The Lord John Series 4-Book Bundle

by Diana Gabaldon

  The thump of a fresh explosion reached him, muffled only slightly by the rain that drummed on the canvas overhead as he followed Gormley into the shelter.

  “Why do they test ordnance in the rain?” he asked, to cover his unease, and by way of making conversation.

  “Do you not sometimes fight in the rain, my lord?” Gormley sounded amused. “Useful to have bombs and grenades that will still explode when the casing is wet, don’t you think?”

  “Ah … quite.” The Commission’s harping insistence upon the weather at Crefeld seemed suddenly to acquire some meaning. Likewise their insistent questioning regarding his perceptions of the powder … Edgar. Goddammit, Edgar!

  It was the juxtaposition of his half brother with the notion of gunpowder that finally triggered realization.

  Rain would certainly dampen the firing powder, no matter what precautions were taken. Normally, damp was less of a problem with the bombs and grapeshot cartridges, they being well wrapped, but even these would now and then fail to explode. A certain number of them simply failed to explode in any case, weather notwithstanding. And when this happened, the dummy charge must be removed from the breech before a fresh load was rammed down the barrel. Otherwise, the impact itself might cause the faulty load to go off. Or—he remembered Marchmont’s accusation with a fresh surge of fury—a hasty or incompetent gun crew occasionally did neglect to remove the faulty load, ram a fresh one, and then touch off both charges together, which might indeed fracture a gun.

  And Edgar owned a powder mill. The insinuation, he supposed, was that Edgar’s mill had supplied dud powder, which had by coincidence been used to make the grapeshot cartridges he had used in Crefeld. One of these failing to go off, his own inattention or stupidity had … But this was the sheerest idiocy, even for someone like Marchmont. What—

  But these fevered speculations were interrupted as Jones came to an abrupt halt beside one of the tables and turned, looking expectant.

  The table was littered with shattered chunks of verdigrised and blackened brass. It had been a large cannon, a twenty-four pounder; most of the barrel forward of the trunnions was intact. And it was an English cannon—the royal cypher of George the Second showed clearly, though the reinforcing band upon which it was stamped had cracked through and the breech of the gun lay in a rubble of twisted pieces, blackened with powder.

  “Do you recognize it, Major?” Gormley asked.

  Grey felt an odd sense of shock, and something strangely like sorrow, as he might for an unknown soldier blown to bits beside him. Would he care, he wondered, if he didn’t now know the gun by name?

  “Tom Pilchard, is it?” He reached out and touched the broken barrel, gently.

  “Yes, sir.” The young man seemed to share his sense of loss; he bowed his head respectfully, and spoke with lowered voice, as one might at the bier of a friend. “I thought you might wish to see him, sir—or what’s left.”

  Grey glanced at Gormley, rather surprised—and caught sight of Captain Jones on the far side of the table, staring at him intently. Blank puzzlement was succeeded by a fresh wave of anger, as realization struck him. God damn them, they’d brought him to view the carcass in order to see whether he might betray some manifestation of guilt!

  He hoped no sign of his fury showed on his face. Heart thumping, he moved slowly down the table, examining the wreckage.

  They had laid out the broken chunks in rough order, a giant bronze clutter of jagged pieces. Near the shattered butt, he caught sight of an oddly curved piece, and despite his awareness of Jones’s scrutiny, put out a hand to it.

  It was what remained of a leopard, couchant, part of the ornamentation from one of the cannon’s dolphins. No more than the head remained, split right through. The face snarled intact on one side of the small chunk of metal, ear laid back. The other side was broken, the pitted brass already greening.

  “My lord?” Gormley’s voice was questioning. Paying no attention, Grey reached into his pocket and drew out a small piece of bronze, smoothly cast on one side, rough on the other. It was heavy in his hand, dark, clean, and cold. The last time he’d held it thus, it had been still warm from his body, and darker yet, slick with his blood.

  There was a murmur of interest and excitement. Gormley leaned close to see, and Captain Jones, in his haste to look, too, caught his hip a wallop on the corner of the table, making the pieces of the cannon rumble and clang. Grey hoped it would leave a bruise.

  “Where did you get that, Major?” Jones asked, rubbing his hip as he nodded at the fragment Grey held.

  “The surgeon who removed it from my chest gave it me,” Grey answered, very cool. “A memento of my survival.”

  “May I?” Gormley extended a hand, face eager.

  Grey wished to refuse, but a glimpse of Jones’s hard interest prevented him. He tightened his lips and handed the cat’s face to Gormley. Cupping the larger remnant in his hand, the young man fitted the smaller one to it, restoring the leopard’s head.

  Gormley made a small noise of pleasure at adding this bit to his jagged puzzle. Grey was more interested at what was still missing.

  There was a dark crack between the halves of the leopard’s head, where a two-inch sliver of metal was still missing. Missing, but not gone. He still retained that small souvenir of his brief acquaintance with Tom Pilchard—lodged somewhere in the depths of his chest. He was interested to see the dimensions of it—longer than he’d thought, but very slender—no more than a hair’s width at the narrower end.

  The surgeon, digging through his chest with urgent fingers, had touched the end of the bronze splinter but been unable to take hold of it with forceps in order to draw it out—and after prolonged consultation with his learned German colleague, had decided that to leave it in situ was less risk than to attempt removal by cutting through his ribs and opening his chest.

  Grey had been in no condition to contribute to that debate, nor did he remember everything they’d done to him, but he recalled—and with no sense of shame whatever—the warmth of tears running down his face at the news that they did not propose to hurt him any more.

  He hadn’t wept through all that terrible day, nor the ones that went before it. The dissolution, when it came, had been a blessing, acknowledgment of mourning for the lost, acceptance of what remained of his life.

  “Major Grey?” He became aware that Gormley was squinting curiously at him, and shook off his memories abruptly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I only asked, sir—when the gun blew up, did you hear anything?”

  The question was so incongruous that he actually laughed.

  “Did I hear anything? Beyond the explosion, you mean?”

  “Well, what I mean, sir …” Gormley struggled for clarity. “Did you hear just a loud bang, same as you would when the gun was fired? Or perhaps two bangs, right close together? Or a bang, and then a … clang? Metal, I mean.” He hesitated. “I mean … did you hear the sound of the gun breaking?”

  Grey looked at him, arrested.

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “I believe I did. A bang and a clang, as you put it. So close together, though … I couldn’t swear …”

  “Well, they would be,” Gormley said eagerly. “Now, what I understand, sir—this wasn’t your regular gun?”

  Grey shook his head.

  “No. I’d never seen it before.”

  Gormley—Grey could not help thinking of him as “Gormless,” the name was so the opposite of his small, quick cleverness—creased his narrow brow in a frown.

  “How many times did it fire before it exploded?”

  “I have no idea,” Grey answered shortly. This was beginning to echo the bloody inquisition he’d been through half an hour before, and he had no intention of repeating himself ad infinitum to a series of questioners of descending seniority. To forestall more questions, he seized the moment to ask his own.

  “What are those?” He pointed to the broken barrel where several half circles scalloped
the edge, quite unlike the jagged shear of the rest.

  To his surprise, Gormley stiffened and glanced uneasily at Jones, who gave the young man a flat, blank sort of look.

  “Oh. That’s … nothing, sir.”

  The devil it is, thought Grey. But he had had enough of mystifications and dark hints. Moved by impulse, he picked up the smaller fragment of the leopard’s head, restored it to his pocket, and bowed to Jones and Gormley.

  “I have business elsewhere, gentlemen. I bid you good day.”

  He turned on his heel, ignoring cries of protest. To his surprise, Captain Jones positively sprinted after him, catching him by the sleeve at the edge of the shelter.

  “You can’t take that!”

  Grey glanced at the captain’s hand on his sleeve, keeping his eyes fixed there, until Jones’s grip relaxed.

  “I beg your pardon, Major,” Jones said stiffly, standing back. “But you must leave that bit of metal here.”

  “Why?” Grey lifted a brow. “The fragments will be melted down, surely?” Such a small bit of brass couldn’t be worth the tenth part of a farthing.

  Jones looked taken aback for an instant, but rapidly regained his confidence.

  “That bit of metal,” he said in severe tones, “is the property of His Majesty!”

  “Of course it is,” Grey agreed cordially. “And when His Majesty likes to ask me for it, I shall be quite happy to give it to him. For the moment, though, I shall keep it safe.”

  Taking a deep breath in preparation, he wrapped the edges of his cloak around himself, pulled his hat well down, and dived into the rain. Jones didn’t follow.

  He had a decent sense of direction and was used to finding his way through foreign towns and open country alike. Keeping in mind the directions Gormley had given him as they sped through the Warren, he was able to find his way back past the maze of the proving grounds to the foundry, pausing only now and then to take his bearings.

  The din in the foundry seemed almost welcoming, a cheerful, self-absorbed racket that was completely uninterested in Major Grey and his experiences on the battlefield at Crefeld. He paused for a moment to watch a moulder beating with an iron rod at a great heap of clay that sat on a bench before him, while an assistant shoveled handsful of horse dung and wool clippings into the mix, counting as he did so.

  In the next bay, men were winding rope carefully round a tapered wooden spindle, some ten feet long, that sat in a sort of large trough, suspended in notches at either end—the cannon mould to which the clay would be applied, he supposed.

  “Beg pardon, sir.” A young man appeared out of nowhere, pushing him politely aside in order to retrieve a bucket of soft soap, which he then rushed back and began daubing onto the tight-packed grooves of the rope with a large brush.

  He would have liked to loiter and watch, but he was clearly in the way; already, men were glancing at him, curiosity mingled with a mild hostility at his unuseful presence.

  The rain had at least slackened; he walked out of the main foundry building, his hand curled round the fragment of brass in his pocket, thinking of that missing sliver.

  For the most part, he was unaware of it, and often forgot its presence altogether. Now and then, though, some postural shift would send a brief, piercing pain through his chest, freezing him in place. The English surgeon, Dr. Longstreet, had told him that there might remain some harmless irritation of the nerves, but that the spasms would eventually pass.

  The German surgeon, evidently unaware of Grey’s fluency in that language, had agreed, but remarked in his own tongue that there was of course a slight possibility of the sliver’s turning suddenly, in which case it might pierce the pericardium, whatever that was.

  But no need to think of that, he had concluded cheerfully, as if so, he will be dead almost at once.

  He had recalled Gormley’s directions aright; directly ahead was what the young man had called Dial Arch. Beyond that lay Dial Square, and beyond that in turn he should find the exit he sought to Bell Street, where, no doubt, his long-suffering valet was still waiting for him.

  He smiled wryly at thought of Tom Byrd. He had insisted that there was no need for his valet to accompany him all the way out to Woolwich—it was ten miles, at least—but Byrd would not hear of his going out alone. Tom, bless him, had scarcely let him go anywhere alone since his return from Germany, fearing—and with some reason, Grey was grudgingly forced to admit—that he might collapse on the street.

  He was much better now, though; quite restored, he told himself firmly. Hand still curled round the tiny leopard’s head, he paused under the arch to brush and shake himself into order before facing the critical eye of Tom Byrd, aged eighteen.

  A huge stone sundial lay in the center of the square, giving it its name. It was of course not working at the moment, but it did remind Grey of time. He had been engaged to his mother and step-father, General Stanley, for supper, but it was already growing dark; there was no hope of making the long and dangerous carriage ride in time. He’d have to spend the night in Woolwich.

  Unpleasant as that prospect was, it carried with it a sense of relief. He’d seen the general since the “unfortunate occurrence,” as Hal so tersely termed it, but only briefly. He hadn’t been looking forward to a long tête-à-tête.

  A movement on the other side of the sundial made him look up. A man was standing there, regarding him with a faintly puzzled, somewhat offended look, as though considering his appearance exceptionable in some way.

  Grey might have been offended in turn, were he not taken aback in his turn by the other’s appearance, which was most certainly exceptionable.

  He wore an unfamiliar uniform, old-fashioned in appearance, of a regiment that Grey did not recognize. The hilt of a dress sword showed beneath his coat—this a full-skirted garment, blue with scarlet facings, and two antique pistols were thrust through his belt. Below were breeches of a grossly unfashionable cut, baggy at the knee and so loose through the leg as to swim about his figure, stocky as it was. His wig, though, was the most remarkable thing, this being unpowdered, long, and curled upon his shoulders in a glossy profusion of dark brown. It was a most unmilitary sight, and Grey frowned at the man.

  The soldier appeared no more impressed with Grey; he turned upon his heel without a word and walked toward the opening at the other side of the square. Grey opened his mouth to hail the fellow, then stood with it open. The soldier was gone, the archway empty. Or, no—not empty. A young man was there, looking into the square. Another soldier, an artillery officer by his dress—but certainly not the gentleman in the old-fashioned wig.

  “Did you see him?” A voice at Grey’s elbow turned him; it was a short, middle-aged man in uniform, faintly familiar. “Did you see him, sir?”

  “The strange gentleman in the ancient wig? Yes.” He frowned at the man. “Do I know you?” Memory supplied the answer, even as the soldier knuckled his forehead in salute.

  “Aye, sir, though little wonder should you not recognize me. We met—”

  “At Crefeld. Yes. You were part of the gun crew serving Tom Pilchard, were you not? You were—yes, you were the rammer.” He was sure of it, though the neat soldier before him bore little resemblance to the black-stained, sweat-soaked wretch whose half-toothless savage grin was the last image he recalled of the battle of Crefeld.

  “Aye, sir.” The rammer appeared less interested in picking up the threads of past acquaintance, though, than in the old-fashioned gentleman who had so abruptly departed. “Did you see him, sir?” he repeated, clearly excited. “It was the ghost!”

  “The what?”

  “The ghost, sir! ’Twas the Arsenal ghost, I’m sure it was!” The rammer—Grey had never known his name—looked at once terrified and thrilled.

  “Whatever are you talking about, Private?” Grey asked sharply. His tone brought the rammer up short, and he stood stiff at attention.

  “Why, sir, it’s the Arsenal ghost,” he said, and despite his pose, his eyes sought the
opposite side of the square, where the apparition—if that’s what it was—had vanished. “Everybody knows about the Arsenal ghost—but damn few has seen it!”

  He sounded almost gloating, though his face was still pale.

  “Folk say as he’s the ghost of an artillery officer was killed on the proving ground, fifty years or more ago. It’s good luck, they say, for an artilleryman to see him—not so good, maybe, was you not of his h’occupation.”

  “Good luck,” Grey repeated, a little bleakly. “Well, and I’m sure we can all use a bit of that. Come to that, Private, how do you come to be here?”

  The ghost—if that’s what he was—had raised not a hair on Grey’s head, but the rammer’s presence had set the back of his neck to prickling.

  “Oh.” The man’s look of avid interest faded a little. “I’m summoned, sir. They’s a Commission of Inquiry, regarding the h’explosion. Poor old Tom Pilchard,” he said, wagging his head mournfully. “ ’E were a noble gun.”

  The rammer glanced at the sundial, gleaming with rain.

  “But I come here, sir, for to see was there enough light to tell the time by the dial, see, sir, not to be late.”

  A sense of movement on the other side of the square made Grey look up quickly. It was not the ghost, though—if it had been a ghost—but the small, black-coated functionary who had taken him before the commission, wearing a large handkerchief spread over his wig against the rain, and an annoyed expression.

  “I believe this will be your summons now,” Grey said, nodding toward the functionary. “Good luck!”

  The rammer hurriedly straightened his hat, already moving across the square.

  “Thank’ee, sir!” he called. “The same to you!”

  Grey lingered for a moment after the rammer’s departure, looking into the walkway beyond the square. It was growing late in the afternoon, and the light was beginning to darken, but the space beyond was perfectly visible—and perfectly empty.

  Grey found himself profoundly uneasy, and seized of a sudden urge to be gone. The artilleryman’s ghost—if that’s what it was—had not disturbed him in the slightest. What troubled him was the glimpse he had had of the other artilleryman, the young soldier standing in the walkway, watching.