advent of the pistol, that Pierre Vigny was born, to turn stick fighting into an art.”
I let the last remark pass without comment, though inwardly I smiled at the conceit.
“But come, sir,” he continued. “Time is precious, and we have much to do. Take the position on the floor, as I do, with your feet at a ninety-degree angle. Step forward with your right foot, but keep most of your weight on the back one.”
By the end of the lesson two hours later, I had shed my jacket and was perspiring freely, unlike my leather- clad companion, who looked fresh enough to go on for several more hours. I’d had a long day at Aldershot and had been looking forward to a tranquil night, studying the books Barker had given me. Instead, I was remarking to myself that while I was well paid, as far as my employer was concerned, my time belonged to him. I would sleep well that night, provided he didn’t have yet another instructor waiting somewhere in the wings. What was left to teach me, Irish Gaelic?
Gradually, as my blocks got lower and weaker, Vigny saw that my arms were growing tired, not to mention sore. One of my hands was swollen from a sound whack, an ear was stinging, and I lost count of the number of blows he’d administered to my ribs or the top of my head, which would now interest a phrenologist.
“That is all for tonight.” Maitre Vigny stood in the formal stance, holding his stick vertically in front of his face. I did the same. He swished it forcefully down and away, and bowed.
“Your arms will be a trifle tired in the morning, Mr. Llewelyn. I suggest you do not coddle them. A few choice strokes with the cane in the air to improve the circulation will be beneficial. I give you the malacca stick from my personal collection as a present.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, surprised he’d give away such a beauty.
“Now, go take a hot bath in Cyrus’s bathhouse and go to bed…. Well, go! Don’t take all night.”
“Yes, sir.”
I awoke the next morning feeling like one of those bodies that had been unearthed from Pompeii: calcified, hard as stone. “A trifle tired” were not the words I would have used myself. I felt my exercises since becoming injured two months before had all been for naught. I was back to where I had started, unable to wave my arms.
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.
“
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.
