Rebeccah and the Highwayman

by Barbara Davies

  Whatever its cause, the disturbance seemed to be spreading. The shouts and curses were more widespread and growing louder.

  “Make way,” came a man’s shout, as horses whinnied and people screamed insults.

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” droned Reverend Rewse from close by. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  “Make way, I said,” shouted the man again. “We have a message for the City Marshall. Let us through.” The clatter of shod hooves and ironbound wheels on cobblestones drew nearer.

  “Get back, you whoresons!” screeched a fishwife. “You’re blocking my view.”

  “We are on the Queen’s business,” came the man’s shout again, this time a little closer. “Make way there, I say. Make way.”

  “The Queen?” muttered someone. “Did he mention the Queen?”

  “Lord, let me know mine end,” continued the pious drone of the Ordinary.

  “What’s going on?” That was Minshul’s voice, coming from beside Kate.

  If she gave voice to her slender hopes, would they vanish like morning mist? “Hanged if I know.”

  “Is it a reprieve?” called someone. And at the question, the crowd exploded into noise. “Reprieve, reprieve, reprieve,” they chanted, their joy obvious. Then, “Who for, who for, who for?”

  “Now for the Lord’s Prayer,” said the Ordinary. “Say it with me, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven -’”

  The clip clop of hooves and clatter of wheels stopped abruptly and Kate’s keen hearing picked up the sound of a carriage door opening.

  “My name is Wyatt,” shouted the man’s voice, “and I have here an order for the City Marshall.”

  “‘Hallowed be Thy name -’”

  “Can’t it wait until after the hanging?” came a testy voice, presumably belonging to the Marshall.

  “No it cannot, for if it does a pardoned woman will hang.” (Kate’s heart skipped a beat.) “Don’t stand there like a fool, fellow. This is the Queen’s business. Read this document at once.”

  “Thy kingdom come -“

  The cart sagged beneath her feet, and Kate struggled to keep her balance.

  “Thy will be … Young woman.” The Ordinary sounded scandalised. “What do you think you’re doing? Get away from those prisoners at once!”

  A familiar, enticing fragrance met Kate’s nostrils and she blinked as she tried to identify it. But it can’t be! “Rebeccah?”

  For a moment she feared she was dreaming, then a hand clasped hers in wordless reply. Which was just as well, since at this latest development the noise from the crowd had grown deafening and Kate could hardly hear herself think.

  “I won’t tell you again, Madam,” screeched Reverend Rewse. “Get away from her! … Constables!”

  “Leave Mistress Dutton alone, sir,” bellowed Wyatt. “I asked her to point out the prisoner. If that is Catherine Milledge, then she is the one to be pardoned … Come on, man!” He must be addressing the Marshall. “Free her at once or you’ll answer to the Queen.”

  The touch of Rebeccah’s hand disappeared, then something deliciously warm and curvaceous eased behind Kate. Fingers plucked at her hood.

  “What are you doing, Madam?” cried the Ordinary.

  “It is as Mr Wyatt said,” came the Marshal’s voice again, no longer testy but resigned. “Release her at once. It is the Queen’s orders that Catherine Milledge be granted a conditional pardon. She is to be transferred into the custody of Mistress Rebeccah Dutton. … I presume that is you, Madam?”

  “Yes, sir,” came Rebeccah’s voice.

  “They are pardoning Blue-Eyed Nick,” cried the mob in growing delight.

  “The Queen is pardoning the highwaywoman?” “Are you sure?” “They’ve pardoned the snaffler?” “Blue-Eyed Nick’s neck is safe!” “Gawd Bless our good Queen Anne.”

  The hood was whisked from Kate’s head and she blinked the dazzle away. Next came the halter. She twisted round and gazed at Rebeccah in astonishment.

  Rebeccah smiled at her. “Told you I would come,” she mouthed.

  “Cut her loose.” The Marshall brandished an important-looking document bearing the royal seal.

  The Under-Sheriff’s officer who had escorted Kate to the gallows climbed up and sliced the ropes binding her wrists and elbows with a knife. She half jumped, half fell out of the cart, then turned and assisted Rebeccah down.

  Kate was about to head for the coach Rebeccah had pointed out when she realised that Josselin was standing just a few yards from her. Rage replaced his look of stunned disbelief, and his face suffused with blood until he looked quite apoplectic. A fit of hilarity overtook her and she felt the urge to thumb her nose at him. Then the urge died, for she had just caught sight of Alice - the widowed landlady’s face was a mask of confusion and heartbreak.

  For a moment, Kate could not fathom it. Alice should be pleased she was alive, shouldn’t she? Then it dawned on her. The red-haired landlady had just seen her hated rival save Kate from the gallows and now they were about to leave together. As far as Alice was concerned, she had lost Kate just as surely as if death had taken her. Kate couldn’t help but feel pity for her.

  “Come on! This way.” Rebeccah shoved Kate towards the waiting coach and four.

  “Have they saved you, Kate?” It was Minshul’s muffled shout, and Kate glanced back to the cart where the big man still stood, blinded by his hood.

  “Ay,” she called. “I am to live another day.”

  “You always did have the Devil’s luck!” But there was no rancour in his tone. And beside him Jemmy Powell, who had opted to go hoodless, swayed and grinned and mouthed something that might have been “Bollocks!”

  Kate raised a hand in farewell. “God Speed, my friends.”

  “Hurry,” said the younger woman. “For I do not wish to witness what they are about to do here.”

  Then they were at the carriage, and Kate was hauling herself inside, blinking when she found herself face to face with Rebeccah’s mother and Mary. Rebeccah piled in after her and pulled the door closed.

  “But what about Mr Wyatt?” asked Mrs Dutton. “Are we not to wait for him?

  “He will have to make his own way back to Windsor in any case.” Rebeccah rapped her knuckles on the ceiling and yelled, “Home, Robert.”

  The coach’s lurch pinned Kate to her seat, as it began its slow progress back the way it had come. It had gone barely thirty yards when a great sigh seemed to go through the surrounding mob, followed seconds later by a rousing cheer.

  Minshul and the others must have embarked on their journey to the next life, thought Kate, chilled by just how close she had come to accompanying them. She exchanged a wordless glance with Rebeccah. And when a small hand slipped itself into hers, she held on tight, as though her life depended upon it.

  Mary knelt beside Kate’s bare feet and dunked a clean rag in the basin.

  When they had arrived back at the house in St James’s Square, Rebeccah had sailed past her smiling sister with a brief, “We are very well as you can see, Anne, I will talk to you later,” and started up the stairs.

  Barely stopping in the hall to hand her wrap and gloves to a waiting Nancy, and declaring loudly that as Kate was assigned to her custody she would take care of her herself (“And besides, Mama will no doubt wish to change out of her travel-stained clothes and regale Anne with the details of our trip to Windsor.”), Rebeccah had taken no time in urging both Kate and Mary up the stairs to her bedchamber.

  There, the young gentlewoman gasped when the full extent of the sores on Kate’s ankles was revealed, and gasped again at the condition of her knee breeches. Ignoring Kate’s joke that they would have been far worse had she kept her appointment with the noose, Rebeccah had summoned Will and instructed him to fetch a spare pair of his own breeches - he need not worry, she would recompense him handsomely.

  When the footman returned, she bundled the garment into Kate’s arms, shoved her into the little dressing room she had
last occupied under very different circumstances, and told her to change. Kate did so willingly. A neatly darned bullethole marred one thigh, but Will’s breeches were still a distinct improvement on those she had arrived in. Once Kate was more fragrantly attired, Rebeccah asked Mary to take a look at Kate’s ankles …

  “That was closer than I would have liked,” said Rebeccah, now she had time to draw breath.

  Kate threw her an amused glance. “It was closer than I would have liked too.”

  Rebeccah grimaced. “I did not intend you to go through such an ordeal. If things had gone to plan we should have arrived in good time. But…” She raised her hands and let them drop.

  “Nevertheless,” said Kate, smiling warmly, “you arrived in the nick of time, and I am forever in your debt.” The younger woman’s cheeks pinked at the sentiment.

  “This may sting,” warned Mary, wringing out the excess water and dabbing at the welts on the highwaywoman’s ankles.

  That was something of an understatement. A hiss escaped Kate’s gritted teeth, and Rebeccah hurriedly sat beside her on the bed and took her hand.

  “I was going to ask you to pinch me, to see if I was still dreaming,” managed Kate, “but Mary’s attentions have convinced me that I am wide awake.”

  The maid threw her an apologetic glance, dunked the rag once more, then resumed her dabbing. “A moment more. Then I have a salve that will help.”

  “Ow!” But it was Rebeccah who had exclaimed aloud not Kate.

  “Sorry.” Kate released Rebeccah’s hand at once.

  She flexed her fingers. “You have a grip like a vice.” Then she smiled and took Kate’s hand in hers once more.

  Mary looked from one woman to the other and lifted an eyebrow. Kate arched her own eyebrow in response. The corner of the maid’s mouth twitched, and she resumed her dabbing. “Nearly done. … There.” She reached for a pot of foul-smelling paste and began to apply it to the sores. Almost at once, the pain began to ease.

  Kate exhaled with relief. “You’re an angel, Mary.”

  “A saint’s more like it,” muttered the maid, earning a goodnatured “Tsk!” from her young mistress. “There. All done.”

  She put the lid on the pot of salve then rose and started tidying her things away. Kate sat quietly, content just to hold Rebeccah’s hand and adjust to the realisation that she had a future once more.

  “Shall I have these … things laundered, Madam?” Mary was pointing at the stained breeches lying on a chair.

  “Please do. Then that will be all for now. … Look to your own needs, Mary, for you must be as weary after the journey as the rest of us.”

  “Thank you, Madam.” The maid curtseyed, and exited, carrying the breeches at arm’s length in a way that made Kate chuckle rather than take offence.

  “She’s a character,” she said.

  Rebeccah nodded. “Irreplaceable … And she knows it too, unfortunately.”

  Silence fell. Now the shadow of Tyburn that had loomed over her for so long had been lifted, Kate felt oddly weightless. Had Rebeccah’s thigh not been pressed against hers, her soft hand anchoring her, she felt she could have floated away.

  “How are you?” came a soft voice.

  Kate turned and smiled at Rebeccah. “I feel … strange,” she admitted. Then she broached the subject that was bothering her. “I confess, I am also concerned that my now being your servant will affect … things between us.”

  “Kate, you are not my servant!” protested Rebeccah. “The pardon’s condition is merely that you must obtain employment with my family, which is not the same thing at all.”

  “Oh.” Kate blinked then said slowly, “Then what job do you have in mind for me? Are you in the market for a highwayman?” She chuckled at Rebeccah’s expression. “I didn’t think so. Whatever it is, my dear, I hope it can hold my interest. For the last thing I would want after all the trouble you have taken on my behalf is to be tempted back into my bad old ways.”

  Rebeccah cocked her head to one side and looked at her. “Will you miss being Blue-Eyed Nick?”

  “In truth?” Kate rubbed her neck where the halter had chafed it. “No. For of late it had begun to pall. And also my profits had dropped alarmingly.” She grinned. “For I was more interested in the kisses of a pretty young woman with green eyes than I was in her valuables.” She lifted Rebeccah’s unresisting chin, and kissed her on the lips. “I still am.” She pulled Rebeccah onto her lap and kissed her again, more deeply. For a moment, both women lost themselves in the pleasant activity, then pulled back, looked at one another, and smiled.

  “So what job would you like to do?” asked Rebeccah, still looking flushed and sounding breathless.

  “Ah. That is the difficulty. For I fear I those skills I have are of little usefulness.”

  “I cannot believe that.”

  Kate thought for a moment and began to list them on her fingers. “I can sing,” she said.

  Rebeccah gave a delighted smile. “Really? I cannot wait to hear you.”

  “And sew … but I am not the girl I was at 13 - mantua-maker would no longer suit me, alas. … And I kiss tolerably well, or so I have been told.” She gave the younger woman a sly glance.

  “Indeed, I can attest to that.” Rebecca became thoughtful. “But you do yourself an injustice if you believe those are your only skills. ” Kate looked a query. “I’m serious. The journey back from Windsor was fraught, but it gave me time aplenty to consider possibilities. Tell me, Kate. As Blue-Eyed Nick, did you not outride, outshoot, and outfence the best of them?”

  A memory of swords clashing in the moonlight, and of the Earl of Avebury flinging Kate’s winnings at her surfaced. “Ay,” she said, without false modesty.

  Rebeccah’s face lit up. “Well then, I believe I have come upon the very thing. Mr Ingrum hasn’t yet got his hands on the money Papa left Anne, so before he does I will persuade her to put a portion of it towards the Dutton Fencing Academy. You will be its master.”

  Kate blinked at her. “A fencing academy?” Rebeccah nodded. “With a woman as its master?” Rebeccah nodded again. “It has never been done before.”

  “Until now.”

  “But such an establishment would be considered outrageous,” objected Kate. “Especially once it got around that its master was not only female but had once been a notorious highwaywoman.”

  Green eyes twinkled. “And it would get around - we would make certain of it.” Kate snorted. “For Blue-Eyed Nick would be an irresistible attraction, Kate. Potential students would flock to the school, just to satisfy their curiosity, and once they had seen you fight they would be clamouring to sign up. Word would spread. Being taught to fence by you would soon acquire acachet.”

  Kate gave her a doubtful look. “I’m not that good!”

  “Practice makes perfect. … Come now. It’s just the thing. For you and for the Duttons, for we would all profit from its success.”

  “Assuming it is a success.”

  Rebeccah let her smile speak for itself.

  Kate settled the other woman more firmly on her lap while she mulled over the idea. The more she thought about a fencing academy, the more it appealed to her. “We would need to hire at least one other master,” she said at last, “but I know just the man. His name is Berrigan. He’s a clergyman, and I sense he has grown tired of his current employer.”

  “A clergyman and an ex-highwayman.” Rebeccah clapped her hands together. “Better and better.”

  “And if we are going to be novel, I could take women as pupils as well as men.”

  “Only the plain ones,” warned Rebeccah, “for I would not want any to catch your eye.”

  Kate laughed. “That would be unnecessary, for I have eyes only for you.” The look that brought her was one she was beginning to recognise. It meant “Kiss me.” So she did, thoroughly.

  “That’s settled then,” said Rebeccah when they parted at last. She gave a satisfied sigh, though whether its cause was the kiss or Ka
te’s agreement about their new business venture, Kate was unclear.

  They sat in contemplative silence, Kate stroking the back of Rebeccah’s hand with her thumb and thinking about the surprising future that had suddenly opened up in front of her. Then something else occurred to her.

  “There is another matter that must be addressed, my dear. But you have already done so much for me …”

  Rebeccah looked at her. “What is it?”

  “Where am I to live? For I cannot go back to Alice’s, that much is certain.”

  “Not if you want to escape with your hair still attached,” agreed Rebeccah. She thought for a moment. “I will have to ask Mama, but I see no difficulty. There’s a spare room in the attic - that will surely serve for now. And once the fencing academy is up and running, it would make sense for you to have rooms there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rebeccah’s brow creased. “If it proves as successful as I think it will, you will be spending all your time there, Kate. Perhaps I should find some reason to be there often too.” Her brow cleared. “With Mr Edgeworth’s help - he’s Papa’s clerk,” she explained, “perhaps I could learn to handle the academy’s administrative side. For I cannot imagine it would involve anything beyond my capabilities. Then you and I would have the perfect excuse to be in one another’s company throughout the day.”

  “That sounds a tempting prospect,” agreed Kate. But what about the nights?

  Rebeccah was not like Alice, though. She was still green in the ways of love, and a respectable gentlewoman besides. Kate could not ask her to share the pleasures of her bed without the promise of more. And indeed, she realised, wondering when exactly it had happened, the prospect of settling down with this young gentlewoman for the rest of her life had become not only irresistible but necessary to her sense of wellbeing.

  She felt her way carefully. “Would not your family mind you being involved with the academy and with me? For surely they have plans to marry you off to some gentleman and breed more Duttons.”