Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  But now one of the watching men does begin to make his way towards the Demon and my panicked thought is that I must get off this coach! But how? The way is blocked by the gasping leveret-keeper, who is climbing ponderously aboard by way of the hind boot, where the wool bales are stacked. He swings around and plumps down his huge arse so that he is facing the rear of the coach and settles his pannier on his knees again. And suddenly, with a resumption of our jinglings and creakings, we are off!

  There is a shout from below. The footman, if it is he, has missed his chance.

  I crouch behind the great slab of the leveret-keeper’s back, grateful for his bulk. And rolling on into the blue night, I allow myself to sneak a look at the receding road. I have every expectation of an approach by those cloaked horsemen, but the Demon continues on its rickety way with no one in pursuit. At length I begin to breathe more easily. I turn to gaze at the quiet beauty of the sky – it is thick with stars and wads of silver clouds. Soon I will be on a fast coach to Bristol and away on the tides to freedom.

  But all at once the wretched Demon lumbers to a stop.

  We have arrived at the foot of a sticky rise that resists our progress and we are called to get down in order to relieve the horses. They stand mud-spattered in the moonlight with a spectral glow rising from their steaming coats, while the driver orders the men to form up and push the helpless machine. I hang back from the other women as we climb the hill, listening to the coach being manhandled behind us and the skitter of the drovers’ dogs. One of the passengers does all the urging, while skidding and unskidding the brake, and the driver calms the galled horses. There are no hedgerows here, only the fields and a great swathe of woodland like a frontier.

  The coach arrives at last at the crest of the rise and the driver stands up in his box to call us to come aboard. But he hesitates – and my pulse starts to quicken. He has swung around to stare with obvious strain in his bearing at a bend that lies in the road ahead. Then we all become aware of the reason for his alert – the reverberant hoof-beats thudding towards us. Not highwaymen, surely? Why would anyone bother to hold up a ramshackle night coach? Still, I tear into the field at the side of the road, although it is only a feathery sea of young barley that gives little cover. The woodland being too far to reach, I throw myself down and burrow into the soft, damp crop. The hoof-beats come closer. I press into the cold earth, peering through the grassy veil of barley to see who it is that runs upon the coach.

  I can make out three horsemen. One of them, wearing a visor on his face, is pointing a pistol at the driver, and two others have come up on the rear of the coach.

  A muffled voice cries out, ‘Throw down your cargo, man!’ They are highwaymen after all.

  To my surprise, the driver decides to risk a flight. At a crack of the whip, his team leaps forward and the robber in front must yield to them. A shot rings out, but there is no stopping the coach, which takes off at a rattling pace. The highwaymen in turn spur their mounts onward and the drovers must call the dogs to heel. The dogs watch in a sulk as the pistol-men disappear over the brow of the next rise in pursuit of the Demon, and I clamber to my feet and brush down my damp skirts, feeling giddy with euphoria at my reprieve.

  My fellow passengers are flocking together on the road in indignation. An old man eventually makes himself heard. He insists, his words carrying in the stillness, that the coach was transporting cash concealed in bags of wool, placed on the run-down vehicle for disguise. This news delights me for now I see the mysterious men at the Saracen’s Head in a different light. They were interested in the Demon, not in me. At any event, the coach has disappeared with everyone’s luggage. The passengers set off in its wake, their strident review of the hold-up gradually receding into the night. I have no intention of being among their number when they totter into the next hostelry on the road, where an alarm will be raised, witnesses sought and questions asked. How far it is to Reading I can only guess, but I hope that I will reach an inn before daybreak and find a coach to take me onwards to Bristol – and to France.

  *

  As I make my way along the hushed highway, I try to picture myself undertaking successful employment as a seamstress in an enchanting French town with cooperative weather. But this exercise only reminds me how scanty is my knowledge of France. I can conjugate a handful of verbs. I have read Montaigne’s essays in translation. I know that the currency is the livre. It does not seem very much to go on.

  My shoes begin to pinch and my stride shortens to a trudge. With only the sound of my breath for company, a feeling of desolation begins to creep over me. The signs of life in the air – a cock’s crow and the smell of chimney smoke – make me nervous. I imagine local yeomen rising for the day with a stamping of feet and a rubbing of hands as if to say, let us get on with the task of bringing miscreants to book.

  I pine for Sedge Court, even though my life there was dogged by insecurity. I miss the assurance of its routines and the everyday tasks whose banality once irked me so. I can see in my mind’s eye the little flock bed in the corner of Eliza’s dressing room, where I slept. How could I have ever found it cramped and uncomfortable?

  And I wonder whether I ever had any insight into Eliza at all.

  Is she really as blind as she seems to the distancing effect that she has on her mother? Or does she employ incognisance as a tactic to protect herself from rejection? Everyone at Sedge Court sees the gulf between Mrs Waterland and her daughter. Apparently it has been present since Eliza’s birth. Hester Hart, our parlourmaid, says that Mrs Waterland had been long foiled in her attempts to hatch another child to follow Johnny, the heir. It was ten years before she managed to bring a second infant to term and then she was sorely disappointed at the out-come of her travails. Hester says that Eliza came into the world as a bawling babe with a face as red as a tomato and a persistent case of colic. Her squalls succeeded very quickly in driving Mrs Waterland from the nursery. Eliza never did master the art of sweetness. I, on the other hand, divined from the day I passed through the portal of Sedge Court, that my presence must always be a boost to the company.

  *

  The wind has risen. I can hear it moaning on the upland to the north like some phantom that has lost its way. Now it is bothering the new hawthorns in the hedges and their white blossom is set swirling like a flurry of unseasonal snow. There are times when things like the movement of shadows through tall grasses or a grief-stricken gust of air seem so vivid to me, almost alive, that I could take them for the shades of longpassed souls roaming among us. Do you think it possible that we might continue to exist in the universe in some form after we have left our bodies?

  I wonder this, because it seems to me that I can sense you. I feel you flowing all around me. It is an apprehension that lifts my spirits and gives me a sudden desire to shake off my self-pity and to acknowledge that Sedge Court is not Eden any longer. It is likely, in fact, that the people of that house are waking this morning to their jeopardous situation. Were not the affairs of the Waterlands badly bungled? I am remembering now that the recent news was very bad. Exceedingly bad. I am scrabbling for the details, but they won’t yet quite come to mind. Is it a collapse of financial means, though? Perhaps the servants have already been sent away and the fires are dead in the grates and the pantry empty of its victuals. I seem to feel that it may be as bad as that. In which case I am not the only one who is stranded. My heart trembles for Eliza.

  Birds are in flight now against the skimming clouds and there is a feeling in the air that all things are shifting and changing. Soon labourers will be abroad, and other travellers.

  I swerve from the road and make my way towards a stand of woodland on the crest of a hill. On reaching its shelter, I crawl under the skirts of a wide shrub. I have just enough strength to suck dew from its leaves to quench my thirst, and then nothing, not the bellowing of my empty stomach or the shivers of cold, nor my anguish, can prevent me from plummeting like a stone into the well of sleep.

  I wake
much later in the deep of the afternoon without any sense of being refreshed. My petticoat smacks of the gin that was spilled on me at the Saracen’s Head and my hair is horribly stale and my bruises ache. Just now a cowherd came to the field nearby, and when he was at its far end standing at piss I stole a slice of bread and a lump of cheese from the napkin that he had left tucked under a log away from the prying tongues of the cattle. I can only eat the food in tiny bites, because my throat is swollen; but that small amount of sustenance has lifted the fog from my brain and energised my legs. I will walk to the coast if I must. What can I do but see this course through to the end?

  *

  I have had a stroke of luck. I encountered on the road an old skinner, who was taking hides to market, and he gave me a lift in his cart. It was drawn by sluggardly mules, but I was glad to be off my feet and thankful, also, for his blighted eye. I uttered a silent hurrah when he turned his afflicted gaze to me and I saw that he would make a very poor witness.

  That’s how I am now, heartened by another’s ill fortune if it should turn to my convenience. The skinner offered to drive me all the way into Reading, but I excused myself on the outskirts before we passed through the turnpike. I diverted through trees on a rise that gave me a view of the road and the town – Reading seems to be built on a low ridge between two rivers – and settled down to wait for the night to unfold. I found a dew pond nearby and scooped handfuls of water into my parched mouth and slept again. On waking I saw that the moon had passed to its downward journey and I judged it an apposite hour to depart. My intention now is to locate the George Inn and try to connect with the early-morning coach to Bristol.

  I made my way to the highway on a chalk path glowing in the moonlight. It brought me out at a curve in the road, just as a herd drove past a gaggle of geese. I joined their train and followed them across a bridge, then leftwards on to an unpaved, unlit thoroughfare lined with burly buildings. Now up ahead I sense light and movement.

  A complicated black-and-white frontage turns out indeed to be the George, its yard already bristling with business. But my exultation at this discovery is short-lived. The book-keeper here has informed me, after allowing himself a pause to brush the front of his waistcoat, which is spoiled with snuff, that the day coach to Bristol is full inside and out. Can this be true? Does my tattered appearance tell against me? Or am I simply riddled with suspicion and mistrust?

  I have dragged myself to a seat in the inn’s vestibule and sit staring in a glazed manner at the foxes’ brushes fastened on either side of the entrance. Above the lintel hangs an arrangement of horns and crossed swords. My recent assertion that I would stride to the coast if I must is nothing but empty bluster, of course. I am so weak I could barely cross the yard.

  A boy pushes past bearing a tray of hot, sliced ham and disappears through curtains that must lead to the dining room.

  Am I really capable of living like this from now on? Scrambling along muddy fields under cover of night, endlessly on the move, edging around the perimeters of civilised places to the constant drone of fear and hunger, with every fibre painfully alert to exposure?

  Oh, Lord, how shall I proceed? The only certainties are that I cannot sit on this bench for ever; and that I was right to dread the loss of Sedge Court, for without it I have nothing and I am nothing. The waiter reappears with his empty tray. I am tantalised to the point of giddiness by the savoury aroma that lingers in the vestibule. I have money to pay for scrapings of ham, but it seems foolish to squander even a farthing of it while I do not know how far my limited funds must stretch.

  But so unbearable is my hunger, it drives me to seek the dining room. It is a low-ceilinged place tarnished by tobacco smoke where busy lads pass to and fro with trays of tankards and pipes. Breakfast has been set up on a long table that is already under assault by ravening travellers and their clashing forks. In my frantic condition of body and mind, I struggle to stay on my feet, but somehow, in one swift movement, I abscond with several slices of ham clutched in my hand and flee into the vestibule.

  I blunder up a flight of stairs, jostling travellers descending from their chambers, and press into the dimness of the landing’s return. I expect to be apprehended by servants of the inn, but nothing will deter me from gobbling the greasy ham. The meat tastes heavenly. Were my mouth not stuffed I would laugh out loud in triumph, for I find there is a thrill in carrying off this theft without a consequence.

  The landing overlooks the vestibule and I have a useful view of its activities. It is filling now with passengers preparing for departure, but no one runs from the dining room on behalf of the ham.

  So intent am I on guzzling, it takes perhaps a minute or two for me to realise that I am not alone in my hideaway. A lad of about thirteen or fourteen has crept to my side. He grins at me and whispers from behind his hand in the style of a conspirator, ‘How are you, madame? All right?’ He has a pasty complexion with a downy smudge on his upper lip and bright eyes. His scrunched-up face looks familiar to me, but I cannot place it. He widens his eyes in wordless entreaty, and I offer him the remaining slice of ham.

  He crams it into his mouth and the two of us stand in silence, chewing.

  He wipes his fingers on a gaping coat that is dark blue with a hint of the military about it and doffs his shaggy high hat, at which his wild hair springs free. He says, ‘Your humble servant, madame,’ and describes with the hat an intricate arabesque. As he bows, an odd pendant falls free of his neck and dangles on a leather thong. It looks like a rusty nail.

  A self-important clamour out in the yard announces the arrival of the coach.

  The lad asks, ‘Do you take the Bristol stage, madame?’ I explain that I would if I could, but the day coach is full. He sighs, ‘Ah yes, that too is my difficulty,’ and smoothes the nap of his hat with gnarled, thin fingers that look like they have already worked through three lifetimes. His voice is familiar to me, too. Is not this the youth who sat next to me for one or two stages before the highwaymen came and, in fact, caused my gin to spill when he came aboard the Demon near Slough?

  A servant has thrown open the George’s main entry door to accommodate the flow of passengers, those departing and those coming in with faces creased and costumes crumpled from the journey. A bell begins to toll dolorously to mark the hour. The Bristol coach will soon depart. The boy is speaking to me, but I cannot make out his words.

  Because there is a roaring in my ears. It is caused by the blood rushing through all my channels to the aid of my heart, which has nearly stopped dead. Is this what it feels like to be hit by a thunderbolt? The pain of a jumping fire followed by stone-cold shock?

  Advancing into the vestibule below is terror made flesh. I am too horror-stricken even to whisper his name. The sight of him produces in me an overwhelming desire to evacuate my bowels like a sheep being driven into the killing shed.

  I was right to be so frightened at every turn in the road. He was always coming after me. He will enjoy bringing me before the watch, he will have made it his personal business to do so. But most of all he will lap up the spectacle of my hanging, I know that without a doubt.

  In he saunters, pulling off his hat, and looks about, oozing confidence, and turns to usher someone forward …

  My God, has the shock of seeing him robbed me of my senses? I could swear that Eliza Waterland has followed him into the vestibule. There she stands in her three-cornered hat and her blue riding habit. Eliza!

  I am too far distant to make out the expression upon her face, but she seems the picture of misery. Her arms are wrapped around herself as if she is very cold or is trying to hold herself together. What is she doing here? It perplexes me utterly to know why she should embark on this chase. Is it to satisfy her curiosity regarding my disappearance? How I wish I could run to her now and reassure her and bring her away from the monster at her side. It anguishes me to see her with him. But I cannot reach her without signing my own death warrant.

  A voice penetrates my daze: ‘Mada
me! Do you hear me? I know a way to ride that Bristol coach, full or no. I could be putting you on to it for only a little shilling.’

  I struggle to tear my gaze from the friend of my childhood.

  ‘Sixpence then,’ the lad says. ‘I would have a poor time of it if all the world were as hard as you, my lady.’

  ‘Very well,’ I manage to reply in shaking tones, ‘but I must sidle out of here unobserved.’

  ‘Nothing easier, for you have a casement at your disposal.’ The lad pivots on his heel and darts towards the landing window. ‘The window opens, madame, do you observe, and we are small enough to slip through.’

  I clamber after him over the sill and down to the outdoor promenade of the first-floor gallery. While the driver and the guard are bustling up on to the box of the coach in their crimson coats, my rescuer and I descend fleetly the side stairs into the yard. Just as the coach makes its wallowing start, the lad jumps up quickly on a hind wheel, which raises him so that he may grasp with one hand the boot. He beckons me with the other. Following his example, I step up lightly without pause on an ascending spoke of the wheel and gain a purchase with my foot on the iron rim.

  ‘Allez, madame, allez!’ The lad catches my arm and then we are the both of us dangling, but only for an instant. We flop over the side of the boot onto its cargo.

  As we balance on hands and knees upon swaying boxes and barrels, I glimpse a familiar silhouette in the doorway of the George. Has my escape been noticed? I scramble to hide among the roof passengers, but they resist us.

  ‘Spongers!’ one of them shouts.

  ‘Cheating dog!’ another growls. ‘We will throw you off!’

  But the lad forces a place for us at the rail even as a woman screeches in the direction of the driver, ‘Hie, we’ve intruders among us!’ To which the lad returns, ‘Have a heart, madame, we will pay directly.’

  In any event, the driver is not inclined to pull up now, since we have passed on to the High Street and the coach is gathering speed. Reading’s half-timbered dwellings and crooked chimney pots rattle by at a clip.