Patrick paused for a moment to wait for his companions, then the three men climbed the ladder that connected the divisions or sub-floors. After a moment they were underneath the trap door. Patrick – full of ardor – pushed a table underneath it, then jumped up and began to push, for it was locked from the inside.
“This door will not be opened,” said a sweet, feminine voice from above, “Not to you or your filthy master, the king.”
“Lydia!” Patrick cried “It is I!”
“Patrick! Have you burned your way through France as well?”
“I would burn my way through Hades, my love. But open, for there are soldiers below.”
Lydia did not hesitate and the trap door was soon removed, opening the passage to the attic. As it was pulled aside, a fair head came down through the opening, searching for Patrick. He was found; she smiled. Lydia was beauty, a true Hibernian divinity. Her hair was the red of a closed eye looking to the sun, and it fell past her shoulders with a slight curl. Her eyes were mismatched – one of hazel and the other azure of a dark blue. Her skin was light, almost pale, and her nose was slightly pinched at the end. Her lips projected from her face, but even with their shape were rather small. They were held with a graceful poise.
“Royalty cannot defeat love,” she smiled, her hazel eye looking at Patrick. She turned her head, then, and her blue eye came to face him. “Yet without love, royalty is but tyranny.” She laughed and disappeared into the tower.
Patrick leapt up behind her, but turned when he was in and faced his companions. “Come up, it is our way of escape.” They came, and when they were in, Patrick continued. “Close the door and seal it,” and they obeyed without question.
“Now,” he went on when they were done, “Do as I do.” He turned to the window and looked out upon the buildings below them. “I think I know how to escape!”
Chapter 51
“I know how to escape,” Patrick said. He stood at the window facing the harbor and the houses which bordered the narrow garden. As he spoke, he pulled a wooden panel from the wall, three feet long and two across. It was made of chestnut wood, tempered with alcohol to make it tender and bendable – for the wind charged in from the harbor and the tower was designed to give way without breaking. “Do as I do,” Patrick said.
Lydia turned to him with her blue eye; and while the hazel eye had looked upon him with tenderness, the blue was laced with scorn. “Does the child have an idea?” she asked with a sneer, “Does the poor, innocent child have an idea ? Do not delay on my account, young one!” and her blue eye burned, though her hazel eye remained placid.
“The dust blinds my eyes,” he moaned, “But who can save me with their spit, now? Double woman, you will be my undoing! But silence; for we have the devil on our tails, and by God if he does not bite.”
“The devil whose hell you have escaped. Do you think, child, that a poor village boy can overcome the will of the King of Hibernia and Emperor of the Three Kingdoms? Does he not allow you to defeat him only to make his inevitable victory sweeter by its price?”
“Silence, I said; and I will be obeyed!” Patrick rose up to his full height, as if to threaten her.
“Beat me,” she laughed, “Beat me until I am tempered; for you are a man and I am but a woman.”
“Could I touch you but in love? No; but do not tempt me.” Patrick became silent, and as he stood there, Leggitt and de Garcia removed panels for themselves and for Lydia.
The latter turned her pale face to Patrick, looking at him through her hazel eye. She spoke in a tender voice, though only in a whisper, “No, you would not hurt me, though I would myself. If I were the devil, you would not refuse me; and if he were God you would not repent. For that I love you, though I have not the strength to show it.”
Patrick smiled at the change he had seen many times before. Then, with hands skilled in carpentry, he removed the window from its frame with a dagger. When the way to the roof was clear, he turned to the others and said, “Do as I do.”
He held the wooden panel in front of his stomach and dove through the window. When he landed on the roof the panel was below him and it glided over the slippery tile as if over ice. His momentum multiplied with the incline to bring him speed. As he neared the upward curve of the roof’s edge, he was going fast enough that he could not stop. Yet he did not want to. The pliable panel curved up the ramp and he was thrown over the garden to the houses beyond, whose flat roofs stood waiting. There was a muffled thud and a slight groan, then he landed safely. The others were right behind him.
“Come,” he said as he stood and turned to leave, “For our enemy pursues.”
Five minutes before this, Vladimir and his soldiers had entered the house. There were six of them with him, mounted and armed heavily. The young officer led them at a feverish pace, as if fleeing the spawn of hell; and indeed Montague was no less, though he did not pursue him at that moment.
“Hurry, men,” he hesitated. “There is no one else but de Casanova, so de Casanova it will be.”
At that moment they arrived at the door. Vladimir came forward and knocked three times in a heavy fashion. Then he turned and waited, resting his hand on the door handle in his haste. He stood that way for ten seconds, then could bear no more and tried the handle – albeit with the vain energy of the unexpecting. Yet, to his surprise, it turned and opened, revealing the inner scene to him. The butler was prostrate on the floor, the furnishings disarranged.
“Has de Garcia’s wrath been shown here, as well?” he sighed. “It is as they say: the warrior within is never broken.” Then, in a louder voice, he called, “De Casanova, what has happened?”
“Damnation!” a voice called from the garden room and Vladimir and his men ran back to see what was about.
There, lying in the garden beyond the broken window, was de Casanova, in a swoon. Vladimir ran over and pulled him further into the garden, onto a small spread of Spanish moss.
“Awake, friend!” and Vladimir shook him.
“Damnation,” the other moaned, rolling to the left.
Vladimir shook him a second time, and he leapt to his feet, in a heavy fever.
“Damnation!” he cried, “They escaped you, Vladimir!”
“Yes,” the other lowered his head.
“I am disappointed,” de Casanova grew angry. But then, with a press of the lips, he stopped himself and spoke quietly. “Yet look what they have done to me. I did not know Leggitt was among them, and Gylain does not choose his friends without cause; nor his enemies, as we have seen. But look, they are still above us.” He picked his sword up from the ground where it had fallen in his fall and put his foot within the glass room, remaining, however, in the garden. “They will not fly by us again.”
As he spoke, Patrick McConnell sailed by overhead, flying on a wooden panel. Neither de Casanova nor Vladimir could speak for a moment, but stood with their heads extended upwards as the others passed over the gap between the houses.
“How quickly I have forgotten,” de Casanova said, “The man who ruined the Spanish rebellion and the man who started the English rebellion together, with Gylain’s trusted deputy at their side. But we outnumber them.” He placed his sword within its sheath and ran around the narrow garden to the street beyond. The soldiers’ horses stood there, tied to a post alongside de Casanova’s. “Hurry,” he yelled back to those following, “For they will not delay!”
In the meantime, Patrick was leading the others to the next house, whose roof was directly adjacent to the first in the row of houses. They jumped across the narrow gap, doing the same for the next three before they came to the end of the street, just as de Casanova was mounting his horse. A hay wagon happened to be passing by underneath the roof. Patrick did not hesitate as he jumped over the edge and landed squarely in the back, his companions beside him.