Fortune's Whelp (Fortune's Whelp Series Book 1)

by Benerson Little

  “Easy, lad,” he said, gently stroking the horse’s muzzle before putting boot to stirrup. “We’ll be away soon.”

  As Edward settled into the saddle, Rocinante shied sideways and almost bolted. The Scotsman quickly got the animal under control. He drew his sword, fearing another attack. Again the horse shied, and this time also began to back away. Edward realized it was not man the horse feared, but beast.

  Fifty feet away, barely visible except for his shining eyes, was a rangy wolf slinking along the tree line.

  You’re a bold bastard, Edward thought; the shooting should’ve scared you away.

  “Away with you, fool, if you want to live!” he shouted. “Away with you!”

  The wolf trotted a few steps.

  “Still making your reconnaissance, are you?” Edward asked. “Well, then!”

  He shortened his reins and spurred Rocinante, forcing the horse to charge the wolf, who this time turned and raced away.

  Edward laughed quietly. The confrontation had lightened his mood.

  And then a cold shiver started at the back of his neck and ran down his spine.

  The dogs! They would’ve discovered a wolf long before it got this close—as they would the rapparees…. His instincts would not let him ignore the glaring absence. She never rides without them: where the hell were her wolfhounds?

  Coldly furious, he galloped away to raise the hue and cry, trusting his and his mount’s senses and instincts to guide them safely through the darkness.

  A horse and rider skidded to a halt by the two rapparees.

  “Damn you!” the rider cursed in Irish, voice quavering with anger and fear. “I ordered you not to attack him! I said to rob him as if you were after his valuables so no one would suspect we were after the letters! I wanted him left alive!”

  “Hell, only the letters matter! If we’d killed him, we’d have them now! He’d not have parted with them without a fight, anyway!” one of the rapparees argued back.

  Michael O’Neal, who had so far been silent, grabbed the man by the shoulder and shook him hard. “Shut up, you fool! You disobeyed orders, you failed to kill him, and you didn’t even get the letters!”

  “Christ, Michael, leave off! I’m hurt bad; I’m bleeding all over my saddle!”

  Michael handed the man a handkerchief. “Stuff it with this. And give me the wallet.”

  “I don’t have it; I lost it when I took his blade to my gut.”

  “What the hell?” Michael shouted. “Now you tell me? Shit!”

  “We’ve lost all the letters, his and ours?” the newcomer demanded incredulously.

  “Aye, apparently,” Michael replied, biting his lip in shame and anger. “But they’re probably still on the road.”

  “Michael, I need help, get me to a surgeon, Christ, please,” his companion pleaded.

  “Shut up, you damn fool.”

  “By God, if we had killed him, we’d have the damn letters and we wouldn’t be arguing while I’m bleeding to death!” the wounded rapparee retorted.

  “Kill him? Kill him and they’ll hunt us all down like dogs! There’s too much at stake! Kill him and we’ll all hang!” the other rider said, furiously.

  “Are you sure that’s the only reason you don’t want him dead?” Michael asked, his voice cold and threatening.

  “Why the hell do you take orders from her anyway, Michael? She’s a Goddamn woman; what does she know? I told you this business on the road is a man’s work—that a woman would get us killed. Just fuck the bitch, she’s proved that’s all she’s good for,” his companion said between sobs of pain.

  The rider raised her pistol.

  “Dammit, give that to me! I’ll break his Goddamn head with it,” Michael hissed as he reached to grab the barrel.

  Crack!

  The pistol flash startled the Irishman so much that he drew back hard on his reins, almost pulling his horse over as it reared.

  His wounded companion, however, never recovered from his own surprise. In moments he had slipped dead from his horse, with nary another word of criticism.

  “What the hell? You’re mad!” Michael shouted.

  “I didn’t shoot him, you did!”

  “Whose bloody finger was on the trigger? It wasn’t mine! Christ, he was right, you’ll get us all killed!”

  “You would have clubbed him to death for what he said!”

  “He was mine to punish, not yours!”

  Michael dismounted and quietly inspected his companion for several moments. He kissed the man’s forehead and arranged his arms across his chest.

  “He’s dead, though I’ll admit he may have deserved it for his disobedience,” he said quietly.

  “And for what he said about me?”

  “What he said was true.”

  “You want truth? Here’s some: you’re profoundly lucky it was him in front when you attacked,” she replied, voice still trembling in anger and fear, hand with pistol still shaking from the shot. “Otherwise I’d swear it was your idea to disobey me!”

  “To hell with you!” Michael snarled. “You find a way to get the letters now.”

  “By Joseph and Mary, you’ll help me clean up this mess,” the rider commanded. “Get this body out of here, then get back up the road and find those letters!”

  “Oh, I’ll take care of my man; I know a useful purpose he can serve. As for the rest, it’s your problem, it always was. I’ll do your bidding this one last time and search for the letters in the mud—and then I’m off and away, whether I find them or not. Slán leat!”

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Michael came close to Molly, leaned over, and whispered coldly.

  “I’m going to kill a king.”

  Chapter 14

  But the unhappy contriver of this nefarious Treason, expiated his Crime with his Life, being hanged on the next tree.

  —Sir Roger Manley, The History of the Rebellions in England, Scotland and Ireland, 1691

  From an old tree the pendant corpse hung, an ancient life proclaiming recent death. The great oak directed a diminishing stream of water from leaves to branches and thence down the rope, cleansing the body of the dirt and sweat of having lived.

  If a man must be murdered by hanging, Edward thought as he stared at the body before him, let it be in the rain, for the spectators won’t stay long, and the compassionate will remove the empty flesh.

  Edward, tracking on his own, had spotted the body from a distance that morning soon after the hue and cry. It was difficult to miss, standing out from the wet grays and greens as it did, a striking image.

  “How’s your foot?” Sir William asked after several minutes of silence, interrupting Edward’s dark perusal of the day. The two men were taking their rest, one sitting on a stump, the other on a fallen tree. The old gentleman was fatigued from the chase, and Edward was keeping him company while the two posses, one of combined militia dragoons and the constable’s hired men, the other of royal dragoons garrisoned at Charles Fort, had ridden off together to investigate suspicious riders noted by a traveler on the road.

  Edward, doubly troubled by the night before, to the point that his cold-blooded temperament needed a distraction while his mind worked to find answers, said nothing until Sir William passed him a serving of cold rabbit and venison pie. The old gentleman always traveled well-stocked.

  “Well enough,” Edward said slowly. He pulled off his right boot and massaged the thick scar tissue on his foot and ankle, then took a bite of the pie. The morning’s search had rubbed his scars raw, and tired his leg to the point where he could just barely use it. “I lost our men’s tracks in the rain, but at least I found my hat.”

  “Why’d you go off alone this morning?”

  “Posses make too much noise, and they trample on footprints.”

  “Ever the hunter, even ashore.” Sir William said, and took another bite of the rich pie. He pointed at Edward’s ankle. “Warned you about hard riding.”

  “You wa
rned me about riding with a bad foot, not about meeting rapparees on the road,” Edward said dryly, as he pulled his boot back on.

  “At least it’s a man’s weapon you’re carrying on the road now, and not that gentleman’s tilter you had last night, nothing more than a damn’d porker suitable only for sticking pigs and simpering gentlemen,” he said, motioning with his piece of pie at the basket-hilted backsword Edward now wore. “Hell, a smallsword’s not even that: it’s a bodkin, nay, a tooth-picker, and yours is a damn’d Spaniard one at that, although I do like their blades. Keep your broad Highland fox with you instead, at least when you ride.”

  “My Konigsmark blade served its purpose and held up to that Irishman’s, but I know what you mean. At Killiecrankie I cut an English officer’s smallsword clean through with my backsword—broke it would be more correct, I suppose—and smashed his skull cap into his brains with the same blow. It’s not the best weapon for the battlefield, the small rapier, even one as sturdy as the one I carried last night.” Edward took another bite of pie and spoke as he chewed. “And how did your own search go?”

  “It was almost as much fun as a wolf hunt, this hue and cry, riding headlong into who knows what,” Sir William said, strangely unexcited. “Had quite a go. We followed some tracks, the militia and I did, but like you lost them in the rain. We stopped several travelers, but all could account for their activities. You found more than we did: the dead.” He paused and nodded toward the corpse. “I wonder who hanged him.”

  “More importantly, why was he hanged?”

  “You said you think he’s one of the rapparees who attacked last night?”

  “I think he’s the one who took my blade to his belly,” Edward said matter-of-factly, entirely devoid of any emotion but curiosity.

  “Then someone found him, dead or alive, and hanged him for the villain he is.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe his companion wasn’t as friendly as he thought he was. Let’s find out if he’s the same man.”

  Edward walked through the light drizzling rain to the tree, drew his backsword, and cut the rope from which the body hung, swaying and spinning gently and so very slowly in the wet air. The flesh hit the soppy, soaked ground, splashing more mud across Edward’s boots.

  Edward noticed that something was stuffed in the mouth, a handkerchief probably.

  Quite a message! he thought.

  He ripped open the shirt beneath the coat—Curious, he thought, that the coat wasn’t stripped from the body—and there it was, as he suspected: a sword wound next to the navel... and a bullet hole about ten inches above, which he examined closely. He wondered which was the wound that had killed the rapparee.

  “I can’t tell if he was alive or dead when he was hanged. Wouldn’t someone seek the reward for killing a highwayman or rapparee? Forty shillings, is it? Or why not? Fearful of retribution?” Edward pondered as Sir William joined him.

  “Looks like you pinked him twice, once with ball, once with blade. He was one of O’Hanlen’s men, I warrant, and probably a traitor to his brethren,” Sir William said, nodding at the hanged man now lying in the mud.

  “Who?”

  “Raver O’Hanlen, our local rapparee or highwayman. They call him the Black Captain, or just Captain O’Hanlen. They’re false names, of course. A few poetic idiots even call him Captain Manannan after the Irish sea god, and his horse they call Splendid Mane, or whatever it is in Irish, after the name of Manannan’s steed, all because some say he was once a pirate. But it’s mostly romantic nonsense; he’s just a damned thief and murderer now, though he fought for James during the war here. Pity no one’s sure what he looks like—or at least, none will tell.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped me to know what he looks like; I couldn’t see either of their faces. What do you think of this, Sir William—a bloody handkerchief is stuffed in his mouth.”

  “Odd thing to do. You know, I remember a man hanged on this same tree; the gossips said O’Hanlen did it, hanged him as an example to others who might surrender to King William. Yet that didn’t stop King William’s courts from finding him guilty of treason after his death and ordering his lands confiscated. ‘Tis a mad world. I’ve even heard that O’Hanlen hanged one of his own for disobedience. But the war here is over; I don’t know why he’d hang anyone now, if that’s even who did it. Perhaps this dead man talked too much, or said something he shouldn’t have.”

  “There’s no reason to remind a dead man not to talk,” Edward said dryly. “The handkerchief in his mouth is almost certainly a warning to others instead. Maybe even to Brennan or Allin.”

  “Stay out of politics, Edward, no good ever comes of it to honest men. But I think you’re grasping at straws to think this is a political message.”

  “Those weren’t common highwaymen last night, Sir William.”

  “Nonsense. What else would they be?”

  “Tories doing secret business. And the handkerchief in the mouth a reminder not to interfere—and for Tories not to turn traitor.”

  “Or just a reminder to mind one’s own business, or else,” Sir William grumbled. “Still, it’s an odd sort of thing to do to one’s own unless, perhaps, he ran his mouth too much.”

  The old gentleman hobbled to his saddle, filled two large wine cups from a squat bottle tucked in a saddlebag, and sat down again on the stump, gesturing for Edward to join him.

  “Damn, my ass hurts. It’s not my game leg that gives me pain, it’s the ass it’s attached to. Here,” he said, passing Edward one wine cup and raising his own, “to a life free from old age!”

  “To a short life, then?”

  Sir William laughed. “A long life, then, with no more pain than necessary to live it well.”

  “That, sir, I will drink to,” Edward said, wondering at the philosophical turn in the conversation.

  “By the way, were you a natural son of mine, I’d have flayed you alive for sending Molly home alone last night.”

  “I had no choice,” Edward said.

  “Never again leave her like that. I love her like a daughter, though we’re often of opposite minds and loyalties.”

  “You have my word.”

  “I intend you keep it.”

  “And I will. But I do need to talk to you about something. About her.”

  “Not now, lad, I’m too tired.”

  “Sir William—”

  “Edward, not now! Forgive my temper, I’ll explain it all to you in good time.” The old gentleman poured more wine. “Now, lad, you said you think these weren’t common thieves. What were they then?”

  “Tory agents, Jacobite agents, however you want to call them.”

  “Your evidence?” Sir William asked as finished his piece of pie and got another.

  “First, they attacked at night and at the gallop from behind, rather than by day and from ambush. And then they argued after they rode off, at least it seemed so to me, and there was the flash of a pistol,” Edward said.

  “Scared, stupid highwaymen who buggered a robbery. Probably snapped the pistol by accident.”

  “I’m sure they knew I was carrying important letters from Brennan and Allin.”

  “Maybe, and maybe not. That’s it?”

  “No. There’s this,” Edward said, holding up the large leather wallet. “I doubt they missed it until too late, but for certain they came back to look for it; I found boot tracks other than mine where it was lost last night. I saw the tracks this morning before the rain washed them away. The wallet came from the man I pinked with my sword, he who now lies in the mud over there.”

  Edward passed the wallet to Sir William, a flat hole punched through it and the letters front to back.

  “What are they?” Sir William asked, as he briefly inspected the correspondence.

  “Three letters from France, addressed to persons, known Jacobites I’m sure, here in Ireland. One pretends to be sent lover to lover, but I’m sure the names are false. Do you know ‘Mrs. Sullivane of Bantrydereen?’”

 
; “No such person or place around here.”

  “The second and third are merchant letters. In both are identical lists pretending to be signatures to a warrant against a debtor—but no warrant needs three dozen signatures. I think it’s a list of code names of men in England willing to rise in rebellion, or of men around here to be recruited or to have their loyalties tested. Nothing too unusual here, we both know rebellion is still planned behind some doors. Yet there’s something more.”

  Sir William, his mouth yet again full of pie, nodded at him to go on.

  “Last night I found a secret message in the love letter; it was revealed when I wet the paper. I’ve dealt with spies and their ilk before, I know their ways. The heat of a fire didn’t work, nor a candle behind the page, but water did. Alum dissolved in water would make an ink that water would reveal. Fire and light are too obvious.”

  “Nothing unusual there; lovers often hide secrets in their letters,” Sir William said, but starting to look concerned.

  “We both know this isn’t a lover’s letter—highwaymen aren’t post riders, and messages that reveal only when wet are too sophisticated for green-sick romantics. In the letter is a cryptic message that the ‘blessed event’ will occur only if ‘what each of us hopes for’ also occurs, and that the ‘blessed event’ will surely happen by Easter. In both merchant letters, in plain writing, is a similar message, but more dangerous: the writer is exhorting another to ‘have faith and prepare’ because what they hope for will occur by Easter!”

  “Business dealings. Smuggled goods, perhaps.”

  “In secret letters smuggled by rapparees?”

  “Smuggling is still a crime, even if a popular one, and secrecy is necessary to maintain it. However, I’ll pretend to see from your point of view: an invasion, then.”