the status of their crown appointments while disdaining the actual work. Rather than sully their lily-white hands, they generally hired others to carry out their duties—a gaoler to oversee the local prison, marshalmen to gather evidence, interview witnesses, and arrest and interrogate suspects.
Some of the hirelings were honest men. Others, like the ones he’d encountered tonight, were worse brigands than the people they arrested. Brutal thugs more interested in bribes and bounties than truth and justice.
“Glad to see yer finally awake, mate,” the man wheezed as he came to a halt before Nicholas’s cell. “Brought ye yer supper.” He set down a metal pail with a clang.
This, evidently, was the gaoler. “I’m not hungry,” Nicholas said weakly, trying to sound like an outraged, innocent citizen. “I’d like to speak to the magistrate.”
“Makin’ demands, are ye?” The man glowered at him. “Yer lucky we didn’t hang ye straightaway, after the way ye near spilled Tibbs’s guts with yer knife.” He set the lantern down behind him.
Nicholas’s every muscle went taut. The pail of food was too big to pass through the bars. The gaoler would have to unlock his cell door. “How was I to know they were the law?” He pressed an arm across his midsection with an exaggerated wince, holding his bruised ribs. “I was merely passing through this pleasant hamlet of yours and when I stopped at the stables to hire a horse—”
“Steal a horse, more like.”
“Hire a horse. The next thing I knew, four hulking blokes ambushed me. It was the dead of night. I thought they were outlaws. I simply defended myself.”
“They’d been trailin’ ye fer half an hour, mate. If yer so innocent, what were ye doin’ skulkin’ around the roads so quiet-like after midnight?”
“As I told them, I was merely passing through—”
“On business. Aye, a planter from the Colonies just passin’ through on business.” The gaoler shook his head in disbelief, the rolls of fat under his chin wobbling. “Ye don’t fight like no planter, mate.”
Nicholas clamped his teeth to stop an oath, chastising himself again for fighting when he should have remained calm and reasonable.
Unfortunately it seemed that old pirates, like old dogs, couldn’t be taught new tricks.
“The magistrate don’t need to be seein’ ye,” the gaoler continued. He still didn’t reach for his keys. “Ye match the description well enough. Been in all the county broadsheets fer a month. There’s a nice fat reward out fer ye. Fifty pounds.”
“Really?” Nicholas asked, one eyebrow quirking upward, the irony in his tone completely lost on the gaoler. “Fifty whole pounds?”
“That’s right. More’n any of us makes in a year, even split four ways.” Instead of opening the cell door, he bent down and withdrew a few items from the pail. “An’ now we got a witness what swears yer the one he saw sneakin’ away from Lord Alston’s house with a sack full o’ loot a month ago.”
“Witness?” Nicholas demanded incredulously. “What witness?”
“Tibbs himself.”
Nicholas swore. The wounded marshalman was obviously so infuriated, he would say anything to see Nicholas hanged.
The gaoler passed the foodstuffs through the bars—a leg of mutton, a slab of bread, and a tall pewter mug filled with some sort of drink. Nicholas took them one by one, his frustration deepening when it became clear the door wouldn’t be opened.
This unsavory bunch wasn’t going to take any chance of their fifty-pound prize getting away.
And he couldn’t bribe his way out. They’d relieved him of his coin purse when they arrested him. Along with the few weapons he’d been carrying.
His chances of making it to York before Michaelmas were narrowing by the minute.
“You’ve arrested the wrong man,” he insisted. “The assize judge won’t give you a shilling for me. Because you won’t be able to prove a thing.”
“Oh, we’ll prove it, mate.” The man’s tone made it clear they could prove whatever they wanted, that they had done so before. “And we won’t be waitin’ fer the assizes.”
A new sense of foreboding prickled up Nicholas’s spine. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means this lot here”—the gaoler waved a beefy hand to indicate the half-dozen prisoners held in the other cells to the left and right—“can wait ’til January when the judge comes on his usual rounds. But not you, mate. Yer worth too much. We’ll be taking ye in now so we can collect straightaway.”
Nicholas felt his heart slam against his bruised ribs. “Taking me in to...”
“London,” the gaoler confirmed with a nod and a grin filled with greed.
Nicholas stared up