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

by Benerson Little

  “Ever the pragmatic hater you are, Michael.”

  “Do you have a warrant or commission from King James?”

  “Right to the point—your scruples have improved I see. I do.”

  “To commit murder?”

  “Have you come to fear the sight of blood, Michael?”

  “Dutch Billy is a soldier, and I’ve spilled the blood of many. But I don’t want to be left aground in London if it all goes to hell. You’ve a fine lodging to return to at St. Germain, and doubtless your own private escape route. I don’t want my lodging to be a gibbet, nor my escape route the path to hell.”

  “We’re all headed to hell,” Barclay said with a smile, “it’s just a matter of timing. Berwick is recruiting. James has promised a French army. England’s Jacobites are armed and ready to rise.”

  “Is Berwick in London?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Where?”

  “Come ‘round to my quarters tomorrow night.”

  “Why isn’t Berwick here?” Michael insisted.

  “He’s done his work, his plans are laid. We are the point of the sword.”

  “What you mean is that we must succeed. If we fail, there’s no escape.”

  “It’s a terrain you’ve been over before. And you’re one who knows how to make an escape.”

  “As are you.”

  “Again, Michael, come to my lodging tomorrow night. A messenger will inform you of its location.”

  “You won’t trust me with this information now?”

  “It changes.”

  The two assassins parted company. Michael spent part of the next day hidden at his own lodging, then drinking at a Jacobite tavern in Maiden Lane with an Irish co-conspirator he knew from the war, an officer named Edward Lowick. With Lowick was a hothead named Chambers who, like Michael, harbored an anger of fierce proportion. Unlike Michael, however, his passions seemed ungovernable.

  That evening, Michael met Barclay and his company of assassins. They were an odd lot, as are all men in all political conspiracies, made up of good men and bad, careful men and fools, sober men and drunkards, loyal men and greedy bastards, brave men and cowards, and even some of both courage and cowardice, depending on the moment.

  Barclay showed Michael the warrant signed by King James. It said nothing about murdering King William, although it did authorize Barclay to make such acts of war as he saw fit, including acts of hostility against the Prince of Orange. It was truly a princely document of the finest Machiavellian sort, worthy even of a Cardinal Richelieu or Henry II. No matter the outcome, James’s hands were clean. Importantly, it satisfied the conspirators. Michael doubted the document was a de facto order to kill King William, but he needed no such reassurances.

  “And what were King James’s personal instructions to you?” he asked out of curiosity.

  “For my ears only, but you may be assured that the King wishes us to do what we do.”

  “I wish for many things I would never put word to, Sir George.”

  “The paper matters naught, Michael, you know this. No matter what the warrant says, if we fail, we are hanged and quartered. If we succeed, others are hanged and quartered. And you are here because I need steady hands at the killing.”

  Michael grunted. He knew that if this plot failed, it would likely not be at the final execution, but during the plotting or while they lay in wait. He grunted again, and looked at the company about him.

  About half the men present were members of King James’s personal guard, men of absolute loyalty. They had made their way to London by twos and threes. Their absence from St. Germain went unnoticed by English spies, for they had all given reasons for leaving James’s service and had resigned one-at-a-time.

  The rest were men recruited in London, not all of them by Barclay himself; and here, Michael felt, lay weakness. One was a petty, bullying patron of the gaming tables, another a hot-headed hater, yet another an arrant opportunist.

  Barclay and Lowick he already knew, and Robert Charnock, one of the ringleaders and formerly dean of Magdalen College at Oxford. He had met Charnock on the Cornish shore last November, but until today had not known his name.

  And the arrogant bastard pretends not to know me, thought Michael. Best to be on guard against all of them.

  Barclay called Michael back to his side and reviewed the plan for him: they would ambush Prince William as he returned from hunting in Richmond Park. William’s carriage would bog down, requiring that it be pulled through the mud, and he would thereby be vulnerable. Rookwood’s company would attack one flank, Porter’s the other, Charnock’s the rear guard, and Barclay’s, with Michael included, the carriage and the king. Parkyns had provided the horses and Cranburne the ‘stabbing’ swords and pistols.

  Michael thought the plans as described were suitable enough, though he still worried that there were far too many men who knew of them. Forty and more men were enough to hide at least one traitor, probably more. Men were squeamish at actually murdering kings, though they might pretend to be brave enough during the planning, and plots provided ample fodder for political opportunists. It bothered him also that one man, Sir John Friend, had been informed of the plot but had refused to help, though Barclay was assured that the man would not inform on them. Maybe, thought Michael, maybe—but what about the others?

  Two days later, Michael examined the killing ground, located between Turnham Green and the River Thames, and found it suitable. If the day came without betrayal, if the forty made it safely to the ambuscade, and if William came, then the plan would likely succeed. Or at least the assassination would succeed. Jacobite supporters must then rally to James and defeat the Whiggish army.

  Damn! thought Michael suddenly, what have I got myself into?

  To kill a king who was a soldier was nothing to him, but he had no intention of throwing his own life away. He enjoyed the waiting to kill, as he would enjoy the killing, but there was too much left to Fortune. He felt suddenly like a pawn, not an ancient Irish king. Time, he thought, to look again to his own avenue of escape should the plan fail. If it failed, the ports would be closed, city gates closed, all would be stopped on the highways.

  Where to, then?

  To the coast, probably, to steal a boat and sail to France. If he must, he might return to Romney Marsh and attempt to cross there. He made sure that concealed on his person were a dagger, a brace of pistols, a few biscuits, a pocket compass, and money enough for bribes, post horses, and passage.

  Very well, he thought; I’m prepared in case we fail.

  Finally had come the day and all lay in ambush to murder one king and restore another.

  But Dutch Billy did not come.

  Forty men waiting for the king’s coach to mire in the muddy road, forty men waiting to drag him from the coach and stab him to a bloody Caesar’s death. And now they were still forty men without blood on their hands, forty who must return to their lodgings and taverns to wait in anticipatory fear for seven more days.

  Michael’s suspicions surged—he had smelled betrayal since he had arrived.

  “Nonsense!” said Barclay when they met the following Friday at the Sun Tavern in the Strand. The knight persuaded him to remain until the morrow, when the king would surely go hunting as planned. “Nothing to fear,” Barclay said. “The king wasn’t well last Saturday, but our informant tells us that he’s recovered and will indeed hunt tomorrow.”

  But again King William did not hunt.

  From Porter’s lodgings the assassins had ridden to Blue Posts before departing on the final leg to murder. But at the last moment there came word that the Prince of Orange would not hunt this day either, that his coaches had returned, that something odd was up.

  And now Michael knew for certain that something was wrong. It was time to run: treason, after all, would be a charge brought only against losers and other fools.

  While others tried to fortify their courage and deny that they were discovered, Michael abandoned the enterprise a
nd prepared to depart London that night.

  He searched for Barclay that afternoon, but he was nowhere to be found. Barclay’s sudden absence alone gave Michael enough reason to run. And that night, just as he headed back to his lodgings, the hue and cry were raised. By noon the next day every Jacobite contact Michael knew was gone to ground or arrested.

  The bastard could have warned us! Michael cursed as he lay hidden. And the rest, all fools! he thought angrily. They should’ve known better after the Dutchman had twice canceled his trip to Richmond! A fine plan it had been yesterday morning, but today? Ports closed, an invasion expected, the Habeus Corpus Act suspended, Fenwick and Charnock—and half of the others, it seemed—already taken, and soldiers and trainbands everywhere.

  King James would not bring salvation in the form of an army from Calais. The Irishman would have to make his escape from an alien land where everyone on the road would be questioned and everyone in every town knew everyone. He left his few possessions behind at his lodging, not daring to return there, fearing even friends and acquaintances, those few who might not already have been taken. Even the priest who had first hidden him had been taken. There was no longer any place to hide. He dare not visit Hunt’s house on Romney Marsh, he dare not show his face anywhere—yet he must.

  He rued his arrogance now, rued the fact that he had listened to someone else when making his final decision to join the rebellion. He swore at himself for being greedy, for indeed it had been greed more than loyalty that had brought him to this land, for surely those forty who would have a bloody hand in delivering England from the Dutchman would also have been well rewarded. Now only a gibbet would be his reward unless he could escape to Ireland or France: he was no nobleman to receive the headsman’s ax.

  And Molly? he thought. No reward now for me, for you, for us.

  That his treason might be tied to her never occurred to him.

  With no place to hide, there was but one thing to do. He stood and began running toward the sea.

  Aye, beware the hue and cry!

  To steal to eat, to steal to escape, to steal to live is to have the soldiers bring tight the halter around his neck. So for two days he did not eat, he did not sleep, he drank only water from puddles and troughs. He stole nothing and was cautious even of the air he breathed and of the dark and obscure corners in which he hid.

  He found no succor or escape at the Downs the first night, nor the next morning. Fortune did him no favors. The tide worked against him, and he dared not try to enter as crew or passenger lest he be arrested. And not long after, shipping was embargoed; everyone was on the watch for those trying to leave, even the boats and wherries were watched. So onward he went by night and by rain.

  By a miracle he made it back to Romney Marsh on the third day, and from there to Rye, to the Mermaid. He considered speaking to the tavern keeper, a noted smuggler and Jacobite, but changed his mind when the man appeared to recognize then shun him. Too late Michael realized he had violated his own rule: never go back the way you came.

  Michael left the tavern and went instead to the back door of the young woman’s nearby house, the woman he had—against the wishes of his priestly escort—bedded quickly and just as quickly abandoned when he had arrived here but two and a half weeks before. The look on her face was enough to tell him that her husband, himself a smuggler, was still away.

  She took him in. Even more, she arranged his passage with a local smuggler, and heeded Michael’s warning.

  “I prefer it be a man who hasn’t had your favors before, for I don’t want a jealous man’s knife in my back,” he said.

  “You think I’m a whore, then?”

  “No, my lovely girl, but it’s friendly and beautiful you are. Find a man who wants you but hasn’t had you, and let him know he might yet.”

  Then came the searchers, but they found only the man they sought, a petty smuggler, and they never knocked at the door of O’Neal’s temporary mistress. The Irishman had two more nights and days in her arms.

  On the last night he would lay with her, Michael O’Neal met with the man who hoped to lie, as O’Neal was doing, with the smuggler’s wife.

  “Is it arranged, then?” asked Michael.

  “A privateer out of St. Malo, tomorrow night. I’ll row you out to her.”

  The Irishman was in place hours before his rendezvous, to make certain there was no ambush. From Rye he had traveled north across Scotch Flat, then across Craven’s sluice and onto the Marsh the first night. He lay hidden all day in rain, mud, and mist, then slogged the next evening through the fens of the alien, surreal landscape of the Marsh itself, among its dikes and ditches and dramatically eerie damp grasses and twisted trees, among the small isolated churches built for secreting illicit cargos. Twice he skirted army patrols.

  He met the smuggler by the shore at midnight, not far from the tiny village of Dymchurch, where a four-oared fishing boat was drawn up on the shore. He liked neither the size nor lines of the boat: it would not be a swift sailor. On the other hand, it would be easy to row, and its size would make it easy to miss in the troughs of the sea.

  A signal came from the sea. The smuggler returned it, and the two men pushed the small boat into the sea and boarded it.

  Michael was hyper-alert as the smuggler rowed and he steered. He had heard that an English man-of-war ketch had been seen in the area for the past few days, and it might surprise the French privateer. He searched keenly into the darkness and eventually found what he was looking for: a blackness blacker than the surrounding darkness, bobbing gently up and down.

  “Ho! Holà!” Michael called.

  No answer.

  “Holà!” he called again.

  Still no answer.

  “Hold water!” he whispered sharply to the smuggler. “I don’t like this!”

  “Nage à bord!” came an answer finally.

  “Give them the password,” Michael demanded.

  “Vive le roi!” shouted the smuggler.

  “Vive la France!” came the response.

  “Give way… Easy, though, easy,” Michael ordered. “I don’t like this, something’s not right.”

  As they came closer a sense of near-panic settled on Michael. He could not point to a single thing out of place, but something about the vessel or circumstances was wrong.

  “Backwater!” he ordered.

  “What?” the smuggler replied nervously.

  “Something’s wrong! I want more distance between us! Give way, damn you!” he ordered quietly as he put the tiller to starboard. He shouted loudly, “D’où êtes-vous?”

  “Nage à bord vite!” came the reply.

  Hell, this isn’t right, he thought. And then it came to him: A French privateer here, when the fucking English navy is everywhere looking for traitors and assassinators? Possibly, but it’s just too Goddamn convenient!

  “Christ, that’s no French privateer!” Michael cursed.

  “Ahoy the boat!” came a voice across the water.

  In English!

  “Quiet!” hissed the smuggler. “They surely can’t see us yet!”

  A splash followed at the stern of the fishing boat.

  “What the hell was that?” Michael whispered severely.

  “A packet of letters weighted with a rock. They can’t be captured!” came the nervous whisper in reply.

  “Fool!” Michael replied in a whisper. “Have you no sense to keep quiet?”

  “Ahoy the boat! Come aboard or we’ll fire on you!” came the cry.

  Michael drew a small pistol from his pocket.

  “Open your mouth and I’ll kill you,” he warned his companion as he pointed the pistol at him.

  “Ahoy the boat! Come aboard or we fire!”

  “Give way smartly, sharply now, and quiet about it, and do nothing to alter the course I steer, no matter what they do or say! And if you’ve betrayed me, you’re a dead man! Give way, damn you!”

  Michael steered under the stern of the vessel and into t
he English Channel.

  “Fire!” he heard from the ketch, followed by a volley of musketry that stirred the surface of the water nearby like a small shoal of fish. But not a single ball struck the boat.

  Almost by a miracle the challenging voice grew more and more distant. After half an hour, Michael put his pistol away and ordered the smuggler to step the mast and set the sail. The fishing boat picked up speed, but the smuggler was a lubberly sailor and Michael cursed him several times.

  He glanced at his taciturn escort. The man had not spoken to Michael since they had escaped, and now would not even look at him. He appeared far more nervous than an experienced smuggler’s caution should permit. Michael would not trust a man who by all accounts should have little to fear, given his years of smuggling goods and agents across the channel.

  He’s betrayed me.

  He knew this in the same way he had instinctively known that the naval ketch was a trap.

  He lashed the tiller, picked up a bucket, and began to bail. He tossed a half bucket of seawater over the side, waited for the smuggler to lean forward with the oars, and like a shillelagh he brought the bucket down upon the man’s skull.

  Crack!

  The bucket staves sprung as the man’s head split. Twice more Michael struck the man’s head. Blood and fluid dribbled from nose and ears, yet still the man would not die. Michael heaved him onto the gunwale and let him lay there on his belly, breathing heavily, his limp feet resting on the bottom boards, his head hanging over the side and dipping now and then into the sea as the boat rolled back and forth.

  “It’s a mercy I now do for you, my backstabbing friend,” Michael said to the dying man. “You chose your path, and now not even I can keep you from dying before your three score and ten, for no man will survive a skull broke in so many places. I should cast you into the sea and let you drown, for a backstabber deserves no better, but I know the reward on my head would have tempted even a saint.”

  With these words, Michael pulled his dagger from its sheath, jerked the man’s head up, and shoved the blade into the dying man’s neck. Pushing the sharp edge forward, from ear to ear he slit the man’s throat, then released him.