The Spy's Reward (17 page)

“If you say
one word
to her about me, you will regret it,” Meyer promised savagely. “Leave Mrs. Hart in peace. I've interfered quite enough in her affairs.”

“And this is not interference?” Rodrigo asked scornfully, indicating the purse and the packet of papers. “Do you think I really believe that you are sending me to help Master Anthony? You know perfectly well he had promised the señora he would stay with her and her daughter until they reached England.”

“Interference,” said Meyer, “was when I tricked her into doing what I wanted. Choosing the northern route from Digne-les-Bains. Staying in a farmhouse near the bridge at Pont-Haut. This”—he waved at the papers—“is compensation.”

“She has not asked for compensation,” the servant told him, exasperated. “And if she had asked, she would not wish for it in this form. This is simply another round of deception and manipulation. Only now your goal is to make yourself feel better rather than to blow up a bridge.”

Meyer had not been very successful with the bridge. He suspected he was not going to do much better with this attempt to salve his conscience. But at least if he foisted Rodrigo onto Abigail Hart he would not have to listen to moralizing lectures in Spanish all the way back to London.

19

 

Louisa Roth looked up in surprise as her husband tapped lightly on the open door of her sitting room. It was the middle of the afternoon, the heart of the working day. In fact, because of the chaotic state of things in Europe since Bonaparte's return to France, everyone at the bank had been working longer hours than usual for the past few weeks. She had not expected to see him for hours.

“May I come in?”

She put her sewing back in the drawer of her worktable. “Of course.”

“Are you expecting any callers?”

“No, but if you like I shall ring for Sweelinck and tell him we are not to be disturbed.”

Roth performed this office himself, and closed the door firmly behind the retreating figure of their butler. “I have just had a most interesting conversation,” he told her as he pulled up a chair next to her. “A conversation I was enjoined to hold in strictest confidence. Since it concerned Nathan, I requested permission to consult you, and that permission was granted. But you must speak of this to no one else.”

She was intrigued. “Who was it who came to see you?”

“Colonel White.”

“Nathan's colonel?”

“Indeed.”

Her brother-in-law had no official standing in the British army. Unofficially, however, he reported to the irascible White, and for all intents and purposes was the most senior of the colonel's intelligence officers. Meyer and White had been working together for over ten years, and never before, to Louisa's knowledge, had the colonel sought a private interview with her husband.

“What did he want?”

Roth gave her a wry look. “He wanted to know if we had noticed anything peculiar about Nathan since his return from France.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “Anything peculiar? I could give him a list. A long list. And that in spite of Nathan's determined and largely successful efforts to confine his presence in this house to hours when I am either out or asleep.”

“He is not avoiding you, my dear,” Roth reminded her. “Or even me. He is avoiding Anthony.”

That was the first peculiar thing. Even though they had originally been traveling together, Nathan and her nephew had arrived separately from France. The second peculiar thing was that Rodrigo had been with Anthony instead of with his own employer. The third was that the servant and Anthony had clearly been very angry with Meyer. Louisa had been unable to persuade any of them to explain the cause of the hostility. After a few weeks Rodrigo had seemed more like his normal self, but just as Louisa was scheming to make a second attempt to suborn him, he had disappeared. Which was the fourth peculiar thing, because usually her brother-in-law and his servant were inseparable. Thus, Rodrigo was away and Nathan was here in London—yet another oddity. She would have expected Meyer to be abroad at a time like this. Her nephew James, for example—Meyer's son—was the most junior courier in White's service and he had barely been in England three days out of the last sixty. And then there was Nathan's strange, abstracted mood. As expected, he had thrown himself into a frenzy of activity, reading reports and papers, conferring repeatedly with her husband, sending queries out through the bank's messenger service. But there was something almost mechanical about his actions. He would ask a question and ignore the answer, or comment twice on the same story in the newspaper. He seemed withdrawn and tense.

“Why did the colonel want your opinion of Nathan's behavior?” she asked, frowning.

Roth sat back in his chair. “First of all, when Nathan came back, you may remember that he refused to give the bank any further information about Bonaparte's forces and their projected rate of progress towards Paris. He said that he had been asked not to do so, and I thought that for some reason the War Office had forbidden him to discuss his report with civilians. In fact, however, he also refused to report to White, claiming that he had personal reasons for the omission. The colonel accepted that, although he thought it rather strange. But then last week Nathan was asked to go to Belgium. Twice. And both times he said he would rather not leave London.”

She was taken aback. “He was not willing to go to Belgium? I have never known him to refuse a request from Whitehall before. Have you?”

“No. In fact, before his trip to France, he had been to Vienna several times to maintain a clandestine watch over the Allied military leaders—at his own suggestion. The very same role Wellington was asking him to play in Belgium. Finally White summoned Nathan to his office and asked him point-blank why he would not go. And Nathan had no reasonable answer. He simply said that he thought others could do a better job.”

Louisa frowned. False modesty was not one of Meyer's attributes. “You would think he could at least have produced something more convincing.”

“Colonel White was not very happy with that answer either,” Roth said. “He confessed to me that he lost his temper a bit. He asked Nathan what the—er, what Nathan thought he was doing behaving like a coy maiden when Europe was going up in flames and he was needed in Brussels. Nathan replied that in his judgment he was no longer fit for confidential surveillance work. That he would be better employed as he was now, decoding ciphers and monitoring reports. At which point the colonel lost his temper
more
than a bit and let fly a few rather choice oaths—his own phrase, Louisa—before informing Nathan that Whitehall, not individual couriers, made decisions of that sort. And then Nathan lost
his
temper and swore right back, reminding White that he held no commission, that he accepted no pay, and that he was free at any moment to walk out of White's office. Which he proceeded to do.”

“Nathan lost his temper?” she said, incredulous. “That is odder than everything else put together.”

“Yes, White was rather stunned as well. Hence his visit to me. And hence my visit to you.”

Louisa sighed. “I don't see how I can be of any help. I see Nathan even less frequently than you do. You at least catch occasional glimpses of him in the morning.”

Her husband brooded for a minute. “Do you remember what you said when he first came back to London? About my little scheme?”

A week after Nathan's return, Eli had dragged her into the bookroom one morning and confessed everything: how he had sent Meyer off to Digne-les-Bains with Diana Hart as a decoy, and Diana's mother as the real candidate. “Go on,” he had said, “you have been dying to say ‘I told you so' ever since Nathan stalked in here looking as though he wanted to strangle me. I surrender. I will leave Nathan to go his own way from now on. You were right. My attempt was a complete, unmitigated disaster.” But Louisa, to his surprise, had been unwilling to gloat.

“Yes, I remember,” she said now. “I told you that I had heard some rather strange rumors about Abigail Hart and that it might be just as well if nothing came of your plan.” Luckily, Eli had never pressed her for details of those rumors.

“No, not that. The other thing you told me.”

“Oh. Yes.” She had pointed out that it might well be too soon to label the result a disaster, that Nathan's anger was not at all the same thing as the amused scorn which had followed all of Eli's earlier attempts.

“I believe we have been proceeding from a false assumption,” he said. “We believed Nathan's distress, his preoccupied air, must be related to the news from abroad. At least, I did.”

Louisa nodded. Her brother-in-law's unhappiness was easily explained by the increasingly grim quality of that news: Marshal Ney defecting to Bonaparte; King Louis fleeing to Belgium; Napoleon's triumphant entry into Paris and his call for all Frenchmen to return to armed service.

“Well, we may have been wrong. Perhaps something happened in March when Nathan was in France,” Roth said. “Something connected with the Harts. Look at how Anthony and Rodrigo have been behaving. I will make another attempt to question Nathan myself, but if that fails there is only one thing to do. You must go and see Mrs. Hart.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Abigail Hart,” he said impatiently. “You must call on her. Cultivate her acquaintance.”

“And how, pray, am I to do that? We have never met. Will she not think it rather odd when I suddenly appear on her doorstep asking questions about Nathan?”

“She did nurse Anthony,” Roth reminded her. “He told us he was quite ill for a few days. You could call to thank her.”

“Eli, that was two months ago! And Anthony himself visited, quite properly, the week after he arrived here.”

Her husband coughed. “Apparently he is still calling on Mrs. Hart occasionally. Or, more accurately, on Miss Hart. At least according to Battista.”

Anthony's servant had arrived in London several weeks ago and had promptly quarreled bitterly with Rodrigo. Meyer had seized upon the quarrel as an excuse to send the Spaniard away.

“You are suggesting that I go and insinuate myself into Mrs. Hart's confidence on the pretext that I am concerned for Anthony's welfare?” She wished she could sound more indignant. Between her curiosity and her concern for her brother-in-law, Eli's proposal was dangerously appealing.

“Anthony is my brother's only son,” Roth said piously. “And he has not been looking very well of late.”

Privately Louisa thought the thinner, sterner version of her nephew had a certain appeal. At least to females. And Nathan was not the only one who had been spending many unexplained hours away from the house. If Anthony was dangling after Diana Hart, it behooved her to investigate further. “Very well,” she said. “If your talk with Nathan does not produce satisfactory results I will call on Mrs. Hart. Although why a woman I have never met should wish to confide her opinions about Nathan to me I am sure I do not know.”

Roth waved his hand airily. “All women enjoy gossip.”

No, thought Louisa. All women did
not
enjoy gossip. Especially a woman who had herself been the victim of gossip for many, many years.

 

 

“Now push the ramrod down the barrel. Hard.” Mark Davis illustrated the movement on his own weapon in one smooth thrust.

Anthony jammed the brass rod up against the wadded mass of ball, powder, and paper in the barrel of his musket and shoved. As usual, the rod got stuck halfway down.

His instructor sighed. “Try banging the butt on the ground.”

Obediently, Anthony slammed the butt a few times onto the hard-packed surface of Walworth Fields. There had been grass here earlier in the spring, but now that militias were drilling here every evening it was long gone. This time the ramrod slid properly to the end of the barrel.

“Level your weapon.”

His shoulder aching, Anthony hoisted the gun up and sighted.

“Fire!”

The bullet buried itself near the center of the straw target.

“Nothing wrong with your aim,” Davis said sourly. “But if you can't load faster, my sergeant won't have you. Try again. A round a minute, minimum, is what you need, and most of our lads could do twice that.”

After weeks of sweaty, backbreaking practice every Tuesday and Thursday, Anthony had progressed from two rounds every ten minutes to two rounds every four minutes. Doggedly he pulled out the cartridge, bit off the end, poured in powder, tipped the ball into the muzzle, and picked up the ramrod for the twentieth time.

“Push,” ordered Davis.

Anthony shoved. The rod jammed, and he swore fluently. His stock of oaths had tripled since beginning his training at Walworth.

“Try twisting the rod a bit as you go,” suggested a grizzled veteran, peering at Anthony's weapon. A crowd always collected around him during practice, curious as to why a well-dressed young man who spoke in educated accents should be in one of the worst districts in London wrestling with a Brown Bess. The answer was simple: Mark Davis was the only Jew Anthony knew who had served as an enlisted man under Wellington. Davis lived in Walworth; Anthony, therefore, crossed the river twice a week to train and put up with comments about his clothing, hairstyle, vocabulary, posture, and, inevitably, religion. Davis's advice on how to ignore these sallies had been far more effective than his instruction with the musket; Anthony was rapidly becoming totally impervious to insults.

Gritting his teeth, Anthony tried the rod again, this time twisting slightly. There it was, the smooth, efficient movement he had been trying to master for nearly a month. Simultaneously annoyed and elated, he rounded on Davis. “Why didn't you tell me to twist it?”

Davis fired his own gun, reloaded, and tamped. Now that he knew what to look for, Anthony could see the slight rotation of his wrist.

“I'll be!” Davis said, abashed. “Didn't know as I was doing any twisting, Mr. Roth. It's been many years since I learned to load this old girl. Try another round now.”

Anthony fired, reloaded, fired, and reloaded. It was still a struggle, but the ramrod was behaving itself. “How long?” he asked.

“Just under three minutes, sir,” said Noah, Davis's eight-year-old son. He was holding Anthony's watch as though it were made of eggshells.

Anthony grinned. “Another go?” he asked Davis.

The older man shrugged. “Your powder and shot, sir.”

Cartridge, ball, wadding, rod, aim, fire. And again. His shoulder felt as though it had been kicked by a horse. He looked at Noah.

“Just under three minutes.”

Anthony sighed.

“But more under,” Noah added hastily. “Closer to two and a half, really.”

“It's tearing open the cartridge is slowing you down now, sir,” Davis said critically. “And you could practice that at home.”