DARE THE WILD WIND (23 page)

The
Trident
hove into the estuary of the Thames at high tide.   On deck with Fenella, Brenna watched Gravesend and Woolwich glide by the rail.  Now the first of the London docks slid past.  She had never dreamed London could be so sprawling and vast.  Wharfs and warehouses jutted from the banks of the river for miles.      

"Dear Heaven," Fenella breathed.  "How will we ever find Iain or Lord MacCavan in such a place?"

Brenna had the same misgivings.  What did she know of
London?  Yet she had to outwit or bribe Cam's jailors.  And pray her mother's remaining jewels would buy Cam and Iain from prison.     

"We have Lady Wittworth's letter," Brenna said, "and good Scottish sense.  Our German king has a passion for order.  He must require strict account kept of the prisoners."

Her voice held more conviction than she felt.  Fear and impatience gnawed at the pit of her stomach.  They were landing in
London as much as a fortnight behind Cam and Iain.

Brenna and Fenella had been elated to board a ship quickly in
Aberdeen, but they had lost precious time on the voyage.  For five days the brigantine had lain blinded and becalmed in an impenetrable North Sea fog, its sails collapsed and useless on the windless sea.  And their drift off course on the wayward current beneath the keel had squandered three more days.

Cam
and Iain's ship sailed from Inverness four days before they embarked from Aberdeen, and the
Hornet
could have missed the weather the
Trident
encountered.  The
Trident
could have reached the Thames a week, perhaps two, behind the prison flotilla that cast off through Moray Firth.  But they were at London's door at last.  And Brenna would move the stones of Parliament to save Cam.

With other tallmasted
brigs and frigates, the
Trident
sailed up the main channel, surrounded by barges and wherries and lighters.  Dwarfed, the faster of the boats that plied the river darted like smaller fish between the seagoing vessels towering above them.

"Look."  Fenella pointed in surprise.  "Swans."

"The property of the Crown." 

Brenna jumped to find the captain at their elbows.  He smiled.

"They swim down from
Windsor Castle when the tide is in."

His gaze was on Fenella, and a faint blush stained her cheeks.  "Captain, I expected you to be on the bridge."

"Miste
r Hawkins has brought the
Trident
up the river as often as I have," Captain Sebastian said, speaking of his first mate. 

A tall angular man in his thirties, Trevor Sebastian was imposing in a lean chiseled way, with high cheekbones and dark hair just threaded with gray at the temples.  The shipbuilder Eleanore Wittworth had directed them to contact in
Aberdeen had called him the most reliable of men, and Captain Sebastian had treated them with faultless courtesy aboard the brigantine.

"Does it please you to see our voyage almost at an end?" he asked Fenella quietly.

"I haven't been the best of sailors, I'm afraid."

"You did quite admirably for your first time at sea," Sebastian said gallantly.  "As you did, Miss Dalmoral," he added.

Brenna hadn't used her title on their journey.  She let the captain assume her to be no more than a respectable but distant relation of the Dalmoral Clan.  Brenna and Fenella hadn't revealed their real purpose in
London.  They had come too far to let anyone send them home.  A little ashamed at concocting such a lie, Brenna invented the wish of her ailing mother that they go to an aunt's house in London until the unrest subsided.  

"Forgive us, Captain, for being so eager to set foot on solid earth again," Brenna said.  "The delay wasn't any fault of yours."

"Much as I regret the weather we hit, I can't entirely curse it." He looked at Fenella.  "Not with such pleasant company aboard."

"You're too kind," she said, her color rising again.

Brenna took pity on her discomfort.  "We must have been as much a trial as the fog."

"Quite the contrary.  I'm grateful for the chance to show that some Englishmen are more civilized than the King's troops in
Scotland."

He brushed away Brenna's quick assurance that the crew of the
Trident
couldn't have shown them more respect.

"It's only with the greatest reluctance that I'll hand you both into the care of your family, Miss Dalmoral."  He hesitated.  "With the permission of your uncle, I hope I'll be allowed to call on you while I'm in port." 

Brenna tried to swallow her alarm.  But the captain saw nothing but Fenella.  "With your leave, Miss Strath."

"Oh," she floundered, "it really wouldn't do.  I'm only a servant, Brenna's...Miss Dalmoral's maid."    

"I'm in no way discouraged by that," he said in a steady voice.

They had forgotten Brenna.  Tactfully she retreated along the rail, but Fenella's answer carried to Brenna along the deck.      

"I couldn't have anyone calling on me there," she objected in a rush.  "It's generous of you to want to pay your respects, but I'm sure the family would never allow it."

His response was too low for Brenna to hear.  Whatever Fenella said next caused him to bow stiffly and correctly over her hand and take his leave of her, striding with a straight back for the bridge. 

Distress written on her face, Fenella stood
staring after him for another moment.  Then she joined Brenna.

"I never meant...I never thought..."  She cut herself short, looking chagrined and miserable.  "I didn't try to encourage the captain," she said, as if she expected Brenna to accuse her.

"I'm sure he'd be the first to admit that much," Brenna said, attempting to ease her guilt.  "Captain Sebastian is a fine man.  He paid you a compliment even Iain would understand."

Fenella's great gray eyes lifted to Brenna's.  "I'd never be unfaithful to Iain."

"I know that."  They had traveled too far together for Brenna to have any question in her mind on that score.  "What did you tell the captain?" she asked, though she was loath to pry.

"The truth," Fenella answered, "or as much as I could tell.  That I was already spoken for."

Relief washed through Brenna.  It would be difficult enough to elude the captain's care once they docked.  They could spare no time worrying he might seek them out once they were ashore. 

Now the jumbled rooftops and twisting streets of the old city began to slide by them.  Churches and great houses with their water gates to the
Thames sat cheek by jowl on the south bank with slums.  Confusion seemed to reign in every byway and narrow crowded alley.  The richly dressed and the ragged pushed their way against an equally determined tide of foot traffic in the opposite direction, and carts and coaches alternately blocked the streets or threatened the life and safety of anyone in their path.

Then a squared, ugly many
walled pile loomed on the right bank.  Enclosed by battlements and turrets, it was a massive fortress, built of ochre stone faced with white and guarded by brightly clad warders in Tudor dress.

"Yeoman of the Guard," a sailor said as he climbed down from the rigging a few feet from Brenna and Fenella.  With sly deliberate malice, he gestured to a dark portal jutting across the moat and the wharf.  "Can the pair of you spy Traitor's Gate?"

It was the
Tower of London.  Brenna's throat closed.  The Tower was as brooding and forbidding as its evil and bloody name.  And Cam and Iain could well be held prisoner there.

Fenella's expression reflected her reaction.  Brenna saw the gratified look on the sailor's face as he started aft to his duties.  Captain Sebastian had been sympathetic to two young women in flight from
Scotland and Cumberland's marauding troops, but the sailor had made it plain not every member of the crew shared his sentiments.  And they could encounter more open hostility once they were ashore.

Brenna turned resolutely away from the thick stone walls casting
a jagged shadow over the
Trident
and the Thames. 

Ahead, a great bridge lay across the river, its twenty arches a honeycomb spanning the wide stretch of water.  Tall stone gatehouses stood at either end, and dwellings and buildings of stone and wood rose four and five stories atop it, squeezed shoulder
to shoulder along its length.  It was like another city over the Thames, and Brenna couldn't quite credit the sight.

"
London Bridge," Fenella said in reluctant awe.  "I saw an engraving of it in a book of my father's.  Look, Nonsuch House."

The last was a strange, many
  storied puzzle work of cross timbers and wooden blocks, with odd onion shaped spires crowning its four corners.  Only the center of the span was free of    overhanging masonry and human habitation.  A drawbridge, it slowly lifted as they watched to allow a tall masted frigate to pass.

London
was bizarre and choked and mad.  The confidence Brenna had summoned for Fenella began to ebb.  But somewhere in the city Cam and Iain waited, and she and Fenella could be their best and perhaps their only hope for freedom.  And their first hurdle would be to slip from the charge of the protective Captain Sebastian.

The
Trident
swung in the current, making for the docks just below the bridge.  Their scant baggage sat on the deck beside them, and Brenna and Fenella could scarcely contain their eagerness to disembark.  They had expected to deal with Trevor Sebastian when the brigantine's side bumped against the pilings of the wharf, but when the gangplank was lowered, he sent Mister Hawkins in his stead.       

"I've been ordered to escort you into your aunt's keeping."  

Brenna blessed this stroke of luck.  She would much prefer to match wits with the first mate.  Taciturn by nature, Hawkins had kept to himself through most of the voyage.  Unlike the captain, he might not read their deception in their faces.

"I'm
not sure my aunt received my mother's letter in time to meet us on the dock," she said as they started down the plank.

"How long ago was it posted?" Hawkins asked, extending a callused and weathered hand to steady her step at the bottom.

"The day she sent us on our way to
Aberdeen."

She saw the first mate tot up the distance in his head.  Traveling by coach, a mail pouch could be slowed by bogging mud, broken wheels or axles, or half a dozen other calamities.  It was possible they could have reached
London ahead of a hastily dispatched letter, despite their own delay aboard the
Trident
.

He squinted and frowned, unable to pick out anyone on the wharf who might be watching for them.  "Do you see your uncle?"

Brenna made a show of scanning the faces up and down the jetty and shook her head.  She longed simply to dismiss Hawkins, assuring him they could find their way alone.  But if Captain Sebastian saw them part from the first mate without a relative to collect them, he would stride down the gangplank and take them personally in tow.

"Perhaps we should wait." 

Displaying a patience they didn't feel, Brenna and Fenella sat down on a bench next to the spot where
the cabin boy deposited their bags. As minutes passed, Hawkins stole increasingly frequent glances at the deck of the brigantine, anxious at being kept from his other duties and doubtless the liberty he had looked forward to in port.

Finally the moment Brenna watched for arrived.  On deck, the captain had stepped away to con
fer with the ship's supercargo. 

Brenna rose.  "Mister Hawkins, we're keeping you from your errands.  I feel sure my mother's letter hasn't reached my aunt.  If you'll hire a conveyance, we'll be perfectly safe on our own."

He looked tempted, then doubtful.  "The captain instructed me to deliver you directly into the hands of your family.  I'll hire a coach and accompany you."

"Oh, sir," Fenella broke in, "the family could be out.  Miss Brenna's aunt is a fair gadabout, and her uncle is scarce ever at home.  You could cool your heels all day waiting for them."

The last had its effect on the harried first mate.

"Fenella is right.  She was with my mother when she visited
London last year.  The servants will remember her, even if it has been years since they've seen me."  She summoned a stouthearted smile.  "And don't forget, a Scotswoman is never without her dirk."

She saw him jump inside his skin at the news she was armed.  "There's hardly a need to nursemaid us to my family's house."

He glanced
back to the
Trident
, to discover what Brenna had a moment before.  Captain Sebastian was no longer on the quarterdeck. 

Hawkins weighed Captain Sebastian's order against his desire to wash his hands of them.  Brenna's breath caught, and she willed Trevor Sebastian to remain below the brigantine's deck.

"As you wish, Miss Dalmoral.  But I'll find you a coach and see you personally aboard."