An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana (читать книги TXT) 📗

Lord John Grey

Postscriptum: If you can tell me, who is presently in charge of the American Department, with regard to correspondence?

Lord John Grey to Harold, Duke of Pardloe

4 February 1777

(family cipher)

Hal—

I saw Amandine. Wainwright does live at the manor house—a place called Trois Fleches—and does maintain an unwholesome relationship with the baron. I met the baron’s sister, Wainwright’s wife. She certainly knows of the link between her brother and her husband, but does not admit it openly. Beyond that, she appears to know nothing whatever. I have seldom met a more stupid woman. She is openly lewd in manner and a very bad cardplayer. So is the baron, by which token I am convinced that he does know something of Wainwright’s political machinations; he behaved shiftily when I steered the conversation in that direction, and I am sure he is not schooled in the art of misdirection. He is not stupid, though. Even if he were, he will certainly have told Wainwright of my visit. I have alerted Norrington to watch for any activity on that front.Knowing what I do of Wainwright’s abilities and connexions (or rather, the lack of them), I cannot quite fathom his involvement. Granted, if the French government does have such schemes in mind as he indicated, they would hardly make open communication regarding them, and sending someone like Wainwright to speak to someone like me might be considered sufficiently sub rosa. Certainly such an approach has the benefit of being deniable. And yet something seems wrong in this, in a way I cannot yet define.I will be with you soon, and hope by then to be in possession of some definite information regarding one Captain Ezekiel Richardson, likewise one Captain Denys Randall-Isaacs. Should you be able to investigate either of these names through your own connexions, you would greatly obligeYour most affectionate brother,

JohnPostscriptum: I trust your health is mending.

Harold, Duke of Pardloe, to Lord John Grey

6 March 1777

Bath

(family cipher)

I’m not dead. Wish I were. Bath is vile. I am daily wrapped in canvas and carried off like a parcel to be sunk in boiling water that smells of rotten eggs, then hauled out and forced to drink it, but Minnie saysshe will divorce me by petition in the House of Lords on the grounds of insanity caused by immoral acts if I don’t submit. I doubt this, but here I am.Denys Randall-Isaacs is the son of a Englishwoman named Mary Hawkins and a British army officer: one Jonathan Wolverton Randall, captain of dragoons, deceased, killed at Culloden. The mother is still alive and married to a Jew named Robert Isaacs, a merchant in Bristol. He’s still alive, too, and has a half interest in a warehouse in Brest. Denys is one of your damned politicals, got ties to Germain, but I can’t find out more than that without being too overt for your tastes. Can’t find out anything in bloody Bath.Don’t know much about Richardson, but will find out directly. Sent letters to some people in America. Yes, I am discreet, thank you, and so are they.John Burgoyne is here, taking the cure. Very cock-a-hoop, as Germain has approved his scheme to invade from Canada. I have mentioned William to him, as his French and German are good and Burgoyne is to have a number of Brunswickers. Still, tell Willie to be careful; Burgoyne seems to think he is to be commander-in-chief of the army in America—a notion that I daresay will come as rather a surprise both to Guy Carleton and Dick Howe.Trois Fleches. Three arrows. Who is the third?

London

March 26, 1777

The Society for the Appreciation of the

English Beefsteak, a Gentleman’s Club

Who is the third?” Grey repeated in astonishment, staring at the note he had just opened.

“The third what?” Harry Quarry handed his sopping cloak to the steward and sank heavily into the chair beside Grey’s, sighing with relief as he held his hands out to the fire. “God’s teeth, I’m frozen solid. You’re going to Southampton in this?” He flung one big cold-blanched hand at the window, which framed a dismal prospect of icy sleet, driven almost horizontal by the wind.

“Not ’til tomorrow. It may have cleared by then.”

Harry gave the window a look of deep suspicion and shook his head. “Not a chance. Steward!”

Mr. Bodley was already tottering toward them under the weight of a tea tray laden with seedcake, sponge cake, strawberry jam, marmalade, hot buttered crumpets in a basket wrapped in white linen, scones, clotted cream, almond biscuits, sardines on toast, a pot of beans baked with bacon and onion, a plate of sliced ham with gherkins, a bottle of brandy with two glasses, and—perhaps as an afterthought—a steaming teapot with two china cups and saucers alongside.

“Ah!” said Harry, looking happier. “I see you expected me.”

Grey smiled. If not on campaign or called away by duty, Harry Quarry invariably entered the Beefsteak at four-thirty on a Wednesday.

“I thought you’d need sustenance, with Hal on the sick list.” Harry was one of the two regimental colonels—as distinct from Hal, who was Colonel of the Regiment, it being his own regiment. Not all colonels took an active hand in the operations of their regiments, but Hal did.

“Malingering bugger,” Harry said, reaching for the brandy. “How is he?”

“Quite his usual self, to judge from his correspondence.” Grey handed Quarry the unfolded letter, which the latter read with a burgeoning grin.

“Aye, Minnie will have him sorted like a hand of whist.” He put down the letter, nodding at it as he raised his glass. “Who’s Richardson and why do you want to know about him?”

“Ezekiel Richardson, Captain. Lancers, but detached for intelligence work.”

“Oh, intelligence laddie, eh? One of your Black Chamber lot?” Quarry wrinkled his nose, though it was not clear whether this was a response to the notion of intelligence laddies or the presence of a dish of grated horseradish accompanying the sardines.

“No, I don’t know the man well personally,” Grey admitted, and felt the same pang of deep unease that had been afflicting him with increased frequency ever since his receipt of William’s letter from Quebec a week before. “I had been introduced to him by Sir George, who knew his father, but we didn’t talk much on that occasion. I had heard a few things to his credit—in a quiet sort of way—”

“That being, I suppose, the only way one wants to hear anything about a man in that line of business. Huuuuuh!” Harry drew a tremendous gasp of air through his open mouth and up into his sinuses, by the sound of it, then coughed once or twice, eyes watering, and shook his head in admiration. “Fresh horseradish,” he croaked, taking another large spoonful. “Very … huuuuuuh … fresh.”

“Quite. Anyway, I met him again in North Carolina, we talked a bit more, and he asked my permission to approach William with a proposition regarding intelligencing.”

Quarry stopped, a slice of sardine-laden toast halfway to his mouth.

“You don’t mean to say you’ve let him lure Willie off into the weeds?”

“That was certainly not my intent,” Grey said, nettled. “I had some reason to feel that the suggestion would be good for Willie; for one thing, it would get him out of North Carolina and end with him attached to Howe’s staff.”

Quarry nodded, masticating with care, and swallowed thickly.

“Aye, right. But now you have doubts?”

“I do. The more so because I can find very few people who actually know Richardson well. Everyone who recommended him to me in the first place did so by reason of someone else’s recommendation, it seems. Except for Sir George Stanley, who is presently in Spain with my mother, and old Nigel Bruce, who’s rather inconveniently died in the meantime.”

“Thoughtless.”