The Highwayman's Footsteps (11 page)

I had made her let me dress her wound again. That apothecary was skilled, I had to admit, and she was strong – the wound was clean and knitting together well.

We had then begun to eat and drink, silently still, our faces becoming red in the fire. And then, at last, she had begun to speak, her eyes dark above her pinked cheeks, her voice fatigued by her passing fever. “I thank you for helping me today. I am glad you came back.”

Although my heart swelled, I chose not to respond. Instead, before the moment disappeared, I risked her anger again by asking what I most wanted to know. “What was your meaning when you said the redcoat had done something? He had done nothing. He was walking away.”

She answered at once. “I hate the redcoats. Were you a redcoat, I would have killed you when I met you. I have been waiting for the chance to kill one. Today, I had that chance and I took it. He deserved to die. I am more than glad.” Her voice was level but I saw her eyes inflamed with anger and hatred, her mouth tight.

“Why, Bess? What have the redcoats done?” I knew from the way she spoke that she must have her reasons.

She was leaning back in her chair. She bent forward now, placed her elbows on the table and stared into her mug of ale before speaking. “I have never told anyone this story before and I do not know if I can. It has been told to me, many times, but I have never had anyone to tell it to.” She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

And then, she told her story. By the end, I knew why she had killed the redcoat. I believed she would do the same again and I could hardly blame her if she did. It was a tale that would catch and trap even the coldest heart and melt it. She spun me into her life with the words of her story, a story of bravery and love, of heartbreak and fury, of honour and dishonour.

This was Bess's story.

“My father was a highwayman, the best there was. He chose his victims for their wealth and their corruption. He said that stealing from them was like lancing a boil – their money was poisoning them. He kept only what we needed and gave the rest to the poor. I was seven years old when he met his end. But he had already schooled me in horsemanship, and to use a pistol, even to use a sword – he had one fashioned especially for me.

“You may wonder what my mother said to this: but I never knew my mother. He took me to her several times, at night, but I was too young to remember. When I was some three years old, he stopped taking me, at her insistence. She said she could not bear to see me and yet not have me with her. He continued to visit her and he would tell me how she loved me.

“My mother had been fourteen years old when I was born. Her father came close to killing her when he discovered that she was to bear a child out of wedlock. He was the landlord of a tavern, nothing more, but he had hoped my mother would marry above her station. When I was born, he took me from her and gave me to a servant. “Take it far away,” he said. “Let me never see it or hear of it again.” The servant gave me to someone who knew where my father was. Folk knew my father and trusted him to take good care of me. They knew he was honourable. He did care for me, with the help of a local woman, and it is that woman who recounted the story of my grandfather's terrible anger and all that followed. Aggie was her name.

“It was Aggie whom I was with the night my father died. She kept alive for me the story of his death, and my mother's too, telling me the tale again and again over the following years. My mother was never wedded, though many tried to woo her. She refused their advances, always making excuses, feigning madness, or illness, or sullenness. Her father, the landlord, did not forgive her for that.

“Aggie put the pieces of the story together after that terrible night, the night my parents died. Many saw part of what happened, and guessed the rest. Another man died the next day, too, to pay a price for what followed. Or to begin to pay. That man deserved to die.”

Bess paused now, gathering her strength for the rest of the story. She took a mouthful of ale and set the tankard down slowly. I saw her thin fingers on the handle, tight and white as though no flesh sat between the skin and the bones. I said nothing, waiting for what was to come.

“I
t was a fierce night when my father left our lodgings for the last time. The equinoctial storms of spring were stripping dead twigs from the trees and a full moon scudded between the clouds. My father was after a prize that night – he had heard that Sir John Sowerby's coach was taking his ill-gotten wealth to Scarborough. On his way, he rode to see my mother, to snatch a kiss, and, perhaps, to taunt her father with a glimpse of him. He took pleasure from such risks. Aggie was often angry: ‘Think on t' child,' she would say. ‘Thou hast a child. Bess's child.' And he would tilt my chin towards his face and smile and place a kiss on my forehead before leaping onto his horse and galloping off into the night. And I was never afraid for him. Never.”

She closed her eyes, as if conjuring up his image.

“I remember what he wore that night. I remember it as if he were standing here now. I remember the fawn-coloured breeches, unwrinkled above his long black boots with their laces up the sides. I remember his velvet coat the colour of wine, at his chin the bunched lace which I had washed myself that morning. I remember how hard I had tried to make it look just so and how vexed I was when one edge would not settle neatly. Everything gleamed, sparkling in the lamplight as he stood inside the door and checked the powder in his pistols.”

Opening her eyes, Bess touched one of the pistols lying on the table in front of her. I looked at them as she spoke, imagining him as he left her that night.

“He wore his sword too, as he always did, but I fancied it twinkled more brightly than ever. He saw me watch as the light bounced from the jewels on it and danced over the ceiling and he twisted the hilt to make the light play across my face. His hat was in the French style, the brim turned up and with a cockade of lace at the top. And, as he blew me a kiss, I did not for one moment think that I should not see him again. Aggie worried every time he went after a prize but I knew that he would always return. I thought he was like a god – immortal. He might be away for a day or two, if the redcoats harried him, but he told me never to be afraid and so I was not.

“I wear his ring around my neck – in a locket, which is the only thing he has from his own mother. She gave it to him in secret when he left home.” She touched a chain beneath her collar and fingered it as she continued.

“Bess, my mother, was sitting at her casement, waiting for him. He had sent word to her, through those he could trust. To tell her he would come to her. And as she waited, she plaited a dark red love-knot through her long black hair.

“They were watched. Bess's sister, Annette, watched, worrying for Bess. Annette knew about the baby which Bess had borne, and remembered how their father had raged. She had seen him hit her sister across the face, until her mouth was bloody and swollen. Annette loved her sister. And so she worried when she heard my father say to her, ‘I'm after a prize tonight. But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light. If there is danger, if they hunt me, then I will come tomorrow night, so look for me by moonlight. Watch for me by moonlight.'”

The words were familiar but I could not at first place them. Then I recollected: they were the words Bess had spoken during her fever, as I left her.

“But Annette was not the only one who heard my father promise to return. She was not the only one who saw him press his face in Bess's hair before galloping away to the west.

“Tim, the idiot stable boy, listened too. In the crazy darkness of his mind, he thought Bess was his. Ugly Tim, Mad Dog Tim, Scarecrow Tim, Hollow-head and Rat Boy, those were some of the names they called him. He lived in the darkness, hating the light, blinking with white and empty eyes if he came out into the light of day. How could he think Bess would love him in return? I hate him. I hate him. If he lived now, I would hunt him down. I would shoot him dead, dead like a rat in a gutter. How could he think…?”

Her knuckles were white, her lips tight in the firelight, her face pale against her tumbling black hair. Again her hand went to the chain around her neck.

“My mother watched the winding road through her window, the road where he would come. He did not come at dawn. He did not come in the cold March noon. He did not come in the afternoon, even when the sun sank into the russet sky, and Bess must have been beside herself with worry now. He had told her that he would return, but this time perhaps she did not believe him. Then at twilight, finally, a redcoat troop came marching, marching along the very road that he would take.

“Annette knew Bess waited for him, knew why her face was white as she served the hungry soldiers their meat and ale downstairs, silent as she tried to ignore their mauling, pawing hands, their crude, coarse jibes. Annette saw whey-faced Tim, the idiot stable boy, go crawling to them like a cringing dog but she did not hear his words. Later, when it was too late, a terrible regret haunted Annette, as she tormented herself with thoughts of how she could have silenced Tim, somehow, or warned Bess.

“Perhaps she could have prevented it; perhaps not. But at the time, she did not understand. So she listened helplessly as the soldiers went into her sister's chamber. She could only hope they would not harm her. Little did she know…

“Then Annette, fearful now, tried to send word to someone who could warn my father, the highwayman, but the landlord saw what she planned. He locked her in her room, pleased at the thought that the man who had taken his other daughter's virtue would now meet a fitting end.

“No one knows what those soldiers did to my mother. No one will ever know. But some things we know. We know that they tied her to the end of her bed, gagging her viciously, so viciously that, when her parents found her later, the sides of her mouth were lacerated. We know that they tied a musket to her, the muzzle digging into her breast, tied it so tightly that the shape of the barrel made a long, ugly bruise on her flesh.

“She must have struggled in silence as the soldiers watched for her lover through the windows. She must have twisted her fingers desperately until one rested on the trigger. What thoughts went through her mind as she waited and as she watched the ribboning road in the moonlight, the road that he would take? How brave she was! What terrible fear must have filled her heart as she waited there, with no one knowing what she planned?

“Did she think then of his words? I think she did: ‘Watch for me by moonlight. I'll come to thee by moonlight, though Hell should bar the way.'

“The moonlight lit the bare and winding road that night. Annette watched from her window too. She stared at the moors, eyes wide, thinking of her sister, wondering what was in her mind, not knowing what was in her heart. She heard the horse's footsteps ringing through the ghostly air. She wanted to scream. Afterwards, she wished she had, though perhaps it would have done no good.

“There he was! Galloping towards them. When would they shoot? He was perhaps out of range; Annette could not tell, did not know of such things. She held her breath, shut her eyes, could not bear to watch. She heard the shot, one shot only, shattering the moonlit air, and opened her eyes to see the crows fly up with a fearsome noise. But the highwayman did not fall. Clattering to a halt, he paused for a mere moment and then wheeled around and was gone, galloping away, waving his rapier defiantly at the wind. Safe! He was safe. Annette's heart sang and she wanted to shout her joy to the moon.

“Something stopped her. Some premonition perhaps.

“Why was there only one shot? Why did only one soldier shoot?

“Moments later, a terrible scream tore the air. And another. Annette's body froze, her blood turning to ice, a strange moan creeping from her throat. Her face grew grey and she sank to her knees as she listened to the noise from Bess's room. Rousing herself, needing to know what awful event had caused her mother's screams – why the continued wailing, why her father's anguished yell, and the shouting and confusion – she scrambled to her feet.

“Numbly, she ran down the corridor towards her sister's room.”

B
ess took another drink of ale from her mug, and continued her tale.

“The door was open, the room crowded with people. Moonlight slanted still through the casement window and onto a terrible, terrible sight. My mother, her black hair cascading down, her head bowed, was slumped over the scarlet mess that was now her breast. There was the gun, still strapped to her, its barrel pressing into her blood-drenched flesh. The soldiers stood foolishly, away from the bed, some by the window, some still watching vainly for their intended victim, others gripping their muskets, looking at each other as though wondering what they should do. What could they do? Everything had been done. Everything they could ever do, they had done.

“Not till dawn did my father hear what had happened and they said his face grew grey when he heard how Bess, his beautiful Bess, Bess the landlord's black-eyed daughter, had watched for her love in the moonlight and died in the darkness there. And when he heard, when he understood that she had paid with her life to warn him of the redcoats' presence, he roared his curse to the sky. Then my father turned his horse and galloped blindly, madly, for many miles and many hours, until in the cold noon he reached once more the end of the road which ribboned the moors. And there he shouted his defiance as he rode towards them, brandishing only his sword, and at the last moment they shot him, shot him at last, shot him down on the highway. They shot him down like a dog on the highway and they laughed as he lay dying in his scarlet blood on the highway.”

Bess looked at me and when she saw the tears in my eyes she smiled. “The story is not quite finished. Annette, and others who saw him as he lay dying there, with the soldiers running towards him, said he shouted his love to the sky, his love for Bess, his black-eyed Bess, the landlord's red-lipped daughter. But before he died, they also say he whispered his curse again into the dusty road. With his last gasping breaths, he cursed the men who had done this and he vowed to haunt them. Folk say he does. They say a highwayman haunts these moors and that if you have evil in your heart he will find you and settle his curse on your head too.”