“Dominic? No. At least, not until lately.”
“When you say lately, what exactly do you mean?”
Again there was that brief consensus taking. “The last month?” said Jefferies. “Maybe more.”
“Do you know what was making him nervous?”
The question was met with a heavy silence. After a moment Burlington cleared his throat and said, “He thought someone was following him. Watching him.”
“Did he ever see anyone?”
“No. No one. It was just a feeling he had. He was spooked. It’s why we all laughed at him. God help us. We laughed at him.”
Riding his neat little black Arab, Sebastian took the road south from London toward Merton Abbey, following in reverse the route Dominic Stanton would have taken the night before.
The afternoon was hot, the sun a golden blaze of late-summer glory. By now the traces of last night’s rain had been reduced to an occasional patch of mud drying quickly in the heat. Insects whined; the ripe, uncut fields of wheat and rye stood motionless, unstirred by any breeze. When a stand of oaks and chestnuts near the base of a hill closed around him, Sebastian welcomed the shade.
The road had proved to be little traveled. Sebastian suspected that even with yesterday’s mill, by the time Dominic Stanton left the White Monk on the outskirts of Merton Abbey, the surge of spectators returning to London would have already passed. Sebastian might welcome the coolness of this shady wood, but for a young man riding at dusk, alone and frightened by an unseen menace, the shadowy copse must have seemed anything but pleasant.
Sebastian slowed his horse to a walk.
The ground here fell away to the east, deep into a rocky gulley where the trees grew close and tangled with vines. As Sebastian scanned the sides of the track, he noticed his mare’s ears flick forward and back. Tossing her head, she whinnied softly. Sebastian reined in and listened. From the depths of the gully came a soft answering nicker.
He found the gray deep in the gully, her trailing reins caught fast in a thicket. Dismounting, he approached her with softly crooned words. “Easy there, girl. Easy.”
She quivered a moment, her eyes wide, then hung her head. He stroked her neck and let her nuzzle his chest. Slowly, looking for traces of blood, he ran his hand over the saddle leather. His hand came away clean.
“What happened, girl? Hmmm? Do you know?”
He checked her hocks and hooves, but she seemed sound. Then, skimming his fingers along the girth, he found the place where a sharp knife had sliced through the strap. Not enough to cut it completely, but enough that it would eventually work itself loose and a rider would feel his saddle begin to slip.
Leading the gray, Sebastian followed the faint trail of broken branches and bruised leaves back up to the road above. Last night’s rain coupled with the day’s traffic had obscured any trace that might have been left on the roadway itself. But at the edge beneath the trees, he found a place where the gray had trampled the earth with nervous sidling feet and, beyond that, tracks left by a two-wheeled carriage or cart that had pulled over to the soft verge. Whether the tracks had been laid down last night or at some other time, he had no way of knowing.
He spent the next fifteen minutes walking the area, looking for any other indications of what might have happened there last night. He was about to give up when a flash of white caught his eye. Reaching down into a tangle of long grass, he found himself holding a small porcelain vial decorated with a blue-and-white flower pattern.
He’d seen such vials before. They were imported by the thousands from China and the Far East. Raising the vial to his nostrils, he sniffed.
And caught the familiar pungent scent of opium.
Leading Dominic Stanton’s gray mare, Sebastian arrived at the White Monk in Merton Abbey to discover that Sir Henry Lovejoy’s constables had already done a commendable job of setting up the backs of every one of the White Monk’s ostlers and serving maids.
Located on the outskirts of town, the White Monk was a rambling, half-timbered country inn with an old- fashioned cobbled yard and busy stables. “We musta ’ad a ’undred or more carriages and gigs through ’ere yesterday after the fight,” said the head ostler, fixing Sebastian with a malevolent glare. “Which one you askin’ about?”
Sebastian bounced a half crown in his palm. “The one whose driver was behaving in some way out of the ordinary.”
The ostler eyed the coin with undisguised longing. He was a thin, wiry man in his late fifties with gray stubble shadowing his cheeks and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed when he swallowed. “Didn’t see that one.”
Sebastian tossed the coin into the air and caught it. “Do you recall which ostler took care of this gray?”
“Aye. That were me.”
“Really? Did you notice anything amiss with the saddle?”
“Course not. Why you ask?”
“Look at it now.”
The ostler cast Sebastian a quizzing glance, then went to run an expert’s hand over the rig. At the sight of the cinch, he froze. He fingered the neatly sliced edge, his back held rigid, then swung slowly to face Sebastian.
“You think I did this?”
“No. I think you want this half crown. Who really took care of the mare?”
The ostler hesitated, his chest rising with his labored breathing. At last he said, “It were me. But I swear to you, there weren’t nothin’ wrong with the cinch when I brung this horse to the young gentleman.”
“At the time Mr. Stanton called for his mare, was there a crowd in the yard?”
“Aye. More than a few. Why?”
“Do you think one of them could have sliced the cinch?”
The ostler squinted off across the cobbled yard to where a pair of geese was coming in to land on the holding pond, the rich light of the evening sun turning their outstretched white wings to gold. “I suppose it’s possible. But I didn’t see nothin’.”
“Did you notice exactly who was in the yard at the time?”
“No.” He shook his head with what looked like genuine regret. “Not that I recall.”
The geese filled the air with their plaintive calls. “You’ve been most helpful,” said Sebastian, pressing the coin into the ostler’s palm. “Thank you.”
Sebastian spent the next hour drinking a couple of pints of dark ale in the White Monk’s public room. Tonight, the patrons were all locals. But yesterday’s fight had brought a crowd of young men such as Dominic Stanton and his friends. Sebastian talked to a farmer with ruddy cheeks and a bulbous nose who remembered the young gentlemen clearly.
“I’ve a son about their age myself,” said the farmer, wiping the foam from his upper lip with the back of one hand. “Those lads were in high spirits, to be sure. But no harm in that. A man’s only young once, I always say.”
“They didn’t quarrel with anyone?” Sebastian asked.
“Not that I saw.”
Sebastian spent the next hour buying drinks and talking to the inn’s various patrons. But they all told him the same tale.
Calling for his horse, he checked the cinch, then rode back to London, Dominic Stanton’s pretty little gray trotting contentedly behind him.
