The Wild Princess

Fifty-two



“No!” Byrne screamed, as if by the sheer force of his voice he could stop the inevitable. From atop the ruins of the bridge he heard a sharp crack, the sickening sound of splintering of wood as the coach slammed into the bridge’s stone abutment, breaking apart the monstrous thing before it hit the water.

He stood in shock, unable to breathe, his gut a ball of fire. Never had he felt more helpless. More lost. The two men holding him back dropped his arms, called off by their sergeant. Faced with more pressing problems than protecting the queen’s agent they raced off to fight their attackers.

All about Byrne was madness. Gunfire echoed from the direction of the shore behind; the guardsmen who had been bringing up the rear were fighting off a heavily armed force. He should join them to protect the two princesses and other civilians trapped in the melee. But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop staring down into the putrid, gray flow beneath him. At the bobbing wreckage of the royal coach.

Where was she? He stepped to the edge, prepared to jump in at the slightest sign of life. At least from here, above, he had a better chance of spotting her. There might still be a chance of getting her out, of her surviving. Oh, God, there has to be!

At first he could make out nothing but debris in the wretched, reeking confluence. Then a billow of white blossomed at the water’s surface, reminding him of a graceful, pulsing jellyfish in the dark water. As he squinted, trying to make out what the thing was, a long white-gloved arm appeared.

“Louise!”

“Bloody fool.” A hand clamped down on his shoulder before he could step over the edge. “You’ll do her no good dead. Come, there’s a better way.”

Byrne hung back, trying to extricate himself from Lorne’s grasp. He looked across the open space where the middle span of the bridge used to be. The queen’s carriage had made it across to the other side before the blast ripped a hole through stone and mortar. Hussars now surrounded the boxy little brougham. Brown had taken one of their horses and was standing in the stirrups, trying to see what was happening on the other side.

“Take her on!” Byrne shouted above the sounds of battle, waving him off. His throat closed, blocking further words. If the Scot left now, the queen and heir to the throne would be safe with the bulk of her guard as escort. The Fenians seemed not to have yet realized that Victoria wasn’t in the coronation coach.

Lorne hadn’t given up tugging on his sleeve. “Move your bloody ass!” the marquess ordered, and this time Byrne snapped to action, drawing the Colt out from the hip holster where it had stayed to leave his hands free to reach for Louise.

They broke into a run, past the princesses and Alice’s duke, now surrounded and sheltered by the queen’s guard. Perhaps because of his love of the hunt, Lorne instinctively found the one hole in the fighting and made for it. Byrne followed on his heels.

An instant before they reached the foot of the bridge, Byrne caught a glimpse of a thin man in a dark cape, aiming a pistol at the running Lorne. He recognized Gladstone’s secretary, the Fenian officer.

Philip Rhodes’s first shot missed. Byrne’s shot didn’t. Rhodes staggered two steps, firing a second volley too wide and high to hit anyone, as a crimson stain spread across his chest. He fell to the ground; Byrne didn’t stop but felt satisfied the wound was fatal.

As soon as they were clear of the bridge, Lorne turned down the steep incline and raced, mud flying from beneath his boot heels, down the embankment toward a nearby boatyard. A covey of fishing skiffs, a barge, and a tugboat were docked there.

Believing he knew what the marquess had in mind, Byrne shouted, “We’ll never reach her in time, rowing.” Even putting up a sail would take precious minutes. And there was barely a breeze, this rare hot day, to fill the canvas.

Lorne pointed. “If that steamer tug is stoked up—”

Byrne’s hopes soared at the sight of gray smoke starting to billow from the tugboat’s stack.

But Louise still might have been killed in the fall. Crushed beneath all that heavy wood and cursed metal hardware. Drowned as her gown sucked up water and dragged her down by its weight. Knocked unconscious by falling rubble as more and more stone blocks tumbled into the river. He agonized over the myriad ways she might have met her end. After all, he’d seen a dress and an arm, nothing more. He hadn’t seen her face or been able to tell from the height of the ruined bridge if she was even breathing.

His heart felt as if it would detonate like an Irish bomb. He stared out over the water, scanning the filthy froth surrounding the rubble and shattered, half-submerged coach. Now, as he ran, he could see nothing at all that looked human in the water.

When they were just feet from the tug, Byrne heard the grinding throb of its engine. It was a relatively new model, he guessed—no paddle wheels, so there would be a propeller beneath the water to move her forward. Lorne exchanged a hopeful look with him, the pallor of his face less deathly. A bearded man in a waterman’s smock and cloth cap was coiling heavy lengths of hemp rope while a younger fellow, stripped to his waist, shoveled coal into the boiler, stopping only to consult the steam gauges.

The captain saw them coming. “You from the queen’s party up yonder?” he bellowed over the noises of the engine and the fighting above them.

“Yes,” Byrne shouted. “Can you get us out there, to where the coach fell in?”

“Just what we’d in mind, sir. How many in her when she went over?”

“One. Princess Louise.”

“Lordamighty,” the captain said.

“Shit,” added the boy, “she’s good as dead, she is.”

The captain silenced him with a look. “Engine’s near ready. Lucky we were already heading out for a job when it happened. Hop aboard. It’ll take a few minutes to get us out there.”

“Can’t you shove off now?” Lorne wailed, his blue eyes electric with panic. He grabbed binoculars laying nearby on a crate and scanned the water.

“Pressure’s gotta build. Almost there,” the captain assured him. “We started her up soon’s we saw that boat blow.”

“Boat?” Byrne scowled at the captain.

“Dory or some such, covered over with tarp. Tied to that middle strut there. I thought they were bridge repair boys. Musta been filled to the gills with powder.” The boy slammed the iron boiler door closed and nodded at his captain. “We’re off, boys.”

The tug swung away from the dock and picked up speed.

“Let me see those.” Byrne took the binoculars from Lorne and rushed to the bow to better see the water directly ahead of them. If there was any chance of Louise swimming to shore he didn’t want them running her down.

Lorne came up behind him. “She loves you, you know,” he said.

Byrne’s heart stopped. He said nothing.

“If she’s alive . . . if you save her”—the marquess choked on his words—“I won’t stand in your way.”

Byrne shot him a quick look. Their eyes met in a moment of understanding. Then Lorne looked away, his tear-filled eyes narrowing on the water. “There!” he shouted.

“Where?” Byrne’s heart leapt with hope.

“Two o’clock. Another rescue boat.” Lorne pointed.

Not her. Not her, damn it.

“With another boat helping we’ll have a better chance of finding her,” Lorne yelled in his ear over the engine’s growl.

Immediately following the explosion, the river had cleared. Merchant ships, ferries, fishing trawlers—all made quickly away from the area, no doubt fearing their boats would be damaged by more blasts. But this lone boat had now reversed direction and was moving toward the catastrophic scene.

Byrne had always wondered whether he’d know his old enemy Rupert Clark, if they ever met face-to-face. He’d only ever seen a photograph of him during the war. And then there were the statements of a few witnesses, filling in physical details.

Now, as he peered through the binoculars at the two men aboard the rusty old ferry steaming across the water, Byrne felt his sixth sense kick in. One man stoked the boiler. But it was the other who drew his eye. He was tying a large open loop in the end of a length of rope, using his teeth to hold the rope secure while manipulating the strands into a knot. Even from this distance, Byrne could tell that something was wrong with the man’s right hand.

Fingers missing. The badge of a black powder man.

The rope man’s face was back to him. But he knew Rupert Clark by his shock of red hair and war injury. His work with the rope done, the former rebel soldier’s attention fixed on something in the water beneath the bridge. Something he intended to haul aboard with his lasso?

Byrne shifted the binoculars by sixty degrees to follow the general direction of Rupert’s gaze. At first he saw nothing but floating rubble. He swung the binoculars to the right, and stopped. There.

He’d have recognized those smooth white shoulders anywhere.