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Tom Byrd was packing; they would leave in the morning for Dublin, and the room was strewn with stockings, hairbrushes, powder, shirts, and whatever else Tom considered essential to the credit of his employer’s public appearance. Grey never would have believed that all of these items would fit into one trunk and a couple of portmanteaux, had he not seen Tom accomplish the feat repeatedly.
“Have you packed up Captain Fraser already?” he asked, pulling on his stockings.
“Oh, yes, me lord,” Tom assured him. “Everything save what he’s wearing—and his nightshirt, to be sure,” he added as an afterthought. “I did tryto make him wear powder for supper,” he said, with an air of reproach. “He says it makes him sneeze.”
Grey laughed and went down, meeting Hal on the stairs. His brother brandished a small book at him.
“Look what I’ve got!”
“Let me see … No! Where did you get it?”
“It” was a copy of Harry Quarry’s book of poetry, entitled Certain Verses Upon the Subject of Eros. The original, which Grey had presented to Denis Diderot, had been bound in calfskin, whereas this copy was a much cheaper version, done with plain buckram covers, and selling—according to the cover—at half a shilling a copy.
“Mr. Beasley had it. He says he bought it at Stubbs’s print-shop, in Fleet Street. I recognized it instantly from the title and sent him off to get me a copy. Have you read it?”
“No, I hadn’t the chance—only heard a few choice bits that Diderot read out over the piss pot … Oh, Christ!” He’d flipped the book open at random and now read out, “Bent upon scratching his unseemly itch / This self-fellating son of a bitch …”
Hal gave a strangled whoop and laughed so hard that he had to lean momentarily against the wall for support. “Self-fellating? Is that even possible?”
“You’re asking me? I certainly can’t do it,” said Grey.
“I havena any personal experience in that regard myself,” said a dry Scottish voice behind him, “but dogs di
Both Greys swung round, startled; they hadn’t heard him approach. He looked well, John thought, with a slight sense of pride. Upon Fraser’s arrival, Mi
“It ispossible, though,” Fraser added, coming even with them. “For a man, I mean.”
Hal had straightened up at Fraser’s arrival but didn’t abandon his own amusement, smiling broadly at Fraser’s remark.
“Really? Dare I ask how you come by this knowledge, Captain?”
Fraser’s mouth twitched slightly, and he shot a glance at Grey. He answered Hal readily, though.
“On one memorable evening in Paris, some years ago, I was the guest of the Duc di Castellotti, a gentleman with … individual tastes. He took a number of his di
“D’you think Harry’s writing from personal experience, John?”
“It’s my impression that Colonel Quarry has considerable experience of various kinds upon which to draw,” Fraser said, before John could answer. “Though I shouldna have taken him for a man of letters. D’ye mean to say that he composed that remarkable bit o’ verse?”
“Astonishingly enough, yes,” Hal said. “And quite a lot more of a similar nature, if I am to believe the reports. Wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you?”
Hal had turned, quite naturally, with a lift of the shoulder that invited Fraser to walk beside him, and they now went down the corridor, conversing in a pleasant ma
Mi
Master me. Or let me your master be.
He thought he would settle for mutual respect—and, for the first time since Hal had put this scheme in hand, began to look forward to Ireland.
SECTION III
Beast in View
15
The Return of Tobias Qui
“IS HE ALL RIGHT, ME LORD?” TOM ASKED IN LOWERED VOICE, nodding toward the dock. Turning, Grey saw Fraser standing there like a great rock in the middle of a stream, obliging hands and passengers to flow around him. Despite his immobility, there was something in his face that reminded Grey irresistibly of a horse about to bolt, and by instinct he fought his way down the gangway and laid a hand on Fraser’s sleeve before he could think about it.
“It will be all right,” he said. “Come, it will be all right.”
Fraser glanced at him, torn from whatever dark thought had possessed him.
“I doubt it,” he said, but absently, as though to himself. He didn’t pull away from John’s hand on his arm, but rather walked out from under it without noticing and trudged up the gangway like a man going to his execution.
The one good thing, Grey reflected a few hours later, was that Tom had quite lost his fear of the big Scot. It wasn’t possible to be afraid of someone you had seen rendered so utterly helpless, so reduced by physical misery—and placed in so undignified a position.
“He did tell me once that he was prone to mal de mer,” Grey said to Tom, as they stood by the rail for a grateful moment of fresh air, despite the lashing of rain that stung their faces.
“I haven’t seen a cove that sick since me uncle Morris what was a sailor in a merchant man come down with the hocko-grockle,” said Tom, shaking his head. “And hedied of it.”
“I am reliably informed that no one actually dies of seasickness,” Grey said, trying to sound authoritative and reassuring. The sea was rough, white froth flying from the tops of the surging billows, and the small craft lurched sickeningly from moment to moment, plunging nose down into troughs, only to be hurled abruptly upward by a rising wave. He was a good sailor himself—and smug about it—but if he thought about it for more than a few seconds …
“Wish I’d a-known,” Tom said, his round face creased with worry. “Me old gran says a sour pickle’s the thing for seasickness. She made me uncle Morris take a jar of ’em, put up special with dill weed, whenever he set to sea. And he never had seasickness, to start with.” He looked at Grey, his expression under the wet seeming to accuse his employer of gross negligence in the provisioning of pickles.
Grey felt himself falling under some kind of horrid trance, as he watched the surface of the ocean rise and fall, rise and fall …
“Yes,” he said faintly. “What a good idea. But perhaps …”
“Your pardon, your honor,” said a voice at his elbow. “Would ye be by way of being friends of the gentleman downstairs what’s sick as a dog, and a tremenjous big dog, too?”