*
The convoy consisted of one large wagon hauled by a quartet of mud-caked, steaming ponies that slipped and slid alarmingly in the slush. It had snowed during the night, just enough to deposit a shallow white crust, which, in itself, was no cause for anguish, except that the dawn had been mild, and the snow had thawed, and now the road was a cloying quagmire. The driver did his best, snarling and whipping like an angry Bedlamite, but the weary beasts could do little to improve their sluggish pace, and the seven surly firelocks who escorted the vehicle were left to grumble in the roiling miasma that tumbled from the roadside woods. The lone officer was on foot too, though he clung to the shaft of a glinting partisan, employing the butt-end as a walking stick.
Lieutenant Gilbert Amberley silently cursed as he drove the staff hard into the filth with hands numb despite their kidskin sheaths. He cursed the feeble sun, cursed the hills for their evil depths, and cursed Temperance Rathbone, the brewer’s daughter, whose pouting scorn had put him here. A vixen shrieked somewhere distant, making him start. He patted the pistol jutting from his belt, then hauled on the partisan to pep lethargic strides. Be a man, Gilby, she had whispered. Ask for my hand then, and it’ll be freely given. Well God damn her, Amberley thought, as his eyes strained against the never-ending whiteness. No pair of tits was worth this.
It was a haunting place. Forbidding. The chalk hills were smothered in yew, beech and conifer, and the dark bowels of the wood seemed to whisper to him, calling him to his doom. The gully through which they now slogged was known as Gravel Bottom, the low road between the twin humps of Butser and Wardown. Was it a road? Barely, to Amberley’s mind. Admittedly, in many sections of this northward route, the going was not entirely ruined, for quarried chalk, smashed and compacted, made for a robust surface when treated with a layer of flint. However, such stretches of hardy thoroughfare were to be found only in the towns and villages such as the salt road on Hayling Island, the passage through Havant, and patches around Horndean and Buriton. In between, in those great swathes of crop and forest linking village to village, it was nothing more than soil, pounded by heel and hoof, sunken over centuries to carve a discernible scar against the open countryside. This was one such place, a backwater, not far short of twenty miles from the brine pans and harbours of the coast. This was farming country, peasant country, and, Amberley suspected with a new chill; pagan country. England’s deep, unenlightened underbelly, where illiterate folk prayed to demons and sought wisdom from witches and warlocks. He shuddered. By Christ it was a terrifying place. The mist made it infinitely worse.
The forest crackled. Amberley twisted back, peering along the narrow road that snaked into the distance, its breadth a mess of hazardous ruts, gnarled roots and water-filled boot prints. Further back they had noted a small, decrepit cottage. It had appeared to be empty, and he was sorely tempted to scurry back to its dank rooms to wait till the misty blanket had lifted. Yet he knew a detachment of dragoons awaited his unit at Buriton church, and he was so close now that it hardly seemed right to delay.
Above and to the sides, bare, silvered branches protruded through the miasma like huge talons, preparing to drag unwary pilgrims into the murky abyss. Black crows flared suddenly from shrouded perches. Men flinched at the maddened caws. Amberley felt a powerful urge to sketch a cross over his chest, but knew his Puritan-minded charges would lose what little respect they held for him. He prayed silently instead.
And then the music started.
*
There was no breeze, so the chimes needed a helping hand. They were on a bough close to Eustace Grumm, and he snaked his fingers through the hollow shafts of wood, tickling them with a tender caress, letting each swing back and brush the next by sheer momentum. The song was at once gentle and haunting, and exactly what Samson Lyle had asked for. He crouched low and moved through the rotten brown bracken fronds to the edge of the road. He could not yet see the wagon or its guards, but he could hear them clearly now, the voices of the men shredded in their disquiet. The chimes played on and he flashed a smile at Grumm. He stepped onto the road. “Shall we?”
*
Lieutenant Amberley felt a patch of moisture bloom in his breeches. He stepped back, levelling the partisan at the empty road and drawing the pistol with his free hand. He pointed the firearm into the mist, but became aware of his trembling hand and lowered it quickly. The musketeers trudged past the wagon to come up behind him, following his gaze to scrutinise the obscured near-distance.
The imp appeared at that moment. It came from the mist, bolting across the road, from right to left, not twenty paces in front of Amberley. He could have sworn his heart ceased beating in that instant. He backed away by instinct, mouth painfully dry. He knew of witchcraft, had been warned of it from a thousand pulpits, and was acutely aware of its insidious but very real threat. He had once even seen an ancient harridan hanged for souring a neighbour’s milk by way of dark power. But this was the first time he had encountered evil in its rawest form, wickedness in its own realm. The terror was palpable.
It was only when he wandered into the first of his musketeers that Amberley managed to take hold of his fear. The firelocks muttered and whimpered behind, like so many pups scolded by a snarling bitch, and they began to shuffle away, too frightened to proceed, too tense to hightail it into the woods. He was ashamed of the very sight of them.
“Hold!” Amberley ordered. “Keep still! Make ready your weapons!”
One of the firelocks, thick brows furrowed tight beneath the peak of his Montero cap, shook his head rapidly. “What use’ll they be, sir? Leaden bullets against witchery?”
“Enough, man!” Amberley hissed. He put the pistol away and took the partisan in both hands, jabbing it towards the shoaling group. “Do as you are told or find yourselves on a charge!”
“Christ,” the musketeers’ spokesman whimpered, eyes drifting beyond the lieutenant’s shoulder. “Jesus protect us.”
Amberley wrenched himself round. There, in the road, was the imp. It was small, hooded and dark, a living silhouette risen from the forest murk. It stood stock still, tiny claws clasped out in front, and laughed in a tone that was pitched querulously high. Then the white talons parted and objects fell to earth, scattering in the mud. The visage sunk away as quickly as it had appeared, vanishing into the mist from whence it was born. One of the firelocks was praying at Amberley’s back as he summoned the courage to advance a pace, squinting to inspect the macabre seeds that had been sown by the creature.
He saw dolls; tiny figurines, carved from some kind of dried root and clothed in paint. There were four of them, laying pell-mell in the mud, staring sightlessly back at him with beady black specks. He stooped to pick one up, turning to show it to his men.
“King Jesus!” the heavy-browed musketeer began to babble. “King Jesus help us!”
The soldiers were all praying now, and some even crossed themselves. They stumbled backwards, colliding with one another, and with the horses harnessed to the vehicle. One of the horses tried to rear, flailing legs only missing skulls by fractions. Amberley looked down at the doll as the realisation dawned. It was a poppet, a thing of magic, the tool of the witch. He dropped it as though it burnt a hole in his glove, and reeled away, staggering back to his men, some of whom were edging beyond the wagon in thought of desertion.
Fear was giving way to flight. Better the noose of a mutineer than the unknown fate of a man taken by the devil himself. Gilbert Amberley knew he should berate them, for his duty was paramount, and yet he could see the horror in their eyes, hear it from their lips, and shared it in his own tightening breast. He was only snatched from the mind-swirling reverie by the click of the pistol pressed above his ear.
*
“Ground your arms!” Samson Lyle bellowed. He was among the musketeers, so that a small voice might otherwise have sufficed, but cacophony naturally exacerbated terror. “Ground them, I say, or this man shall die!”
“Who the...?” one of the soldiers managed to blurt
.
“My name is Major Lyle.”
“The Ironside Highwayman!” another of the stunned guards exclaimed. They exchanged flickering glances, seemed collectively stricken with guilt, and already the weapons began to shift.
“Put ‘em down, gentlemen,” Lyle warned. He kept the double muzzles firmly poised against his captive’s skull, pressing hard enough to extract a wince, while with the other hand he took the man by a slender elbow, guiding him backwards and out of the soldiers’ reach. “Advise your fellows to ground their arms, sirrah, lest you would ruin this nice coat with a smattering of brains.”
The man was clothed in a suit of grey. The feathers in his hat were the colour of saffron, worn to compliment the scarf that crossed his torso from shoulder to hip. It was Goffe’s scarf, the major-general’s device, and Lyle knew that Celia Hart had proven as veracious as she was voracious.
“The ghoul?” the officer managed to hiss, his body tense but not struggling.
“An associate of mine, of course.”
The officer’s shoulders seemed to sag. “You have fooled me.”
“So it would seem.” Lyle shook the officer gently. “Well?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, during which Lyle prayed his bluff would not be called, and then the man drew a sharp breath. “Lower your muskets, men,” he ordered. “Ground them.”
Lyle watched as the soldiers, albeit grudgingly, did as they were told. He glanced at the razor-tipped partisan. “And drop the twig, there’s a good fellow.”
The man did so through muttered derision. “Major Lyle,” he said scornfully. “You hold no commission.”
“And you are?”
“Lieutenant Amberley. Langstone garrison.” The man’s neck wrenched about so that he could glimpse his enemy. “You are a vile traitor, sirrah.”
“And you, sirrah, are a terrible bore. I have heard the cry of treason more times than I care count.”
“Are you not ashamed, sir? A man of your birth?”
“If shame is what a man must feel for choosing peace over war, then I embrace the sensation gladly.”
“You are an outlaw.”
“In the eyes of General Goffe and Colonel Maddocks,” Lyle said.
“They are the law,” Amberley retorted caustically.
“But ask the common man,” Lyle went on, ignoring the assertion. “See what he has to say on the matter.”
Now Amberley struggled, bucking against Lyle’s grip with startling ferocity, but Lyle held him firm, jabbing again with the pistol’s cold muzzle. All the while he kept the younger man’s body between his own and the disarmed but twitchy musketeers. Eventually Amberley’s fury ebbed, like a broken colt, and he became still, resigned to his fate. Lyle nodded, then, without looking round, roared, “Bella! Eustace! I’d welcome your company, if you please!”
Bella appeared first, coming out of the mist to the south. Her face was masked with a wide kerchief below the eyes, and she led a large, roan mare by its head collar. Harnessed in its wake was a shallow cart set on a high chassis and huge wheels. It was packed to the full with hogsheads. Water slopped from each of the open casks. Lyle had known that the salt wagon would not be easy to turn or pass, so he had stationed Bella at the tumbledown shack that haunted the road further back, a position from which she could access the convoy’s rear, and now she coaxed the doughty beast and its trundling burden all the way up to the lower-slung vehicle.
From the north came Eustace Grumm, grey cloth smothering his white beard. He coaxed two larger horses by reins looped tight about his sharp knuckles. One was a black gelding; his own mount, Tyrannous. The other was an imposing grey stallion, its face marked out by a brilliant white diamond that seemed to glow despite the murk. It was a handsome creature, imperious in its height and musculature, and yet Lyle’s eyes could not help but dwell upon the large patch of mottled pink skin that ruined one of its long flanks. Star had been wounded by an exploding cannon during the wars. The stallion was his oldest companion, and he still felt a pang of culpability for the injury.
Lyle nodded to the old man and stole a glance back at Bella. “At your leisure, Mistress.”
The mask shifted above the girl’s wrinkled nose as she evidently grinned, freckles dancing along the line of cloth, and she went to work, first cutting the ponies loose from their harnesses, and then leaping up onto her high cart like a squirrel dancing a lofty bough. The water had been an easy thing to source, for they had simply shovelled snow into the barrels and let it melt. Now they had a cartload of the deadliest weapon imaginable to a convoy out of Hayling Island’s famous pans, and it took the girl a matter of seconds to unhitch the side of the vehicle adjacent to the piled sacks. She took a few seconds to haul away the oiled coverings. Then she kicked. The first hogshead crashed over the side, toppling into the salt wagon. Its upper surface had been cut away, so that its contents gushed manically over raggedly splintered wood and onto the budging bags, darkening the cloth and saturating everything within.
The driver of the cart, a sickly looking fellow with meaty jowls and rivet-head eyes, remained frozen to his seat. He gave a disconsolate whimper, and shrank down, head and arms thrust between his knees as if he were attempting to burrow his way to safety.
Bella laughed through the kerchief. She placed her boot heel against the next cask, shoving hard, and it toppled too. Again and again she kicked, and even the vessels packed deeper within the cart emptied their bowels as they fell, the torrent coursing over the nailed slats and pouring over the side, a waterfall that drenched and dissolved General Goffe’s precious salt.
It was over in a matter of seconds; the sacks a sagging mound, the salt utterly ruined.
Samson Lyle released Amberley and stepped away. As he moved, he drew his sword with his free hand, using the point to prod gently at the lieutenant, ushering the crestfallen officer back towards his men. Amberley turned, glanced at the blade, and temptation flared in his brown eyes.
Lyle knew the look well enough. He shook his head. “You have heard of Charles Besnard?”
Amberley eyed him warily. “The fencing master?”
“My tutor, Lieutenant.”
Amberley stared again at the sword, though this time it was as if the weapon had become a hissing viper in the highwayman’s grip. His neck convulsed as he swallowed thickly. “I do not fear your bragging, sirrah. I can fight.”
“Then you have my respect,” Lyle said, flashing a grin. “Perhaps one day we shall sing the song of swords. But not today. My work here is complete, and I’ve little wish to see virgin snow tainted red.”
*
It was the driver who changed things. Grumm had brought up the horses for their escape, Lyle had returned Amberley, but still held his pistol level with the cluster of soldiers so that they remained appropriately meek. The driver — a cowering, quivering wreck — had been duly ignored.
His terrified mewing might have been real or fake, it was impossible to tell, but now that he stood tall on the back of the salt wagon, a long, thin dirk poised in one hand and a thrashing, cursing girl dangling from the other, it all seemed academic.
Grumm pulled his pistol, the soldiers gasped, Amberley brandished a tight grin of triumph, and Samson Lyle swore.
“Cut her, m’lord?” the driver called, his voice tremulous, as though the magnitude of his action was only this moment dawning. “Cut her?”
The lieutenant balked. “What? Good God man, no.” Then, stifling the natural slant to chivalry, he skewered Lyle with a narrow stare. “That is to say, not unless Major Lyle prefers stupidity above sense.”
Time was as frozen as the forest. The musketeers gathered up their firearms, checking locks to ensure the flints had not worked loose. Grumm and Lyle were still armed, but now they were hopelessly outgunned. The driver waited, his dirk partly concealed beneath the scarf that hung across Bella’s chin.
Lyle eyed Amberley warily, gauging the younger man’s temper and courage. “The salt is gone, Lieutenant. Wh
at have you to gain?”
“Everything.”
“Oh?”
“An exchange. The girl,” Amberley said, jabbing a finger towards Lyle, “for the Ironside Highwayman.” He stooped briefly to retrieve the partisan. “My reputation dies with the salt. It is rekindled with you.”
“Me for the girl?”
Amberley nodded. “Aye.”
Eustace Grumm inched forward. “Nay.”
“Aye,” Lyle said.
Grumm’s pale eyes widened above the edge of his mask. “Major!”
Amberley nodded, his face taut with triumph. He glanced back to the driver. “You, sirrah. Bring the whelp.”
“Very good, m’lord.” The driver removed the blade just enough to avoid stabbing Bella as he coerced her from the wagon. She knew better than to resist, but the terrified look she threw Lyle was enough to twist his guts.
Snowflakes — like huge white feathers — began to tumble from a sky that was uniform grey. They settled on hats and coats, in the road ruts and on ancient branches. Lieutenant Amberley waved them from his face as he paced carefully backwards, distancing himself from Lyle but never breaking the gaze. He returned to his men, who grumbled for vengeance, and muttered soothing words as though they were a pack of unruly hounds. The driver, hauling the girl by the collar as though she were a stray cat, joined them too, and the group began to move southward along the road.
The outlaws pursued at a distance. “What are you about, Lieutenant?” Lyle called. “You wish an exchange; well let us exchange!”
Amberley turned. “You have three pistol balls aimed at our backs, and your very name cries treachery!” He shook his head. “No, sir! I am duped once, but never twice!” He stretched out the partisan, so that its glittering blade pointed to the bend in the road. “To the cottage, Master Lyle!” he shouted. “I will treat with you there, in good faith!”
*
Gravel Bottom Cottage — though it barely deserved the name — had once, Lyle supposed, been a most welcome sight on the tree-choked and lonely saddle between the rising crests of Butser Hill and Wardown. A marker on the passage through the dangerous belt of high chalk downland that spanned the waists of Hampshire and Sussex. It was still a marker, of course. A place to be expected, to be noted in one’s mind as the miles meandered, but no longer was it a haven. It had been habitable once, at least a generation ago, but now it was a mouldering hovel of crumbling daub and rotten, fractured beams. Its windows were black holes, shutters long since plundered by man or torn by gale, and its thatch blown to the depths of the forest. Through its roof grew the boughs of an adjacent oak, its bare limbs threading the rafters to form a gnarled latticework, as though God Himself could not abide the cottage’s nakedness. The building — erected by man and absorbed by nature — sat back from the road, a silent sentinel, glowering at travellers foolhardy enough to brave the elements and tempt the criminals.
Highwayman- The Complete Campaigns Page 13
