Of course, they didn’t, not just like that. There was lot of arguing, most of which I could not follow, and eventually a young boy was despatched, returning after a few minutes, to say-
“Thor tae gan doon the beach. Wor Geordie’ll see them there. But thor tae leave their guns and stuff here.”
“Ah’ll trouble ye to leave yor pistols here, captain”, the man with the fowling-piece addressed us, “an’ yor bonny sword an’ a’. Just a’ case yer gets aereated, like. We want nae trouble. Yer auld, lame marrer can keep his stick. Wor Dick’ll show yer the way, but divven think yer can tak liberties. Ther’s plenty around winnat hev it.”
I struggled to suppress a smile, pleased that my imitation of a decrepit old man had been so successful. It was true that my best pistols were at home, but no-one goes a travelling without taking some precautions against mishaps, and my stout ebony cane with its tooled silver handle concealed a surprise that I hoped would remain so, as did the voluminous pockets of my greatcoat. I had never actually used the double-barrelled, tap-action pocket pistols Mr Twigg had supplied to my order, but I had checked their charges and flints just this morning. If trouble were to materialise, we should not be quite defenceless.
The boy led us down to the top of the old, mediaeval walls, which, I was surprised to see, were substantially intact on the side next the sea. On the sands outside were a large number of fishing boats, drawn well up out of the water, and a substantial-sized trading vessel – a collier, I surmised – was leaning at a drunken angle further out, where it had been left by the receding tide. On its deck were a group of men, armed with an assortment of axes, scythes and boathooks, with the odd firearm. They all wore a band of red cloth about their brows, as, I noticed, did our escort, who now descended a set of stone steps and conducted us into an archway leading through the walls, presumably the sea gate.
On either side beneath the arch, was a stout, oak door, heavily studded with large, square nails. Our guide opened the one on the right without further ceremony, and shouted up the spiral stairway it disclosed,
“Mr Charlton!”
“Come on up,” a deep voice rumbled, and we followed the urchin up to an airy room with glassless windows on every side, obviously intended as gun ports, but now devoid of cannon.
At a table under the seaward embrasure sat a large, grey-haired man in a Guernsey frock, who rose as we entered, revealing himself to be scraping the ceiling with his head.
“Mr Charlton, these is the sojers come from Newcastle for the Frenchie,” piped our guide, obviously in some awe of this personage. “Can I go now, please, Mr Charlton, can I, please?”
“Aye, hadaway hyem, Dickie Cooper, and tell yer Da ye Aah said ye did weel the day,” said the giant, turning to us.
“I am George Charlton,” he said, “but everybody calls me Geordie. I have been fishing these waters these forty years, and people have learned to trust me.”
What he actually said was more like “Aah’m George Charlton, but ivverybody caalls uz Geordie. Aah’ve been fishun these watters these fowerty yors, and people have lorned to trust me,” but the effort of phonetic transcription grows too tedious, and I shall resort to simultaneous translation into English from now on.
“The shore folk have chosen me to stick up for their rights,” he continued, “and I intend to do that. We have been done out of them for too long in this town, with the council interfering with the customs of the shore, and the fisherfolk’s privileges. Now they’re trying to do us out of our salvage money, and the reward for the French spy. There’s some as say they will make out he’s not a spy at all, aye, and not even French, and we can go whistle for our money. There’s even some as say some councillors are in Boney’s pocket, and plan to let the villain go once we hand him over. Well, we won’t have it. We want justice, justice for this spying foreigner, and justice for ourselves, and unless we get satisfaction we will hang the Frog ourselves.
You say you’ve come to take him for a fair trial at the Newcastle Assizes. Well, we say we’ll not give him up until our just demands are met. That’s right, our just demands. We’ll give him a fair trial ourselves, first, and then we’ll hang him, in the market place or on the beach, it makes no odds where.”
He subsided, at last, and allowed Wickham a chance to speak for the first time.
“You tell us you will not surrender your captive unless your demands are met?” he enquired. “But what, exactly, are those demands?”
“Them’s our demands, what I told you. Them’s our demands, and them’s just.”
“And is that the sum of your demands? Is that all of them, I mean.”
“Why, there’s a few more, I doubt, that Bobbie Raikes says we should hold out for, but I cannot remember them all. He’s a clever lad, is our Bobbie, and he’s got them all written down, in his best clerk’s hand. You’ll have to ask him. He should be here any minute.”
“And who, precisely, is Mr Raikes?”
“He’s the Town Clerk, he is. He’s a learned man, and knows what he is about. He speaks for the ordinary folk of this town, not the nobs on the council.”
“Very well, we shall await his arrival.”
I thought it best to break the embarrassed silence that ensued, by pointing out that in any case we could not proceed until we had seen their prisoner, and satisfied ourselves that he was what his captors claimed him to be.
“Aye, that’s reasonable,” observed Mr Charlton. “Go and see for yourselves, then. He’s in the old lock-up, across the way. It’s the door opposite this one, under the archway. It’s only bolted, and you can get in, but Monsewer Frog is locked in one of the cells, and you’ll not get him out of there. I’ll leave you to it, so you can draw your own confusions. I’ll still be here when you come back.”
We descended the stairs again, not without a certain amount of eye-rolling, and crossed to the door opposite. The bolt slid easily through its sockets, having obviously been oiled recently, and admitted us to a corridor, apparently set within the thickness of the wall, with locked doors with barred windows leading off to one side.
Behind the first of these, we found the prisoner.
He was huddled in a corner, looking thoroughly miserable. The sunshine from the barred window shone full upon him, highlighting his torn blue jacket and stained white breeches.
Wickham’s eyes widened.
“Well,” he said, “that is certainly a French drummer boy’s uniform, but its wearer is no more a Frenchman than I am.”
“Just so,” I agreed. “ I have seen countenances as prognathous, and foreheads almost as receding before, even on the Bench, and his face is no more lined and wrinkled than our friend’s across the way. Even the hair on the back of his hands is not unknown. But I do believe that what provides the clearest clue is the tail protruding from the seat of his breeches.”
Chapter Twenty-six : The King’s Writ
“So,” said Wickham. “Someone has made a monkey out of the corporation of Hartlepool. Or have they made monkeys out of us?”
“But does this not solve your problem?” I cried. “There is no French spy. You can hardly be blamed, therefore, if you fail to bring him back to your superiors.”
“I fear you do not know the military mind, my friend, nor my superiors, for, mark you, this will have got well beyond Colonel Lambton by now. It will have reached London by now, and I dare say some earl’s nephew at the Horse Guards will be looking for someone to take the blame for any mishaps even as we speak. On the contrary, this situation has made my task much more difficult, if not impossible. My orders say I am to bring the French spy back from Hartlepool to Newcastle. If I return without a French spy, then I shall have failed in my mission. No-one will ever believe me if I tell them the spy was a monkey, or rather an ape. If I take the animal with me, I will be accused of making game of my superiors. This sort of thing is just what my enemies have been waiting for. It will be even worse if we leave the brute here, and the malcontents hang it after we have left. I m
ight as well put my commission up for sale now, while I can still get something for it.”
We both of us stood lost in thought for a moment. I dare say Wickham was pondering how to explain his failure to his superiors. What was occupying my mind, however, was the thought of an unemployed, insolvent Wickham – and Lydia – and a mewling infant – all back on my hands at Longbourn. That must be avoided if at all possible.
“Well,” I suggested at last, the sight of Wickham wringing his hands having somehow, in the circumstances, lost much of its amusement, “at least it can do no harm to take the animal back with us. Then, perhaps, everyone will have a good laugh at the gullibility of the natives of Hartlepool, and we can all forget about it. That is, of course, if his captors will honour your habeas corpus.”
“That is it!” he cried. “I always knew you were a clever man, Mr Bennet, but this is brilliant! Pass it all off as a hoax, a trick played upon us all by some wag in the Hartlepool council. That way there may be credit enough for all, or at least the wrath of the mighty may be diverted. Let us secure the beast and be off. If we can persuade yon fisherman before his famous learned agitator of a town clerk arrives, he may yield the keys to us.”
So we hurried from the prison, and across the archway to the opposite door. No sooner had we passed through it, however, than the sound of conversation coming down the stairway informed us that we had been forestalled.
We climbed the stairs and found our Mr Charlton conversing with a meagre individual of less than common height but more than common stentoriousness. I say, ‘conversing with’, but in truth it was more of the nature of ‘being harangued by’ the newcomer, who continued to point out in great and evidently gratifying detail, how remiss his companion had been in allowing anyone to see the prisoner without his consent. The unfortunate fishermen’s leader seized upon our entry as an opportunity to stem the flood.
“Here they are now, any road,” he interjected, “and you can have it out with them yourself. Captain, this is Mr Raikes, who speaks for the craftsmen and small traders of this town, who have joined us in presenting our demands to the council. He understands the law, and politics, and suchlike things, and will explain what we are after better than I can. Mr Raikes, this is Captain Wigham, come from Newcastle to take charge of the Frenchie.”
“Then he has had a journey for nothing,” replied his colleague, in the same voice, more suited to addressing a public meeting than speaking to a gentleman in an enclosed place, “for we shall certainly not give our prisoner up until the council see sense.”
He clenched both jaw and fists as he said this, and glowered at us in a way that was evidently intended to overawe.
Wickham returned hard words with a smile, something at which I dare say he has not gone short of practice.
“Come, come, Mr Raikes,” he replied, “I make no doubt of your being as learned and experienced in the ways of the world as your friend here makes you out to be, but, in that case, surely you must know that your prisoner is no more a French spy, or even a Frenchman, than you or I?”
“He came off a wrecked ship that was flying the French flag. He’s wearing a French uniform. He doesn’t understand plain English. He jabbers away in a heathen lingo none of us can understand, nobody here being a French scholar. He eats the frogs and snails we’ve been feeding him. What else can he be but a Frenchman?”
“He probably eats the reptiles because you have fed him nothing else,” retorted Wickham “and his ‘jabbering’ is not a ‘heathen lingo’ - or any human tongue at all. I speak French, sir. My advisor here, Mr Bennet, speaks it even better than I. He also speaks Latin and Greek and Italian and German, and the noises produced by your prisoner are no more than noises. Your ‘Frenchman’ has hair all over him. He can pick things up with his feet as well as with his hands. He has a tail, for pity’s sake! He is not a man at all, he is a monkey.”
“Ah, well,” put in Mr Charlton, “that just goes to show he is a Frenchman. It’s well known, isn’t it, that Frenchmen have tails? They just keep them hidden most of the time.”
“In that case, why should he leave it on view if he wished to pass for an Englishman? Why should he wear such a uniform, for that matter? But in any event, felonious Frenchman or foolish foreigner, man or monkey, I have an order here from the High Court in Newcastle, requiring whoever holds the alleged spy to deliver him into my custody for conveyance to Newcastle for judgement. I think that even you, Mr Raikes, would consider it imprudent to resist such an order.”
At this news, Charlton’s mouth gaped open, and his shoulders slumped, disappointment written all over them.
Not so his colleague, however.
“Such things are easily said,” he replied, with almost a sneer in his voice, “but where is the written evidence? Where is the ‘notice in writing’?”
It was Wickham’s turn now to bridle.
“Were you a gentleman, sir, I should feel myself obliged to resent your implication, but as you neither belong to that estate nor attempt to behave as if you do, I have all the more pleasure in inviting you to peruse this document.”
So saying, he handed over the court order, which had lain all this while undisturbed in his sabretache.
Raikes sniffed, and taking the document carefully by the edges, bore it over to the window, where he studied it carefully, holding it up to the light the while, paying particular attention to the signature and the seal at the bottom.
He came back with a smile on his face.
“I regret that I must decline to oblige you, Captain,” he said, positively beaming as he did so.
“You would defy the King’s writ, sir?” retorted Wickham. “Are you not aware that in these circumstances that could be considered to be treason?”
“I think that that would be stretching the meaning of the term, sir, but, in any case, I should not dream of questioning the order of a competent court. But these circumstances, sir, are not circumstances in which the court upon which you rely has any competence. These circumstances, sir, are taking place in the borough of Hartlepool, in the county of Durham, or, rather I should say, in these circumstances, in the Prince-Bishopric of Durham. The King’s writ does not run here, sir, nor does the jurisdiction of the court upon which you rely extend south of the Tyne. If you wish to serve an injunction upon me, sir, you must bring me one signed and sealed by a justice of the High Court of the County Palatine of Durham and Sadberge. Until then, we shall continue to hold our prisoner in earnest of our demands.”
All credit to Wickham for not showing it, for he must have been as shaken and confounded by this claim as I found myself to be.
“I see I must take advice upon what you say, sir,” was all he replied. “I shall wait upon you again when I have done so. I dare say that you are aware, however, that I am not without means to enforce my request, should that prove necessary.”
“I am perfectly aware, sir, of exactly what means are available to you, and of their precise strength.”
The mutual ‘Good Days’ with which we parted, were, I am sure, quite as sincere as they sounded.
Wickham said no more as we were led back to the barrier through which we had entered, merely gesturing at our guide when I began to speak. I took his meaning and held my peace until we had crossed over, and Wickham’s arms had been restored to him.
Even then, not a word passed until we had turned the corner, and we kept our voices down, not knowing who might be listening. It must have given us a strange, furtive look, walking along with our heads together exchanging half-whispers.
“What do you make of that?” he said, “is he right with his lawyer’s cant about the court order not being valid?”
“How should I know? You are the one with any pretensions to local knowledge. I have heard of such things, however. There are areas in London – the Savoy comes to mind, and the Fleet – whither debtors flee, because judgements against them cannot be enforced there, the right of justice having been conceded to a separate power. He may well b
e right, I fear. The Prince-Bishopric of Durham is an ancient and well-known institution. The Bishop may no longer lead his own army and mint his own coins, but I believe all his other ancient powers to be preserved to this day, and justice is almost certainly one of them.”
Wickham sighed.
“I have been too timid,” he said. “I see now our best chance would have been to strike at once, grab the prisoner and defy the consequences. But the consequences were precisely what I could not afford to defy, and in any case we did not know where to strike.”
“Perhaps we should have overpowered Messrs Charlton and Raikes when we had them to ourselves,” I suggested, “ and forced them to release their ‘Frenchman’ and escort us back to your men?”
“I thank you for the suggestion, Mr Bennet, but you will forgive me if I suggest that you yourself are perhaps no longer the young Hercules while both rascals looked determined brawny villains. The fisherman was twice my size, and the lawyer’s clerk no sylph. I doubt we should have had no success in the enterprise, and found ourselves even worse off.”
“I bear you no ill will for your suggestion, Wickham. Non sum qualis eram, indeed. But perhaps my pocket pistols might have weighted the odds somewhat? And this cane is not quite what it may seem. I was never searched as you were, remember.”
Wickham stared for a moment, and then shook with laughter.
“Why, Mr Bennet!” he exclaimed. “My dear Mr Bennet, how you do continue to amaze me! I thought I was a scapegrace and all the time you were concealing an arsenal about your person! But, in all sadness, sir, I thank you for the offer, but I fear we should never have brought it off. Even if we should have succeeded in over-awing their leaders, they had another man outside, and no doubt many more within earshot, and I do not think either of us would really have pistolled our hostages if they refused us passage.
More Sport for our Neighbours Page 21