The Devil's Feast Page 5

  “I thirst,” he croaked. He cried out again and vomited suddenly upon himself. The next moment, he was visited by a terrible convulsion which caused his knees to jerk up to his head. I told the footman to bring help.

  “No,” Rowlands gasped. “I cannot be seen like this.”

  Ignoring him, I told the footman to be quick. After some minutes, Mr. Percy arrived with a jug of water, the footman in tow.

  “He cannot stand. I think you must call a doctor as soon as possible.”

  “I imagine he simply needs to sleep it off,” said Percy, with the air of a man all too familiar with such things. “We will find him a bed and make sure he is looked after. He will need to be carried upstairs.” The footman was sent off to arrange carriage.

  Rowlands’s body unclenched. He gasped for breath, then he soiled himself. He began to cry, apologizing piteously for having lost control, and saying his stomach burned. He begged for water. I knelt down with the jug.

  “Lord, his hands are frozen,” I said. Wordless, Percy knelt and rubbed them. Rowlands’s heart was racing fit to burst from his chest.

  Moments later, several footmen appeared with a makeshift litter, but when they tried to lift Rowlands onto it, he cried out in pain.

  “We shall take him to one of the club’s bedchambers,” Percy said. “They are very comfortable.”

  “Will you call a doctor?”

  “In these cases, it is rarely necessary,” said Percy.

  I picked up Rowlands’s gaudy coat and the jug of water and came after them.

  “We have it in hand, Captain Avery,” said Percy.

  “Mr. Percy.” I drew close and muttered in his ear. “I am almost certain that this is the cholera: the vomiting, the diarrhea, the thirst, the spasms. I have seen it fell a man in hours. You must get a doctor.”

  Mr. Percy rubbed his forehead; for a moment, his composure deserted him. Rowlands shrieked and vomited again, his hands, arched like claws, grasped mine.

  “Please, do not leave me!” he gasped. The footmen began to look alarmed and mutinous.

  Percy stepped back as if he had been stung. “I will arrange it. But we must get him upstairs.” Rowlands was still clutching my hand. “I know it is a great deal to ask, but would you be good enough to stay with him until I return?”

  “Of course.”

  He gave the footmen directions and unhooked a key from his chain. They lifted the litter through a door to a chilly corridor and a set of plain stone steps, evidently the servants’ staircase. It was an agonizing journey: the stairs were narrow and steep and seemed to go round and round forever. At every pitch and turn the poor man cried out and twisted in pain, but at the third flight, we came into a corner anteroom and through a doorway onto a carpeted landing. I was directed to the first door to hand. A bedchamber with thick Turkey carpet, red velvet curtains, a marble washstand, a fireplace, a chair and a brass-framed bed, onto which the footmen rolled the patient, none too gently.

  The door opened and Percy came in, followed by Morel and a formidable-looking woman in a nightcap and quilted bedcoat who was introduced as the housekeeper, Mrs. Quill. At that moment, Rowlands was seized by another convulsion and voided his guts.

  One of the footmen was instructed to light the fire; the others were dismissed. I asked Rowlands if he could describe his symptoms. In a shrunken voice he told me that he was desperately thirsty, his throat and stomach burned, his head ached, and he could not feel his hands or his feet. When the spasms came he could not breathe.

  Percy, Morel and Mrs. Quill, the housekeeper, muttered to each other. Mrs. Quill shook her head a great deal.

  “All my housemaids are long abed,” she said firmly, “and they are none of them sufficiently discreet. We do not want this widely known.”

  “Matilda is awake,” said Morel. “She has been copying out Chef’s recipes for the banquet. She is capable and prudent.”

  I did not like the idea at all but felt it was hardly my place to protest.

  “We will need towels, clean linen, hot water and bowls. Will you see to it?” said Percy.

  The housekeeper reluctantly assented, though, clearly, she felt it beneath her.

  “And laudanum to dull the pain,” I said.

  Pursed-lipped, she left. Matty arrived not long after. She looked past Morel and Percy at the sick man.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “It may be the cholera,” said Percy, “but we are not certain. He must be nursed and made as comfortable as possible. Will you help, Matilda? You are not obliged to, and it may be unpleasant, but it shall not be forgotten, I assure you. There is hot water from the basin. Mrs. Quill is bringing clean linen and bowls.”

  “Are you staying, Captain?” she said.

  I nodded. “But I would not ask this of you,” I said in a low voice.

  “Then I will stay,” she said.

  “We must take care,” I said. “In India, we were told not to come too close to cholera sufferers, for fear of inhaling a patient’s miasma, and to wash well after contact.”

  The housekeeper returned, none too graciously, with linen, soap, buckets and a small bottle of laudanum. Then she, Morel and Percy, who said he must report to Monsieur Soyer, left. I mixed a little laudanum in brandy and forced Rowlands to take it, while Matty turned on the copper faucets above the basin. The steaming water flowing into the bowl distracted me for a moment. I had never seen such a thing and was both impressed and secretly alarmed that it might not stop and would overflow into the room. Matty brought over her bowl and cloth and set about cleaning, with great gentleness, this man she had never met, though every touch seemed to pain him. We asked him if he could think what might have caused it; he said he could think of nothing and confessed that he was very frightened. Then for a while he seemed to drift into slumber, and Matty and I sat quiet for a time. I offered her the chair, but she preferred to warm herself next to the hearth.

  “I’ve never been into the club before,” she said.

  “What? Never?”

  “I’ve never had reason to leave the kitchen, and the servants’ stairs take us to our rooms. Women aren’t to be seen. If a housemaid hears a member coming when they are cleaning, she must hide in an anteroom or a cupboard.”

  Rowlands cried out again. The convulsions returned more violently and, each time, he vomited or voided his guts and breathing became more difficult. By the time the club’s doctor arrived, Rowlands’s skin was wrinkled, as if all the fluid had been wrung from his body. The smell was appalling.

  “Cholera,” said the doctor briskly. “I am afraid it is too late to bleed him. Indeed, there is very little to be done at all. I doubt he will last the night. I will give him a little brandy now. You may give him more at the correct intervals.”

  Even as the doctor administered brandy, poor Rowlands cried out for water, and the moment the doctor left we gave it to him.

  Through the small hours, Percy and Morel returned intermittently. Then, finally, Soyer came. He was hatless and without his frock coat and rings. He approached the bed as Rowlands was gripped by another spasm. He watched him for a while, then beckoned me to the door.

  “Mr. Percy says there is no hope,” he whispered. I shook my head.

  He came and sat with us, wordless at last, while the poor patient stared at us, his eyes full of terror until, with a last convulsion, he expired.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Four

  After Rowlands died, they insisted I stay what remained of the night at the club. I bade Matty good night, told her to wash thoroughly and said she had shown great kindness and presence of mind. Haunted by Rowlands’s desperate face, I did not expect to sleep, but I slipped into unconsciousness almost at once.

  When I woke, in the deep folds of a four-poster bed, I was unable to recall where I was. The first thing that came to me was Blake’s incarceration,
the second that it must be late and that I must have missed the early train to Swindon—once again, I would disappoint my wife. Then the horrors of the night returned to me. I stumbled up. I was astonished to find one of my own clean suits over a chair. A footman knocked and informed me it was ten o’clock and a bath had been drawn for me.

  I had never seen such a thing as the bathroom. It was so lavish. The bath was polished marble, and above it was one of the shining copper faucets from which hot water directly issued. The pleasure and novelty of the water distracted me for a while from the memory of the night before. I dressed, folded my evening suit into a bundle and found my way to a grand staircase framed by vast mirrors.

  At the bottom was a great square hall such as one might imagine in a grand Roman villa, encircled by a portico of handsome Corinthian columns in ochre marble, and with a mosaic pavement. Under the portico were leather Chesterfields on which members sat, murmuring together. Instead of the open air, a square skylight netted in gilded diamond panes provided a roof through which light poured in, and above the portico was a gallery that ran around the sides of the hall. The walls on the ground floor were picked out in polished-marble panels of oxblood, green and black, and divided by gilded pilasters. The place felt rich and warm. A footman whom I vaguely recalled from the day before accosted me.

  “Captain Avery? Jeffers, sir—from last night.” I remembered him then. He had gone for Percy when we had found Rowlands on the floor. “May we get you some breakfast?”

  I could not think of food. “Thank you. I have a train to catch and am already late.”

  “Then would you follow me, sir? Just for a moment. You are awaited.”

  I wanted to be gone.

  “Please, sir. They beg just a minute of your time.”

  “Lead the way.”

  He took me to a long library that must have run almost the length of the building. The walls were bookcases, every one filled with volumes, divided from each other by gilded pilasters. There were reading desks, deep leather armchairs and a Turkey carpet. By one of the fireplaces, four well-dressed, well-fed men were seated. Five men were standing: Soyer in black velvet, for once capless, and staring resolutely at the carpet; Mr. Percy; another man I did not know; and two liveried footmen.

  At a gesture from one of the seated men, all those standing except Soyer departed. My first instinct was mild alarm.

  “Gentlemen, what is it that you want of me?” I said.

  “We wish only to express our gratitude, Captain Avery. We are the governing committee of the Reform Club—the most significant part of it.” This from a man in late middle age, expensively if conservatively dressed in black, with thick, dark umbrella brows, and eyes that looked as if they had been outlined in pencil for some theatrical melodrama. “I am the club’s chairman, Lord Marcus Hill. We are so distressed that you were forced to witness the terrible events of last night, and at the same time know that we were fortunate to benefit from your attention and kindness. Won’t you sit down?”

  It seemed churlish to refuse. “I am sorry I could not do more.”

  “We give you our thanks. Can we not offer Captain Avery a fortifying brandy or something to eat?”

  “Thank you, no. Just now, my appetite is somewhat diminished.”

  “Of course. May I also say that your reputation, Captain Avery, and that of your talented colleague, Mr. Blake, precedes you. Just the other day I was speaking to an old friend of mine lately retired from the East India Company about your brave defense of the great Mountstuart.”

  I nodded politely and shifted uneasily in my chair. Soyer continued to stare at the carpet.

  “I mean your reputation for courage and for”—Lord Marcus hesitated—“discretion. We would very much like your discretion, Captain. Were it to be widely bruited abroad that the poor gentleman died here in such circumstances, well, the gossip could be very unfairly damaging to the club.”

  “I had no intention of discussing the matter abroad,” I said, a little irked.

  “That is a great relief,” said Lord Marcus. “And in fact we have something more to ask of you—to beg of you, really. Might we presume further on your goodwill by asking whether you would be willing to look further into the matter for us?”

  “I do not understand. He died of cholera, did he not?”

  “The fact is, Captain Avery, in four days the club is holding a banquet for a very important eastern potentate, Ibrahim Pasha. You may have heard of him? The Prince of Egypt? Many regard him as the key to peace in the Middle East. Lord Palmerston is hosting the occasion. It will be the pinnacle of the club’s existence so far. Crowned heads will be present. Monsieur Soyer has devised an extraordinary menu. All the newspapers, including The Times, will devote pages to it. Nothing can be allowed to go wrong. Do you see, Captain Avery?”

  “I cannot say I do, nor how it relates to Mr. Rowlands.”

  A small, red-faced man with a red beard jumped up impatiently. “Damn it, man, let us be clear about this. We need to know what the man died of! If something other than cholera did for him!”

  “Captain Beare, please!” said Lord Marcus.

  “Do you have any reason to believe it wasn’t cholera?” I said. “If so, you will need a doctor or a chemist, not me.”

  “For heaven’s sake, no more of this fimble-famble!” said Captain Beare. “We want you to find out if there’s been foul play, or if the kitchen is contaminated and Soyer is fit to run it. And we want you to do it quietly, with no fuss!”

  “How dare you! Of course I am fit to run it,” said Soyer, suddenly furiously animated.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Captain Beare, waving his finger.

  “There is nothing wrong with my kitchen!” shouted Alexis Soyer. “If you are looking for so-called foul play, look to yourselves.”

  “Soyer!” said Lord Marcus.

  “I offer my unreserved apologies, milord,” said Soyer immediately. “But my kitchen is the cleanest you will ever see.”

  “We have no doubt of that, Monsieur Soyer,” said Lord Marcus mollifyingly.

  “There he is, getting above himself again,” said Captain Beare, shaking his head.

  “Captain Beare, you are not helping,” said Lord Marcus.

  “I am sorry to be obtuse, gentlemen, but you will have to make things a good deal clearer to me if you want me to help,” I said.

  Lord Marcus rubbed his chin. I realized he was uneasy.

  “Captain Avery, before I say any more, I must have your word that you will speak nothing of what you hear in this room. It is absolutely vital.”

  I did my best to hide my surprise. “I give you my word.”

  “The fact is, the banquet for Ibrahim Pasha is extremely important, and absolutely nothing can be allowed to obstruct or impede it. The matter is also exceedingly sensitive, the fruit of the combined efforts of certain members of both parties, Tory and Whig—I mean, liberal.” He looked around, smiling.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said.

  “Of course, this must be kept strictly secret. As I said, the banquet must be a success. Ibrahim Pasha has come to England ostensibly on a private holiday but in fact on behalf of his ailing eighty-year-old father, Mehmet Ali Pasha, the ruler of Egypt. The banquet is a vital symbol of goodwill between Egypt and Britain, and the beginning of very delicate and secret negotiations among Egypt, Turkey and ourselves—an attempt to prevent war, no less. The truth is, the Russians are doing their best to start a war in the Middle East. They aim to draw Egypt into an alliance against Turkey. They have promised Egypt arms and territory if they will come in with them. As you know, barely two years ago Ibrahim Pasha took Palestine and Syria from the Turks and was almost at the gates of Constantinople.”

  “And it was our own dear Lord Palmerston who sent British warships to bombard his armies and force them out,” said another man sardonically. He w
as younger than the others and fashionably dressed in a bright tartan waistcoat and a plum-colored coat. “Which is why relations are so delicate.”

  “Thank you, Molesworth,” Lord Marcus said, with a rather forced smile. “We did so with the help of the Russians, you will recall, and signed an agreement on it. Now they are reneging upon it. We all want to avoid another war, at all costs. We have only just extricated ourselves from China, and Afghanistan is going none too well.”

  “Both wars Palmerston encouraged,” said the man called Molesworth.

  Lord Marcus went on, “If Ibrahim Pasha is seduced by the Russians, we will be obliged to help Turkey, the Middle East will be a disaster and Russia will almost certainly use this as an excuse to attack our northern borders in India. I have no need to explain to you, Captain Avery, the dangers attached to that.”

  “May I ask why the government is not arranging the dinner?”

  “Yes, why is it not?” asked Molesworth.

  Lord Marcus ignored him. “We do not want to alert the Russians, or the Tory party—who, in their usual ostrichlike way, want nothing to do with the outside world, and would do their best to stall any agreement with Egypt. The prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, however, fully understands the risks. He and Lord Palmerston both agree that something must be done. Thus, Palmerston—who is Britain’s most respected figure when it comes to foreign policy, even if he is out of government—will be conducting the secret negotiations with the whole world watching, and none the wiser. He is also a sufficiently elevated figure to legitimately entertain Ibrahim Pasha, when the government are apparently ignoring him. So you see.”

  “See what?” I said, mildly irritated.

  Lord Marcus opened his mouth. And closed it again. Soyer sighed.

  The skeptical gentleman, Mr. Molesworth, spoke up. “The fact is, Captain Avery, something not dissimilar to Rowlands’s death took place at the club some weeks ago. It is possible that this is not a coincidence, that neither man may have died of natural causes. That both may have been murdered. And that this is some attempt to disrupt or even prevent the banquet, which, of course, as Lord Marcus has repeated several times, must proceed smoothly.”