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I cleared my throat.
‘Are you… are you sure that nothing else happened? Up there in your office? Nothing else but me passing out?’
He hesitated. I saw his hand tighten around the walking stick that concealed his sword. His lips parted.
‘I…’
‘Here, Mr Ambrose, Sir!’ Like a fat little ball of lightning, the porter shot around the corner, and I mentally cursed the man and all his descendants to the seventh generation. Or maybe the eighth. ‘Here is the gentleman’s tailcoat! Dried and cleaned as requested!’
Although it was my tailcoat he carried, he handed it to Mr Ambrose, an action that didn’t endear him to me any more than his sudden appearance had. I added a few curses for the ninth and tenth generations. They probably more than deserved it. And I was sure my good friend Napoleon would see to it that they were adequately tortured if I asked him.
Mr Ambrose nodded to the man.
‘You’re dismissed. Take up your post again.’
‘Yes, Sir! Immediately, Sir!’
Emitting relief like a beacon did light, the man hurried off, and Mr Ambrose held out my tailcoat to me.
‘Here.’
‘About what I said,’ I tried to return to the earlier subject. ‘About what happened up there in your office… I’m pretty sure I can remember something about you and me-’
I didn’t get any further than that. Suddenly, I was cut off by a violent hiss. Mr Ambrose’s fingers had clenched into the material of the tailcoat, around a lengthy tear in the black cloth. He stared at the damaged garment with eyes like icicles.
‘Look at this,’ he told me, his voice matching the coldness of his eyes. ‘Look at this, Mr Linton. Now!’
Uncomprehendingly, I stared at the tear in the coat.
‘Yes? I see it. And? I must have ripped it somewhere. Maybe on a nail or something like th-’
‘That’s no tear,’ he interrupted me with deadly calm. ‘Do you not see that the whole is round? Do you not see the blackened edges of the cloth where it is ripped open? Those are gunpowder stains!’
My fuzzy brain tried to grasp the meaning of his words. It needn’t have bothered. Stepping so close to me that our faces were almost touching and I could see the darkness of his eyes, Mr Ambrose told me:
‘A bullet grazed you and ripped your coat open! Another inch and it would have buried itself in your flesh!’
The way he said your flesh sent shivers down my back. Shivers of fear, anger and… something else I couldn’t quite grasp.
He wasn’t shivering, though. He was colder and harder than I had ever seen him.
‘You could have died.’ He seemed to be speaking to nobody in particular. His icy eyes were staring right through me. ‘You really could have died.’ They were looking so far into the distance, those eyes of his - as if he was seeing some other world, another reality altogether. Suddenly, they refocused on me again, and he thrust the tailcoat into my arms.
‘Here. Let it be a reminder, Mr Linton.’
I staggered back, clutching the coat in my arms.
‘A reminder of what?’
His hands, empty of cloth now, once again curled tightly around the handle of his hidden sword. ‘A reminder to never, ever cease to be careful.’
He turned in the direction of the chaise and started towards it.
‘You’re right.’ I swallowed. Somewhere on the edge of my consciousness was hovering the knowledge that a piece of lead could have buried itself in me tonight. But my mind was so exhausted, it wasn’t quite ready to let that realization in. Not yet. Hurriedly, I started to follow him. ‘Now… about that thing in your office… I could swear that you-’
‘Nothing happened in the office!’ His voice cut through the air like a blade of ice. Without looking back at me, he swung himself into the carriage and slammed the door shut behind him. ‘You fell, you hit your head, no more. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Let’s go!’
Nothing happened. Nothing at all…
Those were the last words he had spoken to me that night. Leaning out of the chaise, he had flung a command at the porter, who’d hastily opened the large outer gate of the back yard. I had yanked open the door on my side and clambered in. The driver hadn’t needed prompting after that, he appeared to be well familiar with Mr Ambrose’s distaste for wasted time.
‘Gee up!’
The cry of the coachman was followed by the crack of the whip. Seconds later, the coach lurched forward and we were rattling over the cobblestones, out under the massive archway, into the street. The blurry shapes of gas lanterns rushed past us like ghosts on their way to the underworld. I wondered if any of them could be bothered to stop and haunt us, maybe rattle their chains for a few minutes or something like that. Mr Ambrose certainly looked like he could use the company.
He was staring out of his window, his face turned away from me. He was even more cold and taciturn than usual. What was the matter?’
‘Mr Ambrose?’
Silence.
‘Mr Ambrose, Sir?’
More silence. Really quite extraordinarily silent silence.
But then, why should that surprise me? This was Mr Ambrose I was trying to talk to, after all. Still, for some reason I had expected him to be more talkative. I had expected him to want to talk about something… something important. The memory hovered on the edge of my consciousness. Once more, I reached up and touched my lips. In his icy, silent corner I saw Mr Ambrose shift, almost imperceptibly.
Had I… had we…?
No. I just couldn’t remember.
The streets rushed past as if in a dream. The houses shrank, the streets narrowed. No more palatial mansions and memorable marble façades, we were now driving past honest middle-class homes, the comfortable little brick houses of greengrocers, shoemakers and probably also piano-tuners and their sons who had illicit affairs with young blonde ladies.
‘Oh gosh,’ I mumbled. ‘I almost forgot about them!’ My gaze wandered to Napoleon, who was sitting between me and the ice-cold statue in the corner that was Mr Ambrose.
‘You couldn’t take care of that for me, could you?’
The Emperor shook his head sombrely. I sighed.
‘I thought so. Blast! You’re an abominable slacker, you know that, don't you?’
Mr Ambrose slowly turned his head towards me. His gaze cut into me like a deep-frozen razor.