Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (144 page)

HE RINSED HIS
mouth with brandy and spat into a bowl, then sat back and sipped a little, cautiously.

They sat in what was plainly the captain’s great cabin, for the stern windows rose in a blaze of scintillant light reflected from the river below. It made him queasy to look at it for more than a few seconds, but he was beginning to feel better.

“I really do apologize,” Richardson said, and sounded as though he meant it. “I have no personal animus against you at all, and if I could have managed this without involving you, I would have.”

Grey shifted his gaze reluctantly to Richardson, who wore the uniform of a British infantry major.

“I have heard of double agents, and met them, too,” he said, more or less politely. “But damned if I’ve seen one less able to make up his mind. Would you care to tell me which side you’re really on?”

He thought the expression on Richardson’s face was meant to be a smile, but it wasn’t altogether succeeding.

“That,” Richardson said, “is not as simple a question as you might think.”

“Well, it’s as good a question as you’re likely to get, under the circumstances.” Grey closed his eyes and lifted the glass under his nose; maybe inhaling brandy fumes would allay the headache without making him drunk. He thought it might be dangerous to be drunk in Richardson’s company.

“Let me ask you one, then.” Richardson was sitting in the captain’s chair; it creaked as he leaned forward. “When I asked you whether you had any personal interest in Claire Fraser, you replied that you didn’t, and then promptly married her. Why did you do that?”

That made John open his eyes. Richardson had spoken mildly, but was regarding him with the air of a very patient cat sat outside a mousehole. John touched the back of his head gingerly, then looked at his fingers. Yes, he was bleeding, but not heavily.

“I could tell you that it’s none of your business,” he said, wiping his fingers on his breeches. “But as it is, there’s no reason for secrecy. You had threatened to have the lady arrested for sedition. She was the widow of a good friend. It seemed to me that keeping her out of your clutches was perhaps the last office I could perform for Jamie Fraser.”

Richardson nodded.

“Just so,” he said. “A gallant gesture, my lord.” He seemed slightly amused, though it was hard to tell. “I understand that the marriage was necessarily of short duration, owing to Mr. Fraser’s unexpected return from a watery grave. But did the lady tell you, in some exchange of marital confidences, anything regarding her antecedents?”

“No,” Grey said, without hesitation.

“That seems rather remarkable,” Richardson said, “though given what those antecedents are, perhaps the lady’s reticence was justified.”

A ripple of unease crept down the back of Grey’s neck—or perhaps it was just a dribble of blood, he thought.
Antecedents, my arse.
He leaned back a little, careful of his tender head, and gave Richardson what he hoped was an inscrutable stare.

Richardson regarded him for a long moment, then, with a brief nod to himself, rose and fetched a leather folder from the shelf and sat down again. He opened the folder and removed an official-looking document, complete with seal and stamp, though Grey couldn’t tell from where he sat whose seal it was.

“Are you familiar with a man named Neil Stapleton?” Richardson asked, cocking one brow.

“In what sense, familiar?” Grey asked, raising both of his. “I might have heard the name, but if so, it’s been some time.” It
had
been some time, but the name “Neil Stapleton”—better known to Grey as Neil the Cunt—had struck him in the pit of the stomach with the force of a two-pound round shot. He hadn’t seen Stapleton in many years, but he certainly hadn’t forgot the man.

“Perhaps I should have inquired as to whether you knew him…in the biblical sense?” Richardson asked, watching Grey’s face. He pushed the document toward Grey, whose eyes fixed at once on the heading:
Confession of Neil Patrick Stapleton.

No,
he thought.
Bloody hell, no…

He took up the document, glad in a remote way to see that his hands weren’t shaking, and read a moderately detailed and quite accurate account of what had occurred between himself and Neil Stapleton on the night of April 14, 1759, and again on the afternoon of May 9 of the same year.

He laid down the document and stared at Richardson over it.

“What did you do to him?” he asked. His stomach tightened at the thought of what they—for surely it
was
a “they” and not this man alone—
might
have done to a man like Neil.

“Do to him?” Richardson said, looking bland.

“Blackmail, bribery, torture…? He didn’t write this of his own free will. What sane man would?” And whatever else he might be, Neil had never been lacking in his wits.

Richardson shrugged.

“Is he alive?” Grey said, between his teeth.

“Do you care?” Richardson seemed only faintly interested. “Oh—but of course you do. If he were dead, you could claim that this document is a forgery. But I’m afraid that Mr. Stapleton is, in fact, still alive, though I naturally cannot guess as to how long he’ll stay in that condition.”

Grey stared at him. Was the fellow actually now threatening to have Neil killed? But that made no sense.

“He is, however, in London. Fortunately, though, I have additional…testimony, shall we say?—nearer to hand.” He rose and went to the cabin door, opened it, and put his head out.

“Come in,” he said, and stepped back to allow Percy Wainwright room to enter.

PERCY LOOKED DREADFUL,
Grey thought. He was disheveled, his neckcloth missing, and his curly, graying hair matted in spots, sticking up in others. He was pale as skimmed milk, with dark circles under his eyes. The eyes themselves were bloodshot and fixed on Grey at once.

“John,” he said, a little hoarsely. He cleared his throat, hard, then looked away and said, “I’m sorry, John. I’m not brave. You’ve always been brave, but I never have.”

This was no more than the truth, acknowledged between them and part of the love they’d once shared; John had always been willing to be brave for both of them. He felt a tinge of sympathetic pity beneath the larger sense of annoyance—and the very much larger sense of fear.

“So you made him sign a statement of confession, too,” he said to Richardson, doing his best to keep calm.

Richardson pursed his lips and opened the folder again, this time drawing out a longer document.
Well, it would be longer, wouldn’t it?
Grey thought.
How long were we lovers?

“Unnatural acts
and
incest,” Richardson remarked, turning over the pages of the new document. “Dear me, Lord John. Dear me.”

“Sit down, Percy,” Grey said, feeling unutterably tired. He caught a brief glimpse of the document’s heading, though, and his spirits rose a fraction of an inch.
Confession of P. Wainwright,
it said. So Percy had kept that one last bit of self-respect; he hadn’t given Richardson his real first name. He tried to catch Percy’s eye, but his erstwhile stepbrother was looking down at his hands, folded in his lap like a schoolchild’s.

You did try to warn me, didn’t you?

“You’ve gone to rather a lot of trouble for nothing, Mr. Richardson,” he said coolly. “I don’t care what you do with these documents; a gentleman does not submit to blackmail.”

“Actually, almost all of them do,” Richardson said, almost apologetically. “As it is, though, I’m not blackmailing you.”

“You’re not?” Grey waved a hand at the folder and its small sheaf of papers. “What on earth is this charade in aid of, then?”

Richardson folded his own hands on the desktop, leaned back, and looked at Grey, evidently assembling his thoughts.

“I have a list,” he said, finally. “Of persons whose actions have led—either directly or indirectly, but without doubt—to a particular outcome. In some cases, the person him—or her—self performs the action; in others, he or she merely facilitates it. Your brother is one who will facilitate a particular course of action that in turn will decide this war.”

“What?”…
actions have led…will facilitate…will decide…
He shot a sideways glance at Percy, who was looking up, but with an attitude of complete bewilderment, and no wonder.

“What, indeed?” Richardson had been watching the play of thoughts on Grey’s face. “I may be mistaken, but I believe that your brother intends to make a speech to the House of Lords. And I further believe that the effects of that speech will affect the will of the British army—and hence Parliament—to pursue this war.”

Percy was listening to this in total bewilderment, and Grey didn’t blame him.

“I desire that your brother
not
make that speech,” Richardson concluded. “And I think that your life and honor are probably the only things that would prevent him doing so.” He cocked his head to one side, watching Grey.

Grey blinked.

“If you think that, plainly you don’t know my brother.”

Richardson smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant expression.

“You’ve seen a man hanged for sodomy.”

“I have.” He had, in fact, not only attended that hanging but had pulled on Bates’s legs in the desperate hope of hastening his end. He found that one hand was idly rubbing his chest, in the place where Bates had kicked him.

“The American colonies are no more tolerant of perversion than is England—probably less. Though you might have the luck to be stoned to death by a mob rather than formally hanged,” he added judiciously, and nodded toward the papers on the desk. “Your brother will appreciate the position, I assure you. You—and Mr. Wainwright—will remain aboard as my guests, while copies of these statements are delivered to your brother. What happens to you after that will depend upon His Grace.”

He closed the folder, picked it up, and bowed.

“I’ll have some food brought. Good day, gentlemen.”

WILLIAM’S FIRST RESPONSE TO
learning of his father’s disappearance was to go and look for him. He began at General Prévost’s headquarters.

No one had seen Lieutenant Colonel Lord John Grey, he was told. They would like very much to know where he was, though, as Regimental Colonel His Grace the Duke of Pardloe had left responsibility for the soldiers remaining in Savannah in Colonel Lord John’s hands, and while the executive officers over these soldiers were fully capable of keeping the men fit and in order, they would certainly appreciate more specific orders, when these should be forthcoming.

At least they knew where Uncle Hal was—or was supposed to be. In Charles Town.

“Which is the devil of a lot of help,” he told Amaranthus, after two days of searching. “But if Papa doesn’t turn up here quite soon…”

“Yes,” she said, biting her lip. “I suppose you’ll have to go find Father Pardloe in Charles Town. If he…” Her voice died away.

“If he what?” he demanded, in no mood for obfuscation. She didn’t reply at once, but went to the sideboard and took down a bulbous black bottle. He recognized it; it was the German brandy Papa and Uncle Hal called black brandy, though the name was really “Blood of Martyrs.” He waved it away impatiently.

“I don’t need a drink.”

“Smell it.” She’d uncorked the bottle and now held it under his nose. He took an impatient sniff, then stopped. And sniffed again, more cautiously.

“I don’t pretend to be a judge of brandy,” Amaranthus said, watching him. “But Father Pardloe did give me a glass of this once. And it didn’t smell—or taste—like this.”

“You tasted it?” He raised a brow at her and she shrugged.

“Only a fingertip. It tastes much as it smells—hot, spicy. And that’s not how it
should
taste.”

William dipped a fingertip and tried it. She was right. It tasted…wrong, somehow. He wiped the drop of wine on his breeches, staring at her.

“Do you mean to say you think someone’s
poisoned
this?” His natural incredulity was lessened by the worry of the last few days, and he found that he wasn’t at all unwilling to believe this.

Amaranthus grimaced, gingerly putting the cork back into the bottle.

“A few weeks ago, Father Pardloe asked me did I know what foxglove is. I told him I did, and that he’d seen it—Mrs. Anderson has quite a lot of it bordering the front walk of her garden.” She took a short breath, as though her corset was too tight, and met William’s eye. “I told him it was poisonous. And I found that”—she nodded at the bottle—“locked up in the strongbox in his office. He gave me a key some time ago,” she added pointedly, “because all of my jewelry is in it.”

William looked at the bottle, black—and menacing. The fingers of the hand that had touched the stuff felt suddenly cold and seemed to be tingling. He rubbed them impatiently against his sleeve.

It wasn’t that he thought Uncle Hal wouldn’t kill someone he thought needed killing; he just didn’t believe he’d do it with poison. He said as much to Amaranthus, who looked at the bottle for a long moment, then back at him, her eyes troubled.

“Do you think he might have meant…to kill
himself
with it?” she asked quietly.

William swallowed. Faced with the imminent prospect of telling his wife what had become of their eldest son, and the eventual prospect of having his family and the regiment disgraced and destroyed…he didn’t
think
Harold, Duke of Pardloe, would seize upon suicide as an escape, but…

“Well, he didn’t take it with him to Charles Town,” he said firmly. “It’s no more than a three-day ride. I’ll go and find him. Put that stuff somewhere safe.”

Charles Town

WILLIAM HAD NOT
expected ever to meet Sir Henry Clinton again. But there he was, frowning at William in a way that made it evident that Sir Henry recalled very well who he was. William had been waiting in an anteroom of the gracious Charles Town mansion presently serving as command headquarters for the Charles Town garrison, having requested a brief audience with Stephen Moore, one of Clinton’s aides-de-camp with whom he had been friendly—and one who he knew was familiar with the Duke of Pardloe. He’d sent in his name, though, and five minutes later Sir Henry himself popped up like a jack-in-the-box, his appearance nearly as startling.

“Still
Captain
Ransom, is it?” Sir Henry asked, elaborately courteous. There wasn’t any bar to a man resigning one commission and buying another, but the circumstances of William’s resignation of his commission under Sir Henry had been dramatic, and commanders in general disliked drama in their junior officers.

“It is, sir.” William bowed, very correctly. “I trust I see you well, sir?”

Sir Henry made a
hrmph
noise, but nodded briefly. He was, after all, surrounded by the evidences of a significant victory: the streets of Charles Town were pitted and marred by cannon fire, and soldiers—many of them black—were everywhere, laboriously restoring what they had spent weeks blowing up.

“I am come with a message for the Duke of Pardloe,” William said.

Sir Henry looked mildly surprised.

“Pardloe? But he’s gone.”

“Gone,” William repeated carefully. “Has the duke returned to Savannah?”

“He didn’t say he meant to,” Clinton replied, beginning to be impatient. “He left more than a week ago, though, so I imagine he’ll have got back to Savannah by now.”

William felt a coolness on the back of his neck, as though the room around them had subtly changed from one moment to the next and an unseen window had opened.

“Yes,” he managed to say, and bowed. “Thank you, sir.”

He walked out into the street and turned right, with no intent in mind save movement. He was at once alarmed and incensed. What the devil was Uncle Hal about? How dare he go off about his own business when his own brother had disappeared?

He stopped dead for a moment, as the thought struck him that his father and uncle might have disappeared together.
But why?
The thought died in the next moment, though, as he spotted a familiar red-coated form a hundred yards down the street, buying a packet of tobacco from a black woman in a spotted turban. Denys Randall.

“The very man I wanted to see,” he said a moment later, falling into step alongside Denys as he walked away from the tobacco seller.

Denys looked up, startled, then looked forward and back before turning to William.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“I might ask the same of you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous; I’m supposed to be here, and you aren’t.”

William didn’t bother asking what Randall was doing. He didn’t care.

“I’m looking for my uncle Pardloe. Sir Henry just told me that he left Charles Town more than a week ago.”

“He did,” Denys said promptly. “I crossed paths with him as I came down from Charlotte on the…oh, when was it…the thirteenth? Maybe the fourteenth…”

“Damn what day it was. You mean he was riding north, not south?”

“How clever you are, William,” Denys said in mock approval. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

“Stercus,”
William said. His stomach knotted. “Was he alone?”

“Yes,” said Denys, looking at him sideways. “I thought that odd. I don’t know him to speak to, though, and hadn’t any reason to do so.”

William asked a few more questions, with no results, and so took his leave of Denys Randall, with luck, for good.

North.
And what lay to the north that might lead the colonel of a large regiment to depart suddenly and without word to anyone, riding alone?

Ben. He’s going to see Ben.
The vision of a black bottle rose in the back of his mind. Had Hal thought of poisoning himself, his son, or both of them?

“Too bloody Shakespearean,” William said aloud, turning his horse to the south. “Fucking
Hamlet,
or would it be
Titus Andronicus
?” He wondered whether his uncle ever read Shakespeare, for that matter—but it didn’t matter; wherever he’d gone, he hadn’t taken the bottle. At the moment, all he could do was go back to Savannah and hope to find his father there.

Three days later, he walked into Number 12 Oglethorpe Street and found Amaranthus in the parlor, poking the fire. She swung round at the sound of his step and dropped the poker with a clang. An instant later, she was hugging him, but not with the fervor of a lover. More the action of a stranded swimmer reaching for a floating log, he thought. Still, he kissed the top of her head and took her hands.

“Uncle Hal’s gone,” he said. “North.” Her eyes were already dark with fear. At this, the little blood remaining in her face drained away.

“He’s going to see Ben?”

“I can’t think what else he could be doing. Have you had any word from Papa? Has he come back?”

“No,” she said, and swallowed. She nodded at an open letter that lay on a small table under the window. “That came this morning, for Father Pardloe, but I opened it. It’s from a man named Richardson.”

William snatched the letter up and read it quickly. Then read it again, unable to make sense of it. And a third time, slowly.

“Who
is
that man?” Amaranthus had retreated a little, eyeing the letter as though it might suddenly spring to life and bite. William didn’t blame her.

“A bad man,” William said, his lips feeling stiff. “God knows who he really is, but he seems to be—I don’t know, exactly. ‘Major General Inspector of the Army’? I’ve never heard of such an office, but—”

“But he says he’s arrested Lord John!” Amaranthus cried. “How could he? Why? What does he
mean
‘infamous and scandalous acts’? Lord
John
?”

William’s fingers felt numb and he fumbled the sheet of paper, trying to refold it. The official stamp beneath Richardson’s signature felt rough under his thumb, and he dropped the letter, which caught a whiff of air and spun across the carpet. Amaranthus stamped on it, pinning it to the floor, and stood staring at William.

“He wants Father Pardloe to go and speak to him. What the devil shall we
do
?”