The Emperor's Gold

by Robert Wilton

  Jessel was standing in the middle of an attic room, head bent to avoid the roof timbers and eyes intent on the pieces of paper that he was passing from right hand to left. Behind him, a dragoon was hunched by a crude wooden bed, pulling at bits of bedding and furniture without conviction.

  Jessel’s glance flicked up as Roscarrock appeared on the stairs.

  ‘We missed him, Tom. But we’ll get him.’

  ‘Fannion?’

  ‘Chance.’

  ‘He was staying here?’

  ‘Owner’s a tailor. On a night when everyone’s a radical, how else would a radical tailor pick his bed? He’s hooked it in the panic – must have made for the hills as soon as the dragoons attacked – left a bundle of philosophical pamphlets behind him, and some letters, by the bed.’ He held out a handful of small pages.

  Roscarrock flicked through them as Jessel had done. The diary of a woman missing a man.

  ‘From his wife, obviously.’ Jessel grunted.

  ‘Any detail on his plans?’

  A negative grunt. ‘No addresses on any of them. But he’s been in Sheffield, which has got problems at the moment, and Nottingham – they say the slums of Nottingham are the worst in the whole British Empire. Tinder for the troublemaker.’ Jessel tapped the soldier on the shoulder, muttered at him, and the man stood and clumped across the attic and away down the stairs. ‘Nothing on where he’s going. Owner says they hardly exchanged a word, what with Chance doing a runner.’ Jessel had turned away to scan the bare room, and was addressing the rafters. ‘I think he was expecting a few coins in rent.’

  ‘Leave him a pamphlet. Did you hear the speeches, Dick?’

  Jessel sat on the rough bed, and it bowed dangerously under him. ‘Enough of them. Chance is trouble. All that God stuff is a fine way to make fellows feel good about themselves when they’re pulling down the Magistrate’s house. Who can be a rebel when he’s doing the Lord’s work?’

  From outside there was a sudden squall of shouting, and a faint scream. Roscarrock handed back the sheaf of envelopes and notes. ‘Chance is remarkable, but he’s away with the angels. Fannion is the dangerous one.’

  ‘He’s a killer, but I thought he went pretty flat tonight.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Listen to the chaos outside. They’re not doing that because Gabriel Chance promised them the Lord. They’re doing it because they’re furious that an Irishman told them they hadn’t got the nerve.’ Roscarrock sat back under the eaves, surprised at how James Fannion had affected him, and his fist softly thumped at a beam. ‘I had him, Dick.’

  Jessel’s eyes flicked wide.

  ‘I was on his tail, moonlight and open ground and a good horse and I had him. Then Lady bloody Virginia bloody Strong had to go and get herself lynched.’

  Jessel was startled. ‘She’s safe?’

  ‘She’s safe. Got her out just in time.’

  There was a low chuckle from the bed. ‘Terrible thing when lust gets in the way of duty. But I think the Admiral would prefer it this way. You’ll get your Irishman soon enough.’

  Roscarrock frowned at the bare boards, and then looked up. ‘Jessel: I’m assuming she’s not just some feather-headed aristo out for a rough radical flirt.’

  Jessel considered him for a second, and shook his head.

  ‘She works for the Admiral – for us, yes?’

  A smile. ‘I don’t think that one works for anyone. Free spirit. Not sure if there was ever a husband, but she either murdered him or gave him a heart attack.’ He stood. ‘When she’s not in your saddlebags, Tom, she’s in France. One of our finest. Fearless, brilliant’ – a grin over his shoulder – ‘and persuasive, as you’d imagine.’ He started to stamp down the narrow staircase.

  31 July 1805

  Grasmere, the 27th day of July

  My dear Sir Keith,

  Our poor Gough is dead, and you must blame me for this saddest of losses before you curse any greater power. I know that you were particular about the lad and bade me have a special eye to him, and so much greater is my haste in writing to you, and so much greater my shame that I was not more pressing in my warnings to him on that last glad fresh morning of, as it now seems, all of our lives.

  The circumstances are briefly told. He had determined that April morn to walk over the mountain that the local folk call Hell-vellen. In rising so high out of the plains of man he has reached quite another vale, and we are the worse for it. A local militiaman named Tyler was to have guided him, but apparently never appeared – indeed, the fellow still cannot be found – and with my entreaties to care blowing around his ears like the breeze of that clearest day, dear Gough determined to make the walk attended only by his terrier. Hearing nothing more of him, I foolishly assumed that he was safe arrived and away and, in that quiet private way of his, had felt no need to communicate with me; in life as in death so do the young leave the old behind. Not one hour ago I heard of the discovery this morning by a shepherd of his body – dead of exposure or of a fall, we may never tell. Nature herself has claimed back as of right this proudest emanation of her power and beauty; his faithful hound stayed beside the corpse those long, cold weeks, last bond of life, eternal bond of the truest souls that transcend life.

  This was to have been the century of the young; but they are burning out like meteors and leaving it to the old to trudge in darkness. The passing of my poor brother, and now dear Gough, leave me cold and alone.

  A power is gone, which nothing can revive.

  Not for a moment could I now behold

  That fell, that sea, and be as once alive.

  The feeling of my loss will ne’er be old.

  If you are acquainted with his kin, I beg you to offer them my most sorrowful condolences for this promise and joy that is gone, and tend you my own respects and deepest sympathy.

  W. Wordsworth

  [SS M/1096/2]

  ‘Damn the dog.’ A Lowland Scots hiss into the gloom. ‘And damn all poets.’

  Sir Keith Kinnaird in a doctor’s parlour in Oxford, a handful of letters piled neatly in front of him and a spartan breakfast going cold around them.

  He read the last of the letters. The one from Wordsworth was folded carefully and pushed into an inside pocket of his coat, then he carried the others to the fire, watching until the last corner of script browned and blazed and shrivelled to ash.

  Gough was dead, and a man calling himself Tyler was loose in the land. The chaos was spreading like a plague, and the Scotsman’s face frowned and aged at the threat.

  Gough was dead, and his portion of the covenant of the Comptrollerate-General must be entrusted to another.

  By the evening, as indifferent flurries of rain sputtered out of a cold, sour evening, James Fannion was warmly established in the Red Lion inn in Colchester. They wouldn’t be looking for him here, and he could afford a decent room, and a wash, and a little while staring across the inn counter at the serving woman. She was plain enough, but cheerful with it, and that suited him fine. There was a plan now, a plan with his hidden hand pulling the strings, and in exactly a week he would see London on its knees.

  Yesterday had been entertaining, and the new certainties of warmth, and a bed, and a plan, had cheered him. Against expectation, he’d liked the English crowd. Stubborn and slow as donkeys, but they were thoughtful enough, and he had to respect that even if they were harder going. He’d spent his life fighting the English, and he’d killed a handful when the need had arisen; but he’d never really met many.

  The serving woman was back from the other end of the counter.

  ‘Now, you see, Mary, here’s my problem.’ The maid leant in happily towards the easy chat. ‘I’m supposed to be in town to stay with a cousin of mine – a soldier he is – fine man, very popular with the ladies, him with his uniform. But – and here’s the problem – he’s a lovely-looking chap but he’s not my type, and here I am sitting in your inn, and you looking after me so pleasantly.’

  Mary giggled. Christ, if
the Dublin specials could see him now. It was painful stuff. They both knew it.

  Mary said emptily, ‘Oh, you ought to go and find your cousin, I reckon,’ and adjusted the shoulder of her dress.

  ‘Mary, you’re probably right. You’re showing me my duty and you’re a good woman for it.’ He laid a hand on her forearm, fingers close to the promising heave of her bust. Christ and all his saints. ‘Now, if you was a cousin of mine too, say, then…’ – he looked up, and sighed – ‘but you’re right. You’re right. Where would I find the soldiers, would you say? Where do they drink? I don’t want to hang around the barracks – find myself kidnapped and off to the war, and you back here waiting for me.’

  She giggled again. ‘The soldiers are mostly round the Balkerne Hill. The officers don’t like it so the soldiers do. There’s a few pubs: the King’s Head, the Marquis, couple of others. Cheap, and they can get – you know… other entertainment.’ She looked down at the counter for a second, and Fannion tried to produce a bashful smile.

  He put his other hand on her wrist. ‘If I want entertainment, Mary, I know where…’ He stopped, sighed heavily. ‘But hell, I’m a slave to duty, that’s what I am. Mary, you’re a wonder. Be waiting for me, when I come back a general.’

  Fannion offered a silent apology to the ghosts of Ireland’s bards, and stepped cautiously out into the night.

  The speakers had known what they were about too. McNamara was a chancer and a charlatan, but good with a crowd. Hodge had no strategy, but he was a serious thinker and, from Lord knew where, he’d found real rhetorical skill. And the tailor, now; he was something else. An honest-to-God prophet. He’d only heard a few lines, but Fannion replayed them to himself as he sauntered through Colchester. There was a kind of holiness there, something he’d only seen in poets and priests, and then only far from the cities.

  There was something else: a… bitterness. As a professional, as a prophet, or just as a man, Gabriel Chance felt thwarted somehow. That might be useful.

  Faintly, he caught the rhythmic rattle of marching feet from around the next corner. It was getting louder, the stamp of boots echoed by the lighter clatter of muskets and webbing. Soldiers, and coming his way. Fannion hissed in a slow breath. He had to keep going. They would not be looking for him. Two soldiers appeared at the corner and swung ponderously and began to tramp towards him, and then it was four and finally six, a patrol striding towards the lone Irishman. He forced his legs forwards towards them and his face into indifference. One of the men had a heavy moustache, and Fannion saw only the surprise of the man he’d stabbed in Liverpool.

  He contrived to glance incuriously at the soldiers as they crunched past him. The reason they would not be looking for him was that Colchester was a military town, home to thousands of soldiers, and an Irish rebel would have to be a lunatic to show his face there. There would be other patrols. He was here to meet soldiers, to talk to them. Maybe he’d show what a little Irish lunacy could do.

  Really, these English radicals were quite something: so civilized, and so organized. A little of that in the ’98 rising and he’d have taken Dublin in an afternoon. First the letter of invitation, then the conversations last night, all so polite and reasonable. We’re selling the country to Napoleon and we thought you might be interested in lending us a hand, old fellow. Mightn’t he just? Instructions for J. Fannion all worked out – not instructions of course, merely suggestions, delivered with the pleasant certainty of centuries of imperial control. A couple of errands, a couple of conversations, and on the 6th London would collapse in chaos. And Gabriel Chance, the unassuming angel, at the heart of it all.

  He almost missed the Marquis. In a dark and stinking back street, the dark and stinking inn was easily missed, a low and shambling ruin of timber and plaster with little light and no paint. He stood back, checked the last traces of lettering on the rotting sign that was now propped against the porch, and stepped down into the inn.

  He was looking for a man called Foley, and it would be a delicate and tiring night of work, perhaps more than one night, to find him and meet him and become his friend and make him a traitor, all without getting arrested or discreetly beaten to death in the dirty garrison town.

  A part of his mind was still fixed on the previous night, on the man on the horse behind him, and the woman.

  1st August, 1805

  In the early afternoon, Roscarrock was sitting with his chair tilted comfortably back against one of the walls of a coffee house on Drury Lane, where the poorer district in which Jessel lodged skirmished with the fading fashions of Great Queen Street and Lincoln’s Inn. Another fruitless meeting during the morning, and now he was watching the ebb and flow of faces and coats, busy men and idle men, trying to convince himself that the smoke and the stink were spray and salt, when Jessel dropped dark into the chair in front of him. The fair hair was awry and the face was grim.

  Roscarrock eased his chair forwards, waiting for Jessel to find the words. Eventually Jessel’s stare broke, and he glanced away and then straight back across the table. ‘One of these days, Tom Roscarrock,’ he said low and plain, ‘I’ll have to know who you are and what you’re doing.’

  ‘Tell me when you do, because I’m as sick of this half-world as you are.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. You have to know more. Kinnaird knew more about you, and he obviously didn’t know it all.’ For a moment the voice was almost pleading. ‘Tom, it doesn’t matter how wrong you’ve gone in the past; it doesn’t even matter what your game is today. We can and we will use you, if you play straight with us.’

  Roscarrock stayed silent.

  ‘What is Kinnaird doing? Are you helping him?’

  ‘I’ve told you. He’s more of a mystery to me than he is to you.’ Roscarrock shifted in his chair, straighter, limbs ready. ‘Now either you like that, or you let me walk out that door right now and forever and neither of us’ll be too sorry. Or draw your blade.’

  Jessel checked the position of his chair relative to the table, glanced at Roscarrock’s torso, then back to his eyes. ‘Honestly, I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘We’ve lost someone else?’ Eventually Jessel nodded, once and slow. ‘Another dead fieldsman? Friend of yours?’

  ‘No.’ Jessel was almost smiling in his anger. ‘A friend of yours.’

  Roscarrock was very still indeed.

  ‘The Parson up at Oakham. Forster. Henry Forster. Kinnaird’s special, just like you. The man you spent all those hours alone with.’

  Roscarrock was ice. ‘He was alive when I left him.’

  ‘He’s not anymore. He’s lying dead in a half-burnt parsonage. Bit of local trouble? Coincidence?’

  ‘I liked him.’

  ‘And Kinnaird liked you. Now Forster’s dead, and Kinnaird’s gone, and someone’s chipping at the Comptrollerate-General piece by bloody piece. Looks like Kinnaird’s closing down his network for good, doesn’t it?’

  Roscarrock was still watching, frown nagging at his forehead. Setting out the words firmly, he said, ‘I do not know.’

  Jessel really was smiling now. ‘Look at it this way: either you’re helping him, or as one of his network you’ll be dead yourself pretty soon.’

  ‘The thought had occurred to me.’ The face and voice were brisker. ‘Are you done with the interrogation? I’m back to Bury St Edmunds tonight. Come if you like; see if I send a letter to Napoleon on the way.’

  ‘Bury St Edmunds?’

  ‘The tailor; the one Chance was staying with. He was lying.’

  Jessel’s face opened in interest. ‘More private information?’

  ‘Chance has been on the road for weeks, right? He must be travelling with more than a couple of pamphlets and his wife’s letters. But there was no bag in the room, no sack.’ A servant stopped at the table and Jessel waved him away irritably, face not leaving Roscarrock’s. ‘Chance is used to quick exits, surely. He’d have to be. So when he goes to the meeting, he takes his knapsack with him. Just in case. He’s not
worried about a couple of pamphlets left behind, and he’s forgotten that he’s had the letters by the bed to read over.’

  ‘So maybe he’s settled his score with the tailor. Doesn’t mean he’s told him where he’s going. Doesn’t mean he would take that risk with anyone he stays with.’

  ‘It absolutely means that. The only way the wife’s letters – unaddressed, every one of them – could reach him is if he tells each landlord where he’s going next, and the letters get forwarded down the chain as they come. You read the letters. He’d taken them out to re-read them himself. Chance and his wife are close, and if he was taking the precaution of having his bag with him, he’d take the precaution of making sure the tailor knew how to forward any letters that came.’

  Jessel considered it, then nodded. ‘Very well. Good. Might work.’ He stood up, and his fingers drummed once at the table. ‘Have fun with your tailor, then. I hope you both survive the day.’

  Away from its main bar-room, the Marquis tavern degenerated into a rambling series of parlours where off-duty soldiers, or the poorest of Colchester’s citizens, could retreat to drink in private or risk a meal or pass ten minutes with a girl. Late that Thursday evening, Private Foley knocked at the door to one of the little rooms, opened it and stepped aside to usher in three of his comrades. They stepped in warily, eyes low and looking all around themselves, before settling on the figure of a man in the gloomiest corner, face in shadow.

  Foley had a final furtive look outside and then shut the door, snapping the bolt across. Then he sat, and the other three did so more cautiously. There was no movement or sound from the dark man in the corner. One of the soldiers, older than the others, said sourly, ‘This your mystery friend, is it, Foley? Let’s have a look at you, then.’