The Highwayman's Footsteps (24 page)

I hesitated. Bess urged me on. “You wanted her to suffer, did you not? You deserve this much, after what she did to you. You could have died and she would have cared nothing. All that will happen to her is some illness or pain or misfortune. Go on!”

I walked towards the crone, my palms sweating. There were no soldiers or any persons of that sort to be seen. There was nothing to concern me.

Should I do this? I could not be sure.

And yet, I hated her! As I came nearer, I recalled her evil look when she had called the soldiers. And then I recalled the scream of the falling horse and the look in its eyes before I shot it dead. That horse would not have died, had it not been for her treachery.

So, full of anger, I walked towards that gap-toothed hag and I stood in front of her and watched as she looked up. And, with a thrill of true pleasure, I watched the horror spread across her face as she recognized me. Her hands flew to her mouth and she let out a moan, collapsing onto her stool.

“Do you recall me?” I asked. She nodded, mutely. “I, too, recall you,” I said, and turned away from her, slipping amongst the crowds.

As I ran back to Bess and as we made our way from that place, we heard a crash and a commotion from the direction of the old woman's barrow. Briefly, we stopped to watch. We could not see clearly but it seemed as though she had collapsed across her wares, scattering broken jars everywhere. We heard her high-pitched keening, and the shouts of people as they tried to help her.

We disappeared from there as quickly as we could. And, I confess, I felt joy as I thought of the justice of it. I do not know whether it was the curse, or her fear, and I do not know what happened to her next. But I care only that she deserved to feel that horror, to believe that she had been cursed.

It was justice. And I took great pleasure in it.

My pleasure did not last long.

W
e heard the shouting of the news crier, sensed the movement of people towards him. What had happened? At first, I felt only slight interest, the interest of the crowd as we allowed ourselves to be swept along. By the time we reached him, people were passing snippets of the story to each other.

There had been rioting. Civil unrest. In Hexham. The militia and the people were rioting against the authorities.

Even then, I could not know the whole truth. Why was everyone so angry? Did they not like riots? I had heard that the masses like to riot.

People had died. Many people. Some said twenty. Others said dozens. Shot by the militia from neighbouring Yorkshire, because the militia of Northumberland would not shoot their own people. But the orders had been given by the authorities in Hexham. To shoot the rioting people and militiamen of Hexham.

And why had they rioted? Because they objected to the unfairness of the ballot which took men away from their families and enrolled them in the militia. My father's militia.

Only then did I begin to understand.

But there was worse.

The authorities had hanged a man for his part in the riot. An old man, seventy-four years old, they said. They had hung him without trial. They had not waited long – he was hanged, in public, the morning after the riots. They would not listen to the truth: that the old man had not even been in Hexham that day. He was innocent. They had hanged him and left his body on the gibbet as an example to others.

An innocent old man, hanged at dawn, without a proper trial.

And the man who was responsible for this atrocity?

The High Sheriff.

My father.

T
hen, indeed, did ice truly grip my heart. Bess took hold of my arm and guided me, sensing my distress. She pulled me away from the crowds and hurried me back towards the New Brough Barr, till we were outside the town walls.

“Say nothing,” she urged. “We will talk when we are alone. Say nothing now.” And she led me away.

I willingly followed. I wanted more than anything to be far from this place, away from these people who would have strung me by my neck from a tree had they known who I was. Whose son I was.

Gulls screamed overhead as we hurried along the road, and the smell of salt and sea freshened the air as we left the sickening animal smell of the town behind. I found myself hurrying towards the dark moors as though they would give me sanctuary. I think I did not breathe properly until we were away from the sounds and smells of Scarborough town and within sight of the familiar hills. I wanted to cleanse my mouth of spittle, to rid myself of its poison.

Yet the poison was not in my mouth. The poison was throughout my body. My father's blood beat in my heart. How would I ever forget that? How could I rid myself of him entirely? Or would I for ever carry the burden of what he was and what I was?

We soon found a carter who was willing to let us be carried in his cart for the greater part of the journey. Bess and I sat in near silence as we rocked and swayed our way into the hills, and my thoughts became slowly numb as we rattled along the rough tracks. At last, we came to the place where we must get down and walk alone for the last mile up into the hills.

A light misty rain began to fall and cold seeped into my skin. I wrapped myself tightly in my jacket, and shivered.

It was nearly dark when we came to Bess's cottage once more. Wearily, we walked up the last part of the track. A sharp evening wind rustled the trees and shifted the loose straw in the yard. The horses whinnied in welcome as we looked to their needs. We knew we must tend to them before we thought about ourselves. And, indeed, it was a comfort to do so.

By now, I knew what needed to be done in the cottage and I set about lighting the fire and closing the shutters against the night, as Bess lit oil lamps and began to fetch vegetables from her stores to make a warming soup. She brought carrots and potatoes from an outhouse – this, she had told me, was where they had lain bedded in sand to keep them from spoiling over the winter – and some cabbage from a jar of vinegar. I watched her chop them deftly, add a scrag of veal to the pan of water, throw in some dusty herbs from where they were hanging to dry, add a scoop of salt from the box beside the fire, and begin to stir the mixture in the large battered pot above the flames.

I held out my hand, wishing to help her, and she passed me the wooden spoon. As I stirred, and breathed in the steam from that simple food, I began to feel warm again. I smiled at Bess, out of friendship, not because inside myself I felt like smiling. It was a smile to thank her for her understanding and her silence and for not condemning me for who I was.

I think even Bess did not know what to say now. Bess, whom I knew for her outspokenness, her direct questions, her piercing truth, was silenced, struck dumb by my father's actions. And so I spoke for her.

“That was the man who once was my father,” I said. “Can you understand my shame? That my own father could care so little for the life of a person that he would sentence an old man to death, without even a thought? I am ashamed to be his son.”

“You should not be ashamed. Only your father should feel shame.”

I thought about this. Bess had struck the truth in one simple statement. I could do nothing at all about how my father was, just as I could do nothing about how my brother was. Yet why did I feel the shame deep within me, like a cold fall of snow?

I knew what I must do. I must turn my shame to anger. Only by acting bravely and honourably could I bring justice for that old man, and for the other men and women who had died in the riot. Only anger was the proper response.

And anger was not difficult to summon. Anger was as easy to stir as the steaming soup in front of me. As the wind beat against the shutters of our cottage and the door rattled, as the water came to the boil on the flames before me, as the fire burned on my face and my eyes stung, my shame did indeed turn to anger. I fanned the flames of that anger with my thoughts.

I had seen or heard enough of injustice now – the poverty of the blacksmith's family, the death of that soldier's horse, the brutish murder of poor Henry Parish, as well as the tragic deaths of Bess's mother and father. It seemed that the only way to justice was through human actions: the death of Mad Dog Tim the ostler and the curse on the gap-toothed crone felt like justice to me. Even the choice of victims by Bess and One-legged Jack felt like a better sort of justice than that meted out by corrupt sheriffs and magistrates and men who cared only for their own sort. What did those men think of people of the lower orders? What did they care? And who would fight for the weak and the poor?

I
would fight for them. Because I was amongst them now. But also because in my heart it felt right.

All I could do was act as I thought right.

W
e talked, Bess and I, late into that night, not wishing to sleep. We placed more logs on the fire, stoking it till it burnt with unnecessary fervour, till the flames leapt high into the air and sparks flew onto the stone hearth.

Our plans were laid. My only regret was that we would have to wait so many days before acting. I knew that my father, or one of his servants, took his money to the British Linen Bank in Hexham on a Thursday. We knew, too, that Sapphire's injury would not allow her to make the journey for more than a week. It would be nearly three days' ride, and two nights' rest wherever we could find it, so we would begin our journey early on Tuesday of the following week.

It seemed too long to wait. But we would spend the time in planning, in practising down to the last detail how we would rob my father of his ill-gotten money before he reached the Bank. And Bess had a great deal she wished to tell me about the art of highway robbery. I had now no discomfort at the idea of being taught by a girl – I understood enough to know that Bess must be listened to. My heart beat faster as I thought about what I would do. It was not fear I felt, but excitement. I wished we could act now.

Sleep did not come easily to me that night, or those following. It was not the hard floor – I was well used to that by this time. Nor was it the shame I had felt earlier, on hearing of my father's terrible actions. It was the knowledge that now, at last, I had the chance to act, to change something, to fight against the injustice of our lives.

When at last I did sleep, on that first night after learning of my father's dishonour, it was with the memory of Bess's ballad to Henry Parish still echoing in my ears. She had sung it again that evening. I had asked her to. To pass the time, for something to do before morning came, we had written out some copies on thick paper which Bess kept dry in a drawer lined with a layer of salt. We cut new quills and dipped them in the ink, as Bess told and retold each line and we wrote the words down together. We planned to make only a small number of copies to sell to printers in towns and villages where we might find ourselves in weeks ahead, but each time we wanted to stop, we thought of Henry Parish, and how one more copy would spread his story to more persons, each of whom might tell his story to more. And so we wrote, late into the hours of deepest darkness, till the fire quietened and hissed gently, and the noise of our quills scratching on the paper became part of the sounds of the night.

Outside, the night-loving spirits of the moors awoke and, no doubt, ghosts walked. But we were safe indoors and had no need to fear them. And if some of them watched over us, if the ghostly highwayman looked through the trees at us, then that was the way of things. We could only do what the living can do: hope and pray and act.

And so, as I slept at last, the story of Henry Parish's death, in Bess's true words, settled into my head and grew inside me until he became a part of me. I could not know what would happen but my life now was tangled with his, and with Bess's, with One-legged Jack, and Aggie, and Bess's parents – the highwayman and the landlord's red-lipped daughter – and the old man who had lost his life so unjustly on a chill March morning in the year of our Lord, 1761.

I prayed that God, and whatever spirits He might see fit to allow, would watch over us. I could not know if my prayers would be answered.

A
wild March wind whipped the hair into our horses' eyes, as we set out some days later. As we trotted, and as I felt Sapphire's stride strong beneath me, I tried to accustom myself to the sword slapping against my leg. It was Bess's father's sword, which I had polished the night before until its jewelled hilt sparkled. I had sharpened the blade on a whetstone, too, till its edge felt rough against the flat of my thumb, its steel warm, its double-edge deadly and glinting in the firelight. I would use it if I had to and I would think of Bess's father as I did so.

I was proud to have a brave man's sword at my side. I hoped I could be as brave as he.

Our bags were packed with as much as we could carry without overburdening ourselves. We had food and water, flint and steel for making fire, spare clothes, a pair of pistols each, full powder horns and two bags of shot. We had all our money with us, though this was not much – Bess had earned no money since I had entered her life and she had spent much of what she had on buying Sapphire for me. But this robbery of my father's money was not for us – it was for Henry's mother and sister.

Once we were on the road west, we met few travellers. Those we passed took little notice of us – two well-dressed young men riding decent horses, one of us with a sword, neither of us with pistols in view. We could have been fledgling merchants, lawyers, two doctors, even students. Our dress was not flamboyant, nothing you would recall if asked: thick riding cloaks, with plain twisted stocks at our throats, hid whatever jackets we might be wearing; our breeches were dark brown and our spurred riding boots long and burnished to a soft shine. Tricorne hats hid the colour of our hair. In Bess's case, of course, her hat also hid her feminine tresses.