Asher looked alarmed. “Corporal, I do not know how much of the spirits I will need, so I must not have you spilling it all out upon the-”
“Shut up, Jew. I am simply going to confirm it is what you say it is.” He got a cup from the waiting guard. “Now, tap it.”
Asher, the folds of his thin arms quivering as he wrestled to unseat the bung, angled it so that he could swap in the tap before the out-gushing stream became unmanageable. Wet and reeking of ethanol, Asher stood back.
Enrique tapped a finger’s width of the fluid, sipped it, smelling the sharp odor of strong liquor as he did so. He swigged it, gagged, spat out the mouthful. “What shit is that?” he shouted, wiping his lips with his sleeve.
Asher shrugged. “That one is spirits infused with witch-hazel.”
“Do you use it to heal your patients or torture them, Jew?”
Asher’s face was set rigidly. “May I go now?”
“Yes. We’ll join your assistants.” Enrique moved toward the gatehouse; Asher poled after him feebly with the aid of his cane. “So you’re expecting to deliver demon children, then-washing them with poison like that. And after all, anything but a demon child would die in minutes, if it was whelped this early in a pregnancy.”
“We are here trying to prevent birth, Corporal. To delay it until-”
“God’s balls, you think I’m interested in your sorcerous blatherings, Jew? Here, get in the watch room.”
As the guards began stripping Asher unceremoniously and searching both his body and garments, he asked. “Corporal, about my spirits. I expect to have immediate need of-”
“They’ll be in with the ready stores, as always. We’ll have to move some crates to the long-term storeroom to make enough space, though.” Spitting again, Enrique scowled. “You need all that? For one woman?”
“One woman who is carrying three fetuses. And I cannot know what will occur or for how long.”
“How can you need an amount of spirits equal to many times her body weight? That just doesn’t make sense.”
“First, Corporal, the other tun simply contains boiled, purified water. Second, I was not aware of your expertise in medical matters. Shall I send word to His Majesty Philip, by way of Governor Sancho Jaume Morales y Llaguno, that his prize hostage’s personal and obstetrical health is now being overseen by a corporal of the guards?”
Enrique glared, spat, and jerked his head toward the door. “Do your doctoring, Jew.”
Virgilio called for another long burn, and Miro complied. The dirigible rose toward the lower extents of the cloud bank and would soon be up in it. And that meant it would soon be necessary to coordinate with the Atropos by means of the telegraph wire that had been slaved to the primary tow-cord. Miro checked one of his favorite possessions-a manually wound up-time watch that had cost him a small fortune-and confirmed the time: approximately an hour and a half past midnight.
There had been occasional chatter in the gondola up to this point, but as the feathery gray masses of the clouds seemed to descend toward them, the airship grew quiet. Harry was already loading his tools and weapons, piece by piece, on what he called his “web gear,” carefully arranging it so that it would not obstruct the free play of the guidelines that were connected to the heavy black-leather harness he had shrugged into only a few minutes before.
Down below, the lights marking the boats of Miro’s flotilla began winking out, one by one. They were coming closer to the coast now, probably within forty minutes of their target.
Virgilio snapped an order at the Wild Geese, who dutifully tilted two empty oil containers over the side and into the lightless waters below. “Turlough, tell me as soon as we need more fuel for the engines,” he said with a nod of thanks. “We need to shift to gasoline soon. Doctor, if you would please man the telegraph; we need to coordinate our flight with the Atropos so we get the most power from her towing.” It was not a difficult task for a pilot as experienced as Virgilio when he had a clear view of the ship pulling him. But once they ascended into the clouds, once they lost sight of their comrades below, they would have to accomplish the same objective flying by instruments and feel alone.
Miro looked over the side at the boats again-and with a feathery fluttering of gray vapor, they were gone. The crew of the dirigible fell silent as they forged ahead into what looked like the mists of Limbo.
Thomas North looked toward the head of the column: the local guide had stopped, and his men were crouching low, in the surrounding bushes. They were in the higher reaches of the valley just to the south of Bellver, just before its walls began pinching tightly together into a gully known as the Mal Pas. The men stood out slightly against the sun-bleached sandstone that was increasingly poking through the dark scrub growth.
Thomas tapped the two rearmost of the group-Hibernians-on their shoulders: “Rearguard,” he muttered as he walked forward. They dutifully flanked well off to either side of the trail, crouching low into the scrub brush shadows, looking back down toward the dark bay.
As North arrived at the head of the column, the llaut ’s master and current guide nodded to a crevice in the sedimentary rock. “Here,” he said. “This is the cave.”
Thomas nodded and looked around more carefully, mentally removing the undergrowth: yes, they were in an old quarry. “And you have scouted the tunnel?”
“My cousin did, three days ago. It is all clear. They have either forgotten or ignored it. After all, there is no way to open the door up into Bellver from our side. And except for the ancestors of the xuetas who were impressed to build this place, probably no one knows their way through the tunnels, anymore.”
“Very well. We will travel with three bull’s-eye lanterns: one at the front, one in the middle, one at the rear.”
“Colonel, there are parts where only one man may pass at a time.”
“Very welclass="underline" single file. Stay close to the man in front of you.” North checked his manual up-time watch, admiring the phosphorescent dot as it marched on its stiff, sixty-stepped circle around the miniature clock-face. “Let’s not be late to our own party.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
In the top room of the Castell de Bellver’s lazarette, Frank watched his wife squirm in discomfort as Asher arrived, escorted in by guards. As usual, the medium-sized assistant followed the doctor closely, the larger, broad-shouldered one bringing up the rear with the more cumbersome boxes and paraphernalia.
As Asher’s smaller assistant began setting up a folding trestle table and laying out implements, the doctor asked, “Now, are the pains regular or-?”
“Oh! Ow!” Gia exclaimed.
“Ah…irregular,” Asher concluded as his assistants finished raising the sheets that would be used as a modesty blind.
Dakis emerged from the staircase that led down to the fortified walkway joining the lazarette to Bellver’s roof. “So, what’s wrong, Jew?”
“I won’t know until I examine the woman,” Asher snapped, “which is not helped by having three-now four-guards in the room.”
“Just do your work. If you actually have any work to do.”
Gia writhed as Asher turned away to look at Dakis. “And what does that mean, senor?”
“It means that I wonder if she really has any problems with her pregnancy or if they are all feigned.”
“You suspect this is all just theatrics?”
“I suspect that this is a conspiracy.”
“A conspiracy?” gulped Frank before he could shut his mouth or govern his panicked tone. “What for?”
Dakis stared at Frank, assessing. “Why to trick us, of course.” He finished sizing Frank up and seemed to come to the relieving, if depressing, conclusion that the up-timer was too guileless and too overtly surprised to warrant suspicion. “Well, perhaps you aren’t in on it, but your wife might be.” Dakis darted a dark look at her and Asher. “I know fraud when I smell it. The Jew is getting a fat fee every time he comes up here, and charges us for all these pure spirits he claims will keep wounds clean and prevent infection. Probably a lie to justify the outrageous bills he tenders for the cost of his materials. And he’s probably splitting the take with your wife, his accomplice.” Dakis glared at Frank again. “But maybe you are in on it, after alclass="underline" you certainly look nervous.”