The Spy's Reward

by Nita Abrams

  “Why did the colonel want your opinion of Nathan’s behavior?” she asked, frowning.

  Roth sat back in his chair. “First of all, when Nathan came back, you may remember that he refused to give the bank any further information about Bonaparte’s forces and their projected rate of progress towards Paris. He said that he had been asked not to do so, and I thought that for some reason the War Office had forbidden him to discuss his report with civilians. In fact, however, he also refused to report to White, claiming that he had personal reasons for the omission. The colonel accepted that, although he thought it rather strange. But then last week Nathan was asked to go to Belgium. Twice. And both times he said he would rather not leave London.”

  She was taken aback. “He was not willing to go to Belgium? I have never known him to refuse a request from Whitehall before. Have you?”

  “No. In fact, before his trip to France, he had been to Vienna several times to maintain a clandestine watch over the Allied military leaders—at his own suggestion. The very same role Wellington was asking him to play in Belgium. Finally White summoned Nathan to his office and asked him point-blank why he would not go. And Nathan had no reasonable answer. He simply said that he thought others could do a better job.”

  Louisa frowned. False modesty was not one of Meyer’s attributes. “You would think he could at least have produced something more convincing.”

  “Colonel White was not very happy with that answer either,” Roth said. “He confessed to me that he lost his temper a bit. He asked Nathan what the—er, what Nathan thought he was doing behaving like a coy maiden when Europe was going up in flames and he was needed in Brussels. Nathan replied that in his judgment he was no longer fit for confidential surveillance work. That he would be better employed as he was now, decoding ciphers and monitoring reports. At which point the colonel lost his temper more than a bit and let fly a few rather choice oaths—his own phrase, Louisa—before informing Nathan that Whitehall, not individual couriers, made decisions of that sort. And then Nathan lost his temper and swore right back, reminding White that he held no commission, that he accepted no pay, and that he was free at any moment to walk out of White’s office. Which he proceeded to do.”

  “Nathan lost his temper?” she said, incredulous. “That is odder than everything else put together.”

  “Yes, White was rather stunned as well. Hence his visit to me. And hence my visit to you.”

  Louisa sighed. “I don’t see how I can be of any help. I see Nathan even less frequently than you do. You at least catch occasional glimpses of him in the morning.”

  Her husband brooded for a minute. “Do you remember what you said when he first came back to London? About my little scheme?”

  A week after Nathan’s return, Eli had dragged her into the bookroom one morning and confessed everything: how he had sent Meyer off to Digne-les-Bains with Diana Hart as a decoy, and Diana’s mother as the real candidate. “Go on,” he had said, “you have been dying to say ‘I told you so’ ever since Nathan stalked in here looking as though he wanted to strangle me. I surrender. I will leave Nathan to go his own way from now on. You were right. My attempt was a complete, unmitigated disaster.” But Louisa, to his surprise, had been unwilling to gloat.

  “Yes, I remember,” she said now. “I told you that I had heard some rather strange rumors about Abigail Hart and that it might be just as well if nothing came of your plan.” Luckily, Eli had never pressed her for details of those rumors.

  “No, not that. The other thing you told me.”

  “Oh. Yes.” She had pointed out that it might well be too soon to label the result a disaster, that Nathan’s anger was not at all the same thing as the amused scorn which had followed all of Eli’s earlier attempts.

  “I believe we have been proceeding from a false assumption,” he said. “We believed Nathan’s distress, his preoccupied air, must be related to the news from abroad. At least, I did.”

  Louisa nodded. Her brother-in-law’s unhappiness was easily explained by the increasingly grim quality of that news: Marshal Ney defecting to Bonaparte; King Louis fleeing to Belgium; Napoleon’s triumphant entry into Paris and his call for all Frenchmen to return to armed service.

  “Well, we may have been wrong. Perhaps something happened in March when Nathan was in France,” Roth said. “Something connected with the Harts. Look at how Anthony and Rodrigo have been behaving. I will make another attempt to question Nathan myself, but if that fails there is only one thing to do. You must go and see Mrs. Hart.”

  She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Abigail Hart,” he said impatiently. “You must call on her. Cultivate her acquaintance.”

  “And how, pray, am I to do that? We have never met. Will she not think it rather odd when I suddenly appear on her doorstep asking questions about Nathan?”

  “She did nurse Anthony,” Roth reminded her. “He told us he was quite ill for a few days. You could call to thank her.”

  “Eli, that was two months ago! And Anthony himself visited, quite properly, the week after he arrived here.”

  Her husband coughed. “Apparently he is still calling on Mrs. Hart occasionally. Or, more accurately, on Miss Hart. At least according to Battista.”

  Anthony’s servant had arrived in London several weeks ago and had promptly quarreled bitterly with Rodrigo. Meyer had seized upon the quarrel as an excuse to send the Spaniard away.

  “You are suggesting that I go and insinuate myself into Mrs. Hart’s confidence on the pretext that I am concerned for Anthony’s welfare?” She wished she could sound more indignant. Between her curiosity and her concern for her brother-in-law, Eli’s proposal was dangerously appealing.

  “Anthony is my brother’s only son,” Roth said piously. “And he has not been looking very well of late.”

  Privately Louisa thought the thinner, sterner version of her nephew had a certain appeal. At least to females. And Nathan was not the only one who had been spending many unexplained hours away from the house. If Anthony was dangling after Diana Hart, it behooved her to investigate further. “Very well,” she said. “If your talk with Nathan does not produce satisfactory results I will call on Mrs. Hart. Although why a woman I have never met should wish to confide her opinions about Nathan to me I am sure I do not know.”

  Roth waved his hand airily. “All women enjoy gossip.”

  No, thought Louisa. All women did not enjoy gossip. Especially a woman who had herself been the victim of gossip for many, many years.

  “Now push the ramrod down the barrel. Hard.” Mark Davis illustrated the movement on his own weapon in one smooth thrust.

  Anthony jammed the brass rod up against the wadded mass of ball, powder, and paper in the barrel of his musket and shoved. As usual, the rod got stuck halfway down.

  His instructor sighed. “Try banging the butt on the ground.”

  Obediently, Anthony slammed the butt a few times onto the hard-packed surface of Walworth Fields. There had been grass here earlier in the spring, but now that militias were drilling here every evening it was long gone. This time the ramrod slid properly to the end of the barrel.

  “Level your weapon.”

  His shoulder aching, Anthony hoisted the gun up and sighted.

  “Fire!”

  The bullet buried itself near the center of the straw target.

  “Nothing wrong with your aim,” Davis said sourly. “But if you can’t load faster, my sergeant won’t have you. Try again. A round a minute, minimum, is what you need, and most of our lads could do twice that.”

  After weeks of sweaty, backbreaking practice every Tuesday and Thursday, Anthony had progressed from two rounds every ten minutes to two rounds every four minutes. Doggedly he pulled out the cartridge, bit off the end, poured in powder, tipped the ball into the muzzle, and picked up the ramrod for the twentieth time.

  “Push,” ordered Davis.

  Anthony shoved. The rod jammed, and he swore fluently. His stock of oaths
had tripled since beginning his training at Walworth.

  “Try twisting the rod a bit as you go,” suggested a grizzled veteran, peering at Anthony’s weapon. A crowd always collected around him during practice, curious as to why a well-dressed young man who spoke in educated accents should be in one of the worst districts in London wrestling with a Brown Bess. The answer was simple: Mark Davis was the only Jew Anthony knew who had served as an enlisted man under Wellington. Davis lived in Walworth; Anthony, therefore, crossed the river twice a week to train and put up with comments about his clothing, hairstyle, vocabulary, posture, and, inevitably, religion. Davis’s advice on how to ignore these sallies had been far more effective than his instruction with the musket; Anthony was rapidly becoming totally impervious to insults.

  Gritting his teeth, Anthony tried the rod again, this time twisting slightly. There it was, the smooth, efficient movement he had been trying to master for nearly a month. Simultaneously annoyed and elated, he rounded on Davis. “Why didn’t you tell me to twist it?”

  Davis fired his own gun, reloaded, and tamped. Now that he knew what to look for, Anthony could see the slight rotation of his wrist.

  “I’ll be!” Davis said, abashed. “Didn’t know as I was doing any twisting, Mr. Roth. It’s been many years since I learned to load this old girl. Try another round now.”

  Anthony fired, reloaded, fired, and reloaded. It was still a struggle, but the ramrod was behaving itself. “How long?” he asked.

  “Just under three minutes, sir,” said Noah, Davis’s eight-year-old son. He was holding Anthony’s watch as though it were made of eggshells.

  Anthony grinned. “Another go?” he asked Davis.

  The older man shrugged. “Your powder and shot, sir.”

  Cartridge, ball, wadding, rod, aim, fire. And again. His shoulder felt as though it had been kicked by a horse. He looked at Noah.

  “Just under three minutes.”

  Anthony sighed.

  “But more under,” Noah added hastily. “Closer to two and a half, really.”

  “It’s tearing open the cartridge is slowing you down now, sir,” Davis said critically. “And you could practice that at home.”

  Anthony pictured Battista finding little half-chewed bits of paper smeared with gunpowder in Anthony’s room. His servant would go straight to Eli Roth, and that would be the end of Anthony’s plan.

  It was a simple plan: Anthony had decided to enlist and go fight Bonaparte. He was very clear about it. He knew that part of what was driving him was the humiliating beating he had taken at Sisteron, but he knew, too, that he had other, better reasons. The perfumers of Grasse, hoping for the first time in over ten years to be able to export their wares, were a reason. His uncle Jacob, who had been isolated from the rest of the family for the simple reason that he lived in Paris, was another. And although Italy was not as closed off as France, Anthony had felt the strain of doing business in French-controlled territory more and more. When Bonaparte had abdicated last spring, it was as though a giant weight had been lifted from every Englishman in Europe.

  His uncle was another reason. Anthony was still furious with Meyer. To hoodwink innocent companions and place their lives at risk seemed to him inexcusable, no matter what military advantage might be at stake. Enlisting was his way of showing his uncle that there were honorable ways of fighting Napoleon. When he had first approached Davis, who was the brother of a clerk at the bank, the older man had assumed Anthony wanted a berth as an officer. It had taken quite some time to convince him that a wealthy young man was prepared to become a private.

  “The pay is only a shilling,” Davis had warned him. “We sleep on the ground, most nights. The food is full of weevils, if there is any at all. And enlisted men can be flogged.”

  But Roth had refused to consider purchasing a commission. Not only was he quite certain that he would be a danger to his men if he held a command, but he was also unwilling to take a false name and pretend to be Christian, as his cousin James had done. No lies, he told himself. He conveniently ignored the deception involved in concealing from everyone in Eli Roth’s household both his outings to Walworth and his larger purpose.

  “Once more,” Anthony said now. “Last two rounds.”

  Noah, who had closed up the watch, brightened and flipped up the lid again.

  “Ready?” he asked the boy.

  Noah nodded.

  Concentrating fiercely, Anthony loaded and fired twice. The bullets went nowhere near the center of the target, but he didn’t care. “Time?” he asked, panting and leaning on the musket.

  “Two and one-half minutes,” announced Noah, peering at the watch in the fading light.

  It would have to do for tonight. He was exhausted, and his mouth was acrid with the taste of gunpowder. He had not imagined how physically intimate the process of loading a musket was. Every shot was preceded by the horrifying act of putting a packetful of explosives in your mouth and ripping it open with your back teeth. Davis had told him that men who wanted to avoid conscription would sometimes knock out their molars to make themselves unfit for service.

  The evening ended as it always did. Under Davis’s strict supervision, he cleaned his gun, handed it to Noah in exchange for his watch, and then shook hands solemnly with his teacher.

  “Thank you, Mr. Davis.”

  “You are making very good progress, sir.”

  For once Anthony actually believed him.

  20

  Abigail was seriously contemplating hiring a butler. Her house was not large, and up until recently she would not have imagined that she could need any more staff, but the vision of someone imposing who would tell callers that she was not at home was more appealing every day. Her downstairs maid had an exasperating tendency to admit visitors even after explicit instructions to the contrary, explaining afterwards that “it was just this once, ma’am, and Mrs. Herron did say that she was expected.”

  Last year, the possession of a very marriageable daughter had transformed Abigail from an involuntary hermit into a semirespectable member of her community. There were still glances and whispers, but she no longer hesitated to appear in public or accept the invitations which began to arrive within a few weeks of Diana’s taking up residence. She had regarded her new status as something temporary, a phantom that would vanish as soon as Diana accepted an offer; and had tried to be grateful, for her daughter’s sake, as matrons who had ignored her for years suddenly included her in luncheons or teas. If she occasionally wanted to stand up and remind the circle of women placidly eating sweetmeats that she was still Abigail Hart, divorced adulteress, she suppressed the impulse.

  Since her return from France the number of visitors had only increased. First, there was the predictable interest in her encounter (or near-encounter) with The Corsican Monster. Acquaintances stopped her on the street and begged for the story; complete strangers came to her little house in Goodman’s Fields presenting their calling cards, with a few lines on the back citing the recommendation of a friend of a friend. Even her mother, through Leah, had demanded an account. Eventually the tale became old news, but in the meantime Diana had been acquiring a circle of admirers. There were three round-faced brothers, some connection of Joshua’s, who called en masse and presented Diana with three exactly identical posies. A young man visiting from Amsterdam had prolonged his stay in London for Diana’s sake—or so he told her. Anthony Roth called at least twice a week. There were also female visitors; her daughter had made the acquaintance of several girls her own age. When the knocker sounded these days it was usually Miss Hart who was requested.

  Today was no exception. Rosie had just come up to tell her that Diana was entertaining some friends. “No need for you to go down, ma’am, for Mrs. Asher is with them,” she added. But Abigail, with an inward sigh, set down her half-finished letter and headed downstairs.

  The voices came clearly up the staircase as she hurried down: girls’ voices, one loud and confident, the other low and hesitan
t. She stopped, reconsidering her decision to join Diana. She knew those voices; Martha Woodley and her cousin Eleanor were here. Reminding herself sternly that these were her daughter’s guests, Abigail summoned her best company smile and opened the door.

  Fanny was embroidering over by the window, trying not to interfere with what she called “the young people.” The two visitors were on the sofa with Diana, all three girls in pastel muslins much more appropriate for the warm weather than Abigail’s long-sleeved cambric gown. Martha bounced up at once as Abigail came in and gave her a cheerful smile; Eleanor, who was quite shy, got up more slowly. Abigail wished it had been Eleanor, and not the boisterous Martha, who had become Diana’s friend. No, that was unfair, she told herself firmly. Martha Woodley was a polite, warmhearted girl. It was not her fault that she had a father, two brothers, and a brother-in-law in the army and had spent several years in Portugal and Spain with her father’s regiment—a circumstance that had attracted Diana instantly. It was Diana’s fascination with all things military that made Abigail uncomfortable, not Martha herself. And Abigail did not object in principle to Diana’s having Christian friends, although in the back of her mind she could not quite dispel the image of the little shrine in the mountains where Diana had lit candles.