Lying there immobile for the rest of the day seemed an excellent plan, but Mac had other ideas. He was throwing open curtains and welcoming the day in a rather loud voice.
“I’ve brought you some liniment, sir. I made it myself. It should do the trick for those sore muscles.”
I pushed myself into an upright position. There was a fresh cup of coffee next to an unlabeled blue bottle. I pulled the cup and saucer off the desk. They felt as heavy as a bucket of water, and I nearly dropped them.
“It will be warm today, I think. Your train leaves the station in about ninety minutes.”
“Thank you, Mac,” I said, hobbling to the window. It was nearly six. I watched the activity in the garden in my nightshirt while drinking the coffee. There were over half a dozen Chinese men toiling with rakes and hoes and clippers.
“Shall I set out your clothes?” Mac asked solicitously. Ordinarily I thought him as solicitous as a landlord on rent day. He was enjoying seeing me in pain.
“I’ll get my own clothes, thank you,” I said.
In the four days since the bombing, the only success I could see in this case was the progress of Barker’s beard. With the thick stubble on his chin, he looked less the successful London detective and more the convict or pirate.
“That you, lad?” Barker called from his rooftop aerie as soon as I closed the door to my room behind me. He may have had no ear for music, but his hearing was keen enough. I climbed the stairs and found him, as usual, sitting in front of his fireplace, though the grate was empty and all the dormer windows open to the warm June sun.
“How did your training go last night?” he asked. He was feeding a saucer full of tea to Harm. Barker doted on that dog, who was living a life of idle leisure, while I was being sent hither and yon and being trained in lethal arts by foreign masters.
“Good, sir, but I strained my arms a little. They are sore this morning.”
“Shake them out,” he said. “Lift the Indian clubs for five minutes before you leave.”
Harm had finished the tea and was panting a little in the warm room, but for a moment, I swore that the dog was laughing at me.
“Yes, sir. How was your errand yesterday?”
“Er … it was fine, lad,” Barker said, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Learn anything new?”
“My errand did not involve the case,” he answered a trifle frostily. “Dummolard had just put on coffee, when I was downstairs a few minutes ago. You mustn’t forget your breakfast and your Indian clubs before you leave.”
Dummolard had taken over his kitchen again. He was smoking one of his short French cigarettes and transferring the contents of a pan into a waiting piecrust.
“What are you making?” I asked, pouring myself a cup of coffee. “It smells wonderful.”
“Quiche Lorraine. I shudder to think what refuse the two of you shall live on while you are gone.”
I looked over to the counter, where there were three more pie shells waiting for fillings.
“You are cooking for the restaurant here?” I asked.
“Non,” Etienne replied. “Mon capitaine has given me orders. I am to fatten him up. He wishes to gain at least half a stone by the end of the week. Meat pies, quiches, venison stews. You may be blown to bits next week, but for now, you shall eat like kings.”
I couldn’t help but feel there was a more tactful way of putting that.
9
The days ran together after that. Tuesday through Friday were all of a pattern: exercise in the morning, to counteract the soreness of my arms; the short trip to Aldershot during which time I read the books Barker had given me; training with van Rhyn in the making of explosives; the journey home; a heavy meal, watching my employer stuff food into his mouth as if his life depended on it while I wondered if it did; combative training with Maitre Vigny, during which I was thumped so often I began to feel like a drum; my much anticipated bath, accompanied by Epsom salts for the pain; then, blessed slumber.
The books were instructive. Carleton’s treatise on the Irish poor was about the rise of the factions and how stick fighting came to be the natural defense of Ireland. At its heyday in the early part of the century, whole villages used to go at each other with sticks and rocks, the way one parish will challenge another now to a cricket match. Apparently, they’d match blow for blow until sundown, when one town was declared the victor. The women pitched into the fight along with the men; and in fact, in Irish culture, they were considered equal to men.
The other book was even worse. It was the story of a group of Irish coal miners in the United States during the 1870s, who had banded together to form a union against the mine owners. The Molly Maguires had carried out assassinations, bullied its own members to keep them in line, and dynamited mine shafts and buildings. The mine owners had hired a Pinkerton agent to infiltrate the gang, and he had barely escaped with his life. Perhaps Barker thought the volume informative, but just then, it was a little too close to what we were about to do for my comfort. It was a relief to get back to the Irish legends when I was done. Cu Chulainn fighting a hideous monster was far more remote than a secret society of Irish miners beating a man to death for turning traitor.
I had brought Herr van Rhyn his schnapps, and he had trained me in several types of bomb making as well as how to acquire materials, both legally and illegally. The German showed me some of the latest work he was doing-whether for the English army or not-and on the final day, we made nitroglycerin from scratch, which process gives the bomb maker a terrible headache. I wasn’t expecting a diploma or certificate when I was done, but van Rhyn seemed satisfied with what I had learned. At the Home Office’s request, he would be under double guard and his walks curtailed until our assignment was done in case the Irish should catch on that Barker was not who he said he was and try to see if van Rhyn was still sequestered here. Before I left, he extracted a promise that I would return someday with another bottle of schnapps and a detailed account of our adventure.
As for Pierre Vigny, I have never seen a man so obsessed. To him, the world began and ended with a stick. He had gathered every reference ever written about the use of the stick, from Aaron’s rod to Napoleon’s sword cane. He’d studied primitive cultures for their use of cudgels and tried to reconstruct their techniques. The fiercer the battle between us, the more his eyes lit up and a smile grew on his face. I don’t know how good I was, but I loved the feel of the wood and felt an affinity for it that I would never feel for a dagger or my revolver. On the final day, he finished up the lesson by informing me that I had gone from the beginning to the apprentice stage. Barker was present, and I think he looked on with some degree of satisfaction.
I was the one that was dissatisfied. With all these train rides and nightly instruction, I had been removed from the actual investigation. What of Davitt and Dunleavy, and that cool fellow from Ho’s, O’Muircheartaigh? Had anything turned up on Parnell, and how close were the Special Irish Branch to finding the secret faction? Just how much had Henry the Sponge soaked up, besides five pounds’ worth of alcohol? These were the questions I put to Barker when I returned to the office a little early from my final lesson with van Rhyn, my head thumping from the chemicals I’d inhaled during the nitroglycerin-making process.
“One at a time, lad. All your questions shall be answered,” Barker said, from the recesses of his leather chair, as placid as a Tibetan lama. He didn’t have the demeanor of a man about to set out on a dangerous mission. I still didn’t know where we were going. It could be Dublin or Manchester or Paris. The faction could even be concealed in London, for all I knew.