The Duke's Agent (6 page)

‘I'll walk with you. I'm mighty dry. Good drinking weather, this,' laughed the man, wiping the sweat from his face with his folded shirt. He slung the garment across his bare neck as they strode past Walcheren, scarcely giving the rider a glance. His luck was in today! Allowing a decent space to extend between them, Jarrett set off to follow the two men.

The Three Pots stood at the end of a short alley. It was a shabby, half-timbered house, standing hard up against the high wall of a tanning yard. To the far side and behind the
building the deep waters of the river swirled on their way to the lower dam. Jarrett could see why Duffin might warn against visiting the place after dark. The street was a quiet dead end. Those people who hurried past the mouth of the alley kept their eyes to themselves, and the tenement opposite showed no signs of life at its mean windows. The door to the house stood open. Jarrett did not like leaving Walcheren unattended in such a place, but he had come so far it seemed foolish not to go in. He dismounted and followed the rivermen through the dark passage.

The room into which he emerged was unexpectedly spacious. His two guides were over by the bar and Tobias was speaking to a coltish youth wrapped in an apron, who was writing in a large book laid open on the counter.

‘Tobias Hind,' Jarrett heard the man say. ‘I'll take any load.'

‘There's nothing in right now,' replied the youth as he wrote in a painstaking hand. ‘Mr Bedford's just brought in a load of dye. That's why there's nowt in. You've but missed it by an hour. But Mr Pickering's expecting wool. He may send down at any time. Have a glass while you're waiting,' he consoled, with the smooth solicitude of the salesman.

Jarrett caught the youth's eye. The barman gestured to the newcomer with an abrupt jerk of the head that he should wait and turned to draw a pitcher of ale with practised ease. He handed the pitcher to a lad of six or seven. ‘You take that to Mrs Riley down on Fish Lane,' he directed. The lad walked carefully out of the shop and the youth yelled after him, ‘Mind you come straight back with the money or I'll flay ya!'

The youth poured a mug of ale and brought it over to Jarrett without being asked.

‘Is this Lumping Jack's house?'

The barman nodded. He had a watchful, guarded face.

‘Is he here?'

The youth busied himself collecting up some dirty pots. ‘Lumpin' Jack and his missus are gone to Darlington. They'll not be back this day or next, I'd reckon,' he said.

‘As it happens, my business is not with him. I am looking for one they call the Tallyman. I may have work for him. I was directed to ask for him here.' Jarrett slid a silver coin across the table, keeping his fingers resting lightly on it.

The youth's eyes flickered and he looked the stranger up and down. ‘What kind of work?' he asked.

‘My business, not yours,' answered Jarrett, pulling back his hand to leave the coin in plain view. The youth wiped the table and picked up the mugs. The coin was gone.

‘Not been in a while,' he said. ‘I heard word he'd gone to the coast. Might be in Friday night. Can't tell you more.' He moved off to deal with some new customers. As the interview was clearly at an end, Jarrett finished his ale and left.

Retrieving Walcheren who was standing forlorn looking out over the water, it occurred to Jarrett that he had not eaten since the night before. The thought of Mrs Bedlington's boiled ham drew him to retrace his steps and make his way up the hill towards the Queen's Head.

Mrs Bedlington greeted him with exuberance, as if they had not just parted the day before. ‘Why, Mr Jarrett!' she cried with coquettish pleasure. ‘You have come to pay us a visit! You must be famished, poor man,' she fussed. ‘No one to have care of you in that horrid old manor. You just sit there and I'll fetch you a nice bit of ham and green peas, fresh picked this morning.' She turned to catch sight of her maid in the act of kneeling down, a pail beside her. ‘Molly! Not with water, you silly slut! It's a dry rub with sand for boards, as you well know if you'd but take a moment to reflect, girl!' Driving the unfortunate maid before her, Mistress Polly bustled away to the kitchen.

Jarrett found himself the sole occupier of the little parlour. The sun streamed through the windows and he took pleasure
in the room's calm after the crowded alleys of the river quarter. The tap through the passage past the stairs was quiet that afternoon. One or two regular customers could be heard drinking and exchanging the occasional subdued remark.

There was a clatter outside and a medley of hoots and cries, and a boisterous group of young men roiled into the tap like a pack of young wolves. They bore all the marks of being on a spree; doing every alehouse in town by the sounds of them, thought Jarrett. He could only see a small wedge of the room beyond the passage, but the sounds carried clearly. There were shouts of, ‘Bar! Bar! Where's the tapster?'

‘Why wait for him? We can draw our own,' said another.

This presumptuous suggestion was countered by the arrival of Jasper Bedlington. He spoke with the cheerful, no-nonsense authority of the professional innkeeper. ‘What's this? What's this? Well, well – Will Roberts and friends. Celebrating your return from Ireland, my boy? You'll be glad to be rid of your red coat I'll be bound, eh, Will? You put that down, Nat Broom. I can draw me own ale, I'll thank you. So you're all here, eh? Does your Nancy know you're not at your loom, Harry Aitken? She'll not relish the sight of you half seas over on a Monday afternoon. And Joe Walton, too. There you are. I'll take the money now, if you please; you're like to forget later on, the way you're headed.'

Chastened by this treatment, the group settled down. There was a tone to their voices Jarrett had come to recognise from his time as an officer. He had heard it frequently enough when the lads broke loose for a spree. They were entering that phase of intoxication when young men's excited energies balance on the cusp between exuberance and violence. The innkeeper retired into the background. The voice Jarrett overheard had more than a little of the boisterous boy smarting from a telling off by the school master.

‘That's right, Harry – what will your Nancy say? And as
for you, Will Roberts, your sergeant'll be on to you – half cut in the middle of the day.'

‘Aye, a proper man's full cut or nothing, that's his philosophy,' replied Will.

‘So Sergeant Tolley's hoist the blue flag at the Swan, has he? And how is it living with your sergeant, Will? I've heard of marrying the service but, by heck boy! And they say he's a proper bastard.'

‘Didn't marry him.' Will sounded like an even-tempered sort.

‘Oh aye?' The words were a jibe. ‘Way I hear it, marry his daughter and you get him on your back for life. You're either a fool or a brave bugger, Will Roberts – whatever the skirt's condition.'

‘Have another beer and quit riling him, Nat,' intervened another voice. ‘You always must be stirring.'

Nat laughed and drank some more. ‘What's this about Black-Eyed Sal, then?' he started off again. ‘I heard word she's talking about a breach of promise – you slighting her to marry another. That's a court matter, that is. You'd best lie low a while, man. That piece is mad enough for anything.'

‘Sal's not a bad lass.' Will's voice was placating.

Jarrett had a picture in his mind of an easy-going, pleasant sort of fellow. He shifted in his seat to try and get a glimpse of the speakers through the passage. He could just see the edge of the group. There were perhaps five or six young men in their early twenties. Nat Broom was a wiry, dark-haired man, tense and quick. One to keep your eye on if he was under your command. Unreliable; the kind who bore grudges. The peacemaker who intervened was Harry Aitken, the weaver. He had the most married look of the three. His dress was cleaner than the rest and all his buttons were firmly fixed.

Will Roberts was a country Adonis. So this was the suitor who had slighted Sal. They would have made a striking couple,
yet to Jarrett's mind the boy he saw before him would have been vastly outmatched by the black-haired witch he had encountered in the churchyard. Will Roberts was tall and clean limbed. Curly chestnut hair fell over a broad forehead. He had a sleepy, handsome face with a straight, clean-cut nose and full lips. Thinking of Sal's bright, mischievous face, Jarrett could imagine that she might be piqued to have lost so handsome a swain, but somehow he could not believe she would have chosen such a biddable boy to match her fire. And yet, women were a mysterious sex.

‘I'd not mind having Sal after me!' chipped in a voice.

‘You're not married, Joe, and you don't have a bugger like the sergeant for a father-in-law,' chimed in Nat Broom. The envious kind, that one, thought Jarrett; a troublemaker. ‘Never fret, Will lad,' Nat went on. ‘Old Tolley'll see her off. Even Black-Eyed Sal is no match for the sergeant. How the likes o' him ever got fixed with a wife and daughter, the Lord alone knows. I can't see him living under the cat's foot.'

Mistress Polly emerged from her kitchen bearing a loaded tray. She seemed unsurprised to catch her favourite customer eavesdropping.

‘The lads aren't disturbing you, Mr Jarrett?' she asked, setting the dishes before him. ‘Will Roberts and Harry Aitken are good boys but that Nat Broom's a troublemaker to my mind,' she said, succinctly summing up Jarrett's own impression. ‘He gets them all fired up at times. Never you mind, sir. You get this inside you, and then I've an apricot pie just out of the oven.'

*

The pie was good. And to please Mrs Bedlington he ate two pieces. It was nearly three by the time he finished and Jarrett was feeling the need to take some exercise. ‘Did you get your letter taken to the post, Mr Jarrett?' enquired the innkeeper as he cleared away the plates.

The letter! It had gone clean out of his mind. Sunday morning seemed a week ago, so much had happened in the last day and night. Jarrett felt inside his coat pocket. The letter was safely lodged there. He drew it out. ‘As you see, I have it still.'

The innkeeper glimpsed the direction written on it in a bold, flowing hand:
The Most Hon. the Marquess of Earewith, to await collection at the Red Lion, York
.

‘Would you like me to send the stableboy to the post at Greta Bridge, sir? There is time to ride over on a good horse. The York Mail is due at four.'

‘Thank you, but I have a fancy to take it myself. I could do with the exercise. My compliments to Mistress Polly; her fare is excellent.'

The innkeeper bobbed his head in acknowledgement, a pleased blush colouring his round face. ‘Thank you, sir. My Polly prides herself on her apricot pie. You can't miss the way. Just turn left out of the yard and follow the road over the toll bridge by the old abbey. It's not above three miles.'

Some time later Jarrett was riding up the dusty road towards Greta Bridge. The post road ran along a ridge, and the lane leading to it from Woolbridge was steep in parts. He was negotiating a rise that passed by the edge of a wooded area in a semi-reverie, dazzled by the hot sunshine, when his senses jolted him into a sudden awareness of danger.

There was a half-human roar and two stocky figures burst out of the bushes, arms raised. One wielded a stout stick, the other a long hammer of the sort lead miners use. By force of habit his sword hand moved to his sabre hilt before consciousness of the lack of weight reminded him of his civilian dress. Jarrett's battle-honed instincts clicked into action. In a detached, objective part of his brain, he noted the swiftness of his reactions with a mild sense of surprise. Dodge the blow. Parry with a clumsy kick of a boot hampered by the stirrup. Now rear the horse up – pray he would not balk.
No. Good fellow. Walcheren reared up on command, flailing out with shod hooves.

The exhilaration of violence flared within him. Months of inaction had not dulled his stark pleasure in the economy of movement of a professional fighter. Not that these were particularly expert opponents. They were clumsy – alehouse sluggers. They swung at him together, blocking and jostling one another in their ragged attempts to get at him. The old campaigner in him wanted to chide them for bad tactics.

Walcheren too was demonstrating he had not forgotten his old tricks. In response to his master's pressure, the bay rose up again, flinging out his forelegs to land a hearty blow under the chin of the shorter of the two assailants. The man stumbled to one knee, stunned. Jarrett pulled the horse around in a tight circle. The long hammer slid past his right shoulder as he turned, numbing one side of his back. This was getting hot. Struggling to control the nervous animal, he felt behind him in his saddle bag. Every sinew was strained with the effort required to keep control of his mount. He shifted his weight as the animal bucked to one side. For a sickening moment his balance gave way and he began to slide out of the saddle. If he was thrown he did not fancy his chances with these two. With a massive effort that pulsed a tearing pain through his old wound he regained his seat. The horse spun round leaving his back exposed for a moment to the burly man with the hammer.

The smaller man's fall had winded him and he stood back a little from the fray. The taller of the two advanced towards Jarrett. He was big and brawny. Under the brim of his hat his eyes had the fixed, blank look of battle madness. Jarrett's heightened senses noted the pallor of the man's skin under the grime. His assailant came in for the kill, swinging the heavy hammer with unstoppable force.

Jarrett wrestled the pistol free of the saddle bag, levelled it and fired in one smooth action. The horse reared as the
sound reverberated. The hammer hit Jarrett's thigh with a sickening thud and his leg went dead. The big man faltered. The hammer slid to the ground and he put his hand to his shoulder, a confused look on his face – almost like a child waking from a heavy sleep. Jarrett's mind was crystal clear, every sense stretched taut. He took advantage of the pause to back Walcheren a pace or two. He dropped the useless pistol and snatched its twin from its resting place.