The Marsh Hawk

by Dawn MacTavish

  “And so,” the vicar concluded, “tomorrow will tell the tale.”

  “Are you skilled with the pistol, sir?” the lieutenant wondered. “Marner didn’t seem to think so.”

  “Marner observed my holy side,” he said with a wry smile. “I fired a shot across his bow, so to speak. I’m actually a better shot than Simon is; he’ll vouch for that himself. My aim has saved his skin on more than one occasion over the years. It was expedient at the time I fired on Marner to let those present think otherwise.”

  “Well, if the blighter drops you on the Promenade tomorrow, he won’t live to brag about it,” the lieutenant assured him flatly. “You can bet your blunt on that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Simon stormed out of Newgate Gaol and snatched his horse’s reins from Phelps, who was waiting mounted outside. It had not gone well. For the first time in his life, his title hadn’t benefited him. He may as well have been a dipped beggar in the Fleet, for all the clout his earldom carried in that infamous place.

  “Don’t say it!” he warned the valet, mounting his snorting stallion.

  “I haven’t said a word, my lord,” Phelps defended. “But, by your leave to do so, permit me to say that you’re going about this wrongly.”

  “Phelps, I am half mad with this,” Simon returned. “They don’t believe her, and she is denied representation by counsel. Under the law, she must speak for herself. Bloody hell! She’s achieved her goal, by God, but she’s going to die for it unless I can think of some way to prevent it.”

  “Was she seriously hurt, my lord?”

  “I don’t even know. They wouldn’t let me see her.” Though his hair was still tied back with a ribbon, it was mussed from the two-day journey on horseback, and he raked through it with both hands, as though he sought to keep his brain within the confines of his skull.

  “Where do we go now?” the valet probed.

  “Bow Street. I want to get these hands on this Matthew Biggins individual who put her in that hell there.” Simon made a wild gesture toward the prison.

  “Surely not like that, my lord?”

  “Like what?”

  “My lord, they’ll lock you up for vagrancy. You haven’t shaved. Your hair is . . . unkempt. You look as though you’ve slept in your togs. Don’t you think you ought to freshen up a bit at the town house first? You haven’t eaten or slept . . . Begging your pardon, my lord, but you look like a wild man.”

  “I’m going to lose her, Phelps,” Simon moaned. He thumped his breast with a scathing fist. “I should have avenged her father for her. She wouldn’t be in there if I had. I should have said ‘the devil take the deuced ball’ and addressed our differences. I should have swallowed my pride—my stupid, bloody pride! I love her, Phelps!”

  “My heart goes out to you, my lord, but you aren’t thinking clearly. This isn’t like you, sir. You need to regroup and take stock. Nothing will be served by storming the bastions of Bow Street like a madman in the dead of night. How far did such tactics get you in that gaol just now?”

  “I . . . love . . . her!”

  “I know, my lord.”

  “I’m going to have to go after Marner for this, you know that. He’s got to answer for Jenna—and the rest.”

  “I know, my lord.”

  “But not until I get her out of there!”

  “Then come to the town house and let me tend you. I’ll draw you a nice hot bath, and dress your queue. Why, Fury’s tail there is more neatly groomed. Then, after a stiff brandy and a hot meal, you’ll sort it all out, my lord.”

  “It’s going to take more than a bath, a brandy, and a full belly to sort this out, old boy,” said Simon ruefully. “It’s going to take a bloody miracle.”

  In her wildest imaginings, Jenna never conjured the nightmare of Newgate Gaol. It never occurred to her that she wouldn’t have a space to herself. Though she’d heard the shocking rumors, she wasn’t prepared for the press of unwashed bodies milling about in the communal cell; mad and sane, old and young, women from all walks of life, petty thieves and cold-blooded murderers alike were thrust together in a pit of sewage.

  She cowered in the shadows, scarcely believing her eyes. The stench permeating the air was a stifling mélange of filth, vermin, sweat, vomit, and human dung that promised to make her retch. The wound in her shoulder was scarcely more than a graze, but it had grown angry and sore, threatening infection for lack of tending. It hadn’t been touched since the constable at St. Enoder bandaged it.

  She hadn’t slept. She was too afraid. One of the mad-women kept stalking her, fawning over her long hair. The woman dogged her, cooing and crooning, petting her hair as though it were an animal. Another, who had evidently bribed the guards for liquor, watched her constantly as well through bleary eyes. The woman was odious and coarse, not mad—worse, a governess who had kidnapped and murdered her charge, and had been sentenced to hang at Tyburn. Her issue seemed to be hatred of the aristocracy, and since Jenna was the only aristocrat among the motley crew, she was the woman’s prime target.

  Simon hadn’t come. Of all the horrors cast upon her then, that was the worst. She hadn’t really expected him to, but she had hoped. If only he would come—only that—she could face the trial, Tyburn—anything. She had done what she’d done for her father, but glancing around the stench-ridden squalor she’d been abandoned to, listening to the desperate outcries and mad, shrieking laughter of the inmates, she came to the conclusion that he never would have expected this of her. Strangely now, when her tears would have been appropriate, they would not come. Though she ached inside for the hopelessness of it all, and the loss of the man she loved until she thought her heart would break, she could not shed a one.

  Crouching in her corner, as far from the madness in motion around her as she could manage, she desperately attempted to ready her defense. Her own words were all she would be afforded, and she prayed for the fog of confusion in her fever-clouded mind to lift long enough to allow her to prepare her case.

  Matthew Biggins received Simon in his private office—a small, book-lined room, modestly appointed and cluttered with what the Runner defined as “loose ends”—as he gathered up the sheaf of rumpled papers before him and stacked them at the side of his desk blotter.

  “I shan’t belabor this,” Simon told him. “I want a full account of the events that put Countess Kevernwood in Newgate Gaol, and—”

  “It won’t serve you, my lord,” the Runner interrupted. “There’s nothing to be done. Her trial is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

  “—and a full account of your dealings with that jackanapes, Marner,” Simon continued with a raised voice.

  “That’s privileged information, my lord—”

  “Not any longer,” Simon broke in. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead, my lord?”

  “Oh, yes—the minute I lay hands on him, sir! So you can consider that, from this moment forth, you are employed by me.”

  “Th-this is most irregular, sir.”

  “Indeed. Now are you going to answer me, or am I to extract the information in another manner? Make up your mind, Biggins. I am out of patience with Bow Street. Arresting Countess Kevernwood without a word to me—how did you dare, sir!”

  “N-now, look here, my lord—”

  “You have condemned her to death, you nodcock! Give account before I lose my patience altogether and take this place down stone by stone around you.”

  “A-are you threatening me, my lord?”

  “You can bet your blunt upon it!”

  “Sh-she was caught red-handed. She’d disarmed the man, and was running away with the spoils when I brought her down, my lord,” the Runner said, clearing his voice.

  “You shot her?”

  “I-I was doing my duty. You seem to forget, the countess was engaged in highway robbery.”

  “She told you that, did she?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “What did she tell you, then?”

  �
��Well, she . . . didn’t, that is to say . . . I mean . . . she was unconscious most of the way to St. Enoder.”

  Simon stiffened. Rage chased the blood through his veins to his scalp, and his hands balled into fists, drawing the tongue-tied Runner’s eyes.

  “You’re sure she wasn’t injured seriously?” Simon gritted through rigid lips.

  “Y-yes, my lord,” the Runner croaked, running his stubby finger along the inside of his collar. “I merely grazed her shoulder—her arm, really. ’Twas nothing—only a scratch, my lord.”

  “And that ‘scratch’ rendered her unconscious?”

  “The fall rendered her unconscious, my lord. She was moving apace as she fled.”

  “She didn’t try to explain when she regained consciousness?”

  “Well, yes, she told a preposterous tale about avenging her father. Why, she tried to blame the whole deuced coil upon me. Well . . . not me personally, you understand. Upon the whole of law enforcement in general.”

  “You presume too much, imagining the likes of yourself as exemplary of the whole of law enforcement, you inept mawworm. Her story was truth. Did that possibility never occur to you, sir?”

  “Well, no, as a matter of fact, ‘twas too bizarre, my lord.”

  “Leave that,” Simon seethed, looming over the Runner’s desk, his nostrils flared, the veins in his neck straining uncomfortably against the modest shirt points Phelps had fixed in place with a triangular tied neckcloth. “What about Marner?”

  “He thought that you were . . . were—”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Simon cut in. “What made him think to accuse me of such a thing?”

  “Y-your . . . eh . . .” The Runner stammered, pointing to Simon’s queue with a trembling finger. “He claimed that you held him up at gunpoint and he recognized you.”

  “And you believed him,” Simon replied, answering his own question. “It may come as a surprise, but I am not the only man in the realm sporting a queue, Biggins. Many of us old salts still cling to it as a reminder of our glory days. But enough about that. Where is he now?”

  “I . . . I—”

  “Don’t dare hedge with me,” Simon shouted, causing the man to give a violent lurch. “Can’t you tell that you are speaking with a madman? You’ve been warned. My patience is at an end here, and there’s no telling what I’ll do. Where is the whoreson?”

  “W-we parted company at St. Enoder,” said the Runner. “He was still insisting that you—”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure. Where did he go?”

  “He . . . he made mention of a manor house in the Channel Islands. Jersey . . . no, Guernsey.”

  “I hope you got your blunt from the bastard,” Simon said, “because there’s nowhere he can run to on the face of the earth to hide from me. And when I’m through with him, let’s just say I’ll have frozen his assets.”

  “My lord, my business with Marner is concluded. But let me warn you, if you carry out your threats, you’ll answer to the law and follow right along in the countess’s footsteps—earl or no. The Tyburn Tree makes no class distinctions, my lord.”

  “Is that a fact? Well, my good man, we shall just see about that. Enough! Since you ventured into my territory to serve Marner, ethical or no, you’ve set a precedent. You’re on my payroll now, and I’d suggest that you start earning your keep. You can begin by telling me what the countess’s options are.”

  “She has none,” the Runner said. “She has broken the law; nothing changes that. She must stand trial like any other, and she must make her own defense to boot. She must represent herself. No counsel is permitted.”

  “There has to be . . . something?”

  “Tell me your version of this, my lord.”

  “To what purpose, if she is denied counsel?” Simon gave a bitter laugh. “This is ludicrous!”

  “Just tell it to me.”

  Simon raked his hair roughly and began to pace as he related Jenna’s agenda, deftly omitting his own part in the coil and the circumstances of their first encounter on the old Lamorna Road. When he’d finished, he raked his hair again and leaned over the Runner’s desk with his hands splayed on the blotter, waiting.

  “So, you’re saying she was holding him up?” Biggins said, rubbing his chin.

  “She was—to see justice done. You just said she had disarmed the blighter.”

  “Yes, but how was I to know she was a woman, and on such a mission? I took them for rivals arguing over the spoils; so would you have. She was most convincing.”

  “She knew he was her father’s murderer! The man held her up in my own coach not a sennight ago. She recognized the pistol he carried. It had belonged to her father, the very one the thatchgallows stole after he bludgeoned the man with it. There was no mistake, Biggins.”

  “H-how do you know it was the same highwayman?”

  “It was only a fleeting glance, but I saw him myself the night he held up the carriage, and I viewed the body at St. Enoder. They are one and the same.”

  “And she took it upon herself, his apprehension?” He shook his head. “Madness!”

  “I’m not condoning her actions, but the law forced that upon her. She went to the guards for help, and they put her off. You know the sort of law we have on the coast—volunteers, guards from the watch, half of them on the take.”

  “Still, it’s a flimsy defense. Sh-she can never prove that pistol was her father’s.”

  “Oh yes, she can. It was marked; his initials were on it. Where is it now?”

  “H-here somewhere, I imagine.”

  “You imagine?”

  “The constable at St. Enoder may still have it . . . I-I’m not certain.”

  “That pistol could make her case, man! You’ve got to find it! Could it clear her?”

  “It isn’t that simple, my lord. It could pose enough of a question to bring the case before the judge’s peers, I suppose.”

  “How?” Simon urged, grasping at any shred of hope.

  “Well, if—and I do say if—such were the case, the question posed might then be argued by counsel, not at court, mind, but rather at Serjeant’s Inn. All the justices are members there. It’s an outside chance, you understand, it’s hardly a commonplace occurrence, but if it goes that far and they feel she has been convicted unjustly, she could be pardoned.”

  “You’ve convicted her already, haven’t you?”

  “It’s almost a certainty, my lord. I don’t want to raise your hopes. She’s ill equipped to defend herself. She shan’t be privy to the indictments beforehand. No copy is going to be provided her.”

  “Damn your eyes, man! Find that bloody gun!”

  “I-I’ll get right on it, my lord,” said the Runner, righting the quill holder his fidgeting had knocked over. His hands were trembling, and his face had lost all color.

  “Good! The sooner all this is behind us, the sooner I can settle my score with Marner,” Simon replied. “The longer you sit there digging holes with that quill in your blotter, the closer my wife comes to the gallows, and the farther away that whoreson ranges himself from my brand of justice. Whatever Marner paid you I’ll double it, but not unless you earn it. You put her in that gaol. Unless you fancy being without a feather to fly with—because I’ll have your situation, sir, make no mistake, and see you raking seaweed out at Land’s End if she dies on that damned Tree—you’ll get your lazy arse up out of there, and move!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dawn broke over Plymouth heavy with cottony fog ghosting in off the quay. It drifted lazily inland past the headlands, and poured into the narrow lanes and byways that crosshatched the waterfront to spill over onto the Promenade where Lieutenant Ridgeway and Robert Nast waited for Rupert to make an appearance. The viscount was late—well past the fifteen-minute margin—and Robert was afraid that he might try and escape on the Clairmont according to plan.

  “He isn’t going to run,” said the lieutenant. “My friends will see to that. He’s probably having trouble finding s
omeone who’ll stand second for him. Marner isn’t well liked in these parts, Vicar Nast—no one who means Simon harm is.”

  “The Clairmont will be sailing soon. It’s almost light,” Robert worried.

  “The fog will hold her up for a spell, but that won’t matter. Marner won’t be sailing on her, you can bet your britches on that.”

  Robert was about to reply, when a group of men parted the fog. Rupert was at the fore, flanked by the lieutenant’s comrades and a foppish, gangly individual tripping along on unsteady legs, outrageously outfitted in garish colors, not the least of which were his purple brocade waistcoat and lime green satin pantaloons. The man, who appeared to be in his early twenties, was as white as the mist that issued him, his eyes darting among the men herding him unceremoniously to the center of the Promenade.

  Robert gave him no more than passing notice. His scrutiny was aimed instead at Rupert, and Rupert’s complacent, lopsided smirk.

  “There’s no contest there,” said the lieutenant, low-voiced. He ground out a guttural chuckle. “They look like they’re on their way to a fete instead of a duel. That poor fellow’s come straight from one of the gambling hells, to be sure. Steady now. Don’t let them know you’ve got the cannon to back up your fleet. Take them by surprise.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to take them at all,” Robert lamented. “But if I don’t, Simon surely will, and he doesn’t need another coil to unwind just now.”

  Before the lieutenant could comment on that, Rupert shoved his reluctant young second forward.

  “M-my lord,” the man croaked, “Viscount Chester Hyde, a-at your service. Present your w-weapons, sirs?”

  The innkeeper’s pistols had been laid alongside the Promenade on a low table borrowed from the inn as well. The morocco leather case that contained them was propped open with the pistols on view, recessed in the burgundy baize lining. Several tense moments elapsed while the weapons were inspected, and finally approved to everyone’s satisfaction. There was a cursory display of nitpicking from the opposition, soon quelled by Lieutenant Ridgeway and his closest associate, a man called Lige, who had taken on the position of referee. By the time the issue was resolved, the fog had been reduced to lazy ribbons of mist hugging the ground.