Chapter Twenty #2
“I know a place,” Allan said to Mel. “This way, sweetie.” He led her closer to the tunnel.
One of the sentries stepped into their path and held his arms out. “Go round,” he demanded. “You can’t come through here.”
“Give us a break, mate,” Allan begged. “The long way round’ll take too long. I can’t be late back to work, and Grace here won’t wait till I’m off.”
“Too cold after dark,” Mel grumbled. “Too cold now.”
“Tell you what,” said the other sentry. “We’ll let you through if she does us, too.”
The suggestion had the first sentry stepping out of the way so she and Allan could move another few paces. The second man stepped out into the alley, trapping them, as he thought, directly outside the entrance to the tunnel.
It had turned out even better than Mel hoped. They were close enough now to see into the tunnel. If there were more men on the other side of the grill, they were in the darkness beyond where the light reached.
At that moment, they heard a cacophony rising from somewhere not far away. Clanging, banging, shouting, explosions, a scream. The sound was coming through the tunnels as well as over the buildings.
The two sentries turned to look in the direction of the noise, and at that moment, Mel and Allan moved.
In seconds, Mel had hers trapped with a dagger against his neck and Allan had knocked the other unconscious.
The rest of the assault team, in two groups, converged on them from each end of the alley, and took over tying and gagging the two sentries while Allan fished in his pouch for the key and opened the gate to the tunnel.
“We do not know whether there are sentries on the hidden door to the lower tower,” Allan warned. “Be careful. But fast.”
“Like rats up a drainpipe,” said Ernest, cheerfully.
With the aid of a single lantern, carefully shuttered to throw a single pool of light ahead of the group, they hurried in single file along the tunnels.
If Ernest thought these were like pipes, he would have to think again when he saw where they were going.
Allan had described it to her last night—a long round hole, very much like a pipe, connected the tunnels under the tower with the cellars of the house.
The luck was running their way, or the diversion had worked. They saw no one in the tunnels, and when they reached the landing on the stairs where the hidden door into the lower tower was, there were no signs of disturbance. Allan moved the stone that hid the lock and used his key.
No ambush awaited them. The room felt as if it had been empty for days. Once everyone was inside, Allan locked the door again and worked the mechanism that replaced the stone.
“Downstairs,” he said, and led the way. Mel passed the door of the room where she and Allan had first come together in bed. At the time, she had wondered whether it was her seduction or his. She had never expected that he was serious about her—that he would want a future!
This was not the time to think about it, however. They were in the windowless ground-level part of the tower, and Allan and three more men were moving a heavy old desk and the mat it stood on to reveal a trap door in the floor.
Opened, the trap door revealed a ladder and below that a steep staircase. “Light the lanterns,” Allan said, and Baldwin lit a spill from the lantern he carried and passed it to be used to light another lantern. The spill made the rounds until all the lanterns were alight.
Down into the tower cellar they all went, Baldwin coming last to close the trap door behind them. It was a big open space with a reservoir in the center, fed from an undergrown stream that flowed in through a pipe in the wall with the overflow running out through another pipe.
Surely the system dated back to when this tower was a defensive keep—a refuge in times of trouble for the people who lived nearby. Safe behind thick stone walls, with fresh water beneath their floor, they would have been able to outlast warring bands who attacked from the land or the river.
Allan led the group to a third hole in the wall. Round like the two pipes, it was much larger—big enough for even the largest of the men to crawl through, but not big enough to stand up or even kneel in.
They all stared at it. “This is the way?” Somerville said, after the silence had stretched for what felt like minutes.
“This is the way,” Allan confirmed. “This pipe leads to the townhouse’s cellars.”
He sent Mel a quick smile. “I’ll lead the way,” he said. “The pipe is perhaps fifty meters long. Be careful with the lanterns when we get close to the cellars. I think the place we come out is deserted, but I don’t want light to betray us.”
“Lead on,” said Ernest.
“Piping,” said one of Dellborough’s lords sourly. “Oh joy.”
Mel had abandoned her gaudy skirts and petticoats in the tower, and just as well. Crawling through the pipe was much easier in the trousers she’d worn under her petticoats. She was near the middle of the group, with booted feet ahead of her, and Cornelius close on her heels.
She tried not to think about the weight of earth above her. Earth, and by now, surely, the townhouse itself? According to Allan, the cellars that were their destination were younger than the tower but older than the house, which had been rebuilt on the original site after the Great Fire.
The two were not quite contiguous, the cellars being bigger than the current house and at a different angle, so that parts of the cellars were not under the house, and in one or two places, parts of the house were not above the cellars.
Such ruminations distracted her from the sensation of being buried in a round hole in the ground. Distracted her long enough that she was surprised when the man in front of her suddenly disappeared and there was the outlet from the pipe to the cellar.
Her turn. She poked her head out into the cellar and two men stood, one on either side, ready to take her arms and swing her down to the ground.
She looked around as those behind her were being assisted in their turn. She was in a large cellar room with a low ceiling and a clay floor. There was no door—just a rectangular space in the walls with darkness beyond it.
“The place is still deserted,” Allan said, keeping his voice low, his lips close to her ear. “We are under the old wing. The cells where I suspect they are keeping the women are under the main part of the house, near the exit from the cellar to the street that Cook says the warders use.”
Baldwin whispered. “Let’s go. But quietly. My part of the plan might not have worked.”
It had, though, and better than they had expected.
When Baldwin had suggested giving laudanum to the marquess’s cook to put in the warder’s beer, they’d hoped to even the odds against them, at least ensuring that those not on duty would sleep through the noise of the invasion.
Instead, the cook had performed beyond all expectations. Men had dropped where they were, some still holding empty mugs. Had Cook added laudanum to the stew as well? “Lock them in one of the cells,” Somerville ordered. “Choose two to take with us as witnesses.”
“We brothers shall deal with the warders,” Allan said.
“Somerville, you and your friends go from cell to cell, and inspect the place for anything that might support the case against Teign. Mel, I’ll leave you and the other women to follow Somerville and release the prisoners.
Let us know if you find other warders. We’ll collect them. ”
Moriarty’s three women fell into step behind Mel as she followed Somerville. The place was a warren of tunnels with dozens of cells, some big enough for up to ten beds, some with as few as one or two.
They found eight women, locked in the dark in three of the rooms. The two women in the first room shrank away from the light, whimpering, but when they realized that Mel and the Moriarty guards were women, they ceased their noise and just waited, suspicious and frightened.
“My friends and I have come to save you,” said Mel. “We shall take you out of here, away from Teign and his men.”
“Is it true?” The woman who spoke straightened slightly.
“It is another of Farnham’s tricks,” said the other woman.
“No trick,” Mel assured her. “Come. Your warders are all unconscious, and the men in our party are locking them up, except those we are taking to question.”
The women remained huddled under the single blanket they shared. “What do you want us for?” demanded the woman who had suspected a trick.
“We want to rescue you,” Mel said. “We intend to bring Teign to trial for his many crimes. We brought witnesses who can give evidence of what Teign was doing here. But we cannot leave you to suffer. Come with us to have your injuries tended, and after you are well, we shall help you find safe places to live.”
The women exchanged glances. “If it is a trick,” said the suspicious woman, “may you burn in Hell.”
They got up from the bed on which they’d been sitting, and Mel realized something for which she and her friends had not planned. The women had no clothes. Each wore nothing but a grubby shift, spotted and striped with dark stains.
Mel went to the door. “Can you find these ladies some garments?” she asked Allan. She deputed one of the Moriarty women to stay with the two and help them dress, and took the others with her to the next locked room.
A similar scene played out. Before she had persuaded the three women in this room, the two from the first limped in, dressed in shirts, trousers, socks, and coats that must have been purloined from the warders.
“Might as well come along,” said one of them to the three Mel was trying to convince. “At least they’ve given us something to wear. I’d risk a lot for clean clothes.”
Mel left all five women with the one guard and went to the next room, where she was faced with a new challenge. The three women in that room had all been badly beaten.
“Allan,” she said, when she emerged from the room, “these three are too badly injured to walk. Baldwin, can you come and see how we can safely move them?”
They were delayed a further ten minutes while Baldwin gave each of the three a drink of the doctored ale—a small one, since he was uncertain of the amount of laudanum in it—and prescribed temporary dressings and splints.
“They will need a real doctor,” he told Allan, Mel, and Lord Somerville.
“But this will have to do for the journey. We cannot leave them here.”
They had expected to have to fight their way out through the warder’s exit, but the cook’s reach had extended even to the guard post that prevented unauthorized entrances and exits. Two more warders joined the others, locked in a cell to sleep it off.
The transport Allan and Somerville had ordered was waiting, with a detachment of bodyguards on horseback.
The five women who could still walk clambered aboard one carriage, clinging to one another and the Moriarty women.
The men had made makeshift stretchers from doors, and they carried out the three with injuries too severe for walking.
Baldwin climbed into a second carriage with them, to tend them on the journey.
The rest of the men piled into the remaining two carriages, with the two warder prisoners, still unconscious but bound and gagged, thrown on the floor at their feet.
Mel mimed a kiss toward Allan and joined Baldwin in his carriage, to see what help she might be on the journey.
It took only fifteen minutes, even at the slow pace they adopted to minimize the jolting.
Mel and Baldwin tried to hold their patients still, but the trip could not help but cause further suffering.
Fortunately, two of the three women were deeply unconscious, but the other moaned at every lurch.
It was a relief when they finally turned into the stable-yard of Dellborough’s townhouse.
The other carriages had arrived already, and a reception party waited with stretchers and a doctor for the injured.
Baldwin went along with them to explain what he had done, and Allan, who had waited for Mel, escorted her to Dellborough’s study, where a team of lawyers waited to take down everyone’s statements.
“Dellborough and Kempbury were in the next room when His Majesty saw Teign,” he told Mel.
“Apparently, the King demanded that Teign answer to charges of abusing his power over his sons, sending assassins to set fires to kill his sons, buying and selling women, and keeping women prisoner. Teign lost his temper again and called the King a fat fool. The King is not pleased. He is currently determined to punish the marquess. One can only hope he does not waver.”
“I have been told that King George has a kind heart,” Mel replied. “If one of the lords were to tell him about the sad condition of those poor women, I am sure he would be touched.”
“I’ll suggest it,” Allan promised.
“If His Majesty supports us, we cannot lose, Allan,” Mel pointed out.
They were, for the moment, alone in a long passage. Allan tugged Mel into an alcove and kissed her until her head reeled. “Tomorrow,” he promised in a whisper. “Tomorrow, this shall be over, and I shall be free to propose to you, my love.