The Accidental Highwayman (15 page)

I was studying these scribbles by the riverbank when I felt a sting upon my neck. With an oath I rubbed the injured spot, thinking a bee had sent me a message in the traditional manner. Instead I discovered a tiny arrow, the size of a tooth-pick, had sunk itself into my skin.

“What the deuce—” I exclaimed, examining the object. Then a horn sounded.

“Pixies!” cried Violets, and I saw her leap out of the lavender bushes from the place in which she'd been concealed, not far from where I stood. “This way,” she called to me, and flew straight for the place Morgana and the others were. Ere she reached them, she fell to the ground, half a dozen of the same arrows bristling from her back. There was a small
pop,
and Violets disappeared in a puff of dust. Where she had lain, there fluttered three gray moths, which flitted away as if they'd always been moths, and nothing more. Master Rattle had sketched a flower transfixed by an arrow upon the map. If only I had guessed it was a violet!

I crashed through the shrubbery and found the rest of my party on their feet, looking about in alarm. Moments later, a hail of arrows came from the foliage about us. They pricked me like needles. Willum dived behind me, but Gruntle ran to shield the princess. Morgana swept her fist through the air, and the missiles were diverted around us, as if striking an invisible dome of glass.

“I didn't know I could do that,” she cried, and sprinted for Midnight. I ran after her, Willum and Gruntle flying beside me. A moment later I'd thrown Morgana onto the saddle, and a swarm of feyín even smaller than Willum and Gruntle came buzzing out of the grass, firing their arrows from quivers slung between their wings. I didn't see them very clearly, for I was climbing into the stirrups myself, but they looked naked, with green skins, and they had the wings of birds, not insects.

“Get into the saddlebag!” I cried to Willum and Gruntle, but then I saw Gruntle fall. He was wounded, an arrow having torn through one of his wings. He tried to fly, but cried out and fell to the ground again. I sprang out of the saddle, beyond the range of Morgana's protective spell, and immediately felt the bite of a score of the tiny missiles. My mind began to whirl. This must have been the fate of the bandits who waylaid Morgana's coach: a cloud of maddening arrows. But I scooped up the wounded feyín, tossed him into the saddlebag after Willum, and we were riding away within moments, pursued by the swarm.

 

Chapter 15

THE BRIDGE

I
F YOU
have never ridden a great horse, you cannot know what speed feels like. Should men ever learn to fly like the feyín or harness steam-piston engines to a carriage, perhaps then there will be some way to run faster than Midnight. But on that day, there was no swifter creature in the world.

I dashed the arrows from my skin as we went. Morgana, seated sidesaddle in front of me, weighed little more than a child, and I was not a large man, so the horse was scarcely burdened as he fled down lanes and across fields of whispering corn. The sheer strength of him drew tears of exhilaration from my eyes as we soared across the bosom of England. Even the supremely self-possessed Morgana loosed a cry of delight as the mighty horse ran.

We hadn't had time to discuss a plan, but there was little need of one. Ahead of us was the River T_______. The water was too deep and wide to ford, but there was a broad stone bridge that Morgana could manage, although she would be deprived of her strength while upon it. I could not imagine being unable to cross a body of flowing water—these creatures had such powers, and yet such weaknesses!

But if my companions would find the water an obstacle, our pursuers would have less luck—they didn't have a human guide to get them across.

[   
The Bridge Over the River T——
   ]

The river was in sight—the bridge in sight—and Morgana realized where I was taking her. “I cannot cross! It's too wide!” She struggled as if to leap clear of the horse, and I threw my arm about her.

“You're as human as I, or nearly so,” I replied. “Draw courage from your mother's blood.”

The abutment of the bridge was directly before us. There were shrubs around the end of the structure. To my inexpressible horror, a dozen goblings sprang out of them, their stumplike legs churning up the road. Their pikes formed an impenetrable gate as they lined up against us, and I could not help but recall the fateful drawing on the map—a horse pierced through and through!

“All is lost!” Willum cried. But seeing the silvery metal spears arrayed in our path, an inspiration came to me. With scarcely a rod
*
between us, I plunged my hand into my pocket and dredged up a great fistful of my master's gold sovereigns.

Midnight's nose was almost among the lances and the map within a handsbreadth of coming true when I flung the coins full in the gobling's faces. I might as well have thrown vitriol at them. The creatures screamed and dived out of our path; where the gold smote them, it burst apart, and each fragment burned into their flesh, wreathing them in noxious smoke. One of the goblings tumbled down the bank and into the water with a shriek I will not forget as long as I live.

We were through the scrimmage. On we rode across the span. An unfortunate traveler with his nose in a book had to throw himself out of the way, and I think a fisherman was propelled off the sidewall and into the river. Morgana swooned in my arms—the power of the water was too much for her. At the far end of the bridge was a checkpoint manned by two redcoat soldiers who were too distant to have seen the goblings for what they were, but not too far to hear the commotion. They stood at port arms to stop us. There was a tollbooth there, so I guessed they were not a part of Captain Sterne's detachment, but ordinary soldiers. It would not go well if they stopped us in any case, so I kept Midnight at a full run and cried, “Her father is after me! If you see an angry Gypsy, don't spare the ball and powder!”

So saying, I flung another handful of gold at the soldiers, with the opposite result: They sprang not away from the coins, but toward them, laughing at my desperate plight as they filled their pockets.

“Take that!” I cried, and meant it. They troubled us not at all as we sped past.

We had safely crossed the bridge despite enemies on both ends, and it had only cost me the annual salary of a chaplain, about thirty guineas.

We tore down the road. Midnight was nearly blown. Horses will run until they die, if they have to, so the rider must not drive them beyond endurance. I slowed him as soon as it seemed we were not pursued across the water. It began to rain.

A very sick-looking Willum, suffering from the influence of the river, crawled out of the saddlebag and made his way forward. There he performed a comprimaunt that somewhat revived Morgana. The cool rain upon her face also helped.

“We lost Gruntle on the far side of the river,” he said. “Poor chap panicked when he saw the water coming and jumped out of the saddlebag. I'll never forgive myself for not stopping him.”

“I'll go back for him straight away,” said I.

“He's probably dead,” said Willum, and a pale, dreary light gleamed from his breeches. “Lot of goblings just then.”

“Those moths,” said I, my thoughts on the slain Violets. “Is that what you become when you die?”

“They're called
brails,
” said Willum. “Without the magic in us, we're just moths. Violets was a great soul; she became three brails when she went. Gruntle must be an entire choir of them.”

He was choked with emotion.

“This is what we humans get up to all the time, you know,” I said. “We ‘manlings.' It's always war and killing with us. Gruntle was right about that.”

Morgana hung her head. “My father proposeth to make such foul business a permanent occupation for the entire kingdom of Faerie. I feared this alliance with the human king for my own happiness, but now I have seen one of my father's own subjects—my people—die before my very eyes,” she said, her voice almost as small as Willum's. “Had I confronted him when first he made his plans, had I refused on the spot, this might not have happened—”

“It wouldn't have worked, would it?” I said. “Your father doesn't listen to you, I suspect.”

“He is the King,” said she, straightening up proudly, and I saw again that regal flash of defiance in her eye: “Our ancient blood holds more wisdom than mere words.” Then the severe look was gone and she shook her head. “I am sorry to speak thus to thee. I've got mingled in my veins the summer heat of manlings and the winter's blood of the Danann Trolkvinde Arian. They take turns making a fool of me.”

She fell silent again, and wept into her hands. It wasn't her fault she was a princess, and as far as I was concerned, she was on the right side of this business. From what I had seen, Faerie magic was exceedingly powerful. Combine that with mankind's imperial ambitions and it seemed to me there would never again be peace in any corner of the world. Take one of our warships and teach it to fly: Could not such a vessel rule the land, sea, and sky? Equip its cannon with deadly comprimaunts of fire: Could not such weapons topple the mightiest fortification? Now put a man such as Captain Sterne in command of them, and watch the countryside turn to ash. The very idea chilled my marrows.

There was no sign of our pursuers, so I dismounted and led the panting horse. Willum stayed behind to wait near the bridge, in faint hope that Gruntle might yet make his way across the water.

Morgana and I came, after half an hour, to a small village of thirty cottages with a church no bigger than the stables at the Manse. The homes looked jolly, even in the rain: They were bewigged in thatch and had whitewashed walls and boxes of bright flowers at the windows. Strange to think I had jumped Midnight through the roof of such a cottage not long before. There was a small public house at the far end of the village, which I thought might offer the miserable Morgana some warmth, at least. As we approached it, I saw there was a mail-post before the door, and at the foot of the mail-post a brassbound trunk. Upon the trunk sat a yellow-haired young woman, as damp as the rest of us. Beside her sat a threadbare and equally damp baboon.

“Lily?” said I.

 

Chapter 16

DESIGNS UPON WOMEN'S HEARTS

I
DOUBT THERE
is a man in the world who has sorrowed as a woman can sorrow, be she half Faerie or entirely from Liverpool, as Lily was. For it was she, at the very bottom of the selfsame pool of misery in which I'd so often seen her bathe when I was a small boy, like a clumsy pearl diver always dropping the same oyster overboard and plunging down after it again.

When I spoke her name, she looked up sharply. When she saw it was I, her face dissolved into fresh tears like a wrung sponge. Now I had two weeping women, one upon either hand, with whom to contend. At a loss for what else to do, I suggested we get in out of the rain.

In the snug of the public house, which was a room about ten feet square, with a hearth half as large to warm it, we sat with our backs to the streaming windows and our faces to the fire. The landlord did not know what to make of me, as you can imagine—had I broken
both
their hearts? But why the ape? His imagination must have composed tales around the four of us that would have daunted Shakespeare's powers of invention. But he made no complaint over the presence of a Gypsy girl, and for that I was most grateful.

I convinced my bedraggled feminine companions to take a little restorative: for Morgana, a hot toddy of whisky and Spanish lemon, and for Lily, gin and water. I had a dish of piping hot coffee to ward off a chill, as I'd had many cold baths that day. Morgana had never before consumed alcohol, so the effect was an immediate improvement in her spirits. Lily, on the other hand, required several infusions. Once her sobs abated, she told us her tale—with increasing emphasis as her thirst was increasingly quenched.