“I would like to know a little of your background,” she said once we were alone.
She fluttered her eyelashes at me. The effect was highly disconcerting for someone who had been in the remote mountains of the Iberian Peninsula just weeks earlier.
“There’s little to say, ma’am. I was a corporal, then I was lucky enough to distinguish myself and gain promotion.”
“In spying?”
“In … using mathematics to help the war effort.”
“Most redcoat corporals don’t say ‘mathematics,’ they say ‘countin’ or ‘sums.’ You must come from a good family. What did you do before you enlisted?”
“My father is a vicar. I was a teacher before the war.”
“I would wager a hundred guineas that you have never so much as smiled at a whore.”
This was true, but she had no way of knowing it. It caught me off-guard, so I allowed a pause to collect my thoughts. I knew the rules and manners of polite society, but I was aware of being an outsider.
“Only vendors need to smile,” I replied.
“Oh very good, parry-riposte to you.”
“Why did you propose your wager?”
“There is a certain boldness about men who make use of whores, Lieutenant. They think all women are whores, but concede that some whores cost more than others. You are suave, rather than bold.”
“You flatter me.”
“I do indeed. Now you have a cue to flatter me, yet you do not.”
By this stage I was beginning to see what Major Jodrel had warned me about.
“It is not my place to flatter you, ma’am.”
“No? You are ill at ease in my company, Lieutenant, especially when I smile. That flatters me, too.”
“Do you assist Sir Charles with his signaling devices?” I asked, lamely trying to change the subject.
“Me, take an interest in wires, sparks, and steam engines? Surely you jest. I only pay attention when he takes long trips to test his toys, leaving me to manage Ballard House, the brave soldiers who guard it, and their most gallant young officers.”
With that she got up, so I stood and bowed to her.
“Will you take supper with me at ten?” she asked.
“Alas, ma’am, I am ready for sleep.”
“But it’s only six o’clock, the sun is still up.”
“I’m very tired. I was aboard a ship when I last slept.”
She sauntered across the room.
“Good night, ma’am,” I called after her.
She turned back to me at the door.
“Good night, my brave and gallant young officer,” she purred, swayed a hip in my direction, then walked on.
* * *
THAT NIGHT I slept as if I had been shot dead, but like all soldiers in wartime, I rose before dawn. Attacks generally come with the sun, and my habit was to be dressed and ready. Sir Charles was nowhere to be found, and I was not in a hurry to encounter Lady Monica alone, so I went out to the encampment. Young Captain Hartwell met me there, and we took a stroll around the grounds as the sun rose.
“So, are you satisfied that Ballard House is not a hotbed of French spies?” he asked.
“I’m never happy about anyone, sir.”
“Anyone at all? Is even, say, a duke not above suspicion?”
“A duke may whisper secrets to his mistress as they tumble together in bed. Is his mistress above suspicion?”
Hartwell was either unable or unwilling to answer the question. We walked another dozen or so paces before he spoke again.
“One of my men is a veteran of the battles in Portugal and Spain, and he knows of you. He said you rose through the ranks and distinguished yourself.”
“That is true, sir.”
“It must have been for some act of great daring.”
“You flatter me, but it was nothing.”
“Please, please, do tell me. There’s no excitement in Dorset, that must be obvious.”
By now I suspected that the captain had been barred from Ballard House for experiencing a little too much excitement with Lady Monica. Still, Hartwell was a superior officer, and it does not hurt to have the good opinion of such men.
“I speak some Portuguese, and quite good Spanish and French, so I was promoted to corporal soon after stepping off the ship, assigned two Spanish irregulars, and sent deep into enemy territory.”
“To assassinate enemy officers?” Hartwell gasped.
“To sketch enemy fortifications, and count men, cannons, and supply wagons. One day we met with two French spies who had been doing much the same. There was a very sharp and nasty exchange, and I alone rode away from it.”
“Ah, and for that you were promoted to second lieutenant?”
“No, such actions are common enough, but I found some dispatches on one of the French dead. They turned out to be very important.”
“Oh, so you did heroic things, but you were promoted for just mucking about with secret messages,” said Hartwell.
“Secret messages are often more important than bullets. With respect, sir, remember that if you ever find yourself on a battlefield, wondering what the enemy is going to do next.”
“I don’t have the benefit of your experience, Lieutenant, but I do prefer a good, clean fight to spying and secrecy.”
The text of the dispatches had been encoded, but in the days that it took me to return to British headquarters I studied the code in every free moment and actually broke it. The dispatches named two officers on General Wellesley’s staff as spies. I expected that they would be shamed and shot like dogs. Instead they were merely reported as dying heroically in some minor engagement. General Wellesley does not have spies on his staff. It was then decided that I was too valuable to risk on the battlefield. I was transferred to the quartermaster’s service, there to break more French codes.
We had reached the stables by now, and I observed that there was a pair of chimneys rising from the roof. Smoke was puffing from one of them, and I could hear a steady chugging from inside the building.
“That’s a steam engine,” I said.
“Can’t stand them,” muttered Hartwell. “Filthy things.”
“What is it used for?”
“Nothing useful, mark my words.”
“I’d still like to see it.”
One of the field hands was tending a small steam engine, a Trevithick type that is used in the new horseless railways. This engine was turning a Winter electrical generator composed of glass disks, felt buffers, and fine silver brushes. The electrical charge being generated was carried to Ballard House by harpsichord wires sheathed in gut and beeswax, and strung from poles.
The stoker told me that this was the day engine, and it would be stopped for maintenance after dark. Hartwell and I were about to leave when the boy asked if we wanted to see the night engine. When I said yes, he unlocked the door to a room that housed an identical Trevithick engine and Winter generator.
“Between ’em this pair’s kept electrical fluid goin’ te the big house for two years wi’out a moment missed.”
“What device needs continuous electrical charge?” I asked.
“Can’t say, sir,” replied the boy. “I only know steam. Steam’s the way of the future. Hope te make me fortune wi’ steam.”
“Can’t abide the damn ugly things,” said Hartwell as we left. “Did you know that they’re actually replacing horses on some of the colliery railways?”
Now I had a new mystery. Why have continuous electrical charge flowing into Ballard House? The spark semaphores worked from Voltaic piles, so this was clearly for something else. Whatever it was, it had been consuming electrical charge for two whole years.
“What is that room upstairs, where the wires go?” I asked Hartwell, gesturing to the house.
“Monica calls it the raven room,” he replied.
Monica. The familiarity with which Hartwell used that single word told me that Lady Monica had exchanged words of flattery with him in the months p
ast. He had also been banned from Ballard House, so perhaps the words exchanged had been overheard by Sir Charles.
“Why does she call it that?”
“Sir Charles keeps a raven in it.”
“A raven?”
“Yes.”
“A raven, with feathers, wings, and a beak?”
“One beak, two wings, and a great many feathers.”
“Whatever for?”
“Company, I suppose. Nobody else can stand the man. Were he not lord of this estate he would be the resident simpleton in some village.”
Here was a new mystery. Why supply electrical charge to a raven for two years? I am a spy, so my training is to hide my own secrets and unravel the mysteries of others. The raven was clearly a ruse, so what of the electrical charge? Was there a secret device for signaling the French in that room? Was Sir Charles giving spark semaphores to Britain because Napoleon already had them, and was waiting to eavesdrop?
* * *
I RETURNED TO the house and secured the two spark semaphores by locking them in my bedchamber. Next I discovered that two rooms upstairs were locked, but other than that I was free to wander wherever I wished. Sir Charles would not talk of the locked rooms. The unlocked rooms were workshops, or storage for experimental devices that had not worked as he had planned. The mechanisms were mostly wood, wax, wire and glass. The artisans worked upstairs, but lived away in the servants’ quarters. They built things to their master’s specifications, and had no idea how the individual parts were assembled.
When Sir Charles went outside to supervise the servicing of the night engine I went upstairs and checked the two locked doors again. I have some knowledge of pickwires, so I set to work on the locks. One room turned out to be a library, but the lock on the other was beyond my skill. The door was of solid oak bound with iron. Heavy defences always mean something of value is inside. Through the wood I could hear a faint humming, as if a hive of bees were kept there. It was the raven room, where the wires from the stables led.
* * *
LATE THAT MORNING I attended my very first luncheon. Even though I was not hungry, I was compelled to sample my host’s cheddar cheese, asparagus, cold pork, white bread, and German wine. During the meal Sir Charles announced that my lessons with the spark semaphore would commence that very hour, then he bolted down his meal and rushed upstairs again. Once more I found myself alone with Lady Monica. Suspecting that she was about to return to the subject of flattery, I quickly asked her about the raven room.
“Yes, I have been in there,” she said.
“He let you in?”
“It was back in the days when he still tried to impress me with cleverness. A year ago, or perhaps two. The place is full of his boring toys.”
“So you were not impressed?”
“Not in the least. We are not of a kind, Lieutenant. Look over by the window—what do you see?”
“A brass telescope.”
“Yes, a marvel of spectacle lenses and whatever else is inside. Charles uses it to gaze at pockmarks on the moon. I would rather use it to watch a soldier bending a milkmaid over a stack of hay, far out in the fields. What about you?”
I was tempted to say that I would rather be the soldier out in the fields, but that sort of talk would lead as far into forbidden territory as it is possible to go.
“I’d use it to spy on the French from a safe distance,” I managed. “What sorts of toys were in the raven room?”
“Oh … wire rings, brass things, glass things.”
“And a raven?”
“A black bird, bigger than a sparrow, smaller than a chicken. Charles had attached a lot of harpsichord strings to its head.”
“To its head?” I exclaimed, suspecting that she was mocking me. “Can you describe—”
“No! I cannot and shall not!” she snapped, suddenly angry. “His silly toys don’t interest me. I want to be in London, going to balls and meeting dashing young officers just home from the wars.”
“Do you have a key to the raven room?”
Even as I was speaking the words, I regretted the question. I knew what the answer was sure to be.
“I might … for a dashing young officer, just home from the wars.”
With that temptation now dangling before me, Lady Monica took her leave. I was left alone at the table, thinking hard upon moral dilemmas, my honour as an officer, my duty to Britain, electrical machines, and ravens.
* * *
I SPENT THE first hour after luncheon being instructed by Sir Charles about maintaining Voltaic piles, and in methods of encasing harpsichord wire in gut and wax. Leakage of electrical charge between wires was apparently a big problem in his spark semaphore. Following a break for tea, he spent three hours coaching me in the use of his dash-dot code.
As the afternoon faded into evening, Sir Charles went outside for the swapping of the steam engines, and I stole up to his library and let myself in. A glance over the titles on the shelves told me only that he had an interest in the natural philosophies. There were also his personal journals, all bound with leather and lettered in gilt. The earliest volume documented his observations of the planets when he was fifteen. The latest was dated 1810 and was an inch thick. I selected the volumes for 1809 and 1810, then pushed the others across to hide the gap.
My intention had been to conceal the journals in my bedchamber and read of how Sir Charles had been inspired to build his spark semaphore. I unlocked my door, stepped inside—and discovered Lady Monica stretched out on my bed. She was wearing an empire gown in the Greek style, cut to display an immense amount of breast. Her black hair was bound up in the fashion of the ladies on one of her urns from ancient Greece.
“As ye burgle, so shall ye be burgled,” she said. “What did you steal from his library?”
“His journals,” I confessed, taking the two volumes from my coat.
“How dull. Now my journals would make your eyes stretch wide.”
“You, ah, have skeletons in your closet?” I asked before my brain caught up with my tongue.
“My dear lieutenant, I can scarcely get the doors closed. And speaking of closing doors, best to close that one. Lock it, too.”
“Do, ah, you often dress in costume?” I asked, now deliberately trying to seem witless.
“I dress to show off my best features.” She drew a key on a gold chain from her cleavage. “Now then, to business. You wish to enter the raven room, and I have a key.”
“Surely you don’t intend to, to…”
“To what?”
“To extract an unseemly price for the key?”
“Of course I do.”
“But—”
“Think upon this, Lieutenant. Say the mistress of some elderly, gouty officer was suspected of spying for the French, and say she had the good taste to fancy you for some discreet infidelity. Might you not bed the wench, in order to spy upon her?”
Lady Monica had a way of putting her finger squarely upon a man’s vulnerabilities. The answer had to be yes, but I did not want to speak the word.
“I am a patriotic officer,” I said.
“So you would do it for Britain?”
“Well, yes,” I now conceded, “but—”
“But?”
“As a patriotic subject of the crown, would you not simply give me the key?”
“My dear lieutenant, where did you ever get the idea that I am a patriot? If Britain wants me to spy on my husband, then I require payment. That payment is your body upon this bed, to make use of as I see fit.”
“But why me? I am neither rich nor special.”
“You are young, brave and handsome, and unlike most soldiers newly returned from the wars, you are neither poxed nor incomplete.”
“Captain Hartwell—”
“Captain Hartwell is seventeen, and all he knows is what he has learned from me. You are a spy and a killer. I am allured by enigmatic killers with charm and manners. What do you say, Lieutenant Fletcher? Will you permit me to
make a whore out of you?”
* * *
SUFFICE IT TO say that she made a whore out of me. Before twenty minutes were past she slipped out of my room to dress herself rather more conventionally for dinner. I was left to contemplate the situation in Ballard House, and I did not like what I had seen. Lady Monica was bored and unhappy, and perhaps vulnerable to seduction by a French agent. Given the importance of what Sir Charles was doing in the war against France, this was a cause for concern. Then there was the raven room.
I now had the key to the raven room, but I also had better access to Lady Monica than was prudent. I decided that I should flee Ballard House, and ride to Portsmouth the next day. There I would discuss the deployment of the spark semaphore with Major Jodrel. I had picked up the dash-dot code very quickly, but others would take much longer. My plan was to take charge of the training of a dozen encoders at once, so that they would be proficient by the time the first new spark semaphores were complete. Major Jodrel could go to Ballard House in command of a coach full of naval artisans and clockmakers, there to learn how to build the devices, and perhaps to explore the raven room himself with my hard-won key.
Sir Charles was in a strangely cheerful mood during dinner that evening. He drank a lot more port wine than was usual, and between the jugged hare and potted venison he began conversing with me by tapping his wineglass in dash-dot code. If this was to annoy Lady Monica, it did not work. She spent the entire meal looking so smug that he simply must have suspected her of being guilty of something. It was little wonder that Major Jodrel had warned me about them.
As the trifle was served, I announced that I needed to return to Portsmouth, to begin the training of the signalers. For some reason Sir Charles was delighted, and asked his wife if she might like to have a break from Ballard House as well. When she suggested a fortnight alone in London, he agreed at once. Willingly. Almost eagerly. Monica was so thrilled that she dashed around the table and actually hugged her unkempt husband, then hurried away to begin packing.
I returned to my room and stretched out on my bed, practically melting with relief. I had confirmed that the spark semaphore was indeed a priceless weapon, and that the people in and around Ballard House were about as stable as a sack of gunpowder beside a blacksmith’s forge. My duty was done, and I could retreat in good order.
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