Warriors

The Custom of the Army

All things considered, it was probably the fault of the electric eel. John Grey could—and for a time, did—blame the Honorable Caroline Wood-ford as well. And the surgeon. And certainly that blasted poet. Still . . . no, it was the eel’s fault.

The party had been at Lucinda Joffrey’s house. Sir Richard was absent; a diplomat of his stature could not have countenanced something so frivolous. Electric eel parties were a mania in London just now, but owing to the scarcity of the creatures, a private party was a rare occasion. Most such parties were held at public theaters, with the fortunate few selected for encounter with the eel summoned onstage, there to be shocked and sent reeling like nine-pins for the entertainment of the audience.

“The record is forty-two at once!” Caroline had told him, her eyes wide and shining as she looked up from the creature in its tank.

“Really?” It was one of the most peculiar things he’d seen, though not very striking. Nearly three feet long, it had a heavy squarish body with a blunt head that looked to have been inexpertly molded out of sculptor’s clay, and tiny eyes like dull glass beads. It had little in common with the lashing, lithesome eels of the fish-market—and certainly did not seem capable of felling forty-two people at once.

The thing had no grace at all, save for a small thin ruffle of a fin that ran the length of its lower body, undulating as a gauze curtain does in the wind. Lord John expressed this observation to the Honorable Caroline, and was accused in consequence of being poetic.

“Poetic?” said an amused voice behind him. “Is there no end to our gallant major’s talents?”

Lord John turned, with an inward grimace and an outward smile, and bowed to Edwin Nicholls.

“I should not think of trespassing upon your province, Mr. Nicholls,” he said politely. Nicholls wrote execrable verse, mostly upon the subject of love, and was much admired by young women of a certain turn of mind. The Honorable Caroline wasn’t one of them; she’d written a very clever parody of his style, though Grey thought Nicholls had not heard about it. He hoped not.

“Oh, don’t you?” Nicholls raised one honey-colored brow at him and glanced briefly but meaningfully at Miss Woodford. His tone was jocular, but his look was not, and Grey wondered just how much Mr. Nicholls had had to drink. Nicholls was flushed of cheek and glittering of eye, but that might be only the heat of the room, which was considerable, and the excitement of the party.

“Do you think of composing an ode to our friend?” Grey asked, ignoring Nicholls’s allusion and gesturing toward the large tank that contained the eel.

Nicholls laughed, too loudly—yes, quite a bit the worse for drink—and waved a dismissive hand.

“No, no, Major. How could I think of expending my energies upon such a gross and insignificant creature, when there are angels of delight such as this to inspire me?” He leered—Grey did not wish to impugn the fellow, but he undeniably leered—at Miss Woodford, who smiled—with compressed lips—and tapped him rebukingly with her fan.

Where was Caroline’s uncle? Grey wondered. Simon Woodford shared his niece’s interest in natural history, and would certainly have escorted her. . . . Oh, there. Simon Woodford was deep in discussion with Mr. Hunter, the famous surgeon—what had possessed Lucinda to invite him? Then he caught sight of Lucinda, viewing Mr. Hunter over her fan with narrowed eyes, and realized that she hadn’t invited him.

John Hunter was a famous surgeon—and an infamous anatomist. Rumor had it that he would stop at nothing to bag a particularly desirable body—whether human or not. He did move in society, but not in the Joffreys’ circles.

Lucinda Joffrey had the most expressive eyes. Her one claim to beauty, they were almond-shaped, amber in color, and capable of sending remarkably minatory messages across a crowded room.

Come here! they said. Grey smiled and lifted his glass in salute to her, but made no move to obey. The eyes narrowed further, gleaming dangerously, then cut abruptly toward the surgeon, who was edging toward the tank, his face alight with curiosity and acquisitiveness.

The eyes whipped back to Grey.

Get rid of him! they said.

Grey glanced at Miss Woodford. Mr. Nicholls had seized her hand in his and appeared to be declaiming something; she looked as though she wanted it back. Grey looked back at Lucinda and shrugged, with a small gesture toward Mr. Nicholls’s ochre-velvet back, expressing regret that social responsibility prevented his carrying out her order.

“Not only the face of an angel,” Nicholls was saying, squeezing Caroline’s fingers so hard that she squeaked, “but the skin as well.” He stroked her hand, the leer intensifying. “What do angels smell like in the morning, I wonder?”

Grey measured him up thoughtfully. One more remark of that sort, and he might be obliged to invite Mr. Nicholls to step outside. Nicholls was tall and heavily built, outweighed Grey by a couple of stone, and had a reputation for bellicosity. Best try to break his nose first, Grey thought, shifting his weight, then run him headfirst into a hedge. He won’t come back in if I make a mess of him.

“What are you looking at?” Nicholls inquired unpleasantly, catching Grey’s gaze upon him.

Grey was saved from reply by a loud clapping of hands—the eel’s proprietor calling the party to order. Miss Woodford took advantage of the distraction to snatch her hand away, cheeks flaming with mortification. Grey moved at once to her side, and put a hand beneath her elbow, fixing Nicholls with an icy stare.

“Come with me, Miss Woodford,” he said. “Let us find a good place from which to watch the proceedings.”

“Watch?” said a voice beside him. “Why, surely you don’t mean to watch, do you, sir? Are you not curious to try the phenomenon yourself?”

It was Hunter himself, bushy hair tied carelessly back, though decently dressed in a damson-red suit, and grinning up at Grey; the surgeon was broad-shouldered and muscular, but quite short—barely five foot two, to Grey’s five-six. Evidently he had noted Grey’s wordless exchange with Lucinda.

“Oh, I think—,” Grey began, but Hunter had his arm and was tugging him toward the crowd gathering round the tank. Caroline, with an alarmed glance at the glowering Nicholls, hastily followed him.

“I shall be most interested to hear your account of the sensation,” Hunter was saying chattily. “Some people report a remarkable euphoria, a momentary disorientation . . . shortness of breath, or dizziness—sometimes pain in the chest. You have not a weak heart, I hope, Major? Or you, Miss Wood-ford?”

“Me?” Caroline looked surprised.

Hunter bowed to her.

“I should be particularly interested to see your own response, ma’am,” he said respectfully. “So few women have the courage to undertake such an adventure.”

“She doesn’t want to,” Grey said hurriedly.

“Well, perhaps I do,” she said, and gave him a little frown before glancing at the tank and the long gray form inside it. She gave a little shiver—but Grey recognized it, from long acquaintance with the lady, as a shiver of anticipation, rather than of revulsion.

Mr. Hunter recognized it, too. He grinned more broadly and bowed again, extending his arm to Miss Woodford.

“Allow me to secure you a place, ma’am.”

Grey and Nicholls both moved purposefully to prevent him, collided, and were left scowling at each other as Mr. Hunter escorted Caroline to the tank and introduced her to the eel’s owner, a dark-looking little creature named Horace Suddfield.

Grey nudged Nicholls aside and plunged into the crowd, elbowing his way ruthlessly to the front.

Hunter spotted him and beamed.

“Have you any metal remaining in your chest, Major?”

“Have I—what?”

“Metal,” Hunter repeated. “Arthur Longstreet described to me the operation in which he removed thirty-seven pieces of metal from your chest—most impressive. If any bits remain, though, I must advise you against trying the eel. Metal conducts electricity, you see, and the chance of burns—”

Nicholls had made his way through the throng as well, and gave an unpleasant laugh, hearing this.

“A good excuse, Major,” he said, a noticeable jeer in his voice.

He was very drunk indeed, Grey thought. Still—

“No, I haven’t,” he said abruptly.

“Excellent,” Suddfield said politely. “A soldier, I understand you are, sir? A bold gentleman, I perceive—who better to take first place?”

And before Grey could protest, he found himself next to the tank, Caroline Woodford’s hand clutching his, her other held by Nicholls, who was glaring malevolently.

“Are we all arranged, ladies and gentlemen?” Suddfield cried. “How many, Dobbs?”

“Forty-five!” came a call from his assistant from the next room, through which the line of participants snaked, joined hand to hand and twitching with excitement, the rest of the party standing well back, agog.

“All touching, all touching?” Suddfield cried. “Take a firm grip of your friends, please, a very firm grip!” He turned to Grey, his small face alight. “Go ahead, sir! Grip it tightly, please—just there, just there before the tail!”

Disregarding his better judgement and the consequences to his lace cuff, Grey set his jaw and plunged his hand into the water.

In the split second when he grasped the slimy thing, he expected something like the snap one got from touching a Leiden jar and making it spark. Then he was flung violently backwards, every muscle in his body contorted, and he found himself on the floor, thrashing like a landed fish, gasping in a vain attempt to recall how to breathe.

The surgeon, Mr. Hunter, squatted next to him, observing him with bright-eyed interest.

“How do you feel?” he inquired. “Dizzy, at all?”

Grey shook his head, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish’s, and with some effort, thumped his chest.

Thus invited, Mr. Hunter leaned down at once, unbuttoned Grey’s waistcoat and pressed an ear to his shirtfront. Whatever he heard—or didn’t—seemed to alarm him, for he jerked up, clenched both fists together and brought them down on Grey’s chest with a thud that reverberated to his backbone.

This blow had the salutary effect of forcing breath out of his lungs; they filled again by reflex, and suddenly, he remembered how to breathe. His heart also seemed to have been recalled to a sense of its duty, and began beating again. He sat up, fending off another blow from Mr. Hunter, and sat blinking at the carnage round him.

The floor was filled with bodies. Some still writhing, some lying still, limbs outflung in abandonment, some already recovered and being helped to their feet by friends. Excited exclamations filled the air, and Suddfield stood by his eel, beaming with pride and accepting congratulations. The eel itself seemed annoyed; it was swimming round in circles, angrily switching its heavy body.

Edwin Nicholls was on hands and knees, Grey saw, rising slowly to his feet. He reached down to grasp Caroline Woodford’s arms and help her to rise. This she did, but so awkwardly that she lost her balance and fell face-first into Mr. Nicholls. He in turn lost his own balance and sat down hard, the Honorable Caroline atop him. Whether from shock, excitement, drink, or simple boorishness, he seized the moment—and Caroline—and planted a hearty kiss upon her astonished lips.

Matters thereafter were somewhat confused. He had a vague impression that he had broken Nicholls’s nose—and there was a set of burst and swollen knuckles on his right hand to give weight to the supposition. There was a lot of noise, though, and he had the disconcerting feeling of not being altogether firmly confined within his own body. Parts of him seemed to be constantly drifting off, escaping the outlines of his flesh.

What was still inside was distinctly jangled. His hearing—still somewhat impaired from the cannon explosion a few months before—had given up entirely under the strain of electric shock. That is, he could still hear, but what he heard made no sense. Random words reached him through a fog of buzzing and ringing, but he could not connect them sensibly to the moving mouths around him. He wasn’t at all sure that his own voice was saying what he meant it to, for that matter.

He was surrounded by voices, faces—a sea of feverish sound and movement. People touched him, pulled him, pushed him. He flung out an arm, trying as much to discover where it was as to strike anyone, but felt the impact of flesh. More noise. Here and there a face he recognized: Lucinda, shocked and furious; Caroline, distraught, her red hair disheveled and coming down, all its powder lost.

The net result of everything was that he was not positive whether he had called Nicholls out, or the reverse. Surely Nicholls must have challenged him? He had a vivid recollection of Nicholls, gore-soaked handkerchief held to his nose and a homicidal light in his narrowed eyes. But then he’d found himself outside, in his shirtsleeves, standing in the little park that fronted the Joffreys’ house, with a pistol in his hand. He wouldn’t have chosen to fight with a strange pistol, would he?

Maybe Nicholls had insulted him, and he had called Nicholls out without quite realizing it?

It had rained earlier, was chilly now; wind was whipping his shirt round his body. His sense of smell was remarkably acute; it seemed to be the only thing working properly. He smelled smoke from the chimneys, the damp green of the plants, and his own sweat, oddly metallic. And something faintly foul—something redolent of mud and slime. By reflex, he rubbed the hand that had touched the eel against his breeches.

Someone was saying something to him. With difficulty, he fixed his attention on Dr. Hunter, standing by his side, still with that look of penetrating interest. Well, of course. They’d need a surgeon, he thought dimly. Have to have a surgeon at a duel.

“Yes,” he said, seeing Hunter’s eyebrows raised in inquiry of some sort. Then, seized by a belated fear that he had just promised his body to the surgeon were he killed, seized Hunter’s coat with his free hand.

“You . . . don’t . . . touch me,” he said. “No . . . knives. Ghoul,” he added for good measure, finally locating the word.

Hunter nodded, seeming unoffended.

The sky was overcast, the only light that shed by the distant torches at the house’s entrance. Nicholls was a whitish blur, coming closer.

Suddenly someone grabbed Grey, turned him forcibly about, and he found himself back to back with Nicholls, the bigger man’s heat startling, so near.

Shit, he thought suddenly. Is he any kind of a shot?

Someone spoke and he began to walk—he thought he was walking—until an outthrust arm stopped him, and he turned in answer to someone pointing urgently behind him.

Oh, hell, he thought wearily, seeing Nicholls’s arm come down. I don’t care.

He blinked at the muzzle-flash—the report was lost in the shocked gasp from the crowd—and stood for a moment, wondering whether he’d been hit. Nothing seemed amiss, though, and someone nearby was urging him to fire.

Frigging poet, he thought. I’ll delope and have done. I want to go home. He raised his arm, aiming straight up into the air, but his arm lost contact with his brain for an instant, and his wrist sagged. He jerked, correcting it, and his hand tensed on the trigger. He had barely time to jerk the barrel aside, firing wildly.

To his surprise, Nicholls staggered a bit, then sat down on the grass. He sat propped on one hand, the other clutched dramatically to his shoulder, head thrown back.

It was raining quite hard by now. Grey blinked water off his lashes and shook his head. The air tasted sharp, like cut metal, and for an instant, he had the impression that it smelled . . . purple.

“That can’t be right,” he said aloud, and found that his ability to speak seemed to have come back. He turned to speak to Hunter, but the surgeon had, of course, darted across to Nicholls, was peering down the neck of the poet’s shirt. There was blood on it, Grey saw, but Nicholls was refusing to lie down, gesturing vigorously with his free hand. Blood was running down his face from his nose; perhaps that was it.

“Come away, sir,” said a quiet voice at his side. “It’ll be bad for Lady Jof-frey, else.”

“What?” He looked, surprised, to find Richard Tarleton, who had been his ensign in Germany, now in the uniform of a lieutenant in the Lancers. “Oh. Yes, it will.” Dueling was illegal in London; for the police to arrest Lucinda’s guests before her house would be a scandal—not something that would please her husband, Sir Richard, at all.

The crowd had already melted away, as though the rain had rendered them soluble. The torches by the door had been extinguished. Nicholls was being helped off by Hunter and someone else, lurching away through the increasing rain. Grey shivered. God knew where his coat or cloak was.

“Let’s go, then,” he said.

Grey opened his eyes.

“Did you say something, Tom?”

Tom Byrd, his valet, had produced a cough like a chimney sweep’s, at a distance of approximately one foot from Grey’s ear. Seeing that he had obtained his employer’s attention, he presented the chamber pot at port arms.

“His Grace is downstairs, me lord. With Her Ladyship.”

Grey blinked at the window behind Tom, where the open drapes showed a dim square of rainy light.

“Her Ladyship? What, the duchess?” What could have happened? It couldn’t be past nine o’clock. His sister-in-law never paid calls before afternoon, and he had never known her to go anywhere with his brother during the day.

“No, me lord. The little ’un.”

“The little—oh. My god daughter?” He sat up, feeling well but strange, and took the utensil from Tom.

“Yes, me lord. His Grace said as he wants to speak to you about ‘the events of last night.’ ” Tom had crossed to the window and was looking censoriously at the remnants of Grey’s shirt and breeches, these stained with grass, mud, blood, and powder, and flung carelessly over the back of the chair. He turned a reproachful eye on Grey, who closed his own, trying to recall exactly what the events of last night had been.

He felt somewhat odd. Not drunk, he hadn’t been drunk; he had no headache, no uneasiness of digestion. . . .

“Last night,” he repeated, uncertain. Last night had been confused, but he did remember it. The eel party. Lucinda Joffrey, Caroline . . . why on earth ought Hal to be concerned with . . . what, the duel? Why should his brother care about such a silly affair—and even if he did, why appear at Grey’s door at the crack of dawn with his six-month-old daughter?

It was more the time of day than the child’s presence that was unusual; his brother often did take his daughter out, with the feeble excuse that the child needed air. His wife accused him of wanting to show the baby off—she was beautiful—but Grey thought the cause somewhat more straightforward. His ferocious, autocratic, dictatorial brother, Colonel of his own regiment, terror of both his own troops and his enemies—had fallen in love with his daughter. The regiment would leave for its new posting within a month’s time. Hal simply couldn’t bear to have her out of his sight.

Thus, he found the Duke of Pardloe seated in the morning room, Lady Dorothea Jacqueline Benedicta Grey cradled in his arm, gnawing on a rusk her father held for her. Her wet silk bonnet, her tiny rabbit-fur bunting, and several letters, some already opened, lay upon the table at the Duke’s elbow.

Hal glanced up at him.

“I’ve ordered your breakfast. Say hallo to Uncle John, Dottie.” He turned the baby gently round. She didn’t remove her attention from the rusk, but made a small chirping noise.

“Hallo, sweetheart.” John leaned over and kissed the top of her head, covered with a soft blond down and slightly damp. “Having a nice outing with Daddy in the pouring rain?”

“We brought you something.” Hal picked up the opened letter and, raising an eyebrow at his brother, handed it to him.

Grey raised an eyebrow back and began to read.

“What!” He looked up from the sheet, mouth open.

“Yes, that’s what I said,” Hal agreed cordially, “when it was delivered to my door, just before dawn.” He reached for the sealed letter, carefully balancing the baby. “Here, this one’s yours. It came just after dawn.”

Grey dropped the first letter as though it were on fire, and seized the second, ripping it open.

“Oh, John,” it read without preamble, “forgive me, I couldn’t stop him, I really couldn’t, I’m so sorry. I told him, but he wouldn’t listen. I’d run away, but I don’t know where to go. Please, please do something!” It wasn’t signed, but didn’t need to be. He’d recognized the Honorable Caroline Woodford’s writing, scribbled and frantic as it was. The paper was blotched and puckered—with tearstains?

He shook his head violently, as though to clear it, then picked up the first letter again. It was just as he’d read it the first time—a formal demand from Alfred, Lord Enderby, to His Grace the Duke of Pardloe, for satisfaction regarding the injury to the honor of his sister, the Honorable Caroline Wood-ford, by the agency of His Grace’s brother, Lord John Grey.

Grey glanced from one document to the other, several times, then looked at his brother.

“What the devil?”

“I gather you had an eventful evening,” Hal said, grunting slightly as he bent to retrieve the rusk Dottie had dropped on the carpet. “No, darling, you don’t want that anymore.”

Dottie disagreed violently with this assertion, and was distracted only by Uncle John picking her up and blowing in her ear.

“Eventful,” he repeated. “Yes, it was, rather. But I didn’t do anything to Caroline Woodford save hold her hand whilst being shocked by an electric eel, I swear it. Gleeglgleeglgleegl-pppppssssshhhhh,” he added to Dottie, who shrieked and giggled in response. He glanced up to find Hal staring at him.

“Lucinda Joffrey’s party,” he amplified. “Surely you and Minnie were invited?”

Hal grunted. “Oh. Yes, we were, but I had a prior engagement. Minnie didn’t mention the eel. What’s this I hear about you fighting a duel over the girl, though?”

“What? It wasn’t—” He stopped, trying to think. “Well, perhaps it was, come to think. Nicholls—you know, that swine who wrote the ode to Minnie’s feet?—he kissed Miss Woodford, and she didn’t want him to, so I punched him. Who told you about the duel?”

“Richard Tarleton. He came into White’s card-room late last night, and said he’d just seen you home.”

“Well, then, you likely know as much about it as I do. Oh, you want Daddy back now, do you?” He handed Dottie back to his brother and brushed at a damp patch of saliva on the shoulder of his coat.

“I suppose that’s what Enderby’s getting at.” Hal nodded at the Earl’s letter. “That you made the poor girl publicly conspicuous and compromised her virtue by fighting a scandalous duel over her. I suppose he’s got a point.”

Dottie was now gumming her father’s knuckle, making little growling noises. Hal dug in his pocket and came out with a silver teething ring, which he offered her in lieu of his finger, meanwhile giving Grey a sidelong look.

“You don’t want to marry Caroline Woodford, do you? That’s what Enderby’s demand amounts to.”

“God, no.” Caroline was a good friend—bright, pretty, and given to mad escapades, but marriage? Him?

Hal nodded.

“Lovely girl, but you’d end in Newgate or Bedlam within a month.”

“Or dead,” Grey said, gingerly picking at the bandage Tom had insisted on wrapping round his knuckles. “How’s Nicholls this morning, do you know?”

“Ah.” Hal rocked back a little, drawing a deep breath. “Well . . . dead, actually. I had rather a nasty letter from his father, accusing you of murder. That one came over breakfast; didn’t think to bring it. Did you mean to kill him?”

Grey sat down quite suddenly, all the blood having left his head.

“No,” he whispered. His lips felt stiff and his hands had gone numb. “Oh, Jesus. No.”

Hal swiftly pulled his snuff box from his pocket, one-handed, dumped out the vial of smelling-salts he kept in it and handed it to his brother. Grey was grateful; he hadn’t been going to faint, but the assault of ammoniac fumes gave him an excuse for watering eyes and congested breathing.

“Jesus,” he repeated, and sneezed explosively several times in a row. “I didn’t aim to kill—I swear it, Hal. I deloped. Or tried to,” he added honestly.

Lord Enderby’s letter suddenly made more sense, as did Hal’s presence. What had been a silly affair that should have disappeared with the morning dew had become—or would, directly the gossip had time to spread—not merely a scandal, but quite possibly something worse. It was not unthinkable that he might be arrested for murder. Quite without warning, the figured carpet yawned at his feet, an abyss into which his life might vanish.

Hal nodded, and gave him his own handkerchief.

“I know,” he said quietly. “Things . . . happen sometimes. That you don’t intend—that you’d give your life to have back.”

Grey wiped his face, glancing at his brother under cover of the gesture. Hal looked suddenly older than his years, his face drawn by more than worry over Grey.

“Nathaniel Twelvetrees, you mean?” Normally, he wouldn’t have mentioned that matter, but both men’s guards were down.

Hal gave him a sharp look, then looked away.

“No, not Twelvetrees. I hadn’t any choice about that. And I did mean to kill him. I meant . . . what led to that duel.” He grimaced. “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” He looked at the note on the table and shook his head. His hand passed gently over Dottie’s head. “I won’t have you repeat my mistakes, John,” he said quietly.

Grey nodded, wordless. Hal’s first wife had been seduced by Nathaniel Twelvetrees. Hal’s mistakes notwithstanding, Grey had never intended marriage with anyone, and didn’t now.

Hal frowned, tapping the folded letter on the table in thought. He darted a glance at John and sighed, then set the letter down, reached into his coat and withdrew two further documents, one clearly official, from its seal.

“Your new commission,” he said, handing it over. “For Krefeld,” he said, raising an eyebrow at his brother’s look of blank incomprehension. “You were brevetted lieutenant-colonel. You didn’t remember?”

“I—well . . . not exactly.” He had a vague feeling that someone—probably Hal—had told him about it, soon after Krefeld, but he’d been badly wounded then, and in no frame of mind to think about the army, let alone to care about battlefield promotion. Later—

“Wasn’t there some confusion over it?” Grey took the commission and opened it, frowning. “I thought they’d changed their minds.”

“Oh, you do remember, then,” Hal said, eyebrow still cocked. “General Wiedman gave it you after the battle. The confirmation was held up, though, because of the inquiry into the cannon explosion, and then the . . . ah . . . kerfuffle over Adams.”

“Oh.” Grey was still shaken by the news of Nicholls’s death, but mention of Adams started his brain functioning again. “Adams. Oh. You mean Twelvetrees held up the commission?” Colonel Reginald Twelvetrees, of the Royal Artillery—brother to Nathaniel, and cousin to Bernard Adams, the traitor awaiting trial in the Tower, as a result of Grey’s efforts the preceding autumn.

“Yes. Bastard,” Hal added dispassionately. “I’ll have him for breakfast, one of these days.”

“Not on my account, I hope,” Grey said dryly.

“Oh, no,” Hal assured him, jiggling his daughter gently to prevent her fussing. “It will be a purely personal pleasure.”

Grey smiled at that, despite his disquiet, and put down the commission. “Right,” he said, with a glance at the fourth document, which still lay folded on the table. It was an official-looking letter, and had been opened; the seal was broken. “A proposal of marriage, a denunciation for murder, and a new commission—what the devil’s that one? A bill from my tailor?”

“Ah, that. I didn’t mean to show it to you,” Hal said, leaning carefully to hand it over without dropping Dottie. “But under the circumstances . . .”

He waited, noncommittal, as Grey opened the letter and read it. It was a request—or an order, depending how you looked at it—for the attendance of Major Lord John Grey at the court-martial of one Captain Charles Carruthers, to serve as witness of character for the same. In . . .

“In Canada?” John’s exclamation startled Dottie, who crumpled up her face and threatened to cry.

“Hush, sweetheart.” Hal jiggled faster, hastily patting her back. “It’s all right; only Uncle John being an ass.”

Grey ignored this, waving the letter at his brother.

“What the devil is Charlie Carruthers being court-martialed for? And why on earth am I being summoned as a character witness?”

“Failure to suppress a mutiny,” Hal said. “As to why you—he asked for you, apparently. An officer under charges is allowed to call his own witnesses, for whatever purpose. Didn’t you know that?”

Grey supposed that he had, in an academic sort of way. But he had never attended a court-martial himself; it wasn’t a common proceeding, and he had no real idea of the shape of the proceedings.

He glanced sideways at Hal.

“You say you didn’t mean to show it to me?”

Hal shrugged, and blew softly over the top of his daughter’s head, making the short blond hairs furrow and rise like wheat in the wind.

“No point. I meant to write back and say that as your commanding officer, I required you here; why should you be dragged off to the wilds of Canada? But given your talent for awkward situations . . . what did it feel like?” he inquired curiously.

“What did—oh, the eel.” Grey was accustomed to his brother’s lightning shifts of conversation, and made the adjustment easily. “Well, it was rather a shock.”

He laughed—if tremulously—at Hal’s glower, and Dottie squirmed round in her father’s arms, reaching out her own plump little arms appealingly to her uncle.

“Flirt,” he told her, taking her from Hal. “No, really, it was remarkable. You know how it feels when you break a bone? That sort of jolt before you feel the pain, that goes right through you, and you go blind for a moment and feel like someone’s driven a nail through your belly? It was like that, only much stronger, and it went on for longer. Stopped my breath,” he admitted. “Quite literally. And my heart, too, I think. Dr. Hunter—you know, the anatomist?—was there, and pounded on my chest to get it started again.”

Hal was listening with close attention, and asked several questions, which Grey answered automatically, his mind occupied with this latest surprising communiqué.

Charlie Carruthers. They’d been young officers together, though from different regiments. Fought beside one another in Scotland, gone round London together for a bit on their next leave. They’d had—well, you couldn’t call it an affair. Three or four brief encounters—sweating, breathless quarters of an hour in dark corners that could be conveniently forgotten in daylight, or shrugged off as the result of drunkennness, not spoken of by either party.

That had been in the Bad Time, as he thought of it; those years after Hector’s death, when he’d sought oblivion wherever he could find it—and found it often—before slowly recovering himself.

Likely he wouldn’t have recalled Carruthers at all, save for the one thing.

Carruthers had been born with an interesting deformity—he had a double hand. While Carruthers’s right hand was normal in appearance and worked quite as usual, there was another, dwarf hand that sprang from his wrist and nestled neatly against its larger partner. Dr. Hunter would probably pay hundreds for that hand, Grey thought with a mild lurch of the stomach.

The dwarf hand had only two short fingers and a stubby thumb—but Carruthers could open and close it, though not without also opening and closing the larger one. The shock when Carruthers had closed both of them simultaneously on Grey’s prick had been nearly as extraordinary as had the electric eel’s.

“Nicholls hasn’t been buried yet, has he?” he asked abruptly, the thought of the eel party and Dr. Hunter causing him to interrupt some remark of Hal’s.

Hal looked surprised.

“Surely not. Why?” He narrowed his eyes at Grey. “You don’t mean to attend the funeral, surely?”

“No, no,” Grey said hastily. “I was only thinking of Dr. Hunter. He, um, has a certain reputation . . . and Nicholls did go off with him. After the duel.”

“A reputation as what, for God’s sake?” Hal demanded impatiently.

“As a body-snatcher,” Grey blurted.

There was a sudden silence, awareness dawning in Hal’s face. He’d gone pale.

“You don’t think—no! How could he?”

“A . . . um . . . hundredweight or so of stones being substituted just prior to the coffin’s being nailed shut is the usual method—or so I’ve heard,” Grey said, as well as he could with Dottie’s fist being poked up his nose.

Hal swallowed. Grey could see the hairs rise on his wrist.

“I’ll ask Harry,” Hal said, after a short silence. “The funeral can’t have been arranged yet, and if . . .”

Both brothers shuddered reflexively, imagining all too exactly the scene as an agitated family member insisted upon raising the coffin lid, to find . . .

“Maybe better not,” Grey said, swallowing. Dottie had left off trying to remove his nose and was patting her tiny hand over his lips as he talked. The feel of it on his skin . . .

He peeled her gently off and gave her back to Hal.

“I don’t know what use Charles Carruthers thinks I might be to him—but all right, I’ll go.” He glanced at Lord Enderby’s note, Caroline’s crumpled missive. “After all, I suppose there are worse things than being scalped by Red Indians.”

Hal nodded, sober.

“I’ve arranged your sailing. You leave tomorrow.” He stood and lifted Dottie. “Here, sweetheart. Kiss your uncle John good-bye.”

A month later, Grey found himself, Tom Byrd at his side, climbing off the Harwood and into one of the small boats that would land them and the battalion of Louisbourg grenadiers with whom they had been traveling on a large island near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.

He had never seen anything like it. The river itself was larger than any he had ever seen, nearly half a mile across, running wide and deep, a dark blue-black under the sun. Great cliffs and undulating hills rose on either side of the river, so thickly forested that the underlying stone was nearly invisible. It was hot, and the sky arched brilliant overhead, much brighter and much wider than any sky he had seen before. A loud hum echoed from the lush growth—insects, he supposed, birds, and the rush of the water, though it felt as though the wilderness were singing to itself, in a voice heard only in his blood. Beside him, Tom was fairly vibrating with excitement, his eyes out on stalks, not to miss anything.

“Cor, is that a Red Indian?” he whispered, leaning close to Grey in the boat.

“I don’t suppose he can be anything else,” Grey replied, as the gentleman loitering by the landing was naked save for a breech-clout, a striped blanket slung over one shoulder, and a coating of what—from the shimmer of his limbs—appeared to be grease of some kind.

“I thought they’d be redder,” Tom said, echoing Grey’s own thought. The Indian’s skin was considerably darker than Grey’s own, to be sure, but a rather pleasant soft brown in color, something like dried oak leaves. The Indian appeared to find them nearly as interesting as they had found him; he was eyeing Grey in particular with intent consideration.

“It’s your hair, me lord,” Tom hissed in Grey’s ear. “I told you you ought to have worn a wig.”

“Nonsense, Tom.” At the same time, Grey experienced an odd frisson up the back of the neck, constricting his scalp. Vain of his hair, which was blond and thick, he didn’t commonly wear a wig, choosing instead to bind and powder his own for formal occasions. The present occasion wasn’t formal in the least. With the advent of fresh water aboard, Tom had insisted upon washing his hair that morning, and it was still spread loose upon his shoulders, though it had long since dried.

The boat crunched on the shingle, and the Indian flung aside his blanket and came to help the men run it up the shore. Grey found himself next the man, close enough to smell him. He smelled quite unlike anyone Grey had ever encountered; gamy, certainly—he wondered, with a small thrill, whether the grease the man wore might be bear-fat—but with the tang of herbs and a sweat like fresh-sheared copper.

Straightening up from the gunwale, the Indian caught Grey’s eye and smiled.

“You be careful, Englishman,” he said, in a voice with a noticeable French accent, and reaching out, ran his fingers quite casually through Grey’s loose hair. “Your scalp would look good on a Huron’s belt.”

This made the soldiers from the boat all laugh, and the Indian, still smiling, turned to them.

“They are not so particular, the Abenaki who work for the French. A scalp is a scalp—and the French pay well for one, no matter what color.” He nodded genially to the grenadiers, who had stopped laughing. “You come with me.”

There was a small camp on the island already; a detachment of infantry under a Captain Woodford—whose name gave Grey a slight wariness, but who turned out to be no relation, thank God, to Lord Enderby’s family.

“We’re fairly safe on this side of the island,” he told Grey, offering him a flask of brandy outside his own tent after supper. “But the Indians raid the other side regularly—I lost four men last week, three killed and one carried off.”

“You have your own scouts, though?” Grey asked, slapping at the mosquitoes that had begun to swarm in the dusk. He had not seen the Indian who had brought them to the camp again, but there were several more in camp, mostly clustered together around their own fire, but one or two squatting among the Louisbourg grenadiers who had crossed with Grey on the Harwood, bright-eyed and watchful.

“Yes, and trustworthy for the most part,” Woodford said, answering Grey’s unasked question. He laughed, though not with any humor. “At least we hope so.”

Woodford gave him supper, and they had a hand of cards, Grey exchanging news of home for gossip of the current campaign.

General Wolfe had spent no little time at Montmorency, below the town of Quebec, but had nothing but disappointment from his attempts there, and so had abandoned that post, regathering the main body of his troops some miles upstream from the Citadel of Quebec. A so-far impregnable fortress, perched on sheer cliffs above the river, commanding both the river and the plains to the west with her cannon, obliging English warships to steal past under cover of night—and not always successfully.

“Wolfe’ll be champing at the bit, now his grenadiers are come,” Wood-ford predicted. “He puts great store by those fellows, fought with ’em at Louisbourg. Here, Colonel, you’re being eaten alive—try a bit of this on your hands and face.” He dug about in his campaign chest and came up with a tin of strong-smelling grease, which he pushed across the table.

“Bear-grease and mint,” he explained. “The Indians use it—that, or cover themselves with mud.”

Grey helped himself liberally; the scent wasn’t quite the same as what he had smelled earlier on the scout, but it was very similar, and he felt an odd sense of disturbance in its application. Though it did discourage the biting insects.

He had made no secret of the reason for his presence, and now asked openly about Carruthers.

“Where is he held, do you know?”

Woodford frowned and poured more brandy.

“He’s not. He’s paroled; has a billet in the town at Gareon, where Wolfe’s headquarters are.”

“Ah?” Grey was mildly surprised—but then, Carruthers was not charged with mutiny, but rather with failure to suppress one—a rare charge. “Do you know the particulars of the case?”

Woodford opened his mouth, as though to speak, but then drew a deep breath, shook his head, and drank brandy. From which Grey deduced that probably everyone knew the particulars, but that there was something fishy about the affair. Well, time enough. He’d hear about the matter directly from Carruthers.

Conversation became general, and after a time, Grey said good-night. The grenadiers had been busy; a new little city of canvas tents had sprung up at the edge of the existing camp, and the appetizing smells of fresh meat roasting and brewing tea were rising on the air.

Tom had doubtless managed to raise his own tent, somewhere in the mass. He was in no hurry to find it, though; he was enjoying the novel sensations of firm footing and solitude, after weeks of crowded shipboard life. He cut outside the orderly rows of new tents, walking just beyond the glow of the firelight, feeling pleasantly invisible, though still close enough for safety—or at least he hoped so. The forest stood only a few yards beyond, the outlines of trees and bushes still just visible, the dark not quite complete.

A drifting spark of green drew his eye, and he felt delight well up in him. There was another . . . another . . . ten, a dozen, and the air was suddenly full of fireflies, soft green sparks that winked on and off, glowing like tiny distant candles among the dark foliage. He’d seen fireflies once or twice before, in Germany, but never in such abundance. They were simple magic, pure as moonlight.

He could not have said how long he watched them, wandering slowly along the edge of the encampment, but at last he sighed and turned toward the center, full-fed, pleasantly tired, and with no immediate responsibility to do anything. He had no troops under his command, no reports to write . . . nothing, really, to do until he reached Gareon and Charlie Carruthers.

With a sigh of peace, he closed the flap of his tent and shucked his outer clothing.

He was roused abruptly from the edge of sleep by screams and shouts, and sat bolt upright. Tom, who had been asleep on his bedsack at Grey’s feet, sprang up like a frog onto hands and knees, scrabbling madly for pistol and shot in the chest.

Not waiting, Grey seized the dagger he had hung on the tent-peg before retiring, and flinging back the flap, peered out. Men were rushing to and fro, colliding with tents, shouting orders, yelling for help. There was a glow in the sky, a reddening of the low-hanging clouds.

“Fire-ships!” someone shouted. Grey shoved his feet into his shoes and joined the throng of men now rushing toward the water.

Out in the center of the broad dark river stood the bulk of the Harwood, at anchor. And coming slowly down upon her were one, two, and then three blazing vessels—a raft, stacked with flammable waste, doused with oil and set afire. A small boat, its mast and sail flaming bright against the night. Something else—an Indian canoe, with a heap of burning grass and leaves? Too far to see, but it was coming closer.

He glanced at the ship and saw movement on deck—too far to make out individual men, but things were happening. The ship couldn’t raise anchor and sail away, not in time—but she was lowering her boats, sailors setting out to try to deflect the fire-ships, keep them away from the Harwood.

Absorbed in the sight, he had not noticed the shrieks and shouts still coming from the other side of the camp. But now, as the men on the shore fell silent, watching the fire-ships, they began to stir, realizing belatedly that something else was afoot.

“Indians,” the man beside Grey said suddenly as a particularly high, ululating screech split the air. “Indians!”

This cry became general, and everyone began to rush in the other direction.

“Stop! Halt!” Grey flung out an arm, catching a man across the throat and knocking him flat. He raised his voice in the vain hope of stopping the rush. “You! You and you—seize your neighbor, come with me!” The man he had knocked down bounced up again, white-eyed in the starlight.

“It may be a trap!” Grey shouted. “Stay here! Stand to your arms!”

“Stand! Stand!” A short gentleman in his nightshirt took up the cry in a cast-iron bellow, adding to its effect by seizing a dead branch from the ground and laying about himself, turning back those trying to get past him to the encampment.

Another spark grew upstream, and another beyond it: more fire-ships. The boats were in the water now, mere dots in the darkness. If they could fend off the fire-ships, the Harwood might be saved from immediate destruction; Grey’s fear was that whatever was going on in the rear of the encampment was a ruse designed to pull men away from the shore, leaving the ship protected only by her marines, should the French then send down a barge loaded with explosives, or a boarding craft, hoping to elude detection whilst everyone was dazzled or occupied by the blazing fire-ships and the raid.

The first of the fire-ships had drifted harmlessly onto the far shore, and was burning itself out on the sand, brilliant and beautiful against the night. The short gentleman with the remarkable voice—clearly he was a sergeant, Grey thought—had succeeded in rallying a small group of soldiers, whom he now presented to Grey with a brisk salute.

“Will they go and fetch their muskets, all orderly, sir?”

“They will,” Grey said. “And hurry. Go with them, Sergeant—it is sergeant?”

“Sergeant Aloysius Cutter, sir,” the short gentleman replied with a nod, “and pleased to know an officer what has a brain in his head.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. And fetch back as many more men as fall conveniently to hand, if you please. With arms. A rifleman or two, if you can find one.”

Matters thus momentarily attended to, he turned his attention once more to the river, where two of the Harwood’s small boats were herding one of the fire-ships away from the transport, circling it and pushing water with their oars; he caught the splash of their efforts, and the shouts of the sailors.

“Me lord?”

The voice at his elbow nearly made him swallow his tongue. He turned with an attempt at calmness, ready to reproach Tom for venturing out into the chaos, but before he could summon words, his young valet stooped at his feet, holding something.

“I’ve brought your breeches, me lord,” Tom said, voice trembling. “Thought you might need ’em, if there was fighting.”

“Very thoughtful of you, Tom,” he assured his valet, fighting an urge to laugh. He stepped into the breeches and pulled them up, tucking in his shirt. “What’s been happening in the camp, do you know?”

He could hear Tom swallow hard.

“Indians, me lord,” Tom said. “They came screaming through the tents, set one or two afire. They killed one man I saw, and . . . and scalped him.” His voice was thick, as though he might be about to vomit. “It was nasty.”

“I daresay.” The night was warm, but Grey felt the hairs rise on arms and neck. The chilling screams had stopped, and while he could still hear considerable hubbub in the camp, it was of a different tone now; no random shouting, just the calls of officers, sergeants, and corporals ordering the men, beginning the process of assembly, of counting noses and reckoning damage.

Tom, bless him, had brought Grey’s pistol, shot-bag, and powder, as well as his coat and stockings. Aware of the dark forest and the long, narrow trail between the shore and the camp, Grey didn’t send Tom back, but merely told him to keep out of the way as Sergeant Cutter—who with good military instinct, had also taken time to put his breeches on—came up with his armed recruits.

“All present, sir,” Cutter said, saluting. “ ’Oom ’ave I the honor of h’addressing, sir?”

“I am Lieutenant-Colonel Grey. Set your men to watch the ship, please, Sergeant, with particular attention to dark craft coming downstream, and then come back to report what you know of matters in camp.”

Cutter saluted and promptly vanished with a shout of “Come on, you shower o’ shit! Look lively, look lively!”

Tom gave a brief strangled scream, and Grey whirled, drawing his dagger by reflex, to find a dark shape directly behind him.

“Don’t kill me, Englishman,” said the Indian who had led them to the camp earlier. He sounded mildly amused. “Le capitaine sent me to find you.”

“Why?” Grey asked shortly. His heart was still pounding from the shock. He disliked being taken at a disadvantage, and disliked even more the thought that the man could easily have killed him before Grey knew he was there.

“The Abenaki set your tent on fire; he supposed they might have dragged you and your servant into the forest.”

Tom uttered an extremely coarse expletive and made as though to dive directly into the trees, but Grey stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Stay, Tom. It doesn’t matter.”

“The bloody hell you say,” Tom replied heatedly, agitation depriving him of his normal manners. “I daresay I can find you more smallclothes, not as that will be easy, but what about your cousin’s painting of her and the little ’un she sent for Captain Stubbs? What about your good hat with the gold lace!”

Grey had a brief moment of alarm—his young cousin Olivia had sent a miniature of herself and her newborn son, charging him to deliver this to her husband, Captain Malcolm Stubbs, presently with Wolfe’s troops. He clapped a hand to his side, though, and felt with relief the oval shape of the miniature in its wrappings, safe in his pocket.

“That’s all right, Tom; I’ve got it. As to the hat . . . we’ll worry about that later, I think. Here—what is your name, sir?” he inquired of the Indian, unwilling to address him simply as you.

“Manoke,” said the Indian, still sounding amused.

“Quite. Will you take my servant back to the camp?” He saw the small determined figure of Sergeant Cutter appear at the mouth of the trail, and firmly overriding Tom’s protests, shooed him off in care of the Indian.

In the event, all five fire-ships either drifted or were steered away from the Harwood. Something that might—or might not—have been a boarding craft did appear upstream, but was frightened off by Grey’s impromptu troops on the shore, firing volleys—though the range was woefully short; there was no possibility of hitting anything.

Still, the Harwood was secure, and the camp had settled into a state of uneasy watchfulness. Grey had seen Woodford briefly upon his return, near dawn, and learned that the raid had resulted in the deaths of two men and the capture of three more, dragged off into the forest. Three of the Indian raiders had been killed, another wounded—Woodford intended to interview this man before he died, but doubted that any useful information would result.

“They never talk,” he’d said, rubbing at his smoke-reddened eyes. His face was pouchy and gray with fatigue. “They just close their eyes and start singing their damned deathsongs. Not a blind bit of difference what you do to ’em—they just keep singing.”

Grey had heard it, or thought he had, as he crawled wearily into his borrowed shelter toward daybreak. A faint high-pitched chant that rose and fell like the rush of the wind in the trees overhead. It kept up for a bit, then stopped abruptly, only to resume again, faint and interrupted, as he teetered on the edge of sleep.

What was the man saying? he wondered. Did it matter that none of the men hearing him knew what he said? Perhaps the scout—Manoke, that was his name—was there; perhaps he would know.

Tom had found Grey a small tent at the end of a row. Probably he had ejected some subaltern, but Grey wasn’t inclined to object. It was barely big enough for the canvas bedsack that lay on the ground and a box that served as table, on which stood an empty candlestick, but it was shelter. It had begun to rain lightly as he walked up the trail to camp, and the rain was now pattering busily on the canvas overhead, raising a sweet musty scent. If the deathsong continued, it was no longer audible over the sound of the rain.

Grey turned over once, the grass stuffing of the bedsack rustling softly beneath him, and fell at once into sleep.

He woke abruptly, face-to-face with an Indian. His reflexive flurry of movement was met with a low chuckle and a slight withdrawal, rather than a knife across the throat, though, and he broke through the fog of sleep in time to avoid doing serious damage to the scout Manoke.

“What?” he muttered, and rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. “What is it?” And why the devil are you lying on my bed?

In answer to this, the Indian put a hand behind his head, drew him close, and kissed him. The man’s tongue ran lightly across his lower lip, darted like a lizard’s into his mouth, and then was gone.

So was the Indian.

He rolled over onto his back, blinking. A dream. It was still raining, harder now. He breathed in deeply; he could smell bear-grease, of course, on his own skin, and mint—was there any hint of metal? The light was stronger—it must be day; he heard the drummer passing through the aisles of tents to rouse the men, the rattle of his sticks blending with the rattle of the rain, the shouts of corporals and sergeants—but still faint and gray. He could not have been asleep for more than half an hour, he thought.

“Christ,” he muttered, and turning himself stiffly over, pulled his coat over his head and sought sleep once again.

The Harwood tacked slowly upriver, with a sharp eye out for French marauders. There were a few alarms, including another raid by hostile Indians while camped on shore. This one ended more happily, with four marauders killed, and only one cook wounded, not seriously. They were obliged to loiter for a time, waiting for a cloudy night, in order to steal past the fortress of Quebec, menacing on its cliffs. They were spotted, in fact, and one or two cannon fired in their direction, but to no effect. And at last came into port at Gareon, the site of General Wolfe’s headquarters.

The town itself had been nearly engulfed by the growing military encampment that surrounded it, acres of tents spreading upward from the settlement on the riverbank, the whole presided over by a small French Catholic mission, whose tiny cross was just visible at the top of the hill that lay behind the town. The French inhabitants, with the political indifference of merchants everywhere, had given a Gallic shrug and set about happily overcharging the occupying forces.

The General himself was elsewhere, Grey was informed, fighting inland, but would doubtless return within the month. A lieutenant-colonel without brief or regimental affiliation was simply a nuisance; he was provided with suitable quarters and politely shooed away. With no immediate duties to fulfill, he gave a shrug of his own and set out to discover the whereabouts of Captain Carruthers.

It wasn’t difficult to find him. The patron of the first tavern Grey visited directed him at once to the habitat of le Capitaine, a room in the house of a widow named Lambert, near the mission church. Grey wondered whether he would have received the information as readily from any other tavern-keeper in the village. Charlie had liked to drink when Grey knew him, and evidently still did, judging from the genial attitude of the patron when Carruthers’s name was mentioned. Not that Grey could blame him, under the circumstances.

The widow—young, chestnut-haired and quite attractive—viewed the English officer at her door with a deep suspicion, but when he followed his request for Captain Carruthers by mentioning that he was an old friend of the Captain’s, her face relaxed.

“Bon,” she said, swinging the door open abruptly. “He needs friends.”

He ascended two flights of narrow stairs to Carruthers’s attic, feeling the air about him grow warmer. It was pleasant at this time of day, but must grow stifling by midafternoon. He knocked, and felt a small shock of pleased recognition at hearing Carruthers’s voice bid him enter.

Carruthers was seated at a rickety table in shirt and breeches, writing, an inkwell made from a gourd at one elbow, a pot of beer at the other. He looked at Grey blankly for an instant; then joy washed across his features, and he rose, nearly upsetting both.

“John!”

Before Grey could offer his hand, he found himself embraced—and returned the embrace wholeheartedly, a wash of memory flooding through him as he smelled Carruthers’s hair, felt the scrape of his unshaven cheek against Grey’s own. Even in the midst of this sensation, though, he felt the slightness of Carruthers’s body, the bones that pressed through his clothes.

“I never thought you’d come,” Carruthers was repeating, for perhaps the fourth time. He let go and stepped back, smiling as he dashed the back of his hand across his eyes, which were unabashedly wet.

“Well, you have an electric eel to thank for my presence,” Grey told him, smiling himself.

“A what?” Carruthers stared at him blankly.

“Long story—tell you later. For the moment, though—what the devil have you been doing, Charlie?”

The happiness faded somewhat from Carruthers’s lean face, but didn’t disappear altogether. “Ah. Well. That’s a long story, too. Let me send Martine for more beer.” He waved Grey toward the room’s only stool, and went out before Grey could protest. He sat gingerly, lest the stool collapse, but it held his weight. Besides the stool and table, the attic was very plainly furnished; a narrow cot, a chamber pot, and an ancient washstand with an earthenware basin and ewer completed the ensemble. It was very clean, but there was a faint smell of something in the air—something sweet and sickly, which he traced at once to a corked bottle standing at the back of the washstand.

Not that he had needed the smell of laudanum; one look at Carruthers’s gaunt face told him enough. Returning to the stool, he glanced at the papers Carruthers had been working on. They appeared to be notes in preparation for the court-martial; the one on top was an account of an expedition undertaken by troops under Carruthers’s command, on the orders of a Major Gerald Siverly.

“Our orders instructed us to march to a village called Beaulieu, some ten miles to the east of Montmorency, there to ransack and fire the houses, driving off such animals as we encountered. This we did. Some men of the village offered us resistance, armed with scythes and other implements. Two of these were shot, the others fled. We returned with two waggons filled with flour, cheeses, and small household goods, three cows, and two good mules.”

Grey got no further before the door opened.

Carruthers came in and sat on the bed, nodding toward the papers.

“I thought I’d best write everything down. Just in case I don’t live long enough for the court-martial.” He spoke matter-of-factly, and seeing the look on Grey’s face, smiled faintly. “Don’t be troubled, John. I’ve always known I’d not make old bones. This—” He turned his right hand upward, letting the drooping cuff of his shirt fall back. “—isn’t all of it.”

He tapped his chest gently with his left hand.

“More than one doctor’s told me I have some gross defect of the heart. Don’t know, quite, if I have two of those, too—” He grinned at Grey, the sudden charming smile he remembered so well. “—or only half of one, or what. Used to be, I just went faint now and then, but it’s getting worse. Sometimes I feel it stop beating and just flutter in my chest, and everything begins to go all black and breathless. So far, it’s always started beating again—but one of these days, it isn’t going to.”

Grey’s eyes were fixed on Charlie’s hand, the small dwarf hand curled against its larger fellow, looking as though Charlie held a strange flower cupped in his palm. As he watched, both hands opened slowly, the fingers moving in strangely beautiful synchrony.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Tell me.”

Failure to suppress a mutiny was a rare charge; difficult to prove, and thus unlikely to be brought, unless other factors were involved. Which in the present instance, they undoubtedly were.

“Know Siverly, do you?” Carruthers asked, taking the papers onto his knee.

“Not at all. I gather he’s a bastard.” Grey gestured at the papers. “What kind of bastard, though?”

“A corrupt one.” Carruthers tapped the pages square, carefully evening the edges, eyes fixed on them. “That—what you read—it wasn’t Siverly. It’s General Wolfe’s directive. I’m not sure whether the point is to deprive the fortress of provisions, in hopes of starving them out eventually, or to put pressure on Montcalm to send out troops to defend the countryside, where Wolfe could get at them—possibly both. But he means deliberately to terrorize the settlements on both sides of the river. No, we did this under the General’s orders.” His face twisted a little, and he looked up suddenly at Grey. “You remember the Highlands, John?”

“You know that I do.” No one involved in Cumberland’s cleansing of the Highlands would ever forget. He had seen many Scottish villages like Beaulieu.

Carruthers took a deep breath.

“Yes. Well. The trouble was that Siverly took to appropriating the plunder we took from the countryside—under the pretext of selling it in order to make an equitable distribution among the troops.”

“What?” This was contrary to the normal custom of the army, whereby any soldier was entitled to what plunder he took. “Who does he think he is, an admiral?” The navy did divide shares of prize money among the crew, according to formula—but the navy was the navy; crews acted much more as single entities than did army companies, and there were Admiralty courts set up to deal with the sale of captured prize-ships.

Carruthers laughed at the question.

“His brother’s a commodore. Perhaps that’s where he got the notion. At any rate,” he added, sobering, “he never did distribute the funds. Worse—he began withholding the soldiers’ pay. Paying later and later, stopping pay for petty offenses, claiming that the paychest hadn’t been delivered—when several men had seen it unloaded from the coach with their own eyes.

“Bad enough—but the soldiers were still being fed and clothed adequately. But then he went too far.”

Siverly began to steal from the commissary, diverting quantities of supplies and selling them privately.

“I had my suspicions,” Carruthers explained, “but no proof. I’d begun to watch him, though—and he knew I was watching him, so he trod carefully for a bit. But he couldn’t resist the rifles.”

A shipment of a dozen new rifles, vastly superior to the ordinary Brown Bess musket, and very rare in the army.

“I think it must have been a clerical oversight that sent them to us in the first place. We hadn’t any riflemen, and there was no real need for them. That’s probably what made Siverly think he could get away with it.”

But he hadn’t. Two private soldiers had unloaded the box, and, curious at the weight, had opened it. Excited word had spread—and excitement had turned to disgruntled surprise when, instead of new rifles, muskets showing considerable wear were later distributed. The talk—already angry—had escalated.

“Egged on by a hogshead of rum we confiscated from a tavern in Levi,” Carruthers said with a sigh. “They drank all night—it was January, the nights are damned long in January here—and made up their minds to go and find the rifles. Which they did—under the floor in Siverly’s quarters.”

“And where was Siverly?”

“In his quarters. He was rather badly used, I’m afraid.” A muscle by Carruthers’s mouth twitched. “Escaped through a window, though, and made his way through the snow to the next garrison. It was twenty miles. Lost a couple of toes to frostbite, but survived.”

“Too bad.”

“Yes, it was.” The muscle twitched again.

“What happened to the mutineers?”

Carruthers blew out his cheeks, shaking his head.

“Deserted, most of them. Two were caught and hanged pretty promptly; three more rounded up later; they’re in prison here.”

“And you—”

“And I.” Carruthers nodded. “I was Siverly’s second-in-command. I didn’t know about the mutiny—one of the ensigns ran to fetch me when the men started to move toward Siverly’s quarters—but I did arrive before they’d finished.”

“Not a great deal you could do under those circumstances, was there?”

“I didn’t try,” Carruthers said bluntly.

“I see,” Grey said.

“Do you?” Carruthers gave him a crooked smile.

“Certainly. I take it Siverly is still in the army, and still holds a command? Yes, of course. He might have been furious enough to prefer the original charge against you, but you know as well as I do that under normal circumstances, the matter would likely have been dropped as soon as the general facts were known. You insisted on a court-martial, didn’t you? So that you can make what you know public.” Given Carruthers’s state of health, the knowledge that he risked a long imprisonment if convicted apparently didn’t trouble him.

The smile straightened, and became genuine.

“I knew I chose the right man,” Carruthers said.

Diana Gabaldon

The Custom of the Army