by John Booth
“The girls will have to wait until we have destroyed the bomb,” Cam told the boys.
“I won’t be much use to you if I scream every time Alice gets tired of waitin’,” Tricky pointed out. Ebb was already heading to the door and Tricky followed him.
“If you get caught, say you were just in the castle for a liaison with the girls,” Daisy called after them.
“A what?” Tricky asked.
“Meetin’ with ‘em stupid,” Ebb said pulling him into the corridor.
“Ow did you know that?” Tricky asked, as they moved away.
“Daisy told us, in the other future.”
“I should ‘ave known.”
“All present and correct, sir,” an army officer informed Trelawney, saluting smartly as he spoke. Trelawney had asked to address the men before they boarded.
Two hundred men equipped with rifles and bayonets were waiting on the platform with enough ammunition and supplies to fight a significant campaign. Trelawney told their officers to leave most of it on the platform. In his opinion, if the British Army could not capture a small town of unarmed civilians without them then they were not up to very much.
Ammunition and field guns big enough to breach the castle wall were all they needed, that and enough rations to keep the in food for a day or so.
Trelawney stepped across the platform to where the men were waiting. It was clear they weren’t happy at being dragged out of their warm barracks on a freezing cold night.
“Your task tonight is the noblest the army can ever do. We have reason to believe that Lord McBride has turned traitor to the Empire. If we are wrong, he will have the Scottish courts in which to prove me so. If I am right, and I am risking my career on this action, then he and his cohorts have made the largest explosive device in history and plan to use it against the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament, where there will be many Scottish nobles attending.”
The troops murmured at this news. Trelawney knew he was talking to a Scottish regiment and attacking Lord McBride would go against their pride in their own country.
“We believe he has already tested this device and killed many fellow Scots in the process. You may already have heard that the villages of Dalcross and Ardersier were destroyed by an explosion yesterday. Some of you may have friends or relatives there.”
Open conversation broke out among the troops as they digested this terrible news.
The officer shouted for quiet and the men once again turned towards Trelawney.
“The villagers of Glen Russell are almost certainly entirely innocent of any crime, but we must arrest Lord McBride and take the castle and factory as quickly as we can. For our own survival, we must not give anyone there a chance to trigger this bomb.”
There were a few shouts of approval.
“This is not a normal battle. I want you to leave this train at Glen Russell and secure the village, the castle and the factory as quickly and quietly as you can. Let us wipe this stain of Scot killing Scot from history before it has a chance to fester. Are you with me men!”
The troops shouted their approval and shook their rifles in the air.
“Then let us board this train and be on our way.”
The men rushed to board the train. Belinda gave Trelawney a quick hug. She had never felt prouder of him than she did right then.
Tom was certain that Rhona was taking them a long way around to reach the laboratory. However, having argued that they didn’t know the route it was difficult to point this out to her. He was worried she had some ulterior motive in picking her route, though he could not imagine what it could be.
Laura had not remembered the route and was feeling quite comfortable as Rhona led them through the castle. They were going where they wanted to go and they had a legitimate escort, Laura considered that things were going well.
“Just wait here a minute, while I check this room is empty,” Rhona told them. “We wouldn’t want to go parading through the Laird’s private party or anything, would we?”
Laura nodded and smiled at the girl as she slipped through the door.
“I think we should run,” Tom told Laura urgently. He has a very bad feeling about all this.
“Don’t be silly, Tom. She is providing the perfect cover for us and we can always overpower her in the laboratory.”
The door opened a few minutes later and Rhona came out smiling. Three men followed behind her carrying ropes. They wore evil grins.
“This is Alan MacTavish and some of his men,” Rhona told them with a smirk. “They are going to tie you up and then you and I are going to wait until the Laird comes here later tonight. You can tell him your stupid story about how he is evil and see what it gets you.”
Rhona’s face reddened with anger. “I am hoping he whips you both for telling such wicked lies. I don’t know what you were planning to steal from the Laird tonight, but I am proud to have put a stop to it.”
Laura and Tom looked around for somewhere to run, but a man appeared in the corridor behind them, grinning as though he hoped they would try something.
“I think we should give up quietly,” Laura told Tom and he nodded. Tom prayed that Cam and the others would give them up for lost and complete the mission on their own. Neither he nor Laura were going anywhere for the next few hours, he was sure of that.
MacTavish and his men looked decidedly miffed when Tom and Laura failed to put up any kind of a fight. MacTavish punched Tom in the stomach to try and start something, but Tom’s only response was to double up and groan in pain. They were dragged into the room. It turned out to be a meeting room with chairs and tables arranged at random within it and there was a large roaring log fire in the fireplace.
Tom and Laura were bound and gagged before being tied to chairs. The men and Rhona chatted and played cards for well over an hour ignoring their captives. Then MacTavish stood up and gave Rhona a kiss on the cheek.
“It is nearly midnight and we have a job for the Laird tonight, out on the loch.”
“Get away with yer,” Rhona said laughing. “What sane Scotsman would row out on the loch at this time of night and in this weather too? You’ll be lucky to come back with the two you go out with in this cold, kilt or no.”
“Does she mean us, or is she referring to yer family jewels Alan?” one of the men asked in amusement.
“He couldna lose you two, even if he tried,” Rhona replied with a smirk. “As for the others, I hear tell they’re small and shriveled from lack of use.”
“Now who’s been telling you tall tales like that, Rhona Freer? We can quickly settle that if you’d like.” MacTavish reached for the front of his kilt with both hands and gripped the seam running along the bottom getting ready to lift it.
“Away with all of you now. You’ve nothing to show me, Alan MacTavish, that I haven’t seen before.”
“Are you sure you can handle the English scum?” MacTavish asked. “Though I’m pretty sure the boy has no balls to speak of.”
“Well there you are wrong, Alan MacTavish, because I’ve seen his and they would grace a bull and no mistake. It is a pity he’s a liar and a thief, because were it not for that I’d surely be eager to tup him.”
“He is an Englishman and they are all liars and thieves. The bottom of the loch would be the best place for them.”
Rhona frowned. “We are not murderers here, Alan MacTavish and don’t you forget it. A good beating is all these two deserve and I’m sure the Laird will see they get it.”
This amused the other men who burst out laughing before MacTavish told them to be quiet.
“Take care of yourself, Rhona,” he said brusquely, “Innocence is not always rewarded, not even in Scotland.”
49. Death
“I gives up,” Ebb said sitting down on the bottom step of a spiral staircase. “We ‘ave been looking for ‘ours now an’ I’m sure we been ‘ere before.”
“I thinks you’re right, Ebb,” Tricky said, sitting down besides his friend. “I’ve
no idea ‘ow to get back to the others either. You’d ‘ave thought the silly cow would ‘ave given us some clue as to where to look.”
“This castle is too big,” Ebb complained. “An’ every place looks the same.”
“At least Alice ain’t bin blasting me ‘ead off with ‘er messages.”
“Someone’s coming,” Ebb said urgently. “Up the steps, quick.”
The two boys barely made it out of sight before a group of men walked down the corridor below them.
As soon as the men had passed, Tricky whispered softly to Ebb.
“Let’s follow ‘em. Maybe they’ll lead us to the girls.”
The boys tiptoed down the staircase and followed the men, always keeping one turn behind them. This was something that Ebb excelled at, because if he got it wrong in the future he didn’t have to look in the present.
“They’re openin’ some door,” Ebb said without bothering to actually look.
Ebb was suddenly out of breath and doubled over.
“What ‘appened?”
“Went to ‘ave a look. I ‘ave to do it in less than five seconds or it really ‘appens,” Ebb explained breathlessly.
Tricky had seen Ebb do this before back in Smee’s house, but had forgotten about it. Ebb would run down the corridor in the future, look at what someone was doing and then run back. Provided he returned within five seconds, he did not need to actually do it, but he had still seen what there was to see.
“It’s that bloke Saunders an’ ‘is two ‘enchmen. They’ve got ‘em all tied up an’ gagged,” Ebb explained in a breathless whisper.
“I thought that Saunders worked for McBride?” Tricky asked, puzzled by this unexpected turn of events.
“Maybe they fell out with each other?” Ebb suggested. “Are we goin’ to see where they take ‘em?”
“Might as well, seein’ as ‘ow we ain’t findin’ Miss Scream-an-Shout.”
Ebb walked around the corner and Tricky followed him confidently. If Ebb thought it was safe then it most certainly was. The group ahead of dragged the three bound and gagged men down an underground passage leading through the hill. The passage led to a small jetty, which thrust out into the loch. There was a large rowboat moored alongside it.
Saunders and his guards were forced to get into the boat. Something Tricky thought they seemed unusually reluctant to do. The men untied the boat from the jetty and began to row the boat out across the loch.
“Funny time for a boat trip,” Tricky opined once the boat had disappeared in the darkness.
“Listen,” Ebb urged.
A man screamed in terror out in the middle of the loch, and then all was silent.
“Bloody ‘ell,” Tricky said and fell to the ground as if poleaxed. As always, Ebb was already behind him, ready to catch him and lower him gently to the ground.
“Perhaps you should call him again?” Edith suggested primly. “It has been a long time.”
“Tricky hates it when I do that,” Alice responded, trying to match Edith’s more refined speech patterns. “If he is close then my messages will knock ‘im out, just like they did to you three.”
Lucy was sobbing somewhere nearby. None of the girls could see each other and none of them chose to hold onto any of the others. Alice felt that her bottom had frozen with the cold and was wondering if she would be able to walk when she tried. She leaned over in Lucy’s general direction, following the sound of the sobs, meaning to give her a comforting pat.
Gwendolyn felt a questing hand push her over. She instinctively reached out to steady herself from the blow and her hand touched the cold stone floor.
The room instantly lit with torch light and Gwendolyn felt her eyes smart. A man holding a blazing torch stood a few feet from her while looking up at a cast iron candleholder set high on the wall. He reached for it and using his body weight twisted it through ninety degrees.
There was a loud grinding noise and some of the stones in the wall rotated into the room, revealing a door. The door was about three foot high and about eighteen inches wide.
The man with the torch ducked down and stepped through the door holding the torch ahead of him. He seemed to be able to stand up on the other side because the torch light suddenly dimmed. Then the stone door creaked close, and in the fading light, Gwendolyn saw that the candleholder was rotating back into its original position.
“Sorry Gwen,” Alice said as she gathered she had found the wrong girl. Gwendolyn’s woolen top being distinctive enough for Alice to realize she’d made a mistake.
“There’s a secret passage out of here,” Gwendolyn said breathlessly, her news causing Lucy to stop weeping.
“What, where?” Alice asked urgently.
“You have to turn the candleholder on the wall. It opens a small stone door in the wall.”
“There’s a candle ‘older on the wall?”
“I noticed it when Madam put us in here,” Edith said from the darkness.
“I couldn’t even find the wall in this dark, let alone a candle ‘older,” Alice pointed out.
“Me neither,” Gwendolyn admitted in a disappointed voice. She couldn’t see it either and it was high up on the wall. She would need to jump to reach it and that would take forever in the dark if you did not know exactly where it was.
The four girls sank back into silence and despair.
“Gwendolyn, when you had this vision, you could see the room as if it was daylight?” Lucy asked.
“The man was carrying a lit torch, so I could see by its light,” Gwendolyn explained.
“Why don’t you touch the room again and use the light to go over to the candle holder?” Lucy asked. Again, there was a period of profound silence.
“I would have never thought of that, but I don’t know if what I see is my visions are in the same place as reality,” Gwendolyn said after giving the matter a little thought.
“It can’t ‘urt to give it a try,” Alice opined.
Gwendolyn got into a crouching position and touched the floor. The vision started to repeat itself as they always did. Sometimes if there was more than one vision to a particular place they appeared randomly. However, in this case there seemed to be only the one.
Bent over so she could continue to touch the floor Gwendolyn began to move towards the man and the candleholder. Then she hit something lying on the floor and fell over, and the room returned to darkness.
“That hurt,” Lucy complained, rubbing her aching leg where Gwendolyn had ploughed into it.
“You are not in the vision,” Gwendolyn said giggling from where she lay. “I can only see things that are not there, remember?”
“Get on with it,” Edith ordered impatiently.
The second time of trying, Gwendolyn reached the wall without incident and was able to rise to a standing position by touching the wall. To get to the candleholder she would have to occupy the same physical space as the man in the vision, at least if she wanted to be in the right position when she jumped.
The thought of that brought goosebumps, though people had passed through her before in visions. She knew the spirit would feel like a cold wind inside her body and her memories of it were far from pleasant.
Gwendolyn steeled her mind and restarted the vision by taking her hand away from the wall, standing in the right position and touching the wall again. When the man’s hand reached up for the candleholder, Gwendolyn jumped and caught hold of the end of it.
“I have it!” she shouted. She hung there for about a minute, swinging gently from side to side. The holder did not move.
“I am not heavy enough to work the mechanism,” Gwendolyn told her friends in despair.
“We needs to ‘elp ‘er,” Alice told the other girls. “Let go for now. Gwen, and we will join you. Could you blather on about somethin’ so we can follow your voice?”
Less than a minute later, all four girls hugged each other in the dark.
“We needs to give ‘er space to jump an’ then hold onto ‘er an�
� pull,” Alice pointed out. “Can you grab it with both ‘ands?”
“I can try.”
It took them four goes to force the candleholder to turn. By that time, all four girls had bleeding hands from scraping them against the wall. However, the grinding sound of the ancient mechanism finally moving was a great encouragement to them.
“I can lead you to the door in the wall, but how will we see anything beyond that?” Gwendolyn asked.
“We follow your vision,” Alice explained. “With a bit of luck it will take us all the way to somewhere we can get out, an’ show us ‘ow to do it as well.”
“This is the first time I have ever had a useful vision,” Gwendolyn told them with considerable surprise.
“No, that ain’t right,” Alice corrected her, “This is the first time you ‘ave known what to do with your visions. That ain’t the same thing at all.”
James Saunders could not believe he was about to die. He had been chewing on his gag for hours and his jaw ached from the effort. All he had to do was say the right word and this horrible misunderstanding would be over. When these men heard he was from the Brotherhood they would untie them and take them back to see Lord McBride. One word was all it would take. He chewed at the gag with increased determination as the rowers pulled the boat over the still waters to the middle of the loch.
Joe and Mick were contemplating their fate with grim appreciation. They had both killed many people. Joe was particularly fond of killing young women. He liked the way they squirmed when they first saw the knife in his hand, and the way they jerked convulsively as the last of their lifeblood squirted out from their torn necks. Neither of the men saw the irony of drowning in a Scottish loch, it simply seemed unfair.
Mist rose in clouds from the loch, a consequence of its unnatural warmth. Heated by the reactatrons, the loch had become a veritable fog machine, especially on cold winter nights.
“Aye, this should be far enough,” MacTavish, told his men and they stopped rowing. “Tie those rocks to their legs good and tight. The Laird does-na want any of them floating up later and disturbing his view.”