Exile's Return (29 page)

‘I've an answer to that.' Peg Truscott rose to her feet and crossed to a cupboard beside the fireplace. Inside, the shelves were packed with clay pots and mysterious packages. She pulled one out, shook her head, and put it back again.

‘Ah, here it is. Tincture of poppy.' She held up a flask. ‘‘Tis a sleeping draught of my own recipe. Will knock out a horse.'

Kit put his arm around the woman's shoulders and kissed the top of her head. ‘You are a marvel, Mistress Truscott. So all you have to do, Agnes, is get two children and two adults to drink some of this. Any ideas?'

Agnes caught the scepticism in his tone. ‘If I take supper with the children … I am loath to drug them though.'

Jonathan looked at her, his eyes narrowed in thought. ‘Do what you think is right, Agnes. Will there be much to carry?'

Agnes shook her head. ‘I saw four satchels. I don't imagine James upended the contents into one great chest. He would have wanted it portable.'

‘How heavy are they?' Kit asked.

‘Four hundred coins means one hundred coins per bag.' Jonathan looked around. ‘Does anyone have a Unite?'

Kit undid his purse and tossed the gold coin to him. Jonathan picked it up, weighing it in his hand.

‘Four satchels is easy enough. Excuse us, Mistress Truscott, I need your table.'

With a heavy sigh, Peg moved the peas and took her own seat by the fire as Jonathan cleared a space on the table and gestured for them all to sit down. He produced a crumpled sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal from his travelling bag.

‘Draw us a plan of the castle, Agnes, and the best route to get there and away undetected.'

Agnes complied and the men leaned in closer, asking questions, confirming plans.

Setting the charcoal down, Agnes looked around the table at the grim faces of the men.

‘It's not just the gold. I am bringing the children.'

Kit glanced at Daniel. ‘The children? When did they become part of the plan?'

Jonathan straightened, running his hand through his hair. ‘Agnes, I … we understand your concern, but we have limited resources. I just don't see how we can carry out two children as well as the gold.'

Agnes stiffened. ‘The children come or this is the end of my co-operation.'

‘This is madness,' Kit said. ‘The children are not your responsibility, Agnes. They are safe enough where they are.'

‘No, they're not,' Agnes said, her voice rising in distress. ‘Leah Turner beats them and I fear for Henry's life. Tobias covets the title. They are only little … children die … ' She broke off, fighting back tears.

Peg rose to her feet and put her arms around Agnes. ‘They're right, dearest, you can't just make off with ‘em. You know that. You'd have the whole wrath of Ashby and his soldiers on your heels.'

Jonathan swept the plan off the table and consigned it to the flames, where it flared brightly before dying into the peat. With his hands on his hips his gaze rested on Agnes.

‘Our mission is the gold, Agnes.'

She opened her mouth to protest but he held up his hand. ‘I do not mean to be heartless but think of it. Peg's right, if you take the children now, you will be pursued from one end of England to the other as a kidnapper.' He laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Agnes, I know what it is to risk your life for a child, and I know the trouble it brought me. The days of men like Tobias Ashby are numbered. The King will return within months and then I will be in a position to assist you in petitioning him for custody of the children. I have, or at least I had, some little influence with Charles. Please, I counsel patience.'

Agnes looked away, her fingers balled in a fist. She knew he was right but every instinct in her cried out to liberate her child.

‘Patience is not one of my virtues,' she said between stiff lips.

‘Evidently,' said Kit. ‘You and my brother have that at least in common. So we are agreed?'

Everyone nodded, although Agnes's acquiescence lacked enthusiasm. If Kit and Jonathan were successful in liberating the gold without alerting the castle garrison, then Agnes and Daniel would remain within the castle. Agnes could show Tobias the empty hiding place, hoping he would assume that James had divested himself of the gold and Agnes and Daniel could leave Charvaley as they had come, through the front door.

‘Until tonight,' Jonathan said.

The clock on the church tower struck two. Glancing back to ensure the bolsters she had stuffed in the bed resembled, at first glance, a slumbering body, Agnes closed the door behind her and crept on stockinged feet past the slumbering guard.

At supper in the nursery, Agnes had kindly insisted Hannah share in the evening repast with the children and, dispatching the maid to fetch the children's night clothes from where they warmed in front of the fire, she slipped the sleeping draught into the jug of small ale while the girl's back was turned. Agnes had allowed the children a few small sips before removing it from them. Enough, she hoped, to render them sleepy without being drugged. She left the jug and cup in the assumption that once she was alone and the children in bed, Hannah would finish it.

Trooper Brown sprawled on his stool, snoring loudly, his legs akimbo and drool running from his open mouth. While she had taken supper with the children, Daniel had conspired to provide the man with a full jug of drugged wine. The empty jug lay on its side, the last of its contents shining wetly on the floor.

Her fellow conspirators waited for her in the shadows of the servant's stairs. She had never seen a more villainous band. The three men wore cloths wound around the lower parts of their faces, hats pulled low down on their brows: Jonathan, the tallest, Kit identifiable by his swagger, which she had discovered disguised a limp, and Daniel by his slighter build and lithe movements. Like her they were in stockinged feet, their boots carried in bags over their shoulders.

They followed her down the silent corridors and up the stairs that led to the nursery.

The door opened with the slightest click and Agnes slipped in first. The only light in the room came from the window, a waning moon, casting cold shadows across the floorboards. The curtains of the children's bed were pulled tight against the cold night. Hannah slumbered in a pallet at the foot of the bed, and like Brown she snored stentoriously. As Jonathan lit the candle on the table, Agnes flicked back the curtains on the big bed and smiled down at the two children curled up together like dormice in the enormous bed, their slight forms making little impression in the vast space. Both were sound asleep. Reaching out a finger, she stroked Henry's soft cheek.

Soon, little boy,
she promised.

The tapestry rattled on the rod as Daniel drew it aside and Agnes glanced at the slumbering Hannah. The girl snorted and turned onto her side. No sound came from the children and she restored the curtains.

The four conspirators stood looking at the old, worm-ridden panelling. Jonathan held up the candle. Counting from the door, Agnes located the third panel, gratified that its location accorded with the point where Lizzie had indicated the ghost had passed through the wall. Running her fingertips along the seams of the oak panel, she found an unnatural indentation. She pushed on it, heard a slight click, and a section of panel eased away, revealing the stone wall.

She glanced at the men and Kit stepped forward, pushing on a corner of stonework. A whole section of the wall swung inward with hardly a creak, leaving a gap about four feet square. Kit stepped back and let out his breath in an audible sigh and Jonathan gave a curt nod to his companions as he advanced on the opening, crouching down to look into the space beyond. Illuminated by the candle, Agnes could see it was as she had anticipated, a long narrow space, no more than four feet wide, running between the walls. Given the juxtaposition of the two rooms, it was not an anomaly that would be easily detected unless you were looking for it.

Just inside the entrance, piled in a tidy heap, were the four leather satchels she had seen on the night James's men had brought them to Charvaley.

Daniel bent toward Agnes, and placing his mouth close to her ear, he whispered, ‘Stay by the door and keep watch.'

She nodded and took up a position beside the door, leaving it open a little way to get a view of the corridor. The house slumbered in peace.

Daniel, with his slighter build, disappeared into the opening and handed out the four heavy, leather satchels.

Kit pushed the hiding place shut. Well-oiled, it slid back into place with barely a click, and he had his hand on the tapestry preparatory to pulling it back into place when a sharp cry of anguish came from the children's bed.

They all froze in place, the three men turning to Agnes.

Henry. One of his nightmares.

As Hannah stirred on her bed, Agnes cast a frantic glance at Daniel.

‘See to the child,' he whispered and jerked his head at the others. ‘We must away.'

Agnes pulled the tapestry across the wall and hurried across to the children's bed. She slipped behind the curtains, and taking the whimpering child in her arms, she rocked and hushed him, her heart hammering beneath her bodice.

‘Please, be quiet,' she whispered to the little boy.

‘Agnes!' Although Henry was still half asleep, her name seemed to echo around the quiet room. Every nerve in Agnes's body jangled.

‘Don't go away again,' the boy murmured, sleep beginning to claim him once more.

She held him closer, her heart breaking as he stilled, and once more he slept. Just a few more minutes, she told herself, before she needed to return to her room. Just a few more minutes to hold her son. She closed her eyes and laid her cheek against his soft curls.

***

In the corridor outside the nursery, the moonlight streaming in through the windows cast fractured lights across the bare boards, which creaked ominously as the men hurried across them. They had almost reached the turn that led into the main gallery when they heard the unmistakable sound of heavy feet coming toward them.

Beside Daniel, Kit swore under his breath. ‘
Merde
.'

With a sharp gesture of his hand, Jonathan indicated for them to scatter and melt as much as possible into the shadowed recesses of doorways and corners.

As the interloper rounded the corridor his footsteps became stealthier, the floorboards protesting as if someone were trying unsuccessfully to tiptoe along the corridor. Daniel tried the handle of the nearest door but found it locked. Squeezed into the shadowed doorway, Daniel held his breath as he recognised the man as one of Turner's men – Simpson. What would Simpson be doing here at this hour, and acting in such a furtive manner?

The answer came when the man rapped softly, his ear to the nursery door. ‘Hannah? Remember your promise … '

When no one within the room stirred, Simpson knocked again. Daniel thought about Agnes, trapped in that room, and bit back a groan.

He carried no weapon except his knife and he cast about the gloomy gallery for something – anything – he could use to incapacitate the man.

‘Hannah! I'm coming in … ' Simpson said in a syrupy tone.

To Daniel's dismay the door opened and the nursery maid, barefoot in her chemise, her hair sticking out wildly, lurched into view.

‘What are you doing here?' she demanded, her voice slurred with sleep and the drug.

The man chucked her under her chin. ‘We had an arrangement, remember?'

The girl softened, her arms circling the man's neck. ‘Oh yes … the brats are asleep, come inside.'

Concealed behind a tapestry, Kit must have shifted his weight. A floorboard creaked, sounding like a musket shot in the silent corridor.

‘Wha's that?' Hannah said, removing her arms from around her paramour's neck.

Simpson whirled around. ‘Who's there?' he demanded in a voice that would have woken the dead. ‘Someone's there – come out and face me.'

Daniel's mind whirled. How could something so simple go so terribly wrong? Now was not the time for personal sentiment. The priority was getting the gold away. His life, and Agnes's, had to be something he worried about later.

Daniel broke cover, his knife concealed in the palm of his hand, and stood between Simpson and the others. Behind him he heard Kit and Jonathan's footsteps breaking into a run as they disappeared into the gloom of the gallery.

‘Help here!' Simpson yelled. ‘Intruders!'

Daniel held his ground and Simpson lunged toward him, taking him to be unarmed. Like Trooper Brown, Simpson seemed to have been recruited for his size. Daniel could never hope to best him in any form of unarmed combat – all he could do was hope to slow the man down.

Simpson uttered a bellow and rushed at him. Daniel neatly sidestepped, plunging the knife low into the man's leg. Simpson stopped in his tracks, looked down at the hilt of the knife as Daniel wrested it free, and dropped to his knees with a gurgle.

Daniel hesitated, torn between getting past the screaming maid and extricating Agnes and making good his own escape. If he stopped to rescue Agnes, they would both be taken. He would be more use to her free.

‘
Sorry, Agnes
,' he said in his thoughts and pausing only to collect the satchels he had set down, he turned and ran.

***

At the first knock on the door, Agnes froze. She laid Henry back in his place and peered through the curtains at the end of the bed where she could see the maid.

Hannah muttered and groaned and turned restlessly on her pallet. Agnes willed her back into slumber but when the second knock came, more insistent than the first, Hannah awoke, pushing her hair from her eyes and stumbling from her bed toward the door.

Agnes's breath caught in her throat. She was safe enough for the moment but if the noise woke the children or… God forbid, the alarm was raised … Without a second thought she slipped off the bed on the far side, out of sight of the door, and slid under the bed, just as Lizzie had done when she had played hide and seek.