Starrbelow

by Christianna Brand

  Aunt Marcia lost no time at all. It proved a little difficult to persuade friends who had been warm enough in the interval before the marriage, but now seemed to shrink from a bride whose own husband apparently thought her not fit company; but, tant mieux, she had tried to compose a house-party of the highest respectability and might now without scruple invite those whose company she herself really preferred. So into the coach with herself and Sir Bertram bundled Dolly Mettle and a new friend, Betty Eustis: and to offset them she had captured Sir Henry Kidd—already much alarmed at the company he found himself committed to and planning to escape from Starrbelow as soon as it proved possible; and the Honourable John Fair—dear ‘Honjohn’ of whom, so many years later, Lady Weyburn was to declare, standing at bay before her persecutors, that in the words of Sir John Marvel, he at least ‘nothing common did, or mean’—in all those memorable scenes! He had been very young in those days, and very green; and dangling a little after Miss Eustis who, despite her appearance to the contrary, was neither young nor green.…

  That, in bringing her aunt down to Starrbelow, Sophia was in any way influenced by the fact that where Aunt Marcia went Prince Anton of Brunswick went too, never, for some reason, entered Lady Corby’s innocent head; and when, too late, some such vague suspicion occured to her, it was easy enough to keep him pinned out of harm’s way, at her side. She could not, after all, know of the Treasure Seekers’ Circle, and its plans to dispose of her.

  So Christine retired to Frome, and though she would not, it seemed, entirely cut off her friend from her love and counsels and continued to ride and drive with her now and again, refused to enter her cousin’s house at Starrbelow or to meet the riff-raff assembled there; nor did the Earl offer entertainment at the Castle. Lord Franks, however, was not so particular—and, indeed, had no cause to be—and a rout was declared in honour of the boon companion and her new boon companions and friends; they must all drive over in a couple of coaches for the ball and stay overnight.… So ‘the county’ was shocked by a new scandal: Lady Weyburn of Starrbelow—queening it in the splendid decaying house where for twenty years no decent woman had set foot, sleeping in a bed where no woman had slept but for one purpose only, since old Lady Franks had died.… And the next day dallying and delaying until dusk set in and not until then chivying her party into their coaches and setting off home, all a little the worse for drink, along the lonely, darkling, hilly Cotswold roads.… Sir Bertram and Lady Corby rode ahead with Mrs. Mettle, Miss Eustis, Prince Anton of Brunswick and Sir Henry Kidd—Prince Anton very sulky, as seemed nowadays his habit, as he skulked about chained like a large, gangling dog to his mistress’s side; Sir Henry morose and unresponsive, bitterly regretting his mistake in accepting for the visit, and longing to be out of it all. Sapphire, in the second coach, was with her three devils—to the scandal and secret jealousy of the other ladies—and had co-opted a fourth in the person of Honjohn, to the particular disgust of Miss Eustis; except that, already—though but a boy, a famous whip—he had insisted on driving and so was out of Sapphire’s immediate way. And on the high moonlit ridge above Frome where the long road rides the sharp back of the Cotswolds, three horsemen appeared from behind a clump of trees and took up their positions, quietly, strung out across the path of the leading coach.

  Your money—or your lives!

  The coach drew up with a clatter of horses’ hooves; Sir Bertram poked out his head at one side and Prince Anton at the other; the coachman called out on a high note of fear, ‘Highwaymen across the road!’ Behind them the second coach lumbered up and stopped: of the three supposed occupants, only one head poked out of that, however, and that a woman’s—nor was there anyone to observe at the moment that she was laughing.

  In a straight line, slowly, the three riders moved forward, masked, cloaked, pistols at the ready. Nobody spoke. As they neared the first coach one man slipped down from the saddle and went to the leader’s head, his pistol pointing steadily up at the driver’s heart; a second rode on to the following coach and out of the shadows a fourth man slipped and gathered the three horses and stood quietly holding them. The third, a man of great height, called out sharply: ‘Remain within! Nobody to leave his place!’ His eyes glittered behind his black mask like diamonds. He dismounted and walked round to the window of the leading coach, pistol cocked. ‘Ladies—your jewels!’

  The ladies, terrified, clung to the three men within, hampering any attempt at rebellion, imploring conciliation. The ornaments they had worn at the party had been collected—by Lady Weyburn’s (somewhat insistent) advice—for easier care and carriage in a single box, Lady Corby’s jewel-case. Mrs. Mettle and Miss Eustis were clamorous for their personal safety. ‘For God’s sake, my lady, never mind the trinkets; hand over the box and be done!’

  Prince Anton struggled violently to be free. ‘Unhand me, Marcia, let me deal vit dis ruffian.…’ Sir Henry, also, beat off restraining hands. The two glittering eyes looked on in amused contempt at the struggling mass penned in the coach; the single eye of the pistol swung a little, this way and that. ‘Come, madame, take your friends’ advice—hand over and be done.’

  Within the coach—confusion; outside, a rattle of commands, voices raised in argument, a sudden silence—a shout of alarm from the highwayman at the horses’ heads. The tall leader swung about a little but did not relax his grip on the pistol. At the opposite side of the coach the door was pulled sharply open. ‘Aunt Marcia, the box—give me the box.’

  ‘Sophia!’

  ‘Hush, he’ll hear you. Quick—give me the jewel-box.… Give me the box I say; I have a plan.…’ She seized the box from under their feet and, turning, flung it away from her, to lie hidden in the long grass beneath the stone wall that closely bordered the road. ‘Now—where is your dressing-case?’

  ‘My dressing-case?’

  ‘Hush, quiet—the dressing-case. Hand over the dressing-case. He’ll think it’s the jewel-box; how should he know differently?…’

  Over their frantic whispering the voice of the third man calling from the hinder coach. ‘A woman.… Crept out by the far side.… Can’t leave the horses’ heads; the coachman has a firearm.…’ You could picture him standing with his back to his leader, his eyes fixed upon the firearm, calling over his shoulder. ‘She’s gone round to the other side of your coach.’

  The tall leader spoke a word to the second man, wheeled his horse and rode round the great black hulk of the coach. Sapphire stood, panting, at the open door, the leather dressing-box in her arms. ‘Ah, madame—I thank you, you do my searching for me!’ He spoke to his fellow in charge of the first coach, and the man left the horses, but warily, keeping his weapon fixed upon the coachman, and sidled round to the door of the coach and took the box from her; the third man also, still covering John Fair who sat perched up on the driving-seat of the rear coach, backed away and joined them. They stood, the four, grouped in the moonlight: two cloaked and masked figures, backs to one another, firearms levelled up at the coachmen, a third between them, very tall, very dark and bright of eye, looking down at the girl in a green velvet cloak, crouched, suddenly uncertain, staring up at him, backed against the carriage door. ‘We leave you then: but before we go, permit me to thank you, madame.’ He added, sotto voce, ‘And to repay an old score,’ made a low bow and a flourish, swooped suddenly, and, catching her in his arms, bent her head violently backwards and, so holding her, pressed his half-open mouth upon hers. She struggled, beating violently at his breast with clenched hands. His fellows, startled, turned upon him. The coachmen, released from the threat of their firearms, gathered up the reins and got their uneasy teams under control; Prince Anton flung open the door and, over her arched body, tried to force the man off her; and, his friends also seizing him by the shoulders and pulling him violently away, Sapphire wrenched herself free, found herself dragged back into the leading coach and the door slammed. Prince Anton had succeeded, the man being held powerless in the grip of his own friends, in tearing the pistol from hi
s grasp and now covering all three with it, backed away from them and round the coach and hurled himself in at the opposite door. The horses, released at last, took to their heels and, urged on by the terrified coachman, fled wildly off, the coach rolling and jolting behind them, down the moonlit road: and Sapphire, half in, half out of the window, snatched the gun from Prince Anton, leaned out yet further and, steadying her arm as deliberately as possible on the sill of the lurching vehicle, fired it point-blank at the highwayman’s heart.

  The fourth man had stood, meanwhile, quietly, holding the three highwaymen’s horses. John Fair leapt down from the following coach. ‘Here, fellow, bring your beasts over here and hang on to my leaders.…’ The groom obeyed, running crab-wise up the road, trailing his string, trit-trotting with nervously tossing heads behind him. John Fair ran over to the little group crouched in the ditch by the side of the road. ‘For God’s sake—is he dead? Has she killed him?’

  Sir Pardo and Red Reddington knelt in the long grass beside the wounded man. ‘She’s winged him: only winged him.… Here, Franks, pull yourself together; you’re not dead yet.…’ They heaved him into a sitting position, packed precious handkerchiefs, linen and lace, around the spurting wound. ‘Can we get him to the coach?’

  The groom dragged the leaders forward, struggling to control the three loose horses besides. ‘Is he bad, sir?’

  ‘Only the shoulder.… Can you steady them, Bates, while we try to get him in?’

  ‘Thank God she’s not killed him,’ said John Fair.

  ‘He asked for what he got—setting about her like that, and she not able to cry out for fear of giving the game away.… Look, he’s coming to,’ said Sir Pardo. He leaned into the coach for a flask of brandy and poured some down the injured man’s throat. ‘Come, my lord, wake up! You’re not dead yet, I say.’

  They got him into the coach at last and he lay back in a corner, his lean, lined face very grey. ‘Better bring him back to the Manor,’ said Squire Reddington, ‘and send for a doctor from there. You can come with us, John, and continue to Starrbelow later, and bring her the news. Pardo, you’ll stay overnight with us at the Manor?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Sir Pardo. He bent and picked up the two boxes lying in the grass by the wall, one where Sapphire had thrown it, the other where he himself had dropped it when Lord Franks fell. ‘You can take back the jewels with you, John—“saved by Lady Weyburn’s resource and courage”! As for La Corby’s cosmetic box—alas, the bold highwaymen, holding us still at pistol-point, have made off with that, thinking it contained the jewels, dragging their wounded comrade with them.’ He could not help laughing, even then, at the success of their plot. ‘’Twas a famous notion, sure, and’ll keep her ladyship out of the way most conveniently, for she’ll not appear without her rouge-pot, that’s certain.…’

  ‘Come on into the coach,’ said Red Reddington, ‘and don’t gabble so much.’ He jerked his head warningly in the direction of the groom. ‘Up on the box, Honjohn, and drive on slowly to the Manor House. Hey, Bates, can you manage those three back to the stables?’

  ‘I managed them here to meet you, sir,’ said Bates a little sulkily, having intercepted the warning nod.

  ‘Do the same home then; and—not a word, Bates, of this evening’s doings: that’s understood?’

  John Fair sat up on the box, quietly and steadily driving the team so that the joltings of the coach should not jerk open the wound, which appeared now to be bleeding less. From within, voices reached him, raised in anger. ‘’Twas your own fault, my lord, setting about her like that.…’

  The answer was inaudible. ‘A joke?’ said Red Reddington. ‘To force yourself on her when she was helpless to resist?’

  ‘Do you call this “helpless to resist”?’ said Lord Franks’ voice, feebly, but raised to defend himself.

  ‘She had no gun when you fell upon her, and couldn’t cry out for fear of giving us away. A mean advantage, I say, to take of a woman—and a friend.’

  ‘And so say I,’ said Sir Pardo.

  ‘She threw wine in my face and I meant but to even the score with her; ’twas by way of a joke. But I confess I a little bit lost my head.… She looked so devilish alluring,’ he said, ruefully laughing, ‘looking up at the “highwayman”, pretending terror, with those great blue eyes. It isn’t often she uses her eyes, but when she does …’ He used an ugly term.

  ‘For that,’ said Reddington, ‘if you were not helpless, I’d knock your teeth in.…’

  Lord Franks laughed his rasping laugh, gritting his teeth on the stab of pain as his shoulder moved. ‘By heaven, you’re very solicitous of the lady’s name—more so by a long way than ever she is herself. Why this fuss about a kiss in public? She’s ready enough with them in private, as you doubtless all know.…’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort,’ said Red, heatedly.

  ‘Do you not?’ said Sir Pardo. ‘That’s not what you’ve said to me, nor what I’ve found myself.’

  ‘Very well then, I unsay it; nor will I hear it spoken of in my presence.…’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Lord Franks, more comfortably, having drawn the argument away from his own misdemeanour, ‘let us not bicker over our conquests or we shall never have done. In this case I set out, light-heartedly enough, to settle a score, and now the lady has resettled it and I wish her no ill for it. I shouldn’t have let those eyes get the better of me and I’ll send her my apologies—with a pair of ruby buckles for her shoes to match the red devil in her blood: our Lady Lucifer, Daughter of Light!’ He pushed aside some protest from Reddington, declaring he’d believe the Wicked Squire was in love at last and would break the heart of every doxy in Gloucestershire, and lighten their purses for the future, by adhering to but one. ‘Offer her buckles yourself, and see if she’ll not take them! For my part, she threw out a hint as we danced last night; and if her stick of a husband isn’t here to give her gew-gaws, who’s he to complain if others do it in his place?… But what a termagant!’ he added, laughing ruefully again. ‘What a spitfire! I’ll swear she shot to kill.…’

  If Sapphire, the first fury of her outraged feelings abated, felt secret alarm as to the outcome of her action, she showed no sign of it. The man, she said, shrugging, had robbed and assaulted her; she had shot him in self-defence. She hustled the ladies to their bedrooms, sent for food and wine and sat down with the two remaining gentlemen in the candle-lit gallery whose windows overlooked the drive down which, twenty-one interminable days ago, Charles Weyburn had ridden away for ever out of her life. ‘But, Sapphire—but my lady—if you haf killed this man.…’

  She leaned back against the tall white marble mantelpiece, a glass in her hand; in the flicker of firelight the tones in her red velvet dress shifted and shone like the tones of the wine in her glass. ‘It’s no crime for a woman to defend her honour. If a man assaults her, it’s no crime for a woman to shoot him.’

  Sir Henry Kidd lifted his head, startled, and looked direct at her. She said, ‘Why do you stare at me, sir?’

  ‘I am waiting,’ he said.

  ‘Waiting? For what?’

  ‘For you to say something, my lady, something more.’

  ‘I say it’s no crime to shoot a man who assails one’s honour; you are waiting for me to—add something more to that?’

  ‘Something very much to the point,’ he said. ‘Something that can hardly have escaped the attention of anyone so—if I may be permitted to say it—so intelligent as your ladyship; something one would have expected to be the first thing that would leap to the mind. But you have not said it, my lady; you have not said that it is no crime to shoot—a highwayman.’

  She stood very still for a moment, the glass glowing like a ruby in her white hand. Then she laughed a little, ruefully. ‘So—that is the worst of dealing with these keen-eyed lawyers!—you have found us out?’

  ‘Do you mean to say, Sapphire,’ cried Prince Anton, forgetting in his agitation to change it to ‘my lady’, ‘that all this thi
ng hass been a deception—a’—he fumbled for the English word—‘a Betrug, a fraud?…’

  ‘A fraud?’ she said, laughing. ‘Pish, nonsense! Let us call it—an escapade.’

  ‘To what purpose?’ said Henry Kidd, steadily.

  ‘To what purpose? Our escapade? Why—for amusement, sir.’

  ‘I see. But, as you have reminded me, I am a lawyer. Is your amusement to cost the ladies upstairs their jewels—and the dressing-box?’

  ‘The jewels lie hidden by the roadside and will be returned.’

  ‘I see,’ he said again. He thought it over for a moment. ‘Yes, I see. But the dressing-box?’

  ‘The dressing-box—why, sir, the dressing-box is now most unfortunately in the possession of the highwaymen.’

  ‘Who, however, were not highwaymen?’

  She looked suddenly a little alarmed. She said, and now he could have sworn she improvised, glancing uneasily at Prince Anton: ‘But who are—are members of a club, you see. A club of—of treasure seekers, Sir Henry, bound by their rules to obtain certain objects, certain not easily obtainable objects.…’

  ‘Such as—Lady Corby’s dressing-box.’

  ‘A lady’s dressing-box; why, yes, you see, one of them, Lord Franks I think it was, was set this object for his attainment—or lose his election to the club. Other members of the club,’ said Sapphire, bravely struggling with extempore, ‘to pledge their best assistance.’ She laughed, eyeing him warily over the rim of the wine-filled glass.