The Masque of the Black Tulip Read online

  As luck would have it, there was a brown cloak of exactly the type required walking Miles’s way. Unfortunately, it was attached to a very large individual, with a crooked nose and scars on his face that proclaimed he wouldn’t look amiss at a brawl. There was a female creature in dirty flowered cotton and tattered lace clinging to his arm – second-hand goods by the look of them, both the clothing and the woman.

  Miles stepped out in front of the pair. ‘Hello,’ he said, with a winning smile. ‘I’d like to purchase your cloak.’

  ‘My cloak?’ The man looked like he’d sooner punch him than negotiate with him. ‘What do you want with me cloak?’

  ‘It’s chilly, don’t you think?’ Miles improvised. He rubbed his arms and feigned a shudder. ‘Brrrrrr!’

  ‘Awww, gig’ it to ‘imp, Freddy,’ cooed the little doxy, hanging on his arm like a squirrel off the branch of a tree. ‘I’ll keep ye warm.’

  ‘A charming sentiment,’ Miles applauded. ‘And now for the price…’

  The mention of money had its desired effect. Miles walked away several shillings the poorer, proud possessor of a smelly piece of brown wool. A voluminous, hooded, smelly piece of brown wool. Never again would he leave home without one, he vowed.

  No time to muse on the functionality of cloaks. He had wasted too much time already. How long had Vaughn been in there? Swirling the cloak about him, Miles strode rapidly towards the Duke’s Knees. Miles gingerly pushed open the door, which lolled drunkenly off its frame, held in place by a makeshift hinge at the top. From the splintering in the wood of the frame, it looked like the door had been broken off its hinges, and more than once. Charming clientele this place boasted.

  Holding his cloak close about him to hide his telltale white stockings and knee breeches, Miles kept his back hunched and his head low. The taproom was full. Uncertain light wavered over the proceedings from the hearth in the left-hand wall and the battered pewter sconces on the wall. A gang of rowdies in rough shirts and unkempt hair was playing a complicated game with a knife in one corner of the room, the object of which seemed to be not getting one’s fingers sliced off.

  Miles could safely say Vaughn was not of their company.

  In another corner, men were dicing, flinging ivory cubes from a battered tin container. A busty barmaid squirmed on the lap of a red-nosed patron, slapping at his hands and squealing protests with more form than force. Definitely not Vaughn. A steep flight of stairs in one corner led out of the taproom, to private rooms upstairs, no doubt, the sort of rooms designed for clandestine meetings of the amorous kind. Or of the treasonous kind.

  Miles started towards the stairs. But there was another corner of the room left. His eyes had initially skirted over it because the little nook sat entirely in shadow, too far from the hearth for any light to reach. The candle on the wall had gone out – or been blown out, by someone aiming to discourage prying eyes.

  Tucked away behind the curve of the bar, wedged in the far right-hand corner, there was room for just one small table. At that table were seated two men.

  Vaughn. There could be no question. Although the hood was pulled down as far as it would go, covering his forehead and shadowing his eyes, there was no mistaking that aquiline nose, or the elegant aesthete’s hands that sat so incongruously on the scarred wood of the table. Those were not the hands of a labourer.

  Miles sidled closer, under pretext of getting a drink from the bar.

  His companion, too, was cloaked and hooded. Hoods, thought Miles with a wry twist of the lips, appeared to be popular this season. The two were seated on a slight diagonal, with Vaughn nearer the bar, slightly turned away from the main room, and the stranger wedged in the crook between the join of the walls. With the second man’s face turned out, Miles should have been able to make out his features, but the lack of light transformed his visage into something out of one of the novels Hen was so fond of, a hooded horror with nothing but emptiness where the face ought to have been. Dramatic rubbish, thought Miles, inching nearer.

  There was a slightly darker shadow that might have been a moustache… Miles bumped into the corner of the bar, and bit back a startled oomph.

  Since he was there, Miles seated himself on a stool. He hunched over the bar, yanking his hood farther down over his brow, and proceeded to listen.

  ‘Do you have it with you?’ Vaughn was asking tersely.

  ‘So hasty!’ The other man’s voice was lightly accented, with a familiar lilt. It might have been French; Miles was too far away to tell, and while the cloak did wonderful things for hiding his features, it had a distinctly annoying tendency to muffle sound. ‘While we are here, a drink perhaps?’

  ‘What d’ye like?’

  The voice was not Vaughn’s. It was high-pitched, feminine, and came from a region roughly in the vicinity of Miles’s left ear.

  ‘Hunh?’ Miles jerked his head around to encounter a truly alarming quantity of flesh overflowing a low-laced bodice.

  The barmaid heaved a long-suffering sigh, making the mounds of flesh swell to perilous proportions. ‘What d’ye like? I ain’t got all night. Though for you, sweet’eart’ – her voice lowered suggestively, as her bosom lurched an insistent inch closer to Miles’s nose, bringing with it an odour of sweat and cheap scent – ‘I might be persuaded to change me mind.’

  ‘Uh…’ Choking on the reek – that would be something to explain to his friends and relations, asphyxiation by bosom – Miles scooted back as far as the stool would allow. What did they drink in places like this? Not claret, that much he remembered. It had been so long since Miles had explored the seedier side of London.

  ‘Gin,’ he said decisively, pitching his voice gruff and low, just in case Vaughn was listening. Vaughn seemed quite involved in his own conversation, speaking in a low, authoritative tone, but one never knew. Miles turned his attention back to his quarry, assuming the barmaid would hare herself off to riper regions.

  No such luck. The barmaid waved a hand at the barkeep. ‘Oy, Jim! A glass of blue ruin for our friend ‘ere!’

  ‘What was ‘at, Molly?’ Jim cupped a hand over his ear. ‘I can’t ‘ear ye!’

  ‘Blue ruin!’ bellowed the barmaid, loud enough to be heard clear across the Thames. ‘For this ‘handsome ‘ink of man ‘ere.’

  So much for being inconspicuous.

  Miles could only be glad that his back was to Vaughn and his companion. Even if they turned to stare, all they would see would be an expanse of brown wool.

  ‘…utmost discretion,’ Vaughn was saying behind him.

  ‘Sooooo’ – Molly trailed a hand along Miles’s shoulders, her cloying voice in his ear cutting off whatever it was Vaughn was trying to be discreet about – ‘would ye be fancyin’ anythin’ else with that drink, sir?’

  ‘Just the gin,’ Miles mumbled, trying to keep an ear cocked in Vaughn’s direction. What had he just said? Something about…

  Plonk! Miles caught the edge of the bar to keep from tumbling over backwards, right into Vaughn’s table, as Molly flung herself down on his lap. ‘Aw, don’t be shy, sir.’

  ‘This is very flattering’ – Miles attempted a small shove, but Molly wasn’t moving – ‘but I’m not interested.’

  Damn, damn, damn. The voices behind him had dropped a notch, implying conversation of a highly confidential, and thus highly interesting, nature. And he couldn’t make out a word of it. If he could just find some way to move a little closer…

  ‘If ye ’ave a problem, like, we can work on it.’

  ‘I don’t have a problem,’ Miles gritted out. At least, not that sort of problem. ‘I have a mistress.’ Well, he didn’t at the moment, actually, but he had had up until last week. The details were unimportant.

  Molly removed herself from his lap with an irritated flounce. ‘Well, ’oity-toity, aren’t we? Too good for the likes of us…’ Her voice receded to a droning buzz in the distance. Miles scarcely noticed. All of his attention was focused on the conversation taking place behind him
.

  ‘And the rest?’ Vaughn was demanding in a low voice.

  Miles risked a glance back, on pretext of leaning over to straighten the hem of his cloak. Vaughn’s pose was nonchalant, relaxed, but his knuckles were white on the head of his cane.

  ‘By next week. I assure you, everything will be arranged to your satisfaction.’

  Vaughn’s grip eased. ‘See that it is.’

  ‘Would I betray you?’

  ‘Most likely,’ Vaughn said grimly.

  The hooded figure laughed. ‘Milord amuses himself.’

  ‘Milord,’ countered Vaughn, ‘has scarcely been less amused. Let’s get on with this, shall we? I do assume you brought it with you?’

  ‘But, of course!’ The accented voice rose on a note of wounded dignity. ‘You think me incompetent, perhaps?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Vaughn’s voice was laced with irony. ‘Not that.’

  ‘Here.’ If his companion noticed the implied insult, he ignored it. Miles heard the whisper of fabric, the crackle of paper. ‘I have it for you.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Miles turned just in time to see a folded note change hands, disappearing beneath Vaughn’s cloak. He hastily reoriented himself to face the bar, as Vaughn levered himself to a standing position, bracing both hands on the small, round table.

  ‘I shall arrange with you through the usual channels regarding next week’s…instalment.’

  Miles heard the scrape of wood on wood, as the second man stood in his turn. A swishing noise followed, which might have been a bow, or the abstraction of a handkerchief, or just the sweep of Vaughn’s cloak against the edge of the table. ‘I shall not fail you, milord.’

  ‘I sincerely doubt that,’ Vaughn murmured, so softly that Miles, practically back-to-back with him, barely caught the words. ‘I bid you good night,’ he said crisply.

  Acting on impulse, Miles swung down from his stool just as Vaughn began to move away, jostling the older man.

  ‘Sorry, so sorry, me lord,’ he grunted in a gruff baritone, in tones that he hoped leant more towards the dockyard than Oxbridge. He started patting Vaughn’s chest with clumsy motions, as though checking for broken limbs. ‘I’m so sorry. Be yer lordship unhurt?’

  ‘Quite’ – Vaughn forcibly removed Miles’s hand from his person – ‘all right, my good man.’

  ‘Aye, yer lordship. Thank ‘ee, yer lordship.’ Miles bowed and scraped backwards until he felt his backside hit the bar, taking care to keep his head well around the level of Vaughn’s waistcoat. He would have tugged his forelock, but that did seem to be overdoing it a bit. Besides, his hands, like Vaughn’s, were too clearly those of a gentleman. He had been taking risk enough in his assault on Vaughn’s waistcoat.

  But he had achieved exactly what he had sought. Under cover of the hood, Miles permitted himself a small, self-satisfied smirk.

  Just to be safe, Miles remained in his grovelling position until the click of Vaughn’s cane and the scurrying footsteps of his companion had receded across the floor, until the door had swung open and shut, until the sound of Vaughn’s voice giving orders to his chairmen could be heard through the open windows.

  Then, and only then, did Miles permit himself to rise from his crouch.

  It might be wise to give Vaughn and his companion some time to remove themselves from the area (the other man might still be lurking about), so Miles took the glass of gin the affronted barmaid slammed in front of him and, calling for a candle, retreated to the secluded table Vaughn and his companion had just vacated.

  He absentmindedly took a gulp of the gin, wincing at the sharp taste of it on his tongue. Nasty stuff. He could understand how a few daily pints of it could turn someone blind.

  Miles pushed the glass away, just as Molly, his no-longer-so-friendly barmaid, slapped the requested candle down on the table in front of him. It was the merest stub, stuck to the saucer by its own wax, and from the looks of it, it had only a half hour left in it at best.

  Miles didn’t care. He didn’t intend to be there quite that long.

  With a sense of gleeful anticipation, he drew out from under his cloak the folded note he had abstracted from Vaughn’s waistcoat pocket. The man hadn’t a clue, Miles thought complacently, examining his prize. The paper had been folded into tiny squares, the better to be passed from hand to hand, and, from the looks of it, never sealed. There was no writing on the exposed folds, no name, no direction.

  Anonymity was, after all, the hallmark of espionage.

  What could it be? Directions, perhaps, mused Miles. Instructions from the Ministry of Police to their trusted spy, conveyed via a recently arrived operative. The other man’s accent had sounded as though it might be French.

  Nudging the candle closer, Miles slowly unfolded the page and held it up to the uncertain light. His eye caught the word ‘burn’ heavily underscored.

  Good God, had he stumbled upon a plan to burn Parliament? It would be just like Guy Fawkes, only without King James I.

  Miles moved the note nearer to the candle, so close that the flame lapped dangerously at the edge of the fragile paper. He squinted at the spiky writing, which had been inconsiderately rendered in a pale brown ink.

  ‘I burn for your touch,’ read the phrase in its entirety.

  Damn. That didn’t sound like a plan to blow up the houses of Parliament.

  Miles returned his attention to the letter. ‘Every night, I dream of your embrace; I yearn for your voice at the window, and your hands on my—’

  No, definitely not a plot to immolate the members of Parliament. Fiery, yes. Treasonous, no.

  Miles moved on to the next paragraph, which contained more of the same. It could, he rationalised desperately, be merely a ploy in case the missive fell into the wrong hands. Make it look like a love letter and then slip in the pertinent information somewhere in the middle.

  With an expression of great determination, Miles read the letter through from start to end. By the last line, he could safely say that there were no troop movements hidden in there. It might be in code…but it would take one perverse mind to come up with a code that detailed, that convincing, that graphic. Some of the descriptions made Cleland’s Fanny Hill, a favourite piece of contraband among Miles’s set at Eton, look positively restrained, even prim. Delaroche’s mind was certainly perverse, but it didn’t move in those particular channels.

  The signature was entirely illegible, a long squiggle that might have been anything from Augusta to Xenophon. As for the salutation…well, ‘Dearest Love’ was seldom a proper name.

  Oh, hell.

  A look of grim disgust spread across his face as he came to an unfortunate but inescapable conclusion. Miles dropped the paper onto the table, resisting the urge to follow it with his head, preferably banged very hard, several times in a row. Of all the idiot things to do! Since smiting himself was out, Miles reached for the gin instead. He had stolen the wrong bloody note.

  Chapter Eight

  Fashion Papers: the private files of the former Assistant to the Minister of Police

  – from the Personal Codebook of the Pink Carnation

  Midnight shrouded Delaroche’s study. Dark lay heavy as dust on desk, cabinet, and chair, on the rough flagstones of the floor, and on the unadorned surface of the walls. The former assistant to the Minister of Police had, himself, departed half an hour before, closing his cabinets and realigning his chair in the cavity of his desk with mathematical precision. All was still in the office of the tenth-most-feared man in France.

  Except for a quiver of movement along the far wall.

  Like a waterbug skimming the surface at the edge of an algae-ridden lake, so subtly that it barely disturbed the enshrouding darkness, a tiny point of metal inched along the central join of the room’s one small window. The sliver of metal encountered the hook that latched the window closed, and paused. Another moment and the metal continued to rise, like mercury in a barometer, carrying the hook with it.

  The metal disappe
ared. The windowpanes, which had not been opened since the early days of the reign of Louis XIII, slid outward with an ease that bespoke hinges newly oiled. The quiet surface of the room rippled as a shadow, darker than the rest, oozed over the windowsill and swung neatly into the room. The windowpanes were, once again, eased closed, and latched for security. A length of cloth made its way from the intruder’s shoulders over the uncurtained window. This night’s work needed light to proceed, and light might call unwanted attention. A similar, smaller piece of thick-woven black cloth covered the small grille in the door.

  Preparations complete, the silent figure drew out a small, shuttered lantern, and gently coaxed the flame into life. There was no fizz, no smoke, no crackle from the wick, just darkness one moment, and a gentle light the next.

  The black-clad figure nodded in approval, and followed the subdued light in the direction of Delaroche’s desk.

  The chair, so carefully arranged a mere half hour before, was lifted gently back, and placed, with equal care, a short distance away, leaving just enough space for the dark figure to kneel under the desk, feeling with long black-gloved fingers along the back wall. A prick of wood, no larger than a splinter, and like Sleeping Beauty falling softly into slumber, a panel of wood slipped back, revealing a cache just large enough to hold one file.

  In one fluid movement, the black-garbed intruder backed out from under the desk, rising seamlessly to place the file on Delaroche’s pristine blotter. One gloved hand tilted the little lantern closer, providing a steady stream of light as the other hand flipped quickly but steadily through the contents of the file, committing them to memory.

  With two pages left to go, the lantern trembled, sending wavy lines of light dancing about the walls. The Pink Carnation quickly steadied the lantern, but her eyes, narrowed in concern, never left the closely written page.