1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (34 page)

Chapter 38

Tully had, notably, a dry wit, and it was making Finnegan want to find a bucket of water for him to dampen it a bit. They’d gotten a crew of ruffians from the area—men who’d been paid off from cattle-driving and thought a few more pennies to drink would be a fine thing—and marched them up toward the Mackay house.

Tully had been the first to look back.

“I think we’ve more Scots than we ordered, Chief,” he’d said. “Do we have the money to pay them all?”

Two or three gallons over the head. “God love you and all your little jokes, Tully. If they want pay, it’s coming out of your money. Get a picket out, guns and blades. Stop them down the street.”

Tully had clearly been about to cap his wit with another line, but saw the look on Finnegan’s face. “I’ll, ah, be about it. Our boys or the Scots?”

“Half and half,” Finnegan snapped. “Ours for a steady line, them for the thickening of it.”

“Right.” Tully turned on his heel and began yelling orders. He wasn’t helped by the tendency of the drovers to mill about, cudgels over their shoulders, not troubling to pay attention until someone shoved them. Finnegan’s own troop were nobody’s notion of tidy soldiers, but they could look sharp when it was to the purpose.

The Mackay house was on the outside of a sharp right-hand corner in the street, leaving him with plenty of room to get the rest of the boyos dispersed, and only two avenues to picket. There were back entries on either side of the house, but no way out that didn’t come to the front. Edinburgh’s buildings were tight and close together; very little of the town spared space for such things as alleyways nor closes. The Mackay house shared a mews with their neighbor to the right, allowing horses and carriages in and out, but that and the small passageway to the left that led to the servants’ entrance were all the ways to the rear. The back of the house was against the rear wall of the house behind, which was the residence of one of the city’s doctors, and on higher ground, so there was no convenient escape that way. A daring rescuer might get in by that way, but the time it would take to climb back out meant Finnegan felt safe discounting it. He meant for this to be over within the hour, and he had a couple of lads waiting in the high street, watching for any escape attempt that way. The wall at the back wasn’t quite the barrier that the old king’s wall to the south was, but it’d do.

He looked and saw that Tully was taking good advantage of the narrowing of the street where the old wall had been cut through to let this street down to the Cowgate. There was a crowd building back there, as the mob that had followed from the Grassmarket caught up and began to thicken. Someone was shouting about popery, the usual Protestant blather, but the Protestant religion wasn’t the one that, here and now, had guns and blades ready to hand.

And, fuck his arse for getting into a place where he needed it, grenadoes. He’d put O’Hare in charge of the handful of hired thugs who’d been fool enough to volunteer and been big enough lads to trust to throw straight. A questioning look, and O’Hare nodded. There was a slightly sickly look on the man’s face, which was to the good. A man that was comfortable around bombs was an
amadan
of no small measure. Or mad entirely, like the late Cooley brothers.

Another swift look around and he was sure he had enough space to be able to work. Getting away again looked like it might be a dainty morsel of a problem, but nothing a willingness to break heads wouldn’t cure. The Tolbooth was but a short walk away, and the mob would be at his heels, not in his way. And now, for the look of the thing, he’d to demand surrender. “You and you,” he said, pointing at two conveniently near and burly drovers who’d not yet been tapped for any purpose. “With me. At my shoulders, look ready to fight but not a peep without my order. Understand?”

Two nods. Clearly men who understood the business of intimidation, and doubtless had had a coin or two for standing around being large and menacing in their time. Both had stout blackthorn sticks, tools of either trade they followed.

Finnegan had his own
bata
and knocked on the door. “I have a warrant for the arrest of Oliver Cromwell, who I verily believe to be in this house!” he shouted. It’d surely be shaming if he was wrong about the Mackay servants picking fights to cover when Cromwell arrived and left, but weeks of sending his boys about town had turned up no hint about where the man might be lying low. Extravagant offers of reward had produced nothing.

The door didn’t open, but a window above did. A woman’s head came out. “Open the door, woman!” he shouted up.

He caught maybe one word in three; he’d got something of an ear for the way the Scots spoke, and was fairly sure he’d be told to go black his arse.

“I have grenadoes, if you don’t open up!” he shouted. “Tell that your master. I’ll wait his answer.”

He turned to the two drovers. “About what I thought,” he said, “now let’s step away, she’s the manner o’ aiteann who’ll think of chamber pots.”

He was three paces away when the sound of a splattering turd confirmed his guess. He wasn’t such a fool as to think that was the only one she had, so took a few more steps before turning. “A fuckin’ shroud on ye, woman!” he shouted. “Grenadoes!”

“We’ve a child in here, ye papist de’il!” the woman shrieked, apparently out of crocks of shit to throw.

“Then open the feckin’ door!” Finnegan roared back, feeling his temper rise.

All he got in answer was the window slammed shut.

“Lallans,” one of the drovers growled, adding, in the dialect of Gaelic they had, that the devil’s cat couldn’t shit worse than any of them. At least, that’s what Finnegan thought they said, as close as he could follow it. He heartily agreed with the sentiment though.

“Irish or Erse,” he said, “we’ll have the joy of breaking their heads before morning’s out.”

* * *

“She’s walking properly now, not just holding on to the furniture. Into
everything.
The child,” Julie said, firmly, “is
curious.
”

Alex grinned. “Up-time or down-time meaning?” he asked.

“Both,” Lennox put in, with a grin. “The pair o’ you, breedin’? A wonder the bairn hasnae kilt’ a man yet.”

Julie wasn’t sure whether to laugh along or find something to throw. Alexi was
her
daughter, it was her exclusive right and privilege as a mother to make fun of her. “Give her time,” she said when the two menfolk, father and honorary uncle alike, had stopped hooting with laughter at the lame joke. “And the day she gets her first BB gun, I’m pinning targets on both your britches. Keep up with this malarkey, I’ll pin ’em on the
front.
”

Lennox immediately dropped his best noncom’s deadpan in place. “No’ laughin’, ma’am!” he barked out.

“See you don’t,” Julie said, suppressing the giggles she could feel bubbling up. The pair of them were doing their best stony-faced soldier, the corners of their mouths clearly fighting the oncoming grins.

“So,” she said, once the pressure looked like it was getting the better of them, “Monday.”

“Aye, Monday,” Alex said, “Mister Home has no great worries. A deal o’ talk has been in quiet corners, he tells me, but the gist is that he’s confident that whatsoever judge we get, they’re all determined to stick strictly to the law, which is in our favor.”

Julie smiled. She’d tried to read the papers and pleadings, an honest best effort, but the mangled jumble of Scots and Latin had defeated her. In school, languages had been her weak spot. She’d never had a problem with science and math, got by with English literature and sort of muddled through with history and geography, but there seemed to be a part of her brain that just didn’t want to deal with anything that wasn’t plain English.

On the other hand, she’d found that learning German had been surprisingly easy when she was doing it by talking to folks, so maybe it was just a mental block on the academic side of things.

“I can’t say I understand any of it,” she said, “but I gathered that much. We’ve got everything packed up and ready to go at Mrs. MacPherson’s. We make a big public production of heading down to Leith for the next ship to Hamburg. As long as Finnegan’s distracted, Oliver can head out of town. He figures the Figgate Muir road is the way to go, he’ll be setting off while the rest of us are in court. He has a route planned to take him down as far as Carlisle and he’s going to make plans for the rest of England once he gets the lay of the land there.”

Alex nodded. “Darryl still means to go with him?”

“Yup.” Julie nodded. Somehow Darryl—as Irish-American as they came—had ended up friends with Oliver Cromwell. Months of traveling together would do that, even for personalities as radically different as theirs, and the pair of them had grudges against King Charles you could probably see from space. Feuding was apparently a thing English country squires did just as well as hillbillies; maybe Darryl would learn to be as classy about it as Oliver.

“Haud on,” Andrew said. “Signal.” It was his turn to have the earpiece in today. While down-time workshops could make the things no more than a fraction larger than their up-time equivalents, they weren’t as comfortable as the few that had been brought back in time. Wearing them for any length of time was purely a chore, so they took turns. With the court hearing so close, there was a chance—Julie thought not a big one, especially with the Campbells taking an interest—that Finnegan would—

“Attack at your father’s house,” Lennox said, his soldier-face suddenly becoming the real thing. “We’re directed to return, M’lady Baroness.”

“I’m coming,” Alex said, rising. There wasn’t a hint of emotion on her husband’s face but it was dollars-to-donuts his mind had gone to exactly the same place hers had.
Alexi
.

“Your hearing’s Monday!” Julie snapped. He’d been in here most of the summer and a good chunk of the fall—and now, losing it over less than half a week? Not if she had anything to do with it. And no sooner were words and thought formed than she realized that she couldn’t ask him to remain behind, not with news like that. If she was going to go all mama bear, she had to respect his right to ride to the rescue of Daddy’s Little Princess.

“I’ll return when it’s o’er,” Alex said. “There’ll be a fine, at worst. Home will cluck like the auld cock he is, but there’s no’ a judge drawing breath would see me hang for going now.”

“How are we going to get you out?” Security in this place wasn’t, as far as Julie could tell, worth a damn, but there were guys on the door who’d object. She found herself feeling the weight of the pistol she’d carried. She’d taken to wearing loose vests over her dress to hide the shoulder rig; the fact that it was a great way to accessorize didn’t hurt any, either. She’d even gotten pockets put in for clips and mags and loose shells. She hadn’t seen any imitators, yet, but give it time.

Andrew reached inside his coat for a small cloth bag that chinked. “The guid baron bid me carry a bag o’ shillins, they’ll open any lock in this place. The more so when the laddies on watch mind that the colonel here is to be freed Monday.” He grinned. “It’s a broken man indeed that cannae leave the Tolbooth, m’lady Baroness.”

* * *
 

Baron Mackay was never more glad that the medical products from the Lothlorian apothecary had a calming effect to them. While hearing that his own filth had been hurled into the street by way of insult to the Irishman was apt to bring the schoolboy in him back to smirking life, Meg had managed to make a bad situation worse. Cromwell had planned to send Thomas out to inform Finnegan they took no cognizance of the warrant; any delay to argue the matter would give time for the situation to go out of the man’s control by his own efforts. Time, too, to prepare better defenses.

One of the maids had brought report of the business with the chamber pot, a business that would surely spur the man to be about his business. Cromwell glared icy disapproval at Meg as she reentered the back parlor. Gayle was trying to keep her mirth under control as she listened for any signal from the radio, and the rest of the house was a tumult of noise and banging as every male servant in the place—of age for a fight or not—was heaving furniture into the front and side rooms to form barricades. The furniture in the back parlor was heaped below the window that gave on to the mews, the first to be built and already with two of the stableboys posted as lookouts.

There was even the sound of hammering as the servants’ entrance was nailed shut; the kitchen furniture would be dragged across it. The passage wasn’t wide enough for even the strongest man to have enough room to batter the door down, not with stout timbers nailed over it and furniture behind.

If there was to be an assault, it would come from the front of the house or the side, through the mews. The side was, Cromwell had estimated, the more likely approach. To the front, Finnegan was busy holding back an angry crowd who were the merest provocation from being a riot. Cromwell planned to shoot from the upper floors as soon as the assault began to spark
that
powder-keg. Any assault from that quarter would soon be swept away in a press of angry bodies, and Finnegan would surely know that.

Assaulting from the side would permit a shrinking defense against the mob that would stop at the choked entrance to the mews that would hold the riot at bay until the fight was over.

“Do you know your neighbors to the rear?” Cromwell’s voice was icy, almost eerily calm. Mackay took reassurance in that; what little soldiering he had done had taught him the value of such men.

“Dr. Scott,” he said, after a moment trying to recall the fellow’s name. “Quite the fellow, among physicians, or so my own man tells me. We’re acquainted, little more.”

“When the barricades are done,” Cromwell said, “I mean to put fellows to finding ladders. That wall to the rear is fifteen feet at the least. I fancy it might be less on the uphill side?”

“It is at that. It was rebuilt perhaps twenty years ago, when my own father was still alive. He and Dr. Scott’s father fell out over the matter. As I recall, it came close to lawyers, and closer still to blows. Our respective mothers persuaded the two old fools to see sense.” Mackay smiled at the memory. He and his father had had no warm relationship; they’d exchanged hot words over Alex’s birth that had barely cooled to the merest civility by the time the old man had begun making a show of himself over property boundaries, of all things.