Provence, France, July 10, 1841
Shoveling horseshit was, no question, the worst part of the job. Not that Jack Sheffield particularly relished any of the other parts—he’d grown up on the streets of the city that gave him his name, and after that he had marched with the infantry, and thus he’d had little to do with horses before embarking upon his third career. He’d been gobsmacked when he first realized Hull actually liked the smelly beasts and didn’t mind all that was involved in caring for them. But then, Hull was country-born, and moreover a sergeant who’d risen through the ranks, and so it made a sort of sense that he’d be comfortable both with horses and with being sworn at.
The Captain was the real surprise. You wouldn’t expect a man like him to be accustomed either to stables or to taking guff from the men who ran the stables, but the Captain had slipped into the role as easy as—
No. Not the Captain. Palmer had slipped into the role as easy as you please. Sheffield had to stop thinking of Palmer as “Captain.” Keep saying that inside his head, and it was only a matter of time before he slipped and said it out loud in front of the frogs, and that would draw down a deal of trouble they didn’t need.
He usually didn’t need to worry about what he called Palmer, because he and Palmer didn’t usually work this part together. Usually it was Hull and Sheffield who played at being grooms, after Palmer had picked the house and provided information as to what they’d find inside and maybe written up some references if the household was particular about such things. Mostly the households weren’t; English laborers were to be found throughout the French countryside, competing desperately for the sort of menial jobs that didn’t require trust. Like shoveling horseshit.
Then once Hull and Sheffield had gotten hired on and settled in, the Sergeant would court a maidservant or the like and get her to leave a kitchen door unlatched overnight—maybe telling her he wanted to sneak some pie, maybe hinting he meant to come to the servants’ attic and sneak sweeter things. Then he and Sheffield would follow Palmer’s map to the room where the gentry hid their baubles and the Sergeant would stand watch while Sheffield broke into the strongboxes or cracked the safes. Later, Palmer would fence the jewels or the silver or whatnot, and then there was that much less for the frogs and that much more to fund the Rising back home. Easy as you please. They worked each job the same way, because it always worked smooth as Lyons silk.
But this time Hull was out readying their escape route and Palmer was working alongside Sheffield, because this time they were after something big. The Count kept a book in his safe upstairs, so Palmer had explained, and that book was worth more to the Rising than even the dirty great emerald they’d pinched last month. There were bound to be many other books in the safe, and only Palmer could tell for sure which was the right one—Sheffield did not count reading among his accomplishments any more than he counted an affinity for horses—and so Palmer must therefore pose as groom alongside him, shoveling horseshit and touching his cap to the damned frogs as though he’d never faced them across a battlefield, as though he hadn’t fought them with every ounce of his strength at Waterloo and again at Dover and then for five years after. It didn’t seem to bother Palmer, but Sheffield gritted his teeth when thinking of it.
“Back to work, you lazy bastard!” the head groom snapped behind him. Sheffield had never succeeded in mastering much of the French tongue, but this was a phrase he had learned to recognize after many repetitions, so he sighed and put his back into it. It had been made clear to all the grooms that the entire stable had better be clean enough to sparkle before the Count’s guests arrived.
Those guests had been their ticket in, his and Palmer’s, for the Count pinched his francs and hardly ever hired extra labor on his estate save for this summer house party, once-a-year. It gave Palmer and Sheffield barely more than a fortnight to get what they’d come for, but at least they’d managed to get themselves hired right off, no time wasted. They’d settled into their position at the bottom of the stablehands’ pecking order, Palmer had already started a flirtation with one of the maidservants, and the guests would only begin to arrive today, so they were doing well for time. They had two weeks yet to get the job done. Two weeks in a house full to bursting with rich frogs, which of course made it harder, but a solid two weeks still.
At last the stables gleamed to the head groom’s satisfaction, and Sheffield and Palmer leaned against the fence to watch the first carriage come up the drive. It was a lovely light thing, pulled by a team of matched grays, and Sheffield had to set his teeth at the sight. Wicked waste, when life had been so hard for so long back home. It had taken old Boney five years to subdue England even after monsters wearing red and monsters wearing blue had fought to the death at the Battle of Dover—five vicious years of English soldiers employing every guerilla tactic they’d ever learned from their Spanish allies before finally falling to sheer force of Imperial numbers. By that time, southeast Britain was in shreds, cities nothing more than hollow shells and farmland trampled flat. Then the frogs had consolidated their power, and then they’d started the forced migrations. Loyal French generals and landless French second sons got English estates, and the British lords they replaced—those few who hadn’t fallen in the war—were either executed or made to go west, joining the refugees who had fled the southeast with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Fifteen years later, it wasn’t much better. Eastern farmland still didn’t produce what it was meant to, so hunger ran rampant in the countryside and French garrisons in the cities were fed by supplies brought in by packet ship. Folk stuffed into the overflowing west mostly worked the coal and tin mines—working for wages paid by French mine owners, and spending their wages on food from shops run by the same Frenchmen. Damned expensive food, when compared to the wages, so the west was hungry too.
And here in sunny France were the frogs, rolling up to the Count’s flourishing country estate with bees and eagles worked into the devices of their carriages, indecent low-bosomed dresses on the women making even the highborn ones look like whores. Ordinarily Sheffield didn’t let it bother him, seeing as how he and Hull and Palmer got some of their own back with every job, but there was so much waste in one place this time that he found it a hard fight to keep the disgust off his face.
Palmer’s eyes flicked to him, quelling. Don’t you dare draw attention to yourself, those eyes said, as clear as a barked order on a parade ground. You are not here to offer your opinion, you are here to open the safe. Sheffield resisted the urge to salute, resolved to stay invisible, and sucked down a calming breath.
And choked on it.
The tall, elegant figure descending from the carriage was a man known to him. An Englishman, in fact, though you’d never have guessed from his clothing—he was dressed like a frog fop, in a rich dark coat cut tight to the waist and padded about the shoulders, a curving shirtfront like a pouter-pigeon, and a ridiculous tall hat. Apparently you wouldn’t have been able to tell from his accent either, or at least so Sheffield had heard French servants saying to one another, in some of the other houses where he’d played at being a groom. He’d heard French servants say a lot of other things about Charles Wilton, come to think of it, and most of them uncomplimentary. Those who licked the boots of their enemies weren’t well respected by anyone, even the enemies. Turncoat, Sheffield thought. Bloody traitor.
Wilton wasn’t the only Englishman of rank who had decided to sail with the prevailing wind, but Sheffield hadn’t met any of the others, so Wilton received the full dose of his hatred. He’d been a man of wealth and position, a landowner in Kent before the Battle of Dover, and after the battle, managed somehow to maneuver himself into a position of relative power under the new French landlords, collecting taxes or some such. Wilton had gone on to marry a Frenchwoman, eventually moving to Paris with her, and even though she had since died, he was still accepted into the finest circles of French society. With a great deal of laughter behind his back, but Wilton never seemed troubled by that. Whether he was too much of a fool to notice he was being mocked, or whether he otherwise enjoyed his favored position too much to care what anyone said, Sheffield didn’t know. Now he watched Wilton preen about with the indecently dressed Frenchwoman on his arm—not his wife, some other woman he’d acquired—and thought about what he’d like to do to all those who’d thrown their lot in with the frogs.
Palmer’s hand closed hard over his arm. “Stop it,” the Captain said low, in English. “He doesn’t matter. You are here for one purpose only.”
“I can’t stand that traitorous bastard,” Sheffield spat.
“You can’t stand the frogs either, so you tell me.”
“That’s—they’re different, sir.” Sheffield struggled to explain why. “You can’t fault ’em for fighting for their side. Maybe some of them were like me, caught thieving and given a Devil’s bargain. You fight for your colors. But that Wilton—you’re of the same rank, ain’t you, sir, you and him? And you didn’t go finding a French whore to marry after Dover. You took to the hills and fired your rifle from behind trees at the bastards.”
Palmer’s face creased in a faint smile, but he said only, “Don’t call me ‘sir.’ You’ll give us away.”
“Yes, sir—I mean, yes. Palmer.” He still couldn’t say it without it sounding stiff. “But look here, won’t it be dangerous for you? Didn’t you say as you knew Wilton back in the day, back before Dover—he knew you as yourself, that is, and you’re even using the same name now?”
“Wilton,” Palmer said, “is famed for his charm, not his wit. Don’t worry, Sheffield. I’m here to do the worrying. You’re just here to open the safe.”
“Still, sir, a whole fortnight—”
“You’re assuming he’ll ever once look at my face. He never will, even if I should happen to hold his horse for him.” Palmer smiled briefly. “You may trust me on that.”
Sheffield did trust him. Palmer would know what the quality did, having been quality himself before Dover—and was damned well quality still, as far as Sheffield was concerned. He’d taken as good care of his men as he could, even when they were all hiding among the Downs and trying to remember what they’d learned in Spain.
Palmer was his Captain, and Palmer had said not to worry, so Sheffield tried not to worry. For a week he kept his mind on his work, shoveling horseshit, cleaning tack, enduring the mockery of his mates for his broken French, and observing Palmer work his magic on one of the tween-stairs maids. Sheffield felt odd, watching that. It seemed all in the way of things when the Sergeant did it, big bluff countryman that he was, but he couldn’t help thinking of Palmer in regimentals every time he saw the man hold a door for the overworked lass. He ought to be whispering jokes in her ear instead, Sheffield thought, but he supposed the gentry didn’t do that. Palmer didn’t rush anything, just coaxed the girl along as he might a mare with a lump of sugar. Sheffield couldn’t help wondering if Palmer’d courted his late wife the same way, but wasn’t about to ask. Sheffield reflected a few days later that the gentry might know what they were about, as far as women went, for the tween-stairs maid did seem to like Palmer’s treatment. Sheffield stored up what he’d seen, thinking maybe he’d like to get a wife of his own once they were home—though it wouldn’t be that difficult for him, surely, he a man with a bit of silver in his pockets. Still, though, it was always good to have a backup strategy, and the girl did seem particularly pleased by a courtship that was flowers and smiles instead of bawdy comments. Sheffield supposed she took Palmer for an upper servant come down in the world, superior to the usual sort of man available to her even if he was only an Englishman and nowadays only a groom. She wasn’t altogether wrong, if that’s what she thought; the only thing she didn’t know was how far down the Captain had come.
Seven days into the fortnight, Palmer returned to their loft bunks in the small hours of the morning with a blank face and a terse, “Tonight.” The girl had been induced to leave the door open for them, in the expectation that Palmer would come to her. Sheffield wondered if he’d had to promise to marry her, or if he’d maybe offered her silver for her virtue, but thought it would be better not to ask that either.
Palmer snatched an hour’s sleep and was up at cock-crow, no sign in his face that any consideration weightier than horseshit troubled his mind. He and Sheffield cleaned tack and hauled water and did not speak much at all. There was no need to speak about the night to come. They had worked it all out well in advance.
The worst part was the waiting about until their mates should fall asleep—the two of them lying there bone-weary and sunk into straw and yet knowing they dared not close an eye themselves. At last Sheffield counted six separate snores from other parts of the loft, and Palmer got softly to his feet. Sheffield joined him. They had mastered the art of getting almost silently down the ladder by that point, and Sheffield had oiled the door days before. There was just enough moonlight to guide their steps through the stable-yard and to the house.
The kitchen door had not been oiled, but then, no one was nearby to hear it squeak. Sheffield stood still in the big, cool, echoing kitchen, waiting for Palmer to lead the way. The back stairs rose up to the servants’ bedrooms, but Palmer shook his head, put a finger to his lips, and led Sheffield out of the kitchen and into the main part of the house.
It gave him a dirty little thrill, every time, to be walking through a frog gentleman’s home and him unawares. Sheffield smirked a little to himself now. Palmer turned to the right and headed without hesitation up the polished main staircase. His information must have been as precise as usual. Not for the first time, Sheffield wondered where he got it.
A red patterned carpet stretched along the corridor before them. That was fine. Carpet muffled footsteps. Sheffield wondered how much it had cost, and where it had been woven. The doors all looked alike, but Palmer strode along without pausing until he stopped at the sixth one on the left. There he touched his finger to his lips again, indicating the doors all around, and Sheffield nodded impatiently, for they’d been over this. The Count’s study was on the same floor as his bedroom and those of some of the guests, so it was even more important than usual to keep quiet. Palmer acknowledged Sheffield’s impatience with a smile, and bowed him toward the study door.
Sheffield hunkered down and got to work. He was as comfortable with picklocks as he was uncomfortable around horses—having been bred to the former, you might say, as a countryman was bred to the latter. He’d already had considerable expertise under his belt back when he’d been arrested for thieving and sent to the army at the age of nineteen. He’d found his old profession ready to hand when the frogs finally overwhelmed the guerilla fighters and he had to do something other than fire a musket to make ends meet. He’d found an old friend willing to school him, and he’d graduated to proper safes by the time Sergeant Hull had looked him up and asked if he wouldn’t like to put those skills to the service of King, Country, and Captain Palmer.
Forcing the door to the Count’s study was dead simple. Anyone could have done it—the Sergeant with his ham hands, even. Certainly Palmer, if he’d been of a mind to learn. Sheffield held the wrench in place and used the pick to lift the little pins inside, one after the other. He was prepared for a long slog of it, given the grandeur of the house, but the lock turned out to be a commonplace little affair after all. It sprang open under his fingers almost before he’d settled into the rhythm of listening for the tumblers. Almost a disappointment. Lucky there was a safe inside, or he’d have said Palmer scarcely needed him at all.
But the safe was a proper salamander, crouching behind the Count’s big carved desk like a dog in a kennel. Palmer entered the room first, lighting a stump of candle from his pocket with a matchstick from another pocket and using the makeshift torch to check all the dark corners before he waved Sheffield in. Sheffield went to the safe at once, and as he positioned himself for his work, Palmer drew the door softly to and took up the role of lookout, standing before it with his arms folded. Odd bit of role reversal, that, to have a Captain standing guard for you. It wasn’t quite so strange when it was the Sergeant. But then, as Hull and Palmer both said, it wasn’t Sheffield’s job to worry about such things. It was his job to crack the safe. Palmer blew out the candle, Sheffield having assured him he wouldn’t need it, and Sheffield got to work by the faint blue moonlight filtering through the barred casement windows.
Most of his work was done by touch anyway. He twisted the dial with unhurried fingers, listening in the silence of the great still house for the fall of the tumblers, spinning the dial again. It took him about two hours, and for most of that time he was so intent upon his work that they might have fought the Battle of Dover on the other side of those casement windows, and Sheffield would never have noticed it.
Finally the safe door opened, the lock yielding with a snap like a breaking branch that made Palmer spin around. At Sheffield’s breathed “Yes,” the Captain relit his candle. By its flickering light, Sheffield saw sweat running down the Captain’s face, and that surprised him. He’d never seen the Captain nervous before, and wouldn’t have thought anything could unnerve him, given he wasn’t worried by guerilla fighting or horses or the possibility of being recognized by Charles Wilton. But then, the Captain had never stood guard and waited for someone else to crack a safe. Sheffield could see how that would be nerve-wracking if you weren’t accustomed to it.
Palmer left the door at once and came to the safe, and Sheffield crowded out of his way so he could look. Holding the candle aloft, Palmer pulled a litter of papers and books to the floor and started sorting through them one-handed, piling the rejected ones into Sheffield’s arms to keep them out of the way.
“Yes,” he whispered finally. He looked up, and his eyes were gleaming in the half-light. He set a small note-book bound in reddish-brown leather atop the pile in Sheffield’s arms, and reached for the rest to bundle it all back into the safe.
Something moved in the shadows.
Sheffield jerked his head up. A man stood just outside the small spill of candle-light, not quite swallowed by darkness. He wore black—not only a black shirt and trousers, but a black hood and mask as well. He had most definitely not been there the moment before.
He hadn’t entered through the door; a glance showed it still pushed to. He hadn’t entered through the barred windows; not even someone as slenderly built as he could have managed such a feat. He hadn’t been hiding behind any of the furniture or in any of the corners Palmer had inspected. He had simply appeared between one second and the next, nothing heralding his arrival but a flicker of the shadows.
The pistol he held was also black. It caught the candle-flame dully, not glinting as metal would, but the shape was obviously that of a pistol. Without speaking, the man in black pointed the business end at Sheffield and held out his other hand. He wanted the book on the top of the pile, almost certainly.
With only a flash of a second in which to decide what to do, Sheffield jerked his hands over his head and let the papers he was holding cascade to the floor, the brown notebook jumbled amongst them. Maybe the man would bend to get what he wanted, and maybe then Sheffield could overpower him. It was the best plan he could come up with on short notice. He felt there was something to be said for its simplicity.
The man in black apparently thought it had merit as well, for he hesitated an instant.
In that instant, Captain Palmer leaped.
He had been crouched on the floor, half-squatting and half-kneeling. He came upright all at once like an uncoiled spring—a feat more than a bit impressive for a man who had to be knocking on the door of fifty—and his tackle took the man in black at the knees. They crashed to the floor together, and the queer black pistol flew wide.
Sheffield shoved the brown notebook into his breast pocket and caught up the candle-stump. A bit of the fine carpet had caught alight, but he stamped it out. From the floor nearby came thumps and curses—the latter Palmer’s alone; the man in black confined himself to grunts—as the two men grappled with each other. Sheffield searched for a weapon to bring to the Captain’s aid. He couldn’t see where the black pistol had gotten to.
The man in black threw Palmer off, and Palmer fell with a groan. His opponent jumped to his feet, revealing himself to be a young man by the springy way he moved, and whirled on Sheffield, fists already swinging. Sheffield dropped the candle again, and this time it went out. He blocked the first punch by sheer instinct, took the second to the face, and fell over an easy chair, and then Palmer was back up.
From the other side of the wall came voices and footsteps. By the faint moonlight, Sheffield could see Palmer looming up behind the man in black, holding a small table in both hands. The man in black turned from Sheffield just as Palmer brought his weapon down on his enemy’s head, and the man in black crumpled. The voices grew louder, and the footsteps were now running. Palmer hauled Sheffield to his feet and they made for the door.
It jerked open just as they reached it, and they skidded to a stop. There, framed by the light of a candelabrum held aloft, a pistol in his other hand, stood the Count. His dark eyes widened with surprise, then narrowed with suspicion.
Beside him, foolish face open-mouthed with curiosity, broad shoulders effectively blocking any escape, stood Charles Wilton.
Palmer spat a curse, and Sheffield muttered a worse one inside his head. He balanced on the balls of his feet, measuring the distance to the Count and his pistol—
An unexpected look of profound irritation crossed Wilton’s face. While Sheffield was still trying to decipher it, Wilton pulled back his left hand and slammed it, hard and with all the force of his arm behind it, into the Count’s head.
The candelabrum dropped, setting the carpet irrevocably alight. The Count sagged. Wilton caught him with an arm across his throat—the left arm, Sheffield noted, its hand held stiffly as though bones inside had been broken—and with his right hand grabbed the pistol from the man’s slackened grip. He pressed the barrel to the Count’s lolling head.
Sheffield could only stare.
“Wilton—” Palmer said, in what sounded like anguish.
“Can’t be helped,” Wilton replied—in English, and crisply, in a tone much unlike his usual easy drawl. “The cover was nearly worn through anyhow. And this night’s work pays for all, doesn’t it?” Still balancing the Count with his left arm and holding the pistol with his right hand, he looked past Palmer at the stirring man in black. Flames were eating along the carpet, bathing the black-masked face in a golden glow. “Who the bleeding hell is that?”
“Not one of mine,” Palmer snapped. Footsteps were thundering overhead and all down the corridor behind Wilton as servants assembled. Guests poked their heads out of their rooms like jacks-in-the-box, bellowing and twittering and exclaiming, some of them almost close enough to see the pistol held to the Count’s head. Palmer looked into the darkened hall past Wilton’s shoulder, then back at the Count. “Can’t you—?”
“No,” Wilton said. Sheffield felt heat near his boots and looked down to see a tongue of crawling flame reach the dropped litter of papers and caress it. Farther away, a different tongue slid up the full length of a curtain, headed for the ceiling. The man in black groaned, stirred, and fell back again.
Wilton swung around, holding the Count upright with one hand and pressing the pistol to his head with the other, and the gathering crowd fell back. Wilton snapped an order to them in French, then turned his head to command Palmer in English. “Hurry, go, get behind me!”
Palmer seized Sheffield’s wrist again and pulled him into the corridor, behind Wilton’s sheltering back and the more useful shelter of the limp Count. Palmer and Sheffield backed down the corridor, and Wilton backed after them, holding the Count as a shield, snapping orders to the gaggle of frog guests and frog servants to keep them still.
The four of them clattered down the servants’ stair, through the kitchen, and into the still night outside. The relatively cool air roused the Count—he had not been badly hurt, only stunned—but his interrogative turning of his head froze when he felt the pistol on his temple. Wilton dragged him along, and they covered the distance to the stables at almost a trot.
Behind them, flames rose orange in the windows of the study. Good; that would keep the household busy a while longer. Palmer’s eyes gleamed as their awkward cavalcade approached the stable-yard. “Jacques!” he called the head groom’s name, in a tone of malicious delight.
Wilton pressed the pistol harder to the Count’s temple, and murmured something to him in French. The Count hesitated. Wilton said it again, with an undeniable tone of menace, and this time the Count lifted his voice and repeated the order. A sleepy, bewildered Jacques appeared three words in, and stared in horror for a moment before Wilton snapped at him. Sheffield couldn’t make the words out, but Do as I say or I’ll kill your master didn’t need much translation. It was also quite clear that the Count’s words confirmed that Jacques should do what Wilton said.
It shortly became clear that Wilton had ordered the two best horses in the stable saddled. Palmer plunged in at once to help Jacques with this arrangement, and Sheffield was glad to help as well. He had, after all, learned how to seem like a groom.
“You have a place to go?” Wilton asked Palmer.
“Yes.”
“Right.” Wilton raised his voice in French again, and the grooms allowed them to mount and ride away.
Sheffield’s role in this partnership was to open safes. Everything else was the responsibility of the men who didn’t know how to open safes. It was therefore clearly Sheffield’s duty at this moment to keep his mouth shut, spend no energy worrying about what was next, cling tight to Palmer, and not fall off. The last bit was the hardest. Not that he and Hull hadn’t made their escape on horseback now and again, but Hull never drove the beasts hell-for-leather as Palmer was doing now. Over on the other horse, Wilton had the Count before him on the saddle, hands bound behind his back. Wilton still held the pistol to the Count’s head and appeared to be controlling the horse with his knees alone. Sheffield couldn’t fathom how he was doing it.
“I told them we’d let the Count off unharmed an hour’s ride away,” Wilton said sometime later, “but if we spotted pursuit before that, we’d kill him. There’s no sign of anyone following, so I think we’d best be rid of him. Eh?”
“That copse of trees?” Palmer pointed.
They found a stout one to bind the Count to, still with his hands wrenched behind his back. Wilton held the pistol while Sheffield and Palmer worked the knots, and the Count stared at all three of them out of beady dark eyes.
“Traitor,” he spat at Wilton’s back just as the latter turned away. He said it in French, but Sheffield knew that word.
Wilton whirled back to him. “No,” he said in English. “That’s the point. I’m not.”
He struck the Count across the face with the pistol, and the Count’s head snapped back against the tree trunk, then fell forward. Wilton stood looking down at him for a moment before turning back to Palmer and Sheffield. “Perhaps I’d not have done so badly in the army after all, if I’d not been due to inherit,” he commented, once more in the light, drawling voice he was known for. “It might have done me better to have an occupation, back when I was a lad. What do you think, Palmer?”
“I think,” Palmer said, not giving him the compliment he seemed to be seeking, “I ought to have taken a moment to pull the mask off that other man. I wish we knew where he came from. You’re sure you didn’t run your mouth off to anyone else?”
“I only play the fool, Chris. These days, at least.” Wilton gave him a slight, lopsided smile. “Doesn’t matter anyway, does it? We’ve got the prize.”
“We have at that,” Palmer agreed, and seemed to settle a little. “Let’s get home with it and win the war.”