Текст книги "The Scottish Prisoner"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“It’s nay as though there’s anyone to hear, is there?” Jamie said, nibbling gingerly at a thick, waxy leaf. It squeaked between his teeth like a live mouse and was bitter as he imagined wormwood and gall to be, but it helped to kill his hunger. He’d eaten worse than raw cabbage, often.

Tom scrabbled a half dozen blackened knobs out of the embers and speared one with Lord John’s dagger. It hadn’t left his person since his employer had entrusted him with the knife upon his arrest.

“It’s a bit hard in the middle,” he said, gingerly poking at the potato. “But I don’t know as more roasting would help it any.”

“Nay bother,” Jamie assured him. “I’ve got all my teeth, and none of them loose.” Lacking a dirk, he stabbed two of the measly things neatly with his rapier and waved them gently in the air to cool.

“Show-away,” said Quinn, but without rancor. The Irishman had sulked on their way back to collect Tom but seemed to have recovered his spirits since, despite the fact that the rain he had predicted was now falling. He’d been for finding supper and refuge for the night with a cottager, but Jamie had preferred to camp briefly, then go on as soon as they were rested. News of their presence would spread like butter on hot toast—his wame gurgled at thought of butter, but he sternly ignored it—and they could not afford to be picked up by a curious constable. There were enough people already who knew Lord John had had companions. Edward Twelvetrees, for one.

Did Twelvetrees know about Siverly yet? He wondered.

He tilted his head to spill the rain from the brim of his hat and blew on the hot potatoes.

Tom gathered the remaining potatoes in a fold of his cloak, deposited two in front of Quinn without remark, and came to sit down beside Jamie to eat his own share. Jamie hadn’t yet told him about his plan—if his intentions could be dignified by such a word—let alone about Quinn’s desire to abandon Grey, but was interested to see that Tom plainly didn’t trust the Irishman.

Good lad, he thought.

Rain hissed and sputtered as it struck the fire. It wouldn’t last much longer.

“How far is it to Athlone?” he asked, licking his fingers.

Quinn grimaced in thought. “From here? Maybe two hours.”

Jamie felt, rather than saw, Tom perk up a bit at that, and turned his head to smile at the young valet.

“We’ll get him back,” he said, and was surprised at how gratified he was to see relief and trust flood Tom’s round face.

“A-course we will,” Tom said stoutly. “Sir,” he added hastily. He didn’t ask for details, which was just as well, Jamie thought.

“Sleep a bit,” he said to Tom, when the fire showed signs of being finally extinguished. “I’ll wake ye later, when it’s time to go.”

Quinn gave a small snort at this, but Jamie ignored it. Quinn knew fine that Jamie didn’t trust him, and plainly Tom knew, too. It didn’t need saying.

Jamie wrapped the borrowed cloak tighter round his body, wishing for a plaid and thick Highland stockings. The cloak was wool and would hold his heat, even if wet—but nothing shed water like the waulked wool of a Highland plaid. He sighed and found a place to sit where his arse wouldn’t be in a puddle and there was a stone at his back to lean on.

His mind kept nagging at him, wanting to think, to make plans. But plans were pointless, until they reached Athlone and saw how things lay. As for thinking … he needed to let matters rest and sort themselves. He was bone-tired, and knew it. He patted his breeches and found the pleasantly bumpy little bundle of his rosary. And there was the matter of his penance, after all.

The smooth wooden beads were a comfort to his fingers, as the repetition of the Aveswas to his mind, and he felt his shoulders finally begin to relax, the counterpoint of the pattering rain on his hat and the distant gurgling of his wame a peaceful background to his prayers.

“It’s not a crackbrained scheme.”

“Eh?” Quinn had spoken so quietly that Jamie had only half-heard him, such was his state of mind.

“I said, it’s not a crackbrained scheme.” Quinn swiveled on his rock to look at Jamie directly, his eyes dark holes in his face. “The plan.”

“Aye?” Jamie’s brain was slow to focus on this. What plan?He thought dimly. “Perhaps I spoke too hasty, Quinn. I’ll ask your pardon.”

Quinn’s attitude changed at once from hostility to forgiveness; he straightened and, with a glance at Tom curled in a sodden lump some distance away, got up and came to crouch beside Jamie.

“Not a bit of it, mo chara,” he said, patting Jamie’s shoulder. “I hadn’t told ye the meat of it—doubtless it sounded fanciful.”

Jamie made a sound meant to indicate cordial dismissal of this notion, privately wondering what in the name of God himself … oh, Jesus.

“The cup?” he asked. “Because I told ye, when—”

“No,” Quinn replied. “I mean, that’s a part of it, sure, but what I hadn’t told ye yet was how the invasion is to work.”

“The invasion …” Jamie’s mind was coming hastily back from its peaceful bourne of prayer, and the knotting of his belly was not due to raw cabbage alone. “Ye’d mentioned raising an army. I recall that.” And he recalled fine that Quinn had wanted him to raise it.

“Aye, but there’s more.” He saw Quinn’s head turn as he looked over his shoulder, the picture of stealth. Then the Irishman leaned closer, close enough that Jamie could smell the man’s sour breath. “The Irish Brigade,” Quinn whispered in his ear.

“Aye?” He must have sounded as baffled as he felt, for Quinn gave a brief sigh of exasperation.

“Ye’ll have heard of the Irish Brigade, at least?”

“I have, aye.” He glanced at Tom, regretting that he hadn’t let the lad take first watch; Quinn wouldn’t be telling him this sort of thing. The Irishman’s next words drove vain regrets from his mind, though.

“There are three regiments of the Irish Brigade in London,” Quinn whispered, eyes alight with suppressed glee. “The officers of two of them are with us. When the word comes that all is in hand here in Ireland, they’ll seize the king and hold Buckingham Palace!”

Jamie was struck dumb, and a good thing, too, for Quinn went on:

“We’ve loyal men in brigade regiments posted in Italy and France, too. Not all the officers—but once the thing is in motion, the rest will fall in. Or if they don’t—” He lifted one shoulder, a fatalist’s shrug.

“If they don’t … what?” Jamie knew what that shrug meant, but he wanted it spelled out, if only to give himself a moment’s time to think. His scalp was prickling, and his wame had curled itself up into a quivering ball beneath his ribs.

Quinn pursed his lips. “Why, then … those loyal to the Cause will take command, of course.”

“Ye mean they’ll kill those who don’t go along with it.”

“Now, then. Ye know as well as I do, ye can’t make wine without squeezin’—”

“Don’t bloody say it!” Jamie had the obscure feeling that clichй on top of treasonous insanity was more than anyone should be obliged to put up with. He rubbed a wet hand over his wet face, the bristles of his beard harsh under his palm.

“Each regiment has at least two volunteers among the officers. When the signal comes …” But Quinn hadn’t said “volunteers” in English, though he was speaking English. He’d used the Irish term, “Deonaigh.”

In Jamie’s experience, excluding clergy and peasants, Irishmen seemed to consist of two sorts: rabid fighters and maniac poets. These traits weren’t often combined in the same man, though.

That word, “Deonach.”It was in the Wild Hunt poem; he wouldn’t have taken notice, save that there was a popular soldier’s song, a sentimental, maudlin thing in Irish, called “The Volunteer.” There’d been several Irishmen in the group of mercenaries with whom he’d fought in France, much given to singing it when in liquor. That was almost the last song he recalled, before the blow of an ax had severed him forever from music.

“Sй an fuil б lorgadh, is й a teas б lorgadh,”he said abruptly, his heart beating quicker, and Quinn’s face turned sharply toward him. They search out blood, they seek its heat.

A moment’s silence, save for the rain. The fire was drowned now, even the black mark it left on the earth quite drowned in darkness. The cabbage was making its presence felt and Jamie clenched his buttocks, silently easing himself.

“Where did ye hear that, now?” Quinn said, his voice mild, and Jamie realized with a small shock that his life might depend upon his answer.

“Thomas Lally said it to me,” he replied, his voice as mild as Quinn’s. “When I met him in London.” Quinn might know that he’d met Lally—and it was true that Lally had said those words to him, reading them from the written sheet, a puzzled expression on his face.

“He did?” Quinn sounded blank, perhaps a little frightened, and Jamie expelled his breath, only then realizing that he’d been holding it. So. Lally maybe wasn’t part of the plot. But Quinn was fearful lest he knew about it?

“Tell me more about this, will ye?” Jamie said quickly. “Is there a date set for it?”

Quinn hesitated, still suspicious, but eagerness to talk and desire to win Jamie over got the better of him.

“Well, there is, then. All I can say is, it’ll be a day when the streets will be crowded, the beer flowing from the taverns, the squares all hoaching like weevils in a sack of grain. All the regiments will parade down Pall Mall and then go off to barracks. One of the Irish Brigade regiments will come at the last of the procession, and instead of heading back to their quarters, they’ll go round behind the palace. Once His Majesty’s gone inside, they’ll move into the grounds, overpower any guards at the back, and take the palace. The guards in the front will be taken up with the crowds and won’t know a thing’s afoot until it’s too late—and then the second regiment sweeps in to secure the place. All the other regiments will be busy stripping off and putting away their tack—even if word comes as to what’s happening, they’ll never pull themselves together in time to stop it. And once the king is in hand, messengers will go out to our supporters in Wales and Scotland, ready to march and take London entire!”

It might conceivably work. God knew, much madder schemes had.

“But they canna hold out for very long, even wi’ the king’s person to bargain with,” Jamie pointed out. “What if there’s some delay in Charles Stuart coming wi’ the new army from Ireland?” Some delay, he thought, remembering all too well what it took to assemble even an ill-equipped rabble, let alone feed and transport them. And that was reckoning without the Bonnie Prince himself—a weak reed for a revolution to lean upon, and surely to God Quinn must know that much. Or was that what the conspiracy counted upon?

“We thought of that,” Quinn said importantly, and Jamie wondered just who “we” were. Could he get Quinn to tell him names? “There are fallbacks. The regiments in London don’t stir a step until they’ve heard the word.”

“Oh, aye? And what word is that?”

Quinn grinned at him and shook his head.

“Never you mind that, laddie. It’s a mark of the great trust I bear ye that I’ve told ye what I have—but ’tis more than my life’s worth to say more just yet.” He leaned back and a loud fart ripped the air beneath him, surprising him.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

Despite the recent hair-raising revelations, Jamie laughed. Tom stirred at the sound, and a popping noise like distant gunfire emerged from the mound of wet blankets. Quinn glanced at Jamie, eyebrow raised.

“Three’s a lucky number, so it is.”

JOHN GREY HAD SOME experience of prisons but had never been a guest of one. As such establishments went, the cell to which he’d been shown was fairly reasonable: there was no one else in the tiny room, the slop bucket was empty and dry, and there was a small, barred window. The walls oozed damp—why not, everything else in Ireland did—but there were no puddles on the floor, and while there was neither bed nor pallet, there was a wadded blanket in one corner of the room. He was glad to see it; the cell was bloody cold and his clothes were damp, his linen clammy; the heavens had opened on them an hour before they reached Athlone.

He paced the dimensions of the cell: eight feet by ten. If he were to walk seven hundred lengths of the cell, that would be approximately a mile. He shook out the blanket, dislodging a dead cricket, two live moths, and the broken fragments of what had once been a cockroach. What the devil had eaten it? he wondered. Rats?

Suddenly very tired, he sat down on the floor and pulled the blanket round his shoulders, shivering. He’d had time to think, riding to Athlone. He thought he’d have quite a bit more now but didn’t expect it to do him much good.

It was both good luck and bad that Sir Melchior was gone. Bad, as it meant that the sergeant of the garrison had locked Grey up, because the deputy justiciar had not yet arrived, and the sergeant refused to summon the magistrate from the town until the morning. Good, as Sir Melchior or his deputy would very likely have questioned Grey—rather awkward—and then either put him under guard or demanded his parole, either of which would have kept him from getting back to Siverly’s house or making his own investigation into Siverly’s death.

His main concern was for Edward Twelvetrees. There had been no sign of the man, and none of the servants had mentioned his being there. Had he been at Glastuig, he could not but have noticed the uproar and come out to inquire. Ergo, he wasn’t there—presumably because he had fled in the wake of the murder.

It had to have been Twelvetrees that Grey had heard in precipitate flight from the summerhouse after the murder. And as the man plainly had not gone to the stable, he must have returned—however briefly—to the main house. Why?

Either to fetch away something, or because he was cool enough to have realized that open flight would be an admission of guilt. Or possibly both, Grey thought. It was a substantial chest; it would have taken two footmen to carry it. Twelvetrees couldn’t merely have scooped it up and ridden off with it under his arm.

It had been nearly noon when Grey found Siverly’s body. Had Twelvetrees ridden up to the property, left his horse, then crept up to the summerhouse and bashed in Siverly’s head with what Grey recognized as an Iroquois war club—doubtless the weapon with which Siverly had attacked Jamie Fraser?

Or had Twelvetrees never come back at all? It was possible, Grey supposed, that Siverly had enemies—given his record, it would be strange if he did not. And his possession of an Iroquois war club argued some fear of his life, did it not? Though the man did collect things; his room showed the normal accretions of a military man.

He sighed, closed his eyes, and tried to find a comfortable position, resting his head on an outstretched elbow.

Bloody hell. He simply didn’t know enough. But he did know that he had to get out of here, and he had to go back to Glastuig, as soon as possible. There was nothing he could do but wait for Jamie Fraser.

THE SOUND OF FEET on the paving stones outside waked him. He blinked and squinted at the barred window, in an attempt to judge the time. The sky was overcast, but from the feel of things, he thought it was well past midnight—and the footsteps he heard weren’t those of the regular midnight guard, in any case. There were several men.

He was on his feet, shod, and buttoning his waistcoat before the key grated in the lock. The door swung open, revealing the sergeant of the guard, lantern in one hand and a look of apoplectic fury on his face. Behind him loomed Jamie Fraser.

“I see ye were expecting us.” Fraser sounded mildly amused. “Have ye got something to quiet this gentleman’s humors?” He prodded the sergeant, a small, rawboned man, in the back with a large horse pistol, sending him stumbling into the cell.

“You filthy cur!” the sergeant exclaimed, the aubergine hue of his face deepening in the lantern light. “Your soul to the devil, ye wicked Scotch dog! And you—” He turned toward Grey, only to be interrupted by Grey’s handkerchief, balled up and stuffed into his mouth.

Tom Byrd darted into the cell, seized the blanket, and, with a huge grin at Grey, drew Grey’s dagger from his own belt and efficiently ripped off several strips, these being used at once to secure the sergeant. Tom then thrust the dagger into his employer’s hand, and with a hoarsely whispered “Good to see you looking well, me lord!” he darted out again, presumably to scout for wandering guards.

“Thank you, Mr. Fraser,” Grey murmured, shrugging into his coat as he headed for the door in his turn. In truth, he hadn’t expected rescue, had only half-hoped for it, and his chest filled with a breathless excitement.

Fraser handed Grey the lantern, then waved the pistol, ushering him out. With a cordial nod at the sergeant, he pulled the door softly to behind them and locked it. He took back the lantern then and turned to the left. Near the corner, he paused, considering which way to go.

“I shouldn’t have addressed you by name,” Grey said, low-voiced. “I’m sorry.”

Fraser shrugged, eyes squinted against the gloom that cloaked the courtyard. It was not quite drizzling, but the slates gleamed dully with wet where the lantern light reached them.

“Nay bother. There’re none sae many redheided Scotsmen o’ my size abroad in County Roscommon. It wouldna take them long to learn my name—and they wouldna require one to shoot me, in any case. Come on, wee Byrd,” he said under his breath, “where are ye?”

As though the remark had conjured him, a dim figure appeared suddenly on the far side of the old bailey, waving. They walked—at a normal pace, lantern swinging low at Fraser’s side—to the archway where Tom was waiting, his round face pale with excitement.

“This way,” he breathed, and directed them to a set of shallow stone steps leading up to the walkway lined with arrow slits. “There’s another stair at the far end, as goes down to the river gate,” he whispered to John as he passed. “I didn’t see any guards, but I hear voices.”

John nodded, taking hold of his dagger. He hoped, for assorted reasons, that they weren’t going to have to fight their way out.

“Should you leave the lantern?” he whispered, climbing close behind Jamie. Jamie shook his head.

“Better not,” he said. “I may need it.” Jamie stepped out onto the walkway and strode at what Grey considered an agonizingly slow pace. Grey and Tom Byrd followed like goslings. As they approached the bend of the wall, Grey heard voices from somewhere below and half-halted, only to be prodded on by Tom.

“Go on, me lord! We daren’t stop,” he whispered.

Feeling desperately exposed, Grey matched his step to Fraser’s slow stride. He glanced quickly down and saw an open doorway across the courtyard, light spilling from it. The guardroom, it must be; he glimpsed several soldiers and could tell from the sudden hush, followed by laughter, groans, and exclamations, that they were dicing.

Just let someone throw a double six, he prayed.

Around another bend, out of sight, and he breathed again, blood hammering in his ears. The dark below was silent, though he could still hear the guards behind them.

Fraser’s plait hung down his back, unclubbed. It swung gently between his shoulder blades, a snakelet of gold light from the lantern vanishing up the smooth auburn strands into darkness. Suddenly Fraser stopped, and Grey nearly ran into him.

He heard the Scot draw a long, deep breath and saw him cross himself. Jamie turned toward Grey, bending to bring his mouth near Grey’s ear.

“There’s someone below, at the gate,” he said very quietly, his breath warm on Grey’s cheek. “We’ll have to take him. Try not to kill him, aye?”

And with that, he threw the lantern into the courtyard. It landed with a loud clank and went out.

“Fumble-fingers,” said a sarcastic voice from below. “That you, Ferguson? Drop something, didja?” A man came out from the niche at the foot of the stair; Grey saw him as a squat, thick shape against the dark stones. Fraser took in a great lungful of air, vaulted the low wall, and leapt feetfirst from the walkway, startling Grey so badly that he nearly followed inadvertently.

Fraser had struck the man a glancing blow in falling on him but enough to stop his wind for a moment; the two of them writhed on the stones, no more than gasps and grunts to mark their struggle. Grey rushed down the steps, heedless of the clatter.

“Tom, get the gate!” He rushed to the struggling figures and, seeing that the shorter man had momentarily got astride Fraser and was punching him vigorously in the head, picked his moment as well as he might in the dark and kicked the short figure with great force in the balls from behind.

The man rolled off Fraser with a horrible noise, and the Scot got to his knees, breathing like a grampus. Grey was already on his own knees, groping the guard’s clothing for anything usable. The man had neither pistol nor shot but sported a sort of short sword, rather like a Roman gladius. Grey wondered at this unorthodox choice of weapon but took it anyway, pausing to administer a silencing kick in the belly before following Fraser into the niche.

Tom had got the gate unbolted. The Shannon lay just within bow shot, its sullen waters dark as pitch.

Fraser was limping badly; the fall hadn’t done his bruised arse any good. He was also cursing roundly under his breath in Gаidhlig, by which Grey deduced the object of his wrath.

“Bloody hell,” said Tom, moved either by excitement or example. “Where is he? He’s not left us, has he?”

“If he has, he’s a dead man,” Fraser muttered briefly, and vanished into the dark, casting upstream. Grey deduced that “he” was likely Quinn and that Fraser had gone to find him.

“Are we waiting for a boat?” Grey asked Tom, keeping one eye on the bulk of the castle above them. They were no more than twenty yards from the wall, and every instinct urged him to leg it as fast as possible.

“Yes, me lord. Quinn said he could find a boat, and he was to meet us here at”—he glanced round, helpless—“well, at whatever time it was Mr. Fraser said. Which I think it’s just now.” He, too, glanced back at the castle, his face a pale splotch in the darkness. There was no light in the town nearby, not even a watchman’s lantern in the streets.

Grey clutched the gladius in one hand, his dagger in the other—and precious little use either one would be to him if they were fired upon from the ramparts. Not much if the whole garrison suddenly poured out of the gate, eith—

“Hold these!” He shoved the weapons into Tom’s startled hands and, crouching, moved fast along the riverbank, scrabbling his hands through the edge of the water, searching for an appropriate bit of flotsam. He stubbed toes and fingers, floundering in the dark, but found what he wanted: a chunk of wood—a shattered plank. He tugged it free of the mud and ran back to the river gate, where he thrust his prize beneath the edge of the door. It slid under easily; no good, he needed—

Tom, bless him, had divined his need and was just behind him, his arms full of rubbish, sticks, and stones. Grey rummaged feverishly through this pile of dripping rejecta and crammed as much as he could beneath the free end of the plank, driving the wad in with his foot. His toes were going to be as blue as Fraser’s arse, he thought, giving his improvised door jam a final, vicious kick.

Final, because there was no time to do more. There were shouts coming from inside the castle. Seizing Tom by the arm, Grey ran up the bank in the direction Fraser had gone.

The ground was muddy and uneven, and they lurched and stumbled, gasping as they went. Grey’s foot skidded in the mud, then shot suddenly downward, and he fell sideways with a tremendous splash; he’d stepped into a reedbed. Gasping, he surfaced on his back, waving arms and legs in a vain attempt to stand up and catch his breath at the same time.

“Me lord!” Tom splashed in after him, though more carefully, wading out knee-deep, the reeds creaking and rasping as he pushed his way through them.

There was a sudden rattle, like pebbles thrown against glass. Shots, Grey thought, and flung himself over in a heavy swash of awkward, sopping clothes, able at last to get a purchase and crawl toward shore on hands and knees.

Single shots now, an irregular pop-pop! Pop!Could they see Tom and him, or were they firing at random to make a show? He thought suddenly of the arrow slits, and his shoulders hunched instinctively. Tom got him by the arm and hoisted him onto the shore like a harpooned turtle.

“Let’s—” Tom said, and stopped suddenly, with a choked grunt of surprise.

“What—Tom!” Tom’s knees were buckling. Grey caught him halfway down and eased him to the ground. “Where?” he said. “Where are you hit?” He’d heard that sound before: sheer astonishment—and, all too often, a man’s final comment on life.

“Arm,” Tom said, quite breathless but still more astonished than alarmed. “Something hit my arm. Like a hammer.”

It was dark as the inside of a coal mine, but Grey could make out a black smudge on the left arm of Tom’s coat. Spreading fast. He swore under his breath, scrabbled through the wet mass of his hair, and came away with a mangled ribbon between his fingers.

“Above the elbow? Below?” he asked rapidly, prodding the arm.

“Ow! Just there—ow!” A little above. He wrapped the ribbon round Tom’s arm, regretting the loss of his handkerchief, and pulled it tight. It snapped.

A moment’s panic, when the night blurred round him and the sound of shots hitting water sounded harmless, like the early drops of rain from a passing cloud. Then things clicked back into focus, and he found—to his vague surprise—that some part of his mind had kept on working; he was sitting on the ground, one shoe off, pulling the sopping stocking off his foot.

This, with the other balled up to use as a wad, made an admirable tourniquet.

“I shall have something to say to the coves at Jennings and Brown,” Tom said, in a voice that quavered only a little. “That’s where I bought that ribbon.”

“You do that, Tom,” Grey said, smiling in spite of himself as he shoved his bare feet back into wet shoes. His mind was working through the possibilities. If Tom was seriously hurt, then he needed care at once. And the only place to get it was the castle. If it was no more than a flesh wound, though … “Do you think you can walk? Can you sit up?”

“Oh, yes, me … ohhh …” Tom, halfway up, suddenly sagged and subsided onto the ground. “Oh,” he murmured. “Me head’s not half spinnnn …” His voice trailed off into silence. Grey felt frantically for a heartbeat, ripping Tom’s shirt out of his breeches and rummaging up under it, feeling here and there on the cold, wet skin of his chest. He found one, thank God, and, with a gasp of relief, pulled his hand out of Tom’s shirt and looked round.

The river gate was opening, in slow jerks as men hit it from behind, forcing loose his improvised jam. He could see the light of their lanterns, rimming the door in a fiery nimbus.

“Shit,” he said, and, seizing Tom under the arms, waded back into the reeds, dragging his senseless valet.

THE BOAT BOBBED as Jamie shifted his weight, bringing his heart into his mouth.

“Be still, ye great galoot.” Quinn’s voice came from behind, just audible over the lapping of the water against the sides, and the water uneasily close to the top of the boat, if you asked Jamie. “Ye’ll have us over, if ye don’t give over your squirming, and you like a tiger in a sack. Are ye like to be sick again?”

“Dinna even mention it,” Jamie said, and swallowed, closing his eyes. He’d tried convincing himself that if he couldn’t see the water, his stomach would be oblivious, but he was morbidly aware that less than an inch of wood separated his cringing buttocks from the cold black water of the Shannon, and that wood leaking like a sieve. His feet were wet, and as for squirming, he was convinced that the wicked wee boat was doing just that, even drifting down the current as they were.

“Should we not row?” he whispered back over his shoulder—having been warned that sound travels over water.

“We shall not,” Quinn said decidedly. “It’s a bloody flat calm, so it is, and if ye think I mean to go splashing past Castle Athlone, hallooing and cryin’ out for your friends … Hist!”

Jamie jerked his head round to see the bulk of the castle rise up on his right, black as hell against the drizzling sky. The intimation of hell was the more pronounced as he saw the river gate from which they had escaped now burst open, spilling red light and black, shouting figures capered, demonlike, on the bank of the river.

“Hail Mary, Mother of God …” he whispered, and took firm hold of the edge of the boat to steady himself. Where were Grey and Tom Byrd? He shut his eyes tight to accustom them to dark and looked away from the castle before opening them again. But what he could see of the bank was featureless, dark blobs that might be boats or sea monsters bobbing near the shore, the black patches of what Quinn said were reedbeds like tar against the dull shimmer of the water. Nothing seemed to move. Nothing that looked like two men running, at least. And, by God, they shouldbe running, he thought, with that lot after them.

For now the whole garrison was roused, and the shore near the castle was aglow with lanterns, their swinging lights shooting beams up and down the riverbank, the bawling of the sergeant—Jamie grinned despite the situation, recognizing the furious voice of the man he’d taken prisoner—echoing across the water.

A quiet splash made him turn his head. Quinn had put an oar in the water and was sculling, very gently, to slow their progress. The boat’s head turned inward in a slow, meditative circle.

“What if they’re not here?” Quinn said very quietly.

“They’re here. I left them on the bank, just by the castle.”

“They’re not there now,” Quinn observed, an edge to his voice, low as it was.

“They saw me go upstream. They’ll have followed me. We’ll need to turn round. They’ll not have seen us, coming down so quiet.”

He spoke with a great deal more confidence than he felt, but Quinn said no more than a muttered “God and Mary and Padraic be with us” before putting the other oar in the water and settling himself to it. The boat turned, the current hissing past its sides, and with as little splashing as could be managed, they began slowly to retrace their progress, Jamie leaning out as far as he dared to scan the shore.