alternative bride 14

 

Chapter 14

 

Gerard and Jane had done nothing but cuddle overnight; apart from being painfully aware of the innocent ears of Lucy in the bedroom across the hall, they wanted to sleep deeply for what could be a long day ahead. Gerard had found a loo mask in with formal wear, left in his Imperial since he had last been at a house party, and happily donned that. Under a hat and muffler, it gave a perfect impression of a black face, and he wore black leather gloves as well. Lucy rose to bid them Godspeed, and Mrs. Marsh had prepared a basket of food to eat on the way.

“I think she thinks I am fading away,” sniggered Gerard.

“Oh, hush, I am sure you will eat your portion, and be glad of it,” said Jane.

“More than likely,” said Gerard. “We will go stealthily down the high street, which will draw attention to ourselves, and spring ‘em as we come to the outskirts. Anyone who doesn’t see a curricle with a dark man and a girl with brown hair is going to be either blind or engrossed in something else.”

Moving with exaggerated caution, in just the sort of furtive way to draw attention to themselves, they set off. Then it was only four miles to the tollgate at Hockliffe.

“Demme if I ain’t glad of the mask, covering my scars from the wind,” said Gerard, when they set off again. “But I’ll want to rest frequently.”

“Perhaps I could drive,” said Jane. “Your horses aren’t nervous.”

“Maybe, but I think I can make it as far as the Red Lion, in Walcutt,” said Gerard. “It’s five-and-forty miles or so.”

“Ambitious,” said Jane.

“Well, we shall rest the nags at Woburn and Newport Pagnell, and then at Queen’s Cross and see how I am,” said Gerard. “Then if I can make it to Thornby, which is eleven miles short of Walcutt, we’ve plenty of places to break the journey.”

“Bess and Beau are going to be reproachful about not being replaced every twenty miles or so,” giggled Jane. “But that would draw the wrong sort of attention.”

“Damnation! Oh, I beg your pardon.  But you are right, I hadn’t thought of it.”

“And I doubt Frith keeps horses stationed, so he’s in no better case.  And think nothing of it.”

“Thank you. I hope we don’t have to go all the way to Scotland, but we can always double back on parallel roads and lead him a chase worthy of a hare.”

“It’ll be fun,” said Jane. “And he’s going to spitting nails when he finds we’re us, not Lucy and Peter.”

“Anywhere as far as Leicester we could be going to my hunting lodge, after that well... I am sure we will think of a reason which doesn’t sound too silly.”

“Looking for sheep to improve your stock?” suggested Jane.

“Not a bad idea,” said Gerard. “I mostly run cattle.”

“Oh, you’re looking for a good bull from hardy stock with the bad winters we’ve been having, so as to give your cows a better chance of surviving if this weather looks like being long term.”

“Excellent. I was taking my wife for what reason?”

“Can’t bear to be separated so soon after our marriage,” said Jane. “Little wife good and dutiful, and wants to understand your stock.  I do, too.”

“My father introduced the Leicester Longhorn cattle, bred by Bakewell; it was a bit risky at the time, as they are bred primarily for beef, not milk, but it paid off. We’ve a lucrative government contract, providing beef for both army and navy.  The milk is very rich, with a high butter content, and is good in cheese, but less so as milk for drinking. It also gives the calves a good start. Longhorns produce the best marbled meat, which is so tender. It’s a shame, in a way, to salt it down for the sea, but perhaps the superior nature of the meat is transmitted even so.”

“And are they not hardy?”

“Actually, they are. And there’s not much to pick between them and the Angus in meat content. I might be looking into Galloways.”

“I am sure you will think of something.”

“To be honest, it doesn’t have to be plausible so long as it sounds plausible to those who are rude enough to want to know; and they don’t matter,” said  Gerard. 

“Oh! It is a wager,” said Jane. “Your chief cowman said there was no better meat, and your wife said how nice Angus meat is, so we are going on a tasting spree to see if he wins the bet or not.”

“Oh, that is good; but let me change it, a friend declared he had tasted beef superior to mine, and I would not believe it. A bet between gentlemen.”

“Oh, much better,” said Jane. “Yes, a bet is always believable. Men bet on the silliest things, even Mr. Dauntry. He and one of his friends bet on how many pigeons there were in the street outside the house, and I sabotaged them by putting out corn, so they both lost.”

“Your quiet roars of rebellion are more impressive, I think, than loud ones,” said Gerard. “Oh, here is the toll-booth!”

“I will be as silly as I can,” said Jane. They drew level with the window of the toll gate.

“Ninepence,” said the laconic toll-keeper.

“Ninepence? Oh, how does that work?” asked Jane.

“Fourpence-ha’penny per hoss, an’ if y’ask me, it oughta be more in tandem than abreast,” said the toll-keeper.

“Oh, why’s that?” said Jane.

“Just pay him, and don’t spend all day; we haven’t got much of a start on them,” said Gerard.

“Oh, I am sorry,” said Jane, fumbling as she counted out change.

“Well done,” said Gerard, as they rumbled through the gate.

“We should be remembered,” said Jane. “Why does he think tandem should be more?”

“One horse in the other’s footsteps, I suppose, more damage to the ground,” guessed Gerard. “If you have wider wheels, it’s less, as the load is spread over more surface.”

“Well, that makes sense,” said Jane.

“And speaking of spreading loads, I wonder if that is the farmer or carter against whom Mrs. Hallicutt animadverted the other day,” said Gerard. He pointed with his whip towards a cart piled dangerously high with hay.

“Oh, my,” said Jane. “Oh no – some impatient fellow is overtaking. Drop back!”

“I was coming to that conclusion,” said Gerard, who was already halting the horses.

“He’s going to lock wheels,” said Jane, in horror, as the driver of the postchaise came past the wain, overtaking on the inside of the curve, and needing to move to the outer part of the bend to get through it, without going straight into the ditch.

“By God, you’re right,” said Gerard, in horror.  The two vehicles locked in a brief, and far from tender, embrace, and the inexorable weight of the hay wain, its wheels quite six inches wide, carried the lighter wheel of the smaller vehicle, upending it and hurling it both forward and to one side, as the friction was enough to slow the one wheel on the large hay wain so that it turned,and toppled. With inexorable majesty, the whole vehicle slewed to the right and tipped, and the carter jumped clear as the nearside wheels lifted, and the topple became inevitable.  The postchaise was in pieces, the horses clamouring in terror, and possibly pain. The cart horses, pulled to their right by the traces promptly lay down.

“This has happened to them before,” said Jane, cynically.

“They have a better survival chance, getting low, and keeping their legs out of the way,” said Gerard. “The carter jumped pretty sharpish, too; he had a good idea what was coming.”

“We had better go and see what we can do to help,” said Jane.

“Yes,” agreed Gerard. They dismounted; the horses could be trusted to stand.

The impatient fellow had been thrown forward of his own chaise, and lay on the road, a twisted marionette of a figure with eyes which stared sightlessly at the sky with as much life as if they had been painted.

The carter emerged from his ditch.

“That weren’t my fault! You seed him overtake me!” he cried.

“I’d have said it was your fault as much as his, being overloaded, and unbalanced,” said Gerard. “And it’s not the first time you’ve done it.”

“I ain’t taking no nonsense from a blurry darkie fartcatcher, not nowise,” said the carter, adding more insulting and derogatory vituperation.

“My man,” said Jane, angry, “You have a filthy mouth, and also addled wits if you cannot recognise a gentleman. And you have no shame to curse in front of this poor dead soul, who may have been a fool to try to avoid being forty minutes late in this world and ended up forty years early in the next, but had you been travelling with a proper load, he might not have felt the need to get in front of you, for fear of you shedding your load on him. A very real fear, I suspect. My dear, there was a road to the right a little earlier; do you know where it goes?”

“Yes, after a hamlet rejoicing in the name of Milton Brian or Bryant, it traverses the whole circumference of Woburn Abbey, taking us out of our way in a ten mile round trip.”

“Which might be pleasant enough if out driving purely for pleasure, but we need to get on,” said Jane.

“The wain fell a long way to the right,” said Gerard. “And seeing as we are driving tandem, I am going to lead the horses round. I... we had better take up the dead man. Were... are there any others in his carriage?”

Jane swallowed hard, and went to look at the body of the postchaise, crushed like a cheap packing crate dropped from a window.

There was no apparent blood, and she opened the door.

“Woof?” said the occupant.

Jane pulled the body of the chaise apart to get at the dog, a spaniel cross, she thought. The dog leaped into her arms, licked her face, and then jumped down to go investigate the body of its erstwhile master. It raised a muzzle to the sky, and howled.

Jane felt tears start to her eyes as they had not for the fact of the death of the reckless man.

She knelt beside the dog, and found a collar, with the name, ‘Star,’ on it. She picked the dog up, and carried him away from the body. A brief ‘wuff’ and a feeble wag of the tail suggested that Star accepted this.

“We need to find out who the poor fellow is, and if anyone should inherit his dog,” said Gerard. “His horses were fortunate, and are frightened but unharmed. I have cut them out of their traces.”

“If we tie him on the rumble seat, we can take him into Woburn,” said Jane. “And yes, I think we should leave this foul-mouthed fellow dealing with his own problem.”

“Watch my wheels,” said Gerard, having lifted the dead man onto the rumble seat. He also tied the dead man’s horses behind their curricle.  He led the horses past the base of the wagon, partly on the verge. The offside wheel lifted to run on the verge, but was clear of the ditch. And then they were through. Gerard resumed his seat, took Star from Jane, to give her the chance to scramble up, and sat the dog between them, clicking his tongue to the horses.

Star sat bolt upright on the seat, like a woolly liver-and-white chaperone between them, evidently enjoying the motion of the travel, if occasionally glancing back at their gruesome cargo to whine.

 

oOoOo

 

Lucy’s father had not missed his daughter at dinner, assuming that his daughter was being missish and had either ordered a meal on a tray, or was going without food. Women took strange fits like that when shown a firm hand, since she had come back from school expecting to think for herself. A preposterous idea, but easily broken. That young fool David had to die too soon, before Lucy, as his wife, owned his lands, and therefore they would belong de facto to her father.

Wilfrid Frith cared little if his daughter went to bed hungry, it would make her more tractable when her bridegroom arrived in the morning, along with the local vicar, who was to marry them.

She did not come to breakfast, either, and when the ageing suitor, Amos Orpington, arrived, she had still not emerged.

Frith sent a servant to tell his daughter to get up and put on a gown suitable for her wedding, and waited in complacence that she would obey him.

He was shocked when the servant informed him that Miss Lucy’s bed had not been slept in, and that her personal items were gone, and a band box gone with them too.

As the vicar turned up, and expressed his surprise that this old man was Miss Frith’s intended, since he had always understood that she was to wed Mr. Peter Franklin, Frith was even angrier.

Mr. Frith waxed loud, irritable, and repeated many times a soubriquet which can only be described as a racial slur regarding Mr. Peter Franklin.

“They’ll have gone to Gretna, poor young folk,” said the vicar.

“Gretna! That damned cheeky fellow!” cried Frith. The word he used was not ‘fellow.’

“My overnight bag is packed, to honeymoon,” said Orpington. “If you pack quickly, we can go after them.”

“But which route?” cried Frith, wringing his hands. “They might go to the west towards Manchester, or east to Watling Street.”

“Depend upon it, they are going to try to get onto the Great North Road,” said Orpington. “A woman would have no more imagination than that, and no more would a black man.” Like Frith, his description of Peter was less neutral than ‘black man.’

“Across country to Dunstable first, then,” said Frith.

 

It was well into the afternoon when the two men in their respective carriages reached Dunstable. Dunstable High Street, being on Watling Street, presented them with an embarrassment of riches as far as inns were concerned. Orpington was methodical if Frith was not, and soon had some information.

“I don’t know where they stayed, but they left town around dawn” he said. “Heading up Watling Street towards the north.”

“Good, we’ll soon run them to earth,” said Frith. “They lost the time they gained in staying overnight. Hell! If they shared a bed....”

“I’ll still enjoy schooling her,” said Orpington. “And making her forget him. And if there are any little cuckoos, there are ways to bring down the courses, and if all else failed, such might readily be strangled, like unwanted kittens.”

Not one moment of compassion did Frith feel for his daughter.

The two men set off, and confirmed that they were on the trail of their quarry at the toll gate.

By the time they reached the site of the accident, the evidence of it had been largely cleared by a number of burly farm labourers. The carter was nursing some grudges and a number of bruises in his own local, where he continued to asseverate his innocence in the whole matter, until he was threatened with more violence if he did not, in the colourful idiom of the spokesman, shut his trap.