The Deception of the Emerald Ring pc-3
Page 36
"Hmmm," said Miss Gwen, regarding the rockets with renewed interest.
"They're meant to be tied in bunches around a central pole," Geoff explained, busily unrolling a length of twine from around his waist. "That provides the height. The pikes should be just about long enough."
That was all the instruction Miss Gwen needed. They worked swiftly and silently, grouping the rockets into bunches, securing them with thick loops of twine, and inserting fuses into the holes provided for that purpose in their bases. The only sounds in the room were the brush of rope against iron, the periodic scrape of a pike base across the floor, and the disjointed patter of mice scurrying along the baseboards.
The fuse, cotton twine coated with gunpowder, left dark flecks on their gloved fingers as they worked. The acrid smell of sulfur, stronger with the door closed, made Geoff's nose tingle and his eyes water. In the windowless room, it might have been any time from noon to midnight. The door to the back room fitted perfectly to its frame, without any cracks or chinks. The air-holes bored into the wall were too small to admit any light, and they were nearly too small to admit much in the way of air. Hide the rebel leaders in there, and they were probably in greater danger of asphyxiation than discovery.
They could not have been in the room for more than ten minutes, but it felt as though they had been there for eternity, laboring among the sulfur and saltpeter in the reddish glare of the single lamp, like an engraver's etching of the horrors of the damned. It must be well after six, time enough for Letty to be at Lord Vaughn's already.
Perhaps insisting she take embroidery scissors had been a bit much.
He might as well, thought Geoff disgustedly, slicing off a piece of twine, have laden her with the sorts of magical amulets medieval peasants wore to ward off plague. They would probably be just as effective, and a great deal lighter.
Unbidden, a memory arose, of a long, paneled corridor. They kept that wing closed now. But when he was eight, Geoff had sat there, night after night, outside his father's door, crept out of bed and lurked in the hallway, standing sentry against Death. But while he slept, nodding at his post, Death had slipped past. At the time, Geoff had imagined him as a bony man in a tattered black cape, hoisting himself through the window like a burglar in the night. Unopposed, Death had slipped down the hall, through the sleeping house, and trailed his icy fingers through the nursery.
If he had stayed awake…If he had been more vigilant…Logically, he knew there was nothing he could have done. Smallpox struck where it would, and there was nothing a small boy—or even the horde of doctors that had trooped up and down the stairs of Sibley Court, shaking their gray wigs in learned resignation—could do to arrest the disease once it struck. Other than pray.
But how many accidents, how many illnesses, could be prevented through just a bit of care and planning? So Geoff had planned and he had plotted; he had charted out his friends' missions with cold-headed precision, making sure their getaway horses were always in place, their guns always primed, their information the best his spies could provide.
For the most part, he had been successful. But when he thought of Letty entering Lord Vaughn's den, all his preparations seemed as flimsy as a veil hung at the end of a sheer drop. If Lord Vaughn drew a pistol, no number of straight pins and vials of sleeping potion could stop him. It was enough to make him want to barge straight back there, carry her home, and just tie her to the bed for the next fifty years or so.
Not an unpleasant option.
Unfortunately, also not a practicable option.
Tying off the last bunch of rockets, Geoff took a professional look around the room. He had ranged the groups of rockets so that the sparks from one should light the next. With any luck, their upward passage would set off the gunpowder in the room above.
Once any sort of fire started…the rest would go from there, neatly wiping out a substantial part of the rebels' store of weapons. They still had the depot at Marshal Lane, piled high with cartridges, grenades, and pikes, as well as lesser hiding places on Winetavern Street, Irishtown, and Smithfield, but those alone would not be enough for a rising on the scale that Emmet had envisioned. Cartridges were all very well, but they didn't do much good unless one had the proper weapons to fire them from. And pikes, even cleverly hinged ones, were only of so much utility against trained British forces' blazing bullets.
Glancing down at the floor, Geoff noticed that the mice had already been at the sacks piled along the side of the room. The gunpowder was mostly stored in barrels, but the mice had gotten at the saltpeter, leaving a trail across the center of the room, as daintily strewn as sugar along the top of a bun.
"It can't hurt to scatter some gunpowder and saltpeter about," he commented. "The bigger the explosion, the better for our purposes."
At the words "bigger" and "explosion," Miss Gwen's eyes took on a rapacious gleam.
"I shall scatter the gunpowder." She added graciously, "You may lay the fuse."
"Charmed, I'm sure," murmured Geoff, taking the long tail of powder-flecked cotton twine and unreeling it toward the wall. One of the knotholes near the ground was large enough to thread the string through. The less distance the flame had to travel, the better. Feeding the fuse through the hole, he said, "When I see you leave the building, I'll light the fuse. Once I've done that—"
Miss Gwen struck a regal pose, chin lifted to the heavens, hand in a keg of gunpowder. "We light the sky."
"—we run like the devil," finished Geoff dryly.
"Young man," announced Miss Gwen, abandoning her tableau, "however urgent the situation, there is never the need for profanity."
Geoff forbore to argue. "When I light the match," he repeated, "run."
He left Miss Gwen neatly arranging gunpowder in the design of a large Union Jack, surmounted by the royal arms, complete with unicorn.
Outside, McDaniels appeared to have succumbed to the effects of the bottle. Propped against the outhouse wall, he was snoring fitfully, one arm wrapped protectively around the remnants of his drink, like a child with a favorite toy.
From neighboring houses, he could hear the normal noises of daily life. Hens scratching. Men scratching. Kettles clanging against the hearth. A woman's voice raised in anger. A child's agitated wail, abruptly stifled with a slap. The sound of an explosion might rattle their kettles, but the depot was set far enough back to prevent unnecessary harm to the innocent.
Geoff peered cautiously down Hanover Alley, the narrow street that abutted the back of the house on Patrick Street. With Patrick Street a popular thoroughfare, the narrow alley formed the main means of rebel access to their stronghold, a way to come and go unremarked. In the fading light of early evening, the alley drowsed in dusty quiet, undisturbed except for the sound of McDaniels's snuffling snores, and a strange, low rumbling sound coming from within the house. Tuneless and toneless as it was, it took Geoff a moment to identify the noise. Miss Gwen was humming.
He could only be glad she didn't do so more often.
Finding the tail of the fuse, masked by a clump of grass, Geoff began carefully playing it out along the side of the house, engaging in minute mental calculations. Pull the fuse too far, and there was a good chance the flame would burn out before it reached the rockets. Place the fuse too close, and none of them would make it home for supper. They needed just enough time to run like the devil. The henhouse, set close by the house, provided a convenient screen behind which to lay the end of the fuse.
"You just might want to consider finding a new nest," Geoff informed the residents, sotto voce.
The hens cackled irritably in reply. They were clearly committed to the revolutionary cause.
But they weren't cackling at him.
One hand still holding the fuse, Geoff whirled toward Patrick Street. A man pounded across the street, two agitated chickens at his heels and a pistol in his hand.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The man's other hand was engaged in trying to hold his hat on his head.
Geoff's hand froze on the stock of his gun.
Suddenly, Lord Vaughn's residence seemed the height of safety, her presence there devoutly to be wished. Not only was she speeding toward enough explosive matter to blow up the entirety of Notre Dame and a few minor cathedrals besides, he really did not think she should be out in public in those pants. They hugged her hips and thighs as closely as a prostitute fondling a patron. Of all the images that could have sprung to mind, that one did little to add to Geoff's peace of mind.
Or what mind he had left. The fact that he had allowed himself to be distracted by his wife's trousers when he had a fuse in one hand and a building full of explosives behind him did not bode well for the continued viability of his mental powers.
The source of his confusion skidded to a halt in front of him in a haze of hair and feathers. Racketing to a stop, Letty tripped over an inquisitive chicken, who seemed to view the entire situation as a new form of game designed entirely for avian amusement.
Geoff grabbed her elbow to steady her, resisting the urge to grab her by both shoulders, shake her until she saw sense, and then kiss her until she couldn't see anything at all. No matter how oddly the rebels behaved, he doubted the neighbors were accustomed to seeing two men embracing by the side of the house. Although how anyone could take one look at Letty in those trousers and believe her a man…
No. Geoff sliced off that train of thought before it could veer into dangerous territory. He refused to fall prey to a pair of pantaloons. And he wasn't even going to think about that sliver of throat where her cravat had come undone.
"Why aren't you at Vaughn's?" he demanded, as emphatically as one could demand in a whisper. He reached out and hastily knotted the ends of her cravat together in a rough bow. "What are you doing here? It's dangerous!"
Fortunately, Letty seemed to have regained her balance, if not her breath. She panted something completely unintelligible.
"What was that?"
The fuse took advantage of his slackened grasp and promptly began trailing back toward the knothole, like a very long dog's tail. Lunging, Geoff grabbed the end before it could whisk out of reach.
"Mind on your work!" snapped Miss Gwen, from within the house.
"Rebels," panted Letty, dropping the empty pistol and clutching both hands to her aching diaphragm. The chicken, narrowly avoiding losing several tail feathers, pecked at Letty's boot in retaliation and waddled haughtily away, looking uncannily like Miss Gwen. "Meeting. Now."
"Now," Geoff repeated flatly.
The message he had intercepted had been so clear. Emmet, Allen, Dowdall, Madden, and a number of the other rebel luminaries were engaged to dine at Kilmacud with Joe Alleyburne, for an evening of pleasant conversation and plotting. Geoff had eavesdropped on such events before; they tended to go on well into the night and involve the consumption of large quantities of claret.
Clearly, tonight was the exception.
There was no hope that Letty was wrong. Down at the other end of Hanover Alley, a small cluster of men was barely perceptible, no more than flecks on a painter's palette. Geoff would wager there weren't more than six of them—which still made three too many, even if Geoff counted Letty, which he would have preferred not to. There could be no doubt as to their identity. From the not so distant distance came a snatch of a ballad, low but unmistakable.
"And you did mean now," Geoff said grimly.
Why in the hell did rebel movements always have to express themselves in song? Geoff recognized it as "The Lament of Lord Edward Fitzgerald," a lugubrious little ditty that began "Why lie ye here so pale and cold, Edward, Edward? Why ye who were so brave and bold, Edward, Edward?" and went on along that vein for the whole of thirty-eight verses, including a glowing report of Lord Edward's childhood lessons and his preference for jammy tarts at tea ("Oh, ye who liked the raspberry, Edward, Edward"), before getting on to the usual bits about bloody blades, bared breasts, and women weeping.
They had clearly been singing for quite some time; Geoff caught a fragment that ran "And when his Greek translations were due, Edward, Edward, the blank verse came out pure and true, Edward, Edward. For in the glow of Hector's shield, Edward, Edward, you saw that Eire must never yield, Edward, Edward."
One could learn to hate that name after a few verses.
The little group at the end of Hanover Alley was growing more distinct. Six men, clearly in a state of high good spirits, even if there did seem to be a small disagreement about variant endings to the twenty-third verse.
In just a few yards they would be close enough to take an interest in what was going on in their own yard. And there was very little a man could do to explain away why he just happened to be holding a fuse in one hand and a match in the other.
A hen pecked curiously at Geoff's foot, clearly mistaking it for an outrй new form of feed. Rapping smartly on the wall, Geoff leaned over to speak into one of the knotholes.
"I am lighting the match," enunciated Geoff clearly. "Would you care to emerge?"
"Hmph," was all Miss Gwen said, but Geoff heard a thump that he devoutly hoped was the banging of the hidden door. For all her irritating qualities, he had no interest in immolating Miss Gwen. The blasted woman would probably come back to haunt him.
"May I help?" Letty asked, her eyes darting from the fuse to the rebels and back again.
She looked so absurdly small and vulnerable in her borrowed men's clothes. Geoff would have liked to send Letty packing, back to Jane's house, or, even better, all the way back to London. But he didn't have that luxury. Making a snap decision, Geoff held out the end of the fuse.
"Can you work a flint?"
Letty snapped to. "Of course!"
"Good. Take this." Geoff handed her the flint. Letty accepted the flint with a familiarity that boded well for her claim of competence. "The second you see Miss Gwen emerge, use it to light this." With his other hand, Geoff held out the fuse. Letty regarded the black-flecked length of twine dubiously. "Once it's lit, I want you to run, as fast as you can, down toward the church."
"What about you?"
Geoff's mouth quirked with wry humor. "With any luck, I'll be running, too."
Letty just looked at him, her blue eyes clouded with unasked questions.
Abandoning any pretense of levity, Geoff said somberly, "I'll hold them off as long as it takes to protect the fuse."
"I see," said Letty, and she did.
The need to take her into his arms was almost a physical ache. "If anything goes wrong, I want you to go straight to Jane. If anything goes wrong with Jane, go straight back to England. Understood?"
Letty nodded. Reluctantly.
Geoff could tell she was yearning to argue, and his chest swelled with an entirely unfamiliar range of emotions at her perspicacity and self-control. Nine out of ten women—nine out of ten men—would have wasted time in useless arguments. But not his Letty.
Unable to kiss her good-bye, since that really would arouse the rebels' suspicions, as well as other inconvenient organs, Geoff did the only thing he could. Under cover of the henhouse, he reached for her hand and squeezed. "I'm going to go drag Miss Gwen out of the house. The minute you see her, light the fuse."
Letty knew what she wanted to say. But since she couldn't, she went with the next best substitute, inadequate though it was.
"Be careful," she whispered, but the words were lost in a sudden burst of noise. Like an ill wish, Miss Gwen appeared, bursting forth from the back door with enough force to shake the door on its hinges. She seemed, for a moment, to hang in midair like an avenging Fury, her gray hair bristling and her parasol raised like a general's baton.
At the end of the alley, the rebels stood amazed, frozen from sheer shoc
k.
Letty couldn't blame them.
Twisting the handle of her parasol, Miss Gwen drew out a thin sword from the shaft. In her left hand, she braced the open purple parasol like a shield. The silk fringe bobbed merrily in the fading sunlight.
"Fire away!" cried Miss Gwen. Thrusting her sword point high in the air, she charged the astounded band of rebels.
Letty didn't need to be asked twice. Dropping to her knees behind the henhouse, she struck the flint with hands that were surprisingly steady. The metal fit familiarly into her hand, an oddly domestic counterpoint to the scent of sulfur stinging her nose and the chicken dung muddying her pantaloons. Under Letty's efforts, the tinder caught, and lit. Her heart somewhere around her cravat, Letty thrust the powdercoated fuse into the small spark and waited for it to catch flame.
Nothing happened.
The fuse wasn't taking. The flame smoldered sullenly at the very tip before winking damply out.
Fighting her rising anxiety, Letty struck the flint again, willing the metal to spark. Just on the other side of the weathered wooden structure, Miss Gwen's shrill yips of triumph and tart asides mingled with masculine oaths and grunts. They seemed to be holding their own, but how long could two hold out against six?
If there was something wrong with the fuse…Merciful heavens, she didn't even know what a functioning fuse was supposed to look like, much less what one was supposed to do if one wouldn't work. Those little black flecks…she assumed they were supposed to be there, but who knew? And the ground was damp, a damp that might have worked into the twine, inhibiting the action of the flame.
Letty worked the flint with a burst of energy born of desperation, tipping the end of the fuse to catch the flame. If the fuse wouldn't take this time, she would just have to find something else. A long spar of wood torn from the chicken coop, perhaps, and thrust through one of the larger knotholes in the wall. It might work. If the fuse didn't light, it would have to work.
The tip of the fuse caught and smoked, smoldering uncertainly against the backdrop of the muddy earth. As though through a screen, Letty could hear the pounding of booted feet against packed dirt, shouted threats and imprecations, the harsh exhalations of hard-pressed lungs, all drawing steadily nearer. It couldn't have been more than seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Cupping her hands around the red tip, she blew gently on the flame, willing it into life.