“Oh, the devil with it,” he muttered to himself, and seizing the nearest door handle in sight, shoved it open.

He found himself in a low-ceilinged room that smelt strongly of sulfur, hot metal, and other noxious substances. It did, however, have a fire in the hearth, and he headed for this like a racing pigeon homing to its cot.

He slung his cloak forward over his shoulder and closed his eyes in momentary bliss at the feel of heat on his legs and backside.

A sound caused him to open his eyes, and he saw that the noise of his entry had attracted a young man, presently gaping at him from a door on the far side of the room.

“Sir?” said the young man tentatively, taking in Grey’s uniform. The young man himself was in shirtsleeves and breeches, a slender chap with dark, curly hair and a face of almost girlish delicacy, perhaps a few years younger than himself.

“I beg your pardon for my unseemly intrusion,” Grey said, letting his cloak fall and forcing a smile. “I am Major John Grey. I was unfortunately—” He had begun some explanation of his presence, but the young man’s eyes forestalled him with an exclamation of surprise.

“Major Grey! Why, I know you!”

“You do?” For some reason, this made Grey somewhat uneasy.

“But of course, of course! Or rather,” the young man corrected himself, “I know your name. You were called before the commission this morning, were you not?”

“I was,” Grey said shortly, fury returning at the memory.

“Oh—but I forget myself; your pardon; sir. I am Herbert Gormley.” He bobbed an awkward bow, which Grey returned, with mutual murmurs of “your servant, sir.”

Glancing round, he saw that the strong odors came from an assortment of pots and glass vessels scattered higgledy-piggledy across an assortment of tables and benches. Wisps of steam rose from a small earthen pot on the table nearest him.

“Could that be tea?” Grey asked dubiously.

It could. Gormley, clearly grateful for the opportunity to be hospitable, snatched up a filthy cloth, and using this as a pot holder, poured hot liquid into a pottery mug, which he handed to Grey.

The tea was the same grayish color as the mud on his boots, and the smell led him to suspect that the mug was not employed strictly as a drinking vessel—but it was hot, and that was all that mattered.

“Er…what is this place?” Grey inquired, emerging from the mug and waving at their surroundings.

“This is the Royal Laboratory, sir!” Gormley said, straightening his back with an air of pride. “If you please, sir? I’ll fetch someone directly; he will be so excited!”

Before Grey could speak to stop him, Gormley had darted back into the recesses of the building.

Grey’s uneasy feeling returned. Excited? The revelation that everyone in the Warren seemed to have heard about his appearance before the commission was sufficiently sinister. That anyone should be excited about it was unsettling.

In Grey’s not inconsiderable experience, for a soldier to be talked about was a good thing only if the conversation were in reference to some laudable feat of arms. Otherwise, a prudent man kept his head down, lest it be—this unwary thought evoked a sudden memory of Lieutenant Lister, and he shuddered convulsively, slopping hot tea over his knuckles.

He set the cup down and wiped his hand on his cloak, debating the wisdom of absquatulating before Gormley returned with his “someone”—but the rain was now slashing ferociously at the shutters, driven by a freezing east wind, and he hesitated an instant too long.

“Major Grey?” A dark, burly soldier in a Royal Artillery captain’s uniform emerged, a look of mingled welcome and wariness upon his heavy face. “Captain Reginald Jones, sir. May I welcome you to our humble abode?” He offered his hand, tilting his head in irony toward the cluttered room.

“I am obliged to you, sir, both for shelter from the storm and for the kind refreshment,” Grey replied, taking both the offered hand and advantage of the pounding rain to indicate his reason for intrusion.

“Oh, you did not come in response to my invitation?” Jones had thick brows, like woolly caterpillars, which arched themselves in inquiry.

“Invitation?” Grey repeated, the sense of unease returning. “I received no invitation, Captain, though I assure you—”

“I did tell you, sir,” Gormley said reproachfully to the captain. “When I took your note across to the manor, they said I had just missed the major, who had already left.”

“Oh, so you did, so you did, Herbert,” Jones said, smacking himself theatrically on the forehead. “Well, then, it seems good luck or Providence has delivered you to us, Major.”

“Indeed,” Grey said warily. “Why?”

Captain Jones smiled warmly at him.

“Why, Major, we have something to show you.”

He had no time to dwell upon the Commission, at least.

It was a long gallop from the laboratory, through a maze of smaller outbuildings and sheds, then into what Gormley—shouting to be heard above the noise of rain and hammering—told him was the Royal Brass Foundry, a large, airy stone and brick building, through whose archways Lord John glimpsed strange marvels: casting pits, boring machines, a gigantic beam scale large enough to weigh a horse…and a horse. Two, to be accurate, their wet flanks gleaming as they backed a wagon filled with barrels of clay and burlap bags of sand in through the high vestibule door.

The air was thick with the scents of wet rope, drying clay, hot wax, tallow, fresh manure, and the acrid, fiery odors of an unseen forge somewhere in the recesses of the place. Gormley shouted brief descriptions of the various activities they passed, but Jones was leading the way at the double-quick, and Grey had barely time to inhale the fascinating aromas of gun-founding before he found himself propelled once more into the open air and the cold smell of rain on stone, tinged with a miasma of rot and ordure from the prison hulks on the river nearby.

The air shivered periodically with explosion; they were drawing nearer to the proving grounds. The bangs echoed in the hollow of his stomach. Jesus, they weren’t going to try to make him reenact the events leading up to the demise of Tom Pilchard, surely?

The pitted landscape of the proving grounds stretched away to the left; he could see it now. Acres of open ground punctuated by earthen bunkers, outposts of heaped sandbags, and tents of various shapes and sizes, canvas darkened by the rain. Here and there, the glint of muted light on the barrels of the bigger guns.

To his relief, though, Jones veered right and down a muddy path lined with the dismounted carcasses of ruined guns, neatly laid out like dead bodies.

He had no time to study them, but was impressed by both their number—there must be fifty, at least—and by the size of some. There must be half a dozen cannon royal, whose monstrous barrels weighed eight thousand pounds or more and must be drawn by a dozen horses.

Ahead lay a very large, open-sided shelter, roofed with canvas. Long tables lay bleak under the canvas, covered with debris. Here lay half a Spanish culverin, the breech blown off. There the twisted remains of a short gun he could not identify.

The thump of a fresh explosion reached him, muffled only slightly by the rain that drummed on the canvas overhead as he followed Gormley into the shelter.

“Why do they test ordnance in the rain?” he asked, to cover his unease, and by way of making conversation.

“Do you not sometimes fight in the rain, my lord?” Gormley sounded amused. “Useful to have bombs and grenades that will still explode when the casing is wet, don’t you think?”

“Ah…quite.” The Commission’s harping insistence upon the weather at Crefeld seemed suddenly to acquire some meaning. Likewise their insistent questioning regarding his perceptions of the powder…Edgar. Goddammit, Edgar!