IT HAD BEEN UPWARDS OF thirty years since Bob Shaftoe had shinnied up a drainpipe to break into the home of a rich man. But the women of the household had, like birds, flown upwards by instinct, and availed themselves of every stair that presented itself to them, until they nested in an attic. An eyebrow window protruded from the roof, and worried faces flashed in it. Bob, rather than see doors smashed down and the house torn apart, ascended to that roof, belly-crawled up the roof-tiles, kicked out the window, somersaulted to the floor, and parried a rush and a thrust from some kitchen-wench who had thought to snatch up a butcher-knife before abandoning her post. He got this one by the wrist, spun her around into a hammerlock, pried the knife from her grip, and held her as a shield before him, in case any of the four other women in this attic had like intentions. She smelled of carrots and thyme. She shouted something in French that he was sure meant, “Run away!” but not a one of them moved. The booming on the attic-door proved they had no route of escape that way.
They looked at him. Their faces were turned to the light pouring in through the wrecked window. One was a crone, two were matrons, too old and stout to be Abigail. One was the right age, and shape, and coloration. His heart jumped and stumbled. It wasn’t her. “Damn it!” he said, “do not be afraid, you’ll not be touched. I seek Miss Abigail Frome.”
Four pairs of eyes shifted slightly from Bob’s face to that of the woman he was holding.
Then her entire weight was pressing him back, and he had to let go her wrist to catch her. In his life he had learned a few things about unarmed combat, including a trick or two for escaping from a hammerlock. This, though, was a new one: faint dead away into your captor’s arms.
SHE CAME AROUND THREE MINUTES later, diagonal on a bed one storey below. Bob bobbed in and out of her field of view. He’d draw near to count her freckles, then would remember that a life of military service had made him a frightful thing to look upon, and so, to spare Abigail’s tender eyes, he would withdraw, and make a circuit of the room’s windows, inspecting the trench-work of the soldiers below. Some of them were doing it a little bit wrong. He mastered the urge to fling up a sash and bawl at them. He flicked his eyes up to scour the horizon for vengeful French Horse-regiments. When Abigail reached up to rub her nose, he kept an eye on her, in case she had secreted on her person any more cutlery. But he need not have bothered. This was not a tempestuous assassin he was looking at. She was a schoolgirl from a small town in Somerset, of a sweet and level disposition, but inclined to be a bit daft about practical matters, which was how Bob had met her in the first place, and how he had lost his heart to her. To rush at him with a knife, as she had just done, was not typical of her character, but it was a fair sample of the less than practical side of her nature, which Bob, who had nothing but practical in his makeup, needed and wanted. He had seen this, eleven years ago, in the time it had taken his heart to skip three beats. And in a sort of miracle—the only miracle that Bob had ever been party to—this girl had seen in him what she wanted. Wanted, both in the sense that meant was lacking, and the sense that meant desired.
Beds of the time had a lot of pillows, as it was the practice to sleep half-sitting up. Abigail had been flung down flat by Bob, but now pushed herself up against the pillows so that she could eye him pacing about the room.
“Bloody hell!” were his first tender words to her. “There is no time! I know you remember me, or you would not have fainted.”
She was still pale, and not inclined to move more than she had to, but a smile came on her face, giving her the placid look of a Virgin Mary in a painting. “Even if I had it in me to forget you, my lords Upnor and Sheerness would have made it impossible. It was strange how oft they felt moved to relate the story of how you stood on the bridge and challenged Upnor on my behalf.”
“Oh, that was ignominious.”
“True, they told the tale to make fun of you; but to me ’twas a love-story I never tired of hearing.”
“Still, ignominious. As was my second meeting with Upnor, which you might not have heard about. Thank god Teague happened along with his stick! But we have no time for this. Oh, bloody hell, here he comes!”
“Who!?” cried Abigail.
“Didn’t mean to alarm you, Miss. It is not Monsieur le comte. It’s Colonel Barnes. He approaches. Do you mark his peg-leg beating time on the stairs? We must get out of this place.”
Bob moved toward the door of the bedchamber. Abigail watched with a wrinkled brow, not knowing whether it was Bob’s intention to flee; to barricade it; or to welcome the Colonel. But instead some detail of it caught Bob’s notice. He reached out and touched—caressed—the upper hinge: two straps of forged iron, one fixed to the door, the other to the post, joined by a short rod of iron about as thick as his little finger. “Quickly then: a few moments in Taunton market-square, eleven years ago, helping you with that silly banner, when the wind had gusted, and blown it down—you remember? Those moments are to my life what this hinge-pin is in the case of the door; which is to say that all pivoted, and pivots, about it; it is what I am about, as it were, and at the same time, it holds all together. Take it away—” And here Bob, not trusting his tongue, on an impulse drew a knife from his belt, shoved it under the mushroom-shaped head of the pin, and popped it loose. Lifting the door up with one hand, he jerked the pin up and out with the other; then he let go. The pin clanged to the floor. The door fell askew and cracked, and would not move properly any more, but hung sadly askew and wobbled.
“We’ve another moment now, unfortunately no longer than the first. What’s it to be, Abigail?”