Run Wild (3 page)

Long after Michaelmas Day.

Nicholas flattened his palms against the floor and pushed himself up to a sitting position, gritting his teeth. His injured ribs ached and his swollen eye throbbed and the haze of pain made it difficult to think—but he bloody well had to find some way to escape.

Turning his head, he realized that the back wall wasn’t made of bars, but of wood. He reached out with one foot and kicked it experimentally. Solid wood. A good ten inches thick. No escape there.

Grimacing, he let himself fall back against the bars behind him, wiping blood from his face as he surveyed his surroundings more thoroughly. The gaol was half empty, his nearest neighbor two cells to the left. The man lay on the floor, sobbing drunkenly, telling the rambling tale of his sorry life to anyone who cared to listen.

Nicholas looked away. The gaol’s stale air made breathing about as pleasant as trying to inhale some reeking liquid, but beneath the sour smells of sweat and fear, he caught the lingering scent of horses. It seemed this place had once served as a barn. Or a stable. The heat only intensified the—

He stilled as a shudder rippled through him. A memory.

The stifling air. Couldn’t breathe. Darkness. Bodies crushed together in the hold. Father! Why did you kill my father? The lieutenant with a hot iron in his hand. Someone crying. An orphaned boy. Crying. Begging. “Please don’t. No! Please. Don’t—”

The scream. Agony. The smell of burning flesh...

Nicholas shook his head, blinking rapidly, caught off guard by the vivid, unwanted images. He steadied himself with a hand on the floor, sweat running down his face. The sting of it against the cut on his cheek made him reach up—and the roughness of his beard yanked him firmly back to reality.

He was thirty-eight, not ten.

He was in the custody of rural marshalmen, not the Royal Navy.

Jesus
. He had thought those particular memories long ago exterminated. Wiped clean. Obliterated by blood and vengeance.

Almost without thinking, he touched his chest, finding his waistcoat, his cotton shirt buttoned to his throat. The mark concealed. As always.

Breathing hard, he forced his mind back to the problem at hand. His fingers closed around one of the iron bars that caged him, his grip tightening until the cool metal bit into his palm.

Escape.

It would be far too fitting, too ironic, for his notorious career to end this way—since this was how it had begun, twenty-eight years ago.

On the day he’d turned his back on God.

He shut his eyes. Perhaps this was the divine retribution he’d been expecting ever since. Perhaps it was fate that he should find himself here, mistaken for a common footpad, a nameless prisoner in the town of... bloody hell, he didn’t even know the name of this place.

A nameless prisoner in a nameless town, facing a noose for a crime not his own. An ignominious end to a nefarious life.

Fate.

He rejected the idea almost as quickly as it entered his head. Opening his good eye, he stared defiantly heavenward. He didn’t believe in fate.

If anyone was to blame for his current predicament, it was him. The knuckles of his right hand still throbbed and stung. He had managed to land a few solid blows and inflict a bit of damage with his blades before the four men had wrestled him to the ground.

If he hadn’t resisted, if he had answered their questions civilly, he might have talked his way out of it.

But some old habits died hard, he thought bitterly. When cornered, Nicholas Brogan fought. Instinctively. Viciously.

Had he thought he could change? It was clearly too late for that. Too many years of blood and violence had made him what he was. What he would always be.

Too late
. Those two words seemed to sum up his entire life.

A metallic clatter of chains and a groan of old hinges sounded from the far end of the long, dark chamber as a door creaked open. A slash of light streaked across the stone floor. A man stepped inside, an oil lantern in one hand. A ring of keys jangled on his belt.

Ignoring the pleas, curses, and grasping hands that came at him, he moved slowly along the row of cells, heading straight for Nicholas.

Nicholas was about to get to his feet, but decided it would be better to give the impression that he was too injured to be much of a threat. He remained where he was, slouched against the bars at his back... ready to take advantage of any opportunity that might present itself.

Even before the man drew near, Nicholas could tell this wasn’t one of the marshalmen who’d ambushed him. This man waddled more than walked, puffing at the effort of moving his considerable bulk. He was either the gaoler, or the county magistrate coming to interrogate him.

He doubted the latter. County magistrates tended to be aristocratic popinjays who prized the status of their crown appointments while disdaining the actual work. Rather than sully their lily-white hands, they generally hired others to carry out their duties—a gaoler to oversee the local prison, marshalmen to gather evidence, interview witnesses, and arrest and interrogate suspects.

Some of the hirelings were honest men. Others, like the ones he’d encountered tonight, were worse brigands than the people they arrested. Brutal thugs more interested in bribes and bounties than truth and justice.

“Glad to see yer finally awake, mate,” the man wheezed as he came to a halt before Nicholas’s cell. “Brought ye yer supper.” He set down a metal pail with a clang.

This, evidently, was the gaoler. “I’m not hungry,” Nicholas said weakly, trying to sound like an outraged, innocent citizen. “I’d like to speak to the magistrate.”

“Makin’ demands, are ye?” The man glowered at him. “Yer lucky we didn’t hang ye straightaway, after the way ye near spilled Tibbs’s guts with yer knife.” He set the lantern down behind him.

Nicholas’s every muscle went taut. The pail of food was too big to pass through the bars. The gaoler would have to unlock his cell door. “How was I to know they were the law?” He pressed an arm across his midsection with an exaggerated wince, holding his bruised ribs. “I was merely passing through this pleasant hamlet of yours and when I stopped at the stables to hire a horse—”

“
Steal
a horse, more like.”

“
Hire
a horse. The next thing I knew, four hulking blokes ambushed me. It was the dead of night. I thought they were outlaws. I simply defended myself.”

“They’d been trailin’ ye fer half an hour, mate. If yer so innocent, what were ye doin’ skulkin’ around the roads so quiet-like after midnight?”

“As I told them, I was merely passing through—”

“On business. Aye, a planter from the Colonies just passin’ through on business.” The gaoler shook his head in disbelief, the rolls of fat under his chin wobbling. “Ye don’t fight like no planter, mate.”

Nicholas clamped his teeth to stop an oath, chastising himself again for fighting when he should have remained calm and reasonable.

Unfortunately it seemed that old pirates, like old dogs, couldn’t be taught new tricks.

“The magistrate don’t need to be seein’ ye,” the gaoler continued. He still didn’t reach for his keys. “Ye match the description well enough. Been in all the county broadsheets fer a month. There’s a nice fat reward out fer ye. Fifty pounds.”

“Really?” Nicholas asked, one eyebrow quirking upward, the irony in his tone completely lost on the gaoler. “Fifty whole pounds?”

“That’s right. More’n any of us makes in a year, even split four ways.” Instead of opening the cell door, he bent down and withdrew a few items from the pail. “An’ now we got a witness what swears yer the one he saw sneakin’ away from Lord Alston’s house with a sack full o’ loot a month ago.”

“Witness?” Nicholas demanded incredulously. “What witness?”

“Tibbs himself.”

Nicholas swore. The wounded marshalman was obviously so infuriated, he would say anything to see Nicholas hanged.

The gaoler passed the foodstuffs through the bars—a leg of mutton, a slab of bread, and a tall pewter mug filled with some sort of drink. Nicholas took them one by one, his frustration deepening when it became clear the door wouldn’t be opened.

This unsavory bunch wasn’t going to take any chance of their fifty-pound prize getting away.

And he couldn’t bribe his way out. They’d relieved him of his coin purse when they arrested him. Along with the few weapons he’d been carrying.

His chances of making it to York before Michaelmas were narrowing by the minute.

“You’ve arrested the wrong man,” he insisted. “The assize judge won’t give you a shilling for me. Because you won’t be able to prove a thing.”

“Oh, we’ll prove it, mate.” The man’s tone made it clear they could prove whatever they wanted, that they had done so before. “And we won’t be waitin’ fer the assizes.”

A new sense of foreboding prickled up Nicholas’s spine. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means this lot here”—the gaoler waved a beefy hand to indicate the half-dozen prisoners held in the other cells to the left and right—“can wait ’til January when the judge comes on his usual rounds. But not you, mate. Yer worth too much. We’ll be taking ye in now so we can collect straightaway.”

Nicholas felt his heart slam against his bruised ribs. “Taking me in to...”

“London,” the gaoler confirmed with a nod and a grin filled with greed.

Nicholas stared up at him, speechless, struck by a sense of doom that was like a cannon blast. He was done for.
London
. Not just London but the Old Bailey—the venerable courthouse filled with justices and lawmen who had hunted him for years. If any one of them recognized him...

He’d be handed over to the admiralty. Strung up at Execution Dock. Drawn and quartered and left to swing from a gibbet cage as a lesson to others who might be tempted to take up the pirate’s easy, profitable life.

Either that or he’d be cashed in for fifty pounds and executed as a footpad.

Either way, he wouldn’t have to worry about Michaelmas anymore.

He’d be dead before then.

“If ye can prove yer innocent, ye have nothin’ to worry about and the judge will let ye go.” The gaoler leaned down with a stern expression. “But I don’t think yer innocent, mate. And I don’t think he’ll be lettin’ ye go.”

Not likely
, Nicholas thought.
Not bloody likely
. He managed to force only one word past his clenched teeth. “When?”

“The lads will be comin’ to collect ye at first light on the morrow.” The man picked up the empty pail and his lantern. “Eat up, mate.” He nodded to the food Nicholas had set aside. “This may be yer last meal.”

With that pleasant prediction, he turned and waddled out.

Nicholas sat very still for a moment after the door closed with an ominous thud and the chain clattered back into place.

He stared into the darkness as the facts of the situation sank in... and an image left over from his childhood lessons reeled through his mind.

An image of hell.

He didn’t believe in much of anything anymore, but he still believed in hell. He had no doubt he would be spending eternity there—and he had no desire to hasten his arrival by even a day.

Somewhere deep inside him an old, almost-forgotten cunning sparked to life, already had him thinking, scheming, planning. He would
not
let the Royal Navy get their hands on him.

He would never let them do to him what they had done to his father.

No, by hell, he wouldn’t let that happen. He was going to escape. Somewhere between here and London, he vowed, he was going to escape.

~ ~ ~

A half-hour later, the rest of the prisoners had quieted down for the night and the torches had burned low. Nicholas leaned back against the bars of his cell as he ate his supper, slowly, being careful of his swollen lip. He had to keep his strength up, and the food was edible enough—the mutton not too overcooked, the thick bread reasonably fresh, the mug filled with water drawn from a cool well. There was something to be said for being arrested in the countryside.

He bit into the mutton, thinking as he chewed. Since he alone would be hauled off to London, the marshalmen might take him on horseback or on foot, rather than in a coach or cart. That, at least, was some small cause for hope. It would give him a better chance to escape.

Finishing the water, he pressed the cool pewter mug against his bruised face with a pained sigh. He still had a chance of survival. Not a great chance, but a chance nonetheless.

Perhaps God hadn’t deserted him entirely after all.

A commotion at the door made him sit up straight and set the mug aside. It couldn’t be dawn already.

As soon as the door was thrown open, he realized the marshalmen weren’t coming to collect him. They were bringing in another prisoner—a kicking, bucking, struggling prisoner that two of them fought to restrain.

“Hurry up, Bickford!” one of the men shouted.

“Let me go, you cretins!” The new arrival accompanied the demand with a string of oaths that would burn the ears of a Barbary sailor.

Oaths made all the more remarkable by the feminine voice that uttered them.

The gaol’s awakened inhabitants quickly filled the air with whistles and catcalls.

“Bring ’er ’ere, mates!”

“Give ’em hell, missy!”

“I’ll take her off yer hands!”

Swearing, the marshalmen wrestled her along the row of cells, the gaoler waddling behind, fumbling with the ring of keys at his waist.

“Ow!” one of the guards howled. “She bit me! Bickford!”

“Hold on to her, Swinton, hold on,” Bickford muttered. “It’s hard to see and these ain’t numbered, ye know. I have to find one what fits one of the empty—”

“Unhand me!” the woman cried, lashing out with her heel. “You half-witted, barmybrained gullions, let me
go
.”

The second guard uttered a yelp as the girl stomped on his foot. “Just pick one, Bickford! Any of ’em.”

“Plenty o’ room in my cell!” one prisoner offered.

Nicholas remained silent. He could see her better by the light of the gaoler’s lantern—though he couldn’t make out much more than a whirlwind of blonde hair, pale yellow skirts, and white teeth.