I came into the dining room just as Barker was finishing his meal, a feast consisting of roasted capon, potatoes with chives, an asparagus salad, rolls and butter, and lemon curd tarts. Barker’s little teapot sat on the end of the table, and my own silver coffeepot had been swathed in a linen towel, to keep it hot.
“Ah, Thomas,” my employer said. “Tuck in, lad. How was your training?”
“Good, I think, sir,” I said, helping myself to a slice of breast from the platter. “You knew what you were about when you said van Rhyn was eccentric. He realizes the need to stick to the schedule, however. I believe I can bear it for a week.”
“Good. A week is all we’ll get, I’m afraid. You shall be interested to learn that I have eliminated one suspect today. It is Rossa. He is on a liner bound for New York at the moment. He’s booked for a lecture tour. Davitt is doing much the same thing in Scotland, but with the railways as fast and efficient as they are, he could be here in a matter of hours.”
Barker charged one of his little handleless cups with green gunpowder tea, and sipped while I ate. Just then, there was a knock at our door. Barker got up, as if he’d been expecting a visitor.
Maccabee answered it, but the Guv was no more than a few steps behind him. I thought it might be Inspector Poole, but when Barker raised his voice, I distinctly heard him say “Pierre.” I put down my fork and turned around, expecting our visitor to be shown into the sitting room behind me. Instead, they all seemed to vanish. I wiped my mouth and put my head out into the hallway. It was empty. My ear told me they hadn’t gone upstairs. I walked to the end of the hall, but the back door was bolted and the kitchen and library empty. That left only one place where they could be. I opened the narrow door that led to the basement and crept downstairs.
Barker was waiting impatiently in our basement room, skirting the mat where we often practiced our physical culture throws. He was alone. I was about to make some comment when the door to our lumber room opened and a man stepped out. He was about my own size but a great deal more muscular. His hair was brilliantined to a high gloss, and his black mustache waxed to points, as Le Caron’s had been. There was nothing absurd about this fellow, however, and he wore a leather coat much like a fencing master’s tunic.
“Pierre, Thomas Llewelyn, my assistant,” Barker said. “Thomas, Pierre Vigny, of the Swiss Army, attached to the military college at Aldershot.”
“At your service, sir,” the Swiss said with a sharp bow and a click of his heels.
“At yours,” I responded.
He looked me over speculatively, as if I were a horse he was considering buying. I cast an enquiring glance toward my employer.
“All the faction cells are trained in stick fighting, lad, and I thought it possible we might have to defend ourselves. I couldn’t find an Irishman willing to teach his art to us, but Pierre here is the leading expert in the next best thing, la canne.”
“Cyrus,” Vigny chided with a wounded air. “You make it sound as if what I teach is inferior. Besides, you know I have made many improvements in the art of la canne.”
“My apologies, maitre,” Barker said, bowing.
“Accepted. Leave this little fellow to me.”
“I do have something to attend to,” Barker said. “Thomas, I shall see you in the morning.”
“Go, go,” Vigny said impatiently, waving him away.
To think I should live to see the day when Barker was dismissed in his own home like a schoolboy. Whoever this little fellow was, he was big enough to have my employer defer to him. I watched the man I’d seen order half London about bow almost meekly and climb the stairs, leaving us alone. He didn’t even issue the grumble he generally did when he felt put upon.
“Mr. Llewelyn.” Vigny called me out of my reverie. “I do not think you realize how fortunate you are to have been chosen to learn my art. I have reserved it solely for the officers of the Swiss and the British armies. Only a friend of your employer’s caliber could have prevailed upon me to give you private instruction. It is unfortunate that we have less than a week for something which should logically take a lifetime to learn, but as I have trained your employer, I hope the two of you will continue to practice together. He tells me you have had some experience in fencing and singlestick.”
“Just a little in school, sir,” I told him. “I never progressed beyond foil.”
“That is good. I do not want you to bring bad fencing habits into our La Canne training. Take this,” he said, placing a slender walking stick in my hand. “What do you suppose this wood is?”
I turned the stick over in my hands and examined it. It was made of some sort of light-colored wood with a silver knob at one end. When I held it in both hands, it flexed. “Willow, perhaps?”
“Very close, sir. It is actually malacca from Malaysia. Very strong and flexible, as you can see. One can lean upon it and it remains rigid, but one flick with the ball and it curves around a sword or another stick enough to deliver a sound thrashing. Like so.” He took up a second, identical one, and began to swing it by the bare tip back and forth; it hummed like an angry bee. I thought I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that silver head, which was just what happened next.
“Ow!” I cried, holding a hand over my waistcoat pocket, where it felt as if he’d just broken one of my ribs.
“My apologies,” the little Swiss said. “It is necessary to feel the effects of the stick firsthand before one can learn. It stings, no? Rub your hand across the wound several times, swiftly. It will pass. From the day the earliest man picked up a fallen branch to defend himself, it has been his boon companion. A pity that it is only now, with the advent of the pistol, that Pierre Vigny was born, to turn stick fighting into an art.”
I let the last remark pass without comment, though inwardly I smiled at the conceit.
“But come, sir,” he continued. “Time is precious, and we have much to do. Take the position on the floor, as I do, with your feet at a ninety-degree angle. Step forward with your right foot, but keep most of your weight on the back one.”
By the end of the lesson two hours later, I had shed my jacket and was perspiring freely, unlike my leather-clad companion, who looked fresh enough to go on for several more hours. I’d had a long day at Aldershot and had been looking forward to a tranquil night, studying the books Barker had given me. Instead, I was remarking to myself that while I was well paid, as far as my employer was concerned, my time belonged to him. I would sleep well that night, provided he didn’t have yet another instructor waiting somewhere in the wings. What was left to teach me, Irish Gaelic?
Gradually, as my blocks got lower and weaker, Vigny saw that my arms were growing tired, not to mention sore. One of my hands was swollen from a sound whack, an ear was stinging, and I lost count of the number of blows he’d administered to my ribs or the top of my head, which would now interest a phrenologist.
“That is all for tonight.” Maitre Vigny stood in the formal stance, holding his stick vertically in front of his face. I did the same. He swished it forcefully down and away, and bowed.
“Your arms will be a trifle tired in the morning, Mr. Llewelyn. I suggest you do not coddle them. A few choice strokes with the cane in the air to improve the circulation will be beneficial. I give you the malacca stick from my personal collection as a present.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, surprised he’d give away such a beauty.
“Now, go take a hot bath in Cyrus’s bathhouse and go to bed…. Well, go! Don’t take all night.”
“Yes, sir.”
I awoke the next morning feeling like one of those bodies that had been unearthed from Pompeii: calcified, hard as stone. “A trifle tired” were not the words I would have used myself. I felt my exercises since becoming injured two months before had all been for naught. I was back to where I had started, unable to wave my arms.