The Highwayman's Footsteps (12 page)

I shivered at that, thinking of the ghostly figure I thought I had seen on the moors.

Bess continued, “Don't be afraid. I do not believe it myself. And besides, they have said such things for much longer than the seven years since my father died.”

What should I say to her story? Perhaps I need say nothing. I looked at her. Telling the story had seemed to compose her. She looked strong once more, her eyes bright but dry, her lips red now in the warmth of the fire. Then she spoke again. “They killed Tim, the mad stable boy.”

“The redcoats?”

“No. Friends of Bess and Annette's. Perhaps Annette set them to do it. They tied him up and hung him by his neck from a tree. He was two hours in the dying, they did it so carefully.” There was raw spite in her voice.

I stared into the flames, taking this in, and I knew I was glad that he had died in such a way. What is justice if it does not feel right, if it does not echo the evil? Justice should be passionate and hard and fiery. There must be balance, a sense of rightness. The stable boy had acted without honour and he had caused two deaths. It was proper that he should pay.

But would my father, if he had been sitting in judgement over him in his court, have sentenced the boy to hang? No, the law would say that the stable boy had been right. And my father was on the side of the law. What was right? Was it what
felt
right or what the law said was right? Was the law always right? Even if it did not feel right? I did not know. It was too confusing and too new a thought.

I pushed such difficult matters away. “Did you live here, with your father?” I wanted to think of them here.

“At first we lived in Scarborough, in lodgings. Aggie lived with us. She cared for me, believing that I needed a woman's attentions. But he cared for me too, and taught me to read and write, even to read Latin and Greek and to know the paths of the planets. He taught me music and dancing too, though I confess that dancing was not my favourite pastime. My father was high-born, the youngest son of a Scottish landowner, educated at Edinburgh University, destined for the church, but he had turned away from all that and come south for a life of adventure. He had not thought to stay here for long before travelling further south, but he fell in love with my mother. Then he would not leave. And, of course, I was born. And so, we stayed.

“He was also a dancing master, entering all the wealthy houses in the area under the guise of teaching the young ladies and gentlemen to dance. They had no notion of how many secrets he learned about their lives. Certainly, they did not suspect that their elegant dancing master by day was the man who robbed their carriages by night.

“Perhaps a year before he died, he rented this cottage and a small piece of land. The landowner asked no questions. My father did him a service – he kept footpads and common thieves away. Many folk knew what my father did, how he put food on our table, how he paid for my clothing. They kept their silence because they respected him. He defended the weak, the poor and the downtrodden. Always he stood for what he believed to be right, and he taught me to do so too. And now, people know that they will receive the same from me. They know I can handle a pistol and a horse. Perhaps they suspect that I have followed in my father's footsteps. That I am a highwayman. But if anyone were to ask, I have a different story.”

She paused, and although I knew she was going to tell me whether I said anything or not, I asked her what her story was. How did people think she had money for food or for shoeing her horse, or for any of the other necessities of life?

“I say I am a ballad seller. And indeed, I have sold many ballads,” she said with a degree of pride. “There is a printer in Scarborough who buys them from me willingly. I have even sung them myself, on occasion, to earn the more.”

I had heard of such things, although I had never had cause to listen to one sung. I knew that uneducated folk were willing to pay to hear the ditties and rhymes of the ballad sellers. A happening such as a hanging provided rich material. Once, I had heard my father sneering to one of his friends that no one who could not write in the languages of Homer and Cicero should be allowed to pen anything in the English language.

“It is a way of passing a winter's night when I have gold in my purse and no need to ride after a prize.”

“May I hear one?”

“No, you may not. No doubt you have been schooled to look down on the ill-written ditties of the ballad sellers.” She looked at me and I did not need to answer.

I turned my eyes away.

“I was telling you how I came to be here. My father came to this place when he wanted to be alone, when he needed to lie low. I came to live here with Aggie after my parents died. But Aggie did not like the moors – she considered them lonely places fit only for bogles and ghosts. But she stayed for me. And for my mother and father, because she promised me she would. She died a year ago.”

Bess's face toughened as she said this, her jaw rigid as she struggled to keep her voice level. I marvelled at how strong she must be: to bear what she had borne, to live on her own, still to smile sometimes, to fight for her survival and not to sink into the weakened torpor of the poor.

Even though she was from high-born blood, yet she had lost her status now. She was destined to be for ever either poor or a felon. There would be no way back to gracious society. I pitied her, denied her rightful station in life. But then I thought: she would no more wish to be gilding the ballrooms of gentlefolk or keeping high company than I would wish to be a swineherd. Perhaps even less so. She was as happy with her lot as my brother and sisters were with theirs.

I tried to imagine them here, in this simple smoke-filled room. My brother would look around in sneering contempt, while making some trite comment on the weather. My sisters would hold their breath as they wondered how to place their smelling salts in front of their noses at the same time as holding high their skirts, in unfeigned horror at the dirt on the rough, stone-flagged floor. No, I thought with a smile, my sisters would likely be swooning.

How easy their lives were. How easy mine had been. How little they knew.

I did not know what to say. I had suffered nothing by comparison to her. Yet she was stronger by far than I. Or perhaps it was her suffering that had made her strong?

Perhaps it is what we endure that shapes us for the better?

“I
am sorry,” I said. “You have had a hard life and…” but she brushed aside my silly words with a flick of her wrist. I fell silent. Anything I might say would seem empty, though there were many thoughts which I could not voice. Confusing thoughts.

She stood up, stretching slowly, carefully. “I am going outside to wash. Then we should sleep. There is much to do in the morning. We must cut logs and we need food, in case the weather worsens again. And then, perhaps, we should get you a horse.”

My face gave no sign that I had understood. Had I understood? Did she mean me to stay? Or did she think she could be rid of me only if I had a horse on which to make my departure?

“A horse?” I said, sounding foolish, but then I never did know for certain what to say with Bess. She was too unpredictable, too different from any person I had known. And even though she was more lowly born than I, yet I felt that somehow she knew far more. She had an air about her, a knowingness which seemed almost like wisdom. But how could she know more than I? Only a girl, and brought up by a villain and a woman of low birth – how could she know more, even if her father had once been from a family of wealth? How could she make me feel as though she was in some way above me, when she was not above me in status? Status is something we are born with, is it not? Is it not given to us as part of God's natural order?

“Yes, a horse. You will be of little use without a horse. I know you can handle horses – I have watched you. You have been well taught.” I did not need her to tell me that. But I was glad this had not slipped her attention.

“And where shall we find a horse?” I asked. “Do you intend to steal one?”

“I would not steal horses,” she said, harshly. “It is too risky. And it is wrong. We will go to Scarborough – I know a man who will find us a horse.”

Right to steal money, wrong to steal a horse; right to kill a redcoat; right to kill a crazy idiot; wrong to kill a highwayman. Right or wrong to steal flour from the army? Right or wrong to steal a purse of gold from a rich man? Wrong to steal but right if the thief gives the money to the poor?

These thoughts spun in my mind and I suddenly became aware that Bess was asking me a question.

“Well?” She stood in front of me, a rough cloth in her hand and a bowl to carry water in.

“What?”

“Well, do you wish to stay?”

I struggled to keep the smile from my face, to maintain my composure. “I thought you did not require my help.”

“Did I say I required your help? I do not recall it. I asked if you wished to stay. I can manage very well on my own. I have done so for the past year.”

“I would be pleased to stay,” I said, as calmly as I could. This was not the moment to make a clever comment or to argue with her. Inside, my heart was singing. For the first time since I had left my home, I could grasp the future, though weakly. I could not know what would happen, but if I was not alone I believed that I could face it. Bess knew what she was doing; I did not. But I could learn. And I thought that a life with Bess, confusing as she was, was better by far than a life on my own, on the run, always afraid, always hungry.

I felt as though I was on the edge of something, something exciting. I had thrown away my old life and comforts, and I was more than willing to learn new ways.

“As a companion,” she said, bluntly. “You shall not share my bed.”

The heat rose from my neck to my temples and I could think of nothing to say except to splutter, “Of course. Of course not.” Before I turned away, I saw her face. A thin shiver of a smile, that was almost not a smile at all, disappeared as fast as it had come.

That night, when eventually we lay on our beds – or her in her bed and I on the floor by the fire on a blanket that did little to soften the flagstones beneath – with the embers of the fire spitting and crackling gently, I had a strange new feeling: that I had never been so happy as I was that moment. I thought that nothing could ever make me frightened again.

How foolish we are sometimes.

E
arly next morning, we argued about who was to ride her horse. It pleases me to say that I won, though I would not show my pleasure in front of her. She was clearly not well, pale and tight-mouthed when she arose stiffly from her bed, wincing as she lit the fire to boil water for an oatmeal gruel. I guessed that her head pained her, for she kept pressing her fingers to her temples. My suggestion that we wait till the following day met with her firm refusal, however. In truth, her fever had passed, but she was weak from it. This weakness was the first reason I would not ride the horse.

And she was a girl. That was the other very strong reason.

I could not comprehend her argument. She seemed to think that if I walked then it must be because I thought her weaker and more delicate. Well, she was correct: that was indeed what I was thinking, although I was struggling to continue thinking so in the face of her spirit. I had been taught to believe that the fairer sex is the weaker sex. The fact that I had seen women, serving women, carry burdens that would have felled me, and that I had seen their sturdy muscles as they scrubbed floors or beat rugs or kneaded dough in the kitchens, did not stop me thinking that in essence women are fragile.

For certain, she had held me at gunpoint, but was that not merely because she had a gun and had taken me by surprise? Yes, she had insisted on holding a pair of pistols when we thought the redcoats were about to breach our refuge, but was that not merely because she would have been more afraid without the pistols in her hand? Surely it was so?

Besides, even if I had to admit that she had an uncommon strength, it was still not proper for me to ride while she walked. Only if she had been my servant could I have done so. And she was not.

However, I won the argument by persisting until she snapped in exasperation. “You had better walk fast, as I shall be setting a good pace. I trust you have sufficient strength.” And she threw the side-saddle onto Merlin's back with an angry heave, trying to prevent me from seeing how much it hurt her injury.

I omitted to mention: Bess was not dressed in man's attire now. She wore a good dress, with the skirt of some fine, dark blue, woollen material, very full, tightly belted, and the top part of the same material but with wide lace cuffs, all covered by a short dark cape, allowing her arms to move freely. I noticed her leather gloves and riding boots, polished to a shine and well-made, even moderately expensive once. Her face was clean – though certainly with the signs of illness etched in the dark circles beneath her eyes – and her hair brushed and twisted neatly into some clever arrangement mostly hidden by her wide hat, tied beneath her chin with a dark blue sash to prevent it blowing away in the wind.

I felt ragged by comparison. And out of place. You would have thought me to be her servant. And when, after some three hours of her purposeful speed, stopping only once to rest and water the horse, or to pay the toll at a turnpike, we could see Scarborough in the distance, with the castle to the left and the shimmering German Ocean in front of us, I understood that that was exactly what she planned.

Just outside the town walls, Bess stopped the horse. We were beside an inn, graced by a hanging picture of an enormously muscled bull. Surely she was not going within? It would not be proper. Or safe. She would be thought a loose woman. There were a number of persons about, all making towards Scarborough, though none seemed to give us more than a slight glance. Nevertheless, I was worried amongst these crowds; I could not say why – only that, since my recent escapes, too many strangers made me wary. I found my heart beating faster, though I knew there was no good reason. Surely no one might recognize me here?