The Highwayman's Footsteps

by Nicola Morgan

  There was a slight pause, a silence in which I waited for her to answer. Her answer was not what I expected. In an instant, she flashed her hands upwards, knocking my pistols clear out of my grip, whipping round and grabbing both my wrists before I even had time to exclaim. In another movement she had twisted one of my arms behind my back, forcing it upwards until I almost screamed.

  She held me there for several moments, enough to tell me that she could have held me longer. When she released my arm, I scarcely managed to keep upright. I cannot describe the humiliation I felt at being bettered by a girl. I had wrestled with boys of my age and I knew myself to be strong, yet her wiry strength contained a determination and cunning which I could only wonder at.

  A freshly-killed hare hung by its feet from her belt, its head wrapped in sacking to soak up the blood and prevent it dripping.

  Only as she walked away, turning her back on me as though to prove that she need not fear me, did I see that she still did not walk entirely straight. Her breathing was laboured. She was still in pain – and certainly the more so after her actions – but she was not going to show it.

  Well, I would not show it either. “I brought your horse. He is a fine animal.”

  “Yes,” was all she said at first. Then, as she walked stiffly to the door, discreetly holding her side, she added, “I thank you for bringing him.” She continued out to the byre where the horse stood. Running her hand over his shoulders and down his nose, she examined him thoroughly, before nodding approvingly, finding nothing amiss. “Did you feed him?”

  “I did. Hay and meal.”

  She unfastened the buckle under the saddle and reached up to heft it from his back, but I saw her stifle a gasp. She could not bear its weight.

  Before she had to ask me for help, I moved to do it for her.

  “I can do it!” she snapped.

  “I believe you can. But you should not. You might open your wound again, and if you do that I will have to fetch more remedies, perhaps even an apothecary.” She said nothing to that. “How is your fever?” I asked.

  “It is passing. I am strong. It would take more than a fever to finish me.” But she shivered in the wind which now flung icy rain at our faces. She led the horse through the door into our shelter and I closed it behind us. Taking him over to a far corner, she removed the bridle, and stroked his neck. The horse stood there, unknowing of any human fears or worries. His raw, warm smell was a comfort to me.

  I stoked the fire and soon it crackled and spat, lifting the gloom. Then I made her bed more comfortable and shook out her cloak. “You should rest,” I said, as she watched me. “And dose yourself with physic. And your dressing should be changed.”

  “I do not need your help,” she said, beginning to skin the hare expertly with a knife.

  I was stung by her rudeness and hostility. More than that, I was afraid that in truth she did not need me. It hurt me to confess this, but I needed her company. More, obviously, than she needed mine.

  But I would not show it. I would not stoop so low. I would not stay if I was not wanted.

  I stood up, straightening my back so that I was as tall as I could be. Staring at her for a long moment, I spoke. “You are right – you do not need my help. In that case, I will go. But, if you recollect, you were the one who first stopped me with your pistol.” I stooped to pick up my bag, gathering my few belongings into it, and moved towards the door. Opening it, I simply said, “Farewell,” and left the place.

  I pulled my hat well down onto my head and walked away without looking back. Feeling her eyes burning into me, I desperately willed her to change her mind, to call me to return. I did not know where I was going and life seemed empty, without another human soul with whom to share it.

  I did not know her. I did not even much like her. She made me feel small and foolish. Yet, there was no one other.

  The thought of dying on my own, with no one to know or care, was more than I could bear.

  Yet, bravely now, I walked away. Bravely? I had no choice. Is that bravery? Is it actions which count as bravery, or how you feel inside?

  I did not know. I knew only that what I felt was coldness and misery, and these did not feel in the least like bravery.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Wearily, I trudged away. Perhaps I went slowly because I hoped she would call me back.

  She did not. I continued. Could I put thoughts of her from me? I must.

  Very soon, I heard hoofs ahead of me on the stony road. I stopped to listen. Should I hide? My heart began to beat a little faster. It sounded like one horse only. I was right – he was coming round the corner in the distance. Dark, stepping high, trotting proudly.

  Ridden by a redcoat.

  Although I could not be sure I had anything to fear, the last time I’d seen a mounted redcoat he had died because of me. This one might be searching for me. I did not believe he would know who I was as the soldiers had barely glimpsed me, and I was now wearing a hat and a cloak, which I had not worn when I was at the village. But I could take no chances. I darted into a gap in the hedge and crept around to the other side.

  A few moments later, he trotted past. He did not seem to be searching for anyone. He looked ill, slouching in the saddle, his large body drooping. I saw his face as he passed, noticed the redness about the nose, the half-closed eyes set above fat greasy cheeks, the wet lolling lips. His pigtail was whitened, the flour clotted in the wet air. The boy, Henry, came unwillingly into my mind. I stood and watched the man, uneasy for no reason I could name, except that Bess was alone.

  But Bess had said she did not need me.

  The soldier stopped his horse and slid off. He stumbled, tottered slightly as he walked to the edge of the road and unbuttoned his breeches to pass water. A loud belch reached my ears. He was drunk.

  With some difficulty, he clambered back onto his horse and continued along the road, an ugly dead weight upon his mount. I watched him. I was glad that I did, for I saw him stop at the turning to the hovel where Bess was. I watched him direct his horse into the turning and disappear.

  Goaded by fear now, I ran back in the same direction, thinking only of what he would do if he found Bess. It was well known how drunken soldiers behaved if they found a girl or woman on her own. Bess was strong, but it would not be enough against the full weight of this soldier.

  I reached the turning to see the redcoat sitting on his horse in the middle of the yard. Peering from behind a tree, I could see that the door was shut. Did I see a movement at the unboarded window? I do not know. Perhaps I only thought so as I later tried to piece together the events that followed.

  I do know that the redcoat slid off his horse; that he walked slowly towards the door; that he did not take his pistols from his belt. I remember that he stopped at the door, for a moment, a moment during which I neither moved nor breathed, and that he turned aside. I watched him turn and move away. He did not open it. I do not know why he did not open it, why he walked away, but I am saying only what he did, what I remember.

  But I heard the door creak as it opened.

  And then, as he walked away from the door, as he turned slightly, I remember, in a terrible blur, his chest exploding into a shocking mess. He flew into the air and crumpled instantly to the ground, where he lay like a mangled scarecrow. But scarecrows do not pour bright blood onto the ground.

  I ran towards him. Bess stood in the doorway, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, her eyes wide with something that was not quite fear, or shock, but something more unexpected.

  Later, I would come to know that it was pure hatred.

  “What have you done?” I shouted, looking briefly at the body and then turning away. “What have you done?”

  She stood there, her lips curled back in a strange grimace, without making a sound. Smoke still breathed from the ugly mouth of the gun. “Is he dead?” she said at last.

  “How might he not be dead? And now there will be a price on your head. You did not have to kill h
im! He was walking away. You did not have to! Why? Why did you?” Shock increased my anger.

  Her voice was almost calm, though if you listened carefully you would have heard its tension, tight as the spring on a new musket. “I did have to. Because of what they did. Because I know what they did.” She walked away, dully, back into the hovel.

  I followed her and found her crouched on the floor, her back hunched, breathing hard. I went to her and touched her shoulder then and she did not move. I did not ask her what she meant – there was not time. I knew that we must leave that place. And with all speed. I would discover later what turned her from the calm and reasoning person I had thought she was to the weak and unguarded one I now saw before me. She was crying and she did not even try to hide it.

  “We must go, Bess,” I said. “They will search for him and find him and they will find you here too. We must go. Now.” She let me lead her horse out to her. She watched, with blank expression, while I saddled and bridled him. I had to help her mount, partly because her wound still hurt her, partly because I do not think she knew what she was doing. I told her to wait while I collected our possessions. We did not have much. A bag each, our pistols, some scraps of food, our cloaks, hats. The dead hare I left, skinned and disembowelled – a feast for rats and scavengers.

  Quickly, I glanced around the bothy, making sure we had left nothing behind, and sparing a brief thought for this place where my life had changed once more. What would happen now? How far might I control my fate? Little enough. Little enough.

  Outside again, the icy drizzle falling around us, I swung up behind her and together we trotted away, leaving the soldier’s body. His horse stood over it, patiently, without understanding.

  Bess did not need to tell me the route – I would not make the same mistake again. She said nothing as we travelled, holding the reins loosely in her hands, trusting her horse, and trusting me too.

  Was it her lingering fever that had made her behave thus? She had not needed to kill the soldier. He had done nothing, was walking away. What manner of girl had I become involved with? So unpredictable: one moment laughing, the next scornful; one moment brave and strong, the next unable to control her actions. Could I trust her? Why did I stay with her?

  How could I not?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Later that night she told me her story. And then, everything made sense. Or one sort of sense. An uncommon sense. Now I understood her, and trusted her.

  It was beside the fire in her cottage that she told me. We had arrived as the afternoon gloom drifted into twilight. By now composed, though nearly silent, she had begun to groom and feed the horse, but when I had offered to do it, she had agreed, to my surprise. She had lit some oil lamps and made up the fire, slowly, still in some pain and stopping frequently to take deep breaths. I said nothing about the boy who had used her home and she noticed nothing amiss. I wanted to forget him, though every time I looked at the fire, the table, the mugs of ale she put out, I thought of him and could not help but wonder if he were still alive.

  I had made her let me dress her wound again. That apothecary was skilled, I had to admit, and she was strong – the wound was clean and knitting together well.

  We had then begun to eat and drink, silently still, our faces becoming red in the fire. And then, at last, she had begun to speak, her eyes dark above her pinked cheeks, her voice fatigued by her passing fever. “I thank you for helping me today. I am glad you came back.”

  Although my heart swelled, I chose not to respond. Instead, before the moment disappeared, I risked her anger again by asking what I most wanted to know. “What was your meaning when you said the redcoat had done something? He had done nothing. He was walking away.”

  She answered at once. “I hate the redcoats. Were you a redcoat, I would have killed you when I met you. I have been waiting for the chance to kill one. Today, I had that chance and I took it. He deserved to die. I am more than glad.” Her voice was level but I saw her eyes inflamed with anger and hatred, her mouth tight.

  “Why, Bess? What have the redcoats done?” I knew from the way she spoke that she must have her reasons.

  She was leaning back in her chair. She bent forward now, placed her elbows on the table and stared into her mug of ale before speaking. “I have never told anyone this story before and I do not know if I can. It has been told to me, many times, but I have never had anyone to tell it to.” She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

  And then, she told her story. By the end, I knew why she had killed the redcoat. I believed she would do the same again and I could hardly blame her if she did. It was a tale that would catch and trap even the coldest heart and melt it. She spun me into her life with the words of her story, a story of bravery and love, of heartbreak and fury, of honour and dishonour.

  This was Bess’s story.

  “My father was a highwayman, the best there was. He chose his victims for their wealth and their corruption. He said that stealing from them was like lancing a boil – their money was poisoning them. He kept only what we needed and gave the rest to the poor. I was seven years old when he met his end. But he had already schooled me in horsemanship, and to use a pistol, even to use a sword – he had one fashioned especially for me.

  “You may wonder what my mother said to this: but I never knew my mother. He took me to her several times, at night, but I was too young to remember. When I was some three years old, he stopped taking me, at her insistence. She said she could not bear to see me and yet not have me with her. He continued to visit her and he would tell me how she loved me.

  “My mother had been fourteen years old when I was born. Her father came close to killing her when he discovered that she was to bear a child out of wedlock. He was the landlord of a tavern, nothing more, but he had hoped my mother would marry above her station. When I was born, he took me from her and gave me to a servant. “Take it far away,” he said. “Let me never see it or hear of it again.” The servant gave me to someone who knew where my father was. Folk knew my father and trusted him to take good care of me. They knew he was honourable. He did care for me, with the help of a local woman, and it is that woman who recounted the story of my grandfather’s terrible anger and all that followed. Aggie was her name.

  “It was Aggie whom I was with the night my father died. She kept alive for me the story of his death, and my mother’s too, telling me the tale again and again over the following years. My mother was never wedded, though many tried to woo her. She refused their advances, always making excuses, feigning madness, or illness, or sullenness. Her father, the landlord, did not forgive her for that.

  “Aggie put the pieces of the story together after that terrible night, the night my parents died. Many saw part of what happened, and guessed the rest. Another man died the next day, too, to pay a price for what followed. Or to begin to pay. That man deserved to die.”

  Bess paused now, gathering her strength for the rest of the story. She took a mouthful of ale and set the tankard down slowly. I saw her thin fingers on the handle, tight and white as though no flesh sat between the skin and the bones. I said nothing, waiting for what was to come.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “It was a fierce night when my father left our lodgings for the last time. The equinoctial storms of spring were stripping dead twigs from the trees and a full moon scudded between the clouds. My father was after a prize that night – he had heard that Sir John Sowerby’s coach was taking his ill-gotten wealth to Scarborough. On his way, he rode to see my mother, to snatch a kiss, and, perhaps, to taunt her father with a glimpse of him. He took pleasure from such risks. Aggie was often angry: ‘Think on t’ child,’ she would say. ‘Thou hast a child. Bess’s child.’ And he would tilt my chin towards his face and smile and place a kiss on my forehead before leaping onto his horse and galloping off into the night. And I was never afraid for him. Never.”

  She closed her eyes, as if conjuring up his image.

  “I remember what he wo
re that night. I remember it as if he were standing here now. I remember the fawn-coloured breeches, unwrinkled above his long black boots with their laces up the sides. I remember his velvet coat the colour of wine, at his chin the bunched lace which I had washed myself that morning. I remember how hard I had tried to make it look just so and how vexed I was when one edge would not settle neatly. Everything gleamed, sparkling in the lamplight as he stood inside the door and checked the powder in his pistols.”

  Opening her eyes, Bess touched one of the pistols lying on the table in front of her. I looked at them as she spoke, imagining him as he left her that night.

  “He wore his sword too, as he always did, but I fancied it twinkled more brightly than ever. He saw me watch as the light bounced from the jewels on it and danced over the ceiling and he twisted the hilt to make the light play across my face. His hat was in the French style, the brim turned up and with a cockade of lace at the top. And, as he blew me a kiss, I did not for one moment think that I should not see him again. Aggie worried every time he went after a prize but I knew that he would always return. I thought he was like a god – immortal. He might be away for a day or two, if the redcoats harried him, but he told me never to be afraid and so I was not.

  “I wear his ring around my neck – in a locket, which is the only thing he has from his own mother. She gave it to him in secret when he left home.” She touched a chain beneath her collar and fingered it as she continued.

  “Bess, my mother, was sitting at her casement, waiting for him. He had sent word to her, through those he could trust. To tell her he would come to her. And as she waited, she plaited a dark red love-knot through her long black hair.

  “They were watched. Bess’s sister, Annette, watched, worrying for Bess. Annette knew about the baby which Bess had borne, and remembered how their father had raged. She had seen him hit her sister across the face, until her mouth was bloody and swollen. Annette loved her sister. And so she worried when she heard my father say to her, ‘I’m after a prize tonight. But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light. If there is danger, if they hunt me, then I will come tomorrow night, so look for me by moonlight. Watch for me by moonlight.’”