Chapter Thirty-Nine

“My ring! He took my ring!” LaFontaine screamed as Molly Gant tried to stem the flow of blood from his mutilated hand with a soiled scarf. He batted her away and the four people in the room watched in amazement as the vicious wound began to heal. First it sealed, then it started to expand. The flesh filled out the missing palm. Fingers sprouting back into place. After a few minutes the maimed hand was once again whole. The Frenchman cursed and grimaced the entire time, showing all how painful the rapid restoration was. Once his hand was fully healed LaFontaine continued his profane diatribe. Eventually Cranmer was forced to raise his voice to get the man’s attention.

“Boss! They know about me. We need to leave as soon as we can.”

“What?” LaFontaine turned and snarled at his lieutenant. “What do you mean?”

“Yesterday several men attacked my house. I got enough warning from my gift to get out before they arrive, but only by minutes. I don’t know what gave me away, but I suspect it was related to the Bennets somehow.” Cranmer said in a calmer voice. It was obvious to the experienced operative that the precognitive was attempting to reduce his leader’s agitation by example. “I have no reason to assume they are aware of this house, but we are still in St. Albans which is far too close for my comfort. The only reason I stayed in this town is that this was the only location with which MacDill was familiar enough to create a portal.

“Then we need to move immediately.” LaFontaine insisted. “Do you have a carriage?”

Cranmer indicated he had.

“Then we shall remove to Canonbury. MacDill, you’ll drive. Molly, please find me a change of clothes. I cannot be seen in such a state.” His hand swept his gory suit. “Cranmer, please send word to our friend in Meryton that he should meet with us in Canonbury tomorrow evening. We leave in thirty minutes.”

The trip to Islington was blessedly uneventful. It allowed LaFontaine the time to reflect on the events of the past months. He considered the performance of his altered minions and the impact they had had on driving the British forces to redeploy to face an internal threat. After much consideration, he could only come to one conclusion. The plan was not working. And, without significant change, it was not going to work. There were simply too many English gifted and too few ExtraOrdinaries.

He reviewed the mathematics of inevitable failure. According to the best French intelligence estimates there were tens of thousands of gifted in the United Kingdom. They made up one and a half percent of the national population. That was on one side. On his side, he had found that only one in ten nulls had the potential to be successfully altered. For many his efforts had no effect. For three in ten, it meant a painful lingering death. And his alterations lasted, at most, a few weeks, and could only be repeated after a lengthy wait and only a few times before the altered individual’s body broke down from the abuse. This meant that he could only produce a small number of ExtaOrdinaries, realistically no more than a dozen or two, at any one time. And that relied on him having sufficient people whom he could alter and that he could trust to follow his orders, often to the death. They would always be out-numbered, and in many cases overpowered as well.

He realized they could be terrifyingly destructive in small, out of the way, locations. But the remoteness of those locations made them less effective for creating a stir in the larger population. There was also the very real possibility of the local gentry of whatever location he attacked having sufficient power to defeat any force he could assemble. Altering animals into monsters was even less effective, as they were uncontrollable, and few could withstand the concentrated fire that even normal farmers and gamekeepers might bring to bear. They were more effective at causing chaos in a crowded urban environment. But not effective enough to justify the risk of his capture.

He needed to contact his superiors and alert them to the ultimate failure of this experiment. They would likely demand his return to France to find better ways of using his gift. Perhaps he could be better utilized creating a corps of temporary shock troops for use in specific battles. There was always a need for more gifted soldiers and sailors.

First, he would return to London and renew his attacks. The more distracted with his minions the British authorities remained, the greater his opportunity for escape. He knew he had to return to France. But before he quit the field entirely, he wanted to punish those most responsible for his failure - that miserable Darcy and the thrice damned Bennets.

And he had a plan.

# # # # #

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George Wickham left the meeting with his French taskmaster in a state of high dudgeon. The man was mad, Georgie decided. His plans were foolhardy and would lead to the militia officer’s certain capture and subsequent hanging for treason. Still, he was not sure what he could do to extricate himself from the madman’s clutches. For a moment he considered simply throwing himself on Darcy’s mercy, but realized that path also likely led to the hangman’s scaffold. He resolved to put off the decision and indulge himself in the arms of his favorite local lass.

Two days later, Georgie found himself once more outside of Meryton, preparing for another clandestine assignation with the youngest Miss Bennet. He had convinced her to meet with him occasionally to improve her martial competences in preparation for her eventual application to the erstwhile special ladies battalion he had assured her was being mustered.

“But when will I be summoned?” she asked for the hundredth time. Patience was not her strongest suit, Georgie thought for the ninety-third time. But neither was it his, and he had to refrain from snapping at her in response.

“It takes time to convince the stodgy Army high command to accept such a radical idea. It may be that you will be the one that demonstrates the value of the concept to them. To prepare for that possibility, you should continue to secretly exercise as we have discussed.”

“But it’s so tedious to spend my time racing to the peak of Oakham Mount and back, or lifting stones in the old quarry.” Her petulance rendered her surprisingly unattractive. “I know! Why don’t we do that combat course again? I promise to not get carried away when we are sparing. Did you bring the muskets?”

“Not this time,” He regretted introducing her to an exercise that included his shooting towards her with a series of pre-loaded muskets, while she closed on his fortified position from several hundred yards away. When she eventually closed to blade range, she often had proven too excitable and had managed to do him some harm whist he fenced with her. It was her favorite activity, but one he dreaded not only for the potential danger, but because it was so bothersome to prepare, requiring him to requisition and transport up to a dozen muskets and the necessary shot and powder. Making sure he fired near, but not too near, her as he advanced was also becoming more difficult as she continued to wear on his forbearance. Not that he was sanguine that any accidental strike would do more than spark her anger, not something he wished to confront. “We must be deliberate with your training, so as to avoid causing you to culminate prematurely. You must perform your best when the Generals call.”

“Very well, but do you think it will be long?”

# # # # #

“I don’t quite comprehend why you thought you could evade eventual detection,” Wickham said in a calm voice. “I recognize you have always assumed your understanding was so far above that of us mere mortals, but the reality is that you are a clever lad and an able administrator. But you are no modern-day Aristotle.”

“And you are no Cato.” Graves countered. The former clerk was bound in a chair in an interrogation room. It was obvious from his bloodied condition that he had not been taken without a struggle. “You are simply a man that lucked into a position of power based on an accident of his freakish birth. In a fair world you would have been my clerk, if that.”

While William Wickham gazed impassively at the prisoner, his memory ranged over the years of his career. Born to a landed family in Yorkshire, he had the education of a gentleman, even earning the patronage of the Dean of Christ Church while attending Oxford. After traveling and studying in Geneva, he returned as a barrister and magistrate, joining government service in secret. His dismantling of the Corresponding Society was the key to his first appointment as Superintendent of Aliens back in ’74. It was undeniable that his truth speaking gift was essential to his successes in his subsequent adventures on the continent. Could he have succeeded without it? That hypothetical was beyond even his ability to answer.

“That may well be, though we will never know,” Wickham said. “We were both born into this world. And you chose to foreswear your vows to King and Country. And now, unless you can convince me you have some great value as a source of information on the enemy you served, you will be executed as the traitor you are. What have you to say?”

# # # # #

Hamish MacDill looked through his portal over the Purfleet Royal Gunpowder Magazine. The five long, windowless brick sheds, with their sharp-slopping roofs and copper-lined doors, were built to store upwards of ten thousand barrels of gunpowder each. The depot was the central storage point for powder, before its distribution elsewhere for use by both the Army and the Navy. All that stood between this vital resource and its destruction by the Frenchman and his collaborators was a small garrison of sleepy guards. The Scottish ExraOrdinary was certain that they could take control of the fortified repository with their half-dozen altered radicals and grotesques, reinforced by the score of mercenaries LaFontaine had procured.

He wished that the capture and destruction of the strategic resource was their only concern. But the Frenchman was obsessed with attaining his revenge on the magistrates that had thus far foiled his plans. This obsession was likely to bring about their downfall. Already LaFontaine had shipped their permanently precognitive asset off to France. Cranmer was a fool and a bore, but his gift might have proven useful. But MacDill knew his master had no regard for the counsel of those he saw has his marionettes. The Scotsman resented the strings, but knew that these powers, temporary though they may be, were the best hope he had of personally repaying the gifted Sassenach elite for the tragedy they had brought down on his family over the years.

And, if necessary, he would defy even his puppeteer to reach that goal.