An Echo in the Bone (104 page)

“Anyway,” Percy went on, not losing a beat, “I discovered this curious document. I had heard of the family scandal, of course, and recognized the names at once.”

“You asked the present baron about it?”

“I did. What did you think of Claude, by the way?” Percy had always been like quicksilver, Grey thought, and he hadn’t lost any of his mutability with age.

“Bad cardplayer. A wonderful voice, though—does he sing?”

“Indeed he does. And you’re right about the cards. He can keep a secret, if he likes, but he can’t lie at all. You’d be amazed at how powerful a thing perfect honesty is, in some circumstances,”

Percy added reflectively. “It almost makes me think there might be something in the Eighth Commandment.”

Grey muttered something about “more honored in the breach,” but then coughed and begged that Percy might continue.

“He didn’t know about the marriage contract, I’m sure of it. He was genuinely staggered. And after a certain amount of hesitation—‘bloody, bold, and resolute’ may be your watchwords, John, but they are not his—he gave his consent for me to dig into the matter.”

Grey ignored the implied flattery—if that’s what it was, and he thought it was—and carefully deposited the caterpillar onto the leaves of what looked like an edible bush.

“You looked for the priest,” he said with certainty.

Percy laughed with what sounded like genuine pleasure, and it occurred to Grey with a small shock that of course he knew Percy’s mind, and Percy his; they had been conversing, through the veils of statecraft and secrecy, for many years. Of course, Percy had likely known to whom he was talking, and Grey hadn’t.

“Yes, I did. He was dead—murdered. Killed in the street at night while hurrying to give the last rites to a dying parishioner, such a terrible thing. A week after the disappearance of Amelie Beauchamp.”

This was beginning to rouse Grey’s professional interest, though the private side of him was still more than wary.

“The next thing would have been the comte—but if he was capable of killing a priest to keep his secrets, it would have been dangerous to approach him directly,” Grey said. “His servants, then?”

Percy nodded, mouth quirked at one corner in appreciation of Grey’s acuity.

“The comte was dead, too—or he disappeared, at least; he had a reputation as a sorceror, oddly enough—and he died a good ten years after Amelie. But I looked for his old servants, yes. I found a few of them. For some people, it really
is
always about money, and the assistant coachman was one of those. Two days after Amelie disappeared, he delivered a carpet to a brothel near the Rue Fauborg. A very heavy carpet that had about it a smell of opium—which he recognized, because he had at one point transported a troupe of Chinese acrobats who came to entertain at a fete at the mansion.”

“And so you went to the brothel. Where money…”

“They say water is the universal solvent,” Percy said, shaking his head, “but it isn’t. You could plunge a man into a barrel of freezing water and leave him for a week, and you would accomplish much less than you might with a modest quantity of gold.”

Grey silently noted the adjective “freezing,” and nodded to Percy to continue.

“It took some time, repeated visits, different attempts—the madam was a true professional, meaning that whoever had paid her predecessor had done so on a staggering scale, and her doorkeeper, while old enough, had had his tongue torn out at an early age; no help there. And of course none of the whores had been there when the infamous carpet was delivered, that being so long before.”

He had, however, patiently traced the families of the present whores—for some occupations run in families—and managed after months of work to discover an old woman who had been employed at the brothel and who recognized the miniature of Amelie that he had brought from
Trois Flèches
.

The girl had indeed been brought to the brothel, in the middle stages of pregnancy. That had not mattered particularly; there were patrons with such tastes. A few months later, she had been delivered of a son. She had survived childbirth but died a year later, during a plague of influenza.

“And I could not
begin
to tell you the difficulties of finding out anything about a child born in a Paris brothel forty-odd years ago, my dear.” Percy sighed, employing his handkerchief again.

“But your name is Perseverance,” Grey noted with extreme dryness, and Percy glanced sharply at him.

“Do you know,” he said lightly, “I believe you are the only person in the world who knows that?” And from the expression in his eyes, that was one too many.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Grey said. “That one, at least. What about Denys Randall-Isaacs?”

It worked. Percy’s face shimmered like a pool of quicksilver in the sun. In half a heartbeat, he had the perfect blankness back in place—but it was too late.

Grey laughed, though without humor, and stood up.

“Thank you, Perseverance,” he said, and walked away through the grassy graves of the nameless poor.

That night, when his household was asleep, he took pen and ink to write to Arthur Norrington, to Harry Quarry, and to his brother. Toward dawn, he began, for the first time in two years, to write to Jamie Fraser.

BATTLE OF BENNINGTON

General Burgoyne’s camp

September 11, 1777

THE SMOKE OF burnt and burning fields hung over the camp, had done so for days. The Americans were still withdrawing, destroying the countryside in their wake.

William was with Sandy Lindsay, talking about the best way to cook a turkey—one of Lindsay’s scouts having just brought him one—when the letter arrived. It was likely William’s imagination that a dreadful silence fell upon the camp, the earth shook, and the veil of the temple was rent in twain. But it was very shortly apparent that something had happened, nonetheless.

There was a definite change in the air, something amiss in the rhythms of speech and movement among the men surrounding them. Balcarres felt it, too, and stopped in his examination of the turkey’s outspread wing, looking at William with eyebrows raised.

“What?” said William.

“I don’t know, but it isn’t good.” Balcarres thrust the limp turkey into his orderly’s hands and, snatching up his hat, made for Burgoyne’s tent, William on his heels.

They found Burgoyne tight-lipped and white with anger, his senior officers in clusters round him, speaking to one another in low, shocked voices.

Captain Sir Francis Clerke, the general’s aide-de-camp, emerged from the press, head down and face shadowed. Balcarres caught at his elbow as he passed.

“Francis—what’s happened?”

Captain Clerke was looking noticeably agitated. He glanced behind him into the tent, then stepped aside and moved out of earshot, taking Balcarres and William with him.

“Howe,” he said. “He’s not coming.”

“Not coming?” William said stupidly. “But—is he not leaving New York after all?”

“He’s leaving,” Clerke said, his lips so tight it was a wonder he could speak at all. “To invade Pennsylvania.”

“But—” Balcarres darted an appalled look toward the entrance to the tent, then back at Clerke.

“Exactly.”

The true proportions of the disaster were revealing themselves to William. General Howe was not merely cocking a snook at General Burgoyne by ignoring his plan, which would be bad enough from Burgoyne’s point of view. By choosing to march on Philadelphia rather than coming up the Hudson to join Burgoyne’s troops, Howe had left Burgoyne essentially to his own devices, in terms of supply and reinforcement.

In other words, they were on their own, separated from their supply trains, with the disagreeable choice of continuing to pursue the retreating Americans through a wilderness from which all sustenance had been stripped—or turning round and marching ignominiously back to Canada, through a wilderness from which all sustenance had been stripped.

Balcarres had been expostulating along these lines to Sir Francis, who rubbed a hand over his face in frustration, shaking his head.

“I know,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, my lords—”

“Where are you going?” William asked, and Clerke glanced at him.

“To tell Mrs. Lind,” Clerke said. “I thought I’d best warn her.” Mrs. Lind was the wife of the chief commisary officer. She was also General Burgoyne’s mistress.

WHETHER MRS. LIND had exerted her undeniable gifts to good effect, or whether the general’s natural resiliency of character had asserted itself, the blow of Howe’s letter was swiftly encompassed.
Whatever you want to say about him
, William wrote in his weekly letter to Lord John,
he knows the benefit of certain decision and swift action. We have resumed our pursuit of
the Americans’ chief body of troops with redoubled effort. Most of our horses have been
abandoned, stolen, or eaten. I have quite worn through the soles of one pair of boots
.

In the meantime, we receive intelligence from one of the scouts to the effect that the town of
Bennington, which is not too far distant, is being used as a gathering place for the American
commissary. By report, it is lightly guarded, and so the General is sending Colonel Baum, one of
the Hessians, with five hundred troops to capture these much-needed supplies. We leave in the
morning
.

Whether his drunken conversation with Balcarres was in part responsible, William never knew, but he had discovered that he was now spoken of as being “good with Indians.” And whether it was owing to this dubious capacity or to the fact that he could speak basic German, he found himself on the morning of August 12 deputed to accompany Colonel Baum’s foraging expedition, this including a number of dismounted Brunswick cavalry, two three-pounder artillery pieces, and a hundred Indians.

By report, the Americans were receiving cattle, funneled out of New England, these being collected in quantity in Bennington, as well as a considerable number of wagons, these full of corn, flour, and other necessaries.

It was, for a wonder, not raining when they set out, and that alone gave the expedition a feeling of optimism. Anticipation of food increased this sense significantly. Rations had been short for what seemed a very long time, though in fact it had been only a week or so. Still, more than a day spent marching without adequate food seems a long time, as William had good cause to know.

Many of the Indians were still mounted; they circled the main body of soldiers, riding ahead a little way to scout the road, coming back to offer guidance through or around places where the road—no more than a trace at the best of times—had given up the fight and been absorbed by the forest or drowned by one of the rain-swollen streams that leapt unexpectedly out of the hills.

Bennington was near a river called the Walloomsac, and as they walked, William was discussing in a desultory way with one of the Hessian lieutenants whether it might be possible to load the stores onto rafts for transport to a rendezvous downstream.

This discussion was entirely theoretical, since neither of them knew where the Walloomsac went nor whether it was navigable to any extent, but it gave both men a chance to practice the other’s language and so passed the time on a long, hot march.

“My father spent much time in Germany,” William told Ober-Leftenant Gruenwald, in his careful, slow German. “He is of the food of Hanover very fond.”

Gruenwald, from Hesse-Cassel, allowed himself a derisive twitch of the mustache at mention of Hanover, but contented himself with the observation that even a Hanoverian could roast a cow and perhaps boil some potatoes to accompany it. But his own mother made a dish from the flesh of swine and apples, beswimming in red wine and spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, that made his mouth water only to remember.

Water was running down Gruenwald’s face, sweat making tracks in the dust and dampening the collar of his light-blue coat. He took off his tall grenadier’s headdress and wiped his head with a giant spotted kerchief, sodden from many earlier employments.

“I think we will maybe not find cinnamon today,” Willie said. “Maybe a pig, though.”

“If we do, I will him roast for you,” Gruenwald assured him. “As for apples …” he tucked a hand into his tunic and withdrew a handful of small red crab apples, which he shared out with William. “I haff a bushel of these. I haff–”

Excited yips from an Indian riding back down the column interrupted him, and William looked up to see the rider throw back an arm, gesturing behind him and shouting, “River!”

The word enlivened the sagging columns, and William saw the cavalry—who had insisted upon wearing their high boots and their broadswords, in spite of their lack of horses, and had suffered in consequence—draw themselves up, clanking loudly with anticipation.

Another shout came from the forward line.

“Cow turds!”

That caused a general cheer and much laughter among the men, who hastened on with a quicker step. William saw Colonel Baum, who did still have a horse, turn out of the column and wait on the roadside, leaning down to speak briefly with the officers as they came past. William saw his aide lean close, pointing up a small hill opposite.

“What do you think—” he said, turning to Gruenwald, and was startled to find the ober-leftenant staring at him blank-faced, his jaw hanging open. The man’s hand loosened and fell to his side, and the mitred helmet fell and rolled away in the dust. William blinked and saw a thick worm of red snake its way slowly down from under Gruenwald’s dark hair.

Gruenwald sat down quite suddenly and fell backward in the road, his face gone a muddy white.

“Shit!” said William, and jerked suddenly to an awareness of what had just happened.

“Ambush!”
he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“Das ist ein Überfall!!”

There were shouts of alarm rising from the column, and the crack of sporadic firing from the woods. William grabbed Gruenwald under the arms and dragged him hastily into the shelter of a group of pine trees. The ober-leftenant was still alive, though his coat was wet with sweat and blood. William made sure the German’s pistol was loaded and in his hand before taking his own pistol and dashing toward Baum, who was standing in his stirrups, shrieking directions in high, shrill German.