The rest of the room was nondescript. Grandpapa Goddard’s portrait added a note of stern benevolence from a bygone era. Correspondence sat in neat stacks on the desk, and newspapers in French and English adorned the sideboard. The carpet bore a slightly faded design of roses and greenery and the furniture qualified for the worn version of comfortable.
The only remarkable object in the room was Orion’s cavalry sword, hung above the mantel and below Grandpapa’s portrait. Rye kept it there, immediately across from his desk, as a reminder and a reproach.
“Benny disappeared for a few days last month,” Otter said. “Away on business, according to him.”
Orion mentally berated himself for not noticing that previous absence, but he did not eat with the boys. Enlisted men needed privacy from officers, and conversely.
“Did the magistrate take him up?”
“Mayhap. They’d hang a boy like that for sport,” Otter said, “or sell him to a molly house and claim he’d been transported.”
Some of the magistrates would. Of the six boys who called Orion’s dwelling home, Benny was the tallest and the least robust. He had a lanky sort of grace, delicate features, and the quiet air of the scholar, even though he hated soap and water. Benny could read—read well in both English and French, a quirk he didn’t advertise to the others—and had a fondness for cats.
Otter by contrast, was terrified of cats, a secret Orion would take to his grave. If the other boys knew, they exercised the curious diplomacy of the stews, and ignored this gap in Otter’s otherwise impregnable defenses.
“Did Benny intimate what sort of business had called him away?”
Otter pushed unruly dark hair from his eyes. “Hint, ya mean? Nah. Benny keeps mum on a good day.”
One of Benny’s many fine qualities. “I’ll ask a few questions down at the pub, and have a look around.” Orion would search every alley and coal hole. “He won’t be gone long. The lad would miss his mates.”
“He’d miss a hot meal and a safe place to sleep.”
Also true, but Orion hoped Benny was safe enough. He was a perceptive lad, and not cursed with Otter’s temper.
“Tell the others I’ve been alerted,” Orion said, “and they are not to worry.”
Otter snorted and left the office on silent feet. The boy never offered greetings or partings, though he was learning to knock before opening a closed door. With the lads, patience was not a virtue, it was a non-negotiable necessity.
So was an ability to take each boy on his own merits. John was their songbird, with a tune for any occasion, most of them too filthy and hilarious to have been learned anywhere but the lowest taverns. Louis knew the streets, alleys, wynds and sewers. Entire rivers flowed beneath London, and Louis carried a map of the whole city in his head.
Bertie knew the rooftops and could get onto them and traverse them with more agility than a squirrel. He frequently served as lookout for the others, a skill usually acquired in the housebreaker’s trade.
And shy, fastidious Drew had a facility for math and memorization. He’d spout Bible verses at odd moments, in odd contexts, and how he’d come by his store of proverbs, aphorisms, and quotes, nobody knew. For all that he too hated soap and water, somebody had put the table manners on him.
That the boys had already done their best to find their friend, with no results, was cause for panic. Most pickets who failed to come in from a night watch hadn’t deserted.
Orion left the house by way of the back garden, stopping only to grab his top hat, riding crop, and gloves. He could look the part of a gentleman when necessary, not that it did him any good. Still, the uniform mattered, in business as in war, and so he had dressed today in the finery of the prosperous merchant.
The boys were likely watching him, so he made straight for the stables, as if his plan was to trot from one watering hole to the other. Like a cat, Benny sought the warmth and safety of the mews when he wanted privacy, another secret Orion carried. He’d once found Benny poring over a primer in the hay loft, and had spotted the boy sniggling out of the mews on many occasions thereafter, a book in hand.
Orion gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the stable’s gloom. He kept two horses, an extravagance he excused as more vanity expected of a successful purveyor of fine wines. The truth was, old Agricola was getting on, for all he still cut a dash under saddle, while Scipio had moments of youthful stupidity. They worked well enough together in harness, both being bay, but a matched pair, they were not.
The horses looked up from their hay when Orion entered their domain. He paused to scratch Scipio’s hairy ear, and spared a pat for Agricola’s velvety nose. The horses were calm of eye and their stalls had recently been set fair, a routine Orion insisted on.
“Seen any wandering boys?” Orion asked softly.
Agricola craned his neck over the half door to nudge at Orion’s pocket. He rewarded the horse with a bit of carrot left over from their morning hack.
Where were the cats? The stable had its share, and they were a lazy, arrogant lot. The swallows made sport of them, and if the felines had ever caught a mouse, they’d done so under a vow of secrecy.
Benny loved the worthless lot of them, though. Orion climbed the ladder to the hayloft silently, his riding crop between his teeth. A fat tabby watched his progress from a beam over the barn aisle. An equally grand marmalade specimen lay curled in pile of hay, yawning as Orion stepped off the ladder.
Threats welled, admonitions about boys who played silly games just to get attention, foolish lads who set a whole household to needlessly worrying.
Except that Orion had once been a foolish
