Meanwhile, Reggie mentioned rigging the steam-powered crane to reach the fallen man. While it couldn’t reach the woman in the upper branches, the man might still be alive.
“I’d be very surprised. You heard the crack when he hit the last branch. That was most likely his back snapping.” And Red sensed they didn’t have long to dither. He crossed the cobblestone to gain a better vantage and then yelled up to the treetop, “Anyone alive up there?”
“Yes. Yes. Alive. You have to help me!”
Definitely a woman. But as he couldn’t see her, that meant she was either trapped in the foliage or she had a serious injury—both would prevent her peering down at her rescuers.
“Who are you?”
“Alison Raw—all.” A howl of wind pierced her surname. “Midshipman aboard the Queen Vic.”
“What happened? How did you fall?”
“Oh, Christ, does it matter? They’re trying to kill me. For the love of God, they can’t let me live. I—who are you?”
“Red Mulqueen and friends, retired veterans of the armed forces.”
“Help me, Red M—een! I have urgent dispatches for a member of the Admiralty.”
“Who is it?” The name she gave would be crucial—it would tell him where her loyalties lay.
After a significant pause, “Viscount Faversham, Salisbury.”
Good girl. He didn’t need time to reflect—Faversham was sympathetic to the rebel cause and a prominent figure on Red’s list of contacts in England. “Hold tight, Alison! We’re coming up.”
He’d already made up his mind what he was going to do before Joe rattled off a quick-fire appraisal of their options. “The crane needs refuelling—that’ll take time, and it won’t reach but half way. The scaffolds either side are too far away. I reckon the riggers used roof harnesses to decorate the top of the tree like that, but we don’t have ’em. The only way we’re getting up there is to climb.”
“Already on it, old boy,” said Red.
Joe pressed a spidery hand to Red’s chest, halted him. “You’re not going.” He looked down at his clockwork leg. “That thing’d seize up before you got gibbet-high, then we’d have to haul you down as well. No, I’ll go get help.”
“I’m climbing, Joe.”
“The hell you are.”
Red gripped the old fusilier by his lapels. “Listen, that woman up there is a courier. She’s an agent for my organisation, and she’s a friend to us. Believe me, if the information she’s carrying is as sensitive as I think it is, the emporium is about to receive some very unwelcome guests. Buy me some time, Joe. Can you do that? But whatever happens, I’m making this climb?”
“And if you make it up there, what then?”
“Let me worry about that. Rope has plenty of uses. Just keep Edmond safe, and don’t let anyone near this tree. Anyone. You understand?”
Joe pursed his thick lips, gazed up to the frantic yellow beam lashing through the heavy snowfall. “I’ve got you, brother. Go rescue your damsel. The emporium is ours.” He dashed away to the others, pointing his one arm hither and thither.
Reggie fetched two coils of rigging rope from a pile over by the hot air balloon basket—the same basket used by Phileas Fogg himself during his famous circumnavigation. He slung them over Red’s shoulders, then shook his hand. “Good luck, guv’. Make sure you tie ’em onto somethin’ that’s got guts.”
“Thanks, Reggie. Keep any intruders busy for me, will you?”
“Gotcha covered there, guv’. Joe and Angie have a plan already.”
Red sucked in a livid breath, then a long, cool, stuttery one as he surveyed the dense, bristly tangle awaiting him. While the bottommost branches appeared sturdy enough, swirls of snow and jiving limbs would make the upper part of the climb far more treacherous. He made his mind up to stay near to the trunk as far as possible.
“All right, Red, let’s see what this leg of yours can really do,” he whispered. After a quick salute to the caretaker’s cabin, where he knew young Edmond would be watching every step of this crazy ascent—he couldn’t let the lad down now—he steeled the squirrel in his chest and fought through the first sharp curtain of pine needles.
A ladder led him up from the soil trough to the first branch. His eye adjusted to the darkness in no time. Climbing with one leg proved tricky at first, but quickly became swift and methodical. It was a clockwork rhythm for a clockwork tool. He stiffened the brass joint for each upward step, giving his natural leg a crutch to climb with, then loosened it so he could lift the limp appendage with him. By focusing on this simple procedure, he found he could overcome any obstacle, provided he took his time.
As he reached roughly a third of the way up, Alison’s voice floated down through the inner branches. It sounded much nearer, and reverberated in his ears. “I can hear someone climbing,” she called. “Is that you, Red?”
“Yes, it is. What injuries have you got, Alison?”
“Both legs broken. One shoulder damaged, maybe dislocated. Maybe a couple of cracked ribs. And it feels like I’ve gashed my back on something sharp. I’m a wreck, Red. There’s nothing for it—no way I’ll make it down in one piece. I’m a goner.”
“Nonsense. Just keep talking, love. I’ve enough rope here to scale Mount Everest. I’ll get you down.” He rested a few beats, gathered his breath. “Tell me what happened up there, Alison. Who are we up against?” Not that it mattered much now—he could never turn back, not with such a sweet, forlorn voice beckoning.
“Acting Captain Abercrombie, little more than a jumped-up lieutenant but ambitious as they come. Our captain by-rights, Agnew, is terminal sick in his cabin—some kind of dagoe malady. Abercrombie received a wireless coded message from the Leviacrum not long since, informing him the Queen Vic was carrying rebel dispatches from Gibraltar. I overheard him reading it to his second-in-command. Everyone on board knew I was the only one who’d come from the Rock, so I dropped a line sharpish and aimed for the roof. Those idiots sent a man after me, without gloves. He slipped and hit me. Next thing I knew, we were both through the glass and shattered. Pathetic attempt at a getaway, eh?”
“You did what you had to, ma’am. Your dispatches concern the Atlas Club?”
“Why, yes—how did you—”
“Never mind that. Let’s just say I’ve been working hard to expose that secret society. It’s honeycombed the Leviacrum Council so thoroughly, there’s no difference between the two any more. The Atlas Club has also suborned its share of peers and industrialists in Britain, but not, I hazard, too many that it is beyond being brought to task by Whitehall. Not yet anyway. With assistance, perhaps with the evidence you possess, Viscount Faversham can help turn the tide. Nothing is more important in London right now. The Leviacrum Council cannot be allowed to go on unopposed.”
“How do you know all this? Mulqueen, is it? Why have I never heard of—”
Crack! Crack!
The first gunshots shattered remnant glass shards in the upper foliage and ricocheted down through the tree. Red gripped the trunk, ducked under a fat orange-brown branch. “Alison! Are you all right?”
“Still here, Red. They must be desperate. I’m under a few broken branches, flimsy cover, but it’s camouflage. They can’t see me.”
“They’re firing blind?”
“Yes.”
Christ. She must have the goods on some prime Atlas members. I need to get her away from here at all costs. Her and...the letter to Faversham.
“Hurry, Red! One unlucky shot and I’m done. Hell. They’re circling back. What’s taking you so long?”
He vaulted up the next half dozen branches without using his mechanical crutch at all, instead pulling himself up by anything his hands could grip. Pinecones dug into his palms, needles slid inside his sleeves and his collar and shook from his hair whenever he jerked himself up.
Crack! Crack!
“Alison?”
“Red, are you all right? I can here clanging. What have you got there?”
/> No use fibbing. “Something to help me climb—the strongest leg you ever saw.”
“Did you say leg?”
“I said hang on. It’s not far now.”
Chapter Seven
Sometime between the first clap of gunfire above and the waking of the final steam exhibits around the emporium, Edmond observed the whole scene through a peephole no bigger than a corky ball, and realised the desperate truth behind the frivolous violence in his adventure comics.
Desbrusleys, the deaf Frenchman, had been instructed to start up the moving picture show near the hangar’s entrance. This he did, but being hard of hearing, he didn’t know about the synchronized sound recording accompanying the imagery via a gramophone on the same pressure system. Edmond had marvelled at it that summer—he’d watched its demonstration for hours. But he hated it tonight.
The hangar doors flung open and half a dozen armed aeronauts dressed in fur-lined, hooded parkers bounded in. Debrusleys was unaware that the western movie show he’d started a moment before—an action-packed train robbery—was full of loud gunfire. The aeronauts shot back in the direction of the noise. They hit Desbrusleys, whose silhouette could not be more conspicuous against the bright screen, umpteen times. The projected light flickered red, then out. The movie ran no more.
Edmond couldn’t stop himself shaking against the tin wall of the hut. He couldn’t look out, but he must. The intruders fanned out among the stalls. He could see no sign of Angharad, Joe, Reggie, or Bertie Considine, the quiet man who suffered from the early stages of palsy. He tried to picture the heroic rise of Red Mulqueen inside the spruce tree.
I hope you’ve seen ’em, sir. I hope they don’t see you.
He crept over to the window and looked up as far as he could, nowhere near the top of the tree. But a cluster of foliage half way up danced more than at any other point, opposite the third tallest scaffold platform. That had to be Mr. Mulqueen, inching his way up inside, one clockwork stride at a time.
The steam organ piped up somewhere to his left. It drew at least two intruders over to investigate. At the same time, a dull whuh-whuh-whuh gathered pace at the far end of the hangar. Edmond recognized it as the sound of the aerogypsy’s rotor blades. But he couldn’t see anyone inside it, atop the podium. Two more intruders crept toward it at ground level, between the fruit seller’s stall and the booths demonstrating automatic typewriters. Those machines, too, had been switched on—steam columned up from their copper pipes.
The rotor blades quickened to a blur. Above, the miniature steam train that circled the entire emporium gave a whistle. It began its long, laborious climb, but seemed to be empty. The two curious intruders shrugged and turned to reunite with their comrades. They managed a few steps before the aerogypsy’s podium began to tilt, then to topple.
Edmond covered his mouth. Screams, and an almighty metallic clatter signalled the men’s grisly end. The hunched figure of Joe DiStepano scurried away along the far wall, from podium to podium, between the steel bars of the scaffolding.
Yells erupted across the hangar, along with one or two pistol shots. The remaining four aeronauts met at the candy apple stall. One of them removed his neckerchief and wrapped it around his hand—had he taken a bullet?
Had Joe snatched a weapon from under the aerogypsy wreckage?
While his colleagues headed for the tree, Neckerchief Man lagged behind to finish tending his wound. He didn’t get the chance. Reggie and Angharad emptied a barrel full of steaming hot chestnuts over him from across the counter. They kept low as they dashed away, leaving their victim to squeal like a baby as he crawled away on all fours over the cobblestone, toward the exit.
The moment of truth.
Three enemies remained. They were at the base of the tree, pointing up, whispering to each other. They appeared to decide that their best position for shooting was from the right of the tree, between the kiln and the tallest scaffold. Edmond could no longer see them, but he guessed they would probably climb one of the scaffold ladders to gain the best possible shot at Mr. Mulqueen and the injured lady. Should he do something? Tell someone? Call it out? But they were armed and he wasn’t, and he’d already seen them riddle poor Desbrusleys without knowing who or what they were firing at.
Mr. Mulqueen, be careful. Please be careful. He said a quick prayer for the old soldier who’d gallantly risked his life to save a complete stranger. Under fire from above, and now from below, what chance did he have? Surely God couldn’t let him die like this, not half way up a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.
The silhouette of a hunched, one-armed man crept in front the red-and-green-spangled tree with what looked like a relay baton in his hand. It was Joe. He made straight for the kiln. He stuffed the baton in his belt, snatched up one of the heat-retardant gloves and used it to open the kiln door. The heavy hinge squeaked, drawing shouts from his right. No sooner did Joe toss the baton into the flames than three gunshots made Edmond cover his ears.
Joe staggered away, holding his side. He crashed into the chairs arranged in a crescent for his veteran friends.
Not Joe!
A devastating explosion hurled bricks and flame in every direction from the smashed kiln. Bricks rained down on the cabin’s tin roof and pinged against the scaffolding like a cacophony of giant piano strings snapping. A few of the lower tree branches caught fire, but Angharad, Reggie and Bertie were soon on hand to douse them with pails of water.
Edmond stole out of his cabin in a daze, coughing through the brick dust and the sudden intense heat. Three charred bodies lay under the tallest scaffold—he daren’t get any nearer to those. Meanwhile, Joe had managed to climb onto his chair, and there he sat, perched on the edge of his seat like a rapt spectator at a theatre, chewing tobacco.
Edmond was somehow able to form the words, “Are you shot?”
“Aye, lad, that I am.”
“Is it bad?”
Joe gazed up to the open window in the roof, then behind him to the open exit. Both revealed a blizzard outside. “Bad? No, not bad.” His grey beard hid much of his grimace as he touched the puncture wound in his side, then another in his back. “In and out, straight as you like. I’ve had worse.”
“Angharad, he’s been shot.” Edmond’s alert stopped her in her tracks.
“Joe?”
“I’ll take a bandage. No cause for alarm. It’s bleeding a fair bit, though.”
Angharad shook her head. “Fusiliers.” Then she hurried away to the candy apple stall, where she retrieved their first aid valise.
Joe drew a pistol from his belt, laid it on his lap. Moments later, Reggie and Bertie arrived with sidearms of their own, all pilfered from the dead intruders. “It’s time to get you out of here, lad.” Joe turned to Edmond, rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve seen too much already, and they’ll likely not give up so quick.”
“I don’t reckon it’s safe to venture outside yet,” Reggie said. “We’d be better off barricading the doors, lock the buggers out.”
“See to it.”
“Aye.”
“What will happen if more do get in?” Edmond asked.
“God only knows, son.” Joe looked up again, maybe hoping for a sign from Mr. Mulqueen. “And he ain’t telling tonight.”
***
Like a flaming blade stabbed up through the foliage, the god-awful explosion had cleaved Red’s desperation in two. On the one hand, Alison would certainly die if he couldn’t get to her in time. On the other, had Edmond escaped the shocking force of the blast? The latter dread hacked at his resolve, filed him to a grim, lean tool that sliced up, ever up through endless ranks of pine needles and coarse bark.
After the explosion, there were no more gunshots from the airship, nor the ground. Had Joe and the others got rid of all the insurgents? Or had the veterans been overpowered, taken prisoner? He gasped and wheezed, hot tar eating at his chest and his throat from inside. The muscles in his left leg raged. No matter how many rests he took, he was approaching the
limit of his endurance.
“Alison?”
“Red?”
“Did you see anything of the explosion?”
“Not a thing. I’m wedged here like a twisted cleat. I’m sure your friends weren’t hurt.”
Red wanted to agree. Her voice sounded mighty close. He glanced up and saw her face for the first time—a wet, pallid oval clamped between a wishbone-shaped branch. Her ebony hair had snagged on the sharp bark, and was lashed tightly across her brow. She’d shut her eyes to help fight the pain. Her face shivered. He called up, “Alison, I’m here.”
A roving light from above caught his belt buckle. The reflection flashed into her open eyes. “You made it.” Her weak voice trickled into a cough. “But how are we going to get down?”
He crouched on the branch beneath her, not wanting to poke his head up and give their position away. “I’m working on it, darling. A hoist of some kind, so I can lower you down. If your legs are broken, it’s going to hurt like hell, and you’ll have to push any obstacles aside as you descend. There’s no way around that. But we’re going to do this. The tree broke your fall and kept you camouflaged; it’s obvious she wants to save your life tonight.”
Alison blew a tired breath to free a few loose hairs from her eye. Red brushed them away for her, stroked her cold, slick cheek.
“If we make it, I’ll let you buy me dinner,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Yes, I’m cheap that way.” Her soft, supple features suddenly hardened to spearhead the extraordinary effort it took to move her broken body even an inch. “It’s...it’s no use. I’m coming apart at the seams, Red.”
“We’ll see.” Despite her cries of pain, he managed to tie a rudimentary harness around her waist using a bowline. As for splinting her legs with the stiff ends of branches, or any other ideas he’d had for mitigating her pain, there simply wasn’t time. Any moment now, a hail of bullets might finish them both.
Yuletide Miracle (The Steam Clock Legacy Book 3) Page 7
