Deadly Peril (14 page)

“I don’t care about
him
or his Frisians!” the Margrave spat out with annoyance. “I’ll have them wiped off the map come spring. Now I must prepare for the arrival of our guest. My sister will want to know…”

When the Margrave let the sentence hang and the silence stretched, the Baron felt compelled to move time on.

“Highness, with your permission, the prisoner must be shaved, it is the law, and perhaps he should be bathed and put into a new suit of clothes as befits his rank.”

“By all means clean him up,” the Margrave replied with a dismissive wave. “But leave the beard—for now. It will afford the Princess some amusement—”

“The Princess?” The Baron was appalled. He spoke without thinking. “Surely Your Highness cannot mean to subject
Her Highness
to such barbarism?”

The Margrave lifted his chin. “Herr Baron. Do I know my sister better than you?”

“Yes, Highness,” Baron Haderslev replied meekly. “Forgive me. Of course. I was only thinking of her—”

“Thinking of her?” the Margrave snapped. “Why were you thinking of her? You should not be thinking of my sister at all!”

The Baron shrugged and tried to appease his master. “I was not thinking of her in that way or any way. It was a figure of speech, Highness. I only meant—”

“Get out! Go! Leave us!” the Margrave screeched, not at the Baron, but at his entourage, who were restless and tittering amongst themselves, some were even daring to point a finger at the bearded prisoner who remained on his knees with his gaze fixed to the floor. “Go away! Now! Not you, Herr Baron,” he added when Haderslev made motions to follow the courtiers, who were now scrambling to all try to fit through the doorway at once. “What is so amusing, eh?” he demanded of his Captain of the Guard.

“Nothing at all, Highness,” Westover answered soberly, the antics of the Margrave’s group of painted and patched friends wiping the smile from his face.

“Is he dangerous?” the Margrave asked, waving his handkerchief in Sir Cosmo’s direction, as if he just remembered the prisoner was still in the room. “Will he go—
wild
?”

Westover thought it odd a general who had commanded an army in the field would ask such a question, particularly as the prisoner remained passive with head bowed, but he did not hesitate to answer. “I do not believe so, Highness.”

“Then you leave, too. Haderslev and those two standing over there may remain.”

Captain Westover hesitated, a swift look at the Baron to see if he also thought this request an odd one. After all, as captain of the Margrave’s personal bodyguard, it behooved him to remain with his sovereign lord and master at all times. But when Haderslev did not make eye contact or object to the request, he did as he was told. With a curt bow he left the room. But he did not go very far. He waited and listened on the other side of the door.

“So, Englishman,” Margrave Ernst said, addressing Sir Cosmo in perfect English. “Tell me everything you know about your good friend Alec Halsey.”

N
INE

EMDEN, MIDANICH

A
LEC
STOOD
on the deck of the schooner
The Caroline
, chinchilla-lined wool cloak buttoned up to his chin and felt tricorne pulled low on his black curls. A fine mist of water droplets—a mixture of drizzle from the heavens and sea spray which slapped hard up against the hull—covered him from hat to polished jockey boots. But he was oblivious to the weather. His gaze was on the town emerging out of the fog as the captain skillfully maneuvered the two-masted sailing ship to dock in Emden’s harbor.

The schooner was being escorted off the starboard bow by a naval sloop of French origin, commandeered by Midanich as a spoil of the most recent conflict. Two merchant frigates remained out in the deeper waters of the estuary, having helped the sloop bring the schooner into the harbor, to stop
The Caroline
making an attempt to run for the safe haven of Dutch waters, and a shoreline which was within swimming distance. Alec suspected the frigates had also been confiscated and overrun by pirates in the pay of the Margrave.

More than two dozen fishing boats bobbed up and down in the freezing waters, sails and flags flapping wildly in the unrelenting gusts that whipped up the brackish waters into waves and drenched their hardy occupants. In this weather, and in this season, these herring luggers were usually moored, the fishermen shore-bound and bedded down for the winter. Alec presumed they had been forced to take up sail, as another deterrent to
The Caroline
making for Holland. Again, Alec’s suspicions were confirmed when one of the pirates laughingly pointed out through the rigging to the flotilla of watercraft and made a derogatory remark about such a pointless gesture.

But the schooner which had transported Alec and his party from Harwich across the North Sea had no plans to flee.

The Caroline had been met by the French naval sloop as it sailed in through the narrow channel south of Borkum Island at the mouth of the Ems river. Resident whalers on the island had watched with interest as the naval sloop fired a shot across the bow of the English schooner.
The Caroline
acknowledged the warning by hoisting a civil ensign, signal that the craft was not military so meant no harm, and thus should be allowed to continue on its way. But the naval sloop stayed between the English schooner and the Dutch coast, coming alongside and boarding her when she was within sight of Emden. The French sloop’s crew were little better than pirates, privateers at best. And despite the captain giving his word that
The Caroline
would not make for Dutch waters—the town of Delfzijl had been their original destination—the pirates wanted guarantees, and so six of their number remained onboard while three crew from
The Caroline
were taken hostage on the sloop.

The Duchess of Romney-St. Neots, Selina Jamison-Lewis, Sir Gilbert Parsons, and their respective servants, were all ordered back below deck, and to remain there. Incredulous and angry, all had suffered varying degrees of sea-sickness on the three-day journey and were keen to see land, and thus were reluctant to return to their cabins, whatever the threat to their mortality.

The Duchess collapsed in the arms of her niece at the thought of having to return below. She had been the most ill, and her pallid cheeks still carried a green tinge. The pirates threatened to manhandle her, and the other women with her, if she and her companions did not do as she was ordered. Incredulous and vehement in his denunciation of the outrageous behavior of a bunch of ruffians, Plantagenet Halsey strode forward to offer the Duchess assistance. Instantly pistols and cutlasses appeared and were waved menacingly in the old man’s face.

Alec stepped in and the impasse was peacefully resolved. And this without the need to draw his sword, which, for a reason known only to the pirates, they had not confiscated upon boarding. The passengers reluctantly returned below at his calm insistence they would be more comfortable out of the icy wind and sleet. He, however, was ordered to remain topside, because he spoke Dutch and could translate the pirates’ demands to the captain of
The Caroline
, who knew only English.

To his surprise, Plantagenet Halsey was permitted to remain, and was motioned to stand by his nephew on the quarterdeck. The flame of possibility that the pirates might be reasonable men after all was extinguished when Alec revealed to his uncle he was only there to guarantee Alec’s cooperation. If he proved recalcitrant, the old man was to be tossed overboard.

“Let ’em try!” Plantagenet Halsey growled low, but there was no fight in his tone. He pulled his woolen cloak tighter about his shoulders and held it firm at his throat. “It would take at least three of those crusty beggars to lift my scrawny carcass, least of all heave me overboard. Fools.”

Alec gave a huff of laughter at his uncle’s bravado but made no immediate comment, gaze remaining firmly on the view. So his uncle silently joined him at the port side railing, the biting wind flecked with ice that snapped at their flushed cheeks ignored, as was the bosun’s whistle and the activity at their backs, crew scurrying to prepare the rigging for docking.

Alec ruminated on their situation, and what he intended to do about it once they disembarked and the passengers of
The Caroline
were safe and warm.

He had not anticipated a flotilla would be awaiting their arrival, or that his travelling companions would be forced to travel on to Emden. He could have kicked himself for not thinking such a scenario a possibility, because it made perfect sense. With Midanich at war, any vessel sailing the Ems estuary with a cargo worth having was fair game. The usual supply lines had been cut off, and resorting to piracy was one way of making up the deficiency. His only hope was that their ship had not been targeted specifically because he was on board, but that they were like any other ship commandeered by pirates in the pay of the Margrave. He was certain agents of Midanich’s ruler had been ordered to take prisoner any person traveling with him, all to ensure his compliance was absolute. As if Emily and Cosmo’s incarceration was not enough to obtain unconditional obedience!

His gloved fingers gripped the railing a little too hard and he squinted as the port town of Emden emerged from the mist. This medieval township was so familiar to him: The huddle of terracotta roofs; the imposing walls of the star fortress which enclosed and protected the city on three sides; and the nine towering brick and earth windmills—one to each triangular bastion that projected outwards from the high city ramparts. Stretching into the wintery sky like protective giants, tall and proud, the windmills’ long canvas sails turned with monotonous yet comforting regularity. Driven by the incessant wind that blew in off the North Sea, they were majestic symbols of the town’s prosperity, the wealth and independence of its merchant inhabitants, and could be seen for miles, out across a windswept plane of swamps and marshes. Such was their powerful symbolism that they not only appeared on the town’s coat of arms, but on the Margrave’s armorial.

Upon seeing these beacons of prosperity and free will some eleven years ago, Alec had been filled with a sense of adventure. Emden was his first look at Midanich, and the seaport’s quaint architecture and orderliness surprised and delighted him. Heavily influenced by its Dutch inhabitants, Emden’s red brick and sandstone townhouses rose four and five stories high, and were neatly squeezed together along the numerous canals that crisscrossed the city. These waterways were the roads, and the low-roofed boats—called trekschuiten—were the vehicles by which people and goods were moved throughout this orderly town. Aside from the enormous windmills, the only other buildings of significance which had been proudly pointed out to him upon his arrival were the Calvinist church, with its imposing spire, and the Customs House at the dock. The church had stood for over a hundred years. And if it was the town’s symbol of religious tolerance for those Dutchmen who had fled their homeland to escape persecution by the invading Spanish, the Customs House, with its copper roofing and distinctive dovecote under the roofline, was the symbol of its wealth—wealth either brought with them by the Dutch-speaking settlers, or accumulated through hard work upon resettlement.

And yet, in the past decade, Emden had been invaded, first by the French, and then occupied by the English during the Seven Years’ War. While Alec was hard-pressed to see any outward signs of the tumult of invasion—all the windmills still stood, and the townhouses and public buildings showed no outward signs of violence—he wondered how it had affected its populace.

The last invasion and threat to England’s sovereignty had been almost twenty years ago, with the Young Pretender’s failed march on London. He remembered how panic had seized London, everywhere was talk of bloody massacre. Ordinary citizens were seized with terror and went to extraordinary lengths to secure and defend property and family. Emden’s citizens must have gone through something similar and worse, because the enemy had succeeded in taking over the town and much of the rest of the country. And to add to their woes, Emden’s citizenry was now caught up in an internal struggle.

It left Alec speculating, not for the first time, to which brother the town had pledged its allegiance—the new Margrave Ernst, or his half-brother Prince Viktor. And to whom the soldiers quartered at Emden, and the pirates who had commandeered
The Caroline
, owed their allegiance. He supposed he would not have long to wait to find that out. Just as he would soon discover if his letters to Jacob Luytens, the British Consul resident in Emden whom he also considered a friend, had been received. His most recent one was sent as soon as he knew he would be returning to Midanich. He had hoped such news would be enough to prompt the British Consul to send a reply, but again, this correspondence was met with silence.

It was Jacob Luytens who had helped him escape the country ten years ago, stowing him away on a cousin’s herring lugger. Alec had remained under the weight of the fishing nets until the boat was well out into the estuary and heading northwest. He had wanted to catch a last glimpse of the town, and watched it disappear over the horizon, the slowly moving sails of the towering windmills his last best memory. Filled with relief, his legs had then collapsed under him.

Now, as
The Caroline
was slowing being warped to the pier, watched on by its pirate escort and flotilla of luggers, it was not excitement or relief that made his knees weak, it was dread. It was the sort of sickening anxiety that came with the certainty of knowing the time was almost upon him to have to account for the consequences of his impetuous actions of a decade ago. His life would once again be turned inside out, and he knew with absolute certainty that the Margrave Ernst and his sister Joanna intended he should pay, and pay dearly, for his disloyalty.

What he had not anticipated was his uncle, his godmother, and Selina bearing witness to his return, and all that that entailed. They were supposed to be on the other side of the estuary, in Holland, safe from harm and ignorant of events unfolding in Midanich. More to the point, ignorant of those events concerning him. While he had every confidence in keeping from them the most repellent of his transgressions, there were some factors about his time in Midanich that were on the public record and thus revelation was unavoidable.