Elisabeth Fairchild (35 page)

Opportunity presented itself at last, daylight fading, in the need, once again, for food from the Horse and Groom. Collecting what little coin remained among the gathered men, she and Brunt clambered down the ladder. Meat pies they wanted. A luxury, that, but Thistlewood suggested, “Not so fine as the dinner we will be interrupting.”

Let no man meet his death hungry, Dulcie thought.

There were strangers in the growing darkness, two men lounging about the stoops of Cato Street, two more beneath the lamp above the door to the Horse and Groom. Lamplight streamed, warm yellow, from fogged windows. The public house spilled laughter and the smell of sausages and ale into the chill night.

At the far end of the narrow street, where posts had long ago been set in the pavement to barricade carriage traffic, a figure stood in the shadows. He waved as they stepped from the night into the bright warmth of the public house.

Brunt poked Dulcie in the ribs. “There’s your Georgie, returned at last.” 

“Is it?” Roger? Dulcie had no sense of it. She dared not tarry to be sure. No matter, really. She had every intention of leaving before Roger’s return; none at all of climbing the ladder into the stable loft again.

She stayed tight on Brunt’s heels within the well-lit walls of the public room. Patiently, she sat beside her burly escort while he downed a pint, as if she had nothing better to do, as if it did not worry her that her father might by now have reported her missing to the local constable. They had to wait as the barkeep took pies from the oven and packed them in sheets of old newspaper. She meant to lull Brunt into a sense of complacency, her plan to break for it, in the dark, the moment they left the pub.

Tension hung in the air like smoke, a sense of waiting, among the drinking men. The light above them shimmered like dark red wine. She wondered if they were Bow Street Runners, watching their every move.

Brunt stood, cloud thick as clabbered milk about his head and shoulders. Draining his mug, he grabbed up the jug of ale meant for the others, tucked a loaf of bread under one arm, a sausage under the other. “Take that,” he ordered, and so she grabbed up the warm, newspaper packet full of mincemeat and kidney pies, fell into step with Brunt again, and readied herself to make a run for it.

Brunt seemed to divine her intent. He paused in the doorway, shoulders hunched, haunches tensed.

“Gor Blimey! Fit me for a Norway neckcloth!” He turned on his heel, blocking her exit. The loaf he carried banged against the doorjamb, flipping out from beneath his arm to roll out the door and into the gutter. He frowned at her, chest heaving. “Out of me way, rantipole.”

Confused, she stood her ground, the packet of food warm against her belly.

“Runners!” he grunted, shoving her aside. “I’ll not be nabbed.” Jug of ale brandished in one hand, sausage like a sword in the other, he lunged over the bar, past the barkeep, through a curtain and out the back way. Heads turned. The slam of a door marked his escape.

She could see them now, fifteen or so, single file, crouched low in the dark. Runners, Roger’s Runners, ignoring the Horse and Groom, ignoring her, intent on entering the stable, expecting trouble from within rather than without. Eight of them she counted, and before the last of them had made their way through the door she heard a shout.

“Take him!”

She crept past the lamplight, into the shadowed street, unsure of her direction, clutching like a shield the greasy packet of pies.

Where was Roger? Had the man in the street been he, returned to the viper’s nest just in time to be taken?

A clatter, an indiscernible shout, and then a voice, every word clear. “We are peace officers! Lay down your arms!”

A pandemonium of muffled shouts followed, laced with oaths, and the tramp of boots taking the ladder at a run. A dog began to bark. It came layered, the fabric of this encounter. The individual threads of good and evil impossible to unravel in the dark.

Clinging to the shadows, Dulcie made her way down the street.

Behind her, an order. “Drop your sword, or I’ll fire!”

A cry. “Kill the bastards. Throw them down the stairs!”

Voices rose, panicked and enraged. A shot rang out. The crack of gunfire sounded misplaced in the city street. Two more explosions cut the night’s stillness. Blue flashed in the ill-covered slit of window in the loft. Then a barrage of shots rattled like hail on a lead roof.

The din of it tore at her nerves, drove her to her knees upon the cobblestones. She pictured the men in the loft diving for cover, Roger among them. From the sound of it, all of the gathered guns had been put to use.

The dim light behind canvas covered windows went out.

Shouts sounded, frantic in the sudden dark.

Eyes wide, blinded by the night, by her ignorance, heart beating, frantic, like the wings of a bird ready to fly from her throat, Dulcie felt the impact of each shot that exploded into the expectant silence. With each boom she imagined the worst. Roger shot. Bleeding in the dark. Killed by the very men he sought to assist. The Runners.

A low-voiced shout came from in front of her, from the street down which she meant to escape. “Fix bayonets! Shoulder Arms! Double-time!” A gleam penetrated the darkness. Metal clanked on metal, the unmistakable sound of the military, shod feet tramping in unison. A file of Coldstream Guards rounded the corner.

With a creak the stable door swung wide. Dear God, could it be Roger? Out vaulted Thistlewood, a cold flash of metal in his hand. Her eyes, adjusted to the dark, did not mistake that shadowed face and form. His feet flew over the cobblestones away from the Guards. They let him go, intent on surrounding the stable, a small group following the Captain who led them, disappearing through the stable door with a verbal challenge for all inside. “Lay down your arms!”

Gunfire punctuated the angry shouting that followed. She tried to make out Roger’s voice, but could not.

A crowd of the curious dribbled from the public house, from doorways, ghostlike as the gun smoke drifting from the stable door. Dulcie rose, knees cold, bruised, stiff. Heart racing, she joined them, taking meager comfort in grumbled speculation.

A slovenly woman in drooping mobcap said, “I knew there was something odd about the place, windows draped as they were.”

“Fight!” Someone shouted from the stable. “While you have a drop of blood left in you.”

A reed thin fellow mumbled around the dark stem of his clay pipe. “Desperate criminals they must be to have so many come after ‘em.”

“Foreward!” Came an order.

The bartender from the Horse and Groom wiped his hands on dirty apron. “Scruffy looking bunch. Murderers, the lot, I’ll be bound. Not enough coin between them to be thieves.”

Was Roger endangered? Was he dead? Dulcie shivered, could not stop shivering. Her teeth clacked with fear.

Boot heels on cobblestone, a squeal as the stable door swung wide. A scuffle, a shriek. Desperate and cowardly a voice cried, “Do not kill me. I will tell you all!”

From the dark maw of the open stable door a man bolted. Not Roger, Daniels, head down, and at his heels a Runner shouting, “Stop thief! Catch him! Catch him!”

The waiting soldiers knocked his feet from under him, piling atop in a tumble of uniformed arms and legs. Ordered to his feet, limping now, he was returned to the cluster of soldiers gathering about the door, torches flaring light throwing into harsh relief faces become familiar to her. One by one the prisoners were led down, seven in all. None of them, Roger.

Where was he? Her limbs ached with the need to know. Her eyes burned as she strained to see.

Two of the guard helped their Captain through the stable doors looking much the worse for wear, bleeding from a gash on his forehead, uniform in ribbons. Behind him came another officer, clutching his right arm, blood staining scarlet his sleeve.

No sign of Roger.

From the stable door staggered two Runners, a body borne between them, blood everywhere, this one dead, no mistaking the peculiar limpness of the body.

Please God no! Was it red hair illuminated by the torchlight?

“Only casualty,” she heard someone say, the words taken up and repeated so that they echoed from mouth to mouth.

Dulcie’s knees went weak, her head felt as if it floated. The meat pies she clutched were flattened, gravy dripping warm against her breast, the greasy odor so strong she came close to casting up accounts right there, in the gutter.

They carried the body past, into the Horse and Groom. Tears flooded her cheeks unstayed. She hated herself for the weeping of them, for they were tears of joy. The hair was blond, not red, the pale, lifeless face caught in the moonlight that of a stranger.

Chapter Forty-Three

John Street

Roger heard the melee from John Street. Gunshots. Shouts. Dogs barking. Orders from the Coldstream Guard. The unified tramp of boots on the cobblestones. He was responsible for this moonlit confrontation.

Where in this mess was Dulcie? Was she in the thick of the battle being waged? Had he placed her life in danger? Worry knotted his stomach. The lives of ministers, the fate of England, for the moment meant nothing. Only one life mattered. For only one life did he feel completely accountable.

How could he have left her in a nest of adders? How could he arrive now too late to extricate her from certain destruction? He ran. Into what, he could not be certain.

It never occurred to him that Thistlewood might escape, that the man might slip past the runners, past thirty Coldstream guards, that he might dash headlong out of the gunshot darkness. He barreled into him. Literally ran into the man.

The two of them staggered, almost ran on, so intent were they, each of them, on their separate directions, but then recognition dawned. Thistlewood gripped his shoulders.

“Edwards!” he cried out, breathless, shocked. “We are taken. Ings. Tidd. Davidson. All taken. The arms too. They are onto us!”

“Bethany! What of Bethany?”

“Gone to the Horse and Groom with Brunt for food. Perhaps they got away. None of the rest escaped. I ran one of the bloody bastards through, to make a road for myself.”

From beneath the edge of his coat swung the curved, double-edged sword, dark with blood.

“Killed him?”

“Aye.” He sounded giddy, proud. “One less Runner to trouble us.”

“Where to now?” Roger asked, wondering which of his friends had been downed.

“Away. Best not go home. Like as not they know where we live. I’ve a cubby hole for just such an event.”

Did he mean the room in White Street? The hidey-hole Roger himself had suggested? Did he keep another safe house?

“Someone has given us away. One of our own.” Thistlewood spat the words.

“Who?” Roger did his best to sound offended.

“Too many of them for it not to be so.” Thistlewood glanced over his shoulder, at the approaching rumble of carriage wheels. He pulled Roger away from the middle of the street, into the shadow of a basement stairwell, where a cat skulked. Suspicion clouded his brow. “You were conveniently absent.”

With a growl, a maniacal sort of strength in his bloody hands, he slammed Roger against the wall. “Where have you been, Edwards, so near unto the appointed hour? Was it you who gave us away?” He wielded the bloodstained sword, might have run him through, right then and there, had not Roger pushed aside the blade with the box.

“This!” he said strongly, unflinching, his eyes never leaving Thistlewood’s. “Damn it man! I have been to fetch this. Minister’s boxes do not sit about on street corners, you know.”

Madness fading, Thistlewood dropped the blade back under his coat. Closing his eyes, he said softly, “We came so close. I must know who betrayed us. I would carve him up and stuff him into that bloody box.”

Marching feet and shouted orders returned their attention to the idea of flight rather than confrontation.

“Best we split up,” Roger whispered.

“Aye,” Thistlewood agreed. “We will meet again when things settle, at the White Lion in Wyche Street.”

Dulcie, Roger thought, as Thistlewood set off. He must find out what had become of her.

The shooting had ceased. The fracas was over. He turned up his collar as a hack rattled past, and in it two of the Coldstream guards, Adams between them, head down. The night threatened too many opportunities to be recognized, Roger thought, by radicals, runners and guards alike. He had dealings with them all, in one guise or another.

Best not to be recognized, best not to involve himself directly with the business in Cato Street or he would be carried off to Bow Street in irons himself, and a great deal of favor pulling to do in order to get himself freed again and all explained.

He turned, eyes following the hack, caught sight of Thistlewood’s back as he ducked into an alleyway. It troubled him to think the body of conspirators might be taken only to have the viper’s head of mischief slither off to some unknown hidey-hole.

And Dulcie? Did he not trust her to save herself? She was an intelligent female, the most intelligent and instinctive he had ever known. She had certainly set herself free and run to the safety of another man’s arms by now.

He turned his back on Cato Street--a bitter taste in his mouth, a weighty reluctance in his every muscle. He knew he turned his back, for the moment, on the one woman he loved above all others. He would be no good to her if he was taken--no good to his government if Thistlewood got away.

Guilt squeezing his heart, the box meant to hold a bomb bumping his back with every step, he set out after the man who would think of such an ignoble end to his ministers, keeping a discreet distance.

Dulcie might have run home in that instant, might have turned her back on the whole thing in an instant, but she did not, caught up in the spectacle of the dead man. The crowd grew, strangers drawn together by the fearful intensity of the moment, by the urgency of a man’s death: guards, runners, and neighbors piling into the Horse and Groom.