“It would be less embarrassing if we could stop him before he sets sail. I wonder what wharf he would be most likely to use.”
The eyes were sharp again. “Soldiers and all,” muttered the old woman. “I doubt you’re telling me the ’ole tale, mistress, but you look like a good ’un. I ’eard ’em say Harrison’s Wharf. It’s close by on the river.”
“How long ago?”
“Not long. They won’t have got orf yet, I don’t think.”
Elf took the woman’s callused, dirty hand. “What’s your name?”
The woman shied a bit, but then said, “Dibby Cutlow, mistress.”
“Thank you for your help, Mrs. Cutlow. And if you are ever in need, come to Malloren House in Marlborough Square.” Then she turned to Bryght. “The clergyman is probably Murray in disguise. En avant!”
She saw Fort, standing some way away but clearly able to hear, turn to his soldiers as if to give independent orders. She marched over to him. “This is a serious business with no place for rivalry. If we act in competition, we could well interfere with one another.”
She really couldn’t tell if his eyes were icy cold or flaming with anger. Perhaps it was icy rage. She only had a moment to study them, for he turned sharply toward Bryght. “What plan of action do you have?”
Elf could have hit him for so pointedly overlooking her, but this was no time for that either.
Later, she promised herself, remembering Rothgar saying that to Cyn. They, however, hadn’t been talking about a chance to talk, to explain, to understand.
Oh, devil take all men and their codes of behavior.
“We should approach this wharf from both sides,” said Bryght. “Three sides, in fact. Some of the soldiers can go on board our boat to stand out in the river in case they get the cargo out on the water.”
“You came by boat?”
“It was fastest.”
“You shot the bridge?” For a moment, Fort looked at Elf and she chose to believe that his flare of temper could come from concern for her. Immediately, however, he turned to his men. “Corporal, send four men with one of Lord Bryght’s people to take position on the river.”
“Aye-aye, my lord! What orders, my lord?”
“Stop any suspicious vessel. No, damn it. The river’s too crowded—”
“I’ll go on the boat,” said Elf. “I can recognize Murray.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Fort snapped.
“I agree,” said Bryght.
“Such harmony of opinion!” She pulled out the pistol. “I’ll shoot any man who tries to stop me.”
Fort and Bryght gaped at her, then shared a look that came close to commiseration.
Without another word, Elf turned to the four chosen soldiers. “Follow me.” As she led them toward the river, she heard Bryght say, “I knew it was dangerous to arm women.”
She also heard Fort’s response. “Of course, ladies are taught from birth to behave themselves.”
She remembered a similar conversation at Bryght’s betrothal ball, one that had almost come to blows. At the moment, she rather hoped they battered each another bloody over it.
The boat and the eight oarsmen stood a little way off the steps, but at her sign, it pulled in so they could embark. Elf gave Woodham, the leader of the crew, a brief explanation of the situation.
“So,” she said at the end, “I need you to hold position on the river opposite Harrison’s Wharf. Can you do that?”
The sturdy, middle-aged man scanned the busy waterway. “Aye, milady, though it won’t be easy. Other boats won’t want to go round us.”
“Do the best you can.”
As Woodham had said, getting out into the river under eight oars was easy enough, despite having to jostle for good water with the lighters and wherries ferrying goods to and from the ships. Holding place in the fast-flowing water without colliding with other boats was more difficult, but the oarsmen managed it.
Elf scanned the crowded river, looking for a boat carrying a coffin and a bob-wigged minister or Murray with his blond hair. She couldn’t see any vessel that could fit the bill.
She turned to study the wharf.
She wished she had a spyglass, for the riverbank was a confusing jumble of jetties, warehouses, and cranes, all swarmed over by workers. Then she saw a flash of red that must be the soldiers. In moments she could make out Fort and Bryght coming from different directions, and could even mark their progress by the eddies in the human stream as men moved away from the military.
She studied the edge of the wharf where goods were being loaded into boats. It was hard to spot any one person, but then she saw a crane hoisting something off a cart.
A coffin?
“There!” she said to the soldiers. “See that box?”
It took a moment, but then they spotted it too. The crane was swinging the coffin over a lighter. Below on the wharf a white-wigged figure almost danced with agitation as he watched the operation.
“That’s our target,” she told the soldiers. “We must stop it being loaded on board a ship.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, milady,” said one of the soldiers, “but on the river, that could be dangerous.” She could see from the way he clutched onto the boat that he wasn’t happy on the water. “If it gets onto a ship, it’s no great problem. A vessel can be stopped and searched on its way down the river.”
That was true. It could take days to sail down the Thames into the North Sea, and vessels were subject to various regulations all that time.
“Perhaps not, milady,” said Woodham. “See that vessel there?” He pointed out into the confusing forest of masts. “The one flying the fleur-de-lis?”
Elf shaded her eyes and did see it. “What does that mean?”
“I reckon it’s the ship taking the French ambassador back, and it’s the only one that’s yet to sail. Stopping vessels like that ain’t usually done.”
“Of course,” murmured Elf. “That’s why it all had to be last night. To travel on that ship. You say it’s about to sail?”
He squinted at the great vessel. “Aye, milady. Anxious to be off on the tide, I’d say.”
Excitement had fueled Elf, but at this crucial moment, it suddenly drained away, making it hard to formulate decisions. What-ifs and ifs only clamored in her weary head. She shook them away. “Block the way of that boat,” she ordered.
“Aye-aye, milady,” said Woodham, but he added, “That’s a lighter they’re putting that coffin on. A big boat, a lighter is. If it chooses to go through us, we’ll be kindling.”
Elf could see what he meant, but couldn’t weaken. “Then we’ll have to stop it before it goes through us, won’t we?”
The coffin sat on the lighter now—a mere fraction of the cargo the huge barge could carry—and Fort and Bryght’s parties had arrived nearby. From a sudden shift in the crowd—a surge away from the edge of the wharf—Elf knew something was happening. Like a line of toy soldiers, the redcoats aimed their muskets.
At whom?
At a man with a pistol.
Even as she saw that the man with the pistol wasn’t Murray, fire spurted from the barrel as he fired, and the line of muskets belched flame and death.
The pistol-wielder tumbled backward into the river.
On the wharf another person fell.
Who? Dear God, who?
Elf stood clutching one of the stanchions, watching the lighter moving ponderously into the river, while on the wharf confusion seethed. But the barge was steering away from them, away from the French vessel!
“What’s he doing?” Elf cried, trying not to even think of dead bodies. “Where’s he going? Get closer to him!”
“Nay, milady,” said Woodham phlegmatically. “He’s heading for the French ship. Lighters are dumb-boats, see. With just one man and one oar they can’t steer proper. They have to use the flow of the river. Lightermen know the ways of the river like you know your hand and he’ll end up at the French ship in the end. Of course,” he
added, squinting at the crowded Thames, “that means that even if he don’t want to crash right through us, there’s not much he can do about it.”
“Oh, God,” Elf whispered.
She stole a glance back at the wharf, but saw only a milling crowd. The soldiers suddenly fell into line again and fired another round after the boat, but it missed. She prayed God their fire not injure an innocent person, and that Bryght or Fort stop them firing again.
If Bryght and Fort were both still able to give commands.
Who had fallen on the wharf?
Perhaps it wasn’t either of them.
Why did she have this certainty that it was Fort?
She forced mind and eyes back to the lighter.
It was sidling and drifting its way over the river, and now it clearly headed toward the French ship. Which meant it headed toward them.
Then she spotted Murray.
He stood, one hand protectively on the coffin, gazing rapt at his destination. He wore clergyman garb, but Elf recognized him all the same. A pistol in his free hand pointed at the lighterman, so he couldn’t be entirely caught up in the sight of the French ship. Clearly, the lighterman would not be allowed to turn back even if he tried.
There was only one thing to do.
Elf spoke to the soldiers. “Which of you is the best shot?”
One moved forward. “I am, milady. Pickett’s the name.”
“Well, Private Pickett, do you think you can kill the man standing in that vessel?”
He considered it, squinting. “If this boat don’t move too much, it’s an easy shot, milady.”
“Woodham, keep the boat as steady as you can.”
“Aye-aye, milady.”
It shocked her to contemplate cold-blooded murder, but she had to stop the barge. Elf remembered Vauxhall, and the way Murray had pursued her, knife in hand. She knew he would shoot the innocent lighterman on the slightest pretext, and he was responsible for all the recent deaths, including Sally’s.
Including Fort’s?
She couldn’t know that Fort had been the person who had fallen on the wharf, and yet she did, and chill sat heavy inside her because of it.
She cast one last harried glance at the distant riverbank, took a deep breath, and said, “Whenever the time seems right, Private Pickett.”
The man knelt on one of the velvet-covered seats, using the back as extra support for his long musket, viewing down the barrel with great care. With a loud click, he pulled back the pin and removed the flint cap. Mouth dry, Elf saw his finger begin to tighten on the trigger.
Then another lighter passed between, blocking the shot, and creating a bobbing wave.
Pickett muttered something, then said, “Bob, keep an eye open for anything else like that, will you?”
“Right’o, Billy,” said one of the other soldiers. “Looks clear for the next couple of minutes.”
Pickett waited for the swell to die down, having to let the lighter get closer and closer. This would make the shot easier, but Murray had only to take his gaze off the lighterman and the French ship to spot the unlikely sight of the nobleman’s barge among all these working ships. Then he would surely notice the red-coated soldiers on board, and the one aiming at him.
They were close enough now for Elf to make out the name on the lighter. The Tilbury Troll. It seemed suitable for such a cumbersome craft.
Hurry, hurry! Elf silently beseeched Pickett, even though she knew the soldier had to wait for the boat to steady.
Then Murray did move, shifting to look back at the wharf. As he turned back toward the lighterman and the French vessel, his gaze passed over Elf’s boat. His mouth opened as if to shout something, but the thunder of Pickett’s musket silenced everything. As the smoke cleared Elf saw the Scot sprawled back over the coffin containing his precious Stone of Scone.
The enormity of death froze her, but then she took in the Tilbury Troll gliding ever closer, the lighterman yelling, and Woodman asking—
“Yes!” she screamed. “Move! Move!”
Eight powerful oars thrust them out of the lighter’s way, but only just, so the blood-soaked rag doll that had so recently been a man passed only feet away.
Everyone on the boat stared at the corpse, and Elf thought perhaps even the soldiers weren’t hardened to such sights. Suddenly she realized she had the command here. She’d acted that way, giving orders, taking responsibility. But she knew there was more to command than that. She had to make this sit right for the men.
Wishing her hands would stop shaking, she said, “Well rowed, Woodham. Can you call to that lighterman to head back to Harrison’s Wharf?”
“Right, milady. But it’ll take him a while.”
“No matter so long as his cargo doesn’t end up on the French vessel.”
As the shouted exchange began, accompanied by some lively language from the distressed lighterman, Elf turned to the soldiers. “Well done, Private Pickett. A clean shot. You doubtless saved that poor lighterman’s life.”
She looked closely at him for the first time, realizing he couldn’t be more than twenty years old and was white with stress. At her words, however, he turned pink and bashful. “ ’Tweren’t nothing, milady.”
“On the contrary. It was very important, and you played your part.”
Woodham had finished conveying her instructions to the lighterman, so she turned back to him. “Take us back to the wharf, if you please.”
And she finally felt able to slump down on a seat. Unfortunately, the release of urgency allowed fears for Fort to surge in like a river flood.
On the wharf, a coach had arrived. A doctor? Or a means of taking someone to a doctor? They wouldn’t call a coach for a corpse, would they?
They probably would for the corpse of an earl.
Perhaps it hadn’t been Fort who had fallen.
She was sure it was.
Perhaps he’d just tripped and fallen.
Perhaps . . .
Perhaps . . .
She knew, with an instinct beyond human comprehension, that he had fallen, had been shot, and was seriously injured.
Surely she would know equally clearly if he were dead.
She remembered at Sappho’s house, with Fort bound and her brothers angry, she hadn’t been sure where her deepest allegiance lay. Now she knew.
Hands clenched together before her mouth, she prayed as she’d never prayed before. Prayed for his life and another chance to bring joy into his life.
Then she saw the concerned attention of the soldiers and hastily lowered her hands, striving to appear normal. She had to play another part—that of a Malloren, cool commander of death and destruction.
Bryght waited at the stairs, alone.
He wasn’t injured. She was relieved, of course, but not from her main concern.
She saw no sign of Fort or the soldiers who’d been with him. On the planks, red glinted in the sun.
Blood.
Heart racing, she leaped to her feet, desperate to be the first off the boat. As soon as the oarsmen had the vessel alongside she seized Bryght’s hand and scrambled up onto the wooden jetty.
“Well done!” he said.
“Fort?” she demanded.
He sobered. “Took the ball in the leg. I don’t think it’s life-threatening.”
All strength left Elf, and she collapsed into his arms, weeping for grief, for relief, and perhaps for sheer, bone-deep exhaustion.
She felt herself lifted and carried, but fell asleep before he found a means to take her home.
After two hours of explanation, questioning, and excuses, Rothgar emerged from the King’s Drawing Room through a side entrance and asked a footman for his brother. He found Cyn under guard in a small room on a lower floor, but lounging around in reasonable comfort, drinking ale.
At Rothgar’s entrance he raised his tankard. “How long do I keep my head?”
“Indefinitely, though His Majesty is still not entirely convinced. Congratulations on using your
head to effect.”
Cyn laughed, surging to his feet. “It was the most damnable thing, Bey! The blasted machine was sitting there, right on that big gilt table in the Drawing Room. It appears it had come with a cunning message from you, and the king had demanded it be sent straight up. His equerry tried to put him off, but wasn’t about to forbid him to try the thing. The only reason the king hadn’t already switched it on was that he’d sent for the queen to enjoy the treat! I got him out of there.”
“Admirable military verve.”
“Yes, well, with hindsight, I probably committed all kinds of lèse-majesté and, judging from his reaction, my chances of making major, never mind colonel, are decidedly dim.”
“Perhaps we should convince him of your worth. Where is the diabolical device?”
“In the room next door. I insisted they put it where I could keep an eye on it.”
Rothgar opened the door. The gaudy Chinese pagoda stood on a side table, its tiny figures frozen, waiting only the release of a catch to spring into lethal life.
“A pity, really,” he said. “It is most cleverly made.”
“Should we blow it up?”
“I gather it will blow itself up, given the opportunity. The trick will be to let it do so safely. Roll up your sleeves. We’re going to carry it.”
“We are?”
“Who else? It appears to have been carried up and down stairs without hazard. But in case, should we order others to take the risk?”
“ ’Struth. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were feeling penitent.”
“You think me beyond repentance?”
Cyn shook his head. “I think you’re in a damned funny mood. Very well. Let’s move the thing.”
It was not heavy, but it was cumbersome, especially when they wished to move it with great care. Eventually, however, they could put it down outside the castle, on the grass near the river. Cyn pulled out a handkerchief to wipe sweat off his face.
Rothgar, unruffled, then summoned servants to bring old mattresses and a musket, and sent a message to the king to invite him to watch the spectacle from a distant balcony, if it so pleased him.
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