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BOB HAD LOST THE FACULTY of hearing sounds of a high sharp timbre, but had grown very keen to thuds, bumps, and rumbles, which he heard not with his ears but with his feet and his ribs. What he listened for, with said organs, was hoofbeats, door-slams, gunfire, amp;c. Of guns he had heard only a little thus far. Hooves were spattering the earth to their rear: the Whig Association cavalry, dashing across the back of the line. Bob was leading his company across a pasture toward a hedgerow that bordered its up-hill side. Like all the other hedgerows on this estate, it had been trimmed short, which Bob looked on as a military preparation; the height was good for men to kneel behind and shoot over.
Three such hedgerows, dividing perhaps a quarter mile of more or less open ground, stood between Bob’s line and a hilltop farm that seemed to be the source of the barking. Bob glimpsed a carriage careering to and fro up among its buildings but could make no sense of this, and so forced himself to ignore it. His line had instinctively wheeled so that it was parallel to the next hedgerow. When they were just reaching it, and slinging arms and breaking stride to clamber over, Bob felt something in his feet, and shouted, “Cavalry! Less than a squadron-much less. Hold the line. They are coming from beyond those trees.” Which was merely a reasonable guess, based on the fact that he could not see them yet. His men’s heads all turned-they were hearing something he couldn’t. Following their eye-line, Bob locked his gaze upon the edge of the little copse ahead of them-it was growing in a little pocket of the landscape-and saw horses’ legs, lit by the orange-amber sun of early morning, scissoring against tree-trunks.
A moment later three riders tore around the corner of the wood and made straight for them. They’d been apt in their timing-waiting for the moment when the approaching foot broke stride to address the hedge-climbing project. “About face-backs against the hedge!” Bob commanded, and they did it.
The three riders had formed a diagonal spread as a result of wheeling round the corner of the wood-the one who’d taken the outside track now trailed. The one in the middle was-his eyes had to be deceiving him-black. Had he been burned? A weapon burst in his face? No time to ponder it now. Bob drew out his sword in case he needed to parry a saber-cut from above. But none of the riders had drawn. The foremost jumped the hedgerow very near Bob, and Bob was almost felled, not by any physical contact but by dizzy awe at the magnificence of the horse and the power of its movement. The black man made the jump just behind Bob. At the same moment a flash lit up the top of the hill, and a moment later came a roaring whoosh and a clatter of booms. The third rider was just fixing to jump the hedgerow when all of this occurred; his mount faltered, clipped the top of the hedge, landed awry, and broke a leg.
The rider tumbled free and rolled to his feet only a little hurt. But two platoons of Foot were crouching with their backs to the hedgerow, all aiming their muskets at him from such short range that his riddled corpse would be scorched by powder-burns if Bob gave the order to fire.
“Take that bloody thing out of my face and shoot my horse,” said this fellow to the nearest.
The other two riders-first the black man, then the white-wheeled about in the middle of the pasture, a stone’s throw away. In the distance Bob saw several Whig cavalry rounding to intercept them. “Jimmy! Tomba!” shouted the dismounted man. “Go! You can get through ’em! It’s a few fops on some nags, and they don’t know the territory, and they won’t fight!”
All of which, Bob suspected, was true. If “Jimmy” and “Tomba” had kept on at a gallop they could, with a bit of luck, have survived a volley from Bob’s musketeers and probably shot through the Whig line. But they showed no gust for it. They exchanged a look, then turned back, and began riding toward their comrade. Bob came out from the shade of the hedgerow, glancing back one time-u
Bob now recognized these two-Jimmy and Da
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” he said.
It was an expression of disgust and chagrin-hardly of surprise. He had been ru
“I knew ’twould come to this sooner or later, uncle,” said Jimmy, with a sad, wise shake of the head, “if you kept trafficking with the legitimate authorities.”
“You know this man!?” said the black fellow, his mop-like hairdo all a-swing.
“He’s our friggin’ uncle,” said Da
Bob’s heart was thudding. His feet were, too; that because of the cavalry, who were charging across the pasture, having perceived, in all of this, an opportunity to lop some heads, or at least limbs-the sort of entertainment Horse-men lived for. This clear and present danger unfroze Bob’s tongue, and his legs. He stumbled out into the path of the cavalry, and held up a hand to stay them; their captain had the good sense to call off the attack. They dropped to a canter and came on in a line to seal off any possible escape.
“You boys have been Absent Without Leave from the King’s, and then the Queen’s, and then the King’s Own Black Torrent Guard for twenty years,” said Bob.
“Don’t be such a prick!” was Da
Da
“I suppose not,” said Jimmy at last, “but it does put a friggin’ strain on me like this, having to do the decent thing twice in, what, two friggin’ minutes.”
“You’ve had twenty years to do the wrong things,” said Bob. “These two minutes won’t kill you.”
“What about the two minutes at Tyburn?” was Da
DANIEL HAD NEVER HEARD ISAAC admit to feeling pain, until he and Leibniz each took one of his hands and pulled him to his feet. Then Isaac got an astonished look, as though he’d never hurt before in his life, and let out an “Ooh-oh! Ah! Ah!” He clenched his eyes shut, grimaced, and steepled his brow, then froze just long enough to convince Daniel that he was suffering a cardiac event that would terminate his life. But finally the pain appeared to leak away in slow increments, and his conscious mind assumed control over the nerves that led to the muscles of the face. He could now wear the expression he wished to: one of forced unconcern. “It is,” he said, and stopped to sip air, “nothing. The muscles…about the ribs…were not ready…for Baron von Leibniz’s…intervention.”
“Might you have broken a rib?” Daniel asked.
“I do not believe so,” said Newton in one long down-hill gout of breath. Then he regretted having said so much at a go, as this obliged him to breathe deeply once. The grimace came back.
“Let us fetch the carriage, so you do not have to walk,” suggested Leibniz. “Daniel, you might remain with Sir Isaac?”
Daniel stood by Newton while Leibniz-who because of gout moved in an awkward shrugging-and-rolling gait even on a good day-went off to find their carriage. Its team must have fled screaming when the top of the hill had gone off. The place had not precisely exploded-though embedded in the event had been many small explosions. It had, rather, caught fire and burned to cinders very rapidly, as if a fire that ought to have extended over some hours had been compressed into as many seconds. The place had been a kind of slum, growing and ru