A Mummers' Play Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dreckham.
    “And will you stay?” he asked, refilling his glass yet again. How much did he need to drink to become indiscreet? And how much to escape into insensibility?
    “I suppose I must,” she replied, assessing his state.
    He looked back at her over the rim of his glass. “You don’t seem the type for servitude, you know. I detect an adventurer beneath the mousy disguise.”
    For a moment she thought he’d caught her out, but then realized it was merely an honest observation. It showed again that alarming shrewdness, however. “I have little choice, your grace.”
    “Ah ha! You slipped up. I think I’ll make you pay a forfeit for each ‘your grace.’” He dug in his pocket, pulled out a sixpence, and placed it carefully on the table. “I’ll mark each one with a coin.”
    “Nonsense.” He was right. Drink turned him silly. It was time to pump him before he drained the decanter and fell asleep. “Now you should tell me about your family, Colonel.”
    Yes, Colonel suited him. He still had the physical and mental effectiveness of a good officer, even dressed in the height of fashion and blurred by drink. She had the strange thought that he, too, was in disguise.
    Of course he was. Beneath it all he was a foul traitor.
    “My family,” he repeated. “As ordinary as yours, really. My father was the grandson of the third duke, so he had no title, but he married well. Which means, he married money. He kept busy and out of the house as a member of parliament, even a minister now and then. Not a bad fellow, but he died when I was twelve, which left me in the clutches of my mother.”
    “She was cruel?”
    He laughed dryly. “Not unless it’s cruel to bore someone to death. She’s an amazingly stupid woman who loves to talk but has nothing to say that isn’t petty or malicious. She could find a bad side to a haloed angel. Mostly I could avoid her, though, which is more than can be said for my poor sisters. No wonder they all married young. All except Mary, who’s a hopeless case.” He grimaced at her. “See what I mean about indiscretion? I’m sounding as malicious as she is, and boring you with personal matters, to boot.”
    “I’m not bored, Colonel.” Justina wanted to keep him talking at all cost, but she wished he wouldn’t go on about his family. She didn’t want him to be a human being with feelings and flaws, parents and siblings. She needed to see him as a black-hearted monster cackling over his ill-gotten gains.
    He toasted her. “How polite you are, Esme. Anyway,” he continued contemplatively, “my childhood was pretty good. My brother and I had great fun in the schoolroom and then at Westminster, after which I went into the army and he went into the navy.” He sipped from his glass. “He died without glory in a storm off Portsmouth four years ago.”
    For simple words, they carried a weight of stark grief that caught her breath. For a moment she wondered if this was his reason for sin, an excuse of sort. But no. Nothing could excuse treasonous murder, and why would the death of his brother turn him
toward
Napoleon?
    “I’m sorry,” was all she could say.
    He shrugged. “That’s war for you. Just one damned death after another, and most of them without glory.” After draining his glass, he added, “
I
didn’t die.”
    “That is clear.” Since his wits were clearly now all adrift, she pushed a little closer to matters that interested her. “You must have made good friends in the army.”
    “The best. They died, too. . . .”
    But then he sat straighter and made a visible effort to rise up out of gloom. “Forgive me—this is no talk for Christmas.”
    He looked at his glass and seemed surprised to find it empty again. Refilling it, he said, “We had the strangest Christmases in the army, you know. One year, we had nothing to eat but onions and stale bread, and nothing to drink but water. Another, we spent in a Spanish estancia drinking wonderful wines and feasting