"No, unless some of my boyhood friends have gone there. One of our local squires went there to live when I was a boy, but I can't recall his name. Then there was a bigwig from the next shire who spent most of his time in London—I saw him at Bodwin, and his being a captain in the Royal Navy impressed me greatly. It's just possible you know him. His name was Tarlton."
The blood did not rush to my head; the floor stayed solid under my feet; my voice sounded a little strained, but not enough to attract the governor's attention; I doubted if there was any visible change in my face.
"I don't believe I recall him," he answered after a polite, thoughtful pause.
"Perhaps he's long passed to his reward."
"By any chance do you mean Lord Tarlton?"
"I think not. This gentleman might have been a knight—"
"Lord Tarlton was a knight before being made a baron-Sir Godwine Tarlton was his name then—and now I think of it, he had a long career in the Navy. Why, I admire him intensely. He was the only gentleman of high position who refused to meet that upstart, Beau Brummell. The Prince of Wales was put out with him for years, but came to realize he was right, and when he broke with Beau, what did he do but elevate Tarlton to the peerage! At least that was the story—quite in keeping with our Regent's character—although of course Tarlton's service against the Americans, in that little ruckus of 1812, was the official excuse."
"Is he as rich and prominent as the country people thought?"
"One of the first gentlemen of London. A great sportsman, he wears his sixty years like a younker."
I had known it all the time. My soul had confided there was no need to ask. He looked, not like an eagle, but like a phoenix, that ever rises laughing from the fire.
"You have a highly individual countenance, Mr. Blackburn," Lord Somerset remarked.
"That's a mild way to put it."
"Ordinarily I am good at reading faces. It's part of my training as a servant of the king. I must confess that yours baffles me. Some expression passed across it a moment ago, but again it's like—what shall I say—"
"Please say what comes to your mind. It won't offend me, you may be sure."
"Flint, with one gouge of a chisel across the left cheek. But 'tis better that, than to look like every Tom, Dick, and Harry. In some pursuits it might be an advantage."
"That of a professional pugilist, perhaps."
Lord Somerset laughed nervously. "I see you're plain-spoken and your feet are on the ground. I'm sure you'll get on well in the sporting world of London. As to Lord Tarlton, I could give you a letter to him, but being so very English, he's a bit aloof."
"I won't take any letters, thank you kindly. Since I'm humbly born, I'd better make my own way."
"Now I think of it, Tarlton and you might get on famously. Mark you, he's a great blood. Although his title, Baron Tarlton of Grindstone, is quite new, his lineage is ancient. But he conforms to fashion as much as he pleases, and no more. He flaunts his bastard son in the best society. To put it in a nutshell, he lives by his own law."
Now that Lord Somerset had mentioned his son, there was no reason that I couldn't speak of his daughter. But I did not.
"Grindstone, did you say? That's an odd designation."
"It was his own choice, largely speaking. It is often so with newly created peers—or else the king suggests some appellation out of sentiment. As I remember it, Grindstone is an island near North America that was the scene of a sea battle between his ship and an American vessel during the Rebellion."
"That's very interesting. And since you've given me so much of your time—"
"There's one other matter I wish to mention. If I send a secretary to your lodgings, will you draw a map for him showing the position of the mine that produced your gold? His Majesty's government would like to know, in view of future developments."
"Sir, it was in Southern Nubia, a country that's been mined over for thousands of years. My gold was a small deposit overlooked by earlier seekers, and there's no use to search any further."
His face flushed with anger, but as he looked upon my face, he did not speak. A moment later he gave me a cold but not stinted bow.
It might be I could now explain the deeply troubled satisfaction I had found myself taking in my gaunt form and stony visage, but the explanation appalled me as much as the fact itself. Perhaps I perceived at last it could be used as a weapon against my enemies. Along with my sword of gold, it might help my cause.
But when the need of my heart came round, what would I do for friends?
CHAPTER 24
In Remembrance
My impulse and temptation was to keep Jim near me all the time. I felt a distinct loss when we were out of sound of each other's voices; when he had been away, my heart lightened to hear his step. So two ghosts might feel in a throng of living—or two of the quick cast by shipwreck on an island of the dead. The fact remained that in the immediate future he had more important work to do than being my counselor and servant.
When dealing with English-speaking people he was at a disadvantage because of his color and dialect. The fact remained that he had come far from the simple man whom I had known aboard the Vindictive; the ordeal in Africa had developed his resources, his mind had broadened, his character had strengthened, and the struggle to survive had taught him subtlety and cunning. He spoke the Kalam wati—the Arabic vernacular—fluently. In Berber dress he would attract no undue attention about the docks of Malta. The Arab-speaking emigrants and migrants would probably suspect that he was not of the Faithful; but he could catch many a fish with a silver hook.
I was a marked man, and he was not. This was another and clinching reason why he, not I, must undertake a necessary mission in Malta. And it was in view of parting with him at Lisbon for several months at least that the idea came to me to engage Alan as a general secretary and agent. He knew London well, had had a good deal of experience in English upper-class society, possessed an alert, keen, although not powerful, mind, and seemed to me honest and capable of such loyalties as I would require of him.
"Would you care to tell me about the scrape you got in?" I asked him one evening in my quarters. "As you said to me when you first questioned me, you might find it to your advantage."
"I'd rather someone else told you. You might get a truer account."
"I'll take a chance on yours."
"I had a commission in an old and rather swagger rifle regiment. I hated the whole business, and especially fighting. A good many people say I was afraid to fight, and it might very well be true. Especially I hated fighting the Americans in 1812. My grandpa, the first Lord Ridgeley, was born in Virginia, and he had stood with Chatham and Wilkes and Barre in '76 in the Colonies' defense. Still, that may have been only my excuse to get out of a dirty job."
Alan paused, as if to ask me whether to go on. I nodded.
"Ever since we lost the War of the Revolution, we've pretended we didn't lose it and those great states are still our plantations and the Americans are a pack of rebel dogs. I doubt if we—the English Upper-class, I mean, to which I was born—will ever get the notion clean out of our heads. Yet by bad luck my regiment was under General Ross in the raid up the Patuxent River on Washington. By the worst of luck, I was ordered to command a detail to set fires. I refused and was court-martialed for disobedience and cowardice. The cowardice charge didn't stick, but I was cashiered for the other, and might have been shot if the burning of the capital hadn't begun to smell bad clear across Europe. The London bucks wanted me hanged for a traitor. I was expelled from all my clubs and my old schoolfellows erased my name from their rolls. I could have helped Napoleon escape from Elba without incurring such wrath from my own kind."