Revenge of the Brotherhood (Book 3 in the Tom & Laura Series) (17 page)

The allotted time up, Harris made his way to his boss’ inner office. Baxter paced the room, which was never a good sign.

“I got this damned message first thing this morning.” Baxter handed over a telegram. It was from Dr Thomas.

“Hart, Short and Trenchard dispatched to Templar Sanatorium on compassionate grounds after request from Trelawney,” Harris read out. “So what?”

“He is plotting something, Harris. I can feel it in my water.”

Harris stifled a laugh. The idea that a few children, one of them dying, could seriously affect their plans was madness. “I do not see how,” he said diplomatically.

Baxter put his face mere inches from Harris. “That is what bothers me most. Neither can I.”

“Do you really think these children represent a threat?”

Baxter stopped pacing and returned to his desk. “Yes. I am sure of it, despite it making no sense to me.”

Harris considered the problem. Baxter was a Grade 5 Precog. A level of talent that was so low as to be almost imperceptible. Nevertheless, nearly all successful business men, generals and politicians in the country had a smattering of Precog or Empath in them. It made a difference. Harris himself was a Grade 5 Empath. That counted for something.

“Then I shall arrange for a suitable catastrophic accidental fire at the Sanatorium and our problems will be solved.”

“Get it done as soon as you can,” Baxter snapped irritably. He mopped his brow and jowls. “Make sure the doors and windows are blocked so not one of them escapes.”

Daisy and Laura woke late. It was almost noon before they made their way down to the dining room. The room looked different in daylight, shabbier and less respectable than they remembered it from the night before. If was packed with men carrying rifles fitted with bayonets. While not wearing military uniform they all wore cravats of the same color and Daisy suspected this served the same purpose.

The girls fully entering the room created a moments silence and all male eyes turned to them, showing suspicion if not downright hostility. Daisy ordered breakfast as quietly as she could, not wanting to reveal to them that she was speaking English.

They had barely started eating when another group of people entered the tavern. The group consisted of four men of which three of them wore uniforms. The three were speaking French very rapidly at the fourth. He was taller than the other men and wore a white bushy beard. Laura thought at once that there was something familiar about him.

Their eyes met and Laura saw the man flinch as though he had been struck. He turned his back on her and said something in French. The others followed him as he led them over to the far side of the room where they ordered the men sitting to leave a table so they could take it.

“Did you see the man with the white beard?” Laura asked.

“They must be the leaders of these men. The one out of uniform is probably a local politician.”

“I think I might know him.”

Daisy laughed. “You have Breton politicians for friends? Perhaps we will find sanctuary in France if you are friends with the Emperor.”

Laura laughed. She knew nobody foreign. The very idea of it was absurd.

“Look, there is some sort of commotion outside.”

Laura focused on the street beyond the window and saw people running. A man entered the room and shouted something that sounded urgent. As a man, the rebel soldiers dropped to their haunches. They began loading their rifles and the room filled with the smell of unspent gunpowder. The ones nearest the windows rested their rifles on the window sills pointing them out at the street.

A low thrumming sound slowly became louder. Laura didn’t recognize it until Daisy pulled her to the floor and whispered in her ear. “Horses. It sounds as though the cavalry is coming to town.”

“Whose side?” Laura whispered back, but Daisy shook her head.

Then they heard the sporadic firing of guns. Whether it was the cavalry shooting or the defenders was not clear.

A wave of men on horses galloped through the town, the men riding low in their saddles to avoid being shot. The flash of a gun from a rider was followed by the sound of splintering wood. A volley of shots from the riflemen left the room hazy with gun-smoke. Laura started to cough as the acrid smoke reached them.

The rebels ran out of the inn and into the street. Taunting shouts and the odd gun blast followed.

“They seem to have gone,” Daisy said quietly. “Shall we go out into the street and take a look?”

“Do you think it is safe?”

“I think it would be regarded as most suspicious if we do not.”

The road was filled with people. Most of them were further up the road in the direction the men on horses had gone. Some were shouting abuse in that direction.

There were two dead men lying in the road. They may not have been dead when they fell off their horses, but each had what looked to be at least a dozen bayonet wounds in their chests.

Everyone was taking a turn to look at the bodies, including the women and small children. The boys kicked the dead men while the women spat on them. Feeling they had no choice, Laura and Daisy took their turns for a close up look. The first man they saw was unfamiliar to them. He had a neat bullet hole in one side of his head while the other side was missing.

The second man they saw was Captain Trentwood. It appeared he had been alive when he fell off his horse from the defensive cuts on his hands. The locals had made short work of him. Laura leaned against Daisy, her head in her bosom.

“He was scum, but I did not want him dead,” she said miserably.

“Come on. People are starting to stare at us.”

The two women shuffled back into the inn while the crowd continued to jeer and whoop at the killing of two of the enemy.

Harris entered the Crown Tavern in Soho and made his way over to the bar. A short time later Eddie Canter served him.

“Good ev’ning, sir. It’s been a while.”

“I need a fire-starter. A good one who likes to kill.”

Eddie considered this question. He wanted to pick someone he did not care for because the last two men he recommended to the Brotherhood never came back.

“Pat ’ll do. If you go find somewhere to sit I’ll sent him over. The ale is on the house.” He put a tankard of ale in front of Harris and left.

The man that squeezed next to Harris on the bench a short time later smelled of urine and sulfur. Harris hated this kind of work, but there were no middle class fire starters, though there was no shortage of murderers.

“’ear you got a job.”

“Templar Sanatorium. You know where it is?”

“Big building that. Cost you a lot.”

“I need you to block the doors and windows. No one must escape. You understand?”

“All dying in there anyway. Why bother?”

“Can you do it tonight?”

Pat sucked in his breath. “It’s Sunday. Earliest I can do it is Tuesday night. Need some ’elp, I will. To block all the doors an’ to make it burn even, like.”

Harris groaned. Baxter would not be happy to wait so long, but it was still well before the wedding on Saturday.

“Very well. How much do you want?”

17.
              
Storms

After seeing Trentwood killed, Laura was in no fit state to travel and Daisy decided they would go back to their room and hide there. However, she knew on Monday morning that they had to move soon. The suspicious looks they had received the day before were openly hostile at breakfast.

“Where will we go?” Laura complained.

“The General and his men have stationed themselves at the border to cut us off,” Daisy said thoughtfully. “But the border with France is long and largely unguarded. We should be able to find a way through.”

“Surely the General will be attacked by the rebels and the French?”

Daisy smiled, “This may come as a surprise to you, but we are not currently at war with the French. They are still licking their wounds from the last one. The General is not a complete fool. At the border he will have the French protecting his back. Alan Kincaid will be with him and the French will be informed of it the moment they arrive. The French may support the rebel cause, but they cannot give the Empire the excuse for another war with them. They may even warn the rebels off.”

“But even so, the rebels will surely attack them?”

Daisy disagreed. “They pose no threat where they are. I think the rebels will ignore them for the time being. With the General separated from his main forces they will be able to consolidate their positions and perhaps drive the main forces back.”

Laura shook her head in disbelief. Warfare lacked any logic she could follow.

After breakfast they returned to their room. The bearded man they had seen the day before stood when they entered and bowed.

Daisy pulled a small pistol from her skirt. It was a surprise to Laura that she possessed one. The man raised his hands slowly into the air.

“Who are you? What do you want?” There was a harshness to Daisy’s voice that Laura found unnerving, so unlike her normal demeanor.

“How quickly they forget. And it was less than a year ago.”

Daisy looked puzzled while Laura moved closer to the man, inadvertently putting her body between Daisy and the man. She peered at his face and then it all clicked together.

“Dominican Snood? But you are dead.”

Daisy pushed Laura out of the way. “The last time we met we were enemies.”

“Not quite enemies,” Laura said.

“But not yet friends,” Snood finished for her.

“Did the Captain also survive?” Daisy asked belligerently.

Snood smiled; his hands still in the air. “I think not. Does Trelawney keep everything from his agents?”

“Put the gun down, Daisy. He could have set the rebel army on us if he meant us harm.”

Daisy saw the sense in that and Snood lowered his arms as she lowered her gun.

“Why are you here?” Laura asked.

“You should have left town yesterday. Rumors are circulating that a Class A Spellbinder and her companion have recently fled the British Army and that is what the insane cavalry ride yesterday was all about. It will not be long before the rebels come knocking at your door.” Snood paused as if in thought. Then he continued.

“Did you really change their officers into girls? I would love to see that bind, not that I have the power to do such a thing myself.”

Laura grinned. Even though this man had tried to kill her in the past, he was a fellow Spellbinder and as her tutor had taught her to think differently about binds and magic.

“Triple bind, immobilization for twelve hours while the officers transformed, then weakness for all until it broke.”

Snood whistled in admiration. “How long did it last? A day?”

“Getting on for three.”

Daisy coughed very loudly. “Perhaps we can discuss the danger posed to us by the rebels?”

Snood and Laura looked shamefaced and broke eye contact with each other. It was Snood who answered.

“If you leave this morning you should be safe. However, they have an old woman who might be a Precog and I don’t know what she has told them. Make your way to the French border, but stay away from the La Gravelle road. I cannot help you in Brittany. Once in France, tell the authorities that you are friends of Louis Delmar. It will help.”

Daisy looked doubtful, but Laura smiled.

“You look different and much happier. France has proved good for you.”

Snood took Laura’s hand. “My unlikely act of heroism against the Captain changed me. In France, Spellbinders are rare and I found a position helping the government with metal production and the like. However, in return for their protection, I am expected to help them out in other ways. When a big bad Class A came to destroy the rebels I was sent to offer advice.”

“I never meant for the Army to kill the rebels,” Laura said in a whisper. “They were supposed to take them prisoner.”

“If they had done as you asked the rebels would be suing for peace and this war would be over. The fault is with the army, not with you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Snood,” Daisy said and offered out her hand. “We will take your advice and leave immediately.”

Snood took her hand and kissed it in the French manner. “Take care. I know the commanders have something planned with their Precog. If they catch you they will show you no mercy. Too many men have died for them to act rationally. A Class A could be used to negotiate a permanent settlement with the British or bring the Austro-Hungarian Empire in on their side, but I believe they will kill you both.”

Laura took Snood’s hand and impulsively kissed him on the cheek.

“That is for helping us in Hobsgate.”

Antonia and Tom sat in the observation room. There was nothing much to see. Below them were ocean and clouds and nothing else at all.

She passed over a hand drawn map. It was of London with a few landmarks highlighted. A red X marked the position of the Sanatorium where Ebb lay dying. “That is the best I can do. I never was much good at drawing. Andrea has been shown a picture of the building so I should be able to recognize it if we come down low enough.”

“I’m sure it will be sufficient,” Tom said. “My biggest fear is that we will become lost and make landfall in Africa rather than England.”

“Is that possible?”

“We know that the ship is pointed east, but the actual direction depends on the power and direction of the wind, which we cannot measure from the ship.”

Antonia frowned. “So what is Dougal doing with that thing he uses to measure the position of the sun?”

Tom sighed, but mainly because he barely understood it himself. “It is called a sextant and it is supposed to give him latitude, which is the distance we are from the North Pole. He uses the ship’s clock at noon to work it out. Or so he claims.”

“What about longitude?”

“That he can get at night from the angle between the moon and a planet. Assuming he gets the right planet. He has an almanac to help him with the calculations.”

“It all sounds very complicated, but I’m sure Dougal is doing his best.”

“We shall reach land soon. I am just unsure which land we will reach.”

Antonia leaned to one side so she could look forward. “I do hope that that is not going to be a problem.”

Tom looked where she was looking and gasped. They were heading straight towards a towering black cloud that covered half the horizon. Flashes of lightning lit the cloud and they heard distant rumbles of thunder.

“I think we had better start tying things down,” he said as he got up and headed for the bridge.

Eric Kincaid walked in on Andrea without knocking. Sometimes he caught her in a state of disarray and the memories of those moments were almost all he thought about when he went to bed. Andrea was a remarkably pretty woman even though she was far too old for him at twenty three years old. Still, a young man could dream.

“Good afternoon, Eric. How is your brother holding out?”

Eric grinned and took a chair from the side of the room to place it just in front of Andrea’s desk. The one subject they could talk about for hours without getting bored with each other was being one half of a pair of identical twins.

“He is still breathing, which is more than can be said for Captain Trentwood or Lieutenant Rogers. They were unhorsed and killed when the cavalry raced through a town near the border.”

“Perhaps they are still alive?” Andrea offered. She smiled at Eric and he crossed his legs to hide a sudden embarrassment.

“I doubt it. I should not talk about it, but the Spellbinder was putting rebels to sleep or something, and then our soldiers walked in and killed them. Alan will not talk of it, beyond saying it was horrible. If someone did that to my people and they fell off their horse next to me, they would soon be dead.”

Andrea leaned forwards and all Eric could see was how wet and inviting her lips were.

“This Spellbinder must be evil if she did something like that.”

Eric did not notice that Andrea knew the Spellbinder was a girl. All he wanted to do at that moment was impress her with his knowledge.

“She thought they were going to be taken prisoner. That is why she ran away, and why my brother is deep in enemy territory.”

Andrea sat back in her chair. “I thought all you men liked the idea of being in enemy territory?” The use of ‘men’ rather than boys was deliberate; Eric knew more than she did about what was happening in Brittany and she was trying to flatter him into revealing all he knew.

Eric was going to sit back in his chair as she had, before he remembered the uncomfortable bulge in his trousers. “He might get killed and then I would no longer be working with you.”

“What are they doing now?” As an encouragement, Andrea opened the first button of her blouse and began to twiddle the next one down with her fingers.

“When they reached the border, Alan and the General spoke to the French commander on the other side. There’s a garrison nearby in a place called Gravel or something like that. The General speaks French and he told them that Alan was a Telepath and if they were attacked from the French side, Queen Victoria would know of it within the hour.”

“I did not know your brother speaks French?”

“The General had him pass on the conversation later to High Command and translated it.”

“What are they going to do now?”

“The General says the rebels will not attack and neither will the Frenchies, so they can patrol the border in search of the Spellbinder.”

Andrea decided that the boy needed a present for his cooperation so she undid two more buttons and ran a finger down her cleavage. She might have gone further, but she suspected the boy might explode.

“The General seems very sure of himself.”

“He is a g’good leader even if he is a…” Eric could not use the word in front of a lady.

Andrea began to redo her buttons to Eric’s considerable disappointment.

“Run along now, Eric. There’s a good boy.”

Camilla Burns stood in woodland three miles from the nearest inhabitation. Even here she would not be able to practice for long. She found a slope in the landscape that would give her the same range and drop as if she was shooting from the gallery in the church. A paper target with a red heart drawn on it had been pinned to a tree at the appropriate height. Now all she had to do was master the pistol well enough to hit it.

Her first few shots managed to hit the tree, though they hit high as she was not compensating for the height difference. Over the next half hour and twenty shots later, she was hitting the target every time.

That was when she heard the shouts of people coming towards her. This was no surprise. A normal pistol shot could be heard a mile or more away and hers was louder than most.

“Thank you, Sir Ernest. I hope you will appreciate the work I am putting into killing you.”

She left the clearing like a ghost making no sound as she slid through ferns away from the approaching men.

The men carried shotguns and looked like typical gentlemen farmers.

“This is where it came from,” one said. He pointed at the drawing of a heart which was still pinned to the tree. There was not much left of it.