Gideon the Cutpurse (21 page)

FIFTEEN
A Pact Made in Blood
In which Inspector Wheeler goes on the warpath, Peter and Kate make a solemn promise, and London exposes some of its attractions and its dangers

They had no choice but to spend the night under the oak tree. They made themselves as comfortable as they could, and although they were all hungry, at least the fire kept them warm. The knowledge that Ned's body lay stretched out on the other side of the carriage haunted their dreams. When Hannah had sung Jack a lullaby to get him back to sleep, he wasn't the only one who allowed himself to be comforted.
Nobody slept well. Peter least of all. It bothered him that Kate clearly thought so badly of him.
She must know how unfair she's being,
he thought, but still it bothered him. She'd said that Sidney was braver than he was! What had he done that was so great? Allowed Stinking John to knock his teeth out? And surely Kate must see that if Peter hadn't gone off with Gideon, things might have turned out a lot worse. And maybe it was mean of him to go off with Gideon without trying to include her--but it was meaner of her to imply he was acting like his dad, who always left him behind while he went off and did something important. Nor was it his fault that girls had to wear stupid big skirts in the eighteenth century and weren't allowed to do anything interesting.
He tried to stop thinking about it and instead forced himself to work out how many days they had been in the eighteenth century. Tomorrow, he decided, must be their sixth day. Which meant that at home, in four days' time, it would be Christmas. Not that his mother had yet decided whether she could spare the time to fly home to celebrate it with them.... She'd been so far away for so long. Strangely, it felt pretty much the same whether they were separated by eight thousand miles or two and a half centuries. Something tugged at him--was it anger? Or guilt at feeling angry? Or was it just that he missed her? Or perhaps he was frightened that he didn't miss her enough?
"Aren't you proud of her?" his dad had said. "Doing without her for a few months is hard but not too much to ask. This film is so important to her."
Except it wasn't a few months, it was more like a year and a half. And, yes, it was nice to be able to say to his friends that his mum was working on a film in Hollywood, and, yes, he'd been promised a couple of weeks' holiday in LA before too long, but all he really wanted was for her to come back home and for things to go back to normal. His dad was so bad-tempered when she wasn't around. Always on a short fuse, always too busy, always so critical. And when she did come home for a holiday, it was awkward at first--like having to get to know each other all over again--and just as everyone was beginning to feel comfortable, she would fly back to California.
Images of his mother came to him unbidden. Precious memories, silly things, momentous things: standing in a thunderstorm together, heads back, mouths wide open; her throwing a tub of chocolate mousse at him after he'd lied about taking some loose change, and then, as she scraped it off his clothes, her happy, infectious laughter; her waving good-bye to him at Heathrow, trying very hard not to cry the first time she left for Los Angeles.
Fluorescent spirals started to form in his mind. Peter opened his eyes. He lay on bare, ploughed earth, hard and white with frost, and directly above, a watery sun was trying to break through rippled white clouds. There was no sign of the giant oak tree, and in the distance he could hear the constant hum of traffic as if there were a motorway over the horizon. I'm back! he cried. I'm back! He stood up and tried to ignore the flickering dark borders that were trying to creep into the center of his vision.
If I concentrate,
he thought,
I can stay. I refuse to go back! I won't go back! I'll walk to the motorway and hitchhike back to Richmond.
He was conscious of a force being exerted on him with increasing pressure. He felt he was strong enough to resist it, but it was building up every second. For a moment--and he wasn't quite sure how he was doing it--he felt he was making headway. And then Kate's words pushed their way into his thoughts, just as a gust of wind suddenly flings open a window: "And you went off without giving me a second thought...."
His concentration snapped, and a pool of darkness flowed over the pale wintry scene. After all his efforts he collapsed to the ground. He was back on the damp earth under the oak tree and no matter how hard he tried he could not manage to blur a second time. Peter felt cold and empty and alone. He had nearly managed to return home by what felt like sheer force of will. If only he hadn't thought of Kate...And now he was stuck in 1763 with a girl who thought he was a coward. For all he knew he might never be able to blur again. Might never see his parents ever again. He realized he was crying: He never cried, he had trained himself not to. His back heaved as he gulped silently for air. Suddenly he became aware of a hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Peter felt too ashamed to look up and kept his head buried in the crook of his arm. He tried not to sniff. Then he sensed someone lay a jacket over him, spread it out, and tuck it around his sides. The warmth soothed him, and soon he fell into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

To Gideon's and Peter's surprise, the cherry-picking boy kept his word and arrived shortly after daybreak with his father, a farmer with a good-natured nut brown face and hair streaked yellow by the sun and scraped back from his face in a neat ponytail. They brought two large wooden wagons with them. The boy was keen to get his second sixpence, which Gideon willingly gave to him. The farmer helped the party into one wagon and was beginning to load their luggage into another when he spotted Ned's corpse. He shrank back and put his rough, square hand to his mouth and took another, fearful look at the folk he had come to help.
"Do not be alarmed, my good fellow," said the parson. "We are no murderers. This is none other than the notorious highwayman, Ned Porter. We have had a narrow escape."
The farmer's curiosity was such that he took a surreptitious peep at Ned's face when he thought no one was looking, though he slapped the back of his son's head when he tried to do the same.
Tom was allowed to travel with them too, mainly thanks to Kate, but he had to suffer a stern warning from Parson Ledbury.
"I have my eye on you, lad. You have Mistress Kate to thank for your safe passage. If her faith in you proves to be mistaken, you can be assured that Newgate Gaol will be your next destination!"
The wretched boy cowered even more than usual and put his hand deep into his pocket, where, Kate guessed, he was gaining some small comfort by stroking his one friend in the world.
The farmer refused to have anything to do with moving Ned's body but agreed to get a message to the magistrate at Lichfield that afternoon. Parson Ledbury undertook to write a full account of the night's events and send it to him but said he was not prepared to delay their journey to London any longer, for they had an appointment to keep with no less a person than His Majesty King George III.
"I have the King's evil," announced Jack proudly to the farmer and his son, who looked suitably impressed.
Gideon and the parson covered Ned's face with his jacket and placed some leafy branches over him to protect him, at least for some little time, against the rooks and the foxes. The parson stood over him and said a few words. Already flies were beginning to buzz around him. How happy the travelers were to see the giant oak tree and the scene of the attack recede into the distance.
Gideon reluctantly put Midnight into the hands of Martin, the driver, who was no longer needed now that the party was to catch a stagecoach. After two knocks to the head in as many days, Martin was, in any case, happy to be returning home on a fast horse.
"Though I hope I might be spared any further encounters with any gentlemen of the road," he said.
The parson did his best to reassure him.
"I doubt, Martin, that the sight of you drooping over your horse would excite the interest of the least daring highwayman. He would have expectation of very slim pickings indeed to spare a poor wretch like you a second glance. Why, he is more likely to offer you a sixpence."
Gideon stroked Midnight's nose and wished horse and rider Godspeed. When the driver dug his heels in, Midnight responded a little too eagerly--they all watched poor Martin disappear out of sight clinging to the reins for all he was worth.

* * *

While the farmer's massive shire horses heaved against the weight of the wagons on the road to Birmingham, the party took it in turns to recount what had happened the previous night. Somehow it helped everyone get over the shock of the attack and the horror of Ned's murder. The farmer listened in rapt attention and then, when Hannah told him about the parson having to preach to the drunken footpads in a state of undress, he slapped his thigh and laughed out loud, begging the parson's pardon, at the thought of it. He could not stop repeating, "As I live, Ned Porter...As I live..." and was quite beside himself when the parson allowed him to hold Mrs. Byng's diamond necklace in his own hands. Gideon, who was driving the second wagon, piled high with luggage, happened to look back as the farmer dangled the jewels from his fingers, his eyes wide with awe. Gideon glared at the parson and raised his eyebrows. The parson met his gaze and hastily snatched back the diamonds, secreting them in his jacket.
"Faith, you've spent a more thrilling night in Shenstone than ever I have, and I was born and bred there!" the farmer said. "I shan't want for an audience at the Fox and Hounds tonight."
Thrilling, thought Kate, isn't what it had felt like at the time.

* * *

They stopped briefly at Aldridge for breakfast before making haste to Birmingham, where they hoped to catch the morning stagecoach to London. The farmer and his boy deposited them outside the King's Head, and having been thanked very kindly and paid two shillings for their trouble, they set off back toward Shenstone, their heads buzzing with tales of footpads and highwaymen.
As the party was so large, an extra coach was laid on for their party to travel in. Parson Ledbury handed over the princely sum of twenty shillings (which he was obliged to borrow from Gideon), and the party clambered in. A printed notice announced that "God permitting" the London coach would depart at nine a.m. and would reach the Blue Boar Inn in Holborn at ten a.m. the following day, stopping only at four staging posts along the way to change the horses.
Gideon and Tom sat up on top with the driver and his guard, who carried a blunderbuss and a fearsome-looking cutlass in case of attack. The rest of the party were crammed into the carriage: It smelled of horse and stale sweat, but its steel springs made for a more comfortable journey than anyone had been expecting. The guard said that Dr. Samuel Johnson often took the stagecoach from Lichfield and swore that he had a better night's sleep than in any bed at a wayside inn. Nevertheless, the carriage bumped over interminable potholes and made frequent enforced stops while they waited for flocks of sheep and herds of cows to let them through. Often the roads were so bad the driver would take detours over farmers' fields to avoid getting stuck in the mud. Just after Oxford the driver stopped at a turnpike and paid to use a private road, which was much smoother in comparison and allowed them to make fast progress for a good while.
Whenever they passed another coach, the drivers and passengers would exchange greetings and pleasantries and wave their handkerchiefs out of the windows.
"This is a bit different from being stuck in lines of traffic on the M1," whispered Kate to Peter.
"Yeah," he whispered back. "But I wish we could stop at a service station for a Coke and a burger and chips."
The golden landscape swept slowly by. Day turned into night and night into day. Once they passed a village green where they saw, suspended from a gibbet, the body of a half-decomposed man swaying in the summer breeze. He still wore his three-cornered hat. Hannah would not let Jack look. Otherwise the journey was uneventful. The most exciting thing that happened was in Highgate the following morning when the driver lost his temper with a foppish young gentleman in a yellow jacket who refused to give way to him, nearly causing the carriage to run over a woman carrying a baby. He was driving a pretty, if slightly ridiculous-looking, one-seater chaise--a carriage built for one passenger--and was hurtling through the crowded streets paying no heed to the other road users.
The stagecoach driver cracked his whip over the horses' heads and skillfully drove off in hot pursuit of the one-seater, weaving between wagons and horse riders. He drew up next to him and started to force him, inch by inch, onto the side of the road, brushing the flimsy, ornate wheels of the chaise with the solid metal-rimmed ones of the coach. The gentleman, red-faced with fury, called out, "What the devil are you about, you impudent hound?"
The driver took pleasure in howling at him like a lovesick dog and then replied, "Have you not heard of hunting the squirrel? 'Tis a fine game--so long as both players can hold their nerve...."
And with that, he urged the horses forward and compelled the one-seater to dive into the gutter, where one of its wheels collided with some debris. The chaise tipped sideways and the young dandy was deposited into the gutter. If his dignity was not already damaged enough, a gang of small boys then decided to pelt him with mud. Everyone laughed, even Tom, who had remained silent the whole trip.

* * *

The roads had become busier and busier, and Peter and Kate hung their heads out of the window, eager for their first glimpse of the London of 1763. And then they saw it, the greatest city in Europe, stretched out below them, set against a blue horizon made hazy by the wood smoke of tens of thousands of fires. A host of church spires rose up from a maze of streets that described the curving contours of the Thames. Soaring up majestically in the east, the tallest building in the city, was the great dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, and farther east still, the Tower of London. To the west, Westminster Abbey and St. James's Park. It was not the gigantic, sprawling city of the twenty-first century that Peter and Kate knew. You could walk from one end to the other in the space of an afternoon, and yet they recognized it straightaway like an old friend.
"It's so beautiful!" Kate gasped.
"It's so small!" said Peter who had seen London from high up on Hampstead Heath many times. "You can see the edges! It's surrounded by green.... And no Post Office Tower! No Big Ben! No Canary Wharf! No Centre Point! Not a single skyscraper! I wonder if there are this many churches in our century--because if there are, you can't see most of them behind everything else."
They stared, mesmerized, longing to get out of the coach and experience the city firsthand, all feelings of fatigue gone. At a quarter to ten the stagecoach came to a halt in the yard of the Blue Boar Inn at Holborn. The driver leaped down and opened the door. His passengers clambered out onto the granite sets of the street. Although they now stood on firm ground, after over a day of being constantly jolted over holes in muddy roads, they had the impression that they were still in motion.
Peter and Kate looked about them. The noise of the street reached them from the other side of the inn. Here in the yard it was scarcely calmer. The Blue Boar Inn, one of the largest coaching inns in London, was a hive of activity--they saw porters carrying trunks, bakers delivering bread, a butcher stooped nearly double with the weight of a whole side of beef on his back. And there was a smell. Peter sniffed the air, and a grin appeared on his face that no one could have understood. Eighteenth-century London in the summer had its own distinctive mix of odors: wood smoke and horseflesh, rotting vegetables and sewers, and fresh horse manure. But over and above that pungent mix there was a trace of a smell, something subtle and impossible to define but which Peter recognized. London still
smelled
like London. In a curious sort of way Peter felt he had arrived home.