Conflict and Courage (15 page)

“There’s a
Conclave scheduled two days hence,” Gerry replied, “a feast is
planned and the Lords will be drunk, most of the guards too if
previous feasts are anything to go by.”

“Get them here
at moon’s height in two night’s time,” ordered Aglaya, “can you do
this?”

“Yes, I think
so,” answered Gerry. “I’ll be up at Fort in the morning and can
engineer a meeting with Anne then.”

“Get them all
here,” repeated Aglaya, “we take you north very fast.”

“There are more
Lind at the other side of the woods,” added Louis, seeing the doubt
on Gerry’s face at the idea of two Lind carrying them all north,
“they’ll not catch us. Remember, we’ll be mounted, they won’t. You
are an experienced rider and the others will have to manage as best
they can. We’ll tie them on if need be.”

“I think I’ll
be able to stay on all right,” Gerry answered, “and could manage
one of the children pillion with me if required. Young Gavin is
only five and his mother will need all her energies to keep herself
in the saddle. They’ll try and catch us.”

“They can chase
us all they want. They not catch us,” opined a smug Ustinya, “they
be on two feet and we on four paws,” she added, “much better.”

“Do they have
any means of distance communication?” asked Louis.

“I don’t know,”
was Gerry’s reply. “When they took over the Fort they ‘inherited’
most of the surviving equipment. I do know that Camilla intended to
destroy all she could if things got bad but from what I have heard
they were overrun pretty quickly.”

“We must just
hope for the best,” said Louis.

Gerry put his
hand in his pocket and drew out a small piece of much crumpled
durapaper. Louis realised that it was a map. “Camilla gave me this
before I left Fort with the girls. I’ve added a rough map of the
land dispositions here in Murdoch on the back. It’s amazing the
information that can be picked up just by listening. The Lordship
borders are pure guesswork mind and also the areas where I think
the convicts are, mostly along the rivers at the moment. They use
small river skiffs for communicating between them although Pierre
Duchesne’s land,” he pointed it out with his finger, “is, as you
can see, much more isolated.”

Louis looked at
it with interest. He pointed towards the area to the northeast.
“You do seem to know a lot about this area,” he noted.

“The most
extensive annotations are round the Fort and the Lordship of
Duchesne. I’ve spoken to the man who used to be his senior sergeant
quite a few times, a good man. Duchesne’s Lordship is developing
differently to the others. He’s pretty much obliged to keep a
regiment for defensive purposes but the rest of his people are
building farms and beginning to cultivate the forests. He’s keeping
his alterations to Lord Baker’s directives hidden from the other
Lords. To get anywhere in this benighted country you have to be
strong and hard and he doesn’t want to be thought of as a
weakling.”

“Go on.”

“According to
Michael Wallace he treats the women and children he has well. He
has to keep his men happy, don’t get me wrong, he still keeps a
whorehouse but the women are not treated harshly. He seems happy to
entertain them forming permanent relationships with his men. He
certainly is the most popular Lord. Other men not so fortunate
would like to settle there. He’ll have to tread carefully though,
if he goes too far the other Lords might well see him as a threat
and seek to topple him.”

“Politics a bit
murky then?”

Gerry nodded
then thrust the map at Louis. “Too dangerous to keep this on me
now. You take it. I’ll get the three children and Lysbet Quirke
here in two night’s time. Once it is fully dark.”

“Anne
Howard?”

“Impossible.
She’s pregnant by Murdoch and the babe is to be their King. It’s
some sort of agreement with the Larg. I don’t know all the details
but I believe they’ve ceded the country to the heirs of Murdoch’s
blood. She’s too far-gone to travel, brave woman that she is. She
intends to stay at Fort and try and give us time before the escape
is discovered.”

After a short
mental conversation with Aglaya through Ustinya, Louis nodded.

“Right, two
nights from now. You must travel light.”

“Nobody has
much in the line of personal possessions anymore,” was Gerry’s wry
comment as he began to push himself back through the bushes. “Keep
out of sight.”

* * * * *

The Lords of
Murdoch arrived to attend the second Conclave called by Sam Baker.
They began to discuss the coming agenda, sounding one another
out.

“Yes,” Bryan
Brentwood was saying, ”the men are restless and bitter about being
forced to retreat from that settlement of theirs when they were
winning. A few more hours and it would have been ours. They need an
outlet for their pent-up energy.”

“My land is not
full of restless men, whatever yours is like,” retorted Henri
Cocteau. “It is full of men working hard. I have plans to divert
their energy into something more productive than a never-ending war
of attrition with the north. We have to start thinking logically
and begin to set up an infrastructure for our future here. We will,
however, always need regiments to guard us from the Larg, I do not
trust them.”

“My regiment is
ready for anything,” confirmed Alan Smith.

“That is not
the point,” said Cocteau.

The talk moved
on to the more mundane topics of crop growing and the allocation of
the finite resources. It droned on for hours and more than one of
the Lords were becoming increasingly restless when Pierre Duchesne
got to his feet.

“If we can
resume this tomorrow,” he announced, “I think I will pay my
respects to Anne Murdoch. We must keep up appearances in front of
the men. They know the importance of the child she carries and will
think it odd if I do not.”

Indeed, in the
embryo court that Baker was developing, the pregnant Anne had a
visible role to play. With Murdoch dead, the clever Baker had
realised that the nation of Murdoch was in dire need of a
figurehead with which to focus the men’s allegiance and therefore
insisted that Anne was present during all he called ‘state’
occasions.

“Anyone else
joining me?” invited Duchesne. He needed to speak to Anne in
private but he was in no mind to arouse any suspicions that there
was more to this visit than simple courtesy.

As he had
hoped, no one else could be bothered. Sam Baker had provided some
of his best ale for the occasion and the lords were taking full
advantage of his largesse.

“I wish to see
for myself that she is healthy and the pregnancy developing as
planned. Our continuing safety and existence here depends on the
safe delivery of this child and, unlike those of you whose demesnes
are near, I cannot inspect her often.” He spoke of Anne as if she
was a prize heifer.

“Naturally you
must visit,” answered Baker with a laugh, unsuspecting of
Duchesne’s ulterior motive. Pierre Duchesne had taken great pains
to cultivate an outwardly objective interest in Anne’s
wellbeing.

“Then I will do
so now,” replied Duchesne as he took his leave.

It must be
admitted that Pierre Duchesne’s suspicions that something was afoot
were aroused as soon as he entered Anne’s outer room, although she
was sitting composedly enough, her arms round Cherry and Joseph,
telling them a story.

He half-bowed
to her as she raised her head at his entrance. He could hear noises
of someone moving around in the inner chamber and raised an
enquiring eyebrow.

“Lysbet
Quirke,” Anne said by way of explanation. “She is sorting out some
clothes.” She rose awkwardly to her feet.

“Why don’t you
two go and help Lysbet and Gavin?” she said to Cherry. “I’ll come
join you in a minute.”

As her two
children happily trotted towards the connecting door, Pierre looked
hard at Anne. She looked flushed, bright-eyed and something else –
if he thought about it, nervous, yes that was it. What had happened
to make the normally unflappable woman like this?

“What’s wrong?”
he asked with concern, “are you ill?”

Anne began to
talk in a low voice. “I got your message when your sergeant last
visited. Did you mean what you said about helping us?”

Duchesne
nodded.

“You know Sam
Baker is planning to relocate the children?”

“I did try and
argue him out of it,” he answered, “but the population crisis is
very real and he and the other Lords were having none of it.”

“I have to get
Cherry and Joseph away,” whispered Anne, “you remember Gerry?”

“Michael
Wallace has been in touch with him but not recently. Has he got a
plan?”

“He’s coming
for them tomorrow night,” she said with a catch in her voice.
“Today and tomorrow are probably the last hours I will ever spend
with my children. It’s breaking my heart, but I must do it. Peter
would expect it of me.”

“Peter?”

“My husband. He
was Captain of the
Electra
.”

“I had
forgotten that.” Duchesne looked uncomfortable at the reminder then
pulled himself together. “How can I help?”

Anne looked at
him. “You mean this? You’ll be acting against your friends.”

“They’re no
friends of mine,” answered Pierre. “I was one of them once, I
admit, but the war sickened me right down to my bones and the Larg,
how they can ally with such creatures I don’t know.”

“Gerry seems
confident that he can get them away. I think friends have arrived
from the north to help but he didn’t say, probably thinks it safer
that I don’t know.”

Pierre Duchesne
assumed the Lind were involved in some way, “your problem is how to
get them out of Fort itself then?”

“Lysbet and I
thought that, perhaps during the feast that’s planned for tomorrow
night, we could get them out past the guards, but we’re at our
wits’ end as to how.”

“You need a
diversion of some kind,” said Pierre. “Leave that to me.”

Pierre Duchesne
thought long and hard about how he could help and next morning he
sat in Anne’s apartments making polite conversation. Lord Cocteau
and his wife Carla had decided to visit Anne on hearing from
Duchesne that she was feeling unwell. Pierre had tagged along,
hoping to slip two messages into her hands, knowing full well that
Anne’s illness was a subterfuge; it was not in the plan for Anne to
attend the feast.

Anne looked
tense and worried, as well she might Pierre thought as he let
Carla’s voice drone over him.

During the
goodbyes as Anne pled for a need to rest, Pierre managed to slip
the two messages into her fumbling hand as he moved past her on his
way to the door.

The coast
clear, Anne sped into the inner chamber and read the smallest.
“Diversion ready for tonight,” she read to Lysbet, “it doesn’t have
a signature.”

“What’s the
other one?” asked Lysbet.

“It’s sealed
and addressed to ‘The Rulers of the North’.” She looked at her
friend. “It seems that Lord Duchesne’s redemption is more complete
that we thought. I think he wants to open up a dialogue with them.”
Anne looked at it for a moment, “its very existence marks him
guilty as sin if I chose to tell Lord Baker. It would be his death
sentence if this were to fall into unfriendly hands. I do believe
that it’s only at this precise moment that I actually trust
him.”

Lysbet looked
at the tightly folded paper as if it might bite her.

“I like him,”
Anne added, “you take it with you.” She thrust the paper at Lysbet,
“hide it well.”

But Lysbet was
looking at Anne in horror. “You only
now
trust him and you
have been telling him all about tonight’s escape!”

Anne shrugged,
“beggars can’t be choosers.”

“I’ll guard it
with my life,” said Lysbet, putting it in a small pocket attached
to the front of her skirt. “I’ll eat it if I have to.”

Anne’s mouth
drooped. The farewell hour was close.

Understanding
what Anne was going through, Lysbet acted, “I’ll go and get the
children so that you can spend time with them. When are you going
to tell them?”

“Not until I
must,” she answered. “I want these last few hours to be filled with
fun, not tears. Also, the guards might suspect. Are the packs
ready?”

Lysbet nodded.
“Will you attend the feast?”

“No, old Dr
Arthur had given me some pills. When they hit my system the
resulting bout of sickness will cause even Sam Baker to excuse
me.”

She smiled
impishly at her friend. “If I plan it carefully I might be able to
be sick right in front of him. Wouldn’t that be a picture?”

“It would be
better if you were sick all over him but I suppose that’s too much
to ask for.”

“I can try,”
answered Anne with a brightness she did not feel.

* * * * *

When Gerry
arrived outside Anne’s dimly lit apartments late that evening, the
feast was well underway. Sounds of drunken shouting and raucous
laughter could be heard from the main hall. To his surprise, the
guard who usually stood outside the door of Anne’s rooms was
nowhere to be seen. He did not learn until later that Michael
Wallace, Pierre Duchesne’s stalwart sergeant had arranged his
disappearance and the man was lying, in what appeared to be a
drunken stupor, in a dark alley some two buildings away with a
large bruise on his forehead.

Gerry looked
around the courtyard. It was deserted. He knocked softly at the
door. A nervous looking Lysbet opened it immediately and he sidled
inside. The outer room was in darkness.

“We’re in the
bedchamber,” she whispered, lighting a small candle, “we had to
drug Joseph, he made such a fuss, threatening to report us and
shouting and yelling. Anne was so upset.”