Lord John and the Private Matter (Lord John Grey #1) 7

“Better not to be found, than to be in the hands of the Frenchies, surely?” Doubt was beginning to flicker in Scanlon’s eyes.

“Not really.” Grey explained the matter briefly, Scanlon frowning and drawing patterns on the table with a dollop of spilled beer all the while.

“Ah, I see, then,” he said, and fell silent. “Perhaps,” the apothecary said after a few moments, “I should speak to him.”

“Is it your impression that he will attend, if you do?” Grey’s question held as much incredulous derision as curiosity, but Finbar Scanlon only smiled, and stretched himself again, the muscles of his forearms curving hard against the skin.

“Oh, I do, yes, sir. Mr. Trevelyan has been kind enough to say as he considers himself within my debt—and so he is, I suppose.”

“That you have come to nurse his wife? Yes, I should think he would feel grateful.”

The apothecary shook his head at that.

“Well, maybe, sir, but that’s more by way of being a matter of business. It was agreed between us that he would see to Francie’s safe removal to Ireland, money enough to care for her and the babe until my return, and a sum to me for my services. And if my services should cease to be required, I shall be put ashore at the nearest port, with my fare paid back to Ireland.”

“Yes? Well, then—”

“I meant the cure, sir.”

Grey looked at him in puzzlement.

“Cure? What, for the syphilis?”

“Aye, sir. The malaria.”

“Whatever do you mean, Scanlon?”

The apothecary picked up his cup and gulped beer, then set it down with an exhalation of satisfaction.

“ ’Tis a thing I learned from the surgeon, sir—the man as saved me life. He told it me while I lay sick, and I saw it work several times after.”

“Saw what, for God’s sake?”

“The malaria. If a man suffering from pox happened to contract malaria, once he’d recovered from the fever—if he did—the pox was cured, as well.”

Scanlon nodded to him, and lifted his cup, with an air of magisterial confidence.

“It does work, sir. And while the tertian fever may come back now and then, the syphilis does not. The fever of it burns the pox from the blood, d’ye see?”

“Holy God,” Grey said, suddenly enlightened. “You gave it to her—you infected that woman with malaria?”

“Aye, sir. And have done the same for Mr. Trevelyan, this very morning, with blood taken from a dyin’ sailor off the East India docks. Fitting, Mr. Trevelyan thought, that it should be one of his own men, so to speak, who’d provide the means of his deliverance.”

“He would!” Grey said scathingly. So that was it. Seeing the scarified flesh of Trevelyan’s arm, he had thought Scanlon had merely bled the man to insure his health. He had had not the faintest idea—

“It is done with blood, then? I had thought the fever was transmitted by the breathing of foul air.”

“Well, and so it often is, sir,” Scanlon agreed. “But the secret of the cure is in the blood, see? The inoculum was the secret that the surgeon discovered and passed on to me. Though it is true as it may take more than one try, to insure a proper infection,” he added, rubbing a knuckle under his nose. “I was lucky with Mrs. Maria; took no more than a week’s application, and she was burning nicely. I hope to have a similar good effect for Mr. Trevelyan. He didn’t want to start the treatment himself, though, see, until we were safe away.”

“Oh, I see,” Grey said. And he did. Trevelyan had not chosen to abscond with Maria Mayrhofer in order to die with her—but in hopes of overcoming the curse that lay upon them.

“Just so, sir.” A light of modest triumph glowed in the apothecary’s eye. “So you see, too, sir, why I think Mr. Trevelyan might indeed be inclined to attend to me?”

“I do,” Grey agreed. “And both the army and myself will be grateful, Scanlon, if you can contrive any means of getting that information back to London quickly.” He pushed back his stool, but paused for one Parthian shot.

“I think you should speak to him soon, though. His gratitude may be significantly ameliorated, if Frau Mayrhofer dies as a result of your marvelous cure.”

Chapter 18

God’s Dice

Eight days passed, and Maria Mayrhofer still lived—but Grey could see the shadows in Trevelyan’s eyes, and knew how he dreaded the return of the fever. She had survived two more bouts of the fever, but Jack Byrd had told Tom—who had told him, of course—that it was a near thing.

“She ain’t much more than a yellow ghost now, Jack says,” Tom informed him. “Mr. Scanlon’s that worried, though he keeps a good face, and keeps sayin’ as she’ll be all right.”

“Well, I’m sure we all hope she will, Tom.” He hadn’t seen Frau Mayrhofer again, but what he had seen of her on that one brief occasion had impressed him. He was inclined to see women differently than did most other men; he appreciated faces, breasts, and buttocks as matters of beauty, rather than lust, and thus was not blinded to the personalities behind them. Maria Mayrhofer struck him as having a personality of sufficient force to beat back death itself—if she wanted to.

And would she? He thought that she must feel stretched between two poles: the strength of her love for Trevelyan pulling her toward life, while the shades of her murdered husband and child must draw her down toward death. Perhaps she had accepted Scanlon’s inoculum as a gamble, leaving the dice in God’s hands. If she lived through the malaria, she would be free—not only of the disease, but of her life before. If she did not … well, she would be free of life, once and for all.

Grey lounged in the hammock he had been given in the crew’s quarters, while Tom sat cross-legged on the floor beneath, mending a stocking.

“Does Mr. Trevelyan spend much time with her?” he asked idly.

“Yes, me lord. Jack says he won’t be put off no more, but scarcely leaves her side.”

“Ah.”

“Jack’s worried, too,” Tom said, squinting ferociously at his work. “But I don’t know whether it’s her he’s worried for, or him.”

“Ah,” Grey said again, wondering how much Jack had said to his brother—and how much Tom might suspect.

“You best leave off them boots, me lord, and go barefoot like the sailors. Look at that—the size of a teacup!” He poked two fingers through the stocking’s hole in illustration, glancing reproachfully up at Grey. “Besides, you’re going to break your neck, if you slip and fall on deck again.”

“I expect you’re right, Tom,” Grey said, pushing against the wall with his toes to make the hammock swing. Two near-misses with disaster on a wet deck had drawn him to the same conclusion. What did boots or stockings matter, after all?

A shout came from the deck above, penetrating even through the thick planks, and Tom dropped his needle, staring upward. Most of the shouts from the rigging overhead were incomprehensible to Grey, but the words that rang out now were clear as a bell.

“Sail ho!”

He flung himself out of the hammock, and ran for the ladder, closely followed by Tom.

A mass of men stood at the rail, peering northward, and telescopes sprouted from the eyes of several ship’s officers like antennae from a horde of eager insects. For himself, Grey could see no more than the smallest patch of sail on the horizon, insignificant as a scrap of paper—but incontrovertibly there.

“I will be damned,” Grey said, excited despite the cautions of his mind. “Is it heading for England?”

“Can’t say, sir.” The telescope-wielder next to him lowered his instrument and tapped it neatly down. “For Europe, at least, though.”

Grey stepped back, combing the crowd of men for Trevelyan, but he was nowhere in evidence. Scanlon, though, was there. He caught the man’s eye, and the apothecary nodded.

“I’ll go at once, sir,” he said, and strode away toward the hatchway.

It struck Grey belatedly that he should go as well, to reinforce any arguments Scanlon might make, both to Trevelyan and to the captain. He could scarcely bear to leave the deck, lest the tiny sail disappear for good if he took his eyes off it, but the sudden hope of deliverance was too strong to be denied. He slapped a hand to his side, but was of course not wearing his coat; his letter was below.

He darted toward the hatchway, and was halfway down the ladder when one flexing bare foot stubbed itself against the wall. He recoiled, scrabbled for a foothold, found it—but his sweaty hand slipped off the polished rail, and he plunged eight feet to the deck below. Something solid struck him on the head, and blackness descended.

He woke slowly, wondering for a moment whether he had been inadvertently encoffined. A dim and wavering light, as of candlelight, surrounded him, and there was a wooden wall two inches from his nose. Then he stirred, turned over on his back, and found that he lay in a tiny berth suspended from the wall like the sort of box in which knives are kept, barely long enough to allow him to stretch out at full length.

There was a large prism set into the ceiling above him, letting in light from the upper deck; his eyes adjusting to this, he saw a set of shelves suspended above a minuscule desk, and deduced from their contents that he was in the purser’s cabin. Then his eyes shifted to the left, and he discovered that he was not alone.

Jack Byrd sat on a stool beside his berth, arms comfortably folded, leaning back against the wall. When he saw that Grey was awake, he unfolded his arms and sat up.

“Are you well, my lord?”

“Yes,” Grey replied automatically, belatedly checking to see whether it was true.

Fortunately, it seemed to be. There was a tender lump behind his ear, where he had struck his head on the companionway, and a few bruises elsewhere, but nothing of any moment.

“That’s good. The surgeon and Mr. Scanlon both said as you were all right, but our Tom wouldn’t have you left, just in case.”

“So you came to keep watch? That was unnecessary, but I thank you.” Grey stirred, wanting to sit up, and became conscious of a warm, soft weight beside him in the bed. The purser’s cat, a small tabby, was curled tight as an apostrophe against his side, purring gently.

“Well, you had company already,” Jack Byrd said with a small smile, nodding at the cat. “Tom insisted as how he must stay, too, though—I think he was afraid lest somebody come in and put a knife in your ribs in the night. He’s a suspicious little bugger, Tom.”

“I should say that he has cause to be,” Grey replied dryly. “Where is he now?”

“Asleep. It’s just risen dawn. I made him go to bed a few hours ago; said I’d watch for him.”

“Thank you.” Moving carefully in the confined space, Grey pulled himself up on the pillows. “We’re not moving, are we?”

Belatedly, he realized that what had wakened him was the cessation of movement; the ship was rolling gently as waves rose and fell beneath the hull, but her headlong dash had ceased.

“No, my lord. We’ve stopped to let the other ship come alongside of us.”

“Ship. The sail! What ship is it?” Grey sat upright, narrowly missing clouting himself anew on a small shelf above the berth.

“The Scorpion,” Jack Byrd replied. “Troopship, the mate says.”

“A troopship? Thank Christ! Headed where?”

The cat, disturbed by his sudden movement, uncurled itself with a mirp! of protest.

“Dunno. They’ve not come within hailing distance yet. The captain’s not best pleased,” Byrd observed mildly. “But it’s Mr. Trevelyan’s orders.”

“Is it, then?” Grey gave Byrd a quizzical glance, but the smooth, lean face showed no particular response. Perhaps it was Trevelyan’s orders that had caused them to seek out the other ship—but he would have wagered a year’s income that the real order had come from Finbar Scanlon.

He let out a long breath, scarcely daring to hope. The other ship might not be heading for England; it could easily have overtaken them, sailing from England, en route to almost anywhere. But if it should be headed to France or Spain, somewhere within a few weeks’ journey of England—somehow, he would get back to London. Pray God, in time.

He had an immediate impulse to leap out of bed and fling on his clothes—someone, presumably Tom, had undressed him and put him to bed in his shirt—but it was plain that there would be some time before the two ships had maneuvered together, and Jack Byrd was making no move to rise and go, but was still sitting there, examining him thoughtfully.

It suddenly occurred to Grey why this was, and he halted his movement, instead altering it into a reach for the cat, which he scooped up into his lap, where it promptly curled up again.

“If the ship should be headed aright, I shall board her, of course, and go back to England,” he began carefully. “Your brother Tom—do you think he will wish to accompany me?”

“Oh, I’m sure he would, my lord.” Byrd straightened himself on the stool. “Better if he can get back to England, so our dad and the rest know he’s all right—and me,” he added, as an afterthought. “I expect they’ll be worried, a bit.”

“I should expect so.”

There was an awkward silence then, Byrd still making no move to go. Grey stared back.

“Will you wish to return to England with your brother?” Grey asked at last, quite baldly. “Or to continue on to India, in Mr. Trevelyan’s service?”

“Well, that’s what I’ve been asking myself, my lord, ever since that ship came close enough for Mr. Hudson to say what she was.” Jack Byrd scratched meditatively under his chin. “I’ve been with Mr. Trevelyan for a long time, see—since I was twelve. I’m … attached to him.” He darted a quick glance at Grey, then stopped, seeming to wait for something.