it.”
Time for me to leave.
I stood up and removed Annie’s revolver from my pocket. “I think you should have this.”
He shook his head.
“Holmes, you have armed guards, we have one housekeeper and a pair of adolescent house-maids. We are valuable property, you are easily disposed of. We have more knives and blunt implements than we can hold; you have your hands. Until we join forces, you have greater need of armament than we do.”
He pressed the weapon back into my hand. “The pocket-knife is sufficient. If I succeed in overcoming the first guard without noise, then we will have a gun. If I do not, those on this side are lost in any event, and you will need your gun to get out of your front door.”
Reluctantly, but in agreement, I returned the weapon to my pocket, and went to the window. When he had snuffed the candle, I put my head out, waiting until I was certain there was neither guard nor traffic before I inserted myself into the narrow slot and permitted Holmes to shove me steadily outward.
“Until midnight tomorrow,” I whispered.
Indeed.
* * *
Annie and Edith were on the rooftop again. This time, they had wrapped themselves in their bed-coverings, and were fast asleep.
I would have left them where they sat, propped upright against each other, but their backs were to the door and I did not feel like finding an alternative route downstairs. I laid a hand on Annie’s shoulder, and found myself looking into the gleam of a knife in the low lamp-light. I went still; she blinked; the blade went away. She threw off her bed-clothes and stood.
Edith did not wake – or did not appear to – but still I turned my back on her before I retrieved the gun and handed it to Annie. “He didn’t want it,” I said. She thrust it without hesitation into her waist-band, then squatted to pick up Edith. I tucked cotton and eiderdown under one arm, held up the shielded lamp, and followed the two of them down the stairs.
* * *
Despite the misgivings I had shared with Holmes, no unexpected disaster met us on the stairway, no twist of wicked fortune roused us from our beds.
The Fates waited until we were up and around the next morning before throwing out their threads and entangling us all in catastrophe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PIRATES [
Upon our prey we steal;
In silence dread
Our cautious way we feel.
IN THE THREE days we had spent here, the outer door had opened precisely six times: once to receive our luggage, twice for the diplomats the day before, and once each afternoon during the quiet time between lunch and tea, when the cook’s two girls collected the baskets and string bags of supplies, and gave any requests for the following day. Apart from that, it was closed and locked.
Which meant that when the door was pushed open that morning, it took a moment to identify the noise. Confusion lasted but an instant, replaced by alarm as the sound of multiple boots on tiles echoed down the entranceway.
Half of us were on our feet, and of those still seated, most had a hand at her throat when Samuel marched in, two armed guards at his back and a look of open triumph on his face. It was the sort of situation in which women traditionally swooned; actresses, it seemed, were of sterner stuff.
Mrs Hatley, one of those who had stayed in her chair, forced her hand away from her throat and brought her spine upright. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, her voice very nearly under control.
“Meaning is, time to go now.” He leered; that is the only word for that expression.
Everyone but Mrs Hatley and I were on their feet now, the girls drawing together in uncertainty. “You mean,” Fannie asked, “we’re free to go?”
“Oh, at last!” Isabel cried.
June’s head came over the upstairs balcony. “We’re leaving?”
Doris’s pale curls appeared directly above June. “Have I time to wash my hair?” A third golden mop was just visible above hers, on the other side of the wooden grating – someone had gone up early to the rooftop. No head was still on its pillow; all ears were hanging on the pirate’s words.
Edith, who had just come into the room wearing her Moroccan pirate’s gear, looked from the men to me and asked, “Shall I change back into my frock?”
“No,” I said in a loud voice. The criss-cross of talk stuttered and died. With all attention on me, I faced Samuel across the courtyard. “He doesn’t mean we’re free to go. He means he’s taking us elsewhere. Someplace very secure and impossible to escape.”
He ignored the ripples of distress that swept the house and had the guards tightening their grips on the guns. His gleaming boots padded across the tiles. With every step he grew larger, until he came to a halt a hand’s breadth from my knees and stared down, willing me towards retreat. But I had no place to go, literally or figuratively, and I fingered the knife I had secreted in my sleeve, waiting for a distraction that might give me a chance against those lightning reflexes.
“What is this, Parrot?” he asked.
Being a tall woman leaves one ill prepared for the sensation of smallness. I felt myself shrinking with this cruel figure towering over me, growing small, and weak.
And he knew it. I saw in his eyes the dawning of cruel delight. His lips parted, but-
“Edith,
Samuel whirled away – God, he was
Seeing the threat was nothing more than a little girl in a boy’s caftan, Samuel straightened, and said something to the guards. They laughed; Edith flushed; Mrs Nunnally gathered her child in. The pirate’s lieutenant turned back to me – and the sky fell in.
That was what it felt like. Impossible motion from the upper reaches of my vision, a sound like a roomful of teeth crackling down on a million tiny bones, and then a huge hand smashed out of the heavens. All the musical notes in the world shouted at once; as I cowered down, my hunched back was pummelled by a rain of sharp, dry objects.
Things stopped falling. My head beneath my arms seemed to be in one piece. I tentatively raised one arm – then remembered Edith, and staggered upright.
The child stood, her mother at her back, both of them untouched but gape-jawed with shock. I, too, was aware of that familiar swaddled sensation that accompanies a severe blow. I bent to pick up a length of silver-dry timber that my foot had kicked. There seemed to be quite a bit of the stuff scattered around. Numbly curious, I looked upward, past first one, then another blonde girl, both wearing the same flabbergasted expression as Edith. Beyond them a third face looked down, from the rooftop. Yet I could see her clearly. For some reason, the wooden grating seemed to have a hole in it. A large hole. Through which I could see Annie. Her big blue eyes were wide, too – but not with shock, or horror.
With triumph.
Unwillingly, I made my gaze descend, to see what caused that expression.
