Highway Robbery (7 page)

I was looking at a long night ahead of me in the bitter cold, and I began to wish that it had never been my misfortune to meet Dick Turpin and Black Bess.

THEY CAME IN
the night, sir, as I might have guessed they would, Toothless and his portly friend.

I never saw or heard them coming at all. They just appeared, sneaking silently up the alley behind me.

My first thought when I saw them was to take their thirty shillings and run. Even if the soldiers caught me, I’d be better off than I would standing there and perishing in the cold. But they never offered it this time. They just pushed me into the mud and made off with the horse.

I’m not very big, sir, as you can see, but I can make a big noise if I choose to, and I did so then. The door of the nearest house opened, but I was already running after the men and Black Bess. I needn’t have, though. Because the soldiers had also appeared, as if from nowhere, and they were everywhere around us in the dark, blocking every mouth of every alley. The men tried to make a run for it, but they hadn’t a hope.

They were collared in no time and brought back to my corner, and pushed against the wall. There was plenty of light by this time, because the commotion had caused half the people in the street to open their doors. And the other half, I suppose, to bolt them more securely.

‘But the horse is mine,’ Mudbreeks was saying. ‘That urchin stole her from me.’

‘Is that true, lad?’ said the captain, strolling in from one of the alleyways. ‘Is this the man who asked you to look after his horse?’

I’m good at thinking on my feet, sir. You have to be if you live on your wits, like I do. But on that occasion I didn’t think fast enough. It could all have been over, you
see. If I had said yes, there could have been an end to it all.

‘But he promised me a guinea and now he has to give it to me’ is what I should have said. Muddybreeks would gladly have given me a guinea to get off the hook, and he would have got himself a great bargain. As for me, I could have taken myself off to the nearest pie shop and got myself a bellyful of steak and kidney.

But there was an even better outcome to that particular plan, and it was this. If I named Muddybreeks as the owner of the horse, then the soldiers would stop watching for Dick Turpin, wouldn’t they? So when he did come back for Black Bess, he would be disappointed, of course, and
he would think that I had let him down, and that would be very unfortunate if it were to happen that I encountered him again some day. But what matters is that he would have his freedom, and he could go about his business on the highways. It was, in fact, the perfect solution to everyone’s problems.

But did I say
yes
?

No. I said
no
.

Two such small words, sir, but what a big difference between them. I said no, and the soldiers laid hands on the two men instantly, as if they were following my personal orders. Such a sense of power that gave me, but it didn’t last for long. Muddybreeches spat at me as they took
him away, which goes to prove that he was no gentleman, despite his waistcoat and his boots.

Three of the soldiers went with the men and the rest vanished back to wherever they had been hiding before. Only the captain remained behind, and he clapped me on the shoulder and said:

‘Back to your post, young man.’

My heart sank at the thought of more standing around in the darkness and the cold. But what could I do? I led the mare back to our station and adjusted the cloak on her back. It was wonderfully warm beneath it, where the heavy woollen cloth trapped the heat from her body, and I envied her and wondered how it was that a beast could be so well provided for and comfortable when I was so miserable and cold. But that was my lot, sir, and I was
well accustomed to suffering it, so I pulled my tattered old coat round me as tight as I could and stamped my icy feet up and down on the ground.

I don’t know how long we stood like that, with the mare moving her weight from one hind leg to the other and myself leaning against the wall and doing the same thing. I know there are some people who take pleasure from the hours of darkness, but I’m not one of them. It’s during the night that I remember my life at home before my mother died, and when there is nothing to look at, it’s difficult to keep your mind away from dwelling on the bad things that happen. I measure my days by the passage of the sun through
the sky and by the length of the roads and streets I travel, but I have no way of measuring the hours of darkness, so I have no idea what time of night it was when Black Bess grew tired of standing and, very carefully, laid herself down on her belly.

And now that she no longer towered over me, I saw a way in which we could share Dick Turpin’s cloak and both stay warm beneath it. I had never sat astride a horse before, but with her back now so close to the ground, it didn’t seem to me to be a very great risk to take when the return was the promise of such warmth.

Very slowly and quietly, taking care not to alarm the mare, I put the reins back over her head and climbed into the saddle. She sighed in the darkness but she made no other objection. I pushed myself to the very back of the saddle, then leaned forward over her withers. The cloak came over my back and up to my neck, but a draught still came in beneath it, so I felt
along the collar until I found the buckle and strap, and I fastened them beneath my chin.

The cloth still held a rank smell from the mare’s dried sweat, but it held the heat from her body as well, and I began to warm up so fast that I got pains in my hands and feet. But there was pleasure too, sir: the pure delight of being warm, and even before the pains had faded away I had drifted off into sleep, with my cheek resting on the mare’s thick mane.

I WOKE TO
the alarming sensation of the mare clambering to her feet beneath me. It was so dark that I thought my eyes were gummed together, as they often are when I wake up in the mornings, but then I caught a glimpse of a few stars above the rooftops and I knew it was still the dead of night.

‘Off you get, lad. It’s all up.’

It was the captain’s voice, and now I could make out his form in the street beside me. But I was looking down at him instead of
up, because I was sitting up high on the mare’s back.

‘What’s all up?’ I said. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Two constables caught Dick Turpin yesterday afternoon. The report of it has only just reached us.’

He sounded very cross. I wondered whose fault it was that he and his men had stood for half the night in the freezing cold, waiting to catch a man who had already been caught.

‘So down you get, and off home with you.’

But I wasn’t ready to get down, and in any case I had no home to go to. And there was another thing.

‘What about my payment?’ I said.

‘Oh, hang your payment,’ said the captain, and he reached up to take hold of my arm and pull me down.

But I wasn’t coming down. My heart filled with fury at the way I had been used. Did he really think that he could treat me like that? Keep me standing around all day and night and then just send me on my way without so much as a sixpence? I yanked my arm away and kicked out at him as hard as I could. I missed him by a mile, but as my leg returned, my heel slammed hard into Black Bess’s flank. And, noblest of mares, she didn’t need to
be asked twice. She spun away from my heel and lit out along the street as though the devil was after her. Lord knows how I stayed in the saddle, but now that we were moving I clung on to her mane as tight as I could, knowing that my life might very well depend upon it.