Death and the Chevalier

by Robin Blake

  She looked at me steadily. Her face – pale as wash, grave, unregretting – looked astonishingly beautiful.

  ‘No, Titus. It was not a “would-be” rape, and he is not a “would-be” rapist. You do not understand what you saw that night. You were certain when you came into the bedroom that you’d interrupted him before his attack began. You thought that you had saved my honour in the nick of time.’

  ‘Dearest, did I not do that?’

  She shook her head, then spoke to me very slowly and quietly.

  ‘He had penetrated me, Titus. He had been inside me. When you came up to the room, he had already finished forcing me. It was over and done with.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ I said, laying my forehead on her knees. ‘Why did you not tell me, Lizzie? Why did you not let me help you?’

  ‘I was ashamed, Titus, quite terribly. But also I was full of disgust for everything sexual, and I did not know how I could tell this to you, my loving husband. But after staying a few days with Ma and Pa, not talking about it, but thinking, thinking about it, I came to a firm decision. I saw no hope that the man might be arraigned by any lawful authority, but I was not going to let it rest there. I would not be able to sleep, and I would never be reconciled with you, dear Titus, until I had punished the Marquis before the world. I have tried to do so tonight. How well have I succeeded? Will you go through to where they have him in the dining room, and find out for me, Titus, how well I have done?’

  I got to my feet and went into the dining room. The Marquis, gasping from pain and swearing a string of French oaths, lay on his back on the table, which was covered with oilcloth. One soldier held him down at his head and another at his feet. Fidelis, now wearing a professional wig, had fetched his medical bag from the kitchen, where he had left it prior to our setting out for Back Weind Court. He got out a pair of very large scissors which, when he saw them, made the wounded man flinch and stare with eye-bulging fear.

  ‘Ne vous inquiète pas,’ Fidelis said reassuringly. ‘Seulement pour couper le pantalon.’

  He fit actions to these words by cutting away the, by now, blood-drenched breeches, and examining what he found beneath. Handling the Marquis’s wounded flesh, he produced more agonized squeals, which were abruptly followed by silence. The Marquis had lapsed into unconsciousness.

  ‘How is he, Luke?’ I said.

  ‘He’s taken the ball full in the balls,’ said Fidelis. ‘They are beyond saving, but I believe I can stop him bleeding to death.’

  ‘Shall we all agree to call this an unfortunate accident?’ I said, looking around at the rebel officers present. ‘The fellow O’Higgins was holding my wife at pistol-point when he was attacked by the dog and accidentally discharged the gun, hitting the Marquis in his genitalia. Shall we call it a peculiarly providential accident?’

  ‘Aye,’ they said. ‘An accident, it was. Nae blame on your wife, o’ course, but the Frenchie deserved it, nae question.’

  I went back to the kitchen and told Elizabeth what I’d seen and heard. She closed her eyes and smiled.

  ‘I am glad. There is no need for him to die. But he will rape no more women now, and with that I am satisfied.’

  We were interrupted by Matty who was followed in by one of the kilted officers who was carrying in his arms, with some effort, the great wounded mastiff bitch. Matty laid down an old sheet in front of Elizabeth and Bawty was placed on it. I knelt and looked at her wound, which had almost stopped bleeding. By contrast with the Marquis, Bawty had been lucky. The bullet had passed right through her upper thigh, missing, as far as I could tell, any bone. Elizabeth began to tell Matty what to do – how to wash the wound and bandage it – and her voice sounded so much more like her own, full of renewed spirit and purpose, that I felt I could leave her without anxiety.

  I went back to the business room to speak to the highwaymen. To my surprise, I found Madame Lachatte had come down from her room and, under the armed eye of the sentry, was deep in conversation with Shamus Fingal O’Higgins.

  ‘Good Lord, Mr O’Higgins,’ she was saying. ‘What an agreeably exciting life you do lead. Ah! Mr Cragg! I have been making friends with this handsome Irishman, though I must forgive him for being a Dubliner. Cork does not hold with Dublin, you know.’

  ‘I am no Dubliner, madam,’ said he. ‘I am born and bred in Kildare and that’s the God-honest truth. But I have lived in Dublin and found it a fine city, very fine, and the second city of the kingdom. Dublin is London in all but size, and I am fond of it.’

  She fluttered her eyelashes and gave a coquette’s laugh, a penetrating high-pitched trill.

  ‘Cork is finer. Dublin may be the London of Ireland, but Cork is the Venice of it – as you must know, sir, if you pay any attention to such matters. Cork is the Serenissima of Ireland.’

  ‘I regret I have been to neither of those distinguished cities, so I cannot judge the comparison,’ said Jack Fingers. ‘I can only bow to your superior knowledge about the world.’

  He was quite at his ease, like a man calling on a lady for tea, in order to flirt with her.

  ‘Mr O’Higgins,’ I said, ‘I am eager to know if you caught up with Abel Grant?’

  ‘No,’ said the highwayman. ‘He disappeared entirely. Perhaps he has gone to ground in the house of some confederate. A pity. I had been thinking quite soberly that, instead of killing him, I would invite him to join our fellowship and try his luck on the road. He has the makings, you see. He has the qualities.’

  Madame Lachatte wanted to know who we were talking about.

  ‘Oh,’ said O’Higgins, ‘it is a young fellow who is all athwart the law. He killed a man, then stole from me, but since he no longer has the money, I am prepared, or at the least inclined, to forgive him.’

  ‘Yet this evening he viciously murdered again – your man, Paddy,’ I said. ‘Do you not hold that against him?’

  ‘Oh! Mercy!’ said Madame Lachatte. ‘He did a murder this evening?’

  ‘Not two hours ago,’ said O’Higgins with smooth complacency. ‘But I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to kill Paddy myself. So there’s another point in Mr Grant’s favour. He has done me a useful service.’

  O’Higgins was one of those who tries to make his mark with a lady by playing the devil. And in this case, more than a little chagrined, I could see how well he was succeeding. Madame Lachatte’s eyes were transfixed on Jack Fingers, and they were shining.

  ‘I doubt Grant will throw in his hand with you,’ I said. ‘You have beaten him and put him to the torture. He will hardly believe you are sincere.’

  ‘The torture!’ whispered Madame Lachatte in something like a rapture. ‘Can this be true?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true, I regret to say, but necessary,’ said O’Higgins. ‘As to his joining up, I can be very persuasive. Would you be kind enough to convey my invitation when you see him next, Mr Cragg, to join me in infamy?’

  The door that connected to the house opened again and this time Captain Brown entered. I had not seen him all evening, and he had evidently come in late, only to hear of the events that had happened in the meantime. He looked aghast at them.

  ‘I am very concerned, Mr Cragg,’ he said. ‘We move out in only a few hours, and I cannot possibly leave the Marquis behind. Will he be fit to travel?’

  ‘You must ask Doctor Fidelis. He is confident of saving the Marquis’s life, at all events.’

  ‘Thank God for that. But he must be fit to travel.’

  ‘They are in the dining room,’ I said. ‘You must go and see for yourself.’

  It was past one o’clock and the visiting rebel officers began one by one to excuse themselves, hoping to get three or four hours’ sleep at their billets prior to the muster, which was to be an hour before dawn.

  One of these was the man who had been watching over the Cheshire Turpin, with Joe and Stumpy, in my business room. Madame Lachatte had reluctantly said her own goodnights half an hour before, and now the soldier, too, said he must get so
me rest. I thanked him for his service and he went away, leaving me alone with the three criminals.

  ‘It’s time for a decision, Cragg,’ said O’Higgins. ‘What to do with us? That is the question.’

  ‘And I’ve decided it,’ I said. ‘I’m going to let you go your ways.’

  ‘That is courteous of you,’ said O’Higgins, with a raising of his eyebrows. ‘It is the act of a gentleman.’

  ‘It is not meant to be. The plain truth is the times are so disjointed that I have no means of detaining you. Our Sergeant, whom I would normally call out, was this afternoon lying imprisoned in a cell below the White Bull Inn, drunk as a stickleback in a brandy flask. I doubt they have released him, or that they will before they march away. Everyone holding judicial office in Preston has run from the rebels like rats from a burning barn. Therefore, you get the benefit.’

  ‘Are you not interested in the great sum promised as a reward for my capture?’

  ‘Let’s say I already have it, in golden guineas. This is the price you pay for your freedom, O’Higgins, and I trust you are glad to pay that price and will banish that bag of money from your mind.’

  ‘I have done so, I assure you,’ he said.

  ‘Then come this way, if you please.’

  I led the trio into the deserted outer office and unlocked the street door.

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said, pulling it open and letting in a gust of freezing wind and powdery snow. ‘In some ways it has been a pleasure, and in others not.’

  ‘It has been interesting, at all events,’ said O’Higgins. ‘I hope our paths cross again. Goodnight.’

  And, with a tip of his hat and bared teeth in face of the weather, he was gone. Stamping down the steps after him went his acolyte Stumpy, with Joe going after. Unless, of course, it was Joe followed by Stumpy.

  I locked up and returned to the house. The patient had been removed to his bed upstairs, and Matty was wiping clean the table, watched by Luke Fidelis and Captain Brown. The two men were in conference.

  ‘I tell you he ought not to travel,’ Fidelis was saying. ‘I have sewed his wounds as finely as I can, but the jerks and bumps of the road—’

  ‘There is no question of leaving him,’ said Brown. ‘The Marquis must not be captured by Cumberland.’

  He lowered his voice.

  ‘We all know – though it is unofficial and not spoken of – that the Marquis is the personal representative of King Louis. His capture would give the government in London something big to brag about. The French king would have to beg to have him returned. He would lose countenance and appear duplicitous and weak.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Fidelis.

  Fidelis had a powerful mind, but it was too straightforward to grasp the political arts.

  ‘Because,’ I broke in, ‘instead of sending an army to give support to this rebellion, he has sent a single man. And that man may be more spy than ambassador. These are things our rulers would publish to the world, holding France in contempt. Is that not right, Captain?’

  Brown nodded.

  ‘Add to that, there must be harm to the Prince’s credit with King Louis. We cannot take the risk.’

  Fidelis shrugged.

  ‘Instead, you take another risk – that the Marquis may die before you reach Carlisle. So be it. As a doctor, I prefer to vindicate my skill and save him; as a man, I think Mrs Cragg may have done the world a service by giving him that wound, and I would dearly like him to live with its consequences. But if you insist on his travelling, I can take no responsibility for his death.’

  He swept off his wig and dropped it into the case, with the rest of the medical equipment.

  ‘I will therefore say goodnight, Captain.’

  Brown bowed to him, and then to me, and went up to his bed.

  At the door, Fidelis said, ‘I must leave poor Bawty here with you, Titus. But I’ll come tomorrow early to look at the Frenchman and bring a salve for the dog’s leg. I have given the Marquis opium, by the way, so he will sleep.’

  I locked the door and stood for a moment in the hall, listening. The house at last was quiet, though I knew Elizabeth was still sitting up in the kitchen. I found her drinking ale, spiced and mulled, with Matty. I accepted a glass myself.

  ‘A Christmas drink,’ I said. ‘There has been so much going on that I had quite forgot the season. And it is my favourite time of the year, I think.’

  Shortly after that we went up to our attic bed and lay down together for the first time in a fortnight.

  ‘Will you tell me how it was?’ I said after we had stared companionably at the ceiling for a while. ‘I mean your suffering, Lizzie. I know it was terrible, but what form did it take?’

  I knew I was being a little importunate, a little pressing. The right thing was probably to let the matter rest for a while, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t wait to have my Lizzie back as she was before. And I was impatient to understand.

  To my surprise, she was willing to talk about it without reserve. She talked as freely, in a way, as she might on the subject of some other woman to whom these things had happened.

  ‘It was like being possessed by a demon,’ she told me. ‘It sat smack down on my spirits with its great sooty arse. It blackened my light; it soured my food and drink. I could do nothing without it being in the way.’

  ‘That was horrible. Have you exorcised it now?’

  ‘It was my intention when I came back to Preston. It was something Father said to me that started me thinking of it. As you know, he never has much to say at the best of times. But like many taciturn people, when he does say something, it is worth attending to.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘This was when we were out walking, just the two of us with the dog. Quite suddenly, he said, without us having led up to it in any way, “You know, lass, the man as can only misuse it should lose it.” He said it in such a way that I felt he was giving me his permission.’

  ‘How were you planning to do it? You couldn’t know you’d get the chance to shoot him.’

  ‘The carving knife,’ she said. ‘I thought I would cut him with the carving knife.’

  To my amazement, though very quietly, Elizabeth laughed, and it was then that I was sure she was my Lizzie again.

  After a few more minutes her breathing settled into a regular pattern, and I knew she was asleep. As I turned to snuff the candle, I saw, on the bedside table, the sheet of paper I had put there after clearing the pockets of my coat. It was the ballad I had bought in Market Place that afternoon.

  I unfolded it, thinking to myself I did not know how the fight between Lord Dancy and Count Blackheart turned out.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  In the first hour after dawn, it stopped snowing, but the swollen clouds looked ready to burst again at the slightest provocation. As the vanguard of the rebel column started along the northern road, these ashen skies were a match for its mood. The martial jubilation, the skirling pipes, the muscular songs had all gone. Sullenly, the soldiers marched away to a lone drumbeat on every fourth step.

  The first arrival of the Pretender in Preston had been greeted with celebrations by his many supporters. There was no corresponding outburst from his enemies now, only a restrained but universal feeling of relief, as with the puncture of a boil. In the last few days, fear of a fight between the rebels and Cumberland had swollen to painful proportions. But now we knew there would be no street fires, no holed roofs and demolished walls, no dead babies. There would no new Battle of Preston in 1745, thank God.

  The withdrawal was still only half accomplished when, at nine o’clock, Luke Fidelis returned to have a look at the Marquis. The wounded man would be leaving us prostrate on a litter, to be loaded on a mule-cart and trundled along behind the army, in company with the ladies’ coaches and the baggage train, taking his chances on the jolting road, trusting to the fastness of Fidelis’s stitches. Before he was carried away, the doctor unpacked the wound and, having repeated his advice that
the Marquis d’Éguilles ought not to travel, said that the closures he’d made last night were holding.

  As Brown’s men were manoeuvring the patient down the stairs and into the street, I wondered why we had not seen Madame Lachatte. Neither Captain Brown nor Elizabeth had seen her. No more had Matty. I sent the girl to look into the lady’s room.

  ‘She’s not there,’ said Matty. ‘I’ve looked in the press and under the bed, just to be sure. She’s gone. Her box is gone an’ all. There’s only this.’

  She handed me a book and I recognized it at once. It was Roxana. Slipping it into my pocket, I walked into the garden to see if the privy was occupied; it was not. There was really nowhere else she might be. She must for some reason have left early, before the rest of the house was awake. I could not imagine why.

  Elizabeth had avoided getting anywhere near the Marquis but was otherwise cheerful. I even heard her singing once or twice – just odd phrases – as she set about changing the beds with Matty and airing the rooms.

  Even the dog Bawty gave reason for optimism. She had a decently cold nose and seemed not to be in pain, except when she tried to stand up and walk. Fidelis, having given Matty instructions for the use of his ointment, said she would be fit enough to return home to him in a few days. The only shadow for me, therefore, was the continued absence of Hector. I wanted my son with me. Elizabeth said he ought to stay with his grandparents until after the Duke of Cumberland and his army had come through.

  ‘If they choose to billet here, as the rebels did, we can do nothing to stop them, and we’ll be all at sixes and sevens again. Best leave the boy where he’s settled for the time being.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘but he must be back for Christmas.’

  At half past nine I walked out to see what was happening. Along the whole length of Friar Gate, a column of soldiers stood waiting to start. Many stamped the ground and hugged themselves against the cold, but they were quiet, like cattle. I strolled across to Lawyer Starkey’s and saw the Prince coming out with a group of officers. They mounted horses and rode away without ceremony to join the column. The Chevalier’s expression was sulky, intransigent, and quite unlike the young man of the world he seemed when we’d spoken just the day before. Nor was he the brave young warrior who had led his men south on foot. He looked more like a mardy boy.