When Gods Die (16 page)

The soldier was convinced the lady had been alone. But he still could not remember seeing her leave; nor could he remember any of the other visitors to the inn that day.

Sebastian slipped another coin in the man’s cup and turned toward the inn door. Ducking his head to avoid the low lintel, Sebastian pushed into a common room thick with the smell of ale and warm, closely packed bodies. A roar of boisterous male voices mingled with the clatter of platters and the clink of pewter tankards. Then one man’s voice, louder than the others, carried clearly. “If you ask me, they ought to let the poor old King out and lock up his son. That’s what they ought to do.”

There was a moment’s hush, as though everyone in the room had paused at once to draw breath. Then another man, this one from the shadowy recesses of the darkly paneled room, grumbled, “Lock up the lot of them, you mean. They’re all as daft as me Granny Grim-letts. Every blasted one of them.”

A chorus of laughter and
Hear, hear
’s, swelled around the room as Sebastian worked his way toward the bar.

As unassuming as a shy young man just up from the country, he ordered a pint. Then he stood with one elbow resting on the bar, his gaze drifting slowly around the crowded room to the wide upward sweep of carpeted stairs just visible through the open doorway. Guinevere would never have come in here to the common room. But the inn had rooms upstairs and doubtless a private parlor, as well. The place might be far from fashionable, but it was nonetheless respectable, at least from the looks of things.

As for what a lady such as the Marchioness of Anglessey was doing here, in Smithfield, it seemed to Sebastian that the number of possible explanations was rapidly narrowing. There was only one reason he could think of for a lady to avoid the smart, fashionable hotels such as Steven’s or Limmer’s and seek out an inn so hopelessly outré that there could be no danger of her encountering any of her acquaintances here. But it was a reason Sebastian found himself oddly reluctant to credit.

Still sipping his ale, he shifted his attention to the innkeeper. He was a big man, tall and muscle-bound, with a shiny bald head and the broad nose and full lips of an African. But his skin was the palest café au lait, hinting at a heritage that was at least half-white, if not more.

The man was aware of Sebastian in that way all good innkeepers are aware of a stranger. When Sebastian ordered another pint, the big black man brought it over himself. “New to town, are you?” said the innkeeper, slapping the pint on the ancient, scarred boards between them.

The man’s accent was a slow drawl that whispered of magnolias and sun-baked fields and the crack of an overseer’s whip. Sebastian took a sip of his ale and gave the man a friendly smile. “I’m secretary to Squire Lawrence, up in Leicestershire. But my father spent some time in Georgia as a young man. Is that where you’re from?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “South Carolina.”

“You’re a long ways from home. Do you miss it?”

The black man peeled back his lips in a hard smile that showed his strong ivory teeth. “What do you think? I was born a slave in the summer of 1775, exactly one year before them Yankees come up with what they call their Declaration of Independence. You ever heard o’ it?”

“I don’t believe so, no.”

“Oh, it’s a grand-sounding piece o’ writin’, no gettin’ away from that. All about equality and natural rights and liberty. Only, them fine words, they was only meant for white folks, not for black slaves like me.”

Sebastian studied the thickness of the man’s strong neck, the way the veins stood out on his forehead. It was a long way for one man to have come, from being a slave on a South Carolina plantation to owning an inn on Giltspur Street in Smithfield. “I understand they’re a sanctimonious lot, the Americans.”

The black man laughed, a deep rumbling laugh that shook his chest. “Sanctimonious? Yeah, that’s a good one. They like to think they’re a glorious, godly nation, sure enough, like some shining beacon on a hill that’s gonna lead all mankind out o’ the darkness o’ tyranny and into the light. Only, look at what they done. They done killed all the red men and stole their land, and then they brung us black folks from Africa so’s we could do all the hard work and them white folks, they don’t need to get their lily-white hands dirty. Uh-uh.”

“Squire Lawrence always says the Americans really fought their revolution because the King refused to allow them to disavow their treaties with the red men.”

“Your Squire Lawrence sounds like a smart man.”

Sebastian leaned forward as if imparting a secret. “To be honest with you, the Squire asked me to come here to London to make a few inquiries for him. A few
discreet
inquiries,” Sebastian added with emphasis, clearing his throat and glancing hurriedly around, as if to make certain no one could overhear. “It’s his sister, you see. She left the protection of her home last week. We believe some folks from the village gave her a ride to Smithfield, and I’m hoping she might have come here. For a room.”

The big man’s broad African features remained impassive. “We don’t get a lot of ladies around here. You might try the Stanford, over on Snow Hill.”

“I checked there already. The thing is, you see, I’ve discovered that a lady was seen entering the Norfolk Arms, just last Wednesday. A young lady with dark hair and a red pelisse. Now, as far as I know, Miss Eleanor’s pelisse is green, but she certainly has dark hair, and she could always have bought herself a new pelisse, couldn’t she?” Sebastian paused, as if reluctant to divulge the truth. “I hesitate to say it, but we fear a man may be involved.”

The innkeeper wiped a cloth over the ring-marked surface of the bar. “Last Wednesday, you say?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian, all effusive eagerness. “Have you seen her?”

“Nah. I don’t know who told you such a daft thing, but we’ve had no ladies here. Must have been some farmer’s wife he seen, up for last week’s market.”

The innkeeper wandered away while Sebastian went back to sipping his ale and regarding his surroundings. The Norfolk Arms might be in Smithfield, but its clientele was not, for the most part, drawn from the likes of drovers and market people. The two Israelites conversing in low voices over near the window could probably buy and sell the King of England several times over, while at a table near the door, a small huddle of men was sharing a bottle of brandy.

Good French brandy,
Sebastian noticed, his eyes narrowing. One of the men bore ink-stained fingers that suggested a clerk, while the rest had the look of barristers and solicitors from the nearby Inns of Court. As Sebastian watched, one older gentleman with a shock of graying hair and a powerfully jutting jaw raised his brandy and proposed a toast. “To the King!”

The words were quietly said, so quietly that someone with hearing less acute than Sebastian’s would never have heard them. The others at the table likewise raised their brandy, their voices murmuring, “Hear, hear, to the King,” as they deliberately waved their glasses above a nearby water pitcher before taking a sip.

Sebastian paused with his own ale halfway to his lips.
To the King over the water
. It was an old toast, dating back a hundred years or more, a ruse by which men could seemingly drink to the health of the reigning Hanoverian monarch while in reality maintaining their allegiance to that
other
king, the dethroned Stuart King James II and his descendants, condemned forever to live in exile.

Over the water.

Chapter 27

L
eaving the Norfolk Arms, Sebastian had reason to be grateful for what Kat Boleyn liked to call his cat’s eyes. At some point within the last hour, the dark afternoon had slid into night, the heavy clouds left over from the day’s rain blocking out whatever moon and stars might have hung overhead. Here were no neat rows of streetlamps, their oil receptacles lit at sunset by a ladder-toting lamplighter and his boy, as in Mayfair. The shops were shuttered and the narrow lane, though still thronged with people, had few lanterns.

But whereas the setting sun reduced the world for most people to a palate of grays only vaguely seen, Sebastian never lost his ability to distinguish colors. He could see almost as well at night as during the day—better, in some instances, for there were times when he could find the light of an extremely bright day almost too painful to be borne.

And so he was aware of the shadow of a girl who slipped from the mouth of an alley he passed to fall into step behind him. “Pssst,” she whispered. “Sir. About the lady—”

She took a quick, wary step back when Sebastian swung around. She was an exceptionally tall woman, but young. Studying her face, he suspected she was little more than a child, fifteen at the most, maybe fourteen. She had smooth cheeks and a small nose and strangely pale eyes that gave her an almost unearthly quality.

Sebastian’s hand snaked out to close around her upper arm and tighten. “What about her?”

The girl let out a gasp. “Don’t hurt me, please.” Beneath his grip she felt unexpectedly vulnerable. “I heard you askin’ about the lady what come to the inn last week. The lady in the red dress.”

He searched her eyes for some sign of deceit, but could find only fear and a habitual wariness. “You saw her? Do you know whom she came to meet?”

Throwing an anxious glance over one shoulder, she sucked in a quick breath that shuddered her thin chest. “I can’t talk about it here. They might see me.”

Sebastian gave a soft laugh. “That’s your trick, is it? You think to lure me to a darkened doorway where your friends can roll me?”

Her eyes went wide. “No!”

Around them, the crowd in the streets was thinning. A musician lilting a familiar tune on a flute strolled by, followed by three laughing drovers reeking of gin, their arms linked about each other’s shoulders, their voices warbling the ballad’s words.
Oh, Father, oh, Father, go dig me grave, go dig it deep and narrow, for Sweet William, he died for me today, and I’ll die for him tomorrow.

One of the drovers, a big redheaded man with a broken nose, kicked up his heels in an ambitious jig that drew hoots of encouragement from his mates, then catcalls of derision when he stumbled over the edge of the lane’s kennel. Breathing out heavy fumes of gin and raw onions, he fell against Sebastian, jostling him just enough to allow the girl to slip from his grasp. She darted back up the alley, bare feet flashing, lank blond hair flying loose about her shoulders.

It was a trap of course. He knew that. And still Sebastian followed her.

He found himself in a crooked passageway of packed earth leaking a line of foul water that ran in a trickle between piles of rubbish and broken hogsheads. The buildings here were of red Tudor brick, old and crumbling, the air dank and heavy with the smell of wet mortar and the pervasive stench of blood from a nearby butcher’s shop.

A hundred feet or so down the alley, the girl ducked into a low doorway just as three men rose up from behind a pile of crates and ranged across the narrow space.

They were dressed roughly but not, Sebastian noticed, in rags. “Looks like you made a mistake,” said one of the men, taller and better dressed than the others. He had a long, patrician-nosed face that seemed vaguely familiar, although Sebastian couldn’t fix a name to it. His starched white cravat was flawlessly tied, the tails of his coat black against the dark red of the brick behind him. “Doesn’t it, lad?”

Sebastian swung about. The silhouettes of two more men showed against the dim haze of the smoky torch at the mouth of the alley. He was trapped.

Chapter 28

T
he extent of the preparations for Sebastian’s reception surprised him. He’d been expecting one man, perhaps two. His questions in the neighborhood had obviously touched a raw nerve. And it occurred to him, as he lowered himself into a crouch, that there was more involved here then the death of one young woman.

He kept a dagger hidden in his boot, its handle cool and smooth against his palm as he slipped it surreptitiously into his hand. He felt no fear. Fear came when one had time to reflect or was helpless to fight back. What he felt now was a heart-pounding flow of energy, a heightening of all senses and skills.

With a speed and competence honed by six years of operating in the mountains of Portugal and Italy, and in the West Indies, Sebastian summed up the danger he faced. He could stay where he was and let the men close on him, forcing him to fight all five at once. Or he could charge one of the two groups of men and try to escape before they joined forces. With three men ahead and only two blocking his return to the lane, the choice was simple.

For the moment, both groups of adversaries seemed content to hold their distance. “Who sent you here?” asked one of the men near the mouth of the alley, a dark-haired man with the thickening waist and heavy jowls of middle age. He held a cudgel, a stout length of wood he tapped threateningly against the palm of his free hand. His redheaded companion—big and broken-nosed and quite sober—had a knife. In the street, earlier, there had been three of them, Sebastian remembered. Which meant that somewhere, one more drover and perhaps a flute player awaited Sebastian.

Licking his lips in a show of nervousness, Sebastian made his voice go high-pitched and quivery. “Squire Lawrence, up in Leicestershire—”

“Uh-uh,” said the man with the cudgel. “Think about this: a man can die quickly or he can die by inches, screaming for mercy and ruing the day he was born. The choice is yours.”

Sebastian gave the man a grim smile.
“Oh, Father, oh, Father, go dig me grave,”
he said, and hurled himself forward.

He chose the man on his right, the big redhead with the nimble feet and the knife that could kill quicker than a cudgel. Redhead held his ground, his knife low, waiting to absorb Sebastian’s attack. But by switching his dagger to his left hand at the last instant, Sebastian was able to circle his right forearm beneath the big man’s lunging blade, knocking the freckled hand holding the knife up and away long enough to drive his own dagger through the waistcoat and shirt of the drover’s broad chest, deep into the flesh and sinew beneath.