Rogue Spy

Twenty-nine

By the time she disentangled herself from cousins and aunts and a small child inexplicably wound around her legs, Pax was gone. She found him in the hall, almost to the front door. Her path to him was complicated by Tonio and the stiff-legged fighting cocks who swaggered behind him, playing at being dangerous, and didn’t want to share the game with her.

Or—it was no game. These cousins of hers were most certainly deadly. They were simply much less deadly than Pax.

They were three tomcats trailing a tiger. Who was in a bad mood, most likely. And everyone was heavily armed. It is almost impossible to hold reasoned discussion once pistols enter the conversation.

Bernardo opened the front door politely and stepped through first. Baldoni politeness. One does not force a guest to present his back to a possible enemy.

Bernardo was saying, “. . . considerably more joyful than I expected when Lazarus sent word someone had used an old, old recognition signal. I assumed I would be dealing with a fraud.”

“A reasonable expectation.”

“It would not be the first time a stranger has claimed to be Baldoni,” Bernardo said. “Briefly.”

Pax took the front steps, his back insouciant, his step deliberate, his hand—she could tell by the angle of his arm—on a knife. He was ignoring his tail of escort. Tonio would find that annoying.

She pushed past cousin, cousin, cousin, and cousin and went to where Pax and Uncle Bernardo had stopped to confront one another at the low iron railing that separated the house from the pavement.

When she hurried up, Pax looked down at her with his calm, serious face and the smile that didn’t escape from deep in his eyes. To Bernardo he said, “Do you think she’s an impostor?”

“She is my nephew’s child. There was never a moment of doubt. I know her as I know my own sons.”

Tonio and his fighting tail of bad judgment arrived. She said, “He’s my friend,” and clarified that with, “If any of you touch a gun, I’ll break your fingers.”

Uncle Bernardo said, “There is no question of welcome, Mr. Paxton. She is one of us.”

It was early afternoon. The street was without shade and almost empty of people. The few men and women going about their business showed no interest. If attentive eyes peered at them from hidden corners, they were discreet about it.

Her cousins slipped away, one gliding casually down the pavement, others out into the street. They were not spectators at a coming fight. They intended to be participants. She did not bother to point this out to Pax, who was perfectly capable of seeing for himself.

Baldoni men, and many of the women, prepared themselves for adventurous lives. Antonio would have taken lessons in boxing and fencing. He’d be a crack shot. He’d traveled in dangerous places. The three men at his back were young, strong, and equally well trained.

But they faced someone outside their experience—a man who lived in the cold shadows they occasionally passed through on their way to a profitable venture elsewhere.

Pax didn’t fight for sport. His calculations didn’t include shaking hands afterward.

She didn’t say, “Pax, my cousins would very much like to rescue me from something and you are handy. Don’t hurt them.”

Antonio stepped into Pax’s path and said, in English, “Go back to Lazarus and tell him we’ll settle whatever claim he has on Sara. She is Baldoni. Ours. Run tell him that, figlio di puttana.”

“He’s not from Lazarus,” she snapped.

“All the better,” Antonio said. “Nothing to stop me from cutting his bollocks off.”

“You will leave his bollocks precisely as they are.”

“I am your closest male relation—”

“You are my closest male idiot. No one removes any man’s balls on my behalf. I will do whatever castrating is necessary among my acquaintance.”

“Children,” Uncle Bernardo said mildly, “he speaks Italian.”

Pax wasn’t revealing a knowledge of Italian on his face. That meant . . . “You know him, Uncle.”

“I know of him,” her uncle said. “Antonio. You and the others . . .” He motioned to the cardinal points of the compass. Without comment, her cousins separated to take up positions at the distant edges of sight, guarding, watching, and not hearing whatever Uncle Bernardo was about to say.

That left her standing between Pax and Uncle Bernardo as one might stand between unfriendly wolfhounds.

“You did not know Mr. Paxton had lived in Italy?” Bernardo said.

She could have filled libraries with what she didn’t know about Pax. “It doesn’t amaze me.”

“Or that he killed men there? Many men. Not openly in the duello, not in battle. He came as a sneak thief in the night and murdered.”

She didn’t answer. Decoders learn many secrets. She’d coded messages in and out of Italy. One agent sometimes received orders to kill.

Uncle Bernardo continued to speak mildly. “We are realists in Italy. France and Austria fight their battles across our countryside, as they have for centuries. We are the bosom friend of whichever army is closest. When Monsieur Bonaparte marched so swiftly and destructively around Italy, many nations followed events with considerable attention. Including the English.”

“As they would,” Pax answered, speaking the language of Florence, of Tuscany, of the Baldoni family.

“One man who concerned himself particularly was named Il Gatto Grigio—the Gray Cat, so called because it is said all cats are gray in the dark.”

“A melodramatic name,” Pax said.

“We are a melodramatic people, we Italians,” her uncle replied. “It was said that Il Gatto came and went among the French armies, unseen, like a cat. Where he passed, munitions dumps exploded, supply trains were lost to landslides, donkeys could not march because their feed was tainted, and prisoners escaped before execution.”

“Sounds like a dozen men at work,” Pax said, “and one man taking the credit.”

Uncle Bernardo nodded. “It might be so. It was also said that Il Gatto did more than harass and harry the French. French soldiers who committed atrocities upon unarmed villages died at his hands. Il Gatto found them, no matter how well they guarded themselves. And that, I think, was the work of one man.”

“Possibly,” Pax said.

Uncle Bernardo said, “He struck alone, at night, silently. The country people said he walked through walls. Il Gatto was mist that blew away. The whisper of leaves.”

“A nuisance to the French,” Pax said.

She had known Il Gatto Grigio was an English agent. Until now, she hadn’t known it was Pax. In a world filled with brutes, the British Service had chosen Pax for that work. Damn them anyway.

“He was said to be a Piedmontese. Or a man of Venice. Or a Florentine. He was black haired and swarthy. He had light brown hair and a scarred face. He was dark haired and walked with a limp. He was an Austrian spy, pale and light haired under his disguises.”

“A gray cat indeed.”

“And like a cautious cat, he trusted very few men. Many claimed to know him, but the real number was only a few dozen. I was most fortunate to have one of my own in his inner circle—the boy who led the donkeys and hid with Il Gatto in the hills was a Baldoni. So I knew the Gatto was pale under his disguises and almost certainly English.”

“There are no secrets.” Pax might have been having a conversation that bored him.

“The boy showed me Il Gatto once, in Mantua, drinking coffee at a café on the other side of the square. I was surprised and not surprised to find the man who so annoyed the French was a thin brown scholar no one would notice, harmless and unmemorable. You were reading a book at the time. I was told later it was Virgil.”

“A scholar’s choice of reading.”

“I think, if you rolled up your right sleeve I would see a scar on your forearm.”

Indifferent, Pax said, “And if you did?”

“Then I would know you for certain.” Uncle Bernardo looked left and right, to study first one end of the street and then the other. “It happened that once Il Gatto was stealing arms in the town of Varallo. It was typical of him that he paused to empty the guardhouse as he left. One of the men he saved from execution was the friend of a Baldoni.”

She was tired of standing between men being subtle and unrevealing and both of them very good at it. Enough. “Then you owe him a debt, Uncle.”

“Which I acknowledge. I suspect I owe him several. I will think upon how to repay them.” Her uncle looked from her to Pax. “Mr. Paxton, we will speak again someday. You will not find me ungenerous. Call upon the Baldoni in any need and we will answer. But, for now, it’s best that you leave and do not return. There is nothing here for you.”

Good Lord. He’s protecting me from Pax.

“He stays,” she said. “Or I leave with him.”

That brought Uncle Bernardo’s attention to her with an almost audible snap.

“You haven’t asked why I’m in London.” For a little space she’d almost forgotten the Merchant, who planned to kill her and had experience in such matters. “Or why I need someone like Lazarus.”

“Whatever difficulties you face, your family will serve you.” Bernardo frowned and gestured. “You have no need of Lazarus. Or of Mr. Paxton. Sara, what is this man to you?”

“A friend.”

“He is British Service. To befriend the police is to lay your hand in the mouth of a rabid dog.”

“I knew him before he was British Service. Long ago.”

Her uncle looked on her soberly, obviously searching for the right words. “There is much to admire in Mr. Paxton. He is a hero in Italy. When the French offered extravagant rewards for his death, there was no farmhouse in Piedmont or Tuscany where he could not hide and be sure of safety.”

“I’m not surprised.” And she wasn’t. She had seen him gather the Cachés around him and transform them into a band of brothers and sisters.

Her uncle, with almost visible reluctance, went on. “He is an assassin, Sara. He has killed many times. There is an emptiness in the soul of such men.” Uncle Bernardo paused. “What is he to you?”

Pax gave no sign he was being discussed in this depth. He stood in that relaxed fighter’s stance that meant he might pull out his watch and consult it for the exact time or he might attack, without warning, in any direction. He had his hand negligently on his knife and was exactly one lunge from Uncle Bernardo’s waistcoat buttons. He was also keeping an eye on her cousins. Who could blame him?

She said, “He is a friend.”

“Friend” was wholly inadequate to describe Pax. He was bastion, shield, and implacable protection. He was a friend as a stone castle is a house.

“Baldoni use the word ‘friend’ carefully,” Bernardo said. “It is an obligation second only to family. We do not—”

“I understand what that means.” It is at such moments one chooses loyalties.

“Whatever this Paxton has been to you—”

“You cannot imagine what he has been to me, Uncle Bernardo. When I was alone in Paris, without family, abandoned—”

“The family never abandoned you. It was Francesco. Only Francesco pursued your father.”

“Vendetta.”

“Not vendetta. Never vendetta. My child . . . My child . . . Cesare sent your father into exile to prevent a bloodbath that would have destroyed us all. Francesco acted in evil madness, in unforgivable betrayal.” Uncle Bernardo was pale, breathing heavily, his voice harsh with suppressed anger and pain. “When you knocked on the gates and begged for help, every Baldoni was gone from Paris. Francesco sent lying words to you. Lies. An hour later he hanged himself inside the house.”

Pax said, “She was a child. She was alone. With all the resources of the Baldoni, you didn’t find her.”

“We shook that city like a rug, street by street. A dozen of us, for weeks.”

“You didn’t find her,” Pax said.

“For which there will never be sufficient recompense.”

“Then pay her back now,” Pax said. “She doesn’t need a hearty convivial dinner or more cousins with babies. She needs . . .” He faced her. “What do you need, Cami?”

She started with the blackmail letter delivered in Brodemere and ended with the address on Semple Street. Some secrets—the Mandarin Code, the Fluffy Aunts’ profession—she omitted.

Tonio and the cousins returned and drew in close, listening.

She ended with, “If I can’t find where the Merchant has hidden Camille Besançon and free her, I will walk alone on Semple Street into the hands of the Merchant. With your help, I am hoping to do that and still live.” She looked from one face to the other. They were so intent, so eager, she could smile.

“I’d like to kill the Merchant.” Giomar said that. “I’d like to be the man who did that.”

“You will be the man who holds the horses. I’ll do the killing.” Tonio suddenly didn’t look much older than when she’d known him in Tuscany.

Pax, in a voice of calm reason, said, “The kill is mine. My choice whether he lives or dies. This is not open to debate.”

They were all speaking Tuscan. This, in itself, was an incitement to extremity. From the Medici onward, she could not begin to imagine the number of murders that had been planned in that language.

Cousin Alessandro suggested drawing cards for the privilege.

Pax cut him off. “The British Service wants him taken alive. That’s a good deal harder than just shooting him.”

Tonio grinned, all but rubbing his hands together. “This sounds like fun.”

“We do not undertake a hazardous game because it is ‘fun.’” Under half-closed lids, Bernardo regarded Pax, then her. “Nor do the Baldoni annoy the British Service unnecessarily. So long as someone destroys the Merchant it does not matter which hand holds the knife. Cami, let us come inside and you will tell us your exact plans. Mr. Paxton, join us. Perhaps you will feel safe in drinking wine with us this time, having been declared a friend.”