The Path of the Wicked (14 page)

Tabby had been right about the map. It was a large one that looked as if it had been professionally surveyed, showing the town and the countryside for several miles around. It was easy to pick out the farm that was the subject of the Raddlebush Brotherhood's latest threat because somebody, Mr Penbrake probably, had ringed it in red ink. Red ink arrows converged on it from the north, with names and numbers beside them, with green ink ones coming from the south. I tried to make as much sense of it as I could in the few minutes that were probably all I had. The farm was about half a mile past the Kembles' land and uphill of it. It was isolated, with only two buildings near it – probably farm cottages. To the south, the main road went close, with a lane off it leading up to the farm. Green arrows clustered either side of the lane. Above the farm was a dead-end track, leading only to a quarry. Woodland ran along some of the hillside between the quarry track and the farm and could conceal a group of men. It would be a good place to start a surprise attack, with nothing but a field or two between saboteurs and farmyard. Penbrake clearly thought so too because two sets of red arrows pointed towards a copse of trees and an area carefully marked ‘dead ground' between the quarry road and the farm. If the brotherhood came from that direction, there'd be men in hiding waiting to ambush them.

I'd been too intent on the map. Before I was aware of steps in the passage outside, the study door was opening and Mr Godwit and Mr Penbrake were back.

I turned, not trying to hide my embarrassment and confusion.

‘Oh, I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't be here, but I'm so scared and worried.'

I spoke to Mr Godwit, but it was Mr Penbrake who answered.

‘My dear young lady, you mustn't disturb yourself. We promise that we'll keep you and everybody else safe, won't we, Stephen?'

He spoke like a kindly uncle to a child of seven, noticing me now because I was playing my proper part in their drama. Mr Godwit was making small soothing noises. I edged away from the map.

‘I'm sure you will, but it's you and Mr Godwit I'm scared for. The guns . . .'

Two of them, propped up against a bookcase. Mr Godwit's might have been used in King George's time, but the other looked modern and businesslike.

‘My dear, I promise you we'll bring him back safely. Sleep tight tonight and don't worry, and we'll be back with you by breakfast time, safe and sound,' Mr Penbrake said.

Somehow he'd got hold of my hand and was patting it. I'd always hated that, even when I was a child, so I pulled it away, pretending a need to get my handkerchief out of my pocket. Naturally, he assumed I was trying to hide a nervous tear. After a few more soothing sounds, we went in to our campaigning dinner, where Mr Godwit only toyed with his food but Mr Penbrake ate steak and kidney pudding like a hero. I left the table as soon as I decently could, but not before suffering a toast from Mr Penbrake: ‘To hearth, home and the ladies. May they always find defenders.'

Tabby, sensing action, was waiting in my room upstairs with my plainest dark wool dress laid out on the bed and my good stout walking shoes under it. She was wearing her urchin boots, visible because she'd already hitched her dress up to shin level.

‘Are we off now?'

‘We'll let them go first. They probably won't be long.'

The gig, loaded with rustic weaponry, was already on the drive under our window, with the cob in the shafts, the gardener standing beside it, holding the reins of Mr Penbrake's horse.

‘Do you want me to get Rancie ready?' Tabby asked.

‘I think we'll go on foot.'

There'd be fields to cross and I had no intention of putting Rancie at unknown hedges in the dark. The battle party went off soon afterwards. Watching from the window, we saw a group of what looked like local farmhands, who had been waiting by the church, fall in behind Mr Godwit and the gig. I guessed that they'd been ordered by their employers to come to another farmer's defence, whether they liked it or not. They probably liked it. A rural worker's life can be pretty monotonous.

‘Whose side are we on?' Tabby inquired. It sounded as if she didn't mind one way or the other.

‘We're not on anybody's side. We're just trying to prevent bloodshed.'

I'd no great sympathy for people who burned ricks, but my father had brought his children up to be on the side of the working man. Also, Mr Godwit was too old and too gentle to be dragged into battles in the dark.

Tabby and I waited half an hour. Then we put on our cloaks and walked uphill, in the opposite direction to the way the battle party had gone. It was around half past seven, still broad daylight. Penbrake's tactics were probably to put one party by the main entrance to the threatened farm and a larger one in the fields at the back, between the farm and the quarry road. He'd want to get both groups in place before dark. The Raddlebush Brotherhood couldn't risk arriving by daylight. Their attack would come late, possibly even in the early hours of the morning. We could all be in for a long wait.

‘We could have done with a lantern,' Tabby said.

‘Probably. There'll be a half-full moon, but it doesn't rise till much later.'

I'd consulted Mr Godwit's almanack before we left and put a few inches of candle in my pocket, along with a flint lighter. Tabby fell behind and then caught up, holding two stout hazel sticks that she'd taken from a hedge. She offered me one of them.

‘Better'n nothing,' she said. ‘If you hold it by the thin end and bring it down like this.'

Her swing made it whistle through the air like a hornet.

‘For goodness' sake, Tabby, we're supposed to be stopping them, not joining in.'

Still, I accepted the stick. It had a comforting feel. As we walked, I explained my plan to Tabby. Mr Penbrake was probably right in thinking the attack would come from the quarry track because the brotherhood would expect the front gate of the farm to be defended. We'd wait on the track or in the quarry with the aim of intercepting the attackers and warning them that the farm was defended with guns and a much larger party than they'd been expecting. If there was a brain among them, they'd surely call off the attempt. If not, then at least we'd done what we could.

As we turned on to the quarry track, the sun was going down over the western hills, a great copper hemisphere in a pale sky, with home-going rooks silhouetted across it. Smoke was rising from chimneys down in Cheltenham. I imagined the Raddlebush Brotherhood gathering on street corners or in public houses and then setting out for their long walk. Barty Jones would be with them, I was sure. He hadn't even expected me to believe his pretence of knowing nothing. The road was deeply rutted by quarry carts, so we were glad of the hazel sticks for balance. It was high and exposed, apart from a few old and twisted oaks on our left. Rabbits hopped across and a fox came out of the woods, then turned quick as flame and went back under the trees when he saw us. The roof of the Kembles' house came into view above the trees. I supposed Rodney Kemble and his father would be out with the defenders. Further on, we saw a prosperous-looking farmhouse with several barns and a whole row of haystacks, giving plenty of targets for the brotherhood. Two large copses, one close to the farm and another nearer our road, would be good hiding places for the magistrates' forces. There'd be men in there already, sitting on tree trunks, checking their weapons. When I thought of that, a flaw in my simple plan occurred to me. Even though they wouldn't be expecting the attack till much later, they'd be keeping an eye on the quarry road and Tabby and I would be all too visible as we walked along it. We decided we'd better take to the woods and helped each other clamber over a keeper's stile into the shelter of a copse. We walked, sometimes in clear patches over dead oak leaves, sometimes shoulder-deep in bracken and foxgloves. It was slow going, but then we were in no hurry.

By the time the belt of woodland ran out, we were past the farm and almost at the quarry. The light was going by then, so we felt safe enough scrambling through a hedge into the quarry itself. The cliffs of cut stone on either side of the entrance looked like huge doors that might close on us, but everything was peaceful inside and still warm from a day of sunshine on pale limestone. We settled on a block of cut stone, our backs against the rock face, and prepared for a long wait. Once or twice voices came up from the fields between us and the farm. It was a reminder of how sound travels on still evenings, so when Tabby and I talked we kept our voices low.

‘Do you think Sal Picton would talk to me about her sister?' I said.

‘Nah. I told you, she wished she hadn't talked to me.'

‘Everybody must know about it, though. Something like that would be the talk of the village for months.'

But then it wouldn't be something they'd talk about easily to strangers. It explained, perhaps, why the other villagers had shown so little charity to Sal and her mother. A rioting and fire-raising brother was bad enough; a woman who'd killed her baby far worse. But none of that excused Mr Godwit for not telling me. Since there was no progress we could make in that direction, I told Tabby about my discoveries in town. She thought the explanation for Mary Marsh's meeting with Jack Picton was the obvious one.

‘They were sweethearts; then he got tired of her and killed her. Like I said.'

‘That simple? Then we can pack up and go home tomorrow.'

‘Wouldn't mind.'

‘There's more to it than that. How would they have met in the first place?'

‘Don't know, but they must have.'

‘We must try to speak to Barbara Kemble's maid tomorrow. She'll have some idea if there was any gossip about the governess. Then I think I'd better call on young Barbara herself.'

‘Will she see you?'

‘Probably, yes.'

If I called and left my card, social convention would almost demand that she invited her neighbour's visitor to tea.

We waited. Bats criss-crossed each other in the air, catching insects in the upward draughts from the warm stone. Owls hooted from down in the copse. Some of them sounded strange and I wondered if they might be signals among the various groups of the farm's defenders. Usually, Tabby was good at waiting, but countryside made her fidgety.

‘If I was to go back the way we came, I could whistle to you if I heard anyone coming.'

‘Better not whistle. Wait along the track if you like. Only don't try to tackle them or speak to them. Run back here.'

She went. The air was chilling now and the bats had gone. Soon it was almost completely dark, an overcast night with not even stars showing. I wrapped my cloak tightly round me and strained my ears for any movement in the fields or back along the track. It was a long time before anything happened. Then somebody was running towards the quarry, only one person and light steps. Tabby appeared, a darker shape against the darkness, gasping for breath.

‘In the fields already. Four or five of them, I think.'

She'd heard them and seen shapes pushing through a hedge into a field soon after the turning on to the quarry track. I'd thought they'd keep longer to the track before they went cross-country, but they'd wrong-footed us. Their route across the fields to the farmhouse would take them close to one of the copses where Penbrake's men were waiting. Tabby and I ran back along the track, stumbling on ruts, and pushed our way through a dark mass of hedge, hoods up to protect our faces from thorns. On the other side, we fell into a group of sheep. They'd been sleeping till then and scrambled to their feet, setting up an outcry of baaing that would have been audible a mile away. Somehow we got clear of them and started downhill, heading for the copse. The men from the brotherhood would have to make a diagonal course across the fields to reach the farm, and at some point our straight downhill line would intercept it. Simple in geometry; not so in dark fields with shoe soles sliding on dry grass and sheep droppings.

We came to a stone water trough in the hedge and scrambled over it into the next field. A sheepdog was barking down in the farm. I put out a hand to stop Tabby. Between the barks there were noises much closer to us. Footsteps and a muffled curse from a hedge at right angles to the one we'd just crossed. They sounded near enough to hear if I called to them, but we might be quite close to the defenders in the copse by now. I fumbled in my pocket and found the few inches of candle and the lighter. The rasp of the flint sounded terribly loud. As soon as a bud of light formed round the candle wick, I kept my hand round it, so that it wouldn't be seen from the copse but might be visible to the men who'd just come through the hedge. It worked. The footsteps stopped. We could see nothing outside our cave of candlelight.

‘Who's there?'

A whisper, but still too loud. I thought I recognized the voice, and when the speaker took a few steps towards us, I knew from the rolling walk that I was right.

‘Who's there?' he said, more urgently.

No point in keeping quiet now. The men in the copse might already be alerted.

‘There are men waiting with shotguns,' I said. ‘A lot of men, this side of the farm.'

Barty Jones stopped a few yards away from us.

‘I know that voice. It's the Lane woman.'

‘No names, for goodness' sake. Just get away or you'll be dead or arrested.'

I don't know whether he believed me, but luckily one of the men in the copse must have broken discipline. Penbrake, or whoever was in charge of the group, had probably heard voices in the field and told his men to get ready to fire. Through nervousness or over-eagerness, somebody discharged his shotgun without waiting for the next command. The sound of it blew the night apart and echoes rolled back from the quarry, out over the fields. By the time they died away, Barty Jones and his men had melted away into the dark. I blew out the candle and dropped it. Drips of hot wax had already soaked through my glove and scorched my hand. Shouts were coming from below us. The men from the copse, with no hope now of surprising the invaders, were spreading out in the fields, searching for them. Tabby sized up the situation as soon as I did and we were running together uphill, back to the quarry track. I caught a toe in my dress hem and fell full-length, just managing not to cry out. She turned back and dragged me up and on, so fiercely that my feet didn't make contact with the ground again for yards. We found the stone trough and scrambled back over it, hugger-mugger so that our clothes trailed in the water. By the time we reached the hedge between the last field and the track, we were both gasping and the pain under my ribs was as sharp as glass. Somehow we bundled ourselves through the hedge and on to the track. The sheep were bleating again, but that didn't matter because of the noise coming from below us. Men were shouting to each other across the fields and down in the farmyard. More distant shotgun blasts suggested that those posted at the main gate of the farm were shooting at random.