Sea Change (16 page)

As they walked along the passage towards their room at the Drei Tassen, a door ahead of them some way short of theirs slowly opened, the light from a lantern beyond the windows at the rear of the inn falling unevenly across a figure that stepped out into their path. Mcllwraith pulled up at once and sucked in his breath. He knew who the man was. And Spandrel sensed that he did not like him.

'I saw you coming,' the man said. He was a squat, burly fellow, with a head too large for his body. His face was in shadow, but there was menace enough simply in his posture. Spandrel felt suddenly cold. 'You should be more careful.'

'Colonel Wagemaker,' said Mcllwraith quietly. 'What brings you here?'

'The same wind that's blown you in.'

'Is that so?'

'I'm in the King's service, Mcllwraith. I outrank you. In more ways than one.'

'I can only think of one, Colonel. And that wasn't always the case.'

'Where's the widow de Vries?'

'I don't rightly know.'

'Nor would you tell me if you did.'

'True enough.'

'But she does have the book, doesn't she?'

'Book?'

'Don't try to play blind-man's-buff with me, Mcllwraith. Jupe and Zuyler are dead. But she slipped through your fumbling fingers, didn't she? Cloisterman's at the Town Hall now, trying to—'

'Cloisterman's with you?'

'He is. And that's Spandrel you have skulking beside you, isn't it? So, we have our seconds ready-made for us, don't we?'

'Seconds? You surely don't mean to—'

'Kill you? Most certainly. Unless you kill me. I told you that if we ever met again I'd finish it between us. Well…' Something in the tone of Wagemaker's voice revealed the smile that Spandrel could not see. 'We meet again.'

'Quite a turn-up, eh, Spandrel?' said Mcllwraith, as he sat by the window of their room at the Drei Tassen and gazed out at the blank Bernese night. By the flickering light of the single candle, Spandrel saw him raise his whisky flask to his lips and sip from it. 'Just what we didn't need. Just what I didn't want.'

'You're really going to fight him?'

'I have no choice. Despite appearances, I lay claim to be a gentleman. Colonel Wagemaker demands satisfaction. And I must give it him. Tomorrow, at dawn.'

'This is madness.'

'A form of it, certainly.'

'What's it about? Why does he hate you?'

'He blames me for his sister's death.'

'And are you to blame?'

'Aye. I am. But so is he. We share the blame. I believe that's what he can't stomach.'

'How did she die?'

'It's not a story I'm fond of telling. But since we need to consider the possibility that I may not be alive tomorrow to correct the cholerical colonel's version of events…' Mcllwraith chuckled. 'As my second, you come close to being my confessor, Spandrel. You know that?'

'I haven't agreed to be your second.'

'You'll do it, though. I know you well enough by now. We may despise the forms of this world, but we observe them nonetheless. It'd be as cowardly for you to refuse to stand by me as for me to refuse to stand against him.'

'And, if so, I'm entitled to know why.'

'Aye. So you are.' Mcllwraith took another sip of whisky. 'It goes back to the war. Like so much else in my misdirected life. Glorious days and grievous: they were the way of it. But we didn't mind. Not while Marlborough led us. A hard man. And a harder one still to read. But a leader, in his heart as well as his head. You'd have followed him into the fissures of Hell. Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet. I was at all of them. And proud to be. Then the politicians did him down, as good soldiers always are done down by backstairs intrigues and closet bargains. The Government changed its hue. The Captain-General was dismissed. Peace talks began. We surrendered in all but name. Most of the British troops went back to England, while the negotiations dragged on through the spring and summer of 1712. I was with Albemarle's Allied division during those months. Nobody knew what we were supposed to be about. Most of the officers were Dutch or German. There were precious few British left. And precious little spirit left either. The French seized their chance, crossed the Scheldt and attacked us at Denain. Seventeen battalions were lost. I was one of the many taken prisoner. We were sent to Valenciennes and confined there until a truce could be agreed. I fell in with an English officer from the garrison at Marchiennes, which the French had also captured. He was badly wounded and our captors made little effort to treat him. Before the truce was concluded, he was dead. His name was Hatton. Captain John Hatton. He was a good fellow. He made me promise to carry a letter he'd written to a young lady in England to whom he was engaged. His beloved Dorothea. You already know her surname.'

'Wagemaker.'

'The very same. The Wagemakers owned land in Berkshire. Still do, I dare say. When I was released and sent to rejoin what was left of my regiment, I was immediately discharged on half-pay. The country was done with us fighting men. Our time was over. I had no notion of what to do or where to go. I certainly had no wish to return to Scotland. I burned my boats there a long while ago. I had it in my mind to go back to what I knew best: fighting. There's always an army somewhere in the world that wants a recruit. But before I set to thinking about that, I had to deliver Hatton's letter to his betrothed. I wrote to her, warning her of my visit, then travelled to the Wagemakers' house, Bordon Grove, on the edge of Windsor Forest.'

'Was Colonel Wagemaker there?'

'He was. Though he was only a lieutenant then. Reduced to half-pay, like me, and cooling his heels at home. Our Augustus saw himself as head of the family, following his father's recent death, though his brother Tiberius had the running of the estate, such as it was. As for Dorothea, she was the pick of the bunch, as she'd have been of many another. Not merely beautiful, but sweet-natured and altogether lovely. A young woman of such breeding that you couldn't help wondering how she'd acquired so ill-bred a pair of brothers. A lamb to their wolves. She thanked me for my condolences and for bringing the letter. She urged me to stay awhile. And so I did. I stayed, indeed, too long. Brother Tiberius offered me the rent of a folly on the estate. Blind Man's Tower, it's called, on ironical account of the staircase to the top being on the outside of the building, open to the elements, with neither guard nor rail. But the ground floor's as cosy as a cottage. I took it just for the winter. By spring, I planned to be on my way.'

'And were you?'

'I was. But much had happened by then. What Wagemaker and I are to duel over was already done. I grew to know the family too well. That was my mistake. A soldier needs a billet. But he should never think he's found a home. The Wagemakers were pressed for money. Their father had been a poor manager of their interests and Tiberius wasn't the man to repair them. A loose-tongued aunt who lived with them and kept their invalid mother company muttered to me more than once about debts hanging round their necks. No doubt that explains why Tiberius was willing to rent me Blind Man's Tower. Any income was useful. And it also explains why he and Augustus weren't at all sorry that poor Hatton was dead. They never made any pretence that they were, speaking slightingly of him on several occasions, until they saw it tried my temper to do so and guarded what they said. They had a different, wealthier, husband in mind for Dorothea: Esmund Longrigg, owner of a neighbouring and better founded estate. Longrigg held the office of chief woodward or somesuch in the Forest hierarchy, which carried with it an enviable load of perquisites. He and Dorothea were put much together at balls and musical evenings that Christmas and Longrigg liked what he saw. But Dorothea didn't. I couldn't blame her for that. I didn't like the look of Longrigg myself. Tallow to her beeswax. But moneyed. To her brothers, that was all that mattered. They encouraged her to accept his proposal if, or, as they saw it, when it came. And come it did.' Mcllwraith sighed and drank some more whisky. 'She asked for time to think. Then she turned to me for advice. She detested Longrigg. But she knew how important it was to the family's future that she marry him. Yet still she detested him. Her life with him would be a misery. What was she to do?'

"What did you tell her?'

'To refuse him.' Mcllwraith looked across at Spandrel, his face wreathed in shadow. 'If her brothers were so concerned about the family's future, by which they meant their own comfort, they should bestir themselves to secure it, rather than mortgage their sister's happiness.' He seemed to smile at the recollection of his words. 'Such was my advice.'

'Did she take it?'

'She refused him, right enough. Which displeased them mightily, as you can imagine. The more so because they knew she'd been to see me before giving Longrigg his answer and suspected I'd put her up to it. Nobly, she denied it. But when they accused me nonetheless, I chose not to deny it. I didn't care to be summoned to the house and cross-questioned like some tenant caught poaching. Longrigg was with them. The brothers seemed to think

they had the right to tell me what to do simply because I was living on their property. Harsh things were said. Tempers were lost. Longrigg had the gall to suggest I was harbouring dishonourable intentions towards Dorothea. Then Augustus went further, implying they might not

just be intentions. I demanded he withdraw the slur. He refused. So, I called him out. There was nothing else for it.'

'You challenged him?'

'Aye. But the duel was never fought. Dorothea was being held a virtual prisoner by then. I wasn't permitted

to see her. But she knew what had happened. She smuggled a letter to me by her maid pleading with me not to fight her brother. She said she couldn't bear the thought of either of us dying on her account. I replied, saying it was a matter of honour and I had no choice but to fight, unless Augustus took back the remark, which I knew he wouldn't. Even then, he was too stubborn for that. And too brave. He'd deliberately provoked the challenge. He wanted to fight me. And I wanted to fight him, God forgive me. But we never did fight. Till now, anyway. A day and time were fixed for us to meet. The night before, Dorothea implored her brother to apologize to me. When he refused, she calmly said good night to him, walked up to the top floor of the house and threw herself over the balustrade into the stair-well.'

Spandrel caught his breath. 'She killed herself?'

Mcllwraith nodded grimly. 'It was all of a sixty-foot drop to the stone-flagged hall. Certain death. And the only certain way she knew to prevent the duel. She had my letter, my pompous resort to honour as a justification for refusing to withdraw the challenge, concealed in the sleeve of her dress. Augustus found it, of course. He's a diligent searcher, if he's nothing else. And finding it somehow enabled him to forget his own responsibility for what she'd done. He laid it all at my door. The duel was called off, naturally, as a mark of respect, as Dorothea had known it would be. As far as Augustus was concerned, though, it was only a postponement, until after the funeral.'

'But not as far as you were concerned.'

'No. I couldn't go through with what Dorothea had laid down her life to avert. I withdrew the challenge.'

'What did Wagemaker do then?'

'He issued one of his own. Which I declined, on the tenuous grounds that a junior officer cannot challenge a senior. The actual grounds were rather different, of course. And seemingly beyond his comprehension. As it appears they still are. Now, however, he's no longer my junior. I cannot decline to meet him.'

'What will happen?'

'One of us will die. He hasn't waited eight years to content himself with a shot into the air. He's a man of his word. And he's given it.' 'But his sister's memory…' 'Is more likely to stay my hand than his.' 'But it won't, will it? You don't mean…' 'I don't know what I mean, Spandrel. It's late. And whisky inclines me to mawkishness. I'll tell you this for what it's worth, though. I lost no time in quitting Blind Man's Tower after the funeral and taking off on my travels. The Danish army found a use for me in its war against Sweden. That's how I came to learn enough of their language to be able to negotiate our passage aboard the Havfrue. I wasn't the Danes' only British mercenary, of course. There were a good many. And among them was one who'd met Lieutenant Augustus Wagemaker while serving in Ireland. He'd been a notorious duellist there, apparently. Quick to take offence. Determined to seek satisfaction for it. And never known to miss.' Mcllwraith drained the whisky flask. 'I think Dorothea knew full well that it was far more likely to be me she was saving than her brother.' He sighed. 'There's a thought to ponder when we reach the standing-place tomorrow. If I'm right, Wagemaker knows it as well as I do. Perhaps she loved me a little. Perhaps more than a little. If so, that's really what he hates me for. And why he means to kill me.'

No candle burned in the room a few doors down the passage that Colonel Wagemaker was sharing with Nicholas Cloisterman. But only one of its occupants was still awake. Cloisterman lay on his bed, eyes wide open, staring anxiously into the darkness. From the other side of the room came the steady rise and fall of Wagemaker's slumbering breaths. How a man could sleep so soundly on the eve of a duel Cloisterman could not imagine. He had studiously avoided such affairs of honour himself, preferring any number of apologies and humiliations to the prospect of sudden, painful and, as he saw it, pointless death. He had never served as a second either and had no wish to do so now, but Wagemaker had insisted, deploying the ingenious argument that this was a heavensent opportunity to eliminate a dangerous rival in their pursuit of the Green Book and that Cloisterman was therefore obliged to assist him.

The possibility did not seem to have crossed Wagemaker's mind that he, rather than Mcllwraith, might be eliminated by the morning's exchange of fire. He seemed, indeed, blithely confident of the outcome. 'Mcllwraith's as good as dead,' had been his dismissive remark on the subject. As to the reason for the duel, which Cloisterman felt entitled to know if he was to stand as a second, about that too Wagemaker had been sparing with his words. 'He brought about my sister's death. Now he must pay for her life with his.'

If these two irascible old warriors were determined to take pot-shots at one another, that, so far as Cloisterman was concerned, they were welcome to do. He certainly could not prevent them. It was also undeniable that it would be easier to wrest the Green Book from Estelle de Vries, whom they would surely overtake before she reached the Simplon Pass, without Mcllwraith trying to do the same. None of these considerations eased his mind, however. He did not like Wagemaker and he did not trust him. He did not subscribe to the colonel's notion that this would be a quick, clean kill, an old score settled and a present problem solved, free of consequences, devoid of penalty. In Cloisterman's experience, life was never that simple and nor was death.

A particularly disturbing thought was that he had no idea what the attitude of the Swiss was to duelling. For all he knew, it might be forbidden by some ancient cantonal law. If so, the seconds as much as the duellists would be in breach of it. During his visit to the Town Hall, he had represented himself to the Sheriffs officer with whom he had discussed the deaths of Zuyler and Jupe as a reputable and accredited agent of the British Government. How the Sheriff would react to such a personage involving himself in a duel he did not care to contemplate. But Wagemaker was Walpole's man. And Walpole seemed likely soon to be the arbiter of all their fates. Cloisterman had no choice but to do as he was bidden.