But Badger’s tingling fingers seemed to have misled him after all, for that first large pike was the only one yielded up by the lake. The hooks rebaited and the lines replaced, Badger took up the oars and, keeping to the tree-lined shore, rowed downstream toward the dam and the sluicegate, where the trammel net lay. If all else failed, the net, well hidden in the weeds, would certainly fill the basket in the bottom of his boat with tench and roach and perch, which would do as well among the poor as pike. And there was just time to clear it out before the storm broke. Already the rain was coming harder, and he was glad for the mackintosh.
In a few moments, he had reached the edge of the shallower, weed-filled stretch where the trammel net was staked. He shipped the oars, stood up in the boat, and took up the twelve-foot wooden pole that he used to propel the rowboat through the weeds. When he reached the net, which was held up by large flat corks, he laid the pole aside and began to haul it in.
But the net was extraordinarily heavy in his hands, either with the weight of a tremendous lot of fish, or having snagged something under the surface of the water, so that the more he pulled, the more difficult pulling became. Finally, he let it go and began to pole along the length of it, looking (as he now thought) for the snag and thinking that he should have to light the bull’s-eye lantern he had brought along with him, to see how to work the net free, if he could without tearing it. And if he could not, he should have to come back tomorrow night, when the weather was more kindly.
A few yards along, he saw where the net was sagging, weighted by something beneath the water. Cursing under his breath, Badger took the net in both his hands and pulled up on it with great effort. At that moment, a jagged flash of lightning lit the sky, and he saw that the net was not snagged on something, but that something large and inert was caught in it-and not a fish, either, for the net was designed to hold fish alive and wriggling. It might be a submerged tree branch, except that the foresters kept the Park trees so neatly groomed that this did not seem likely. Bent double, breathing hard, Badger hauled, and stopped, and peered down into the water. And then hauled again, harder and faster and with a mounting panic, as he realized that the large, inert thing that was caught and held in the net was a human body.
There was another flash of lightning and a thudding, rolling rumble of thunder. As the horrible thing rose toward him out of the depths, the dead flesh gleaming whitely in the dark water like the bloated belly of a dead carp, the mass of long, loose reddish hair floating like trailing weed, Badger saw to his horror that it was a woman, and that she had not died by drowning. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear, and the pike had been at her face.
At that moment, the heavens opened and the rain came crashing down.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“That’s the way we all begin,” said Tom Platt. “The boys they make believe all the time till they’ve cheated ’emselves into bein’ men, an’ so till they die-pretendin’ and pretendin’.”
After dinner upstairs was finished, Ned had helped Alfred load the last dishes on the carts and push them from the dining room back to the kitchen, a distance that seemed like a dozen miles. When people built such bloody great houses, they obviously didn’t have the efficiency of their service in mind or the labor of their servants, and they couldn’t much care about hot food, either. When Alfred said that the kitchen was so far away because aristocrats hated the smell of food cooking almost as much as the look of a bare working hand, Ned could only laugh and be at least temporarily glad that he was neither aristocrat nor servant.
In fact, Ned was something in between, for although his father was descended from the Irish aristocracy, the connection couldn’t be claimed. Ned had discovered that his father-his real name was Thomas Chapman, not Thomas Lawrence-was not married to his mother, Sarah Junner, whom he had met when she became a servant in the Chapman household. For Sarah’s sake, Thomas had abandoned his wife and four young daughters in Ireland, removing himself, his mistress, and their sons to Wales, then to France, and finally to Oxford. There, Thomas and Sarah took the surname Lawrence and held themselves out as man and wife, concealing the illegitimacy of their five sons. Ned might be privately comforted by his aristocratic ancestry, but his birth disbarred him from assuming his rightful place as a gentleman. It was an uneasy knowledge that this current bit of work brought to the forefront of his mind.
Alfred had duty in the main hallway upstairs, where he would stay at his station until time to begin his locking-up rounds at midnight. He paused beside Ned in the hallway and bent close to his ear to say, with a passionate urgency, “Remember, lad, I’m hoping for some news of Kitty.”
This remark took Ned aback briefly, until he remembered that he had told Alfred he would be meeting Bulls-eye that night-a suggestion that had been scotched by Lord Sheridan. He would have to come up with some story or another to satisfy Alfred. But short of a plan for the theft or word from the absent Kitty, he didn’t know what that would be.
The other servants went off to their beds as soon as their evening work was done, but Ned was rather at loose ends. He could not go to bed in the room he shared with Alfred, since the footman thought he was meeting Bulls-eye in Woodstock; if Alfred should stop by his room and find Ned there, the truth would come to light. For the same reason, Ned did not dare to stay in the servants’ hall, where coals still burned in the fireplace, or anywhere else Alfred might conceivably appear. On another night, he would have gone outdoors for a walk, but thunder was growling and lightning flashing, and a storm had been in progress for some time.
So Ned took himself off to the lamp-and-candle room, where the brass candlesticks were cleaned, the lamp chimneys polished, and all the lighting supplies and spare lamps stored. He shut and locked the door, lit several candles for good light, took a small book out of his jacket pocket, and sat on the floor with his back to the wall to finish reading Mr. Kipling’s Captains Courageous, which he had brought with him from home.
Engrossed, he finished the book in an hour. He stood up and stretched, feeling restlessly that perhaps he was being a bit too cautious. After all, Alfred was on duty in the great hall upstairs, and it wasn’t very likely that he would appear downstairs, was it? He could put the time to better use by exploring the labyrinth of hallways and corridors below-stairs. A real spy, he reminded himself, would undoubtedly use the opportunity to look around, reconnoiter, get the lay of the land. Anyway, he was hungry. And if memory served him correctly, he had seen one of the kitchen maids put a loaf of bread and some cheese into the corner cupboard.
So he took one of the candles and set off cautiously along the deserted back passage, making his way gingerly through the shadows cast by the flickering candle, feeling more and more like a spy. In the cavernous kitchen, the fire in the great iron range was banked for the night and the pans and dishes laid out in readiness for cooking breakfast. It took only a moment to ascertain that, indeed, the loaf and cheese were still in the corner cupboard and to cut off a sizable hunk of each, which he stowed in his jacket pocket.