Not Less Than Gods by Kage Baker Page A

scowling.
    “Cut that one a little fine, didn’t you?” said Ludbridge.
    “May I ask why there is a common thief among our ranks?”
    “Because he’s not a common thief,” said Ludbridge, steering them back toward Aldgate. “He’s an exceedingly uncommon thief, as you must have noticed. Remarkably talented. It sometimes happens that the Society has a use for his talents. Allowing him to ply his trade is a necessary evil, I’m afraid—keeps his skills in trim. Your righteous wrath is commendable, but consider the greater good, Bell-Fairfax.”
    Bell-Fairfax exhaled sharply. He thrust the portrait into his pocket and drew out the next one, studying it.
    “Ah,” he said. “This one’s at Gravesend.”
     
    Rosherville Gardens was generally reached by excursion steamer, though it was nowadays a little more fashionable to go there by railway. Smart and exclusive as the steam locomotive might be, Ludbridge and Bell-Fairfax discovered that it could not be said to be a swifter mode of transport, on account of frequent stops.
    As the train idled through Greenwich, Ludbridge leaned back in his seat and considered Bell-Fairfax.
    “So you served in China, did you?”
    Bell-Fairfax looked up from the third portrait. “I did, sir, yes.”
    “You can’t have been much more than a boy then. Midshipman?”
    “Yes, sir.” Bell-Fairfax seemed unwilling to enlarge on his reply. Ludbridgetook out his cigar case, offered a cigar to Bell-Fairfax, and lit his own cigar when Bell-Fairfax declined. He puffed smoke.
    “So you can’t have got up to much, I suppose.”
    “No, sir, not much.”
    “I served in China too,” said Ludbridge casually. “Royal Marines. What’d you think of the whole business?”
    Bell-Fairfax raised his eyes, looking wary. “I didn’t care for it, sir.”
    “I didn’t either.” Ludbridge blew a smoke ring. “And I served under Stransham, you know. When we were at Zhenjiang . . . there were three merchants there and, you know, they were supposed to have obliged us in a certain matter and—to make a long story short—they hadn’t. So I was sent out with my men to round up the merchants’ wives and concubines and children and servants. Which we did, of course. We herded them into the courtyard in front of the house we’d commandeered, and our C.O.—won’t tell you his name, but he was knighted a few years ago—he brought the merchants to the window looking out over the courtyard, and he bid them look well. Then he told me to give the order to prepare to fire.
    “And I did. We raised our muskets and aimed into that crowd of weeping women and squalling babies. I assumed, of course, that all we’d have to do was threaten—the Chinese are very particular about their offspring, the sons at least—and the merchants would fall to their knees, begging for a second chance to do as they’d been told.
    “And that was exactly what they did. But, do you know, the C.O. gave the order to fire anyway?”
    Bell-Fairfax looked steadily at Ludbridge. “And did you?”
    “No.” Ludbridge blew another smoke ring. “I refused a direct order. Made no difference, of course. The C.O. was set on making an example of the merchants, you see. He had me relieved of command and my men fired into the crowd, and about half the women and children died at once. Then the C.O. ordered my men to reload and shoot the rest of them.
    “I was told a great deal during my dressing-down about how yellowheathens only understood that sort of cruelty, how they often did worse to their own people, how they were scarcely human anyhow. You know the sort of things we were told out there, I expect.”
    “I remember,” said Bell-Fairfax, in a whisper.
    “Well, and then my C.O. went on to make an example of me. Soldiers, themselves, only understand that sort of cruelty. I was cashiered and sent home, and spent a year in prison. When I got out, Greene came round to see me, on the Society’s behalf. I was recruited and became a