Robert Butler - The Empire of Night

Mother withdrew, sitting down hard in her seat. My hand lay on the chair arm between us and she immediately put her own hand on mine and squeezed. I looked at her.

“Stage nerves?” I asked.

She stretched out a tight little smile for me.

I turned my hand upward and clasped hers.

As we neared the house, an iron-arched entryway appeared in the fence, with a couple of uniformed local constables pulling the gates open for us. Only for us, for now, as the travelers were simply gathering on the south side of the road, parking their vehicles, waiting to enter the grounds. We slowed and turned in.

The main inner road headed for the courtyard, but the driver shortly angled off into a side road toward the cliff. We entered a driveway circle and went the long way round, to the right, and we stopped, presenting Mother’s door to the center of the south face of the house. The driver jumped out and galloped around to open it.

He was a hulk of a man with a thick neck, but he moved quickly and lightly. If he were an American I’d take him for a Wolverine half-back. Since he was a Brit, a rugby footballer. Since he was Stockman’s man, though, however he’d acquired his skills, I was willing to bet he was more than a driver. A tough guy. I slipped from my side and stepped clear of the car. I looked at Sir Al’s abode.

Sometimes a man’s castle is his home. His was well fortified and he was the only family member residing in it, up here high above the Strait of Dover. I glanced that way, at the cloud-begrayed water laid out against the horizon, just beyond which was Calais and the shooting war. If he was a German agent, he was well placed.

The house was Victorian-Elizabethan-Eccentric. Seventy-five years old at most, but it was of quite another era: this wide facade — at least sixty yards, maybe more — was an Elizabethan profusion of glass, two dozen vast window casements transomed and mullioned into hundreds and hundreds of panes on this south face alone.

To my right, at the wing’s eastern end, rose a parapeted tower that was more King John than the Virgin Queen. This Gothic tower lifted a full two storeys above the slate roof, its only window a cruciform loophole. And from the top of the tower Stockman House rose higher still. On another two storeys of flagpole flew a whopping Union Jack, nearly as wide as the Silver Ghost was long. Including the cliff on which everything stood, that flag waved a good two hundred feet above the shore. The pole was high enough and big enough that it was even anchored against high winds by four guy wires lashed to the tower parapet. Such an extravagant declaration of Britishness struck me as Stockman wrapping himself in a big flag to hide his treachery.

A striking thing about the house itself — a vaguely intimidating thing — was its stone. Ashlar-worked black flint. An odd contradiction to my eye, this darkly craggy stone, usually found rusticated, made smooth and slick and polished. And even as that thought passed through me, Sir Albert Stockman’s polished baritone filled the salty air, booming and yet mellifluous.

I could understand Mother thinking she needed to warn me about her putting her arm in his. Outwardly he was her kind of guy. He was a tall man, taller than me by a couple of inches, bareheaded but wearing an unbuttoned single-breasted day-wear tailcoat with striped trousers and sporting a flash of pink silk in his breast pocket. He had a fine, angular face, chipped and polished from a craggy white stone. He was graying lightly, probably Mother’s age but having arrived in his fifties beautifully, in the way she loved, envied, and despised in males. He was a leading man.

I began to move toward the point between them where they were about to meet, him striding to his Isabel Cobb, she taking her own step toward him, and another. They arrived. He caught up both her hands. He bent to her and they bussed on each cheek. I stopped.

They finished bussing and stood back to look at each other. They kept holding hands. I was watching him closely enough to see his eyes not quite leave hers but register me, as I was comfortably within his line of easy peripheral sight and only a few steps away. I tried to portray a respectful deference, slumping a little at the chest, lowering my chin ever so slightly.

“I am so happy you are here,” he was saying.

“I am happy to be here,” my mother said.

“You’ll have time to rest a little,” he said. “Today the grounds are open to the good people of Ramsgate and Broadstairs. We will host and feast some of my constituents. You don’t mind appearing for them?”

“Of course not, Albert. I am happy to be hostess of Stockman House tonight.”

Albert straightened to full height in overplayed joy at this. He bent again, this time toward her hands, one of which he lifted and kissed, somewhat lingeringly.

Mother lowered her face and watched.

Albert rose. “Thank you, my dear,” he said. And then he turned his face to me.

“And this must be Mr. Hunter,” he said. Warmly. Convincingly so, I had to admit. This was good. I needed to appear useful to a man not only whose heart and history but also whose active, secret allegiance might be to Germany.

“Yes,” my mother said, turning to me.

Not “my mother.” Isabel , I thought. I had to play this role inside my head as well.

Stockman let go of Isabel Cobb and took the three steps to me as she said, “This is Joseph W. Hunter. .”

He offered me a hand, which I took, prepared for a firm grip. I got one. Luckily I wedged my own hand fully into his and gave him just enough back to let him think I was a substantial enough man but not a rival. Meanwhile, my mother was saying, “Lord Albert Stockman.”

He and I were locked in at the eyes. Perhaps it was just the dulled light of the cloudy day but I could have sworn his eyes were almost precisely the shade called feldgrau , literally field gray, the color of the German army’s fighting uniforms, gray but cut by green, the combination perfect for camouflage in the European countryside.

“Lord Stockman,” I said.

“Mr. Hunter,” he said. “I am delighted to meet you.”

He lifted his chin just a little. I was wrong about his eyes. I stopped indulging my impulse to see him, in every detail, by the light of our suspicions. This wasn’t a feature story for the Sunday edition. That newswriter reflex was bad for my present line of work. His eyes weren’t feldgrau. They were grayer than that.

He said, “I get the newspapers from the United States. We are all very attentive, as you may know, to your country’s attitudes. I’ve read you with great interest.”

The locution he used was not uncommon. But he paused, as if to let that soak in. That he’d been reading me . Not just my stories. But I got the strong sense he meant more.

“I hope I didn’t cause you any offense,” I said.

He lowered his chin and gave me a careful look. “Why would you think that?”

“You are English. Perhaps the stories I write are too willing, from an Englishman’s point of view, to understand the German side of things.”

Stockman gave me a slow, nodding smile. He said, “Perhaps I am trying to understand your President’s reluctance to become more involved.”

I let my Mr. Hunter show his nerves at all this, looking briefly away from Stockman in a deferential shrug. “Just so,” I said. “That’s my concern on your behalf. If he no longer heard the voice of those Americans who favor Germany, he might be more willing to help you.”

I was back to Stockman’s eyes and he was focused intently on me, assessing me. He smiled. “Don’t worry about that. You are a welcome guest in my home.”

“You’re too kind,” I said.