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There was answering musket-fire now from Angusina and the few men who’d scaled the ladder. When his ears cleared he heard shod hooves biting into wood-MacIan’s cavalry, drawn to the sound of the pipes, had reached the wooden drawbridge that spa
There was an epidemic of hammering noises, and the room became very dusty. A barrage had been fired from the Wharf into the windows. Taking advantage of the reload-interval, he raised his head above the windowsill. Two more men were clambering up the ladder as sprightly as they could go. A platoon of lobsterbacks, now with their backs to the river, were lined up on the Wharf reloading; one had been shot and was curled up on his side. The other soldiers who’d been on the Wharf were no longer in sight. Indeed, since the menacing sloop had suspended its attack, there was no reason for them to remain out there. The lieutenant must have perceived this and ordered them to march back through St. Thomas’s Tower. They would be flooding into the Lane at any moment-
Horseshoes below. He looked plumb down to see a line of a dozen riders in kilts trotting into the Lane from the gate; and sweetest of all, heard the Byward Tower portcullis hurtling down behind them, sealing the Tower off from London. “Fuck-all ahint ye,” he informed them, “Englishmen afore, comin athort the Lane-get the bastarts!” And without bothering to wait and watch his orders being put into effect, he whirled to the bed, grabbed up the Claymore in its rude back-holster, and bore it in front of him out of the room and down the stairs.
AS A LAD HE HAD plotted his wrake, his revenge, in day-dreams a thousand times. He had always seen it as a straightforward matter of wading through the intestines of Campbells and Englishmen swinging his Claymore. Fortunately, a dozen years of professional war-making had intervened between those laddish phant’sies and the opportunity of this day, and taught him that he must go about it systematically.
So he did not fly out onto the Parade and go looking for Englishmen to slay, but bided his time by the door for a moment and made a study of the place as he hung the great sword on his back.
The Parade was empty except for a single redcoat ru
No, never mind, someone had just shot him, probably from Cold Harbour. The Plan called for ten men, give or take a few, to have slipped into the I
“I need to ken if the Bloody Tower portcullis is dropped,” he remarked, just thinking aloud. But hearing a man clear his throat behind him, he turned around to discover half a dozen lads, flushed in the face and breathing hard from the scramble up the ladder and the dash down the staircase, but all in the pink of health and ready to go with loaded muskets.
“Beg pardon, my lord, but we worked out a signal for that.”
“And ye ir-?”
“Gu
“Ti the windie then, Milton, an look for thy signal.”
“There it is,” Milton replied after a glance across the Parade. “See there, the Chapel has a clear view of Bloody Tower, as we’ve a clear view of it. We’ve a lass in there. Came in last night for a funeral, stayed all night to pray, and stayed all day to keep an eye on Bloody Tower for us. Do you mark the yellow cloth in the middle window there? She put it up to let us know that the portcullis is dropped.”
“Then the Black-guard maun hae sprung the Russian,” said Rufus MacIan, “an the Russian maun hae duin his job. Crivvens! It’s a clinker.”
“A clinker, my lord?”
“A wadna hae believed it, tha a one-airmed man could fell so many. But he hae surpreese on his left flank, an mad panic on his right, an either o the twae, by itself, is more mauchty than Hercules. Ir ye all guidwillie, now, to practice your auld profession?”
“Aye!” and “Yes, my lord,” came the answers.
“Then count to five, and follow.” MacIan flung the front door open and stepped out onto the Parade, as casually as if he were the Lieutenant of the Tower on his way to church.
“One,” chanted the men crouched in the building he’d just left behind.
Smoke jerked from the window of a Yeoman’s house.
“Two.”
A musket-ball buzzed in like a massive bumblebee, ruffled the whiskers of MacIan’s beard, and destroyed the window he had lately been peering out of.
“Three!” chanted the gu
Musket-smoke spurted from half a dozen odd places around the I
“Four!” Another musket-ball, much too high, dug a crater from the front of the Lieutenant’s Lodging. “Paltry,” was the verdict of Rufus MacIan. “A dowless effort.” But his comments were drowned out by the echoes of the recent fire rolling around the Parade, as several other shots had just been fired to suppress the efforts of those Yeomen who were taking pot-shots at him.
“Five!”
Three men piled out the door, dropped to a kneeling position on the gravel track that ran along the front of the house, and raised muskets to their shoulders, taking aim at windows where they thought Yeomen were holed up. Their fire heaved up a cloud of smoke that covered the emergence of a second three.
Rufus MacIan was ru
A red garment flashed in the window of one of the houses off to MacIan’s left. He wrenched the barrel of his musket that way, but the soldier saw him and dove to the floor before MacIan could pull the trigger.
The second group of three, likewise leaving their muskets on the ground, got up now and ran after their fellows towards Bloody Tower. MacIan took up the rear, following after them. But he moved only at a stroll. Partly this was because he expected a few more gu
Of the motley line of half-timbered houses that stretched along the southern verge of the Parade, the Lieutenant’s Lodging lay farthest to the west. The one Rufus MacIan was concerned with was at the opposite, easternmost end, therefore closest to Bloody Tower. It was thrust out into the green in a ma