Runaway (5 page)

‘It’s just someone out shooting rabbits or a deer,’ I said soothingly. ‘It’s a way off. No need to fuss.’ The mare dropped her head and looked trustingly at me. I gave her the word to go on, hoping whoever was shooting had bagged his prey.

A short time after, a chaise approached. It was a light, open, two-horse chaise, built for travelling fast. The horses were magnificent; elegant, high-bred carriage horses, groomed until they gleamed.

The chaise slowed as it approached and came to a smooth halt just in front of me. ‘Whoa!’ I called to Magpie, who obediently halted. I looked curiously up at the people riding in the chaise. A young gentleman was driving with an elderly groom sitting beside him. ‘A word of warning,’ said the young man. He had a pleasant voice, deep and relaxed. My eyes were drawn to him. He was finely dressed, in a brown velvet coat over a plain beige waistcoat. His cravat was a simple stock without lace, tied neatly with its ends thrust through his buttonhole. He wore a neat brown travelling wig, but looked fair and, I thought impulsively, very likeable. He was the kind of handsome young man a young lady like Charlotte might once have dreamed of: tall, slim, and graceful, with soft hazel eyes. But I was no longer that young lady, so I swallowed hard and met his eyes frankly. Seeing amusement there, I blushed, realizing I must have been staring.

‘There are highwaymen in this part of the forest,’ the young man warned me. ‘We’ve just had a run-in with one. You might have heard the shots that were exchanged?’

‘I did,’ I said.

‘I think Bridges here frightened him off, but we can’t be sure. If you’ll take my advice, you won’t travel on without company this next stretch.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

The gentleman nodded to me in a friendly way and gave his horses the office to drive on. I nodded back, but then remembered I was a lowly packhorse boy and should be more respectful, so I hurriedly touched my cap to him. There was once again a hint of amusement in the charming smile he cast me as he passed.

The crest on the carriage caught my eye as it drove by: a magnificent stag. It looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I shook my head, frowning to myself. Why would I recognize an English nobleman’s crest?

I stood uncertainly in the road, wondering what I should do. Martha took her timekeeping very seriously and we needed to reach Hungerford by nightfall. On the other hand, I was unarmed and couldn’t protect her horses or the goods they carried. Martha could be a long way behind me, for all I knew. She had parcels on the last two horses, to be dropped off at various inns along the road.

A rumble of wheels decided me. I would wait a few more minutes for the wagon approaching behind me. Once it reached me, I sent Magpie on and we proceeded on our way through the bright green of the spring foliage.

‘You were slow today,’ remarked Martha, when she walked into the yard of the Bear Inn in Hungerford as I was unloading the third horse. I explained what had happened and she nodded approval. ‘I heard the tale,’ she said. ‘Mr Lawrence was the man driving the chaise. I works for the family from time to time. You judged rightly. That’s a tricky stretch of road and company is always a good thing.’

‘You didn’t warn me,’ I pointed out.

‘You can think for yerself, can’t yer?’ asked Martha as she began to unload packs.

‘Have you ever been robbed?’ I asked her.

‘Not yet,’ she said and paused briefly beside me, opening her jerkin a short way to reveal the butt of a heavy pistol tucked in there. I was impressed.

‘So what do your horses carry?’ I asked Martha over plates of pulled chicken, mash and green peas that night. Martha popped a piece of chicken in her mouth, sucked her fingers and took her time replying.

‘Goin’ up to Lunnon, I mainly takes wool,’ she said at last. ‘That’s our main trade down west. We can get it there a deal faster than any trundling wagon can.’

‘And on the way back down from London?’

‘Parcels for folks as want stuff carried, manufactured goods for the shopkeepers in Bradford and whatever else is ordered.’

‘I’ve seen lots of other trains of horses. Do they all carry such things?’

‘Similar. Lunnon’s a hungry city. It needs food and raw goods to keep it goin’. Money, too, from the estates. There’s a lot of fruit from down our way gets sold up in Lunnon. There’s a packhorse train from the north, I’ve heard, that travels day and night to bring fresh fish into the city. That wouldn’t suit me. I’m too old for that.’ She sighed and stretched her legs out, taking a pull at her ale. ‘That’s enough gabbin’ now. Get you to bed if you’ve eaten.’

The nights felt very short compared to the long weary days. I’d barely laid my head down each night when Martha was shaking me awake to begin the next day’s work. But I was fed far better than before I met her, in fact better than I had been since my father was discharged from the army. The long months of poverty through the winter had been hard, with my father deteriorating day by day.

I snuggled down on the lumpy mattress in the attic room we shared and pulled the coarse sheets up around me with a sigh. The loss of my mother, followed quickly by giving up his profession, had broken my poor father. He’d told me several times that he’d returned to England for my sake and my brother’s. I still didn’t know the reason. A wave of sadness swept over me as I lay waiting for sleep. My life with my father already felt immeasurably distant. When I counted the days, I was astonished to find they numbered only five since the killer had crept into our room, altering the course of my life utterly. It felt more like five weeks.

After a final night at Chippenham, we moved on together, passing through Corsham and heading towards the Bath to drop off more goods. Before we reached the city of Bath itself, we branched off the Great West Road and headed down to a market town called Bradford-on-Avon.

This was a town built of yellow sandstone cottages on the side of a steep hill. A river ran through the bottom of the valley. We crossed the bridge at dusk and climbed the steep track up the hill between tall houses. Despite the long days they’d worked and despite the steepness of the hill, the horses walked briskly, their ears pricked forward eagerly. I panted and hurried, unable to keep up. I was walking beside the ninth horse, Sparrow, when he trotted into a yard at the top of Silver Street and joined his fellows at a water trough, drinking noisily and swishing his tail with contentment. The horses were home.

As I helped unload the packs, groom and feed the horses, I reflected that I had succeeded in fleeing my father’s killer. I’d put many more miles between us than I’d thought possible. I had been incredibly lucky meeting Martha.

We turned the horses out into a paddock adjacent to Martha’s cottage where they rolled and fell to contentedly cropping the winter grass.

‘Well, Charlie,’ Martha said after a supper of mutton and dumplings. She looked directly at me with her sharp blue eyes. ‘How was driving a packhorse train?’

‘I won’t say it wasn’t hard, but I enjoyed it,’ I assured her. ‘I love working with horses.’

‘You did just under half a full run,’ she told me. ‘So by my reckoning, taking into account your food and lodgings, I owes you sixpence.’ She put the silver coin on the table and pushed it towards me. I picked it up gratefully. A sixpence was little enough between me and the wide world, but it felt like riches compared to my previous condition.

‘Now,’ said Martha. ‘I can pay a shilling for a full run. With Jason laid up, I’m going to need help the next weeks. Do you want the work?’

Gratitude and relief flooded me. ‘Yes!’ I said at once. ‘Oh yes, please.’

Martha grinned: ‘Tomorrow is Sunday so it’s a rest day. We go to church together and then you have the rest of the afternoon off. But you’re grooming and stalling the horses tomorrow night ready for Monday morning. So if you do go out drinking with the lads in the town, don’t spend that whole sixpence at once, and come back sober enough to look after my horses! And if you get into fisticuffs as a regular habit, don’t do it on my time.’

I grinned at the thought of going out on a spree with the local lads and rolling home drunk. ‘I’ll tend the horses,’ I promised. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s only until Jason is back, mind you,’ Martha warned. ‘He’s apprenticed to me and I can’t afford to take on anyone else.’

‘I understand,’ I told her, hastily calculating that I might have earned six shillings or more before I was obliged to fend for myself again. A small fortune. I could then set out alone to find Henry in Dorset without fearing starvation.

As I settled onto Jason’s straw mattress above the stable and pulled a blanket over myself, I felt more relieved than I’d been able to express to Mistress Martha. I pushed my remaining anxiety for the future away, and thought only of the security of the next weeks. Only one thing troubled me: I had to return to London each week. I would have to hope that my disguise and my new occupation were protection enough for the hours I would have to spend there.

I quickly settled into the routine of the packhorse train. Being on the road with few possessions in all weathers was familiar to me from the years we’d spent following the army. My blisters healed and I toughened up. My skin grew brown from the early spring sun and my clothes were almost constantly dirty. I felt increasingly confident that even if the murderer were to see me in London, he wouldn’t know me for the pale-skinned city girl he had threatened.

It was just as well that I looked so different, for the Castle and Falcon in Aldgate Street where Martha put up in London was uncomfortably close to those last lodgings where my father had met his end so horribly. I recognized the pie shop and the spot where the bay horse had got stuck. The thought struck me that the killer must have been watching us before he attacked. He knew we’d just moved in to that house and he even knew I’d gone out, leaving father alone. I shivered and cast a glance around me.

A shock awaited me, too, in the inn yard. A printed notice was tacked to the wall, offering a reward to anyone who had information on the whereabouts of one Charlotte Smith, wanted in connection with an unlawful killing. There was even a sketch of me that was a reasonable likeness, my long hair tumbling down around my face. I stared at the notice in horror. It was as though someone had dropped ice down my neck.

‘A right scandal, that were, weren’t it?’ said a friendly stable boy, nodding at the notice as he passed by me. ‘Did you hear? A young servant upped and murdered her master and robbed him too.’

‘Really?’ I croaked, horrified. ‘It doesn’t say so.’

‘No, but it were in the papers,’ said the lad. ‘Mr Jones read it to us a couple of days ago. They even preached about the wickedness of the crime at church on Sunday.’

I gulped. ‘But how do they know that’s what happened?’ I asked. ‘If there’s been no trial?’

‘Oh, it’s clear as day, ain’t it?’ said an ostler, joining us. ‘T’was in the paper as how the landlady swore she was outside the door and there was no one else what could have done it.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She stabbed him seventeen times and ran off with all his valuables, the hussy!’

‘I heard as how she cut him into pieces,’ contradicted the stable boy. ‘Sawed his head clean off!’

Fearing I might be sick, I withdrew to the stables and leaned my clammy forehead against Magpie’s neck. The stall was in semi-darkness as the daylight failed and I could stand and shiver without being observed.

‘They must have bribed the landlady, Magpie,’ I whispered, trembling. ‘Now I’m a wanted felon.’

It struck me that the two stable boys had discussed the crime with me right in front of the poster without so much as a curious glance at me. I hoped that meant my boy’s clothing was protection enough for now. This thought gave me courage and I pulled my cap down low and went into the inn. But I avoided the taproom and my dinner, going straight to bed.

Early the following morning, I tore the notice down when no one was looking, ripped it up and stuffed it in the midden heap. But there were others; I saw them here and there in the streets and on buildings. I couldn’t possibly remove them all.

I breathed more freely as we passed out of the city gates into the open countryside again. Each trip into London was fraught with danger and I dreaded it.

I cared for Martha’s horses conscientiously. She was quick to spot an unbalanced pack or a badly tightened girth, but I knew when horses were sickening and what remedies to use. I’d always spent as much time as possible in the stables with my father’s comrade and groom, Henry. He’d taught me how to spot the first signs of lameness, how to brew and apply poultices, and how to groom and turn out a horse so it looked its very best. And I’d learned the trick of calming a horse when he was angry or frightened.

I wondered what Henry was doing in Dorset. We’d parted company at Plymouth, after just a few days back in England and I missed him a good deal. His presence might have helped father in his troubles. But he was obliged to find a way to make a living just as we were. I hoped he’d succeeded.

I sighed as I trudged along beside Magpie. She turned her head towards me at the sound and whickered softly. I laughed and patted her neck as we walked. ‘Don’t mind me, Magpie,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking. This has been an interlude, working with you. I have to face the future again very soon.’