The Soldier's Poisoned Heart

“I suppose the moss should come off, as well. So I’ll take care of that.”

With that the pair of them set off to work. John Paul walked into the knee-deep grass, out to the shed. Inside, he found, was a lawn trimmer that he pulled out. It would need some work; he spied a can of oil lying beside. He poured it onto the joints where the spinning blade met the frame, and that got it spinning well enough.

It was slow going. Each few feet, the blades would catch on a twig that had not been visible for the depth of the grass, or even on a too-thick tuft of grass. Each time he stopped he found himself more tired of the work, wondering why he hadn’t just paid someone else to do it.

There was no reason to pay someone for so simple a task, though, and he already had far too much idle time to himself besides. The time working on this was time that he had something to fill with, he reminded himself, though it was little consolation.

He sat down for a moment, looking back on the trench he had cut in the deep grass. He could see the yard extending hundreds of meters, though he guessed that it would be faster going once he started in earnest. He dusted himself off, pulling his shirt from where it stuck to his skin with sweat, and then got back to work.

There was a tree, he saw, in the middle of the yard, a focal point for it, like a sort of pine from a distance. When he got closer, he saw curious spiraled spine-like leaves that stuck out at all angles. Its curious shape distracted him completely from his work for a moment.

He could hear Henry calling something in the distance, but he paid it no mind. He was back to work before he knew it, the grass churning beneath his booted feet. He would need to stop early, he decided, to clean his boots before they went back into Derby for supper. They would finish it in the morning, but in the last half an hour or so he would push as hard as his schedule allowed.

He replaced the trimmer in the shed and stepped back into the house, stripping his clothes off in the middle of the parlor. There was no one to see, after all, and he couldn't go out in such clothes after the work he had done. He make a laughingstock of himself.

As he pulled on new clothes, pulled from his chest, he looked back through the rear doors at the work he had done. Half the lawn now sat proud of the other half and the entire lawn had the

strong, distinct smell of cut grass. He could even walk through a good deal of the rear yard without worrying about a snake in the grass coming out of nowhere.

He sat down for a moment, catching his breath, and then he got up once more. The towel he had been using so often was slung over the back of a chair to dry, and he picked it up along with a bit of polish from his trunk.

He settled into a chair wearing only an undershirt and trousers and got to work polishing the things. John Paul knew, vaguely, that there were boys who did such a thing for a few pence. It mattered little. He had no need to pay someone else to do what he could do himself.

He was no cook, and no expert on the workings of a stable, and so he needed those things. A gardener might be worth the time, as well, once he and his nephew had finished the chores.

But shoe shines, he thought, could were easy to do by oneself if you only took a modicum of time and effort. If there was one thing that John Paul was always prided himself on, it was taking the time where he could.

His entire career had shown it, and even the gold had been in part the result of his fastidiousness. A less cautious man might have made a mistake. Somehow lost the fortune at the poker table, or into the hands of a superior, or lost it in bribes.

John Paul was the right man to keep his money, and in the end he reckoned that his efforts had paid for themselves. He didn't need the pension the army had offered, though it would have seen him comfortably through the latter half of his life. Now he had enough for five lifetimes, and every intention of passing as much to his family as he could, and for them to pass it on as well.

He had every intention of the Foster name coming to mean something in this part of the country, even if it took five generations to do it. So for now, he would save the penny on the shoe-shine and do the damn job himself. As it was meant to be. He hoped silently to get the chance to teach the same lesson to his children one day.

He stood up, pulling a shirt and stockings on, and then boots over that, and it looked nearly as if he hadn’t been working in the yard at all. Like a proper, respectable gentleman. A waistcoat completed the effect, and he stepped outside, wondering if Henry had finished with the front of the house.

He went to the front stoop and saw, to his relative astonishment, nobody there. There was a massive pile of moss folded up like some curious sort of linen, but no Henry at all.

For a moment, John Paul wondered where his nephew had gotten off to. The answer was made clear when he heard the sound of hoof-beats rhythmically clomping around from the paddock. He walked across the road to investigate.

What he found was little surprise—Henry sat atop a horse, riding it around in a great circle. The look of concentration in his eyes was such that John Paul wondered how much time, if any, he had spent on a horse. It may have been that he’d only ever seen it done, if he’d only ever taken the omnibus or been driven in carriages.

John Paul was beginning to learn something about his nephew: he had a thirst for new experiences that was quite boundless. It seemed to include many of the things that John Paul himself found to be rather mundane affairs, like riding or fencing. Further, the young man threw himself at them with an admirable vigor.

That he was less than talented meant little. For a man with ambition—and John Paul was learning that his nephew had some degree of that—it was easy to improve himself. It would come with time, with practice, and there was little other than time out in the English countryside.

Riding, he would pick up quickly; swordplay, quicker still, with a particularly high target to aim at like his uncle. What sort of ambitions would he discover after that?

He leaned down onto the fence and watched. Henry rode with increasing speed around the courtyard. Each passing moment the horse sped up until it was moving at a full gallop. It ran the tightest circle it could manage, as Henry held on with a grim determination that almost hid the fear in his eyes.

It wasn’t a passing fear, like the discomfort of looking down from a great height, but a deeper fear that held Henry Roche in its grip. John Paul knew it well enough, a mix of madness and fear that he had felt in the heat of battle.

It had made him feel more alive than he could have imagined. Each second filled him to the brim with the feeling of aliveness. That, he suspected, was what Henry felt now.

The horse seemed to have relative control of itself. The boy hadn't pushed it to dangerous speed, either. Yet one misstep could send Henry flying out of the saddle and into the railing around the paddock, and he would be dead. The trick was to trust the horse not to kill you, and hope that your trust wasn’t misplaced.

At long last the horse began to slow down, finally, as the fatigue set in, and Henry relaxed. He looked around and spotted his uncle standing there, watching. He lifted a hand to wave, but immediately regretted the decision and slapped the hand back down onto the saddle-horn.

John Paul climbed the fence of the paddock and jogged up in front of the horse. It, too, was a little spooked, he saw, feeding on the fear and excitement of its rider, and he took the reigns from his nephew. Walking with the horse a bit, he waited until it had calmed down before he stopped it and looped the reigns around a post.