1635 The Papal Stakes (46 page)

Another yellow-flaring thunder-bolt struck him down from above; the brief burst of excruciating pain it caused became sudden numbness.

So,
John thought as he collapsed forward,
that fellow in the window wasn’t Frank, after all.

Owen felt his throat constrict as he saw one of the last two princes of Ireland smashed to the ground by a second full load of double-aught buckshot from overhead. He emptied three chambers at the window—just as the dim figure there jerked back sharply.

Owen arrived at John’s side, already shouting orders. “Synnot, get over here. The rest of you, cover us.” With Synnot’s help, Owen got the mumbling, bleeding John O’Neill up off the ground. “We’re leaving,” he ordered through his tears. “Everyone: fighting withdrawal.”

Harry, blood coating his burning shoulder, noticed that the stock of the Remington was sticky and wet. As was his shirt. And the table upon which the rifle was resting. And the sandbags upon which it was stabilized. “Signor Lefferts, you not look so good,” said Benito.

Harry nodded, waved him toward the signal building. “Go over there. Tell them, ‘lights out.’ Send runners to order withdrawal.” After a moment, he gestured at the one remaining
lefferto.
“You go with him.” There was no point risking another youngster’s life by keeping him up here, since he didn’t really need spotters anymore.

As the two young men’s feet pounded down the stairs, Harry swayed back into the firing position, gritting his teeth as he set the stock into his brutalized shoulder. Through the scope, he could see Juliet running with the rest of the fleeing rioters but, being heavily built, she was quickly falling to the rear of the crowd.

Juliet was pumping her legs as fast as she could when there was a blast behind her. She went down, her left buttock apparently aflame. But no, it was just a pistol-shot through the thick of the flesh. Flesh, she allowed, of which she had plenty to spare. She struggled back to her feet, her lungs burning almost as badly as her rear end, and tried to resume running.

Sherrilyn, the last to cross the ladder, jumped off its last rung, turned, and pushed it down into the street. Covering her, Donald fired his shotgun at the distant belvedere, jacked another round into the chamber, jerked his head at the knotted line running down the front of the church. “You first,” he said.

“No: it’s my—”

“Sherrilyn, you’ve been first in and last out the whole way. Now give it a rest: git.” He fired another round at the belvedere; a short scream suggested that his shot had found its mark.

Sherrilyn started down the rope, feeling like some target at the country fair:
Step right up and try your luck! Shoot the teacher off the rope! Three tries a dollar!

George, just below her, had stopped in mid-descent, looking—no, staring—down the street that ran the length of the western edge of the
insula
Mattei. The cords stood out on his suddenly flushed neck as he screamed, “Juliet!
Juliet!
”

Sherrilyn turned, looked up the street, caught sight of a Spanish horseman, the scattering rioters, the litter of bodies, the distant but approaching Spanish infantry—and somehow, framed by it all, she saw the Spanish cavalryman who had shot Juliet gather his horse carefully and then spur it straight at her. He was smiling as he came. Smiling. Smiling as he rode her under, the hooves crushing and splitting and breaking the body that they churned through and over. And when she was a crumbled, barely moving lump of bloody flesh behind him, he turned in the saddle to look at her. And he was still smiling.

“JULIET!” screamed George, who slid down another ten feet, leaped from the rope, and landed off-center. He tumbled, came up like a gymnast and, loping badly, still sprinted in the direction of his stricken wife, screaming, again, “Juliet!”

Owen came out of the courtyard at a sprint, right behind the wounded Piero. He turned as he exited, grabbing a handful of what was left of the doors and pulled them shut: felt the thud as two musket balls hit them a moment later.

Owen turned—and found himself facing a cavalry charge.

Jayzus!
“Fire what you have!” he shouted to the clustered Wild Geese. He raised his pistol and started squeezing off rounds. The sustained barrage from their pepperbox revolvers slowed the charge, the riders clearly baffled to encounter so steady a volume of fire from such a small group. But they came on, even so.

The next ten seconds seemed longer than most days Owen had lived through. Caught in a whirl of horses, blazing guns, and falling bodies, there was no time to give orders or even think. Owen dodged, fired, lost his grip on John, fired again, which sent a horse tumbling toward him. He scrambled away, saw a Spaniard loom out of the smoke and chaos, pistol raised, hammer falling. A flash, a boom—and Synnot, who was still close beside him, carrying John with one arm, went down with a bullet through his forehead. Owen brought his own gun to bear, fired back, and missed. But even so, the Spaniard spilled out of his saddle, albeit in the opposite direction from what Owen would have expected.

It made no sense, but Owen had no time to be puzzled; having spent the last three shots in the cylinder, he let the pistol fall on its lanyard, ready to draw steel. But, through the smoke, he saw the last three Spanish cavalrymen had already reversed, leaving five of their number behind. Only now did Owen register the more distant shots he had missed hearing during the melee, and which probably explained the mysterious demise of the last Spaniard he had faced. The rifles of the Hibernians and Harry had come to their aid like angels—angels of death, of course, but angels nonetheless.

He turned, looked for John, and discovered him pinned beneath a horse, inarguably dead. Probably had been from the first shotgun blast that had ripped down through his body. Only sheer animal vitality had kept him going after that.

Owen reached out, took a firm hold on the earl’s traveling cloak, just below the embroidered pattern of the Tyrones, and yanked hard. And again. On the third try, it came free, and clutching it as he waved his remaining men into their retreat, Owen wondered
for whom have I taken this cloak? Who is left of the line of the O’Neills who might justly receive it? And if there are none such, then what good is it at all?

For more than a man named John O’Neill had died in Rome that night. Half the hopes of Ireland had expired with him.

Harry sighed, glad to have saved Owen—anyone—out of all this mess. He had just started thumbing fresh rounds into his empty rifle when the figure of a dark-cloaked man—not much more than a speck, since Lefferts was not using the scope—emerged from the ranks of the of the Spanish foot and walked up behind Juliet. For a moment, he stood very still, watching her drag her broken body away. Then, looking first toward George, who had been tackled by the rest of the Wrecking Crew, and next, vaguely in the direction of Harry himself, he took a step forward. The man drew a revolver, large enough to be the one that Lefferts had seen in Frank’s bar, and shot Juliet in the back of the head.

Then the dark-cloaked man stepped back into the ranks of his soldiers. For they were clearly his soldiers; they parted before, and then closed around, him like a sable tide making way for whatever power had conjured it in the first place.

Even as George screamed wordlessly at the now-steadily approaching Spanish infantry, Sherrilyn grabbed both his cheeks, hard, and pulled his face down to look at her. “We need you,” she shouted.

If it wasn’t for the two Hibernians with the lever actions, she was pretty sure they’d all be dead by now. But those long-range rounds had struck down so many of the foot soldiers’ lead rank that they had scattered into the lee of the buildings for cover. Facing this fire immediately after watching their cavalry cut apart by the revolvers of the Wild Geese, the renowned Spanish infantry had apparently decided against making any headlong rushes. Yet.

“George, listen. You have to carry Felix,” she lied. “You’re the only one strong enough. He needs you.”

“Juliet needs me, she—”

“No. She doesn’t. Not anymore. Here’s Felix: carry him.”

Harry stared at the ruin of the plan that he thought, at first, had come together. But instead, it had come apart. The Wild Geese were leap-frogging to the rear in fire teams of three. Sherrilyn had hoisted Felix onto George’s back, who seemed bowed, like a tired draft horse about to drop in its traces. Piero was keeping what was left of the
lefferti
moving together along the streets that lay between the Spanish and the Crew’s main line of retreat, thereby serving as a flanking screen.

The boy that Harry had sent with Benito to spread the withdrawal orders came pounding back up the stairs. “Signor Lefferts?”

“Yes?”

“You must go.”

“Yeah, I was just about to stroll on home. Where’s Benito?”

The boy made a face. “He got shot. Not killed, though. Not yet, anyway.”

Harry’s jaws tightened.

“Any orders?” the boy asked.

“Orders? For who?”

“Why, for me, sir.”

“Yes. Here are my orders: run like hell. Then get lost. And don’t get found.”

Thomas North looked over at Sean Connal for the fourth time in as many minutes. “That’s too much gunfire,” he opined. “Too much, for too long.”

“So you’ve said. And so I’ve agreed.”

North stood. “Then I’m retasking this force to provide a base of covering fire for a retreat.”

“We need a diversion. If Borja has any forces waiting here in the Trastevere, we’ll need to draw them away from the Crew’s path of retreat. We’ll also need to keep them busy long enough so that they miss detecting and following these boats—or we will never get out of Italy alive.”

“Excellent points. I hope you have an equally excellent plan.”

“It just so happens I do.” North turned to the one
lefferto
who had been left with them. “You. Are there abandoned houses in the north side of Trastevere?”

“
Si
. Many. I know of one near the Via Aurelia—”

“Fine. Now take this. It is an explosive. You understand that? No? Hmm, let’s try a new approach: this box goes BOOM! Now do you understand? Excellent. Take this to the house you mentioned. Light this fuse, like so. And then run away as fast as you can. Do not stop until you hear the boom. Then find a hiding spot, get rid of all your
lefferto
rubbish, and walk away.”

“Why? I am proud to be a
lefferto
and I will not—”

“You will be dead if you do not do as I tell you. The attack has failed. The Spanish will find many dead
lefferti
. They will search very hard for the rest. Do not be stupid. Get rid of the
lefferti
clothes and doo-dads and do not look back. Go into hiding for a week, at least. Can you do this?”

“
Si
. I—”

“Excellent. Go. Now. Dr. Connal?”

“Yes?”

“You stay here with the boats.” North held up a hand. “No complaints. Someone has to guard our ride home.” He turned to his own men. “You two come with me. I suspect our rifles will be needed to help Captain Lefferts with his fighting withdrawal. Which, if my ears don’t deceive me, is rapidly approaching.” He scooped up one of his favorite up-time toys—an SKS semiautomatic carbine—and ran toward the Ponte Cestia at a crouch.

For one terrifying moment, as new gunfire crackled out over the Tiber behind him, Harry Lefferts feared that the Spanish had boxed him in. That they had somehow known he planned to withdraw by boat after traversing the Isola Tiberina and had therefore put a blocking force at the bridge.

But the steady fire was coming from Thomas North’s anchor watch. The Limey had apparently pulled his team forward. As Harry reached the Ponte Fabricia, he dropped to a knee and reloaded his Remington for the third time. He looked up intermittently to wave the rest of the Wrecking Crew past him, then the Hibernians, and then the Wild Geese. By the time Owen Roe came along, bringing up the rear, having expended the last of his ready pepperbox cylinders, the Spanish had started closing the distance. They were getting bold again.

Despite the fading light, the early moon showed Harry a good target at just over fifty yards: a foot soldier whose slightly heavier and more weapon-festooned outline suggested a senior sergeant, marshalling the advancing troops. Harry raised his rifle, ignored the incendiary throbbing in his shoulder, let the crosshairs float down to settle on the silhouette and squeezed the trigger. He did not wait to see the result; he simply turned and ran.

As he passed North and his men, there was a loud explosion in the distance, somewhere in the north of Trastevere, from the sound of it.

Harry continued to run until he reached the boats. Thomas North and his two Hibernians were already close behind him by the time he got there. They jumped over the sides together. Waiting hands grabbed them while others—white with clutching poles and oars—pushed the shallow-bottomed punts off and out into the swifter current. As the oars started to creak in the locks and the boats picked up speed, Harry looked back over his boats and the city.

In his own boat, Owen Roe O’Neill sat in the thwarts, empty-eyed, clutching the bullet-tattered cloak that had belonged to the earl of Tyrone. George Sutherland was alternately weeping and laughing. Matija, the bleeding from his arm wound staunched, watched with dull eyes as Dr. Connal moved away from Felix and sat next to Harry.

“Let me look at that shoulder, Captain Lefferts.”

“I’m just Harry, Doc. And I can wait. Finish up with Felix, first.”

“I have finished. He’s dead, Harry.”

The pain as the doctor started cleaning the shoulder wound was welcome. Resisting that pain made it easier to resist the deeper, sharper agonies that were cutting down into his soul. Gerd. Juliet. Felix. John O’Neill. Several of the Wild Geese. Most of the survivors wounded. And scores of rioters and
lefferti
littering the streets of Rome. Their jaunty hats trampled. Their
faux
sunglasses shattered.