The Accidental Highwayman (3 page)

Sometimes he would stop at a particular crossroads or other isolated spot and study the lay of the land with infinite care, I knew not why. I had begun to understand that my master, as much as I, felt trapped—myself by idleness, and him by some unknown business that worried him.

But here my musings ended, for my steps had taken me to the Widow's Arms.

 

Chapter 2

THE DAY'S SECOND INTERROGATION

I
HAD BEEN
instructed by Master Rattle to bring back a jug of beer in addition to whatever else I thought fit. He was not much interested in food, except as it accompanied drink; that and cards were my master's main vices. He was often out all night. I had saved getting the beer for last, because it would spoil if it sat in the cart all afternoon. So it was, with the sun at my back and long shadows stretching out before me, that I stopped in at the tavern.

The Widow's Arms was a low, dark place on the road outside town, always cool within and smelling of damp. There were a number of people at the tables there, it being market day, and the air was blue with pipe smoke. Molly Figgs tended bar, scouring pewter mugs with a rag as brown as bacon. She was a formidable woman with a red cap on her head, not the widow named on the signboard but her daughter-in-law. She knew me well, my master requiring an above-average quantity of beer.

“Brought your jug, I see, Mr. Bristol,” she boomed. Bristol, being the town in which I was purchased, was my surname. “Same as always?”

“If you please, ma'am,” I said, and placed my coins on the bar. I thought of ordering a dish of tea for myself, but one look at the washing-rag and I decided against it.

Molly arranged the jug beneath a beer-tap in the end of a cask, then aimed a leering wink at me. “Your master's a rare 'un,” she said. “There's talk of him from one end o' town to the next, you know.”

I did know. I felt my face turning red. It was a proud thing to work for a gentleman, but not so proud if the gentleman was prone to strange behavior.

“It's only gossip,” said I, staunchly. “Master Rattle is restless from inaction, that's all.”

“Curse of the titled class, boredom,” Molly said, and squinted as if she could squeeze me to death with her eyelids. I was searching for a suitable response when there was a great clatter of boots and hooves in the foreyard, and a few moments later the door flew open and banged against the wall.

The officer late of the fine brown horse strode in, spurs ajingle, and tucked his hat under his arm like a bagpipe. He surveyed the room, examining each face turned toward him. To judge by his scowling demeanor, he found some fault in every one. He might have been correct, but it was unkind to make his opinion so obvious.

Still, thirst must be answered. So he clove through the occupants of the place as a ship cleaves the waves, with a pair of soldiers at his back forming a red wake, and dropped anchor right beside me.

“Whisky,” he barked in a drill-field voice. The soldiers standing behind him gazed lovingly on the tuns of beer that stood behind Molly. While she fetched the bottle, the captain leaned on his elbow and turned to sweep the room with his eyes again, lingering on the roughest characters. I barely rated a blink's worth of scrutiny.

“I am Captain Sterne,” bellowed he, “of the Earl of Bath's Regiment, now designated the Tenth. Look on me well. If any crime is perpetrated upon the roads from here to the Irish Sea, or t'other way to Penzance, or thence to the chalky Cliffs of Dover, I shall pursue the perpetrant to the very gates of hell. But every coin has a backside, and so have I.”

At this, several of the customers chuckled, and Captain Sterne fixed them with a glare so ferocious it could have knocked a bird out of the air.

“On the
obverse
of this coin: If any of you have knowledge of a crime done, or of plans to commit one in the future, I am provided with means of instant reward by courtesy of our practical-minded Majesty. There is nothing so soothing to the conscience as gold. When I'm not fixing the noose about your necks, I'll balm your tongues with sovereigns. Am I understood?”

There was a smattering of “yerss” and “aye” from those present, sufficient so that the captain felt he'd done his part.

“The age of land-piracy is come to an end,” he said. “And I'm the end of it.”

So saying, he threw the dram of whisky down the back of his throat like a shovel of coals onto a smelting fire, coughed once, and clapped a gold sovereign on the bar. “God save the King,” said he, and spun on his heel so that he was nose to nose with his men. They parted to let him pass, then followed him out of the place, just as thirsty as when they had walked in.

Every eye in the house turned from the door as soon as it was shut, and fell upon the coin that gleamed atop the bar. After she'd gathered her wits back together, Molly Figgs' red hand leapt out and snatched it up. It vanished into a pocket among her skirts. Then she swept the room with her own eyeballs, no less ferocious than the captain.

“That's what I gets for keeping an 'onest hestablishment,” said she, defiantly. “And don't think I'll fail to turn 'ee in one and all if you ain't 'onest yerselfs!”

So saying, she commenced polishing the bar with such determination that part of it nearly became clean. The jug was overflowing, and I pointed this out to her. She corked it up and slid it across to me, but didn't let go. Her brains had been at work, it seemed.

“There's talk,” Molly said, “that your master rides out of an evening and don't come back till morning.”

“Most gentlemen do that sort of thing, I'm told,” I said. “Until they have wife and children, of course. Then they don't come back all week.”

“There's some what seen him on that great black horse, riding across the moors by moonlight. Wild as an Apache, they say. Clad all in black,” she went on, now leaning over the jug to squint at me more closely.

“I doubt very much that's my master,” said I, growing irritated. This sort of talk was dangerous. If they thought my master was galloping around in the dark, it wasn't a far stretch to asking why an
honest
man would do so. People were seeing highwaymen behind every tree these days—they could mistake him for a brigand. And Captain Sterne might not care who he captured, as long as he captured
someone.

I was about to argue the point, but stopped myself, remembering my earlier interview with Lily the acrobat. If I protested too much, Molly might well take it that I was hiding something. I was an open sort of person by nature—little credit for that, as it caused me no end of difficulties—but my years on the road had taught me a great deal about how dishonest minds work. They tend to attach the worst motives to everything.

“My master's a man of rare habits, I confess,” said I. “But there is no harm in him. We go hunting thrice a week, but he hasn't any interest in bagging game, as far as I can tell. He once shot a sparrow out of the air by way of a demonstration of marksmanship, and accidentally trampled a marmot while jumping Midnight over a stile, but that's been the whole of his bag in the two years I've known him. Master Rattle loves to ride, that's all. And Midnight's the finest horse in England. Anyone would want to ride him day
and
night.”

Molly nodded, as if this confirmed her worst suspicions. She began to release the jug, lifting one finger at a time in order to prolong the conversation. “He likes his guns, though, even if he don't shoot rabbits,” she said, and winked so violently her cap tipped sideways.

A couple of ruffians at a nearby table had begun listening to the conversation. Captain Sterne's eye had lingered upon them earlier. One had a pink scar that ran from his cleft ear to his nose, like a saber cut.

Their pipes had gone out, and they were staring at me in a most curious manner. I watched them from the tail of my eye, and was again reminded of my conversation with Lily. It might be as well to warn people that the Rattle estate was reasonably well defended.

“He's a brilliant shot with pistols,” I boasted, raising my voice a little. “And he's a wizard with a sword. Master's taught me a great deal so that I might spar with him, but there's none so quick as he. However, I can play my part.”

“Practicing pistols and swords … it makes a body wonder what on Earth he needs such talents for,” Molly said.

She didn't elaborate on what she was thinking, and when I finally realized what she was implying, I decided not to say another word, lest I make matters worse. Unless I was much mistaken, she suspected my master was—incredibly enough—a highwayman. And it hadn't occurred to me until that moment that I could furnish no proof otherwise.

Master Rattle
did
ride out at all hours of the night, with no word to explain where he'd gone. He was the surest shot and the nimblest sword I knew, and his magnificent horse could scarcely have been swifter if he'd been equipped with wings. What a dreadful thought! But it was nonsense, of course. Highwaymen didn't have manservants, and here I was.

With that thought to sustain me, I departed the Widow's Arms. The eyes of the two ruffians followed me to the door.

 

Chapter 3

RATTLE RIDES OUT

T
HE SUN
was down and the sky a red bowl over the darkening countryside when I drove the cart through the crooked iron gates of the Rattle Manse, and the stars had come out by the time I had put Old Nell away in the stable. Midnight, my master's fine black hunter horse, was not there, nor his tack. I brought my purchases into the house by way of the kitchen, and there found a note pinned to the long deal table with a paring knife.

Dear Mr. Bristol,

I shall be out all night, and possibly longer. Do not wait up, I pray.

Yrs

J. Rattle

This was a fairly typical communication from Master Rattle, who (despite his station in life) seemed to find it amusing that he had any household staff at all. He'd grown up with many servants in the much finer seat of his family. His father was an influential and wealthy lord, and his elder brothers were celebrated, too: one was an admiral in the navy, the other an importer of tea. James Rattle was himself, as he'd once said to me, nothing more than a spare boy in case one of the other two died prematurely. As a result he'd been given one of the hereditary estates and a trifling income. Although he joked about it, I think he acutely felt his father's indifference to him. I cannot speak of my own father's indifference, for no one knew who he was. Neither of us could remember our mothers, who had perished young in the fashion of the times.

The Manse was a big place, to be fair—far too big to maintain, and set in the middle of extensive grounds. Yet among the estates thereabouts, it was the least. The roof was falling in, it was overrun by mice (which Demon the bulldog steadfastly ignored), and the cellar flooded for a month every spring.

*   *   *

Having been employed by him for two years, I thought I understood my master fairly well (which, as you shall learn, shows I understood little enough). He had two reasons for not employing more servants: one was money, always in short supply—gambling consumed his entire annual stipend in a month or two—and the other was privacy. Most servants employed to mind such a wreckage as the Manse would do nothing but carry tales into town all day. Master Rattle detested wagging tongues.

I made for myself a supper of ham and butter between two slabs of bread, a clever way of taking meals invented by John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. Then I set some sausage and the jug of beer on the table for my employer—the kitchen door was nearest the stables, and among Master Rattle's eccentricities was his use of the kitchen door as if it were the main entrance to the house. His father, he once remarked, had never set foot in his own kitchen in sixty years.