Alternative Bride 20

 

Chapter 20

 

“Shouldn’t he be on our tail by now?” asked Jane, who was using the handmirror from her dressing-table set to look behind, rather than keep turning round.

“Maybe he had trouble turning that long vehicle of his,” said Gerard. “Also, our horses are fresher and better rested.”

“Oh! I can see dust,” said Jane. “I fancy he’s whipping those poor horses; it’s coming quite fast.”

Gerard clicked his tongue to his pair, and shook the reins, and they picked up the pace.

“Can we get back to Wintergreen House in one day?” asked Jane.

“Debateable, but possible,” said Gerard. “We’re nipping across country, and so long as we rest the nags and feed and water them once in a while they’ll go all day. We have vittles for ourselves.”

“What about him catching up early? How will we rest them?”

“His horses will flag soon. He can’t really be such a fool as to run them to death,” said Gerard.

“I hope not,” said Jane.

“Well, it’s up to him, not us, and there’s nothing we can do about it, I’m afraid,” said Gerard. “Though I will have a bone to pick with him if he does.”

“Have a ham sandwich,” said Jane. “And reflect that Frith is going to get hungry.”

“Thank you,” said Gerard. “I think we’ll let him exhaust his nags, and then pull in for a brief rest and feed our team.”

“Poor things,” said Jane. “Oh, hello, he’s in sight.”

 

 

Frith was ecstatic, he was catching up with his quarry! His horses were sweating and covered in lather, and flecks of foam  drifted back, but he cared little for their distress. He flicked the whip again to sting the rumps of the leaders, and one of them faltered and stumbled in the traces.

Frith growled. How like the stupid nag to fail now in his hour of triumph! He lashed the poor beast viciously, and it fell, thrashing in panic as the carriage slewed to a halt, and the other beasts stopped so as not to over-run it.

Frith was beside himself. He was so close! He leaped down, and belaboured the poor beast with his stick, screaming vituperation.

The horse tried to rise, but it was exhausted. The other horses reared and shied in fear.

“Damn you! Damn you to hell!”screeched Frith.  Animals were contrary, and went out of their way to be difficult. He cut the collapsed leader out of its traces, and with some difficulty persuaded the others to back his phaeton away from it.  He would have to drive unicorn and the rest would have to do better.

Frith had never driven unicorn, and nor had his team; and the traces were not designed for it. The unicorn hitch requires the wheelers to be hitched as with a pair, and the single leader to have the same hitch as a tandem pair. Frith had never driven tandem, either, and was unaware of the problems arising thereof. Especially with a team which was spooked.

Backing away was not too difficult, the wheelers were afraid of the bloody mass which was their fellow, lying in the road, as well as of Frith’s vituperation. Perforce, the leader went with them, and Frith was able to push the phaeton more or less into the right place. He remounted, intending to drive on, past his stricken leader.

The other leader shied, and the carriage fishtailed.

 By the expedient of lashing the rump of his sole leader, Frith got the team into motion to pass the exhausted horse lying in the road.  This was managed at a walk, the horses rolling their eyes and panting, but as the leader got level with his companion, now on the wrong side, he shied again, and kicked back at the wheeler behind him, jumping and managing to turn backwards in the traces. The whole phaeton slewed, and before Frith could react, both wheelers had kicked over the traces and were tangled. He threw down his whip and jumped up and down in the seat, screaming at them, and only stopped when this made them thrash more and he had to jump for his life as the phaeton turned over.

“Happen you’m buggered, squire,” said an interested bucolic.

Frith, sitting in a ditch and covered in pondweed, gave the bucolic to understand that his pedigree, cleanliness, and personal habits were not to be desired.

“Now go and get help, you fool!” he screeched.

“Oh, I be surely too dirty a bastard and sinner to be of any use to a fine gen’lman like yourself,” said the bucolic, whose name was Harry Ashton. “Moreover, happen I’d not feel like going for help if all I get is hard words and slurs on my reputation, ar, and that be slurs on my missus too.” He rubbed his finger and thumb together suggestively.

Frith raised his whip.

“If that thing, or your stick, touches me, squire, reckon I’ve got a better tool to retaliate with,” said Harry, displaying his very sharp bill-hook, with which he had been laying a hedge.

Frith paled.

“Get me out of here, and I’ll pay you to get help,” he said.

Harry pulled Frith out of the ditch, and Frith fished out two shillings.

Harry looked at them, and gently closed Frith’s hand around them.

“Happen I didn’t know you was a pauper,” he said. “You keep it; you need it more’n me, though happen someone will pay for your horses at cat-meat prices.”

Frith opened his mouth... and shut it again.

“I need to get my team on the road as soon as possible,” he ground out.

“You’m exhausted them, think on,” said Harry. “They’re going to need bran mash, and a rest of at least two hours before they can even walk on.”

“Damn you! I’ll never catch up!” cried Frith.

Harry shrugged.

“Happen that long term, men on foot go further and faster than hosses,” he said. “You can rest them and feed and water them, and go away with nags, or you can push them on, but you might as well shoot them now, for you’ll kill them if you push them any further.”

“I need to hire a team; where’s the nearest inn where I may do so?”demanded Frith.

“Oh, ‘bout ten miles back the way you come,” said Harry.

“What about a riding beast?” demanded Frith.

“Well, vicar is looking to sell his hunter, now he’s too old for the hunt,” said Harry. “O’course it’s prime blood, coming up on the hunting season, and he won’t take no less than sixty guineas for it.”

“Take the money and bring me the beast,” said Frith.

“That’ll take me away from my paid work, squire; I don’t know that I could see my way to losing a day’s pay,” said Harry.

“Damn you!” said Frith, adding a note to the sum of ten pounds.

Harry jogged off.

The vicar was glad to take fifty guineas for his hunter, and Harry led it back to Frith tenderly.

“What about them other horses and the carriage?” he asked Frith as that individual fastened on his overnight bag and mounted.

“Do what you bloody well like with them, and you can pay for others to shift them out of the road from what I gave you,” said Frith, digging his heels into the hunter’s sides.

“Well, that’s a nice bit o’ pay for your bad temper,” said Harry, to the dustcloud behind Frith. He fetched his water bottle to the badly beaten leader. “You see here, my fine fellow, Harry’ll see you right, and that’s... well, nicely matched four, matter o’ seven hundred guineas and a hundred for that fancy cart, if I can get that mended right and tight,” mused Harry. He hopped over the stile to collect his wife to cook and bring bran mash and oats, whilst he carried water. Those horses would be in his barn and the curricle out of sight before Mr. Intemperate changed his mind. Harry was planning on owning his own farm on this piece of work. A yeoman farmer!  And that gave his daughters chances of landing squires for themselves.  And maybe the breeding of other horses off these if he was careful.

He hoped those the intemperate man was chasing got away. They had looked a merry couple, and the man knew how to handle a tandem team well, and had good horseflesh. From the set of his shoulders he was some relation of Wintergreen, maybe Wintergreen himself; though why the viscount should be wearing a mask and being pursued by as nasty a piece of work as Harry had ever met, Harry could not fathom. Harry was sharp of eye, and was not fooled by a scrap of black velvet.

Happen the viscount was playing some joke on the fool, the young limb, thought Harry, indulgently.

 

oOoOo

 

Jane saw the horse stumble, and winced. Star barked.

“No, not to worry,” said Jane. “He pushed them too far; he will have to rest them now, and walk them at best.”

“Good; there’s an ale-house on the left in a couple of miles, we’ll stop there to rest and bait the nags, I’ll sink a pint or two, and they’ll find you tea,” said Gerard. “Poor horses, but he can scarcely expect them to go on now.”

“I hope,” said Jane.

“The funny thing is, if they are exhausted, he could go faster if he paid someone to care for them, and followed us on foot,” said Gerard. “But he won’t.”

“Not with those moustaches,” giggled Jane, who had caught a glimpse of them when they crossed behind Frith.  “Those moustaches are above Shanks’s Pony.”

Gerard chuckled.

“I have a vision of his moustaches setting forth on their own, waving a cavalry sabre,” he said.

“What an idea! Riding, of course,” said Jane.

“Yes, and actually if one of his horses is less exhausted than the others, I could see him riding after us,” said Gerard. “But he’d have to undo the traces first, and arrange the care of the others. A gentleman does not just abandon his horses.”

“Is he sufficiently a gentleman, though, Gerard?” said Jane.

“I... actually, I don’t know,” said Gerard. “He doesn’t seem very gentlemanly. Well, even so, it will give us half an hour, and if I recall correctly, the tapster has a son named Pip, who must be about ten, and school’s still out for the summer, so he’ll be pleased to earn a couple of bob to sit up on the stable roof as lookout.”

“That relieves my mind,” said Jane. “Have another sandwich.”

 

 

oOoOo

 

Pip was only too happy to sit on the stable roof with any excuse, and Gerard also vailed the child’s mother for likely torn trousers. Jane had plenty of time to take two deep cups of tea, with macaroons, and Gerard sank a couple of pints of the local ale, and told those in the tap what he and his wife were up to, standing the stable hand – singular in this hamlet – a drink, and a mug of chocolate for his boy, an unheard of luxury for the youth, who gave his loyalty to Wintergreen in an instant once he had tasted it.

Pip came down with news of pursuit on a single horse and was rewarded with his own chocolate on top of largesse, if he could manage to delay the gentleman, but to beware of his temper. Pip and his crony, the lad, planned on stripping the tack from the horse to curry it thoroughly, after setting it to eat.

As it happened, the hand recognised the vicar’s hunter, and called ‘horse thief’ on the rider, where several hefty idlers were happy to hold on to Frith, gobbling in outrage like a turkey, whilst the vicar was found, and Frith’s tale of buying the horse was confirmed.  By now, Frith was really hungry, and consented, in a defeated sort of way, not to run away if he were fed.

He paid up front, as a suspected horse-thief might be expected to do, and did so with more resigned exhaustion than good grace.

There was an ugly moment when the vicar first declared that he did not know Frith, but added that he had sold Bucephalus to a gentleman via Harry Ashton, and that if this man said he had bought a hunter that was quite correct. He enumerated the horse’s excellent traits to Frith, delaying him further, who became more and more angered. One could scarcely, however, lay hands on a man of the cloth. Frith started trying to divert the conversation to ask about his quarry.

The tapster scratched his ear.

“Well, I wouldn’t say he’s black, exactly,” he said. “Kind of swarthy, yes, but not black as such.”

“If I say he’s a damned [epithet] he’s a damned [epithet]!” declared Frith.

“Now, my good sir! Some Christian charity towards our African brethren!” tried the vicar.

“If a brother of mine was a black, I’d drown him, and Franklin had had any sense he’d have done the same to that brat of his!” cried Frith.

This occasioned a shocked silence, and a homily from the vicar, and when Frith stormed out, having found his horse in need of being saddled and bridled, he was in a fine temper again and a good hour further behind again, having come close to catching up the forty-five minutes he had lost for losing his team.

He would have been even more furious than he already was, had he known that the hay wain which blocked the whole narrow road had been organised by the enterprising Pip, who volunteered his services to help with the harvesting of a local farmer’s hay, if it could be done immediately. Pip sat on the rump of a shire horse, making heavy weather of passing along the road.

He was even being paid to help his lordship out.

Pip was enjoying himself no end. He made a deliberate pig’s ear of turning his vehicle into the field to be mown, and heard a description of his personal habits, ancestors, and cleanliness which would have shocked Pip’s mother, never mind the vicar.

Pip was delighted to increase his vocabulary, but it did nothing for the temper of Frith to have a treble-voiced cherub ask him what certain of his words meant.

And Pip was well enough dressed that Frith declined to tell him.

Pip was well pleased.