1635: The Papal Stakes

CHAPTER FIFTY

In the top room of the Castell de Bellver’s lazarette, Frank watched his wife squirm in discomfort as Asher arrived, escorted in by guards. As usual, the medium-sized assistant followed the doctor closely, the larger, broad-shouldered one bringing up the rear with the more cumbersome boxes and paraphernalia.

As Asher’s smaller assistant began setting up a folding trestle table and laying out implements, the doctor asked, “Now, are the pains regular or-?”

“Oh! Ow!” Gia exclaimed.

“Ah…irregular,” Asher concluded as his assistants finished raising the sheets that would be used as a modesty blind.

Dakis emerged from the staircase that led down to the fortified walkway joining the lazarette to Bellver’s roof. “So, what’s wrong, Jew?”

“I won’t know until I examine the woman,” Asher snapped, “which is not helped by having three-now four-guards in the room.”

“Just do your work. If you actually have any work to do.”

Gia writhed as Asher turned away to look at Dakis. “And what does that mean, senor?”

“It means that I wonder if she really has any problems with her pregnancy or if they are all feigned.”

“You suspect this is all just theatrics?”

“I suspect that this is a conspiracy.”

“A conspiracy?” gulped Frank before he could shut his mouth or govern his panicked tone. “What for?”

Dakis stared at Frank, assessing. “Why to trick us, of course.” He finished sizing Frank up and seemed to come to the relieving, if depressing, conclusion that the up-timer was too guileless and too overtly surprised to warrant suspicion. “Well, perhaps you aren’t in on it, but your wife might be.” Dakis darted a dark look at her and Asher. “I know fraud when I smell it. The Jew is getting a fat fee every time he comes up here, and charges us for all these pure spirits he claims will keep wounds clean and prevent infection. Probably a lie to justify the outrageous bills he tenders for the cost of his materials. And he’s probably splitting the take with your wife, his accomplice.” Dakis glared at Frank again. “But maybe you are in on it, after all: you certainly look nervous.”

“I look nervous? Really?” answered Frank. “I can’t think why-what with a doctor hovering over my pregnant wife, holding a knife, three months before she’s due.”

Dakis scowled, then blanched; Asher’s hands had come from behind the sheets and were covered in blood. “Perhaps this is all part of our theatrics, senor?”

Dakis uttered an inaudible profanity and, crossing his arms, leaned his back against the inner wall of the lazarette. “Get on with it,” he growled.

Asher glanced at his medium-sized assistant. “Fetch me more of the ethanol, quickly.”

Virgilio angled the props to give a slight downward boost-and suddenly they were under the clouds again, with the xebec visible below and slightly ahead of them. Off to the right, watch lights showed where Palma slumbered at the far end of the bay to the north.

“Very well, we continue on our own, from here,” announced Miro. “Dr. Connal, signal the Atropos that they are to release us. Aurelio is to signal the other boats to head south to their pre-chase loiter positions before he continues west at best speed. After you send the message, reel in the line quickly. Harry, are you ready?”

“Almost. Lemme double-check that my gear is attached good and tight.”

“Virgilio, we have to be in the clouds again before you call for another burn; we can’t show a flame any more.”

“Yes, I know, Don Estuban. I will need more fuel for the engines now. Make it the best we have.”

Miro turned to Turlough Eubank. “Gasoline into the engines, please. And since you will be otherwise occupied shortly, please fill the tanks to the brim, this time.”

“Aye, just as you say, Don Estuban. Do I pitch the container if it’s empty?”

Miro thought. “No, not any more. It’s only a few pounds. We can keep the weight until we no longer have need of stealth.”

Virgilio made a noise that suggested he would have answered Eubank differently. Miro smiled, turned to Connal, and saw the end of the main tow-line come up into his palm from over the side of the gondola; the wires protruding from the end of the narrow up-time electric cord attached to it were faint copper wisps. Connal handed it to Harry, who was waiting for it.

“Do you need help?” asked Miro. He had asked Harry this every time they had run the drill in preparation for this moment; Harry had never admitted needing assistance, and indeed, seemed not to.

But this time Harry said, “Sure, Estuban. Double-check each connection, will you?”

Miro agreed, tugged on and inspected each point where Harry had fastened the tow-line to his harness with D-rings. Then Miro took the device to which Lefferts had attached the wire-ends, which looked like nothing so much as a scissor with a spring resistor against easy closing. “The electrical connections look good, Harry.” He handed back the odd scissors. “Test the handset.”

Harry clicked through three long contacts, then a long-short-long combination. Dah-dah-dah, dah-dit-dah chattered the receiver nestled between Doc Connal’s knees. He looked up and smiled, “‘OK’ indeed, Harry.”

Lefferts nodded. “Then let’s do this.” He swung a leg over the edge of the gondola. “You have all the slack reeled in, Doc?”

“I do. Remember, we can let you down a lot more quickly than we can pull you up.”

“Ain’t that the terrifying truth.”

“And remember: you have extra cable coiled in five one-foot spools at the first harness attachment point; you can give yourself a little more drop if you need it, Harry.”

“Doc, you’re starting to sound like my momma. Anything else?”

Miro simply nodded. “Godspeed, Harry.”

He nodded back and swung his other leg over the side of the gondola. “Well, guys, it’s been a slice.” He turned slowly until he faced back toward the center of the airship, keeping his weight on his arms. He smiled, and said, “Geronimo!” And he let go-gradually.

Harry did not fall, but eased down into a position where he dangled four feet beneath the gondola; a smaler cable-just a cord, really-was attached lower on his back, which helped to stabilize him against spinning or tumbling.

“How are you, Harry?” Miro called down.

“I’m good to go,” came the up-timer’s reply, faint over the hum of the throttled-back engines. “Let’s stop dawdling.”

Miro smiled. “As you wish. Virgilio, can we get back into the cloud bank with engines?”

“Maybe,” answered the pilot, “but a quick burst from the burner would be a great help. You can use the burn-shield to conceal most of it.”

Miro turned back to Eubank again. “Do it,” he said.

The Irishman, moving nimbly despite his cuirass, produced three pieces of thin tin plate and inserted them vertically in slots fixed along each side of the burner, leaving only the southern, seaward side uncovered. The panels had an excessive stove-piping effect, and had a slight tendency to overconcentrate the hot air flow up into the envelope, but they also reduced the visibility of the burner’s flare considerably.

Eubank engaged the burner briefly; the airship climbed back toward the irregular gray fleece overhead.

Miro came to stand alongside his pilot. “We are on instruments only, now, Virgilio, so keep me apprised of wind direction and velocity. I will need that to revise our bearings if we are being pushed off course.”

“Ah, Harry can always put us back on track,” Virgilio pointed out as he throttled the engines back even more.

“I heard that,” Lefferts’ voice announced from ten feet below. “Just don’t go too low, okay?”

“We will not, so long as you tell us what we need to do in order to keep you just below the clouds, and us just above.”

“Count on it,” the up-timer drawled. “Give me a little more slack; the top of the balloon is up in the clouds already.”

Miro looked up; Harry was right. “Ten more feet of slack, please, Doctor.”

Connal nodded. “Down you go, Harry,” he said as he played out the line.

And then suddenly, they were encased in cool gray cotton again.

The tunnel had grown progressively narrower but now rewidened, opening into an irregular oval chamber with a low ceiling and detritus scattered about its dusty floor: ill-cut paving stones, half a belt, a forlorn and ragged shoe. In the shifting light of the lanterns, the men’s bodies threw monstrous shadows on the wall.

The master of the llaut — ghostly from the gray-pink dust of the mining tunnels through which they had entered-pointed toward what Thomas guessed was the north end of the chamber. “We are here,” he said quietly.

North squinted in that direction: stairs, leading up. They were not solid risers, but rather thin slabs of stone that had been set into grooves cut in the facing walls. They ascended toward a heavy-timbered, iron-bound trapdoor seven feet above them. North nodded, checked his up-time watch: they were on time-just. The summons could come at any time, now. “Weapons out,” he murmured. “Check your actions; make sure there’s no dust on or in them.”

“Rearguard, sir?” asked Donald Ohde.

“Perhaps, but I-”

From behind them came the distant sound of feet slapping down against a wet section of the cave floor. Thomas North swung up his weapon; half a dozen of his men followed suit. But listening more closely, the Englishman allowed that it might be water dripping down through the porous sandstone. They had seen plenty of evidence of that on the way in. They waited, guns ready, for almost a minute. The regular sounds ended as a hasty patter, then nothing: water, certainly. “Stand down,” muttered North.

“What was it, Colonel?”

“It was nothing, Hauer. Just water.”

“Or maybe the witch,” offered the master of the llaut, who suddenly discovered himself under the intense scrutiny of sixteen pairs of eyes belonging to heavily armed and already somewhat anxious men.

“I beg your pardon,” said North sweetly, “but maybe it was the what?”

“The witch,” repeated the master of the llaut. “ Na Joanna. The one that inhabits these caves.”

One half of the group-including two of the three Wild Geese-stared about balefully.

In contrast, Donald Ohde was grinning and shaking his head. “There just had to be something.” He almost giggled. “There just had to be something we didn’t learn about or consider. But an attack by a witch? Now, that will be a story worth telling.”

“Yes,” North agreed, “it will be a story worth telling-to scare naughty children. Now let me make a few guesses.” He aimed his chin at the xueta. “First, the legends of this witch probably have to do with moaning on stormy nights, do they not?”

“Often, yes.”

“You mean the kind of moaning that occurs when wind is forced through a narrow ravine, like at the head of this valley?”

The xueta shrugged. “Yes.”

“And let me further conjecture that the witch’s nocturnal harrowings are proven by sudden health afflictions visited upon wandering children and occasional disappearances of goats, followed by the eventual discovery of their skeletal remains.”

“Yes.”

“The former of which is simply parental terror-tactics, while the latter would be consistent with the action of wild dogs, wild pigs, poachers, or all three. And last, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make the wild surmise that the witch was responsible for the deaths of untold workers at the mines and the quarries, correct?”

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. Senor 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 espanol.” 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.”

He seemed to be manipulating something gently when, suddenly, there was a splash of liquid on the floor: blood.

Castro y Papas flinched forward, clearly following an instinct to help, stopping himself as he inevitably realized that there was nothing to be done.

The smaller assistant asked, “Do you need the water or spirits, yet?”

“No, but have them ready. And you”-Asher looked up at the taller assistant-“be quick with that knife.”

In the same instant that Owen Roe O’Neill took his last, long step to close with the slow-eyed guard, he drew his dagger and thrust straight forward.

The weapon’s point entered the man’s heavy neck just where the Irish colonel had intended: at the larynx. As the guard wheezed horror and dismay, Owen withdrew the knife at an angle, dragging its keen edge sharply across the jugular vein. Dark blood spurted and the man, in the midst of scrabbling after his own weapon and trying to rock up to his feet, suddenly grabbed at the mortal wound.

Owen knew the man was dead, but this way he would die neither quickly nor silently: in the time it took him to exsanguinate, the guard might tip over boxes, flail about destructively, and thereby, bring other soldiers to investigate. Can’t have that. Owen, arm coming back from the exit slash, shot forward again into another thrust.

This time, the man was on his knees, moving feebly, when the Spanish dagger sunk almost four inches of its length into his temple. The guard’s struggles ceased abruptly; he fell forward, face down on the paving stones, the blood leaking out of him in an ever widening pool.

Owen turned to Dillon at the door. “Have you locked it?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Then get over here, on the double.”

Dillon did, and together they quickly found the box of spare culverin balls that had been placed square atop the trapdoor into the exit tunnel. Lifting the balls out, they lightened the crate and moved it aside, exposing the trapdoor.

Locked. They could blow the lock off, but that was loud-and besides, this room was for storing tools, also, wasn’t it? “Dillon, keep watch outside. Tell me when those late-night strollers are at the other side of the arms yard.”

“They’re over there now, Colonel.”

Owen quickly found what he was looking for: a hammer and chisel. He set the nose of the chisel in place, tried a test blow.

Nothing more was needed. Evidently the trapdoor had not been used in many decades, nor cared for in the meantime; the lock, its securing arm almost rusted through, came flying off with a dull clatter. He tapped a sequence of knocks on the door’s beams, a tattoo that the up-timers called “shave and a haircut.” He got the “two bits” response-and yanked open the trapdoor.

Thomas North’s dusty face looked up at him. “About bloody time, bog-hopper.”

“Get your lazy sassenach ass up here and sort out the men. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

North came up in two bounds, swapped his nine-millimeter for his SKS, and stared at the locked door. “Any sign of the other element yet?”

Owen received his armor and the rest of his weapons from the oldest of the Wild Geese, Anthony Grogan, and shook his head. “No, we’re still waiting for Harry’s signal.”

“And what is the signal?” asked North’s xueta guide, looking up at them from his position in the secret tunnel.

Surely there’s no harm in telling the fellow now, Owen thought, but North only said, “Even down there, you’ll know it when you hear it.”