two Englishmen?
And yet the Afrikaner, who had been left for dead by his comrades, had lain there wounded within sight and hearing of the train until he'd stopped bleeding and could crawl away. He had watched the horror unfold. And it must be true-in God's name, how could he have made up such a monstrous tale? What he couldn't tell Evering was why it had been done, except that he had heard two men arguing over money. And Evering hadn't cared about that, only about the death of his brother.
In the hall, staring down at the coffin, Ronald Evering hadn't been able to shut out the voice of his mother even after swearing he would see that the devils paid.
For months afterward, it was as if she could see his ambivalence and cursed him for it. Hadn't he loved his brother? Didn't he want revenge for what had been done to him? Yes, but how? Dear God, how?
It was a vicious circle, and he'd gone round and round it, looking for a solution until he had learned to shut her out. Even when he'd tried to take a first step, it had been disastrous. He'd crept home with his tail between his legs, like a whipped dog.
Too bad he couldn't set into motion a little scene of his own, paying one figure a penny to scurry across the cast-iron stage to bury his woodsman's ax into another figure's skull while the wolf-himself- leered from behind painted cast-iron bushes.
It could be done in iron, he knew, given the right counterweights and the right penny. It would take less than a day to create a drawing.
Would it work with flesh-and-blood people as well as these mechanical devices?
No reason why it shouldn't. His mother was proof of that.
He sat back and reviewed everything he'd learned about the two men. Where was the penny, the chink in the armor they had built for themselves? What was the instinct or desire or fear that would send a human being headlong into action, without thinking about consequences? Like the mechanical hunter or the mechanical dog-once set in motion, the outcome was inevitable. Inescapable.
Surely he could work out a revenge that would in no way make him vulnerable, either to the police if he succeeded, or to retribution from those two men, if he failed. A cowardly wish, he was willing to admit that, but hadn't he already suffered enough on his brother's behalf? Perhaps afterward he could get on with his own life…
Engrossed by the idea, he sat there for some time, staring into the painted features of the New York man who had run Tammany Hall for years and grown fat on trickery and power, now reduced to a Victorian concept of thrift and good humor.
No one took this Boss Tweed seriously. A figure of fun, not a figure of fear. And perhaps that was the best trick of all. Those murderers had dismissed him, Ronald Evering, as no danger to them, hadn't they? They'd even taken his money, as proof that he was harmless, no doubt laughing behind his back at how clever they'd been, making certain that whatever he might tell the world about them, they could claim he was no more than a disgruntled client.
He reached for pen and paper.
After half an hour spent putting together his design, weighing the balances and counterbalances, he rather thought it could be done.
Amazing how simple it was, really. He hadn't known he was capable of such a scheme.
His mother would have been horrified.
2
Twenty Years Earlier:
The Boer War The military train pulled out just after dawn, three carriages guarded by a company under Lieutenant Timothy Evering. It was carrying weapons and ammunition forward, and bringing wounded back. The Boers were masters at ambush, and three trains had been stopped on this line in the past month alone. Spread out through the carriages, his men were silent for the most part, their nerves on edge as they watched for the danger that was invisible somewhere out there in the bush.
Evering, hunkered by the window in the last carriage, was all too aware that he had been given green men, men who hadn't faced a baptism of fire. He didn't want to think about how they would respond if the Dutchmen attacked. If they didn't shoot themselves in the foot in their nervousness, it would be a miracle. And he'd already thanked God for Sergeant Bellman, an old hand at war and steady as a rock.
He turned to say something to the private nearest him when the engine brakes caught with a screech of metal that deafened him. The train lurched and fought against the brakes, and for an instant he thought the engine or the cars would jump the tracks. Then they came to an abrupt stop that nearly threw him across the carriage floor.
The Boers had blocked the bloody right of way.
He could hear Sergeant Bellman yelling orders somewhere ahead and the thud of his boots as he ran back through the train, encouraging his men to hold their fire until he gave the order.
Evering, scrambling to his feet, called to the men in the next carriages to keep a sharp lookout, and then, before the words were out of his mouth, the Orangemen were on them, dead shots all of them, and fearless.
It was a short fight. The British soldiers were outnumbered and outgunned.
Private Quarles, cringing behind a large crate, swore, a steady stream of profanity that was in effect a prayer. His rifle, on the floor beside him, hadn't been fired.
What ran through his mind at that instant was purely self-centered. He'd taken the Queen's shilling to get himself out of the mines his father and his brothers had worked as long as he could remember. The army was better than breathing in the black dust until he coughed his lungs out, better than hearing the timbers over his head creak and snap as they gave way, better than living without his legs because the coal face collapsed on them before he could get clear.
And now he was going to die anyway. Those bloody men out there would kill them all, and leave their bodies in the harsh southern sun to rot or be picked apart by those bloody great vultures he'd seen digging into carcasses Someone was screaming just behind him, jabbing at his back with the butt of a rifle, and Quarles wheeled, ready to lash out from sheer self-preservation. Boer or British soldier, he didn't care, nothing was going to make him come out and fight.
But it was only Penrith, trying to squeeze his thin body into the space that could hardly conceal one man, much less two. Quarles swung at him, forcing him back, and in that few seconds silence fell across the veldt.
They stayed where they were, two privates so frightened that the sweat soaked their uniforms and ran down their pale faces like rainwater.
Quarles could hear horses now, riding fast. He thought for an instant that they were coming to search the train and shoot the survivors. Someone was groaning in the carriage up ahead, and he could see the sergeant crumpled by a window, his breath bubbling in his throat. If only the damned fools would be quiet, the commando might believe they'd already finished the killing.
The lieutenant was lying in a pool of blood, and after a few seconds, Quarles reached out, dipped his hand in it, and wiped it across his face and through his hair. Another handful went down the front of his tunic. He could pretend to be dead, if he could stop shaking. But it wasn't him shaking, it was Penrith behind him.
'They've gone. Is it a trap to lure us out? For God's sake, what are we to do?' he was whispering frantically.
Quarles ignored the man, trying to hear.
Nearly a quarter of an hour passed, and nothing happened. Flies were already buzzing loudly in the stillness. Whoever had been groaning up ahead had stopped. But now someone was calling for water. It was a London voice, Cockney.
Quarles shoved the shivering man beside him out of his way and, keeping his head down, crawled to the nearest window, unable to stand the uncertainty.
