The miles rolled on. The snow fell. The coach passed through several small villages in the early dark. There was little activity, here and there horses standing in pastures watching their brethren pass and a few villagers out doing whatever labor was essential, which didn’t seem to amount to much. Then the forest closed in on both sides of the road once more. They had come this way from Bristol, it being the central pike northwest and southeast as far as Matthew knew, and this was also the route he’d been taken by Mother Deare to Fell’s village in the first place. But it was far from being familiar, and the covering of white made everything even less so.
How long was it before Matthew felt as if his face had frozen solid and the exertions of the drive began to ache in his bones? He figured he’d been up top close to three hours. Steam curled from the horses’ nostrils. Even with snow on the road, the coach juddered to its joints and swung back and forth with alarming abandon. He had just about reached his limit. Therefore when in the next twenty minutes he saw off to the right a stone cottage with smoke rising from its chimney, a barn and a corral and a neatly-painted sign out front that read Travellers Welcome, he made a decision for resting the horses and getting some hot food, and he began the rather strenuous task of slowing the team and guiding them off the road toward the chosen destination.
The viewslit came open. “What’re you doing?” Julian asked from within; more of a demand for an answer than a question.
“I’m stopping at this inn ahead. I need to get warm, I need food, and I need to do everything that I’ve been holding back for a solid hour. I expect our guests would wish the same.”
Julian paused for only a few seconds. “All right. Agreed. We might be stopping too soon, but I’d care to get a warm cup of ale at least. But we’re not staying here very long.” He slid the viewslit shut, and Matthew said, “Whoa, whoa,” to no avail and felt as if he needed the strength of three Hudson Greathouses to get the damned team to stop in front of the inn.
At last he fought them to a compromise, halting about fifty feet from a snow-laden green awning that hung above the front door. As Matthew performed his last pull on the reins, the door came open and a stout figure bundled up in a gray woolen cap and a brown coat with a fleece-lined collar hurried out to meet them.
“Hi hidy!” called the man in a voice as rough as the weather but sunny with good cheer. “Welcome, all! How many there be?”
“Four,” Julian said as he came out of the coach. He had put his gun out of sight for the sake of not scaring the innkeeper to death. “All cold, hungry and in need of some rest. The horses too. Can you handle them?”
“Cack a bull, what a team!” The man stepped back, hands on his wide hips, to regard the coach as Matthew climbed painfully down from his perch. “I have never seen the like of such a wagon! Too handsome for this road, by a cannon shot! Well, I reckon I can handle them giants and my teeth hope so. Get ’em unhitched and into the barn, feed ’em and let ’em warm up a bit. That suit?”
“Suit,” Matthew said.
“Afternoon, lady,” the man said to Elizabeth, with a polite little bow. “Dark like the stroke a’ midnight, but there you have it.” And then Firebaugh got out, barelegged and wearing the plaid banyan robe. The innkeeper gave a whistle. “Zonders! You’re toggin’ a nightgown in this foulness? And…what got at your face, sir? Highwaymen?”
“He had an accident with a knife,” said Julian.
“Bloody tinshears, that was some accident then! Go on inside, my Greta’ll put the balm to it. I’m Oliver Autrey, by the by.”
“Pleased,” Julian said, but offered no name in return. “We can’t spend more than an hour here, understand?”
“In such a hurry? An hour’ll hardly do for the team!”
“It’ll have to do.” And the way Julian said it, there was no room for disagreement.
“’Gainst my nature as an innkeeper and stablemaster,” said Autrey, “but I’ll do my best with the time. Horses won’t like it, though, goin’ from cold to warm to cold again so—”
Julian had already turned his back on Autrey and was shoving Firebaugh toward the cottage. Matthew followed behind Elizabeth, and he heard Autrey speaking quietly and reassuringly to the horses as they were approached to be unhitched.
They had not stopped at this particular coach inn on the way from Bristol with the Turlentorts, as they had paused for a couple of brief hours at one that Matthew figured was about fifteen miles further to the northwest. For their purpose, the inns were havens to the weary traveller, offering food, drink, and a place to sleep—bed, cot or barn, depending on the size of the establishment. Matthew was glad to be getting in out of the weather, as the wind had picked up strength and the trees in the forest on three sides of the cottage were losing their coats of snow in long white streamers. He had a sudden thought that locked his knees. “The book!” he said, and he was relieved when Julian turned at the door and touched the breast area of Bogen’s cloak, indicating a second buttoned pocket—or pouch in this case—large enough to push the book into.
A green curtain at one of the cottage’s two front windows moved aside, a face peered out, and the door was opened before Julian could reach it. “Come in, come in, and willkommen bei dir!” said the short, rotund woman who stood smiling on the threshold. Matthew thought her language sounded like it must be Prussian, of all things. Well, he wouldn’t begrudge her being Prussian and miss the warmth of a hearth and a hot meal, so long live Prussia. He tramped on in across the stone floor with the others and in the cheerful yellow lamplight the fireplace with its bounty of burning logs was a thing of true beauty, and beautiful too was the fact that the cottage was warm enough so one wouldn’t need to climb into the flames to thaw out.
The fireplace drew an immediate crowd, including Firebaugh who shivered and shook as the warmth chased the chill from his bones.
Greta Autrey closed the door against the wind and had a look at her guests. “Oh mein Sterne!” she gasped, as she saw the doctor’s injuries. “What happened to you, mein herr?”
“An accident,” said Julian. “He’ll recover.”
“Such an accident I never saw before! I have some balm that could ease you, but I’m thinking you need to see a doctor! And in your nightclothes you’re travelling?” Matthew saw the expression on the woman’s seamed and ruddy-cheeked face change in an instant from concern to suspicion. “Was ist das? No one travels in this weather in such clothing!” She backed toward the far wall where a musket sat on a shelf within reach.
“Ma’am,” Matthew said before anything could get out of hand, “this man is our prisoner and we’re taking him to a special prison in Wales.”
Firebaugh gave a half-laugh, half-choke.
“My name is Matthew. My associate Julian and I are constables.”
Now it was Julian who nearly choked.
“We had to take him from a place where he had no chance to change into warmer clothes. Unfortunately he was a bit roughed up in the doing. We intended to find something for him on the way. Perhaps you have something? At least a pair of winter stockings you might sell us?”
“This man is a damnable liar,” Firebaugh suddenly spoke up. “I’m a respected London doctor and these two criminals have kidapped me! Look what they did to my face and my ear! Would constables of the law commit such violence on a person?” He motioned toward the musket. “If that’s loaded and primed, I’d thank you very much if you would—”
“Matthew is telling you the truth,” Elizabeth interrupted. “The man before you is indeed a doctor, but he is also a criminal of the lowest kind and quite cunning. Greta is your name? Well, Greta, I can vouch for these two constables because this doctor committed several murders in the Spitalfields district of London several years ago. One of the victims was my sister, and I am accompanying these men to see that justice is done when the doors slam shut on him in prison.”
It did not
help his case that Firebaugh at that moment gave a crazed laugh.
Greta Autrey stood open-mouthed. She blinked twice but otherwise did not move.
When he was done with his strangled chortling, Firebaugh might have continued to plead his case if he hadn’t felt Julian’s hand clenched to the back of his banyan robe and tugging him very slightly down toward the red-hot center of the flames.
“Tar und Feder mich,” said Greta. She shrugged. “I’m thinking my Oliver better figure this one out, because I am verdutzt!”
“And I am hungry,” Matthew said, glad to get past this little mountain in the road. “We all are, I’m sure. May we impose upon you for at least some soup and a bit of bread?”
“But it’ll have to be fast,” Julian added. “We can only stay an hour at most and the sooner we’re out the better.”
Greta Autrey might be a simple woman who helped run a small coaching inn, and she might be in the twilight of her fifth decade with a cloud of gray hair and a ruddy-cheeked, gap-toothed countenance, but Matthew could tell she was not stupid. This comment from Julian put the mortar to her construction that likely no one of the four was telling the truth. Her eyelids might have drooped to a suspicious half-mast, but what was she to do?
“I have a pot of chicken soup with barley and enough bread for you all to have a slice,” she said. “The pot’s in the kitchen. You can eat at the table in there if you please.”
“Excellent!” said Matthew. “Speaking of pots, if I’m not too indelicate might I ask also if there’s a room with a chamberpot available?”
“Back there.” She motioned toward a hallway. “One chamberpot will have to suit all. And I ask that you use it, take it outside, dump it and clean it with snow. Ja?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“What is this?” Elizabeth suddenly asked.
Matthew and the others turned to see what had caught her interest. She had walked a few steps to the other side of the room, where a small fir tree was planted in a dark green pot of earth. The tree was decorated with small paper roses in the branches and strands of multi-colored beads were wound around and around, giving quite a beautiful effect.
“Oh,” said Greta. “That’s the tannebaum. It’s a custom in the country of my birth to bring a fir tree in and decorate it this time of year. Here you would call it a Christmas tree.”
“A tree in the house?” Elizabeth went on. “How unusual! It’s very pretty, though.”
“I like the good cheer it brings,” said Greta. “Now, if you’d care for some soup? And those who wish to visit the chamberpot may do so as well.” She motioned for them to follow.
Julian drew aside a window curtain to check outside and saw Oliver approaching through the swirl of snow. Matthew observed Firebaugh’s lip curl as the doctor stood beside Elizabeth and regarded the fir tree. “Most ridiculous thing I have ever seen,” he said. “A tree in a house! That’ll never catch on! As equally ridiculous as you taking sides against me with those two. Have you completely lost your senses?”
“You’re simply asking for more injury,” Elizabeth answered quietly, as the kitchen Greta had retired to was not so far distant. “Where could you go, even if you did manage to get away…which you cannot? Bide your time, doctor. That’s all I can say.”
“And this betrayal is because you and Corbett were in the same gang? I’m sure when Samson catches up to us he’ll like to hear that explanation.”
“Not betrayal. Common sense, which you seem to have left with your ear in the snow.”
The door opened and Oliver Autrey entered. “Whew!” he said, stalking past the others to the hearth to warm himself. “A cold night ahead, mark it! Well, the horses are taken care of, so that’s not to worry.” He shrugged off his coat and removed his cap. Matthew thought he was probably a few years older than his wife, and he also was as gap-toothed as the missus. But he had a friendly, heavily-jowled face and from the very front of his liver-spotted scalp there curled a single tuft of white hair like a tiny angel’s wing. He took the measure of Firebaugh’s wounds again. “Trimmin’ your eyebrows and cleanin’ your ears with a blade,” he said with narrowed and serious eyes, “is not the smartest thing to do.”
Greta returned to the room, her face expressionless. “Ollie, they have given me the pferdefedern story. It is best not to ask questions of these people, and whatever they are up to we are not wishing to know. Come along now, the soup’s ready.” She turned away, a stately presence in the little homey cottage.
“What did that word mean?” Matthew asked, and with a lift of his furrowed forehead that made the angel’s wing dance Autrey said, “Horsefeathers.”
Matthew made a trip to the chamberpot room and in obedience to the lady of the manor went out through the cottage’s back door, passed the woodpile and a little toolshed and ventured a distance into the forest before cleaning the thing out with snow. Elizabeth was the next to go out, and Julian waited for her at the back door in spite of her assurance that trying to run away was not on her agenda. Firebaugh was next, and he refused to clean his pot out so Julian took care of both his own and the doctor’s but not without the grim lip that said Firebaugh would pay for the indignity. Coats and hats went up on hooks and it was time to fill bellies.
In the small but well-kept and clean kitchen where another hearth blazed, everyone gathered around a sturdy oak table to partake of the chicken soup and the thick black bread that Matthew reckoned came from a Prussian recipe. Before any eating could commence there was a short period of haggling between Julian and Oliver over the price of their stay, Autrey saying they had never had anyone stop over for a single hour in their whole eight years of working the inn and he didn’t know how to set the charges. Four shillings was agreed upon. As the soup and the bread were going down into hungry gullets and followed by strong hot tea, Greta pulled up a chair beside Firebaugh. From a little green jar she applied a white ointment that smelled of ginger to his wounds. He cried out with renewed anguish but she assured him the ginger root paste would do wonders at healing him up…unless, she added with a quick wink at her husband, he suffered any further accidents on the way to Wales.
“It is up to the prisoner to behave,” said Julian as he got down to the last of his soup and dipped a hunk of bread into it to chew on. “Matthew and I thank you for your hospitality, but it’s past time for us to go.”
“The team won’t be ready,” Oliver said. “Those steeds are strong, but you can drive ’em ’til they’re ruined.”
“They can take it. They’ll have to. Out of pity for this gentleman before you,” and here Julian motioned with his bit of bread down the table at Firebaugh, “do you have a pair of woolen stockings we can buy? It seems he says his legs are cold.”
“I have two pair but none I can sell,” came the reply. “My woolens are hard to come by and expensive to boot.”
Matthew had a thought and realized he should’ve come up with it sooner. “The baggage compartment in the coach,” he said to Julian. “My…um…escort must’ve been carrying a bag or two for the trip. There might be some woolen leggings in there.”
“Your escort? No questions from me!” said Greta, who began to clear away the dishes.
“Please do check the coach!” Firebaugh was nearly begging. “If you want me alive to reach that damn village, for God’s sake show some mercy!”
“No questions from me, either,” said Oliver, who finished the last of his tea with a single slug and left the table. “Bringin’ more wood in,” he told Greta on his way out the back.
“Go take a look,” Julian decided. “Then we’ve got to get back on the road, whether those horses are ready or not.”
Matthew paused to put on the polar bear coat and his gloves, then went out into the cold. The snowy wind hit him in the face so hard he was staggered. At what must’ve been three o’clock in the afternoon the light was a dim gray dusk. Across the roa
d the forest was a mass of dark seen through a fogged lens. Matthew put his head down against the elements, trudged to the coach and opened the baggage doors. He was gratified to find that inside was indeed a brown canvas bag.
He took the bag, closed the doors and started back, and that was when he heard the horse whinny.
He stopped in his tracks.
Had he heard it, or not? The wind was playing tricks, but he thought that the sound had not come from the barn about thirty yards away and behind him; he thought it had come from off to his left where the road curved into the forest.
But no…no, of course it was one of the team in the barn.
The wind was playing tricks, and how could one tell exactly where a sound had come from in this weather?
He was on edge, that was all.
But then from the corner of his left eye…was there a quick movement from tree to tree, just a dark shape moving among dark shapes? He couldn’t tell for sure, and the movement was not repeated. Snow and wind…blowing across his field of vision.
Better to get inside, he thought. Better to go through this bag as fast as possible, and get moving again.
Within the cottage, Matthew opened the bag on a table as the others watched—Firebaugh in particular with expectant hope—and found a number of blouses, two pairs of breeches, a pair of scuffed black boots…and a pair of woolen stockings.
“Thank God!” said Firebaugh, snatching up the stockings, a blouse, a pair of the breeches and the boots. “I’ll try these on right here!” And without further decorum or regard to his hosts he stood before the hearth, threw off his banyan robe to expose his thin nakedness, sat on the floor and pulled on the stockings, which fit well enough. The breeches were problematic in being too large around the waist, and Firebaugh grimaced as he fought his feet into the boots. The blouse went on and fit reasonably well though it flagged around the shoulders, but when Firebaugh stood up the breeches fell to his knees.
“Hmmm,” said Autrey as he and his wife watched this display with amusement. “I’ve got a length of cord might do to hold those breeches up. Extra shillin’ buys it.”
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