Текст книги "Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon,Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Watching Stephan relax by degrees over their casual supper of eggs, Wurst,and toasted Br ц tchen,Grey found himself reluctant to bring up the true subject of his visit. Whether it were the loss of the arm, something to do with the Princess Louisa—for he noticed that von Namtzen barely mentioned her, though he spoke of his children with evident fondness—or something else, it was plain that Wilhelm had reason to be worried for his master.

Still, whatever was troubling Stephan, his own matter would have to be dealt with—and time was short. Was it better, Grey wondered, lighting a pipe for Stephan and handing it across, to wait ’til the morrow? Or would it be easier for both of them if he were to speak now, when the warmth of friendship renewed and the intimacy of oncoming night might cushion the harsh edges of the matter? That, and a fair amount of alcohol; they had shared a bottle of hock with supper, and the decanter now held a bare half inch.

He decided to wait just a bit longer, unsure whether this decision was the counsel of prudence or of cowardice. He poured the last of the excellent brandy, taking care to fill his own glass no more than halfway. Kept the conversation light, going from dogs and hunting to minor news from his cousin Olivia’s last letter, and amusing stories from the field. He felt the rawness of his own emotions begin to numb, his thoughts of Percy recede to a tolerable distance, and decided that it had been prudence after all.

It was getting on for midsummer, and the sky stayed light far into the night. Through an increasing sense of muzziness, Grey heard the carriage clock strike ten. Wilhelm had come in a little while before to light the candles and refill the decanter, but he could still see von Namtzen’s face by the fading light from the window.

The broad planes of it were calm now, though harsh lines that hadn’t been there the year before cut deep from nose to mouth. The mouth itself had gone from its normal sweet firmness to a line whose grimness relaxed only when Grey succeeded in making him laugh. Grey had a sudden impulse to reach across, cup Stephan’s beard-bristled cheek in his hand, and try to smooth those lines away with a thumb. He resisted the impulse, and let Stephan fill his glass again. Soon. He would have to speak soon—while he could still talk.

“The moon is nearly dark,” Stephan remarked, nodding toward the window, where the faint sickle of the waning moon shone in a lavender sky above the wood. “The badgers come more often from their setts at the dark of the moon. We will take Gustav out tomorrow night, perhaps. You will stay some days, ja?”

Grey shook his head, preparing himself.

“Only a day or two, alas. I have actually come on an unpleasant errand, I fear.”

Stephan’s gray eyes were slightly unfocused by this time, but he lifted his head from a contemplation of his own newly filled glass and turned a face of curiosity and owlish sympathy on Grey.

“Oh, ja? Was denn?”

“Ober-Lieutenant Weber,” Grey said, hoping that he sounded casual. “Michael Weber.” The name felt strange, repellent on his tongue, and he fought back the unwelcome recollections that struck him when he heard or spoke Weber’s name: the vision of Weber’s muscular, pumping, pale backside, the rumpled fawn breeches on the floor—and the usual hot surge of anger that accompanied that vision. “I wished to speak with him—if you have no objection.”

Von Namtzen frowned. Shook his head, swallowing, and grimaced as though the liquor hurt his throat.

“You do object?” Grey raised a brow.

Stephan shook his head again and set down his glass, wiping the back of his hand across his lips.

“He’s dead.” The words came out hoarsely, and he shook his head again and cleared his throat explosively, repeating more clearly, “er ist tot.”

Grey had heard him the first time.

“What happened?” he asked. His heart had seized up at von Namtzen’s words, and started again with a painful lurch.

Von Namtzen reached for the decanter, though his glass was still nearly full.

“I shot him,” he said, very quietly.

“You—” Grey choked off his exclamation, and took a deep breath. “How?” he asked, as evenly as he could. “I mean– youexecuted him? Personally?”

“No.” It was not overwarm in the room, but a dew of sweat had formed along Stephan’s jaw; Grey saw the sheen of it as he turned his head away, groping for the decanter.

“You must understand. He would have been executed—hanged, had he been court-martialed. The family would have been disgraced, utterly, and there are other sons in the army—they would be ruined. I…have known the family for a long time. His father is my friend. Michael…” He rubbed his hand fiercely over his lips. “I knew this boy, knew him from the day of his birth.”

Gustav, sensing distress in his master, got up and padded over to sit by von Namtzen’s foot, leaning heavily against his leg in an attempt to give comfort. Grey wished momentarily that he could act in such a straightforwardly sympathetic manner, but the best he could do at the moment was to keep silence.

Von Namtzen met his eyes directly for the first time, the depths of his wretchedness apparent in the bloodshot whites and swollen rims.

“I could not let such a thing happen to him—to his family.” He took a deep breath, his hand clutching his glass as though for support. “And so I took him from the gaol where he was, saying that I would bring him to his village. On the way, we met with a company of French foragers—I knew where they were; my scouts had told me. There was a skirmish; I had given Michael back his pistol and sword—I ordered him to take his men and fall upon the enemy.”

Stephan fell silent, all too clearly reliving the event.

“He knew, do you think?” Grey asked, quietly. “What you intended?”

Stephan nodded, slowly.

“He knew he was to die. I saw the thought kindle in his mind as we rode. He seized it then, let it burn in him. I saw, when it took him. You know it—that moment when a man throws everything away and there is nothing left but der Kriegswahn?” It was not a term with an exact English equivalent; “the madness of battle,” perhaps. Not waiting for Grey’s nod, he went on.

“The men knew, too. They had treated him with contempt, but at this order, they came together at once behind him, the picture of loyalty. Michael was a good soldier always—very brave. But this…He lifted his sword and charged toward the French, standing in his stirrups, screaming, all his men pouring after him. I have not before seen such ferocity, such courage, and I have seen much of such things. Er war…ein Prachtkerl,” he ended, so softly that Grey barely made out the final word.

Glorious, it meant; radiantly beautiful. And in the sense of intimacy that comes with mutual drunkenness, Grey felt he saw the man for an instant as Stephan had, glorious in his rush toward destruction, his warrior’s end—and beneath this, Stephan’s more personal sense of his beauty as a man; mortal, fleeting.

That gave him a deep pang, the sharp point of his own jealousy blunted by this final picture of the lovely boy, this Weber whose fallen-angel’s face he had seen so briefly, embracing Stephan’s gift of a noble death.

Von Namtzen let go of his brandy glass and leaned down clumsily to pat the dog, who moaned in his throat and licked his master’s hand.

“But he was not killed,” he said bleakly, his great blond head still bent over the dog. “Not even wounded.”

He raised his head then, but would not look at Grey; his eyes fixed on the bowl of chrysanthemums, gone the color of dried blood in the shadows of the night-darkening room.

“He led his men well, killed three French with his own hand, and routed them completely. He stood quite alone for an instant then at the edge of a wood, all his men gone on in pursuit. And then…he turned to look at me.”

With a look of such terror, such despair, that von Namtzen had found himself fumbling for his own pistol, spurring his horse toward Michael, almost by reflex, so strong was the need to answer that wordless cry.

“I passed a few feet before him, and shot him in the heart. No one saw. I got down and picked him up in my arms; his clothes were damp, his flesh was still hot from the battle.”

Stephan closed his eyes. He released a sigh that came from his bones, and seemed to deflate, his broad frame collapsing.

“And so I put him across his saddle and took him home to his mother,” he said flatly. “A dead hero, to be mourned and celebrated. Not a disgraced sodomite, whose name could never be spoken by his family.”

There was silence then, broken only by the sounds of a startled woodcock calling in the forest. Then an owl hooted, somewhere near, and its silent shadow passed the window, part of the gathering night.

Grey wished to speak, but anger and brandy and grief—for Weber, for Percy, for von Namtzen, and not least for himself—seized in his throat, bitter as the smell of the Chinese flowers.

“Er war ein Prachtkerl,”Stephan muttered suddenly again, low-voiced and choked. Pushing back his chair, he lurched to his feet and blundered from the room, his loose sleeve a-flutter, almost stumbling over the dog in his haste.

Gustav snorted in surprise and hopped to his feet, tail waving slowly as he hesitated, not sure whether to follow.

“Here,” said Grey, seeing the dog’s puzzlement. His voice came thick, and he cleared his throat, repeating, “Hier, Gustav,”and held out a bit of cold wurst.“You should like it. You look very much like a sausage yourself, you know,” he said, and immediately felt sorry for the insult.

“Entschuldigung,”he murmured in apology, but Gustav had taken no offense, and accepted the tidbit with grace, tail gently wagging to and fro, to and fro.

Grey watched this oscillation for a moment, then closed his eyes, feeling dizzy. He should call Wilhelm. He should go to bed. He should…The thought drifted away unformed. He crossed his arms on the table before him and laid his head upon them.

He was very drunk, and only half conscious of his body. All the same, his eyes burned and his joints ached, as though some ague was come upon him. He wished dimly that he could find relief in weeping, but with all he had drunk, his body was parched, his throat dry and sticky, and he felt obscurely that he did not deserve such relief.

A soft weight leaned against his leg, and the dog’s breath warmed the flesh of his calf. He reached down blindly with one hand, and stroked the silky head, over and over, breathing the strong musky smell of the animal, the motion keeping thought at bay until brandy and fatigue assumed that duty and his body relaxed. He dimly felt the wood of the table beneath his cheek, and heard the owl again, hooting in the dark.

When Tom Byrd came to find him, he was sound asleep, Gustav the dachshund on the floor beside him, a long watchful muzzle resting on his boot.

The badger’s sett was within a mile of the lodge, the gamekeeper assured them, and so they walked through the woods, enjoying the mildness of the evening. So near to summer, the sun remained in the sky well past nine, and so their badger hunt was conducted in a dim, glowing light that made Grey feel as though they were on an expedition to capture elves or faeries, rather than a ferocious small animal.

Nothing had been said between himself and von Namtzen during the day, but the awareness that there were things to be said hung between them. Still, the gamekeeper and his son walked nearby, keeping an eye on Gustav, who trotted stolidly along, long nose lifted to the scents of the evening air, and so such talk as there was dealt with small, impersonal matters.

He had not known quite what to expect of a badger hunt. The gamekeeper had partially excavated the sett, which lay in the side of a hill, so that the mouth of a dark tunnel was visible. Gustav began to quiver with excitement as the wind changed, bearing a scent so pungently pronounced that even Grey’s feeble nose perceived it.

The dog’s hackles rose all down his back, and he began to growl enthusiastically, then to bark, as though in challenge to the badger. If a badger was in residence, it failed to emerge, though, and at von Namtzen’s sign, the gamekeeper loosed the dog, who shot for the tunnel’s entrance, paused for a moment to dig madly, dirt flying from the stubby paws, and then wriggled his broad shoulders into the earth and disappeared from view, tail stiff with excitement.

Sounds of snuffling and scratching came from the hole, and Grey suffered a moment’s nightmare, imagining what it must be like to go forward into darkness, enclosed, engulfed, swallowed by the earth, with the knowledge of teeth and fury lurking somewhere ahead, invisible.

He said something of this to von Namtzen, who laughed.

“Dogs, fortunately, are not hampered by imagination,” he assured Grey. “They live in the moment. No fear of the future.”

This attitude held an obvious appeal—but as Grey noted, some of its benefit depended upon what was happening at the particular moment. Just now, Gustav appeared to be experiencing a moment with an angry badger in it, and von Namtzen, burdened with imagination, seemed to fear the worst, clutching Grey’s arm with his one good hand and muttering German curses and exhortations, mixed with prayers.

Some one of these incantations must have proved effective, for after a heart-stopping period of silence, something moved at the entrance to the tunnel, and Gustav made his way slowly out of the bowels of the earth, dragging the body of his enemy.

The dog was allowed to disembowel his prey and roll on the gory remains in celebration, before being carried off in triumph by the gamekeeper to have a torn ear mended, leaving Grey and von Namtzen to follow as they would.

The sun had finally sunk below the trees, but the last of the fading light still washed the sky with a brilliant gold. It would be gray within moments, but for the space of a heartbeat, the branches of the forest were etched black against it, each twig, each leaf distinct and beautiful.

Grey and von Namtzen stood watching it, both struck for an instant. Grey heard Stephan’s breath leave him in a sigh, as the light began to fail.

“This is my favorite time of the day,” Stephan said.

“Really? You do not find it melancholy?”

“No, not at all. Everything is quiet. I feel…alone.”

“Allein?”Grey asked, as von Namtzen had spoken in English. “Allein oder einsam?”Alone, meaning “lonely,” or “in peace”—solitary?

“Allein. In Ruhe,”von Namtzen answered, smiling a little. “I am busy always in the daylight, and in the evening, there are the people—official banquets, entertainments. But no one wishes me to do anything while the light falls. You like this?” He nodded at the prospect before them. They had emerged from the forest at the crest of a small hill, not far from the lodge. Waldesruh and its stable lay a little below them, their solid lines gone soft with twilight, so that the lodge seemed about to vanish into the earth and be covered over by the trees, flowing dark and silent down from the slope behind it.

Grey might have found the thought that everything might vanish and they be left alone to face night in the forest somewhat daunting. At the moment, though, he recognized Stephan’s wistfulness, and shared it. To be quite alone, to lay one’s burdens at the feet of the trees, and lose them—if only for a moment—in the deepening shadows there.

“Ja,”he said. “Wundersch ц n.”Yes, he had a liking.

They stood for several minutes then, not speaking. Watching the last trace of color fade from the sky, the lacework of the branches begin to blur and merge with the dark as night crept ineluctably upward from the earth.

“So,” von Namtzen said after a time, quite casually. “What is it?”

Grey took a deep breath of the forest’s cool green air and explained the matter as concisely as he could.

“Oh, how most distressing to your family! My dear fellow, I am so sorry.” Von Namtzen’s voice was full of sympathy. “What will happen to him, do you suppose?”

“I don’t know. He will be tried, at a court-martial. And almost certainly will be found guilty. But the sentence…” His voice died away. The memory of Otway being dragged, screaming, to the gallows was one that haunted Grey daily, but he felt superstitiously that to speak of the possibility was to invoke it. “I don’t know,” he said again.

“He will be found guilty,” von Namtzen repeated, frowning. “There were witnesses, I understand, besides Captain Hauptmann?”

“There were. An officer named Custis—and myself.”

Von Namtzen stopped dead, and dropped the sack containing the badger, in order to grip Grey by the arm.

“Grosser Gott!”

“Yes, I believe that sums up the matter very well.”

“They will make you speak—testify—to it?”

“Unless I manage to be killed before he is court-martialed, yes.”

Von Namtzen made a sound of deep consternation, shaking his head.

“What will you do?” he asked, after a bit.

“Live in the moment,” Grey said, nodding at the bloodstained bag. “And hope that when my own moment comes, I, too, will walk out of the earth and see the sky again.”

Von Namtzen didn’t quite laugh, but snorted through his nose, and led the way through a stand of flowering trees that scattered tiny white petals down on them like snow.

“I was most pleased, of course, to hear that your brother’s regiment would be attached to Duke Ferdinand’s troops,” he said, in an apparent attempt at casual conversation. “Not only for their valuable assistance, but because I hoped to have the chance of resuming our friendship.”

“I, too,” Grey said honestly. “I am only sorry that we cannot meet solely as friends, free of such unpleasant considerations as those I have brought you.”

Von Namtzen gave a lopsided shrug.

“We are soldiers,” he said simply. “We will never be free of such things. And it is part of our friendship, is it not?”

Grey was not sure whether he meant their shared profession, or their shared involvement in recurrent unpleasantness, but it was true, in either case, and he laughed ruefully.

“Still,” von Namtzen went on, knitting his heavy brows, “it is most unfortunate.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Not only the…the occurrence.” Von Namtzen made a brief gesture with his missing arm, which unbalanced him, so that he stumbled, but recovered with a muttered “Scheisse!”

“No,” he resumed. “It is unfortunate that it involved both English and Prussian troops. Had it been our men, and only our own officers who witnessed the crime, it could have been dealt with…more quietly.”

Grey glanced at him. This feature of the situation had not escaped him. The English command could not be seen to deal lightly with such a matter, for fear of losing standing with their German allies. He hadn’t thought consciously about the other side, but plainly the same must be true for the Germans.

“Yes. Would you have done—what you did—had there not been the prospect of a notorious trial and public execution?”

“Killed my lieutenant?” Von Namtzen would not accept any softening of reality. “I do not know. Had the men both been German, it is possible that they would simply have been discharged from the army, perhaps imprisoned for a time, perhaps banished. I think there would have been no trial.”

“So it was my presence, in part, that led to this. You have my great regrets.” God only knew how great.

Von Namtzen turned his head then, and gave him a smile of surprising sweetness.

“I would not for one moment regret your presence, John, no matter what the circumstance.” He had never before used Grey’s Christian name without his title, though Grey had often invited him to do so. He spoke it now with a touching shyness, as though not sure he was entitled to such familiarity.

Von Namtzen coughed, as though embarrassed by this declaration, and hastened to cover it.

“Of course, there is no saying what might be done on any occasion. On the one hand, we—the army, that is to say—do not tolerate such perversions. The penalties are severe. On the other”—he glanced at his missing sleeve, and one side of his mouth lifted—“there is Friedrich.”

“Fried—what, the king?”

“Yes. You know the story?” von Namtzen asked.

“Which one?” Grey said dryly. “Such a man is always the focus of tales—and I suppose some might even be true.”

Von Namtzen laughed at that.

“This one is true,” he assured Grey. “My own father was present at the execution.”

“Execution?” Grey echoed, startled. “Whose?”

“Friedrich’s lover.” The Graf’s momentary laughter had left him, but he smiled crookedly. “When he was a young man, his father—the old king, you know?—obliged him to join the army, though he disliked it intensely. A horror of bloodshed. But he formed a deep attachment to another young soldier, and the two decided to flee the country together.”

“They were caught—of course,” Grey said, a sudden hollow opening behind his breastbone.

“Of course.” Stephan nodded. “They were brought back, both charged with desertion and treason, and the old king had Friedrich’s lover beheaded in the courtyard—Friedrich himself forced to watch from a balcony above. He fainted, my father said, even before the sword fell.”

Grey’s own face felt suddenly cold, his jaw prickling with sweat. He swallowed hard, forcing down a sense of dizziness.

“There was some question,” von Namtzen continued, matter-of-fact, “as to whether Friedrich might himself face the same fate, son or not. But in the end…”

“He bowed to the inevitable, and became not only a soldier, but a great soldier.”

Von Namtzen snorted.

“No, but he did—after spending a year in prison—agree to be married. He ignored his wife; he still does. And there are no children,” he added disapprovingly. “But there she is.” He shrugged.

“His father gave him the chateau at Rheinsberg, and he spent many years there, up to his ears in musicians and actors, but then”—he shrugged again—“the old king died.”

And Friedrich, suddenly aware that his inheritance consisted of several tasty chunks of disconnected and vulnerable land, most of them being eyed by the Habsburgs of Austria, had hastily become a soldier. Whereupon he had united his territories, stolen Silesia from the Austrians, and two years before, decided to invade Saxony for good measure, thus making enemies not only of the Austrians and Saxony, but of Russia, Sweden, andthe French.

“And here we all are,” von Namtzen concluded.

“Not a gentleman given to half measures.”

“No, he is not. Nor is he a fool. Whatever the nature of his affections now, they remain private.” Stephan spoke rather grimly, then shook his head, like a dog flinging off water. “Come, it grows soon dark.”

It wouldbe dark soon; already, the air between the trees had thickened, the forest drawing in upon itself. The path before them was still visible, but as they plunged back into the trees, the ground under their feet seemed insubstantial, rocks and tussocks nearly invisible, but unexpectedly solid.

The effort of walking without stumbling kept them from conversation, leaving Grey to reflect on the story of the King of Prussia and his lover—and the irony that the latter had been executed not for crimes of the flesh or seduction of his prince, but for treason. While Captain Bates…He felt as though those sardonic eyes watched him from the forest, and hurried on, feeling darkness at his heels.

Nor was he the only one. He could sense von Namtzen’s disquiet; see it, in the awkward shifting of his broad shoulders, tensed as though fearing some pursuit.

In a few moments, they reached the edge of the clearing in which the lodge stood, and emerged with a shared sense of relief into a soft haze of lavender, a pool of light still cupped between the forest’s hands.

They paused for an instant, taking their bearings. Von Namtzen turned toward the lodge, but Grey stopped him with a hand upon his arm.

“Show me, Stephan,” he said suddenly, surprising them both.

Von Namtzen’s face went blank.

“Deinen Arm,”Grey said, as though this were quite logical.

Stephan looked at him for a moment with no expression whatever, then away. Grey was already berating himself for clumsiness, but then Stephan’s one hand reached for the pin that held the loose sleeve to the breast of his coat.

He shed the coat without difficulty, still not looking at Grey, but then paused, his hand on the white linen of his neckcloth.

“Hilf mir,”he said softly.

Grey stepped close, and reached behind von Namtzen’s head with both his own hands, fumbling a little with the fastening. Stephan’s skin was very warm, the neckcloth damp. It came loose suddenly and he dropped it on the ground.

“I would not make a good valet,” he said, trying to make a joke of it as he bent to pick the cloth up. From the corner of his eye, he saw Stephan’s throat, long and powerful, a reddish mark across it from the cloth. Saw him swallow, and knew quite suddenly what to do.

He took Stephan’s shirt off gently, with no further fumblings. He was ready for the sight of the arm, not shocked, though the thought of the solid forearm, the kind, broad hand now gone, made him sad. The stump was clean, cut just above the elbow; the scars well-knitted, though still an angry red.

Stephan’s muscles tensed instantly when Grey touched him, and Grey whistled softly through his teeth, as though Stephan were a nervous horse, making the German snort a little, the sound not quite a laugh. Grey ran a soothing hand down the slope of von Namtzen’s shoulder, his thumb tracing the groove between the muscles of the upper arm.

Von Namtzen had the most beautiful skin, he thought. No more than a sprinkling of dark gold hairs across his breast. Poreless and smooth, with a dusk that drew both eye and hand.

You are like porcelain,he thought, but didn’t say it. And damned near as breakable, aren’t you?

He lifted the unresisting arm, and lightly kissed the end of the stump.

“Schon gut,”he said.

Saw Stephan’s belly muscles spring out tight against the skin. The evening air was mild, but he could smell von Namtzen’s sudden sweat, salt and musk, and his own body tightened, too, from scalp to knees. But this was not the time or place—nor the man. To allow Stephan to acknowledge his own desire now would destroy him—and to be the agent of such destruction would shatter Grey himself; he had no illusions regarding his own fragility.

There was one thing, perhaps, that he might give Stephan; it might not help—it hadn’t helped Percy—but it was what he had.

“I love you, brother,” he said, straightening and looking Stephan in the eyes. “So you will stop trying to kill yourself, ja?”

He picked up the shirt and rolled it up in his hands, so that it went neatly over von Namtzen’s head. Helped Stephan to slide his arms into the sleeves, and bent for the coat.

“I think…you would be a very good valet.” Von Namtzen blurted it, then blushed so deeply that it was visible, even in the fading light. “ Entschuldigung!I—I do not mean to insult you.”

“I think it a great compliment,” Grey assured him gravely. “I am hungry—shall we go home to dinner now?”

Chapter 27

The Honorable Thing

Grey found himself steadier in mind upon his return from von Namtzen’s lodge, and met all inquiries and expressions of sympathy with a remote, impeccable courtesy that kept the questioners—as well as his own feelings—at a safe remove. This technique, however, was ineffective with Hal.

It was several days after his return before he saw his brother, Hal having been with Duke Ferdinand. Hal came unannounced to his tent in the evening after supper, sitting down without invitation across the table from Grey, who was writing orders.

“Have you got any brandy?” Hal asked without preamble.

Grey reached beneath the table without comment and lifted the jug of very good brandy von Namtzen had sent with him—half empty now, but still plenty left.

Hal nodded thanks, lifted the jug in both hands and drank, then set it down, and shuddered slightly. He leaned his elbows on the table and put his face in his hands, rubbing slowly at the scalp beneath his wig. Finally, he looked up, his eyes bloodshot with travel and lined with a weariness that went far beyond mere bodily fatigue.

“Have you seen Wainwright since you came back?”

Grey shook his head, wordless. He knew where Percy was; a small country gaol in a nearby village. He had made the minimal inquiries necessary to assure that Percy was decently fed, and beyond that, had tried not to think of him. With a marked lack of success, but still, he tried.

“I suppose the news has spread,” he said. His own voice was hoarse with disuse; he hadn’t spoken to anyone in hours, and he cleared his throat. “Does the duke know?”

Hal grimaced, and took another drink. “Everyone knows,though the matter hasn’t been brought up officially as yet.”

“I suppose there will be a court-martial.”

“The general feeling among the high command is that it would be much better if there wasn’t.”

He stared at Hal.

“What the devil do you mean by that?”

Hal rubbed a hand over his face.

“If he were a common soldier, it wouldn’t matter,” he said, voice muffled. Then he took his hand away, shaking his head. “Court-martial him and hang or imprison him and be done with it. But he’s not. He’s a bloody member of the family. It can’t be done discreetly.”

Grey was beginning to have an unpleasant feeling under his breastbone.

“And what do they think canbe done…discreetly? Try him and discharge him for some other reason?”

“No.” Hal’s voice was colorless. “That might be done if no one really knew what had happened. But the circumstances…” He gulped brandy, coughed, and kept coughing, going red in the face.

“‘Unfortunate,’” he said hoarsely. “That’s what Brunswick kept saying, in that precise sort of way he has. ‘Most unfortunate.’”

Ferdinand was more precariously placed than King Friedrich. Friedrich was absolute master of his own army; Ferdinand commanded a number of loosely allied contingents, and was answerable to a number of princes for the troops they had supplied him.

“Some of these princes are strict Lutherans, and inclined to a rather…rigid…view of such matters. Ferdinand feels that he can’t risk alienating them; not for oursake,” he added, rather bitterly.