"I assume you'll be wanting to talk to your brother and sister next," Alasdair says as soon as he and Francis have left Lovino's chambers and the door is safely closed behind them.
"No. Why would I?" Francis asks. He sounds genuinely puzzled.
"To corroborate your cousin's story?" Alasdair can hardly believe it needs saying, but then Francis does appear to have swallowed Lovino's half-baked explanations with remarkable ease, his righteous indignation over the invasion of his much-valued privacy entirely forgotten. "Do you honestly believe he was telling the truth about what's been going on?"
"I do," Francis says firmly. When Alasdair frowns at him, still disbelieving, he adds, "I know Lovino can be a little... abrasive, but he's a good man, and I trust him.
"I know I haven't yet shared what my father had done to me when we visited Roma after Felice disappeared - it's a miserable tale, as I'm sure you can imagine, and one best saved for when we're both a great deal less sober than we are now - but suffice to say it was hardly pleasant.
"Lovino and Feliciano took care of me then, and lied to my father many times to spare me from the worst of his anger, even though that could have proved dangerous, no matter that they're Imperial princes and his nephews, besides." He shrugs. "You likely think me naive, especially as he's just admitted to abusing my trust, but I still believe that he would always act with my best interests at heart, even if I don't agree with his methods."
There's no logical argument Alasdair can make against a gut feeling; a loyalty born from a closeness and history he doesn't share. He would feel the same way as Francis if someone were to accuse Dylan - or, hells, even Arthur - of scheming against him. Perhaps he is being unfair. Being a rude, snobbish wanker doesn't make someone a murderer, though it would certainly make his job easier if it did.
"Fine," he says grudgingly. "So, we've ruled out your cousin. What now?"
"Well..." Francis draws out the word, seemingly reluctant to reach its end, and gazes off down the length of the corridor in that abstract way Alasdair has noticed often precedes something he'd much prefer to avoid saying. "Something we probably should have done several days ago."
"Which is...?" Alasdair prompts, when Francis falls into chewing pensively at his bottom lip instead of explaining himself further.
"Paying a visit to Ivan," Francis says without turning his head, as though he's voicing his thoughts to the air rather than directing them towards Alasdair, walking at his shoulder.
Presumably, since that way he can distance himself in some small way from the suggestion, and for that, Alasdair can't blame him. It's not an inherently absurd one, far from it, but so overdue by now that's it's verging on the ridiculous, regardless. If Alasdair had been left to his own devices in conducting this investigation, Ivan would have been one of his first ports of call.
"I thought you couldn't be seen having a private meeting with him," Alasdair says. "Wouldn't it be improper."
"I've decided that it's worth the risk. Everyone already thinks I'm being very improper with at least one of my servants" - he aims a small, tentative smile Alasdair's way, doubtless meant as an apology - "and the world has kept on spinning. My father hasn't called for my head, and no-one's demanded that I relinquish my post. Lovino might question my taste, but—"
"Charming." Alasdair snorts.
"Ah, don't pout, mon cher," Francis says, grinning. "You already know that I don't agree with him."
"I'm not—" Alasdair bites down hard on his tongue, cutting himself off abruptly. Francis' expression is gleeful, obviously delighted by this turn in their conversation, and liable to run the subject into the ground if given the tiniest hint of encouragement.
Francis watches him in anticipatory silence for a moment, but when it becomes clear Alasdair isn't going to indulge him, he doesn't press the point further. "I imagine there are many who are questioning my morals," he says instead, "but I don't suppose they ever had a very high opinion of me, anyway. I'm sure now that I can survive the gossip."
-
-
The garden staff are housed in a cluster of small cottages just beyond the walled orchard, abutting the stable yard. They're simple two-up two-down buildings, similar to those that proliferate along Old Town's streets; nothing fancy, but well-made and sturdy enough to withstand even the fiercest winters.
The under-gardeners are all stacked two or three to a bedroom in the other cottages, but Ivan and his sister have one to themselves, set far enough back from the rest that there's space for a little garden in front of it. At this time of year, it's not much to look at, but crammed full of so many plants that it's likely a riot of colour come spring.
There's a climbing rose wound around the front doorframe, and when Ivan answers the door to Francis' knock and steps through it, his shoulders brush against the thorny stems on both sides, completely filling the space. At a distance, it hadn't been obvious, but he's a huge bear of a man, one who makes Alasdair feel small in comparison, somehow, despite his being the taller of the two of them, and perhaps even slightly broader across the chest.
After shooting a quick, baffled glance at Francis' face, Ivan bows low and then stares meekly down at his boots. "Your Highness," he says, only the very mildest of questions in the slight uplift of his tone.
"Centurion," Francis whispers in reply, the word barely more than a breath.
A bright, beaming smile breaks over Ivan's face then, and he invites Francis into his home with a wide, welcoming sweep of his arm. Once all three of them are inside and the door is barred against curious eyes once more, Ivan enfolds Francis in a close hug that Francis sinks and then seems to disappear into, his forehead pressed tight against Ivan's mammoth shoulder.
"My friend," Ivan says with true warmth. "It is good to see you."
He rests his cheek against the crown of Francis' head for a moment, then eases him slowly and carefully away before descending upon Alasdair with his hand outstretched.
"And you too, Alasdair," he says. "I've heard so much about you."
Alasdair really doesn't want to know. "Likewise," he says, accepting the handshake.
Ivan's grip is strong, but he doesn't engage in the pissing contest most large men attempt to start with Alasdair by grinding his knuckles together, and their contact is brief, soon dropped so that Ivan can usher both Alasdair and Francis towards the long sofa that dominates his small front room. Once they are settled there to his satisfaction, he bustles away to fetch them some tea, which he reassures Francis he was in the midst of making anyway when Francis protests that he needn't go to the trouble.
He soon returns with a tray bearing a squat brown teapot and three matching cups, which he fills with a light, steaming brew that smells faintly of rose hips before sitting himself on the narrow, stiff-backed armchair that's set at an oblique angle to the sofa.
For a while, whilst they wait for their tea to cool enough to drink, no-one says anything, and Alasdair uses this opportunity to take stock of their surroundings. Although it's small, the room seems bright and airy. The whitewash on the walls is dazzlingly clean, the floorboards underfoot shining. There are shelves stuffed full to overflowing with books by the door to the kitchen, colourful curtains swagged about the windows, and beneath them, on the sills, sit vases filled with branches covered in berries and glossy evergreen leaves.
It looks like a home, regardless of Ivan's true reasons for living there.
"I have a serious matter I need to discuss with you," Francis says eventually, setting his cup down on the little table to his side, untasted. "I would never have imposed myself upon you otherwise."
"You're never an imposition, Francis," Ivan protests, which makes Francis smile, if only very briefly before he grows grave once more.
"I suppose you've heard what happened to M. Martinez and Mme. Spenser," he says.
Ivan nods. "Katyusha learnt of it before I did, talking to her friends in Old Town. I thought..." He pauses, slanting a suspicious glance towards Alasdair. "I was surprised I did not hear it first from you."
"I would have written to tell you all the details, but it's been brought to my attention that some things should not be conveyed in writing," Francis says. "Letters do seem to have a nasty habit of going astray."
Ivan inhales sharply, his eyes growing round and wide. "Surely you don't think I—"
"I never suspected you for a moment," Francis is quick to reassure him. "Or Katyusha, or Natalia."
"Natalia?" Alasdair asks. He's never heard mention of the name before.
"Ivan's other sister," Francis says. "She lives near Luguvalium, close to the border, and helps arrange safe passage to Caledonia for our... associates."
Ivan gapes at him in shock, and then turns in his seat to study Alasdair appraisingly. "So you've told him everything, then?" he asks.
"I have," Francis says. "You have nothing to fear from Corporal Kirkland, mon ami. He is a man of integrity. I trust him with my life."
Ivan looks a little sceptical - Alasdair can't fault him for that; he still can't quite believe it himself - but ultimately seems willing to take Francis at his word. "Then so do I," he says. He smiles then, and there's something sly about the curve of his lips. "I had heard the two of you had become very good friends."
"Whatever people might be saying, we are just friends," Francis says. "Nothing more."
His voice is low and ardent, his expression serious, suggesting he finds it imperative that Ivan believes him in this, despite how dismissive he'd been about gossip earlier.
Ivan nods again, and then says, very earnestly: "And I'm glad you have that, Francis."
A faint blush rises to Francis' cheeks. "Yes, well, enough of my personal life," he says, tugging fussily at his shirt cuffs. "It's a dreary topic at the best of times, and we have more important things to discuss.
"Such as letters. Aly and I fear that the letters I wrote to you may have fallen into the wrong hands. Now, I know you would never have shared them with anyone willingly, but is there any possibility that someone could have read one or more of them before you had chance to dispose of them? A visitor, perhaps?"
"We never have any," Ivan says. Before Alasdair's heart doesn't have chance to finish sinking before Ivan's brow furrows and he falteringly adds, "Except..."
"Except what?" Francis asks, leaning forward eagerly in his seat when Ivan pauses to gather his thoughts.
"Except I suppose there might be someone," Ivan says. "I have taken my tea a time or two with your secretary, Mr Jansen."
"M. Jansen?" Francis says, half-laughing the name as though there's something inherently ludicrous about it. As though he, like Alasdair, cannot imagine his starchy and self-contained secretary doing anything as frivolous as taking a meal in the company of another person when he could instead consume a nourishing gruel at his desk and not lose a moment of time when he could be working instead. "I didn't realise the two of you were on such friendly terms."
"Of course we are." Ivan, too, looks baffled. "Do you not know who he is?"
"He's twenty-six, raised in Old Town, and worked as Lord Churchfield's secretary for two years." Francis shrugs. "That's is the sum total of what I know about the man."
"Ah, I had presumed that you chose to employ him because you recognised him," Ivan says. "He served in your Legion, and my century."
"He did?" Francis pales and sinks back heavily in his seat, his breath rushing out in a gasp through his laxly parted lips. "How...? I took pains to learn the faces of all the men and women under your command, Cassius, and I studied the full army list many times. But, no, I never recognised him, or his name."
"I wouldn't blame yourself too harshly for either, Francis," Ivan says. "His five year service came to an end just two months after you were appointed as our Legate, and he was calling himself David Bakker then. I don't know when or why he changed it. As he never asked me why I'd taken a new name, I did him the same courtesy."
This last is said with a censorious look directed towards Francis for his slip of the tongue, but Francis does not see it. He is staring rigidly ahead, clearly lost in his memories, but whatever he sees there doesn't help him, because at length he admits, "I honestly don't recall him, and he's never once mentioned that he was in the army."
He sounds stunned, but Alasdair remembers the way M. Jansen had strutted across the palace's hallway with clockwork military precision the morning after Francis had stayed at the apothecary, and he wonders how Francis had missed the signs. He'd even scoffed at the very idea of it, when Alasdair guessed he might be Francis' centurion.
Perhaps, despite his willingness to flirt with an underling if he took a fancy to them, he really does think of his servants as moving wallpaper, just as his cousin does, and never paid them enough attention to pick up on the little details like that.
"I told you I thought he might have been an army man," Alasdair says, "but you dismissed it out of hand."
"I couldn't believe that of him," Francis says, shaking his head. "I had noticed that stands to attention at times, that he marches about the place and orders his office like a billet, but he's a neat and precise man in everything he does, so I just assumed it to be a natural instinct for him.
"He always seemed clueless about military matters when we discussed them in our work, and showed no interest in learning more. In fact, I got the impression he found the entire subject distasteful."
"He does," Ivan says. "He told me once that he grew up in a very hard, low place, and feared he would end up turning to crime if he stayed. He enlisted to take himself away from there, in the hopes of a better life, but the army did not suit him and he does not like to remember his time in service. I thought him a fine soldier, but he found that he abhors violence, and so he struggled. I looked out for him as best I could."
"You took him under your wing," Francis says, smiling softly, "as you did with me."
"I did, and he managed, he survived, and then he came back and found his better life. Here, in the palace." Ivan drains his cup, refills it from the teapot, then offers to do the same for Alasdair and Francis. They both decline. "I saw him that first day when he started working for you," he continues when he sits back down, "but I thought he hadn't seen me, and I was grateful for that. I meant to keep my distance from him, ensure that our paths never crossed, but that evening, he visited me here.
"I was terrified, because I was sure he would recognise me" - Ivan runs his fingers through the long fringe of his light blond hair, tugging a few strands forward until they tumble down in front of his eyes - "despite all the changes I've made. And he did, though I thought it strange then that he did not seem particularly surprised to see me alive. A man who was supposedly murdered in your bed."
"So you've heard those rumours, too." Francis rolls his eyes. "Some people have very vivid imaginations."
Ivan chuckles. "They have," he says. "David - Luca - is not one of them, though. Perhaps that is why he never believed the gossip. Anyway, he was quick to reassure me that he would keep the secret of my true identity, that he was certain that I had good reason for all this... this subterfuge, and he would not betray me to anyone, not even his governor.
"That is something I know must have pained him, because he is a man with a rigid view of the world and his place in it. The correct order of things. But he wanted to do that for me, in thanks for how I had cared for him before.
"I was so relieved, that... Well, I'm afraid I said a little too much, Francis. I told him that he didn't ever have to worry about you finding out about me, because you had been the one who had helped bring me here. That something terrible had happened, I had no choice but to desert, and you arranged everything.
"He seemed grateful for that, as far as I could tell, but those were the last words we shared on the matter. As I said, he does not like to talk of his time in the army, or anything related to it. We dined together several times after that, but spoke only of trivial matters. The weather, my flowers, and so on."
Francis blinks slowly, like a man waking from a deep sleep. "Ah, yes," he says, "those other visits. Did you ever leave him alone during them?"
"For a moment or two, maybe, when I visited the privy," Ivan says, his cheeks pinking. "Never more than that. And I can't believe Luca's the kind of person to go rooting through another man's possessions."
"No, I'd hardly call that the correct order of things," Francis says, nodding. "No doubt you're right, but I think we should still go and have words with M. Jansen, anyway, just to make sure. He might have seen something suspicious whilst he was here. A stranger sniffing around, perhaps." He gets to his feet, extending his hand for Ivan to shake. "Thank you for your time. You've been very helpful."
Ivan ignores the hand in favour of hugging Francis so tightly that his feet leave the floor a little way, and then he sends Alasdair on his way with a companionable slap to the back.
Francis looks contemplative as the wend their slow way through the gardens, heading back to the palace. "I can't imagine M. Jansen having anything to do with all of this," he says at length. "Scrambling over rooftops, getting his clothes dirty? It's impossible for me to picture such a thing. What do you think, Aly?"
Alasdair thinks that he's missing something. Something Ivan had said was niggling at him, an alarm bell faintly ringing, but he can't quite put his finger on what.
He runs their conversation through in his mind again until that bell begins pealing ever louder. It was the name: David Bakker.
Bakker. Bakker. He's heard it somewhere before. Recently, and in a different voice.
Luise's voice.
It was Luise's voice, at his bedside whilst he was recovering from being poisoned himself.
'My Belowstreets contact did inform me about three individuals known to sell rare poisons alongside their more usual stock of dragonweed and counterfeit medicines. Mlle. Lesage, Mr Bakker, and a Mr... Big Jeff. I presume they're all pseudonyms.'
But maybe they weren't. Maybe at least one of them was using their real name.
It all seems to fit: a childhood spent in a low place; some relative or other selling poisons and knock-off medicines. They teach marksmanship in the army, and surely it'd be easy enough to translate that to the use of a blowpipe. He'd have a steady hand, at the very least. Been taught how to move silently over difficult terrain.
Alasdair's throat tightens, his stomach lurching, and he breathes out, "Fucking hell, Francis. I think he could be our man."