Chapter Forty-One
Forty-One
October dawn.
In the uncertain blue-gray light as the day hesitated on the brink, Capstone Park House bulked more like an outcrop of million-year granite crags than anything men had built by hand.
Later, sunlight might creep down the southern facades, gilding the somber gray stone, putting flashy puddles of reflected brilliance on the serried ranks of windows, picking out the detail of dressed stone and crenellated battlement lines.
But for now, the house dreamed itself timeless, geological and blunt.
It stood like a promise made, like a rampart and refuge against the turbulence of shattered norms and hoary old confidences cast down.
Duncan stood on the battlemented balcony roof of the south tower and shivered in a cold wind that had blown up out of the west overnight.
Implication held him stiff at the parapet, thoughts of the road that had led him here, the final steps still to take.
The final signature he had given to underwrite the Fae queen’s compact, the balance of payment, the choice.
And yet, he’d given it readily enough. Could not regret it, even now.
Had perhaps always known, somehow, that it must come to this.
It’s fine. We all die of something.
He put both hands on the stone balustrade, stared at them intently for a moment, then looked up and outward.
From up here, you could see right over the sprawling lawns and gardens of the great house, see the long glinting run of steel mesh fencing that closed them in, and beyond that mile after unending mile of tree canopies nodding in the breeze, copper and golden brown with the autumn die off, massed across the southern expanse of the estate, like some encamped army at siege, waiting for the order to attack before winter could fall.
He heard slippered feet slap time up the steps of the spiral staircase behind him in the corner, the huffing of someone badly out of breath as they leaned on the propped trapdoor at the top.
He didn’t look round, didn’t want to embarrass his host while he was getting his breath back.
He leaned his hands on the parapet again and looked at them like tools he was no longer quite sure how to use.
“They told me you were up here,” said the new arrival gruffly. Footfalls across the rooftop, a bulky presence at his shoulder, faint and somehow comforting odor of pipe tobacco. “I suppose you couldn’t sleep either?”
Duncan shook his head.
The other man joined him at the parapet.
Viscount Savin of Askerndale cut a commanding figure at forty-seven years old, even here in pajamas, dressing gown, and naked, slippered feet.
He was tall, with the build of a man once proudly athletic, handsome in a way that hinted at his rumored eastern European ancestry.
His neatly kept beard and thick head of grizzled hair gave him a vaguely naval air, as if he’d just doffed a captain’s cap and stepped off the bridge of a dreadnought.
Duncan supposed it was appropriate—much of the wealth that made Savin the twenty-fifth richest man in Britain had been made by his family from the ocean.
Savin Line vessels might not be spoken of in quite the same breath as those of Cunard or White Star, but they plied the same routes, and by all accounts they provided some solid competition in both comfort and speed.
A Blue Riband award was anticipated soon.
“They will come, you know,” Savin rumbled kindly. “I don’t like Sir Michael very much, but he is a man of his word. Bainbridge, too, in his own way.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“In any case, you and your friends are welcome here at Capstone Park for as long as this may take. And there is no question of the police or anyone else intruding uninvited. I will not permit it. I hope you know that.”
Duncan smiled to himself. Over the phone to Erlsley, later at the door of his family’s hereditary seat when their car arrived, Savin had been emphatic verging on profane.
“Aye, you made it clear enough. I’m not sure I’ve thanked you properly yet. It’s been a rush.”
The viscount grunted, turned to lean with his back to the view and the Forest. His voice grew gruff again.
“There is no need for thanks, as you well know. My boy is safely home. Every night before bed, I hug him to me and I give thanks—not to God, Mr. Silver, but to you. In your accounts with me, rest assured, my side of the ledger will forever be in red ink.”
Duncan inclined his head, said nothing. Held down another shiver. Savin watched him for a moment, then clapped him on the shoulder with awkward camaraderie.
“It is overly autumnal up here, is it not? Perhaps we should go down and see if Barton can scare us up some breakfast, hmm?”
Duncan nodded, put the Forest at his back for a while, and followed the viscount to the stairs.
He wasn’t hungry.
But with what was coming, he couldn’t afford to skimp on fuel.
—
Nine days.
Nine days since Collier dropped him, drenched head to foot and daubed with Huldu blood, at the rear entrance of the Doorbell Club.
He looked back now, and it felt like time lived by some other being he had only the most tenuous connection with, an automaton out of something by Wells maybe, endowed with his basic reflexes and memory, but otherwise detached.
Or perhaps a changeling.
Jagged snapshot recall of actions taken, decisions made, the impact of consequences he trailed behind him like a Huldu cloak in vivid colors of blood and dark—
Belle D’Or’s face when he told her about Arthur, the way her catlike poise skidded away from her, as if she’d slipped abruptly sideways on a snapped heel. The way she slapped him full across the face with all her force and stalked away, shoulders tight and trembling, before he could see her weep.
Crammond, summoned to the club, grim-faced as Duncan explained quietly what had happened, where he would now have to go with Niamh and Garner.
What promises he would have to keep.
Niamh and Garner, subdued, in varying degrees of shock.
Lad, what have tha bloody done? Garner kept repeating, like some kind of litany.
Do tha realize what tha’ve done? By contrast, Niamh said nothing at all, only sat pale and intent, looking at him out of one hollow eye and the swollen slit that masked the other, and reached out to hold his hand, very tightly.
Savin’s voice, grave over the phone.
The car came for them early that evening, gleaming black and pearled with rain, driven by a chauffeur in full uniform—not, in fact, something entirely out of place for the clientele the Doorbell Club was known to service.
It collected them from the rear entrance in failing light, took them out of Erlsley with the fiery leavings of sunset still layered across mauve clouds in a western sky that looked as if it’d been torn apart by shelling.
—
The papers.
Slaughter at Mystic Retreat: Two Shot Dead, Others Wounded was the Yorkshire Evening Post’s phlegmatic accounting.
The girl, Rachel, had died, together with one of Bainbridge’s men.
Nice shooting, Duncan. Bainbridge himself and a second man were being treated in hospital for gunshot wounds, both expected to survive.
Witnesses at the retreat were oddly vague.
The identity and motives of the intruders remained the target of an ongoing police inquiry and a subject for speculation.
The Times correspondent in Erlsley was evidently prepared to indulge in said speculation and to dig a little deeper in the process.
Abduction and Robbery of Arcane Artifacts Suspected: Scandal Stalks the Most Hated Man in Britain Once Again.
Someone on staff at Adept House had either slipped up, or just been slipped enough to talk to the man from London.
And London, Murdoch the forger had once told him, sucks like that maelstrom in that Verne book.
Bad old town, she never lets go. Duncan remembered Bainbridge’s furious protestations and rancor at Endershall, wondered if Sir Michael and the new owner of The Times shared a club.
The next day, The Manchester Guardian had Innovative Police Dog Unit Tracks Sword and Orb Intruders; More Bodies Found at Disused Munitions Plant; Sword and Orb Mystery Deepens.
Two dogs, from a new experimental patrol force based out of Hull docks, were apparently on loan to Erlsley police and had made short work of the trail through the woods, to find the bodies of Hardy, Arthur, and Nimble Shanks Annie.
Much was made in several publications of the witch’s involvement, the magical wounds she had received, and there were some lurid allusions to her past, but there the detail died.
Arthur was named, curtly, as Lieutenant Arthur John Brightwell, ex of Kitchener’s 12th, mentioned twice in dispatches, invalided out following the battle of Pozières, of no fixed abode ever since.
No mention of Hardy by name, rank, or more recent assignment.
He remained an unidentified associate of Malcom Bainbridge.
Section J, roused from slumber, come north and wielding D-notices in both fists, was Duncan’s best guess. Staying ahead of them was the first order of business.
Hardy was gone, but someone else would be picking the bones out of the Maunston police station raid.
Even if Bainbridge chose to stay silent—and depending on what bargains he needed to strike, what ambitions he still maintained, that seemed unlikely—Duncan’s return from the dead had to be known by now.
They would be searching for him, unofficially for the time being, full national police involvement soon on tap if that failed.
And only a matter of time before someone went back to his rooms on Skoldergate, went through his client notes, and made the connection to Viscount Savin.
Niamh coughed insistently through the nights. He held her, soothed her back to sleep as best he could.