by Clive Mullis
The girls looked puzzled, but then Cornwallis rushed past the opening to the far side.
‘Oi, Tante, gie us a hand.’ Cornwallis remembered the feelers name. ‘This un’s stuck.’
Tante looked up at the calling of his name.
‘O’er ‘ere mate,’ helped Cornwallis.
A moment of confusion flashed on Tante’s face; he thought everybody had gone with the sergeant. ‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s me, come on, it’s heavy,’ replied Cornwallis.
Tante sighed, dropped the fuse he had in his hand and ambled over.
Cornwallis looked at Olive and Winnie and they understood. Tante moaned and whinged as he came through the door.
‘What the bloody hell do you—?’ He didn’t get any further.
Cornwallis gave him a right hander straight to the side of the head. Winnie then grabbed a handful of hair and rammed his head into the wall. Olive followed up with a kick between the legs and Cornwallis punched him in a kidney.
Tante staggered, groggy but not quite out of it, so Winnie gave him a knee to the jaw that Rose had shown her, and that finished him off. He slumped like a rag-doll to the floor.
Cornwallis slapped a pair of cuffs on and then dragged him through to the tunnel entrance room.
‘He should be out for a while, but if he isn’t, I don’t think it’ll matter, as we’ll all be blown sky high anyway. Come on, we’ve got to deal with the rest of them, now.’
They hurried back out and found the chamber still clear of feelers, but just in case, they traversed the space using the columns to cover their movements.
Cornwallis took a deep breath. He didn’t know how many feelers they were dealing with. If he knew that, at least they would have a goal to aim for, one at a time, until none of them were left; but at the moment, there could always be just one left. He wouldn’t know.
He saw a little movement beyond the door and Cornwallis stiffened. He watched nervously, hoping the figure would move away. He heard a shuffling of feet and then the figure became apparent. Cornwallis looked at where the head should be but saw only empty space. He then looked down and a feeling of relief washed over him. It was a dwarf, and he was armed to the teeth.
CHAPTER 36
‘How many?’ asked Cornwallis, incredulously.
‘Twenty eight,’ replied Trugral with a frown. ‘It’s not really fair, I’d hoped there’d be a few more.’
Cornwallis shook his head. ‘Twenty eight is a big enough number for me. Oh, make that twenty seven. We’ve already nobbled one,’ and he pointed to where Tante lay.
They took the fuses out of the barrels and moved them away from the columns. When they’d finished, to Trugral’s satisfaction, they prepared for the next stage, which wasn’t a well thought out tactical battle, but was something that might actually work.
They gathered around the door that led into the warren of cellar rooms and began to file out. Spreading left and right, they began to ease into the labyrinth of rooms and passages. Dwarfs had excellent night vision, but Cornwallis and the girls had only the normal human one, and although the feelers had lit the occasional lantern, presumably so they could find their way back, large parts of the cellar were in total darkness.
Somewhere off to Cornwallis’ left came a distant grunt followed shortly after by a slamming of a door. A few moments peace and then a thwacking noise came to his ears.
Olive and Winnie were close behind and he turned his head to give them a smile of encouragement, to show that he had confidence in them. He needn’t have bothered as both their eyes were shining bright with eager anticipation. The presence of the dwarfs had done something to their demeanour and he pitied any feeler who would come within an arm’s length of them.
Trugral had darted off ahead and Cornwallis saw him jog into a side room. A muffled yelp came from the room, then a bit of a clattering, and as he passed by the entrance, Cornwallis saw a feeler lying flat out on the floor: Trugral stood over him with a big grin on his face.
A bit further on Cornwallis paused. A scuffling noise came from the room up ahead and he peered around the door and saw a feeler checking a barrel’s placement, moving it a little, and then checking it again, trying to get it in exactly the right place, against a main retaining wall. He pulled his head back and let Winnie and Olive take a look. He saw them look at each other and then nod. Before he had a chance to tell them what to do, they were through the door and doing it.
Cornwallis winced as the girls ripped into the feeler. As the hapless victim turned at the sound of someone coming in, Winnie greeted him with a Gornstock kiss, and she didn’t hang about; she delivered it with the speed and accuracy of a street brawler, and the effect was literally stunning. Olive favoured an elbow to the stomach, swiftly followed up by a knee to the jaw. Cornwallis could see Rose’s tuition in the moves and he reminded himself that he might have to rethink his strategy next time they had a disagreement. Winnie couldn’t resist giving him a kick to the gonads which served as the icing on the cake. The feeler slumped to the ground, in no condition to offer anything other than a feeble whimper.
With the barrel moved and made safe, Cornwallis and the girls returned to the hunt. It became apparent that Trugral might be enjoying himself a little too much, Cornwallis noted, as he drew up alongside the dwarf. He hadn’t seen such a gleam in the eye since the mass pub brawl of a couple of weeks ago. He supposed that the freedom to break skulls without the yoke of law wrapped around his shoulders unleashed his inner demon: he could do someone serious damage with impunity.
The stealth approach, which had worked well at first, now needed fresh consideration as the numbers of feelers diminished. Feelers were beginning to realise that something wasn’t quite right and began to voice, very loudly, their concerns. One or two had heard things that made them feel a little less than secure. There were shouts of alarm, and a panic had begun to spread right through them. Grinde now had difficulty in controlling his men.
Cornwallis, the girls, and six dwarfs dealt with another couple of feelers and moved on, pushing the bombers forward. The feelers ignored Grinde, and ran towards the old bar, barging through the double doors and taking refuge in the place of safety. Grinde followed and berated them, calling them all the names under the sun, but then he turned as the doors swung open and Cornwallis and his followers stormed in. There appeared to be only eight very nervous looking feelers left, plus Grinde, and they had just three barrels of exploding gonepowder between them.
Grinde saw Cornwallis and sneered his contempt, but left his greatest vitriol for when Olive and Winnie joined him.
‘Get those abominable creatures away from us. We are all men here and those things have no right to be here.’ He pointed a tremulous finger at the two who he found so offensive. ‘We are armed and dangerous men,’ he warned.
Trugral turned to Cornwallis. ‘Is he on about us?’
‘No,’ said Olive, interjecting. ‘He’s on about me and Winnie.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, then.’
Cornwallis wondered whether he could be bothered to reply to Grinde, who had obviously embraced the wrong side of sanity, when he heard a noise coming from above: a dull thud followed shortly after by a slam of a door, which sounded very close.
There were hurried footsteps descending in the dark which abruptly stopped.
‘Oh, bollocks,’ came a voice, as the realisation dawned.
Grinde turned his head to look up at the intrusion. ‘You see, Cornwallis, there are others. All of you back away or we’ll have no option but to ignite these devices.’
There now came a series of bangs as if a door was being forced open, and then a splintering noise as if it had been successful.
Up on the stairs in the dark there were hurried footsteps, many hurried footsteps, and Grinde grinned.
‘I did warn you, Cornwallis.’
‘Did you now, Grinde?’ The footsteps had stopped and from out of the darkness stepped MacGillicudy, behind him were Fran
kie and Rose and lots of girls.
Grinde grimaced. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. All his plans, all his time, all of it had come down to this. A confrontation, instead of a nice big explosion. ‘This is all your fault, MacGillicudy. If you’d left things alone, then none of this would have been needed. You should resign your command and let me take control. The service has a dire need for a steady hand — and you are not it.’
‘You think the city would allow someone as unstable as you to run the service? Do you think the ministry didn't know what sort of sergeant you were?’ answered MacGillicudy walking down to the bottom. ‘Captain Bough knew, I knew, the minister knew and so did the Yard. You were hated Grinde, universally hated. These feelers aren’t here for you; I’ll bet they’re here for themselves. Only Magot, Loovis and Sprat were friends of yours, and, in truth, would you trust them?’
‘Er… Mr Cornwallis,’ said Olive.
‘Yes.’
‘Before the commander came down, I saw another man. What happened to him?’
‘Oh shit,’ said Cornwallis. ‘Frankie,’ he called out. ‘There was someone on the stairs. Have you got him?’
Grinde laughed.
‘No,’ replied Frankie. ‘We thought he belonged to that lot there.’
Frankie spun around and looked up into the darkness. How had they missed him? Could he still be back up there?
A hissing noise filtered down from above within the blackness, a mean hiss, a hiss filled with threat, a hiss dripping with animosity — the hiss from a cat.
‘That you, Fluff?’ called Frankie.
‘Hissssss.’
Frankie and Rose began to ascend the stairs, the hissing guiding their footsteps. Very soon, they came to the bend in the stairs where they could see the outline of a cat and it appeared to be up on its back legs, and, as Frankie flicked a match, they could then see the whole tableau.
Fluffy had his back legs planted firmly on the step and hissed out of the corner of his mouth. His front paws had unsheathed claws digging into the flesh of the man he’d caught while he’d clamped his jaw around that part of an anatomy where a bite could render him a eunuch.
‘You bastard,’ said Rose, looking the man in the eye. ‘You complete and utter bastard.’
Her right hand bunched into a fist and she let fly. His head rocked back and smacked against the wall as his nose took on a far from straight appearance. As his head hit the wall his foot jerked, which unfortunately for him, as Fluffy still gripped him tightly with his jaw, made Fluffy bite down hard.
‘Ugh!’ exclaimed the cat. ‘I really didn’t want to do that.’
Fortunately, the figure slumped unconscious to the floor unaware that the option for children now was pretty much a lottery.
Rose and Frankie looked down on the slumped form of Sergeant Toby Diffin.
‘It’s Diffin,’ yelled Frankie. ‘Rose and Fluffy have dealt with him.’
Grinde sneered and then swept up a small barrel and sprinted off. The movement took everyone by surprise and he gained a good few yards before the chase began.
Cornwallis tried to trip him, but for an old feeler he was quick and agile. A second later, he went through the double doors and into the corridor, moving at speed.
Winnie and Olive were first into the corridor, their recent experiences whetting their appetite for more of the same. The two girls were well aware that Grinde was deranged, but they didn’t care. Cornwallis followed close behind with Trugral and the dwarfs behind him.
The little knot of feelers were now resigned to their fate, and limply gave up all resistance.
Grinde ran blindly, a barrel gripped to his chest. He could sense that they were catching up, so he turned a sudden right and charged down a corridor.
The dwarfs saw how Grinde intended to shake off his pursuers and Trugral ordered them to split up. Olive and Winnie felt the red mist descend as they pushed themselves as hard as they could.
Grinde possessed a decent amount of speed which impressed Cornwallis, but when your life might depend on it, then perhaps it’s a good enough reason to find that extra pace.
Grinde smacked into a wall and that forced him into a turn he didn’t want to take, at one point he nearly lost the barrel but somehow he managed to cling on.
Ahead, the dwarfs had managed to get into a blocking position, forcing the ex-sergeant into turns and manoeuvres that took him away from where he wanted to go.
The passages, rooms and corridors that Grinde flew down became just rooms and corridors, random, any sense of direction lost. He saw a door up ahead and ran towards it. The door flew back on its hinges as he stormed through, but then he faltered in his step as he looked up. He was knackered, breathed heavily and sweat poured down his brows. He had returned to where he started from, in the bar, and everybody stared back at him.
Olive, Winnie and Cornwallis pulled up as Grinde looked at the sea of faces. Dwarfs, women, detectives and feelers, and he found he had run out of options.
‘Come on, Grinde,’ said MacGillicudy, not unkindly. ‘It’s finished. Drop the barrel and except defeat.’
Grinde eyed MacGillicudy with contempt.
Frankie watched from behind the bar as he inspected the pumps and spirit shelf. The odour of stale beer came as he pulled on one of the pumps. He’d lined up a good few glasses and picked up a couple of bottles of dusty white whisky which had come from Aerlonde, across the western sea: somehow they had been forgotten when the bar had been cleared. He looked up as Grinde made his decision.
He began to walk towards the centre of the bar when he cut the fuse of the barrel he had hold off and then sprinted over to the last two barrels left. He lit the fuse with his match and then flung it onto the barrels, diving into what used to be the snug.
Being closest, Frankie dived on to the sizzling barrel, and, not for the first time that evening, picked up a live charge.
Everybody yelled at him to throw it away, when it dawned on him; Grinde had dived into the snug.
As the fuse disappeared inside the barrel, thinking time had come to an end and Frankie aimed his thoughts in just one direction. Isabella. She was pregnant with his child and unless he did something now he would never see or know his own child, and his child would never know him. It threw all thoughts of safety out of the window. He grimaced and yelled and a couple of steps later he threw the sizzling bomb into the snug and slammed the door shut.
‘Down!’ he yelled, and threw himself clear.
The bang happened a second or so later and if the one upstairs was bad enough then this one took on a whole new dimension. There appeared to be two bangs, close together. Someone must have already put a barrel in there. The walls bulged, the door exploded outwards in splinters and the sound echoed around the cellar like a bouncing ball. Hands covered the ears in a forlorn attempt to lessen the noise as it drilled into their brains — all except Diffin, who still didn’t know what day it was. As they lay flat on the floor, decades of dust and debris rained down, blanketing them like a shroud as the indoor mist began to settle.
When the noise and reverberations had settled back down, people and dwarfs began to stir, standing up and shaking off the dust.
‘Ye gods,’ exclaimed MacGillicudy. ‘Did that really happen?’
CHAPTER 37
As the reverberations petered out an ominous variety of silence descended. Cornwallis waited for the ceiling to collapse and was surprised when it didn’t. He opened his eyes and saw Rose lying as still as a statue. He had a few moments of dread but then she turned her head and looked at him. She smiled in reassurance and then began to climb to her feet.
‘We’re okay, thanks, Mr Cornwallis,’ said Winnie, lying beneath him. ‘But we’d quite like to breathe now.’
When Frankie yelled, everyone dived to the floor, and Cornwallis had flung himself on top of the two girls next to him, his first instinct, to protect them. He now disentangled his limbs from theirs and slowly rose to his feet.
Every
one still seemed stunned by the blast and everyone still seemed stunned at being alive.
MacGillicudy breathed a deep sigh of relief as the building settled back down. ‘Is everyone all right?’ he yelled, his ears not quite having recovered.
The affirmations came back thick and fast, nobody had been hurt, least of all Dewdrop who lay on the floor with a big grin on his face. Dewdrop had a happy face because he lay beneath Felicity, who had thrown herself on top of him.
Frankie appeared from behind the bar clutching one of the bottles he’d found. He unscrewed the top and took a long large pull. He grinned as MacGillicudy swiped it from his grasp and followed suit.
Someone had to look, and that someone turned out to be Cornwallis. He sauntered up to the snug and took a look inside. It resembled an explosion in a jam factory; a large portion of Grinde appeared as a red mist, and the rest of Grinde consisted of lumps, glistening and wobbling as he hung off bits of the snug. Cornwallis turned around, walked straight over to MacGillicudy and relieved him of the bottle.
The cells were rammed with feelers, every last one of those involved with the gonepowder plot were now under lock and key, all apart from Magot’s brother Shadrig, and his friend Jangles, who it now emerged had stolen the gonepowder and had driven it to Cricklybit Lane. Their freedom would shortly be curtailed, as Frankie made his way towards them with a hurry-up wagon, Dewdrop and a bunch of feelers in tow.
Everything poured out of Diffin’s mouth; like a tap that couldn’t be turned off. He gave the in’s and out’s and everything about’s. It was strange, because Diffin and Grinde had never seen eye to eye when at work, but MacGillicudy found out that Grinde had known something about Diffin that Diffin didn’t know. Both of them were members of the alternative Morris Council, which met in secret to discuss society and plan for the day when they could return to the old ways. Grinde had recognised Diffin’s voice. They all wore hoods and cloaks for disguise, their true identity known only to a select few.