A Little Sleight-of-Character, An Escape

“Stop there, ruffian,”commanded Uncle Mortimor – Lupin did not see how he was able to order these men about, until she closed her eyes and saw the glint of gun metal in her mind’s vision. Uncle Mortimor had a pistol, a very fine one at that, and Lupin wagered he knew well how to use it.
The three sets of boots stilled. Lupin clenched her jaw unconsciously against the incipient chattering of her teeth. She tried, too, to still somewhat the beating of her heart, but to no avail. It sounded like a drum in her ears.
“Out,” Uncle Mortimor snapped. “I will not allow a gang of thieves to steal my things in this inferior posting house just because of some godforsaken French rain!”
Lupin could almost hear Uncle Mortimor wrinkling his nose in disgust. “Out!”
The quartet shuffled a little. Lupin could feel Uncle Mortimor’s tension. But knew nothing else. But she tensed all the same. Suddenly a huge shout of sound, like a thousand hands clapping at once – just once. An acrid, tinny, smoky smell filled the air, and touched Lupin’s nostrils through the wire mesh of the trunk. It awoke her a little form the numb fear she had been gripped with. A man was yelling in pain, but the other boots were not moving.
The instinct to chatter had left Lupin, and she was calm and dark. The yelling of the man had increased, and there was swearing now too. But still no one moved. Uncle Mortimor must have had another gun somewhere. As unreliable as the things tended to be, he must have had it ready. Lupin could only congratulate him on his forethought. “Out!” he barked again, and she heard the boots shuffling backwards, the yelling man begging to be taken with them, and their subsequent flight down the hall. Not too far, though. She could hear they were going into another chamber, and she heard a woman’s scream. No doubt they were amateurs, but they would return if they didn’t find what they were looking for – that is, if they did not find her.
She waited a bare ten seconds and then swiftly, silently undid the latch, drew off her boots, and leapt out of her trunk. Uncle Mortimor was seated on the settle, the gun cradled in his hands.
He had a look of entire distaste. “I do not like violence,” he said simply and primly, and set the gun down carefully beside him.“We must leave now,” Lupin said, very softly and very urgently. “They will be back soon,”
Uncle Mortimor nodded a few times, and Lupin moved to the side of the window to peek out. Uncle Mortimor came to stand beside her, and she moved to draw closed the door. It squeaked, but she could still hear the men down the hall harassing another traveler’s room, and downstairs the loud moans of the shot kidnapper floated up between the thin floorboards.
Lupin took up her boots as she moved past her trunk, and then opened the window latch. As she did so, her face became set. It was not the first window of a posting house she had escaped through, and the memory was very hard to bear.
Lupin took the pistol steadily from Uncle Mortimor’s hand, where it was hanging, and gestured him out the window first. It was a drop of some 15 feet, but there was a small amount of sloping roof just 5 feet under the window, and below that soft bushes, made sodden in the constant rain, but offering gentle landing nonetheless. Uncle Mortimor hesitated, the look of distaste crossing his features once again, but he climbed through the rather high embrasure and hanging down, found footing on the shelf of thatching. And there he stopped. Lupin glanced at the doorway. There was no sound of boots coming down the hall. But neither was there a sound from another chamber. It was not reassuring. She reached out the window nevertheless, and offered Uncle Mortimor her hand as he fought to keep his balance on the slippery thatching.
Another few moments and he landed with a bit of a splash and not a few snaps in the bushes, then, fighting to sit up, managed to roll himself out the side. Lupin pulled on her boots, then swung herself out the window. It was at that moment that she heard the ruffians returning – and this time there was another step with them.
She let go suddenly, forgetting about the pistol, and found herself falling backwards towards the bushes. She managed to twist and fall on her side – but the pistol stayed very close to her body, trapped just next to her chest, where her arm was caught in the branches. She tried to disentangle her arm, but it would not be freed from the bush’s close embrace, and so she took a breath and rolled swiftly out the side. The pistol shot went off then, nearly deafening her. But she took no notice. She leapt from the bushes, and feinted back against the house, drawing far against the clapboard walls. There were shouts from above, and Uncle Mortimor stood alone by the bush, with one hand to his mouth.
Lupin crouched, plastered against the damp lumber of the posting inn wall, the pistol, hot from its shot, gripped carefully between her hands. She watched Uncle Mortimor, standing beside the accommodating bush, his body bent over as if to protect something as he looked defiantly up at the raiders.
“You may have made me lose my gun, but you won’t get my gold, you scoundrels!” he cried, shaking his fist up at them, “the authorities shall hear about this, you may be certain of it!”
Lupin could feel the hatred pulsating from the window, and the lessening of it as Uncle Mortimor shouted his deceptive invectives. The feeling of being hunted lessened for a moment – Uncle Mortimor turned and began to run away. “Thieves!” he called back over his shoulder, “Devils!” He ran around the corner of the stables – more thatched shacks, really – and out of Lupin’s sight.
She sat in the silence for nearly a minute, the tense ringing rather deafening after the last hectic moments. She felt completely stopped from doing anything besides sit in absolute stillness, waiting for she knew not what.
Then she rose slowly, and feeling as if the threat was receding, ventured to the edge of the roof line. The windows were close and dark, the inn still. She made herself walk slowly to the stable corner and turn round it. Uncle Mortimor stood there, leaning against the wall, looking rather green. Lupin looked at him for a moment, gently. Then her jaw set again. “Do you, indeed, have the gold?” Uncle Mortimor reached into his jacket and pulled out the crimson journal with a strange look of distaste and tolerance in his eyes. “I see,” said Lupin, her eyes going rather stony. “No gold.”
They gathered the horses they had hired, and saddled them. A thief once again Lupin mounted her gelding without a word and they set off wearily and quickly.