“Alas, no. I have other business to attend to.”
“Would your business involve that man in Newgate Prison?”
Jasper switched his gaze from the ceiling to his valet. Pynch’s usually wooden expression had a bit of squint about the eyes, which was Pynch’s version of a worried face.
“I’m afraid so. Thornton’s to be tried soon, and he’s sure to be convicted and hanged. Once he’s gone, any information he has dies with him.”
Pynch crossed the room with a large bath sheet. “Always assuming he has any information to impart.”
Jasper stepped from the tub and took the sheet. “Yes, always assuming that.”
Pynch watched him as he dried off, that same squint in his eyes. “Pardon me, my lord, I don’t like to speak when it isn’t my place—”
“And yet you will anyway,” Jasper muttered.
His manservant continued as if he hadn’t heard. “But I am worried that you are becoming obsessed with this man. He’s a known liar. What makes you think he’ll speak the truth now?”
“Nothing.” Jasper threw aside the towel and strode to a chair where his clothes lay and began dressing. “He is a liar and a rapist and a murderer and God only knows what else. Only a fool would trust his word. But I cannot let him go to the gallows without at least trying to learn the truth from him.”
“I fear that he is merely toying with you for his own amusement.”
“You’re no doubt correct, Pynch, as you usually are.” Jasper didn’t look at the valet as he pulled a shirt over his head. He’d met Pynch after the massacre of the 28th Regiment of Foot at Spinner’s Falls. Pynch had not fought in the battle. The valet didn’t have the same drive to find out who had betrayed the regiment. “But, sadly, reason does not matter. I must go.”
Pynch sighed and brought him his shoes. “Very well, my lord.”
Jasper sat to"0%Jasper draw on his buckle shoes. “Buck up, Pynch. The man’ll be dead in another sennight.”
“As you say, my lord,” Pynch muttered as he picked up the debris of the bath.
Jasper finished dressing in silence and then went to his dresser to comb and club his hair back.
Pynch held out his coat. “I trust you haven’t forgotten, my lord, that Mr. Dorning has made another request for your presence on the Vale lands in Oxfordshire.”
“Damn.” Dorning was his land steward and had written several appeals for his help with a land dispute. He’d already put the poor man off in order to get married and now . . . “Dorning’ll just have to wait another few days. I can’t leave without talking to Miss Fleming’s brother and Miss Fleming herself. Remind me again, please, when I return.”
Jasper shrugged on his coat, grabbed his hat, and was out of the room before Pynch could make another protest. Jasper clattered down the stairs, nodded to his butler, and strode out the door of his London town house. Outside, one of the stable lads was waiting with Belle, his big bay mare. Jasper thanked the boy and mounted the horse, steadying her as she sidled sideways, mouthing her bit. The streets were crowded, necessitating that he keep the mare to a walk. Jasper headed west, toward the dome of St. Paul’s, looming above the smaller buildings surrounding it.
The bustle of London was a far cry from the uncivilized woodland where this whole thing had started. He remembered well the tall trees and the falls, the sound of roaring water mixing with the screams of dying men. Nearly seven years before, he’d been a captain in His Majesty’s army, fighting the French in the Colonies. The 28th Regiment of Foot had been marching back from the victory at Quebec, the line of soldiers strung out along a narrow path, when they’d been attacked by Indians. They’d never had time to form a defensive position. Nearly the entire regiment had been massacred in less than half an hour and their colonel killed. Jasper and eight other men were captured, marched to a Wyandot Indian camp and . . .
Even now he had trouble thinking about it. Once in a while, shadows of that period appeared at the edge of his thoughts, like a fleeting glimpse of something out of the corner of one’s eye. He’d thought the whole thing over, the past dead and buried, if not forgotten. Then six months ago, he’d walked out the French doors of a ballroom and seen Samuel Hartley on the terrace outside.
Hartley had been a corporal in the army. One of the few men to survive the massacre of the 28th. He’d told Jasper that some traitor within the regiment had given their position to the French and their Indian allies. When Jasper had joined Hartley in searching for the traitor, they’d discovered a murderer who’d assumed the identity of one of the Spinner’s Falls fallen—Dick Thornton. Thornton—Jasper had trouble calling him anything else, though he knew it wasn’t his true name—was now in Newgate, charged with murder. But on the night they’d captured him, Thornton had claimed that he wasn’t the traitor.
Jasper nudged Belle’s flanks to guide her around a pushcart piled high with ripe fruit.
“Buy a sweet plum, sir?” the pretty dark-eyed girl next to the cart cried to him. She cocked her hip flirtatiously as she held out the fruit.
Jasper grinned appreciatively. “Not as sweet as your apples, I’ll wager.”
The fruit girl’s laughter followed him as he rode through the crowded street. Jasper’s thoughts returned to his mission. As Pynch had so rightly pointed out, Thornton was a man who told lies as a matter of habit. Hartley had certainly never voiced any doubt as to Thornton’s guilt. Jasper snorted. Then again, Hartley had been busy with a new wife, Lady Emeline Gordon—Jasper’s first fiancée.
Jasper looked up and realized that he’d come to Skinner Street, which led directly into Newgate Street. The imposing ornamental gate of the prison arched over the road. The prison had been rebuilt after the Great Fire and was suitably decorated with statues representing such fine sentiments as peace and mercy. But the closer one drew to the prison, the more ominous the stench became. The air seemed heavy, laden with the foul odors of human excrement, disease, rot, and despair.
One leg of the arch terminated in the keeper’s lodge. Jasper dismounted in the courtyard outside.
A guard lounging beside the door straightened. “Back are ye, milord?”
“Like a bad penny, McGinnis.”
McGinnis was a fellow veteran of His Majesty’s army and had lost an eye in some foreign place. A rag was wrapped about his head to hide the hole, but it’d slipped to reveal red scarring.
The man nodded and yelled into the lodge. “Oy, Bill! Lord Vale ’as come again.” He turned back to Jasper. “Bill’ll be ’ere in two ticks, milord.”
Jasper nodded and gave the guard a half crown, insurance that the mare would still be in the yard when he returned. He’d quickly figured out on his first visit to this dismal place that extravagantly bribing the guards made the entire experience much simpler.
Bill, a runty little man with a thick shock of iron-gray hair, soon came out of the lodge. He held the badge of his trade in his right hand: a large iron ring of keys. The little man hunched a shoulder at Jasper and crossed the yard to the prison’s main entrance. Here, a huge overhanging doorway was decorated with carved manacles and the biblical quote VENIO SICUT FUR—I come as a thief. Bill hunched his shoulder at the guards who stood about by the portal and led the way inside.
The smell was worse here, the air stale and unmoving. Bill trotted ahead of Jasper, through a long corridor and outside again. They crossed a large courtyard with prisoners milling around or huddled in clumps like refuse washed upon a particularly dismal shore. They passed through another, smaller building, and then Bill led the way to the stairs that emptied into the Condemned Hold. It was belowground, as if to give the prisoners a taste of the hell they would soon spend eternity in. The stairs were damp, the stone worn smooth by many despairing feet.
The subterranean corridor was dim—the prisoners paid for their own candles here, and the prices were inflated. A man was singing, a low, sweet dirge that every now and again rose on a high note. Someone coughed and low voices quarreled, but the place was mostly quiet. Bill stopped before a cell that held four occupants. One lay on a pallet in the corner, most likely asleep. Two men played cards by the light of a single flickering candle.
The fourth man leaned against the wall near the bars but straightened when he saw them.
“A lovely afternoon, isn’t it, Dick?” Jasper called out as he neared.
Dick Thornton cocked his head. “I wouldn’t know, would I?”
Jasper tsked softly. “Sorry, old man. Forgot you can’t see the sun much from in here, can you?”
“What do you want?”
Jasper regarded the man behind the bars. Thornton was an ordinary man of middling height with a pleasant, if forgettable, face. The only thing that made him stand out in the least was his flaming red hair. Thornton knew damn well what he wanted—Jasper had asked often enough in the past. “Want? Why, nothing. I’m merely passing the time, seeing the sweet sights of Newgate.”
Thornton grinned and winked, the facial expression like a strange tic he couldn’t control. “You must think me a fool.”
“Not at all.” Jasper eyed the man’s threadbare clothes. He dipped his hand in his pocket and came up with a half crown. “I think you a rapist, a liar, and a murderer many times over, but a fool? Not at all. You wrong me, Dick.”
Thornton licked his lips, watching as Jasper flipped the coin between his fingers. “Then why are you here?”
“Oh.” Jasper tilted his head and gazed rather absently at the stained stone ceiling. “I was just remembering when we caught you, Sam Hartley and I, at Princess Wharf. Terribly rainy day. Do you remember?”
“ ’Course I remember.”
“Then you may recollect that you claimed not to be the traitor.”
A crafty gleam entered Thornton’s eyes. “There’s no claim about it. I’m not the traitor.”
“Really?” Jasper dropped his gaze from the ceiling to stare Thornton in the eye. “Well, you see that’s just it. I think you’re lying.”
“If I lie, then I’ll die for my sins.”
“You’ll die anyway, and in less than a month. The law says that convicted men must be hanged within two days of their sentencing. They’re rather strict about it, I’m afraid, Dick.”
“That’s if I’m convicted at trial.”
“Oh, you will be,” Jasper said gently. “Never fear.”
Thornton looked sullen. “Then why should I tell you anything?”
Jasper shrugged. “You still have a few weeks left of life. Why not spend it with a full belly and clean clothes?”
“I’ll tell you somethin’ for a clean coat,” one of the men playing cards muttered.
Jasper ignored him. “Well, Dick?”
The red-haired man stared at him, his face blank. He winked and suddenly thrust his face at the bars. “You want to know who betrayed us to the%" yed us French and their scalping friends? You want to know who painted the earth with blood, there by that damned falls? Look at the men who were captured with you. That’s where you’ll find the traitor.”
Jasper jerked his head back as if a snake had struck. “Nonsense.”
Thornton stared a moment more and then began laughing, high, staccato barks.
“Shaddup!” a male voice from another cell yelled.
Thornton continued the odd sound, but the entire time his eyes were wide and fixed maliciously on Jasper’s face. Jasper stared stonily back. Lies or insinuated half-truths, he’d not get any more from Dick Thornton. Today or ever. He held Thornton’s gaze and deliberately dropped the coin to the floor. It rolled to the center of the passage—well out of reach of the prison cell. Thornton stopped laughing, but Jasper had already turned and was walking out of that hell-damned cellar.