by Sara Fraser
‘I’se got the Frenchie chained up in my smithy, Master Marston,’ Jenkins said. ‘I ’opes he’s still alive, but you never know, these two murderin’ devils might ha’ done for him.’
‘There’ll be no “might” about me doin’ for you!’ Wright shouted, and received another crack across his head from the carbine barrel.
‘You there,’ Seymour leaned from his saddle and tapped Jethro’s shoulder. ‘What name do you bear?’
Jethro stared back defiantly at the cruel handsome face above him and made no reply.
Seymour’s white teeth glistened wolfishly as he smiled.
‘So! It’s a dumb animal, is it? Well, animals can be trained to perform tricks and I know ways in which they can even be taught to speak.’ Without warning he slashed the back of one gloved hand across Jethro’s face, causing his head to rock under the force of the blow.
Jethro’s face reddened with anger, but he disciplined his impulse to hit back and kept his mouth firmly closed.
The dragoon officer chuckled. ‘I see it’s a mettled beast!’ he taunted. ‘With fire in its belly . . . But never fear, I’ve not yet encountered the fire I could not douse down.’
While Seymour had been baiting Jethro, the third trooper had fetched the other horses from their tether points behind the hedgerows and, taking ropes from the saddlebags, had trussed Turpin Wright’s arms behind his back. The dragoon now did the same for Jethro, tugging hard on the ropes so they bit deep into muscles and sinews.
‘I think we’ll give these fine gentlemen a lodging in your gaol until we leave the town,’ the captain said to Marston. He nodded in answer, then said, ‘I shall go up and get the Frenchie, Captain.’ He spurred his horse towards and into the smithy, only to return almost immediately.
‘The bugger’s dead!’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll have to come up with a carter to fetch him, he’s stiff as a board, so he can’t be slung across my mount’s back.’
‘Dead? Did you say dead, Master Marston?’ George Jenkins questioned incredulously.
‘I did,’ the fat man told him curtly.
The little man’s red-rimmed eyes brimmed with tears. ‘The poor young boy,’ he intoned dolefully. ‘May the Saviour who sits at the right hand of the Lord Most High have mercy on his soul. May its black sins be washed white in the Blood of the Lamb . . . I’ll goo and pray for his salvation right this minute.’ Head bowed and hands clasped prayerfully in front of him, the ranter walked to his smithy.
‘Bleedin’ stinkin’ hypocrite!’ Turpin Wright raged, and ducked to avoid another blow.
‘Mount up,’ Seymour ordered, and the group moved off, Jethro and Turpin Wright each being led behind a dragoon by means of a rope lashed to the saddlehorn and noosed around their necks.
William Seymour was jubilant. It seemed that his luck had turned at last, and now alternative paths of action were opening to him. As the little procession entered the outskirts of the town, he plotted in his mind his next moves.
First he must get Wright on his own. The man was tough and full of hatred, but Seymour knew what a skilfully applied whip could do to tough men, and he cared nothing for any man’s hate.
Then he would deal with the other man, the handsome one who refused to give a name to himself. Seymour smiled pleasurably. Before he was done, the man would recite his whole life’s story, let alone a name. Then, once he had forced the whereabouts of the hoard from the pair . . . Seymour’s mind gloated on what the possession of wealth could mean. To begin with, there would be no court martial, he had recaptured the convicts after all, and money judiciously spent would ensure that he would be allowed to exchange into another regiment . . . Perhaps there might be sufficient for him to purchase his own command . . . A colonelcy! Colonel William Seymour . . . He savoured the sound of the title, it had a fine ring to it.
So deeply engrossed was he in his daydreams, that he failed to notice the drunken man who came reeling from the front door of the Black Lion tavern.
The man’s white smock flapped up about his thighs as he stumbled over the gutter and his broad-brimmed straw hat slipped forward across his eyes. In a fit of drunken temper, he snatched it off his head and threw it from him. Its wideness caught the wind and it sailed straight into the muzzle of Seymour’s horse. The startled beast snorted and reared violently, pitching the unprepared officer from the saddle. Seymour’s body cartwheeled through the air and thumped on to the cobblestones. He heard, rather than felt, the crack of breaking ribs, then white-hot shafts of pain lanced through his chest.
‘You stupid bugger!’ Without stopping to think, Corporal Ryder spurred his mount to crash into the man and send him toppling. The commotion brought the rest of the tavern’s customers to the doors and windows of the building. Big Tom, the yeoman farmer, his mood already belligerent after the vast amounts of gin and porter he had poured down his throat, let his temper break.
‘Stinking lobsters!’ he bawled. ‘You’m only fit to ride over honest men . . . Well, thee shall not do it here. Come on, lads, let’s teach the red-bellied pigs a lesson they’ll not forget in a hurry.’
The hotheads among the drinkers bellowed their support, and the next instant they came boiling from the tavern, wielding bottles, jugs, pots, and chairs as weapons.
Thomas Marston, who was bringing up the rear of the party came to an instant decision. He felt no liking for the military, indeed at times a positive hatred for the arrogant Seymour. The men pouring from the tavern, on the other hand, were his fellow townsmen, and he must continue to live his life among them. He swung his horse and headed away from the erupting brawl, drumming his heels on the gaunt ribs beneath him to drive the broken-winded wreck faster.
A bottle shattered against the wall behind Ryder and he drew his sabre, sending the bright blade whirling through the air and causing the men coming at him to jump back in alarm. The other dragoons did the same and the narrow street became a frantic mêlée of neighing, snorting, trampling horses, shouting men, and flying bottles.
Fortunately for Jethro and his friend, there was a quick-thinking man amongst the brawlers. Seizing the moment when the dragoons were totally occupied in keeping their attackers at bay and dodging hurled missiles, he darted behind the horses with a knife and hacked through the neck ropes of the prisoners. Some more rapid slashes, and both men were free of their bonds.
‘Goo on, lads,’ the man urged. ‘Run for it.’
They needed no second bidding and took to their heels, soon leaving the howling mob out of earshot. Half a mile from the town, the pair left the road and plunged through the hedgerows, making for the woodlands which lay to the south-west.
Back in the narrow street, the fury of the mob was slackening, particularly when the drunken man whose downfall had caused the trouble, clambered to his feet and staggered away singing to himself, completely unaware of what was happening around him. Big Tom, the sweat running in streams down his face and his wind gone from dodging the sabres of the dragoons, shouted in a voice which could plainly be heard above the tumult,
‘By God, lads, but this is thirsty work. I’m as dry as Old Nick’s arse!’
It caught the mob’s humour and roars of laughter swept through them.
‘Let’s goo for some more drink, lads!’ a man shouted, and scuffling and cheering, the crowd began to push back into the tavern, demanding more drink and leaving the badly shaken soldiers staring bemusedly after them.
After a pause, Corporal Ryder realized that it was all over. He sheathed his sabre and checked himself and his friends for injuries. They had been lucky, a few bruises and a bloody knee where Trooper Timpkins’ horse had scraped him against the wall, were the sum total of their hurts.
It was otherwise with William Seymour. He lay motionless, his face bloody and already swelling from the trampling he had received as the crowd had stamped backwards and forwards across his body. One arm was bent at a peculiar angle and as he breathed, his rib-cage felt as if it had been crushed completely. The agony he suf
fered was such that he could only lie with tight-shut eyes, and struggle to stop from screaming aloud.
‘What ’ull we do now, Corporal?’ Timpkins’ simple face was utterly perplexed. He lifted the cut end of the rope trailing away from his saddlehorn and showed it to Ryder.
‘They’se got away agen!’
‘I can see that, you bloody fool!’ the corporal shouted at him, and pointed to the injured officer. ‘We’ll get him to a surgeon, he looks as if he were near dead. Then we’ll goo back and rejoin the regiment.’
‘Be Jase! We’ll get a flogging if we go back wi’ out any prisoners,’ Macarthy protested.
Ryder smiled grimly. ‘Not now we wun’t, Paddy. Not arter I’se told you what we’em all going to tell Major Hickey and the Colonel.’ He stared at Seymour’s broken body, his expression a mixture of hatred and gladness. ‘We’ll tell ’um as how this barstard here brought the mob about our ears by acting like a bloody loony.’
‘But it was you who knocked that cove over,’ Macarthy said. Ryder grinned at him. ‘I was actin’ in defence o’ my officer, warn’t I? That’s a soldier’s duty, that is . . . But who was it who attacked that cove fust, for no reason? And who was it who ’uddent raise the hue and cry for them pair o’ buggers? And whose fault is it that we’se lost ’um agen and all bin near killed?’
As his friends got his meaning, they returned his grin. ‘Shure, that’s the truth of it, Corporal dear,’ the Irishman laughed. ‘But how about that fat ould sod who run off? D’you think he’ll agree wit out story if the major should ever come to question him?’
The corporal nodded slowly. ‘He’ll agree all right, to save his own skin, especially if this bugger dies, and he looks as though he might . . . There’s one thing sure, he’ll not be able to save hisself from court martial now, even if he recovers from this little battering. Told you I’d settle with the bastard, didn’t I?’
‘You shurely did, Corporal dear, you shurely did,’ Macarthy agreed happily.
Seymour heard all that was said and cursed inwardly at the realization of his own impotence. He feigned unconsciousness while the dragoons roughly bundled him on to a crude litter fashioned from rope and carbines. He bit the inside of his mouth until it bled, to stop himself screaming out in agony and giving them the satisfaction of knowing what tortures they were inflicting on him, tortures that intensified with each slow, jarring step they took.
Chapter Nine
On the evening of the day of the brawl in which Seymour was hurt, a sheriff’s officer came by post-chaise from Shrewsbury to escort Henri Chanteur on the first stage of his journey to the hulks at Portsmouth. A small group of his fellow prisoners-of-war came to the town gaol to wish him well, and to give him the few guineas they had been able to collect. Henri heard very little of what they said to him, he was too intent on searching for some glimpse of Sarah in the darkness of the street.
Not unkindly, the sheriff’s man ushered him into the closed carriage and to the waves of his comrades, Henri’s journey began. He sat numbed and unhearing and felt only a great emptiness at the thought that he would perhaps never again see the woman he loved.
Thomas Marston locked the thick door of the now empty gaol and stood in the street, absently gnawing at his fingernails as he watched the post-chaise, drawn by its two mares in tandem, rattle away. He had had an earlier visitor in the shape of Corporal Ryder and had come to an agreement with the soldier regarding the story they would tell about the incidents concerning Seymour, who was lying unconscious in the doctor’s dispensary.
‘Taking all in all, it’s ended pretty well,’ the constable thought. ‘And I must remember to goo wi’ Binns the carter, up to Jenkins’ shed to fetch that dead Frenchie. I’ll pop up to the Castle and tell him now. Perhaps I’ll have a tot o’ brandy while I’m there.’
Happy at the comforting notion, he went waddling up the short steep slope to the Castle Hotel. A slender, shawl-covered figure slipped out from the shadows to confront him.
‘Pon my soul! What a shock you gave me, wench. What is it you want?’
The woman slipped the shawl from her head, revealing herself as Sarah Jenkins.
The constable frowned. ‘Well, young woman? I’m not in the mood to bandy words wi’ you,’ he snapped, ‘so stand from my way.’
‘Not before you answer a question I have,’ she told him boldly.
‘I’ll save thee the trouble of asking it,’ he puffed. ‘Your French friend has gone to Portsmouth. That was the post-chaise that come and fetched him to Shrewsbury to catch the wagon.’
Sarah drew in her breath sharply. ‘Oh God! And he went thinking that I didn’t try to help him, I’ll be bound,’ she thought, then recovered herself and asked. ‘Is it the hulks he’s gone to?’
He nodded, then, softened a little by her obvious distress, he said, ‘Now don’t you worry your pretty head, my wench. That Frenchie will be treated well enough. We’re not a nation that tortures its prisoners-of-war. Why, they do say that the hulks can be quite pleasant places, especially in the summer wi’ the sun shining and the sea airs ablowing, and all the fine ships to look at.’
Without answering, the young woman pulled the shawl back over her head and left the fat man still talking.
*
‘Wheer’s you bin?’ In the flickering light of a solitary candle, George Jenkins sat at the table, an open Bible lying before him. ‘Sit down theer,’ he pointed to a footstool placed in the centre of the room. Sarah hesitated.
‘Do as thou’rt bid, you harlot!’ His voice was cold and expressionless and the glow of the candle shining into his face highlighted the glowing pinpoints of madness in his red-rimmed eyes.
Sarah shivered in sudden fear. She had come back to the smithy expecting her father’s usual roaring display of tantrums. This strange control and his manner made her afraid. Silently she obeyed his command and seated herself.
‘Put that shawl off,’ he instructed. ‘And look straight at me.’
She slipped the garment to her shoulders and steeled herself to meet his insane glare.
‘Listen well, whore!’ he boomed at her, and a trickle of saliva dribbled from one corner of his mouth, trailing slime across his black whiskers. ‘Listen to the words of the Holy Book.’ He began to read aloud, tracing the sentences with his fingers. ‘But if this thing be true and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel,’ his voice grew excited, ‘then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s home, and the men of the city shall stone her with stones that she die, because she has wrought folly in Israel to play the whore in her father’s house.’
Jenkins’ voice thundered the words and his hands gripped the edges of the heavy brass-bound tome, kneading the leather covering as if they would tear it to pieces.
‘Does thee understand that, whore?’ the ranter glared down at her, hysteria in his tone. ‘To play the whore in her father’s house! And the Lord tells us, so shalt thou put evil from amongst you.’ He slammed the book shut and rose to his feet. ‘The Lord has come to me in a vision, and commanded me as to what I must do. Praise to the Lord for His infinite mercy!’
At first Sarah didn’t fully understand, but as her father rounded the table she suddenly realized with a shock of horror what he intended doing.
‘No!’ she screamed. ‘No, father! Please! Nooo!’ She sprang towards the door, but before she had taken more than two steps, he was on her. His hands locked into her thick hair and he heaved her back, dragging her off balance. She twisted her body, clawing at his face with her nails and trying desperately to sink her teeth into his hands. Jenkins began to growl deep in his throat like a savage dog and he shook Sarah violently, lifting her from the ground as though she were weightless. The girl felt her wits leaving her and she shrieked in hopeless terror. The sounds reverberated through the room, going on and on and on and on and on, and the last thing she heard was that appalling shriek tearing at her senses and filling her being, until it blotted out all else around h
er and became a mass of blackness into which she fell.
*
‘There now, lass, rest easy. Rest easy.’ The rustic burr of Binns the carter’s voice came faintly to Sarah’s ears and when she opened her eyes, his seamed face smiled reassuringly down at her. She recovered her senses with a surge of fear and tried to struggle up from the bed she was lying on.
‘My father? Where is he?’ she asked anxiously.
The man’s strong hands held her shoulders. ‘Doon’t you fret, lass.’ Binns calmed her fear. ‘He’ll not harm you. Marston the constable has took him to the lock-up in the town.’
The girl blinked in puzzlement. ‘But how did you come here? The last thing I remember is my father catching me by the throat.’
With her fingers, she gently explored the bruised soreness of her neck.
‘Me and Fat Thomas was coming up to fetch that dead Frenchie you got here,’ the carter explained. ‘Well, we comes up the lane and we ’ears you ahollerin’ and screamin’ enough to wake the dead.’ He gave a long tuneless whistle. ‘I thought twas the Devil hisself had got you.’
‘I think perhaps it was,’ she mused, half to herself. ‘For I’ve never seen such evil in a man’s eyes before as my father had in his.’
The man sighed heavily and released her shoulders. ‘The pity is, lass, there’s naught the constable can do to him. Oh e’s’ going to lock him up for the night for causing a disturbance, but that’s all ’e can do. There’s no law says a man canna gi’ his own daughter a beating . . .’
‘What hour is it?’ Sarah asked.
‘Nigh on half past ten o’ the clock, I should rackon,’ the carter told her.
Sarah’s head ached, but it was now clear and she was collecting her thoughts. ‘I thank you for your help, Master Binns; and please convey my thanks to Master Marston. I don’t doubt but that you saved my life by coming when you did,’ she told him gratefully.
