When Gods Die

They stood in silence for a moment, her gaze, like his, on the mother duck shepherding her brood one by one into the water. The air filled with a happy chorus of quack-quacks and the soft slap of ever-widening ripples moving out over the surface of the pond.

“There’s a lot of disaffection in the streets,” O’Connell said after a moment. “Rumors. Whispers. People are ready for a change.”

“What kind of change?” she asked, her breath suddenly coming so hard and fast she had to call on all her abilities as an actress to make her voice sound casual, disinterested.

He kept his gaze on the mother duck and her brood. “A different dynasty, perhaps.”

“How would that help Ireland?”

“The Stuarts were always more sympathetic to the Catholics.”

She swung her head to look directly at him. “There are no Stuarts anymore. Not really. And the English would never accept a Catholic king. Remember what happened to James the Second?”

“James the Second never tried to restore Catholicism to England. All he wanted was tolerance and an end to the debilitating restrictions put on Catholics.”

“Yet the people still wouldn’t accept him. And if they wouldn’t accept James the Second a hundred and twenty years ago, what makes you think they’ll accept someone like him now?”

“Because the House of Hanover is tainted by madness and everyone knows it. Because men are out of work by the thousands, and women and children are starving in the streets. Because we’ve been at war for so long it’s all most people can remember. If a new King promised to bring peace and an end to high taxes and the press gangs, I think a lot of people would welcome him.”

Kat’s eyes narrowed. “Who is pushing this?”

He was regarding her with a studied expression that made her realize she’d said too much, shown too much interest. “That’s the funny thing about conspiracies,” he said with a smile. “Different men can be attracted to the same conspiracy for altogether different reasons. Reasons that sometimes aren’t even compatible. Why does it matter so much who’s behind it, as long as it’s good for Ireland?”

“You suggest a restoration of the Stuarts might lead to peace with France,” she said. The sun slipped out from behind the chestnut trees on the far side of the pond, striking her in the eyes. She tilted her parasol until it once again shaded her face. “But I thought England at war with France was good for Ireland. You said that’s what we need, to weaken the English. That it’s the only way the Irish will ever win their freedom.”

He laughed. “You are quick, aren’t you?” He leaned toward her, suddenly more serious than she’d seen him. “But if the English at war with France is good for Ireland, then how much better do you think a new English civil war would be?”

She searched his face, but he was as good at hiding what he really thought as she. “Is that what these people want? Civil war?”

“Hardly. But I suspect it’s what they’re going to get.”

BY MIDMORNING, Tom was so hungry his head was spinning. He’d known hunger in the past, in the dark days before fate brought Viscount Devlin into his world. But these last few months he’d grown accustomed to a full belly and a warm bed. He’d even begun to feel safe again, the way he’d felt in the golden, half-forgotten years before his da took sick and his mother—

But Tom slammed his mind shut on that thought before tears and the clawing blackness of terror could take him again.

He was sitting against the back wall, his forehead resting on his drawn-up knees, when he heard a commotion in the yard, men banging tin cups against iron bars and laughing women calling out soft, obscene suggestions.

The men and boys in his cell crowded up to the bars. Tom pushed to his feet and wiggled his way forward to take a look. “What is it?” he asked.

“Some magistrate,” said one of the other boys, a big, half-grown lad from Cheapside who’d been caught pinching pewter tankards from a public house and would probably hang for it. “They say ’e’s here on account of the nob’s son what got hisself butchered in St. James’s Park t’other night.”

Tom could see him now, a funny little man with bowed legs and wire-framed glasses he wore pushed down to the tip of his nose. Despite the heat of the day he wore a thick greatcoat, and held a pomander to his nose.

Tom surged forward. “Sir ’Enry,” he called, pressing his face against the bars. “Oye, Sir ’Enry. It’s me, Tom. Sir ’Enry—”

A rough hand thumped Tom in the shoulder, giving him a shove that sent him sprawling back into the filthy straw. “You there,” spat the gaoler. “You dirty little filcher, you shut yer mouth. You ’ear?”

Tom scrambled to his feet and threw himself forward again, but by then it was too late. The yard was empty and the little magistrate had gone.

Chapter 45

Sebastian spent the morning in Smithfield, looking for Tom.