Lord John and the Private Matter lj-1

by Diana Gabaldon

  Scanlon was watching, too, Grey saw. The apothecary had started brewing some potion over a spirit lamp; a bitter-smelling steam began to rise from the pot, fogging the windows. Glancing back toward the bed, he saw that England had fallen far behind by now; only a narrow hump of land was still visible through the windows, above the roiling sea.

  “And you, Mr. Scanlon,” Grey said, rising, and moving carefully toward the apothecary, cup in hand. “How do you find yourself entangled in this affair?”

  The Irishman gave him a wry look.

  “Ah, and isn’t love a grand bitch, then?”

  “I daresay. You would be referring to the present Mrs. Scanlon, I collect?”

  “Francie, aye.” A warmth glowed in the Irishman’s eyes as he spoke his wife’s name. “We took up together, her and me, after her wretch of a husband left. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t marry, though she’d have liked it. But then the bastard comes back!”

  The apothecary’s big clean hands curled up into fists at the thought.

  “Waited until I was out, the shite. I come back from tending to an ague, and what do I find but my Francie on the floor, a-welter in her own blood and her precious face smashed in—” He stopped abruptly, trembling with recalled rage.

  “There was a man bent over her; I thought he’d done it, and went for him. I’d have killed him, sure, had Francie not come round enough to wheeze out to me as it weren’t him but Tim O’Connell who’d beaten her.”

  The man was Jack Byrd, who had followed O’Connell to the apothecary’s shop, and then, hearing the sounds of violence and a woman screaming, had rushed up the stairs, surprising Tim O’Connell and driving him away.

  “Bless him, he was in time to save her life,” Scanlon said, crossing himself. “And I said to him, I did, that he was free of me and all I had, for what he’d done, though he’d take no reward for it.”

  At this, Grey swung around to Trevelyan, who had risen from his own wife’s side and come to rejoin them.

  “A very useful fellow, Jack Byrd,” Grey said. “It seems to run in the family.”

  Trevelyan nodded.

  “I gather so. That was Tom Byrd I heard in the corridor outside?”

  Grey nodded in turn, but was impatient to return to the main story.

  “Yes. Why on earth did O’Connell come back to his wife, do you know?”

  Trevelyan and the apothecary exchanged glances, but it was Trevelyan who answered.

  “We can’t say for sure—but given what transpired later, it is my supposition that he had not gone there in order to see his wife, but rather to seek a hiding place for the papers he had. I said that he had made contact with a petty spy.”

  Jack Byrd had reported as much to Harry Quarry—and thus to Mr. Bowles—but, loyal servant that he was, had reported it also to his employer. This was his long-standing habit; in addition to his duties as footman, he was instructed to pick up such gossip in taverns as might prove of interest or value, to be followed up in such manner as Trevelyan might decide.

  “So it is not merely Cornish tin or India spices that you deal in,” Grey said, giving Trevelyan a hard eye. “Did my brother know that you trade in information as well, when he asked your help?”

  “He may have done,” Trevelyan replied blandly. “I have been able to draw Hal’s attention to a small matter of interest now and then—and he has done the same for me.”

  It was not precisely a surprise to Grey that men of substance should regard matters of state principally in terms of their personal benefit, but he had seldom been brought so rudely face-to-face with the knowledge. But surely Hal would not have had any part in blackmail—He choked the thought off, returning doggedly to the matter at hand.

  “So, O’Connell made some overture to this minor intrigant,and you learned of it. What then?”

  O’Connell had not made it clear what information he possessed; only that he had something which might be worth money to the proper parties.

  “That would fit with what the army suspected,” Grey said. “O’Connell wasn’t a professional spy; he merely recognized the importance of the requisitions and seized the chance. Perhaps he knew someone in France to whom he thought to sell them—but then the regiment was brought home before he had the chance to contact his buyer.”

  “Quite.” Trevelyan nodded, impatient of the interruption. “I, of course, knew what the material was. But it seemed to me that, rather than simply retrieving the information, it might be more useful to discover who some of the parties interested in it might be.”

  “It did not, of course, occur to you to share these thoughts with Harry Quarry or anyone else connected with the regiment?” Grey suggested politely.

  Trevelyan’s nostrils flared.

  “Quarry—that lump? No. I suppose I might have told Hal—but he was gone. It seemed best to keep matters in my own hands.”

  It would, Grey thought cynically. No matter that the welfare of half the British army depended on those matters; naturally, a merchant would have the best judgment!

  Trevelyan’s next words, though, made it apparent that things ran deeper than either money or military dispositions.

  “I had learned from Maria that her husband dealt in secrets,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the bed. “I thought to use O’Connell and his material as bait, to draw Mayrhofer into some incriminating action. Once revealed as a spy . . .”

  “He could be either banished or executed, thus leaving you a good deal more freedom with regard to his wife. Quite.”

  Trevelyan glanced sharply at him, but chose not to take issue with his tone.

  “Quite,” he said, matching Grey’s irony. “It was, however, a delicate matter to arrange things so that O’Connell and Mayrhofer should be brought together. O’Connell was a wary blackguard; he’d waited a long time to search out a buyer, and was highly suspicious of any overtures.”

  Trevelyan, restless, got up and moved back to the bed.

  “I was obliged to see O’Connell myself, posing as a putative middleman, in order to draw the Sergeant in and assure him that there was money available—but I went disguised, and gave him a false name, of course. Meanwhile, though, I had succeeded from the other end, in interesting Mayrhofer in the matter. Hedecided to cut me out—duplicitous bastard that he was!—and set one of his own servants to find O’Connell.”

  Hearing Mayrhofer’s name from another source, and realizing that the man he spoke to was acting under an assumed identity, O’Connell had rather logically deduced that Trevelyan wasMayrhofer, negotiating incognito in hopes of keeping down the price. He therefore followed Trevelyan from the place of their last meeting—and tracked him with patience and skill to Lavender House.

  Discerning the nature of the place from questions in the neighborhood, O’Connell had thought himself possessed of a marked advantage over the man he assumed to be Mayrhofer. He could confront the man at the scene of his presumed crimes, and then demand what he liked, without necessarily giving up anything in return.

  He had, of course, been thwarted in this scheme when he found no one at Lavender House who had heard the name Mayrhofer. Baffled but persistent, O’Connell had hung about long enough to see Trevelyan depart, and had followed him back to the brothel in Meacham Street.

  “I should never have gone directly to Lavender House,” Trevelyan admitted with a shrug. “But the business with O’Connell had taken longer than I thought—and I was in a hurry.” The Cornishman could not keep his eyes from the woman. Even from where he sat, Grey could see the flush of fever rising in her pallid cheeks.

  “Normally, you would have gone to the brothel first, thence to Lavender House, and back again, in your disguise?” Grey asked.

  “Yes. That was our usual arrangement. No one questions a gentleman’s going to a bordello—or a whore coming out of one, being taken to meet a customer.” Trevelyan said. “But Maria naturally could not meet me there. At the same time, no one would suspect a woman of entering Lavender House�
�no one who knew what sort of place it is.”

  “An ingenious solution,” Grey said, with thinly veiled sarcasm. “One thing—why did you always employ a green velvet dress? Or dresses, as the case may be? Did you and Mrs. Mayrhofer both employ that disguise?”

  Trevelyan looked uncomprehending for a moment, but then smiled.

  “Yes, we did,” he said. “As for why green—” He shrugged. “I like green. It’s my favorite color.”

  At the brothel, O’Connell had inquired doggedly for a gentleman in a green dress, possibly named Mayrhofer—only to have it strongly implied by Magda and her staff that he was insane. The result was naturally to leave O’Connell in some agitation of mind.

  “He was not a practiced spy, as you note,” Trevelyan said, shaking his head with a sigh. “Already suspicious, he became convinced that some perfidy was afoot—”

  “Which it was,” Grey put in, earning himself a brief glance of annoyance from Trevelyan, who nonetheless continued.

  “And so I surmise that he decided he required some safer place of concealment for the papers he held—and thus returned to his wife’s lodgings in Brewster’s Alley.”

  Where he had discovered his abandoned wife in an advanced state of pregnancy by another man, and with the irrationality of jealousy, proceeded to batter her senseless.

  Grey massaged his forehead, closing his eyes briefly in order to counteract a tendency for his head to spin.

  “All right,” he said. “The affair is reasonably clear to me so far. But,” he added, opening his eyes, “we have still two dead men to account for. Obviously, Magda told youthat O’Connell had rumbled you. And yet you say you did not kill him? Nor yet Mayrhofer?”

  A sudden rustling from the bed interrupted him, and he turned, startled.

  “It was I who killed my husband, good sir.”

  The voice from the bed was soft and husky, with no more than a hint of foreign accent, but all three men jerked, startled as though it had been a trumpet blast. Maria Mayrhofer lay upon her side, hair tangled over her pillow. Her eyes were huge, glazed with encroaching fever, but still luminous with intelligence.

  Trevelyan went at once to kneel beside her, feeling her cheek and forehead.

  “Scanlon,” he said, a tone of command mingled with one of appeal.

  The apothecary went at once to join him, touching her gently beneath the jaw, peering into her eyes—but she turned her head away from him, closing her eyes.

  “I am well enough for the moment,” she said. “This man—” She waved in Grey’s direction. “Who is he?”

  Grey stood, keeping his feet awkwardly as the deck rose under him, and bowed to her.

  “I am Major John Grey, madam. I am appointed by the Crown to investigate a matter”—he hesitated, uncertain how—or whether—to explain—“a matter that has impinged upon your own affairs. Did I understand you to say that you had killed Herr Mayrhofer?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Scanlon had withdrawn to check his hell-brew, and she rolled her head to meet Grey’s gaze again. She was too weak to lift her head from the pillow, and yet her eyes held something prideful—almost insolent, despite her state—and he had a sudden glimmer of what it was that had so attracted the Cornishman.

  “Maria . . .” Trevelyan set a hand on her arm in warning, but she disregarded it, keeping her gaze imperiously on Grey.

  “What does it matter?” she asked, her voice still soft, but clear as crystal. “We are on the water now. I feel the waves that bear us on; we have escaped. This is your realm, is it not, Joseph? The sea is your kingdom, and we are safe.” A tiny smile played over her lips as she watched Grey, making him feel very odd indeed.

  “I have left word,” Grey felt obliged to point out. “My whereabouts are known.”

  The smile grew.

  “So someone knows you are en route to India,” she said mockingly. “Will they follow you there, do you think?”

  India. Grey had not received leave from the lady to sit in her presence, but did so anyway. The weakness of his knees owed something both to the swaying of the ship and to the aftereffects of mercury poisoning—but somewhat more to the news of their destination.

  Still fighting giddiness, the first thought in his head was relief that he had managed that scribbled note to Quarry. At least I won’t be shot for desertion, when—or if—I finally manage to get back.He shook his head briefly to clear it, and sat up straight, setting his jaw.

  There was no help for it, and nothing to be done now, save carry out his duty to the best of his ability. Anything further must be left to Providence.

  “Be that as it may, madam,” he said firmly. “It is my duty to learn the truth of the death of Timothy O’Connell—and any matters that may be associated with it. If your state permits, I would hear whatever you can tell me.”

  “O’Connell?” she murmured, and turned her head restlessly on the pillow, eyes half-closing. “I do not know this name, this man. Joseph?”

  “No, dear one, it’s nothing to do with you, with us.” Trevelyan spoke soothingly, a hand on her hair, but his eyes searched her face uneasily. Glancing from him to her, Grey could see it, too; her face was growing markedly pale, as though some force pressed the blood from her skin.

  All at once, there were gray shadows in the hollows of her bone; the lush curve of her mouth paled and pinched, lips nearly disappearing. The eyes, too, seemed to retreat, going dull and shrinking away into her skull. Trevelyan was talking to her; Grey sensed the worry in his tone, but paid no attention to the words, his whole attention fixed upon the woman.

  Scanlon had come to look, was saying something. Quinine, something about quinine.

  A sudden shudder closed her eyes and blanched her features. The flesh itself seemed to draw in upon her bones as she huddled deeper into the bedclothes, shaking. Grey had seen malarial chills before, but even so, was shocked at the suddenness and strength of the attack.

  “Madam,” he began, stretching out a hand to her, helpless. He had no notion what to do, but felt that he must do something, must offer comfort of some kind—she was so fragile, so defenseless in the grip of the disease.

  “She cannot speak with you,” Trevelyan said sharply, and gripped his arm. “Scanlon!”

  The apothecary had a small brazier going; he had already seized a pair of tongs and plucked a large stone that he had heating in the coals. He dropped this into a folded linen towel and, holding it gingerly, hurried to the bedside, where he burrowed under the sheets, placing the hot stone at her feet.

  “Come away,” Trevelyan ordered, pulling at Grey’s arm. “Mr. Scanlon must care for her. She cannot talk.”

  This was plainly true—and yet she lifted her head and forced her eyes to open, teeth gritted hard against the chills that racked her.

  “J-J-J-Jos-seph!”

  “What, darling? What can I do?” Trevelyan abandoned Grey upon the instant, falling to his knees beside her.

  She seized his hand and held it hard, fighting the chill that shook her bones.

  “T-T-Tell him. If we b-both are d-dead . . . I would be j-j-justified!”

  Both?Grey wondered. He had no time to speculate upon the meaning of that; Scanlon had hurried back with his steaming beaker, had lifted her from the pillow. He was holding the vessel to her lips, murmuring encouragement, willing her to sip at it, even as the hot liquid slopped and spilled from her chattering teeth. Her long hands rose and wrapped themselves about the cup, clinging tightly to the fugitive warmth. The last thing he saw before Trevelyan forced him from the cabin was the emerald ring, hanging loose from a bony finger.

  He followed Trevelyan upward through the shadows to the open deck. The bedlam of setting sail had subsided now, and half the crew had vanished below. Grey had barely noticed his surroundings earlier; now he saw the clouds of snowy canvas billowing above, and the polished wood and brightwork of the ship. The Namparawas under full sail and flying like a live thing; he could feel the ship—feel her;they called
ships “she”—humming beneath his feet, and felt a sudden unexpected exhilaration.

  The waves had changed from the gray of the harbor to the lapis blue of deep sea, and a brisk wind blew through his hair, carrying away the smells of illness and confinement. The last remnants of his own illness seemed also to blow away on that wind—perhaps only because his debilities seemed inconsequent, by contrast with the desperate straits of the woman below.

  There was still bustle on deck, and shouting to and fro between the deck and the mysterious realm of canvas above, but it was more orderly, less obtrusive now. Trevelyan made his way toward the stern, finding a place at the rail where they would not obstruct the sailors’ work, and there they leaned for a time, wind cleansing them, watching together as the final sight of England disappeared in distant mist.

  “Will she die, do you think?” Grey asked eventually. It was the thought uppermost in his own mind; it must be so for Trevelyan as well.

  “No,” the Cornishman snapped. “She will not.” He leaned on the rail, staring moodily into the racing water.

  Grey didn’t speak, merely closed his eyes and let the glitter of the sun off the waves make dancing patterns of red and black inside his lids. He needn’t push; there was time now for everything.

  “She is worse,” Trevelyan said at last, unable to bear the silence. “She shouldn’t be. I have seen malaria often; the first attack is normally the worst—if there is cinchona for treatment, subsequent attacks grow less frequent, less severe. Scanlon says so, too,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  “Has she suffered long with the disease?” Grey asked, curious. It was not a malady that often afflicted city-dwellers, but the lady might perhaps have acquired it in the course of traveling with Mayrhofer.

  “Two weeks.”

  Grey opened his eyes, to see Trevelyan standing upright, his short hair flicked into a crest by the wind, chin raised. Water stood in his eyes; perhaps it was caused by the rushing wind.