Absolute Honour (24 page)

‘Employment. In the service of His Majesty. Though since
you are already a soldier, perhaps you should consider it a transfer.’

Jack swallowed the rest of the sherry. ‘May I have another?’ Turnville nodded. The glass was filled and Jack now held it in
one hand. ‘You do not believe me to be a traitor?’

‘I believe you to be what you just called yourself – a fool. Not a hanging offence and almost obligatory in one so young.
Besides, you have other qualities attested to by,’ he waved his hand over the desk, ‘General Murray, Colonel Burgoyne, one
Captain Engledue of the
Robuste.
Bravery, verging on the foolhardy. A taste for disguise. An ability with languages and weapons. All very useful to us.’

‘Indeed?’ Jack was content to sip this second sherry.

‘But even more useful – no one knows you, at least in the spheres we move in. We could introduce you into a certain arena,
give you another disguise, another name. A more likely one than Absolute, eh?’ The man actually smiled.

‘What arena?’

Instead of answering, the Colonel reversed a clump of paper, tied together with a thick bootlace. The top page had names on
it. The first was the name he’d known him by, the rest were the aliases he’d heard at their first meeting in the cell below.

‘Red Hugh McClune,’ Jack read aloud. ‘May I?’

‘Later, perhaps. But allow me to
précis
a little.’ Turnville rose, went to look out at the rain. ‘The Irishman and I have had a long relationship. I faced him at
Culloden, though I did not know it then. I nearly caught him in London in fifty-two when he planned to be one of four hundred
men who would storm St James’s Palace and seize the King. It was called the Elibank Plot. Heard of it?’

‘I don’t believe—’

‘Not surprised. Most haven’t. We try not to let these things come out. But he was there, as he has been at the
bottom of most conspiracies against our State. We heard he was in America, seeking arms, fomenting discontent. And then we
found him, quite by chance, in Bath!’ Turnville turned. ‘I was so pleased to meet him at last. Alas, we had only the one,
brief conversation. I was to return in the morning – one week ago – to continue our talk.’ He sighed. ‘But by the morning
he was gone. And Mr Dawkins’s brother was dead.’ He gestured to the man still standing behind Jack. ‘And this Mr Dawkins was
the smaller of the siblings.’

Turnville came round the desk, perched on its edge. ‘Red Hugh McClune is a very dangerous man and our most capable opponent.
He is always about something big. The Elibank Plot. Killing the King here in Bath. Now he’s escaped he’ll be planning something
equally spectacular.’ That half-smile returned. ‘We had him. We lost him. We would like to have him back.’

‘And you think—’

‘You know him. I mean, you can actually recognize his face. Few alive can. I am amazed he let you live, as your story goes.
He must be fond of you, which, again, may be useful. It is a weakness he has not yet displayed.’ He reached for his own glass.
‘We want you to find him, point him out to us. Then we can do the rest.’

Jack sipped the sherry. ‘But how will I find him?’

Turnville came off the desk, moved back to his chair. Another paper was produced. ‘We suspect he was the Methodist reverend
seen taking an Antwerp-bound vessel with wife and daughter from Southampton. Yet even if he goes via the Low Countries he
will still end up in France. He is employed and paid by the French equivalent of my own department – Le Secret du Roi, the
Bourbon’s intelligence. He will go to them for instructions and gold. He’ll take the latter and largely ignore the former,
unless they also suit the cause of the Lost King. And then we think he’ll make for the centre of the Jacobite world.’

‘Charles Edward?’ Jack had heard that the Bonnie Prince was in Germany.

Turnville snorted. ‘That drunkard? No,
Bliadnha Thearlaich,’
he mangled the Gaelic, ‘was his chance and he lost. Charles’s year was seventeen forty-five. As they sing in their taverns:
“He’ll come no more.” ’

‘Then where?’

‘The court of the exiled King, James the Third as he calls himself. The Pope still shelters him and the Jacobite diaspora
gathers around him, a broken, dispirited crew in the main, living on cold soup and former glories. But that’s where they still
plot the Old Pretender’s return. In Rome.’

‘You wish me to go to Rome?’

‘Yes. Infiltrate the Jacobite exiles. We’ll give you a good story. Report all you can, who’s in, who’s out. You’ll be doing
useful work. And then when our quarry finally appears, you point him out and we take him. You will have time, for our fox
will go to ground in France a while, ’tis certain. He’ll also travel slower than a youth such as yourself, for I doubt he’ll
abandon his women. Did you know that the so-called Mrs O’Farrell is actually Bridget O’Doherty, his wife? No matter. His cousin
will also undoubtedly go with them.’

Turnville was staring at Jack rather directly now. So he took a sip. ‘My concern, sir, is that this latest outrage in Bath
will have been reported in all the newspapers. My name might have been unearthed – you know how these scribblers desire all
the story. Even if I was to travel incognito, might I not be exposed?’

The Colonel was looking at him quizzically. ‘To what outrage do you refer?’

‘The assassination attempt?’

‘There wasn’t one.’

‘But—’

‘There was an explosion of a gaseous substance at a house
on the Circus. Unfortunately it coincided with the King’s visit. Some old scientist was experimenting, apparently. The landlord
was shocked – it was quite against the terms of the tenancy.’

Jack shook his head. ‘People will not believe that, surely?’

‘They will believe what we wish them to believe.’ Turnville nodded emphatically. ‘They are not at liberty, sir, to publish
what they wish.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack, somewhat sadly. ‘I thought in England that they were.’

‘Ah, youth,’ said Turnville. Then he leaned forward and tapped the folder marked with aliases. ‘Well? Do you read this or
no?’

Jack stared at the inked names, the desk they sat on, Turnville and then beyond him, to the rain outside. Could he do this?
Yes. Did he wish to do this? That required more thought. He hated the way he’d been deceived, used. It
was
treason of a sort, as he’d said to Red Hugh over his sword point, a betrayal of friendship. Above all, a violation of honour.
He had made it clear to the Irishman when they were about to fight against the privateer and he donned the uniform of his
regiment, that honour had clear lines for him, ones that must not be crossed. Red Hugh had trampled over his as if they did
not exist. Now that they were ‘quits’, as he had said, it demanded redress. And he was being offered that chance. A chance
also to fight for England, in a different way than he had previously.

Still, there were two things he had to clear first. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I am ordered to report to my regiment.’

‘They will be informed, to your credit, trust me. And the second?’

Jack hesitated. But he had to say it. ‘I am not sure that, if I went, all my motives would be entirely pure. If I am honest,
sir, Miss Fitzpatrick, uh, still … holds …’

He trailed off. Turnville had got up again, moved to stare
out at the rain. ‘Hearken, Lieutenant Absolute, to the first law of espionage: No one engages in it for a single, pure reason.
If they do, we waste no time on them for they are quickly dead. Some rejoice in the game of it, the codes, the disguises,
the sudden betrayals, the unexpected triumphs. Some want power or gold, which are often linked.’ He picked a small thread
off what, Jack now noticed, was a beautifully tailored jacket of rich brocade, and let it float away. ‘And if another is motivated
by love, well – God help that man, I say. God help
you.’
He turned. ‘And he will, just so long as, this time, you put loyalty first, eh?’

To whom? Jack thought, but he said, ‘I am still unclear, sir, why you want me to do this? Surely there are more experienced
men who also have seen the Irishman.’

‘Such as?’ Jack pointed a forefinger over his shoulder. Turnville snorted. ‘Dawkins? Hardly. Not very bright, you see.’ He
looked past Jack. ‘You’re none too bright, are you, Dawkins?’

‘No, sir,’ came the grunted reply.

‘And my other men? Too obvious or too old. Would find it hard to infiltrate, even if they were not personally known. Whereas
you, with your youth and your background … I believe half of your generation find it to Rome on the so-called Grand Tour.’
He shuddered. ‘God knows why they should want to. Filthy inns, filthy food, filthy foreigners! I never desired to leave Britain,
only did it with the regiment to kill Frogs. You shall fit easily into such a crowd. Many a youth visiting Rome is drawn to
the supposed romance of the Stuart cause. Hmm?’ He reached back, tapped the sheaf of papers. ‘But it’s up to you,
Lieutenant
Absolute. Choose to serve your country by helping to capture one of its most abhorrent enemies. Serve yourself as well,’
a pitying smile came, ‘or choose not to, and live with the consequences.’

Jack looked again into the appraising eyes, recognizing the threat of those final words. Did he have a choice? The taint of
treachery would follow him throughout his life. And was not this a way to help redeem the threatened name of Absolute?

He reached forward and picked up the file. ‘Red Hugh McClune,’ he read aloud, ‘William Leadbetter. Thomas Lawson. Josiah Tumbril
…’ He looked up, out of the window, to the rain. A thought came but this one he didn’t speak.

I’ll see you all in Rome.

‘Huzzah! Huzzah!’

As he rose to the acclaim, the man took off his spectacles, his eyes receding to the size and shape of two currants on a frosted
Chelsea bun. Where the frames had rested, bruises marked his cheeks in purple, stark against the sheen of the man’s dripping
face. Rome was an inferno, all sweated. Yet though Jack made sure he kept well to the leeward of some of the Jacobites – MacBrave,
the lugubrious Hebridean, was especially fruity – somehow he could forgive this man anything, even his ripeness.

For Watkin Pounce had an extraordinary voice. Completely at variance with his bulk, it was a counter tenor, exquisitely modulated,
and Jack settled back to enjoy it. The man always sang the final verse of this, his favourite Jacobite song, the sentiments
heightened by the large tear that inevitably squeezed onto his cheek:

With heart and hand we’ll join, boys,

To set him on his throne;

We’ll all combine as one, boys,

Till this great work be done.

We’ll pull down usurpation,

And, spite of abjuration,

And force of stubborn nation

Great James’s title own.

Hard on the heels of the most raucous huzzahs yet, Watkin’s voice dropped an octave and he bellowed, ‘The King across the
water!’

The King just round the corner, thought Jack, rising with the rest, his voice as loud as any. While the cheers echoed he turned,
called to the two boys standing in the doorway of their snug:
‘Raggazi, ancora vino, pronto.’
During his week in Rome it was most of the Italian he’d learned but he’d discovered he needed very little else. Those words
and the wine they brought had won him the comradeship of the men in the room. It wasn’t hard to buy a Jacobite a drink – quite
the reverse – and finding them had been just as easy. Once he’d been told about the area surrounding King James’s Palazzo
Muti, he’d made for it directly – just another young Englishman come to gawk at the Old Pretender. His informant, a clergyman
in the English enclave of the Piazza di Spagna, had warned that youths such as himself were considered fine prey to the exiles
there. The least that could be gotten from them was news of home, while others, if they displayed the smallest sympathy for
the Lost King’s cause, might be taken up and worked upon. Jack had made himself malleable.

Turnville had warned him against complacency. But truly, Jack thought, I am not complacent. I am just rather good at this.

He was especially pleased with his disguise. The story’s facts may have been concocted by Turnville but the gilding came from
Jack. He felt he had suffered quite enough as Beverley. The tailors of Rome were excellent and, after all, it was essential
that ‘Philip – Pip – Truman’ moved easily through all ranks of Jacobite society. His silk shirt with its lutestring piping
and his maroon breeches were quite adequate for the present company – the foot soldiers of the Cause – but their ‘officers’,
the exiled nobility, had different ways of using their time and better filled purses. Jack was
thrilled with the dove-grey suit and green waistcoat he’d commissioned for the opera that night. Just as well that Turnville’s
story had turned him into an earl’s son, he thought, for it required him to provide a purse to match.

Pounce, who’d been relieving himself in the chamber pot in the corner, now returned. ‘Are you well, Pip?’ he said.

‘Be better when this is filled,’ replied Jack, lifting his glass and joining in the cheer as the wine was brought in. He seized
the bottles and poured everyone there a tot. ‘To your health, sirs,’ he cried.

‘To yours,’ came the shout. There were ten men in the small room and, once the liquor was thrown down and more replaced it,
the conversation became general.

‘Allow me,’ Jack said, leaning over to fill Pounce’s already emptied bumper.

The faintest demur came. ‘Ah, Pip! You gladden an old man’s heart.’

Jack didn’t know quite how it had happened. But from almost the moment Watkin had encountered him gazing up at the Palazzo
Muti, they had begun a relationship reminiscent of the one in the play he’d seen in Bath. Somehow he’d become Prince Hal to
Pounce’s Falstaff, even if Mr Harper at Orchard Street could have fitted twice inside that threadbare black coat. Pounce was
certainly as drunken as the stage knight, as prone to melancholy and bombast. Indeed he
was
a knight, but his estate in Norfolk was long forfeit, its recovery dependent on the Stuart restoration. Watkin, like Falstaff,
was also quite content to spend Jack’s gold, and Jack was quite happy to let him. Pounce had showed him the town and, most
importantly, had connections at the Palazzo Muti.