C Harris - When maidens mourn

`The woman who tells fortunes near the Adelphi and the York Steps,' said Sebastian, still in Romany. `We would like to speak to her.'

The Gypsy stared at Sebastian, not a line in his face moving.

`I know you have two Gadje children here with you,' said Sebastian, although the truth was, he didn't know it; he was still only working on a hunch. `A boy of nine and a younger child of three.'

The Gypsy shifted his pipe stem with his tongue. `What do you think?' he said in English. `That we Rom are incapable of producing our own children? That we need to steal yours?'

`I'm not accusing you of stealing these children. I think you've offered them protection from the man who killed their cousin.' When the Gypsy simply continued to stare at him, Sebastian said, `We mean the children no harm. But we have reason to think that the man who murdered their cousin now knows where they are.'

Hero touched Sebastian's arm. `Devlin.'

He turned his head. The old woman from the York Steps had appeared at the front doorway of the nearest caravan. She held by the hand a small child, his dark brown hair falling around his dirty face in soft curls like a girl's. But rather than a frock he wore a blue short-sleeved skeleton suit. The high-waisted trousers buttoned to a tight coat were ripped at one knee, the white, ruffle-collared shirt beneath it grimy. He stared at them with wide, solemn eyes.

`Hello, Alfred,' said Hero, holding out her arms. `Remember me, darling?'

The Gypsy woman let go of his hand, and after a moment's hesitation, he went to Hero. She scooped him off the platform into her arms and held him tight, her eyes squeezing shut for one betraying moment.

Sebastian said, `And the older child? George?'

It was the woman who answered. `He went down the river with some of our boys to catch hedgehogs. They were coming back to camp along the road when a man in a gig drove up behind them and grabbed the lad.'

`How long ago?' said Sebastian sharply.

`An hour. Maybe more.'

Hero met his gaze. `Dear God,' she whispered.

Fishing his engraved gold watch from his pocket, Sebastian turned back to the mustachioed Gypsy. `I'll give you four hundred pounds for your fastest horse and a saddle, with this standing as security until I can deliver the funds. And to make damned certain you give me your best horse, I'll pay you another hundred pounds if I catch up with that gig in time.'

`But we don't know where they've gone,' said Hero.

`No. But I can guess. I think Hildeyard is taking him to Camlet Moat.'

The Gypsies sold him a half-wild bay stallion that danced away, ears flat, when Sebastian eased the saddle over its back.

`I don't like the looks of that horse,' said Hero. She had the little boy balanced on her hip, his head on her shoulder, his eyelids drooping.

`He's fast. That's what matters at this point.' He tightened the cinch. `Lovejoy should still be at Bow Street. Tell him whatever you need to, but get him to send men out to the moat, fast.'

`What if you're wrong? What if Hildeyard isn't taking George to Camlet Moat?'

`If you can think of anyplace else, tell Lovejoy.' Sebastian settled into the saddle, the stallion bucking and kicking beneath him.

`Devlin...'

He wheeled the prancing horse to look back at her.

For one intense moment their gazes met and held. Then she said,

`Take care. Please.'

The wind billowed her skirts, fluttered a stray lock of dark hair against her pale face. He said, `Don't worry; I have a good reason to be careful.'

`You mean, your son.'

He smiled. `Actually, I m counting on a girl... a daughter every bit as brilliant and strong and fiercely loyal to her sire as her mother.'

She gave a startled, shaky laugh, and he nudged the horse closer so that he could reach down and cup her cheek with his hand. He wanted to tell her she was also a part of why he intended to be careful, that he'd realized how important she was to him even as he'd felt himself losing her without ever having actually made her his. He wanted to tell her that he'd learned a man could come to love again without betraying his first love.

But she laid her hand over his, holding his palm to her face as she turned her head to press a kiss against his flesh, and the moment slipped away.

`Now, go,' she said, taking a step back. `Quickly.'

Sebastian caught the horse ferry at the Lambeth Palace gate. The Gypsy stallion snorted and plunged with fright as the ferry rocked and pitched, the wind off the river drenching them both with spray picked up off the tops of the waves. Landing at Westminster, he worked his way around the outskirts of the city until the houses and traffic of London faded away. Finally, the road lay empty before them, and he spurred the bay into a headlong gallop.

His world narrowed down to the drumbeat of thundering hooves, the tumbling, lightning-riven clouds overhead, the sodden hills glistening with the day's rain and shadowed by tree branches shuddering in the wind. He was driven by a relentless sense of urgency and chafed by the knowledge that his assumption that Hildeyard was taking his young cousin to Camlet Moat to kill him could so easily be wrong. The boy might already be dead. Or Hildeyard might be taking the lad someplace else entirely, someplace Sebastian knew nothing about, rather than bothering to bury him on or near the island in the hopes that when he was eventually found the authorities would assume he'd been there all along.

A blinding sheet of lightning spilled through the storm-churned clouds, limning the winding, tree-shadowed road with a quick flash of white. He had reached the overgrown remnant of the old royal chase. The rain had started up again, a soft patter that beat on the leaves of the spreading oaks overhead and trickled down the back of his collar.

The Gypsy stallion was tiring. Sebastian could smell the animal's hot, sweaty hide, hear its labored breathing as he turned off onto the track that wound down toward the moat. He drew the horse into a walk, his gaze raking the wind-tossed, shadowy wood ahead. In the stillness, the humus-muffled plops of the horse's hooves and the creak of the saddle leather sounded dangerously loud. He rode another hundred feet and then reined in.

Sliding off the stallion, he wrapped the reins around a low branch and continued on foot. He could feel the temperature dropping, see the beginnings of a wispy fog hugging the ground. As he drew closer to the moat he was intensely aware of his own breathing, the pounding of his heart.

The barrister's gig stood empty at the top of the embankment, the gray between the shafts grazing unconcernedly in the grass beside the track. On the far side of the land bridge, a lantern cast a pool of light over the site of Sir Stanley's recent excavations. Hildeyard Tennyson sat on a downed log beside the lantern, his elbows resting on his spread knees, a small flintlock pistol in one hand. Some eight or ten feet away, a tall boy, barefoot like a Gypsy and wearing only torn trousers and a grimy shirt, worked digging the fill out of one of the old trenches. Sebastian could hear the scrape of George Tennyson's shovel cutting into the loose earth.

The barrister had set the boy to digging his own grave.

Sebastian eased down on one knee in the thick, wet humus behind the sturdy trunk of an ancient oak. If he'd been armed with a rifle, he could have taken out the barrister from here. But the small flintlock in his pocket was accurate only at short range. Sebastian listened to the rain slapping into the brackish water of the moat, let his gaze drift around the ancient site of Camelot. With Hildeyard seated at the head of the land bridge, there was no way Sebastian could approach the island from that direction without being seen. His only option was to cut around the moat until he was out of the barrister's sight, and then wade across the water.