The Red Plague Affair

Chapter Thirteen Don’t Go that Way, Sir

Valentinelli, examining his dirty fingernails, looked supremely unconcerned as Miss Bannon’s black carriage jolted into motion. In fact, he was humming an aria from Ribellio, of all things, and off-key as well.

It was, Clare reflected, like sharing a cage with a wild animal. Familiarity had allowed him to overlook just how dangerous the Neapolitan could be.

And Miss Bannon?

It was a very good thing mentaths did not often wince. For if they did, Clare was certain he should be wincing now at his own idiocy.

It was not the credence given to a controversial theory; there was no other way to account for the peculiarities the case presented. It was the flash of pain on Miss Bannon’s features, swiftly smoothed away, when Clare had wondered aloud.

He had meant, of course, that Miss Bannon’s value far exceeded his own in the current situation. It was quite likely that the Crown depended on her loyalty far more thoroughly than Miss Bannon ever guessed. Empire was maintained by those like her – proud servants, all.

Clare had often speculated upon the nature of the sorceress’s attachment to Britannia’s current incarnation, but had consigned it to the mental bureau-drawer of mysteries deserving close, thorough, and above all, unhurried contemplation at some later date. She did an excellent job of hiding her origins, did Miss Bannon, but he had the advantage of close acquaintance. The ghost of childhood want and deprivation hung about her, and her attachment to the Queen bespoke a battle against such a ghost within a person’s character more than an avowed duty to Empire.

No doubt Emma would hotly dispute such a notion, or give it brisk short shrift. But Clare thought it very likely – oh, very likely indeed – that it was not Victrix the sorceress sought to insulate from harm. It was instead a young girl who had been saved from the spectre of a short brutal life in a rookery or worse, plucked from the gutter and set in the glitter-whirl of sorcery’s proud practitioners. Of course nothing less than serving the highest power in the land would do for such a child’s powerful wanting in a sorceress’s body, and of course she would see an echo of her own struggles in Victrix’s dangerous first years of reign.

In any case, this morning Miss Bannon had apparently not taken his meaning correctly, and Clare consoled himself with the thought that she was an exceedingly logical woman, and would not take umbrage at his indelicacy. Would she?

And yet, he had never quite seen her look… hurt, before.

The morning crush of crowd and other conveyances had thickened during the few hours spent in Copperpot’s well-appointed flat. Rumblings, shouts, and curses filled the close-choking Londinium air. The wheels ground more slowly, and Clare’s busy faculties calculated the likely rate of the sickness spreading and the resultant chances of sufferers surviving the boils.

Could the Shield have spread the disease? Perhaps. Physicker Darlington? No, there was no break in his skin… but still. Clare cursed inwardly. If the canisters dispensed a form of highly infectious illness, Eli may well have served the same purpose. Certainly very little of Morris’s behaviour made sense unless he planned the sickness to spread from sufferer to sufferer.

Another jolt, and the carriage ceased its forward motion. There was a great deal of shouting and cursing – a blockage in the street, perhaps? Sunk in thought, Clare barely noticed when Valentinelli stiffened.

The carriage door was wrenched open, and Clare’s short cry of surprise was drowned by Valentinelli’s much louder bark. A confusion of motion, and the Neapolitan was thrown back, an elegant half-hand strike to the man’s throat folding him up quite effectively. The attacker, stocky but long-legged in black, his top hat knocked askew, drove another fist into Valentinelli’s groin, a swift blow that made Clare inhale sharply in male sympathy.

There was a click, and the door pulled closed. The man, with a speed that bespoke long practice, levelled the pistol at a cursing, writhing Valentinelli.

Clare coughed, slightly. “Well. A pleasant surprise.”

Francis Vance, Doctor of Art and mentath, had a wide, frank, disarming grin. His moustache was fair but his hair had darkened as he aged, and one of the odd qualities of the man was his ability to change appearance at a moment’s notice. He required no appurtenances to do so, merely his own plastic features. His eyes were variously hazel, gold, or green, depending on his mood, and at the moment they were quite merry. “Hullo, old chap.”

“I kill you—” Valentinelli was not taking this turn of events calmly at all.

Clare cleared his throat. “Ludovico, please, he merely wishes to talk. Or he would have shot you with that cunning little pistol. A Beaumont-Adams, is it not? Double-action. And you only have two shots.”

“Very good.” Vance’s smile broadened a trifle. “Two are all I require; normally it would be merely one. Your Neapolitan here is most dangerous, though. I have a high idea of him.”

So does Miss Bannon. “You are not the only one who does. To what do I owe this pleasure, sir? I have been a trifle too busy to return your letters.”

“If you could reply, I would be in Newgate by now. As it is…” Vance gauged Valentinelli with a sidelong look. The assassin had ceased sputtering and half lay, curled against the carriage’s wall, glaring balefully at the uninvited guest. “I do apologise, signor. I did not think you would offer me a chance to speak.”

“You were correct,” Valentinelli snarled, and Vance’s eyebrows raised a fraction.

“Indeed. You are most singular. Anyhow, Mr Clare, I have come to offer you my services.”

“I would engage your services?” A queer sinking sensation had begun in Clare’s middle.

“Oh yes.” Vance apparently judged the moment to be less fraught, as he tucked the pistol away. His entire posture bespoke tense readiness, though, as Valentinelli slowly uncurled. “You are pursuing a certain Morris, are you not?”

Dear heavens. Clare’s stomach was certainly sinking. “And you are as well? No. You cannot be. For one thing—”

“He came to my attention; I neither engaged nor funded him. His project is unprofitable, to say the least.” Vance’s smile faded. His changeable countenance became a statue of gravity. “For another, even I have some scruples, faint and fading as they are. This is dirty pool, old boy. Very dirty indeed.”

“I see.” Clare’s mouth was dry. Of all the turns this case could take, this was perhaps the most surprising.

And he had not foreseen it. Perhaps his faculties were dimming.

“No, you do not. Yet. But, Mr Clare, might I suggest you tell your driver to direct us to Bermondsey? It seems a particularly profitable place to begin.”

Londinium’s sky wept, a fine persistent drizzle tinted a venomous yellow as the sun began its slow afternoon descent. Between the buildings the fog rose in streamers, tamped down by the rain’s catlike licking, the Themis breathing its vapour into street-arteries. Valentinelli slumped next to Clare, staring balefully at the mentath who had struck him.

Vance appeared at ease, having taken the entire seat for himself. “What do you know of Morris?”

Clare suspected he had gathered his faculties as much as he would be allowed to. “A genius of Biology. No more than thirty-three, and quite a disciplined student, though he failed any and all requisite mentath testing and consequently paid for his schooling by neighbourhood subscription and—”

“His childhood, Mr Clare.” As if Clare were at Yton again, and Vance a patient instructor.

I rather do not like this fellow. “Londinium born and bred, south of the Themis in every respect until he was sent to school. I deduce his father died while he was young. His mother rather coddled him, and his schoolfellows did not like him.”

“Consequently, he took refuge in his art. And in one other thing.” Vance nodded. His eyes had darkened to hazel, the gold flecks in them shrinking. He observed a catlike stillness, but Clare had no doubt the pistol, especially filed by a gunsmith to rob the trigger of any stutter, would make short work of any obstacle in his path.

Clare’s faculties helpfully supplied the answer. “Ah. Religion.” A few more scraps of information came together inside Clare’s skull. “A Papist, quite possibly.”

“Most certainly.” Vance looked pleased. “And today is Monday.”

Of course it is. What does that have to do with—But the carriage slowed its forward motion, Harthell calling and clicking to the clockhorses in the peculiar tongue of coachmen, and from the sound of the traffic outside, Clare decided they had reached Ettingly Street in Bermondsey.

There is a church of the Magdalen here. I wonder… “The Magdalen was Morris’s church?”

“He visited regularly. Papists can be faithful, you know. Come, gentlemen.” Vance’s countenance had turned graver, and he now looked at least ten years older. “Let us discover if he was praying to a saint, or to Science.”

Valentinelli’s flat dark gaze met Clare’s, and the mentath shook his head slightly. No, my canny Neapolitan. Do not kill him. Yet.

And Valentinelli subsided, his capable fingers retreating from the knife in his sleeve.