Beneath a Silent Moon (17 page)

Charles leaned against the drinks table. "Where's McGann?"

Tommy's gaze darted over his face. "You mean you don't know, either?"

"Mélanie and I just got here."

"So did I." Tommy took a sip of port. His face was leaner than Mélanie remembered, sun-weathered and set with lines that sat oddly with his boyish insouciance and white-blond hair. "I suppose now we all dance about trying to figure out who knows what."

"Or we could just make it easy and try telling the truth." Charles watched his former fellow diplomat with a steady, appraising gaze.

"The truth? Good Lord, Charles, what have we come to? Still, I suppose trying something new always has a certain piquancy." Tommy gave the sort of disarming smile that had been setting hearts aflutter in diplomatic ballrooms ever since he was first posted abroad as an attaché. It didn't, of course, mean he intended to tell anything remotely close to the truth. "I'm sorry about Francisco Soro," he added. "I never quite trusted the man, but I know he was a friend of yours."

Mélanie's gaze went involuntarily to her husband's face, as Charles's went to her own.

"Oh, yes, I know about Soro," Tommy said. "I know most of what you know, I think."

"Is that why Castlereagh sent you here?" Charles asked. "Because of Soro?"

"Indirectly." Tommy crossed his legs. The light from the window picked out a film of dust on the gleaming leather of his Hessians. "I've been involved in investigating something in Paris for some time now."

"Something?"

"A spy ring of sorts. A ring of former Bonapartist officers. Called the Elsinore League, of all things. We haven't been able to determine exactly what they're up to, but we suspect it's something serious. Soro seems to have gone to work for them when he came to France."

"So Castlereagh told me," Charles said, neglecting to comment on whether or not he believed the Foreign Secretary.

Tommy nodded. "We have a couple of men infiltrated into the Elsinore League, or at least the league's outer circle. We thought we were finally on to something."

"We?"

Tommy met his gaze for a moment. "Castlereagh had me running the operation. It's gone on for several months now."

"Since before I left Paris."

"Yes." Tommy smoothed a crease from the glossy blue superfine of his sleeve. "No one can be involved in everything, Charles. Not even you."

"And my sympathies have been considered a bit too Bonapartist since the war."

"You said it, old boy, I didn't." Tommy took another sip of port. "If Castlereagh told you that much, he must have told you Soro apparently reached the point where he couldn't stomach the group's activities. I always thought he was too soft for his own good, though I could never tell which way he'd break. He came to England, probably with evidence against his former associates. He sought you out. He trusted you."

"Which may have been a fatal mistake on his part. I didn't do a very good job of protecting him." Charles's fingers whitened round his glass. "You followed Soro to England?"

"No. I came because we'd stumbled across evidence linking the Elsinore League to contacts in Britain."

Charles's shoulders straightened, an involuntary sign of quickening interest. "Go on."

Tommy ran his finger over a chip in his glass. "Why did you come to see Giles McGann today?"

"Why did you?"

"Here we go again. This circling round really is tiresome. I'm guessing you were doing more than simply calling on an old friend. But I don't think you quite realize what McGann was involved in, Charles."

"Enlighten me."

"One of the members of the Elsinore League, a Colonel Coroux, hanged himself in his cell in the Conciergerie three weeks ago."

Charles gave a quite brilliant impression of never having heard of Colonel Coroux. "You're sure it was suicide?"

"We're bloody well not sure of anything. My agents bribed the jailer to give them a quarter-hour to search the cell. They didn't find any evidence of foul play. But they did find some papers hidden in the straw in Coroux's mattress. Part of a list. Judging by the jottings, it looked like something he'd decoded. Or encoded. It seemed to be some sort of network." Tommy looked up at Charles, his blue eyes hard as tempered steel. "Giles McGann's name was on the list."

Charles's eyes widened. Given what they already knew,
Mélanie thought some of the surprise in his gaze was feigned. "What the hell would a Scots farmer have to do with a ring of former Bonapartist officers?"

Tommy shifted his position on the frayed tapestry settee. "Castlereagh didn't tell you the whole story. A number of the members of the Elsinore League are former Bonapartist officers, that's true. But we think the group itself is far older than Waterloo. Older even than Bonaparte's regime. We've traced it back to the early days of the Revolution." He rested his arm along the back of the settee. "McGann had sympathies with the Revolution, didn't he?"

"I could name you a dozen MPs of whom one could say the same."

"Fair enough. Perhaps if McGann had been in Parliament he'd have expressed his views in that way. Instead he seems to have been acting as a sort of courier for this group, relaying messages and supplies. Holding things in safekeeping for them."

Charles folded his arms. "That's a good story. But I've heard a lot of good stories lately."

"Christ, Charles, are you going to take Soro's word over mine?"

"Do you really have to ask me that?"

"Given our history? No, I suppose not. You've always been quick to trust anyone other than those in authority."

"Francisco's been at least as honest with me in the past as you have."

Tommy sat forward, hands gripping his knees. "Damn it, Charles, Castlereagh would skin me alive—"

"I can think of a number of situations where that hasn't stopped you."

"You know as well as I do there isn't always proof—"

"If there's no proof, I don't see how you can be certain of your claims, either."

Tommy grimaced, swore, and knocked back the remainder of his port. Finally, he pulled a paper from inside his jacket. "I found this locked away in a box in your friend McGann's writing desk."

Charles took the paper, glanced at it, and went still. Without speech, he held the paper out to Mélanie.

McGann,

I have a delivery for you.

In place of a signature, it bore a stamp in red ink, as from a signet ring. Not the castle of the Elsinore League, but a small picture of a falcon.

"Do you recognize it?" Charles asked Mélanie, his voice without a hint of betraying inflection.

She studied the crimson image. "It seems as though I should, but—no."

He took the paper back and stared down at it. Fear flickered in his eyes for a moment, sharp and wounding. "Have you heard of Le Faucon de Maulévrier?"

Mélanie tensed inwardly as she did whenever Charles mentioned anything to do with France, but in this case she was able to shake her head without any need for deception. Charles gave a faint smile. "I sometimes forget what an infant you are."

"Only six years more so than you," she said. "An important six years in this case. You were a baby during the Reign of Terror. I was a young boy. And even then I probably wouldn't know about it myself if I didn't have cousins who emigrated from that part of France."

"Le Faucon de Maulévrier was active during the Terror?" Charles nodded. "He was a
représentant en mission
in the Vendee at the height of the anti-Republican rebellion. He was very effective at keeping order, largely because he was willing to inflict whatever horrors it took to frighten the local populace into submission."

"When the guillotine proved too slow, he tied prisoners up, bombarded them with cannon fire, and bayoneted the survivors," Tommy said. "But his real task was to deal with a band of rebels who were hiding out in the hills, causing havoc for the local authorities. Le Faucon systematically had his men ravish the wives and daughters left behind in the village in an attempt to drive the men out of hiding."

"Did it work?" Mélanie asked, shutting her mind to memories.

"It was a start," said Tommy, seemingly unaware of the way Charles was scowling at him. "But after a few months he still hadn't caught the rebel leader, who was eldest son of the d'Argenton family, the local landowners. The d'Argenton parents were dead, but a younger brother and sister still lived in the chateau. Le Faucon—" Tommy caught Charles's eye at last. "Got them to talk."

"He broke into the chateau and threatened to rape the sister if the younger brother wouldn't tell him where the elder brother was?" Mélanie said.

Tommy's eyes widened. "How the devil did you know?"

"It's the obvious way to get the information." Mélanie glanced at Charles. "The moral dividing line is whether or not once he had the information he ravished the girl anyway and killed the younger brother."

"He did," Charles said, eyes grim. "And then ambushed the elder brother and his remaining followers in their camp."

Mélanie willed herself to relax, the way she always had to when they discussed this part of French history. "Who was he? Le Faucon?"

"That's the odd thing," Charles said. "No one knows where he came from or his real name. He always signed his papers with a signet stamp, as on the paper you see there. Some say he was a student from the University of Paris, perhaps the younger son of an aristocratic family. There are even theories that he was foreign."

"English?"

"Or Prussian or Belgian or Italian. Perhaps because a number of Frenchmen would prefer not to take credit for him."

"What happened to him?"

"Just as the Terror was collapsing, he disappeared." Charles looked at Tommy.

"We think Le Faucon is running the Elsinore League," Tommy said. "That he started the league in the days of the Terror. It may have gone on all these years, or he may have resurrected it after Waterloo."

"Do you know where he is now?" Charles asked. "Or
who
he is?"

"Damn it, Fraser, do you think I'd be in the wilds of the Highlands if I did? A lot of Frenchmen would like to see him brought to justice. A third d'Argenton son who was away at school survived the Terror and is new a; friend of the Comte d'Artois. He's rumored to have offeree) a sizable reward for information on Le Faucon's whereabouts."

"And Castlereagh?" Charles said.

"Would like to find him first. Le Faucon may have been a wanton criminal, but his intelligence gathering was phenomenal. Whether he continued the Elsinore League through the war or started the group up again since, he has contacts with a number of former Bonapartists who were powerful men. Castlereagh's more interested in learning what Le Faucon can tell him than in exacting vengeance or retribution."

"You don't have any idea where he went to earth?"

"He could be anyone. A soldier in the Bonapartist army, a Bonapartist government official. He could even have been masquerading as a Royalist all these years. He could well not even be in France. The most persistent rumor is that he was British or at least-half-British and he took refuge in England."

"But nothing was ever proved."