1634: The Baltic War: Chapter Thirty Two

    “Are you sure about this, Darryl?” asked Melissa. Both she and Tom Simpson were practically squinting at McCarthy. With pretty much the same expression on their faces they might have had if Darryl McCarthy had just announced he was going to become a monk. Or, perhaps more to the point under these circumstances, he’d announced that he knew a batch of Las Vegas showgirls who’d decided to take holy vows.

    “Yeah, I’m sure. Why is it so goddam hard to understand?”

    “They’re Yeoman Warders, Darryl,” said Tom patiently. “You know. The Tower of London’s Beefeaters—even if they won’t be called that for another half century or so. Renown for their unswerving loyalty to the king. That sort of thing.”

    “Oh, piss on that,” snapped Darryl. He gave Melissa a wary eye. “Meaning no offense.”

    “Good thing for you there’s no blackboard around,” she said, half-smiling. “As I believe I’ve mentioned about twenty times since we got stuck in here. But Tom’s question still stands, Darryl. I’ll grant you that the Beefeater reputation got overlayed with a lot of sentiment by our time. But it’s still true enough—and nothing we’ve seen since we got here has indicated otherwise. Yes, they’ve been very pleasant to deal with. Far more pleasant, God knows, than this bunch of thugs who’ve been running the Tower for the last few weeks. But I’ve never doubted for a moment that the Warders would do their best to stop us from trying to escape.”

    “I ain’t talking about ‘the Warders,’” Darryl pointed out, trying for the same patient and level tone of voice that his commander Captain Simpson always did so well. “I’m just talking about one family among them. More to the point, Stephen Hamilton’s family. You think you’re pissed about these new mercenaries who’ve been running roughshod over everybody in the Tower? You don’t know what the word ‘pissed’ even means, to somebody like him. And it’s a double whammy. Just being angry wouldn’t have given Stephen Hamilton a way to do anything about it. But now, me being part of the family and him having figured out we’re planning to escape… I think from his point of view, that settled the question.”

    Tom rubbed his heavy jaw. “I think Darryl’s probably right, Melissa. All the Yeoman Warders are quietly furious about the situation, not just Hamilton and his kin. I haven’t spent much time out and about in the Tower since the lid came down, because we all agreed we’d be wise to keep a low profile. Darryl and Nelly are the only ones who go out regularly any more, because they’ve both got legitimate excuses that not even that prick Windebank questions. A sweetheart in Darryl’s case—betrothed, to boot—and simply shopping for food in Nelly’s. But I’ve been out there a couple of times, for an hour or so, and all it takes is a few minutes to figure out how mad they are. If word came down from Whitehall that King Charles had tired of Windebank and the Warders could do with him as they chose, they’d have the arrogant bastard staked out naked on the Tower green and be laying bets on which ravens would pluck out his eyes.”

    When Melissa had visited the Tower of London as a tourist, back in the late twentieth century, she’d thought the ancient custom of having ravens as pets of a sort in the Tower was charming. Even then, she’d known the historical origins of the custom. But it had all seemed very far removed, as harmless as a medieval sword displayed in a museum case. Now that she’d been imprisoned in the Tower during its “operational period,” so to speak, she’d developed a different attitude. The ravens were indeed there to pluck out eyes—the eyes of men beheaded on the orders of the English crown.

    Tom was still rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “And Darryl’s also right about Stephen Hamilton. You haven’t met him, not really. I have. That is one scary human being. Not somebody I’d want mad at me, for damn sure.”

    Melissa grimaced. “Tom, I have to tell you that ‘one scary human being’ is not actually a recommendation on a resumé. Not for me, anyway.”

    Tom gave her a thin, rather cold, smile. “We’re in different lines of work, so to speak. From my point of view—being the commander of a military force that you couldn’t call a ‘squad’ without breaking into hysterical laughter—‘scary human being’ looks pretty damn good, unless we’re dealing with an actual sociopath. Which I don’t think is true of Hamilton.”

    Darryl frowned. “Hey, take it easy. He’s really a pretty good guy, you know. Hell of a nice grandpa for all the kids. I know him a lot better than either of you. He’s just… Well, he never talks about it—nobody does in the family—but I think he’s been in some very bad places in his life. The one thing for sure is that he’s nobody you want to cross unless you’ve got a really good reason. ‘Really good reason’ like in: ‘I’ll die if I don’t, so I may as well, even though he’ll probably kill me.’ I could tell that the first day I met the guy. Even Harry would walk carefully around him.”

    He cleared his throat. “Which, uh, kinda brings us back to the point. Is it gonna be ‘would’ or ‘will’?”

    “A miracle,” stated Melissa. “God, they seem to happen every other day in this time and place. Darryl McCarthy just made a clear and correct grammatical distinction.”

    Darryl looked vaguely alarmed, the way a righteous hillbilly will when his credentials are challenged. She might as well have suggested he liked Brie and crackers with dry white wine.

    “Hey!”

    “Oh, relax, Darryl,” said Tom. “I’m sure it was just a momentary lapse. My lips are sealed.” Then, to Melissa: “But, yeah, you’re right. It is a clear grammatical distinction. So what’s going to be our correct response?”

    Now it was Melissa’s turn to look vaguely alarmed. “Oh, dear. Tom, I’m really not good at this sort of thing. Gauging violent people, I mean. I thought my college boyfriend was really cute until he turned out to be a screwball, fiddling with explosives that he had no idea how to make and even less idea of where and why and how he’d use them. I think it just made him feel like a dangerous anarchist.”

    Darryl sneered. “Ain’t the same thing, Melissa. Stephen Hamilton is the real deal. For that matter, so’s Andrew and the other guys in the family, even if none of ‘em are in the same great gray wolf league that Stephen is.”

    “Got to tell you I agree with him, Melissa,” said Tom. “If Darryl’s right and the veiled remarks Stephen and Andrew have made to him mean that they’re offering to switch sides, we’d be crazy not to accept.” The army captain twitched his head, using it to point across the Thames that ran below one set of the windows in their quarters. “I can tell you for sure and certain that Harry’ll be tickled pink. Even as brash as he is, Harry’s been scratching his head for weeks trying to figure out how to pull off Jailbreak, Version Two, Super-sized. Having half a dozen Warders to work with would make a huge difference.”

    He smiled wryly. “’Course, he’ll also have conniptions when we tell him he’s got to plan for springing another couple of dozen people—all the way down to toddlers.”

    Melissa winced. So did Darryl. Harry’s last remarks on the subject of jailbreakees who kept adding more jailbreakees to the list had started with sarcastic and gone downhill from there.

 

---

 

    In the event, however, Harry Lefferts’ reaction was quite otherwise.

    “Hot diggedy damn!” he exclaimed, after switching off the walkie-talkie. “Guys, scrap plan—whatever number we’re up to. Things are looking up. Way, way up.”

    He’d been using the walkie-talkie in the kitchen, instead of the room upstairs that they’d set up as their radio room. Over the weeks they’d now been in Southwark, once their initials plans for a quick jailbreak had gotten scrapped after the Earl of Cork’s coup d’etat, Harry had soon realized that the radio room was pointless for the walkie-talkies. Just a relic from old habits, when they’d had to rely on fancy communications equipment with tricky antennas and, even then, relaying everything through Amsterdam. The walkie-talkies worked just fine in the kitchen, and that way he didn’t have to repeat everything to the rest of the team.

    Felix didn’t share his enthusiasm. “For Christ’s sake, Harry, twenty or so more people? Three of them babies?”

    “None of them babies,” said Juliet, sniffing disdainfully. “You’ve got to understand the distinctions here. Good thing you have women with you.”

    She began counting off on her fingers. “If I’ve followed all this properly, we’ve got one infant, two toddlers, and five other children. I don’t count the teenagers. They’re not a problem.”

    Sherrilyn Maddox rolled her eyes. “I’d love to hear you say that to my mother.”

    Juliet sniffed again. “I doubt if your mother ever participated in a mass jailbreak. Not a problem, I say. Unless the two boys get too eager and we have to haul them away by the short hairs.”

    “They’ll get too eager and we’ll have to haul them away by their shorthairs,” predicted her husband calmly. “But, yes, not a problem.” He opened a huge hand and closed it. “See? Easy.”

    That brought a little ripple of laughter around the table, from everyone except Felix. As usual, he was the self-designated Cassandra of the team. “Maybe not in the escape out of the Tower—but what then?”

    It was his turn to start counting on his fingers. “Let’s add it all up. Start with our own people in St. Thomas’ Tower.” He did a quick count. “Mailey, the Simpsons, Darryl, Gayle, and Friedrich and Nellie Bruch. That’s seven.” He started over again with a new finger count. “Cromwell. Wentworth. Add in Wentworth’s wife and his three children. How old are they, by the way?”

    “The son Will’s the oldest,” said Juliet. “He’s almost eight, I think. The oldest daughter Nan is about six and half years old. The youngest daughter Arabella is only four and half.”

    Felix rolled his eyes. “Marvelous. More kids. Just what we need. But let’s keep going. So far, we’re up to thirteen, three of them children. No teenagers, either, we’re speaking of real children. Then we add Laud to bring us up to fourteen.”

    He broke off the finger count and spread his hands wide, encompassing everyone in the kitchen. It was a large kitchen, but it was still very crowded. “And that’s just the escapees. Since I assume our fearless leader wasn’t planning to have us surrender ourselves into the king’s custody, we’ve also got to plan for our own escape. And there are nine of us—eleven, counting Julie and Alex.”

    Mackay and his wife were in a corner, Alex perched on a stool and Julie perched on his lap. She shook her head. “I don’t know if you should figure us in it. We gotta get out of London, sure—but then we’re headed back to Scotland, where we left our daughter with my father-in-law.”

    “I imagine Cromwell will want to come with us, too,” added her husband. “He’s still got his own children hiding out in the Fens somewhere, don’t forget. I doubt very much if he’d agree to leave England without them.”

    Seeing the gathering storm on Kasza’s brow, Alex barked a laugh. “Oh, leave it be, Felix! You needn’t plan a second escape. It’d have to be weeks or months later, anyway. Let us worry about it. Or Cromwell, if he decides to go on his own after he finds his kids. By all accounts, y’know, he’s a full-grown man and quite capable of handling his own affairs. He did manage to become Lord Protector of England, in whatever other universe his duplicate self is in.”

    Harry coughed. “Ah… I think it’s a little more complicated. I know Darryl is planning to stick with Cromwell—dunno about whether his squeeze Vicky will go with him, though—and I’m pretty sure Gayle is too.”

    Everyone stared at him. “You never said anything about that,” complained Ohde.

    “Yeah, Don, I know I didn’t. Darryl asked me to keep it to myself, until we got closer to Der Tag. Seems he’s gotten to be friends with Cromwell—you gotta know Darryl like I do to understand how completely weird that is, but I’ll skip over it now—and he also thinks he’s got to keep an eye on him.”

    The stares didn’t waver. Harry sighed.

    “Look, guys, this’ll mean a little bit to Julie and Sherrilyn but it won’t mean squat to the rest of you. Darryl’s family are Irish, and they get real fruitcake on the subject. Give money to Noraid, the whole bit. For reasons I am not going into now, Oliver Cromwell ranks right up there with Satan’s top demons, in their book—and here Darryl’s gone and made friends with him. But I guess Darryl figures the guy’s probably still a demon, even if he likes him, so he isn’t letting him out of his sight.”

    Macska shook his head. “Never mind. Politics in this century are bad enough. And Gayle? Is she one of these fruitcakes too?”

    “Ah… no. Seems she’s gotten interested in Cromwell. Personally, I mean. Which is a neat trick, seeing as she’s never even met the guy. Just talks to him on the radio they snuck into his cell.”

    Kacza threw up his hands again. “This is sheer lunacy!”

    Harry grinned. “It’s like Melissa says. We’re in an age of miracles. But you oughta keep going, Felix. I’m finding it actually helpful.”

    Felix scowled a little, but went back to the finger counting. “Fine. So we had already reached the preposterous figure of twenty-five people, for what we laughingly call a ‘jailbreak.’” He gave Julie and Alex a sharp glance. “For the moment, we’ve got to include the two of you also. Regardless of how many parties wind up going in separate directions, we’ve got to get everybody in the Tower out of there and them and rest of us out of London.”

    He looked at Harry from lowered brows. “And now, how many Warders are we talking about? Keeping in mind that if they’re the berserk clansmen they sound like, they won’t agree to leave without bringing every single one in the clan.”

    “I’m not sure, exactly. I’ll have to get Darryl to give me an exact count. Somewhere around twenty is all I know, including all the women and kids.”

    By now, even George Sutherland was starting to look aghast. “Ah… Harry. You’re talking about almost fifty people. Just exactly how many boats did you figure on using?”

    Throughout, Harry had been standing up, leaning back against one of the kitchen walls. Now, he pushed himself off the wall with a little heave of his shoulders and came up to the table.

    “The way I figure it, we get one big boat for all of us except the people heading for the Fens.”

    Matija grimaced. “For the love of God, Harry. A boat big enough to hold something like forty people, even packed like sardines? You’re talking about one of those Thames barges. We’ll be lucky if we make three miles an hour over whatever the current’s doing, unless we’ve got a good wind—and who knows if we will?”

    “Yeah—and so what? I figure there’ll be enough confusion that we can get out of London without any trouble. After that, it won’t actually be all that easy for cavalry—much less infantry—to catch up with us. We’re on the river, doing at least five miles an hour with the current. They’ve got to follow country roads, most of which don’t parallel the river hardly at all. Brit road-makers in the here and now aren’t any crazier than they are up-time. You don’t build roads right next to rivers, especially not a river like the Thames. The soil’s too crappy.”

    “There are tow paths all along the Thames,” pointed out Paul. “Stretches of them, anyway.”

    Harry shrugged again. “Sure. And would you want to take a cavalry horse down one of them? With us on the boat with up-time weapons and plenty of ammunition? And we’ve got enough ordnance here that we can give most of the Warders up-time guns.”

    “They’ve never used them,” protested Gerd. Feebly.

    Harry laughed. “Yeah. I know. They’re also Warders. How long did it take any of you to figure out how to operate a pump-action shotgun? Being delicate and all, I won’t mention the sicko kinky love affairs that followed.”

    That drew a laugh, even from Kasza.

    “I’m not actually worried about any of that,” said George. “The Thames is a wide river, even here in London. By the time you get down to Tilbury, where it narrows a bit, it’s almost a thousand yards wide. Even at Tilbury, it only ‘narrows’ to something like seven hundred yards. Cavalrymen—even infantrymen—standing on the banks at shooting at us with matchlocks and wheel-locks stand almost no chance of hitting us. We’ll stay in the center of the river, of course, just to avoid the shoals in nothing else.”

    He held up a big forefinger in the way of warning. “There’s the fort at Tilbury to get past, too, don’t forget.”

    He didn’t say it with any great alarm, just more in the way of a reminder. Harry and his crew had made it a point to visit the fort on their way up the Thames when they arrived in England. That hadn’t been hard, since they’d sold their boat in Tilbury and therefore had an excuse to be lounging about for a time. Harry and Don Ohde had taken the opportunity to visit the fort while the others handled the commercial transaction. The soldiers manning the fort had been so delighted to have visitors that they’d shown them all about. For their part, Harry and Don had been polite, letting no sign of their professional contempt show visibly. Henry VIII had had the fort built, in the previous century, and it had fallen into a state of almost complete desuetude. The entire garrison wasn’t more than thirty men, and none of the fort’s few cannons looked to have been fired for years.

    Felix being Felix, he rallied and went back to his Cassandra routine. “Fine. So we make it down to the mouth of the Thames. And then what, Harry? I’ll grant you, especially with some initial confusion, that even a barge can probably make it down to the sea before a cavalry force can intercept them. But nobody’s ever accused the Earl of Cork or the men around him of being morons. Greedy assholes, yes; imbeciles, no. They’ll certainly have enough sense to send couriers down to the Royal Dockyard at Sheerness. And there’ll be at least one or two warships stationed there. Once they move into the Thames, we’re fucked. Or do you propose that a shallow-draft barge spilling over with women and children and armed with a few rifles and shotguns can take on a Royal Navy warship? Even one of those reconverted merchant ships.”

    “No, of course not,” said Harry. “But I doubt very much if those warships are going to be in any position to intercept us. In fact, I’ll be surprised if they still exist at all.”

    Everybody was staring at him again. Harry planted his hands on his hips and gave them a look of exasperation. “Give me a break, willya? I treasure my reputation more than anybody—but I’m not actually a loose cannon on the deck. Wildass cowboy, sure; rebel without a cause, no. Obviously I’m not going to do something like this unless we get backup. Like in real serious, Admiral Simpson type backup.”

    “Those ironclads aren’t really seaworthy,” protested Matija.

    “No? Then why is Simpson proposing to sail them out into the North Sea, around the Skaw, and into the Baltic?”

    “Risky. And he’s got four. I’ll bet you—good odds—that at least one of them breaks down and doesn’t make it.”

    “Maybe you’re right,” said Harry, “and maybe you’re not. But I figure that’s the Admiral’s business. And what I know for sure, is that this decision is way over my pay grade. In fact, Melissa told me yesterday it was way over her pay grade. So she relayed the whole thing to Magdeburg.”

    That brought a moment’s silence. Then Felix said: “And the answer was….”

    Harry gave him a very cheerful grin. “What do you think? We’re talking about the Prince, guys. Of course he told us to go for it. He said he’ll make sure we’ve got the backup we need, when the time comes.”

    It was almost comical, the way everyone at the table seemed to simultaneously relax and perk up at the same time. They almost never discussed the subject, simply because it was something taken completely for granted amongst them. But, like Harry Lefferts himself, all of his team had become dyed-in-the-wool partisans of Mike Stearns. It wasn’t really even a political matter for them, or if it was, only tangentially so. True, they all accepted the basic principles of Stearns’ political view, but that was simply a veneer. What lay underneath was simple, rather savage, and completely medieval. He was the Prince and they were the prince’s men. And—once again—he had not failed them.

    Felix clapped his hands together, all traces of Cassandra gone. “Well, then. Now that we don’t have to worry about the women and children—”

    He broke off, his peripheral vision having spotted the Rapidly Rising Backs of Sherrilyn and Julie Mackay—even Juliet’s was coming up—and hastily said:

    “The non-combatants, rather. But let’s move on to the rest. Now it gets interesting.”

 

---

 

    Later that evening, in the kitchen that was used by the small clan of Warders, Darryl spoke quietly to Stephen Hamilton and Andrew Short.

    “So there it is, guys. Up front, and all cards on the table. You’re in or you’re out.”

    He could have added, or you turn me over to the authorities, but didn’t. Partly because he knew it was no longer necessary, but mostly because he knew that saying any such thing would enrage Stephen Hamilton. Now that he’d become part of the clan himself—so much, Hamilton himself had made quite clear—any suggestion that the clan would turn on him would be deeply offensive.

    “We’re in,” said Stephen immediately. Andrew’s nod came not more than a split-second later.

    With someone else, Darryl might had asked if they were really sure. But, again, that was both unnecessary and might quite possibly trigger off Hamilton’ anger. The warder Captain was not a hot-tempered man—quite the opposite, in fact—but if you made the mistake of treading on areas that meant a great deal to him, you ran the risk of stirring up that hidden, incredibly cold and ruthless capacity for fury. Darryl would no more have considered stepping on a cobra, just to see if it was awake.

    “Good. Now, first thing. Since they’re still letting the Warders guard our quarters in St. Thomas—fucking idiots, but there it is—we need to start sending the men over there, one at a time. Whenever nobody looks to be watching.”

    “That’s not a problem,” said Andrew. “We’ve often come into St. Thomas’ Tower, helping Nellie with the groceries. Can’t stay inside for more than half an hour, though, or suspicions might get aroused.”

    Darryl smiled thinly. “With you guys, half an hour will be plenty. Biggest problem will be just tearing you away from your newfound loves.”

    Both Warders frowned at him, puzzled.

    “Won’t be able to fire them, of course. But the noise of working the slides ain’t much, and we’ll only do it when one of your kin is standing guard at the door anyway.”

    Darryl’s smile wasn’t thin at all, now. “Gentlemen. I will shortly be introducing you to a couple of very sleek dames. Lady Pump-Action Shotgun and Lady Automatic Pistol. Several sisters there, actually. I’m personally partial to Ms. Ten Millimeter. You’ll even like their papa, Mr. Dynamite.”

 

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    “There’s something very peculiar going on over there, I tell you.” Elizabeth Lytle finished pouring the broth and started passing out the cups to the three men sitting at her kitchen table.

    “What? Followed her, did you?” asked Richard Towson, nodding his thanks.

    “Good idea, that,” said Patrick Welch, blowing on his broth to cool it off. “Just in case this friend Juliet of hers might turn out to be an informer of some sort.”

    Liz gave him a disdainful look. “Not likely! If you knew her the way I do…” After setting down the kettle, she gave her short dark hair a little toss. “I was just curious, really. There’s something… mysterious about her, now. Not like she used to be.”

    “It’s been years since you saw her, love,” pointed out Anthony Leebrick calmly. “While she was on the continent.”

    “Not that many years. And what difference does it make, anyway? George is still with her, so nothing fundamental’s changed. I met him too, on one of my lunch encounters with Juliet. He hasn’t changed a bit, from what I can tell.”

    “Are those wise in the first place?” asked Richard. A bit carefully, since Liz had something of a temper.

    “I suggested she do so,” said Anthony. “Avoiding an old friend completely when there was no obvious reason to do so was more likely to cause suspicion.”

    “Let’s get back to the point,” said Welch. “Since you followed her, what did you discover?”

    Liz sat down and stared pensively at her own cup of broth. “The first thing I discovered was that I couldn’t get near the house she’s living at. Not without being spotted by several pairs of eyes. Very keen ones, too, let me tell you. There are men in that house, several of them, and at least one other woman. And two other men lounging about the tavern nearby, that don’t belong there.”

    Welch looked dubious. “And how could you tell if they belonged there or not? People come in and out of Southwark all the time. It’s hardly what you’d call a stodgy little village.”

    “They didn’t look right,” Liz insisted. “Too alert. Too fit looking. At least, too fit-looking for men who weren’t swaggering about bullying people and looking for a fight. They made me edgy. They spotted me as soon as I entered the street and their eyes kept following me the whole time I was there. I felt like a plump mouse being watched by cats.”

    Towson hid his smile behind his cup. Leebrick cleared his throat, a bit smugly. Patrick, undiplomatic as usual, barked a harsh little laugh. “For the love of all that’s holy, Liz. Men do have a habit of eyeing you, y’know?”

    “Excluding our couth selves,” added Richard. “But he’s got a point, Liz.”

    She gave both him and Welch an exasperated look. “Let me see if I understand this. Your suggesting to me—a woman whose past bears no close scrutiny—that some men are lecherous. Oh, dear. I never would have guessed.”

    Towson chuckled. Welch tipped his cup a little, in a gesture that acknowledged a hit had been scored.

    Elizabeth Lytle had inherited a number of things from her Portuguese mother, along with her dark eyes, slender frame, and attractive appearance. Among them was a wide mouth that lent itself very nicely to a derisive expression. “Tell a former whore about the salacious nature of the male sex, will you? I believe I am quite familiar with that phenomenon, Patrick Welch, thank you very much. And I’m telling you those two men weren’t thinking of bedding me. They were contemplating—not seriously, simply as a possible measure—whether they might have to slit my throat.”

    Her slim shoulders shivered slightly. “Scary, they were, in a quiet sort of way. I’m telling you, they didn’t belong there. They’re up to something. Some sort of criminal enterprise.”

    “That hardly makes them out of place in Southwark,” said Leebrick. “They might have no connection to Juliet and George at all, you know?”

    Liz sipped slowly at her tea, thinking about it. Then, shook her head. “I can’t prove it, Anthony, but I think they do. The tavern they were sitting outside of—with the table they’d chosen—allowed them to keep Juliet’s house under observation. Along with the rest of the street leading to it. Well, part of the house, at least. It’s set back a ways from the street, right close to the river.”

    Leebrick looked at his two companions. After a moment, Towson shrugged. “The hunt for us has died down. As many weeks as it’s been since we escaped Cork, by now they must think we’re out of England entirely. They certainly don’t think we’re anywhere in London. And I, for one, am sick to death of never seeing anything except the inside of Liz’s lodgings. Meaning no offense, you understand.”

    Patrick scowled, slightly. But the expression was more a matter of habit than anything concrete and specific to the moment. Perhaps because he was Irish, Welch was the sort of man who just naturally looked for the trap, the moment he spotted a juicy morsel. That made him occasionally annoying, in casual circumstances, but it also made him a superb officer to lead reconnaissance missions.

    “I’ve got no objections,” he announced, after a few seconds. Again, he made that little tip-of-the-cup acknowledging gesture, this time at Leebrick. “I will admit—not that I’ll sign anything to that effect, mind—that our gallant commander has proven to be right. Hiding in London was a stroke of genius. The hunt passed right over our heads, and they’ll never think of looking for us here now. So why not move about some, finally?”

    His sneer was even better than Elizabeth’s. “We have the added protection, after all, of the portraits they circulated everywhere on reward notices. A man could have those posters in his hand, be staring right at us—and he’d swear there was no resemblance at all.”

    Leebrick chuckled. “They were wretched, weren’t they? I was quite offended, actually. The only thing they got right was our beards.”

    Smiling, Towson tugged at the goatee of his Van Dyck. “So they did. Doesn’t help much, though, does it? Seeing as how every other man in England—half the continent, too—shares the same style. They showed us wearing clothing, too. Thereby clearly distinguishing us from all the traitors running about the island stark naked.”

    Leebrick finished his cup. “Fine, then. Liz, draw us up a little map, would you? We’ll go tonight, and see what your friend is about.”

    She frowned. “Why don’t I just guide you?”

    Welch shook his head. “Not a good idea. You said yourself those two men watched you closely. Even in the dark, they’ll recognize you.”

    “Oh, nonsense. I’ll wear a bonnet.”

    Patrick scratched his head and said nothing. For a wonder, a spasm of diplomacy seemed to have seized him.

    Leebrick smiled. Towson chuckled outright. “Won’t matter if they see your face, girl. They’ll recognize your walk.”

    “My walk?”

    “Yes. You have a certain way of… well, you’re not prancing, exactly. But it’s quite distinctive.”

    She gave her paramour a sharp, suspicious glance. Anthony’s smile widened. “I’m afraid he’s right, love. First thing I noticed about you, when we met. Well. More precisely, when I first spotted you on the street and began following you. We hadn’t actually met yet. Quite entrancing, it was.”

    She sniffed, disdainfully. “Men. It’s a wonder you get anything done.”

    Since everyone had finished, she gathered up the cups. “All right, but be careful. They really are rather frightening-looking people.”

 

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    At least, they’d allowed him paper and a pen. So Thomas Wentworth was able to communicate with his wife in some manner, even if it was ridiculous to be writing letters to a woman whom he could have spoken to in person by simply taking a two minute walk from the Bloody Tower to the Lieutenant’s Lodging. But Sir Francis Windebank refused to allow Thomas to leave the Bloody Tower, for any reason, and he refused to allow him visitors of any sort. Not even his wife and children.

    Naturally, they wouldn’t allow him to seal the letters he wrote. Windebank’s men would read every line before they passed the letters on to Elizabeth—and the same, with any of her replies.

    Once the shock of those first days had passed, Thomas had been able to gauge the near-maniacal manner of his imprisonment for what it was. A sign of fear on Cork’s part, not confidence. Richard Boyle had come to power by seizing on a fluke, not by dint of anything more substantial. True, he’d had a powerful faction following him already, but so had several other men. It had only been the terrible nature of the completely unforeseen accident combined with Cork’s sheer luck in being in the right place at the right time—and his own decisiveness, of course; Thomas would give him that much credit—that had allowed the earl to seize power in a single day.

    Wentworth wondered again, as he had so many times since he’d been overthrown, whether Cork’s presence at the scene of the accident had simply been fortuitous. The coincidence reeked, after all. But, no matter from what angle he examined the problem, he simply couldn’t see any way that Boyle could have manipulated the situation. Not the accident itself, at any rate. He’d certainly manipulated the aftermath. It was blindingly obvious, in retrospect, that the warning brought to Thomas that the king had suffered a mishap on the West Road was a ploy of Boyle’s—and, for perhaps the hundredth time since that day, Wentworth cursed himself for having been a fool. If he’d simply stayed at Whitehall and sent a lieutenant to investigate, he’d have been able to forestall Cork’s later machinations.

    But he was well-nigh certain, after weeks of thinking upon the matter, that the horrible accident that had taken the queen’s life was simply that. An accident, unforeseen by anyone. True enough, the sudden appearance of the Trained Bands at that particular time and place might have been the work of Cork, or one of his accomplices. But the Bands hadn’t caused the accident. Leebrick and his mercenary company could have dispersed them in a few minutes. Something else had caused the carriage to race off, and there could only be two explanations. Either the king had panicked—the queen, more likely, with the king acquiescing—or the commander of the escort had somehow caused it to happen.

    Again, as he had dozens of times before over the past weeks, Thomas reviewed his knowledge of the king’s character, and that of Captain Leebrick—and again, as he had dozens of times before, came to the same conclusion. That Charles or Henrietta Maria would panic in such a situation was not difficult to believe at all. That Leebrick was a traitor was not impossible, but Wentworth thought it extremely unlikely. All the more so since one of the guards keeping him captive in the Bloody Tower had let slip that there was a giant manhunt on for Leebrick and two of his lieutenants. They’d been taken for questioning by Cork, it seemed, and had then made a daring—and quite bloody—escape from his mansion.

    That same bloody escape, of course, was being pointed to by Cork and his party as proof of Leebrick’s complicity in a treasonous plot masterminded by Wentworth himself. But Thomas knew that was nonsense, and nonsense thrice over.

    First, because as the supposed mastermind of the plot, he knew for a certainty it had never existed.

    Secondly, because the supposed plot was preposterous to begin with—which was exactly the reason, he was quite certain, that Cork had not as yet pressed any formal charges against the Earl of Strafford. The charge was simply incoherent, looked at from the standpoint of logic.

    What was he trying to do? Take power? Thomas Wentworth had already had the power. As much as any minister of any king in English history had ever had. The only step up he could have taken would have been to depose the dynasty and replace it with one of his own—which was so ludicrous a proposition that he wondered if anyone even in that den of fools that called itself Parliament could say it publicly and keep a straight face.

    In the end, he imagined, they’d accuse of him of having plotted to make himself “Lord Protector of England,” using the known history of that other world as his guide. They might even go so far—probably would, in fact, since Thomas had never made a secret of his visits to the dungeon—accuse him of plotting with Cromwell himself.

    Finally, it was nonsense because of the business with Leebrick. If he’d been working for Cork, why not simply pay him his thirty pieces of silver? Richard Boyle could certainly afford it. And even if one pre-supposed that Boyle had wanted to silence Leebrick and his men, surely—with a prepared plot and a cabal in place—he could have managed it without there having been the possibility of such a flamboyant escape by his intended victims.

    No, none of it made sense. Happenstance alone had given Cork his opening, and he’d taken it.

    Bleakly, Thomas stared out the window. His weeks of captivity had forced honesty upon him. Well, not that, exactly. Thomas thought he’d always been an honest man. But he’d now allow that he’d also been a man who was so intent on the rightness of his own course that he’d been oblivious—indifferent, certainly—to what other people around him might think of that course. Especially those who purported to be its supporters.

    He’d made enemies, many of them, and many of them unnecessary ones. Cork had seized upon that, too.

    Thomas could also have made the walk to Tower Green in two minutes, and someday he might very well do so. Walk to the same spot on the Green where William, Lord Hastings, had lost his head in 1483. The same spot where Henry VIII had beheaded two of his wives, and Queen Mary had beheaded Lady Jane Grey.

    Not likely, though. The Tower Green was only used for executions that the crown wanted to be kept reasonably private. Most men lost their heads on Tower Hill, in front of the cheering mob—the London mob that detested Wentworth, because he’d stifled them. Cork would surely want to pander to that same mob.

    So be it. Thomas knew now, with the advantage of hindsight, that Cork was repeating many of his own mistakes—and adding ones of his own into the bargain. Richard Boyle would find that the mob was fickle, and the king’s favor more fickle still. He’d seized the power. Now, let him try to keep it.

    A clatter at the door announced the arrival of the cleaning woman. The guards who accompanied her, rather. Left to her own devices, the woman would have knocked before she entered. The guards simply slammed the door aside. It was just one of the many petty little arrogances they indulged themselves in, not realizing that their effect was the exact opposite of what they intended. The Earl of Strafford knew the ways of power far better than his captors. It was not true, of course, that all bullies were cowards. Many of them were not. But it was true that all bullies were insecure. Fearful of the world, if not the man they confronted at the moment.

    She was a new one, he saw, but obviously a Warder’s kin like the former one. Perhaps his regular cleaning woman had taken sick. That would hardly be surprising, given the cavalier way the new mercenaries had ignored Rita Simpson’s sanitary arrangements. Wentworth worried now about the health of his own wife and children.

    The woman placed the basket of foodstuffs upon the table and then went about her business quickly and efficiently, while the guards waited at the door, lounging against it in boredom and chatting idly. Wentworth himself simply remained at the window, ignoring them all.

    To his surprise, the cleaning woman spoke to him briefly on her way out. Very softly, in words the guards couldn’t hear.

    “Make sure you try the new bread, My Lord. It’s quite tasty.”

    He stared at her for a moment, as she hurried toward the door. Then, looked back at the window. A few seconds later, he heard the guards closing the door and bolting it from the outside. That took a few seconds, since the bolt was a heavy one and they’d added two more.

    Even if they decided to re-enter, they couldn’t do so quickly. Now intently curious, Thomas went over to the table and picked up the loaf of bread. When he broke it open, he discovered that a note had been tucked inside. He extracted the little piece of paper and went over to the fireplace. This early in spring, there was a fire going. Not a big one, but big enough to consume any small piece of paper that got tossed into it, within a few seconds.

    It was a short note, with no signature. But Thomas was fairly certain that he recognized the handwriting. Lady Mailey’s, he thought. He and the American ambassadress had exchanged a fair amount of correspondence over the months since he’d had her and her party sequestered in St. Thomas’ Tower—which he could have reached from here with a walk of less than a minute. He’d been struck by the combination of her excellent penmanship and the complete absence of any of the flourishes that people in his time who had good penmanship normally added as a matter of course.

    A very short note. King James. Jeremiah 51, Verse 44.

    The one book they’d allowed him—no way to refuse, not that book—was the Bible. And it was the King James version, of course.

    He found the passage quickly.

    And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.

    Slowly, he set the Bible aside and stared at the fire. Then, placed the note into the flames. Then, went back to staring at those same flames, as they consumed the wood that had once been solid and hard.