Where Serpents Sleep

Hero peered out the window at the horse and gig slewed across the road. “There appears to be a carriage in the way.” A man stood at the horse’s head, his voice a gentle murmur as he stroked the animal’s neck and said soothingly, “Easy, girl. Easy.”

“What’s the trouble there?” shouted Coachman John.

“A broken trace,” said the man, walking toward the carriage. By the pale light of the carriage lamps, Hero could see him quite clearly. He looked to be somewhere in his midthirties, rawboned and darkened as if from years under a tropical sun. But his accent was good, and he wore a neat round hat and a gentleman’s driving cape, which swirled around a fine pair of high-topped boots.

As he paused near the box, she became aware of the sound of hoofbeats coming down the hill behind them. One horse, ridden fast. Her gaze traveled from the man in the road to the double-barreled carriage pistol in a holster beside the door.

The gentleman in the cape said, “If one of your footmen could help me move the gig out of the road, you can be on your way.”

Reaching out, Hero slowly eased the carriage pistol from its holster.

Lady Jarvis said, “What on earth are you—”

Hero put out a hand, hushing her.

Hero couldn’t see the man who’d ridden up behind them, but she heard his horse snort. “Need some help?” he called.

“I think everything’s under control,” said the man in the road. Reaching beneath his cape, he drew out a pistol and extended his arm so the muzzle pointed up at the box. “Don’t move.”

“What the bloody hell?” blustered the coachman.

The man in the road said, “You’ll notice my friend here has a gun, as well. Throw down your weapons. We know you’ve got them.”

Lady Jarvis’s eyes went wide. “Oh, my goodness,” she said in a panicked, high-pitched whisper. “Highwayman. Hero, put that thing away. We must give them everything! Thank heavens I didn’t wear the sapphires tonight. But there are your pearls—”

Hero put her hand over her mother’s mouth. “Hush, Mama.”

She heard muffled thuds as the two footmen threw down their guns. The man in the road said, “You, too, Coachman.”

The carriage shuddered as the big coachman shifted his weight. His blunderbuss landed with a thump in the grassy verge. Hero tightened her grip on the handle of the pistol and carefully eased back both hammers.

“You didn’t tell me we was stoppin’ a lord’s rig,” said the second man, nudging his horse forward into the lamplight. “Two ladies in a carriage like this oughta be sportin’ some nice baubles.” Hero watched him swing down from his horse. He was younger than the man in the cape, and more coarsely dressed. She steadied the heavy carriage pistol with both hands and pointed the barrel at the door.

“That’s not what we’re here for,” snapped the caped man, shifting his stance so he could cover both the footmen and Coachman John. “Just make it quick before someone comes along. And make bloody sure you shoot the right woman.”

The younger man laughed. “I can tell a young’un from an old’un,” he said, jerking open the carriage door.

Hero squeezed the first trigger and discharged the pistol straight in his face.

The man’s face dissolved in a bloody red shattering of skin and bone. The percussion was deafening, the carriage filling with a blue flash of flame and smoke and the acrid smell of burned powder. Lady Jarvis screamed and kept screaming as the impact of the shot blew the man out of the carriage and flopped him back into the dirt of the road.

“Drummond!” The gentleman in the cape whirled, the barrel of his gun leveling on the carriage door. Half falling to her knees on the carriage floor, Hero leaned out the carriage door and squeezed the second trigger.

She shot higher than she’d meant to, and wilder, so that instead of hitting the man square in the chest her bullet smashed into his right shoulder, spinning him around and sending his pistol flying out of his hand.

“Quick,” Hero shouted to the servants. “Get his pistol.” She shoved up, only to sag slightly against the side of the open door. Now that it was over, her knees were shaking so badly she could hardly stand. “Is he dead?”

“Naw,” said Coachman John, turning the caped gentleman over. “But he’s bleedin’ pretty bad, and he ’pears to have gone off in a swoon.”

“This one’s done for,” said one of the footmen, Richard, bending over the first man she’d shot. “My Gawd, look at that. He don’t have a face no more.”

“Get that gig out of the middle of the road so we can drive on,” said Hero, turning back to deal with her now hysterical mother. “Lady Jarvis has sustained a terrible fright.”

“It would appear,” said Paul Gibson, studying the chessboard before him, “that Sir William has his own reasons for discouraging any investigation of the Magdalene House fire.”

Sebastian and the Irishman sat beside the empty hearth in the surgeon’s parlor, the chessboard, a bottle of good French brandy, and two glasses on the table between them. The neighborhood had long since settled into quiet, and only an occasional footfall could be heard passing in the street outside. From the distance came the cry of a night watchman making his rounds. “One o’clock on a fine night and all is well.”

Sebastian said, “Just because he knew Rachel when she called herself Rose and entertained gentlemen in Orchard Street doesn’t mean he knew she’d taken refuge at the Magdalene House.” He watched his friend move his rook to b3.