C. Harris - Why Kings Confess

A new explanation for Damion Pelletan’s murder, and for the attempted murder of his sister, was beginning to take shape in his imagination. He said, “The man who killed your friend. . what did he look like?”

The courtier frowned with the effort of thought. “I didn’t see him well-he wore a greatcoat and scarf, with his hat pulled low over his forehead. All I can say with any certainty is that he was dark-haired and roughly your height, only slightly stockier.”

The description matched that of the man who had attacked Sebastian at Stoke Mandeville and again in York Street, although he had no doubt it also matched any number of other men in London. “He didn’t say anything?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Did you notice his eyes?”

“His eyes? No. Why?”

Sebastian shook his head. “I’ll ask you one more time: Who would have reason to kill you?”

But Serena simply stared off across the park, as if looking for the answer in the mists that swirled among the winter-bared trees.

Thursday, 28 January

T he next morning, Sebastian was easing on his Hessians when Calhoun said, “You know how you asked me to look further into Sampson Bullock, my lord?”

Sebastian glanced over at his valet. “Discovered something interesting, did you?”

“You were right, my lord: Bullock spent six years in the Ninth Foot. He came back to London when his unit was reduced in 1802, after the Peace of Amiens.”

“In other words,” said Sebastian, stomping his foot into his boot, “he knows more about gunpowder than your average cabinetmaker.”

“Considerably more, I should think. He was in the artillery.”

• • •

Sampson Bullock was flooding a new tabletop with boiled linseed oil when Sebastian walked up to him. The fog was still so thick that a deep gloom filled the shop, and the cabinetmaker had lit the lantern suspended over his work. The air was heavy with the smell of warm oil and freshly shaved wood and rank male sweat.

Sebastian stood for a moment, arms crossed at his chest, and watched the cabinetmaker turn the pale raw wood a deep, rich brown as the oil soaked into the surface. Bullock glanced up at him, then dipped his cloth into the tin of oil and went back to rubbing the piece.

“Wot ye want from me?” he demanded after a moment. “I got nothin’ t’ say t’ ye.”

“I understand you were in the Ninth Foot. The artillery, to be precise.”

“Aye. Wot of it?”

“I would imagine you know a fair bit about gunpowder, don’t you?”

Bullock kept his gaze on his work, although Sebastian noticed his movements had become slower, more deliberate. “Suppose I do? Wot of it?”

“You heard about the explosion in Golden Square?”

“Ye’d be hard pressed t’ find a body hereabouts who hasna heard of it.”

“Did you know the charge was set directly beneath Madame Sauvage’s rooms?”

“Now, how would I know that?”

“I thought you might have heard. After all, it’s not often someone tries to blow up a London house with gunpowder.”

The cabinetmaker flung down his cloth with enough force to send thick golden globules of oil flying in all directions. “Wot ye sayin’? That I done it? Is that wot yer sayin’?”

Sebastian subtly shifted his weight, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. “You did threaten to kill her, remember?”

“Yeah? Well, she weren’t killed, now, was she? It was that Basque bitch wot bought it.”

Sebastian studied the man’s small black eyes. The scar across his cheek had darkened to a deep, vicious purple. “A mistake, I wonder? Or a deliberate attempt to hurt Alexi Sauvage by killing someone she loved?”

When the cabinetmaker remained silent, Sebastian said, “She didn’t kill your brother; he died of gaol fever, in prison.”

“She put him there!”

“You mean, by having the courage to stand up and say what everyone in the neighborhood knew to be true? That your brother was a brutal wife beater?”

“Why, ye-”

His face twisted with raw savagery, Bullock grabbed a long, sharp awl and lunged around the table to come at Sebastian with the tool clutched in his fist like a stiletto.

Sebastian yanked his own knife from the sheath in his boot, the carefully honed blade winking in the lamplight as he settled into a street fighter’s crouch.

The cabinetmaker drew up, his lips twitching, his fist still tight around the awl’s worn wooden handle.

“What’s the matter?” said Sebastian. “Does the idea of a fair fight give you pause? Do you prefer stabbing men in the back and blowing up women in their homes?”

A strange, eerie smile lit up the cabinetmaker’s face. “Ye think yer real smart, don’t ye? High-and-mighty lord that ye are, livin’ in that big fancy house, surrounded by all them other grand nobs. Think ye can come in here and talk t’ me like yer still a captain and I’m jest some swadkin? Think I gotta play by yer rules?”

“How do you know I was a captain?”

The man’s smile widened. “Think yer the only one can ask questions? I know all about ye-about ye and yer wife, and about the child she’s carryin’ in her belly. I even know ’bout that black cat you fancy.”

Sebastian was careful to keep all trace of his instinctive reaction off his face and out of his voice. All that remained was a cold, lethal purposefulness. “You stay away from my wife.”

“Wot’s the matter, Captain? Ye scared?”

“I see you anywhere near my wife, my house, or my cat, and you’re a dead man. You understand?”

Bullock laughed. “Ye sayin’ ye’d risk hangin’ fer killin’ the likes o’ me?”

“Yes.”

For a moment, the man’s self-satisfied smile slipped. Then it slid wide again. “I reckon maybe ye mean it, after all. But ye gots to see me comin’, don’t ye, Captain? And I can move real quiet when I wants to. Quiet as a raindrop runnin’ down a windowpane, or a dog dyin’ somewhere alone in the night.”

“I have extraordinarily good hearing,” said Sebastian.

And then he left Bullock’s workshop before he gave in to the temptation to kill the bastard then and there.

It was only afterward that Sebastian found himself wondering if he’d just made a terrible mistake.

S ebastian had long ago come to the conclusion that there were two types of madmen in this world. Places like Bedlam were full of those society labeled as insane: men and women who heard voices, who lurched between mania and despair, or who were so tormented by life’s vicissitudes or their own demons that they simply disengaged from the world. Many were undoubtedly crazy enough to commit murder. But they seldom got away with it.

More dangerous by far, in Sebastian’s estimation, were those like Sampson Bullock: men with a solid grasp of reality who seemed sane, yet whose thought processes were breathtakingly brutal in their single-minded self-interest. Easily enraged and never forgiving of the most insignificant of perceived slights or injuries, they moved through life with an utter disregard for the wants and desires of those around them.

But there were times when Sebastian wondered if he was wrong, if perhaps people like Bullock weren’t actually mad, after all. Perhaps they simply lacked a fundamental component of what we like to believe it means to be human. The problem with that theory was that Sebastian had known dogs and horses capable of the very love and compassion such individuals seemed to lack. Utterly without conscience or empathy, they saw others not as fellow beings but as targets or opportunities. Not all were violent or lethal. But those who were could kill without guilt, convinced that their victims either brought death on themselves or were too inconsequential to merit consideration.