Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

“Agnes-Maria. HerrThomas says you are a great lord.” Her frown deepened a little, and her tone held a certain dubious note, as though suspecting that she had been practiced upon.

“Ah…something of the sort,” Grey replied warily. “Why?”

She produced an inkhorn, a quill, and a copybook from the folds of her apron, set these on the table beside him, and opened the book to a blank page.

“I am to write down, you see, a page.” She sighed at the enormity of the prospect, and turned her huge blue eyes reproachfully upon him, as though this drudgery were somehow his fault. “A page about some foreign country. But I do not remember what the schoolmaster said about France or Holland. HerrThomas, though, says that you have been to Schottlandand know everything about it. So, you see—” She flipped open the inkwell on the table and picked up her quill, very matter-of-fact. “You can tell me what you know, and I will write.”

“How efficient,” he said, smiling despite himself. “Very well. Let me think how to begin…. Perhaps we should say first where Scotland is? Yes, that seems right. ‘Scotland lies to the north of England.’”

“It is cold there?” the girl inquired, writing carefully.

“Very cold. And it rains incessantly. Let me spell ‘incessantly’ for you….”

A pleasant half hour spent in Scotland with Agnes-Maria left him, if not calmer, at least distracted, and he went to bed and fell asleep, to dream of cold, high mountains and the smoke of a fire in the Carryarick Pass.

Chapter 29

Dawn of Battle

He woke suddenly from a place beyond dreams, Tarleton’s excited face an inch from his own.

“Sir! We’ve found them! It’s starting!”

It was. All around him, officers were rolling from their beds, pulling curling papers from their hair, cursing and stumbling barefooted, calling for servants, ale, and chamber pots.

Tom was already there, jerking Grey’s nightshirt unceremoniously off over his head and pulling his shirt over it in almost the same motion.

“Where?” he demanded of Tarleton, his head popping out of the neck. He jerked the garment into place, Tom already stooping with his breeches.

“Behind the dyke thing, the Land-ware.” Tarleton was dancing on his toes with impatience. “We saw them—me and another scout who was in the church spire. The sky started to get light and there they were, creeping along the back of the dyke like skulking cowards!” His face shone under a sprinkling of soft, fair whiskers.

“Well done, Mr. Tarleton.” Grey smiled, tucking his shirt into his breeches. “Go and shave. Then fetch Mr. Brett, see to my horse, and eat something. Both of you eat something. I’ll join you—ouch!” Tom’s hands paused in their hurry to untangle the snag of hair his brush had just encountered. “I’ll join you at the stable. Go!” He made a shooing motion and Tarleton shot out of the room like a flushed hare.

“Speak of shaving, me lord…” Tom’s deft hands set by the hairbrush, and reached for the pot of shaving soap, the badger-bristle brush stirring up the foam with a scent of lavender.

Sitting on the bed as Tom shaved him, briskly plaited his hair, and bound it up, Grey wondered where young Agnes-Maria was. Probably moving hastily behind the English lines with her family. If Clermont’s main body was indeed skulking behind the Landwehr,the French artillery was very likely within range of Hьckelsmay—and the French were no respecters of private property.

“Here, me lord.” Tom thrust a pistol into his hands, then bent to fasten his sword belt. “It’s not loaded yet. D’ye want your cartridge box, or will one of your boys take it?”

“I’ll have it. Shot bag, powder…” He touched the items attached to his belt, checking, then thrust his arms back into the leather jerkin Tom was holding for him, the one he wore in lieu of the usual waistcoat on battlefields.

He was aware that some of the English junior officers considered this garment mildly contemptible, but then, relatively few of them had been shot at yet. Grey had, repeatedly. It wouldn’t save him from close fire, but the fact was that most of the French muskets had a very short range, and thus a good many musket balls were near spent by the time they reached a target. You could see them, sometimes, sailing almost lazily through the air, like bumblebees.

Coat, epaulets, gorget, laced hat…roll. Tom, always prepared, had thrust a crusty German roll into his hand, thickly buttered. Grey crammed the last of it into his mouth, shook crumbs from his lapels, and washed it down with coffee—one of the other orderlies had brewed some over a spirit lamp, the smell of it bracing.

Tom was circling him, eyes narrowed in concentration, lest he miss some vital detail of appearance. His round freckled face was anxious, but he said nothing. Grey touched him gently on the shoulder, making him look up.

“Me lord?”

“Thank you, Tom. I’ll go now.” The jumble had almost sorted itself out. Officers were thundering down the wooden staircase, shouting to one another, calling for their ensigns, and the air was filled with the scents of coffee, powder, heel black, hot hair, pipe clay, and a strong odor of fresh piss, both from the chamber pots and from the urine-soaked lumps of stale bread the orderlies used to bring up the shine on gold lace.

Tom swallowed, and stood awkwardly back.

“I’ll have your supper for you, me lord.”

“Thank you,” Grey repeated, and turned to go. He’d reached the door when he heard Tom cry out behind him.

“Me lord! Your dagger!”

He slapped at his waist in reflex, and found the place empty. He whirled on his heel to find Tom there, dagger in hand. He took it with a nod of thanks, and turning, ran down the stairs, tucking the knife into its sheath as he went.

His heart was thumping. In part from the natural atmosphere of excitement that attends a looming battle, in part from the thought that he might have found himself on the field without his dagger. He’d carried it since he was sixteen, and would have felt unarmed without it, pistol and sword notwithstanding.

The fact that he’d forgotten it, he thought, was not a good sign, and he touched the wire-wrapped hilt in an attempt to reassure himself.

Outside, the pigs were still snoring, both river and ditch invisible in a shroud of mist so thick that Grey wondered how the lookouts had ever seen the French troops. The air was fresh, though, with a spattering rain that came and went, and the weather did nothing to allay the spirits of the men.

He rode slowly through the forming columns, Brett and Tarleton foaming with excitement behind him. He felt the same excitement pulse through his own limbs—felt it in waves, coming off the men as they hurtled into position, clanking and cursing.

How does it work?his father had written in his campaign journal, after Sheriffmuir. How do emotions transmit themselves between men, with no gesture, no slightest word spoken? Whether it be confidence and joy, despair, or the fury of attack, there is no evidence of its spread. It is just suddenly there. What can be the mechanism of this instantaneous communication?Grey didn’t know, but he felt it.

“Hoy!” he shouted at the retreating back of a bareheaded soldier. “Hoy, Andrews! Lose something?”

He unhooked the calvary saber he carried and leaned down, neatly catching up the battered tricorn on its point before the hat could be trampled. It clinked; Andrews, like many of the infantry, had crisscrossed the inside of his hat with iron strips, the better to turn a blow.