bomb, Laura?” Grey asked.

  She said nothing, but he nodded as though she had. “Where is it?”

  Again, she said nothing, and only the faintest twitch of her eyes revealed that she had even heard his question. Grey frowned in concentration, studying the objects in the direction her eyes had gone: the wooden divider, the kneeling cushion worked with the Hurleigh coat of arms, the slot to hold the books.

  “Was seating arranged beforehand?” he asked.

  Stuyvesant answered him. “Every sitting arrangement was worked out in advance, for every meal, every discussion.”

  “Laura, did you put it in a prayer book?” Grey asked her gently.

  She jerked her head to the side, but Stuyvesant was sitting bolt upright, hit by a vision: Prime Minister. Prayer book. “Jesus Christ,” he burst out. Baldwin had held on to his prayer book as he walked out.

  “Jones!” he bellowed, but to no response—the guards had already begun to escort their charges to safety.

  “Bennett, I want you to swear to me, you won’t let her escape.”

  The other man didn’t take his green gaze from the woman. “I promise you, Harris, I won’t let her walk out of here.”

  Stuyvesant fumbled to get his gun into his belt while running down the length of the church. He skidded on the polished stones but grabbed the end of the pew and swung through the circle, letting go to launch himself through the door.