Page 53 of The Duke Undone

“That’s what you’re missing, Jack. Give it to us, won’t you? There’s a good fellow.”

Anthony paused as heads swiveled in his direction. The table before him was packed with shopworn dandies, cheap suits cut in flash style.

“For his coat,” continued the youth, waving a thin hand overburdened with rings. His lips were shining, oyster shells piled on the platter in front of him.

“It’ll match that paper collar he’s so fond of.” The table burst into laughter, except for one man—presumably Jack—who rapped his walking stick against the skull of his neighbor.

Anthony tossed him the flower and a hoot rose to the rafters.

“A toast!”

Tankards smashed together, foam spilling down the sides. Anthony watched the movement of the bubbles. Then he started forward, angling toward the bar. A potboy banged into him, almost dropping his tray. The taproom was crowded with all sorts. Swells, workingmen, a few women in neckerchiefs, smoking cigarettes. His eyes slipped over the people and locked on the taps gleaming down the length of the bar. The bartender, a smiling giant in a striped apron, was filling glass after glass.

His head pounded. He needed to leave, to find Charlotte Road with time to spare so he could walk its length, gather evidence.

“From Jack.” The beringed youth was at his elbow, holding out a tankard. His round face was humorous and he winked as he pressed the glass into Anthony’s hand. Anthony froze. Then he hoisted the glass in the general direction of their table.

The decision had been made for him.

“There’s a dark look,” came a comment from the end of the bar. “Now, I ask you, what sort of man is too fussy for an ale? A man in need of a stout, that’s what I say. Two more.”

Anthony glanced at the speaker, thin as a spindle in a great clod of a wool coat. He held a tankard half-filled with stout and tipped it back, finishing the contents in one gulp. Two of his fingers ended at the first knuckle. He noticed Anthony’s gaze and held up the hand.

“Bengal Horse Artillery,” he said. “Lost those on the retreat from Kabul. Coldest I’ve ever been in my life. Couldn’t load a gun, much less pull the trigger.”

Anthony eased onto the stool beside him.

“I know that cold, in those mountains,” he said.

The man’s wizened face cracked into a smile. His teeth were gray as his beard.

“What about the heat?” he said. He took two stouts from the bartender and passed one to Anthony.

“Francis Doolan from County Tipperary. Where do we start? With the snow or the dust?”

By the second stout, they’d discussed every extreme of Afghanistan’s weather and geography. By the third, they’d compared notes on British-bred, Irish-bred, and desert-bred stallions, as well as the army’s supply of draft horses, cobs, and ponies. Camp yarns carried them through the fourth and the fifth, Anthony avoiding any mention of Maiwand. By the sixth, they’d waded into politics. Nearly forty years separated the first and second British wars in Afghanistan, but they sprang from a single root.

“It’s an obsession,” said Doolan. “Keep India safe from the grasping Russians. I never saw a Russian, did you? Waving down from a peak in the Hindu Kush? Waste of life. And for what?”

“For the Crown.” Anthony laughed suddenly, a sharp bark. Waste of life. Afghan life, Indian life, British life, animal life. How many thousands of horses, camels, elephants, died on those marches through the passes? He’d ridden by miles of bones. All sizes.

It made no sense, defeating and dismembering the country, if a strong Afghanistan was wanted to provide a buffer against Russian influence in the region. Illogic piled on illogic.

He cooled his forehead against his glass.

“I was young when I attested.” Doolan’s pale blue eyes had fixed. “What an adventure, that’s how I was thinking. Now I know it for a horrible, mean, miserable business. Victorious or not, the latest war was more of the same.”

He’d sunk deeper into his coat. His words emerged clearly enough.

“Politics in London means violence in Delhi, in Kabul, in Zululand. In Dublin.”

“You’re talking about Home Rule now.” Anthony waved for the next round.

Rubbing elbows with an Irish nationalist. His father hadn’t thought to list it among his prohibitions. Because it was unthinkable.

Doolan was drawing spirals with the nub of his index finger in a puddle of beer on the bar top.

“It’s all connected,” he said. “Do you see?”