‘Get up!’ Barker ordered again, and tapped the side of her neck with the sword, not quite hard enough to break the skin; she flinched involuntarily at the coldness of the metal. Bracing her elbow against the shelves, she pushed herself to her feet, folding the broken inkpot into the crook of her arm to hide it. It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing she had. She wrapped her other arm around it, hugging herself.
‘Now,’ said Barker, ‘come with me.’ She hesitated, and he sneered. ‘You will pay your husband’s debts, sweetheart, but you can do it with both hands – or none.’ The sword dropped and tapped her wrist.
Lucy looked at the ink-brewers, who both now stood with their backs to the wall, the woman crying, the man still holding his hands in the air. Barker looked at them too, and extended his pistol toward them. ‘Beg them for help,’ he told her, ‘and you will be to blame for what happens.’
He would shoot the man, and use the sword to subdue the two unarmed women. Lucy shook her head. Still hugging the inkpot she walked slowly to the door. Barker followed her out sideways, pistol still pointed at the ink-brewers. He closed the shop door, then kicked a timber under the threshhold, jamming it.
Half-formed plans for escape flowed through her mind. She could run while he still had half his attention on the ink-brewers; she could hurl the inkpot into his face and run; she could throw herself to the ground and start screaming, hoping that he would run . . .
He wouldn’t, though. He would kill her, and afterwards kill anyone who came running to help. This brazen daylight abduction was the act of a man with nothing to lose. She recognized, sickly, that it was the act of a man who was already fleeing a charge of murder. Oh, Rob!
When they were a few paces from the shop, Barker sheathed his sword and turned the pistol on Lucy, holding his arm close to his body so that the weapon would be less noticeable to anyone at a distance. There was nobody close by. Moorfields was an area of fruit and vegetable gardens, sprinkled with a few small cottages and businesses like the one they’d just left. She knew it quite well. She’d spent months working on an unlicensed press hidden in a Moorfields barn. It was a bright December day, about eleven in the morning. Frost sparkled on the grass, and the puddles had a rim of ice. There were plenty of people about, but they weren’t crowded together as they had been on the streets of the city. Outraged and despairing, she contemplated her own stupidity. She’d known she was being followed, yet she’d walked away from the crowded street and safety.
But who could have anticipated the audacity of this attack? In Moorfields, in broad daylight! Presumably Barker was preparing to flee abroad to escape a murder charge, and had paused to take revenge, but surely the ink-brewers would raise the hue and cry as soon as they got that door open!
‘You go before me,’ Barker said in a low voice. ‘Take that track to the right, through the sheds. Quickly!’
She did as he commanded. Her face throbbed where he’d hit her, and there was a taste of bile in her throat. There was nothing mysterious in the order. He was getting them out of sight. When the ink-brewers worked up the courage to barge open the door, they wouldn’t know which way he’d gone.
They passed the last shed. ‘Now left,’ he commanded, ‘through the orchard.’ She turned obediently under the branches of the winter-bare trees. She doubted he had any real destination in mind; he was simply taking her off towards a more isolated place, for the obvious purpose. She would not, not let him do it, she decided. He probably meant to kill her after raping her, so she would make her attempt at escape before he did. Then at least she’d be spared the rape.
‘Straight on!’ he ordered, when they reached the end of the orchard. They trudged on, going further and further from the city, walking along the edge of the vegetable beds, which were mostly bare brown mounds in this season, with here and there some green cabbages or yellow parsnip leaves. Barker’s boots crunched the frost behind her.
She needed to get him off guard. She felt instinctively that challenging him would draw punishment, but that he’d relish it if she begged and pleaded. The thought of doing so was repulsive, but . . .
‘Oh, sir!’ she said thickly, not looking back. ‘I beg you!’
He gave a snort. ‘Do you now?’
‘I’ve not been married a year, and I’ve spent scarce ten days of that in my husband’s company! If he owes you debts, I know nothing of it. I beg you, sir, don’t hurt me!’
‘Your foul-faced husband,’ snarled Barker, ‘owes me my life, which he took from me.’
‘But, sir, you are no ghost, how . . .’
‘I’m no better than a ghost! Your husband stole everything from me. I had the trust and patronage of great men and the esteem of all my friends; he blasted my reputation, turned my patrons against me, and even when I’d been flung out to that wretched Pontefract, what do I find but Cyclops Hudson must come and wreck me even there! I was drummed out of the Army because of him!’
How can you blame Jamie for the result of things you did to hurt him? Lucy thought indignantly. What she said, though, was, ‘I know nothing of this, sir! Please, please don’t hurt me! I never hurt you!’
‘You did me the worst hurt of all!’ replied Barker, his voice rising. ‘It was you riding to Colchester that turned General Ireton against me!’
She didn’t try to argue; she just cried, ‘I never meant it to! Have pity!’
He spat at her. She felt the gobbet of phlegm strike her shoulder, and flinched. ‘That’s right, you slut, beg me! You and your husband owe me everything you’ve taken, and you’ll pay. That shed. Over there. Go to it.’
The shed was a small plain one, indistinguishable from dozens of others sprinkled across Moorfields to hold garden tools or livestock. Lucy walked up to it with her legs trembling and a cold sick weakness in her belly. It would be here. This might be the last sight she ever saw.
‘Open it,’ ordered Barker.
She put her hand to the latch and twitched it, then cried, ‘It’s locked!’ She thought that might even be true.
Barker made a wordless sound of disgust and stepped forward to stand beside her. He gave her a glare and set his hand on the latch. She dropped to her knees, raising her hands pleadingly and crying out, ‘Mercy, sir, I beg you!’ When he glanced round in satisfaction, she lunged at the pistol.
She got both hands on it and jerked it away from him before he’d understood what she was about, but as she did the trigger was pulled or twisted, and the gun went off. There was a flash of fire from the jarred priming charge and a cloud of sulphurous smoke. The savage kick threw the weapon out of her hands again. She didn’t dare look for it; she had no idea where the shot went, but it hadn’t hit Barker. He was bellowing and drawing his sword. She grabbed her broken inkpot – dropped when she went for the gun – and hurled it into his face with all her strength; the thick paste plopped off again, but enough of it had got into his eyes to blind him. She jumped to her feet and started to run.
‘You lying whore!’ Barker howled, wiping frantically at his eyes. ‘God damn you!’
She didn’t look back, only hauled up her skirts and ran harder, listening, over the pounding of her own feet, for the sound of his coming after her. There was nothing, nothing, nothing – and then the crashing detonation of the pistol – and a scream.
She ran on: she wasn’t even sure that the scream hadn’t been her own, such was her heart-pounding terror. The cry was followed, though, by broken shrieks of agony. She looked back.
At first she thought Barker had vanished; then she saw his red coat flashing and bobbing on the ground before the shed. His shrieks became a moan, then ebbed into silence.
The sight had slowed her, and now she stopped and stood panting, staring at that red shape, already distant. She told herself that he might be feigning injury to lure her back – but she knew that those shrieks had not been feigned. Still, she could not bring herself to go and check. She turned instead toward the city, and made her way unsteadily back through the fields to the
ink-brewers.’
There was a crowd in front of the shop, many of them carrying truncheons and hoes, a few with swords. The senior ink-brewer, the old man, was standing on an upturned tub gesticulating. He froze when he spotted Lucy, then cried, ‘Mrs Hudson!’
Everyone turned towards her; several people cried out thanks to God. The ink-brewer daughter darted forward and embraced her. ‘I thank the good Lord!’ she cried. ‘Did you escape him?’
‘Aye,’ said Lucy, and swallowed. ‘I think he’s hurt by his own pistol.’
She had to lead the whole posse back to the shed. They found Barker lying against the door, his face a red and black mask of ink, blood, and powder burns. Blood had made a puddle around him, but the dark soil was drinking it in, leaving only a red slick that steamed in the cold air. He was dead. The ramrod from his pistol had been driven through the side of his throat and up into the roof of his mouth. Lucy went to the nearest dung-heap and was violently sick over the stable-sweepings.
In ordinary times, the incident might have been reported in the newsbooks. ‘Miraculous dispensations’ were always popular items. Lucy was glad that the times were far from ordinary, and that Lieutenant Barker’s death was passed over in favour of the Army’s purge of Parliament. Others might praise God’s marvellous vengeance; she found herself filled with an unsettling rage. She had been raped before; where had God’s marvellous vengeance been then?
She dared not ask the question out loud. She knew the official answer, having heard it in innumerable sermons and pious exhortations: the woeful state of the world was the result of human sin; God was justly angry with mankind, but sometimes, out of his great mercy, shielded men and women from the consequences of their own wickedness.
The official answer did not satisfy her. Jamie’s scars had taught her something about pistols, and it was perfectly clear to her how Barker had died. He’d tried to load the pistol in haste, while it was still hot and without wiping it out first – something every man ever issued a gun was strictly told never to do. Some fragment of wadding had still been smouldering in the chamber, and when he rammed the fresh charge home it had fired, shooting the ramrod into his face.
Of course, Almighty God usually worked through earthly chances – but she also had the suspicion that if the pistol hadn’t misfired she still would have escaped. She’d been a good distance from Barker when it went off. The ink in his eyes must have delayed him long enough to give her such a lead that he’d known he couldn’t hope to catch her again. She thought she would probably have been out of range of pistol shot even if he’d succeeded in getting the gun loaded. She would have run back to the ink-brewers, who’d already raised the hue and cry, and Barker would very likely have been taken and hanged. So why was a miraculous misfiring pistol even needed? If God wanted to work a miracle, why hadn’t he done so the first time she was raped, by those three cruel soldiers in her father’s barn all those years ago?
Questioning Divine Providence would shock and distress her friends. Better to endure quietly, and let time and work wash away the question and her anger. She found, though, that something in her life was broken – some proud confidence she’d barely noticed, until it was gone. She could not walk alone down a London street without her heart pounding and a cold sweat starting; a lustful whistle or catcall from one of the innumerable soldiers threw her into a rage. Worst of all, the scent of ink, which for so long had meant freedom to her, now made her queasy. The thought of leaving London became more attractive by the day.
The incident did, however, make enough noise that, about a week later, one of The Moderate’s mercury-women passed on a letter to her:
Sweete Lucy,
It seems I ’scaped lightly. So often I tryed to engage you in Dalliance, and never once did I suffer Heaven’s Vengeance. I’ll be sworne ‘tis because you’ve a liking for me: Matt at The Sunne told me how that hypocrite Knave Mabbot desired you to betray me, and you refused. Sweete, I am glad your Steelie Chastitie has been rewarded by Heaven, and you came off safely.
Prag
The missive annoyed her intensely, in many ways. How could he equate groping with attempted rape at sword-point? If he knew she’d refused to betray him, and what it had cost her, why he hadn’t bothered to say thank you? Why did he consider that only ‘Steelie Chastitie’ could be behind her ability to tell him ‘no’? Why on earth did he sign himself ‘Prag’? Did he think she was fooled by his by-line’s posturing? She longed to pen a really cutting reply – but anything along the lines of ‘I do not like you!’ would sound suspicious, as well as ungracious. She suspected, too, that he was better at cutting replies than she was, so she did not reply at all.
Seventeen
The journey north was a nightmare. There were three of them – Jamie, his father, and a servant – and they’d brought four horses, the spare to serve as a remount if one of the others went lame. They rode hard for two days, rising before dawn and stopping only when they could no longer make out the potholes in the road. George Hudson was white-faced with pain and exhaustion by the end of the first day, and Jamie was seriously concerned for his health.
Jamie’s own health was much improved. Bedrest at home and as much food as he wanted had done wonders for the pistol-graze. He could not be pleased about it, though. His recovery seemed to mock Rob’s decision to challenge Barker on his behalf.
They arrived at Doncaster at dusk on the twenty-sixth of November, less than a fortnight after Jamie had turned his back on the town. George was frantic to press on and find Robert. The letter with the news of the duel had included the name of the inn where Rob had been taken after he was shot, but Jamie had no idea where the place was, and it was not clear whether Rob was still there. He left his father to eat supper at a Doncaster inn and rushed around the town trying to find someone who knew what had happened to his brother.
The regiment had received its orders to return south, and was in the process of preparing to march. Everything was in chaos. Philibert and Sam were pleased to see Jamie, but not surprised. They knew of the duel and its outcome, but they had no news, and could only point him in the direction of Captain Drummond, who had been Robert’s second – why him, and not one of Jamie’s friends, Jamie had no idea. Drummond proved elusive. Jamie went from the regimental headquarters to Cromwell’s Doncaster base twice before eventually tracking the captain down in his quarters. Drummond was preparing his company to start south, but he confirmed that he’d left Rob at The White Swan, which was about eight miles north of Doncaster, on the Great North Road.
‘It is a coaching inn,’ said Drummond. ‘A good-sized place, where a sick man may rest comfortably, if he has the money – which your brother does. He came north prepared to buy you out of prison, so he has ample funds for an inn. His servant is with him. The surgeon believed there was hope for him, and he yet lived when I last saw him.’
‘When was that?’ Jamie asked anxiously.
‘Four days gone,’ replied Drummond; then, defensive under Jamie’s indignant stare, ‘I’ve my company to concern me! I did what I could. Whether or no he lives is in the hands of God.’
Jamie went back to the inn where he’d left his father, hoping that the old man had bespoken a room for the night. It was dark now, and too late to set out again.
The innkeeper, hauled from his bed to answer the door, sullenly informed Jamie that Mr Hudson had taken an upstairs chamber and gone to bed – and he, the innkeeper, would like to do the same.
Jamie thanked the innkeeper wearily and decided not to disturb his father. He lay down on the floor of the common room, curling up against the warm chimney-breast. He was just drifting off when he heard steps on the stairs and sat up to find George Hudson coming down them with a candle. The old man was pale and dishevelled, but fully dressed. He recoiled at the sight of Jamie. ‘What do you here?’ he asked harshly.
‘I had hoped you were asleep,’ said Jamie.
George Hudson let out a huff of surprise and sat down on one of the tavern
benches, setting his candle on the table. ‘I was asleep,’ he said, after a minute. ‘I woke, and you were still not back. I was afraid for you.’
‘Sir, you should go back to your bed,’ said Jamie. ‘We must be up betimes.’
‘There is space for you upstairs,’ George Hudson replied. ‘You need not lie here like a servant.’ He peered at Jamie anxiously and suddenly said, ‘I know I have ever used you with less esteem than I did your brothers. I should never have apprenticed you in a mere mechanical trade; I should have seen you educated like a gentleman. I was much at fault, and I am sorry for it.’
Jamie did not know how to respond to that, either. He’d always been keenly aware of that lack of esteem, and bitterly resented it – even though he liked his ‘mere mechanical trade’, and rather pitied Rob’s dusty hours struggling over Latin verbs. For his father to apologize, though, was unprecedented.
‘You never thought I would be heir,’ he said at last. ‘No more did I.’ Then, with a pang of anguish for Rob, he added, ‘And I pray God I never am!’
George sighed. ‘Even if Robert lives, I think he’ll have no more children. You saw Kate. If she died, and he remarried . . . but that’s an ill fate to wish on a poor harmless gentlewoman.’
‘Then I pray that Rob keeps Bourne until my son can inherit from him!’ said Jamie.
His father smiled. ‘Amen. You’ve shown yourself a loving brother, Jamie. This journey has been good for that, at least.’
‘I hope, sir, that it will be good for more, and that we’ll find Rob alive and nurse him to full health again.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘In the ruckus earlier I neglected to say that Captain Drummond, who was Rob’s second, gave me some grounds for hope. He says that this White Swan is a good comfortable place, that Rob has Jenkin to care for him, and that the surgeon had hope.’
George’s big hands clenched. They both knew that wounds could rot, and that shot wounds frequently did. ‘I pray God he is better!’
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