1635 The Papal Stakes (77 page)

The
xueta
smiled at last. “Yes, some stories claim that.”

“And of course one couldn’t possibly explain these purported deaths as being the consequences of mining accidents, malnutrition and disease, surreptitious murder by guards or rival workers, or missing persons who simply, in fact, escaped?”

“All true,” said the
xueta
.

North finally smiled back. “And of course you, personally, don’t believe in the legend of this witch at all, do you?”

“Not a word of the drivel,” their guide affirmed with a nod. “But it is always worth a smile watching grown men shiver like little boys for a minute or two.”

“Thanks for the entertainment, yeh barstard,” growled Seamus Jeffrey, the youngest of the Wild Geese.

“What? Resentment? I have done you a favor.”

Donald Ohde cocked his head. “How so?”

“Did I not divert you for a moment? Did I not take your mind off of the attack to come? And does it not now seem, in comparison, that the perils of men and steel seem small in comparison to the terrors your mind was building?”

Several in the group blinked; the veterans among them—the same who had taken no heed of the legend of the witch—tried to conceal amused grins.

“Yes, well,” huffed North in an attempt not to smile himself. “Story time is over.” He moved next to the stairs, produced his nine-millimeter automatic, and snapped the safety off. “Our next game is deadly serious.”

Asher’s smaller assistant looked over at the bored Mallorcan guard who had brought him down to the main ground floor storeroom to fetch a gallon of water and ethanol each. The guard was taking the opportunity to pilfer a few sausages hanging close to the door.

Asher’s assistant opened the tap of the first tun. As the liquid started spattering noisily to the bottom of his waiting, empty jug, the assistant palmed a crude key wrench out of his sleeve. Judging from the angle of the guard’s shadow, he was still facing out the open door into the courtyard; a sigh of contentment followed by earnest munching indicated that his attention was not on his
xueta
charge. After all, what mischief could the Jew possibly do with a guard standing within ten feet of him? The assistant grinned faintly while, using his body as cover, he inserted the key wrench in a well-concealed hole and gave it a sharp turn. Then he shut off the spigot, which squeaked. Then he half opened it, closed it again: another squeak.

The guard looked up. “What are you doing? Stomping on mice?”

“No; this spigot leaks. I have to ram it closed, hard. Here, one more time—” and his final effort produced a third squeak.

“You done yet?” asked the guard. He did not sound impatient, but wistful; his eyes strayed to another sausage hanging by the wall.

“One more,” answered the assistant as he tapped the second tun. He repeated the process: when the guard wasn’t looking, he inserted the key wrench in a similarly situated hole—just beneath, and concealed by the rim of, the tap. When he was done, the assistant scraped the key wrench across the handle of the spigot twice. Then he re-palmed it and once again tightened the spigot three times.

“What? Another squeaky spigot?”

The assistant shrugged. “Shoddy workmanship, I suppose.”

“Just what a Jew would be willing to pay for,” sneered the guard. He belched and pointed out the door. “Get going. If that little bitch dies, it’s not going to be because you were late getting back.”

Asher’s assistant bowed slightly and walked out, a gallon jug hanging in each hand. He made his way up to the second level, and was about to start on his way to the roof when a rich bass voice called after the two of them.

“Guard, a moment.”

The assistant’s escort looked around dully, then snapped straight to attention; the hidalgo
captain—Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas—was approaching from the governor’s office. “I just heard about the prisoner,” he explained. “I am going up. I will escort the doctor’s assistant to the sickroom.”

The guard spoke with his eyes fixed above the hidalgo’s brow line. “Sir, I must continue to escort the prisoner. Señor Dakis’ orders, sir.”

“Ah. I see. Well then, I shall accompany you there.”

“As the captain wishes.”

Asher’s assistant started up the stairs to the roof, wondering why this captain was concerned enough to accompany them, but he knew one thing very clearly: from all accounts, he was smart enough to be trouble.

Lots of trouble.

Inside the secret compartment at the core of the tun of purified water, Owen Roe O’Neill counted to fifty after hearing the three squeaks that signaled that the barrel’s false interior was now unlocked and could be opened.

It was hard making sure that he did not count too quickly, but fortunately, the only light inside the hidden compartment was also the assurance that he did not succumb to the desire to rush his exit: the pale green phosphorescent dot of the up-time watch Miro had lent him continued in its orbit around the unseen center of the timepiece’s face. The watch had not only been necessary to ensure that he waited long enough to emerge from the immense barrel, but was also a means of determining if the whole operation had gone awry. Had there been no three squeaks of the spigot within the next ninety minutes, Owen would have emerged anyway—but to withdraw as surreptitiously as possible: if the signal to come out was that late, it meant the operation was, as the up-timers put it, “busted.”

Owen watched the second sweep hit the ten o’clock position and grabbed the handles on either side of the egress hatch from the secret compartment. He pushed them outward and heard the click that meant the spring lock had been pushed back far enough to allow the hatch to begin turning. He rotated it through ninety degrees and both heard and felt the flanges on the hatch clear the restraining tabs. Sliding himself forward, he got his arms doubled up behind the hatch, braced his feet against the back of the compartment, and pushed.

The head of the tun hinged outward at the first hoop, the water in the false reservoir there flooding out on the floor with a rush. Owen wriggled out, past the lead inserts that had given the barrel proper weight and rolled to his feet, dagger at the ready.

He was in a dark storeroom and he thought he smelled—sausage.

He turned toward the other barrel just as it, too, hinged open from the first hoop, the ethanol that had been trapped in the reservoir behind the spigot splashing out, mixing with the water.

Owen helped little Edward Dillon crawl out. Dillon clambered to his feet, reached back inside, and retrieved his pepperbox revolver. Owen shook his head. “No Edward, that’s not the tool for this particular job. It’s in here.” He tapped the young man’s temple. “
Como le va?
” he asked.

“
Bueno. Estoy dispuesto a hablar español
.” Dillon’s accent was as convincing as his reply was swift and sure. Furthermore, being one of the “black Irish,” he looked as genuinely Spanish as he sounded. His gear, like Owen’s, had been carefully selected from among the pirate equipment that had originally been worn by troops on Spanish argosies. The disguise was very effective in Dillon’s case; it was much less so for rangy, red-haired Owen Roe O’Neill, whose tip-tilted nose and plentiful freckles definitively marked him as a son of the northern Celtic peoples.

“Shall I lead, then, Colonel?” Dillon asked.

“Just a moment.” Owen checked the handle of both spigots; he saw two fresh, lateral scratches on one of them: the ‘go’ sign. “Lead on, Dillon. You know the way.” Twenty rehearsals on the chalk outline in Tarongi’s basement ensured that.

Dillon nodded, went to the door, drew a deep breath, and fell into what he evidently hoped was a nonchalant posture.
A great actor he will never be,
thought Owen,
but he’s good enough to walk
fifteen feet to the left.

Which is just what Edward Dillon did: pushing open the door casually, he wandered out to the left-hand side, not hugging the curving wall of the Castell de Bellver’s lower gallery, but anyone on the opposite side of second gallery level would still have only seen him from the waist down. Owen shut the door behind them without attempting to muffle the noise and followed Dillon, who reached the door to the long-term storage room, located just to the south of the Castell’s main entrance. The door was not open, but they had not expected it to be. They could not be sure if the room was occupied, either; their advance intelligence, while good insofar as layout and complement were concerned, did not extend to a precise knowledge of interior duty stations, or any others that could not be observed from the nearby slopes and low mountains just a bit inland.

Dillon looked at Owen, who glanced around the Castell’s circular bailey or, “arms court”: only two Spanish in sight, almost on the opposite side of the lower gallery, strolling. Were they walking a patrol of the interior? That hardly seemed plausible, since it was only one hundred feet in diameter. More likely they were simply off duty, bored, and glad for the freedom to be taking some of the comparatively cool night air. Owen turned back to Dillon and nodded.

The little Ulsterman opened the door without having to knock or fiddle with the lock; that much they had known—that this room was kept unlocked for ready access to routinely used tools and supplies. The dim light revealed a guard; before he looked up, Dillon muttered an informal greeting.

As the guard grunted his lazy response, Owen moved past Dillon quickly and quietly, noting that the Spaniard was portly, well settled into a snack of olives, cheese, and bread, and rather slow-eyed.

He looked up at Owen’s approach, suddenly anxious at the sound of swift, decisive movement. “Sir, I wasn’t—I didn’t—” He stopped and squinted as Owen got within arm’s-reach; the guard frowned, and his hand went to the short scabbard on his belt.

“Hey—” he started.

Harry Lefferts squinted into the murk and signaled on his handset for Doc Connal to lower him another ten feet in two intervals of five. The clouds had not risen as they approached the slopes on the west side of the Bay of Palma, which meant that they were damn near evolving into a ground fog.

Harry scanned under the thickening cloud bank to find the sea-level—and therefore, visible—landmarks he’d spotted during his approach. Using the lights at Fort San Carlos to the south, and Palma to the north as his points of reference, he confirmed his bearings. He looked at his compass, recalled the last time he had seen the dim outline of Bellver—probably about three minutes ago—and frowned. Unless he was completely screwed up on the numbers, he should be almost on top of—

Bellver’s lazarette loomed out of the darkness at him the same moment that the line started playing out in response to his request for the first five feet of slack—putting him on a course that would carry him up against the battlements with a solid whack before he cleared them. Worse yet, he realized with a jump of his heart, the guys in the dirigible were about to lower him five more feet—meaning he was actually going to miss the roof entirely and instead splat full into the side of the tower at ten miles an hour. Not great, in itself, but then he’d either get dragged straight up the near side of the lazarette and be caught on its crenellations, or slide around curve of its outer wall, bumping as he went, his line possibly snagging one of the toothlike merlons, snapping, and dropping him one hundred feet down into the dry moat.

Harry signaled quickly with the handset and reached his other hand around to unholster his .357 automatic—a gun he was not particularly fond of, but was optimal for this situation. His signals—which were a three digit code for “emergency: raise me ten feet now: stop the airship now”—were evidently quickly received and understood; the second five-foot dip reversed into a hasty reascent that began as a lung-cinching snap. Wheezing, Harry reached behind to release two of the small spools of landing slack affixed to his main wire and did the same to his “fanny wire.” As he approached the wall—a little too high, now—he suddenly dropped two feet lower: his final altitude correction. At the same time, his butt swung down, leaving him in more of a sitting position as his course took his toes over the battlements, his feet out to brace against an impact or land. His gun was up, his eyes scanning for targets on the roof.

Well,
he thought,
here goes nothing.

Frank looked up as Asher’s assistant came back with the water and ethanol—and his heart sank.
Oh no.
Don Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas pushed into the room ahead of the returning guard, his eyes dark with genuine worry.

“How is your wife?” he asked, crossing to Frank in one stride.

Frank stared at him. S
o it’s just like old times, huh? Just like that, all is forgiven. No hard feelings for the cold shoulder I’ve been giving you for weeks, even though I
am
lucky that it was you who beat me up. And I’ve never thanked you for the paper, the ink, the niceties, and especially for Asher, because there’s no other way Morales would allow a
xueta
into his precious Castell. So, despite my ingratitude and rebuffs, here you are, no resentment, just genuine concern. Probably ready to do anything for us, for her. You poor sap.

“Frank?” asked Don Vincente, the frown on his face deepening. “Are you quite all right?”

Asher’s voice was loud and scratchy. “I need quiet. Here,” he said to his larger assistant, “keep this handy.” Asher reached out a long, wicked looking knife; it didn’t look like any surgical implement Frank was familiar with, but then, he wasn’t too familiar with the doctoring tools of the seventeenth century. The tall assistant reached out, took the blade carefully. Dakis and one of the guards watched him closely until he set the knife down on the table in front of him.

In the meantime, Asher had asked for his smaller assistant to stand ready with two full quart-sized, long-necked bottles of water and ethanol respectively. “I may need you to wash away a great deal of blood and douse against infection,” Asher said grimly as his hands were busy behind the privacy blind. Giovanna, to whom he had earlier given a draught that he identified as opiated wine, murmured and moaned. “God help me,” Asher muttered, “this will not be easy.”