The Accidental Highwayman

by Ben Tripp

  Then Willum also descended from the canopy; in his arms was a pair of shining Faerie wings similar to his own. He was furious.

  “You see these?” he cried. “Cut off! Those pixie brutes! They’re torturing folk now.”

  With that, he spoke some words in a foreign tongue and performed the fire-comprimaunt upon the wings, and they disappeared in a puff of green smoke. Then he flew into the wagon, pulling his hair. For her part, Morgana wept.

  “It is my fault that these good folk have died,” she said. “Didst I but marry as my father demands—”

  I put my arm around her and spake useless words of comfort for a time, and then Lily did the same, to better effect, pointing out that lives given for a noble cause were never lost, but a cause abandoned was no better than an unmarked grave for those who died in its name. There’s wisdom to be found in all heads. Lily was as foolish as I, but only in ways that would cause trouble to herself, never others.

  With such thoughts, and with lamentations for the feyín dead, my mind was occupied. There were thousands of brail-moths flittering about us—what I had at first taken for smoke was but the dust of their myriad wings.

  Now I bent my eyes upon the ground, and there saw signs of struggle all about—the moss underfoot was torn, stems of wood flowers broken, leaves cut and pierced as if by miniature knives, which they may well have been. And the pixie arrows were everywhere. Even as I looked upon them, I saw they were turning, becoming needles, as from a pine tree. Only the most observant eye would mark them, and wonder how came pine-leaves to lie beneath a stand of chestnuts.

  Then a glitter of bright metal caught my attention. I strode to the place, some distance from the wagon. There upon a natural cushion of moss lay a silver coin with the head of an unfamiliar king upon it. I stooped to look at it.

  “What found you there?” Morgana called, dashing the tears from her face.

  “Someone dropped a bit of foreign money,” said I, reaching down to pick it up.

  “Touch it not!” Morgana cried, and thrust out her arms. A wave of force thumped into me, and the nearest moths were sent a-tumble, with me after them. I flailed through the branches and alighted upon my head twenty paces from where I’d begun.

  “’Tis a sigilantum,” she said to her magical companions, who had fluttered over to see. Lily made her way to where I was to see if I was fatally injured, but as I’d landed on my pride, I wasn’t badly hurt. I was, however, infuriated. It was one thing to fling caprizels about at her foes; quite another to loose them at me.

  “What in heaven’s name is a sigilantum? It looks more like a silver crown to me,” I complained, getting to my feet. “Except for the king’s prodigious periwig.”

  Morgana stood over the object, panting, her cheeks flushed. “That pirate witch the Duchess has marked it.”

  “You sense enchantment upon it?”

  “No, and that’s why I am certain it’s a sigilantum. They bear no trace of magic. But there can be no other reason for this coin to be here. It’s manling-size, so it’s gobling silver, and there have been no goblings here. It was left in this place to be discovered by you.”

  “Pray tell, what harm would come of retrieving it?”

  “Sigilanta allow someone in Faerie to observe the progress of something in the manling world without having to employ spies or do a ruckins. No enchantment is required; the object merely has to come from Faerie. With that in your pocket we’d always be found out. That cunning pirate! She knows a manling can never leave money lying upon the ground. But her minions must be somewhere near, lying in wait; we must fly!”

  “I just flew,” I complained, and only then did she recall what she’d done.

  “Forgive me, Kit,” said she. “I know not—”

  “You know not your own powers,” I concluded for her. “I, on the other hand, am becoming well aware of them.”

  In less than a minute the whole company was piled into the wagon, and I got Midnight up to a good speed, despite the burden he pulled. In ten minutes we were well away from the wood, and by sundown we’d gone up every crooked lane and cart path in the countryside. I guided our craft through pig-yards to perfume it and brooks of swift water to render it scentless, and performed every dodge that came to mind like a large and lumbering fox endeavoring to escape the hounds. In the end, Theseus himself could not have found us afoot, though he raveled all the string in England.

  The question uppermost in my mind was most disquieting: How had the Duchess known we would pass through that place? It was no good scattering thousands of coins across the countryside on the chance we’d pick one up, for anybody might do so, and then she’d be tracking all sorts of people she wasn’t looking for. So it wasn’t thus. That coin was meant to be found only by one of our party, which meant that somehow the Duchess knew where we were, or what our route was.

  * * *

  It was twilight when we heard the shrill scream of gryphons, at a height so great we could not see them. I halted the caravan against an immense haystack and scooped straw over the roof to conceal it from above; Midnight was so weary he could not take another step. We cowered in the hay and listened to the faraway wailing of the creatures circling in the sky.

  They came near sometimes, and then drew far away, and eventually there was silence, except for the crickets. We spent the night without fire, and none but the horse slept a wink. Even poor mad Cornelius knew there was some fell pursuit behind us. He thought it was the Turks, come to take away the dancing-girls.

  For the last couple days of our journey, we rolled along with a tarpaulin of rotten sail canvas over the roof of the wagon to disguise it from above, and only took it down to enter the towns where we would perform.

  Chapter 29

  THE COMPANY SOON TO PART

  THE CLOSER we drew to the coast, the more bees went back and forth, until the wagon began to look like a rolling bee skep. These insects made superb messengers, because not only were they impervious to threats or bribery, they were also all but impossible to follow. For absolute security, they could even be instructed to pass messages by relay, so that an entirely different bee would appear before the recipient. But there came a time when the sheer volume of bees was suspicious. Willum, Gruntle, and Morgana held council on this, and concluded that their frail anonymity could not last much longer.

  It was agreed that Puggle’s Spectacular should do one final performance that evening, and then we would make for the coast as fast as we could, abandoning our subterfuge. We would travel just as swiftly as Midnight could bear, even leaving the caravan behind, if necessary, in the final stretch of the journey.

  At the docks, the company would part ways. I would sign up as crew on a ship to the Americas, if I could get such a berth, and see Midnight joined a grand stable. Lily, for her part, had vowed to return her mad old uncle to the nursemaid Prudence Fingers—consequences be d___d. At least she’d enjoyed some time with him again, even if he had not known he was enjoying time with her, and he had spoken fondly of her memory. She was resigned to the fact that he would never recognize her in person again.

  It was not clear what Fred the baboon’s plans were; when the topic arose he would scratch himself and blink. Lily volunteered to take him with her, but if she went to gaol for kidnapping, his fate would be grim. He might well end up as a stole or hearthrug.

  Morgana’s future, I could not guess, nor did I wish to think upon it. It filled me with fear. Though I stared at it for hours, the borigium map told me nothing. The sketch of the castle gate was next on our path, whatever it meant.

  * * *

  We arrived at our penultimate destination, a market town of unhealthy countenance in a marshy place that eventually drained into the River Mersey. The air was humid and the clouds low and weighted with lead. It matched the somber mood of our little company, except Uncle Cornelius, who was in good spirits because we were all going to Calais, in his mind, for a last tour of the Continent. We rolled up to a place of low, damp fields, beyond
which was the city. There we studied the prospect, looking for a likely spot to stage our show outside the town; the market was within, but I didn’t like the notion of putting gates and guards between ourselves and rapid escape.

  “Look at those castle walls and turrets, Harry,” said Cornelius, to the fellow he imagined me to be. “Look at the height of ’em! We’ll not cower outside. Tonight we perform behind those walls, and if this were Troy, we could smuggle in a dozen warriors through the gates. Instead we’ll play our best, and if we’re lucky we can smuggle a dozen maidens out!” With that, he winked and jabbed me in the ribs with a ribald elbow.

  “Oh, Uncle,” said Lily, at once sad and fond, her head poking out between us through the front door of the wagon.

  Morgana joined her there and remarked, “If you can smuggle but one maiden out, I shall be content.” So saying, she didn’t look very content. She could not meet my eyes.

  For my part, I noted that the gate in the wall of the city was equipped with a portcullis—very like the entrance to a prison.

  We decided to remain outside the walls until near the hour of our demonstration, and to depart shortly afterward, to travel through the night. So we had a few hours of time to spend waiting. Each of us was withdrawn and brooding. The feyín were so anxious, Gruntle worried his wings would fall out. Even Uncle Cornelius sensed the mood, and took to polishing the woodwork inside the wagon.

  Morgana drifted past me while I was inspecting Midnight’s hooves, and whispered, “I would speak with you alone.”

  “I’m at your Royal Highness’s every beck,” I said, sincerely. I had seen the great respect her people showed her, and it humbled me.

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped.

  I was entirely bewildered, for this sort of forth-and-back had become routine: I’d say the wrong thing, and then, to correct my error, I would say nothing, which was the wrong thing to do; and round it went, back to the beginning, and I would say and do the wrong thing again.

  “Morgana,” I amended.

  We walked out in a field of barleycorn, leaving our friends behind until they looked like puppets themselves, and the wagon their little theater.

  “There are thousands of my people all over the countryside ready to rise against my father,” she said. This wasn’t what she had originally meant to talk about, I could tell. I had driven the original topic from her mind with my awkward obeisance.

  But she continued, “I had not meant to start anything; I merely wanted to be free of an oppressive marriage. Have you ever done something for entirely selfish reasons, and then discovered there was a far better reason to do it?”

  I thought about that. “I have never had the chance,” I said.

  “You’ve never been so selfish, you mean,” she said, and managed to make it sound like a defect in my character. “I didn’t expect to see you again after we collided outside that inn, and yet you have stuck by me: goblings, One-Eyed Duchess, and all. What profit can there be in it for you?”

  “None,” I said. “But not everything is a matter of gains and losses.”

  It seemed the conversation had come around to her original purpose—something to do with our tempestuous allegiance. I dared not call it friendship.

  “Why not call it that?” said she, sharply.

  “Don’t read my mind!” I cried. “Or is it my fault again, for sending you mental bees with my inmost thoughts scribbled upon them? I simply do not know what is the right course of action with you from one minute to the next.”

  “As you know, I have never had friends before now, Mr. Bristol. Only subjects. My friends are precious to me, more precious than life. I would give up a thousand years so that Lily might enjoy ten minutes in the company of her uncle’s right mind. If I would do that for a simple girl, what would I do for my people? I never thought of it before, yet now I find I would not merely defy my father for them, but fight back against him.”

  “That’s why I called you ‘Your Highness,’” said I. “When you cast off being a princess, you became a queen.” The moment this sentiment left my lips, I must have turned purple; my face felt as if it were pressed against a frying pan. Where did these preposterous utterances come from? Had I swallowed a bad poet?

  “It’s not bad poetry, Kit,” she said. “I merely wish to know if we are friends, you and I.”

  When she said this, she shyly took my hands in hers, and I saw a tear well up in her eye. Her dark brows quivered with some suppressed emotion. My heart was leaping in my breast like a spring hare. Were we friends? What should we call this troublesome bond, which seemed to have the power to heal or hurt with a single glance?

  I must not have answered in time; truly I did not speak for far too long, my thoughts whirling like autumn leaves blown out to sea. For she tore her hands from mine, and pressed them over her eyes, and rushed away from me across the barley, trying not to let me hear her sobs.

  Though I rose and took a few steps to follow her, I stopped. Whatever I thought of her, and she of me, it mattered very little. I was a wanted man, and she a princess, whether she liked it or not. Our destinies were unmatched: mine was small, and hers great, and our life spans equally mismatched. I’d be dead in a fortnight on the point of Captain Sterne’s sword—or, if the map was correct, swinging my heels at the end of a rope. She might live for countless ages. I watched her figure disappear among the barley stalks, and sighed, and hung my head low.

  * * *

  You never saw a more gloomy band of entertainers in your life as Puggle’s Spectacular was that evening. The colorful wagon rolled through the crowded streets and Uncle Cornelius barked our wares, outcrying the costermongers and fishwives, his wooden sword held proudly aloft. We set up our show-place at his direction, in a broad square aside a guildhall where we could stretch the tightrope between the eaves of two timber houses, and there was room beneath for a riding-circus of the prescribed diameter.

  As I was pulling on my boots for the performance, Uncle Cornelius sat down beside me with his pipe. “Have you a brimstone match?” he asked. I was certain I did, and felt in my weskit pockets. But instead of a match, I found something long and sharp.

  I drew the object out: it was that accursed tooth of Magda’s! With a gasp, I flung the bit of bone away from me.

  “You can’t light a pipe with that,” Uncle Cornelius said. “Do you take snuff*, Li-Chang?”

  I confessed that I did not. Uncle Cornelius told me I was mistaken, for he’d seen me take it only the previous day when we performed at Vienna. Then I recalled I did have my master’s snuffbox still, in one of the saddlebags, and so was able to meet his request.

  The old man thrust a generous pinch of the stuff up his nostril with an almighty snort. His rheumy old eyes rolled up into his head, his bristling white brows flew halfway over the top of his gleaming skull, and then he bent his mouth into a shape expressive of horror and delight at once. Thus composed, he hung in that position for several seconds as a ball, thrown straight up, seems to hang at the very apex of its flight before beginning its descent.

  Then the suspense was shattered by a colossal explosion: He sneezed with such violence that his head shot down where his knees should have been, and his knees shot up to fill the void left by his head. Once all of his parts had returned to their customary positions by a process of subsidence, a matter of about half a minute, he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, said, “Bless my Turkish slippers,” and took another pinch.

  Then rush torches and lanterns were lit around the square. It was time for the show to begin.

  Chapter 30

  THE FINAL PERFORMANCE

  CORNELIUS ANNOUNCED us as vigorously as ever, and Lily and Fred did their comic turn; for the discerning members of the gathered crowd, there was a hint of tristesse or sadness that loaned the comedy sweetness and made it all the more charming. Willum and Gruntle were across the square, where they could perform their puppet show and watch the city gate at the same time, and Morgana was fortune-te
lling at the stoop of the wagon, watching the other side of the square, where there were several outlets.

  Midnight acquitted himself well; my own thoughts were in such a jumble I hardly knew what I was doing, but if my performance lacked precision, at least I didn’t fall to the cobblestones. Then Uncle Cornelius delivered his monologue, and I discovered we had left one consideration entirely out of our plans: the possibility that the old gentleman might describe something accurately.

  Until that moment, he had betrayed nothing of his unusual companions, nor spoken of the strange things he’d seen the last couple of weeks. We had ceased to guard against it. But this night, halfway through his rambling speech, he began to tell all.

  “—As the Dauphin will attest, my merry company and I were rolling along the road between Paris and Versailles in this selfsame little dogcart. We had paused for a pinch of snuff, when what should appear from out of the sky but ugly warlike creatures astride the backs of giant winged serpents—may Jupiter anoint my collar with mustard if I tell a single word untrue!”

  The crowd thought it was all in good fun, and most folks laughed fit to burst their buttons. We fellow players were less amused. I motioned to Morgana to cease her reading of fortunes. She joined me beside Midnight for a whispered convocation while Lily made desperate throat-cutting gestures to her uncle from the foot of the bank upon which he stood.

  Uncle Cornelius ignored her, and went on. “So these creatures—they might have been gryphons, or basilisks, I know not what—spake most haughtily to me, and demanded to know where my companions were. I told them not a word! Not a word, lest they trouble the ladies present. Well, my friends, off they went, and I didn’t see them again. They think I travel alone, or rather, alone except for Fred the baboon. He’s the one that drove them off, you see, with his stern countenance. Show them your countenance, Fred.”

  With impeccable comedic timing, Fred, who was seated at one end of the boards, happened to yawn. He showed his tremendous teeth and the laughter was tumultuous. Meanwhile, Lily was ascending to her tightrope prematurely, in hope of cutting her uncle’s monologue short.