"The son Will's the oldest," said Juliet. "He's almost eight, I think. The oldest daughter Nan is about six and a half years old. The youngest daughter Arabella is only four and a half."
Felix rolled his eyes. "Marvelous. More kids. Just what we need. But let's keep going. So far, we're up to thirteen, three of them children. No teenagers, either; we're speaking of real children. Then we add Laud to bring us up to fourteen."
He broke off the finger count and spread his hands wide, encompassing everyone in the kitchen. It was a large kitchen, but it was still very crowded. "And that's just the escapees. Since I assume our fearless leader wasn't planning to have us surrender ourselves into the king's custody, we've also got to plan for our own escape. And there are nine of us-eleven, counting Julie and Alex."
Mackay and his wife were in a corner, Alex perched on a stool and Julie perched on his lap. She shook her head. "I don't know if you should figure us in it. We gotta get out of London, sure-but then we're headed back to Scotland, where we left our daughter with my father-in-law."
"I imagine Cromwell will want to come with us, too," added her husband. "He's still got his own children hiding out in the Fens somewhere, don't forget. I doubt very much if he'd agree to leave England without them."
Seeing the gathering storm on Kasza's brow, Alex barked a laugh. "Oh, leave it be, Felix! You needn't plan a second escape. It'd have to be weeks or months later, anyway. Let us worry about it. Or Cromwell, if he decides to go on his own after he finds his kids. By all accounts, y'know, he's a full-grown man and quite capable of handling his own affairs. He did manage to become lord protector of England, in whatever other universe his duplicate self is in."
Harry coughed. "Ah… I think it's a little more complicated. I know Darryl is planning to stick with Cromwell-dunno about whether his squeeze Vicky will go with him, though-and I'm pretty sure Gayle is too."
Everyone stared at him. "You never said anything about that," complained Ohde.
"Yeah, Don, I know I didn't. Darryl asked me to keep it to myself, until we got closer to Der Tag. Seems he's gotten to be friends with Cromwell-you gotta know Darryl like I do to understand how completely weird that is, but I'll skip over it now-and he also thinks he's got to keep an eye on him."
The stares didn't waver. Harry sighed.
"Look, guys, this'll mean a little bit to Julie and Sherrilyn but it won't mean squat to the rest of you. Darryl's family are Irish, and they get real fruitcake on the subject. Give money to Noraid, the whole bit. For reasons I am not going into now, Oliver Cromwell ranks right up there with Satan's top demons, in their book-and here Darryl's gone and made friends with him. But I guess Darryl figures the guy's probably still a demon, even if he likes him, so he isn't letting him out of his sight."
Maczka shook his head. "Never mind. Politics in this century are bad enough. And Gayle? Is she one of these fruitcakes too?"
"Ah… no. Seems she's gotten interested in Cromwell. Personally, I mean. Which is a neat trick, seeing as she's never even met the guy. Just talks to him on the radio they snuck into his cell."
Kasza threw up his hands again. "This is sheer lunacy!"
Harry grinned. "It's like Melissa says. We're in an age of miracles. But you oughta keep going, Felix. I'm finding it actually helpful."
Felix scowled a little, but went back to the finger counting. "Fine. So we had already reached the preposterous figure of twenty-five people, for what we laughingly call a 'jailbreak.' " He gave Julie and Alex a sharp glance. "For the moment, we've got to include the two of you also. Regardless of how many parties wind up going in separate directions, we've got to get everybody in the Tower out of there and them and the rest of us out of London."
He looked at Harry from lowered brows. "And now, how many Warders are we talking about? Keeping in mind that if they're the berserk clansmen they sound like, they won't agree to leave without bringing every single one in the clan."
"I'm not sure, exactly. I'll have to get Darryl to give me an exact count. Somewhere around twenty is all I know, including all the women and kids."
By now, even George Sutherland was starting to look aghast. "Ah… Harry. You're talking about almost fifty people. Just exactly how many boats did you figure on using?"
Throughout, Harry had been standing up, leaning back against one of the kitchen walls. Now, he pushed himself off the wall with a little heave of his shoulders and came up to the table.
"The way I figure it, we get one big boat for all of us except the people heading for the Fens."
Matija grimaced. "For the love of God, Harry. A boat big enough to hold something like forty people, even packed like sardines? You're talking about one of those Thames barges. We'll be lucky if we make three miles an hour over whatever the current's doing, unless we've got a good wind-and who knows if we will?"
"Yeah-and so what? I figure there'll be enough confusion that we can get out of London without any trouble. After that, it won't actually be all that easy for cavalry-much less infantry-to catch up with us. We're on the river, doing at least five miles an hour with the current. They've got to follow country roads, most of which don't parallel the river hardly at all. Brit road-makers in the here and now aren't any crazier than they are up-time. You don't build roads right next to rivers, especially not a river like the Thames. The soil's too crappy."
"There are tow paths all along the Thames," pointed out Paul. "Stretches of them, anyway."
Harry shrugged again. "Sure. And would you want to take a cavalry horse down one of them? With us on the boat with up-time weapons and plenty of ammunition? And we've got enough ordnance here that we can give most of the Warders up-time guns."
"They've never used them," protested Gerd. Feebly.
Harry laughed. "Yeah. I know. They're also Warders. How long did it take any of you to figure out how to operate a pump-action shotgun? Being delicate and all, I won't mention the sicko kinky love affairs that followed."
That drew a laugh, even from Kasza.
"I'm not actually worried about any of that," said George. "The Thames is a wide river, even here in London. By the time you get down to Tilbury, where it narrows a bit, it's almost a thousand yards wide. Even at Tilbury, it only 'narrows' to something like seven hundred yards. Cavalrymen-even infantrymen-standing on the banks and shooting at us with matchlocks and wheel locks stand almost no chance of hitting us. We'll stay in the center of the river, of course, just to avoid the shoals if nothing else."
He held up a big forefinger in the way of warning. "There's the fort at Tilbury to get past, too, don't forget."
He didn't say it with any great alarm, just more in the way of a reminder. Harry and his crew had made it a point to visit the fort on their way up the Thames when they arrived in England. That hadn't been hard, since they'd sold their boat in Tilbury and therefore had an excuse to be lounging about for a time. Harry and Don Ohde had taken the opportunity to visit the fort while the others handled the commercial transaction. The soldiers manning the fort had been so delighted to have visitors that they'd shown them all about. For their part, Harry and Don had been polite, letting no sign of their professional contempt show visibly. Henry VIII had had the fort built, in the previous century, and it had fallen into a state of almost complete desuetude. The entire garrison wasn't more than thirty men, and none of the fort's few cannons looked to have been fired for years.
Felix being Felix, he rallied and went back to his Cassandra routine. "Fine. So we make it down to the mouth of the Thames. And then what, Harry? I'll grant you, especially with some initial confusion, that even a barge can probably make it down to the sea before a cavalry force can intercept them. But nobody's ever accused the earl of Cork or the men around him of being morons. Greedy assholes, yes; imbeciles, no. They'll certainly have enough sense to send couriers down to the royal dockyard at Sheerness. And there'll be at least one or two warships stationed there. Once they move into the Thames, we're fucked. Or do you propose that a shallow-draft barge spilling over with women and children and armed with a few rifles and shotguns can take on a Royal Navy warship? Even one of those converted merchant ships."