"Slow 'em up, cully, lest I clean your ear with lead!" From the corner of his eye he could see the coachman glance across at him. The thundering pair of bays harnessed out front did not falter. "Rein them in, friend!" he called again. "Do not make me kill you!"
The beasts whinnied as their harnesses pulled taut and, as though the mud had deepened in that instant to suck at the crashing fetlocks, the bays fell to a canter, to a trot, and finally walked to a steam-shrouded halt.
The rider wheeled his mount back to face the coach. It was a splendid thing indeed, like the jewellery box of a giant, half gold, half cornflower blue, the doors draped with patterned curtains of silver and black. He kept the pistol up, steady and level. "Jump down, there's a good fellow."
The driver dropped his reins. A musket lay on the timber platform at his feet, and he cast it a surreptitious glance.
"Do not be a dullard," the rider warned.
The coachman swallowed hard, nodded, and scrambled down to earth. He was a short, plump man, probably in his early forties, with warts on his chin and a syphilitic nose. He snatched off his felt hat to reveal a pate of thinning brownish hair and nodded emphatically. "Don't kill me, sir, I beg you. I've four chil'ens and..."
"Away with you," the rider snapped. The terrified driver needed no further encouragement and bolted into the tree line, vanishing noisily amongst the safety of the undergrowth like a startled fawn. "You inside!" the rider called as he dismounted and strode up to the inert coach. "Out you come, and be sharp about it!"
Nothing moved. The bays whickered nervously as though they discussed their plight with the rider's big grey, but from the coach there came nothing but silence. The rider took a step nearer. "Do not be foolish," he called in a steady tone, "for you will not live to regret the mistake."
The coach swayed like a milkmaid's hips as someone moved inside, huge springs creaking noisily beneath, and he braced himself, one foot in front of the other like a man striding into a gale.
"I am stepping out!" a voice called from within the gilt shell. It rocked more vigorously.
The rider noted the depth of tone. The stentorian edge that made him think of his time with the cavalry. It made his neck prickle. "No weapons! Raise your hands where I may see them, and move slowly!"
"To whom am I speaking?" the voice barked back.
"Lyle!" the rider replied strongly, knowing the revelation could only serve to move matters along more swiftly.
The sticky earth trembled. More hoof beats. Lyle peered past the coach to see the approach of a black gelding and a roan mare. The black was ridden by a man wearing a buff coat that sagged across the shoulders to betray a painfully thin frame beneath. His face was creased deeply with age, fringed by a neat beard of wintry whiteness, and made severe by a long, hooked nose that was bright red at the tip. His neck convulsed in a violent twitch as he waved cheerily. "Shall I take the reins?"
"You'd better," Lyle snapped, irritation bubbling in his veins. "For you've done nought else of use this day."
The old man twitched again and grinned. "The branch wasn't long enough, Major, 'pon my life it was not." He slid down from the saddle and spread his palms. "A miscalculation is all."
"We'll discuss it later," Lyle said. "And cover your ugly face."
The old man flashed an amused sneer and drew a silken scarf up from his collar to envelope his head. A pair of holes had been cut in the material through which his blue eyes gleamed.
"He's right, Samson," the second newcomer said. The face was already masked, and the body clothed in the garments of a man, but her feminine voice seemed to jar against the deeper tones of the others.
Lyle looked up at the diminutive figure who deftly brought her powerful steed to a halt. She was twelve, they reckoned, but she might have been twenty, such was her confident bearing, and he suppressed a smile. "I said later. Now to your business."
She nodded, cocking a long pistol in one smooth, practised motion. "Let's see what's what, then."
"I have placed my pistols inside!" the voice from within the coach announced.
"Let us see you then, sir," Lyle replied.
After a brief pause the curtain at the small door was swept aside and a head poked out into the chill evening air. The man had seen perhaps fifty winters. He had a broad, ruddy face and straight grey hair sprouting from beneath the rim of a wide, feathered hat. His eyes were dark and bright with intelligence, and his lips thin - pressed into a hard line. He ducked back for an instant, a clunk announced the door's catch had been freed, and it swung outward. The man edged out like a rat easing from its hole, a rotund torso and short legs emerging in turn. He wore the attire of a soldier - a suit of oiled buff hide and metal - but one of high rank, for the shapes cut out of his rapier's guard were ostentatiously intricate, and his coat was lined with golden thread.
Lyle sighed. "Stone me for a base rogue if there isn’t a guard for even the smallest carriage these dull days!"
The elderly man who had gone to take the reins of the mud-spattered bays gave a wet-sounding cackle. "As if the roads ain’t safe, Major."
Lyle glanced quickly back at him. "Quite so, Mister Grumm, quite so!" He returned his gaze to the well-upholstered fellow who now stood with his back pressed against one of the coach's big wheels. "But what exactly is he guarding?"
The armoured fellow squared his shoulders and widened his stance, standing like a sentinel before the coach. "I protect a man whose boots you are not fit so much as to lick, sir."
Lyle trained the firearm at his face. "I will decide that, sir. And if I must blast a hole 'twixt your eyeballs to do it then I am ready and willing." He saw the man eye the pistol with interest and twitched the twin muzzles a touch. "She's Dutch. You like her?"
"What manner of weapon is it?"
"A flintlock as you'd know it, sir," Lyle said, "though she has a pair of barrels mounted 'pon an axle pin. So I may choose to shoot each of your stones out in turn, should you give me cause."
"What do you want?" the voice of another man broke the tension. It was slightly muffled, coming from within the vehicle, but not so much that Lyle could mistake the rounded notes of an East Anglian accent. "I say, Walmsley! What does the blackguard want?"
The guard, Walmsley, kept his gaze fixed upon the poised firearm. "He wants you to fear him, sir. This is the infamous Samson Lyle." He spat. "The Ironside Highwayman."
Lyle touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “At your service. Though the name is not something I encourage. A creation of the news sheets, I’m afraid.”
The curtain crumpled suddenly and was thrust aside. Out of the coach stepped a man in simple black breeches and doublet, with a tall buckled hat and tidy falling band collar. To Lyle's eyes he was dressed like a puritan preacher, except that the clothes were stretched so tightly over his corpulent midriff that such an austere vocation seemed unlikely. Besides, Lyle knew from the accent that he had found his man and he inwardly thanked God for it.
"Ah ah ah," Lyle warned as he noticed Walmsley's hand snake to the small of his back. He twitched the pistol in his grip. "What have you hidden there?" The guard's jaw quivered. "Ground arms, my man, or you'll find yourself staring at the clouds."
Slowly Walmsley eased a small pistol from his belt and let it drop to the ground. "I have no more, save my blade."
Lyle nodded. "Try any more tricks, and things will go badly for you.” He winked. “There's a good fellow."
"You are a bastardly gullion, Lyle," Walmsley growled.
Lyle gave a weary sigh. "Bark when you have teeth, sir. For now, mine is the only bite that matters." He looked beyond the soldier to the plainly attired passenger. "Let me see you, sir."
The fat fellow stepped tentatively to the side, though he remained firmly behind his bodyguard. "You know this man, Walmsley?"
"Every military man knows him, sir," Walmsley replied. "A soldier, as was. A good one. A good man, no less. But now?" He shook his head pityingly. "A scoundrel of the very worst kind." Hi
s little eyes examined Lyle, from the tall boots pulled high over his thighs to the crusty buff coat and long cloak that was the dark green of woodland moss. He scrutinised Lyle's face with its broad, clean-shaven chin and thin lips below a long, slightly canted nose. "I had hoped to run into you, Lyle, truth told. There are so many stories."
"All good, one hopes."
Walmsley spluttered derisively. "All ridiculous, judging by the measure I now have of you." He glanced quickly over his shoulder at his soberly presented companion. "The Major. Terror of the highways, scourge of the new regime." He hawked up a gobbet of phlegm, depositing it amongst the churned mud between Lyle's boots. "And yet here you are. A simple brigand."
Lyle cocked the pistol. "And yet I have you, sir." He let his gaze drift beyond the belligerent soldier. "And I have Sir Frederick Mason, do I not?"
The portly man in black seemed to colour at the mention of his name. "How...?"
"Lawyer by trade," Lyle went on. "I have been tracking you, sir. Waiting for you. You are my prey this night."
"Why?" Mason said, finally finding his voice.
"Because you are courtier to the new power in the land. Goffe's adviser and Cromwell's lapdog. A beneficiary of England's misery."
"He is the man," Walmsley cut in defiantly, "who'll drink a toast when he sees you dance from Tyburn Tree."
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Table of Contents
1. Markyate Manor
2. A Toss and a Tumble
3. Diggers’ Dreams
4. Rule of Thumb
5. A Disguise
6. A New Arrival
7. The Stocks
8. Nomansland Common
9. Gloves and Mud
10. Demands and Promises
11. Sticks and Stones
12. Letters and Lies
13. A Hiding Place
14. Truth Will Out
15. Dark Passage
16. Mercenaries’ Gold
17. Jacob Mallinson
18. Ladybird, Ladybird
19. A Death
20. Highway Maid
21. Pistol and Shot
22. A Son’s Duty
23. Farewell
Historical Notes
Extract from Highwayman Ironside by Michael Arnold
Shadow on the Highway Page 20
