by Sara Fraser
‘I’m arresting you in the King’s name!’ Tom repeated, and warned, ‘You’d best come quietly!’
‘Do you know who you’re talking to, you lanky bastard? Do you know my rank?’ Kent growled.
‘Yes, I do, and you’re still under arrest. Now come with me.’
Unnoticed by either of them, three men wielding cudgels slipped silently from around the side of the building.
‘Fuck you!’ Kent growled and hurled himself at Tom, the impact bringing them both crashing down with Tom undermost.
The three men reached the pair, cudgels swung. Tom received a heavy blow to his head, and knew no more.
As consciousness gradually returned a terrible headache was pounding through his skull, and he groaningly struggled on to his knees, grasping the hitching-ring to pull himself on to his feet.
The singing was still bellowing in the tavern, but the horse and his quarry had gone.
Tom gingerly fingered his bleeding wound, and assumed he had hit his head on the cobbles when he fell backwards with Langlois on top of him.
Anger at himself for failing to arrest Langlois fuelled a grim determination. He picked up his hat, shouldered his staff, went first to the lock-up to tell Amy what had happened, then set out to walk the four miles to Beoley Village.
‘He’s not here, Master Potts.’ Clad in a billowing nightdress and mob-cap, Pammy Mallot stared at Tom in dismay. ‘Your head’s bleeding! You’d best come in and let me dress it.’
‘Thank you, I will.’ Tom followed her into the house. ‘How is Phoebe?’
‘I slipped her a good dose o’ laudanum in her posset, and her’s sleeping like a babe.’
‘Then with your permission, I’d like to remain here until tomorrow in case Langlois returns.’
‘I’ll be very glad for you to do that.’ The woman smiled.
‘When I go back to Redditch I shall raise the hue and cry for him,’ Tom told her. ‘And when he’s captured, he’ll most definitely be sent to trial for assaulting an officer of the Law and resisting arrest. With any luck he might even be sentenced to transportation.’
‘I wish he might be sentenced to hang,’ she retorted. ‘And when Reverend Winward comes back I shall give him a bloody good roasting for bringing the bad bugger here in the first place.’
Tom made no reply, but prayed silently that Winward would indeed return.
SIXTY-NINE
Redditch Town
Tuesday, 1st July
Early morning
Tom awoke long before dawn. He lay in the quiet darkness taking pleasure in the warm sweet scent of Amy sleeping peacefully beside him. Then, inevitably, his pleasure was overlaid by the bitter frustration which for the past three weeks had dominated his waking hours.
The hue and cry, with its widespread dispersal of reward-offering ‘Wanted’ posters, had not produced any results whatsoever; and from past experience Tom knew that any possibility of tracking down either Langlois or Winward was by now virtually moribund.
He scowled in self-disgust. ‘And I’ve only myself to blame for it. I should have hit the bugger over the head before telling him he was under arrest! No wonder the whole Parish is jeering at me for a fool!’
While Tom was castigating himself a closed carriage moved along the deserted streets and came to a halt on the chapel crossroads. A small girl carrying a weighted sack-bag alighted from it and ran across the Green.
When she neared the lock-up she halted and looked about to make sure that no one was abroad and no light glimmered from the neighbouring buildings. Then she darted to the door of the lock-up, dumped the sack-bag to one side of it, and ran back to the waiting carriage.
Tom went down into the rear yard at first light, doused his head and upper body under the water pump, cleaned his teeth, returned upstairs and finished dressing. With Amy still soundly sleeping, he returned downstairs and followed his usual routine, opening the front door and stepping outside to check if all appeared normal on and around the Green.
Satisfied all was well Tom turned to go back inside and only then noticed the sack-bag. Without thinking he tipped its contents out on to the floor, and found himself looking at the severed heads of Christophe de Langlois and the Reverend Geraint Winward.
He stared down at them in shock. Then he peered hard around the environs of the Green, but could see no movement or other signs of life. He crouched and pushed the heads back into the bag, stepped back inside the lock-up and closed the door. He stood deep in thought for several minutes. Finally he came to a decision and, steeling himself to instantly act upon it, he lifted the sack-bag and left the lock-up.
Two hours later the early bells of the mills and factories rang out to rouse the sleeping town, and men, women and children left their beds and readied themselves to face another long day of grinding toil.
Amy Potts opened her eyes, yawned, stretched, and called, ‘Tom, where are you?’
No answer came, and Amy called louder. ‘Tom? Where are you?’
This time she was answered by Tom calling from below. ‘I’m making our breakfast, sweetheart.’
He stood at the cooking range stirring the savoury mess of oats and onions, his mind at ease.
‘I’ve done the right thing, and so has whoever killed those evil bastards. George Creswell’s been avenged, and poor Phoebe has been saved from a life of Hell!’
He spooned porridge into a bowl and ate it with gusto.
A mile westwards, in the deep mud-thick waters of Bridley Moor Marsh, a shoal of voracious eels was tearing into another type of breakfast with equal gusto.