Poetry and perfection 11

 

 

Chapter 11

 

Hugo tried to make sense of the tangled tale from two young people talking at once, and held up a hand.

“Enough!” he said. “If I am to make any sense of your babbling, you must speak one at a time.”

“It started when the footman brought a note to the red-haired young lady, and he gave it to Kitty, but we think it was to me,” said Elvira. She gave the note to Hugo.

“I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think I may know that writing,” said Hugo, seriously. “We need to catch up with them; if Kitty has hidden her face enough for him to think he has Elvira, he’ll head for Gretna. But Sophie….”

“Mama will be here as soon as she can get rid of the other guests, Miss Bottringham, you are laughing at me. Both Misses Bottringham,” he added, as Sophie had giggled, too.

“Forgive us, Mr. Worthington,” said Sophie, “But it does sound as if she is efficiently butchering them to store in the ice house.”

“Lud! Yes, I suppose it does,” sniggered Stephen, then sobered again. “Anyway, Mama is coming here so that you might come with me, Hugo, if you will.”

“No question about it,” said Hugo. “Have you a pistol?”

“In my pocket, and powder and ball,” said Stephen. “A sandwich, too, for having missed supper, a roll of soft, and I put a spare blanket in the boot in case she’s hurt, and a canteen of water and a hip flask of brandy.”

“You’re well-prepared; good,” said Hugo. “I will equip myself likewise, save that I have eaten already, with Sophie. Elvira, can you procure yourself something, and Mrs. Worthington if she needs it?”

“Of course, Hugo,” said Elvira. “Good luck, and take care, both of you.”

“We will,” said Hugo, dropping a kiss on her and on Sophie. Hugo harnessed up his phaeton, which had a wider seat.

 

 

 

The two young men were setting out at about the time that Kitty was shooting her abductor, though the would-be rescuers had no way of knowing this.

“It’s damned plucky of your sister to try to draw attention away from mine, but how foolish!” said Hugo.

“She’s a plucky sort of girl, but she don’t know the seamier side of life… and nor would anyone want her to,” said Stephen. “Any idea who this ‘friend’ might be?”

“My immediate guess would be Abelard, Viscount Haselbraid, who hasn’t a penny to fly with, and who has previous with the attempted abduction of an heiress,” said Hugo, grimly. “He made a play to impress Elvira, who horrified him by asking if he was hoping to introduce her to a young man of his acquaintance as he was too old to be wanting to dance with young people.”

Stephen sniggered.

“Well, I can’t see Kitty being any more complimentary unless she goes off on a high flight of irony, which isn’t beyond her. I can see her singing ‘Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,’ just to annoy.”

“He’d be likely to hurt her.”

“Well, she has her muff pistol, so she’s likely to shoot him.”

“That makes me feel better if she has the fortitude to do so.”

“Oh, she does. She’s shot at a tinker who was trying to intimidate a lady driver,” said Stephen, cheerfully. “She told him he had three seconds to stand aside or take the consequences, and he laughed at her. So she shot him. He lived to be hanged,” he added. “Her pistol throws a bit to the left, so she missed his heart. I imagine she’s learned to correct her aim.”

“Well, I hope we shan’t have to deal with a dead viscount, but if we do, we do,” said Hugo. “A lady can’t be blamed for militating against being abducted.”

 

OoOoO

 

Dawn’s rosy fingers were adding a touch of colour to the crepuscular grey of predawn when Abelard, Viscount Haselbraid, regained consciousness, and groaned. His head heart like the worst hangover he had ever had, he was cold, covered in cold sweat, and his belly felt like lead.

He heard what sounded like a parody of his groan from behind him. That bastard Griggs, no doubt! How dare he make fun of him!

“You’re fired, Griggs,” he hissed, sitting up, and wincing from the crease he had received to his head. Sitting up was more than his system could cope with, and he was violently sick, managing, at least, to avoid being sick on himself. Over the next few minutes, he managed to work his way back to the wattle fence at the back of the verge, so he might prop himself up. The cow looking over the fence at him made the noise he thought was Griggs mocking him, and Haselbraid swore.

Where was Griggs, anyway?

“Griggs!  I didn’t mean it. Come here!” called Haselbraid, as loudly as he dared without waking the dozen dancing demons in his skull.

Griggs did not appear.

What Haselbraid did not know, since he had been unconscious at the time, was that Griggs had taken one look at his master in the uncertain light of the moon, discerned that the viscount’s head was all over blood, assumed that he was dead, and made himself scarce, not wanting to be associated with a corpse, and not having enough personal loyalty to take up his master’s body, alive or dead, and promptly set out to walk back to the next inn where he might tell a tale of woe for being turned off for some trivial offence, and look for a new master.

Consequently, Haselbraid was all alone, apart from a pewter utensil.  He stared at this.

Well! That proved this was not just some nightmare. He could never imagine a pewter utensil in a dream, he was sure; it was too random, too… mundane.

He swore.

He was on his own in the middle of that horrible wilderness called ‘the countryside,’ with a raging thirst from his burning mouth where he had been sick, wet through from the dew, shivering in the cold morning air, and not sure what to do.

The concept of trying to milk the cow to rinse his mouth and slake his thirst never occurred to him; or to see if a bucolic would come to do the milking, and to ask for aid. When a whistling call caused the cow to wander off, it did not occur to Haselbraid to follow it, or even call for aid.

 

oOoOo

 

Meanwhile, the increased bustle of the inn awoke Kitty, and she heard the rumble of the wheels of a large coach. The stable hands would be busy with the coach; so, she slid down from the hay loft and slipped out of the stable, quickly using the necessary house, and then readily able to mingle with the passengers as they disembarked.  There was a steady flow in and out of the four stalls provided for this purpose. Most of them looked as rumpled as she; travel was not conducive to neatness, being bounced around on rutted roads with springs strained to their maximum from the illegal, but common, overloading, crammed together like herrings in a barrel for hours on end. The other passengers took no notice of Kitty, those from inside assuming the slim youth had been riding outside; those riding outside assuming she had been on the inside. Kitty hung back for those who plainly expected to resume the coach to grab scalding hot mugs of tea or coffee and gulp down as much as they could, taking away sandwiches or pies set up ready to sell, and their bolting for the necessary house, sometimes with mug and snack in hand to make themselves comfortable and be ready to be back on their way, something Kitty could not approve of. One did not mix eating with the sewer, but plainly some travellers were less nice about such things, or more desperate to fulfil all their needs in as short a time as possible. As the bustle quieted down, Kitty bespoke breakfast and a room to make herself more respectable.

“Come far?” asked the landlord.

“No, not really, but I hate travel, and I want to rest before I resume my journey,” said Kitty.

“At least you’re too young for the whiskers to show, lad,” said the innkeeper.

“It is a relief,” said Kitty, aghast that she had not considered that.  She discussed a full breakfast of bacon, fried blood pudding, sausages, buttered egg, bubble and squeak, and plenty of buttered toast. With this in her, and three mugs of tea, she felt much more the thing, and went to her room to have a wash and change her shirt and drawers, thankful that she had had the forethought to raid Haselbraid’s clothing. On due consideration, she resumed her shirt of the previous night to snatch an hour’s sleep, then washed again and re-dressed in the clean linen. Kitty was good at setting herself time to sleep and then waking up; it came of illicit overnight adventures at school, where she might be genuinely asleep as preceptresses did their rounds, and coming awake like a cat.   Kitty had an imaginative brother and a running feud with the acerbic teacher of domestic economy, who did not do things the same way Kitty’s mother did, and did not want to hear about other ways of performing household chores or better ways of removing stains. Kitty’s exploits included the addition of tartaric acid to tooth powder, which promptly fizzed when wetted. She had also haunted her least favourite teacher with some impromptu puppetry involving a nightgown stuffed with a pillow, and the release of air – very slowly – from a blown-up pig’s bladder, which had wailed like a banshee, waking all the staff in their bedroom wing, and trapping Kitty on top of the large linen press until everyone had gone back to bed. She had dozed until the hue and cry died down.

 

The stolen linen garments were a trifle large on her, but not enough to worry about. She was somewhat mismatched in her clothing, her brother’s comfortable buckskins at variance with the satin waistcoat in blue and yellow stripes not close enough to those of the Four Horse Club for any of that elite establishment to take serious issue with a stripling aping their chosen uniform, yet close enough to suggest an aspirant whip. She had chosen it purely to match the blue superfine jacked which had gone over her gown, but the shining boots matched the jacket, and few people would see anything but the accoutrements of an obvious gentleman, whose casual tying of his neckcloth, and well-worn buckskins spoke more of a desire to travel in more comfort than other, more formal wear might provide. On an impulse, she tried on the pale yellow pantaloons, and discovered that the viscount had legs no longer than hers, and that the stretch permitted them to fit her legs exactly, the instep-strap holding firmly under her foot, so that the line of her leg was smooth and unwrinkled. She examined herself in the rather fly-blown mirror in her room, and was well contented. The pantaloons were very comfortable, and she looked far more a gentleman.

Satisfied with her look, Kitty strolled downstairs, and called for coffee. She had just finished drinking it, and had paid her shot, when a coach rumbled in. Kitty strolled out.

“Which route do you do?” she asked.

“Back and forth between York and London,” said the coachman.

“Have you room for one more?” asked Kitty.

“Yes, fairly empty today,” said the coachman. 

“Good, I’ll take a ticket all the way.”

Had Kitty been more accustomed to public transport, she would have been aware that she paid a rather steep price for carriage to London, just nineteen miles away; but as she had the money to pay, and asked no questions, the coachman assumed the young gentleman realised he was paying for almost ten times the distance from London to Hatfield, Hatfield being one tenth of the journey, and a place where the horses were changed.

Another lesson Kitty loathed was geography with globes; she had absolutely no idea of direction at all. She had a blind spot, and, as well as having trouble telling right from left, applying the theory that the sun rose in the east and set in the west to where it might be the rest of the day completely eluded her. Kitty resented that the mistress who taught geography called her ‘stupid,’ since she knew that she was not; but she just had no bump of direction at all and learned her way about the city by rote, and by the names of the roads. She would no more have been able to find her way home from an unknown location than she could fly; she was just hoping to fetch up in an inn where she could pay a stable hand to take a letter to her parents and ask them to collect her.

Kitty, unaware that she was to be heading further north, curled up in the corner of the carriage, and decided that she could catch up on her sleep for the two and a half hours or so that it should take to return to the metropolis.

 

 until daddy persuaded mummy to let me navigate, journeys with mum to anywhere but somewhere she knew could be magical mystery tours. She had no bump of direction at all. Chief in my memory is going the wrong way down a one way street reserved for buses in Sunderland [we were at least supposed to be in Sunderland] because she was convinced she knew where we were going.