When Falcons Fall (24 page)

S
ome twenty minutes later, Sebastian was waiting outside the village shop while Jenny Dalyrimple exchanged the two pounds of butter she’d made for a length of candlewicking and other supplies. She packed her purchases in her basket, then cast him a decidedly hostile look as she left the shop and turned toward home.

“What you want with me?” she asked as he fell into step beside her.

“I want to know how Alex Dalyrimple came to be accused of working with the French.”

She kept walking, her gaze on the road ahead. “What difference does it make to you?”

“It does. Isn’t that enough?”

For a long moment, he didn’t think she meant to answer him. Then she said, “You ever hear of Colonel Edward Despard?”

Sebastian suspected there were few in England who hadn’t heard of Colonel Despard. An army officer who had served with distinction from Jamaica and the American colonies to Honduras, Despard was accused by a government informant of plotting to seize control of the Bank of England and kill King George III. It was true that Despard had become a vocal member of one of the many Corresponding Societies that sprang up across Britain in the years after 1789. But the Corresponding Societies were legal in those days, and the evidence for the outlandish charges against him was laughably weak. That didn’t stop the attorney general, Spencer Perceval, from putting him on trial, along with six coconspirators. Admiral Nelson himself testified in Despard’s behalf, but all seven were nevertheless convicted of high treason and sentenced to be hanged, cut down while still alive, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered.

At the last minute, fear of a public revolt caused the government to abandon the medieval ritual of torture and dismemberment they’d planned, and Despard was simply hanged and beheaded. But Sebastian had never believed the colonel guilty of anything more than admiration for the principles espoused by Thomas Paine and the American and French Revolutions.

That, and marrying a beautiful young black woman descended from slaves.

He said, “I’m told your husband was a member of the local Corresponding Society.”

“He was. But so was lots of others, back then.” She stared off down the winding road, the features of her face held tight. “Alex dreamt of a day when every Englishman rich or poor would have the right to vote and run for Parliament. When every child could learn to read and write, and a man couldn’t be thrown in prison for the crime of speaking his mind. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t love his country. It was because he loved England so much that he wanted it made better for everyone—not just for the likes of George Irving or Lord Seaton.”

“Who accused him?”

“A nasty little weasel named Wat Jones. We learned later he was paid to do exactly what he did—worm his way into the local Corresponding Society so he could then denounce all his friends to the authorities with a pack of lies.”

“Who paid him? George Irving?”

“I always thought so. But it could even have been the high-and-mighty Earl of Powis himself, for all I know. Alex stirred up the whole county with his ideas. That’s why they knew they had to find a way to kill him.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-two.”

They’d reached the cottage, and she drew up to turn and face him. “Alex’s been dead twenty years, and nothing he dreamt of seeing has ever come to pass. The hamlet of Maplethorpe is little more than a memory, and now Jamie’s dead too.”

“It will come to pass someday,” said Sebastian. “The things he fought for. They will.”

She gave a sharp, disbelieving laugh. But there was a fragility, a bleakness about her that touched his heart. “So saith his lordship, son and heir to the great Earl of Hendon.”

Rather than answer her, Sebastian said, “Jamie told me once that his father was either an English lord, a Welsh cavalryman, or a simple stable hand. Could the English lord he suspected have been Lord Seaton?”

“Not his lordship, no. But he was some sort of relative of the Seatons. They both were—the English lord and the captain both.”

“And the stable hand? Who was he?”

“Just some good-looking lad m’mother fancied.”

“From Northcott Abbey?”

She tipped her head to one side, her gaze on his face. And he knew she both sensed and understood the quiet desperation that drove his questions. “No, from Maplethorpe Hall.”

He thought for a moment she meant to say something more—that she knew more.

Then she turned and entered the cottage, closing the door behind her.

S
ebastian was headed back toward the Blue Boar when he noticed Reuben Dickie sitting on the pump house step, his head bowed over his carving.

“I’ve been looking for you,” said Sebastian, walking over to him.

Reuben froze, his eyes darting this way and that, as if he were thinking of bolting. “Mumma said you was. It’s ’cause of the book, ain’t it? But I already told the lady, I don’t remember where I found it.”

“Do you remember when you found it?”

Reuben shook his head slowly back and forth. “It’s been a while.”

“Was it by the river? Or somewhere else?”

“I dunno.”

“Did you find anything with it?”

Reuben’s nostrils flared on a suddenly indrawn breath. “What would I find with it?”

“A satchel. Or a sketchbook, perhaps.”

“No. Oh, no.”

The man was an appallingly bad liar.

Sebastian said, “You won’t get into trouble for it, you know. In fact, you’d be a hero, for finding something we’ve all been looking for.”

Reuben dug the toe of one clog into the dirt. “You’re trying to trick me, aren’t you? You think I’m stupid. Well, I’m not stupid.”

Sebastian tried a different tack. “I hear you like to go out at night.”

“I ain’t supposed to go out at night.”

“But you do sometimes, don’t you?”

Reuben shook his head again, harder and faster this time. “Things happen at night. Things people don’t want you to see.”

“Oh? Such as?”

Reuben quit shaking his head as a sly smile crept over his features. “You don’t know, do you? You think I’m so stupid, but there’s lots of things I knows that you don’t.”

Sebastian leaned against one of the pump house’s worn columns and crossed his arms at his chest. “If I wanted to find out about those things, where would you suggest I look?”

Reuben’s tongue crept out to lick his lips. “Depends what things you want to know about.”

Sebastian simply stared at Reuben expectantly, and after a moment his silence goaded the other man into saying, “Ain’t nothin’ there now, but if you’d looked in Maplethorpe Hall’s old carriage house a few days ago, ye might’ve seen somethin’.”

“How many days ago?”

“Oh, maybe around the time that pretty young widow was kilt,” Reuben said airily, and went back to his whittling.

Sebastian watched the man’s short, incredibly deft fingers peel away curls of wood to reveal what he now realized was a badger.

“Saw her, too, you know,” said Reuben abruptly.

“You mean, the night before she was killed?”

Reuben sucked his lower lip between his small, oddly spaced teeth as he focused on his carving. “I ain’t allowed out at night, remember? But she was up real early that mornin’.”

“You saw Emma Chandler on Monday morning?”

Reuben kept his attention focused on his carving. “Mm-hmm.”

“Did she have her sketchbook with her?”

“What’s a sketchbook?”

“The notebook she drew pictures in.” Was it significant, Sebastian wondered, that Reuben hadn’t asked,
What’s a sketchbook?
when Sebastian first inquired after it?

“Reckon she did,” said Reuben.

“Where did you see her, Reuben? And don’t pretend you don’t remember, because I won’t believe you.”

Sebastian said it with just enough menace in his voice that Reuben’s hands went slack, the knife tumbling from his grasp as his mouth formed a startled “O.”

“The old pack bridge, down past Maplethorpe,” he said in a rush, scrambling after his knife. “She was paintin’ a picture of it in that notebook of hers. What’d you call it?”

“A sketchbook. Did you speak with her?”

“Jist to say she was up awful early.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said she hadn’t been able to sleep, so she figured she may as well come paint the sunrise.”

“At the pack bridge?”

Reuben nodded vigorously. “Said it was real pretty, she did.”

A single arch of dark, old red brick, the pack bridge was a relic of an earlier age, when England’s roads were so abysmal that most goods were hauled across country not in wagons or by canals, but on pack animals. Its track was narrow and seldom used now, but not entirely abandoned.

Sebastian stood on the grassy bank of the River Teme, the tip of his riding crop tapping against his high-topped boots. The sun was beginning to sink in the sky, the air heavy with the scent of the mint that grew in the dark, damp shadows of the bridge.

It was an out-of-the-way, deserted place for a young woman to visit alone, even in broad daylight. What the hell had possessed Emma to come here early on the morning of the day she was fated to die?

He climbed back up the bank to where he had left his rented hack, his gaze narrowing as he turned again to study the track that crossed the bridge and disappeared into the wasteland on the opposite bank. A marshy, uncultivated stretch of bracken and scrub, it extended as far as he could see. But somewhere to the south, he knew, lay the estuary of the River Severn and Bristol Channel and, beyond that, the North Atlantic Ocean.

And France.

Maplethorpe’s caretaker-gardener, Silas Madden, was weeding a bed at the far end of the water garden when Sebastian turned into the old hall’s once grand, formal drive.

Sebastian continued on around the ruined, blackened walls of the burned house to where the stable block and carriage house still stood. He dismounted, his gaze on the wagon ruts he’d noticed that first day, dry and crumbling now in the heat of the afternoon. From the distance came a man’s shout.

Sebastian ignored him.

A long, narrow structure built of the same red brick as the burned hall, the carriage house was quite large, with a row of six arched double doors. Each door sported a well-oiled and surprisingly heavy hasp and padlock, although most of the locks hung open.

Ain’t nothin’ there now,
Reuben had said.

Sebastian thrust open the first set of doors, the afternoon sun throwing his shadow before him across the beaten-earth floor. It was a cavernous space, once home to traveling carriages, tilburies, whiskies, and dogcarts, but empty now except for a pile of discarded sacking, some cracked old harness hanging on a wall, and several bales of hay that looked very new indeed. A number of incongruous but undeniable scents lingered in the dusty air—pungent aromas left by recent stores of tobacco, wine, and brandy.

A noise from the near door brought Sebastian’s head around. His gaze met Silas’s.

“Tell Weston I want to see him,” said Sebastian. “Here. Now.”

M
ajor Eugene Weston arrived in less than ten minutes.

By then Sebastian was seated on a stone bench in the lea of one of the garden’s high yew hedges. The major came striding up the track through the spinney, arms swinging, face red from a combination of physical exertion and righteous indignation. He drew up abruptly at the sight of Sebastian.

“I say,” blustered Weston, hands clenched into fists at his sides. “It’s not exactly the done thing, now, is it? Poking about without anybody’s leave? Sending a man messages by his servants? How would you like it if—”

“In my experience,” said Sebastian, crossing his arms at his chest and leaning back in his seat, “smuggling gangs have a nasty habit of turning lethal when they find themselves in danger of being exposed. Is that what happened? Did Emma Chandler accidently stumble into your little operation here? Is that why you killed her?”

“Kill her? Me? What a preposterous notion. And as for smuggling . . .” Weston gave a tinny laugh. “This isn’t exactly Cornwall or Kent.”

“True. Which makes it so much easier to maneuver, doesn’t it? Far more comfortable to land your goods near Newport or Chepstow without all those annoying revenue officers sticking their noses into everything. Part of each cargo is probably sent directly to Hereford and Worcestershire, while from here you can supply all of Shropshire and a good section of the hills of eastern Wales, as well.”

Weston gave Sebastian a wooden stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sebastian heaved a pained sigh, his gaze on the major’s flushed, sweaty face. “You basically have two options: You can tell me what I need to know, or you can answer some decidedly awkward questions posed by His Majesty’s revenue men.”

Weston spread his arms wide and smiled. “There is nothing here for anyone to find.”

“Not now. But that can be fixed.”

The smile slid off the major’s face. “What does that mean?”

“Use your imagination. And if you take one more step, Silas,” Sebastian added calmly as he shifted his weight to draw a small, double-barreled flintlock pistol from his pocket, “I’ll blow your bloody head off. First yours, and then the major’s.”

Silas, who had been sidling toward him along the hedge with a pitchfork gripped purposefully in his hands, froze as Sebastian pulled back both hammers with an audible
click.

Weston turned a sickly shade. “That will be all, Silas,” he said, his voice wheezing. “Thank you.”

For a moment, Silas looked as if he might balk. Then he shouldered his pitchfork and turned toward the stables.

Sebastian shifted the muzzle of his pistol to the major. “Make up your mind. I don’t have all afternoon.”

Weston waited until the caretaker was out of earshot, then cleared his throat, a tic spasming the flesh beside his right eye. “I have your word as a gentleman that if I answer your questions, you won’t inform the revenue men?”

“Not unless I discover Emma Chandler was killed because of your little adventure.”

Weston licked his dry lips. “What do you want to know?”

“What night did your latest cargo arrive?”

“A week ago yesterday.”

“Sunday night?”

“Yes.”

“And you sent it on again when?”

“The next night.”

“So, Monday?”

Weston nodded, his jaw thrust forward in a way that pursed his lips.

The shipment would have been brought in from the estuary by packhorses, then reloaded here into wagons and sent on its way buried beneath grain or some other legitimate product. And Sebastian found himself thinking about Reuben Dickie’s brother, Jeb, and the shipment of timber he’d recently hauled to Wales.

“That’s the night Emma Chance was killed,” said Sebastian.

“Yes. But the one has nothing to do with the other. Absolutely nothing.”

“Emma Chance didn’t come back here again that evening and see something you didn’t want her to see?”

“Of course not. How careless do you imagine we are?”

“And you’re certain the shipment wasn’t already in the carriage house the day she came to sketch the hall?”

“No! I tell you, it arrived that night, long after she’d finished and gone away. Besides, Silas was watching her the entire time she was here, just in case she got too curious.”

“Pitchfork at the ready, one assumes.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“And the next night? What time did the wagons leave?”

“Just before dawn—so Tuesday morning, actually. Any earlier and there’s always a danger of arousing suspicions.”

“Were you here Sunday night?”

“Good God, no. You don’t seriously think I deal with any of this myself?”

“No,” said Sebastian.

Weston’s role was undoubtedly minimal and would extend little beyond supplying the critically necessary funds. Smuggling was a lucrative but capital-intensive business. Because customers paid for their smuggled goods only on delivery, the money to finance each run up front had to come from the likes of merchants and landowners—wealthy men who risked their investment but not their lives.

The real dangers were run by others: by the crews of the black-hulled cutters that plied the channel; by the fishermen who ferried the cargo ashore in their small boats; by the impoverished, starving countryfolk who served as tubmen and batsmen, or who guided ponies loaded with ankers of brandy and wine or oilskin-wrapped packets of tobacco, silk, and lace. Moving under cover of darkness from one isolated safe house to the next, they were the ones who ferried the goods inland, the hooves of their pack animals muffled with rags. They were the ones who faced death or transportation if caught.

But while their risks were high, they were paid pennies. The handsome profits generated by their labors were pocketed by men like Weston, who were seldom caught. Yes, he allowed the old hall’s carriage house to function as a way station. But if it were ever discovered, he could simply claim it was used without his permission or knowledge. The actual management of the operation would be handled by someone else—someone with the kind of skills needed to negotiate with ships’ captains and coordinate the laborers who actually moved the goods. Someone who probably didn’t even live in Ayleswick.

“What about Monday night?” said Sebastian. “Were you here then?”

“Of course not. What do you think? That I plow my own fields and shear my own sheep as well?”

“So how do you know what actually happened on either night?”

“Because I would have been told, had anything untoward occurred.”

“Silas handles everything here, does he?”

“He’s very reliable.”

“I’ve no doubt that he is,” said Sebastian. “How long have you been dabbling in the free trade?”

Weston’s jaw jutted out mulishly. “What the devil business is it of yours?”

Sebastian pushed to his feet. “If you’d rather answer the questions of His Majesty’s revenue men—”

“Fifteen years,” snapped Weston. “What else was I to do, after Liv wheedled her father into leaving his will the way he did? He was in his dotage by then, you know. The will never should have been allowed to stand, but it was. So what would you have me live on? Pin money doled out by my own wife, just so she can waste the ready on her damned gardens? I had no choice!”

“It’s her fault, is it?”

“Of course it is!” Weston stared at him, eyes wide, nostrils flaring with his hard, quick breaths.

Sebastian studied the man’s flushed, overfed countenance. “Do you remember a young woman named Lady Emily Turnstall?”

Weston looked confused. “Who?”

“Lady Emily Turnstall. She attended a house party given by the Irvings in September of 1791. She was just sixteen, and very pretty.”

Weston huffed a disbelieving laugh. “Do you seriously think I remember every green girl I ever met?”

“She was the daughter of the Earl of Heyworth. Quite richly dowered.”

Weston shook his head. “Sorry. If I ever met her, I don’t recall it. What has she to do with anything?”

“How about Alex Dalyrimple?” said Sebastian, ignoring the question. “The man who was gibbeted in 1793. You do recall him, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Radical bastard. If you ask me, he should have been drawn and quartered as well as gibbeted.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean,
why
? The brute terrorized the entire parish for months. If he’d had his way, they’d have set up a guillotine on the village green! No man or woman of birth or breeding would have been spared.”

“Took it personally, did you?”

“Who wouldn’t take it personally?”

His tone was one of moral outrage. But there was an element of bluster there too, that told Sebastian the man was being less than honest.

About any number of things.