Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton

by Rowland Hughes

  A highwayman should make a rule of exchanging horses with the traveller if he were better mounted than himself. Coats, too, could often be exchanged to advantage, as long as the misadventure of Dick Adams was borne in mind who, having robbed a gentleman of gold watch, silver snuff-box and money, cast a covetous eye on his fine laced coat and saying, ‘Sir, you have a very good coat on. I must make so bold as to change with you,’ stripped him of it, only to discover too late, to his unspeakable rage and mortification, that he had left his booty in his own coat.

  Barbara learnt that behind the activities of the highway fraternity was an elaborate organisation of confederate innkeepers, ostlers, tapsters, chamberlains and chambermaids, besides the actual fencing cullys or receivers of stolen goods with their headquarters in London. Captain Jackson could give the names of inns in most districts in England where a gentleman of the Road could be sure of a welcome, and where there were privy hiding places for stolen goods or for the highwayman himself. But for Barbara and Captain Jackson’s present purposes the ‘Leaping Stag’, where he had taken her that first evening, was a sufficiently convenient rendezvous, near enough to Watling Street yet in a retired and wooded spot, with a hostess who was a good friend to the brotherhood in general and to Captain Jackson in particular, who was not afraid to see pistols loaded in her kitchen, and who boasted that in a sudden alarm she could convey a fugitive ‘from chamber to chamber to the backside of the house and so away.’

  Barbara listened attentively. She was ready to learn all that this man could teach her. It had not taken her long to gauge his character. Boastful, braggart, childishly vain and talkative, outwardly daring and bold, inwardly ill at ease and longing for reassurance, a mixture of insensitive brutality and careless good humour – she saw him with a clarity that her sensual thraldom to him in no way dimmed. When she told him, with a docility that delighted him, ‘I am content to be ruled and ordered by you in all things,’ she was not being so very deceitful. For it was true that she needed him, needed him for his fine vigorous body as well as for his professional experience.

  He had an endless store of tales, mostly relating to his own exploits, and to these Barbara gave doubtful credence. They were illustrative of his wit, his ruthlessness or his gallantry, according to the mood that he was in when he related them. Was it true that he had stopped Lady Castlemaine2 and, relieving her of her jewels, informed the haughty favourite that it was his trade to rob one whore to maintain another? Had he really agreed to throw a main for £1503 with another of his distinguished victims, the Duchess of Mazarin,4 and, having lost, gallantly allowed her to keep her winnings? Had he, as he related, had a swearing match with a well-known judge, a boxing match with an earl, and obliged a Bishop to preach an extempore sermon? And what of his tale that he had stopped a gentleman and his wife on the Bath Road and, on the man refusing to pay up, had taken his wife into a nearby thicket and ‘acted a man’s part by her’, informing the husband, as he collected fifteen guineas off him, that this was no more than was his due for he was not obliged to do his drudgery for nothing?

  How many of these stories, growing more incredible as he helped himself to the wine, could be believed? Or which were borrowed from the experience of some other highwayman? Barbara neither knew nor cared, but when he told her that he had robbed on nearly every road in England she believed him, for when in action he displayed a skill and assurance that could only have been gained by long experience.

  In fact he had been on the Road since the age of seventeen. In a burst of naïve confidence he had confessed to her that ‘Captain’ was a self-bestowed or, as he put it, an ‘honorary’ title. The son of a Shropshire butcher, he had run away from home at the age of fourteen, taking his father’s savings with him. He had worked, or perhaps idled would have been a more accurate description, as a stable boy in various London inns. Then his upstanding appearance had got him the job of groom to a nobleman. In this capacity he had learnt to ride, to gamble and to imitate the vices and to some degree the deportment of his betters. But this situation came to an abrupt end when he seduced her ladyship’s favourite waiting-maid. He was dismissed, and left with some of his master’s jewellery and gold plate. He joined the army as a trooper, was flogged for insubordination, deserted, and, for his part in a drunken riot, was consigned to the Poultry Compter.5 Here he fell into the company of highwaymen, learnt what a profitable and gentlemanly trade highway robbery was and, in his release, took to the Road.

  Such was his history, not precisely as he related it to Barbara, but as she shrewdly took it to be when stripped of the embellishments provided by his vivid imagination. Yet it did not hurt her pride to know that her lover was a man of base birth and rascally character. On the contrary, she derived a perverse satisfaction from feeling that in breaking thus, secretly and violently, from the traditions of her class and upbringing, she was revenging herself on Sir Ralph, on her in-laws, on fate itself for these five long, never-to-be-recalled years of her frustrated youth.

  It seemed strange as a dream to Barbara, and with a dream’s uneasy fascination, that she, Lady Skelton of Maryiot Cells, should ride out thus night after night with this graceless scamp, on robbery bent. Side by side they prowled through the sleeping, unsuspecting countryside – through the milky refulgence of the moonlight, under the glitter of the stars, through the sighing wind and sharp, malicious lashes of rain. They could see each other’s dimly-outlined masked faces and cloaked figures, hear each other’s quick breathings and whispers, the jingle of bits, creak of saddle or stirrup and thud of hoofs as their horses paced together neck by neck and flank by flank. They were bound together in a partnership closer even than that of their bodily embraces, the partnership of a common business and danger.

  Sometimes as they rode to their hiding place they talked, or rather Jerry Jackson talked for the most part, for while he was eager to chat and boast about himself, Barbara maintained a resolute silence, which he had endeavoured in vain to penetrate, about her identity and her daytime life. Sometimes they were silent in instinctive enjoyment of their proximity and the hushed yet watchful mystery of the night, or revelling like birds of prey in expectation of the approaching swoop. Or less happily, when their path took them past a roadside gibbet where a gruesome object, horribly blackened and tattered by weather and decay, hung in chains. Then Barbara would see by the way that Captain Jackson threw back his head and squared his shoulders and looked to the other side that, however light he might make of ‘half an hour’s pastime’, as he called hanging, he was haunted by the dreadful thought that one day his handsome body might also rot in chains by the wayside.

  Barbara was aware that there was a part of Jackson’s life that she could not share. She was, unhappily, precluded from joining in his daytime robberies. She was a night bird, her coups must be swiftly executed and at no great distance from her home. Daylight must find her sleeping quietly behind the rose-coloured curtains of her great bed at Maryiot Cells. (Her lie-abed habits were a matter of some concern to her mother-in-law. As Barbara’s figure remained disconcertingly slim, old Lady Skelton concluded that her daughter-in-law was in a decline and fussed over her with asses’ milk and sugar of roses.)

  Then, after a particularly good haul, Jackson would go to London to spend his share of the proceeds at the gambling table, on wine, fine clothes and (Barbara knew by his sleek air and the assiduousness of his attentions to her when they were reunited) on women. It riled Barbara that while he was gallivanting in town she must relapse into the unrelieved role of a country lady, full of domesticity and good works.

  Nor, from Jackson’s accounts, was his revelry confined to low taverns, to the unlicensed theatre at Sadlers Wells, or to the bawdy houses of Mother Temple and Madam Bennet’s in Drury Lane or Moorfields. No, Captain Jackson boldly displayed his new finery and that of his frail and rapacious lady friends at the fashionable French eating-house in Covent Garden, at the Opera House, the old Spring Gardens and other modish resorts. It puzzled Barbara how
he was able to show himself in public like this without being apprehended, till he explained to her that the longer his career of highway robbery continued unchecked, the higher would be the reward offered for him, and the more valuable he would become from an informer’s point of view. Therefore it paid those persons who were, without doubt, watching his movements with the calculating interest of a sportsman watching the form of a certain horse, to allow him to remain at liberty as long as possible. A murder committed by him on the highway would, of course, double his value, and this was one reason, he explained to Barbara, why he continued to kill horses instead of men.

  One night, after several weeks of bad weather, when travellers had been scarce and takings poor, Jackson said to Lady Skelton:

  ‘Barbara, you seem to me a person who would not baulk at an adventure because dangerous. I have had a blow set me that there is a farmer near here by the name of Cotterell, who has two hundred guineas laid by in his money chest. I intend to relieve him of them on Friday night. This is something different from the highway lay, but the goldfinches will be none the less good for that and, as it is so convenient for you, I would not care to leave you out of the affair if you have a mind to join me.’

  Barbara was startled. The Cotterells were tenants of Sir Ralph’s, prosperous and worthy folk. She knew them well. Many a time she had ridden by their farmhouse and had accepted a syllabub from beaming, curtseying Mrs Cotterell, had chatted graciously with her about her rheumatism or the weather or her latest grandchild. She had even honoured their house with her presence on the occasion of their eldest daughter’s wedding to one of Sir Ralph’s coachmen. To break into that peaceful home under cover of dark, in company with this desperate man, was a different matter to robbing strangers on the open road.

  Yet she was flattered that Jackson should want her help on this venture. And how curious it would be to allow her two lives, her tame, open, day life and her wild, secret, night life to impinge thus on each other! Her thirst for new sensations, assuaged but by no means quenched, urged her to accept.

  And so on that June evening, young Lady Skelton, as she paced between the roses in her formal garden, cast impatient glances towards the sunset sky. It had been raining during the day but now it had cleared, and a great bank of cloud, creamy yet flushed a little angrily with rose, was floating across the blue expanse. Here, even in the enclosed garden, there was a restless little wind, but above, in the evening sky where the clouds sailed by slowly and triumphantly, there was a serenity that seemed full of purpose. To the north there were long slithers of cloud softly grey as a pigeon’s wing; southward the trees were backed by a violet darkness.

  It seemed to her – her restless mind busy with thoughts of tonight’s project – a long time before the sky and garden were drained of colour. The summer’s day was so long adying. In the dusk the roses had faded to poignant ghosts of their glowing selves; only their perfume grew more insistent with the approach of night.

  It was not quite dark when Barbara set out – a bird still sang, the trees were like sombre lace against the colourless sky – but luckily Sir Ralph’s rule of early hours for his household held good for summer as well as winter. Those who wished to stroll out or hold tryst after sunset must do so by stealth. Barbara knew how to avoid porter and watchman, and make her way unobserved to the dark yew glades. Here she could relax her caution, give Fleury his head and gallop away to her lover and her other life.

  Jerry Jackson was waiting for her in the parlour of the ‘Leaping Stag’. The hostess brought in a tankard of mulled port as Barbara arrived. ‘To give you heart for your night’s business,’ she said, ogling Jackson and ignoring Barbara as was her wont.

  When she had left the room Barbara said, ‘I do not trust that woman.’ ‘Molly? Why she is a good friend to me.’ ‘All the more reason why she should not be my good friend. She knows that I am a woman. Though I have never unmasked in her presence she may guess by your attention to me that I am neither the worst favoured nor the most unkind of my sex. She has been your mistress. (Pray do not trouble to deny it. She must have been quite personable before her chin and bosom got out of bounds.) There is nothing here to make her dote on me!’

  Captain Jackson laughed uncomfortably. ‘Believe me, it’s a long time now since I gave Molly a green gown. She was a saucy enough baggage in those days, but she has given up tight-lacing and jealousy long since, like a sensible woman.’ He drew Barbara into his arms. ‘I’ll tell you this, sweetheart. Since I’ve had the enjoyment of your person there is not a town miss that can satisfy me. If I take them out when I am in London, why truly, it is more from duty than pleasure!’

  Barbara laughed at him. ‘What you do with your Bridewell beauties in London does not concern me, but if you are ever false to me here, then our knot is broken for ever.’ ‘Never fear that happening,’ he assured her. ‘You are likely to be made a hempen widow long before I tire of you.’

  She smiled to herself. How typical of him, she thought, never to imagine that she might be the first to tire!

  As they rode towards Cotterell’s farm he said, ‘You are not feeling timorous, my pretty lamb?’ Then, as she shook her head scornfully, ‘I should have known better than to ask you. The old fellow should give us no trouble. There is a great lubberly coward of a man-servant – he should be easy to dispose of – and one son at home. He may show more fight, but they will be asleep and easily surprised.’

  A rough cart-track led through the trees to the hollow where the farmhouse lay snugly with its outhouses round it, like a cat nursing its kittens. It was on the bank of a millstream and, as the two riders crossed a narrow bridge, their ears were stunned with the noise and rushing water. When they had passed over the bridge and speech became possible again, Jackson whispered to Barbara, ‘We will leave the horses here under this tree. My information is that there is a window at the back that is carelessly fastened and will let us into the kitchen. We will avoid the front door which is always strongly bolted. It is round there on our left.’

  Barbara nodded. (Mrs Cotterell curtseying in the porch. ‘You’re welcome, my lady. Will your ladyship take a sip of my elderberry wine?’)

  They dismounted. Jackson whispered, ‘Pistols ready?’ They walked stealthily towards the house. There was a growl at their feet, and a large black dog sprang out barking from a kennel against the wall of the house.

  ‘A pox on it! I was not told of the dog,’ muttered Jackson, and drawing his pistol made to strike at it with the butt.

  Barbara ran forward, ‘Prince! Hush, good dog. Good Prince. You know me. Quiet, good Prince!’

  The dog, reassured by the sound of its name and the soft, vaguely familiar woman’s voice, jumped up on her, paws on her stomach, licked up at her face, allowed himself to be fondled, subsided into his kennel with a rumble of halfhearted growls.

  Jackson said, ‘What! so you know this house?’

  Barbara nodded, enjoying his astonishment. ‘Tolerably well. Follow me and I will show you the way to the Cotterells’ bedroom.’

  The window, its rickety latch easily raised with a knife’s point, let them into a little outhouse or scullery and from there into a big stone-flagged kitchen. The fire was still alight; by its glow they could see the copper saucepans above the fireplace, rows of hams hanging from the rafters, a big wooden churn in a corner and, lying on a heap of rushes before the fire, the sleeping man-servant.

  With a cat-like swiftness Jackson leapt upon the recumbent figure, clapped a hand across his mouth, one on his throat and, before he could do more than give a half-strangled grunt, had, with Barbara’s assistance, securely gagged and bound him.

  Barbara beckoned to Jerry Jackson to follow her. They stood side by side at the foot of the wide shallow staircase. The last time that Barbara had been here the staircase had been thronged with jovial wedding guests. Barbara had stood a little apart in her gown of amber satin with the flowered petticoat and her plumed hat, her gratified host and hostess flanking her on either s
ide. Her beauty and her rich attire had drawn many respectful and admiring glances. Her gracious smiles had masked the boredom that she had felt at having to watch the revelry of these ‘base bumpkins’. Very prettily she had accepted a bride’s favour from comely, blushing Deb Cotterell, had dropped her sprig of rosemary in the sack possett as she drank the young couple’s health. The staircase and the hall had been adorned with wreaths of summer flowers; the sun had poured through the casement windows, there had been much merriment and chatter and laughter…

  Now all was dark and silent, except for the squeaks and tripping of mice behind the wainscoting. And she, the gracious lady of the manor, was standing here in man’s attire, hand on pistol butt, eyes straining upwards into the darkness of the house, a robber in robber’s company.

  What, she asked herself in a moment of utter bewilderment, had brought her to this rash and crazy act? A ruby heart lying like a drop of blood on a card table? Her own heart, frustrated, unfulfilled, beating like a wild bird in a cage?

  From the woods outside came the menacing hoot of an owl. Barbara shivered. She whispered to Jackson, ‘Come with me. I will show you their room.’

  They crept up the staircase, every creak sounding loud as a pistol-shot in their guilty ears, and along the passage. Barbara remembered perfectly where the bridal couple had been put to bed amid jests and laughter, and Mrs Cotterell saying, ‘We have given them our own bedchamber, your ladyship. As I said to my good man, “Let them have the best chamber and the best bed. A girl’s wedding night comes but once in a lifetime”.’

  Barbara paused before the door, raised the latch with a gentle hand. The room within was dimly illuminated by a rushlight. From behind the curtains of the big oak bed a mild snoring proclaimed that the Cotterells were enjoying their well-earned sleep. Barbara drew the curtains apart. Husband and wife lay there, placid and rosy as two grownup children. Jackson drew his pistol, whispered ‘Keep an eye on the door,’ and rapped sharply on the farmer’s shoulder.