In comparison, this was a stroll in the park, an afternoon’s tea party. But that didn’t mean a stray bullet couldn’t bring one of them down. All it would take would be one man, with the benefit of surprise and a quick trigger finger, one lucky strike, one fortunate ricochet. He had never worried himself about that sort of thing before. Battle was battle, and he knew that he could die as easily as the next man, that a sniper’s rifle could kill just as effectively as a cavalry charge. It was all part of the job and there were no guarantees. He had simply been lucky so far.
But that had been before. How could he climb that ladder and explain to Lady Henrietta that her husband wasn’t coming back? He wasn’t particularly thrilled with the notion of having his lifeless body borne back to Girdings, either. He had other plans for his return, and they had nothing to do with mausoleums.
Robert spared a moment’s gratitude that the women were safely above ground. It would be ten times worse having to worry about them as well. They might be cold in the deserted church, but at least they would be unmolested.
Robert staggered to his feet, jerkily wiping out the drawing with the sole of one shoe. ‘I go first,’ he said, ‘since I know the way. Tommy, you take the rear. Dorrington—’
‘Understood,’ said Miles with a grin that suggested a mind happily free of funereal thoughts. ‘I take the middle.’
‘Once we pass the bronze doors to the river, I want total silence,’ Robert said sternly. ‘No talking, no whispering. We don’t know how sound carries in these caves.’
‘And we don’t want to alert anyone to our presence,’ agreed Tommy. ‘It would be deuced unfortunate if they decided to do away with the evidence.’
It would be more than unfortunate. It would precipitate an immediate succession crisis. How was one to explain that the king had been kidnapped and murdered? The country would be in an uproar. And the Prince of Wales, with his dubious political allies, would be on the throne.
Robert grimaced. ‘I don’t think any of us have any interest in a Medmenham ministry.’
One by one, they ventured through the square-cut hole in the wall, lowering themselves from the altar to the ground. As Robert had suspected, the circular cavern was deserted, the great lamp hanging lightless from the arched roof. The bronze doors were shut.
With a finger to his lips to indicate silence, Robert put his shoulders to the door on the right-hand side, where Dionysus revelled with his maenads in a perpetual debauch. The door resisted slightly and then gave, moving open by inches onto total darkness.
The darkness was pregnant with the whisper of the water as it slapped and slithered against the banks, like a nest of serpents stretching. The silver chain chimed softly as the boat rocked in its moorings, like a spectral bell, tolling a mythical hero to his death. And through it all, Robert seemed to hear the hiss and whisper of drowned voices, batting against the banks, fighting the waves for release.
Kicking himself for supernatural fancy, Robert motioned peremptorily behind him for Tommy to bring the torch. It was a chancy thing, potentially signalling their presence to the enemy, but still less of a liability than plunging headfirst into the river. Into that chorus of drowned voices, a nasty voice in the back of his head provided, and he squished it.
It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dark waters. It was simply common sense. If he recalled correctly, there were enough twists and bends in the tunnels that their light would only be visible to someone standing directly on the other bank. Or a creature within the water. It would be like Medmenham to stock his subterranean river with his own private sea serpent.
Silently, Tommy obeyed, circling Miles’s broad form. The torchlight cast their shadows in relief along the bank and lent a reddish glow to the surface of the water, as though it burnt with subterranean fire. The boat had been chained to the near bank, creaking lightly in its moorings, the long pole braced against one side.
Robert listened. He listened hard, sorting out the slap and echo of the water, the natural noises of the subterranean system. It was too easy to imagine the sounds he sought, to turn the creak of the boat’s timbers into the distorted echo of a man’s voice or the slap of the water into the shuffle of boots in the tunnel beyond. The opposite bank gave way to a tunnel, narrow and slope-roofed, stretching upwards into unmitigated darkness. Once in the tunnels, there would be nowhere to hide, no cover from a wildly aimed bullet, save the very cells that might serve as bolt-holes for a waiting adversary.
Frowning, Robert stepped to the very edge of the water. His shadow stepped with him, a black blot stretching back across the far wall. There was something wrong. He only wished he could pinpoint what it was.
Miles waved one large arm to get his attention, jabbing in the direction of the boat, mimicking climbing in.
‘By God, that’s it,’ Robert exclaimed, breaking his own vow of silence. ‘Don’t you see?’
‘See what?’ asked Miles cautiously.
‘It’s the boat,’ Robert said, looking from one man to the other. He was met by confusion on Miles’s part and narrowed eyes on Tommy’s. ‘The boat is on the wrong side of the river.’
‘I should think it’s on the right side,’ offered Miles, scrutinising the offending craft. ‘If it were on the other side, we’d have to swim across.’
‘Exactly,’ said Robert. ‘So how did our man get across?’
‘Maybe he took the other entrance?’ suggested Tommy. ‘He might have come in through the front.’
‘But the pipe was on this side,’ Miles pointed out, looking perturbed. ‘Right by the entrance.’
‘Near the entrance,’ Robert corrected, his lips feeling as though they had been frozen. He forced them to move. ‘Near the entrance. Not at the entrance. What if we were wrong? What if your wife was right?’
‘You mean—’ began Tommy.
The torchlight burnt like hellfire against the cavern walls as Robert gave voice to the nightmare prospect. ‘What if our man with the pipe was never in the caves?’
He didn’t need to say more.
Without a word exchanged between them, the three men made an abrupt about-face, jostling towards the door. If the man with the pipe had never been in the caves, that meant he was above ground. In the church.
With Charlotte.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Lady Charlotte? If you will?’
Remembering the fate of the last man who had climbed that ladder, Charlotte clung tightly with both hands as she very slowly and painfully twisted her torso to look down below. She could see Henrietta pinned in the grasp of a man whose rough wool cap hid his face from Charlotte’s view.
The man who had spoken, the one who had called her by name, obligingly stepped forward, into Charlotte’s line of vision.
He wore a monk’s habit, a rough brown robe of the sort the members of the Hellfire Club had been wearing, but Charlotte could see the tips of boots beneath rather than sandals. He had thrown his hood back, revealing close-cropped brown hair and a face that Charlotte might have considered handsome had its owner not been pointing a pistol at her.
‘Won’t you come down?’ the Frenchman said lightly, as if he were asking her to stand up with him at Almack’s rather than threatening her at gunpoint. ‘I really shouldn’t like to shoot you.’
‘I shouldn’t like to be shot,’ Charlotte agreed, but she continued to cling to the ladder without moving. She wasn’t particularly sure that down was a safe place to be. Unfortunately, up wasn’t an option, either. He could undoubtedly shoot faster than she could climb.
‘Now, Lady Charlotte,’ said the monk, very, very patiently, and Charlotte reluctantly began to shimmy downwards, feeling her way down rung by rung. Henrietta had been wrong; it wasn’t any harder going down than it had been going up, but Charlotte deliberately drew out the process, playing for time. If she dawdled long enough, there was a chance the men might finish in the tunnels and charge up to rescue them. Or they might stay down there, searching for nonexistent villains an
d exchanging witty quips. Charlotte suspected the latter. A more likely avenue of opportunity was Henrietta’s discarded pistol. Where had she left it? Charlotte thought she remembered Henrietta setting it down by the base of the ladder, but her mind had been on other things at the time.
Twisting, shoulder level off the ground, she peered down at the Frenchman as though something had just occurred to her. Which it had. But it also made an excellent opportunity to try to look for the pistol.
Charlotte donned her daftest, vaguest expression – which, as her grandmother was fond of saying, was very daft indeed. ‘How do you know my name?’
The Frenchman was neither impressed nor diverted. ‘That would be telling.’
Charlotte widened her eyes at him in the way that had worked so well on the real Dr Simmons. ‘I suppose it would be futile to ask who you are?’
‘Very.’ The Frenchman gestured with his pistol, but not before Charlotte thought she saw something metallic on the ground by the crumpled form of Wrothan’s fallen guard. Charlotte gave silent thanks to St Lawrence, or whoever it was to whom Medmenham had dedicated the church. The curve of the man’s body shielded the firearm from the Frenchman’s view. ‘Come along, Lady Charlotte, no dawdling.’
‘I’m not very good with ladders,’ said Charlotte disarmingly. ‘I haven’t a very broad acquaintance with them.’
‘All the more reason not to prolong your acquaintance with this one,’ said their captor pleasantly. ‘Peter? Would you care to help Lady Charlotte along?’
It was decidedly unclear just what sort of help he intended. From the way Peter – Charlotte assumed he must be Peter, since he had sauntered forwards at the Frenchman’s call – lifted his pistol, potting pigeons came to mind.
‘No – no!’ Charlotte flailed a foot behind her as she felt for the next rung down. It wasn’t entirely an act. There was nothing like being aimed at to wreak havoc with one’s sense of balance. ‘That’s quite all right. I can manage.’
Moving with more speed than grace, she deliberately floundered her way down the next few rungs. It was mostly deliberate, at any rate. She was feeling more than a little bit wobbly, and her skirt seemed to catch at her calves even more than usual. Just as a pair of hands reached out to lift her off the ladder, Charlotte contrived to fall sideways, bumping into Peter in the process. Peter stumbled gratifyingly, and Charlotte fell heavily to her knees by the side of the ladder. As Peter swayed and swore, Charlotte scooped the pistol up under her skirt, wedging it as best she could in her garter under pretence of floundering on the floor.
One could only flounder for so long; grabbing a hand, Peter yanked her unceremoniously to her feet, all but pulling her arm out of the socket in the process.
‘I’m all right,’ she said breathlessly, making a show of swaying dizzily. Her garter sagged but held, just barely supporting the weight of the metal. Charlotte clamped her knees together, trapping the barrel between her thighs. ‘Really I am.’
‘You are also,’ said the Frenchman drily, ‘blocking the ladder. Jack?’
Peter dragged her backwards while another of the Frenchman’s henchmen made for the ladder, presumably in pursuit of the hidden king. Across the width of the ladder, Charlotte’s eyes met Henrietta’s. She let her eyes slide sideways, towards the ladder. In response, Henrietta lowered both eyelids in a discreet blink. That was one of the joys of over a decade of friendship: There was no need for words to communicate.
They were agreed. It would be much easier to let the Frenchman’s men fetch the king down first and stage their rebellion after, while the Frenchman was preoccupied with the king. At least, Charlotte was fairly sure that that was what Henrietta’s blink meant.
In the meantime, it was best to continue to be as daft as possible. Charlotte fluttered her lashes at the Frenchman, hoping he wouldn’t notice that her knees were pressed together at a very odd angle. ‘Shouldn’t your men be Jacques and Pierre?’ she asked. ‘Rather than Jack and Peter?’
‘I believe in supporting the local economy,’ said the Frenchman blandly. ‘It would be very inadvisable to travel with a foreign retinue. I am sure your brother would agree with me – Lady Henrietta.’
So he knew who Henrietta was, too. Charlotte had the greatest respect for the Frenchman’s intelligence-gathering network. They were obviously immensely thorough.
Henrietta regarded him narrowly, as though staring long and hard enough might provide a clue to his identity. ‘Do you know Richard?’
‘So to speak.’ The Frenchman had his eyes on the ladder, watching as his man climbed, steadily and far more speedily than Charlotte, up towards the painted scene on the ceiling, but Charlotte had no doubt that he was equally attuned to her and Henrietta.
‘What do you want with the king?’ Charlotte asked boldly.
If he was going to kill them, he would do it, anyway, so where was the harm in asking? Charlotte was nearly certain that he had no interest in killing them, unless circumstances somehow made their deaths absolutely imperative.
Robert would probably say that was taking her trusting nature too far, but Charlotte didn’t think it was about being trusting. It was about the Frenchman not wanting to make more of a mess than he had to.
‘I don’t want your king particularly,’ said the Frenchman with disarming frankness. ‘But as you can see, events have forced my hand. I can’t very well leave him here, can I?’
Charlotte felt that that was a rather disingenuous portrayal of the situation. ‘But you drugged him,’ she pointed out. ‘Why, if not for this?’
With a Gallic shrug, the Frenchman dodged the question. ‘The old man was half mad, anyway. He scarcely noticed the difference. All I did was … help him along a bit.’
‘That,’ said Charlotte sternly, or at least as sternly as she could with her arms clamped behind her back, ‘is not an excuse.’
‘Justice with her flaming sword,’ murmured the Frenchman. ‘How charming. If somewhat trite.’
‘I prefer old-fashioned,’ said Charlotte helpfully. ‘It sounds better that way.’
On the very top of the ladder, his minion – Jack, if Charlotte remembered correctly – was beginning to descend with a man-size bundle draped over his back.
‘Well done, Jack,’ the Frenchman called. ‘When you are finished, bring him out to the carriage.’
‘Carriage?’ said Charlotte, as Jack reached the midway point, carefully balancing his royal burden.
‘I fear you will come to know it rather intimately,’ said the Frenchman, and although he spoke matter-of-factly, there was something decidedly ominous in his words. ‘I cannot leave you here.’
‘Can’t you?’ faltered Charlotte.
‘As much as I hate to disoblige a lady …’ The Frenchman held up both hands in a stylised gesture of helplessness. ‘You do pose something of an inconvenience, you realise.’
‘What do you intend to do with us?’ Henrietta asked darkly.
‘Isn’t the usual procedure to drop you in an oubliette pending ravishment?’ He smiled blandly as Henrietta scowled at him. Henrietta had never enjoyed being made fun of. ‘You really must resort to better reading material, Lady Henrietta. I am, I fear, flat out of oubliettes, and I have no desire to be pursued by your large and irate male relations vowing vengeance. I have,’ he added tantalisingly, ‘met them before. No. Once we have gone a sufficient distance from Wycombe, you will be left at a perfectly nice coaching inn to find your own way back to London. I will even pay for a private parlour. We wouldn’t want you mingling with the masses.’
‘Then why take us along at all?’ asked Henrietta grumpily.
‘Because if I leave you here, you will be able to raise the alarm. It’s really quite simple.’ His air of superiority reminded Charlotte of Henrietta’s older brother in one of his lecturing moods; it clearly struck Henrietta the same way. ‘By the time your companions finish searching the grounds for you, we should be well out of the way.’
‘There is a flaw in your reasonin
g somewhere,’ insisted Henrietta.
‘When you find it, do be good enough to let me know. Ah, Jack. Excellent.’ The Frenchman’s man presented the king to his master like a butler with a decanter of claret. The king was unconscious, unshaven, and strapped into a straight waistcoat. There was a distinctly unpleasant odour to him. Whatever other accommodations Wrothan might have made for his stay, he had never contemplated the incompatibility of a chamber pot and a straight waistcoat. The poor king. The degradation of it all made Charlotte’s throat tight.
The Frenchman’s nose twitched. ‘This is going to be a very uncomfortable carriage ride,’ he said resignedly.
‘Couldn’t we change him?’ Charlotte suggested tentatively. ‘We could wrap him in my cloak if there aren’t any other clothes to be had.’
‘Swaddled tenderly as a babe by your own lily white hands? I think not, Lady Charlotte.’
‘It wouldn’t take long,’ Charlotte persisted as the man holding her muscled her over the threshold, out into the stinging night air. ‘And it would make us all far more comfortable.’
‘An excellent attempt, Lady Charlotte. But I refuse to oblige you by loitering here until the cavalry arrives. There will be plenty of time to tend to the king once we are under way.’
‘Carriage rides make Lady Henrietta sick,’ Charlotte blurted out.
Henrietta, who had never been sick in a carriage in her life, promptly blew out her cheeks in an attempt to look bilious. The Frenchman was not convinced.
‘How very unfortunate for her,’ said the Frenchman drily. ‘Shall we?’
‘Perhaps if you let her sit on the box?’ Charlotte pleaded, submitting to being shuffled forwards by her captor. ‘She is seldom as queasy in the open air.’
‘And allow her to grapple with my coachman for the reins?’ The Frenchman was bearing them inexorably away from church and mausoleum, away from the caves where their cavalry still hunted will-o’-the-wisps. At the end of the lane, Charlotte could see a carriage, a blur of unrelieved black. It was going to be a very tight fit with all of them in it, even assuming the Frenchman left his locally hired ruffians behind. ‘Ingenious, but no. I suspect Lady Henrietta suffers from carriage sickness as much as I do.’