The Marsh Hawk

by Dawn MacTavish

  The road they took had never seemed so long to Simon. Less than three quarters of an hour traveling time by coach, the five-mile journey along that winding, desolate road seemed to pass at a snail’s pace, though they kept up a reasonable speed. He thumped the brougham roof with his pistol barrel and called out to Barstow to push the horses to their limit.

  Biggins was not permitted to ride up top on this excursion. Wearing his very own manacles, he sat beside the lieutenant, grousing and puling over the indignity of being pinioned like a common criminal, but his words fell upon deaf ears. What infuriated Simon most was that Biggins—run to ground, and caught out—still would not own up to his part in the coil; quite the contrary. And though Simon held his rage in check, it was all he could do to keep his hands from reaching out of their own volition and silencing the Runner’s complaints for good and all.

  The storm had worsened, and though it was only mid-afternoon, Barstow had to light the coach lanterns. Cold horizontal rain assailed the coach, sliding in sheets down the windows and drumming on the roof as though some frantic being begged admittance. Was it an omen? Simon wasn’t given to superstition, but the eerie sound did call to mind the legends learned in childhood at his nursemaid’s knee, of the gnomelike Knockers, as they were called. Their mysterious tapping on the walls deep in the tin mines was reputed to lead the miners to the richest veins of ore. Had he angered them? As he recalled, that was something one must never do, and, as luck would have it, he’d forgotten the rules. Was it food or gold one was supposed to ply them with? He couldn’t remember. There was nothing for it; he was going mad. Nothing but utter and absolute insanity would have driven him back to those miserable, desolate nursery days made bearable only by escape into tales of Knockers and sirens and mermaids and trolls—anything but the reality of a bitter, loveless childhood.

  The brougham bounced over a deep rut suddenly, jolting him back to the present. Impatient, he wiped the fogged window and strained his eyes toward the landscape. The rain was still sliding down in sheets that totally obscured the hedgerows and stacked-stone walls that lined the highway, where it narrowed at the approach to St. Enoder. Biggins had nodded off across the way, and Simon kicked the man’s crossed feet smartly with the toe of his Hessian boot, jolting him awake. They had arrived.

  “You had best pray that pistol has been left behind in honest error,” Simon growled, remanding the Runner to Ridgeway’s custody as they quit the coach. “Have you anything to say before we go inside?”

  “Look here, I’ve told you all I know. Standing out here in this Cornish tempest isn’t going to change anything. It isn’t going to get the damned thing back. Get on with it, or turn me loose. You’d best think on that carefully before we go on in there, because I intend to have the pair of you up on charges the minute I get back to Bow Street—that I can promise you.”

  Simon and Ridgeway propelled the Runner up the constabulary steps, and all three burst inside on a howling gust of rain-lashed wind that had already soaked them to the skin. Simon recounted their mission to the slack-jawed officer, who spoke very little during the speech. When he’d finished, the gray-haired bailiff cleared his voice, and took an audible breath.

  “Well, gentlemen,” he said. “’Twas myself on duty the night in question. I remember it well. I doctored the prisoner, and took charge of the dead thatchgallows and—”

  “You doctored her?” Simon thundered. “No surgeon was called?” He was incredulous.

  “Well, no, my lord. ’Twas in the dead of night, and the nearest surgeon is an hour away by coach. Mr. Biggins here was anxious to see the prisoner back to London. ’Twasn’t all that serious, her injury. I cleaned and dressed it and sent them on their way.”

  “Was there an inventory taken of the contents of the sack of spoils Biggins brought in?” Simon asked the man.

  “There was.”

  “Might I see it, if you please?”

  The bailiff took a long, leatherbound ledger from the drawer of his desk and began leafing through it. “Here,” he said, turning the book for Simon to view.

  Simon read the entry, then read it again. Try as he would, he couldn’t make the words army service pistol appear on the page.

  “Just as I thought,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “It wasn’t in the sack. What have you got to say now, Biggins?” He was still seething over Jenna’s care, and he stiffened at the touch of Ridgeway’s hand gripping his arm. He’d almost forgotten the lieutenant was standing there.

  “Belay it,” Ridgeway said, low-voiced, leading Simon aside. “Remember where you are. You can’t do the countess any good from the other side of those bars there. Fly up in the boughs at the blighter and that’s just where you’ll end up.”

  “We haven’t got time to play his game, Nate.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “We know Marner didn’t have the pistol on him,” Simon reiterated. “He either discarded it, left it behind in the coach, or sent it back to Moorhaven Manor for safekeeping with Wilby, that dimwitted groom of his. I know it’s a long shot, but I need you to go there and see if you can find it. If you do, bring it to the town house straightaway. If Marner hasn’t tossed it, Wilby will know what’s become of it. I want you to wring the truth out of him. I don’t particularly care how. I’ve no doubt you’ll be creative, as only you can be. It shouldn’t take much. I’ve seen the blighter struck with terror, peeing in his britches—or rather the Marsh Hawk has—over far less than he’s going to be up against at your hands. Just see if you can get that damned gun.”

  “And what are you going to do meanwhile?”

  “Since I haven’t got the deuced evidence, I’ll have to settle for the next best thing—Biggins himself. I’ll haul him back to Serjeant’s in chains, if needs must, and choke the truth out of him before those magistrates. He knows he’s caught now. I wouldn’t even entertain the thought of removing his manacles. Look at him. I’d bet my last quid he’s hatching a plan to make a run for it and disappear right about now.”

  Ridgeway was silent. His brow was pleated in a frown, and his mouth had formed a tight, lipless line.

  “What?” Simon prompted.

  “I don’t know that it’s safe to leave you alone with the gudgeon. I’ve seen that look before, and what it’s led to. ’Tis battle madness, that—just like on the Monarch, when you practically took on the French singlehanded. I’ll not forget that anytime soon. You cut them down like wheat sheaves.”

  “We won, didn’t we? The stakes here now are higher, Nate. They’re personal. I shan’t do anything foolish . . . unless I have to.”

  Ridgeway said no more, and Simon was grateful for that. He wasn’t in any humor for lectures. He strode back to the Runner. “All right, Biggins,” he gritted out. “This is your last chance to tell me the truth. You’d best think carefully. You won’t like the alternative.”

  “I’ve told you the truth. I’ve got nothing else to say.”

  “Very well, then, you leave me no choice but to have you back to Serjeant’s Inn to tell the magistrates how you’ve just happened to have ‘misplaced’ a piece of critical evidence. Surely you must know Sir Alexander Mallory? It is he who is passing judgment upon the countess. He’s about as stern an authority ever to sit on the bench. We’ll just see what he does to you in the dock. He takes a dim view of renegade Runners, so I’m told.”

  “You don’t frighten me, my lord. The countess was caught red-handed, don’t forget. That pistol is a separate issue entirely.”

  “It was linked enough to get her sentencing stayed while I run it to ground.”

  “Do your worst, my lord. It’s your word against mine after all, and my status as Runner gives me the edge, so to speak. I do believe you’re quite mad—even said so yourself once. Now I believe it!”

  “You’re forgetting about me,” Ridgeway drawled, swaggering close. “I’m as sane as the Honorable Alexander Mallory himself, and your odds just got a little slimmer. The word of two earls—tw
o decorated war heroes, mind—against one Runner turned sour? You haven’t got a prayer.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” Biggins insisted.

  “Come on, we’re wasting time,” said Simon. Fastening his fist in the Runner’s shirtfront with little regard for the flesh beneath, he propelled him through the door, past the slack-jawed bailiff, and out into the horizontal rain to the waiting coach.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Time was bearing down on Simon like a dark rider in pursuit. It was gaining on him. He parted with Ridgeway at the coaching station in St. Enoder, and went on with Biggins alone—much to the lieutenant’s chagrin, which was voiced at a waste of his breath. Simon was immovable. If his friend were to carry out his mission, Simon decided it would be accomplished faster on horseback than by coach, since Ridgeway’s course to Moorhaven Manor would soon part them. Just how the lieutenant would accomplish his mission, he left to the lieutenant’s judgment. His mind was too brimful of rage to bother with logistics. In that moment, he was ready to agree with Biggins that he was indeed on the brink of madness.

  He had hoped to leave the storm behind with the coast, at least for Ridgeway’s sake, but that was not the case. It seemed to have settled in over the whole land with relentless stubbornness, and what should have only taken two days, stopping only to change horses, stretched into three, bringing him to London on the brink of midnight, with time run out.

  All the while they traveled, he hoped against hope to find Ridgeway waiting for him at the town house with the pistol that would give him back his wife—if she would have him after his stubborn pride had cast her this lot. But the lieutenant was not at Hanover Square when he reached it, nor had he ever been. Phelps was conspicuously absent as well. Could the valet have gone back to the coast? It didn’t seem likely. There was nothing to be done until morning in any case, except to send a missive to the magistrate’s address to the effect that he had arrived in London with proof of his wife’s innocence, and would bring it to Serjeant’s Inn first thing in the morning to present it. It was half-truth—not even—a ploy to buy some time. Meanwhile, he shackled the Runner to a mahogany four-poster in a locked chamber across the corridor from the master bed-chamber. Then, after interrogating the staff without success in regard to Phelps’s mysterious absence, he took himself off to soak his weary body in a steaming hot tub.

  Matthew Biggins tugged at the manacles shackling him to the bedpost. It was no use. Even if he could manage to shinny up to its top, the bed curtains were in the way, and the finial was too large for him to slip the chain over. He glanced around the room. It was well appointed, though sparsely furnished. Aside from the bed, which dominated the space, there were several Chippendale chairs, a writing desk, a chifforobe, and a drop-leaf table before the window, where a branch of lit candles offered the only light.

  The Runner licked his lips in anticipation. A plan to free himself was hatching. He stretched toward the table, but it was just beyond reach. There was nothing for it. He would have to move the bed. He was by no means an athletic figure, but desperation triggered a spurt of extraordinary strength and daring, and he slid off the bed, dug in his heels, and pulled hard on the chains. At first the bed didn’t budge. Was the damned thing nailed to the floor? A quick glance told him that it wasn’t, and his posture collapsed. Breath exploded from his lungs as he sagged against it in defeat, and he squatted there panting for a moment.

  He had to get free. It was still his word against Simon’s, but then there was Ridgeway, and he wasn’t all that confident that he could persuade the magistrate that both earls were addled. The lieutenant’s absence troubled him. He was certain Ridge-way would return to London with them to speak his piece at Serjeant’s to back Simon up. He’d been sorely troubled since the lieutenant rode off hell-bent for leather in the teeming rain. Where could he have been going on horseback in a flaw? Judging from the direction he took, it could only be Moorhaven Manor. He was looking for the pistol. What if he were to find it?

  Biggins drew a ragged breath of the stale, musty air in the room. It had obviously been long vacant. Dust motes dancing in the candlelight from the disturbed bedclothes choked him, and he loosed a string of blasphemies under his breath.

  His mind was racing. He could always stick to his story, of course, and blame the theft upon Rupert. The blighter was dead after all; he could hardly contest it. If he stuck to his story, he might get off with just a censure for negligence, in that he let the deuced pistol slip through his fingers. The trouble was, he had always been a terrible liar, and with both Simon and the lieutenant hammering at him . . .

  He’d been dogged by guilt since he took the bribe. Now that the countess’s life was in the balance, it gave him no peace. And what if Wilby knew? Frantically, he wracked his brain trying to remember how private that transaction actually was. Dratted servants had an uncanny habit of getting wind of the most private affairs. Could Wilby have overheard Rupert begging for that pistol? Could he have seen the exchange? Could Rupert have even discussed it with him? He must have if he left it in his charge. Biggins couldn’t be certain, and because he couldn’t be, he dared not take the chance. He couldn’t afford to wait around and hope for the best, either. No. There was only one solution. He had to escape and disappear. It would mean his career, everything he’d worked for, but that couldn’t be helped. The way things were stacking up against him, he was about to lose it all anyway.

  Right now, getting free of the manacles was the only thing that mattered. There was only one way to accomplish that. Jumping to his feet, he tugged at the chains again and again, until his wrists were bruised and bleeding, until the old mahogany bed frame finally groaned and moved an inch—and then another. Sweat ran into his eyes from his brow, and drool dribbled from his open mouth. Like a man possessed, he put all his strength into the task until he’d finally breached the distance to the flaming candle branch denied him by the manacles. Then, praying that Simon had posted a guard outside who would hear him, he seized the candlestick in trembling hands, and touched the flames to the counterpane and bed curtains. They caught in a whoosh of fiery heat as the flames shot up the bedpost to the canopy above, slathering it like frosting in seconds. It happened so fast. Too fast! Burning bits of fabric began raining down, and he tried to back away, but the shackles prevented him.

  “H-help! Fire! Help, I say!” he shouted, as tall tongues of writhing, crackling flame roared to life all around him.

  Simon was exhausted, mentally and physically, and he’d nearly fallen asleep in the bath when frantic knocking at the dressing room door sent him scrambling to answer. Tugging on his pantaloons, he hopped to the door and flung it wide.

  “Fire, my lord!” cried the breathless footman on his doorstep, waving his arms wildly toward the chamber where Biggin’s had been incarcerated across the hall. Smoke was pluming out beneath the doorsill.

  Barking a string of expletives, Simon snatched his key chatelaine from the drop-leaf table, and unlocked the smoldering chamber door. The Runner’s shrill voice rushed at him as he flung it wide, releasing a billowing cloud of thick black smoke and a burst of flame-fed heat. He could scarcely see. Beating the smoky fog away with flailing arms, he staggered into the room coughing, his stinging eyes flooded with tears. Half-shuttered, they strained through the murky atmosphere for Biggins as he groped his way toward the bed where the man was chained.

  The fire seemed confined to the immediate area of the bed. A quick assessment was all Simon needed to evaluate the situation. It appeared that, in an attempt to liberate himself, the Runner had knocked over the candle stand, igniting the bed-clothes and draperies. The fire had come precariously close to the Runner’s person, now. His hysterical shrieks rose above the cries of the servants who had come running with buckets of water and sand, dousing everything in sight with both, with little regard to the Runner in the midst of the spreading blaze.

  Simon unlocked the manacles that pinioned Biggins to the bedpost—and for his pains took a blo
w to the head with the loosened chains and dangling bars that brought him to his knees, momentarily stunned. Groping his way up to his full height, he shook his head like a dog in a desperate attempt to clear his vision, blurred by smoke and the blow. Was that blood running down his face? He shook his head again and wiped it from his eyes, loosing another string of profanity as he staggered after the Runner, who was disappearing toward the door in the voluminous curtain of smoke.

  Simon’s head was throbbing. He reeled into the corridor, colliding with two footmen who doused him with the water they were carrying, spilling more over the parquetry underfoot. He was hard put to keep his balance, slipping on the puddles that had collected on the smooth waxed surface, but he crossed the corridor and burst through the master bedchamber door. There was a brace of loaded dueling pistols in the top drawer of his chifforobe. He snatched them up and followed after the Runner, who had reached the landing and was set to escape down the staircase in the confusion, still trailing clanking irons.

  “Stand where you are!” Simon commanded.

  But the Runner continued to flee.

  “Stop, I say!” Simon shouted.

  When the Runner still did not comply, Simon fired a warning shot over his head that hit a bronze wall sconce and ricocheted off the chandelier suspended above the landing, shattering prisms and candles over the steps below. Biggins froze where he stood, glancing back at the smoking pistol in Simon’s hand.

  “Not another step, or the next time I won’t miss,” Simon warned, moving nearer.

  No one above was paying any attention. The servants that swarmed steadily up the back stairs from the servants’ quarters, toting buckets and kettles of water, were far too occupied with the fire. Where the deuce was Phelps? It wasn’t like him not to leave word of his whereabouts. Simon could certainly use him now, to back him up from below. But there was no sign of the valet, or any other to come to his aid.