At the same time, Sir Percival had learned—from the associate, the mysterious Englishman—of the fallback arrangement with the French delivery vessel, and had arranged the grave-ambush on the beach at Arbroath.
“But what about the Customs officer who was killed on the road?” I asked sharply. I couldn’t repress a small shudder, at memory of that dreadful face. “Who did that? There were only five men among the smugglers who could possibly have done it, and none of them are Englishmen!”
Tompkins rubbed a hand over his mouth; he seemed to be debating the wisdom of telling me or not. I picked up the brandy bottle and set it by his elbow.
“Why, I’m much obliged, Missus Fraser! You’re a true Christian, missus, and so I shall tell anyone who asks!”
“Skip the testimonials,” I said dryly. “Just tell me what you know about the Customs officer.”
He filled the cup and drained it, sipping slowly. Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, he set it down and licked his lips.
“It wasn’t none of the smugglers done him in, missus. It was his own mate.”
“What!” I jerked back, startled, but he nodded, blinking his good eye in token of sincerity.
“That’s right, missus. There was two of ’em, wasn’t there? Well, the one of them had his instructions, didn’t he?”
The instructions had been to wait until whatever smugglers escaped the ambush on the beach had reached the road, whereupon the Customs officer was to drop a noose over his partner’s head in the dark and strangle him swiftly, then string him up and leave him, as evidence of the smugglers’ murderous wrath.
“But why?” I said, bewildered and horrified. “What was the point of doing that?”
“Do you not see?” Tompkins looked surprised, as though the logic of the situation should be obvious. “We’d failed to get the evidence from the printshop that would have proved the case of sedition against Fraser, and with the shop burnt to the ground, no possibility of another chance. Nor had we ever caught Fraser red-handed with the goods himself, only some of the small fish who worked for him. One of the other agents thought he’d a clue where the stuff was kept, but something happened to him—perhaps Fraser caught him or bought him off, for he disappeared one day in November, and wasn’t heard of again, nor the hiding place for the contraband, neither.”
“I see.” I swallowed, thinking of the man who had accosted me on the stairs of the brothel. What had become of that cask of crème de menthe? “But—”
“Well, I’m telling you, missus, just you wait.” Tompkins raised a monitory hand. “So—here’s Sir Percival, knowing as he’s got a rare case, with a man’s not only one of the biggest smugglers on the Firth, and the author of some of the most first-rate seditious material it’s been my privilege to see, but is also a pardoned Jacobite traitor, whose name will make the trial a sensation from one end of the kingdom to the other. The only trouble being”—he shrugged—“as there’s no evidence.”
It began to make a hideous sort of sense, as Tompkins explained the plan. The murder of a Customs officer killed in pursuit of duty would not only make any smuggler arrested for the crime subject to a capital charge, but was the sort of heinous crime that would cause a major public outcry. The matter-of-fact acceptance that smugglers enjoyed from the populace would not protect them in a matter of such callous villainy.
“Your Sir Percival has got the makings of a really first-class son of a bitch,” I observed. Tompkins nodded meditatively, blinking into his cup.
“Well, you’ve the right of it there, missus, I’ll not say you’re wrong.”
“And the Customs officer who was killed—I suppose he was just a convenience?”
Tompkins sniggered, with a fine spray of brandy. His one eye seemed to be having some trouble focusing.
“Oh, very convenient, Missus, more ways than one. Don’t you grieve none on his account. There was a good many folk glad enough to see Tom Oakie swing—and not the least of ’em, Sir Percival.”
“I see.” I finished fastening the bandage about his calf. It was getting late; I would have to get back to the sickbay soon.
“I’d better call someone to take you to your hammock,” I said, taking the nearly empty bottle from his unresisting hand. “You should rest your leg for at least three days; tell your officer I said you can’t go aloft until I’ve taken out the stitches.”
“I’ll do that, missus, and I thank you for your kindness to a poor unfortunate sailor.” Tompkins made an abortive attempt to stand, looking surprised when he failed. I got a hand under his armpit and heaved, getting him on his feet, and—he declining my offer to summon him assistance—helped him to the door.
“You needn’t worry about Harry Tompkins, missus,” he said, weaving unsteadily into the corridor. He turned and gave me an exaggerated wink. “Old Harry always ends up all right, no matter what.” Looking at him, with his long nose, pink-tipped from liquor, his large, transparent ears, and his single sly brown eye, it came to me suddenly what he reminded me of.
“When were you born, Mr. Tompkins?” I asked.
He blinked for a moment, uncomprehending, but then said, “The Year of our Lord 1713, missus. Why?”
“No reason,” I said, and waved him off, watching as he caromed slowly down the corridor, dropping out of sight at the ladder like a bag of oats. I would have to check with Mr. Willoughby to be sure, but at the moment, I would have wagered my chemise that 1713 had been a Year of the Rat.
48
MOMENT OF GRACE
Over the next few days, a routine set in, as it does in even the most desperate circumstances, provided that they continue long enough. The hours after a battle are urgent and chaotic, with men’s lives hanging on a second’s action. Here a doctor can be heroic, knowing for certain that the wound just stanched has saved a life, that the quick intervention will save a limb. But in an epidemic, there is none of that.
Then come the long days of constant watching and battles fought on the field of germs—and with no weapons suited to that field, it can be no more than a battle of delay, doing the small things that may not help but must be done, over and over and over again, fighting the invisible enemy of disease, in the tenuous hope that the body can be supported long enough to outlast its attacker.
To fight disease without medicine is to push against a shadow; a darkness that spreads as inexorably as night. I had been fighting for nine days, and forty-six more men were dead.
Still, I rose each day at dawn, splashed water into my grainy eyes, and went once more to the field of war, unarmed with anything save persistence—and a barrel of alcohol.
There were some victories, but even these left a bitter taste in my mouth. I found the likely source of infection—one of the messmates, a man named Howard. First serving on board as a member of one of the gun crews, Howard had been transferred to galley duty six weeks before, the result of an accident with a recoiling gun-carriage that had crushed several fingers.
Howard had served the gun room, and the first known case of the disease—taken from the incomplete records of the dead surgeon, Mr. Hunter—was one of the marines who messed there. Four more cases, all from the gun room, and then it had begun to spread, as infected but still ambulatory men left the deadly contamination smeared in the ship’s heads, to be picked up there and passed to the crew at large.