“The request shouldn’t be outside your scope.” Royce glanced at Demon. “You both know the country well-they don’t, or they wouldn’t be hanging so far back, not if they’re his guards.”
Demon glanced at Devil. “The bend before the windmill?”
Devil nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Less than a minute later, they were all mounted, streaming down the rise to circle to the west, to follow and overtake the band of cultists, and separate his guards from Ferrar.
Jack and Tristan caught up with the carriage a little way out of Bury St. Edmunds.
“Not a cultist in sight,” Jack reported. “They must have taken the bait, which means they should be coming up the road behind us.”
“I don’t know about you”-with his glance, Tristan included Mullins, Mooktu, and Bister-“but after all this, I’d like to be in at the end.”
“Me, too,” Jack said. “So we vote to stop at an inn in Bury, get the carriage off the road, and watch Ferrar and his flunkies go past. Then we can join the others on their trail.”
No one argued. They found the perfect inn in Westgate Street, and hired the front parlor, from which they could see back down the road up which they’d come, as well as see some distance left and right. Whichever route Ferrar took, he was likely to pass their position; they settled to wait.
Fifteen minutes later, Ferrar, alone, came jauntily riding along Westgate Street, smiling as he tacked this way and that through the late-afternoon traffic. He passed the inn window right to left. Emily seized Gareth’s sleeve. “He didn’t come the way we did.”
Jack and Tristan crowded the window, peering at Ferrar’s back. “He must have taken that minor lane to Bury.” Tristan stared the other way, in the direction from which Ferrar had come. “Where are the others?”
For a full minute, they looked back and forth, at Ferrar’s back, then the other way, hoping to spot their comrades, who should have been on his trail.
“Damn!” Jack said. “He must have lost them.”
He and Tristan were out of the door on the words. Gareth rushed after them; Emily rushed after him. Jack’s and Tristan’s horses were still saddled. They swung up to their backs and rode out of the inn yard.
Using his major’s voice, Gareth commandeered a carriage horse. It had no saddle, but the long reins were still there. Grabbing the horse’s mane, he swung up to its back.
“Gareth!”
He looked down into Emily’s eyes.
“You can’t leave me here!”
He could. But…teeth gritted, he beckoned her closer, bent, gripped and hoisted her up to the horse’s back before him. “Hold on. But if we need to ride hard, I’ll have to set you down.”
“No, you won’t.” Locking her hands in the horse’s mane, she stated, “I have it on excellent authority that I’m a devilish good rider.”
Be that as it may…he guided the horse, a steady beast, into the traffic thronging Westgate Street. Bury was a market town; from what they’d seen, today was market day. Which was helpful-the crowds in the street kept Ferrar to a slow walk, and gave them excellent cover as they followed him. “Not that he seems at all supicious,” Gareth said. “He hasn’t looked around once.”
“Overconfident,” Emily stated. He had to agree.
He tacked around a curricle, only to have a big gray horse fall into position alongside.
Even before his eyes had reached the rider’s face, Wolverstone drawled, “I might have known.” His gaze was resting on Emily.
Gareth shot him a look that stated very clearly: Yes, he might.
Emily ignored him. “We thought you’d lost him.” She wriggled and tried to look back. “Where are the others?”
Wolverstone regarded her for a moment, then decided not to take issue with her first statement. “Delborough, Gervase, and Tony are behind me. The Cynsters and Chillingworth remained to engage the cultists. Sadly, only eight stayed to play.”
Emily looked into his eyes, and got the impression she was treading very close to some edge. She looked ahead, nodded forward. “Jack and Tristan are closer. Do you have any idea where he might be going?”
“No.” On the word, Ferrar turned into a commercial stable. Royce angled his horse across Gareth and Emily’s, steering them to the curb. “We’ll wait here and see what he’s up to.”
Up ahead, Jack and Tristan had similarly halted by the opposite curb. They were chatting as if they were neighbors.
Royce looked at Emily, then Gareth. “If Ferrar comes out, try to keep your heads down-we don’t want him to recognize you. Although I have to admit he’s been singularly unwatchful thus far.”
Emily was too keyed up to even pretend to chat. Then Ferrar came striding out of the stable and crossed the street. He passed within yards of Tristan and Jack. They shifted to keep their faces from him, but he didn’t even glance their way.
Looking at Royce, Emily saw that his head was up, that with a glance he was collecting his men.
Ferrar strode on, oblivious, heading away from the center of the town, then without breaking stride, he turned through a wide gateway set in the thick stone wall bordering the other side of the street.
Royce frowned. “The abbey ruins are through there.”
As soon as Ferrar passed through the gateway and out of sight, they all hurried across the road, closing in on Tristan, who stood waiting in the gateway’s shadows. Jack had already slipped through.
Delborough, Gervase, and Tony joined them as they halted by Tristan’s side.
Jack reappeared. He looked faintly surprised. “He’s…wandering. Aimlessly ambling as if he had not a care in the world-as if he’s out for a stroll among the ruins, as, incidentally, quite a few others are.” He glanced back through the gateway. “I had no idea ruins in winter twilight were so much in vogue.”
Emily frowned at him. “You should read the Ladies’ Gazette.”
To a man, they stared at her, then Royce said, “Is he early for a meeting? Or…is he a student of ruins?”
“He stabled his horse, so his lair must be near,” Delborough pointed out. “Within walking distance.”
“Which covers the whole town.” Royce walked through the gateway, rapidly scanned the area, then came back. “Here’s how we’ll handle this.”
He directed Emily and Gareth to stroll through the gateway, then along the stone wall to where they could observe the grassy promenade that ran across the backs of the buildings built into the west side of the ruins-houses filling the arches of the old abbey, as well as the town’s cathedral built out of the old abbey’s main gate. “You’ll be able to keep your distance, but still see if he goes into one of the houses, or even into the cathedral. From there he can reach the rest of the town.” Royce looked at the others, his expression predatory. “He might have seen all of your faces, but he hasn’t seen mine. I’ll follow him directly-or as directly as I can without alerting him-while you five take the flanks. If he’s meeting someone, I want to know who.”
Everyone nodded and set off, quickly disappearing amid the huge stone blocks littering what proved to be a very large expanse, eyes scanning the deepening shadows for a glimpse of Ferrar.
“That misbegotten idiot!” From the top of the cathedral’s Norman tower-the tower that had once housed the abbey’s main gate and now afforded an unrivaled view of the abbey ruins far below-Alex stared down at Roderick-and the men who were fanning out ominously in his wake. “Just look how many followers he’s managed to collect!”
Daniel stared in disbelief. “He doesn’t even seem to know they’re there.”
Horror-struck, they watched from above, as Roderick paused, leaned back against a large fallen stone, reached into his coat, and drew out a rolled white paper.