He sounded almost gloating, though his face was still pale.

“Folk say as he’s the ghost of an artillery officer was killed on the proving ground, fifty years or more ago. It’s good luck, they say, for an artilleryman to see him—not so good, maybe, was you not of his h’occupation.”

“Good luck,” Grey repeated, a little bleakly. “Well, and I’m sure we can all use a bit of that. Come to that, Private, how do you come to be here?”

The ghost—if that’s what he was—had raised not a hair on Grey’s head, but the rammer’s presence had set the back of his neck to prickling.

“Oh.” The man’s look of avid interest faded a little. “I’m summoned, sir. They’s a Commission of Inquiry, regarding the h’explosion. Poor old Tom Pilchard,” he said, wagging his head mournfully. “’E were a noble gun.”

The rammer glanced at the sundial, gleaming with rain.

“But I come here,sir, for to see was there enough light to tell the time by the dial, see, sir, not to be late.”

A sense of movement on the other side of the square made Grey look up quickly. It was not the ghost, though—if it had been a ghost—but the small, black-coated functionary who had taken him before the commission, wearing a large handkerchief spread over his wig against the rain, and an annoyed expression.

“I believe this will be your summons now,” Grey said, nodding toward the functionary. “Good luck!”

The rammer hurriedly straightened his hat, already moving across the square.

“Thank’ee, sir!” he called. “The same to you!”

Grey lingered for a moment after the rammer’s departure, looking into the walkway beyond the square. It was growing late in the afternoon, and the light was beginning to darken, but the space beyond was perfectly visible—and perfectly empty.

Grey found himself profoundly uneasy, and seized of a sudden urge to be gone. The artilleryman’s ghost—if that’s what it was—had not disturbed him in the slightest. What troubled him was the glimpse he had had of the other artilleryman, the young soldier standing in the walkway, watching.

He had told Oswald that he had had no opportunity of studying Philip Lister’s face, and that was true enough. He had,however, seen it, in the instant before the cannonball struck. And he suffered now from a most unsettling conviction that he had just seen it again.

Drawing his cloak more closely round him, he crossed the square and went to find Tom Byrd, feeling a certain coldness near his heart.

Tom Byrd was waiting patiently for him in Bell Street, sheltering from the rain in a doorway.

“All right, me lord?” he inquired, putting on his broad-brimmed hat.

“Yes, fine.”

Byrd narrowed his eyes at Grey, who reflected—not for the first time—that Byrd’s round and essentially guileless young face did not in any way prevent his exhibiting the sort of penetrating suspicion more suitable to an officer in charge of a court-martial—or to a nanny—than to a valet.

“Fine,” Grey repeated, more firmly. “Mere formalities. As I said.”

“As you said,” Byrd echoed, with a trifle more skepticism than was entirely becoming. “Covering their arses, I expect.”

“Certainly that,” Grey agreed dryly. “Let us find a little food, Tom. And we must find a bed, as well. Do you know anywhere suitable?”

“To be sure, me lord.” Tom squinted in consideration, and after a moment’s consultation with the detailed map of London he carried in his head, pointed off toward the east.

“The Lark’s Nest; decent house round the corner,” he suggested. “Do a nice oyster pie, and the beer’s good. Dunno about the beds.”

Grey nodded.

“We’ll chance the fleas for the sake of the beer.”

He gestured to Tom to lead the way, and pulled down his hat against the steady drizzle. He washungry—ravenous, in fact—having eaten neither breakfast nor dinner, his appetite suppressed by thought of the coming interview.

He had been pushing that interview to the back of his mind, in hopes of distancing the Commission’s remarks sufficiently to deal rationally with them later. Now relieved of other distraction, though, there was no escape, and the Commission’s questions replayed themselves uncomfortably in his mind as he splashed through darkening puddles after Tom.

He was still angered by Marchmont’s insinuations regarding his own possible culpability in the explosion—but not so angered as not to try to examine them honestly.

The baffling taradiddle regarding Edgar he dismissed, seeing no way to make sense of it, save to suppose that Marchmont had intended to goad him and thus perhaps to drive him into unwary admission of fault.

Couldthe explosion have been in any way his fault? He felt a natural resistance to the suggestion, strong as the involuntary jerk of a knee. But he could not dismiss Marchmont’s insinuations—or deal with them, if they could not be dismissed—if he was not clear in his own mind about the matter.

Be the devil’s advocate,he told himself, hearing his father’s voice in memory. Assume that itwas your fault—in what way might it have happened?

Only two possibilities that he could see. The most likely, as Marchmont had implied, was that the gun crew might, in the excitement of the moment, have double-loaded the cannon, not pausing for the first round to be touched off. When the linstock was put to the touchhole, both rounds would have exploded together, thus blowing the cannon apart.

The second possibility was that a faulty round might have been loaded, and properly touched off, but failed to explode. It should by rights have then been cleared from the barrel before a fresh load was inserted—but it was far from uncommon for this step to be overlooked in the heat of battle. If the aim did not require to be adjusted, the process of loading and firing developed an inexorable, mindless rhythm after a time; nothing existed save the next motion in the complex process of serving the gun.

It would be simple; no one would notice that the charge had not gone off, and a fresh load would simply be tamped in on top of the faulty one. Stimulated by the explosion of the second, fresh charge, the faulty one might then explode, as well. He’d seen that happen once, himself, though in that instance, the cannon had merely been damaged, not destroyed.

Neither instance was rare, he knew. It was therefore the responsibility of the officer commanding the gun to see that every member of the crew performed each step of his duty, to discover such errors in process and correct them before they became irrevocable. Had he done that?

For the hundredth time since he heard of the Commission of Inquiry, he reviewed his memories of the battle of Crefeld, looking for any indication of an omission, any half-voiced protest by some member of the gun crew…but they had been completely demoralized by the sudden death of their lieutenant, in no frame of mind to concentrate. They might so easily have made an error.

But the Commission had called the rammer. Had they already interviewed the other surviving members of the gun crew, he wondered suddenly? If so…but if some member of the gun crew had testified to double-loading, Grey would have been facing more than insinuations.

“Here we are, me lord!” Tom called over his shoulder, turning in to a sturdy, half-timbered house.

They had arrived at the Lark’s Nest, and the smell of food and beer drew him momentarily from his broodings. Even oyster pie, sausage rolls, and good beer, though, could not keep recollection at bay. Once summoned, Crefeld remained with him, the smell of black powder, slaughtered pigs, and rain-soaked fields overpowering the scents of tobacco smoke and fresh-baked bread.