She had naturally concluded that he was a spook.
Now, in the darkness his voice rang with confident authority.
“If I asked you who you really are would you tell me?” She asked, stifling a shivering yawn.
“Melody?” Henrietta asked, not yet recognising the stranger but cognisant that nothing about the mysterious interloper had panicked her partner.
“Brigadier Harrison and Lady Henrietta’s father wasn’t prepared to allow you, either of you, to go out and about without,” the man paused, chuckled lowly, “a safety net. Besides, in the beginning we didn’t trust Alonso.” He grunted ruefully at this juncture. “That was another mistake. If it wasn’t for him you two would almost certainly be enjoying the hospitality of the Nacional de Inteligencia de Nuevo España, or,” he reconsidered, “one or other of the various flavours of the Inquisition vying for position in Madrid.”
This was a classic case of too much disjointed information all in one mouthful for the women to quickly assimilate.
“Is Alonso all right?” Melody asked.
“Yes. The last time I heard. But that was a few days ago, now.”
Both women, still clutching the blankets close had sat up.
The man leaned forward, viewing them by the faint illumination of the candles.
He chuckled ruefully.
“Well, I don’t think there is anything I can suggest to improve your disguises, ladies!”
“Very funny!” Melody retorted.
“Sorry, but your own Mums wouldn’t recognise you and in the circumstances that’s all to the good. It’s pretty chaotic out there and we need to take advantage of that. Sooner or later the Generals,” he shrugged, “or it may be the Colonels, who tend to be better at insurrection than the old guard, will get themselves organised, wheel out the King-Emperor, or the most senior surviving member of the Royal Family, kiss the ring of the Cardinal of Madrid and turn a blind eye to the excesses of the Inquisition, then it will only be a matter of time◦– not long, I’d guess◦– before the towns and the cities, and the borders, I daresay, get locked down tighter than a duck’s arse.”
“The Army mounted the coup?” Melody demanded.
“Maybe. Maybe, they just stepped in when the Court factions kicked off, or when the Nacional de Inteligencia de Nuevo España and the Guardia Nacional tried to move against the Cardinal of Madrid’s personal inquisitors. All that stuff’s way beyond my pay grade. Nobody on our side has the vaguest idea who organised the mass protests outside the Royal Alcazar that seem to have been the trigger, or the starting gun, for the craziness. Coups always work better in a climate of chaos when nobody has a clue what’s really going on.”
It was a lot to digest.
Neither woman spoke.
“Anyway, once Alonso had got word to us that he’d locked you two ladies away in a monastery,” the man guffawed laconically, “that was a nice touch coming from a chap like the Duke,” another chortle, “then it was the work of another couple of days to find somebody to fly the aeroplane and voila, here I am!”
Melody frowned.
“There’s nowhere within ten or fifteen miles of here that a plane could land?”
“Well, not in one piece,” the man whom she knew as Paul Nash agreed affably.
“That’s why I had to parachute into the valley. It took me bloody hours to retrieve all my kit and then to climb all the way back up to the monastery!” He sniffed. “I’d hoped to be with you a couple of days ago. Sorry about that. I’d have been here a lot earlier if I hadn’t bumped into those scoundrels La Superiora has been keeping at bay the last few days.”
“Scoundrels?” Henrietta murmured.
“Their officer confided to me that his superiors wanted to get their hands on ‘the Duke’s whores’ but that Sister Isabella had sent him away with a flea in his ear and a threat of ex-communication ringing in his ears…”
“There are people looking for us even up here in the mountains?” Melody checked, trying to figure out what the man had meant when he said ‘bumped into’.
The man smiled, barring his teeth in the gloom.
“No, not anymore,” he said blankly.
Chapter 25
Friday 31st March
HMS Perseus, off St Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia
Alex Fielding did not know how he felt about having been peremptorily transferred◦– temporarily, he hoped◦– from the Colonial Air Force to the Royal Naval Air Service.
Technically, this was a thing his home colony◦– New York◦– could have vetoed but given that by transferring Alex, and his whole squadron, to the Royal Navy, the ever-parsimonious bean counters back in the Defence Department in Albany got to defray the entire cost of operating 7NY Squadron to the British Exchequer, the people in the colonial capital had probably bitten off the Navy’s hand when the transfer was first mooted.
Not that Alex had that much to complain about. He had been bounced to the rank of substantive Commander, with that rank’s pay and prestige, while actually serving as only a Lieutenant-Commander aboard HMS Perseus. Basically, the three navy-rings on his sleeve seriously trumped his major’s pips in the world of short-term CAF commissions. Heck, it almost made him ‘respectable’!
Whoever would have seen that coming?
Not that any of that guff pre-occupied him that morning.
He had lost two of his guys already: one dead and another banged up so badly he was not going to be in uniform again, if ever, any time soon. That was in addition to the three men who had not cut it as naval aviators and a fourth who had decided that this new game◦– operating the Squadron’s Goshawk Mark IVs off the deck of an aircraft carrier◦– was not for him. That was fair enough, none of them had signed up for the Navy lark!
The yardstick by which a man was certified ‘deck qualified’ was six successful landings on a carrier at sea. There was no time limit within which this had to be achieved, not officially. Unofficially, the Navy had wanted it done in a screaming hurry.
Land, take-off a minute later, climb back into the circuit, take your turn and come in to land again, and so on until a man had the magic six ‘survived’ deck landings.
Alex and sixteen of his nineteen remaining pilots◦– including a couple he had offered to transfer back to land-based operations because he had mistakenly thought they would get themselves killed on ‘this lark’◦– had already qualified over two fraught days.
The last week had been brutal, not least because the Navy believed it was only a matter of time before it was right in the middle of a shooting war. Back on land the politicians, generals, legislators and media people could complacently pussy-foot around reality; out at sea the Navy had already activated War Plan Alpha-1978.
In the absence of specific guidance from the mandarins in London the Senior Service was doing what it always did in times of crisis, it prepared for the worst and hoped for the best. Which was why the huge aircraft carrier was gliding through the slowly lifting fog in the wake of two pilot boats to dock alongside Gun Wharf◦– a complex of quays linked to the magazines on the northern shore of the Naval Base which these days, virtually encircled St Margaret’s Bay. Perseus was at best half-worked-up, in no condition to punch even a proportion of her substantial weight but even a half-strength Combat Air Wing of some thirty-five aircraft, with a flight room filled with still raw, green ‘carrier airmen’ she was, to quote her CAW Commander: ‘One Hell of a beast!’