Susanna Gregory - The Piccadilly Plot

Chaloner was about to remark that he had no intention of being silenced when he heard the merest of rustles behind the door. A faint smile tugged the corners of Brilliana’s mouth, and he knew her deliverance was at hand. Reacting instinctively, he hurled himself to the floor, dragging Thurloe with him. And then the room was full of noise as bullets ripped into the oaken panels and smashed the windows.

Before the gunmen could reload, Chaloner kicked the door closed and struggled to his knees to lock it. Immediately, someone started to batter it from the other side. It began to splinter, not being as robust as the ones in the Great Parlour. Chaloner glanced fearfully at Thurloe, expecting him to be shot, but the ex-Spymaster scrambled to his feet and hurried to Brilliana, who was gazing at the shattered remains of her right arm in shocked disbelief. Cave was dead.

‘Open the window,’ hissed Thurloe. ‘We shall escape through that. Hurry!’

Obediently, Chaloner ran towards it, but could see shadows moving in the fog outside. When one of them fired a musket at him, he whipped around and began prodding the panels instead.

‘The plans said Hyde installed a passage in this wall,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Help me find it.’

There were voices in the hallway — Fitzgerald’s piping treble ordering someone to hurry. The pirate sounded deranged, and Chaloner knew he and Thurloe would not live long once they were caught. Whoever was kicking the door intensified his assault, and Chaloner’s hunt for the hidden passage became more frantic, too.

It was Thurloe who found it — a tiny knob disguised as a carving of a pineapple. Chaloner followed him inside, then pressed the mechanism that closed it. A little light filtered through the holes that had been placed for spying, but it was still difficult to see where they were going.

‘Fitzgerald did not care who was shot just then,’ Thurloe whispered, shocked. ‘Indeed, I cannot help but wonder whether he wanted Brilliana and Cave dead anyway.’ His voice was unsteady, stunned by the ruthlessness of the onslaught.

‘Probably,’ agreed Chaloner. ‘It is more loose ends tied.’

‘Do you accept now that I was right to keep you away from him? And understand why I could never find witnesses to speak against him when I tried to bring him to trial? How could I, when he murders his accomplices?’

They were passing the last of the peepholes when the door burst open and Fitzgerald flew in. Chaloner stopped to watch. The pirate did not so much as glance at the writhing Brilliana, and instead issued a piercing scream of frustration when he saw his enemies had escaped. His master entered more calmly.

‘They seem to have gone,’ said O’Brien softly. ‘Find them, or you will die, too.’

Chaloner gaped at the man who had been the author of so much carnage, then clenched his fists as rage consumed him. It was O’Brien’s fault that Lester had died saving worthless Adventurers, and in the darkness of Hyde’s secret passage, he vowed the man would pay. Unfortunately, his dive to the floor to avoid the deadly hail of gunfire meant he had dropped his weapons, so the odds of him fulfilling that promise were remote to say the least. But he determined to do his best.

‘ He was never among my suspects,’ whispered Thurloe. He sounded disgusted and stunned in equal measure. ‘I underestimated him — and his capacity for greed, because he is already rich.’

‘Rich enough to have funded the Piccadilly Company all these months,’ replied Chaloner. ‘No wonder he refused to join the Adventurers. I believed him when he said it was because he opposed the slave trade — he was convincing. But it was a lie, a ruse to conceal his real intentions.’

‘And what are his real intentions? What can he gain, other than to make yet more money?’

Chaloner was about to repeat the reply he had given when Rector Thompson had posed the same question the previous week — that money was one of those commodities of which those who owned it never felt they had enough — when O’Brien crouched by the dying Brilliana. She tried to move away but he made a sudden movement and she went limp, head lolling to one side.

‘I thought I told you to find our unwanted guests,’ he snarled, when he saw Fitzgerald watching him. The pirate took an involuntary step backwards at the force of the words. ‘Hunt them down and kill them. They have done immeasurable harm with their meddling.’

‘I said it was a bad idea to bring the Adventurers to Queenhithe,’ Fitzgerald snapped back. ‘If you had let me blow them up in Woolwich, as we originally planned-’

‘How?’ snapped O’Brien. ‘You could not have smuggled gunpowder on board Royal Katherine , and using Jane was a stroke of genius.’

Fitzgerald scowled. ‘Modestly put. But how did you persuade Leighton to change the time and venue of his party? It cannot have been easy.’

‘It was, actually — I told him I would join the Adventurers if he did as I asked. Unfortunately, now our plan is foiled, he will know that I am behind the plot to massacre them all, so I will have to kill him today, too. But not before I have dispatched Thurloe and his helpmeets, to teach them what happens to those who cross me.’

‘ I did not cross you,’ said Fitzgerald immediately. ‘I was on my way to warn you that we had to set the explosion early, but then I saw you on the quayside, so obviously I did not risk our venture by exposing myself to recognition by approaching you.’

‘Obviously,’ said O’Brien flatly, while Chaloner recalled that O’Brien had been one of those whose life had been saved by the timely evacuation. However, he was sure O’Brien was right to be sceptical of Fitzgerald’s intentions.

Beside him, Thurloe released a soft sound of disgust. ‘If he trusted Fitzgerald not to betray him, then the man is deranged,’ he said softly.

‘He is deranged,’ Chaloner whispered back. ‘Look at his face. And what he did to Brilliana …’

‘Well, do not just stand there!’ O’Brien was snapping to his accomplice. ‘Our enemies cannot be allowed to escape, so find them and kill them. Now!’

Fitzgerald was an intelligent man, who knew his quarry could not have left through the window while there were guards outside, so he immediately turned his attention to the panels. He began tapping and poking, and Chaloner knew it was only a matter of time before he found what he was looking for.

He and Thurloe moved as fast as they could along the passage, but it was difficult in the dark. Thurloe gave him a vigorous shove when Fitzgerald screeched his triumph, sending him stumbling down a flight of steep stairs. When he had finally regained his balance, he saw a flare of light close behind him. Thurloe had a tinderbox and had lit a candle.

‘Douse it!’ Chaloner hissed in alarm. He glanced up to see a second gleam at the top of the steps. ‘They are coming!’

‘They know we are here,’ Thurloe snapped back. ‘And it is better to see, than to blunder blindly.’

Chaloner snatched the candle and ran along a corridor that — according to Hyde’s plans — led to the kitchens. He was acutely aware of footsteps behind them. Then he reached a dead end.

‘I sincerely hope we have not gone past the exit,’ gulped Thurloe, groping frantically along the wall. Chaloner did likewise, noting that the mortar was still damp.

Chaloner gasped his relief when he detected a knob. He pulled and twisted, but nothing happened. He did it harder, then gaped in horror when it came off in his hand. Calmly, Thurloe reached past him and pushed the exposed metal. There was a soft sigh, and a stone slid to one side. Aware of Fitzgerald’s lamp coming ever closer, Chaloner crawled out quickly, and when Thurloe had followed, he stood by the hole with a brick in his hand.