Honor's Kingdom (36 page)

Abruptly, he laid his hand upon my arm. The grip was still as vigorous as a young man’s. “It was all quietly done, don’t you know? With the face skinned off him, he was as marked as ever a man could be. They gave him a horse and sent him off for the Khyber. Told him if ever he set foot on Her Majesty’s territory again, he’d hang for certain. Last I heard, he was doing service along the Caspian, providing a bodyguard to an emir or such. Though that may have been no more than a rumor.” He peered into my eyes, despite the darkness. “And now you say the devil’s back in England?”

“So I am told, sir. And so I may have seen, but cannot be certain. I saw a man in a mask, but not a face.”

He shook his head. “We were cautioned never to speak of him. Those of us who knew, or were suspected of knowing. Sworn to it. Now I fear I’ve broken my pledge.”

“It may save lives, sir.”

“Still . . .”

“I am in your debt. For telling me.”

But his thoughts had roamed to that haunted land between the Ganges and Indus. “Last time he was seen,” the colonel said, “the devil was on a horse, with his hands bound behind him and a bloodsoaked handkerchief tied over his face. And not a man in India wished him well.” He gripped my arm again. Even more firmly. “And now . . . I think you owe me an explanation.”

“GOOD LORD,” HE SAID, when I had finished my tale.

“I did not mean to go back on my promise, see,” I repeated. “Or to mislead you, or to dishonor the regiment. And there is true. But none of us may see into the future.”

“No,” he said. “No, of course not. And now I suppose I should address you as ‘Major?’ ”

“Well, that is neither here nor there, and you may call me what you wish, sir. So long as you will believe me.”

“It’s too queer by half to be a lie, that story of yours. How terribly odd, though. A sergeant in the Old Combustibles, and now a major in the American army.” He sighed. “Anyway, it isn’t as if you’d joined the French, don’t you know? Although the frog-eaters would have probably made you a general. But a major . . . it’s remarkable, really.”

“A major of volunteers, sir. It is not the same as a regular commission.”

“Still and all . . .” He brightened. “You know, the only army I wish to serve in now is the Lord’s . . . still and all, it does reflect credit on the regiment, you know . . . from sergeant to a major . . . not quite the same jump in America, of course . . . still and all . . .”

Well, I was greatly relieved he had not scorned me. He was a better Christian than Abel Jones.

“Wouldn’t old Ricketts just pop over dead to see it?” the colonel asked me. “If he wasn’t dead already? To know you’d got up to the very same rank as him? I’d almost pay to see it, don’t you know?”

I owed a special prayer of thanks to my Maker. For the good, old colonel had not only taken things well, but had done me a pair of services on the way. I now knew Campbell had been a spy for both sides, and that Lieutenant Culpeper might be more than a spook raised up to fright me.

Now you will say: “All this is pure coincidence.” But I will tell you: I believe in Jesus Christ and justice. And, sometimes, in the goodness of my brothers.

WE WERE STEPPING ALONG in the strangest way, almost as if we were two old friends and not a retired colonel and his former sergeant who had been more trouble than he had ever been worth. This world holds such a wealth of possibilities that I cannot like the man who is ungrateful. Any man blessed enough to be able to choose between his cup of tea or coffee is already rich enough to feel himself a king.

But let that bide.

Colonel, Retired, Norbert Tice-Rolley was telling me of the wondrous things he had done, although he did not praise the deeds himself, but merely reported them. All his trophy money from the Seekh Wars through the looting spree after the Mutiny had been dedicated to his church crusade, as well as not a few of the rents from his late wife’s properties at High Belchgill and Grapplethwaite. He not only had sobered up many a man, but found him work thereafter, and recalled a number of lasses from the streets. He even employed a pedagogue to teach poor children to read, although there were many who thought such skills luxurious and thoroughly unsuited to the poor. He did what he could for orphan homes, and to supplement the meals at the charity ward. And still he thanked me for sparking his conversion!

I was ashamed to call myself a Christian. A true one walked there by my side that night, forgiving even the sorry likes of me.

I only hoped to be rid of him soon.

I feared for him, you see, if any of my enemies suspected his involvement in my efforts. I did not want to see him come to harm, and though I was delighted by his company, and by his very decency of manner, I hoped to excuse myself from further meetings. At least until affairs had been resolved.

“And so you see,” he went on as we entered the square, “it’s all very simple, don’t you know? The Good Lord gave us work so we might do it, and we can save ourselves through honest work. It’s the very thing for the poor. Give ’em work and wages, and damn me if they don’t begin behaving. Even give up drink, more often than not. It’s a positive inspiration. Give the poor a spot of discipline, then find them a position that doesn’t overtax their faculties, and before you know it they’re bringing their neighbors to chapel.”

Among the many grand things he had told to me, one was that he had joined the Abstainer’s League and was given over entirely to the cause of Temperance. And the colonel had not been one to slight the punch back in the lines. Now I found his virtue had overtaken mine, for he even decried the stimulation of coffee, which is the very lifeblood of Americans. Had he not been called to found his own Church Militant, the colonel would have made a fearsome Methodist.

“The question of the poor is one that troubles me,” I confided, “and glad I am—”

Twas then I noticed the crowd that had gathered ahead of us, just across the street from my hotel and shrouded in a fabric of filthy air. At first I thought the little girl, that Fanny, was performing late to please her thirsty father, but then I caught the hubbub and the cry.

“What is it? What is it, Jones?” the colonel asked me. For I had begun to quicken the pace without warning.

I knew what it was. I cannot tell you how, I simply knew. As veteran soldiers know things that will not be explained by all our mortal senses.

“Leg of yours hasn’t slowed you down,” the colonel complained, as he come following after me.

We crossed the street and I pushed through the crowd, and I found just what I had feared.

The old fiddler with the sergeant’s stripes lay dead upon the ground, with his lungs coughed up, and blood down his neck, and his eyes wide as two moons. The girl had lost her hat and her hair was wild. But not so wild as her tortured voice. She stood above her father in utter dismay and howled like a beast at the darkness and the crowd.

“Keep off him,” someone warned. “It mought be the cholera morbus laid him out.”

At those frightful words, the crowd eased back.

It was not cholera. I know the look of cholera, see. You do not vomit blood, but watery gruel. And I had heard him cough to bring down a house. Consumption it was, or something of the like. And his rust-haired daughter refused to understand, and slapped at any hand that dared approach her, drawing complaints at the viciousness of the poor.

And then she saw me. The Lord knows what she thought. She come to life and broke to a run and launched herself against me. She hit me like the ball of an eighteen-pounder and nearly knocked me over on my back. I did not fall, but I could not order my senses.

She clutched me as a drowning man will clutch a bit of timber floating by. She clutched me as if I were life itself, and all hope of Salvation. Not one word did the poor lass say, and she only wept more fiercely, but her child’s hands had the grip of a brawny gunner’s. She cried until the tears soaked through my waistcoat, then through my shirt, and finally through my linens.

I do not know what children think, but they have a liking for me that is inexplicable. Perhaps it is that I am not made tall and still seem half a child to unlearned eyes. Or maybe it is only that I am fond of them, and know too well what a child can be made to suffer.

I would rather die myself than harm a child.

A constable arrived, and then another. Someone called for the dead car, and they hoisted the corpse away. I thought perhaps the child would want a look at him, a last look, but all she did was cling to me and cry.

The constables did not even ask about the girl, although they doubtless knew her relation to the dead man, for the two were much in evidence on the square. But the poor do not figure, unless they break the law. And before I knew, the corpse was gone, and the crowd was gone, and the constables disappeared. Leaving me with the weeping girl and a baffled Christian colonel.

“Missy,” I said, petting her to soothe her just a little. “Missy . . . Fanny, if that is your name . . . you must tell me where you live, see. You must tell me that much, if I am to help you.”

She did not, or could not, reply, but only sobbed. My shirt was soaked beneath my waistcoat and I could feel the warmth of her little face.

“Do you have any relatives?” I asked. “Is there anyone else, Missy?”

She wept, and would not speak.

“Is there a chapel you visit, lass?” the colonel asked, to a modicum of effect.

“Where do you live, Fanny? There’s a good girl, just tell us where you live. Where’s your home?”

She clutched me tighter than ever she had and squeezed out her first words.

“I canna gae ta hame without me faither,” she sniffled. “He give me a knife for ance he was gaun off, for he knew he were set to gae. But I’m unco feared of Betts and Spanish Jemmy.”

FOURTEEN

HER NAME WAS FANNY RAEBURN, OR SO SHE HAD BEEN called by those around her, and she lived off the High Street, in a room in the Old Vennel. The colonel tried to feed her a bun he fetched from the Hotel Clarence, but the lass would not let go of me to eat it. I managed to glean that she had no earthly relatives—at least none known to her—and the question of her age was inconclusive.

“I maun be twelve,” she told me, “for that I hae been a time. Though I mought weel be a’ thirteen, or a mickle elder.”

“And this room of yours,” I said, as I petted her hair. Great thickety, rusty locks she had, and lovely, though I felt a nit or two. “Can you sleep there, lass? Now, tell me true, and we will see you looked after.”

She buried her head and tightened her grip and told me again, “I canna. For I’m feared of Spanish Jemmy. Me faither said he’s waiting ta tae him a vantage.”

Now, the colonel had ever been one for good solutions, pulling the regiment through a dozen times when every justice said we should have perished. And since he had attached himself to philanthropy, countless charities begged for his attention, as those in every sort of need will do, and he whispered to me that he knew the very thing for the lass: Miss Thumper’s Home for the Elevation of Discommoded Girls.

“Miss Thumper and Miss Sharp will see her right,” the colonel assured me. “Generous circumstances, Jones. Generous
as could be. Institution adheres to the latest system. All terribly scientific. Science, with the very best of manners. Devil of a combination, don’t you know? Child will find it a source of every joy. And all done Christian, too.”

The little thing held onto me as if doubtful of every word, but after a bit she seemed to acquiesce. First, though, we would go to her old room to collect her things. I do not think less of the poor than I do of the rich and fine, but I know how the world is, all the same. An orphan’s effects will go missing in a blink.

The distance to the Old Vennel was not far, but the difference between the elegance of George Square and the peerless squalor we found in that narrow alley was greater than any society should reveal—although I fear I sound like Mick Tyrone. A few high gaslamps, set above the reach of wicked boys and doubtless insisted upon by the police, set the walls to gleaming where the slothful had emptied their night-pots from upper windows, splashing the masonry until it crusted over. The stink would have offended a scavenger dog, and the poverty of the place was such that the sole prostitute we met was ancient beyond all tallying and so disheartened she did not even speak. A fellow, drunk or dead, had ploughed the gutter with his face, but Fanny only skipped over him, as if it were the commonest of customs.