Fortune's Fools

by Paul Tomlinson

  Gosling unlocked the door and peered out to check that their escape route was clear. “No,” the little assassin admitted. “I suppose you have at least some standards.”

  They closed the door behind them.

  Grimwade and Anton stepped out from behind the tapestry.

  “Well, I think this is where I too must bid you goodnight,” Anton said. “I will leave you to welcome your latest guests. I can see myself out.” He moved back towards the opening behind the tapestry.

  “Guests?” Grimwade said. “What guests?”

  There was a loud hammering at the main door.

  “Those guests. Farewell.” Anton disappeared.

  “It’s a nice enough place, I suppose. I notice my daughter’s touch in the furnishings, very tasteful. There’s a few too many cocks on display for my liking, but each to theirs, I suppose,” Lucinda cast a glance in Grimwade’s direction.

  Griselda’s mother was a broad, squat woman with an immense bosom and a face like an old boot: rough skin, wrinkles and tiny eyes. The pipe, which she smoked continuously, was clamped between toothless gums, and she had the deep husky voice of a seasoned drinker and smoker.

  “Thank you for sending the messenger with news of my daughter’s passing,” Lucinda said, tears in her eyes.

  “It was... the least I could do,” Grimwade muttered. He had sent no messenger. He had expressly forbidden anyone contacting Griselda’s family. Who could have disobeyed him?

  Lucinda toured the ground floor rooms of the house, determined to avoid any but the most grudging show of approval. Grimwade winced as she stepped off the beautiful carpets, the nails in her boots leaving white scratches in the polished floor.

  The two brothers stood silently in the hall, waiting for their mother to complete her viewing. They were twins. Their hair was thinning and cut very short in an attempt to hide the fact. Low foreheads and pronounced brow-ridges, deep-set eyes. Florid complexions. Huge stomachs and massive upper arms. Hands like bear paws. Armitage was the more talkative of the two: where Lilywhite would only grunt, Armitage might give a monosyllabic answer. The brothers had been named after Lucinda’s husband’s two business partners, who had died mysteriously, allowing the family to become wealthy and powerful in their local underworld. Armitage would respond to ‘Armi’, but Lilywhite had been known to eviscerate anyone who referred to him as ‘Lily’. He was known within the family as ‘Big Lil,’ while those outside the family tried to avoid having to know him.

  Once she had seen the house, Lucinda turned to Grimwade, crossed her arms and blew smoke in his direction.

  “I want you to explain to me just how you managed to let my daughter be killed,” she said.

  Grimwade swallowed.

   

   

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Sheldrake’s wounds had been stitched and dressed, and he now lay on a cot in a Guard House cell. He had dreamed feverishly for an hour or more, his head thrashing wildly from side to side, wailing plaintively; but he was awake now. His eyes held a strange gleam, and their whites were visible all around the irises.

  In the darkness, he smiled. It was a mirthless smile. The smile of a spider welcoming a fly to its web.

  “Help! Help me!” he shouted suddenly. He refastened the belt-buckle which he had used to spring the locks of his manacles. “Help me!” he shouted, his voice filled with pain and fear. His eyes stared. He smiled.

  The door at the top of the dungeon stairs opened. A young Guardsman stood listening.

  “Help me... please help me...” Sheldrake’s voice was weak now, pleading.

  The young Guardsman hurried down the stone stairway, the keys in his hand jingling. He peered through the little barred window in the cell door, and saw Sheldrake lying, unmoving, on the cell floor.

  “Captain Sheldrake?” He called. “Captain?”

  There was no response. The young Guard bit his lip, peered anxiously back towards the door at the top of the stairs. He had been told not to open this door, no matter what the circumstance. But he knew that the captain had been injured when he had been brought here. If he went in to check that Sheldrake still breathed, to help him back onto his cot, where would be the harm? He quietly fitted the key in the lock.

  “Captain?” He inched forward, his tread silent on the straw-strewn dirt floor.

  “Sir, are you all right?” He leaned forwards.

  There was no response from Sheldrake.

  The young Guard knelt beside him, slowly reached out with a hand to check the pulse in Sheldrake’s throat.

  Sheldrake grabbed the young man’s wrist suddenly. He turned to stare up into his face, smiling.

  The young Guard tried to back away, but Sheldrake’s grip held him firmly.

  “You really ought to obey orders,” Sheldrake said quietly. “They told you I was dangerous, did they not? Do not open the cell door, no matter what he says or does, they said. You should have listened.”

  Sheldrake sat up, still holding the young man’s wrist. The Guard was transfixed, a rabbit staring into the mesmerising eyes of a snake.

  The captain stood slowly, the young man following him up.

  “You should have listened.” Sheldrake shrugged apologetically. “But I am afraid it is too late now.”

  The young Guardsman saw that his own knife was in Sheldrake’s hand.

  The knife plunged into the young man’s flesh, just above the groin. With need of only gentle sawing motions, Sheldrake opened the youth to the breast bone. He released the boy’s wrist then.

  “You might need both hands,” Sheldrake said.

  The young man looked down. His entrails bulged through the split in his tunic, oozing outwards slowly.

  “Come on, lad. Pull yourself together.” Sheldrake moved towards the door.

  The young Guardsman stared down in horrid fascination, disbelieving, as the slick purplish snakes of his viscera tumbled out of him onto the floor.

   

  Chapter Seventy

  “Are you drunk again?” Meg asked.

  Edison raised his head from the tavern table and looked at her, unsure whether he was drunk again, or drunk still. The masquerade ball had been the previous night, and he felt certain he had not been to bed – or sober – since then. “I thought you were leaving?” he said.

  “On the morning’s tide tomorrow,” Meg said.

  “It is not morning yet?” Edison asked, unable to guess either the time of day or the day of the week.

  “The sun has just gone down,” Meg said.

  “I saw your ship was gone from the quay,” Edison said.

  “After the gunpowder was loaded, the harbourmaster wanted us out in the deeper water of the bay.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” Edison said.

  “You won’t come south with me?” Meg asked.

  Edison shook his head. “I would be a terrible sailor.”

  “Is there anything you’re not terrible at?”

  “I can act,” Edison said, “and I am a fabulous lover.”

  “I am still waiting for proof of that,” Meg said.

  “You have seen me perform,” Edison said.

  “The last love scene I saw was interrupted before we reached a rhyming couplet,” Meg said.

  “Perhaps we are fated never to get further than a kiss,” Edison said.

  “Are you prepared to tempt fate once more?”

  “By way of an experiment, you mean?”

  “By way of a good...”

  “Captain Meg, come quickly!”

  Megan turned her good eye on the intruder. “This had better be very, very important, Tam.”

  The cabin boy stood by their table, gasping for breath. “The ship is alight, ma’am”

  Megan knocked her chair over in her haste to leave. Edison was close behind her.

  A crowd was gathered on the dock, jostling for positions, staring and pointing towards Captain Meg’s ship, which lay at anchor in the bay. The sea was black, the
wave tips lit white by moonlight. The ship itself was an intricate silhouette against the sky.

  People moved aside to let Meg and Edison through.

  “You can see the fire, below decks!” a voice shouted, and there was a ripple of sound through the crowd as the news spread.

  A flickering orange glow could be seen through an aft cabin window. There was a flash, and an ooh from the crowd, as the heat blew out the glass. Flames licked up the side of the ship.

  Row-boats, laden with pumps to throw sea-water up headed toward the blazing ship.

  “They are too late,” Megan turned from the scene.

  “Why?” Edison asked. He looked from her to the burning ship.

  The explosion lit up the sky with yellow and orange light. Flaming debris, thrown high, arced down like meteors and hissed on contact with the ocean. Flames raced along the rigging, curled up the twin masts. Two men leaped from the sides of the ship, one of them ablaze until he hit the water.

  The waves caused by the explosion rocked the little boats, but they continued on. All thought of dowsing the fire was gone, and they made to pick up the survivors.

  A second explosion turned night to day. The masts folded inwards towards each other, the vessel’s back was broken. Repulsed, fascinated, the crowd continued to watch, their faces glowing in the orange-yellow light, their eyes bright and staring. They were silent now, the crackling of the flames and the creaking of the dying ship was the only sound.

  Gasps from the crowd as the ship listed suddenly.

  Then somewhere below the water-line her belly must have ruptured and let the water flood in, because her prow dipped suddenly below the waves. She began to slide gracefully, nose-first, into the foam.

  A black cloud hung over the harbour. Wood smoke and the smell of burnt gunpowder scented the breeze. The light was fading now, only a few sparks flew from the inclined decks. A dull orange glowed below the waves, until the fire below-decks ate up the last of the air, and the water was sucked in.

  A last deep groan, and the ship disappeared. The water closed in over the top of it.

  Some stayed, staring into the black waters, thinking on what they had witnessed. Others turned, dazed, their faces smeared with sooty streaks, and wandered off in the direction of home.

  Megan hurried out onto the wooden jetty to help the survivors ashore. She was giving clear instructions. One man was sent hurrying to summon a physician, while two others helped an injured man and two other wet crewmen towards the tavern, where a warm fire and a drink would help revive them.

  One of the boats was rowed out into the bay again, and the men in it used hooks to pull a body out of the water.

   Megan entered the inn. She spoke briefly with the physician who was attending the crewman who had superficial burns, then approached Edison, who was kneeling beside the second survivor, a young man.

  “They have pulled the last one out of the water. Fortunately only a handful were aboard. One is dead, another will die before dawn,” she knelt beside Edison. “How is he?”

  “He needed someone to breath for him until he remembered how to do it himself. He is fine now, I think.”

  The young man’s snores reassured them that he was still breathing. His hand gripped Edison’s tightly.

  “Something else is troubling you,” Edison said.

  Meg shook her head. Then sighed as Edison simply raised an eyebrow to tell her she was lying.

  “Some of the crew are missing,” she said.

  “Killed in the explosion?”

  Megan shook her head. “These men weren’t on the ship tonight. But now they are nowhere to be found.”

  Edison frowned. “Perhaps they signed on with another ship after they learned of the explosion,” he suggested.

  “It is possible.”

  “But?”

  “You know the kind of men I hire, Edric. They will only work aboard my ship because no one else will hire them. And even if they heard that my ship had gone down, they would still have been around to collect the wages they felt were owed,” Megan said.

  “Then they are all sleeping off hangovers in some whorehouse, unaware of any of this.”

  “You could be right,” Megan said. “But there is something else which gnaws at my thoughts.”

  “What?”

  “The explosion. It was not large enough,” she said.

  “It seemed to do the job well enough, your ship lies at the bottom of the bay. How big would you have had it?”

  Megan shook her head again. “I mean that given the quantity of black powder we had in the hold... There was enough below-decks to destroy a small town. The explosion should have lifted the ship out of the water, sent spray and splinters of wood hundreds of feet into the air.”

  “Perhaps the water got to it and prevented the majority from combusting?” Edison suggested.

  “I do not think so.”

  “What of the blaze itself? Do you believe that was started accidentally?”

  “No. My people have carried this cargo before: they know what precautions need to be taken,” Meg said. “There would have been no men smoking, no burning candles or other flames, not even anything that might strike a spark.”

  “Then if it was started intentionally...”

  “I think the gunpowder may have been removed – at least a large part of it – and then the fire started to hide its theft,” Megan said.

  “Is such a cargo worth stealing?”

  Megan shrugged. “The powder is valuable, of course, thought I doubt anyone would mount such an elaborate plot to take it.” She shook her head. “I think whoever has taken it does not intend to sell it.”

  Edison and Megan stared into each other’s faces.

  “Sheldrake!” they said simultaneously.

   

  Chapter Seventy-One

  A lighted torch burned by the cave entrance, stuck in the sand, well away from the three barrels of gunpowder which were stacked towards the back of the cave. The sandy floor looked to have been smoothed over, and there were lines of the black powder snaking off into the dark shadows at the back of the cave.

  The cave mouth darkened.

  “You saw through my little ruse, Captain Jarrett,” a voice behind them said.

  Meg and Edison whirled round. Sheldrake stood in the entrance, a loaded crossbow in his hands.

  “I thought you might,” Sheldrake continued. “I also assumed that you, the daughter of a great pirate, would know of these caves and determine my purpose. But, as you see, I am prepared for you.”

  “What happened to the crewmen you had bring the powder here?” Meg asked.

  “They met with a little accident after they had placed the gunpowder under the castle: these caves can prove quite dangerous,” Sheldrake said.

  “You plan to destroy the whole of Sangreston?” Edison asked.

  “I do not have enough powder for that, unfortunately. But I shall do what I can: if I can have the whole of the eastern quarter and the castle sliding into a chasm, I will be satisfied. The caves are quite close to the surface there, so I am hopeful for success.”

  “But why?” Edison asked.

  “I have grown to despise this place. I had such plans for it. As Captain, I had command of the Guard. As Eòghan’s successor I intended to take control of the whole region.” He smiled. Shark to prey. “But that is now impossible. It is time to destroy all evidence of my time here. I shall move on to another life, knowing that Sangreston lies forgotten, in smoking ruins behind me.”

  “You are a mad,” Meg said.

  “Perhaps. Most artists are accused of madness, are they not? There is only a razor’s edge separating beauty from deformity; love from hate; genius from insanity. I have walked that razor, and will soon reach my future destination. I will be a better man, unencumbered by the memory of this place.”

  “Will you take gunpowder like snuff to remove all thoughts of this place from your brain?” Meg asked. “Or do you honestly believe that
when this town ceases to exist, your memories of it will magically vanish?”

  The crossbow wavered. “Perhaps you are correct. Destroying this town will not change my past, perhaps not even my future,” he stopped. A broad grin spread across Sheldrake’s face. “But when I see this town torn asunder by explosions and its flesh exposed to be picked over by carrion crows, why, I shall feel such a fabulous sense of relief. Any past suffering will almost seem worthwhile.” Sheldrake raised the crossbow and pointed it in Meg’s direction. “On the barrels behind you are some lengths of rope. You will use them to bind your friend. If I find that the knots do not hold him immobile, I will cut his throat so that he cannot move again.”

  “If you are going to destroy all of this, why not kill us now and have done with it?” Edison asked.

  Meg tied his hands tightly behind his back.

  “The destruction will not occur as a single event. I have barrels piled in a number of locations under the town, with powder trails laid from them to this point. I will light these lines individually, and they will travel various distances to their destinations, setting off a series of blasts that will bring the castle down in stages, beginning with the north tower and working towards us,” he smiled. “I want you to be able to hear these explosions, to imagine the destruction they are causing as you feel the rock around you tremble with the force of the blast.”

  Edison sat on the sandy cave floor, and Meg secured his ankles.

  “Are they tight?” Sheldrake asked.

  He approached them, and Meg spun round, releasing a handful of sand into his face. Sheldrake dropped the crossbow, which shot its bolt into the darkness. He rubbed at his eyes to try and remove the grit. “Bitch!” he cried. He threw himself blindly at her, knocking her from her feet. Before she could react, Sheldrake had his hand covering her face, and he lifted her head and slammed it repeatedly against the ground, until her eyes rolled into unconsciousness.

  “You bastard!” Edison hissed.

  Sheldrake climbed to his feet, his eyes bloodshot, his face streaked with tears. “Be silent,” he said.