It was not often that Hugh admired other men and her curiosity about Captain Midnight was sharpened.
The village was a stretch of little cottages sitting sideways on to the sea and the Fishing Boat Inn was in the middle of them, at the end of a rough stone pier that jutted into the boiling waves. Moored out beyond the harbour bar, she saw a little cutter. They pushed open the door and found the inn full of smoke and very noisy in spite of the early hour. Men were crowded into the room, sitting at long benches along the walls and drinking out of metal tankards. Hugh and Aylie paused, looking around, and Hugh nudged her, indicating a tall man in a blue coat who was leaning against a wall near the dirty window.
‘That’s him, that’s Captain Midnight.’
His profile was towards them and the first thing that struck her was that even when his face was in repose he seemed to be smiling, for the curving deep lines at the sides of his mouth made him look humorous and amused. His nose had been badly broken at one time for there was a hump on its bridge and it twisted sharply to one side. He was clean shaven and his hair was fair and very curly. From his mouth hung a long, thin black cheroot, the smoke of which curled slowly up to the ceiling. When he turned to see who had arrived, she also noticed that he was wearing golden earrings.
He looked pleased to see Hugh. ‘It’s the gypsy!’ he exclaimed in a strange accent. ‘Come in, gypsy, what have you brought for me tonight?’
His eyes ran over Aylie in an interested way and he smiled at her. ‘You’re a little young to be one of the moonlight boys,’ he said laughingly.
Hugh was delighted at the sensation his wife was making. ‘This isn’t a boy, this is my wife, Aylie,’ he said again, bringing her proudly forward.
Captain Midnight removed his cheroot from his mouth in surprise. ‘A woman smuggler! I thought you were a boy. Forgive me, Madame.’ He took her hand, bending over it in an elegant gesture, and she blushed scarlet, thinking that he was laughing at her but in a way she did not mind, for his dancing eyes made her want to laugh too.
Daniel Fleury, the French smuggler, was famous all down the Northumberland coast. He had been making the trip across the North Sea in his neat little cutter, L’Esperance, for ten years and when he said that he would arrive on a certain day, you could be sure that he would keep his word. He was a magnificent seaman, a daring smuggler and above all a fair dealer, who never attempted to cheat or short sell anyone who dealt with him and so his name was highly respected by everyone who dealt in contraband, either as a buyer or a seller. If brandy came from Captain Midnight, it was good brandy, never watered down or adulterated.
The novelty of dealing with a woman amused him, so when he came to settle up with Hugh, he gave him a good bargain and said, ‘I’ll send a messenger to tell you when I’m coming next time. I like your style, you’re a man after my own heart.’
Aylie beamed with pride and pleasure at the captain’s words and when, seeing her smile, he turned his eyes on her, she blushed again. He made her forget that she was wearing men’s clothes under an overcoat many sizes too big for her. He made her feel like a woman, as fresh and as feminine as if she had been dressed in her finest gown. There was something about the Frenchman that made her want to preen herself and step lightly. Was this a peculiar quality of the French, she wondered? Did her father Blaize have the same effect on her mother? She loved Hugh deeply but he had never allowed himself to flirt with her and he had certainly never openly sighed with love for her or courted her with sweet words, though she did not doubt that his feelings towards her were deep and genuine. When he was moved to emotion it was in private, intense moments and he thought it unmanly to show it outside. Her response to Captain Midnight was not lost on Hugh, whose face darkened.
They left Boulmer at sunset and he rode ahead, imposing a spanking pace on them, cantering up the slopes to the moors and not slackening his pace when he reached them.
Puffing at his side, Abel protested, ‘Hold on, we’re not in a steeplechase, are we? What’s the hurry?’
‘I want to get to the inn. I’m thirsty. Now we’ve just got to deliver the brandy and we’re finished.’ Hugh was surly and sullen-faced. He didn’t speak to Aylie at all.
In misery and confusion she rode behind him. Hugh was jealous. He thought she’d made eyes at the Frenchman. How unjust! It was the first time she had evidence of the jealous streak in her husband’s nature and she regretted having unwittingly provoked him into showing it.
She rode up alongside him and spoke directly. ‘What do you think you’re doing treating me like this? I won’t stand for it. Who do you think I am?’
‘You won’t stand for it!’ He was as furious as she was. ‘I won’t stand for you bobbing and becking to the Frenchman. If that’s what you want you can just get yourself back down to Boulmer and stay there.’
She gasped in anger. ‘So that’s what’s wrong! I thought as much, but I wasn’t doing any such thing. Don’t be a fool, Hugh, speak to me properly. You know I’d never look at anyone but you.’
He glanced at her obliquely but his face was still sullen. ‘We’ll talk about it when we get home, Aylie. I don’t want to discuss it now,’ he said, digging his spurs into the sides of his horse.
She needed every ounce of her energy when they hit the top of the hill called Yealverton Bell and began the long trek over the Cheviots, for the rain turned to sleet that cut through their clothes and made the horses turn their heads aside in pain as its lash cut into their eyes. Abel, at the back of the line, was battling to control his two led horses, who would have turned and dashed back downhill if he had slackened his hold on them. Aylie, in the middle, crouched in her saddle and, whenever one of her charges became restive, muttered Gilbert’s magic words to them. There was no way of knowing if they even heard what she was saying however, because the wind was howling so loudly in her ears that when the riders tried to shout words of encouragement to each other the blast carried the sound over their heads.
Will this journey ever end? Will we be found up here on the hills frozen to death? she asked herself and wondered if Hugh was thinking the same thing. She could just make out his figure, sitting well down on his horse, coat collar turned up round his head, which was bound up like hers, in a woollen scarf.
‘This is a hard way to make money,’ she called out cheerfuliy to him, but he did not turn round and she could not tell if he had heard her. She wished he would forget his jealousy and talk to her.
Their progress was slow against the bitter wind. At times it threatened to blow the horses off their feet, and they had to tack and turn in a twisting route to take its fury on their flanks. She stared into the darkness and admired the way Hugh always knew which direction to take. He had a sort of sixth sense about it and even on the most starless nights, he could unerringly find his way home over unknown territory. He had once said there was a sort of magnet in his brain that told him which way to go.
‘I think the swallows must have the same thing because they always find their way back in the spring,’ he told her.
Nelson was running at the side of the line, head down and tongue lolling. He always liked to keep up with Hugh and his white skin made a marker for her in the darkness.
Their first stop was to be the widow’s lonely inn and Aylie longed to see its pinpoint of light on the horizon, but hours passed without any sign of it. Her mount stumbled many times and once when she was on the verge of falling asleep with sheer exhaustion, it almost threw her into a water-filled ditch. The shock made her gather herself together, call up new resources and battle on. She tried to imagine what they looked like to a deity in the sky – if there was such a thing, for like her mother she was a sceptic – three lonely figures, each riding a horse and leading two others, across a vast expanse of lonely land on the top of the world.
She was half dead with tiredness when they reached a crossroads in the track, a point where the old Roman road crossed a droving road used by smugglers. There was a ford there, swollen now wit
h water from the melting snow, and the place where it was safe to cross was marked by a thicket of scrubby hazel, rowan and hawthorn trees that grew only to a man’s height because of the ferocity of the prevailing winds. They made up for their lack of height by an impenetrable thickness, however, and deep inside their twisted branches sheltered hares and foxes, badgers, voles and frightened birds who peeped out with flashing eyes when the midnight convoys went by.
Hugh’s horse was level with the thicket on the bank of the ford when two shots rang out and Aylie, riding behind him, was startled to full alertness by brilliant orange flashes lighting up the sky. Her husband’s figure seemed to slump in his saddle and the white shape of Nelson flung itself towards the thicket with terrible snarls. Another loud bang rang out, another orange flash illumined the scene and the brave Nelson lay dead on the bank.
Abel, behind Aylie, let out a blood curdling yell. ‘It’s the excise men, the excise men!’ Letting go of his led horses, he wheeled his mount round and made off southwards. Aylie, caught in the middle, was frozen into immobility for a few seconds and in that time the wind fell and she heard Hugh crying out to her, ‘Get away, save yourself. I’ll hold them off.’
He straightened up in the saddle and rode straight into the thicket. As he went, he turned his head again towards her and she noticed that he never used her name. ‘Get away, damn you, get away!’ She dropped the reins of the plunging packhorses which, feeling their freedom, went dashing off in different directions, scattering their loads as they ran. Her own mare was rearing beneath her and she gathered up the reins, dug her heels into its flanks and cleared the ford in one mammoth leap. She galloped up beside Hugh calling, ‘I won’t leave you. I’ll stay.’
Their booted legs were brushing together, the metal stirrups clashing, when he turned his face to her, brandishing his unsheathed knife. ‘If you don’t go I’ll kill you,’ he yelled and she knew that he meant it.
The grey mare proved that her looks did not play her false. With her deep chest and good bones she was capable of outlasting other, more refined-looking horses. Head down, she carried Aylie over the roughest ground on the Border, galloping flat out and taking bogs and ditches in her stride. Once a stone wall loomed before them and the girl gathered the horse together, remembering Gilbert’s advice long ago on the hunting field when he said that the way to face an impossible jump was to ‘throw your heart over to the other side’.
Horse and rider soared into the air and cleared the top by only a couple of inches. Landing on the other side, the gallant mare sank to her knees in a bog but Aylie stayed in the saddle and pulled her back up again. She was in agony from a pain in her side and the mare was staggering on her legs when at last they saw the lights of Meg’s inn.
The widow was waiting, face dimly showing in the candlelit little window overlooking the southern slope of the hill. She ran out to open the stable door for Aylie and without asking questions started to pull down hay bales to reveal another secret stable behind them.
‘Put her in there. I’ll get a scoop of corn and I’ll bring some water for her when she cools down a bit.’
When they were finished tending to the horse, the widow led the exhausted girl into the house. ‘I’ll get you some soup. You’re Hugh’s wife, aren’t you? What’s happened?’
The tears began to fall at last and Aylie told about the ambush at the thicket.
Maggie frowned. ‘How did they know he was crossing there tonight? I never talked about it to anyone and there’s been no smuggling for weeks. Someone must have tipped them off.’
‘And they must have got Hugh or he’d have been here by now. Oh, do you think they’ll kill him?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘No, they’ll not do that. They like to have somebody to haul up in court to prove that they’re doing their jobs. They’ll not kill him if they can help it. I just hope he doesn’t kill any of them.’
‘What do you mean?’ It was a fearful whisper.
‘You said he had a knife. If he kills one of them they’ll hang him.’
Aylie put her hands over her face. ‘Oh my God, I hope he gives himself up.’ But in her heart she knew that was an unlikely prospect.
The widow put her to bed and as the girl undressed both women were horrified to see bloodstains marking her clothes. They stared at each other in consternation and Maggie asked, ‘Are you cut? Did you hurt yourself?’
Aylie shook her head. She knew that, wild though her ride was, it would not make her bleed.
‘I’m pregnant, I think,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, you poor lassie,’ said Maggie, and helped the girl into bed.
In spite of her ministrations, within two hours Aylie miscarried and the older woman carried the minute body away in a bucket.
* * *
The noise of people kicking at the locked and barred front door woke her and she struggled to sit up in bed but sank back on the pillows, overpowered by waves of pain.
In the room beneath she could hear Maggie shouting at the intruders… ‘Who do you think you are? What do you want here?’
Men’s voices rumbled and she caught a few words – ‘two men… smugglers… the gypsy… gone to Jedburgh’.
Then Maggie again, loudly – to warn her, she knew, ‘I haven’t seen anything. Nobody’s been here all night, there’s just me and my serving girl and she’s upstairs in bed. She’s sick.’
Tramp, tramp, tramp came feet up the bare wooden stair and she huddled under the covers in terror. A face looked at her from floor level as a man shoved his head through the trap door that covered the stair well.
‘Get up, lassie, till we have a look at you.’
She replied weakly, ‘I can’t.’
‘Get up.’ His order was more peremptory this time and she threw back the covers to stagger to her feet.
The sight of her bloodstained nightgown made him flinch, and Maggie shouted up, ‘I told you the lassie’s sick. If you want to know, she’s just lost a bairn.’
Embarrassed, the man withdrew his head and she could hear them muttering below. Then the clank of the bucket handle told her that Maggie was giving the men proof of what she said.
For what seemed like hours they searched the stable and rampaged noisily through the innyard. Eventually however they rode off and when they were well gone, Maggie came bustling back up the stairs, red-faced and flustered.
‘They’ve gone away. They didn’t see your horse, it stayed quiet, thank God. That’s a good hiding place.’
‘Were they looking for me?’ asked Aylie.
‘No, they weren’t looking for a woman, though they knew there was three in the gang. Of course they think they’re all men. They wanted you to get out of bed in case you’d somebody in there with you.’
‘Two men, they said they’re looking for two men. Does that mean they’ve got Hugh?’
Maggie looked sad. ‘I’m sorry, yes, they’ve got him. He’s been taken to Jedburgh jail. Abel got away. I hope he’s got the sense to stay out of the way.’
Aylie leaned back against the pillows and let her tears flow. ‘How I wish I could get my hands on whoever it was that told the excise men Hugh was riding out,’ she sobbed through clenched teeth.
‘You’ll find out who that was at his trial, I expect,’ said Maggie.
* * *
Hugh looked like a man in the grip of serious illness. His skin had lost its healthy glow and even his hair hung lank and lifeless. Yet he had only been in the prison cell for five days. What would he look like, she wondered, if he got a long sentence? She dared not think of anything worse than that happening to him.
With Jane she had ridden over in the carter’s waggon to see him and a kind jailer let them into his cell to sit beside him on the wooden bench.
‘What are you going to plead?’ she asked, gently massaging one of his hands in hers. They talked in whispers so that the jailer could not hear what was said.
‘What’s the point? They caught me. It doesn’t matter what I pl
ead. I don’t even know what they’re going to charge me with yet. They say I tried to shoot the excise men.’
Aylie’s heart chilled at this but she controlled her face so that he would not see her fear.
‘But you didn’t have a gun. I know that. They were the only people who fired any shots. I was there and I saw that.’
A glimpse of the old Hugh shone through as he glared at her. ‘Don’t you ever mention that again. I don’t want you involved in this. Awful things would happen to you if they knew you were with us.’
He turned to Jane. ‘Keep your daughter quiet, good wife, promise you’ll make her hold her tongue no matter what happens.’
Jane nodded silently. She was well aware of the consequences for Aylie if the news got out that she had been in the smuggling gang.
Wanting to soothe him, Aylie changed her tack. ‘Will the court sit here?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Nobody tells me anything, I’ve just to wait and see. If it’s here there’s a good chance that Myreheugh’s brother’ll be on the bench and I don’t fancy that. I’m sure it’s them that got me put here in the first place.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Well, I’ve had the time to do a lot of thinking. They were mad at me taking the smuggling trade off them and then that Josey turned up – just at the right time, didn’t he? He stuck around till he knew our route and exactly when we were going and then he vanished – but he didn’t know you were riding out with us and that’s why they’ve left you alone so far. Promise you won’t give anything away. I’d never forgive myself if they got you, Aylie.’
They remanded him in custody and while he was waiting for the circuit judge to come round, Aylie saw him every day because a friend of Gilbert’s who lived in Jedburgh took her into his house.
In the cell they sat talking for hours under the eye of the indulgent town jailer and he said how sorry he was to have allowed his jealousy to take him over. Their love for each other during these few days was so intense that Aylie thought she would die from the pain of it. To spare him, she never mentioned the lost baby and instead they talked only of what would happen when he had served his sentence and they could be together again.
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