Chapter Fourteen

The Irregulars were making their way back towards the Folly in ones and twos, reporting on their failure to locate the elusive Miss Caesar. How they missed somebody who literally glowed, I am not certain, but then the army has never been the most selective of employers and I suppose that London is rather large.

Having discharged their duties as they saw them, the soldiers retired to their own various nighttime activities, which for the most part meant either drinking, fucking, or sleeping, although Kumar retired rather pointedly with a book instead. By the small hours only Mr. Caesar and Captain James were left propping up the bar, Mr. Caesar staring disconsolately into a mug of weak beer and speaking little.

"She'll be found," Captain James told him. "If the men don't then the family will."

For a long time, Mr. Caesar made no reply. Then at last he responded with a morose, if accurate: "People disappear in this city every day."

"Not earls' granddaughters."

Mr. Caesar had no reply to that.

"We can go back out," suggested the captain, "if you want. Though we'll not have much chance tonight I don't think."

"No"—defeated, Mr. Caesar could barely even bring himself to shake his head—"no, I do not believe we would do any good."

The door opened and, conjuring hope from nowhere, Mr. Caesar turned towards it. Not expectant, but alert. He had responded like this to every guest who had entered all evening, finding sometimes one of the Irregulars with discouraging news, sometimes a complete stranger looking for a drink or a bed or a combination of the two.

This time, however, the new arrival was his father.

"She is back," he announced from halfway across the room. "I thought you should know."

Guilt is an alien emotion to my species (we are, indeed, capable of feeling only six things: mirth, anger, curiosity, two sensations that have no equivalents for mortals, and one I choose not to name), but I have seen it often in humans, and I recognised it in Mr. Caesar now. "There was no need, Papa," he said. "That is—you have come a long way."

Not wanting to have this conversation from across a floor full of drunk strangers, the elder Mr. Caesar approached his son. "And who should I have sent? Your mother? Your sister? Nancy is a good girl, but we do not pay her enough to carry messages at this time of night or to this part of the city."

"You still didn't have to come yourself. I would have—"

"Come back eventually?"

"Tomorrow, Father," Mr. Caesar insisted. "I would have come back tomorrow." It wasn't a lie. It was a prediction on the basis of minimal evidence.

The elder Mr. Caesar gave a slow nod. "Well, now you have no need. Be safe, John."

And he departed, leaving his son not quite able to follow, not quite able to ask him to stay. Sat at a bar he wasn't sure he wanted to be in, thinking thoughts he wasn't sure he wanted to think, about a life he was only half-sure he wanted to be living. Since waking that morning, he had managed to drive away both a sister and a father and he could face no more demands, no more expectations, and no more choices.

"I believe," he said at last, "I may be done for the evening."

With that, he rose and made his way up to the, by his standards at least, rather squalid room he had taken to staying in when he had a mind to escape to the Folly. Halfway up the staircase, he turned, and noticed that Captain James was following close behind, like a friend or a lover.

"Not tonight," he told him. "I've a lot on my mind and am in no mood to fuck a soldier."

Before the captain could reply, Mr. Caesar—perhaps knowing he had not been entirely tactful—turned and fled to the room.

In more polite company, that would have been the end of it. But he was not in polite company, he was in the company of infantrymen. So as he tried to hide in bed, a persistent pounding at the door dismissed all his hopes of oblivion. Still, with gentlemanly resolve, he did his best to ignore it.

"Do you really think I'd let you say that then walk away?" asked Captain James through the door.

"You think it's your place to let me do anything?" Once again it had been the wrong thing to say, but sometimes saying the wrong thing felt so right .

"Oh no you don't. You want to play the lordling with society brats and thief-catchers that's one thing, they were asking for it. You don't play it with me."

"Go away, Orestes."

"Captain James to you, Caesar."

"Go away, Captain. "

The doors in the Folly could, if necessary, be bolted from the inside. But Mr. Caesar was not of a mind to pay attention to details and was, in any case, accustomed to propriety providing greater protection.

It did not, in this case, provide greater protection.

The door opened and Captain James slipped through. With the courtesy of a dangerous man, he kept a respectful distance from his sometimes-lover, but still his displeasure was evident to anybody with eyes to see. Even those limited by mortal perception.

"That's a very strange definition of away, " Mr. Caesar complained. "I might almost categorise it as towards. "

"Don't be pretty with me. I've not the patience."

Mr. Caesar let his head thunk back on the pillow and gave a hollow laugh. "And you think I do. It may have escaped your notice, Orestes"—

"Captain James."

—"but I've had rather a trying day. "

His arms folded hard against a chest that somebody who was interested in such things might find distracting, the captain leaned against the wall, a careful study in idle power. "We tried. We failed. That's war."

"Well, I'm not a warrior. I'm a gentleman."

"And I'm a soldier, not a fucking rent boy."

Mr. Caesar heaved a theatrical sigh. "Then I suppose we both have our limitations. Perhaps we can address them in the morning."

If Mr. Caesar had expected that to be the end of it (and I could not tell if he did, because he could not tell himself), he was to be sorely disappointed. Captain James did not move from his place by the wall.

"I am grateful, " Mr. Caesar continued, "for everything you have done for Mary. But I wish now to be alone."

"I don't want your gratitude." There was an atypical sharpness in Captain James's voice. "What I've done for Mary I'd do for anyone. Man or woman; French or English; Black, White, rich or poor. I learned to fight for my king, but I'd rather fight for them as need it."

Rolling over so as to face away from the captain, Mr. Caesar carried on talking to the wall. "Then why are you here?"

"Why are you?"

The list of reasons that Mr. Caesar was choosing, in those particular circumstances, to hide away in a low tavern frequented by soldiers and vagabonds was long and rambling. But it could be condensed down to a convenient five words. "I needed to get away."

And that, at last, broke Captain James's stoicism. He crossed the room with a warrior's swiftness, put a hand on Mr. Caesar's shoulder, and flipped him back to face him. "This isn't away, Caesar. It's here. It's my life. It's Callaghan's life, and Boy William's life, and Kumar's and Sal's. And you're welcome to stay with us if you're with us, but not if you're just trying not to be somewhere else."

The sensible thing to do, Mr. Caesar was aware, was to stay. To accept that yes, he had been taking the support of the captain and his fellows somewhat for granted. To admit that some part of him was, in fact, running to as much as running from. To say that he was afraid and ashamed and tired and sorry.

But pride was hereditary in the aristocracy and Mr. Caesar chose this particular moment to be, once more, the grandson of an earl rather than any of his many other selves. So he rose, pulled on his shoes, and bid the captain a cold "Very well."

"Don't be an arse, Caesar. It's late, it's dark, and you don't know the streets."

Gathering his cravat, since he did not have the time to retie it, Mr. Caesar looked back, an image of civility. "A gentleman does not stay where he is not welcome."

"A gentleman doesn't last two minutes in St. Giles at this time of night."

Pride, as I say, was hereditary in the aristocracy. Which is in some ways a strike against the Darwinian theory because it is most definitely not a trait for which nature selects. Mr. Caesar gave a firm nod, bid the captain good evening, and left.

And, reader, you may be certain that I followed.

By the year of some people's lord 1815 the gas lamps were beginning to light the London streets, but they were restricted to the parts of the city about which the government gave a shit. Which meant that the only light in the streets of St. Giles came from the candles that burned in the windows of the few locals who could afford the luxury.

It was a clear night, which was a blessing. But moon and stars do not by themselves give humans any great ability to see what is in front of them (then again, neither does broad daylight much of the time; you are such a limited species). So Mr. Caesar stumbled over uneven streets in shoes better suited for a ballroom, and as he travelled he caught the attention of every ne'er-do-well, sometimes-does-well, and could-do-better in the district.

His cravat, loosely gripped in one hand, was yanked from his grasp by a small child who struck from the shadows and vanished back to the same with no more warning than a cheery "'Scuse me, mister."

And while he was mourning its loss, kicking himself for his stubbornness, and wondering whether it was a blessing or curse that he'd not brought his purse, he felt the cold press of a pistol barrel in his back and heard a soft, familiar voice whisper, "Perhaps you would be so good as to come with me."

Had events fallen out in a more convenient manner this would have been a delightful moment to jump away and begin following Miss Caesar, leaving the reader to wonder what terrible fate might have befallen her brother in the meantime. But they did not fall out conveniently, and when I went to check on the lady (briefly adopting the shape of her dog, Ferdinand) I found her … not sleeping, she did not sleep anymore, but standing in her room statue-still and silent. She expressed some little pleasure at seeing me, but since she did not feel inclined, at that time, to speak her thoughts aloud to a convenient canine, I gave her up as a bad job, slunk under the bed, and reemerged in my mist-and-shadow shape to follow her hapless sibling.

It took a little searching to track him down again, but my innate advantages of speed and perspicacity made it a far simpler job for me than it would be for a lesser being.

He was by the river, on a muddy bank near water that, at more sociable hours, would be a staging ground for eel-trappers and river-dredgers trying to eke a living from the open sewer of the Thames. Now, however, it was home to four men in red. Three robed and masked, one decidedly not.

The major sneered. "I said you hadn't seen the last of me, Caesar."

Relatively certain that he had less than an hour to live, Mr. Caesar saw little to be gained through politeness. "Yes, then you tried to have Captain James discharged, and failed. Then you challenged me to a duel, and failed. You'll forgive me for not taking your threats seriously."

"The duel was ruined by witchcraft," blustered the major, hand drifting to his spadroon as if he'd half a mind to demand a rematch there and then.

"And," added the soft-voiced man, "you'd be well advised to hold your tongue."

"Aren't you planning to shoot me anyway?" Mr. Caesar asked over his shoulder.

The soft-voiced man nodded. "Eventually."

"But first," the major continued, "I need to be sure you know quite how misguided you have been."

The only misguided thing Mr. Caesar felt he had done, and even that he hated to admit, was to leave the Folly in the dead of night. "If you mean hitting you, I regret only that I didn't keep my wrist straighter."

For a moment the gun moved away, and the soft-voiced man delivered Mr. Caesar a sharp clout to the back of the head that made his vision blur and his stomach lurch.

"You will learn," the major said with the most measured tone Mr. Caesar had ever heard from him, "to respect your betters."

"I am an earl's grandson," Mr. Caesar replied. "Socially, I outrank you."

This was strictly untrue. Nobility did not travel far down the distaff line, and while Mr. Caesar's direct connection to the Earl of Elmsley was advantageous it conveyed no formal honour on him. The major, however, was not especially interested in the details of the matter. " I am an officer of His Majesty's army. You are the misbegotten whelp of a wilful harlot who—"

One of the many things I taught that bastard Will during our short acquaintance was the power of the your mother joke (he used it only once, in Titus Andronicus ), and so I was very aware of both the efficacy and the artlessness of this particular barb.

Indeed it proved efficacious to the point of being counterproductive, for it so provoked Mr. Caesar that he rounded on Major Bloodworth in spite of the gun in his back and, since a quick death was not the reason he had been brought there, he did so without consequence. "My mother," he said with an almost admirable boldness, "is an English gentlewoman and you will speak of her according to her station."

"Come now, must we really stand on formalities here?" asked the soft-voiced man.

Latching on to debate partly as survival strategy and partly because he had always been an argumentative soul, Mr. Caesar replied, "It is not formality to defend one's mother from insult."

"True," returned the soft-voiced man, "but I still think it a little pointless, given the circumstances."

Perhaps because the repartee had evolved to a level he could no longer follow with his tiny human brain, the major was growing impatient. "Enough of this, take him to the water and shoot him."

Mr. Caesar was further from the gunman now, but that just meant he had a better view of the pistol.

"I strongly suggest that you move," the soft-voiced man suggested strongly.

With a resignation that substituted well for courage, Mr. Caesar smiled. "I'm comfortable where I am, thank you."

Unfortunately, while bravado can take a man a certain distance, there does come a point where physical strength, fleetness of foot, or the capacity to transform into moonlight become far more important. The two robed men who had thus far taken little interest in proceedings seized him and dragged him towards the river. I, for my part, considered transforming into an aquatic being to watch from a better position, but decided in the end that invisible and airborne afforded greater opportunity. Besides, I thought I had seen something moving beneath the surface, and it troubled me.

Having no practical defence against the manhandling of ruffians, Mr. Caesar was dragged to the water's edge and forced to his knees.

"Poseidon," began the soft-voiced man, although that appellation was no longer quite so apt, for he spoke stridently now, and with a sorcerer's confidence, "earth-shaker, averter of disasters, lord of horses, giver of safety—"

"Can you please just get on with it?" interrupted the major. "You don't have to say every single name of every single god."

And for an instant, the pistol was withdrawn.

"We are not here for your vengeance," replied the soft-voiced man. "We are here for the war, the king, and the gods, in that order."

Mr. Caesar permitted himself to glance up at the major. "Still taking orders from other men, Bloodworth? You should come to one of my clubs, you'd be wildly popu—"

He got no further. And there was also, at around the same time, a gunshot. But for all I love to frame events in the most dramatic manner possible, I cannot quite—under the exacting terms of my oaths and bindings—pretend that the shot came before the interruption. Something swift and deadly reached up from the insalubrious waters of the Thames and dragged Mr. Caesar down and, if not away from danger, at least away from danger of shooting and into danger of drowning.

Now the man was fully submerged, I briefly reconsidered my plan to watch from above, but that was before I saw Captain James rise from the waters like a uniformed leviathan, seize the first of the soldier-cultists by his robes, and, in the most honoured tradition of the London-trained combatant, headbutt him.

The masked men being, by and large, the sort trained in the fencing salles of the ton rather than the streets of the rookeries, the attack caught the first of them entirely off guard, or at least sufficiently off guard that Captain James was able to capitalise by twisting a short blow into his gut and, when that drove the wind from him, wrenching him around into a human shield.

"I have a second pistol," the soft-voiced man pointed out.

"And I've got your friend," replied Captain James who, while unarmed, had a grip on his opponent's carotid artery that would, with the application of a little pressure, prove extremely disagreeable.

The soft-voiced man seemed to consider this a moment. Then he raised the pistol. "Poseidon, we the army of King George grant you the blood of this man that our fleets will find calm seas, our cavalrymen strong steeds, and our people victory over France. Sorry, Charles."

Captain James moved sideways at the same time the gun fired, catching the hapless cultist square in the forehead and pitching him into the Thames.

"You're a fucking maniac," observed the captain, taking the opportunity to close with the soft-voiced man before he could either reload or find alternative armament.

"Not mania," the soldier-sorcerer replied. "Religion. Religion and grand strategy."

If Captain James had any interest in further exposition (spoilers, reader, he did not) he quelled it and moved instead to strike his opponent on the jaw. But while the rest of the cult (if cult it was; these things are ambiguous in a world torn between cosmologies) had proved weak-willed and unskilled, the soft-voiced man had technique honed in battle and a drive rooted in divinity.

On the periphery of the fight, Major Bloodworth noted the three-to-one odds and the fact that he was the only man with a sword, and found those details to his liking. Drawing his spadroon, he rushed forwards for glory.

This, it turned out, was a mistake. The banks of the Thames were not made for rushing, and while Captain James was somewhat occupied with a more worthy opponent, he had not lived as long as he had in His Majesty's service by ignoring incoming blades.

So when the major slipped in the mud, his balance faltering just as his sword came down to strike, the captain was able to shift his weight, catch the major's forearm against his own, and then, with a motion so swift that even I could barely track it, lever the blade from his grip. And this, in the eyes of all present, shifted the calculus of the fight decisively.

"How about," Captain James suggested, "you all run back home and we pretend this never happened?"

The soft-voiced man and the last remaining soldier-cultist were silent. Major Bloodworth was not. "You have my sword, James."

"Which is why I get to make the rules."

"It is my property. Return it to me."

Captain James turned the weapon slightly in his hand. It was a fine weapon in certain ways, the blade stained blue to half its length and decorated with gold along all of it. "Don't think I will."

"So you're a thief, as well as a ruffian, a blackamoor, and a sodomite."

To a man more mired in the values of the ton, any one of those appellations would have been like a knife to the kidney. To the captain, they were merely words. "I'm a soldier," he replied. "And the first thing King George taught me was that when you beat a man, you can take what's his. You want your sword, come and get it."

Kneeling in the mud at the point of a blade, the major was in no way inclined to try to take anything. Of course, he was also not inclined to admit defeat to a man he perceived as his inferior, but in this specific context self-preservation overcame propriety. He rose, rankling inwardly at the need to put his hands in the mud, spat on the ground, and then left, taking the other men with him.

The soft-voiced man followed, but not before making a strangely formal bow to the captain.

When the strangers had gone, the captain made his way to the water's edge where Mr. Caesar was struggling to extract himself from the river. He bent down, proffered a hand, and, when it was accepted, hauled him up.

"I am soaking, " Mr. Caesar complained. "And I am filthy. And I smell like actual shit."

"The smell's the river, it'll fade as we walk. Also you're alive."

"You could have saved me in a way that kept me dry."

The captain shrugged. "Could have. But this was safest. Besides, you needed a good drenching."

"I did not need a good drenching."

"I can always put you back."

Although Mr. Caesar was relatively certain that the captain would not, in fact, put him back, he stopped protesting nevertheless, and remained silent all the way to the Folly.