“He is if I say he is,” said the Hound, his gaze still on Anne. She gave another small cry and ran to hide behind Gwen.
“What happens next?” Gwen asked through a throat gone dry with fear.
The Hound gave his rictus smile. “My message has been sent, so now we pass the time until his lordship calls. Do you enjoy ombre? Vingt-et-un? I am fond of faro.”
He seated himself at the table and gestured the ladies forward. “Come, I’ve sent for refreshments. We’re not savages, even if we do live in Wales.”
“You beat that Jewish man from Merthyr Tydfil until he died,” Gwen said. “An act of savagery if I ever heard of one.”
The Hound shook his head. “Ach, Daniel. Such a stubborn man, so hard to persuade. I regret that some of my men like their work too much. I pay better than the mines, you see, and less risk of life and limb.”
A knock sounded at the door. “Spot of tea for the ladies!” It was Minikin, bearing a polished salver with a pitcher and tall pewter goblet. “Ha, only jesting. It’s small beer for you,drewgi.”
Gwen watched in amazement as Minikin advanced to the table and slid the platter onto the linen cloth. The Hound didn’t look up from the deck of cards he was shuffling, apparently not realizing that his minion had just called him a smelly dog.
“Does he not speak Cymraeg?” Gwen asked in Welsh.
“Na, he’sGwyddelig,” Pedr spat.
Irish. Just as the English considered the Welsh uncivilized, many Welsh thought of the Irish as barbarians. Iolo Morganwg, the self-appointed modern Welsh bard, said the Irish loved only violence, deception, and poetry.
“But you serve him,” Gwen said, still in Welsh. The Hound looked sharply at her but said nothing. No one else understood their conversations. Anne knew only a few words that Gwen had taught her, mostly the names of flowers and birds.
“We serve the man with no name,” Pedr answered in a slow rumble.
“A gift from the publican at the King’s Head, your Houndship.” Minikin switched to English and poured from the pitcher into the goblet. Gwen swore she detected the sharp, sour scent of darnel. “The men are enjoying a dram or two, and there’s more at the Head if they nip in there tonight whilst going about their business.”
Gwen’s heart raced with sudden hope. Pen was the man with no name. He said he’d been working with their attackers from the bridge. He had brewed the darnel and if Pedr and Minikin served it here, they would disarm the Hound’s men. Mr. Trett at the King’s Head had the only thing in Newport that served as a lockup, a rickety lean-to in his stable yard. Though she seemed to recall Pen and Evans, in their work at the stables, had reported reinforcing the lean-to with new timber and a great new iron padlock.
Pen meant to lure the Hound’s henchmen to the pub, lock them up, and have the constable deal with them. The rough-hewn army, dispensed with in one blow. But what, then, of the bombs he had Evans and Ross making?
“What are we to do?” Gwen whispered in Welsh. What was the rest of Pen’s plan?
Minikin gave her a reproachful look, speaking out of the side of his mouth. “You was supposed to have the sneeze weed.”
Gwen almost laughed. They had counted on her not walking into the trap, yet here she was, in the Hound’s lair, with three helpless women and a wounded Sutton still unconscious in his chair. Could she overcome the Hound if he drank the poisoned beer? Could Pedr and Minikin alone help them escape if their cohorts grew drunk and rowdy? Sounds of revelry spilled from the main deck where, she assumed, the first firkin had been tapped. But the side effects of darnel were unpredictable. Who knew what a man prone to violence was capable of under the influence of intoxication, much less hallucination?
The Hound didn’t glance at the goblet. “I dislike beer, Morys. Open a bottle of wine.”
“Aye, but ’tis a gift, your Houndship, and you know they say that—”
“Wine, Morys,” the Hound said.
“For me as well.” Lydia glared at the little man. She sat without touching the back of her chair, shoulders stiff, chin high. “We might play vingt-et-un to begin, Mr. Bryan. I am not one of those fast faro ladies to lose thousands of pounds a night at the table.”
“You have a harp,” Gwen noted with surprise, at last spotting the instrument housed beside the rack of wine bottles where Minikin browsed the selection, then picked out a set of faceted glass goblets. “Shall I play for us?”
The sound would disguise any noises from above, of the men’s carousing or Pen’s arrival, if indeed he were coming to rescue them. And harping would help her think. The Hound wasn’t drinking the beer. She didn’t have her sneezewort. A rack of guns gleamed above the desk, long-barreled, lethal-looking weapons, but she didn’t know the complicated sequence required to load and fire a gun, much less what went into it. She needed another weapon.
As coolly as if she were at tea, Lydia unpinned her hat and set it aside. Prunella cautiously followed suit, hanging her bonnet on the back of her chair. Anne sat near her brother, keeping a nervous eye on him. Gwen studied the three women and the adornments they’d unknowingly retrieved from St. Sefin’s poison garden.
Lydia’s hat brim was decorated with blooms of hellebore. A quite toxic plant, the ingestion of which could cause burning in the mouth, purging of the stomach and bowels, and potentially halt the heart.
Prunella had embellished her bonnet with blooms of cheerful purple-blue lobelia. In small doses effective for breathing difficulties or bouts of sadness; in high doses, responsible for nausea, vomiting, and cardiac arrest.
And Anne, bless her delicate heart, had decorated the corsage of her pretty muslin gown with a stem of foxglove.
The Hound looked up from dealing cards as Gwen casually swept up the ladies’ hats and asked to see Anne’s posy. “You mean to play for us while you await your doom?” He grinned. “By all means.”
