Who Buries the Dead (16 page)

T
he Black Devil stood in a narrow cobbled lane just off Bishopsgate, not far, Sebastian realized, from the Houndsditch shop of Priss Mulligan. Popular with the area’s tradesmen and apprentices, it had half-timbered walls, twisted brick chimneys, and a high-gabled roof that marked it as a relic of a bygone era.

He paused for a moment on the far side of the lane, his gaze traveling over the tavern’s ancient, diamond-paned windows and the cracked wooden sign depicting a horned black devil dancing against the flames of hell. Then he crossed the street to push open the taproom door.

The interior of the tavern was as little altered as the exterior, its low ceiling supported by dark, heavy beams, its sunken flagged floor strewn with sawdust to absorb spills, the oak-paneled walls blackened by centuries of smoke from the vast stone hearth. The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and ale and workingmen’s sweat.

“You,” said the lovely dark-haired young barmaid, her exotic, almond-shaped eyes narrowed with animosity as she watched him walk up to her.

“Yes, me,” Sebastian said cheerfully, resting one forearm along the bar’s scarred surface as he surveyed the crowded room. Jamie Knox was nowhere in sight. “Where is he?”

“What you want with him? You’re trouble, you are. I knowed it from the first time I seen you. You want a pint, I’ll give you a pint. Otherwise, why don’t you jist take yourself off?”

Sebastian turned his head to meet her angry gaze. “I’ll take a pint.”

“Make that two pints, Pippa,” said Jamie Knox. “And bring them back here, if you will.”

Sebastian shifted to find the tavern owner leaning against the doorframe of a small back room that served as a kind of office. He was built tall and leanly muscled, taller even than Sebastian, with hair of a slightly darker shade. But the high-boned cheeks and gently curving lips were eerily the same as Sebastian’s, as were the strange yellow eyes.

Like the devil who danced on the tavern’s painted sign, he was dressed all in black—black coat and trousers, black waistcoat, black cravat; only his shirt was white. His origins were as murky as his history. The son of a poor, unmarried barmaid, Knox claimed not to know the identity of his father. Once, he’d been a rifleman with the 145th, a man famed for his eerily keen eyesight and animal-like hearing and quick reflexes. Discharged when his unit was reduced after the disaster at Corunna, he’d returned to England, some said to take to the High Toby as a highwayman . . . although there were also those who whispered he’d acquired the Black Devil simply by murdering its previous owner.

The two men had first encountered each other some months before. They had never directly addressed the startling and inexplicable physical resemblance between them, never openly speculated on its possible causes or implications. But the awareness of it was always there, for both men a source of antagonism and an unwanted but undeniable bond.

For Sebastian, it was an unwelcome reminder of a painful truth about his own paternity that had come close to destroying him. Yet it was also, beguilingly, a tantalizing clue to the identity of the unknown man who had bequeathed to him the same golden eyes and uncanny, wolflike senses that Knox possessed.

And Knox himself? Not for the first time, Sebastian found himself wondering how the rifleman viewed the unknown relationship between them.

For one long moment the two men stared at each other. Then Sebastian pushed away from the bar and walked toward the man who might—or might not—be his half brother.

Knox stepped back to allow Sebastian to enter the room. “What do you want?” he asked without preamble.

“How do you know I’m not simply thirsty?”

Knox grunted. “Last I heard, there was no shortage of taverns in the East End.”

Sebastian went to stand at the small window overlooking the rear court. The tavern backed up against the wall of St. Helen’s churchyard, so that from here he could see the tops of the weathered gray tombs and the winter-bared branches of the elms standing stark against the sky. He said, “It’s a melancholy view. I can see it bothering some—such a constant reminder of death.”

“Pippa doesn’t care for it, that’s for sure.”

Sebastian turned to look at him. “And you?”

Knox shrugged. “I’ve seen enough death in my life; I don’t need to look out the window to be reminded that life is short and uncertain.”

“Shorter for some than others.”

“True.”

Sebastian leaned back against the windowsill. “There’s a secondhand dealer in Houndsditch named Priss Mulligan. Deals in rare historical objects. I understand you know her.”

Knox reached for a clay pipe and began to fill the bowl with tobacco. “Let’s just say that I know of her. Why?”

“I’m told a fair portion of her merchandise is smuggled in from the Continent.”

“There’s heaps of smugglers working the Channel these days,” said Knox without looking up from his task.

“I hear she received a new shipment last week. Is that true?”

Knox thrust a taper into the fire on the hearth and watched the end flare. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But the shipment did arrive?”

“So I hear.” He held the taper to his pipe and sucked on it for a moment before looking up. “I don’t do business with the woman myself.”

“Any particular reason?”

“The same reason I make it a practice to avoid rabid dogs and vipers’ nests.”

“She’s dangerous?”

Knox blew out a long stream of tobacco smoke. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘deadly.’”

The two men’s gazes met and held, then broke toward the door as Pippa came in carrying foaming pints of ale. Without even looking at Sebastian, she slammed the tankards down on the simple gateleg table near the window, then left after throwing Knox a long, pregnant glare.

Knox said, “I hear you’ve had a son. A future Earl of Hendon.”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“And yet you’re still chasing after murderers?”

“How do you know I’m investigating a murder?”

A gleam of amusement showed in the eyes that were so much like Sebastian’s own. “It’s the only time you ever come here.”

“Huh. Must be something about the people you know.”

Knox sucked on his pipe, his lean cheeks hollowing, his expression enigmatic.

Sebastian said, “Ever hear of a man named Diggory Flynn?”

“Can’t say I have. Who is he?”

“He doesn’t work for Priss Mulligan?”

“Not to my knowledge. But then, I did mention I try to stay away from the woman.”

“Yet she knows you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“She told me I look like you.”

“Ah.” Knox reached for his ale and took a long, slow sip. He was silent for a moment, as if thoughtful. Then he said, “I hear someone tried to kill you the other night.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

The tavern owner wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of one hand and smiled. Then the smile faded. “Does Priss Mulligan know you’re looking into her?”

“She does. Why?”

“There was a smuggler named Pete Carpenter tried to cheat Priss a few years back. He had a wife and two sons. The little boys weren’t more than four or five. He came home one day to find them chopped into pieces, with the bits deliberately positioned about the house—a head sitting up on the mantel, a leg on the kitchen table, a hand under the bed—that sort of thing. He never did find his wife.”

Sebastian felt the tavern keeper’s words wash over him, raising the hairs at the back of his neck and sucking the moisture from his mouth as the horror of the tale—and its implications—hit his gut. He focused his attention on taking a long drink of his ale and swallowed, hard, before saying, “I take it you’ve heard about Preston and Sterling?”

“I have.” Knox drained his own tankard and set it aside with a soft
thump
. “Some people are just flat-out evil. Priss Mulligan is one of them. If I were you, I’d be careful. Of yourself, and of your family.”

Sebastian sat beside his library fire, a glass cradled in one palm, his gaze on the golden-red glow of the coals on the hearth. The house lay dark and quiet around him.

He took a sip of the brandy, felt it burn in his throat. He was drinking too much lately and he knew it—a slow, dangerous slide back into the self-destructive hell that had nearly consumed him in the months after he’d first returned to London.

The clock on the hearth chimed two and then fell silent. In its wake, the stillness of the night felt like a heavy presence, oppressive and soul sucking, and he was aware of the long, grueling hours of darkness stretching out ahead of him. He’d gone to bed with his wife; made slow, desperate love to her, then held her in his arms as she eased peacefully into sleep. He loved her with a tenderness and a passion that humbled, awed, and frightened him; he was closer to her than he had ever been to anyone. Yet in some vital, inexplicable way he found himself feeling more alone and disconnected than ever. And so he’d slipped from her side to draw on his breeches and dressing gown and come here.

He took another sip of the brandy, his unnaturally acute hearing picking up the sound of her door opening far above, her light footsteps on the stairs. He held himself very still. He did not want her to find him like this. Didn’t want her to see his weakness and his fear and his uncertainty.

She came up behind him and leaned over the chair to slip her arms around his neck and rest her linked hands against his chest. “You’re thinking about them, again, aren’t you?” she said. “The women and children of Santa Iria.”

“Yes.”

“You need to stop blaming yourself. You’ve dedicated years to making amends for a wrong that others did. But the past is past, and nothing you can do will ever change that. You can’t keep torturing yourself like this.”

He tipped back his head to look up at her. Her face was golden in the firelight, the strength of her features accentuated by the shadows and framed by the heavy fall of her dark hair.

He said, “I didn’t tell you everything.”

She brought up a hand to run the backs of her fingers down his cheek. “I know.”

In the silence that followed, he heard the fall of ash on the hearth and the endless tick of the clock. Then she came around to sit on the rug beside him and rest the side of her head against his leg.

He touched her hair, felt it slide soft and silky smooth through his fingers, and expelled his breath in a long, painful rush. “I watched the French kill them.”

“You don’t need to tell me.”

He shook his head, kept his gaze on the fire. “I knew the French captain and his men had left their camp a good half an hour before I managed to escape. But I rode to the convent anyway. It was as if I couldn’t believe that I was too late to warn them. To save them.”

He felt an ache pull across his chest. “Some of the children had been playing in an orange grove at the end of the valley when the soldiers came up. The French must have galloped at them with sabers drawn, because the earth around them was trampled by the hooves of the horses. And the children . . .”

She touched his hand. “Sebastian . . .”

He swallowed, remembering how he’d stopped and knelt beside each slashed, bloodied little body. “Two of the littlest ones—a boy and a girl—couldn’t have been more than five or six; big brown eyes, baby-soft light brown hair. They looked enough alike that they were probably brother and sister—maybe even twins. They were still holding hands. They must have held on to each other when the soldiers rode down on them.”

“They were dead?”

“All of them.”

“And the French?”

“I could hear horses neighing, men shouting, children screaming, women praying to God to save them. So I rode on. The convent was ancient, surrounded by a high sandstone wall. But the French had left the gates open. I could have ridden inside. I almost did. But at the last moment, I turned into a copse of trees at the edge of the road. I stayed there and watched them kill everything and everyone inside that convent. Babies in their cradles. Cattle. Chickens. Dogs. Everything.”

“And if you had ridden in? What do you think you could have done? You’d have been killed in an instant.”

“Yes. But it seemed right that I should die with them. I
wanted
to die with them.”

“Oh, God
,
Sebastian; no.”

He shook his head. “The only reason I didn’t was because I knew that if I stayed alive, I could avenge them. I planned to start with Sinclair Oliphant, but by the time I made it back to headquarters, he was gone—recalled to England on the death of his brother. So I set out after the French soldiers instead. I went back to the convent and tracked the troop that had done it until they were in a vulnerable position. And then I betrayed them to the Spanish partisans. The Spaniards knew what those men had done at Santa Iria. The soldiers’ deaths were not easy or quick.”

“And the captain?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“I’d meant to let the partisans have him too. But when I saw him again, I couldn’t stop myself. I . . . beat him to death.” He realized he’d clenched his fist and forced himself to open his hand. “I tell myself he deserved to die. But what I did was little short of murder. And when it was over, I found I had no pleasure in his killing. The truth is, I live with his death and the deaths of his men as surely as I live with the deaths of the innocents of Santa Iria.”