Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  Phillipa bought a moment by eating some more of the pudding, which tasted far too strangely floral for her taste. “Edmee told me Clare came back a little while ago.”

  “Oh.” Aldous, looking suddenly ill at ease, removed his arm from her waist. “Really? She’s back? Hmm, I wonder why she didn’t come down to supper.”

  “Fatigued from her journey, I should think.”

  “Yes, indeed. That must be it. Yes.” Aldous drained his wine cup. “So, uh...she’ll be asking for her keys back this evening, then. If we want to see what’s in the cellar, our only chance is to go now.”

  Phillipa ate a little more of her pudding, stirring this remarkable new development around in her mind. Her mandate at this juncture was to get into that cellar, whatever it took. Aldous’s offer to show it to her in an apparent attempt to ingratiate himself with her was therefore timely and fortuitous—almost too fortuitous, and she couldn’t ignore the whisper of foreboding that tightened her scalp. For him to make this offer after weeks of dodging her subtlest inquiries about the conspiracy against King Henry naturally roused her suspicions. But if, as he now professed, Clare had merely been employing him as an errand boy while keeping him in the dark about that conspiracy, it did not seem strange at all. Was it possible that Phillipa had mistaken Aldous’s ignorance for circumspection?

  “Of course, Orlando is down there,” Aldous pointed out, adding imperiously, “But that’s of no import. I can deal with one old Italian.”

  Ah, yes, Orlando. After taking yesterday off from his work, he had spent all of today in the cellar, and had not yet emerged from it. It put Phillipa at ease a bit, knowing she would not be alone in that secluded, windowless undercroft with Aldous. And then there was the fact that her only other alternative for gaining access to the cellar was to bed Aldous and steal the keys from him.

  What a fool she’d been to tell Hugh that she was willing to do just that. Had she really thought he would be so horrified by that prospect that he would reveal the deeply-buried feelings he’d been denying all this time? Were there any feelings to reveal, or had she been deluding herself, finding his assertion that it was all about sex just too painful to accept?

  In any event, she had mishandled things—badly—and now Hugh was gone. When he left yesterday, it was as if a piece of her soul had been torn right out of her, leaving her wounded in a way that couldn’t be seen, but was nonetheless agonizing. The devastating sense of loss had receded little since then. Comporting herself as if naught were amiss, when inside, she still howled with pain, was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.

  “Well?” Aldous prodded, rising from the bench and reaching for her hand. “Shall we go exploring?”

  She set down her spoon, stood, and put her hand in his. “Let’s go.”

  At the door to the cellar stairs, Aldous pulled the chain of keys from beneath his tunic, chose the large, ornate brass one and turned it in the lock. He preceded her down the torchlit stairwell and swung open the door at the bottom. Phillipa followed him into Orlando’s laboratory, now brightly lit by hanging lanterns, and not nearly as warm and fetid as when she and Hugh had stolen down here to investigate. In fact, it felt as cool and damp as in any undercroft; the reason became clear when she glanced at the makeshift furnace and saw that the fire had been allowed to go out.

  “Good evening,” Aldous said.

  Orlando, standing over his work table, looked up in surprise. “Master Aldous...Lady Phillipa.” He looked at her and raised his eyebrows slightly, clearly mystified that Aldous should have brought her there after he, Orlando, had been sworn to secrecy about his work.

  Glancing around curiously, Aldous said, “I thought we’d look around a bit, if it’s all right with you.”

  “Er...if the lady Clare were to find out...”

  “My sister asked me to bring the lady Phillipa down here, show her what you’ve been working on.”

  “Is true?” Orlando asked Phillipa.

  Weighing her distaste at lying to her friend against the need to gather evidence to stop the queen’s revolt, Phillipa said, “It’s true.”

  “Buono. I am please for to show you my work.”

  Aldous stepped up to the work table, on which were laid out a number of strange cast-iron devices shaped like tubes, each with a different sort of handle on the end. Scattered about on the table were scores of little iron balls like that which she and Hugh had found on the cellar floor the night they’d sneaked down here to investigate. “What have we here?” Aldous asked.

  “These are the armi della mano, to be held in the hand,” Orlando said. Pointing over Phillipa’s shoulder, he said, “Those are the throwing weapons, the bombe.”

  The cage, which had been empty when she had explored the cellar with Hugh, now contained about a dozen enclosed iron vessels of various shapes and sizes, mostly round, with lengths of cord emerging from them—as menacing in her eyes as a cluster of dragon’s eggs.

  “How do those work?” Phillipa asked.

  “Is very simple,” Orlando said, setting down the arma and funnel he held. The more, how you say, solido the vessel that hold the powder, the more violento the reaction. In china, they put it in the bambù tube, or sometime the iron globe. Istagio—” he glumly crossed himself “—he make for me in his bell foundry many different shape so that I may see which one work best. I fill each bomba with a powder made from the salnitro, what you call the Chinese snow...”

  “Saltpeter,” Phillipa said.

  “S, and the zolfo and the carbone di legna.” Orlando swept his hand toward the pots filled with sulphur and charcoal. “And then Istagio, he close them up good. The fusibili...how you say, the...wick?”

  “Those long cords?”

  “S, the cords I soak in the alcool, the fluid from the distill, along with a little salnitro. Is burn very slow, very steady, until the cord burn down and the fire meet the powder. Then...” He spread his hands, fingers extended. “Very loud boom.”

  “Are those the sounds we’ve been hearing from down here?” she asked. From the corner of her eye she saw Aldous puttering among the devices on the work table, the armi della mano.

  Orlando saw him, too, and swatted at the deacon’s hands. “No touch, please, no touch! I load them all for the test. Is very much danger to handle. Some of them, because of the shape, is very powerful but go boom very easy. My assistente in Roma, he is test one and it burst apart in his hand and kill him. And then the straw on the floor, it catch on fire, and whoosh! No more laboratorio.”

  “Ah.” Aldous backed away from the table. “Well, then.”

  “Those sounds you hear,” Orlando told Phillipa, “they come from when I test the armi. The bombe—” he nodded toward the cage “—those I cannot test. Is much too violento, I think, much too danger to test indoor. I will take outdoor when I am ready.”

  Phillipa saw the chain and padlock securing the cage and realized that stealing a bomba would present quite a challenge. On the other hand, the hand weapons, in addition to being accessible, could conceivably be secreted on one’s person. She glanced down at her tunic of pink shot silk, wondering if its folds were deep enough to conceal an arma della mano.

  Approaching the table, she asked Orlando, “Are these filled with the black powder, too?”

  “How did you know it was black?” asked Aldous.

  “Er...”

  Orlando came to her rescue, lifting the top from a green-glazed clay pot to display the glittering black granules within. “She see it.”

  “But that was covered.”

  “Not when you first come in.”

  “Really? I don’t recall—”

  “The arma,” Orlando interrupted, “it need the black powder to work, but only a little. Too much, and boom.”

  There seemed to be entirely too many opportunities, Phillipa reflected, for inadvertent booms.

  Gesturing to the tidy row of weapons on the table, Orlando said, “I have load all these for testing with the powder and iron b
all. The hole in the top, here, that is where the hot wire go in.” He picked up an arma and turned to a small tabletop brazier on which a shallow pan scattered with short pieces of red-hot wire sat over glowing coals. With a pair of tongs, he plucked up a length of wire and held it close to, but not touching, the hole. “When the wire touch the powder...”

  “Boom,” Phillipa said.

  Orlando nodded. “And the ball, it come flying out at very high rate of speed, so fast you cannot see. Make very big hole in flesh. The pig and the...capra...how you say, goat, they die very much fast.”

  Phillipa winced. “You test these on live animals?”

  “Just once. The lady Clare, she insist—she wanta see what happen to living thing when the little ball go in. But now I just shoot the balls into the well.”

  “And those are the sounds we hear,” she said.

  “S. Is good weapon, do very much harm, but is one big problem. It only shoot once and then must load the powder and the ball all over again. The crossbow reload much quicker. Same with the longbow and the shortbow. I am work on a solution.”

  “Fascinating, no?”

  Phillipa wheeled around to find Clare standing in the doorway, dressed with unaccustomed utility in a plain brown riding tunic.

  Aldous didn’t so much as blink at his sister’s appearance, Phillipa noted. It was as if he’d been expecting her.

  A cold alertness gripped Phillipa. Keep your wits about you, she cautioned herself.

  “Would you like to try it?” Clare asked Phillipa as she strode into the cellar.

  “Try...”

  “Shooting one of Orlando’s armi.” Clare took the weapon from Orlando and hefted it in her hand. “I come down here and do it myself from time to time. It’s really quite exciting in a curious sort of way.”

  “I...I don’t think—”

  “I’d like to try!” Aldous said.

  Clare directed a look of languid contempt toward her brother. “Perhaps later, Aldous. I want Phillipa to feel for herself the incredible power and potential of these weapons.”

  She went to hand the device to Phillipa, but Orlando grabbed her arm. “Not that one, my lady. Is one of the type that sometime make bad esplosione. To test this one, I must ignite with the slow fusibile and stay much far away in case it burst apart.”

  “Ah.” Clare handed the weapon back to Orlando. “That wouldn’t do. We don’t want anything untoward happening to our dear Phillipa, do we? Which one would be safe for her to shoot?”

  Orlando chose another arma and held it out to Phillipa, handle first. “You wanta try?” he asked, evidently oblivious to the ominous undercurrent sparked by Clare’s arrival.

  Phillipa accepted the weapon with some trepidation, wrapping her fingers around the handle, which was anvil-shaped, rather like that of Hugh’s Turkish dagger. It felt cold and heavy in her hand. “What do I...”

  “Here.” Orlando handed her the tongs that held the still-glowing wire, and led her to the well in the middle of the cellar’s earthen floor. Aldous and Clare followed. The torture devices on the far wall, Phillipa noted, looked no more benign clearly illuminated by lamplight than they had in the dark three nights ago—if anything, they were even more starkly menacing.

  “Hold the arma like so,” Orlando said, “pointing down into the well. Then you just stick the wire in the touch-hole, like so, and...”

  “Boom,” Phillipa said thinly. The well was deep, so extraordinarily deep that she couldn’t see the bottom. It seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth.

  “Brace yourself,” Clare warned. “That thing kicks like a mule when it fires.”

  “I’ll brace you,” said Aldous as he positioned himself behind her, his arms around her waist. His sister rolled her eyes at the gesture.

  “Hold on tight to the arma,” Orlando instructed. “I no want you for to drop it down the well.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Phillipa drew in a steadying breath, held it, and slid the wire into the hole as Clare and Aldous put their fingers in their ears.

  The weapon bucked in her hand, throwing her back hard against Aldous, its roar echoing off the walls of the well like rolling thunder. Following a quick flash from the open end of the arma there came a gust of acrid smoke that hung in the air.

  Orlando took the weapon and tongs from her and smiled, as if she’d done well.

  Through the ringing in her ears, Phillipa heard Clare snicker. “‘Twas worth all that trouble just to hear Lady By-blow squeal like a little girl.”

  Had she? Recalling Hugh’s teasing words—I rather like this new squealing of yours—Phillipa felt a rush of longing for him so keen it pained her physically, in the chest.

  As her hearing returned in full, Phillipa realized that Clare was telling Orlando that he’d worked long enough today, and that he should go upstairs and get some supper. “In fact,” she said as she led him toward the door, “given that you’ve spent every single day down here since coming to Halthorpe, perhaps you’d like to take a few days off. Rest a bit...get over what happened to poor Istagio...”

  “Grazie, my lady,” said Orlando, “but my melancholia, it get smaller when I work. Is why I come down here today, to make the bad feeling go away.”

  “There are other ways to ease one’s grief, Orlando. You’ve been working far too hard. A few day’s respite—a week, perhaps—will serve you well, I think.”

  “But—”

  “But I really think it would be best,” she purred as she guided him out the door. “In fact, I insist. Buona notte, Orlando.”

  “I’ll go up with him,” said Phillipa, but she’d taken only one step toward the door before Aldous’s arms snaked around her from behind, over her own arms, effectively restraining her.

  “Not quite yet,” he murmured into her ear, holding her far too snugly against him.

  Her heart rattled in her chest. She struggled against him, but to no avail, and with her arms immobilized like this, she couldn’t reach her eating knife in its little sheath on her girdle.

  If you find yourself in some sort of fix, Raoul will help you. Phillipa opened her mouth to call a plea to Orlando—Tell Raoul I’m in trouble!—but Aldous clamped a hand over her mouth, hard.

  Clare tsked as she closed the door behind the departing Orlando. “So eager to leave already? We have another, even more instructive demonstration in store for you.” Indicating the array of armi with a sweep of her hand, she asked her brother, “These are all loaded?”

  “That’s what Orlando said,” Aldous replied. “He was preparing them for testing.”

  “How exceedingly convenient.” Clare glided a beringed hand across the row of weapons as if choosing a pair of slippers to wear. “This one, I think. I’ve fired it before, so I can be fairly sure it won’t blow up in my face.” With the arma in one hand and the tongs in the other, she turned to the brazier to pluck a hot wire off the pan. “You may remove your hand from her mouth now, Aldous.”

  The moment he did so, Phillipa filled her lungs with air and screamed, “Help me! Somebody—Raoul! I’m in the cellar!”

  “They can’t hear you,” Clare said as she sauntered toward Phillipa. “The only thing anyone can hear from down here is the occasional esplosione. One more will draw no notice whatsoever.”

  Clare pressed the open end of her weapon against the side of Phillipa’s head. When Phillipa flinched, wresting her head to the side, Clare seized the single, ribbon-wrapped braid that hung down Phillipa’s back and yanked her head upright. “You may tie her hands now, Aldous. I know how you’ve been looking forward to this part.”

  From somewhere on his person, Aldous produced a tassled satin cord, such as draperies are tied back with. Gripping her wrists behind her, he looped the cord tightly around them and tied it off.

  “I heard Orlando tell you about the goat and the pig,” Clare said. “He let me do the shooting. ‘Twas a...deeply rousing experience, holding this—” she pushed the iron shaft hard against Phillipa’s templ
e “—to the head of a living thing and sliding this—” she held the hot wire in front of Phillipa’s eyes “—into its little hole.”

  Aldous wrapped his arms around her again, his breath hot and swift on her hair. She felt against her back the hard lump of the keys he still wore around his chest, and farther down, against her bound hands, a different and more sinister pressure, one that chilled her given that she was essentially at his mercy.

  “The effect of firing one of these into a living creature is really quite remarkable,” Clare said as she brought the glowing wire toward the touch-hole. “You can feel the flesh burst open, hear bone explode even over the beast’s death scream. It drops instantly, of course, convulses a bit, and then goes very still. The pig’s brains ended up on the far wall. With the goat, the head came entirely off.”

  Phillipa closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Keep your wits. Panic is your worst enemy.

  “We haven’t tested it on a human yet,” Clare said. “‘Tis an oversight that would be easy enough to remedy.”

  They’re harmless, the both of them, Hugh had said of Clare and Aldous. They haven’t got the stomach for killing. Was that true, or were they, indeed, capable of murder if enough was at stake?

  “After you.”

  Phillipa opened her eyes to find Clare gesturing with her weapon toward the rear of the undercroft, where the iron chair and sachentage were bolted side-by-side to the wall. Shaking her head, Phillipa squirmed against Aldous’s arms. “Nay...”

  Clare stood to the side, swinging the arma back so that it was aimed at Phillipa’s head. “Aldous.” She cocked her head toward the rear wall.

  With a viselike hand around Phillipa’s neck, Aldous pushed her forward until she stood, panting with dread, in front of the terrible engines of punishment.