The Rose Garden

The constable, it seemed, had not been pleased to find his spy left on the shore. And despite Jack’s claims no local jury would convict the Butler brothers, I knew better than to underestimate the constable. What Creed could do within the law and what he’d dare to do outside it were, I knew, two very different things.

The boat scraped bottom on the shingle. Fergal held it steady while I scrambled out to stand beside the waterfall, which, having passed midsummer, had thinned down to a trickle that shifted and danced down the long drop from overhead, splattering onto the already wave-wet rocks close by my feet. It was a good thing I already knew about the hidden entrance, otherwise the sudden figure stepping from what looked like solid rock might have unnerved me into jumping even higher than I did.

Daniel touched my arm. ‘We’ll have to put the boat up. Will you wait inside a moment?’

With a nod I sidled past him through the long cleft in the stone.

The rush of silence struck me with the same swift force that I remembered from the day I’d come down here with Mark. The sea sounded suddenly very far off, and the lyrical dripping of water from somewhere came echoing back from the walls of wet stone.

This was not the unused and abandoned space I’d seen that day, though. The scents of the sea and the salt-dampened rocks were overlaid here with more human ones – pipe smoke and new wooden barrels and candles that had only just been extinguished, the smell of their smoke still a sharpness that lingered unseen. The one candle they had left burning sat stuck in its own melted wax on a small tin plate set on the top of a barrel – one barrel among many others that stood stacked in staggering rows down the long curving wall to my right. I couldn’t tell from looking at the barrels what was in them, but I would have bet the bank it wasn’t anything to drink.

More likely, I decided, they held guns or arms of some sort that were meant for the rebellion. From the articles I’d read I knew the Duke of Ormonde’s plans had been to raise a loyal army in the west of England that would fight beneath his banner in support of young James Stuart when he came across the sea to claim the throne so many in these times believed was his by right of birth.

James Stuart would come, I knew. He would land in the north, up in Scotland, and men throughout Britain would rise in his name, and would pay with their lives, and their cause would be lost in the end. All for nothing, I thought. All the risks that these men were now taking to bring back these guns or whatever they were, and to hide them down here, it was all wasted effort.

I felt a sudden heavy sadness in my chest, and yet I knew that, even if I did warn Daniel of what was to come, he would do nothing differently. He stood with his king, no matter what the odds or consequences, because that was where his heart and honour told him he must stand. Fergal had explained this at the woodpile when he’d said, ‘To Danny, knowing that the battle will not end the way he wishes does not make it any less worthwhile to fight.’

I heard a quiet step behind me on the stone and Daniel’s head came round the corner of the entrance. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘Would you mind fetching me that candle, Eva?’

Being closer to it, I nodded, and crossed to lift it from the barrel, being careful where I put my feet upon the floor with all its slippery rocks and damply filled depressions. As I lifted up the candle on its small tin plate the flame dipped briefly sideways, dancing light across a gleaming length of metal near the barrel’s bottom edge – the blade of Daniel’s dagger, lying on the floor. He must have dropped it there by accident, I thought. I nearly bent to pick it up … but then I stopped myself, remembering Mark’s treasure box, and Daniel’s dagger buried at the bottom of it.

Here was where he’d lost it. And where Mark, in time, would find it. It was not my place to interfere.

Daniel must have seen me hesitate. ‘Is everything all right?’

My fingers folded to a tight fist at my side, to stop me reaching for the dagger as I wanted to. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, and turning I walked back to him, the candle held in front of me. It hardly shook at all.

He took it from my hand and thanked me for it, then to my surprise he blew it out. ‘I would not wish to see our work destroyed by fire,’ he said, by way of explanation.

‘Won’t we need the light for walking home?’

Which was, I later thought, a really stupid thing to ask a smuggler who would hardly want to call attention to his presence in the woods at night. But Daniel only smiled, a smile I couldn’t see but clearly felt against my lips as he bent close to lightly brush his mouth across my own – the barest kiss, because there wasn’t really time for more than that, with Fergal waiting just outside.

‘Sometimes,’ said Daniel, ‘’tis better to be in the dark.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

We slept late the next day. Jack was up and about before any of the rest of us. I heard him moving round the house and whistling round the kitchen on his way out to the stables. In the room beside me Daniel woke and stirred. I heard his feet thump to the floor, and then the quiet movements while he dressed and went downstairs.

I thought of drifting back to sleep, but in the end I rose and dressed as well. It took a little while, and by the time I got down to the kitchen Jack was back indoors and arguing with Daniel, though this wasn’t like the argument I’d heard them have before. More like a stubborn disagreement.

‘Ay,’ said Jack, ‘I know what you were thinking, but I’m saying you were better to have let the lad come with you and then tossed him over halfway through the crossing, for that might have been an accident and no one could have called it any different.’