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nothin’ but ignorant culchie paddies, that anybody’ll tell the tale to in their shit-shovellin’ britches. Them boys’d make friends with the cat I haven’t got and have him telling every grand tale he knows in half an hour.”
    Boyle laughed. “Aye, and they’d have the cat’s daughters pregnant in half an hour more. I’ve heard the tales.”
    “Sure they’ve the vices of their virtues, now.” Finnegan grinned. With a little easy-going charm it was possible to make even his crew of monsters seem like loveable rogues. Mulligan and O’Hare had rarely turned up as a team before Finnegan collared them, but then tricksters and cheats seldom worked together. And it would surprise Boyle not a whit to find that one or two of those heartbroken maids hadn’t quite said yes first. As long as he kept them in coin, though, they’d confine themselves to whores or it’d not be a trial for rape they got but a quiet dagger where it’d teach them not to embarrass their master. And Finnegan would wipe his conscience clean at the same time he did his blade. Nor would Boyle lose any sleep, come to it. He’d hold the leashes of monsters while they were useful, but only a fool would shed tears when it came time to put them down. Finnegan’s own guise of virtue came, Boyle knew, from cold calculation—he got more and more reliably through looking like a faithful, if grim, earl’s man. If he knew he faced no repercussion he’d wallow in blood and take a pleasure in it that was all the more chilling for how mild it was.
    “Be that as it may. Downriver’s likely. Don’t trouble yourself with where they’ve taken ship from, I’ve sent word to Chatham to get a sea-search in hand. I’ve no more idea than you whether such a thing is even possible, so I’ve asked for word of what success is likely by return of messenger. I’m more worried by what they might manage that stay behind, and I heard about two boats too. If one of those was some second mission, we’ve a rat loose in the pantry. I want it, them, whoever, caught.”
    Finnegan touched a forelock. “Am I not your earlness’s terrier, to rat at command?”
    “That you are. Stay on the trail, have messages back to me as often as may be. Run them to ground if you can, frustrate whatever knavery they’re about. I’ve a fine lot of politics to play here in London, and you know how I am with surprises on that score. Keep Cromwell, Wentworth and the Americans from pissing in my gravy while I work on the king. You know me for a generous master, and if I can take this trick, Finnegan, I’ll have much to be generous with.”
    “Now that I can warm my heart with, my lord.”
    “See that you do. See to your boys and what you can learn here. I’ve a clerk going hot-foot back to my house for a pouch of all I have on Cromwell and Wentworth, copied against need. You’ll carry it with you and learn what you need as you go. See it’s burnt before it falls into anyone’s hands but yours or mine. More than one of the little birds that told me what’s in those papers would pay with his life for telling me what he knew, and where would I be without their songs to delight me?”
    “I’ve not to kill any birds while I chase your rats for you. Right you are, your earlnessship.”
    “Be off, before your jests make me forget how useful you are.”

Chapter 5
    “It comes to something that a man may easier read shite than take one,” Robert Mackay muttered. Getting from the commode back to the bed was no joke, but when a man broke his back, that was what he’d to put up with. There was probably a bloody theologian somewhere blethering something about God’s plan out his arse, and be damned to the prating pederast. All the pain and indignity of being helped to the pot, all the indignity and pain of being helped back, and then the fucking paperwork was still waiting.
    “Will ye haud ye’re noise, ye auld fool? If you’d bided on that bluidy mare ye’d no be led theer