‘Mr Palmer!’
‘Mistress Palmer!’
Glaring like dogs with a disputed bone they stopped talking. Their eyes were popping, their mouths shrinking to a small collection of wrinkles, until, first Emma then Pitcher burst into laughter, stepping towards each other to support themselves.
‘Best we leave it until later, Emma, then, if we’re still of a mind to, we’ll persuade Daisy to give the desk to you,’ Pitcher said with his tongue in his cheek. ‘We must have someone there we can completely trust.’
‘To me? I don’t want it! I’ll have far too much to do in the kitchen!’
‘And Arthur and I will be as frantic and speedy as flesh and blood can be without catching fire. In the bar, the cellars, the stables and seeing to the renting of rooms. So?’
‘I can’t stand chattering to you,’ Emma said, backing from the argument and the room. ‘Sort it yourself. Three persons I’d have to be to satisfy you!’
‘Satisfies me well you do, Emma Palmer, and never think different.’ He reached for her and hugged her, while she pretended to escape. The new maid, a shy young girl called Megan, saw them and ran back down the stairs in embarrassment. Grown people behaving in such a way. She’d never thought to see the like!
* * *
Ben Gammon was on his way towards Swansea. An evening mist filled the hollows of the fields and poured into the low-lying lanes shrouding everything and making his journey tedious. There was always someone to share a word with, or something to see and weave into a story for those waiting for him at the inn. But this evening, although it was a long time before the sun would set, it was like riding through a nightmare.
Trees dripping their branches in front of him were unseen until they touched him. The horse was nervy and shied at half revealed bushes and trees. When two men stood out in front of them Ben was almost unseated.
‘That’s very unfriendly, looming up and setting the horse to throw me off in fright. Why, there ain’t a day without I says to myself, this old world is afull of thoughtless and unthinking people!’ He waited, pulling at his mount to steady it and asked, ‘Well, do you want my help? Stranded are you, or lost in this soup of hell’s kitchen?’
The men did not speak and as they stepped closer, Ben saw that their faces were covered with scarves. In their hands they both held a ‘Brown Bess’, long land service muskets used by British soldiers worldwide. The gun had been given the nickname ‘Brown Bess’ owing to the dull brown of the forty-six-inch long barrel which had been treated so as not to gleam and give away the soldier’s position. To Ben’s alarm the guns wavered as if the weight was too much for the arms that held them. Ben shivered as he thought that if the hands also lacked control he would soon be no more than a problem for his wife, her having to find the money to bury him.
Beads of sweat burst through his skin and he tugged at the horse to turn it and escape, but the horse’s head was held and Ben was told to dismount.
‘But that I cannot do. I need my horse to get me to Swansea,’ he protested, believing them to be horse thieves. ‘Spare an old fella from a long walk on such an evening.’
‘You can keep your horse, friend, but hand over your bag.’
‘But it’s letters, being transported in the name of the King!’ As he protested verbally, Ben hurriedly took the bag from his shoulders and handed it to the nearer of the men. The contents were swiftly removed and pages of the notebook torn out, then one of the men slapped the horse’s rump to make him run and they both disappeared into the mist.
Ben listened for a while but there was hardly a sound from the men’s retreating footsteps. He waited for what he guessed was long enough for them to have got well away, then he raised his horn to his mouth and blew.
* * *
Olwen was sitting on the cliffs watching the mist pour down from the hill behind her. It was as if a great jug were tilted allowing the stuff to escape to fall and settle across the sea. She felt the chill of it and ran back to the house. She was wearing a dress of bright, buttercup yellow and over it she wrapped a shawl.
‘Going far?’ Mistress Powell asked, looking up from her knitting.
‘Olwen, fetch some water for me before you go, will you? I’m that tired the bucket would pull me over,’ Enyd complained from the room.
Fingers to her lips, Olwen tiptoed from the house.
She stopped to admire the goat, which came to greet her, its coarse, hairy body quivering under Olwen’s stroking. The sheep was less friendly but it too came to see what was on offer. She admired them both and guiltily thought she ought to go and tell Madoc again of the pleasure the sheep had brought her. It wasn’t far, and at this time of day, with the weather closed in, Vanora would be there. She did not fancy visiting when the brothers were alone.
The cottage looked gloomy when she reached the gate of the field and she almost turned back. The mist was thick here, in the valley where a stream ran through. The building could have been melting, she thought, its edges were already vanishing into the thickening mist. She wondered fancifully if the building was dying with the family it sheltered.
She approached the doorway which, as always, stood half-open. There was no fire, not even a smell of smoke, and from what she could see in the darkness of the cold room, no occupants either. With relief she turned to leave.
She was almost at the gate when she heard voices. They weren’t coming from the house but from the field beyond it and she walked towards the sound, hoping that Vanora was there. Gradually she made out two figures and again she wanted to run. There was something frightening about the ghostly shapes, bending about some unseen task. Then a light flared, and a torch was lit. In its yellow light she saw that Morgan and Madoc, because it could be none but them, were burning some papers.
Her curiosity was greater than her fear and she stepped a little closer. Then she gasped. The paper they were burning consisted of letters, several dozen from what she could see. She turned then and ran back to the gate. As she touched it, footsteps sounded behind her and giving a faint scream of fright, she tried to unfasten the latch. Failing to release it she climbed over and as she swung her leg over, it was caught in the grasp of two strong hands.
‘Morgan, let me go!’ she gasped, kicking out with all her strength. She could hear his panting breath, the short run had weakened him, but the power of his grip was unaffected. She did manage to escape, using her weight to fall from his grasp, but her yellow dress was like a beacon in the mist and he soon caught up with her again. This time Madoc was with him.
‘Madoc! Tell him to let me go!’ she said, trying to sound angry. ‘I only came to see you, and thank you again for the sheep! Where’s Vanora? She won’t see me treated like this! What is the matter that you chase me away like a thief?’
‘I think you had better come back to the house,’ Madoc said sadly. ‘You can’t be allowed to tell what you saw.’
‘I saw nothing, except two ill-mannered people who treat a visitor like an enemy!’ Her protests were ignored and she was made to walk back to the cold, empty house.
Shutting her inside where she leaned on the door and shivered, they discussed their situation in undertones before releasing her and saying, ‘We want you to help us dig a patch of the garden, Olwen.’
‘All right, I’ll come back tomorrow and help you. Perhaps Dan will come as well, strong at digging, Dan is,’ she babbled, but she fell silent when Madoc shook his head.
‘Now, Olwen.’
‘But why?’
‘So the law will believe we have been working all day and not moved from the house. Poor at turning soil we are, and if you do a good piece then Vanora will convince them we have been at it all day.’
‘Hurry.’ Morgan warned. ‘If you don’t help us, then you and Barrass will be blamed for the robbery. Easy it would be for us to put one of the missing letters in his pocket or in his bed. Easy to persuade Daniels you and he are partners.’
For three hours Olwen dug and cleaned the patch the
brothers indicated. Beside her they also worked, but with far less result. Looking at the turned soil through the mist, she could see with ease which had been her work and which theirs. She hoped others wouldn’t see the difference and wonder at it. For Barrass’s sake she must do as they wanted.
The warnings were repeated when she set off at last to go home. She would help them or face the knowledge that Barrass was in prison, and she was responsible for his plight. They made no attempt to hide the fact that they had robbed the Royal Mail, boasting to her about the ease with which they persuaded Ben to hand over the letters.
She was holding back tears with difficulty as she walked home. The threats of the Morgan brothers seemed to fill the air around her, as if they had followed her with their intimidation. She decided that as an extra precaution against Barrass being implicated, she would stay away from him. To be seen together might mean he was accused too if she should be revealed to be an accomplice to the Morgans. Because that was what she had become, she thought with a sob. An accomplice to thieves.
* * *
Ben reached the inn near the sorting office three hours late. Walter, who himself had only woken from an evening nap just before he arrived, walked impatiently to meet him, complaining, threatening, and announcing that if Ben couldn’t find a more reliable mount then he must give way to a younger man who could.
‘It wasn’t the fault of the horse,’ Ben panted, hoping to give the impression he had run all the way. ‘Attacked by gunmen I was and the horse sent away crazed with fright.’
At once a crowd gathered to hear his story. But it wasn’t until he was seated comfortably at one of the tables beneath the tree with a mug of ale in one hand and a brandy in the other, that he began. He told it as he told every incident, setting the scene like an actor, beginning with how the mist came down and enfolded him, persuading his audience to feel as he had felt, the imminent danger in the air.
‘A foreboding of evil,’ he called it. ‘I was helpless when they set upon me,’ he told them. ‘Two big strong men armed with guns materialized out of the fog, and so threatening I was at once afeared for my very life. I tried to fight them off and hold on to the bag, mind, but I couldn’t. Ben Gammon was out-fought there in the fog of a summer’s day with no one to say, “Ho, there, leave that man be or you’ll have me to see to as well!” No, I was alone and although I says to them, think careful what you’re doing to a poor, hard-working, Christian man, they went off with me letters and threw the bag at me without a word.’
Daniels had arrived by the time his story and several drinks were finished and he sent the crowd away and told Ben to begin his story again. ‘This time without any fancy additions. I want to know everything that happened and nothing besides.’
Ben borrowed a horse from the inn and went with Daniels to the spot where the men had been waiting for him. Although the area was now dark as well as misty, Daniels dismounted and bent to search the ground. He found a letter, showed it to Ben and between them in the fading light they read the address as being ‘To William Martin, of Llanelli, to be collected at his convenience’. Daniels shrugged; he had never heard of the man. He looked at the address again and saw that, written small, a few numbers and letters had been added. Frowning, he tucked it into his pocket.
There seemed little he could do until daylight assisted him, but Daniels went back to the inn and talked for a long time to Ben, getting as full a picture of what really happened as possible from such a wildly fanciful storyteller.
The news had travelled fast and the inn was full of those interested in hearing Ben’s story and those who had similar stories of their own to relate. Lowri was sitting with Walter, and Daniels was surprised to see both Annie and Kenneth appear. They beckoned to Walter and Lowri and when they were in a huddle, Kenneth told the Keeper of the Peace quietly, ‘I knew this would happen, see. Using as public a place as an inn leads to too much being known of the workings of the post. Since Pitcher had the letters in his place there have been two lots of letters lost and then found carelessly thrown away, and now this. It should be returned to my house where it belongs!’
‘I doubt if anything Pitcher has said could have resulted in Ben being attacked, Kenneth. It isn’t unknown for carriers of letters to be robbed, why, you yourself were beaten and tied a while back as I remember,’ Daniel reminded him.
Watching silently from a corner, Markus saw a brief but unmistaken glance of understanding pass between Kenneth and Annie Evans. He did not move a muscle but knew that unless he were very stupid, that look meant collusion. Information was passing between the woman who still called herself Annie Evans although shown to be of a different name, and Kenneth, the bitter, ex-letter-carrier of Gower.
Leaving Ben still regaling his audience with details of his adventure, Daniels left the town. He badly wanted to catch the thieves. He needed some successes to support his application for promotion. With Florrie insisting on servants, the increase in salary was urgently required.
He gripped the letter he had found. The numbers and letters on the front of the folded pages were worth an hour’s study. They might lead him to the smugglers as well as the thieves. More fortuitous things had been known. The men had to communicate somehow. Why not by the post? He touched the horse’s side with his polished boots and trotted on.
Next morning, the tall figure of Daniels knocked on the door of the fisherman’s cottage. Stooping as Spider and Dan had to get inside, he sat near the fire and asked Olwen a lot of questions.
‘You see a lot of Morgan and Madoc Morgan?’ he asked.
Olwen nodded, glancing at her mother, her face stiff with fear.
‘Yes, I visit them sometimes.’
‘And walk with Madoc after church?’
‘Yes.’ Olwen’s voice was a whisper.
‘Did you see them yesterday?’
‘Digging their garden they were,’ she replied at once, glad to have the lie spoken and rid of it. Now she was committed to helping them. If she went back on what she said, the Keeper of the Peace would never believe her again.
That evening she lay on her bed listening to the droning complaints of Enyd and the accompanying voice of Dan, through the open windows. She had never been so unhappy. Sent in disgrace from Ddole House through the treachery of Annie Evans, forced by her love for Barrass to protect thieves, and separated from Barrass by the need to protect him. How would she ever return to the happy life she had once enjoyed? She wanted to run away. But that would only add to her misery. There was nothing she could do, only wait in the hope that the bad things would somehow end and better things return.
Chapter Sixteen
Daniels’s first decision after the attack on Ben Gammon and the loss of the letters was to alter the route along which Ben travelled. He sat beside Ben with a map in front of them and they drew out a new course. This was written out and sent to London with a request for the change, but while they waited for approval, Ben used it. Avoiding the area where he was attacked didn’t completely ease his fear of a repeat, but it helped not to pass the actual spot. Daniels felt happier having done at least something towards avoiding another robbery.
The letter he had found at the site of the attack seemed determined not to give up its secrets. Illegally, he kept it and sat for a long time studying the numbers and letters on the corners of the folded pages. 2 A 2, were printed faintly and half hidden by the writing of the address. It was probably nothing. Just an idle scribble while the writer’s mind was elsewhere.
He wished he could discuss it with Florrie, but although she was betrothed to him, he knew regretfully that her loyalties were with the smugglers. Having lived in the village all her life, and probably knowing at least a few of those involved, she was unlikely to change to his way of thinking overnight.
It would take time for him to persuade her to think of the law as an absolute necessity for peace and tranquillity. He imagined a life where no one broke the law except under great emotional strain and knew that it was only
a dream. But a dream he wanted at least to bring closer to the people in his care.
He gave up the letter to Barrass without telling him how long he had kept it, and explained how it had come into his hands.
‘I looked at it for a long time in the hope of learning something.’ he told the letter-carrier. ‘but it remained dumb.’
‘I will keep my ears and eyes alert for anything that might help catch the thieves,’ Barrass promised, aware that the Keeper of the Peace was thinking more about the smugglers than of the armed robbers. When he left Daniels, Barrass went on an unscheduled call to Ddole House. There he discussed the recovered letter with William Ddole for some considerable time before continuing with his deliveries.
* * *
Ben liked the new route. It took him past two isolated alehouses that broke his journey in a pleasant way, and the extra time he took was easily explained.
‘Damn me, there’s a long way I have to travel now,’ he announced. ‘I says to myself, Ben Gammon, you’ll have no seat in your breeches with all the extra riding you’re doing for to get the mail to its destination in safety! And as for my poor horse, well, he thinks I’m daft, going such a way when he can end his journey far sooner following the way he knows, like a cow knows the quickest way home at milking time.’
* * *
Barrass soon allowed the thoughts of the robbery to fade from his mind. Something else began to puzzle him. Olwen was treating him like a leper. For all the years he could remember, Olwen had been there like a shadow attached to his heels. Unavoidable and frequently a nuisance, she had tormented him and caused him to lose the attention of many female admirers. He had always been very fond of her but she had been something of a trial. But now all that had changed and she seemed to dislike him so much she wouldn’t stop for a friendly word.
The Posthorn Inn Page 27
