Honor's Kingdom (44 page)

To find the statue of Knox upon its pedestal, I began to make widening circles on the high ground, paying attention to the least dropping off to a slope. If I kept my rings neat, I would have to come upon the assigned meeting place, just off the crest of the hill. I poked along, trying to be quiet, and it seemed to me that my carefulness only made the rest of the world quieter still, as if it wanted to hear me.

I near fell into an open grave prepared for use in the morning. My stick it was that saved me, as another cane had saved me from a nasty fall in a Mississippi plantation house.

I stepped along the grass with still-greater care, wondering who the tombs around me memorialized. I know the poets find boneyards romantic, but I would rather be among the living.

More rats there were. I wondered at their diets.

And then a lovely voice broke into song. It was a voice I did not want to hear.

Fanny it was, singing “Annie Laurie.” But her pitch broke, and her voice kept dying off. Then it would rise up again, as if she were being threatened and prodded and cursed.

She was not far away, and I went toward her. Yes, it was a trap. But a good man does not run away. Not when he knows what must live on in his conscience.

I wanted to call out to her, to tell her all would be well. But I knew better. I tried to keep a silence to my movements, as if I were patrolling the tribal frontier. I wished I might have had my boys from the regiment with me, the ones I chose when I knew the odds were mean. Molloy I would have taken first of all. Then a few others.

But I was alone.

Of a sudden, her voice broke off and left the world in silence once again. I only hoped they had not cut her throat.

I smashed my knee into a tombstone blackened to charcoal, and had to pause a minute to recover. My good knee it was. Now both knees were sour.

The night is a trickster, and memory is no better. You learn much through the years, but never enough. I sought to keep my bearings well enough to take me toward the ghost of her voice. But after twenty or thirty paces, I could no longer be sure of my orientation. The earth will lead your feet where it wants them to go.

I felt the ground declining. Slightly. And I had to make a choice.

I wheeled right and proceeded.

The spark of a match startled me, then a torch exploded. Near enough to dazzle my eyes near uselessness. And a second torch burst into flame.

“How long must a man wait,” a scraped voice asked, “for the justice due him?”

The figure that spoke stood by a plinth and column. Wearing a gentleman’s country garments. And a crimson mask. His sword flashed when he made the slightest movement.

Fanny stood behind him, held by both arms, with a tribesman to either side of her. The fear on her face brought back a sorrow of memories, from the days when I took pleasure in killing and called it a soldier’s duty. The tribesmen were got up like English gents themselves, but the torches in their hands made them look like devils. Then one of them released his grip on Fanny, took both torches, and placed them in sconces fixed to the front of a crypt. After he returned to the girl, both natives drew their daggers.

“Do you think,” the man in the mask said, “I should kill her now? Quickly? Or should we have a bit of sport between us first?”

“I should have killed you in Delhi,” I told him.

“And I you,” he said.

“And McLeod? Is he here? Or did you kill him, too?”

I thought I sensed a smile behind the mask. “I’m afraid I only borrowed the inspector’s good name. I expect he’s in his bed, dreaming of all the glories that were Scotland.”

He whipped the air with his blade. Twas clear from that single gesture he was the better swordsman. My tools had been the musket and the bayonet, and the cutlasses we trained with now and then, in case we might be detailed to the guns. Culpeper had a young gentleman’s training. And I come from a tan-yard and a mine.

I felt a fool for burying the pistol under my coat. Had I tried to reach it, he would have killed me before I got through the buttons.

“You first, I think. The child can wait.” He sliced the air again. “Tell you what. Give me a proper go of it. Make this interesting. And I may only cut off her hands, and let her live. She can always sing for her supper.” He stepped away from the plinth and took his ground in the open space between us. “After I introduce her to a few of the simple pleasures of the East.”

I did not look at Fanny. It is a thing you must not do. You must keep your eyes on the eyes of the man who means to take your life. But I could feel her terror. Thick as the air that clutched us. I imagined how those devilish hands must feel upon her. But she was braw and bonnie, to use her words. She did not cry out or plead, or expect miracles. Perhaps she did not expect anything at all. And feared that I might think her of no value.

“Tell them,” I said, “that if I win, they’re to let her go.”

He laughed. “Don’t be a fool. If you should put me down—which I don’t think likely, old man—you’ll have to fight them after. Whether or not they cut your little gutter-bitch’s throat first or not. And that will rather depend on how skilled you are.”

He raised his sword. And I released the sheath from my own. Even had I possessed an equal skill to his, it would not have been a fair fight. For the
grip of a sword cane will not rival the grip of a proper sword. Such a cane is meant for alleys and thieves, not for duels and fencers.

I stepped toward him. Quickly. Choosing my ground in the clearing. I had but one hope, see. And that was a slight one. My bad leg would not let me leap about—although my recent injury to the other knee was utterly forgotten in the excitement—so I would have to take my ground and stand to it. To retreat by half-steps when pressed, and to come back to where I started as quick as I could. Twas more a matter of fending off than of fighting.

“Even if you win,” I told him, “you’ll never get the letters now. They’re in London.”

He laughed. “I’d almost forgotten the letters,” he told me. “I’ve dedicated this particular night to you. Anyway, I don’t believe they’re in London, old man.”

He plunged toward me. Artfully done, it was. Had I not been quick, he would have pierced me through.

Back he jumped, before my own blade could chase after him. He stepped to the side. So that the torches were full in my face. But I knew that trick, and I stepped off and turned myself, although it left me with my back to the plinth and column.

He sizzled the air again, then thrust for me. I turned him off three times. Close enough we come for me to hear his panting above the crackle of the torches. Then we crossed blades again. He never was in danger from me, for all of my efforts went into parrying his attacks. Twas all I could do. Using my blade solely to block, with every hair on my skin remembering the hundred tricks of attack that near killed me in India.

He come at me fiercely, trying to bring his size and strength to bear. But coolness is better, and once I nearly cut him. It made him curse me savagely. But it also made him remember himself. He began to carry himself like a proper swordsman after that. Making me turn on one leg then another. Twisting me up. Applying his power at angles that challenge the defender’s arm.

For a moment, he stepped back. Breathing richly. “Very good, Jones,” he told me. “Keep that up, and I may only cut off one of her hands. Now, let’s see if our little Welsh soldier’s all bluff.”

He rushed at me, but it was a trick. To bring himself close to me. When our hilts were locked, he reached up his left hand and tore off his mask.

No leper of India bore a face so dreadful. The dried and rotten beef of him was wet with unhealed sores. And I had been right when I suspected him of smiling. For his lips had been cut away, and smile was all the creature would ever do.

All this I saw in an instant. Then his blade slashed down my own face.

Had I not had the instincts of an old sergeant, he would have sent the tip of his blade through my eye. But I had turned me just in time. Not enough to escape him, but far enough to save my life. Still, I felt the sting and wet we feel when our faces are cut. I could not judge how much of my own meat he had laid open, but warm-cold gore poured down my cheek, and my left eye clouded with blood.

It goes so fast with a fellow like him that the novice cannot survive. The hard part of soldiering is getting through your first battle or two. After that, your chances begin to increase.

I was not fool enough to touch my face, or to try to clear my eye. I kept my eyes on his eyes. Struggling not to look at the rest of his face, which was a task near impossible. If he had possessed a monster’s soul in India, now he wore a monster’s visage to match it.

He did not laugh, but seemed to smirk. With that skull’s smile disfiguring every expression.

“When a man kisses a woman. Or whatever he chooses to kiss. This is what he should see,” he told me. “This is what we all are underneath. The beauty, and the beggar.”

He did himself no favors by cutting me so. For I have scars a-plenty upon my person. But somehow I had ever preserved my face. I am no handsome man, and others have been known to
put it less kindly still. But I did not like the addition of a scar to my face. It made me go strange. Cold, not hot. It put me in that killing place that lies beyond all morals and human decency. The place that spawns the deadliest of soldiers. And, perhaps, the murderer, as well.

We fought for a full five minutes more, which seems a time near eternal to the warrior. Just at the edge of death there is a place that cancels time, and we had found it. The blood rushed down my face and into my collar, for the head bleeds ever the worst, and I felt the slime on my neck and down my chest.

Our eyes took turns in the firelight. As we shifted and flashed our blades. I thought—feared—I felt a loosening in the handle of the sword-cane. Such implements are not made with duels in mind. But there was nothing I could do. I only kept him off me as best I could: One brief triumph after another, each canceled by the next attack.

We both were winded, but we kept at each other. Whether my sword broke first or I did myself, I knew I could not win against him now. But I would not give him any chance he did not earn.

One of the natives muttered something, and it nearly broke the lock of his eyes with mine. I recognized the old tongue of the barracks, but could not quite distinguish what the tribesman said.

I understood the next voice well enough.

And it was a voice I knew.

Commanding in that barracks tongue, as if we were in India and not Scotland.

The colonel barked at the natives to come to attention. And they nearly did before they regained control of themselves.

But Culpeper it was who suffered from the interruption. The colonel’s sudden outburst startled him, and he looked away. Just for a slice off a second.

I put my blade through his heart. If heart he had. And plunged it in until it come out his back.

Twas all a great screaming then, with the colonel calling invisible men to the attack, as if he had our old, red regiment with him.

In another chop off a second I saw them, the colonel coming on waving his cane, and Inspector McLeod beside him with a truncheon. Miss Perkins was just on their heels, with Mr. Adams bringing up the rear.

The tribesmen released the girl and raised their blades. Beginning to scream their ancient battle-cries.

McLeod saw that his billy was no use and stepped him back. And I saw Mr. Adams leap for the stony shelter of a crypt. I had no time to draw my pistol, for the colonel and the natives were already at it, and he was bound to lose.

I plunged into the melee with Culpeper’s sword, while the inspector shouted at the lot of us that somebody was bloody well under arrest, blowing a whistle in between his curses.

The colonel was in the very worst danger. A wooden cane is no match for an Orient blade. And he was old, if brave.

I got one of them off him, but the fellow was all for chopping me to bits. I feared the colonel was nearing the end of his fight with the other tribesman.

And didn’t a great, roaring pistol go off? Not once, but twice. The colonel’s opponent went down in a heap, and I heard the voice of Miss Perkins, setting aside her demure temper and fair shrieking, “’Ow d’you like that, you ruddy little bastard?” Twas then I marked the pistol in her hand.

The last of the tribesmen did not run. For such are brave and loyal. He knew he was dead if he stood his ground. But he stood it, and damn us all. I never faulted the men of India for want of bravery.

I only hoped that Miss Perkins would not fire again, for I suspected luck had given her all it intended to, and I was not certain who the next bullet might surprise.

The tribesman fought to evade my sword, while the colonel attempted to thrash him. I saw that final fear in the poor bugger’s eyes.

Then the colonel shouted,
“Rally, the Old Combustibles!”
and he gave the fellow the ball of his cane on the temple, just as my own blade slithered into his entrails.

I recognized that final word they said, the “Allah” that comes out sounding more like “Ullah.” He died with his brown eyes open.

Miss Perkins stepped up beside us, pistol fuming. I relieved her of its weight as swiftly as she would let me. Overcoming her ladylike timidity, she gave the poor fellow’s carcass a poke with the tip of her shoe and said, “Let that be a lesson, you nasty thing.”

TWAS ONLY THEN SHE noted my wound and cried out in alarm. When I assured her the cut was not mortal in nature, she bent to reveal her petticoat and tore off a great strip without hesitation. Come at my face she did, for she wished to bandage me. But the mess of my snout was a trivial thing at the moment.

Fanny had disappeared.

I called to her. Telling her it was me, and that the danger was past. Hoping she had not been injured in the fray. And hoping she had not run back to Betts and Spanish Jemmy, thinking their lair a safer harbor than any I was like to have on offer.

All of the rest gathered by me, including young Mr. Adams, who seemed quite charged now that the fighting was over.