“Who the hell are you?” Darcy demanded.
The man ignored the question. “Where the devil is your cousin? It is difficult to pin all of this on the foreign secretary’s son, if he is not here.”
“What does my uncle have to do with this?” Darcy asked
“Everything of course,” the man said. “The French have their purpose here tonight, but I believe we can safely say that neither you, nor I, nor any of the English here would be in this cave tonight if it were not for your filthy uncle!”
“Who are you?” Elizabeth cried. “What do you want?”
“I want to destroy Lord Matlock of course,” the man said scathingly. “I want to chop down his family tree, and make it look as if his own son did it. I want to kill or destroy as many of his loved ones as I possibly can. I want to ruin his life.”
“But why?” said Darcy.
“Because I want him to know how it feels!” the officer cried. “I want him to know what it is like to have everything ripped from him, I want him to feel the pain I have felt, because when it happened to me, he protected those who did it! He let go the men who killed my Marguerite, my child, because they outranked me, and because it would be bad for morale for themto be punished. I want the man who disregarded my pain to feel his mistake the way I felt his mistake!”
The officer turned on Huggins. “When are they coming?” As if his words carried an order, suddenly they heard an explosion from afar.
The sound did not come from the water but from the other direction. It came from the direction of the cliffs, where Elizabeth knew the militia had set up the fireworks display earlier that day.
William Bennet ran.He ran as if he had never run before. He ran at full speed in the direction of the cliffs. His chest burned, his stomach cramped, his legs screamed as he ran, but he never slowed. He blessed his recent weight loss and increased activity, for otherwise, this would never have been possible. Just as he neared the field where the fireworks were prepared, his heart dropped as one of the combustibles flew up into the sky and exploded into light.
“Wait!” He cried as he collapsed in front of the men. “No fireworks! Your colonel said no fireworks!”
“Whatever do you mean, sir!” a young officer asked in surprise as William gasped and heaved on his hands and knees.
“I am come from Lady Amesbury’s ball, there is an emergency!” William breathed, “I do not know what it is, some sort of plot, but your colonel has received an express, and needs all of his men without delay, that is why he sent me! You are to leave the fireworks, and rush to the ball with all haste!”
The young privates immediately turned about and headed in the direction of Lord Amebury’s estate. They had a journey ahead of them, it was on the other side of Eastbourne, and evenat a run, it would be at least twenty minutes before they reached it.
William lay on his back and stared at the stars for several moments, then, when he had caught his breath, he rose and began to collect all of the prepared explosives. He carried them all to the edge of the cliffs and threw them off, then turned in the direction of the Martello Tower, and began to head, at a brisk trot, in that direction to see if young Tom Tyler had been successful in his mission.
CHAPTER 52
Back in the cave, they began to hear shouts from the water. Elizabeth and Darcy looked at one another in horror as the men in the cave advanced upon them, when the cave suddenly filled with officers, with Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam at their head. Metal clashed against metal, and muskets fired, as Darcy raced to Elizabeth and pulled her behind the stack of trunks again, attempting to shield her.
There appeared to be about sixty men in the company of dragoons, and they made quick work of the rough men. Elizabeth squeaked as she observed Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam throw down his sword, stride purposefully towards Mr Wickham, and as he approached him, he reached out with his hands, grasped both sides of Mr Wickham's head, and snapped his neck savagely.
With this most necessary of tasks accomplished, Colonel Fitzwilliam looked at the higher ranking officer who had been talking them to death before he arrived, and rasped, “Spaulding.”
The officer called Spaulding looked at Richard with revulsion as Richard strode up to him and spat, “Traitor!” and struck theman in the face. There was murmuring amongst the dragoons, then suddenly there was a great deal of voices outside the cave.
One of the dragoons rushed to the entrance to the cave and came back. “At least one ship has landed! The French are coming ashore!”
Suddenly, the woman who had been feeding Darcy rushed out of a section of the back of the cave that led deep into the cliffside and dragged Elizabeth back with her. Darcy had heard Wickham speak of it, and knew it to be a long corridor with many small roomlike openings. He followed, and saw the woman pull Elizabeth into a small room, then push several enormous bundles of rags in front of the small opening. He had sensed that the woman had not been unsympathetic to him when she had brought him food and water. He ensured that their hiding place was covered, then raced back to the cave opening, took a musket and a sword from a pile of weapons, strode past Wickham’s lifeless form and unseeing eyes, and raced out of the cave after the dragoons.
Huggins and Spaulding had quickly disappeared into the melee when the dragoons had rushed into battle with the French. Darcy threw himself into the fighting alongside his cousin and shouted, “Richard! There are too many!”
Darcy could see in Richard’s eyes that he knew this. This was what his cousin did on the front. When there were too many to fight, when other men held back, Richard rushed in. Darcy fought harder at his cousin’s side.
The Wish Towerwas quiet when William Bennet approached it. There may be one or two officers inside, but the tower was now mostly the domain of the volunteer corps, and they did not manthe tower at night unless they were investigating a smuggling drop. As he came up to the Tower, he looked up to see Tom Tyler climbing the iron bars sticking out of the stone that created a ladder up the side of the tower.
Tom reached the top and looked around him. The first and only firework had exploded in the sky some minutes ago. He was glad Mr Bennet had apparently stopped the rest, but the French might still land. He would not be prevented from accomplishing the mission he had been given. There was a drunken officer sleeping on the floor next to the open door that led inside. In the middle of the roof of the tower, an incredibly large bonfire was laid, a small cauldron of lamp oil hanging above it. There was a torch burning nearby.
Tom approached the officer. Tom was an expert in determining the likeliness of a drunkard to wake, he had experience enough with his father. He shoved the officer lightly with his boot. The man did not even move. Emboldened, Tom grasped the man with both hands, and rolled him through the door, onto the landing at the top of the stairs inside. He stood and stepped back, closing the door, and bolting it from the outside, grateful the door was equipped for such, likely to protect the person who had to light the beacon.
He turned towards the bonfire, and carefully stepped up the ladder that led to the cauldron. When he reached the top, he grasped the handle and tilted it, pouring the oil carefully and slowly onto the wood below. He then descended the ladder carefully. As much as he wished to rush, he could not, this had to be done right. He could not make a single mistake.
When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he grasped the torch and stepped back a bit towards the nearby bell. He tossed the torch onto the firewood, and shielded his eyes with his hands as the blaze billowed up. As he looked up and down the coast, every minute or two, other beacons further down the coast inboth directions lit one by one, each tower warning the next, as the signals got smaller and smaller in the distance. It was a sight very few might ever see in a lifetime, and for good or ill, Tom Tyler knew he would never forget this night.
