"Yer not," O'Toole said flatly.

"Why would you say such .1 shameful thing to me?"

"Because I've seen Amber FitzGerald."

Montague recoiled.

Shamus O'Toole stood up to leave. He couldn't stomach this piece of English offal another minute. "I'll tell ye this, Montague: If ye ever again set foot on my bailiwick, yer a dead man," Shamus vowed.

O'Toole went straight to the magistrates in the Old Bailey Court to find out about Sean's trial and imprisonment. They found no record whatsoever and when Shamus explained where it happened and who was involved, he was told anything that happened upon an Admiralty vessel would be tried by the Admiralty Court.

Since the head of the Admiralty was the Earl of Sandwich, William Montague's brother, Shamus O'Toole knew defeat stared him in the face. But only for the present. He'd be back with a plan, with bribes, with whatever it took to gain Sean's freedom.

It took him two more days to obtain a court order to have Joseph's body exhumed, and then Shamus carried his son's coffin aboard Joseph's own schooner, the Brimstone. As they weighed anchor and sailed from the Thames, Shamus wondered how long his beloved son

oseph had been Earl of Kildare. A day, mayhap. His heart was heavy as a stone. He had ordered his sons to London; now he was leaving one behind and taking the other home. How am I to face Kathleen?

Amber FitzGerald wondered where she would go. Dublin was out of the question; she did not want the FitzGeralds to learn of her fare. She finally decided upon the port of Wicklow in the next county.

She knew Shamus O'Toole had been more than generous, instructing Paddy Burke to give her an ample amount of gold that would keep her for at least a year.

But the thought of what she would do when the gold ran out haunted her. Never again did she want to ask tor charity, not from any man breathing.

If she took a chance and spent all the money on a business, Amber knew she would be forced to make a success of it. With a flint-hard resolution she decided to gamble it all. She bought a house in Wicklow, devoting eighteen hours a clay making her business a success, and she vowed that someday she would seek her revenge.

Sean FitzGerald O'Toole had his head shorn. It was the last haircut of his imprisonment. He was issued a pair of canvas breeches, canvas shoes, and a cotton shirt. The day he entered the hulks was the last day he would ever be clean. As a new prisoner, he was a.s.signed to the lowest deck, the third down, on an old Indiaman, the Justicia, which housed five hundred convicts.

An act of Parliament stated that convicts aboard the hulks were to be kept at hard labor, so they were put to work loading and unloading vessels, moving timber, cleaning ships at the dockyard, and, the worst job of all, raising sand, soil, and gravel to keep the Thames navigable.

The convicts were infested with vermin and begrimed with filth. The food was inadequate and beds nonexistent. At night they were secured in pairs; one man was chained to the wall, the next manacled to the man beside him. Then the hatches were screwed down, burying all five hundred in suffocating, fetid blackness.

As a direct result of these unspeakable conditions, sickness, disease, and death were rife. When a prisoner died, he was buried in the nearby marsh, where the gra.s.ses soon erased all trace of disturbed ground.

During Sean's first months of imprisonment he made seven escape attempts.

Each time he was caught and beaten within an inch of his life. He stopped being rash and realized that patience and perseverance were likely the only way out. Sean O'Toole did not fear death. He wished a thousand times over that he had died in Joseph's stead. But gradually it was borne home to him that death was the easy way out. It was life that was h.e.l.l on earth. Life without freedom was worse than any death.

The deprivations, the hunger, the vermin, and the cravings affected him harder than the brutality, the filth, and the bone-breaking labor. He was so filled with rage, so consumed by hatred, that faith in a merciful G.o.d did not sustain him for long.

After only a short time he began to realize that only faith in himself would see him through this ordeal.

Survival was paramount; he must survive in order to take vengeance. The elements necessary for survival were at hand. He needed only three things: food, sleep, and work. In survive he knew he must let go of everything else. There was no room in his head for thoughts other than survival. Longings for freedom, food, or love were utterly useless. All thought, all effort, must be directed toward survival.

The guards aboard the Justicia exercised complete physical con-trol over him, while Sean O'Toole exercised total mental control over himself. But, oh, his dreams were another thing entirely! At first he was too exhausted to dream, but as he became toughened to the heavy physical labor, his sleep took wing. He sailed the seven salty seas, he dined upon ambrosia, and when he made love, it was usually to a woman with hair like smoke. The s.e.x of his dreams was so highly erotic, it was like riding wild horses on a magic carpet!

The first year was the hardest. After that he was inured to every-thing.

O'Toole grew an iron carapace about himself that protected him from all emotion save one: the need for revenge. His hatred was a burning, living thing inside him.

He controlled pain, hunger, fatigue, sorrow, and most of his thoughts, but thoughts of his family were so guilt ridden, he vowed never to think of them again until he gained his freedom. Thoughts of his enemy's family, however, were another thing entirely. His hatred for Montague extended to every member of his family: his brother, the Earl of Sandwich; his nephew Jack; his wife Amber; his son John; and his daughter Emerald; he would take his revenge against each and every one. Like a litany, the last thing he said every night was "I'll get them if I have to go all the way to h.e.l.l!"

Sean O'Toole ate every sc.r.a.p of food he could lay his hands on. He cared not if the biscuit was weevil infested, the gruel rancid, the bread moldy, or the water fetid; it was all grist to his mill. Because of his youth and strength he intimidated many of the older, weaker prisoners, and as a result he was able to steal rations from them. He did this without one pang of guilt because he no longer had a conscience.

Gradually the round, firm flesh of youth fell away with hard la-bor, He was the hardest-working convict aboard the Justicia. He relished the toil because it made him lean, hard, and strong. After the second year he slopped being chained to the ship's wall and chose to be chained to the man beside him. That way, at least, one side was unfettered.

By the third year he had even learned to control his anger, at least to the point where it never showed. He often made sardonic comments and witticisms so that even the guards sometimes laughed with him. The Irish traits for survival were bred into his bones; a mixture of fatalism and hope that was a curious paradox. For over six centuries Irish oppression in the form of famine, murder, enslavement, and per- secution had given him the control he needed to survive. The only thing he could not control, would not control, was his thirst for vengeance!

It gave him the only pleasure he knew. He carried a talisman with him always to remind him: the stub of his thumb. Death was too easy for his enemies. Death was a sweet, gentle reward. It was life, made a living misery, that was a h.e.l.l. Life that was a living h.e.l.l on earth! He wanted them all to live long so they could endure all the suffering, all the pain, all the humiliation, he had planned for them.

His fourth year of incarceration came and went. He had now been there long enough to be housed only one deck down. His favorite job was the hardest: dredging the silt from the bottom of the Thames. He was a superb swimmer and diver who excelled at what he did. He was totally oblivious to the cold water and seasoned to the wet clothes that dried on his back.

Just as his body had become all lithe sinew and muscle, his brain was razor sharp, always looking for that one opportunity to escape. As his fifth year aboard the hulks began, escape attempts were no longer antic.i.p.ated. An attempt simply was not good enough. The next escape must be successful.

Sean O'Toole floated up through the depths of sleep reluctantly. The ever-pervading stench a.s.saulted his nostrils and then his tongue; the smell was so rank, he could taste it. Nothing stank so foully as men incarcerated together for years. p.i.s.s, s.h.i.t, vomit, sweat, running sores, rot, and human misery formed a miasma that clung to every dripping timber of the prison ship.

The familiar sounds of dawn greeted his ears: coughing, spitting and moaning, mingled with the relentless rattle of chains and the con stant plash of the Thames against the hulk, He shifted slightly against the hard planks, stretching muscles that continually ached. As he stirred, c.o.c.kroaches scurried away from his toenails, their nightly feast over until he slept again.

He became aware of the relentless gnawing of hunger deep inside his gut, but the flesh-chilling cold and bone-softening dampness no longer touched him. He opened his eyes to darkness, yet he saw everything; the dark was no longer a barrier to his sight. His nostrils flared wide, welcoming the familiar stench. The grating, raucous noises were music to his ears. The ache in his muscles and the hunger in his belly told him he was still alive. He had survived another day. He was one more day closer to achieving his goal.

Glorious revenge!

When the guard unmanacled him from the wretch beside him, he stood and stretched the musculature of his arms, shoulders, and legs.

"There's a smell of spring in the air this morning," the heavyset guard remarked.

Sean quirked a black eyebrow and breathed appreciatively. "An' lure's me thinking that queer stink was you."

The guard was used to O'Toole's cutting disparagement and took it in good part. He tucked the phrase away in his memory so he could use it later in the day.

Sean wolfed down the gruel, then without hesitation wolfed down the gruel of the man he had been chained to. The older convict seemed lethargic today and not much interested in food. As they were herded up onto the deck of the Justicia and a.s.signed their work for the day, O'Toole smiled with sardonic appreciation that he would again be diving and dredging. "I'm the luckiest b.a.s.t.a.r.d alive; what other job would allow me to perform my ablutions while I work?"

An hour into his diving, the words he had spoken in jest proved true. Today he was the luckiest b.a.s.t.a.r.d alive! There on the bottom of the Thames lay a knife, begging to fit into his palm. Sean did not pick it up immediately. He surfaced first to see where the guards were. When he saw their attention was not riveted upon him, he dived to the bottom and slipped his fingers about it with an almost caressing motion.

He had been lucky enough to find the knife, but now came the gargantuan problem of holding on to it all day while he dived and dredged. He could not simply stick it in the waist of his canvas pants, because the haft would be visible. He knew he could grip it between his legs for a short time, but not all day while he labored. He thought of concealing it somewhere and retrieving it at day's end, but because of shifting tides and because he could not bear to let it out of his possession for one moment, he dismissed that idea.

There was only one possible place he could conceal it and that was down the back of his canvas pants, with the sharp blade resting in the valley between his bottom cheeks. It would be almost impossible to hide it there all day, but Sean O'Toole was up to the challenge.

During the long hours of his labor the blade cut into his flesh more than once, but each time he felt the sharp stab he wanted to shout with exultation. After five hours dragged by he was seized by a cramp from continually clenching his a.r.s.e cheeks, but not by word or action did he reveal that he was in pain. Rather, he embraced the agony, relishing the acute spasms that told him he was alive and that this was the last day of his imprisonment.

A thought skittered through his brain: How many will I have to kill to gain my freedom? He banished the thought instantly; it did not matter how many. This time he could not fail.

He did not sit down for the noon food break. He stood while he wolfed down the stale bread and the tin cupful of odiferous cabbage soup. In that instant Sean O'Toole vowed never to eat cabbage again.

"Take a load off yer feet," one of the guards offered casually.

"No, thanks," Sean replied with a twisted grin. "If I squatted after your cabbage soup, I'd s.h.i.t myself to death!"

The guard guffawed, deciding to forgo the soup today.

The interminable workday finally came to an end. Before they were chained for the night, the inmates were served gruel and ship's biscuit a la weevil. The man O'Toole had been chained to for the last month again showed no interest in food, so Sean consumed the double rations eagerly.

At last the men lay down; the guards shackled them in pairs, then screwed down the hatches, leaving them in blackness. Sean O'Toole curbed his impatience.

He had waited almost five years tor this night; he could wait another five hours. The top level of prisoners only one deck clown tared better than those lower in the ship because of two portholes, which were protected by iron bars. It wasn't long before Sean's eyes adjusted to the darkness so that he was able to see everything.

He counted his breaths to pa.s.s the time and control his impatience. He breathed fifteen times a minute, nine hundred times an hour. When his count reached four thousand breaths, most of his fellow inmates had been asleep for three hours.

Holding on to the chain so it wouldn't rattle, he stirred and quietly shook the man whose wrist was manacled to his own.

Nothing.

Again he shook him and, for good measure, jabbed him in the ribs. When there was still no response, Sean peered into the man's face. His pallor was clearly ashen, even in the dim light. On further examination Sean O'Toole was stunned to realize he was shackled to a corpse. It took him a minute to get over his shock, then he tried prying the wrist manacle off with the knife. The iron would not give. He did not want to risk breaking the blade, so he ceased what he was doing and gave his total attention to ways he might free himself.

Nothing brilliantly clever came to mind, so he simply took the knife and cut off the dead man's arm at the wrist, which at least gave him freedom, though the shackles now hung loosely from his arm. He lifted the dismembered hand, carefully carved off the thumb, and took it with him.

As he made his way to the nearest porthole, he gave each prisoner he pa.s.sed a quelling look that effectively silenced him. Before he had loosened the bars across the porthole, the convicts watching began to pull for him. Though they themselves could not get free, they knew that his escape would somehow be a great victory over oppression.

It was an extremely tight fit through the small hole and at one point Sean panicked that his shoulders would prove too wide, but his determination was so set that he knew he would manage even if he suffered a broken shoulder to accomplish it. When he silently slid through the opening and dived down into the black water, a great cheer went up.

11.

Emma Montague sat pa.s.sively before her mirror. Today was her twenty-first birthday, yet she felt little excitement. Her life was narrow, monotonous, and downright dull and she had no expectations that her birthday would be different from any other day.

For over five years she had suffered the rigid guidance of Irma Bludget, and as a result everything about her had changed. Emma's personality had been subdued, turning her into a pa.s.sive, almost pup-petlike creature. In the beginning she had rebelled, but a combination of Bludget's and her father's corporal punishment had brought forcibly home that life was infinitely more bearable if she conformed.

Her dark, vivid looks had been declared too Irish and had been covered by powdered wigs and pale face powder. The clothes selected for her were always in pastel shades of pink or blue so that she resembled a Dresden shepherdess. She knew it delighted her father that she looked like a young English lady, all milk and water.

Emma tried never to think of her mother because it upset her too much. How could a woman abandon children who worshiped her? The thought that her mother had never loved her was unendurable, so she stopped thinking of her. Emma was not allowed to attend Almacks' or other a.s.semblies, since her father and Mrs. Bludget considered the young ladies who frequented such places forward and vulgar. Her so cial life was restricted to taking tea with respectable pillars of society and an occasional dinner party with her father, when he considered it politic to his career.

Her hatred for the ugly brick mansion in Portman Square had been tempered to mere dislike; hate was too strong an emotion for a well-bred young lady to display. Sometimes she daydreamed of marriage, which was her one hope of escape. Her night dreams were another matter entirely. Often she awoke covered with blushes and guilt after dreaming of Sean FitzGerald O'Toole. He was wicked, and she felt shameful that she sometimes dreamt of him. What a naive little girl she had been when she first met him and thought of him as her Irish Prince. She told herself that she was not like her mother. She could never be a wanton, tainted by depraved Irish blood.

As Emma stared in the mirror, to her horror she saw a tear slip clown her cheek. She brushed it away impatiently, determined not to cry on her birthday. How wicked she was to indulge in self-pity when she lived in a mansion, furnished with priceless antiques, with servants to do all the work.

She heaved a tremulous sigh and rang for her maid. When Jane arrived, Mrs.

Bludget was on her heels and Emma hid her annoyance. No matter what she chose to wear for her birthday dinner, Mrs. Bludget would disapprove and make her wear something else. Emma's shoulders drooped; what did it matter? One pastel satin gown was much like another.

The dinner party was attended by her uncle John, Earl of Sandwich, and his son Jack. All throughout the evening Emma had the impression that her father, brother, uncle, and cousin shared a secret to which she was not privy. Later on, when Jack Raymond escorted her to the conservatory, she learned what that secret was. Jack asked for her hand in marriage.

She was so surprised, she was speechless; and yet she knew she should not have been the least surprised. None was closer to her father than Jack; their mutual admiration was apparent. Emma did not wish to marry Jack; she knew she could never love him. Yet what was her alternative? She had no other suitors, nor prospect of any. The thought of remaining a spinster all her life in this ugly mausoleum of a house made her blood run cold.

It she accepted Jack's proposal, she would at least be able to get out from beneath her father's dominant thumb and Irma Bludget would leave to ruin some other unfortunate's life. The alternative was to refuse Jack outright, and she blanched at the thought of defying her father. When she compared Jack with her father, she thought him the lesser of two evils.

She desperately needed someone to love her, whom she could love in return, and Emma believed children would fill this need in her life. She would adore her children and be the best mother who ever existed. No force on earth could ever make me abandon my child, she vowed.

The decision before her proved so difficult, she sought counsel from her only ally in the world, her brother, John. Jack Raymond was forced to cool his heels in the conservatory until Emma returned with an answer for him.

"Jack asked me to marry him," Emma said quickly, knowing they could be interrupted at any moment.

"Ah, I've seen it coming for ages," John said.

"Then why didn't you warn me?" she asked.

"Em, I thought you knew. He's dangled after you for years, it can't be a complete surprise."

"I suppose I did know, I just didn't want to think about it."

John understood exactly what she meant. It was so much better to leave some thoughts alone so that they settled to the bottom of your mind undisturbed. The trouble was, every once in a while you poked a stick into the murky depths, making all your thoughts turbid. "Did you accept his proposal?"

"Not yet; he's waiting in the conservatory," she said lamely.

"It's something you should decide for yourself, Em."

"Well, if I do accept him, it will get me out from under Father's dominance, but on the other hand I don't love Jack and fear I never shall."

"It's your decision, Em," he repeated.

"Is it?" she asked wistfully. "I think it's Father's decision, and I haven't the courage to refute it."

John was silently appalled. Where had that spirited girl gone who tossed her wig to the wind and the sea? She'd always had twice his courage when they were children, even though she was three years his junior. He had wished .1 million times he'd had the guts to defy his father the night Joseph O'Toole had been murdered. He thought that if he had it to do over, he would stand beside Sean O'Toole and deny the lies that his family concocted.

He had admired Sean so much and wanted to emulate him, but when put to the test, he had failed miserably. John despised his own cowardice. He had never been sure whether his father had killed Joseph or whether Jack had done the deed for him, but it was a.s.suredly one or the other. From the accusations hurled by Sean O'Toole that night, John realized his mother's faithlessness was at the root of the murder. He wondered briefly if she, too, was dead. His mind shied away from the thought; he preferred to think her free and living in Ireland. He was glad she had escaped from his depraved father.

The first years after she'd gone, his father had tried to make an officer of him aboard one Admiralty vessel after another. He'd suffered from seasickness every miserable day. Then miraculously his father had done an about-face and put him behind a desk in the office, while at the same time promoting their cousin Jack from his position as secretary to that of naval lieutenant.

John now excelled at what he did, though he still had to lick his father's boots because his sire was in charge of the Admiralty Office. Lord G.o.d, how he hated him! John scanned Emma's pale face, hoping against hope she would decide to defy their father and tell Jack Raymond to go to h.e.l.l.

"Well, I suppose I can't put this off any longer," Emma said with quiet resignation. Then she brightened. "As a wedding present I shall ask for Irma Bludget's dismissal."

Sean O'Toole swam from Woolwich to Greenwich, then waded from the Thames. From there he walked the five miles to the City of London. He had never felt so euphoric in his life. Thoughts of having real food, a bath, and a woman speeded him on his journey. They were the first thoughts he'd had apart from revenge for a long, long time. The pleasure would be in the pace. He would eat slowly, savoring every morsel. He would bathe at leisure, soaping, sponging, and soaking; and he would never again take a woman in haste as long as he lived.

He cut through the back streets of a section of the city where gaming h.e.l.ls vied for s.p.a.ce with expensive brothels. The first cloak he saw, he s.n.a.t.c.hed from the owner's back in a flash. When the man turned to protest, one look at the thief was all he needed to silence him.

Sean shrouded himself in the black cloak that covered a mult.i.tude of sins and proceeded to St. James's Street. With a discerning eye he chose his marks. All that his victims had to be was wealthy and drunk, which at this time of the morning in Mayfair was just about everyone on the street.

He lifted three bags of gold coins with little difficulty. One glance at the black-cloaked figure with beard and wild black mane unmanned his victims.

As he made his way to a less fashionable part of town, Sean smiled to himself.

He had managed to escape and line his pockets with gold without actually having to kill anyone at all. His luck had turned. Satan helps his enemies.

Sean O'Toole went into the George and Vulture by the Blackfriars water-stairs and sat at a table with his back to the wall, facing the door. The smell of food and ale affected his taste buds so acutely, his mouth began to water with antic.i.p.ation. He ordered a steak, kidney-and-oyster pie, and a pint of brown ale to wash it down.

When the serving wench set the steaming dish before him, he gazed at it for long minutes admiring the golden crust, the juice oozing through the slits on top, and the way the smoke curled into the air from its piping-hot depths. Then he bent over it appreciatively to inhale its aroma. His eyes narrowed with expectation of what it would taste like, then he lifted the first mouthful to his lips, his eyes closing in blissful satisfaction.