The Forest (89 page)

To her embarrassment, Fanny felt herself go rather pale and then colour. Seeing Mr West glance at her in surprise she quickly explained: ‘I’m afraid Father and Mr Martell had an altercation when he came here.’

If Francis Albion had given everyone a fright at Mrs Grockleton’s ball, he certainly seemed quite his old self again now – which was to say you could never be sure that he mightn’t have a fit and drop dead on the spot, or, as the doctor confided to Mr Gilpin, ‘He may just as well live to be a hundred.’ One thing was certain at least: as long as he did live he meant to have his way. ‘Martell? A most insolent young man,’ he piped, without a shade of embarrassment.

‘Well, anyway,’ said Mr West, ‘he was most anxious to see one of the pictures in the house: one of his ancestors. And I must say, when we inspected it, the thing was quite extraordinary. It was his double. You saw the picture.’ He turned to Aunt Adelaide. ‘The dark-haired gentleman we looked at upstairs, Colonel Penruddock.’

‘That young puppy was a Penruddock?’ cried Francis, while Aunt Adelaide’s face was like a mask.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mr West said, looking from one to the other, ‘there is evidently some family dispute of which I was not aware.’

‘There is, Mr West,’ Aunt Adelaide replied graciously, ‘but you could not possibly have known of it. However,’ she said with a polite smile, ‘we do not mix with the Penruddocks.’

‘I shall remember in future,’ Mr West promised with a bow.

Certainly this faux pas did not do Mr West any harm in Adelaide’s eyes and she made clear to him when he left that he would be welcome to call again at any time.

‘I think him a very agreeable man,’ Fanny said in answer to her aunt’s questioning glance; and when Francis remarked that he hoped the man wasn’t going to come buzzing around the place like a fly she was able to assure him, with a laugh, that Mr West had a great many other places to go.

Mr West was not the only visitor to Albion House, however. Whether it was by chance, or whether some friend like Mr Gilpin had lent encouragement, a number of people called to see that Fanny was not deprived of company and even Francis Albion could hardly complain if she went out to dine from time to time. One of the most charming of these visitors was the count, who came once with his wife and once without.

Nathaniel had just emerged from Mr Gilpin’s school one afternoon when he was hailed by the fellow trudging down the lane. He didn’t know him, although he reckoned he might be one of the Puckles, judging by the look of him. But when the man asked if he’d like to earn sixpence Nathaniel was all attention.

‘I was up at Albion House and Miss Albion gave me this letter to take into Lymington. Didn’t like to say no to her, but I ain’t going that way. Here’s the sixpence she gave me if you want to take it down there. It’s to a Frenchman, she said.’

‘I can see.’ Nathaniel could read and Fanny’s hand was clear. The letter was addressed to the count. Sixpence was a handsome sum indeed. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘Straight away.’

A deep November night. Moonless. Better, a thick blanket of cloud had snuffed out even the starlight, so that there was only the pitch-black texture of nothingness over the sea. The faint sound of small waves upon the formless shore gave the sole hint that there was anything yet created in the void beyond. Smugglers’ weather.

Puckle waited. He was standing on a small rise on the coast below Beaulieu Heath. In front of him the mudflats extended hundreds of yards at low tide, cut by long inlets known locally as lakes. To his left, a quarter-mile away, lay the little smugglers’ landing place known as Pitts Deep. The same distance away on his right was Tanners Lane, and past that the park of a handsome coastal estate called Pylewell. The Burrards’ land lay beyond that and then, about two miles away, the town of Lymington.

It was a quiet spot. The farmer at Pylewell’s home farm had long been suspected as a large operator in the Free Trade. It was said that hundreds of casks of brandy were buried at Pitts Deep.

In Puckle’s hand was a lantern. It was a curious object because, instead of a window, it had a long spout. When he pointed the spout out to sea, by covering it with his hand and then moving his hand on and off, Puckle could send pinpoint light flashes out there, which were invisible to all but the smugglers in the vessels on the water. The tide was coming in.

The plan, as Puckle had explained it to Grockleton, was very simple. First, as the tide came in, the luggers would bring the contraband to shore. They would leave it and depart. The main body of Free Traders would then come down Tanners Lane along the beach and remove the contraband. That would be the moment when Grockleton and his troops could pounce. This was a typical procedure, but the cargo on this occasion was particularly valuable: best brandy, a huge quantity of silk, lace – one of the most profitable runs ever made.

‘Another hour,’ he remarked quietly to the tall figure at his side, trying to sound calm. Grockleton nodded, but said nothing.

He had taken enormous trouble. So far everything had gone according to plan. The note from Fanny Albion had been a good idea. Using one she had written to his wife some time ago, it had been an easy matter to forge a short letter. Nor were the contents anything to arouse comment if they had fallen into the wrong hands: thanks for a book he had lent her, good wishes from her father and Adelaide. The note had been left with Puckle. When he gave it to Nathaniel to deliver to the count, who was under instructions to inform Grockleton at once, the smuggler sent a signal that the big shipment was due and that he and Grockleton must meet at the Rufus stone again the next day.

The preparations for the military contingent had been even more careful. In the first place Grockleton had told nobody, neither his wife nor his own riders, that anything was afoot. The colonel had arranged for sixty of his best troops to be transferred up to Buckland. At dusk, he had called a muster and then, taking another twenty mounted men from Buckland, he had slipped out with them, split them into small parties and brought them under cover of darkness to the rendezvous, in a little wood immediately above Pitts Deep. A dozen men were already lying, well concealed, overlooking the beach. Their orders were strict. No one must interfere with the landing of the goods or give any sign.

‘We have to catch the landsmen red-handed,’ Grockleton had impressed upon the count. His own role was to be heroic and quite certainly dangerous. While the twenty horsemen raced out of the woods along the shore to cut off their retreat, and twenty of his men ran with lanterns along the line of the smugglers’ caravan, he intended to call out to offer them terms of instant surrender, or a devastating salvo if they resisted.

There was nothing to do but wait. He intended to remain with Puckle until the luggers came to shore. Just to make certain he didn’t change his mind.

Even Isaac Seagull’s keen eyes could not pierce this darkness. He was supervising personally. This shipment was the big one. Behind him, two hundred men and eighty ponies waited quietly in a long, well-ordered line.

Each pony could carry a pair of barrels with flattened sides, roped together over its back. These barrels were called ankers and each held eight and a third imperial gallons. The men would mostly carry a pair of half-ankers, one on their chest, the other on their back, each weighing about forty-five pounds – a heavy load when they had a tenor fifteen-mile march ahead of them.

The tea was packed in waterproof oilskins, known as dollops. A pony could carry several of these. The bales of silk were also in oilskin packages, but for these Seagull had devised a special form of transport. Half a dozen tall, strong women were standing just behind him. They wore long dresses that hung very loose on them. As soon as the silks were brought to shore, however, their dresses would come off. The silks would be wound round them, yard after yard, as though they were being embalmed, and at last, when they had all they could carry and were twice the girth they had been before, they would put their dresses back on, and ride and walk their way to their various markets. Within a couple of days, two of these women would be up at Sarum and another over at Winchester.

As he waited in the dark, Isaac Seagull smiled to himself.

There were so many routes you could choose when you were landing goods on the shores of the Forest. For the smaller drops Luttrell’s Tower in the east was useful. So was the Beaulieu River. It amused him, on occasion, to use the old fortress of Hurst Castle: the Customs had actually put an agent there a few years back, so Isaac Seagull, in his genial way, had gone to see him and asked: ‘Would you like me to break your head or pay you?’

‘Pay,’ the fellow had said promptly and, although he reported to Grockleton, he had followed Seagull’s orders ever since.

On the west side of the Forest, along the coast between the spit of Hurst Castle and Christchurch, there were two wonderful landings. These were the narrow gullies coming down to the shore where a string of packhorses could wait unseen. Bunnies, these little defiles were called: Becton Bunny lay just below Hordle; Chewton Bunny a mile or so further west. Chewton was good because the beach on each side contained treacherous quicksands, to impede the Customs men. From Chewton you went up a mile or so to the Cat and Fiddle Inn, then across the Forest, up the track called the Smugglers’ Road between Burley and Ringwood. There was the first of several Free Traders’ markets held quite regularly up that way. And from the Smugglers’ Road you passed up into the northern forest and far beyond.

But back in the eastern forest there was also Pitts Deep. There were advantages to that, too. You could go eastwards, skirting Southampton; or you could go by Boldre church and across into the western forest by the ford above Albion House, picking up the Smugglers’ Road a few miles further on. Pitts Deep was good, and less obvious. That was why a shipment was coming in there now.

Grockleton tensed. Without his realizing it his claw-like hands gripped Puckle’s arm, causing Puckle to curse quietly as the lantern shook.

For a moment more the Customs officer failed to see anything, but then he did: a faint blue light, winking out at sea. Puckle flashed the lantern again. Two more blue winks. Two from Puckle. Then a long blue flash.

‘They’re coming in,’ the smuggler said quietly. A partial break in the cloud gave them a little starlight now. Just enough to make out the water’s edge and the white lines of the lapping waves. Grockleton felt his pulse racing. The moment of triumph. Soon it would be his.

Beside him Puckle did not feel any excitement at all. For him, he knew, this was the final action that must seal his fate. ‘Don’t worry,’ Grockleton, meaning to be kind, murmured beside him, ‘there’ll be plenty in this for you.’ But it wasn’t true. None of it was true.

Long moments passed. Then the sound of oars and, two hundred yards out, the vague shapes of three large luggers rowing towards Pitts Deep.

Grockleton was gone. Running, stooped over, below the line of the little cliff, now that he was satisfied that the goods really were coming in, he was anxious to ensure that the French troops didn’t move too soon. It was all going exactly to plan. The three luggers were beaching; men were leaping into the water. A moment later they were starting to unload.

Even from where he stood, Puckle could see that they were unloading a prodigious amount. Casks, boxes, oilskins – one could not see exactly, but there appeared to be a long dark line of goods stretching for about fifty yards along the shoreline. Pitts Deep had never received such a cargo. The luggers were finishing their work. The speed of these mariners was remarkable. In the faint starlight, he could see one of the luggers pulling away. A few yards out it started coming towards him. The second lugger was beginning to move out.

Puckle sighed. It was time for him, too, to move.

Grockleton waited patiently. An hour passed. Puckle had told him that the Free Traders often waited a good while before coming down, to make sure the coast was clear. The goods on the shoreline looked so tempting that he longed to go down and inspect them; but he knew he must not. There must be no risk of giving away the ambush.

His eyes scanned the shoreline. Puckle had been ordered to stay at his post because this was what he would normally have done. There was a risk here. He might signal the smugglers to warn them not to approach. But if he did, Grockleton would have him arrested and bring the entire weight of the law down upon him. He smiled to himself grimly: even this would not be the worst outcome. He’d be able to appropriate the entire cargo without the risks of a fight.

Another hour passed. He strained, listening for some sound. At last he could bear it no longer. Moving carefully, bent low, almost holding his breath in case that sound should alert anyone, he crept back to Puckle’s station. It took him ten minutes. He worked his way up on to the tiny knoll.

It was vacant. He peered around. Perhaps the fellow had left his post to attend to a call of nature. Or possibly the Free Traders were close by and they had called him down. He peered around into the gloom. No sound. No movement. He waited five minutes. Surely if the smugglers were here they would have come by now.

Grockleton was a patient man. He waited another half-hour. The silence was complete. Puckle must have warned them. He got up and started to move stiffly. As he did so, his foot struck something, making a sharp tinny crash which, it seemed to him, would have awoken the dead. It was the spout lantern. He looked around, then shrugged. There was nobody to hear.

He walked back to where the troops were waiting and called for a lantern. Holding it aloft, he went down towards the contraband. There was a huge quantity: a fortune at his feet.

Curiously, he reached down to one of the ankers of brandy to see how heavy it was. He tried to tilt it. The anker fell over. He frowned, took hold of the one next to it. The barrel rose easily when he tugged. It was empty. He kicked the one next to that. Empty too. He ran to one of the oilskin dollops of tea, started to unwrap it. Loose straw. He started to lope about. Kicking ankers, dollops, boxes. Empty, all empty.