Free 1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC by Eric Flint, Andrew Dennis Page A

the outside of the Tower. If it had been intended to stop pursuit after they went past, it had gone off too early and too weak. And nobody had seen any large movement of people between the Tower and the bridge at the right time. It was nearly a quarter mile; someone should have seen something if there’d been a flight that way.
    And, indeed, nobody had seen anyone leave the Tower other than by boat by any other route, either. If they had, they’d done it without leaving a trace that could be followed, and Finnegan had reported as much to the earl as soon as he was sure in his own mind, sending a runner with a brief in hand. He had got men far enough down the south bank to have it clear that at some point two boats had indeed become one, and that one had gone all the way down to Chatham and taken ship there. Said ship being one of the USE’s steamships that Finnegan didn’t remotely understand, despite the best efforts of a sailor with a beer in him to explain. Big ship, very powerful. Enough understanding for Finnegan’s purposes. So, the escapers had got some or all of themselves away over the water. The “some” was the important bit, and Finnegan felt his earlship would want an answer on the point. So, nothing landed on the south bank as far as he could find by sending eyes and ears as much as ten miles down, perhaps four as the crow flew, what with the river being so bendy.
    And this was why he’d spent the day at an inn table, enjoying the fine air and good ale while he read the documents the earl had given him. Wentworth would be one candidate to stay, looking to get to his political base in Yorkshire. The Mackays—and some of the shooting said Baroness Mackay had come down from Scotland—would be another, since the king’s agents knew that she’d been in Edinburgh visiting the in-laws. If she’d left, word hadn’t come down yet and reached the earl of Cork’s spymaster, but it wouldn’t be the first time spies delivered the necessary news late or not at all.
    Cromwell. There was the one to watch. If any man had a grievance against King Charles of England and Scotland, it was he. And, as it happened, a record of looking after the people of his own home. Lord of the Fens, they called him, for his speaking, and his litigation against the king’s project to drain the marshes of that country. Well, it wasn’t like any of his boys were unused to the wet and wild places of the earth. Waterford had no bog country to speak of, except on the mountains here and there, but, well, if you were tired of rain you were tired of Ireland and the bits that weren’t bog were hard to tell from the bits that were, if you came at them in the right season. So, if anyone had split off from the party on the boats, they were going north. As witness the boat left tied up with nobody to say they’d been the owner of it longer than a day. Finnegan slightly wished he’d had the forethought to get more of a description of the boats that left the Tower, but it was only a slight wish. Not a one of his boyos had more than a bull’s notion of boats or boating, so any description would have been mangled by lack of understanding. Finnegan himself had seen one or two around Dublin when he’d been there as a boy, but that was about the limit of it. It’d taken them all day to find the thing, and the word they’d had from O’Hare’s ride to Tilbury and back confirmed that this was where the smaller boat had come. Not certain, but certain enough and it fit with everything Finnegan had puzzled out already. In the morning, they’d have word back from Romford, the next town of any note along this road, and he’d decide which way to go.
    It was Welch who arrived first, come the morning, apparently having started back before dawn. After he’d had a bite of bread and a chance to duck his head in the rain-butt, he presented himself to report. “Nothing past Romford, Chief, Mulligan’s casting about for sign around there. I’ve come back