One shard the size of my hand pricked my knee as I shifted position to check Fergal’s pulse at his throat. It was there, faint but steady.
The constable’s men, Leach and Hewitt, had finished their search of the upper floors. Coming back into the kitchen, Leach said, ‘No one.’
‘Then we wait.’ The constable relaxed in his position by the fireplace. ‘I have waited long enough for this already, I can wait a little longer.’
It was the note of satisfaction in his voice that made me look in his direction, and he said, ‘Ah, but perhaps you have not heard, Mistress O’Cleary, that the House of Lords has passed a law suspending those protections that did lately shield your lover. And as keeper of that law here in Polgelly I now have the right to enter any premises I choose, arrest whomever I suspect of plotting treason to the king, and see them sent to London where, I promise you, they will find no reprieve.’
My fingers slid protectively to Fergal’s shoulder as Leach crossed towards us to take up his earlier position, standing guard.
As I shifted a little bit further away from him, my knee came down full onto the piece of the broken jug. I could feel it cut right through the fabric that covered my leg, but I bit my lip hard and said nothing, not wanting to draw any more attention to myself.
The men had fallen back to an uneasy silence, waiting. Listening.
It might have been a quarter of an hour before I heard the measured tramp of footsteps coming.
Leach had brought his pistol up and cocked it with an evil click to hold it aimed directly at the door to the back corridor, so that whoever stepped inside would have no hope of—
‘Mr Creed?’ The voice that called from outside in the yard was more a boy’s voice than a man’s, and wavered from exertion. ‘Mr Creed?’
The fifth man, who stood nearest to the door, looked to the constable, who nodded, and the boy was swiftly ushered in.
He was stocky and round-faced and in the firelight I saw nothing in his face that was familiar, but his voice struck a decided chord within my memory when he said, ‘I know where Mr Butler’s to.’
This was, I thought, the same boy who had come aboard the Sally as a spy, and been put off again by Daniel. The same “beardless lad” Jack had argued might cause us all trouble some day. Jack had clearly been right, and just as he’d predicted, the boy was now trying to prove himself worthy to Constable Creed.
‘I did just like you said,’ said the boy, still half-breathless, ‘and kept myself close to the Spaniard, and two of the men come out talking and one of ’em said to the other that it would be best when the day was well over, for one year of King George was naught to celebrate …’ Pausing, he added, ‘I noted his name for you, seeing that’s treason and all.’
Creed’s eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, the other replied that the king would have no more years after this, and their own work this night would help in sending him where he belonged, and they both laughed, and then the first asked was it midnight at the cave still, and the other told him ay, but both the Butler brothers would be at the cave before that. Both of them together, I did hear it plainly said,’ he finished proudly.
Creed was frowning. ‘And where is this cave they spoke of, then?’
The man named Peter dropped his gaze, and gave a faint shake of his head towards the man beside him, while the young man, Hewitt, shifted till he stood behind the constable, and gave a careless shrug. The bully Leach appeared to miss all this, and clearly didn’t know about the cave below the Cripplehorn himself, but even as my hopes began to rise the boy spoke up, ‘Why, I was thinking that you knew it for yourself, sir, or I would have shown you sooner. I can take you there.’
‘Then do it.’ Creed looked blackly at the men around him, as though he were trying to assess just how much use they’d be, but in the end he only said, ‘If there be any man who is uncertain of his duty to the law, then let him tell me now, for I stand always ready to remind him.’ Only silence met his challenge. ‘No? Then let us waste no more time. Mr Leach, you will remain here with O’Cleary.’
‘And the girl?’ Leach asked.
‘She comes with us.’
This proved too much for Peter. ‘Mr Creed!’
When Creed looked round as though astonished any man would speak in such a tone to him, the older man said bluntly, ‘Sir, I’ll not allow it.’
At my knee I felt a movement, very faint. I braved a quick look down and saw that Fergal’s hand had moved a fraction, and his fingers had begun to curl. I didn’t know just how aware he was of what was going on, or how much he could hear, but to be safe I slipped my hand in his and lightly squeezed to warn him not to move again.
Creed’s eyes were dangerous. ‘You’ll not allow it?’
‘No, sir. First off, she’s not dressed. It isn’t decent.’
This apparently had bothered Hewitt, too, for he put in, ‘There is a chest of women’s clothes upstairs, I’ll just go up and—’
‘No.’ Creed’s voice cut sharply through the offer. ‘Those clothes do not belong to her.’ To Peter, he said, ‘Offer her your coat then, Mr Pascoe, if it troubles you, and let that be an end to it.’
But Peter, growing bolder, said, ‘And any rate, the way down to the cave would be too rough for her, too rough for any woman in the daylight, let alone the dark.’
He hadn’t realised what he’d just admitted, I felt sure, until the constable’s hard features altered subtly and his voice smoothed to the tone I found most frightening.
‘So, you know it, then? The way down to the Butler’s cave.’
The older man’s jaw set, but he didn’t answer either way. And in that silence I felt sure the constable would win; that I’d be taken with them down to wait in ambush in the cave below the Cripplehorn, and Fergal would be left here helpless on his own with Leach. And Leach’s pistol.
In a panic I tried thinking. Then I felt the ragged sharpness of the broken wedge of earthenware still lodged beneath my knee, and very slowly and with care I inched it forwards till it rested underneath the hand I’d linked with Fergal’s. No one noticed. Still more carefully, I guided it up into Fergal’s palm and closed his fingers round it, pushing at his arm until his hand was tucked beneath the outflung edge of his dark coat, against his side.
Leach wouldn’t see it there. But now when Fergal woke, I thought, at least he’d have a weapon. If he did wake.
He’d gone still again.
Creed said, in that same elegantly soulless voice I’d learnt to fear, ‘I do confess that I have never understood the loyalty these Butler men command, and yet I truly cannot help but be impressed by it.’ He looked from Peter back to Hewitt and then to the silent man who stood between the window and the door. ‘It is a pity there’ll be no one from Polgelly on the jury to defend them when they’re brought to trial, for Londoners will surely be less sympathetic to the Butlers’ charms.’ He turned to Leach. ‘I know you’ll be occupied watching O’Cleary, but were I to leave you his sister as well could you manage it?’
Leach looked me up and down, leering. ‘Oh, ay, I could manage her fine, Mr Creed.’
Peter moved again sharply in protest, and Creed’s gaze swung round.
‘You object to that also, Mr Pascoe? Perhaps you’d prefer, then, to stay behind with them.’
‘I would, ay.’ The older man’s face was distrustful, but Creed only told him, ‘So be it,’ and took a step backwards to clear the way.
Peter, still clearly disturbed by my state of undress, began shrugging his coat from his shoulders as he crossed the floor, and the constable reached to take hold of the back of the coat’s heavy collar, as though to assist him.
And then his hold tightened, and swiftly his free arm swung forwards and drove hard at Peter’s chest.
It happened so fast that at first I was not really sure what I’d seen. With a cough and a look of astonishment Peter collapsed to his knees, arms pinned back by the constable’s grip on the coat.
‘You may stay, as you wish,’ Creed said lightly, and as he drew his arm back I could see the knife blade brightly red, a deadly thing. Peter coughed again, and Creed yanked back once with his other arm to wrench the coat completely clear, then watched without expression as the older man fell face-first to the floor and lay unmoving.
‘Now, then.’ In the small, shocked silence Creed, uncaring, wiped the bloodied knife blade on the coat’s dark sleeve. ‘Does anybody else prefer to stay behind?’
The men, including Leach, stayed silent.
‘No?’ The constable glanced round for confirmation. ‘Then let us go.’ He waved the knife from Leach to me and told him, ‘Get her up.’
‘You said—’
‘I lied.’ Creed’s eyebrows rose as if to show surprise that anyone would have thought otherwise. ‘If Butler has his men around him, he may need persuading to submit to his arrest. Besides,’ he added, ‘if I left her here with you she might distract you from your duties, Mr Leach.’
Leach didn’t answer him out loud, but he was grumbling something underneath his breath as he reached down to roughly grab my arm and haul me to my feet.
Creed gave his knife a final close inspection. Satisfied, he tossed the coat across to me, and turned away before I caught it.
‘Cover yourself,’ he said.
The boy who still stood just inside the door was staring dumbly at the body on the floor. If he had ever seen a murder done at all, I thought, he’d never been this close to one, because the stunned uncertainty was written plainly on his face.
The constable stopped walking just in front of him, and waited. ‘Well?’
The boy, misunderstanding, seemed to think that Creed was asking his advice, and answered, ‘Shouldn’t we … that is, sir, should we not attempt to move …?’
Creed frowned. ‘Move what?’ He turned his head, his own gaze following the boy’s. ‘Oh, that. No, leave him there. It was unfortunate that in our efforts to arrest O’Cleary he attacked and killed poor Mr Pascoe, but we can at least console ourselves in knowing that a charge of murder added to his treason will ensure the judge assigns him an unpleasant end.’ He looked back at the boy, impatient. ‘Now, this cave.’
‘The … yes, sir. Yes.’ The boy recovered. ‘I can take you there.’
‘Then do so. Mr Hewitt?’
‘Sir?’
Creed shot one final glance behind him, cold and purposeful. ‘Bring Butler’s whore.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I saw fire on the hillside.
At first my mind just lumped that observation in with all the other things about the night that seemed surreal – the violent drama I’d stepped into, Fergal lying senseless on the floor, the man named Peter being killed before my eyes, and now the fact that I was being hurried by the hands of strangers over the dark field that lay between Trelowarth and the woods … why shouldn’t there be fire on the hill as well, I wondered?
But even through the fog of shock that masked my sharper senses I could see it was no random fire, nor any strange imagining.
The Beacon had been lit.
I’d never seen it lit in my own lifetime. I had seen my parents’ snapshots of the Beacon being lighted for the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, before my birth, and Claire had sent me pictures of it burning on the eve of the Millennium, when all of Britain’s ancient beacons had been set ablaze, but what the photographs had captured was a fraction of the full effect.
The sight was truly awe-inspiring, flames of brilliant gold that speared the star-flecked sky and shifted shape in random sprays of sparks. At any other time I might have marvelled at it, but my mind had narrowed in its focus and refused to be distracted long by anything that fell outside the needs of self-protection.
I had little memory afterwards of passing with my captors through the wood or scrambling down the jagged slickness of the rocks onto the beach – it blended into one long, nightmarish descent where I was scraped by branches, cut by rocks, and finally hit the shingle with a bruised knee and the taste of my own blood upon my tongue. It wasn’t serious. I’d bitten through my lip to keep from crying out when I had whacked my knee, but still the pain of it was real, and my lip swelled so much that when we’d found the entrance to the cave and stumbled in and Creed had set the shuttered lantern that he’d carried from Trelowarth House in place on top of one wide barrel, opening its sides to let the light spill out, the man named Hewitt looked at me with pity and discomfort.
I felt pity for him, too, because I knew he couldn’t come to my defence the way he might have liked to. Both of us had seen what the result of that would be. I drew the stiff edges of Peter’s jacket tighter round my throat against the penetrating dampness of the cave and turned away from Hewitt’s gaze.
The constable was watching us. Without a word he took a long look round the shadowed cave and said, ‘This is a most agreeable arrangement. Have the Butlers used it long?’ He aimed the question straight at Hewitt, but it was the boy who answered.
‘Why, they’ve always used it, sir. ’Tis common knowledge in the village. I was shown it by my father, years ago.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Creed took his pistol from his belt, examining its workings with an attitude of unconcern, but I could see his underlying tenseness. He looked not unlike a predator prepared to spring, and I was sure the people of Polgelly would be made to feel the depth of his displeasure with them. Taking out the knife he had just used to kill a man he turned its point to make some small adjustment to the flintlock mechanism of his gun.
And that’s when I remembered.
It was over there, I thought, just there, between the barrels to my left, that Daniel’s own dropped dagger had been lying on the floor the last time I’d seen it.
If I picked it up I knew I would be changing what was meant to happen, but then I’d already changed things once tonight by being here. A man lay dead because of me, because he’d tried to help me, and however that one act had changed the future it was done, and there was nothing I could do to change it back. All I could do was try to stay alive myself, and if I had a weapon I’d be bettering my odds.
The challenge was to find a way to get from where I stood to where I thought the dagger lay. I was deciding how to do it when my thoughts were interrupted by a noise approaching steadily outside the cave: the heavy crunch of footsteps over shingle.
Creed held one hand up to warn the men to silence, and aimed his pistol at the entrance as a second sound rose up now with the shifting steps – the sound of someone whistling a careless tune I recognised.
My heart dropped. Jack.
And then in almost sickening slow motion all the things I’d seen and heard tonight slid into place like pieces of a puzzle, and I knew then why the Beacon had been lit. I could hear again the boy’s voice telling Creed what he had overheard the one man tell the other as they left the Spaniard’s Rest: that he’d be happy when the day was over, for a year of King George on the throne was not a thing that should be celebrated.
God, I thought, that must be it. In my time the Polgelly folk had marked a royal jubilee by lighting up the Beacon, so it made sense the people here would do the same. Uncaring fate had brought me back on the first anniversary of King George’s rule, the same day when, according to the note in Jack’s unfinished memoirs, Jack ‘did chance to fall afoul of the lawmen of Polgelly, and while fleeing from their constable was killed by one sure pistol shot.’
I knew what was about to happen. Knew because the constable was with me, and the men who walked around us were the ‘lawmen of Polgelly’, and the night was not yet over.
Jack would die, because I’d read it on a printed page and printed pages weren’t meant to be changed. Like in the lines I’d quoted on the ship to Daniel from the Rubaiyat, The Moving Finger had already written what must be.
But then I thought of Daniel telling Fergal, ‘He’s my brother,’ and God help me, I just couldn’t stand there silently and watch another man be killed.
A
s Jack was stepping through the opening into the cave, I made a sudden lunge against the constable and shouted, ‘Jack, get out! Warn Daniel! Run!’
The pistol’s deafening report in that confined space drowned my words and I could not be sure he heard them, and a second after that I couldn’t see him for the powder smoke that seared my throat and stung my eyes and drifted like a white cloud through the cave, but as it cleared I saw the place where Jack had stood was empty.
The constable’s shot had gone wide. Several feet away the boy took an unsteady step and stared at me with wonder and bewilderment, and then he touched a hand to the new spreading stain upon his chest and stumbled once again, and fell.
Creed’s eyes, much closer, had held wonder too at first, but by the time I met them they were freezing over into something terrifying. With the gun still in his hand he swept his arm out savagely and struck me full across my face. I felt the pain against my cheekbone and the trickling warmth of blood start down the bruised skin of my temple, but although I staggered back I didn’t shame myself by falling down.
When Hewitt made a move as though to protest, Creed stopped him with the cold reminder, ‘This is none of your affair. Nor yours,’ he told the other man, behind. ‘Now go, the pair of you, and bring Jack Butler back.’
The two men hesitated, and he wheeled on them. ‘I told you, go!’
And without any further argument the men edged off. I heard their footsteps scraping on the shingle, walking first, then moving off more quickly, breaking to a run.
Creed didn’t move, but still I felt the space between us shrinking.
‘So,’ he said. ‘You have a voice.’
I tried to think. I hadn’t said that many words, and with the pistol’s firing it was likely that he hadn’t heard me clearly, so there was a fair chance that he wouldn’t know I wasn’t Irish, wasn’t who he thought I was. And even though he knew that I could speak, my safest course now might just be to keep my mouth shut and not risk him finding out that I did not belong here.
The Rose Garden Page 33