The Accidental Highwayman

by Ben Tripp

  “To this countryside, Whistling Jack has been a nightmare,” Sterne went on. “Now I am his nightmare.”

  Had I not heard his voice, I would have ridden straight past the gate, and he would have seen me. Would not Captain Sterne find it peculiar that I had been first dressed as a peasant, next clad in a brown suit, and on the third occasion astride a magnificent horse, always in the same boots? Then his men would further identify me as the chap that fell off the bridge. And then the captain would discover the turndowns tucked into my boots. Between those, the pistol, and the gold, I’d surely hang.

  Just before we reached the gate, I reined Midnight around, still bent low in the saddle, and clucked in his ear to urge him back the way we came.

  “First, we shall ride toward—” Sterne’s words ran out abruptly. I urged Midnight to stand still.

  “Did you hear that?” Captain Sterne said. I could tell by his voice that he was now facing the wall between us. “Those footfalls and the creak of the leathers? It’s the very beast we seek. I never forget a horse, lads. Not sight nor sound of it.”

  I heard the clip-clop of hooves approaching the gateway. If only I had paid attention as I rode through town! Before me was a maze of streets bisected by the crowded main thoroughfare, lined with little cottages. I could gallop straight up that and hope we didn’t collide with anyone, or pelt off among the lanes and hope we didn’t circle around back into Sterne’s embrace. There must be some other way. I looked at the houses, the gardens. I hadn’t any idea what to do.

  “You there!” came the voice of Captain Sterne behind me. “On the black. Come here.”

  I pretended not to hear him, or rather I didn’t listen, but rode on, moving away from him at a dreadfully slow walk. On either side were dwellings of thatch, all roof and hardly any walls.

  “On the black horse,” Sterne cried. “Halt!”

  I heard the song of his sword rising from its sheath, and knocked my heels against Midnight’s sides. The horse had been waiting eagerly for my command, and sprang forward. But I didn’t guide him up the thoroughfare. Instead I drove him straight at the nearest cottage. Sterne’s mount clattered after us in a trice, and I heard the hobnailed boots of the soldiers coming up behind. But I didn’t look back, because Sterne himself might not remember my face. He might only remember my horse. I urged Midnight to jump an instant before he would have collided with the stone wall of the cottage.

  He might not have followed my command, except the thatch of the roof looked as much like a steep hill as anything else, I suppose. He must have thought we could climb up it. So he sprang with all his strength. We soared up over the wall, crashed into the roof, and the thatch—being little more than reeds laid on a frame of staves—collapsed entirely. We went straight through it like a cannonball through a sail.

  I caught a fleeting glimpse of a homely interior and a very startled woman bending over a pot on the hearth, and then Midnight alighted and sprang again, driving us through the roof on the other side. I felt terrible about the cottage. It was Sterne’s fault, really. But I couldn’t stop to offer amends. Instead we tore through the back garden in a spray of carrots, vaulted a little stream, and galloped away over the fields, still doing a fair imitation of a cannonball.

  We were a couple of furlongs away from the town when a fusillade of gunfire rang out. I heard a musket-ball purr lazily past my head, and the distant crash of crockery. Chancing a look over my shoulder, I saw soldiers in the back garden, and glimpsed through the hole in the roof of the house that Captain Sterne had got his horse indoors, but it had shied away from bashing through the other side as Midnight had done. Now he was shouting and waving his sword and knocking over the furniture.

  “You’re the finest horse in Christendom,” said I to Midnight. My plans had changed. I decided to ride west, after all.

  Chapter 13

  UP ANOTHER TREE

  AS HAD become our habit, Midnight and I fled across the countryside, through hill and dale. I found myself hoping old Magda would launch us somewhere beyond the reach of the king’s law, such as Africa or Belgium, using her powerful magic. But that bit of my life had concluded. I was off magic for good. So we covered the distance in the usual manner.

  After an hour of riding, we reached a path that ran along the hilltops overlooking the high road, and roughly parallel to it. It commanded a good view for miles. There were slow carts and swift riders, peasants bent beneath mighty burdens of sticks and straw, milkmaids balancing buckets across their shoulders on slender yokes. I saw no redcoats. We could slow down at last. If pursuers came, we would spy them long before they spied us.

  Although I should have learned my lesson well, my thoughts again began to wander. This time I was thinking of a pale olive face, and green flashing eyes with worlds behind them. A mind so wise in some ways, yet simple in others. I remembered her pointed ear tips and the net of silver leaves that bound up her dark hair. My ears were filled with the lilting accent of her voice. Midnight kept looking over his shoulder at me. I hadn’t a clue what state I was in, but horses always know.

  We stopped to rest beneath a tree on a hilltop, with warm sunshine and birdsong all about. Midnight nibbled the tender grass and I contemplated my near-fatal boots. After a while, my thoughts turned again to the princess, but in a more practical way. She was traveling afoot, unless she’d conjured up a horse. If she chose a direct route along the road, unlike my wandering path through the landscape, it would require her two hours to go the distance I had reached in one.

  I did some calculations and determined that she might well pass below us in the next half of an hour, if she hadn’t stopped along the way. After three or four impatient minutes, I did some more calculations and decided we might safely descend to the main road, as long as we remained concealed behind a hedge. No sooner had we done so than I further calculated it had been half an hour and the princess still hadn’t come along. Midnight grazed on the tender grass, concealed by the hedge, and I peered through the leaves to watch the traffic, seeking a girl with a green velvet dress—or warts and the nose of a swine.

  None came past.

  My worries increased with every minute that went by without her. At last I calculated still more and decided there was no harm in revealing myself to one of the travelers who was coming from the direction of the town.

  I stood beside a stile next the road and accosted the very first fellow who chanced to come along, a drover with several dozen geese marching before him, all tied together with string.

  “Prithee,” said I, “have you traveled long on this road?”

  “Oo aar,” said the goose-drover.

  “Then perhaps you’ve seen a young lady on the way, all in green velvet?”

  “Aar, aar,” quoth the goose-drover.

  My heart leapt. “So you’ve seen her? Did she fare well? I was expecting her along this road, some time ago.”

  The goose-drover appeared to be thinking, or at least his brow furrowed, his complexion reddened, and he stroked his chin with his forefinger like a scholar with a flea in his beard.

  At last, as my nerves were about to come unstrung with the suspense of waiting, he pointed up the road behind him and said, “Nar, but ’t grockle rumney garley ’er come cropper moile ha’moile back.”

  Well! I hadn’t the remotest idea what he was talking about, but it did not sound good. My anxiety had blossomed into something like a frenzy. So I whistled up Midnight, whose arrival frighted the geese, and to a chorus of honks and Somerset curses I rode back down the road at such a clip that my great steed’s shoes rang like Cullan’s hammer*.

  If Captain Sterne and his men were on the same road, let them pursue me. I could not bear to spend the rest of my life with my back to danger. Besides, the goblings had it in for me as well, and they could pop up anywhere. Nowhere was safe. Midnight sailed down the road and I searched every face we passed, hoping to see some evidence of the princess in disguise. The old woman with the starched cap? The bulbous fellow
with a book under his arm? The girl in blue bows, rattling along in a dog-cart? None of them afforded me a glance.

  So great was my haste that I might have ridden straight past Princess Morgana and back to the market town and the tender attentions of Captain Sterne, had not I heard a faint cry of distress from beyond the hedgerow upon my left. Midnight reined up and I sprang from the saddle, then threw myself through a gap in the hedge and into the field on the other side. There I saw a sight that would have set me to laughing until I fell down, except circumstances would not permit it; for as ridiculous as it was, it was equally perilous. Particularly for a man standing on his own legs.

  There before me was a bull, a great red beast with curling horns, fiery eyes, and brisket so deep his chest nearly touched the ground. More a man than I, was this bull. He had not spied me yet. The object of his attention was a stout tree some little way into the field, not very tall but sturdy about the middle. Lowermost in the tree was a motley, thick-necked ruffian, whose arms and legs were locked about a branch in such a way that his nethermost parts hung down just out of horn-prick of the bull. There was an ironbound cudgel hanging from his belt by a strap; the bull knocked this instrument with every toss of his head, as a bell knocks its clapper.

  Directly above the ruffian was Princess Morgana, looking less regal than when I had left her. She was perched on another, more slender branch, and sat most ladylike upon it, sidesaddle. Both of them, princess and ne’er-do-well, were shouting at each other and crying for help from passersby, of which there were but few, and none inclined to distress the bull. It was only my haste which had brought me into his field, or I, too, might well have hesitated.

  As I looked on, a wee voice spoke from the hedge beside me. “O marster Kit! You come back, like!”

  It was Gruntle, concealed among the leaves. I threw myself back into the gap in the foliage and peeked around at the bull. So far, none of the party had spied me: not princess, nor ruffian, nor beast. The bull sensed someone about, but looked over his shoulder and saw no one.

  “That there princess,” Gruntle whispered in my ear—I still had not seen him, so cunningly was he disguised—“she told us afore we went out that she’d have our heads and wings and whatnots nor we showed ourselves to living mortal. So I can’t do nuffing to save her!”

  “Nonsense. Give that bull a comprimaunt right in the hindquarters,” I suggested.

  “The Princess forboden it!” Gruntle wailed. “It’s Willum breaks the law. ’E’s a renegade through and through. I’m but a numble conformist.” The bull had renewed his attack upon the tree.

  “By her own word she’s not your ruler any longer,” said I, reasonably enough. “You’re free and equal Faeries. Forget your book of laws and knock the old wooly-pate down with a magical jerrycummumble*.”

  “Princess or not, ’er word is law to me,” said Gruntle.

  “So there’s nothing for it but that I should be tossed by the bull?”

  “If’n you please,” the Faerie said.

  There wasn’t time to argue further, for I saw that the princess’s branch, light as she was, had begun to sag with the weight of her. And the ungentle fellow on the branch below was drooping, too, soon to find himself punctured most cruelly by the raging beast. So, with my customary cunning and forethought, I stepped out into the open and called to the bull: “Here’s a fresh goad for you, old Bucephalus.”

  The creature swung about, astounded, I think, that anyone further would have the temerity to invade his field. He fixed his hard eyes upon me, lowered his head, scored the earth with a mighty hoof, and charged.

  I ran. That was the extent of my plan, and I made the best of it, racing through muck and nettle alike, as fleet as a deer. Sadly, the bull was fleeter, and had soon closed much of the distance between myself and his great curving horns. There before me was an expanse of rough turf, the hedge increasingly distant, and no succor otherwise unless I could double my speed and reach the fence at the far end of the field before the bull made a wimple of my guts.

  Then the ground descended to a pond, lined with reeds and churnish with mud. I turned my steps toward it, urged my legs to one final exertion—I could feel the bull’s hot breath on my neck—and flung myself into the water. With a smack I struck the pond, there was a chorus of outrage from the local frogs, and the bull splashed into the mire at the water’s edge, his forelegs sunk deep in the slop. So great was his fury that he continued after me, deeper into the water, and soon all four of his limbs were secured in the sucking mud.

  For my part, I paddled across the slime and emerged on the far side, streaming with brown sludge as fragrant as a fishmonger’s shoe, bedizened with watercress, my dignity drowned. I observed my bellowing foe for a few moments to determine that he was sufficiently stuck, then hurried as much as I could in my moistened condition back across the field.

  The ruffian with the cudgel had already decamped from the tree and scampered away. Princess Morgana was picking her way down from branch to branch with a delicacy that ill became the circumstances. The bull was soon clear of the pond and trotting in our direction, huffing and snorting.

  “Jump down!” I cried. She did so, falling as lightly as a feather into my arms. I now believe some enchantment arrested her descent; she seemed to weigh less than my sodden hat. I set her upon the grass, forgetting in my alarm to let go of her slender waist.

  “Unhand me,” said she, and I followed her through the gap in the hedge, where Midnight awaited. He snorted most expressively when he spied my condition, or rather smelled it. There being no other travelers in sight, Gruntle emerged from the hedge, his wings a-chatter, and landed on the saddle.

  “A lot of good you did,” said I, venting my wrath at the tiny fellow. “Leaving a defenseless princess to fortune’s whimsy. And who was that blackguard with the club?”

  Before anyone could answer me, perforce we continued down the road, for the bull roared ceaselessly on the other side of the hedge. Once we had gotten past his domain and reached a shallow stream that bubbled across the road—this was before the ways were improved with culverts—I rinsed myself off and Princess Morgana retailed their adventures.

  “After you left,” she began, “we waited a while so that our steps should not catch us up with thine, if perchance you had taken this way and not the other. Then we set forth, Gruntle in his stealthy way and me upon the high road. Traveling afoot is weary work. Willum has gone ahead to recruit assistance to our cause. I thought myself well disguised, for none took an interest in me.”

  “Well disguised?” I cried. The only change in her appearance that I could see was her embroidered dress was a little plainer and there was an ordinary mobcap on her head instead of the silvery net.

  “I was mistaken,” she allowed. “For that scalawag with the stick came over a gate and matched his pace to mine, walking a little behind me. For a mile it was thus, and my fears were ever mounting. Twice, thrice, and again I almost cried for Gruntle to assist me, but if my father had employed that brute to capture me, resorting to magic would reveal where we were to the rest of his minions. Instead I spake some harsh words, though I don’t recall them at this moment—”

  “I do,” interjected Gruntle. “Where a princess learnt such words I ain’t aware, but they’d a’ made the One-Eyed Duchess blush. ‘Thou ventricose fustilarian*,’ said she, and that was the least of it. ‘I’ll have thy worm-poisoned soul stretched on the rack of eternity, thou grobian bog-born rapscallion,’ said she also. ‘Mayest thou drown in the icy darkness of the void where sleeps the Elden Kingdom,’ said she as well, and more besides.…”

  “That will do,” said Morgana, modestly, and Gruntle raised his lumpen hat and fell silent, his face red. She continued, “The remainder of the tale thou may easily guess: That unpleasant man pursued me, and I ducked through the very gap in the hedge through which you came, and there was the bull. I ran to the tree, the ruffian ran after me, and then we perched like mockingbirds until you arrived.”

/>   “You think he was not a common bandit?” I asked when the tale was finished. “The ways are infested with such folk.”

  “After I had spoken hastily to him, he called me ‘your Royal Highness,’” Morgana said. “Not in a satirical way, but most contemptuously; I think he knew me for what I am.”

  “We’ll ride together, then, for Midnight can bear us both with ease. It makes a strange sight, a foreign girl and a waterlogged squire sharing a champion horse, but there’s nothing else for it. We must get away from here.”

  Before she mounted, the princess, seeking the best disguise for herself, threw her strange cloak on and off a number of times, on each occasion changing her appearance: First the pig-nosed woman, then a plain yellow-haired girl with freckles, followed by a very old nun, a very tall washerwoman, a Turkish dancing girl, and a Gypsy. It was the last incarnation we settled upon. It changed her appearance the least; her dark looks and almost-green olive skin remained the same, if a trifle less vivid, but now she wore somber over-stitched skirts, silver hoops in her ears, and a red kerchief about her head. Gypsies being an alien race at that time, any strangeness in her comportment might be forgiven as part of the Travelers’* customs.

  So it was; we boarded Midnight and trotted away, and there was no further talk of separating the party that day. Princess Morgana had proved to herself how little she knew of the ways of men, and I had proved myself a fool.

  Chapter 14

  THE UNLUCKY LUNCHEON

  ON WE rode. It was not gallantry on my part, pray understand, that caused me to ally my cause with hers. I found myself enchanted with the princess, it is true. But she was an enchantress, so that was to be expected. Rather, I understood after our separate misadventures that we would be better served together, at least for a short while.