The Accidental Highwayman

by Ben Tripp

  “Sorry we couldn’t help you on the bridge, Squire,” said Willum. “But you told us not to interfere with you any more.”

  “You might at least have come to her aid,” said I, indignantly.

  “The flowing water makes us weak. We have no magic on rivers,” Willum said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “But what of puddles and things? What about rain?”

  “Flowing water, dunce,” Willum clarified. “In waterways.”

  “I also forbade their interference,” the princess said. “It would be of little use to disguise myself if my servants revealed themselves, would it not?”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Gruntle ventured, in a timid voice. “You said we wasn’t servants no longer.”

  “Gruntle, you blister-pated newt, show some respect,” Willum hissed, nudging his companion.

  But the princess turned to the wee flying men and inclined her head, revealing a slender neck along which curled a few stray locks. “Gruntle is correct. Forgive me,” she said. “It is the habit of a long lifetime.”

  “She gave us our freedom, she did,” Gruntle said, addressing me. “And then she tole us it was never hers to give, but ours all the time. We’re in amongst deep waters, Master Bristol.”

  By this time I was on my feet again, if a trifle unsteadily. The princess held out the purse and bid me take it.

  “I cannot,” I said. “That’s my poor master’s price, not mine.”

  “Thou need’st not be sentimental,” she said. “This is a purse of plenty. Merely reach into it and draw out whatever sum you require, as long as thou shalt live.”

  I laughed aloud. “At the rate I’m going, your Royal Highness, I won’t live long enough to get the price of a button from it. No, you keep your purse of plenty, and the best of luck with it.”

  “I cannot compel thee?” she asked once more, fixing me with a peculiar, urgent kind of look. Her eyes were the color of spring leaves, greener than the greenest eyes I’d seen before, and flecked with darkness like small sorrows.

  “No,” said I.

  I wasn’t trying to be chivalrous, you understand. Money was the farthest thing from my mind, that was all. And it seemed a filthy thing to take a price settled upon by a dead man. In fact, I felt there was something contemptible in the very offer of it.

  But as soon as I’d refused the purse this last time, the princess closed her hand as if crumpling a piece of paper, then opened it, and the little bag was gone. Willum and Gruntle clapped like spectators at a match of jeu de paume.*

  “In your stories about us,” she said, “our people are always full of tricks and tests. That much is true, and I’m no different: The price of magic is trust. Hadst thou taken the purse, we would have vanished, and you’d be alone with a fortune in thy pocket. That’s what has always happened before; you full-bred humans are a greedy lot. Now I confess I know not what to do.”

  I didn’t know what to do, either. “I was thinking about fleeing to France,” I said.

  “Ireland is a free Faerie state; can I but reach its shores, my king has no claim upon me, but I am exiled,” she said, and looked very unhappy.

  “You’ve run away from your father,” I replied, trying to sound encouraging. “If he’s anything like he sounds, what with the goblings and so forth, I’d put as much distance between us as I could. If I were you, that is. Or me, for that matter. Which I am.” I was babbling. She had that effect.

  The princess shook her head, and the feyín did likewise, drooping their wings. “Even Ireland may yet fall to his legions. There’s no safety in all the First Realm whilst my father is upon the throne, and it’s worse in the Middle Kingdom.”

  “What about the other one? The Elden Kingdom?”

  “The Realm Beyond? There is no safety for anyone there.”

  They feyín shivered at the very thought, rattling their wings.

  I felt a tremendous need to get a grasp on the larger picture in my mind. We all had urgent reasons to be on our ways, but until I understood what I’d gotten into, I could scarcely string two coherent thoughts together. I’d need my wits if I were to avoid Captain Sterne and begin a new life elsewhere.

  “Pray believe I doubt not your father’s greatness,” said I, “but there is an aspect to this situation which I cannot understand. Here stands Britain: Her greatest city is London, with close to three-quarters of a million inhabitants; I’m from her second-largest city, Bristol, whence my name. Her citizens have plunged to the bottom of the sea in a diving bell, harnessed the power of steam to mighty engines, captured electricity in a jar, and revolutionized weaving; we produce more woolen cloth, better iron, and finer beer than any other nation in the world.”

  Here I drew breath; the others were regarding me with either bemusement or amusement, I could not tell which. So I continued, “The British Empire stretches from the American colonies to Bengal, and she rules the seas of the world with two hundred naval ships, over eighty of which are ships of the line, bearing some five thousand cannon and forty thousand crew aboard. Her forces at arms extend to another hundred thousand men—several dozen of whom are in pursuit of myself—and I cannot imagine why such an empire would require the services of a crowd of wee magical folk who specialize in making their bottoms blink like semaphores.”

  There was a moment of silence while the others waited to see if I had finished my inventory. They didn’t appear particularly impressed. I was about to mention our improved blast-furnace technology when Princess Morgana raised her hand in a gentle bid for pause.

  “Here, too, stands Britain,” said she. “The average span of life is one score and ten years, and half of her citizens are beneath the age of twenty. Inclosure acts are consolidating land holdings into the hands of the gentry, driving her peasants into the cities, where poverty is rampant and wages low, a crisis that will only get worse as industrialization replaces local agrarian culture. The empire’s overseas holdings are largely beholden to such entities as the British East India Company, whereby the strength of a nation is bent to the advantage of an incorporation; in the meantime, thine empire has just endured the Jacobite Rebellion and war with Spain; she is presently at war with France and the native peoples in the American colonies, as well as with France and India in Hyderabad, and her grip on the Caribbean relies upon human slavery. In addition, everyone smelleth of horses and tobacco smoke, and thine king was born in Germany.”

  With effort I drew my eyebrows down out of my hairline. “You seem to have an extensive grasp of world affairs,” I croaked.

  The princess brushed my remark aside with her hand. “I know not the first thing about daily life in the manling world, but ask me any question about politics. One doth not sit at my father’s court for half a century without learning a thing or two.”

  Half a century? She could not have been more than eighteen years old.

  “So in fact it would be rather a great advantage to have your magic at our nation’s disposal,” I concluded.

  “’Tis so,” said she, “and my kingly father bethinks his advantage lieth in cannon-shot and coke-fueled engines. So must I marry the human king’s grandson and hasten the union of our worlds, or flee.”

  A gloomy silence fell upon the barn. Dust swirled in shafts of sunlight much as my own thoughts churned between light and dark. It seemed to me that the Faerie rebellion wasn’t off to a very good start.

  “Right,” I said. “Well. If nobody else has a plan, I have a suggestion.”

  I went to the straw where I’d concealed Whistling Jack’s equipment, and from the dusty redingote retrieved my master’s will. I spread the document on a cask-head and the others gathered around it, the feyín perched atop the cask itself.

  “Before he perished,” said I, “my master sketched this map. I don’t understand it entirely, but this doesn’t seem to be a map of places so much as a map of time. Here’s an owl in a tree; there I met your coach. Here’s a bull with a crown; there I met you. Each
of these little drawings happens somewhere along this line. So if we follow it, it seems to me we might meet with what’s next to be done. Which appears to be a frog.”

  “’E’s clever,” Gruntle remarked.

  “How came your master by this?” Princess Morgana said. “Only a scrying stone could tell him of what was to come.”

  “Magda has one of those,” I cried. “Dreadful thing in her eye socket.”

  “She didn’t tell me this. I haven’t seen her in many years,” the princess said. “She was my nursemaid when I was a child. It’s been two score years at least; we have sent many a bee back and forth, but never met since her exile. If Magda has a scrying stone, she’s been to the Realm Beyond, and knew what she was about when she told your master of these things.”

  “But then surely she knew my master must die,” I said, horrified.

  “Manlings die like mayflies, scarce knowing the sun,” said the princess. “A quote from the Book of Songs.”

  I began to understand something: These people didn’t adhere to the human schedule. If, as she had remarked earlier, it had been fifty years since she was an infant, and she looked about ten-and-seven now, then she was all but immortal, as far as I was concerned. There was something chilly and ruthless about her way of saying these things; I wondered if that was the true measure of her after all.

  “That’s comforting,” I mumbled. “Anyhow, back to the map: the next sketch shows—” And then I realized I didn’t know what the next sketch was. “What is that?”

  The others leaned close. The princess was so near I could smell her: It was a strange scent, like the air after a rain, or snow melting on a warm day. Pleasant, but not altogether human. I observed the tips of her ears came to distinct points that swept back away from her face.

  “’Tis the gobling crest,” she said.

  Gruntle made frightened noises, and Willum explained, “The King has three legions, called ‘Above, Upon, and Below.’ That’s their relationship to the earth, you understand. Our cousins the pixies patrol the air, the goblings guard the surface, and the trolls are underground. In great emergencies the goblings take all three.”

  “So you can’t tunnel your way out of the country,” I said, hoping to amuse them.

  “We tried that,” Gruntle said. “My nuncle got et by a mole.”

  Chapter 12

  A PARTING OF WAYS

  MIDNIGHT HADN’T been properly groomed since the beginning of our adventures, so I spent a while rubbing him down with straw, cleaning his hooves, and attending to his tack. Then I transferred the contents of my master’s pockets to my own, including the heavy stock of gold, and buried his criminal costume beneath the straw. I kept only the hat and boots, for the hat was of a common type, and the boots were too good to give up. Later I would discover they were too good to keep.

  While I worked, Princess Morgana occupied herself at the far end of the barn, whispering through a crack in the wall; it seemed there was someone on the other side, or else she was speaking to a person within, concealed from my sight. An uncommon number of bees flew in and out of the place; I thought there must be a hive in the eaves. I heard small voices, but only in fragments, as one might hear choirboys trying valiantly to be quiet before a hymn.

  My mind was all in a kippage.* We each had pressing problems, but literally worlds apart: I was in danger of apprehension by a vindictive officer who saw enemies in every face and suspicion in my boots. The princess was in danger of apprehension by magical henchmen and marriage to the prince regent. Her so-called rebel forces had rescued me from destruction more than once; I had rescued her almost as often. Had I taken the magical purse, we would never have met again. Because I had refused it, we were still thrown together. But there wasn’t any mutual business left between us. I resolved to do the decent thing and wish her farewell, then be on my way. Wherever that was.

  Midnight, much refreshed, attempted to eat the ribbon in my hair, and I thought it well to get him out-of-doors for some exercise, as he was prone to mischief when bored. So I inquired politely if Princess Morgana was prepared to take to the road.

  “Go when thou wilt,” said she.

  “Allow me to escort you away from this turbulent town,” I suggested. “There is a crossing a short march to the west, and there we may part. As friends, I hope.”

  “France lies in the other direction,” she said. “Thou needst not turn away from your path on my account, for I will disguise myself in some manner as thou hast seen, and thus travel anonymously. My feyín companions will remain invisible.”

  “Pray forgive me for questioning your readiness for such a journey, ma’am. My concern is that a royal person of your high station might not be accustomed to traveling alone. If we walk but a league or two together, I might acquaint you with the essentials.”

  “I have oft traveled in the manling world,” said she, haughty as a bishop.

  “In a fine coach, with those uncanny servants at your side?”

  “As befits my station,” she spake, and the air seemed to grow cooler inside the barn. I am certain that it did. Although I could have gazed upon her for the rest of my days, I had no desire to suffer her scorn for another minute. She made me feel common.

  “Then,” said I, “I shall press the matter no further. I’m sure you know well enough of inns and wayhouses, of coach-hires and vagabonds and rank-riders, of sore feet and broken shoes and many a league between breakfast and dinner. Best of luck.”

  I thought that concluded our business, but the princess seemed as if she might burst. There was a species of fury rising up in her features that distorted them by degrees until it appeared she was transforming herself by magic. I pretended not to notice, but cinched up Midnight’s saddle and set the bridle upon his head, then turned his nose toward the door.

  “Do not dare to call me sheltered from the storms of life,” said the princess.

  I shrugged. “The rain falls on everyone, but it’s paupers get wettest, they say. If you cannot fly across the country, you must ride; if you cannot ride, you must walk; and if you walk, you walk among men. If you are confident you’ll require no guide, I’m confident Midnight will carry me far away, and there’s an end to it.”

  She stared at me a long while, her eyes flickering. I could not say if she was defiant, dismissive, determined, or disappointed. All of these emotions seemed to take a turn playing upon her features, and none gained the upper hand. At last she composed herself and nodded once.

  “Fare thee well, ’prentice to a highwayman,” said the princess.

  I walked Midnight from the barn and threw myself into the saddle, then made some show of adjusting a stirrup leather, to give the princess time to reconsider. But no word of compromise issued from within, so I got Midnight reared up into a pesade with his forelegs waving prettily, tipped my hat, and off we went. I thought I detected the whispering of small voices in the shrubbery thereabouts as we made our way back to the high road.

  One might question my valor that I left such a rare creature as the princess to the whims of fortune, but I’d heard such resolve in her voice when we argued the point—and felt the very fluid of the air grow cold—that I knew any further argument was fruitless. There was more to her than obstinacy, however. She had great hidden strengths. And she had magic. I only fancied I might be of service to her because I’d spent my life underestimating the female sex, as was the fashion of that time. So instead, I rode on.

  I confess I was profoundly disappointed, although it was an absurd thing to feel: I’d no place in this mysterious princess’s life, nor she in mine. It was a mad coincidence that brought us together at all. Yet—yet. Still I seethed with disappointment. It was the first time in my life I ever regretted what had not come to pass, disaster though it might have been.

  I reached the road and looked left and right, deliberating which way to go. To the east was the Channel, where I could find a boat to take Midnight and I abroad. To the west was Ireland, across the sea. Went I the
one way, and I could leave my human pursuers behind. Went I the other, and I would be safe from goblings and the like. I had neglected to ask if there were goblings in France.

  Whichever route I chose, there was a deal of ground to cover. Last I had seen him, Captain Sterne was riding west, so I resolved to go east, and turned Midnight toward the town. Once we were through it, he could run for many a mile before we came to another settled place. My disguise was proved with every passerby: None spared me a second glance, though Midnight drew the admiring eye of any who knew good horseflesh.

  What happened next would not have transpired, had I not been so preoccupied with the events of the last two days. My head was crowded with strange things: goblings, trolls, ancient witches, exquisite princesses, and tiny winged men with lanterns in their trousers. I thought of royal weddings. I considered the implications of enlightened science working hand in glove with magical powers, and a war among invisible people waged across England, of which hardly a soul would know—or perhaps they would. Perhaps this magical rebellion would split the island of Albion right up the middle and sink it into the sea. I knew nothing, and I wasn’t likely to learn anything more.

  So engrossed was I that I rode through the town without much caution. There weren’t any soldiers afoot, and none but them would have any reason to suspect me. If my horse was of better quality than I, it meant nothing; the lowest stable boy may ride the finest champion. I reached the far end of the town without altogether knowing what we passed on the way. Then I was popped out of my study the way a cork pops out of a bottle, for I heard a familiar voice.

  “I’ve decided, lads,” I heard Captain Sterne remark. “You on this side, take the prisoners in their cage to London. The rest of you, I’ll commandeer horses and we shall ride out until we find him.”

  The voice came through the gates of a courtyard to my right. It was a large inn, the yard surrounded by a tall brick wall, and Sterne and his men were on the other side of the wall. I could see the back of Sterne’s head over the top, but only the plumes on the soldiers’ hats. So the captain was sitting on his horse, and the men were standing to attention. Although none of them could see me, I ducked down low in the saddle.