The Duke's Agent

by Rebecca Jenkins

  While scouting behind the lines around Caldas da Rainha that February Captain Jarrett had been careless enough to suffer a direct cut from a French sabre during a skirmish with a party of dragoons. As chance would have it, it had been the Frenchman’s guts that had spilled to join with the Portuguese dust. Captain Jarrett’s men had pulled him from that field alive but his wound had festered. He might have died in the military hospital at Lisbon but that his friend Captain Cocks, on his way back home on family business, finding him lying there in his blood and delirium, had elected to convey his brother officer to London along with some despatches he carried. Jarrett had woken to find himself at Ravensworth. As his strength crept back the countless petty oppressions that accompanied civilised life increasingly weighed on his spirits. By setting up camp in this charming spot he could snatch a breathing space. His valet Tiplady, with his disapproving sniffs and petty rules of propriety, would reappear all too soon to drag him back into the confines of a proper gentleman’s existence.

  Duffin had found a new spot to smoke his pipe just above the bridge. Below, huge fragments of stone were strewn across the breadth of the river as if some giant had thrown down bits of a puzzle in a rage. Between the boulders the water dazzled with rainbow lights in the setting sun. Jarrett came out of the folly carrying two fishing rods and set off down towards the river. He paused to look up and down the stretch of water. He took something out of the bag slung about his waist and began to prepare his line. Duffin ambled over.

  ‘Trout?’ he asked.

  Jarrett gave an affirmative grunt. Gripping his rod under his arm to free one hand, he paused in his task to pass the other rod to the poacher who took it without a word. As the two men disappeared into the summer foliage of the steep bank the countryman’s voice drifted up.

  ‘A mite of feather from a blackbird’s wing caught up with a twist of yella silk round a body of fox ear down – that’s the best of a summer’s night. There’s not a trout tha’s not been tempted by a bit of fox down dressed up right.’

  *

  It was midnight and the stars were vivid in a clear sky. Duffin and Jarrett lay stretched out about a brisk fire. Plump trout were skewered over the flames on a spit contrived out of a musket’s ramrod and two green boughs that steamed and spat in the heat. Duffin chuckled as he gazed into the flickering light, a bottle cradled in his arms.

  ‘Poaching with the Duke’s man,’ he said. The notion clearly gave him great satisfaction. ‘No need to watch for the keeper.’ He laughed again. ‘His face’d be a proper picture.’

  In the shadows beyond the flames Jarrett was sketching. He glanced up to grin briefly in recognition of the joke.

  ‘Not that Dickon Pace’d ever creep up on the likes o’ me.’ Duffin shook his head. ‘Oh, no. Ox-footed bugger.’ His face plainly reflected his low opinion of the Duke’s gamekeeper. ‘’Tis like half a troop of beasts a coming through t’ wood to hear him. Have to be half deaf or daft not to take heed.’ He drank deep to confirm this statement before leaning forward to take a slice of trout on the blade of a wicked looking knife. ‘They’s ready,’ he announced through a mouthful of pink flesh.

  Jarrett put his sketch aside and picked a trout off the fire. He looked preoccupied. ‘Who the devil would take those books!’ he exclaimed in irritation. ‘If only Crotter had disappeared there might have been reason to it, but there he is dead and buried in the church.’

  Duffin was busy extracting fine bones from his mouth with grimy fingers. He watched Jarrett put aside his fish absent-mindedly and pick up the paper again.

  ‘Tha’ making a map?’ he asked.

  ‘A map?’ Jarrett looked up, surprised. ‘Oh, no.’ He glanced at his sketch and then leant across to hand it to the man. ‘It is yours if you like it. Take it – with my compliments.’

  Duffin tilted the paper towards the fire. In the red light he saw a pencil sketch of himself, Ezekiel Duffin, fishing in his long coat on the rocks down by the river. He could make out the very spot. A place they called Friar’s Cast. He was intent on his taut fishing line and Bob was there, plain as day. The dog’s back haunches were half-crouched, and his ears pricked forward, as if he were about to bark. Just as he did that first moment when a fresh caught fish broke through the surface of the water. ‘Tha’s Bob!’ he exclaimed. Then embarrassed by this show of emotion, Duffin reined in his enthusiasm. ‘’Tis like,’ he said shortly. Jarrett could see he was pleased. The poacher folded the paper with great care and stowed it in between layers of coats at his breast. He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with the back of his fingers. Jarrett busied himself with his trout to give Duffin a moment to regain his composure.

  ‘I sees him in the lane.’ Duffin lay back from the flames, his face in shadow. Jarrett was still. The trout was uncomfortably hot and it burnt his fingers. ‘His kind are of the town but he was in the lane after dark. Knew it had to be mischief.’ There was movement in the shadows and the sounds of Duffin fortifying himself from his bottle. ‘I was in t’ wood a-minding me traps and the dog was barking and barking. Then he stopped – all of a sudden.’ Duffin paused. ‘So I went up, didn’t I,’ he said aggressively, as if Jarrett had challenged him. ‘Poxy fool! None of my affair,’ he scolded himself.

  In the darkness Jarrett had put aside his uneaten fish. He lay stretched out, his back supported against a stump. His arms were folded across his chest, the shape of his white shirt gleaming in the darkness.

  ‘So I’s goes up to t’ hall, don’t I? Mother was ever a-saying – Ezekiel, you must be shoving your nose into other folks’ business. She weren’t wrong.’ He fell silent, contemplating his mother’s words in the flames.

  ‘What did you see, Duffin?’

  The other man started. He looked bemused. The drink was beginning to take effect.

  ‘At the old manor,’ Jarrett prompted him in a low voice, ‘what did you see there?’

  ‘I looked in window. Into that room. Crotter were asleep by fire and the other varmint was standing and cursing over him, but he never moved. Just slept, peaceful like.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘He went off. It were dark. No moon. And cold, though it were summer. Then he came back a-carrying.’

  ‘What was he carrying? Could it have been the books, the ledgers?’

  ‘Could be.’

  Jarrett tried to recall the details of the oblong room. He remembered the blackened fireplace. ‘Did the man try to burn the books?’ he asked on a flash of inspiration.

  The question appeared to amuse Duffin. ‘He tried. God’s truth. He did try. He was piling up the wood and looking about him for things to make fire burn hot. Even tore down one of them bits o’ cloth a hanging on t’ wall and put that on. Didn’t do him no good. Poxy fool. Leather bound,’ he explained.

  ‘So the books would not burn up?’ asked Jarrett. ‘What did he do with the remains?’

  ‘How would I know? None of my affair. Left him to it.’ Duffin gazed into the fire. He hugged the near empty bottle to his chest as if he were cold. ‘A right bugger, that one.’

  ‘You knew the man, Duffin.’ Jarrett’s words were a statement rather than a question. In the shadows he barely caught Duffin’s nod of assent. ‘Who was the man, Duffin, tell me.’

  The poacher shook his head earnestly. ‘You don’t want to be knowing that. Leave it be.’

  Jarrett leant forward, showing his face in the firelight. ‘Duffin, you and I are old soldiers,’ he coaxed. ‘I can hold my own with the most desperate of characters. A man has a right to know his enemy. If you knew the villain, tell me.’

  The fire had sunk to a reddish glow between them. For a frustrating moment Jarrett thought his companion had drifted off into a drunken stupor.

  ‘The Tallyman. They call him the Tallyman.’

  ‘And how would I know him, this Tallyman?’ Jarrett asked softly. ‘What manner of man is he?’

  Duffin was reluctant to answer so direct a question. He sank down into his coats, as
if drawing away from its demand. At last, he conceded that his companion was not going to be put off.

  ‘Great tall fellow; yella hair; cribbage-faced,’ he growled. ‘Used to be at sea, they say. You’d know if you crossed his path.’

  ‘And who does he serve, this Tallyman?’

  ‘Does mischief for all kinds, so long as they pay.’

  ‘So – for hire, is he?’

  ‘Wouldn’t call him particular in anything save preserving his hide,’ snorted the poacher. ‘Not one to cross, that ’un – a proper shite-fire,’ he added gloomily.

  ‘And where might I find this bell-swagger? There must be a place to seek him if he is a man who hires out.’

  It took Jarrett some persistent coaxing before Duffin would admit to knowledge of any of the Tallyman’s haunts. The rogue clearly had a formidable reputation.

  ‘There’s an alehouse,’ he told Jarrett at last. ‘A house of call for the rivermen down on the water. Innkeeper goes by the name of Lumpin’ Jack.’

  ‘Lumping Jack?’ Jarrett was inclined to think that the poacher was spinning him a yarn, but the man was owlishly in earnest.

  ‘Aye. Lumpin’ Jack – he’s a great lump of a man and his wife’s as big. Tallyman and him are thick. Bad place. You don’t want to be going there after lamps are lit.’

  ‘So the Tallyman can be found at Lumping Jack’s alehouse?’ repeated Jarrett.

  ‘Lumpin’ Jack’ll take messages.’ Duffin was impatient with such innocence of the ways of villains. ‘Tallyman moves about. Never in same place twice. But you don’t want to be going down there!’ Duffin was fierce in his advice. ‘Leave it be. You’ve better things to do than get your throat cut and your carcass slid in water down by the sluice.’

  Jarrett was touched by his concern. ‘Duffin, I will have a care, but I, too, cannot help sticking my nose into curious business. I have a taste for mysteries. I cannot help myself.’

  ‘There’s curiosity and there’s foolishness,’ responded Duffin severely. ‘Men who stays alive know that.’

  It was the dead grey hours before the summer dawn. The acrid wood smoke drifted low over the ground in the chill air. The dog Bob, who had been sleeping by the fire, sat up as Duffin lumbered to his feet. ‘There’s no telling you,’ said the poacher in disgust. ‘I’m off to me snares.’ He gathered his belongings in stately silence, slipping the remains of a cooling trout into his pocket.

  Jarrett was sorry they were parting in such ill humour. ‘Good night,’ he called after him, as Duffin stumped off into the greying darkness. ‘I hope to see you when you pass this way again.’

  The poacher’s stocky outline paused halfway down the bank below the bridge. Duffin’s voice came clear through the pre-dawn stillness. ‘The house goes under the sign of the Three Pots,’ it said. ‘And you’ll see me again – if you live,’ he ended lugubriously.

  The pale pre-dawn light was filtering through the windows as Jarrett returned to the folly. He lit the fire and blew out the remains of a single candle that guttered on the table, then slung his crumpled coat over a chair. The motion recalled the disapproving features of the valet he had left behind in Yorkshire.

  ‘Why, Master Jarrett, Mr Tiplady would never forgive you treating a good coat like that,’ he mocked himself aloud. He took up the garment to brush it half-heartedly. A paper, dislodged from an inner pocket, tumbled to the floor. It was a torn part of a sheet he had gathered from Crotter’s library and overlooked. It seemed to be part of a document written in some sort of legal language. From his recollection of the Latin drilled into him at school, one or two of the legal phrases did not quite ring true.

  He opened the double window-doors and stepped out on to the balcony to examine the smudged paper. Amid the wherebys and whereofs it appeared to be a portion of an alehouse licence for a place called the Moorcock, at Fiddler’s Croft. There was a tenant farm of the Duke’s that went by that name if he was not mistaken. The signature on the bottom of the paper was partially torn off but Jarrett could make out the letters and words: ‘-tter, agent to the D-.’

  ‘By what right were you granting alehouse licences, Mr Crotter? You were no magistrate,’ Jarrett said softly. ‘And I wonder how much you were getting by it?’ he mused. Above, the last stars flickered, as elusive as time. They offered him no answer.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Duke of Penrith, old and ailing over the last few years, had not kept abreast of his affairs as he should. Jarrett wasted a few moments cursing himself for setting off so hurriedly on this adventure. He had been so restless, so eager to be off doing something, that he had departed without adequate preparation. His Grace had been in one of his choicest vacillating and complaining moods, and Jarrett had found it so impossible to keep his temper with him in that condition that he had taken the first excuse to get away. It was too late to turn back now. He would have to make do. Among the few papers the Duke had managed to scrape together Jarrett traced the hill farm called Fiddler’s Croft. It lay a few miles up the dale from Woolbridge in an isolated spot. It was one of the new farms brought into existence by the Enclosure Acts of the last generation. In the list written out in a spidery black hand the tenant was given as one Samuel Gibbs, a sheep-farmer who laid the occasional crop of oats.

  The new day dawned bright and clear as Jarrett set off on Walcheren following the broad track that wound up the dale. As he should have anticipated, the Duke’s maps were old and the distances imperfectly surveyed, but by midmorning he came within sight of a clump of buildings that formed Fiddler’s Croft. According to the recent steward’s returns – the unfortunate Mr Crotter’s – Samuel Gibbs was a model tenant. He had been granted a rent rebate in the previous year for improvements which included a fine new stone barn, and likewise a sheepfold. As with all the Duke’s leases, the tenant had agreed to plant six oak, ash and alder trees for ‘the better maintaining of the house, hedges etc. in sufficient and tenantable repair’ for every year of his eighteen-year tenancy. On paper Mr Gibbs was an exemplary tenant. Plain sight told a different story.

  The farm Jarrett surveyed from the furrowed track had fallen on evil times. There was not a tree or sapling to be seen in the bowl of fell that lay below him; nor was there any sign of a fine new barn. There was a sheepfold of sorts. A piece of dry stone walling began bravely enough but petered out in a pile of stone before it had even turned one corner, as if the builder had lost interest in the project. He had finished the enclosure by cobbling together a rough fence of pickets. Looking about him, Jarrett could see no immediate purpose for it. There was but one lone sheep in sight, and that stood so far off as to be scarcely distinguishable. If anyone here dealt in sheep, Jarrett thought, the animals would be unlikely to be their own property.

  A dishevelled house stood amid this clutter. A few hens scrabbled about the midden heap before the door and a gaunt pony, harnessed to a gig, waited in the yard. There was no other sign of movement or human presence at the height of this summer’s morning. On the track leading to the farm stood a gibbet on which a sign hung, shifting in the breeze. Jarrett reached into his saddle bag and fetched out a neat telescope. Its magnifying power brought the sign into focus. Through cracked layers of brown varnish he could just make out the outline of a plump game bird. The Moorcock.

  Jarrett dismounted and unrolled a battered greatcoat from behind his saddle. He shrouded himself in this disreputable garment, turning up the heavy collar to shadow his face. It draped about him with all the familiar comfort of an old friend that had seen him through many a long march. Picking up a handful of dirt he rubbed a little on his face to remedy the excessive cleanliness of his appearance and rubbed a little more on his boots. He took out his pistols, loaded them and stuck them in the deep pockets of his greatcoat. Ruffling his hair with a quick hand, Jarrett remounted and rode boldly down towards the Moorcock.

  He flung open the slatted door and stepped in. The light that filtered through the tiny windows was supplemented by a meagre oil lamp. The greas
e in the lamp and the dung burning in the hearth contributed their foul qualities to the airlessness of the low-ceilinged room. The nook to the side of the cavernous hearth was occupied by an ill-favoured man who was laid out like a corpse, head tilted back and hands folded across his stomach. His chest moved as resonant snores bubbled out through his slack mouth. Three men were grouped around a table, a domino game set before them among a clutter of pots and spilled ale. Another man, thickset, with arms like slabs of beef, balanced on a chair tipped up against the wall watching the game.

  The thickset man’s legs hit the floor with a sturdy thud. He set his meaty forearms on his thighs ready to spring up and confront the intruder. He was a man accustomed to his bulk gaining him respect. He weighed up the stranger and decided he had no need to get up as yet.

  ‘What?’ he demanded. He had a low forehead and dull eyes.

  The three disreputable-looking characters around the table leant back from their game, as if marginally interested in the action. The newcomer was not particularly broad or tall, but he had a lean, spare look that might mean trouble.

  He did not flinch or falter at this greeting. He surveyed the room blankly, strode to an unoccupied table, sat on a chair with his back to the wall and laid a pistol on the tabletop under his hand.

  ‘You sell ale here, Beggar-maker, or is that sign a picture of your ma?’

  Jarrett’s voice had changed. He congratulated himself on a creditable imitation of a rogue who had once served under him when he was a young lieutenant – Long Tom, the hardest man in the division (but the sweetest singer you could wish to hear, when he was well oiled).