The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (31 page)

“You must hold on to the rails or you’ll fall,” he warned, noticing that the Sholto family had all seen the peculiar expression on his mother’s face. They watched her with obvious concern. A scrawny man whose greasy clubbed hair shone in the sunlight also gave Phillipe a curious stare as he turned his bay horse out of the One Bell’s yard and clattered away up the Strand.

“Please,” Phillipe pleaded, trying to pry his mother’s hands apart. “You must hold on!”

Her eyes focused on his face. She said in French, “What difference does it make now?”

The driver uncoiled his short whip, gathered up the traces of the four impatient horses. Phillipe reached over, seized the man’s shoulder:

“Wait! I must get my mother down inside.”

The driver growled, “We’ve a schedule to keep. We should have left ten minutes ago. Besides, there’s no room below.”

“I’ll make room,” Phillipe said, already slipping over the side and skittering down the wheel spokes.

He yanked the coach door open, face to face with one of the children in the traveling family, a bonneted little girl, perched on her father’s knee. Smiling, she was offering her small hoop to the portly man opposite. He in turn registered his dislike of children in general, and this one in particular, with an expression of pompous annoyance.

Phillipe said, “I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen. My mother’s not feeling well. Is there space inside here, out of the wind?”

“No,” said one of the parsons on the far side of the coach. “But we’ll make some. Stay seated, Andrew,” he added to his companion. “We’ll take turns riding on top.” He opened the door on his side and stepped out.

While the driver continued to grumble, Phillipe helped his mother down again. He settled her where the churchman had been seated, placed the casket in her lap. She clutched it protectively. Then she began to mumble in French again. Phillipe heard the words
little lord
as he shut the door, clambered up and resumed his place along with the blackamoor and the shovel-hatted parson, who was already clutching the hat to his head with one hand while he gripped his testament with the other.

The driver flashed Phillipe a glare, muttering, “Damned cheeky foreigner.” He uncoiled the whip, cracked it over the heads of his horses. With a jolt the coach rolled forward. The parson dropped his testament and seized the rail only just in time to keep from being toppled off.

The coach clattered away from the One Bell. Phillipe waved at the Sholtos as their figures diminished and then disappeared altogether. He could think of nothing except his mother down below. Had the decision to make for Bristol, and the colonies, finally undone her? Unconsciously he tightened his hand on the rail, cursing the Amberlys and cursing himself. The blackamoor stared in astonishment.

Phillipe paid no attention. Why couldn’t his mother recognize that they were going to a place that might afford them safety, and a fresh start?

He knew the answer. It was not their ultimate destination that was at fault. He suspected she would have acted the same way if they’d returned to Les Trois Chevres. She had harbored her dream too long, to the exclusion of all others. Its destruction was in turn destroying her.

The morning wind blowing over the coach roof forced him to squint into the jumbled distance of streets and buildings. But he saw only Marie—her lips moving; her eyes vacant; her hands gripping the casket like claws.

He was desperately afraid for her sanity.

Westward; the crowded streets and lanes became occasional cottages and gardens—then open country, as the coach took the post road to Bristol.

The spring sun beat against Phillipe’s back, making him sweat heavily. But the enforced concentration required to hold his place on top of the swaying, jolting coach helped push the worries about his mother to the back of his mind.

Lucas, the blackamoor, sat dozing, apparently quite at home with this risky mode of travel. The parson had tugged his shovel hat down next to his ears, and now used one hand to hold his open testament practically under his nose. How the cleric managed to read with all the bumps, the racket of hoof and wheel and driver’s whip, and the blowing dust that clouded over them, visibly soiling the white lappets of the parson’s collar, Phillipe couldn’t imagine.

In an hour, though, he’d grown accustomed to swaying and bouncing and holding on. He even managed to relax a little. The sun’s warmth helped cheer him, as did occasional friendly waves from farmers laboring in the hay fields or maneuvering their vegetable carts to the road’s shoulder to permit passage of the speeding coach. The rolling, sunlit countryside brought Phillipe a sense of freedom, security—and direction—he hadn’t enjoyed since the encounter at Vauxhall Gardens. He’d be sore and aching when they reached Bristol tomorrow. But if that was the worst that happened, he could be thankful.

He grew aware of the whites of the blackamoor’s eyes. When had the big man wakened? Phillipe hadn’t noticed. Lucas was watching the road behind them. The wrinkles on the broad ebony forehead made it clear the blackamoor had spotted something unusual.

“Man on a horse, sar,” Lucas pointed. “Not there a while ago.”

As the black man tapped the driver’s shoulder, Phillipe twisted his head around—and exhaled hard.

The rider was pacing the coach perhaps a quarter-mile behind. Phillipe could make out only essentials through the dust churning up from the rear wheels. The rider was scrawny, his mount a powerful bay. Phillipe remembered seeing such a horseman depart from the One Bell a few minutes ahead of the coach.

“Could be a gentleman jus’ riding,” Lucas shouted to his companions. “Or could be a road captain.”

The driver preferred to take no chances. He immediately whipped up his horses.

“In the latter event,” yelled the parson, “I will for once be thankful for the poverty of clerics. A highwayman would want nothing of mine.”

Lucas surveyed the landscape skimming by on either side.

Thickets and low hills now. Not a sign of a farmstead, nor any other riders or wagons anywhere ahead.

The blackamoor growled, “Been robbed once before, on the Oxford coach. Sometimes, the captains don’ ride alone. That happen, everybody certain to be poor after.”

Alarmed, Phillipe thought of the talk he’d heard about highwaymen in London. Captured ones were summarily hanged from Tyburn Tree. But that didn’t seem to discourage extensive practice of the profession. They were a desperate lot.

Phillipe turned around again. The rider on the bay was galloping to keep pace with the speeding coach. His hand came up. Suddenly an explosion split the morning air, louder than the thunder of the wheels.

From beech thickets flanking the post road just ahead, two other horsemen appeared, spurring to the road’s center to block passage of the coach. Now it was no longer a question of outrunning a single rider.

The one behind had fired the warning shot. Both men ahead rode expertly, without gripping the reins. Between them they held four long-barreled pistols.

The coach guard flung the blunderbuss to his shoulder, then let it drop—because the driver was already kicking at the brake and hauling on the traces, unwilling to press his luck against a trio.

Phillipe’s eyes riveted on the rider who had come out from the left side of the road. He sat very tall in his saddle, the silver side plates and butt caps on his pistols flashing in the sunlight. Even through the billowing dust, Phillipe could see that the highwayman wore a leather patch over one eye, jackboots and a dirty coat that had once been bright orange.

Shrill questions and cries of alarm rose from inside the coach as it swayed to a halt. The guard leaned over the side and yelled:

“Keep still and hand ’em all your valuables and we’ll get off safe—if we’re lucky.”

Phillipe’s scalp crawled with sweat. Perched in the open, he was quite aware that the one-eyed man had spotted him. As the coach settled to rest, the two highwaymen trotted their horses toward it, joined by their companion from behind. He sprang from his saddle, jerked open the left-hand door.

Phillipe sat utterly still. He knew this meeting was not accidental. Perhaps there had been watchers at every coaching inn of importance. His palms grew as sweaty as his forehead. He realized once again the depths of Roger Amberly’s animosity.

The one-eyed man gave the driver an empty smile and a salute with one pistol. At close range, the pock marks on his ravaged cheeks stood out clearly.

“Captain Plummer, sir, at your service. We’ll trouble your passengers for whatever trinkets they may have. Then you shall be on your way again.”

“Everyone out,” ordered the scrawny man at the coach door, stowing both of his pistols in his belt. The four barrels of the two others still menaced driver, guard and passengers—sufficient firepower to guarantee success of the enterprise.

The family alighted first, the mother comforting her frightened little daughter. Next came the outraged fat man, then the other parson. Of Marie there was no immediate sign.

But Phillipe was more concerned with Captain Plummer. He brought his horse near the coach and once again smiled his false smile:

“If each one of you ladies and gentlemen obey the orders of my coves in good fashion, we shall have no unhappy accidents.” His one glaring eye slid to Phillipe—and the smile froze in place. Phillipe knew full well what was going to happen. At least one “unhappy accident.”

When Captain Plummer saw that understanding register on Phillipe’s face, his smile became genuine. He wagged a pistol.

“If the passengers on the roof will also alight, please—?”

As the parson began to descend via the wheel spokes, the scrawny man said, “There’s one left inside, cap’n. A woman.”

Plummer nodded. “Yes, I wondered about that.”

Phillipe’s cheeks felt fiery. Under his sweated clothes, his heart hammered hard. He knew he had no chance to unwrap Gil’s sword. Nor did he have any other weapon at his disposal. But unless he defended himself, he would die, the quickly forgotten victim of yet another highway incident.

Lucas’ shiny face looked ferocious as he climbed down. A possible ally there, Phillipe thought, dropping into the dust behind the blackamoor.

“Assist our reluctant passenger,” Captain Plummer ordered his scrawny helper.

The man dropped a sack he’d pulled down from his saddle, reached inside the coach toward Marie. For one moment, his body and outstretched right arm blocked the line of sight between Phillipe and Captain Plummer. Phillipe chose the moment because it might be his last chance. He struck for the scrawny man’s exposed middle with both fists.

The scrawny man doubled forward, uttering a furious curse. He clawed for the second, undischarged pistol in his belt. Phillipe heard the mother of the little girl shriek—and something else: the sudden clopping of Captain Plummer’s horse as the one-eyed man positioned himself to shoot.

Phillipe whirled the dazed man by the shoulders. Captain Plummer’s right-hand pistol boomed with a flash and a puff of smoke. Blood splattered Phillipe’s cheeks as Plummer’s close-range ball blew a hole in the scrawny man’s neck.

The man let out a kind of choking sigh, sagging in Phillipe’s arms, no longer a shield.

Phillipe released the dead man, leaped away as the passengers yelled and scattered. Plummer roweled his nervous horse viciously to hold him still, pointed his second pistol at Phillipe’s head.

A clear target against the side of the coach, Phillipe had no place to run. The dark eye of the pistol muzzle followed him as he threw himself on the ground.

Captain Plummer was a professional. He would not be rushed into the shot for which he had undoubtedly been well compensated. Hitting the dust, Phillipe awaited the explosion, the thud of a ball into his flesh—

But it didn’t come. The blunderbuss roared.

Captain Plummer began to swear; his oaths punctuated by groans of effort. Phillipe rolled frantically underneath the coach and out the other side. Just ahead of the horses, the third highwayman toppled from his saddle. A wound in his groin bubbled red.

That man had been the target of the blunderbuss, then. Phillipe ran toward him. Over the lathered backs of the horses he saw what had saved him. The blackamoor had fastened both hands on Captain Plummer’s left arm and was holding on ferociously, even as Plummer tried to haul back in the saddle and transfer his still-loaded pistol to his right hand.

But the immense Lucas kept levering the highwayman’s left arm down and back. Plummer’s mouth worked in obscene rage, spittle on his lips, sweat on his pocked cheeks. With his right hand he hit for Lucas’s eyes, to claw them out if he could. Lucas snapped his head back, laughed a big booming laugh that died abruptly as Plummer managed to gouge a thumb into his eyesocket.

Lucas’s hold on the highwayman’s left arm loosened. Plummer wrenched free and aimed at the nearest target—the black by his stirrup.

Phillipe had reached the fallen man, who was moaning in pain. He snatched up one of the man’s pistols. He fired past the bobbing muzzles of the lead coach horses.

With a scream, Captain Plummer arched his back. Phillipe had aimed for the best and biggest target—the man’s torso. There, over the left ribs, the shabby orange coat showed an immense black-edged hole from which blood poured.

Lucas pried the pistol out of Plummer’s relaxed hand, drew back the cock and fired point blank.

Captain Plummer’s leather eyepatch disappeared in a torrent of blood. The sight brought fresh screams and hysterical sobs from the mother and her small girl. The big blackamoor hit Plummer’s horse on the flank and sent it bolting toward the trees. The sudden motion flung the highwayman’s corpse into the roadside ditch, mercifully hiding the ruin of his head.

Wiping sweat and dust from his cheeks, the blackamoor grinned across the backs of the horses.

“A keen shot, sar.”

Phillips waved weakly, dropped the hot pistol in the dirt. He heard the driver and the guard calling thanks and congratulations. With surprising lack of Christian concern for the dead thieves, even the parsons expressed delight at the outcome.