Brass and Bone (9 page)

“She is a healer,
padrone
! A healer! Proof of her power was witnessed only a few minutes before.”

“Explain,” he rapped.

The two men kept interrupting each other as they told what they had seen in the cell.

I waited until they had finished before I spoke. “Monsieur, if you are in need of a healer, I will offer my services to you. But only if you will ensure our release.”

Their leader stood and moved around the table, motioning for his men to back away from me as he approached. He circled me once before stopping just before me. “A bargain, then?” He laughed, raising the gun from his hip. It was different than the ones carried by his other man. This one was bronze, with crystals inset in the metal.

Given any other circumstance, I would have admired it. Now, as he raised it and pressed it against my heart, I refused to acknowledge it.

“You have no say in the matters here, madame. Nor shall you attempt to negotiate with the likes of men. You will remain here with us. My decision is final.”

“Are you mad? I will do no such thing.”

“Perhaps you believe this now,
mia bellezza.
But you will come to accept your new fate in time.”

I pulled myself up to my full height, glaring at him. “I am not afraid of you. And you cannot keep us here against our will. Now, as I was saying, I will be more than happy to assist your men, but we will not be subject to these abuses.”

The bandit raised the gun, firing it once into the ceiling. I was so startled by the closeness of it that he received a brief cry from me that I cried out. He then grabbed my wrists and restrained them with a chain that had hung from his belt.

The horrible man lifted me up and threw me into the corner of the room. “She is too useful. Too valuable to sell for gold. We shall keep her. And my lovely one,” the bandit leaned in so close that I could smell his stinking garlic breath, “you will fear us. You will be very much afraid.”

After the surly beasts had dragged Cynara away, I struggled against my chains for a moment, mad with fear for what those ruffians might do to her. Then, with more than a little difficulty, I managed to calm myself. After all, had I not spent many years with Lady Abigail Moran and her redoubtable grandpapa? If I had learned no useful skills at all in that time, I had only myself to blame.

I dropped back into the moldy hay as if weakened and near unconscious—not, I must admit, so very far from incorrect. I was indeed weak, but my fellow prisoner’s claim that Cynara had healed my broken bones was balderdash. Of that I was more than positive. Of course, if the gentleman thought the little minx had these amazing powers, who was I to disabuse him of the notion?

I took stock of my accoutrements. The fools had taken my pocket watch, my rings, my small knife and the little derringer I carried in my boot, but they had left me clothed entirely. This was done, no doubt, because removing the clothing of an unconscious man is extremely difficult. Believe me; I know this quite well. Since my clothing alone would probably fetch as much as most folks’ jewelry, they likely did not want to damage it.

I kept a close eye—or as close as one could under circumstances that included very little light and a most unpleasant odor—on the gentleman across the way while I felt surreptitiously inside the lining of my waistcoat pocket. With supreme care, I withdrew, under the cover of a cough, my set of lock picks. Made to my specifications, don’t you know, by one of the finest craftsmen in England and thus, of course, the world.

But what to do about my cellmate once I was free? For I could not risk him calling out to our captors, and naturally I could not trust the bounder. Even after I managed to remove the manacles holding me to the wall—and a most dirty and disgusting wall it was—I still had to pick the lock on the door.

“I say, old chap,” I called out in as pleasant a voice as I could manage. “You wouldn’t happen to have a light, would you? They’ve left me with a pair of quite excellent cigars, don’t you know, but no possible way to smoke them. A hideous form of torture, do you not agree?”

Silence for a moment from across the cell. While it lasted, I busied myself with picking the lock on the manacles and removing them. Carefully, I do assure you!

Then I heard chains rattling. I used the opportunity to tuck my loose manacles into one hand.

“Cigars?” The voice sounded greedy, and I rejoiced at my luck.

“Yes, indeed, old boy. Havana, don’t you know. If only I had a lucifer!”

I heard some reassuring clanks and rattles from across the way. The only light crept through the bars of a window, high in the wall and about the size of a lady’s handkerchief. It was enough, however, for me to make out movement toward me from the opposite corner.

At last, a dirty hand reached out holding, wonder of wonders, a matchbox.

I slid forward, reaching out with one hand. I could not quite touch it. “Can you come a bit further, old man?”

He struggled forward to the very extent of his chains.

What could one do? Naturally, I took the opportunity he offered.

I dropped the chain I’d had doubled up in one hand so I could now reach him quite easily. My other hand held one of the manacles that had lately resided about my wrists. I brought it down hard on the back of the poor fellow’s matted, dirty head.

He collapsed in utter silence, much like a deflated airbag. One must know how to use a cosh scientifically and, in my varied experience, I’ve been called upon to do so more than once.

It took me less than a minute to unlock the cell door. Before I left, I turned back and dropped my last cigars—not without some regret—into my former cellmate’s hand. It seemed the least I could do as payment for his assistance.

Then I relocked the cell door. From the other side, of course.

It had sounded as if the brutes had taken Cynara to the left, so that was the way I went. I considered for a moment escaping and bringing back help—after all, I
was
outnumbered—but decided it was definitely not the thing, not the thing at all, not British behavior. I tiptoed with all caution down the dark hallway, clutching the useful manacles in one hand so they would not make any identifying clink.

At the end of the hallway I ran into a wall. Literally. For a moment I thought I had made a mistake, but was of course mistaken. The hallway simply ended in a T.

“Which way, which way?” I whispered.

“I believe right would be best, don’t you?” asked a voice I know better than my own.

“Abi—”

A hand covered my mouth, stifling my shout of joy.

“Quietly, dear boy,” Abigail whispered. “We’ve taken care of the guard at the gate, but we’re not quite sure how many others there are. No need to announce ourselves until we’re quite ready.”

She took her hand away from my mouth and took my hand.

“How did you know…how could you have found…”

I babbled on a bit—quietly, of course—until Abigail whispered, succinctly, “Ransom note. With directions to this place, the fools.” She shook her head. “What my darling grandpapa would say about their slackness, I shudder to think. Now, shall we go?”

I let her lead me down a short hallway to a door hanging ajar on one hinge. We slipped through it to find ourselves in a stone-floored passageway, which seemed, to my eyes, flooded with light, though I dare say it was dim enough.

There stood Monsieur d’Estes and our dear old Rupert. D’Estes had a pistol and Rupert was armed, as always, to the teeth: a pair of pistols, a knife in his belt and one in his boot and the Lord knows—or so I assume—what else.

“The rest of the robber gentlemen seem to all be clustered in that small room at the top of the stairs, m’lady,” said Rupert in a low voice. “I can’t find any trace of others in this broken-down old fort, so it’s just those five and the mam’selle, all conveniently in one place.”

My heart froze within me at the thought of Cynara in the hands of five villains. “We must rescue her at once!” I cried with manly English courage.

The Frenchie, on the other hand, felt caution the better choice. “We are outnumbered,” he whined—or would have whined, I feel sure, if he’d thought of it

“Good gad, there are four of us,” snapped Abigail. “You may wait at the gate if you’re afraid, d’Estes. We’ll be down with Mademoiselle Cynara shortly.” She turned to Rupert. “Where is this room, Rupert?”

“This way, m’lady.”

We crept up a set of broken stairs, first Rupert, then Abigail and me side by side and then, following at a safe distance, the Frenchie. The stairs opened up to a sort of landing, with three doors, two of them open and one shut. Abigail flitted to peek into both open doors and nodded reassuringly.

“Shall we?” she asked.

We three gathered outside the closed door. As I wondered if we were going to break it down I spared a thought to my sore shoulders.

But such a brutal course would not, naturally, suit Abigail’s delicate sensibilities. With her pistol in one hand, she knocked on the door and, without waiting for a reply, opened it at once. “I say, may I come in?”

And the dear girl stepped inside. An instant later I heard two cracks of her pistol and a shout of pain.

The next few moments were utter confusion. I rushed forward, almost getting stuck in the doorway as Rupert tried to do the same. Once inside we saw Abigail pointing a pistol at a cowering man with a bleeding arm. Another man lay beside him; this one would never cower again or do much of anything else, save rot.

Rupert bellowed like a bull and rushed a man who held a knife. An instant later the man still had a knife, but it was embedded in his own belly, and he was bleating like a goat. Another ruffian sprang forward, conveniently right into Rupert’s fist.

Really, it seemed to me these fellows were singularly unsuited for their avowed profession.

But there was still one man unaccounted for, and he held Cynara before him as a shield. He had an oddly shaped brass pistol pressed tight against her chin.

My heart went cold. Then my face flushed as I remembered our kiss; honestly, memory can be so inopportune, can it not?

“Cynara!” I cried out. “Here, you bounder, release the lady this instant.”

“It’s the best thing to do, old boy,” said Abigail. “Let her go, and we’ll allow you to live. Perhaps.”

No sooner had the last word left her lips than the man whipped his gun away from Cynara’s lovely throat and pointed it toward Abigail. I leaped for her as what sounded like an explosion echoed through the room.

Something punched me, hard, in the chest. I looked down, noted idly how dirty my shirt front was, and how the rapidly growing spot of blood did little to improve its appearance.

From feeling almost nothing to a burning pain, then darkness…

***

“Simon? Simon! Wake up, damn you! Can you hear me?”

I knew that voice, but at that precise moment I could not have put a name to it. I was not even quite sure this Simon fellow was me, but I had a strong suspicion he was.

“Simon, Simon, damn you! Will you wake up?”

There was an earthquake. I remembered an earthquake, surely? But it had been some time ago. Was it happening again? I felt the earth shake around me and such fear, such terror filled me I sat up. I would run; that was the ticket. Run to some safe place.

I opened my eyes. I had not, as it appeared, sat up at all. I was, instead, nestled comfortably in Abigail’s arms, and I was concerned to see she was all over blood. It quite splattered her face, and the front of her white shirtwaist was dark with it.

I did sit up this time, and the fear I’d felt a moment before when I thought there was an earthquake was now forgotten, submerged in a greater and far more intense, more agonizing horror. “Abigail, are you hurt?” I reached out to touch her face, trace the track of a tear down her cheek.

A tear?

“What in hell is the matter?” I asked. For whoever had made Abigail cry—Abigail!—was going to meet his Maker in as short a time as I could manage. “Where are you hurt, damn it? What can I do?”

Abigail laughed, a shaky sound that did little to reassure me, and pulled me to her in a hug that hurt like hell. Still, it
was
Abigail and she
was
hugging me; a bit of agony was little enough to endure for such delight. I gritted my teeth and tried to make out her words over the torment.

“Simon, my dearest boy, I…we thought we’d lost you. You were shot, you silly fool, when you jumped in front of me. You took the bullet meant for me, and I will never, never forgive you, damn your eyes!”

Abigail’s grandpapa’s favorite curse. I felt some assurance now that perhaps Abigail wasn’t hurt at all, but I had to ask.

“Are you…all right?” I cursed how weak and frail I sounded. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Of course I’m all right, you fleawit!” Abigail still had me in a death grip. I could barely make out her words, speaking them as she did almost directly into my left ear. “If you’ll recall, I just described the scene: man shoots at Abigail, triple-damned fool Simon jumps in front, takes bullet. There, is that simple enough for one of even your limited intelligence to take in?”

Ah, she was becoming insulting. I knew she’d turn me loose soon so I settled down to enjoy being in her arms while I could. I even, I fear, groaned a little. Just to make the pleasure last, don’t you know?

“I remember now,” I said. Abigail’s hair had come loose, as it always did in moments of excitement, and I buried my head deeper into it, inhaling her scent. “Cynara and I were taken for ransom by some bandits. And you all came to rescue us. Is anyone else hurt?”

Abigail said not a word, just hugged me tighter to her. Really, this was most enjoyable, but I was beginning to worry and wonder a little. Had Rupert been wounded? Not the dear old fellow, surely? Perhaps Monsieur d’Estes was shot. No great loss there, of course.

Not…not Cynara?

I struggled away from Abigail—not without a great deal of regret, I assure you—and managed to turn around.

We were still, I could see, in the tiny tower room where the bandits had been holding Cynara. D’Estes was at the small table with Rupert, discussing the loot spread across it, I did not doubt. In fact, at the very instant I caught sight of them, d’Estes stuck a handful of jewels and an emerald necklace that looked most familiar into his pocket. He was quite circumspect, and I do not think anyone else noticed.

Dear Rupert was not inclined to be so careful. He was sorting things into a cloth bag, leaving the less desirable while taking things he no doubt thought we’d be able to fence.

There were five men in the far corner, all lying higgledy-piggledy, arms draped over legs and clothing disheveled. Of course, since they were all most likely dead, I did not think this would bother them.

Mademoiselle Cynara sat on a stool quite near me, looking pale and weak and really most ravishingly beautiful. She smiled. “I am glad to see you awake, Si—Monsieur Thorne.”

“Simon, you will not believe it, I vow!” Abigail broke in as she helped me to my feet.

I was still damnably shaky and wished for nothing so much as endless cups of strong tea, followed by a bottle of brandy, neat. “Believe what? It’s been quite an eventful time, starting with the earthquake and the bandits and…” I blushed as I remembered the kiss Cynara and I had shared, “…and so much more. What could possibly be more unbelievable?”

Abigail held me firmly by one arm, and I was more than glad of her assistance. “Why, Simon, have you forgotten what I just told you already? Really, your memory is most unreliable! You were shot. Shot. Bullet. Hole in your chest. Wherever do you think all this blood came from—a turnip?”

I looked down at my shirt. A dreadful ruin of a thing, quite the most unappetizing dark brown color. “Ah,” I said cleverly. “But are you quite sure? For I don’t seem to be bleeding now,” I examined my chest gingerly, “and I can’t find a hole at all.”

“That’s the most amazing thing, Simon!” Abigail pulled my shirt open and prodded me with one finger.

My first impulse was to shout out in agony, but I managed to restrain myself, though I fear I winced. Then I realized that, while sore and really rather painful, my chest felt no worse than after one of my occasional boxing bouts with Rupert.