Fire by C.C. Humphreys

pocket. But then, as he reached for his cloak, he paused. There were footsteps coming fast up the stairs, though the landlord had been up not ten minutes before to replenish their jugs.
    ‘Who’s there?’ Simeon called.
    —
    When the bells of St Matthew’s began their slow toll to ten, Pitman checked that his pistols slid easily from their holsters, spat on the cobbles and stepped out of the shadows.
    As he crossed, he looked up. Captain Coke flashed a thumb before disappearing into the gloom. Pitman hoped that the position he’d assigned to his friend would not be tested; that the conspirators would take the backstairs that led to the small yard where most of his men waited in ambush. The window that gave onto Coke’s roof was small, not an obvious exit if they panicked. With fortune, the captain would not even need to draw his rapier – and the bridegroom’s skin would stay intact for his wedding on the morrow.
    Surprise and speed were required – and numbers. At least he had the latter – ten hard men, constables and former soldiers too, all from Parliament’s army in the late deplored wars. Tenroundheads then – and one cavalier, he thought, licking dry lips as he entered the tavern’s side stairs.
    Like the highwayman who jerks open the carriage door, going in the front was always going to be the most dangerous act. But Pitman was the leader, and he had the armour, such as it was. Bettina had had one of her ‘turns’ and insisted he wear his old breast-and-back plates. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that these rarely stopped a bullet at close range. He also had the blunderbuss which he pulled off his back now. ‘Follow me,’ he said to the two waiting men, Allsop and Friar. He took the stairs two at a time, but they were still half a dozen steps away when the door above was flung open and a large man stepped out. He had a pistol.
    ‘Drop it!’ bellowed Pitman, but the man did not. Instead, he pointed and pulled. There was the spark, the flash and the report loud in the narrow, wood-lined stairwell. Pitman ducked but Allsop did not, crying out and reeling back. Amidst the gun smoke, Pitman saw the figure slip inside again and heard the man’s cry, ‘The watch!’ With the landing clear above, Pitman pulled his trigger. He had loaded it with scrap, for the sound and the fury. He wanted them alive. Justice required it. His purse did too. Sir Joseph paid more for men he could question.
    The hot metal tore great chunks from the wainscot at the stair head. Laying down the blunderbuss and coughing in the smoke, Pitman drew one pistol and charged up the remaining stairs. He knelt and shoved his face around the door jamb. As he had hoped, the back door was open, and men were already crowding it, trying to flee. One turned and raised his arm. Pitman threw himself back as another shot came and wood exploded in splinters above him.
    Friar knelt beside him. ‘Allsop?’ queried Pitman.
    ‘Shoulder,’ replied Friar. ‘Think the bullet passed through.’ He gestured with his head. ‘Do they take the lure?’
    ‘I think so, aye,’ Pitman cocked his head. ‘As long as our friends below bide –’
    Dick Cleethorpe, who’d stood next to him in the push of pike on battlefields across England and never flinched, was in charge below. They were well sheltered down there, behind the beer barrels. Now he heard his comrade’s cry, ‘Surrender! You are surrounded!’
    More shots spoke to this, more replied, and the room that had gone quiet filled with noise again. He risked a look, saw three men rush back into the room. One had a blunderbuss much like his own and discharged it at them now; the door slammed back, coming off its hinges to fall onto the constables crouched there. The sound of smashing came, glass first then wood. Pitman uncocked his pistol, holstered it and grabbed one end of the door. ‘Take it up,’ he cried, and Friar did. Holding it before them like a shield, the two men moved into the