“And what’ll you do to us if we do?” someone asked in a low undertone. “Spike us as you spiked young Adam?”
The Marchioness stood there, her breath coming quickly and the nostrils of her thin nose quivering a little with sheer rage.
“Thieving scoundrels,” she shrieked, “scum of the earth, miserable sapskulls, do my bidding this instant or ’twill be the worse for you,”
“She’s crazed,” one man whispered to another, but the word, soft-whispered though it was, swept round the cavern so that the Marchioness heard it.
“Crazed, am I?” she cried. “Yes, crazed to have ever trusted such riff-raff as you. Do as I order you or, by Heaven, you shall feel the bite of this.”
She made a sudden lunge with her sword and the man nearest to her fell back a pace or two.
“Touché,” she laughed, “shrink bac
