The spyglass was mounted on a tripod. The glass itself was turned toward the northwest, aimed at the road taken by Matthew and Julian Devane. Behind the glass was the eye of Hudson Greathouse, and before both the glass and the eye the road remained empty across the flat plain of snow-covered Welsh landscape. Though the afternoon sky was blue and streaked only with high clouds, cold wind blew hard over the roofs of Y Beautiful Bedd from the sea beyond.

Hudson stood upon a parapet of Fell’s fortress, just above and beside the wagon that still blocked the front entrance between the walls of ancient gray stones. The oaken door that had been destroyed by a gunpowder bomb in the attack nearly two weeks ago was yet in the process of being rebuilt at the carpentry shop. On either side of Hudson two guards with muskets walked the ramparts, and as Hudson peered through the spyglass one of them ambled toward him.

“Anythin’?” the man Hudson had come to recognize as Dan Gravelling asked.

“No,” said Hudson. He straightened up from the glass and pulled the collar of his brown corduroy coat up higher. The fit of his black wool cap was disturbed by the width of his ears. “He’ll be along, though.”

“You mean the both of ’em will be along.”

Hudson smiled grimly. This was a little game of words the two had begun playing in the last week. “That’s what I meant, Dan.”

Gravelling leaned on his musket. “I’ve been wonderin’ for a time, and I’ve got to ask. A big fella like y’self,” he said. “How the hell did they drag you here?”

“It was a woman’s knee to the face, and three thugs with pistols to back it up,” Hudson answered, referring to the hefty knee of Mother Deare that had sent him into dreamland and brought both himself and Berry Grigsby in a guarded coach to Fell’s little village—a little prison for its unfortunate inhabitants—on the windswept and sea-crashed coast of Wales.

“Was she a looker?”

“Oh yes, a real beauty. Caught me sleeping.” Hudson knew the man would recognize the name—and froggish face—of the hideous Mother Deare, but he hated to blight anyone’s fantasy.

“Figured as such,” said Gravelling, who Hudson had found was one of those salt-of-the-earth workmen who were here not because of any evil affiliation but because the accommodations were free and the protection assured. Gravelling was on the run from the law in Newport for physically assaulting a judge. He was an able watchman but honestly he didn’t possess more than a thimbleful of brains.