Cauldron of Fear (12 page)

'Sir, if you
fear God and love your fellow man, I beseech you. Just one score of
horse soldiers and one good officer is all we ask. The Hollanders
will not miss that small a commitment, of that I am sure. And I ask
this not for myself, I urge you to understand, but for the honest
citizenry of this realm.

'I have told
you my story and you have listened, that much I will grant you, but
ask yourself this; should any blackguard be permitted to rule
through terror and threats? Did this country not fight a war within
itself to prevent such a situation, eh?

'I have told
the lady, I should be more than glad to furnish whatever it takes
to ensure the safe return of her cousin, and that I shall surely
do. But what then? More villainy, more abductions? And what if the
ransom cannot be paid, what then? No sir, I tell you, a stop must
be put to this.'

'I agree,
Master Handiwell,' Brotherwood said, with a heavy sigh. 'But this
matter should be taken up in London. However,' he added hastily, 'I
have a compromise that may help, albeit in a small and temporary
fashion.' He rose stiffly and walked around the large desk, moving
towards the window and looking towards the harbour and the forest
of masts.

'I cannot,' he
said when Thomas made no comment, 'act in any official capacity,
you must understand that. Nevertheless,' he continued, still
looking out of the window, 'I have one officer who is overdue a
leave. He has recently suffered a tragic personal circumstance, his
brother and father having died in the latest plague outbreak in
London and his closest friend killed when a runaway cart crushed
him.

'I could order
him to take a week or two away and I could further authorise his
orderly to accompany him. I could also, given the intelligence you
have just brought me, authorise a travelling guard of, say, four
troopers and a sergeant to accompany him.

'However,'
Brotherwood said, at last turning back to face into the room, 'I
could not countenance a leave of absence beyond, shall we say, two
weeks? I should also have a problem with their lordships if I had
to justify too great an expense for this leave, if you take my
meaning?'

Thomas leaned
back in his chair and smiled. 'Colonel,' he said carefully, 'as a
loyal subject of the Commonwealth Protectorate, I should consider
it my duty to offer the freedom of my humble establishment to such
a worthy servant of our country. How long before this officer and
his little entourage can be ready to ride?'

Toby Blaine
approached the old mill buildings cautiously, his eyes darting from
side to side, his ears keened for any unexpected sounds. Fifty
yards from the stone bridge, which stood itself fifty yards
downstream from the main construction that housed the huge water
wheel itself, he halted and stepped off the road to duck into the
undergrowth between the trees.

The going here
was much tougher and he was forced to thrust his way through
tangles of brambles, gorse and weeds, all the time conscious of the
need to move as quietly as possible. He gave thanks to his father
for the tough leather jerkin he wore, though he also wished he'd
had the foresight to go back home first and find a pair of leather
gloves, for the thorns clawed at his hands mercilessly.

However, the
promise of the extra sixpence Harriet Merridew had promised him and
the feel of the six pennies in the pocket of his breeches already
spurred him on to ignore the little cuts and abrasions and, before
long, he found himself crouching behind one of the massive old
willows that ran along the riverbank, a position from which he
could watch the bridge without fear of being seen himself.

Beneath the
bridge, he could see the small wooden boat moored to the side of
the narrow walkway that passed under the outer arch span on this
side, exactly as Harriet had told him the letter said it would be.
Her instructions - the written instructions he had so innocently
carried to her - had stated that she was to take the demanded
ransom money to the boat, board it, cast off and drift with the
little craft downstream, until she came to the place where the
river widened and passed to either side of the small islet known as
Priest's Rock.

Here she was
supposed to guide the boat aground and place the gold coins - the
writer had stipulated gold and not silver - inside a small chest
that she would find hidden among the bushes on the western end of
the small sliver of land, after which, the note finished, she was
to get back into the boat and continue downstream until she reached
the bridge at Wareholt Crossing, from where she should return to
Barten Meade on foot, a journey of some five miles.

If she was
unable to raise the money immediately, she was instructed to take
two white napkins, tied around with a strip of coloured ribbon or
cloth, and place this in the dinghy, casting it loose to drift on
its own. This would be taken as a signal that the money would be
paid within the following twenty-four hours and she would find the
dinghy moored in its present position, at the same hour the
following day.

Toby did not
possess one of the new fangled timepieces that he sometimes saw the
gentry use, nor could he have used it had he one, but the passage
of the sun overhead told him all he needed to know. He had arrived
in position a little after four in the afternoon, the same hour
Harriet was supposed to either start off with the ransom, or leave
her sign and cut the boat free. He opened the front of his jerkin,
withdrew the two napkins tied around with a length of red cloth
Harriet had torn from an old underskirt, and sat back to wait.

His youthful
senses soon detected the sound of hooves coming towards the bridge
from the north, and he was immediately on the alert, pressing
himself against the tree trunk and peering round and through the
trailing fronds, but as the rider came into view he slowly relaxed
again, recognising the rider as the daughter of Lord Grayling,
dressed, as was her habit when riding, in black breeches, a pale
green open-necked shirt and with her long hair tied back at the
nape of her neck.

Whoever he was
supposed to be looking out for, Toby thought, it most certainly
wasn't Ellen Grayling. He sat back waiting for her to continue on
her way, but to his surprise she reined her mount off the track the
moment she crossed the bridge, slipped from the saddle and
scrambled down the embankment. Toby's brow furrowed and he stood
upright, trying to see what the girl was doing.

She stopped by
the water's edge, appearing to look towards the moored boat and
even took a couple of steps towards it, but then after a brief
hesitation she turned away, crouched by the water and scooped up a
handful towards which she dipped her face. As she climbed back up
towards her waiting horse, wiping her damp hands on her breeches,
Toby relaxed for a second time.

The next to
cross the bridge was a heavy farm cart, drawn by a pair of sturdy
horses and driven by a middle-aged man Toby knew to be Jeth Moore,
one of the three brothers who ran a farm that had been in their
family for as long as anyone could remember. The Moores were
respectable, almost gentry and certainly not likely to be involved
with any of this, Toby thought.

Traffic over
the bridge, both pedestrian and mounted, was sparse, as the road
north led to little more than a handful of farms and one small
hamlet, the latter being so close to the main road as it swept
around towards London that few people came this way, rather than
using the back route. It was therefore a further half an hour
before Toby saw any further sign of life, and that was just two of
the mill hands leaving for their respective homes.

By now the sun
was getting low in the west and the bridge and the water beneath it
were in deep shadow. Flexing his stiffening knees, Toby rose, moved
down to the riverbank and began moving cautiously upstream, all the
while watching and listening intently.

He reached the
little boat without incident, dropped the little napkin package
onto the stern seat, untied the painter and pushed the craft out
into the current. It swung around once in the eddies that the
nearer span support created, then steadied itself after a fashion
and began to drift downstream, gradually picking up speed as it
moved towards the bend from which Toby had been observing.

He stood,
hidden under the bridge itself, until the boat was out of sight and
then, jingling the coins that already nestled in his pocket, he
grinned and began climbing back up the embankment.

By the middle of the day, the
Black
Drum
was usually a hive of activity and
this day was no exception. As she walked across the flattened mud
and gravel that formed the forecourt of the inn, Harriet saw there
was a regular coach standing to one side, near to the stables
block, presumably in readiness for a fresh team of horses, and
another two coaches, evidently private vehicles, standing just off
the road, the horses all contentedly working their way through the
contents of the nosebags they wore.

The two rails were also half full of saddled horses, their
owners, no doubt, inside enjoying a break from travelling and a
meal, or ale to quench the dust from the highway. No wonder, she
thought, as she approached the side door, Thomas Handiwell could
afford to loan money and offer to support not only her, but her
father and their ailing farm as well. Trade was good for an inn
with a favourable reputation and the
Black
Drum
was certainly that.

The small side
entrance that led, Harriet knew, to the kitchens, was opened to her
knock by a village woman whom she knew, Anne Billings, wife of
George Billings the shoemaker. Only a few years older than Harriet
she was aging badly, her complexion mottled and pale, a legacy of
many hours spent in the steam filled kitchens of the inn since the
age of thirteen or fourteen.

'I need you to
find out something for me,' Harriet said, when she had slipped
inside and the door was closed behind her. Briefly, she explained
about the stranger who had given Toby the ransom note and Anne, who
had heard about Sarah's abduction, nodded. She guided Harriet
through to a small parlour at the back of the wing and left her to
wait, while she went through to the bar area. A few minutes later
she returned, shaking her head.

'Mary Ellison
remembers the fellow,' she said. 'He ordered bread and stew and a
pint of dark ale, but he didn't hang around once he'd finished. She
remembers him, because he paid with a silver florin and gave her
tuppence for her trouble, she says, but he was gone long before it
started to get busy.'

'Did Mary see
which way he went?' Harriet asked, though without much hope.

Anne shrugged.
'I asked her,' she confirmed, 'but she reckons she don't bother
none about what they do after they go out the door and she doesn't
have time to stand at windows gawping.'

'Well, she'd
have no reason to,' Harriet replied. 'I don't suppose he was that
much different from twenty other men who come in here every
day.'

'Apart from
his eye, of course,' Anne said, and Harriet looked puzzled. 'Mary
reckons he had a glass eye,' Anne explained. 'Said it was a good
piece of work 'cos, she reckons, you had to look pretty close to
see it weren't a real 'un. Cost a pretty penny for something like
that, I reckons.'

'Yes,
probably,' Harriet agreed, 'though that doesn't get me any closer
to finding out who he is and who's behind him, if he's not the
ringleader himself, that is.'

'Heard tell
there was four of them buggers,' Anne said, nodding. 'An' I reckons
they've gotta be pretty local, if you asks me.'

'Oh? Why so?'
Anne wiped her hands on her apron and perched on the arm of an
empty chair.

'Well,' she
said, 'I may not be educated, but I keeps my ears open an' we gets
a lot of the drivers and coachmen around in the little back snug,
where they can get a cheap meal and soak their feet while their
guv'nors eat in the main bar. A body gets to hear all manner of
things, especially when she's only supposed to be ladling up soup
and fetching ale.

'So, Miss
Merridew, I can tell you where and when every one of these coach
robberies has taken place, and they're spread out pretty even over
the road both north and south of here. Not only that, but a couple
of times there's been soldiers happen upon the coaches, just after
they bin robbed and they've ridden after the thieves only a few
minutes or so behind.

'An' yet,' she
concluded smugly, 'they've never caught 'em, have they?'

'So you think
these robbers know the back roads and tracks, is that it?' Harriet
said.

'Stands to
reason they must,' Anne confirmed. 'One time I know for sure, the
soldiers rode south in pursuit and met up with three naval officers
riding north, for London most like, and they reckoned no one had
passed 'em in near on two hours.'

'Have you told
this theory of yours to anyone else?' Harriet asked.

Anne smiled
lopsidedly. 'Like who?' she demanded. 'No one's going to listen to
a simple kitchen hand, are they? I tried tellin' my George a couple
of weeks back and even he told me to leave such things to them as
knows about 'em, so no one else is going to take much notice of
what I might think, are they?'

'Well, I'm
listening,' Harriet said quietly. 'Tell me, Anne, what time do you
finish here? Only there are a few more questions you might be able
to answer and maybe we can work something out on this between
us.'

'Well, I'm not
due to finish till six, Miss Harriet,' Anne said, with a crafty
look on her face, 'but if you likes - an' if you can cover what
I'll lose - I'll tell cook I've got a bad head and cramps in here.'
She rubbed her lower stomach meaningfully. Harriet smiled and
thought of the few coins still in her purse. Some things, she
thought, were more important than others and besides, there was
always the chance she might be able to get her cousin safely back
without having to be in Thomas Handiwell's debt.