Drums of Autumn

  “Yes.”

  He said it with complete matter-of-factness, and she stared at him. He stared back.

  She felt a wild urge to laugh, as unexpected as the surge of nausea had been. What had she expected? Remorse? Excuses? From a man who took things because he wanted them?

  “If ye’ve come in the hopes of getting back the jewels, I’m afraid you’ve left it too late,” he said pleasantly. “I sold the first to buy a ship, and the other two were stolen from me. Perhaps you’ll find that justice; I should think it cold comfort, myself.”

  She swallowed, tasting bile.

  “Stolen. When?”

  Don’t trouble yourself over the man who’s got it, Roger had said. It’s odds-on he stole it from someone else.

  Bonnet shifted on the wooden bench and shrugged.

  “Some four months gone. Why?”

  “No reason.” So Roger had made it; had got them—the gems that might have been safe transport for them both. Cold comfort.

  “I recall there was a trinket, too—a ring, was it? But you got that back.” He smiled, showing his teeth this time.

  “I paid for it.” One hand went unthinking to her belly, gone round and tight as a basketball under her cloak.

  His gaze stayed on her face, mildly curious.

  “Have we business still to do then, darlin’?”

  She took a deep breath—through her mouth, this time.

  “They told me you’re going to hang.”

  “They told me the same thing.” He shifted again on the hard wooden bench. He stretched his head to one side, to ease the muscles of his neck, and peered up sidelong at her. “You’ll not have come from pity, though, I shouldn’t think.”

  “No,” she said, watching him thoughtfully. “To be honest, I’ll rest a lot easier once you’re dead.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. He laughed hard enough that tears came to his eyes; he wiped them carelessly, bending his head to swipe his face against a shrugged shoulder, then straightened up, the marks of his laughter still on his face.

  “What is it you want from me, then?”

  She opened her mouth to reply, and quite suddenly, the link between them dissolved. She had not moved, but felt as though she had taken one step across an impassable abyss. She stood now safe on the other side, alone. Blessedly alone. He could no longer touch her.

  “Nothing,” she said, her voice clear in her own ears. “I don’t want anything at all from you. I came to give you something.”

  She opened her cloak, and ran her hands over the swell of her abdomen. The small inhabitant stretched and rolled, its touch a blind caress of hand and womb, both intimate and abstract.

  “Yours,” she said.

  He looked at the bulge, and then at her.

  “I’ve had whores try to foist their spawn on me before,” he said. But he spoke without viciousness, and she thought there was a new stillness behind the wary eyes.

  “Do you think I’m a whore?” She didn’t care if he did or not, though she doubted he did. “I’ve no reason to lie. I already told you, I don’t want anything from you.”

  She drew the cloak back together, covering herself. She drew herself up then, feeling the ache in her back ease with the movement. It was done. She was ready to go.

  “You’re going to die,” she said to him, and she who had not come for pity’s sake was surprised to find she had some. “If it makes the dying easier for you, to know there’s something of you left on earth—then you’re welcome to the knowledge. But I’ve finished with you, now.”

  She turned to pick up the lantern, and was surprised to see the door half cracked ajar. She had no time to feel anger at Lord John for eavesdropping, when the door swung fully open.

  “Well, ’twas a gracious speech, ma’am,” Sergeant Murchison said judiciously. He smiled broadly then, and brought the butt of his musket up even with her belly. “But I can’t say I’ve finished, quite, with you.”

  She took a quick step back, and swung the lantern at his head in a reflex of defense. He ducked with a yelp of alarm, and a grip of iron seized her wrist before she could dash the lamp at him again.

  “Christ, that was close! You’re fast, girl, if not quite so fast as the good Sergeant.” Bonnet took the lantern from her and released her wrist.

  “You’re not chained after all,” she said stupidly, staring at him. Then her wits caught up with the situation, and she whirled, plunging for the door. Murchison shoved his musket in front of her, blocking her way, but not before she had seen the darkened corridor through the doorway—and the dim form sprawled facedown on the bricks outside.

  “You’ve killed him,” she whispered. Her lips were numb with shock, and a dread deeper than nausea sickened her to the bone. “Oh, God, you’ve killed him.”

  “Killed who?” Bonnet held the lantern up, peering at the spill of butter-yellow hair, blotched with blood. “Who the hell is that?”

  “A busybody,” Murchison snapped. “Hurry, man! There’s no time to waste. I’ve taken care of Hodgepile and the fuses are lit.”

  “Wait!” Bonnet glanced from the Sergeant to Brianna, frowning.

  “There’s no time, I said.” The Sergeant brought up his gun and checked the priming. “Don’t worry; no one will find them.”

  Brianna could smell the brimstone scent of the gunpowder in the priming pan. The Sergeant swung the stock of the gun to his shoulder, and turned toward her, but the quarters were too cramped; with her belly in the way, there was no room to raise the long muzzle.

  The Sergeant grunted with irritation, reversed the gun, and raised it high, to club her with the butt.

  Her hand was clenched around the barrel before she knew she had reached for it. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly, Murchison and Bonnet both standing frozen. She herself felt quite detached, as though she stood to one side, watching.

  She plucked the musket from Murchison’s grip as though it were a broomstraw, swung it high, and smashed it down. The jolt of it vibrated up her arms, into her body, her whole body charged as though someone had thrown a switch and sent a white-hot current pulsing through her.

  She saw so clearly the man’s face hanging drop-jawed in the air before her, eyes passing from astonishment through horror to the dullness of unconsciousness, so slowly that she saw the change. Had time to see the vivid colors in his face. A plum lip caught on a yellow tooth, half lifted in a sneer. Slow tiny blossoms of brilliant red unfolding in a graceful curve across his temple, Japanese water flowers blooming on a field of fresh-bruised blue.

  She was entirely calm, no more than a conduit for the ancient savagery that men call motherhood, who mistake its tenderness for weakness. She saw her own hands, knuckles stark and tendons etched, felt the surge of power up her legs and back, through wrists and arms and shoulders, swung again, so slowly, it seemed so slowly, and yet the man was still falling, had not quite reached the floor when the gun butt struck again.

  A voice was calling her name. Dimly, it penetrated through the crystal hum around her.

  “Stop, for God’s sake! Woman—Brianna—stop!”

  There were hands on her shoulders, dragging, shaking. She pulled free of the grip and turned, the gun still in hand.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, and he took a quick step back, his eyes filled with surprise and wariness—perhaps a touch of fear. Afraid of her? Why would anyone be afraid of her? she thought dimly. He was talking; she saw his mouth moving, but she couldn’t catch the words, it was just noise. The current in her was dying, making her dizzy.

  Then time readjusted itself, began to move normally again. Her muscles quivered, all their fibers turned to jelly. She set the stained butt of the gun against the floor to balance herself.

  “What did you say?”

  Impatience flickered across his face.

  “I said, it’s no time we have to be wasting! Did ye not hear your man sayin’ that the fuses are lit?”

  “What fuses? Wh
y?” She saw his eyes flick toward the door behind her. Before he could move, she stepped back into the doorway, bringing up the muzzle of the gun. He backed away from her instinctively, hitting the bench with the backs of his legs. He fell back, and struck the chains fastened to the wall; empty manacles chimed against the brick.

  Shock was beginning to steal over her, but the memory of the white-hot current still burned through her spine, keeping her upright.

  “You do not mean to kill me, surely?” He tried to smile, and failed; couldn’t keep the panic from his eyes. She had said she would rest easier with him dead.

  Freedom is hard-won, but is not the fruit of Murder. She had her hard-won freedom now, and would not give it back to him.

  “No,” she said, and took a firmer hold on the gun, the butt snugged solid into her shoulder. “But I will by God shoot you through the knees and leave you here, if you don’t tell me right this minute what the hell is going on!”

  He shifted his weight, big body hovering, pale eyes on her, judging. She blocked the door entirely, her bulk filling it from side to side. She saw the doubt in his posture, the shift of his shoulders as he thought to rush her, and cocked the gun with a single loud click!

  He stood six feet from the muzzle’s end; too far to lunge and grab it from her. One move, one pull of her trigger finger. She couldn’t miss, and he knew it.

  His shoulders slumped.

  “The warehouse above is laid with gunpowder and fuses,” he said, speaking quick and sharp, anxious to get it done. “I can’t say how long, but it’s goin’ up with an almighty bang. For God’s sake, let me out of here!”

  “Why?” Her hands were sweating, but solid on the gun. The baby stirred, a reminder that she had no time to waste, either. She would risk one minute to know, though. She had to know, with John Grey’s body limp on the floor behind her. “You’ve killed a good man here, and I want to know why!”

  He made a gesture of frustration.

  “The smuggling!” he said. “We were partners, the Sergeant and I. I’d bring him in cheap contraband, he’d stamp it with the Crown’s mark. He’d steal the licensed stuff, I’d sell it for a good price and split with him.”

  “Keep talking.”

  He was nearly dancing with impatience.

  “A soldier—Hodgepile—he was on to it, asking questions. Murchison couldn’t say if he’d told anyone, but it wasn’t wise to wait and see, not once I was taken. The Sergeant moved the last of the liquor from the warehouse, substituted barrels of turpentine, and laid the fuses. It all goes up, no one can say it wasn’t brandy burning—no evidence of theft. That’s it, that’s all. Now let me go!”

  “All right.” She lowered the musket a few inches, but didn’t yet uncock it. “What about him?” She nodded toward the fallen Sergeant, who was beginning to snort and mumble.

  He stared at her blankly.

  “What about him?”

  “Aren’t you going to take him with you?”

  “No.” He sidled to one side, looking for a way past her. “For Christ’s sweet sake, woman, let me go, and leave yourself! There’s twelve hundred-weight of pitch and turpentine overhead. It’ll go off like a bomb!”

  “But he’s still alive! We can’t leave him here!”

  Bonnet gave her a look of sheer exasperation, then crossed the room in two strides. He bent, jerked the dagger from the Sergeant’s belt, and drew it hard across the fat throat, just above the leather stock. A thick spray of blood soaked Bonnet’s shirt, and whipped against the wall.

  “There,” he said, straightening up. “He’s not alive. Leave him.”

  He dropped the dagger, pushed her aside, and lunged out into the corridor. She could hear his footsteps going away, quick and ringing on the brick.

  Trembling all over with the shock of action and reaction, she stood still for a second, staring down at John Grey’s body. Grief ripped through her, and her womb clenched hard. There was no pain, but every fiber had contracted; her stomach bulged as though she’d swallowed a basketball. She felt breathless, unable to move.

  No, she thought quite clearly, to the child inside. I am not in labor, I absolutely, positively am not. I won’t have it. Stay put. I haven’t got time right now.

  She took two steps down the black corridor, then stopped. No, she had to check, at least, make sure. She turned back, and knelt by John Grey’s body. He had looked dead when she first saw him lying there, and still did; he hadn’t moved or even twitched since she had first seen his body.

  She leaned forward but couldn’t reach easily over the bulge of her belly. She grasped his arm instead, and pulled at him, trying to turn him over. A small, fine-boned man, he was still heavy. His body tilted up, rolled boneless toward her, head lolling, and her heart sank anew, seeing his half-closed eyes and slack mouth. But she reached beneath the angle of his jaw, feeling frantically for a pulse point.

  Where the hell was it? She’d seen her mother do it in emergencies; faster to find than a wrist pulse, she’d said. She couldn’t find one. How long had it been, how long were the fuses set to burn?

  She wiped a fold of her cloak across her clammy face, trying to think. She looked back, judging the distance to the stairs. Jesus, could she risk it, even alone? The thought of popping out into the warehouse above, just as everything went off—She cast one look upward, then bent to her work and tried again, pushing his head far back. There! She could see the damn vein under his skin—that’s where the pulse should be, shouldn’t it?

  For a moment, she wasn’t sure she felt it; it might be only the hammering of her own heart, beating in her fingertips. But no, it was—a different rhythm, faint and fluttering. He might be close to dead, but not quite.

  “Close,” she muttered, “but no cigar.” She felt too frightened to be greatly relieved; now she’d have to get him out, too. She scrambled to her feet, and reached down to get hold of his arms, to drag him. But then she stopped, a memory of what she had seen a moment before penetrating her panic.

  She turned and lumbered hastily back into the cell. Averting her eyes from the sodden red mound on the floor, she snatched up the lantern and brought it back to the corridor. She held it high, casting light on the low brick ceiling. Yes, she’d been right!

  The bricks curved up from the floor in groynes, making arches all along both sides of the corridors. Storage alcoves and cells. Above the groynes, though, ran sturdy beams made of eight-inch pine. Over that, thick planking—and above the planks, the layer of bricks that formed the floor of the warehouse.

  Going up like a bomb, Bonnet had said—but was he right? Turpentine burned, so did pitch; yes, they’d likely explode if they burned under pressure, but not like a bomb, no. Fuses. Fuses, in the plural. Long fuses, plainly, and likely running to small caches of gunpowder; that was the only true explosive Murchison would have; there were no high explosives now.

  So the gunpowder would explode in several places, and ignite the barrels nearby. But the barrels would burn slowly; she’d seen Sinclair make barrels like those; the staves were half an inch thick, watertight. She remembered the reek as they walked through the warehouse; yes, Murchison would likely have opened the bungs of a few barrels, let the turpentine flow out, to help the fire along.

  So the barrels would burn, but likely they wouldn’t explode—or if they did, not all at once. Her breathing eased a little, making calculations. Not a bomb; a string of firecrackers, maybe.

  So. She took a deep breath—as deep a breath as she could manage, with Osbert in the way. She put her hands across her stomach, feeling her racing heart begin to slow.

  Even if some of the barrels did explode, the force of the explosion would be out, and up, through the thin plank walls and the roof. Very little force would be deflected down. And what was—she reached up a hand and pushed against a beam, reassuring herself of its strength.

  She sat down quite suddenly on the floor, skirts puffed out around her.

  “I think it’ll be all right,” she whispered
, not sure if she was talking to John, to the baby, or to herself.

  She sat huddled for a moment, shaking with relief, then rolled awkwardly onto her knees again, and began with fumbling fingers to administer first aid.

  She was still struggling to tear a strip from the hem of her petticoat when she heard the footsteps. Coming fast, almost running. She turned sharply toward the stairs, but no—the footsteps came from the other way, behind her.

  She whirled around, to see the form of Stephen Bonnet looming out of the darkness.

  “Run!” he shouted at her. “For Christ’s sweet sake, why have ye not gone?”

  “Because it’s safe here,” she said. She had laid the musket down on the floor beside Grey’s body; she stooped and picked it up, lifted it to her shoulder. “Go away.”

  He stared at her, mouth half open in the gloom.

  “Safe? Woman, you’re an eedjit! Did ye not hear—”

  “I heard, but you’re wrong. It’s not going to explode. And if it did, it would still be safe down here.”

  “The hell it is! Sweet bleeding Jesus! Even if the cellar doesn’t go, what happens when the fire burns through the floor?”

  “It can’t, it’s brick.” She jerked her chin upward, not taking her eyes off him.

  “Back here it is—up front, by the river, it’s wood, like the wharf. It’ll burn through, then collapse. And what happens back here then, eh? Do ye no good for the ceiling to hold, when the smoke comes rolling back to smother ye!”

  She felt a wave of sickness roil up from her depths.

  “It’s open? The cellar isn’t sealed? The other end of the corridor’s open?” Knowing even as she spoke that of course it was—he had run that way, heading for the river, not for the stairs.

  “Yes! Now come!” He lunged forward, reaching for her arm, but she jerked away, back against the wall, the muzzle of the gun trained on him.

  “I’m not going without him.” She licked dry lips, nodding at the floor.

  “The man’s dead!”

  “He’s not! Pick him up!”

  An extraordinary mixture of emotions crossed Bonnet’s face; fury and astonishment preeminent among them.

  “Pick him up!” she repeated fiercely. He stood still, staring at her. Then, very slowly, he squatted, and gathering John Grey’s limp form into his arms, got the point of his shoulder into Grey’s abdomen and heaved him up.

  “Come on, then,” he said, and without another glance at her started off into the dark. She hesitated for a second, then seized the lantern and followed him.

  Within fifty feet, she smelled smoke. The brick corridor wasn’t straight; it branched and turned, encompassing the many partitions of the cellar. But all the time it slanted down, heading toward the riverbank. As they descended through the multiple turnings, the scent of smoke thickened; a layer of acrid haze swirled lazily around them, visible in the lantern light.

  Brianna held her breath, trying not to breathe. Bonnet was moving fast, despite Grey’s weight. She could barely keep up, burdened with gun and lantern, but she didn’t mean to give up either one, just yet. Her belly tightened again, another of those breathless moments.

  “Not yet, I said!” she muttered through gritted teeth.

  She had had to stop for a moment; Bonnet had disappeared into the haze ahead. Evidently he’d noticed the fading of the lantern light, though—she heard him bellow, from somewhere up ahead.

  “Woman! Brianna!”

  “I’m coming!” she called, and hurried as fast as she could, waddling, discarding any pretense of grace. The smoke was much thicker, and she could hear a faint crackle, somewhere in the distance—overhead? Before them?

  She was breathing heavily, in spite of the smoke. She drew in a ragged gulp of air, and smelled water. Damp and mud, dead leaves and fresh air, slicing through the smoky murk like a knife.

  A faint glow shone through the smoke and grew as they hurried toward it, dwarfing the light of her lantern. Then a dark square loomed ahead. Bonnet turned and seized her arm, dragging her out into the air.

  They were under the wharf, she realized; dark water lapped ahead of them, brightness dancing on it. Reflection; the brightness came from up above, and so did the crackle of flame. Bonnet didn’t stop or let go of her arm; he pulled her to one side, into the long, dank grass and mud of the bank. He let go within a few steps, but she followed, gasping for breath, slipping and sliding, tripping on the soggy edges of her skirts.

  At last he stopped, in the shadow of the trees. He bent, and let Grey’s body slide to the ground. He stayed bent for a moment, chest heaving, trying to get his breath back.

  Brianna realized that she could see both men plainly; could see every bud on the twigs of the tree. She turned and looked back, to see the warehouse lighted like a jack-o’-lantern, flames licking through cracks in the wooden walls. The huge double doors had been left ajar; as she watched, the blast of hot air forced one open, and small tongues of fire began to creep across the dock, deceptively small and playful-looking.