1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (36 page)

Chapter 40

It was only the direst of self-control that kept Ducos from hopping from foot to foot like an excited little boy—that, and the sobering weight of the pistol inside his coat that anchored him down. For all that the Party was operating without benefit of sufficient numbers or even a particularly well-settled plan, things were working out well. The crowd was swelling and thickening nicely, now the Irishman had set men to picket the street. Nobody wanted to be the first to try conclusions with armed men.

There was murmuring and muttering.
Popery. The king’s men.
The earl of Cork was being mentioned—an Irishman himself, it was assumed, and Ducos wasn’t about to correct anybody on that point. As far was the crowd was concerned, Irish meant Catholic as surely as sunrise meant east. And the Irish and the highland Erse were of a breed for popery, to borrow a phrase that he’d heard three times already this morning. One of the Gordon brothers was being busy with that one, if Ducos was any judge. English had never been his strongest language, and he had not yet even half a year’s familiarity with the Scots dialect, but he could already tell that their turn of phrase was unique. Almost, in fact, poetic.

Jamie Fraser shouldered his way through to the spot Ducos had found where the uneven fronts of two houses had made a sort of alcove, perfect for lurking. “He’s knocked a’ the door, Michel,” he said, “and had a pot o’ pish for his trouble.”

Ducos snorted. “The baron himself?”
There
was a sight that would have amused the schoolboys in the crowd, a baron in all his dignity, hurling down a chamber pot.

“No, more’s the pity. Some wee wifie as does for him.” Fraser grinned back. “No’ that it makes any great odds to a man drenched wi’ pish. Time to start?”

“It is,” Ducos said, “find your place. I shall fire first.”

“I ken the plan, as do the other men o’ the Party,” Fraser chided him, and peeled away into the crowd.

Ducos began to peer over the heads of the people in front of him for a way through. There was a natural tendency for people at the sides of the street to find things to stand or perch on for a better view, and while the crowd was not yet so thick as to make movement impossible, sneaking up the sides was definitely blocked. If nothing else, there were boys using window-sills and doorsteps to get a vantage, most of them taking advantage of the crowd to shout rude words at the men blocking the street.

And not just the naughty boys; there was plenty of barracking, and the men lined across the street—mostly drovers in their plaids, but with buffcoated soldiers here and there among them—were wooden-faced with self-control. And, doubtless, not a little fear. If they were rushed, they would go down hard under a rain of fists and boots, however many they could drop with wheel-lock and sword and cudgel. Ducos had seen such when crowds rioted; the victims were seldom beaten all the way to death, but suffered long in the dying over the following days. Those that died were the lucky ones. The ones that lived, lived crippled. It would be a rare man among the men to the front of the crowd that would not know that. They would not hesitate to shoot, to strike hard, to kill. They would have bare seconds to break the crowd, should it surge, or they would surely die.

He began to work his way forward, putting the morbid thoughts out of his mind. The sides of the street were stone-paved, at least, and the step between that and the packed gravel of the street naturally left a gap in the crowd. It was the work of a few minutes to get to the second or third rank facing the line of troops, and Ducos was glad to see that the stub of an old city wall protruded into the street and left a recess that provided good cover.

Not immediately, though.
The smoke of the shot he was about to fire could not come from cover that might be investigated. It had to come from the press and now-uncomfortable jostle of the crowd. He unbuttoned his coat and worked his right arm out of the sleeve, holding his coat shut with his left. The pistol came to his hand, a reassuring weight he could now hold concealed by his right thigh.

A moment on tiptoes—one of the Frasers was a few feet to his right, another he caught a glimpse of from a little farther on. All, as he had instructed, at least two bodies back from the front. Still a position of some risk, if and when the men to their front returned fire, but they had at least a chance.

The roar of the crowd was growing louder: whistles, hoots, catcalls and bellowed insults coming thick and fast as the thickening press of bodies gave the constituent ruffians heart to hurl more abuse. It was still possible to pick out what might be going on a few yards up the street, just around the corner, though, and the shapes of men gathering against the front of the house ready to assault the narrow mews to the right were visible.

It was when he saw them move that Ducos knew that the Irishman was committed to his attack. He let his coat fall free, canted the pistol barrel forward to point between the legs of the men in front of him, and fired.

The crowd bucked and heaved around him as the pistol discharged, someone screamed, and there was a mist of blood in the air. A man in front of him began to buckle, as a pistol-ball to the leg will do to a man. More shots—men of the Party adding to the havoc—and the screams were overtaken by roars of rage.

Ducos knew what
had
to come next, and stooped as though to see to the wounded man who was toppling to the front of him.
Into thy hands,
he silently prayed, as more shots came, at least one some bizarre roaring thing that might be one of the new guns that the Americans made. The falling man collapsed outright as his head burst entirely, and Ducos felt the side of his face sting and burn as fragments of the man’s skull flew apart.
Surely
one of the new guns.

Playing the part of a frightened victim to a nicety, he dived to his left and found sanctuary in the lee of the castle wall, watching the crowd recoil back from the musketry to their front.

From here, either in panicked flight or murderous assault, what the crowd would do was known only to the wisdom of God.

* * *

Even through the mellow cheeriness of the medicine he’d taken, Baron Mackay could feel the tension. Every face in the room—the women servants who had not fit in the kitchen, Meg, and Mrs. Cromwell crouched in the corner listening intently to her radio—was creased with tension.

From outdoors, the sound of men running back and forth, doubtless readying an assault.

Behind that, the roar of a crowd turning ugly. Only little Alexi, sitting in her grandfather’s lap, seemed oblivious to it all, alternating playing with the lace on his cuffs and the ends of his moustaches. Meg was hovering nervously, clearly anxious to be on her way with the child.

“Baron?” Mrs. Mason looked up. “They’re nearly ready at the back wall. They say to send the girls out, youngest first.”

Mackay nodded an acknowledgment. “That honor’s yours, Alexi,” he said, holding the child up for Meg to take. As he lifted his granddaughter, he called across: “Have them run one at a time, best they be as quick as may be without the shelter of the house.”

Gayle nodded and rose to her feet to organize that, repeating the instruction into the radio as she did.

The movement seemed to tell the wee bairn to take note of the trouble, or at least the loss of the security of grandpa’s lap made her mind it. She grabbed hold of his sleeve and protested. “’An-pa!” she shouted, and the indignation would have been, another time, comical.

“No, Alexi, go awa’ w’ Meg,” he said, softly and with as much soothing as he could put in his voice.

“Aye, wi’ y’ auld Meg,” Meg added, taking her cue from the baron to soothe the child.

Again, the bewilderment and indignation would have been funny to behold, were it not such a terrible business they were about.

“I’ll get the girls moving,” Mrs. Cromwell called out from the kitchen door. “Come through with Alexi quick as you can, Meg.” With that she was gone.

“Awa’ wi you, child,” the baron said again. Meg had taken hold of the little girl, and he had a hand free to disengage the fistfuls of sleeve she was holding on to.

From outside, the sound of gunshots. Meg jerked and cringed away with Alexi in her arms, and that was enough to set the child off. She was wailing for her ’an-pa and kicking her feet. Meg would have bruises, sure enough.

“Aw, hush y’greetin,” Meg said, hoisting the child up on to a hip and hugging her tight. “I’ll be awa’, God mind ye, Baron.”

“Aye,” Mackay answered. “Urge the girls on, and mind ye go quick. Mister Cromwell thinks they’ll try to force entry by the stables, and do they burst the garden door, well. Mind ye go quick.”

The crowd had started to roar all the louder, and there were more shots. Some were sounding from inside the house, now. Cromwell had proposed not to fire unless fired upon, which meant it had begun. Nothing through the side of the house, here, though. The shooting must be at the front, to keep the defenders from sallying. That or one of Mackay’s own servants had taken it on himself—aye, there was the sound of Cromwell’s voice bidding someone not shoot.
Someone
would be frantically reloading with words of stern admonishment in his ears.

The business in the street with the crowd was surely turning ugly, too, and he allowed himself to hope that Finnegan’s plan to assault the house would come to nothing even before Campbell’s men could arrive. No man could be fool enough to think he could carry an assault with a baying mob at his heels.

That
hope was dashed with the sound of a modern firearm from upstairs. Mr. Cromwell had clearly decided it was time to shoot back in his own person.

“Will ye move along in there,” Meg’s voice came from the kitchen door, and Mackay didn’t catch the response. From the sounds of it they were having trouble getting everyone through. One at a time across the open garden, if there were bullets flying about, and some of them would be balking.

Mackay offered a silent prayer that the girls’ nerves be strengthened. That was his
granddaughter
they were holding up.

Both of the boys at the barricade under the window were peering tensely through gaps. “They mean to come in!” one of them yelled, one of the younger lads from the stables as Mackay thought it.

“They’ll no manage,” the other said. “We’ve cudgels enow for this windae,” and sure enough, the lad had a stout billet. There was enough furniture piled up that a man trying to climb over could be held up and knocked back with a stout blow from an active youngster.

Where are those Campbells?
he wondered. It had surely been half an hour since he sent a lad running, and that before Finnegan had made his way fully up from the Grassmarket.

It could surely not be long, surely not. As if to answer the hope, the men outside showed precisely how they meant to come in.

“Grenadoes!” one of the boys yelled, looking back with fear-widened eyes to where Mackay sat.

More cracks of modern fire, and a yell from outside gave hope that one of the scum was off to his proper reward.

And then a shatter of glass and a streak of smoke from a burning fuse, and the middle of the room saw an iron sphere land, bounce, hit the hearth-stone, bounce back and spin to a stop with but an inch of fuse.

Meg and Alexi were still in the doorway to the kitchen.

Those two puir wee laddies were looking at the thing, their eyes wide and shining.

Aw, no. No’ the bairns.

Mackay couldn’t say where the strength of arm came from to hurl himself out of the chair, nor the grace that let him fall on the infernal device. There was a terrible, terrible moment. He
knew
what he’d done,
knew
he’d put his broken body to smother the burst of the grenade, but there was a terrible agonizing torture of hope that he’d smothered that last fraction of the fuse—

He had no notion of how long the terrible thump in his gut scrambled his wits for. Somehow he was on his back again, no breath coming but the merest gasps, the sight of his eyes filled with the cracks and crazing of a tiny patch of ceiling.

He saw his son’s face rush in to the diminishing circle of his sight, felt a strong hand lift up his head.

“Oh, Father,” the lad said. He dared not look at the length of him sprawled on the floor. It was starting to
hurt
.

“Aye, son,” he said, “my son,” and went to sleep once more.

* * *

Alex Mackay, baron-by-courtesy of Bornholm, closed his father’s eyes. The rest of the man was a ruin.
More
a ruin. His clothes below the waist mostly blasted away, the terrible wasting of his legs—they would waste no more—revealed. Small wonder he’d kept them hid under rugs and blankets. The middle of him was all—gone. The room a shambles with his guts. A few places where shards of the bomb he’d smothered got out. One had gone clear through the kitchen door, there were hurts among the girls in there.
They
had rushed out so soon as they’d recovered their wits, cringing from the men coming the other way.

Darryl had peeled off to help the defense in the stables. Alex had meant to go with him, but then the explosion had sounded. And he had come in to find the life’s blood of his natural father splashed about like—like. No, rhetoric was a mere beggar here, and would not be admitted. His natural father’s blood had been spilt under his own roof. By an infernal device that he’d given his life to smother, lest Alexi perish. There would be a
reckoning
.

“He threw himself on it,” someone said, one of Thomas’s boys from the stable. There was wonder in the lad’s voice. “We’d surely be deid, had he no’.” The tone was not wondering, but worshipful, for all it had the loudness of one recently deafened by a great report.

Hamilton and Lennox had taken over from the two lads when they’d burst into the room. By some miracle the grenado had not struck either boy with a fragment, though both had nosebleeds, and they’d risen as wee heroes to guard the window. Men had thundered down the stairs to join them repelling the assault, to drive back the party seeking to enter the front rooms of the house, likewise wrecked with grenadoes. They’d held, and when the survivors of the first defenders recovered their wits, drove back the enemy. The fools hadn’t thought to drop their bombs in
front
of the barricades, to clear them.