Chapter Six
London had grown to an astonishing extent during Rossiter’s absence, and the traffic seemed to have doubled.
Great wains and waggons, luxurious coaches, carts, sedan chairs, and horsemen vied for space on the busy streets.
The flagways were crowded with people from all walks of life and in every imaginable mode of dress; the rags of link boys, the laces and velvets of aristocrats, the magnificence of stern Life Guardsmen in their scarlet, blue and gold, the smocks and gaiters of country folk, housewives with their baskets, immaculate and haughty servants, darting, whooping children, gentlemen of the Halbardiers in their long red coats.
It seemed to Rossiter that the noise had increased tenfold.
A Portsmouth Machine rumbled past, the coachman bellowing warnings to the outside passengers and bullying surrounding drivers.
Vendors hawked their wares at the tops of lungs apparently strengthened by their trade, and chairmen sang lustily as they bore their passengers through the throng.
A great new house was being built on Conduit Street, the sound of hammers adding to the din.
Unnerved when he was all but run down by a coach and four, Rossiter dismounted and led his horse along the kennel.
His attention was caught by a scrawny fellow who carried what must have been a heavy hod of bricks, but who scampered up the scaffolding as nimbly as if he carried feathers.
“Pies! Getcher pies! Hot pies! ChickenpizenporkenfineolEnglishbeef!” A vendor took the tray of steaming wares from his head and swung it enticingly under Rossiter’s nose.
The pies smelled delicious, but he was close to home now and although he was ravenous he smilingly declined.
“Poor fellow,” came a sneering voice. “I fancy he cannot afford one. Should we take up a collection, do you think?”
Rossiter stiffened and jerked around.
Two elegant gentlemen watched him from the windows of a dark red carriage.
Raising a jewelled quizzing glass for a closer look, the younger of the two said indignantly, “His sire took up a collection, Smythe. From half the demned population of the demned south country! Let the beastly fellow starve, I say. Drive on, coachman. Blasted stench hereabouts!”
Taut with anger, Rossiter sprang for the door of the coach, only to leap for his life as a troop of horse, breastplates and helms glittering in the sunlight clattered past.
“’Ere,” said the pieman. “Where you orf to, soldier?”
Rossiter had recognized those two cowards.
One had been Reginald Smythe, and the other Sir Gilbert Fowles.
Simpering dandies who’d made themselves thoroughly obnoxious at school and had since become pests who spent their time in gormandizing, gaming, and gossip.
Both would probably faint if faced with a closed fist, but they were not above throwing insults from carriage windows.
He answered the pieman’s question mechanically. “My home lies just along the street.”
“Ar. Yer name wouldn’t be Rossiter, by any chance?”
There was unconcealed impudence in the tone. Gideon threw a quick glance at him, saw the smirk on the dirty face and said icily, “How is that your concern?”
It appeared to the pieman that the thin soldier had grown in both height and menace.
He replaced the tray on his head and retreated a few paces.
“’Cause I’m grateful as it ain’t mine,” he jeered.
“And if you’d like ter know, yer home ain’t just along the street.
Not no more it ain’t. The high an’ mighty Rossiters don’t live there no more.
Come dahn in the world, they has! A long way dahn! ”
His anger supplanted by anxiety for his family, Rossiter sprang to the saddle and turned the hack. Fearing reprisals, the pieman took to his heels, his shrill voice echoing after him, “Rossiter! Yah! Boo! Fer shame!”
Several people had paused to listen to this exchange, and a man said sharply, “What did he say? Is that fellow a Rossiter?”
Another man shouted, “I’ll lay odds he is! One of ’em was in the army I heard!”
“Seize the thieving bastard!”
“Pull him off that there nag! Quick! ’Fore the Watch comes!”
They surged towards him. Someone snatched up a brick and threw it.
Rossiter ducked and a passing horse squealed and bolted.
Another brick flew. Surrounded by rageful faces, he decided that this was no time to take a stand.
He touched home his spurs. The hack bounded forward.
The crowd scattered, shouting in alarm. A third brick caught Rossiter across the back of the head, the impact sending his tricorne flying and half stunning him.
Dimly, he heard a triumphant howl. The pain was blinding.
He had lost the reins somehow. Bowing forward, he clung to the hack’s mane, determined not to fall …
The morning was growing strangely dark …
“There, I think he’s coming around now.”
“Poor fellow. Badly wounded you say, sir?”
“Yes, sad to tell. I believe he’s just now returned home. Must have hit his head when he tumbled out of the saddle.”
The words echoed at first, gradually becoming clearer. The final voice was familiar. Rossiter tried to smile and said rather feebly, “Hello, Tio. That you?”
A hand gripped his shoulder. “’Tis myself in all my glory.”
Rossiter blinked up into a pair of green eyes with laugh lines at the corners.
The aristocratic features were uncharacteristically grave at the moment, and Horatio Clement Laindon, Viscount Glendenning, son and heir of the powerful and formidable Earl of Bowers-Malden, went on in a very gentle voice, “What a slowtop you are, to be riding when you ain’t fit to go.
Came down from your hack right under the hoofs of my team.
My poor coachman nigh suffered a seizure. ”
The mists surrounding his lordship faded away, and Rossiter found that he lay on a settle in a low-ceilinged room.
Several men stood watching him with sympathetic curiosity.
One of these individuals, wearing a grubby white apron, was holding a rag that dripped water, but the rest were either customers of this ordinary (for such he guessed it to be), or pedestrians who had come in from the street.
“Oh—egad,” he muttered, and horribly embarrassed started up.
His head seemed to split in two. An arm was about his shoulders, supporting him.
Glendenning said sharply, “If one of you gentlemen would be so kind as to lend a hand, I’ll take him to my rooms.”
“I … can walk…,” declared Rossiter thickly, and managed somehow to stumble where they led him.
He was being half-lifted into a carriage. The door slammed. A flask was at his lips. He drank, choked, and swore. But after a few minutes he was able to gather his thoughts.
The carriage was moving smoothly, and the noise seemed to lessen. He opened his eyes and saw trees and the green of well-kept lawns.
“Feeling better?” asked his lordship.
“Much.” He peered out of the window. “Where are we going?”
“My flat, off the Strand. Shall that suit?”
“No.” Gingerly investigating the back of his head Rossiter muttered, “Hold up a minute, will you please, Tio?”
Glendenning pulled the checkstring, and called to the coachman to turn onto a quieter side street. “Not going to cast up your accounts, are you, Gideon?” he asked uneasily.
“No, I promise you,” said Rossiter, with more conviction than was altogether warranted. “It was jolly good of you to —to help. Did I really … fall under your team?”
“You came very close, dear boy.” The viscount turned his neatly wigged head, scanned his companion’s pale face and asked, “What happened?”
“A brick. Deedily tossed.”
“Curious.” His lordship tapped a handsome amber cane against his chin. “I think I know you well, but after all this time I’d not have recognized you at first glance. I wonder anybody else did. You’re—something changed, dear lad. Bayonet?”
Rossiter grinned faintly. “Shell.” And then, in sudden hideous comprehension, “Jove! My apologies, sir! You’d best let me out at once. I think my presence must be an humiliation, and—”
“Do you know,” interposed his lordship mildly, “if you didn’t look as if you’d been spat out by a warthog, I should punch your head for you.” He passed the flask again. “Have another pull at this. I’ve no desire to be arrested for corpse stealing. I have enough trouble.”
Grateful, Rossiter complied, and asked, blinking, “Trouble?”
“I suppose you’d not be aware, but I am suspected of having been—er, embroiled in the late Rebellion. On the wrong side,” he added with a wry grin.
“I see.” Rossiter looked at him steadily. “Kindred spirits, is that what you mean?”
It was the viscount’s turn to be discomfitted. “I do not scruple to remark that you’ve dashed unpleasant eyes. Are you saying there is more to your father’s unhappy predicament than is generally believed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what is my father’s ‘unhappy predicament.’”
“Good God!” Glendenning looked aghast. “I thought that was why you had come home.”
“So do others, I gather. No, do not tell me of it, Tio. I had prefer to hear the whole story from Sir Mark. An I can find him.”
His lordship pulled on the checkstring again, and when the coachman peered down from the trap, “Snow Hill,” he said.
The coachman uttered an audible and shocked exclamation.
With a sly grin Lord Horatio added, “It really don’t seem fair to you, Gideon.
But since you have more or less survived shells and bricks, you might live through the ride. ”
Half an hour later, white and shaken, Rossiter descended the steps and clung to the open door. “Damn you, Tio,” he croaked. “How can you be so heartless as to sit there and—and laugh?”
His insensate friend’s mirth rising to a howl, Rossiter started towards the back of the coach, clinging to the wheel as he went.
Glendenning leapt from the carriage and offered his arm. “Just—just do not look down, my heroic friend,” he chortled.