1633

Strafford, still chuckling, waved his hand. "Rest easy, William. There's this much good came out of the madness on the Continent. After fifteen years of warfare, there are thousands-tens of thousands-of experienced English mercenaries, any of whom would be delighted to return to England and serve under their own king's colors."

Laud was not quite done with his glowering. "A scandalous lot. Soldiers-for-hire. Sinners."

Wentworth shrugged. "Frankly, all the better. They'll hardly care about the fine sentiments of Parliament, now will they?"

He rose and went to a window, overlooking the great city. Then, completed his conversion of the bishop.

"They'll certainly not be given to tenderness dealing with the Trained Bands of London."

Mention of the militia of England's capital, that body of artisans and apprentices who had caused so much grief and disturbance over the years to England's monarchs and bishops, brought Laud to his own feet.

"Crush the rabble!"

Strafford clasped his hands behind his back, and straightened his shoulders. Then, gazing serenely down at the dark streets of London:

"Oh, I intend to. Be sure of it, William."

Some time later, over a much more convivial meal, Laud inquired as to the fate of the new prisoner in the Tower.

Strafford's face darkened a bit. "Tomorrow, I shall try again to convince the king to have Cromwell beheaded. Pym, too, once the soldiers bring him to the Tower. And Hampden, if we can catch him. But…"

"He's an indecisive man by nature, Thomas."

The king's new prime-minister-in-all-but-name shook his head glumly, thinking about the king he served. "Worse than that, really. Indecisive in big things, stubborn in small ones. I think he has vague notions-probably put there by his wife-of having some sort of grand spectacle of a trial at a later date. When he can haul all of his enemies out of the Tower and put them up for display."

"In front of whom?" demanded Laud. "Not Parliament, surely!"

Strafford shrugged. "That will be up to us, I suppose. Create some suitable body to replace Parliament, I mean. On that, it occurs to me-please take no offense!-there's something to be said for the French system-"

The argument which erupted thereafter was fierce enough, in its own way. But it was the ferocity of an argument between friends, enjoying the dispute, not that of a quarrel between enemies.

And so Thomas Wentworth, the earl of Strafford, was able to end the day on a better note than it began. And was able to carry with him to his bed the memory of a friendship retained, to blunt the sorrow of seeing a man he much admired fester in a dungeon, grieving a murdered wife and son.

Duty, of course, remained.

First thing tomorrow-I'll do my best to convince Charles to remove his head. Oliver is dangerous. If he ever gets out…

He drifted off to sleep, comforted by thoughts of the thick walls of the Tower. True, men had escaped from the Tower, in times past. But never men immured in the dungeons.

Strafford would have been less relaxed-considerably less-had he witnessed what a young man named Darryl McCarthy was doing at the very moment he fell asleep. For all his brilliance, the earl of Strafford-like Richelieu-had not fully grasped the nature of the new American technology. He could accept, readily enough, guns which fired across half a mile with uncanny accuracy. But still, he-like Richelieu-had the ingrained habits of men born and bred in the 17 th century. An impressive machine or device, they could accept, yes. But, without even thinking about it, they assumed that such a machine or device would look impressive.

A cannon which can destroy a stone wall does, after all. A great, big, brute of a thing.

"That's it," said Darryl softly, turning his head and smiling up at Melissa. "You just give the word, ma'am, that fancy wall is so much rubble and we're outa here. Assuming you can scrounge us up some transportation, of course." He gave a skeptical glance out the window at the moat and the Thames beyond. He couldn't see the water, in the darkness of the night, but he could smell it. "Can't say I much want to swim in that stinking river, much less the moat, even if I could make it across in the first place."

Melissa winced. "I can't quite believe I might destroy… I mean, the Tower of London, for God's sake. It's a world historical monument."

"Not here, it isn't," said Tom Simpson. "Here, it's just another damn prison."

Melissa nodded. She eyed the little hole in the wall which Darryl was now disguising with mud smeared over bits of stone. Once the mud dried and a little dust was spread over it, there would be nothing to indicate an explosive charge except a thin wire leading off. The wire would be disguised behind furniture-a heavy couch that Darryl and Tom said would help direct the blast-and, in any event, wasn't something that a 17 th -century guard would recognize anyway.

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" chuckled Tom.