To Sleep No More

by Deryn Lake

  ‘Perhaps I should attend, dressed as a gentleman. I have plenty of money.’

  ‘Yes, gained at the expense of others.’

  Once again Jacob caught her to him roughly. ‘Henrietta, stop it. There is something between us despite everything. An attraction that draws us close regardless of the barriers created by our backgrounds. If that is not so, why did you deny I was the highwayman? You said yourself that the words of betrayal would not come out.’

  It was true, everything he uttered, and as he bent to kiss her yet again, Henrietta felt an overpowering sense of oneness with him. ‘You’re right,’ she whispered. ‘I, too, am falling in love.’

  *

  The night was ebony streaked with silver, for a thousand stars danced in a sky dark as a rook, while a slim crescent moon sailed through the heavens like a schooner with hoisted sails. Despite the glory of the scene, nothing stirred; the whole of Mayfield lying asleep beneath the brilliance. Only a black-cloaked horseman stood motionless in the trees beside the road known as Pennybridge, listening to the sound of a coach starting its perilous descent of the steep and twisting road. In the starlight, Jacob Challice smiled.

  He already had his kerchief over his face because of the moonshine, and his hat was pulled so well down that only his eyes were visible. In this way he felt safe to step out at the moment when the coach slowed for the steep bend and call to the passengers to ‘Stand fast.’ For now he robbed with a purpose, truly believing that he and Henrietta Trevor had been brought together by fate and were destined to spend their lives as one. If he had to, Jacob would go out every night, widening his net, until he had sold enough jewels to allow him to make investments or buy a trading ship. Anything to acquire the veneer of respectability that would leave him free to court the eldest daughter of the late Squire of Glynde.

  The awaited sound came and Jacob heard the coachman call, ‘Whoa,’ and the horses’ feet begin to slip. He moved forward through the trees and was out on the road in a second, his pistols cocked and pointing, one at the coach box, the other at the window.

  ‘Stand fast,’ he shouted hoarsely and looked up to see if the coachman was armed. To his astonishment there was nobody there and no head appeared at the window in the door, which bore the Baker insignia. ‘Stand fast,’ Jacob called again, and the next second was knocked from his horse, which reared in fright, as something flew through the air and landed hard on top of him.

  The highwayman hit the ground with such a crunch that his breath flew from his lungs and he lay helpless and gasping, unable to protect himself, as his disguise was ripped from his face.

  ‘So it is you,’ said a voice. ‘I knew it all along.’

  He looked up, fighting to get air, to see Nicholas Grey leaning over him, pointing a pistol right at his heart. ‘One move, you bastard, and you’re a dead man. You’ve deceived me long enough.’

  As the Riding Officer stood up slowly, never wavering the direction of his aim and watching Challice through narrowed eyes, the highwayman regained his normal breathing and got to his feet.

  ‘I’m tired of you,’ Grey went on. ‘You have terrorised this road during the last few weeks and got away with it. Well, that’s at an end now. You will remain under arrest until you are taken for trial. You’re going to dance on the end of a rope, Challice.’

  Jacob broke into a drenching sweat, the very thought of such an end filling him with terror.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he exclaimed involuntarily.

  ‘Indeed!’ said Grey. ‘Now get into the coach. I’m taking you straight into custody.’

  As Challice turned his back to clamber aboard, Nicholas’s face changed. Much as the robber had been a thorn in his flesh, his strange grudging admiration of the man was only just hidden beneath the surface. He hated doing this and wished that Edward Jarvis had not rescued Francis Hammond, making it more essential than ever that somebody peached against the smugglers and that dragoons could be sent to catch them in the very act of loading their goods. Cursing his job, Lieutenant Grey stepped aboard, dropping his eyes just for a second to see the step.

  Now it was his turn to go flying as a fist like a hammer knocked the pistol from his hand and crashed onto his jaw in the same swing. Nicholas fell backwards onto the ground, to see Challice darting away across the road.

  ‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ he yelled, but Jacob ignored him and went sprinting on. Reaching in the pocket of his cloak for the other pistol, Nicholas fired towards the retreating figure. There, was no sound and it had vanished into the darkness by the time Grey struggled upright.

  ‘Curse the bastard,’ said Nicholas furiously. ‘I swear I’ll arrest him and enjoy it next time.’

  But he knew that Jacob had to act fast. Now that Lieutenant Grey had seen his face there were only two things left for Challice to do: get away from Mayfield as quickly as he could — or kill the Riding Officer before he could talk.

  *

  The banging on his front door in the middle of the night woke John Langham so abruptly that he had leapt out of bed and crossed to the window before he had fully recovered his senses. But once there, and having opened the casement, he woke up properly and leaned out, his nightcap slipping forward rakishly as he did so.

  A shadowy figure stood in the shaded porch, his face concealed by a large feathered hat. On hearing the window open the figure looked up and called out hoarsely, ‘Mr Langham?’

  ‘Yes,’ said John nervously. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Challice, Sir. Jacob Challice. I wonder if you might help me. I’ve been shot.’

  ‘Shot?’ John leaned forward further and, sure enough, could see that Challice was clutching his shoulder and a trickle of blood was running through his fingers and onto the paving stones below. ‘Wait a moment, I’ll come down.’

  He opened the front door to see Challice, white-faced, standing there swaying as he grasped his gushing wound.

  ‘Good God,’ said John, ‘who has done this to you?’

  ‘A smuggler,’ answered Challice tersely. ‘Can you help me, Sir?’

  ‘Of course. Come in and go through to my private room. I’ll send a servant to you with a drink.’

  Five minutes later John, fully dressed but minus his wig and wearing a linen cap on his head, came into his sanctum to find Challice lying on the couch, his eyes closed in pain and the blood seeping profusely through his coat. Much as the surgeon thought, the bullet was lodged firmly in the top of Jacob’s arm.

  ‘I’ll have to get that out, Challice. Unless I do so the wound will continue to bleed and you’ll be done for.’ Knowing what had happened previously, the surgeon hesitated before saying, ‘I have a method whereby you will feel no pain during the operation. No more than as if I was tapping you on the arm.’

  ‘Then use it,’ answered Challice a trifle impatiently, his granite face creasing as he pressed his lips together to stop himself from crying out.

  ‘Look at my watch as I swing it to and fro and listen only to my voice. Soon your eyes will grow tired and you will close them and after that you will feel me touching your shoulder. That is all you will feel, Jacob. I see that your eyes have closed. I will count slowly to twenty and when I reach that number you will be deeply relaxed but still able to hear me. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ answered Challice disjointedly.

  ‘Good.’ John took his knife and passed it again and again through a naked flame, finally plunging it deep into the flesh at the top of Jacob’s arm.

  ‘Do you feel me touching you, Jacob?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘A gentle touch, is it not?’

  ‘Very gentle,’ came the answer in that flat, slightly unearthly, voice.

  Saying no more, John Langham concentrated on drawing forth the bullet and draining the wound, which he smothered in a paste made from healing herbs before fixing a dressing in place. Then, stopping to wipe his brow, he considered his patient who still lay in the dream state, oblivious of all that had been done to him.
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br />   ‘Jacob,’ said John, ‘are you comfortable?’

  ‘Yes,’ came the whispered reply.

  ‘Then I want you to go back to long before you were in your mother’s womb. But not back to death itself. Go back, Jacob, to twenty years before you were born. Where are you?’

  ‘Nowhere. Floating in darkness. Nowhere at all.’

  John hesitated, with such an excellent subject as Jacob, was he risking the re-enactment of something as awful as the hanging? He chose his next words very carefully.

  ‘Jacob, I want you to go back four hundred years. Go back to that time. Are you still floating in darkness?’

  ‘No. I am in the woods, watching my friend.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Marcus de Flaviel, squire of Gascony.’

  At those words John had a most curious sensation. Something in his memory made a connection and he knew that he had heard the name before.

  ‘Tell me what is happening.’

  ‘I am sitting on a tree-trunk and my charge Colin ...’

  ‘Your charge?’

  ‘It is my duty to look after him because he is a simpleton with the mind of a boy. He is playing the gittern now. He plays like a god.’

  ‘Strange,’ thought John, ‘the very words I used to Lucy to describe the talent of Lieutenant Grey.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He is playing and I am listening and I am thinking that I both love and hate him.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Only because of Oriel his wife. We are lovers, she and I.’

  ‘Does this not worry Colin?’

  ‘He does not know. He is an innocent in every way.’

  ‘What will you do when he has finished playing?’

  ‘We will go home to the palace and have soup before the fire. And Oriel will laugh and listen to our adventures. She loves us both in entirely different ways.’

  ‘What is the name of the palace?’ asked John, feeling that the ultimate coincidence surely could not be possible.

  ‘The archbishops’.’

  ‘And where is it?’

  ‘In England, in Sussex. A place called Maghefeld.’

  ‘Is it the palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury?’

  ‘Yes. It is the archbishop who has employed me to look after Colin who is his brother.’

  ‘And how did you come to England?’

  ‘With my foster father, Sir Paul d’Estrange, knight of Gascony.’

  John Langham felt himself break out in a sweat. He knew the name. But Challice was continuing to speak.

  ‘But he is not just a knight, he is also a herbalist. He studied Arab medicine with a priest. He has also made beautifying preparations for Oriel’s mother, Margaret de Sharndene.’

  ‘Margaret de Sharndene,’ repeated John wonderingly. ‘So you knew her then?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ answered Jacob. ‘I know her well.’

  Forty-one

  The showers that had visited the valley and village for over a week had finally turned into rain. And a downpour at that. The central track that ran through the heart of Mayfield had become a sea of mud through which carts and carriages bumped with difficulty as their wheels squelched into the quagmire below. Frequently they got stuck, and then would come a general heaving and shoving as brawny men put their shoulders to the problem and lifted the conveyances out bodily, sending them on their way amidst a chorus of cheers. It was May time, it was England, and everyone accepted without grumbling that it was pouring with rain.

  In the midst of all the driving water the palace was an island of security. Because the old squire felt the cold so badly these days, fires had been lit in most of the living-rooms and Lucy fussed about making sure that everyone was comfortable and had enough to eat and drink, meanwhile piling the old man with so many rugs and shawls that all that could be seen of him was an angry old face peering out from its various wrappings, rather as a tortoise from its shell. He was in the seventy-ninth year of his life and quite as horrid and pernickety as everybody expected him to be.

  Because of the inclement day, most of the Bakers had gathered in the great withdrawing-room to play games, chatter and — in the case of Nizel — make soft pencil sketches of the assembled company. In tune with the national mania the other Bakers, in company with Henrietta, were gambling small amounts on cards; the old squire, Lucy, George and Philadelphia involved in a session of ombre, at which he appeared to be cheating, secreting the cards beneath his layers of wrapping. Philadelphia, quite pink in the face, obviously wanted to remonstrate but was constantly hushed by George who, today, wore a new wig of even vaster proportions.

  Thomas, declaring that country folk really should keep up with London fashions, was attempting to explain the intricacies of quadrille to Henrietta, loudly proclaiming that it would soon be the universal employment of life in fashionable circles, while his pupil, trying desperately hard to concentrate, thought about Jacob Challice.

  The serving of tea into this scene of domestic country life called for a break in activity and it was during this interlude, filled with the sound of the old squire chewing gummily upon a cake and noisily gulping his drink, that a servant entered discreetly and murmured something to him.

  ‘Speak up,’ shouted the old man, cocking his ear with his hand.

  ‘Lieutenant Grey has called to see you, Sir. He says it is a matter of some urgency and asks whether he may speak with you in private in the saloon.’

  ‘Damn the fellow! Just when I was winning at cards, too. Oh very well, show him up. I’ll come when I’ve finished.’

  Old Squire Baker swallowed the remains of his cake, reached for another, and gurgled down his cup of tea.

  ‘What can he want,’ he grumbled. ‘Lucy, what does he want?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father. Perhaps he has news of the smugglers — or the highwayman.’

  ‘The highwayman!’ said Henrietta, half rising. ‘Surely they cannot have caught him.’

  ‘Why not?’ answered Thomas, eyeing her narrowly. ‘He cannot terrorise the same route indefinitely and expect to get away with it. The fool should have moved on.’

  Her reply was drowned by the sound of the old man getting to his feet, scattering shawls to the four winds — or in this case the anxious hands of Lucy and Philadelphia — and taking George’s arm, at the same time calling for his stick. Nizel hurried up with it, dropping his sketchpad and pencils as he did so, and there ensued a few moments of total pandemonium, which hid the fact that Henrietta had dramatically lost colour and been forced to sit down again.

  With the disappearance of her father, Lucy attempted to restore order by insisting that everyone had more tea and Henrietta suddenly found herself with a cup in her hand, seated, unexpectedly, next to Nizel who was turning the colour of a peony at her very presence.

  In a frantic effort to cover her distress, Henrietta decided to engage him in conversation. ‘Nizel, we have scarcely spoken since I arrived. How are you getting on with your painting? I should so enjoy to see some of your watercolours.’

  ‘Th ... they’re not very good,’ he stammered, going puce and looking, for one ridiculous moment, the image of his father.

  ‘But nonetheless I should like to do so.’

  ‘Well ... er ... I keep them in Charity’s old room. If you would like to ...’ He stopped abruptly as it occurred to him that it was not the done thing at all to invite a young lady into a bedroom and went such a ghastly shade as a result that Henrietta wondered if he was going to have a fit.

  ‘Perhaps you could bring some of them down ...’ she started, but her sentence was never completed for from the saloon leading off the withdrawing-room came a roar like a bull.

  ‘What!’ the old man was shouting. ‘You let him get away! God’s wounds and zoonters, Grey, what is the world coming to?’

  There was a murmured reply and the conversation subsided once more. Henrietta’s heart began to thud with relief. Whoever it was that Grey had apprehended had manage
d to escape. Her eyes filled with tears, which were just beginning to brim over the edge, when the same servant re-entered and said, ‘Lieutenant Grey would like to see you, Miss Trevor.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. The Squire says he’d be obliged if you would step this way.’

  As she left the withdrawing-room with everyone watching, Henrietta felt fear replace every other emotion. She convinced herself during the few moments that it took to walk to the saloon, that she and Jacob had been observed meeting, that she would be taken back to Glynde covered in shame, that her family would be so shocked that the only course open to her would be to go abroad and take the veil.

  As she raised her hand to knock on the door it opened, and the old squire appeared, hobbling out on the arm of a servant.

  ‘He wants to speak to you on your own, my dear,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t let him bully you. He’s got some notion about Challice.’

  ‘Has he been caught?’ she whispered back.

  ‘He’s escaped but he’s wounded ... It will only be a matter of hours now before he’s recaptured. You’ve nothing to fear from a common highwayman.’

  He burbled something else but Henrietta was beyond listening, beyond hearing, as, with not a moment to recover herself, she swept her hoops through the door and stood for the second time in three days, looking into the pewter-coloured eyes of Nicholas Grey.

  Much to her amazement they were twinkling as he said, ‘Do sit down, Miss Trevor. I won’t keep you a moment.’

  Very stiffly she answered, ‘You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?

  ‘Yes.’ He perched on the edge of the writing desk, one booted leg swinging. ‘Yes, it is about the man you identified — or rather did not identify — here at the palace. I recently set a trap for the highwayman, and he walked right into it. It was the same man, Miss Trevor. You must have made a mistake.’