God Is an Englishman (49 page)

lark. Ketch ’em red-handed ourselves, that’s my fancy!”

“Come, now, you can’t be serious, Blubb,” protested Adam, but Blubb said he was, and the risk of failure was minimal. “Send the waggon on as usual, wi’ both they Arscotts aboard. Offload the stuff inside the stable, when we change teams at noon on Friday, stow the pair of us under the canvas and see wot comes of it down at that crossroads beyond Mersham ’Atch. Why, damme, we could wing two of ’em before they got the tailboard down. Then, mebbe, the Arscotts could take a shot at ’em before they run for it.”

The prospect of a brush of this kind appealed to the man of action in him, but Adam said, doubtfully, “I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, Blubb, but I’ve no right to risk your neck in this kind of scrape.” Blubb said, almost passionately, “Lookit here, gaffer, it’s my neck, and to my way o’ thinking it’ll pay off handsome. Not on’y to you, but to me, on account o’ the blood money the Guvverment hands out to anyone who fetches home a footpad dead or alive. It woulden surprise me if there ain’t ten pund apiece on they Irishers. You take the credit an’ I’ll take the money. There’s not much risk, neither. I woulden show my arse to no Paddy alive, and there won’t be no more than five of ’em, if that. They’re taking enough risk as it is gallopin’ about in a bunch in country where they’m seen an’ noted by the locals. Tidden as if it were London, where ’arf the dam’ popu lation is Irish.” And then, almost wheedling, “Look at it from my standpoint. It means little enough to you to get your name in the papers, tho’ you won’t dispute that it’d do the business a power o’ good in passing, but me—well—I was somebody once, when you was no more’n a gleam in your dad’s eye. I was looked up to an’ thought well of by the swells. There weren’t one of ’em who wouldn’t have parted wi’ silver to take the ribbons from Tim Blubb, driving the Tele graph or the Tally-Ho up the Great North Road, or down the Brighton Turnpike. Those days are gone, I’ll GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 258

3/27/09 5:14:04 PM

Swann Treble
2 5 9

own, and I’m getting up along now, but I’ve a fancy to be spoke well of again before I drop the whip in the bracket. Let’s
do
it, Governor, without calling the bloody sodgers in. For if we do then mark my words they’ll botch it, and they Irishers’ll get clear away and try their luck on some other road Fishguard or Liverpool way.”

It was impossible, Adam thought, to resist the old rogue and also, to an extent, to look at the situation through his eyes. He was old and fat and gross but at this moment, with a man’s job ahead of him, he was suddenly Tim Blubb again, flattered and petted by all the inside passengers, and God’s gift to every tavern trollop along the routes he travelled. He said, chuckling, “You really back yourself to bring this off, Blubb?”

“Aye, I do that. Providing you’ll stand by me, and you a trained man wi’ firearms, no doubt.”

“Can you use a pistol if you have to?”

“I can use my old blunderbuss,” Blub said. “I once put a hand ful of rusty nails into the arse of a likely lad who tried to stop the old Wellington at Stamford one dark night. That was when I was riding guard tho’.”

“And forty years ago, no doubt,” said Adam.

“Wot of it? I’d still back myself against Irishers. They can sit a horse well enough but they’re no great shakes at standin’ and facin’ fire from the glimpse I got of

’em. Besides, if we ambush ’em, we’ll have the edge on ’em, won’t we?”

“I certainly hope so,” said Adam, “for you’ve talked me into it, Blubb, and if there is blood money to be earned you’re welcome to it. I’ll settle for the free advertisement.”

It occurred to him, as they went about their preparations, that Blubb would have made an excellent troop sergeant. He was bold but de liberate, foreseeing all manner of contingencies and taking it upon himself to order the entire ambush, down to the last detail. They took the Arscott twins into their confidence and it was arranged that one should travel down to Ashford as driver while the other lay con cealed in the back with a pistol and a cudgel. When, soon after noon, the waggon came into the inn yard, Adam and Blubb were awaiting it concealed in the stable loft. Twelve boxes of ball cartridges and two stand of arms were offloaded and left in charge of the ostler, Blossom, bewildered by all this secrecy but bribed into silence by a handful of silver. Adam and Blubb then joined Reuben Arscott in the back and his brother Job laced them in, leaving one corner loose to serve as a spyhole. Adam had a pair of single-shot pistols and Blubb an old-fashioned GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 259

3/27/09 5:14:04 PM

2 6 0 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N

blunderbuss, of the kind he had carried as a guard. It was not his own for he had no time to fetch that, but one he bor rowed from a local crony and although Adam watched him load it with nails and scrap metal, and prime and charge it with the great est care, it did not look a very serviceable weapon to use against a gang of wild Irishmen. Whilst they were going about their prepara tions Adam speculated aloud on the reason for a raid of this kind, so far from the centre of Fenian activities, but Blubb had already made up his mind about that.

“They need a regular supply of arms for the mischief they’m plan ning over there,” he said, “but there’s a deal more’n that. The more shindig they stir up over here the more they’ll get gabbed about. Being Irishers they’m divided among

’emselves, you see, and this lot is the livelier section, bent on showing the others up. Me, I never driven in Ireland, tho’ I talked to men as did. This kind of business is still commonplace over there, I’m told, for some of ’em are savages, and all of

’em spoilin’ fer a fight.”

As the waggon rolled out of the yard and turned south on the coastal road Adam had a moment’s misgiving. It seemed to him quite absurd that he should have allowed a man of Blubb’s disposition to embroil him in something that was clearly a task for the Crown forces, but as they jolted south the old instincts of the seasoned campaigner returned to him, and he thought how Roberts and

“Circus” Howard would have relished the occasion. By the time they reached Mersham Hatch he would not have been anywhere else but here, with Blubb nursing his absurd weapon and Arscott, tense and silent nearer the box, where he could communicate in whispers with his brother.

The road seemed almost deserted, a fly or two speeding towards London and one knife-grinder’s trap, with the owner fast asleep in the June sunshine. Then, as they approached the crossroads, Adam noticed a closed cab of a kind not often seen on the roads nowadays and it looked unattended, with the horse cropping the grass verge twenty yards down the sideroad that Blubb told him led, by a round about route, to Dymchurch on the coast. He would not have been surprised to see a knot of men lounging close by, but the sight of the driverless vehicle directed his attention to that side of the road, where the hedgerows were high, and he did not see the Irish woman stand ing by a milestone on their side of the road. Blubb saw her, however, pinching his arm as she stepped forward, and then everything happened with a rush that might have overwhelmed them had not the driver on the box pulled hard over to the centre of the road so that the waggon swung round at a wide angle blocking both routes.

Adam’s attention, notwithstanding his glance at the woman through the chink GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 260

3/27/09 5:14:04 PM

Swann Treble
2 6 1

in the curtains, had never really left the supposedly empty cab in the side road and this was just as well. Suddenly its offside door was flung open and two men bundled out brandishing pistols. At the same time, out of the comer of his eye, he saw three others leap over the nearside hedge of the turnpike, one making for the horses’ heads, the others running round to the back of the wag gon.

Blubb’s blunderbuss went off with a fearful roar that stunned the eardrums, and the interior of the waggon was full of smoke. The driver fired at the man holding the horses’ heads but the ball missed its mark and must have clipped one of the animals for the team began to plunge, and after that it was difficult to see what was happening for around them, in and out the smoke, figures were running and crying out, and the woman screamed as one of the attackers reeled against her, clutching at her dress and slithering to his knees on the road.

Adam fired one pistol, aiming at the two running figures who had jumped from the cab but then, not caring to be penned in such a con fined space, he burst through the back flaps and jumped down, Arscott following on his heels. A ball whistled past his ear and he heard it smack into the wooden frame of the wagon as, running round to the front, he saw Blubb standing on the box, flailing down at a tall, wiry-looking assailant with the stock of his blunderbuss.

It was an utterly improbable posture for a man so gross and blubberly as the ex-coachman. He looked like a grotesque clockwork toy going through its routine, arms rising and falling with a kind of jerky precision. Then, as the man fell against the shafts, the scene changed utterly, with nothing happening around the waggon but a combined rush in the direction of the sideroad, where a sixth man suddenly appeared, mounted on a bay horse and leading others. Within seconds the woman and four of the men were galloping away towards a copse in the first fold of the hill, and suddenly there was silence, the dust and smoke settling to reveal the scene of the en counter. Adam saw Blubb scramble down, his little piggy eyes shin ing with excitement as he rolled his man on his back and looked down at his shattered skull. Another man, greyhaired and much older than the lean fellow, lay spreadeagled near the tailboard, a pistol clutched in his hand. He, too, was dead, with a ball through his heart and a smear of blood already showing through his topcoat.

Blubb shouted, triumphantly, “Two of ’em, Governor! And one o’ they others was winged, for they had to help him mount,” and he sucked his bleeding thumb where the blunderbuss had backfired and a piece of metal had laid open the joint.

It was like clearing up after a skirmish on the road to Jhansi. They heaved the GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 261

3/27/09 5:14:04 PM

2 6 2 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N

two dead men into the waggon and turned the horses back towards Ashford. One of the Arscotts mounted the box of the aban doned cab and followed them, Blubb recognising the equipage as a vehicle hired from a livery stable at Deal. Blubb said, dolefully, “I smashed the stock o’ this blunderbuss. Smashed clean to bits it is.

He had a thickish skull I reckon, but that’s common enough among Irishers.” His tone of voice, and the fact that he made no attempt to boast of the success of the ambush or the part he had played in it afforded Adam a brief glimpse of the man Blubb had been in his prime. He thought “He doesn’t belong in this century at all. He’s a Hogarth character and in another decade or so, if he survives, he’ll turn into Falstaff.” Then, without warning, the driver Arscott was sick, so that they pulled up and waited. He said, humbly, “I never seen a man killed before, sir.” Adam took the reins and sent him back to join his brother in the cab. At a slow walk the little cavalcade drove back along the road to Ashford.

3

There was no blood money. The authorities were embarrassed at the prospect of holding a double inquest on two unknown Irishmen who had tried, unsuccessfully, to rob Her Majesty of the consign ment of arms and ammunition. But after the inquest, when the coroner pronounced “killed in the execution of a felony on the high-road” there was a dispute as to who should foot the bill for the funerals.

Nobody came forward to claim the bodies, and the woman and her four companions were never seen again. It was said they had got away by sea from Dymchurch, where a brig sailed within an hour or so of the battle at Mersham Cross.

There was, however, a great deal of publicity, and Blubb, like Ratcliffe before him, achieved a passing notoriety and was drunk for almost a week. This time the impact on the firm was national rather than local. Catesby heard about it away up in the north and Edith Wadsworth wrote saucily from the east, saying she was interested to learn that Adam had exchanged the role of haulier for that of thief-taker. City men discussed it, some of them sarcastically, and Hen rietta, finding in it proof that the soldier in Adam was not dormant introduced it into her sedate conversation at her monthly “At Home,” an event that Adam declined to attend.

But all this, the publicity resulting from Ratcliffe’s feat in the west, and Blubb’s in the south-east, was no more than an overture. The real breakthrough into national recognition was made in a remote Welsh valley, six months later, where Bryn Lovell, manager of the Mountain Square, suddenly found himself invested with the halo of Glendower.

GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 262

3/27/09 5:14:05 PM

Swann Treble
2 6 3

4

The blight of the second iron age was upon this country too but its taint, although glaringly obvious, was not as overriding as in the cotton belt and the potteries. In the north the volcanoes of wealth had erupted and afterwards been levelled off and built upon, so that the factories and the dormitories of those who served them were now so thick upon the ground that the pastoral heritage of the areas had been all but obliterated. Something at once more subtle and more sinister had occurred down here, along the southern face of the Mountain Square. The desolation was not absolute because the outward manifestations of the sickness were scab rous. Instead of falling on the land like a bludgeon its ravages were wayward, sometimes almost casual, as though the valleys had been probed with sooty fingers that left triangular islets of greenery iso lated on some of the spurs. Away in the distance the grape blue line of the mountains still stood like the deserted ramparts of a Promised Land, near enough to be seen but, in all other respects, as remote as the mountains of the moon. For up there beyond the skyline was beauty, emptiness, and worklessness, and only a small minority of rebels, self-outlawed from a land of tips and fouled streams, fought an ancestral battle with tools that were not unlike those used by the tamed but were employed against more elemental forces, wind and granite and an eternity of soft, seeping rain.