When Gods Die

by Harris, C. S.

  The innkeeper wiped a cloth over the ring-marked surface of the bar. “Last Wednesday, you say?”

  “Yes,” said Sebastian, all effusive eagerness. “Have you seen her?”

  “Nah. I don’t know who told you such a daft thing, but we’ve had no ladies here. Must have been some farmer’s wife he seen, up for last week’s market.”

  The innkeeper wandered away while Sebastian went back to sipping his ale and regarding his surroundings. The Norfolk Arms might be in Smithfield, but its clientele was not, for the most part, drawn from the likes of drovers and market people. The two Israelites conversing in low voices over near the window could probably buy and sell the King of England several times over, while at a table near the door, a small huddle of men was sharing a bottle of brandy.

  Good French brandy, Sebastian noticed, his eyes narrowing. One of the men bore ink-stained fingers that suggested a clerk, while the rest had the look of barristers and solicitors from the nearby Inns of Court. As Sebastian watched, one older gentleman with a shock of graying hair and a powerfully jutting jaw raised his brandy and proposed a toast. “To the King!”

  The words were quietly said, so quietly that someone with hearing less acute than Sebastian’s would never have heard them. The others at the table likewise raised their brandy, their voices murmuring, “Hear, hear, to the King,” as they deliberately waved their glasses above a nearby water pitcher before taking a sip.

  Sebastian paused with his own ale halfway to his lips. To the King over the water. It was an old toast, dating back a hundred years or more, a ruse by which men could seemingly drink to the health of the reigning Hanoverian monarch while in reality maintaining their allegiance to that other king, the dethroned Stuart King James II and his descendants, condemned forever to live in exile.

  Over the water.

  Chapter 27

  Leaving the Norfolk Arms, Sebastian had reason to be grateful for what Kat Boleyn liked to call his cat’s eyes. At some point within the last hour, the dark afternoon had slid into night, the heavy clouds left over from the day’s rain blocking out whatever moon and stars might have hung overhead. Here were no neat rows of streetlamps, their oil receptacles lit at sunset by a ladder-toting lamplighter and his boy, as in Mayfair. The shops were shuttered and the narrow lane, though still thronged with people, had few lanterns.

  But whereas the setting sun reduced the world for most people to a palate of grays only vaguely seen, Sebastian never lost his ability to distinguish colors. He could see almost as well at night as during the day—better, in some instances, for there were times when he could find the light of an extremely bright day almost too painful to be borne.

  And so he was aware of the shadow of a girl who slipped from the mouth of an alley he passed to fall into step behind him. “Pssst,” she whispered. “Sir. About the lady—”

  She took a quick, wary step back when Sebastian swung around. She was an exceptionally tall woman, but young. Studying her face, he suspected she was little more than a child, fifteen at the most, maybe fourteen. She had smooth cheeks and a small nose and strangely pale eyes that gave her an almost unearthly quality.

  Sebastian’s hand snaked out to close around her upper arm and tighten. “What about her?”

  The girl let out a gasp. “Don’t hurt me, please.” Beneath his grip she felt unexpectedly vulnerable. “I heard you askin’ about the lady what come to the inn last week. The lady in the red dress.”

  He searched her eyes for some sign of deceit, but could find only fear and a habitual wariness. “You saw her? Do you know whom she came to meet?”

  Throwing an anxious glance over one shoulder, she sucked in a quick breath that shuddered her thin chest. “I can’t talk about it here. They might see me.”

  Sebastian gave a soft laugh. “That’s your trick, is it? You think to lure me to a darkened doorway where your friends can roll me?”

  Her eyes went wide. “No!”

  Around them, the crowd in the streets was thinning. A musician lilting a familiar tune on a flute strolled by, followed by three laughing drovers reeking of gin, their arms linked about each other’s shoulders, their voices warbling the ballad’s words. Oh, Father, oh, Father, go dig me grave, go dig it deep and narrow, for Sweet William, he died for me today, and I’ll die for him tomorrow.

  One of the drovers, a big redheaded man with a broken nose, kicked up his heels in an ambitious jig that drew hoots of encouragement from his mates, then catcalls of derision when he stumbled over the edge of the lane’s kennel. Breathing out heavy fumes of gin and raw onions, he fell against Sebastian, jostling him just enough to allow the girl to slip from his grasp. She darted back up the alley, bare feet flashing, lank blond hair flying loose about her shoulders.

  It was a trap of course. He knew that. And still Sebastian followed her.

  He found himself in a crooked passageway of packed earth leaking a line of foul water that ran in a trickle between piles of rubbish and broken hogsheads. The buildings here were of red Tudor brick, old and crumbling, the air dank and heavy with the smell of wet mortar and the pervasive stench of blood from a nearby butcher’s shop.

  A hundred feet or so down the alley, the girl ducked into a low doorway just as three men rose up from behind a pile of crates and ranged across the narrow space.

  They were dressed roughly but not, Sebastian noticed, in rags. “Looks like you made a mistake,” said one of the men, taller and better dressed than the others. He had a long, patrician-nosed face that seemed vaguely familiar, although Sebastian couldn’t fix a name to it. His starched white cravat was flawlessly tied, the tails of his coat black against the dark red of the brick behind him. “Doesn’t it, lad?”

  Sebastian swung about. The silhouettes of two more men showed against the dim haze of the smoky torch at the mouth of the alley. He was trapped.

  Chapter 28

  The extent of the preparations for Sebastian’s reception surprised him. He’d been expecting one man, perhaps two. His questions in the neighborhood had obviously touched a raw nerve. And it occurred to him, as he lowered himself into a crouch, that there was more involved here then the death of one young woman.

  He kept a dagger hidden in his boot, its handle cool and smooth against his palm as he slipped it surreptitiously into his hand. He felt no fear. Fear came when one had time to reflect or was helpless to fight back. What he felt now was a heart-pounding flow of energy, a heightening of all senses and skills.

  With a speed and competence honed by six years of operating in the mountains of Portugal and Italy, and in the West Indies, Sebastian summed up the danger he faced. He could stay where he was and let the men close on him, forcing him to fight all five at once. Or he could charge one of the two groups of men and try to escape before they joined forces. With three men ahead and only two blocking his return to the lane, the choice was simple.

  For the moment, both groups of adversaries seemed content to hold their distance. “Who sent you here?” asked one of the men near the mouth of the alley, a dark-haired man with the thickening waist and heavy jowls of middle age. He held a cudgel, a stout length of wood he tapped threateningly against the palm of his free hand. His redheaded companion—big and broken-nosed and quite sober—had a knife. In the street, earlier, there had been three of them, Sebastian remembered. Which meant that somewhere, one more drover and perhaps a flute player awaited Sebastian.

  Licking his lips in a show of nervousness, Sebastian made his voice go high-pitched and quivery. “Squire Lawrence, up in Leicestershire—”

  “Uh-uh,” said the man with the cudgel. “Think about this: a man can die quickly or he can die by inches, screaming for mercy and ruing the day he was born. The choice is yours.”

  Sebastian gave the man a grim smile. “Oh, Father, oh, Father, go dig me grave,” he said, and hurled himself forward.

  He chose the man on his right, the big redhead with the nimble feet and the knife that could kill quicker than a cudgel. Redhead hel
d his ground, his knife low, waiting to absorb Sebastian’s attack. But by switching his dagger to his left hand at the last instant, Sebastian was able to circle his right forearm beneath the big man’s lunging blade, knocking the freckled hand holding the knife up and away long enough to drive his own dagger through the waistcoat and shirt of the drover’s broad chest, deep into the flesh and sinew beneath.

  He was close enough that Sebastian could see the pores in the man’s skin, the sheen of nervous sweat on his forehead, smell again the reek of the gin with which he’d doused the coarse wool of his coat. The man let out a whooshing gurgle, blood and spittle spewing from his mouth, his eyes rolling back in his head. Wrenching the blade free, Sebastian swung quickly to face the man with the cudgel.

  Not quick enough. A blow meant to dash in the back of Sebastian’s head fell on his shoulder, bruising hard. Pain exploded across his collarbone, reverberated to his left arm. He went down on one knee, a grunt escaping his clenched teeth. A shadow loomed over him. Twisting, Sebastian had a vision of heavy jowls dark with anger, lips peeling back from yellow crooked teeth gritted in determination as the man raised the cudgel to strike again.

  Sebastian drove his dagger up, deep into the man’s stomach.

  The man screamed, then screamed again when Sebastian tried to jerk the blade free, only to have it catch on the stout cloth of the man’s waistcoat. Someone shouted. He heard the pant of breath, the pounding of feet as the men from the other end of the alley drew near.

  Abandoning the dagger, Sebastian pushed up. He could see the mouth of the alley, an eddy of movement and shadow framed by the darker shadows of looming brick walls. He took one running step, two, just as the explosive percussion of a pistol reverberated up the narrow passage. He saw the yellow-white flash of the burning powder, smelled the pungent odor of sulfur.

  And felt a stinging line of fire plow across the side of his head.

  Chapter 29

  Sebastian’s step faltered, but he kept running.

  He burst from the mouth of the alley into Giltspur Street.

  His hat was gone. He could feel a sheet of blood running down the side of his face, its coppery tang heavy in the moist night air. More blood darkened the front of his coat and waistcoat, only that wasn’t his blood.

  Heads turned toward him. Women in shawls drew back, faces pale, eyes wide with fear. He knew they must have heard the pistol shot, but no one stepped forward to help him. He was a stranger here. The men behind him were not.

  A trickle of warm blood ran into his eyes. He stumbled off the narrow footpath. Horses’ heads loomed from out of the darkness, their nostrils flaring. He heard the crack of a whip and a shout, and the jingle of harness. He jumped back barely in time to avoid the flashing hooves and rumbling iron-rimmed wheels of a big green-and-red brewer’s wagon driven fast up the road.

  The wagon was tall, the top edges of its high wooden sides some three feet or more over Sebastian’s head. He heard running steps slap the paving stones behind him. Without looking back, Sebastian leapt at the wagon’s high back, trying to catch the top of the tailgate with both hands. But the blow to his shoulder had incapacitated his arm more than he’d realized. His left hand slipped off the rough wood, useless. Only his right hand found its purchase and held, jerking his arm in its socket as it took all his weight.

  From somewhere behind him came a shout, followed by a hoarse “There he is! Stop him.”

  Gritting his teeth, his feet kicking in air, Sebastian fought to pull himself up one-handed onto the tailgate. He’d just managed to hike his elbow over the side when one of the men threw himself forward, his arms wrapping around Sebastian’s legs.

  The jolting weight of the man’s body swung Sebastian around, dragged him back down toward the rushing road. Sebastian had a pain-filled vision of a craggy-faced man with thick, straight brows and a thin nose, his lips twisting into a snarl as he said, “I’ve got you, you son of a bitch.”

  Freeing one leg, Sebastian drew up his knee and kicked out hard. His foot landed square in the man’s face. He heard the crunch of cartilage and bone, saw the spurt of blood as the force of the blow sent the man reeling back.

  For one moment, he clutched wildly at Sebastian’s booted foot. Then the boot slipped off with a sucking plop and the man fell back to land with a breath-robbing thump in the gutter, the rough country boot of Squire Lawrence’s secretary still clasped like a trophy in his hands.

  “ONE OF THESE DAYS,” said Kat Boleyn, dabbing a cloth dipped in witch hazel against the side of his head, “someone’s going to shoot at you and they’re not going to miss.”

  Sebastian drew in his breath in a pained hiss. “They didn’t exactly miss this time.”

  He was sitting on a low stool beside the kitchen table in Kat’s house in Harwich Street. Elspeth and the rest of Kat’s small staff had withdrawn to spend their evening off in their rooms in the attics high above, leaving the house dark and quiet. In the distance, he could hear the faint, mournful tolling of a death knell.

  Bringing up one hand, he explored the open gash that parted the hair just above his ear. She batted his hand away. “Don’t touch.” She was busy for a moment mixing crushed herbs from the apothecary into a salve. Then she said, “You knew it was a trap. Why walk into it?”

  “I thought I might learn something. I wasn’t expecting five men. Or a pistol.”

  “So what did you learn? That your questions are making someone uncomfortable? You knew that. Someone’s been following you for days.”

  “I don’t think my shadow was amongst the men who attacked me.”

  “Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

  “No. But the men today didn’t know who I was. If they had, my friend with the cudgel wouldn’t have been so anxious to find out who sent me.”

  She finished smearing the open wound with the salve and went to pack a clean cloth with a mixture of grated raw potatoes and cold milk. “Are you going to tell Sir Henry about this?”

  Sebastian looked up from peeling his shirt off over his head. “Lovejoy? What the devil could he do?”

  She came to slap the cold compress on his bruised shoulder. “He could send someone to investigate the Norfolk Arms.”

  “That’s just what I need,” he said, reaching up to hold the compress in place. “Some thickheaded constable tromping about the place, asking blunt questions and putting up everyone’s back. It’s the best way I can think of to make sure we never learn anything.”

  Her gaze met his, her beautiful blue eyes wide and troubled. “You can’t go there again yourself.”

  He touched her face, his fingertips skimming gently across her cheek. “Careful, Miss Boleyn. You’re in danger of betraying an almost wifely concern for my health.”

  He expected her to make some quick rejoinder and then flit away. Instead, she leaned against him, her arms coming around his neck to hold him close. “If these people are involved in a conspiracy against the Regent and they think you’re on to them, they won’t hesitate to kill you. You know that.”

  He pressed his face against the softness of her breasts. “We know the men at one table in the common room of the Norfolk Arms have a romantic attachment to a dead exiled king. That doesn’t make the entire district guilty of plotting to overthrow the Hanoverian dynasty.”

  She pushed away from him and went to assemble the various salves and potions she’d been using. The uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability was gone. She was once more in control, her voice teasing as she said, “I thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”

  Stretching to his feet, he swung his arm in slow circles, working out the stiffness in the muscle. “I don’t. But I can’t see how it fits with what I know of Guinevere Anglessey’s life. Now, if I could find some way to tie my friends from Giltspur Street to Bevan Ellsworth, it might begin to make sense. According to Guinevere’s abigail, he came storming into his uncle’s town house last Monday and essentially threatened to kill her. He also has one hell of a m
otive—the birth of Guinevere’s son would have disinherited him. With his creditors already pressing him for repayment, Ellsworth could easily have decided he couldn’t take a chance on the child being born a girl.”

  “And you never liked him anyway.”

  Sebastian looked over at her and smiled. “And I never liked him anyway.” Stripping off his bloodied breeches, he went to tip another kettle of hot water into the hip bath they’d drawn beside the kitchen hearth. “What do you know of Fabian Fitzfrederick?”

  “He and Ellsworth are of much the same set, although Fitzfrederick also runs with the Dandies.” She frowned. “Why? You think Fitzfrederick might be involved?”

  “Hell. I don’t know. He does provide a link between Ellsworth and the royal family.”

  “A tenuous one.”

  “A tenuous one.” Sebastian stepped over the high enameled sides and settled himself in the tub, his knees drawn up close to his chest. “The problem is, while the Inns of Court are suspiciously close to Giltspur Street, Ellsworth himself simply wouldn’t have had time to drag Guinevere’s body down to Brighton and still make it back to his faro game in Pickering Place by ten o’clock. Apart from which, the man’s interests begin and end with the turf and gaming table—and the set of his coat, of course. Why would he go through all the risks involved in attempting to implicate the Regent?”

  “To deflect suspicion from himself?” Kat suggested.

  “Surely there are easier ways to have done so?”

  She was silent in that way she had, carefully thinking things through. “The only one I can see who might have a reason to implicate the Regent is Anglessey himself. If he found out the Prince was pursuing her when she hadn’t told him, he might have believed the advances were welcome.”