The Accidental Highwayman

by Ben Tripp

* * *

  On the occasion of our first practice, during an afternoon halt, Midnight and I started out with simple things, riding around and around. The horse thought I’d gone mad. We had lovely countryside on every hand, and here we were pelting about in circles. But he soon got the hang of it, and seemed to find me scampering across his back rather interesting. I practiced hanging from the stirrups, standing in the saddle, and mounting and dismounting at a run, leaping across his back like a Minoan bull-dancer of ancient times. Midnight practiced not tossing his head or kicking up his heels at inopportune moments.

  I love horses, and the riding of them, as I believe this narrative reveals. But to return to the old trade after a long interval, and to find it still fresh in my mind (if not my body), awakened such a joy in me that I wanted to ride all the way around the world. Instead we rode around the ring, man and beast discovering a new partnership. It wasn’t until we cantered to a stop after that first practice that we discovered the rest of the troupe had ceased what they were doing to watch us.

  I’m proud to say that the first applause to ring out for Puggle’s Spectacular was earned by Midnight and I. That it was our fellow performers doing the cheering diminished the delight of it not one whit.

  * * *

  That same evening, we made camp in the corner of a field with a brook along one side and a wood on the other. There was a crust of ruined monastery in the middle of the field—whether the result of the Tudors or Cromwell, I knew not. Until my recent adventures I hadn’t noticed how many ruins were scattered about the English countryside. It was like Rome with more sheep.

  I set Midnight to graze, then sat on a monastery stone to watch Willum and Gruntle, who had elected to continue practicing their show beside the fire. They dispensed with the puppet theater, performing on the ground, which meant their legs were visible below the skirts of the puppet costumes. Willum took the part of Punch and Gruntle took every other role. The overall effect was of watching ugly dolls hop about on very thin legs.

  “Act three, scene three, the prison,” Willum cried from within Punch’s head. “Enter Gruntle as Jack Ketch.”

  “Not as the doctor?” Gruntle demanded, for he was costumed as the doctor.

  “The doctor is dead by act three, scene three. That’s why it’s set in the prison, thou lummox.”

  “And because Mr. Punch slain ’is wife and child.”

  “Right, but the doctor is deceased at this time. You’re Jack Ketch,” Willum explained, his voice getting higher as he grew more irritated. “Why would a doctor hang a fellow? What sort of a doctor would he be?”

  “A Hippocratic oaf,” said Gruntle. “I done a joke.”

  Willum struck his companion over the head with his Punch-stick and there was an interlude of boxing, but as neither of them could see anything more than their opponent’s feet, no telling blows were landed.

  “’Oo plays the constabule, then? There be a constabule in this scene,” Gruntle inquired once the fisticuffs were ended.

  “We’ll cut that role. Ketch can do both parts.”

  “Oh good,” Gruntle said. “I ain’t learnt the constabule part norhow.”

  “But you have committed the Jack Ketch bits to memory?”

  “No.”

  They went on like this for a considerable period of time, never quite getting to the point of rehearsing the scene.

  Fred was prodding the fire, Uncle Cornelius was peeling potatoes he’d bought from a farmer, and Lily was inside the wagon, doing what women do when they’re doing things men don’t know about, whatever those are. Morgana was in conference with some bushes at the edge of the wood, within which I presumed there must be concealed some feyín. Or, for all I knew, she might be talking to the bushes.

  “Fetch me the salt, will you?” Uncle Cornelius asked me. “It’s in the grease cask on the other side of the wagon.” Salt! I sprang to my feet and went straight to the wagon. We hadn’t had salt since our escape. Lovely salt. Unfortunately, the cask contained axle-grease, as it was intended to do. So I got out the brush and greased the axles.

  This meant that I was bent below the little window in the side of the wagon, and so heard Lily’s voice from within.

  “I am a pretty girl,” said she. “You’re very kind. Nowt like a fine princess, pr’aps, but for a common sort I’m uncommon ’andsome.”

  My curiosity piqued, I stole a peep through the window. Had her garments been disarranged I’d have perished of shame, but she was entirely decent, sitting on a tiny stool at the tiny table beneath the tiny looking glass hanging on the bulkhead within. I could not see the glass, but I could well see Lily simpering and tossing her curls at it.

  “It’s a bafflement to me why that young Kit makes eyes like fried eggs at that slip of a girl when there’s a woman under full sail at his very helbow,” she whispered to the glass. My ears burned so hot I worried they’d light up like Willum’s bottom. I ducked down again and scuttled away from the wagon, bent double like a porter carrying an invisible trunk. It was in this undignified posture that I collided with Morgana.

  “What, pray tell, are you doing?” she inquired.

  I stood up straight, my ears reaching boiling temperature. “I was hastening across the grass,” said I.

  “You were a-spying on Lily,” she said. “I saw you at it.”

  “I wasn’t spying. I was overhearing.”

  “With your eyes bent upon the open window?”

  “Well,” I gabbled, “I was overhearing and overseeing, but she’s perfectly decent. It’s just that I heard her speaking, and looked in to see whom she spake to, and there being nobody within but her, I hastened away.”

  “I see,” Morgana said, in such a way that I was convinced she did not see.

  “Why must you think the worst of me?” said I.

  “I do not,” said she. “I think very well of you.”

  “Then go you to that window and listen to the one-sided conversation in there. As a favor to me, whom you esteem so much.”

  Morgana cast such a skeptical look upon me that I found myself studying the night sky, unable to meet her eyes. But at length she crossed the sward on silent feet and stood below the window—she was so diminutive she need not crouch—and listened a while. I stood at a remove, to avoid any further suggestion of impropriety. Morgana returned to my side, one hand clapped over her mouth.

  “She’s merely talking to herself,” she said, and a giggle escaped from beneath her hand.

  “So I said.”

  “It is a privilege of our sex to talk to our reflections,” she said, her amusement gone. “Like players, we must rehearse our parts, for we have by far the more demanding role.”

  But a week before, Morgana had been a stranger to the ways of man. Now she was an expert in the ways of woman. I bent at the waist and clapped my hat over my breast.

  “Why dost thou bow thine head?” she asked, reverting to her accustomed speech—an indication she was growing angry with me.

  “You grow more human with every passing day,” said I, “and yet more mysterious than ever. I daresay you shall make a great queen.”

  She rolled her eyes but couldn’t think of a rejoinder. Instead, she snatched away my hat and pulled it down over my eyes. At this moment, Uncle Cornelius announced the potatoes had boiled, and we rushed to the fireside, Lily, Morgana, and all. I was the last to arrive because I couldn’t get my hat off.

  * * *

  The next day was uneventful, except for a detour to avoid a nest of goblings of which Willum had got word from a friend. One of Violets’ cousins, he told me. Faerie folk had very large families because they lived so long. The death of one of them was a momentous matter for the same reason.

  That evening we made camp a little way from a village of timbered cottages, in a dell full of rushing streams and tall curling ferns. There wasn’t any level ground sufficient for Midnight and I to practice our act, so we had the night off; I went into the hamlet and bought ham, bread, cheese, salt, and
pepper from a farm. Thus equipped, we could make any meal a feast.

  Lily took a halfhearted turn or two on her rope, then installed herself inside the wagon as soon as the sun went down. Morgana puzzled over the tarot cards with which Uncle Cornelius had supplied her from the property box. He tried to explain their various meanings, but got it all completely wrong. For example, he identified l’Epape, the Pope, as an onion-seller with a building on his head. In my previous life as a performer I had seen enough fortune-telling with cards to describe the main suits, and resolved to clarify matters for Morgana later on.

  The feyín argued and came to blows, and between bouts rehearsed their puppet show. As far as I could determine, they had added a character modeled after the One-Eyed Duchess who went about shouting antiroyalist slogans. Fred watched them gravely.

  Uncle Cornelius seemed to enjoy cooking, and he was reasonably skilled at it, except he put twigs in the ham soup. I’d gotten through a bowl of it, along with some cheese and bread, when it occurred to me that Lily hadn’t joined us at the meal.

  “Is she at the looking glass again?” I inquired of Morgana.

  “I know not,” said she, and went to look into the wagon. I saw that her bowl was empty and wondered if she’d eaten the twigs as well. Uncle Cornelius was in the middle of an instructive anecdote about a Chinese dignitary in a Parisian bathhouse when we heard voices raised in distress.

  Everyone rushed to the wagon.

  “… I was merely coming to see that you were well,” Morgana was protesting.

  “I can care for myself, Your ’ighness,” Lily rejoined.

  “Lily!” said I, having reached the doorway first. The two of them stood inside the cabin, their noses almost touching, for there was little enough space, and Lily’s features were bent into an expression of malice I’d not seen on them before. Morgana looked mostly surprised.

  “Well,” said Lily, “the cavalry comes. This one ’ere—I know what she is. And such a fine one! Goin’ about the countryside with a troupe of hacrobats when her people are suff’rin, puttin’ her own safekeeping ahead of everyone else. Risking your neck, Kit, for ’ers! You, what never done wrong when I was stealin’ spoons and climbing through windows, blameless Kit, turned banditti for this bold girl! Whistlin’ Jack, I never!”

  So saying, she turned on her heel as emphatically as possible in so small a room and rushed past the rest of us down the steps. She pelted off into the night, wreathed in sobs.

  “What a performance,” Uncle Cornelius said. “My niece Lily would never have made such a fuss as that girl. I miss her terribly.”

  “Willum,” said I to the wee fellow, who stood upon my shoulder, “make sure no harm comes to her, will you?”

  “Me!” he cried. “I’m going to hex her silly. I’ve got a lovely comprimaunt that will give her flaming boils, and I intend to use it. The brass of that woman!”

  “No!” Morgana said. “She’s not to blame. That’s not the Lily I’ve grown so fond of these past few days. Lay not a finger upon her or risk my displeasure.”

  “Please keep her safe,” I repeated. Willum, though his bottom blazed red as the setting sun, bowed to Morgana and I in turn, tipped his hat to Uncle Cornelius, and flitted into the night.

  “I don’t trust these Belgians. I’d better find her,” the old man said, and followed Willum outside. Fred followed him. It was just as likely we’d lose Uncle Cornelius as well, unless he was watched.

  “Morgana,” said I, and knelt before the afflicted princess, whose entire being radiated misery.

  “I am not hurt by her words,” she said, swallowing back tears. “I am hurt by the truth of it. Here I am in this gilded wagon, fleeing my responsibility to my father one minute and my responsibility to my people the next! And the while, bee after bee tells me the pixies have raided a dozen Faerie rings, clipped the wings of innocent feyín to make them tell where I am, and goblings roam everywhere, stealing cows and sheep and making mischief for manlings. Oh, the tales I have read in just the last few hours!”

  “But that’s not your responsibility. It’s your father’s irresponsibility, I should think,” said I.

  “Whom else is his daughter?”

  “I’ve no mother or father. Does that remove all responsibility from me? But there’s another matter here. I never told Lily you were of royal blood, nor what our mission is. Yet she called you ‘Highness’ and divines your people are suffering. Unless she can read bees, someone told her this.”

  “No,” said Morgana. “I am certain she used title with me ironically. I am prone, when tested, to put on courtly airs. Thou hast been the brunt of it often enough. As for the suffering of my people, she’s seen what happened to Gruntle, wounded for my sake, and she has heard Willum’s warnings of fey folk lying in wait on the road ahead. She’s got a good brain, does Lily. She merely put the buttons through the button-holes and guessed my plight.”

  The tears fairly poured down Morgana’s face, and her voice was in knots when she spake, but she sat bravely erect and held her head high. Gruntle climbed up on the table beneath the looking glass and reached timidly out to take Morgana’s hand. Or the end of her little finger, at least.

  “Truth is, ma’am,” he said, “we common folk been a-sufferin’ many a year, be it in Faerie or be it ’ere in Ningaland. There were a time, like, when we done our magic to freeze the ponds and drop the leaves in winter, then bloom the buds and fatten up the ninsects in springe, all for the love on it.”

  “And I love you for it,” said she, smiling through her sorrow to see the little fellow so concerned.

  But Gruntle wasn’t done. “Then we begun ter get directives, as might be. Fail a crop ’ere, dry up a river there. Pizen those wells and sicken these ’orses. Mischievin’, it were. Decrees from King Elgeron. We was meddlin’ in manling affairs! I wot not what thy old pater had in mind wi’ it, but no good, I’ll be bound.”

  “Her father has been manipulating the affairs of England?” I blurted out.

  “In a manner, sir. In a manner,” said Gruntle. “By Faerie ways.”

  “Your entire society is founded upon agriculture,” Morgana said to me. “It’s a simple matter for a king who rules the seasons and conjures up the weather to make of you what he will.”

  “By Jove,” I cried. “Then what’s his purpose?”

  “It is that very question I have been trying to answer. But with only half my resolve, for it is escape from marriage that has been uppermost in my thoughts. I have been a selfish creature.”

  Here, she hung her head. I was near overcome by a desire to shower her with kisses and embrace her trembling frame in my arms, to press her to my bosom until my weskit was soaked with tears.

  But I did nothing except rise to my feet and say to Gruntle, “There’s a pitcher of fresh milk and a box of oolong in that cupboard. If you could make use of your comprimaunts to boil some water for a pot of tea, I think both ladies may require it.”

  Of the reunion of Morgana and Lily late that night, I will only say that there was much hurt, many tears, and then all the embraces I’d forborne to make were visited upon both of them by each other. Morgana never kissed anyone, perhaps because of her high station, but she clung to Lily as fiercely as a mother to her babe. They mutually apologized for their behavior and vowed eternal friendship and so forth, and drank a great deal of tea together and of consequence couldn’t sleep.

  That night I couldn’t sleep, either. As usual, I spent the dark hours stretched out upon the driver’s seat of the caravan to guard the door. I was tormented by the thought of Morgana’s kisses. Were they merely rare, or had the species gone extinct?

  Chapter 22

  THE TORTOISE COMB

  AN UNEVENTFUL day passed, and another. A couple of small boys watched me practice my trick-riding with Midnight one afternoon, and cheered whenever things went wrong, in the way boys do. But they were most impressed and complimented me on my horsemanship, and Midnight on his excellence as a horse.


  The larder of the wagon, through judicious stops at farmhouses and sorties into marketplaces in small villages, was bursting with victuals: sausages and eggs, fruit, bread, cheese in several varieties, a pin of beer*, and a loaf of sugar. Luxury! I could almost have traveled in this fashion for the rest of my life.

  On the third afternoon following the falling out of Lily and Morgana, it was Lily once again who broke the peace. She had been behaving strangely ever since the Duchess’s gryphons confronted us, but I thought this marked her as more sensible than the rest of us; one would have to be mad not to have been affected by such a fright. But she seemed different, somehow.

  I was reminded of a colorful sword-swallowing acquaintance from my youth: He was a dedicated scoundrel, a pickpocket, and a rake, when he wasn’t consuming fencing foils. Then one day he followed a young lady to a meeting of the Quakers, and thereafter devoted the rest of his life to good works and the young lady, in equal measure. From that time onward there was never a more sobersided, boring fellow in all of England. I’m told the lady ran off with a serjeant of the marines.

  Lily had something of his aspect: She would sigh, and her eyes would gaze off into the distance, and she’d forget to answer questions. I would have thought her deeply in love, except there wasn’t anyone to be in love with except me, and I wasn’t her sort of man. But it wasn’t a happy state she was in. It seemed almost as if she were pining for someone who had not come to claim her.

  That afternoon, we stopped in a quiet place overlooking a forest of oak. I required some time to repair a broken trunnion-pin on the wagon, in which effort I was joined by Willum and Gruntle, who found mechanical things fascinating. Fred went about collecting grubs, Morgana studied the tarot cards and received bees, and Uncle Cornelius conversed with a wild pony that had come to inspect Midnight.

  Lily was within the wagon. As I was beneath it, I could hear her moving about, and thought little of it. But then there was a sort of barking sound, and rapid footfalls, and the back door was flung open.

  “’Oo’s got it!” Lily shouted.