* * *
Anne had been almost destroyed with grieving. But now her son was restored to her. And Letty, dear Letty! When she was at last recovered from her swoon she clung to them and they to her. She did not intend to ever lose sight of them again.
When Anne had calmed herself a little Mr Brimming informed them that the family were free to go. They must remain in Torcester while enquiries were carried out, he said, but a return to gaol was not necessary. The assault on the bishop, the death of his servant: if Caleb and Letty’s story proved true, as appeared likely, these things would not count against them. They were preparing to leave Porlock’s Coffee House when one of the clerks brought news from the bishop’s palace.
It seemed that when the constables were sent to detain Sir Robert they found the palace deserted. When they at last discovered a maid hiding in the scullery she informed them that he and his brother had long since fled.
14.
Enquiries were carried out as the law required and statements taken, but in the minds of those concerned with the case nothing confirmed Sir Robert’s guilt as clearly as his flight. Summer turned into autumn and though he and his brother were sought the length and breadth of the country it was to no avail.
Mr Brimming remained confident that Sir Robert would, in time, be apprehended. In his absence his land and property were impounded by the court and without income, the magistrate assured Caleb, Sir Robert’s power and influence were reduced to nothing. The villain could not keep running for ever. One day the law would find him and then justice would be done.
Caleb did not share Mr Brimming’s confidence. Sir Robert had fingers in every pie: he was sure to have means of support that remained as yet undiscovered. For all they knew he had fled abroad and if that was the case there was no one to bring him back.
As for justice – hadn’t Pa told Caleb often enough that the law was something designed by the gentry to serve their own ends? “Better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent, my boy. So many rotting in gaol! Poverty, not guilt, keeps them there. Yet a wealthy man with a clever lawyer will seldom swing, though his sins be black as pitch.”
Despite Sir Robert’s flight, Caleb and Letty were not overly downhearted. They had, after all, achieved what they wanted. They were believed. Sir Robert’s villainy and the bishop’s complicity had been revealed and the wrong done to both their fathers exposed.
Pa’s name had been restored to him.
On their release from gaol Caleb had written to the parson with instructions. A month later he received a lengthy, humbly apologetic reply telling him a headstone had been erected and a service belatedly carried out at Pa’s graveside. Every member of Fishpool’s congregation had attended. The parson assured Caleb that Joseph Chappell had joined Edward Avery on the long litany of drowned souls prayed for by his flock.
Soon after receiving the letter Caleb and Letty were drinking coffee in Porlock’s when two learned men of the university came in. Caleb recognized them at once – Pa had often sat with them debating matters of philosophy and politics – but he did not expect them to acknowledge him. Yet word of Pa’s fate had evidently spread, for on seeing Caleb the men came at once to his table to express their sincere condolences. He had the satisfaction of hearing them speak of Joseph Chappell with honour and respect. Pa’s passing was at last marked with the tributes and words of praise that were his due.
Redeeming the underwriters’ money through the courts had taken months, but in expectation of their fortunes being restored to full health they had rewarded Caleb and Letty with a sum sufficient to pay the rent on a small house in the city, where they lived with Anne and Dorcas comfortably throughout the winter. There, Caleb and Letty built themselves a new theatre.
When the weather began to turn warmer they were at last permitted to leave Torcester and set forth, touring from town to town and village to village throughout the county, pulled ever northwards by the call of the sea.
Whether he’d asked her, or she him, or whether the question had ever been uttered aloud Caleb couldn’t afterwards remember. It had happened as naturally as waking and sleeping, eating and breathing. One fine spring morning Caleb found himself standing in church beside Letty, holding her hand in his and promising to love her until death.
15.
Tawpuddle quay.
A bright spring morning.
Low tide.
Ships sitting at half-tilt on the mud. Sailors and fisherman, merchants and shopkeepers, housewives, maids, seamstresses, whores, all crowded together on the cobbles in anticipation of a spectacle.
Caleb and Letty breathed in the crowd’s scent, seeing their own intoxication reflected in the other’s eyes. And then, sunlight glinting off the ring he now wore on his third finger, Caleb stepped out to introduce the Punch and Judy show.
Anne stood near the back, holding Dorcas by the hand, watching Caleb with a gentle smile on her face. It could never be said in public – she remained his aunt in name – but privately and in their hearts they knew themselves to be mother and son and that was enough for both.
Letty and Caleb had taken Pa’s show and turned it into their own, making new puppets and devising whole new routines. One involved a landlord and his lapdog, Punch refusing to pay the rent and beating both roundly over the head until they fled. Another involved a horse that Caleb had made for Punch to ride. At first the beast refused to go, digging its heels in stubbornly. When Punch dismounted to see what ailed it, the creature lifted its tail and deposited a heap of dung upon his head. He made the horse sit down like a dog, then ordered it to stand on its head. Next it lay on its back, legs waving in the air while he tickled its belly. Finally ordering the beast to stand and remounting he tried to ride again, and once, twice, thrice the horse did not move. Then – without warning – it ran away with him, bolting around the stage, setting the whole theatre rocking from side to side so badly that the crowd screamed, thinking it would collapse. Punch was hurled into the air and turned a somersault before Letty caught him again neatly on her right hand. He then lay there on the playboard, noisily claiming, “I’m dead! I’m dead!”
Coming to his aid was a surgeon who, attempting to bleed Punch, lacerated his own arm by mistake. Caleb had devised an ingenious contraption using a pig’s bladder filled with watered-down wine, and it spouted from the puppet in great fountains over the front rows of the crowd.
The show went on, Punch laying waste to every figure of authority he came across, knocking the teeth from the mouth of the parson, pulling the wig from the judge. He did what every man and woman in the crowd longed to do and they were in raptures of anarchic delight. Caleb knew his family would eat well that night, and indeed for the week to come. They’d stay at the inn on the outskirts of town. And in the morning, they’d pay another visit to the churchyard where Joseph Chappell and Edward Avery rested in peace.
He and Letty were revelling in the wild nonsense of the performance but, on this particular day, when they reached the hangman scene Letty perhaps did not give it so much energy as usual. For this particular day was one of great significance.
William Benson – complicit though he was in all Sir Robert’s villainy – had been given the chance to turn King’s evidence. If he had testified against his employer, if he had verified the bishop’s involvement in every nefarious scheme, if he had revealed the gentlemen’s present whereabouts – he might, perhaps, have saved his own skin.
But he did not.
He – who had carried out every command with such zealous relish – had an unshakeable faith in the might of his master. He had firmly believed – through his trial and conviction, through his imprisonment and right until the very moment of his execution – that Sir Robert would somehow save him.
While Letty’s Jack Ketch explained to Punch the process of death by hanging, while Punch wilfully misunderstood and ducked first to the left and then to the right, while Caleb stood by the side of the show and the crowd’s eyes streamed with mirthful tears –
William Benson was driven, hands bound, in an open-topped cart through the city of Torcester.
And Jack Ketch was not his hangman: he did not bungle the execution. William Benson was not Punch; he did not outwit Death or the Devil.
At Gallows Hill he hanged, loyal to his very last breath.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Two or three years ago I was on board the Oldenburg, sailing out of Bideford, bound for Lundy – a small island twelve miles off the coast of North Devon.
As the ship moved downriver we passed Knapp House.
Tucked in a valley that leads down to the water, the house is now a campsite and activity centre, but back in the eighteenth century it was home to Thomas Benson, landowner, merchant trader, High Sheriff of Devon, Member of Parliament and, in his spare time, smuggler, fraudster and notorious villain.
I’d read about Benson some years before, but seeing the house from the water and making that crossing over the sea made me think about how things might have been for the ordinary people living in the area back then.
Hell and High Water is a work of fiction inspired by the sinking of Benson’s ship the Nightingale in 1752 and the extraordinary scandal that followed. I’ve taken liberties with North Devon’s geography to make the story work, so all the place names are invented ones, but the novel’s heart and soul are rooted in the West Country.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.
First published in Great Britain 2015 by Walker Books Ltd
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Text © 2015 Tanya Landman
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work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
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ISBN 978-1-4063-6395-1 (ePub)
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Hell and High Water Page 21