The Accidental Highwayman

by Ben Tripp

  “I’m told there are pixies about, as well,” Uncle Cornelius went on, “and that my fortune-teller is really a Faerie princess! Some people call me mad, but I’m the only sane person here.”

  He might have gone on in this vein, except that Lily began to sing from atop the rope, as loud as she was able, a popular local ditty. Uncle Cornelius was outraged—he’d been upstaged for the first time in three decades. But he had scarcely begun to complain when a flickering green glow lit up the rooftops and the low clouds. Then a dread horn rang out. There was a rumble of thunder, or the voices of giants; it was hard to tell which. A brief silence commanded the crowd. Then we heard the scream of a gryphon.

  The scene that followed was pandemonium, and I can only claim to have witnessed it in glimpses, as a fellow falling through a glass window might catch glimpses of the scene around him reflected in the broken shards. But I will attempt to reconstruct what happened.

  After that first supernatural wail, there was a hissing in the air, and a kind of smoke seemed to arch up over the rooftops, and then come down; by the time it reached the crowd, it was not a vapor at all, but a hail of pixie arrows. In a trice the spectators all about were screaming. The tiny darts were not capable of much injury to human beings, but they stung like wasp’s tails, as I well knew, and enough of them would drive a victim ’round the bend.

  Everyone was at once running for their lives and clawing at the places where they had been stuck with the missiles. People snatched up children, horses bolted, and Uncle Cornelius’s stage was overturned, with him aboard. Torches were struck down and fires leapt up around the margins of the square. Giant shadows leapt over the walls. Then a strike of gryphons wheeled into view and descended upon the square.

  These creatures were caparisoned in silver and green, with the Faerie King’s crest upon their flanks. Their claws smote sparks from the cobblestones and their beaks snapped like meat-axes, menacing any who remained in the square. The goblings upon them wore bright armor, with helmets fashioned into grimacing faces even more fearsome than their own. The officer at their fore spied Morgana in a trice, and pointed his great spear at her. She pressed herself into my side.

  “There’s the royal whelp! Take her, and slay any manling gets between!”

  Could I but get Morgana into the wagon, she might yet escape, for the goblings could not seize her. So the manling between would be me, if it came to that.

  “Come with me, quick as you can,” I said. But she held me back.

  “Something else approaches,” she cried.

  It was true: a cold fog came pouring in a tide through the city gates and over the rooftops. It extinguished the heat of the world and crawled across the ground like a living thing. I recognized it: The same fog had swallowed up the Duchess’s gryphons.

  But flying upon the tide of vapor came something worse than gryphons. Half man, half eagle, and neither half any credit to its origins, they stooped down upon the fleeing crowd with deep, roaring voices. Twice man-size, their heads were bald and red, with yellow eyes and hooked, beaklike noses so large that they possessed no upper lip. They had no legs, but powerful humanlike arms with long, scaly talons outstretched before them; vast shining wings feathered like a vulture’s bore them up. Six of the apparitions there were. They snapped and shrieked as their wings beat the air, and whosoever had not panicked before was panicking now.

  This new arrival had thrown the King’s goblings into confusion. I caught up Morgana’s hand and ran with her through a litter of abandoned hats and spilled market baskets; the crowd was pressed up all around the egresses from the square, struggling in the icy vapor, and we were caught out in the open.

  “Mantigorns,” Morgana cried. “Only the Duchess could command their like. We are caught between fearsome enemies, Kit.”

  The mantigorns came to ground opposite the king’s gryphons, each upon one of their hands, the elbows tucked against their bodies, so that they could claw and snatch at terrified humans with the other. But they weren’t interested in the masses. They were looking for someone.

  “There!” the largest of the mantigorns bellowed, and pointed at us, who stood between the two dreadful forces. A moment later they had drawn weapons from quivers between their wings, and javelins rattled to the stones about our feet by way of a warning. We were but halfway to the wagon. I saw Lily in the background near the wagon, hanging from the tightrope, one leg and one hand hooked around it so she could pull the cruel pixie arrows from her exposed flesh.

  In the next moment the swarm of pixies arrived, and there was no opportunity to look to the others. These creatures were in such a warlike frenzy they were manifested only as streaks of greenish light and shrill, fierce cries.

  A mêlée broke out: The mantigorns were beset by the fearless pixies, which gave the gryphons courage to attack. The two grotesque forces came together with a crash and the roar of a hundred lions. Gryphons slashed with claw and beak. Mantigorns tore with their hook-nailed hands and stabbed at their foes with javelins. The goblings thrust with their lances. The entire scene was lit red with leaping flame and ringed about with terrified, screaming people.

  I pulled Morgana along, skirting the combat. The stones beneath our feet shook with the violence of the struggling monsters. We reached the wagon—but too late.

  One of the gryphon-riders had been unseated, and saw us in our flight across the square. Now he leapt between us and the caravan door, brandishing an ugly sword with teeth cut into the blade.

  “You dies and she comes along,” said the gobling.

  I caught up a sword that stood against the wagon. “I’ll distract him—you get within,” I whispered to Morgana. Then I cried, “Have at you,” and raised my blade.

  Our blades met, and it might have been the shortest duel in the entire history of the world. For the weapon in my hand was not my own, but Uncle Cornelius’s, which you will recall was made of wood. It broke off at the hilt and flew away. I’d have died at the very next sword stroke, except the gobling was so overcome with mirth that he couldn’t swing again. I suppose that sort of thing is funny to goblings. In the brief delay, I plunged my hand into my pocket, scooping up a fistful of gold coins. I flung them directly into the braying gobling’s mouth. The unfortunate creature’s head exploded.

  [ The Dread Mantigorn ]

  I spun about to get Morgana safely inside the wagon, but she wasn’t there. Instead, she stood upon one of the barrels that had recently supported the stage. I rushed to her side and reached up to hand her down; she took my fingers in hers, and shook her head. Then she turned to the enraged creatures tearing each other to pieces in the square.

  “My people,” said Morgana, to some other world. A strange wind was tossing her hair and skirts about; her eyes were like silver mirrors set with green jewels. I saw she was illuminated from within, as I’d first seen her. “We have forgotten our way. This is man’s way.”

  She rose up to her full height, or more, as it seemed to me, and I released her hand. She thrust her arms out to her sides, and the light about her formed glowing serpents and phantoms; great iridescent wings of light appeared at her shoulders, and the entire square burned with the brightness of her. Long shadows were cast behind the mantigorns and gryphons. They cowered in the brilliant glow, but their blood was up; they turned on her again.

  “That’s but a parlor trick!” the leader of the goblings roared. “By order of King Elgeron of the Middle Kingdom, Liege of the Faerie Realm, you shall come away or all shall perish!”

  Then a great dark shape obscured my sight, an enormous claw grasped my waist, and I was flung through the air. I crashed across the top of the wagon, knocked half senseless, but with wits enough to see there were three of the mantigorns advancing toward Morgana, striding upon their taloned hands.

  “Curse your King,” the largest mantigorn bellowed. “In the name of the Duchess, she is mine!”

  Both sides rushed at Morgana now. She stood there like a burning beacon, her face fierce
and proud, and then the creatures were upon her.

  Her brilliant light went out, all at once. I was beset by pixies at the same moment, who now stabbed at me with tiny knives made of fox teeth so that I was struggling wildly; then I fell from the caravan roof and was briefly free of them. I cried Morgana’s name, and despite all the chaos and noise, I think she heard me across the square; for she looked for me, and our eyes were joined again. My love, I thought. Good-bye. There would be no more buttered toast for us.

  Then there was a deafening thunderclap, and a flash—not of light, but of darkness—and all the enchanted creatures, every pixie and mantigorn and gryphon, were gone in a spray of foul-smelling sparks. The cold fog crawled away like a devilfish. There was only the stampeding crowd at every gate and doorway, the wreckage, and the fire.

  I whistled as loudly as I could for Midnight. When he came to me, shaking wee arrows off his flanks, I sprang none too spryly into the saddle, determined to give chase, no matter where the creatures had taken Morgana. Red-coated soldiers were pouring into the square now, in opposition to the jostling crowd. I cared nothing for them. They were but mortal men. I rode straight through them, shouting wildly. There came a great rattling and clanking ahead, and the gates of the town were sealed shut by the iron portcullis that descended from the stone ramparts. Midnight drew up only inches from the bars; redcoats seized his reins and I was dragged from the saddle.

  Heavy hands fell upon my shoulders. Muskets surrounded me like a fence of pickets.

  “Whistling Jack,” said Captain Sterne. “It’s been a merry chase.”

  Chapter 31

  CAPTIVITY

  YOU WOULD not call me an oversensitive man, I think. I have demonstrated well enough my immunity from subtle influences. But there was nothing subtle about the next month of my life, and had I been as nerveless as an anvil, yet would I have been miserable. The very tumbril that had borne those unfortunate highwaymen away in their cage some weeks past now bore me. Through every town and hamlet I rolled in that ignominious iron pen, attended by the man who regarded me as his worst enemy.

  How many eyes fell upon me, filled with disgust and fear? How many mouths shaped vile calumnies and flung them in my ears? For that matter, how many spoiled eggs did the young boys throw? I think it was the boys I disliked the most, because if I’d been one among them, I’d have done the same thing. They were reminders of my own beginnings, and reminded me how low I had fallen since. At any rate, I had a good long tour of the countryside, and if it hadn’t been for the frequent rains that slashed down upon ox-wain and cage alike, I dare say I’d have suffocated from my own smell.

  Captain Sterne had refused to hear anything but that I was Whistling Jack. I told him those parts of my tale that didn’t require mention of magical people, but there wasn’t enough to it to exonerate me. I was guilty; I was his foe. When he wasn’t riding along ahead behaving as if he would soon slay me with his own hand, he was riding beside my cage, conversing with me about the experience of death by hanging.

  “The tow*, you see, is a coarse one; it prickles as it rides the neck,” he said one afternoon, as we passed through some dull country of bogs and sheepfolds.

  “Yes, I know,” said I. “And when the nightcap goes over my head, I’ll smell the last breath of the man hanged before me inside it.”

  “Yes! And then—”

  “And then the knot of the rope is cinched tighter than a stirrup iron, so I can sample what the next few minutes will be like,” I said.

  “Will you stop finishing my sentences!” Captain Sterne barked. “It is a most irritating habit.”

  “But,” I said, reasonably, “you’ve already finished them often enough.”

  “Anyway, I’ll be glad to see you swing,” he muttered. “I shall be bringing someone of particular interest to your execution. She was very taken with you before, but I think she’ll soon see I’m the better man.” With that, he spurred his mount to the front of the column of troops escorting me to London.

  But none of these indignities meant anything to me at all, compared to the anguish of my heart. In all the time I’d spent with Morgana, I had not understood what my heart already knew: I loved the girl. All my confusion and irritation came from it. And the worst torment of this revelation was knowing that I would die without being able to confess my passion.

  My mind revolved around this unhappy point in much the same way the string with which I measured out my riding-circuses revolved around the stake. It never got nearer or farther from the locus, but circled it endlessly. I recalled a thousand little incidents that should have told me of my romantic affliction. Why else had I so often gazed upon her with delight? Why else did I find it charming when she smote me with a caprizel, or laughed, or gave me some trifling compliment?

  I’d blamed her for bewitching me! I had thought it was magical influences distorting my mind. But all the while it was my own fault. I loved her more than all the things in the world. I loved her more than Midnight. But, being unfamiliar with the romantic illness, I had not known it for what it was.

  She was captured now, in the hands of her father, or of that fearsome One-Eyed Duchess. Would her father shut her up in a dungeon and force her to marry? Would the Duchess tear out her soul? What would become of those who had assisted her flight, especially Willum and Gruntle? I could not rest for thinking of these things, and when they briefly left my mind, I saw only Morgana, with those shimmering wings of radiant light, in the moments before her apprehension. If only they had been real wings that could bear her away! But all was lost, except me. I had been found.

  * * *

  When my foul cage reached the City, the prisons were full to overflowing, so I was assigned to one of the prison ships that wallowed in the River Medway. These hulks are floating hells; I shall describe the one in which I was shackled only as much as required to convey my tale, as a full account of such earthbound horrors would make the supernatural horrors to which I had recently been introduced, and the description of which is the purpose of this narration, seem paltry by comparison.

  Hundreds of prisoners, scurf’d* for every imaginable crime, dwelled below those decks in almost perfect darkness. The hulks were decommissioned naval ships, demasted, so they were nothing more than immense wooden slop-buckets floating on the tide. Were it not for the gun-ports, we would all have suffocated within a few hours. As it was, the air was so putrid belowdecks that a candle would not stay lit: There was not enough good air to nourish the flame. Beside the reek of disease and filth, and the exhalation of a thousand rotting mouths, there were vermin. The hull was alive with lice, fleas, and rats.

  Only a few days after I arrived in London, I enjoyed a brief respite from the prison ship in order to visit the court. There I was sentenced, alongside a number of less famous criminals, to death. This was no surprise, as in those days a man was generally found innocent, transported to America, or hanged, rather than fiddling about with intermediate sentences. And I was so obviously guilty that no evidence, testimony, or examination was required.

  The judge, a crimson-faced man of immense girth, made a long and tedious speech aimed at my master, but addressed to me. I don’t know why he bothered speaking of reforming my corrupted spirit when it was so shortly to depart. My sentence came just before lunch, and delayed the meal, which I think may have influenced the judge’s remarks. I provide only the last of a long summation here, delivered from beneath a caxon of curled horsehair:

  “Like a ripe pear, Mr. Whistling, you are soon to be plucked from the branch. But the branch from which you dangle shall be the leafless limb of the Tyburn Tree, which has been nourished at the root by the very blood of Cromwell.* Like a pear, I say, but your face will be the color of a plum, and your head swollen similarly, so that you will also resemble a roast of beef; as the pheasant hangs until its flesh has become fragrant, so shall you hang, and the aroma of you, as of a good Stilton, shall waft across the road there, where there is an inn that does fish very well. />
  “Cruelly have you plied your trade upon the road, robbing many a fine coach that was stuffed with riches as a suckling pig is stuffed with apples, leaving nary a crust of bread behind. Why, you may not have heard, but the fine officer who apprehended you was deprived of his beloved’s heart by your predations. How couldst you pluck such a succulent potato from his very dish? What pangs he has endured, what hunger gnaws at his soul! He is starved for love, and it is all because of you. I sentence you, sir, for your menu of crimes, to be hanged by the neck until dead, so help you God. Right, that’s done. Lunchtime.”

  * * *

  The court was pleased to execute me on a separate day from the others to facilitate public participation. Mass hangings always fall behind schedule. I had a fortnight to enjoy my thoughts until then. Two weeks of jolly captivity, then the rope.

  So it was, with my nostrils filled with stench, my skin with bugs, and my ears with the wails of lost and dying souls, I whiled away thirteen days. During that time I drank as little of the vile water as I was able, and ate as little of the heaps of refuse with which they fed us as I could, and so languishing, began to drift in and out of consciousness, meeting old friends and enemies in waking dreams.

  Captain Sterne visited me once, and I was escorted to the top deck for the purpose. There was a lady beside him, some years his senior, and by her costume provided with considerable wealth. She was blushing from her neck to the top of her head. Both of them kept scented linen pomanders under their noses to conceal the noxious stink rising from beneath the deck.

  “You know her,” said the captain.

  “I confess I do not,” said I.

  “Then you know him,” he said, addressing the lady.

  “I never saw his eyes, but I do not recognize the lower parts of his face. His chin was not cleft before.”