Cynthia Bailey Pratt (14 page)

Jocelyn nodded and parted from him, walking about for some time, looking for one particular person among all those milling around waiting for someone to tell them what to do. But Hammond did not seem to be there. She supposed he lay low for reasons of his own.

Tired, she sat on the wall rimming the churchyard, her feet drawn up on a projecting stone. While Mr. Quigg formed her neighbors into orderly brigades, she wondered if Mr. Fletcher and Helena had come to some arrangement or if they still huddled together behind the grave marker discovering the freshness of one another’s affection.

Jocelyn wished that someone’s arm were about her in the midst of this chaos and destruction. She recalled Hammond’s arm about her body in the alleyway and seemed to feel again its strength. She sniffled, a single tear coursing through the smoke and grime on her cheek. “Here,” she said out loud, “this will never do.”

Jocelyn stood up and headed back toward the cemetery. She found Mr. Fletcher and Helena still together. Helena was on Mr. Fletcher’s knee, her hands in his, and her head on his shoulder, dark hair flowing freely. She lifted her head, her face made lovelier by great happiness, when Jocelyn stood over them. Mr. Fletcher looked as if the wind had been knocked out of him again.

Helena sprang up and embraced Jocelyn while Mr. Fletcher climbed slowly to his feet. “Wish me joy!” she demanded. “Mr. Fletcher and I ...” Shyly she looked at her love. “I don’t know your first name.”

“It’s Mark, darling.”

“Mark Darling,” Helena said, her lashes meekly down.

Mr. Fletcher looked as if he’d liked to kiss her, but refrained saving Jocelyn’s presence.

Helena turned toward the burning building and said, “I feel so guilty. Thinking of my future when my brother may be . . .” She caught the words back on a little sob. In another moment she’d cry again.

Jocelyn said sharply, “People are bound to start tiring soon, and some of them will have burns. I’m going home to brew some tea and gather bandages and salve.”

“Oh, yes. I’ll help you. It’s our duty.” Helena said to Mr. Fletcher, looking at him as if he were a young god, “Will you help fight the fire, dearest?”

“No, I’m going to stay with you.”

She was puzzled. “But ... the fire!”

Jocelyn intervened, saying, “Enough people have come to put it out, Helena. I should be glad of Mr. Fletcher’s company.”

“If you think so, Jocelyn.” Helena brightened. “You will take my hand. Mark . . . darling?”

* * * *

Mr. Fain entered the mail coach at Libermore. He knew every other occupant, personally or by sight, yet he climbed in without hesitation. Disguised as a large and coarse woman, he noticed that no one, after one glance, wished to look at him again. Biting on a smile, he made a great noise about his comfort in the corner of the stuffy coach, bullyragging the guard over his luggage. He completed his characterization by using foul language when anyone tried to put down the window.

In the last communication he had received from France, he had been warned that to attack Czar Alexander in London was not wise. Security had been stepped up in the Capital for the visits of the foreign heads of government. Failure would not be tolerated as once the Czar left England, it would be impossible to strike against him.

Fain had some time ago written for permission to attack the Czar during his wide-ranging visits to the English countryside. Though permission had not yet come, Mr. Fain had decided to act without orders before the Czar grew disgusted with England and her foolish Regent and returned to his northern empire.

For three years, Mr. Fain had played the part of a man of peace. Returning to violence was to him as relaxing as putting his feet into an old pair of slippers after a long day in boots. As the coach started forward, Mr. Fain pictured the change of history he prepared, thinking of the joy of the multitudes when his Emperor, Napoleon the Great, returned in triumph to Paris. Mr. Fain smiled widely now and the other occupants of the coach stirred uneasily at the quality of that smile.

Chapter Eight

Hammond’s ears rang and tears filled his smoke-filled eyes as he ran, leaping over obstacles and ignoring whiplike branches, after Cocker.

In a copse behind the church he tripped over something that cried out. Hammond fell down, sliding across sodden leaves. Cocker leapt up from his hiding place and ran. But Hammond held on to his stick even as he fell. He flung it out, sending Cocker flying. Somehow, the gross servant didn’t fall, saving himself with a twist like a fish on the end of the line.

In the leaping firelight the two men stared at each other for a moment. Then, with a whimper of fear as he recognized the man who had seen him set the fire, the uncle of a girl he’d just, as far as he knew, murdered. Cocker threw himself at Hammond.

Though Cocker was bigger and undoubtedly stronger, he’d never realized these things could be disadvantages in a fight with a man who knew his business. Hammond blocked the most vicious blows easily, using his forearms, and the more obvious dirty tricks he returned with greater cunning. Only once did Cocker land a blow, and that, by design or accident, landed just above the slice along Hammond’s ribs. He gasped, and for a moment knew nothing but a wave of pain. Cocker waded in to try and follow up on his enemy’s weakness, but Hammond recovered his presence of mind just in time. After a scientific strike, a right to the jaw, Cocker fell.

After a pause to press his hand to his throbbing wound, Hammond removed his two-foot-long cravat and secured Cocker’s hands before him, leaving the ends trailing. He delayed one moment more to search for his stick. The leaping firelight winked on the silver head, leading him directly to it.

Looking out from the trees, he noticed that, although there were men between the burning vicarage and the church, they were all on one side and milling about to no purpose. No one saw him drag Cocker by his arms inside the church.

Once there, Hammond rolled him over and relied Cocker’s hands behind him, lashing them to his feet with a length of bell rope, in a method he had learned, long ago and to his discomfiture, in Italy. Retrieving his cravat, he soaked one end in the font. He wrung it over the unconscious man’s head, then slapped him sharply. Cocker moaned and rubbed his face against the cold stone of the church floor.

Squatting down before him, Hammond prodded Cocker with his stick. “Hallo there,” he said, smiling -as Cocker lifted his head off the pavement, peering about him dazedly. “Suppose you tell me all about it? Please don’t leave out any of the details. I am, believe me, fascinated by every word you utter.”

“You ain’t no cause to treat me this way,” Cocker said.

“No? Your memory is faulty. I saw what you did.”

“T’was an accident. Didn’t mean no harm t’yer niece.”

“Niece? Oh, yes. We’ll have to have a long chat about that before we’re through. But you should know, old man, I wasn’t referring to the fire.” Hammond studied the profile of the man beside him and saw Cocker’s eyes narrow as he reviewed his past crimes.

In a voice as kind as if he were talking to a dear but troubled friend, Hammond said, “I thought before that your voice was familiar. Perhaps we met by the sea not so many days ago. I’m still carrying the gift your friend—I think you called him Matt—gave me. Tell me, what did you do with his body?”

Cocker struggled with his bonds. “Rot you, rot you! You had no business t’kill him.”

Hammond held up his hand. “My, my, your memory is dreadful. He tried to kill me first. I seem to remember your insisting he do it while I lay there as helpless as ... as helpless as you are. Was it you, by the way, who hit me over the head when I got off the boat from France? How did you know who I was?”

For answer, he received a brief critique of his immediate ancestry, delivered with muffled vehemence. Hammond admired Cocker’s vocabulary even while he deplored the choice of subject.

“I’m sorry you feel that way about it. Perhaps I should mention that the building we are in is a church, just next door to the vicarage.” Alarm mixed with Cocker’s anger. “Furthermore, if you are hoping your vicar will arrive to release you, I think, upon reflection, you will discover he has already left.”

“I know that, curse you.” Cocker wriggled on the floor, attempting fruitlessly to free himself.

“That will do you no more good than it does the chicken about to go into the pot, old lad. You, unlike the chicken, however, have some choice. You can give me all the details of your vicar’s plans, not forgetting to mention where you’ll be meeting—did I tell you I know all about Oxford? I bring it up just in case you were thinking about fobbing me off with some story about London or Plymouth.”

Cocker once more displayed his wide-ranging collection of epithets.

Hammond’s smile was charming as he continued. “As I say, you can tell me all or I can walk away and leave you here. You might prefer that. There is always the chance that the church will not burn. Tell me, in all the time you’ve worked for the vicar, did you ever notice that this church has the remains of a very fine Tudor roof?”

Cocker was silent.

Appearing entirely at ease, Hammond continued. “Quite nice, I think, only the slate has so much of the natural oil in it that it will burn nearly as well as the vicarage, once you’d oiled it. Pity you’re not in a position to look and admire it. It may not be there much longer. Of course, it is some consolation to know that if it goes, you will. Strange to think that Becket also died in a church. If you meet him on what the Puritans described as the farther shore, you can compare experiences.” Hammond’s smile was now beatific. “Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Tactless of me. You will hardly reside with the saints.”

It seemed to Cocker, lying painfully on the cold stone, that the crackle and flare of the burning vicarage were growing louder and brighter with every moment that passed. All along one side of the church, he could see the brilliance of the fire blazing in the clear glass windows of the clerestory. Perhaps because the floor was so cold, he began to feel an uncomfortable warmth growing on his back.

It cannot be said in his defense that he felt any remorse about consigning two young women to a fiery death, but he felt considerable horror at the thought of dying in a burning church. He seemed to see so clearly the fall of the slates, each bearing a load of fire, as they piled around his helpless body. Cocker began to talk.

“He said I’d be the important man in these parts, once he got his way. They’d all play kiss me hand then, they would, those dirty—”

Hammond prodded him once more with his stick. “Now, now. I’ve heard enough of that kind of thing from you...”

“It was them, those women, all of 'em. Makin’ faces and lookin’ at me sideways. I’m good as they. Mr. Fain, he says, all men are just as good as all other men is.”

Cocker rambled on, repeating half-grasped slogans of Revolutionary philosophy and mouthing the twisted catchwords of freedom fostered by Napoleon and those who followed him. While in France, Hammond had been forced to listen to weary hours of such pointless discourse, and he’d hoped that with peace he would be freed from the necessity of ever having to listen to it again. But he sat patiently enough by Cocker, discovering many things he wanted to know.

He was aware of how messages were sent from Paris to England, for he intercepted many. Most he sent on their way after a careful noting of content. Only the letter he himself brought into England was abstracted from the courier, left dead on a French beach. However, Cocker gave him the details of how the system worked from the English side.

Cocker hinted that he knew so much due to his absolute devotion to Mr. Fain. He repeated this idea several times. Hammond, however, was certain that Fain kept Cocker near because he saw in his servant the depths of mindless violence that were so useful to a man in his position.

Hammond took careful mental note of the names that Cocker mentioned in his bragging, thinking it was high time these men were exposed to the War Office. Further, Cocker mentioned several inns where the English sympathizers to the Bonapartist cause were apt to make their rendezvous. Among these was the Marigold, an inn in Oxford. Hammond did not let on that this information was of value.

After half an hour of this weary listening, Hammond again asked for the location of Cocker’s meeting with Fain. But Cocker had talked himself into once more believing his superiority and would not tell, not realizing that he had already said too much.

“Now, I have only one more question. Oh, it’s an easy one,” Hammond said in answer to Cocker’s defiance. “What did you do with your horse? The horse you were supposed to ride into town on?”

The question was so unexpected that Cocker gulped and spoke the truth. “I left it with them Hodges women. They don’t ask nothin’ ‘cause they know what will come t’em.”

Hammond stood up. “You’ve been very helpful, Cocker. Thank you.” He walked past the servant’s trussed body.

“Let me go! You said—” Hammond cut off Cocker’s voice with a kick in the side.

“I’m certain it will break your heart, Cocker. Miss Burnwell escaped the doom you set her. And if she escaped, surely Miss Fain did as well. But it wasn’t your fault they are not dead. So I think I’ll leave you here, for a bit, so you can think about them and the roof. I shall just go out and see if it is burning yet.” Hammond left, ignoring the man’s curses and pleas.

By a stone wall some half-dozen men, begrimed and blackened, rested after their relief by new fire fighters from the town. One saw Hammond and called to him, “Hey, mister?”

To ignore the summons would lead to questions and possibly pursuit. He came over to them. “Quite a mess, isn’t it?”

“Aye, indeed.” The one that called to him was a thin man of forty or fifty years. His sharp eyes looked out beneath his thick brows. “I’m John Arlen, churchwarden. You’re a stranger, I take it.”

“Yes, Mr. Arlen. My name is Hammond.” The men shifted on their feet, looking at one another as if to see if their suspicions were seconded. To relieve their minds, Hammond said, “I am known to Mr. Fletcher, the Luckem boys’ tutor, and to Miss Burnwell.”