Not satisfied with the purse, one of the bandits touched the muzzle of his pistol to the passenger’s heart. “Open your jacket,” he said, in a voice that menaced dire results if disobeyed. I discovered that our new passenger had two expressions. Bored and more bored. Wearing his more bored face, he pulled the coat back to display a sprigged waistcoat.
“Now the waistcoat,” our bandit ordered. The passenger began slowly removing his York tan gloves. The bandit pushed his hands aside and pulled from beneath the waistcoat a letter. A dark blot on it appeared to be a wax seal. The slit of mouth beneath the mask curved in a satisfied smile, and the letter was handed to the mounted scamp.
I began to think it was that letter and nothing else the highwaymen wanted. What could be in it? The highwaymen then turned their attention from the languid Adonis to Ronald and myself. “Hand over your blunt,” one said.
“My reticule’s in the coach,” I replied. “I’ll get it.” I intended to dump most of my money before giving it to him, but apparently the scamps were aware of that stunt, for one of them followed me closely.
Once at the carriage door, they discovered Reverend Cooke and Mr. Wideman, cowering in a corner instead of coming to our aid. The highwayman hauled them out into the rain and entered the carriage himself. He was soon out carrying my leather lap case, Wideman’s sample case, and the reverend’s book. What he had missed, however, was my little patent reticule, which must have been overlooked at the back of the seat. All the stolen articles were dumped into a sort of leather pouch affair hung over the highwaymen’s mounts. While one of them cleaned out the carriage, the other ordered Cooke and Wideman to stand and deliver. They handed over their money without a word.
The money was added to the leather pouch. One of them murmured something under his breath. It sounded like “Chev o” or possibly “Shove oh.” He then went to the carriage team and set them free, hitting their rumps with the harness to make sure they ran off on us. The three scamps exchanged a complimentary smile, gave a Gallic shrug of their shoulders, and one of them decided to be gallant. He lifted my hand and kissed a very wet glove. “Mam’selle.” He bowed, and hopped on his horse.
It wasn’t a terribly exciting performance. I had expected better of the highwaymen—and the passengers. Other than that final kissing of my hand, I began to think I could write a better scene for Aurelia myself. There had been no brutality, no roughing up of the passengers—possibly because they had all acted as tame as rabbits. I remembered the groom’s wound and turned to help him.
Before I took a single step, the new passenger strode up to me and stood glowering down from his six feet and a few inches. I measure five feet eight myself, and was not likely to be intimidated by a tame English coward after doing business with Emir Mohanna, the Bedouin chief, and the dreaded Turkish Pasha Suliman. The Turkish pashas had been known to remove the nose, one eye, and one ear of a previous visitor.
“May one enquire why you got out of the carriage, madame?” he sneered, in an accent I wouldn’t use to the lowliest
saice.
“You made it impossible for us to defend ourselves, with a lady present.”
“Is that your excuse for tugging your forelock and handing your money over to common thieves?” I replied tartly. The drooping eyelids lifted a fraction, revealing a flash of anger. “Five of you men against a mere three of them! I assure you the lady would have a better opinion of you had you defended yourselves—and her.’’ The gentleman looked taken aback at my answer, but I elbowed him aside and took a look at the groom’s arm.
“Am I dying?” he asked fearfully.
“If you’ll get in the carriage, I’ll tie a handkerchief around this scratch. Fortunately, you were only grazed. Ronald, you’d best go after the team, as it’s clear no one else here has his wits about him.”
Ronald provided a handkerchief before leaving, with the chastened passenger in tow. I took the groom into the carriage and did what I could in the dark to provide him a dressing. “Do you coach drivers not carry a gun?” I asked.
“The shot came out of the dark and winged me before I could draw. I wasn’t looking for scamps on a night like this.”
“Surely a moonless night is the likeliest time for attack?”
“Moonless, not bloody pouring rain!”
“How about the man sitting on the perch with you?”
“Kestrel was driving. The bucks like to take the reins.”
I was familiar with this strange desire on the part of sportsmen to play at being coach drivers. “Is that his name?” There was, in fact, a hawkish quality to the man’s face—something in those hooded eyes—but he was no small hawk. More an eagle than a kestrel.
“It’s a title,” the groom replied. “Kestrel’s a lord, one of the Corinthian set.”
Oddly enough, Ronald had been urging me to ingratiate myself amongst the nobility. There was some discussion the other night about my receiving an order for meritorious public service. Were I a gentleman, Moore felt, I would certainly have been knighted. I would have been well pleased with a lesser token of recognition. Not anything so exclusive as the Most Noble Order of the Garter, but some sovereign recognition of my accomplishments. My being a female was all that prevented it, according to people who know more about such things than I. Only strong noble connections could induce Prinney to reward a lady. It seems the only honor a lady may receive is a pat on the head, unless the sovereign decides to go whole hog and create her a peeress in her own right. This is about as likely as the sky falling in. In any case, I had scotched any possibility of Kestrel’s setting up a lobby to gain me a meritorious order.
“How far are we from civilization?” was my next concern.
“Chatham’s ten miles ahead.”
“There must be something closer than that.”
“There’s a stretch of hop farms hereabouts. You must have seen the oasthouses—them with the pointed roofs.”
I had noticed this feature during the latter part of the afternoon. “We’ll go to one of the farms if the gentlemen can’t recover the team.”
“They’ll not catch Maggie and Belle. Them mares like their freedom too well. Pity it’s raining so hard.”
Mr. Wideman and Reverend Cooke joined us, and the discussion turned on their loss. Mr. Wideman figured he had lost five guineas worth of toys, and the reverend lamented the loss of his book (i.e., pictures). In actual cash, he had lost only a couple of guineas.
“How much did you lose, ma’am?” Cooke asked me.
“I lost nothing,” I announced, and retrieved my reticule from behind the groom, where it had gotten wedged in below the squabs.
“You’re lucky you had on your gloves, or they’d have pulled off that dandy ruby ring,” Wideman mentioned.
“I have twenty-five guineas in my reticule, too,” I said, congratulating myself on its deliverance.
“It’s strange they didn’t demand our watches,” Wideman said, massaging his generous chin. “I’ve lost two watches to the scamps.”
“They didn’t seem to notice my reticule was missing either, but it’s my ruby ring, a present from Emir Beshyr, chief of the Druses, that I’m especially glad to have safe.”
“Would it be amiss if I asked what a Christian lady was doing amidst such foreigners?” Wideman asked.
I mentioned a few of my milder exploits, and at length Ronald and Lord Kestrel returned, empty-handed. “I knew how it would be,” the groom said, shaking his head. “They’ve bolted to Chatham on me.”
“You might have told us, my good man, and saved us a highly uncomfortable slog through the mud,” Kestrel suggested, still bored.
The rain hadn’t let up. As the carriage was full, the new arrivals stood at the door, with their heads in out of the wet. We discussed for a moment what was best to be done. Ronald spoke of walking to the closest farm and trying to borrow a team. The groom thought the closest place likely to have horses was three miles ahead.
“It would take hours!” I pointed out. “The rest of you may do as you please, but I intend to walk to the closest house and seek refuge.”
Without further ado, I had Ronald unfasten my small case from the top of the rig, put my pelisse over my head like a blanket to protect my bonnet, and was ready to go. The others grumbled themselves into agreement with my idea, and together the six of us lit out into the teaming rain, peering into the shadows for a sign of more attackers.
Chapter Two
There are many sorts of people in the world, and the sort with whom Ronald and I had fallen into company were the sort who hug their misery to their breasts in silence. In vain did I urge our companions to sing, and alleviate the discomfort of plodding through the dark, wet night.
“There is a season for all things, Miss Mathieson,” Reverend Cooke said, in a damping way.
“And this is
not
the season for merry song,” Lord Kestrel added, rather conclusively.
After an hour Mr. Wideman finally opened his lips. “I’m starved,” he muttered.
“You can afford to lose a few pounds,” I told him. The man could drop two stone and be the better for it.
“It’s perishing cold,” Reverend Cooke added half a mile later.
“I’m soaked through” was Kestrel’s addition to the lament. “I fear Weston’s jacket is beyond repair.”
Even Ronald turned pessimist on me. “I haven’t been this wet since we were shipwrecked off Rhodes,” he said.
I said nothing, but as with our shipwreck, which endured eight hours, my own major concern was food. In a last effort to brighten the journey, I turned to the groom. “You must be our
saice,
our guide, sir. How much further do you figure we must go?”
“A long ways yet” was his uninformative reply.
The rain was so heavy that I felt it seeping through my pelisse to dampen my shoulders. The last thing I wanted was a feverish infection, with my lecture tour set. When I spotted a dark hulk ahead of us, I pointed it out. “What is that?”
“It looks like a hop-picker’s hut,” the groom replied.
As we drew nearer, it proved to be slightly more than a hut. It was a small cottage, not at all prepossessing, and with no outbuildings hinting at horses, but it had a roof over it, and we all turned as one toward it. I felt a moment’s pity for the poor farmer’s wife who would have to spread her meager hospitality over so many of us. Kestrel’s concern for his jacket finally shook him out of his lethargy. He took the lead. He advanced and knocked so loudly, the door rattled. Then we waited. A moment later he knocked again, if kicking a door with a booted foot can be called knocking. Still there was no reply.
“Are they deaf!” he exclaimed, and took hold of the handle to rattle the door loose. He strode in and bellowed ‘Hello’ a couple of times. There was no reply. “It’s empty,” he told us.
This seemed to be the case. We all straggled into the pitch black, and still there was no sign of life. “We need a light,” he decided.
“Ronald, go out and see if you can detach one of the carriage lamps,” I suggested.
The groom went with him, and they soon returned, each carrying a lamp, which by good fortune were of the old detachable sort. The room we stood in was a combination dining and sitting room. It had a dusty deal table and two lopsided chairs, a lumpy horsehair sofa with half the stuffing on the floor, a sideboard, and a grate with a half-empty basket of wood beside it. “Does anyone know how to light a fire?” I enquired.
The gentlemen exchanged startled looks at the suggestion that they should lift a finger for their own comfort. The faces soon turned toward the groom. “John Groom is wounded. Surely one of you knows how to start a fire!” I scolded. “Ronald?” He went to the grate and dumped the container of wood in.
“You need room for a draft, and a bit of kindling or paper to get her started,” the coachman suggested. He directed Ronald to build the wood up in a certain order. I found some old newspapers which I formed into balls while the gentlemen looked on, and with a light from the lamps, we eventually got a small, smoky fire going. We received very little heat from it, however, as we all hung our coats on the chairs to dry in front of it. This left the horsehair sofa, holding three at the most, for our only seating.
The noble gentleman was the first to avail himself of a seat, with the vicar not a step behind him. Wideman took a look around and soon legged it to grab the other spot. I cast a disparaging glance at the three rude brutes and said to Ronald, “It is a great comfort to be surrounded by
gentlemen
at this time of difficulty. Reassuring to know their high opinion of ladies goes beyond failing to defend her during a holdup.”
Kestrel stared at me from his cold gray eyes, still drooping in boredom, and shuffled to his feet. “Would you care for a seat, Miss Mathieson?” he asked wearily.
“Thank you, sir,” I replied, and with a frosty look, sat down, shivering and rapidly becoming weak from starvation.
My companions seemed to have taken the notion that I was in charge of affairs, and asked what should be done. “We’ll need more firewood before long. And as this rain shows no sign of letting up, someone ought to go and see if there are any bedrooms or blankets in this shack.’’
The cottage was only one story high. It had one bedroom in the back, empty save for a roll of tattered, foul-smelling blankets on the floor. Ronald brought them for my inspection. “Goat blankets,” I said, waving them away. I recognized the odor from Damascus. Kestrel’s nostrils quivered in distaste, and he fanned the air beneath his nose with his curled beaver hat. Only John Groom, whose name was in fact Mostly, availed himself of the blankets.
“If we had some boiling water, I’d cleanse that wound properly for you, Mostly,” I told him. The gentlemen looked around the room, everywhere but to the black pot sitting by the grate. “Would someone care to see if there’s a pump in the kitchen?”
I directed this civil request to Kestrel, who gave a silent sneer, but he went forward stiffly and took up the pot. I feared he would not clean it first, and went after him, taking a lamp with me. The kitchen was a discouraging sight. There was a pump in the corner and an open hearth, but they were the extent of its facilities. “That pot should be scoured before you fill it,” I told him.