"Who cares?" said Towson. On his way off the floor, he'd scooped up the bag of silver that had wound up lying close to him. "We'll buy you another. A hundred, if you want, with what's in here."
Leebrick looked around for the document, but couldn't see it anywhere. God only knew where it had flown to, in the fracas.
There was no time to hunt for the thing, and it had no signatures on it, anyway. That wouldn't help Wentworth, of course. But so it went. The earl of Strafford was on his own.
"Now, out!" Anthony just took enough time to extract Doncaster's sword from its scabbard. He ignored the second wheel lock. It had already been fired, and he doubted very much if they'd have time to reload it.
Once in the corridor, Leebrick raced toward the main staircase with Patrick and Richard close behind. He'd have preferred to find a more obscure servants' stairwell, but he didn't dare risk the time it would take to find one. The only route he knew out of the mansion was the same one they'd taken when they were brought in.
As it turned out, he was in luck. Hearing a martial clatter from the far end of the corridor, he realized that the mansion's guards must have been stationed in the servants' area themselves. So they were charging up that stairwell—while he and his two fellows would take the main stairs.
Two guards did emerge from the main staircase, just as Anthony arrived, matchlocks in hand with the fuses lit. He cut one of them down. Richard booted the other back down the staircase, head over heels. The man's musket went off, sending the bullet smashing into the ceiling above.
Patrick picked up the gun that had been held by the soldier he'd sabered. Fortunately, while the blood gushing from a neck hacked halfway through had soaked the barrel—and was still soaking the carpet, as the body slid down the staircase—the grip was clean. He handed it to Welch, who checked to make sure the match was still smoldering.
Edging to the side to keep from slipping on the blood, they scurried down the stairs and into the mansion's great entrance hall. Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, Anthony pressed the tip of his sword against the throat of the man who'd been sent flying by Richard's kick. But there was no need to kill him, since he was clearly unconscious. Leebrick had made it a point to kill Doncaster because of the officer's treachery, but this was just a common soldier.
Just as he straightened up, two more guards emerged, bursting into the room from a side door. Richard shot one with the wheel lock; Patrick shot the other with the matchlock. The Irishman's shot was dead on into the chest, punching right through the breastplate. Patrick's only struck his man's arm.
It didn't matter. The guard was down and would stay down. A three-quarter-inch musket ball did terrible damage when it struck any solid part of a human body. If the man didn't bleed to death, he'd probably lose the arm. If he survived the surgeon, which he probably wouldn't. Either way or any, Leebrick didn't care at all.
There was a doorman standing at the front entrance. Standing quite still, paralyzed with shock and terror, just staring at them.
That was good enough, too.
"Open the fucking door or I'll kill you," Anthony said, speaking almost conversationally. The man was so frightened that a shout would probably just keep him paralyzed. "Now, damn you."
The man did as he was told. "Leave him be," Leebrick ordered, on his way through the door. There was no point in killing the doorman. It wasn't as if there was any chance of hiding their identities, after all.
In the event, the mercy was pointless. Before Leebrick and his two companions made it down the outer stairs to the street, soldiers from within the mansion started firing at them. They missed, mostly because the doorman was still standing in the doorway, gaping down at the three fleeing men. Four bullets struck him and sent him flying. His body hit the street just a split second after Leebrick and his fellows started racing off.
"Racing," at least, insofar as the term could be applied to men who were skating as much as they were running. The footing wasn't quite as bad as it had been on Tyburn Hill Road, but it was still terrible.
Anthony was glad of it, however. The same footing would slow the pursuing guards just as much. Probably more, in fact, since they were the pursuers and not the prey. The hound runs for his meal; the hare runs for his life.
Best of all, it had started snowing again and it was now late in the afternoon. The sun set very early in London, in midwinter, even on a clear day. The visibility was bad and it would soon get worse. Within an hour, they would have the further shelter of nightfall.
One more shot was fired, just as they went around the first corner. At them, presumably, but Leebrick couldn't see where the bullet had gone. As confused and anxious as the mansion's guard force had to be, after the carnage, whoever had fired that shot might well have just hit a building across the street. Or simply fired into the air at nothing at all.