Grand and Batchelor did not have Libbie Custer’s problem when it came to packing. They had not bought anything since they arrived at Fort Abraham Lincoln. In fact, apart from keeping Calamity Jane happy at the Dew Drop Inn, neither man could remember having spent so little in so long a time. The food was bland and boring, but it was free. The clothes they needed for anything other than lounging on the veranda had been willingly lent by anyone who had a set to spare. In fact, with one very notable exception, they had never met a nicer bunch of men than those who made up the contingent at Fort Abraham Lincoln. Even Reno and Benteen had unbent sufficiently to say goodbye in very civil terms. The ladies had thrown them a tea party, where they were twittered over to further order. Libbie Custer had taken James out for a long walk outside the fort, with two troopers walking ahead, two behind. Just because someone wanted to be private didn’t mean they had to risk kidnap and worse as well.
On the morning the stage was collecting them to take them to the station, the enquiry agents went for one last ride on the prairie. The grass waved away to the horizon, where it met the foothills, shimmering in the heat.
‘If it’s this hot now, what’s it like in summer?’ Batchelor wondered.
‘Worse is the only way I can describe it,’ Grand said. He loved his country, but apart from a few places where the climate was mild all year – and he had never found those places – he could do without its weather.
‘Why do they do it?’ Batchelor continued. ‘Staying out here, with nothing to do for weeks on end, nowhere to go that doesn’t look like the place you just left from?’
‘They do it because they think they have to. They’ve got thousands of square miles, but they won’t be happy until they have every square mile.’
Batchelor gave him a piercing look. ‘You don’t approve?’
‘Do you?’ Grand knew his man. Batchelor had never met a cause he didn’t want to espouse.
‘Of course not. There’s plenty of room for everyone. It’s just that I thought … well, I thought every American wanted to own the lot.’
‘Not this American. You haven’t seen my trust fund papers – I own quite enough for one man, thank you very much. No, to my mind, they should just leave the forts, leave the tribes to their own land. They managed very well before we got here. They’ll manage just as well if we went away.’
‘True words well spoken,’ said a bush to Grand’s left and Lonesome Charley Reynolds stepped out, silent as a grave.
‘I didn’t see you there,’ Grand managed when his heart stopped beating in his mouth.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you none. It’s a habit I got into. I just wanted to say goodbye to you gents on our own. You did a good job back at the fort. O’Riordan was not good people.’
‘He fooled everyone, though,’ Batchelor was forced to admit. ‘Calam had a really soft spot for him.’
Reynolds took off his hat and scratched his head. ‘She did and that’s what had me fooled. Calam can usually spot a rotten egg at a hundred paces, but she fell for him hook, line and sinker.’ He put his hat back on and shaded his eyes to look back at the fort. ‘She even had a bath.’ The incredulity in his voice made all three men laugh. ‘Don’t remember her doing that since … oh, I don’t remember since. But O’Riordan was eaten up with wanting revenge. Revenge does no one any good.’
‘It makes you feel better, though?’ Grand didn’t indulge in it himself, but without it, the firm of Grand and Batchelor, Enquiry Agents of the Strand would be the poorer.
‘It does, it does,’ Reynolds agreed, but shook his head. ‘But it can eat you up, as well. You stop seeing right from wrong, except through the goggles you make for yourself, of hatred and regret. You blame everyone for what might be your own fault.’ He stopped. Lonesome Charley Reynolds didn’t share his life with anyone and he wasn’t going to start now. He coughed and dragged his gaze from the far horizon, where, whenever he looked, a beautiful Lakota woman and her two little children gazed at him with nothing but love in their eyes. ‘Anyways, I just thought I’d say thank you, boys, and good travels.’ He chuckled. ‘I heard as you don’t travel too well, Mr Batchelor.’
Batchelor bridled. ‘I travel as well as the next man,’ he spluttered. ‘Sometimes I get a little … tired. That’s all.’
‘Well,’ Reynolds rummaged in a pocket. ‘Next time you’re tired, try this. My wife …’ he looked them in the eyes and they said nothing, ‘swore by this. Just light one end and wave the smoke around. It’s just herbs and such. All natural. But you’ll feel all the better for it, guaranteed.’ He thrust some grey-looking bundles into Batchelor’s hand and, wheeling his horse, rode off across the plain.
Batchelor looked down at the bundles of what looked like slightly mouldy grass and went as though to throw them down, but Grand stopped him.
‘Keep them, James. You never know.’
‘I won’t need them,’ Batchelor said. ‘I’m sure my travel sickness has improved.’
‘Really? Because of course you have made so many transatlantic voyages in the last few weeks. Keep them, James.’ He took one and sniffed it. ‘Sage. A few other bits and bobs. If you don’t need them, you can give them to Mrs Rackstraw for her stuffing.’
As if mentioning her name had conjured her up, a waft of cooking smells came to them on the breeze.
‘Breakfast?’ Grand ventured.
Batchelor wheeled his horse. ‘I’ll just have a little,’ he said. ‘As long as it isn’t grits.’
If Matthew Grand had been given a choice, he would have slipped off back to the Port of London without calling in on his parents, but the thought of his mother’s trusting face looking up into his, eyes big with tears, made that choice impossible. He and Batchelor had an afternoon tea party in New York, with his parents, sister and her little one and her husband. He had never really liked his brother-in-law, a shifty piece of work if ever he saw one and as clearly mixed up in the Belknap scandal as it was possible for a man to be. But he was soon to put a whole ocean between them, so he could afford to be civil. He shook hands with the men, allowed an inordinate amount of kissing and stroking from his mother, dandled Martha’s child on his knee to the ruination of one of his favourite pairs of trousers and generally was the Son of the House for as long as it took. Batchelor came in for some kissing and stroking too, when Mrs Grand was at a loose end and her darling Matthew was otherwise engaged. All in all, it could have been a worse send-off and Batchelor, with four of Reynolds’s bundles of sage still in his pocket, was prepared for the Atlantic Ocean to do its worst.
‘James?’ Grand put his head around the stateroom door. ‘James? Are you awake? Mrs Vanderbilt was wondering if we could join her at her table for dinner? James?’
The voice from the bunk was so low it was almost inaudible.
‘Sorry, James. I can’t hear – I think the waves slapping on the side …’
‘If dinner means food, then no. If Mrs Vanderbilt is the large woman with the two ugly daughters, then hell no. Now, go away and leave me alone.’
‘Have you got any of Charley Reynolds’s …?’
‘No! Now, leave me alone!’
Mrs Rackstraw was a happy woman, happy being a relative condition with her. The house had seemed very empty without her two employers. She complained when they were there – of course she did – but when they weren’t there, she all but pined away. She cooked for herself and Maisie. She still had a woman in to do the Rough. She washed down all the paintwork, she had all the carpets up to beat half to death in the back area. She swathed the furniture in cambric cloths then unswathed it all again because it reminded her of a funeral and the shrouded shapes gave Maisie the ab-dabs on her way up to the garret every night. She spent hours inventing new dishes and then invited the postman in to try them out. When the postman tried a little something over and above her kidney cobbler, she fetched him a nasty one upside the head with the dustpan and kept herself to herself after that.
But now, they were back. It was true that Mr Batchelor was not looking his best, but the poor gentleman never was a good traveller. She didn’t know why he wanted to go gallivanting off to foreign parts. No good ever came of it. Mr Grand had to see his family; she had family herself, disreputable though they were. It was important to keep in touch, though. And Mr Grand’s family looked very respectable, judging from the portraits on the sideboard, though they created a lot of dusting. But she promised herself she would never complain about their socks, their cigar ash, their late nights; she would never complain about any of it, ever again.
‘Maisie!’ Mrs Rackstraw almost sang her name and Maisie stiffened in fear. Mrs Rackstraw had as many moods as London weather, most of them just as grey. But when she was in a good mood, Maisie was on the alert; someone was overdue a smack upside the head, in her experience.
‘Maisie! Have you ironed Mr Grand’s paper?’
This was a new departure and it drove Maisie almost to distraction. While the gentlemen were away, Mrs Rackstraw had gone to some classes at Travers Employment Agency for Gentlewomen in How To Be the Perfect Housekeeper. Mrs Rackstraw had had to lie somewhat; the classes were only for those seeking employment, but she told Maisie that it wasn’t really a lie if it was to help Mr Grand and Mr Batchelor to be more comfortable. Maisie had been doubtful, but she knew it was fruitless to argue with Mrs Rackstraw when she had made up her mind. Maisie had had to go to classes on How To Be the Perfect Maidservant, but when she told Mrs Rackstraw how little her job should entail, Mrs Rackstraw forbade her to go to any more.
The classes had taught Mrs Rackstraw a lot, mostly unhelpful, but the one thing she came away determined to do was to iron the newspaper every day. Not only – the rather condescending tutor at Travers’s told her class – did it give a smoother feel for the delicate fingers of one’s employer, it also killed ninety-nine per cent of all household germs. So, from that day forward, ironed the newspapers had to be.
The first week of July was hot, and Maisie could have done without the blazing fire and the row of flat-irons lined up on the hob. She had heard Mr Grand say to Mr Batchelor in no uncertain terms that he didn’t like an ironed newspaper, or so she had convinced herself. But it was no good telling Mrs Rackstraw that. It was a tricky business, making sure the pages were smooth but not scorched. She expended so much spit checking on the temperature of the irons that she was as dry as dust by the time she got to the end of the Telegraph. And now, today, there was extra to do. Mr Grand’s copy of the Washington Post had arrived, sent regular as clockwork by his mother. Maisie sighed and set to with her smoothing iron. She must have had a mother, but she didn’t remember her. Mr Grand was so lucky.
She laid the paper out straight on the table, smoothing it out. The iron flashed back and forth as she fell into her favourite dream, the one where Mr Grand took her into his arms, let down her hair at the back and told her she was beautiful.
The smell of warm paper filled the kitchen. The smell of Matthew Grand’s bay rum aftershave filled her nostrils. She passed the iron across the page and something caught her eye and she raised the iron, eyes wide. She hadn’t had much education, but she could read newspaper.
‘Soon, an officer came rushing into camp,’ she read, ‘and related that he had found Gen. Custer dead and stripped naked, and near him his brother, Capt. Tom Custer, his nephew Lt. Reed, Capt. Keogh, Lieut. Cooke, Lieut. Porter, Lieut. Chater, Dr Madden, Mr Kellogg, the Bismarck Tribune correspondent, and one hundred and ninety men and scouts, including the bugler, one Isaac Dobbs. Gen. Custer went into battle with Companies C, L, I, F and E, of the 7th cavalry, and the staff and non-commissioned officers of his regiment, and a number of scouts, led by one Charles Reynolds, and only one scout remained to tell the tale. All were killed.’
Maisie put the iron back on the grate. Her hand was shaking so much she didn’t trust herself to hold it. She had heard the two young gentlemen talking while she waited on them at table and, anyway, they often told her of their adventures. She felt she knew these men.
Mrs Rackstraw put her head around the door. ‘Not ironing, Maisie?’ she said.
Maisie sniffed and picked up the iron, testing its temperature with her tears.