Shadowbox

By Lee McAulay

Paris, 1832
Fleeing a murder he cannot forget, Louis Beauregard drowns the memory in debauchery and revels – a life of excess that threatens to alienate his friends and cast him adrift in a city famous for glittering seductions and violent Revolution.

Mad, bad and dangerous to know, his trail attracts others who seek his fortune.
But one of these men holds a deeper desire: to avenge the death of his father. Amongst the artisans of Montmartre and the tombs of Notre Dame, he will hunt Louis down and bring him to justice.
Of any sort.

Both haunted by the death of the same man.
Each striving to find meaning in the midst of their grief.
And beneath it all, the Sacred Kingship of Old Europe, a destiny that drives men to destroy their rivals – or their dreams.

SHADOWBOX: a spellbinding tale of grief and redemption from the author of THE LAST RHINEMAIDEN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee McAulay
• Release date: Jun 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311340610

Lee McAulay

I live in the UK and I'm now working on another novel.Visit my blog for more news, updates, free fiction, special offers and more at http://leemcaulay.wordpress.com, or drop me a line via Twitter, where I'm LeeMcAulay1.

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LEGAL NOTICES AND DEDICATION

SHADOWBOX, A NOVEL BY LEE MCAULAY

TEXT COPYRIGHT © LEE MCAULAY 2014

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1311340610

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, inventions and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously.

This work is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, information storage and retrieval systems – without the prior permission of the copyright owner. The moral right of the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All the characters in this work are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.

...

DEDICATION

For my brother: the greatest gift my parents ever gave me.

...

SHADOWBOX

Prologue – Eton College, Spring 1822

Something beautiful, this morning, to be alive, and young, and filled with health. Tipped from a warm bed into sporting-gear laid out fresh and laundered by a motherly house-mistress. Face scrubbed in cold clear water drawn from the College's own private well, soap scented with violets all the way from the south of France, the first growth of stubble on upper lip and jawline catching on linen towels.

A sprint to the boathouse where the others are waiting, eager, and the heavy boat slips into the water like a teak-oiled leaf.

Athletic limbs move in unison, leaning into the stroke, the dip of each blade a gleam along the calm stretch of the Thames below Windsor Castle. Cuckoos call in the woods that stretch all the way down the grassy lawns of the Two Mile Ride from the Round Tower's battlements to the river's edge. Rooks overhead, voices scratching the sky, rousing the other birds out of sleep to greet the Spring morning.

Early bees hum and swoop in the rushes and the riverbank grasses. May-flies and damsel-flies hover in the air in silent clouds, a day's life begun that will end before evening.

Sunrise, a clamour of purples and pinks across the mist-clad countryside as the boat pushes through the water with an easy ripple and the calm of a world on the turn, the sky overhead clear and endless.

Boys, boating.

Breath heaving in gusts from clean young lungs, the health of the privileged. Backs bent, not by toil but by intent, straighten with a heave and a puff into spring mist eddying in curls beneath the willows where the salmon lie sleeping.

Heave.

Lift.

Droplets glinting as the oars rise, free.

The hull darts forward, glides over the treacle surface, pushes through the dark water under dawn's pale sky.

A moment's hesitation as the oars dip once more.

Rattling, oars in rowlocks, leather-shod feet straining against the rails set like a ladder along the bottom of the boat.

Heave.

Glide.

Rattle.

Dip.

The banks slide past in the early morning glow.

Swans!

White and orange and black-beaked devils, hissing and flapping as the boat passes. A nest the size of a feather-bed in the rushes, the female broody while the male crests his outrage, and they're gone.

Willows draped over the banks, pale leaf-buds glowing bright as limes. Otter and vole and frog splash unseen in marshes beyond the rim of the riverside reeds. Horses grazing in the fringes of the water-meadows, heads raised, crunching grass, their flanks quivering in the chill air.

Boys, boating.

Breath hard to catch now. Hands stiff on the smooth wooden oar, blisters under the skin stinging like the Master's cane on unruly palms. The shirt on the back of the boy in front dark striped with sweat, flexing as he bends to the oars in rhythm.

Dip.

Heave.

Glide.

The willows recede in the distance. The horses take fright and charge off, hoofbeats splashing through the water-meadows into the mist, ghosts from the cavalry charge at Hougoumont Farm.

Shouts from the bank!

Farmhands, pointing at something in the water, calling a warning too late.

– Look out! Look out ahead!

The boat glides on.

More cries from the bank – cries from the boat behind – It's another boat!

Another boat!

A chaos of oars, clattering, up-tangle, the rhythm broken. Thrashing against the current, oars dipped, curling the water under, dark and viscous like honey.

But the boat slices over those in the water.

Scrubbed necks twist, oars forgotten at half-mast. A jolt, an impact, jarring all the way from the bow to the half-bent knees.

Strong limbs and hard heads thud against the smooth wooden hull. Hands in the air, grabbing at oars, pushing at the others, slipping over the wet curve upturned in the water, thumping at its sides for grip.

Twisted side-on by the impact, turned by the current, the boat swings round to face the sunrise. Golden dazzles on the water's surface, a fierce clarity that scars the eyes with dark shadows as sharp as a rook's wing.

Cries and chaos and cold water lapping over the sides of the boat, grazed fingers on the thwarts, pools sloshing in the boat's shallow basin.

– Get off! You'll have us all in!

Desperate hands, shocked young faces, wet hair and panic. Boys dragging other boys from the water to sit chattering teethly on the benches, eyes red, cheeks pale. The upturned boat drifts alongside as the boys row towards the nearest bank where the horses stare. Still the bees and the damsel-flies hover, the rooks calling names to each other, the cuckoos silent in the near-dark woods.

Lights in the high windows far across the water-meadows. A morning-bell, tolling. The morning air not as warm as it first seemed, the sun too far across the boundless cosmos so early in the year, night and day split straight as kindling.

The Bursar, half asleep, and his batman rowing out in a wider boat, unsteady, cautious. Silence as he approaches in a flourish of splashes and ripples. Is all well? A tremble in his voice, half-hidden. Tell me you're all safe. You're all accounted for?

– Here's Hopkins, sir –

Hopkins, are you all right?

– And here comes Barton. Haul him out, sir, he's half-drowned, can't you see?

– Now Purkiss –

That's a nasty bruise, Purkiss, best see Matron as soon as you can.

– Elgood. Percy.

Is that everyone, boys? Where's Beauregard?

– Sir?

Where's Louis?

– Louis!

High voices clamour against the morning's peace, rising in panic and horror, falling in whispers of dread.

Boys! Did anyone see him?

Silence in the boat where the boys rest, chill.

– Sir, I felt something tug at my leg in the water, sir.

The Bursar's face drops open and he turns to the boy who spoke. Peers at the young man, sees dark hair dripping on hunched shoulders, a lanky frame folded up in the wide-bottomed boat.

What did you say, Elgood?

– And me, sir! Like a hand, grabbing, trying to draw me down.

The Bursar turns to the boy with the bruise.

You're sure, Purkiss?

– On my honour, sir! On my honour!

Oh God. Where's Beauregard?

– There's his hat, sir – is that his?

– There, by the willow, sir!

Three of you, go and look –

The surface of the river rolls forward, dark as treacle, smooth as glass. Takes the scrap to a patch of weed knotted under the far bank, downstream. A hank of yellow grasses overhangs the water like a boy's hair bent over his homework.

The Bursar shades his eyes against the sunrise and shakes his head.

But young heads turn to look. Eyes wide, hair dripping, all the freshness of the morning spoiled. Blood on the crisp white shirts – so hard to remove, so hard – throats rough with shouting. Someone, unseen, sobbing.

Lost oars and the shell of the upturned boat drift bankwards with the rest.

The fastest runner sent across the wide water-meadows to the school – Fetch the nurse, fetch the Master, there's a young man taken by the Thames.

Taken by the river.

Youthful faces, frightened, stare out across the waters where one of their fellows still lingers, somewhere, maybe downstream beyond the curve where the willow hangs. Or still here, deep below, his drowned corpse waving like weeds against the pebbled riverbed, the sight they seek without the strength of will to bear it.

Perhaps.

Boys, boating.

CHAPTER 1

Dover, that crisp October morning, hummed with activity while the tide rose and ships prepared to lift anchor. In the attic room of the Packhorse Inn within sight of both the city gate and the harbour, Louis Beauregard tapped his fingers on the bare wooden surface of the breakfast table, looking without appetite on the spread in front of him.

Fruit in a pewter bowl, a pewter plate of cold sausages and bread, a jug of thick brown wine like old blood in his own crystal glasses, half-drunk. He rubbed his chin, slowly savouring the smooth skin where the landlady's razor had shaved him in the Turkish fashion earlier that morning, before he'd started on the wine.

He was dressed in travelling clothes of the usual sort – dark canvas breeches, stout leather boots, crisp linen shirt and a brown serge waistcoat for warmth. His shirt-sleeves, bunched up into the crooks of his elbows, kept a starched crease from the shoulder to the cuffs. The collar scratched his neck. His boots pinched in unusual places, as though he'd put them on the wrong feet that morning. And he desperately wanted this ordeal to be over.

Where's the doctor? he asked for the third time that morning.

His companion, Charles Lyell, a round-faced man in his early thirties, shook his head. I had the landlord send for him at first light, he said, his hooded eyes closing slowly. I suspect there is a shortage.

In Dover? snapped Louis. He rose to his feet and began to pace the room, his pale hair loose and framing his elegant features with the grace of an artist's model. With the garrison in the castle? A shortage?

He turned and strode to the window set deep in the gable of the roof, his stout boots hammering the floorboards. Lithe as an athlete he moved, his slim form robust for his average height and his face lined beyond that which was normal for a man in his early twenties. He flapped his shirt sleeves down and fastened them at the wrist before he twisted the window-lock open.

A cool breeze swept away the stuffiness in his head for a moment. He leaned out of the window, resting on the sill with both hands, the rough thatch overhead tugging at his shoulder-length hair. A full moon, silver and huge in the early morning sky, hung low above the battlements of Dover's massive castle where the King's flag swung, half-folded. Clouds, high and sparse as fog, lay in smooth ribbons between moon and castle.

Beneath him, the town bustled. Off the side of the harbour a tangle of rigging and spars showed the tall ships preparing for voyage. The odour of the sea choked the town's narrow streets and rose even to this height above the houses and inns. Louis glanced to where the pale sunrise lit the eastern horizon with a gleam of fire. He felt a surge of unease, of nausea, nothing to do with the previous night's revelry.

Blast it! he said, swirling around on his heels to face his companion. I meant to take the tide this morning, Charles. This delay is unaccountable!

Lyell sighed and rose from his chair by the fire. I'll go down and ask again, he said, and reached for his long-tailed coat.

Do so, said Louis, and resumed pacing.

When he was alone, he rubbed his chest with one hand under the waistcoat, inside his shirt. The hairs at his collarbone were curled but they stood stiff in the autumn's chill, and the fire in the room's hearth was barely throwing a shadow, never mind heat. Louis peered out of the window again for a brief moment, and shuddered at the sight of the sea. His cheeks burned with fever and his brow throbbed. There was danger in the turning of the tide, in the passage of night into day, at the changing seasons of the year.

Yesterday was a mistake, he thought, cursing his hangover. I should have known the Lady would never let me leave while I was conscious.

From downstairs in the tavern, voices rose through the floors, raised arguments between the boards and up the stairwell – Lyell's voice, ordering, and another man – probably the landlord – pleading with apology.

It's all very well saying you're sorry, Louis thought. You're not the man fleeing the attentions of a goddess.

Dark shadows flashed at the edge of his sight and his hands grew slippery. In his mind's eye, a man lunged with a knife. A man died.

His mouth suddenly dry, he reached for the unappetising wine and threw it down his throat, suppressing the retch that came on him at its rough entry. Drinking didn't help his headache, he knew that, but with enough of it he hoped to forget the ill things he'd done. To forget, even, the one they called the Lady, and her life-changing attentions. Forget that he was fleeing from Her influence as much as from the memory of the knife. And the fact that She'd never come back to him.

He threw himself out of the chair and lunged for the gable window, stood gasping in the clear air, hands trembling on the sill. He shut his eyes. The man lunged again, the knife flashed. Blood spilled. Louis hung his head out of the casement, open-mouthed, his nose running and the knifeman always waiting behind each blink.

Where the hell is that medic? he yelled out across the empty rooftops.

Spattering feet on the cobbles below and an answering yell of abuse from a woman's voice were all his reward.

He spun on one heel and paced to the door of his chambers. Wrenching the thing from its frame, he repeated his demand down the stairs in a roar.

...

When the physician arrived, he was casual, not flustered, a man of profession and purpose. His face was lined with age and a tobacco habit which had also stained his fingertips yellow. His bald head and dark clothing gave him the air of a cleric, and his lips were thin.

You're late, growled Louis.

The doctor said nothing. He opened his medical case and removed a small leather mask which he laid on the table, then a length of rubber tubing as thick as his little finger and as long as his arm. He withdrew a bladder-type bag – oiled silk, by the look of the thing, and ribbed with seams like a Scots haggis – the size of a loaf of bread, similar in colour, tightly stoppered at one end where a nozzle of India-rubber protruded.

Louis sprawled in the bed he'd risen from barely two hours earlier. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt again, tucking the ends under his elbows. His heart was racing. His mouth was still dry, in spite of the wine and the coffee he'd had brought up from the kitchen with the physician's arrival. I wanted this done before we sailed.

You'll have it soon enough, said the doctor, and laid the nozzled bladder on the table next to the other items. He folded his medical case closed and placed it on the floor by his feet.

You know this is important? Louis asked. You've been briefed?

About the Lady? Of course. The physician attached the rubber tubing to the leather mask. The downturn of his mouth and the tone of his voice suggested he did not approve.

It's essential, said Louis, gasping now. I – I can't cross the Channel without this. I tried – The vision of the man with the knife flashed in front of his eyes again and he winced. Cursed himself for gabbling. Noted how the other man was silent, deliberate in his actions, uncompromisingly composed. Wished he'd get on with it.

The doctor pursed his lower lip and connected the loose end of the tubing to the silk bladder. Where will you go, do you think?

Louis hesitated. Unease with the other man's behaviour made his shoulders twitch. He rose from the bed and opened the chamber door to yell down the stairs. Lyell?

He heard the other man's voice below, and yelled again.

What? came Lyell's reply.

Come up here, please. Louis surprised himself by his polite request. He knew he was taking a risk. Laughing gas – ether – was fashionably amusing, in the right company, but in the wrong hands: who could tell? And the physician was not a man Louis trusted. He waited for Lyell's heavy footsteps to reach the stairs before turning back to the bed-chamber. You have no objection? he asked.

The doctor shook his head. He held the mask in one hand, the silk bladder of laughing-gas in the other, his thin lips in a flat line and his eyes blank.

Lyell stamped up the stairs and appeared in the doorway. Ready?

Louis nodded. He took one last look at the gloomy physician and laid on the bed with his hands under his hips, palms pressing into the counterpane. In the darkness that ether promised lay more visions of the man with the knife. He did not want to see his own hand take the weapon. Adieu, Charles, he said, forcing a boldness he did not feel into his voice.

Adieu, whispered Lyell. His face was pale, without the ruddy glow that usually flushed his cheeks, and his brow was creased. He flashed a brief smile, nervous, and Louis realised how much his friend was concerned about this procedure.

Too late.

In that moment, the doctor strapped the leather mask around Louis's mouth and nose. A sweet odour lay below the tanned cowhide, the first wisps of nitrous oxide that would knock him out, and the mask's soft fibres rubbed his skin like a woman's caress.

Louis held his breath, unable to let go of this moment. He fixed his gaze on the physician's face. His hands, crushed under his body, clenched around the bedclothes. Make it strong, he said, through gritted teeth. I don't want to wake up half way across the bloody Channel.

The doctor nodded, grim, and squeezed the silk bag.

CHAPTER 2

Thin the wind blew across the empty Artillery Ground on the southern edge of Bunhill Fields, and Godfrey Woolverham pulled his coat tight around him while he waited for his father's hearse. The open grave by his feet held a puddle of water and the clouds overhead promised more rain, maybe sleet with this North wind, all the way from the sea. Already the gulls had come inland, squalling overhead, and their cries keened like mourners for the dead.

The burial ground's few trees, sparse in the acid soil, bent their bare branches gracefully, the copper leaves already gone to ground so early in October. The scent of the marshes miles further east carried on the wind too, rotten and sick.

Godfrey shuddered and stuffed his hands deep into his coat pockets. His hat stuck on his stiff dark hair, his boots muddy from the long walk along the cemetery's unpaved paths from the City Road entrance, his face burning with a shade of fury that began again at his throat and spread out from under his heavy scarf up to his cheeks. His eyes pinched into slits while he watched a horse-drawn hearse turn off Old Street through the cemetery gates. The shaking in his shoulders was nothing to do with the weather.

Beside him, two men stood waiting, black mourning dress shading them uniform, heavy garb against the chill. One was bareheaded. His long white hair rose out from his head, woolly as the clumps left on gorse by wandering sheep, streaming back from his skull like smoke. He clapped his hands together, rubbing them for warmth. He cleared his throat and removed a large handkerchief from one coat pocket, spat into the fabric, folded the phlegm inside. Did you expect anyone else to be here, Woolverham?

Godfrey's fists unclenched and tightened even more forcefully. He thought of his fellow trainees at the manufactory who had made their excuses after the church service and headed back to work even though Grimstone and Dyer, Chemists, the firm's two owners, stood at his side even now, to his grateful but embarrassed relief. He thought of his mother crushed with grief, the black veil like an iron grille across her face.

And last of all he thought of eighteen-year-old Ida Demko, her dark curls pinned up and her head bent over a suit of fine clothing as she stitched in her uncle's tailoring business, busy with her nimble hands as she learnt a seamstress's trade. No, Mr Grimstone, he said bitterly, the wind snatching at his words. I hoped.

The grey-stubbled man shook his head. It's a bad day, he said. He was a younger man, not yet out of middle age, his pale skin red around the nose and mapped with blue thread veins stretching out across his cheekbones to his ears. Grey stubble stood out on his face, a forest of grey, a thicket half-trimmed. His hat rested on yet more stubble above his brow, along his collar, secretly hiding a scalp of the stuff thick-set.

The old man raised his head, sniffing the air, cautious as a fox in a farmyard. There's been worse, Dyer, he said in a voice just this side of hoarse, and turned away from the other two.

Godfrey stared at the hearse while it struggled up the muddy hill towards the grave in front of them. The horses slipped, the plumes cresting their harness nodded and trembled, foam dripped from their noses onto the damp roadway. He clenched his fists. His breath hurt, throat raw and stuffed with grief and confusion as if his shirt collar had grown too tight in these last few days.

Dyer reached into a pocket of his coat and drew out a hip-flask. He uncorked the vessel, held it out. Here, Godfrey, he said, nudging with his elbow. Brandy?

Godfrey shook his head. Abrupt, curt, like evading a wasp. Dyer's offer stung, too, more than the memory of seeing his father lying in the street, his blood spread out beneath him like Raleigh's cloak. Godfrey's father never shared a brandy with him, or much else.

Dyer shrugged and took a deep draught himself. His lips wet, trembling, he corked the flask again and ruffled it back into his pocket.

Are we to expect your mother? asked the old man.

Godfrey's chin rose and his nostrils flared. His stiff posture did not waver, however, and he shook his head again, slowly this time, a controlled movement that swung in time with his breath, deep gusts from his lungs pouring like smoke into the chill air to be spun away by the wind from the North. However disappointed his mother might have been by his father's behaviour, she was genuine in her grief, unwilling to leave the house now the funeral service was done. Right now, he thought, she's probably taking on herbal tinctures with the same appetite as Dyer for brandy.

The three men watched the hearse draw near. Both horses were slick with sweat, bubbles of froth on their black pelts beneath the harness-leathers. Hooves slipping on the muddy track, they stumbled to a halt ten yards from the graveside and the driver jammed the brake against the hearse wheels. The wooden lever squealed against the iron rim of the wheel, the noise like one of the seabirds lined up on the rooftops of St Luke's Hospital two streets to the north.

Here for the burial, gents? called the driver from his seat above the carriage. He was wrapped up tight in woollens and had to lower his scarf to speak.

Grimstone nodded. He clasped his hands in front of him and stepped away from the other two, headed for the hearse.

Godfrey watched, his limbs tingling but leaden, numb, the wind whipping raw tears from his eyes. He'd kept himself together for the church service where his father's friends and contemporaries shook his hand in condolence, strong beside his weeping mother hung on his supporting arm, and his own friends shuffled with their hats held tight, not knowing what to say. Now, seeing the lonely coffin – so small, too narrow to contain the man whose life had shaped his own so fiercely – Godfrey's head crawled with questions he'd never ask.

The driver swung down from his seat and secured the reins. Just the three of you? he asked. His accent had a wood-cut cadence that hinted at Polish ancestry, and while his eyes were bright in a pale face they had a translucent shadow over the blue, like porcelain.

Yes, said Grimstone. Have you the tools?

The driver nodded. Under the seat. We'll all have to haul on the ropes, mind. You don't want the coffin splitting.

Godfrey winced and turned away.

That's quite enough, said the old man in a low voice. The lad's in a bad way. He'll need to be kept busy.

It was his father, then?

Godfrey's face twisted uncontrollably and his breath shook, his collar choking him now, and he stepped around Dyer to the side of the grave furthest from the hearse. The driver's eyes troubled him – the first signs of cataracts, right enough, but a veil like the first sign of death too. A focus that shifted in a mist of its own, like his father's gaze as he died, unable to recognise his son amongst the faces crowding round him on the cobbled street. Godfrey glanced back through wet lashes.

God help the boy, the hearse-driver breathed, shaking his head. He pulled his scarf low and showed a rough neck-tie held in place by a silver pin. I – I was in the trade myself, in the old country. Before I got sick. He waved his hand in front of his clouded eyes.

Then you'll know the importance of doing this well, said Grimstone, and strode up to where the other two men stood by the open grave, the cold wind whipping tears from his eyes.

Godfrey's muscles responded like iron machines when the four of them removed his father's coffin from the hearse. Gone were the flowers, the ribbons, the sunlit glories of the church on Ironmonger Row. Bare wood, dark varnish, brass handles and black iron nails. Rope that stung his hands, his share of the weight knocking his ankles together, his breath still tight and pure while his father's corpse lay on his shoulder in its box, mere inches from his face, all clay and putty returning to the earth.

They lowered the coffin into the grave where it lay at an angle, the ropes now loose, slithering from underneath and dripping with mud as the driver