He landed lightly on the boards of the walkway, the suspension ropes swaying dizzily as the structure took his weight. Then, with the massive stone bulk of the bridge now between him and the shooter, Sebastian sprinted for the riverbank, the walkway dancing and swaying beneath him.
The last arch of the bridge soared high above the tidal mudflats of the riverbed to butt into the rubble-strewn bank. He reached solid ground and paused for a moment, his senses straining to catch any movement, any sound. He scanned the dry, rutted slope of the bank, the matted half-dead weeds, the looming wreck of the ancient palace. He found himself remembering other nights in what seemed like a different lifetime, when death waited in each dark shadow and around every corner, when the rumble in the distance was artillery, not thunder, and the broken walls were Spanish villages blackened by the stains of fires not yet grown cold.
He drew a deep breath, suddenly aware of a powerful, raging thirst. He swallowed hard, his throat aching. Then, hunkering low, he darted across the open ground and ducked behind the broken fragment of the old palace wall.
Once, this section of the palace had overlooked the river, an elegant facade pierced by high, pointed windows and supported by massive buttresses. Now only the one wall remained, stretching eastward to end abruptly just above the small round tower where the shooter waited. Moving as quietly as possible, Sebastian crept through the ruins, painfully aware of the rustle of the long, dry weeds, of each broken stone that shifted beneath the soles of his boots. He passed the yawning opening of what had once been a massive medieval fireplace, an empty doorway, a spiral of steps going nowhere. Through the gaping windows he could see the massive works of the new bridge, the dark, sliding shimmer of the river, the low curve of the old guard tower's stone foundations.
Pausing at the jagged end of the wall, he slipped his flintlock pistol from his pocket and quietly eased back the hammers on both barrels. He could hear the distant clatter of the carriages on the Strand up above, feel the powerful thrumming of his own blood in the veins of his neck. He took a deep breath. Then he burst around the end of the broken wall, his pistol pointing down into the foundations of the guard tower, his finger already tightening on the first trigger.
But the tower was empty, the weeds within it matted and scattered with debris. The shooter had vanished into the night, leaving only the Baker rifle leaning mockingly against the worn, ancient stones.
Chapter 39
Sir Henry Lovejoy was not fond of heights.
He stood well back from the jagged edge of the bridge's last, half-constructed arch, his legs splayed wide against the powerful buffeting of the growing wind. He could see the river far below, the dark waters churning and frothing against the rough temporary coffer dams. The air was thick with the smell of the inrushing tide and the damp mudflats of the nearby bank and the coppery tang of freshly spilled blood.
`What did you say his name was?' Lovejoy asked, his gaze on the dead man sprawled in the lee of the bridge's half-built cornice.
Devlin stood beside him, his evening clothes torn and dusty and soaked dark with the dead man's blood. In one hand he gripped a Baker rifle, his fingers showing pale against the dark forestock.
`Arceneaux. Lieutenant Philippe Arceneaux, of the Twenty-second Chasseurs Cheval.'
Grunting, Lovejoy hunkered down to study the French officer's fine-boned features, the sensitively molded lips and lean cheeks. In death, he looked shockingly young. But then, Lovejoy thought, by the time a man reaches his mid-fifties, twenty-four or -five can seem very young indeed.
Pushing to his feet, he nodded briskly to two of the men he'd brought with him. Between them, they heaved the Frenchman'[s body up and swung it onto the deadhouse shell they would use to transport the corpse through the city streets.
`You've no idea of the identity of the shooter?' Lovejoy asked Devlin.
`I never got a good look at him. He was firing from the ruins of the old guard tower. There, to the right.'
`Want I should go have a look?' asked Constable Leeper, a tall beanpole of a man with an abnormally long neck and a badly sunburnt face.
Lovejoy nodded. `Might as well. We'll see better in the daylight, but we ought to at least do a preliminary search now.'
As the constable turned to go, Devlin stopped him, saying,
`The Lieutenant had a medium-sized brown and black dog that the rifleman shot. I've searched the riverbank for him myself without success. But if you should happen to come upon him and if he should still be alive I would like him taken to someone capable of caring for his wounds.'
`Aye, yer lordship,' said the Constable, his torch filling the air with the scent of hot pitch as he headed back down the bridge.
Lovejoy squinted into the murky distance. From here, the near bank was only a confused jumble of dark shapes and indistinct shadows.
`Merciful heavens. The ruins of that tower must be three hundred yards away.'
Devlin's face remained impassive. `Very nearly, yes.'
`If I hadn't seen the results myself, I would have said that's impossible. In the daylight it would be phenomenal; how could anyone even see a target over such a distance at night, let alone hit it?'
`If he had good eyesight, good night vision, and a steady finger, he could do it. I've known sharpshooters who could hit a man at seven hundred yards, if the man is standing still and it's a sunny day.'
Something in the Viscount's voice drew Lovejoy's gaze to him. He stood with his back held oddly rigid, his face stained with blood and dust and sweat.
Lovejoy said, `Are you certain Arceneaux was the shooter's intended target? He did continue firing at you, after all.'
`He did. But that was only to keep me pinned down long enough for him to get away. I think he killed the man he came here to get.'
With a succession of grunts, the two men from the parish lifted the shell to their shoulders and headed back toward the riverbank. Lovejoy picked up the lantern and fell into step behind them, the rubble of the half- constructed bridge crunching beneath his feet.
`Am I to take it this Lieutenant Arceneaux is the young Frenchman who befriended Miss Gabrielle Tennyson?'
`He is,' said Devlin. `Only, I gather they were considerably more than friends.'
`Tragic.'
`It is, yes.'
`And you have no notion at all who could have done this, or why?'
Devlin paused beside the ruins of the ancient palace, his strange yellow eyes glinting in the fitful light from Lovejoy's lantern as he stared into the darkness.
`My lord?'
Devlin glanced over at him, as if only suddenly reminded of Lovejoy's presence. `Excuse me,' Sir Henry, he said with a quick bow and turned away.
`My lord?'
But Devlin was already gone, his long legs carrying him easily up the dark, rubble-strewn bank, the rifle in his hand casting a slim, lethal shadow across the night.
Sebastian strode into the Black Devil with the Baker rifle still gripped in his fist. His shirt front and waistcoat were drenched dark red with Arceneaux's blood; his cravat was gone. His once elegant evening coat hung in dusty tatters. He'd lost his hat, and a trickle of blood ran down one side of his dirty, sweat-streaked face.
`Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints,' whispered the buxom, dark-haired barmaid as Sebastian drew up just inside the door, the Baker propped at an angle on his hip, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the smoky, low- ceilinged room.
`Where's Knox?' he demanded, his words carrying clearly over the skittering of chairs and benches, the thumps of heavy boots as the tavern's patrons scrambled to get out of his way.
The girl froze wide-eyed behind the bar, her lips parted, the half-exposed white mounds of her breasts jerking
