The Iron Chain (22 page)

"I am holding your purses myself for safekeeping. These woods are filled with miscreants, and I would not want your coins to fall into the wrong hands while you are otherwise occupied. My assistant Mr. Percival shall issue a receipt, of course."

"Perhaps there is the possibility of a business arrangement," suggested the Dutchman, eying the third worm.

"Quite late in the game for that," answered Keen.

The third leech was as big as the first two combined, and Keen had to ask Percival to help retrieve him. The assistant used a glassblower's wooden-handled stirrer to keep the worm's midsection taut as they walked the creature across and applied him to van Clynne's arm. The leech squirmed violently as it positioned itself around the ropes and the arm of the chair where the Dutchman was held. Its body exerted greater pressure than the last two; van Clynne felt as if a powerful vice had been applied.

"There is one piece of information of some interest to me," said Keen. "I wonder where you got your ruby knife."

"Which knife was that?"

"This one," said Keen, slipping the blade into his hand — and from there, into the floorboards directly at the Dutchman's feet.

"Oh, that knife," said van Clynne. "I'm afraid that is a very long story."

"I suspect I have more time to listen than you have to tell it," said Keen, opening the next jar.

However accomplished Major Dr. Keen was in other arts, he was not such a good time-teller as might be supposed. For as he was aiming his next leech, Rose McGuiness was approaching along the road at a goodly pace.

While Jake had impressed the importance of the mission on her so severely that she would have wrestled Pluto himself had he tried to delay her, she slowed and then pulled over to the side of the road near the cottage for three reasons, the first two of which were related: first, she was struck by the extremely odd sight of a fancy city carriage on this country highway. Second, she hoped its equipage might include some rein or rope she could use to keep herself from falling off her horse, as she had resorted to gripping the poor but patient animal's mane for the several miles she'd ridden thus far.

Last but not least, her hoops were killing her.

As the author has only a passing acquaintanceship with the intricacies of female accoutrements, the description of the cause of her discomfort necessarily will be brief. Jake had told her to take anything of value with her; being that the girl was not from a very rich family, the only thing worth more than a pence or two besides her affections were her clothes.

Lacking a satchel, she could only take one set, which she naturally wore. Her fancy dress had been given to her by her employer but a week before, with a stiff corset and hoops. She was only too happy to leave the corset behind, substituting a much more practical un-boned jump, which performed the same function with considerably less poking around the ribs. But not being completely unmindful of her appearance, she had kept the hoops, putting them to their usual use beneath her dress. This proved to be a mistake — while they did not come close to approaching the dimensions of the more fashionable city attire, they were nonetheless stiff enough to cause distress as she rode bareback through the countryside.

Spotting Keen's coach thus provided a good reason to stop, as well as cover to remove the annoying barrel beneath her waist. The house appeared occupied, and light escaped from the cracks around the shutters, but the yard was empty and the shutters blocked anyone inside from seeing out as effectively as they kept anyone outside from looking in.

Rose coaxed her horse to a stop behind the carriage and slipped off. The animal was well trained and placid, standing still as she reached her hand to a lash dangling from a rear compartment. In a second the leather rope had been placed into service as a makeshift rein, tied gently to the horse's neck; the stallion was not pleased with this new arrangement but stoically refused to complain.

Rose's next priority was to liberate herself from her portable prison. Once free of the whalebones, she cast her eye over the elaborate coach. It took no imagination at all to conclude that it must belong to a Tory — no patriot could afford such an elaborate rig. She resolved to do the Cause a favor by freeing the team of horses, and sprang forward to do so — stopping short when she saw the shadow of the large gun mounted at the driver's bench.

Before Rose could climb up and examine the gun, however, she heard a loud groan from the house. As quietly as she could, she crept to the window. Climbing atop a battered old tree trunk for a better view, she pressed her face to the dusty glass. The crack between the interior shutters gave her a view of Keen and his assistant wrestling with their leeches. Her eye followed the worm to the rotund body before them; with its red-bearded face, it could only belong to the Dutchman Jake had described.

Just as she realized this, the rotted tree trunk gave way, sending her in a noisy heap to the ground.

If she had moved quickly before, she nearly flew now as she threw herself back to the carriage and onto the driver's station. Though she was no expert on weapons, she quickly saw that the miniature cannon was loaded and ready to shoot. The firing mechanism was in all the important ways exactly similar to the lock on a regular rifle, with which she was fully familiar. The swivel mechanism was perfectly balanced, and so it took no great strength for her to maneuver the business end of the weapon and sight it at the front door of the cottage.

A good portion of van Clynne had been covered by leeches, whose black bodies were not only rapidly swelling but had begun to take on a sheen. The animals jostled lightly against each other as they fed, grudgingly admitting newcomers as Keen continued to pack them tightly against the Dutchman's skin. There were still some reddish pink blotches of flesh poking out between the worms at van Clynne's prodigious waist, however, and the doctor expressed the fear that he might not have enough to properly complete the job.

"What a shame that would be," commented van Clynne. "So you won't be able to kill me after all."

"Oh, these aren't intended to kill you," said Keen, hoisting another leech from its jar. "This would be much too pleasant a way to die."

"I had begun to worry about that myself," said van Clynne.

Keen's assistant Percival grinned in satisfaction at the door. He still had his poker under his arm, but as the largest animals had been applied already, his help was unnecessary.

"So, are you ready to tell me about the knife, or will you wait until I have the leeches applied to your eyeballs?"

"I have been ready to tell that story for a half hour or more," conceded van Clynne, who was somewhat thankful when Keen applied the worm to a spot on his chest instead of his face.

"Go ahead then."

"Well, it began several years ago, when I was a young boy on business in South Carolina. A man named Bacon, I believe — a dour-faced fart, but then so are most British gentlemen, present company excepted — approached me and asked if I should like to earn a few guineas by doing an errand for the king. Naturally, I thought he was referring to the Dutch king."

Keen's laughter at the improbable tale was cut short by sounds outside. He listened for a moment as the horses began to whicker.

"Go see what's wrong with them," the doctor barked at Percival.

Keen turned back to van Clynne and placed his tongs on the Dutchman's nose as Percival went slowly to the door. The doctor was just starting to give a sharp twist when the front of the room exploded with warm shot.

_{-Chapter Twenty-five-}

Wherein, Claus van Clynne is liberated and the road forks
portentously.

C
laus van Clynne
had rarely had such an occasion to celebrate an explosion, for the shower of hot shrapnel and splinters abruptly ended the nose-twisting being administered by Major Dr. Keen. Though his body was covered with the most hideous leeches imaginable, there is nothing a Dutchman fears more than having his nose twisted; it signifies bad breeding and a certain facial inferiority.

A large piece of the shattered door caught Keen in the side of the head and knocked him down. Van Clynne bulled his chair over and began crawling toward a large shard of broken glass. The engorged leeches cushioned the fall, and though still bound to the chair the Dutchman quickly reached the glass.

He had just gotten his arms untied and had started working on his legs when Keen recovered from his momentary daze. Van Clynne distracted the doctor's charge with a cannonade of fattened worms; they tickled as he pulled them off, drunk on his blood.

But there are not enough leeches in the world to stop a man such as Keen. Determined to send the Dutchman to his grave and then deal with whatever force had blown up the front of the cottage, the doctor threw himself forward and struck at the legs of the chair. Van Clynne was caught off balance, and found himself being pushed backwards through the debris like a wheelbarrow, as helpless as a beached turtle bound for the soup pot. Splinters of glass and wood tangled in his hair as his head was battered against the broken chestnut floorboards.

This new torment was cut short by a feminine voice at the door, which ordered Keen in rather salty language — we shall leave the exact collection of Anglo-Saxon to the reader's own imagination — to put up his hands and stand away from the chair.

"I will shoot you, sir, if you do not," repeated the voice, and Keen decided he had best comply.

The doctor knew the explosion had been caused by his own swivel cannon, and realized, too, that his minion Percival must have been the principal target of the charge. But he did not criticize himself for the arrogance that had led him to leave the coach unguarded; he would not have survived his many difficult scrapes by wasting valuable time upbraiding himself. Instead, he let go of van Clynne, promising to return to him as quickly as circumstances allowed. Taking a step backwards, he turned slowly and faced his opponent.

Who turned out to be a thin girl all of fifteen, with naturally curly hair and a smart blush upon her cheeks, holding a small though admittedly pretty pocket pistol on him, the likes of which were rare even in London.

Keen realized this must be the four-barreled pistol Bacon had made such a fastidious point of describing when detailing van Clynne's assistant. He told himself that Fate had once more turned in his favor — all he had to do was unarm this fetching creature, and she would undoubtedly lead him to the gun's owner. His entire mission would be wrapped up with her pretty yellow bow.

"Come, child, you don't expect me to be scared by a mere pocket pistol."

"Fired into your face it will be quite fatal," answered Rose. "And at this range, neither shot will miss."

Keen smiled, but kept his hands half raised. "Where did you get such an interesting gun? I don't believe I've seen its like in any of the colonies."

Rose ignored him. "Are you van Clynne?"

"The one and the same," said the Dutchman, hurrying to undo his legs and get himself up from the floor. He, too, had recognized the gun, and expected that its rightful owner was outside seeing to some minor detail of the operation. "Your arrival was most precipitous. Please excuse my dress; I was occupied in medical matters. Where is my friend, Colonel Gibbs?"

The doctor smiled and retreated meekly. Rose was not so naive as to interpret this as a sign of surrender, and endeavored to keep her eyes on him — especially as van Clynne's naked and leech-bitten extremities were hardly pleasant. But Keen needed only the slightest moment to launch his attack, and when Rose turned an eye to check on the Dutchman's progress, he flew into action.

As the British have made such a habit of doing, he greatly underestimated the strength of the American force before him. Though he knocked a candle over into a pile of shavings as a distraction, Rose was quick enough to fire two shots from the four-barreled pistol as she dodged his grasp. The first bullet missed, but the second struck Keen hard in the buttocks.

The assassin yelped with the pain. Rose grabbed the barrels, ignoring the heat to flip them around and prepare the second round of fire. Van Clynne in the meantime grabbed the poker from the floor, wielding it before him like a bayonet.

Temporarily outnumbered, and believing that the Dutchman's assistant must be approaching with reinforcements — surely he wouldn't have relied solely on this reed of a girl — Keen decided to beat a temporary retreat. He dove through a nearby window before Rose had the gun ready to fire again.

Van Clynne continued his charge across the room, sweeping up the ruby-hilted knife and a pistol the British villain had taken from him. He could not fit through the window, however, and by the time he picked his way across the debris at the front of the cottage all he saw of his tormentor was a shadow disappearing into the woods. He fired anyway, and while he would later swear he hit the figure, his subsequent search discovered no evidence of this. Further pursuit was discontinued when he looked back through the trees and discovered tall red flames rising from the cottage — where all of his paper money lay.

A Dutchman in unstoppered mourning is a pitiful thing to behold. His cheeks sag, his clothes droop, his beard — ordinarily the light red color of leaves tinged by the first blush of autumn — blackens. Even his brow is dark with the color of grief.

Or at least with soot, as Claus van Clynne had run back to the cottage and succeeded in beating back the flames with the aid of a large blanket, though not before they had ravaged the pile of currency Keen had placed on the bench. All that remained was a single, charred quarter of a New Jersey warrant, which van Clynne picked up gingerly from the floor. As he studied it, tears began to form in his eyes; at that moment a light breeze fluttered through the half ruined cottage and caught the brittle remains, dashing them to pieces.