The Best of Gerald Kersh

by Gerald Kersh

  ‘But milord gave the horse and the linen to me, my friend,’ I said. ‘You heard him.’

  He shouted: ‘Hey, Marie!’ and his wife came out. She was good-looking in the Flemish style – a skin like cream, and hair like copper. The cream soon goes cheesy, and the copper tarnishes; still, while their looks last, Flemish women, as you know, are very pretty, if you like something to get hold of (if you understand what I mean). Marie Morkens must have been a good twenty years younger than her hogshead of a husband, and she had the sleek look and something of the colouring of a fine, healthy, tortoise-shell cat. I remember that she had golden eyelashes; never trust a woman with fair eyelashes.

  ‘My darling,’ said Morkens, ‘did we hear milord giving his horse and his linen to this gentleman?’

  She answered: ‘Of course not, my dear…. Hey, Cornelys, come here!’ Her voice was husky, yet penetrating, not unlike a cowbell in a mist.

  Cornelys, the blacksmith, whose smithy was only twenty yards away, came running, hammer in hand, and stood open-mouthed, a veritable Vulcan with his leather apron and his blackened face. He stood, grinning like an idiot, rolling his inflamed eyes at the inn-keeper’s wife, with whom he was obviously head over heels in love.

  ‘Cornelys,’ said she, ‘you did not hear the English milord giving his horse and his linen to this gentleman here, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You heard him giving them to my husband, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I? Oh yes, I remember now. That’s right; to your husband, certainly,’ said this idiot.

  Morkens said: ‘So there you are!’

  You know, my friend, that I am nicknamed ‘The Fox’. I am supposed to be incredibly clever. In point of fact, I am not; I pass as clever only because, in an emergency, I keep a cool head, hold my tongue, keep my temper, and wait to see which way the cat jumps. I hold by the old apophthegm To the ignorant much is told, moreover. I give away as little as possible, and prefer to profess, above all, an abysmal ignorance of foreign languages when in out-of-the-way places. In Flanders, for example, I pretended not to understand Flemish, although I understand it perfectly; thus I overheard many interesting things, as will soon be evident.

  Now the woman turned to her husband and in the barbarous dialect of the locality – it always reminds me of a dog with a bone in his throat – said: ‘Joris, give him the horse. One side or the other will be advancing or retreating, any day now, and horses will be commandeered anyway.’

  ‘Give him the horse? Are you out of your mind, wife?’

  She purred in her throat: ‘Give him the horse, I say, husband; and sell him a saddle.’

  ‘You are right, my heart.’

  ‘I am not your heart, you fat lump; I am your brain, you fool. Let me handle this,’ said she. Then to me, in French: ‘Nevertheless, monsieur, it is not in my character to see a traveller stranded in this God-forsaken mud. My husband is willing to lend you milord’s horse. A light rider like yourself can easily overtake milord’s coach, which will be going heavily, the roads being as they are. You can join milord at Flushing, and all’s well that ends well. No?’

  I said, with simulated reluctance: ‘Very well. I see that I am outnumbered here. Shoe me the mare, and let me go.’

  The blacksmith said: ‘Oh, as for that – ten minutes! The shoe is made.’

  So I led the dapple-grey mare out of the stable, and to the forge. Madame Morkens accompanied me. She stood, hugging herself as if in secret delight at some incommunicable titillating thought, as such women will, while Cornelys went to work with rasp and hammer. That lovesick clown’s mind was not on his work. Every other second he paused to make sheep’s eyes at Madame Morkens. Once, indeed, while he was driving home the first nail, the mare Cocotte almost kicked him into his own fire.

  ‘Easy, there!’ I said. ‘Do you want to lame the beast?’

  ‘She’s vicious,’ he said.

  ‘You are clumsy,’ said I, ‘you are not nailing a plank to a joist!’

  He cursed me obscenely in Flemish, and when I said: ‘I beg pardon?’ he said in French: ‘I was simply saying “You are quite right, monsieur.”’

  So, at last, Cocotte was shod and I led her back to the inn. Madame Morkens lingered for a few seconds. I heard the smack of a boorish kiss, and when she joined me she was wiping soot from her face with her apron. And then the rain came down again – but what rain! Every drop hit the mud with a smack and a splash like a musket-ball.

  The landlord had prepared some pleasant concoction of mulled spiced wine. He said: ‘Well, so now you have your horse, all right and tight…. No doubt monsieur is an expert bareback rider, like the ladies in the circus?’ I asked him what he meant, as if I did not know. He continued: ‘Monsieur proposes, no doubt, to ride to Flushing without a saddle?’

  ‘Oh – oh!’ said I. ‘I never thought of that. Oh dear!’

  ‘As luck will have it,’ he said, ‘I have a fine English hunting saddle, almost brand-new. I can let you have it dirt-cheap, if you like.’

  ‘I’d like to have a look at it,’ I said.

  You see, it was my intention to have him saddle and harness Cocotte, and then, pretending to try the saddle for comfort, to get my feet in the stirrups, give the mare the edge of my heel, and so away.

  But he said: ‘Oh, the saddle’s in the stable, and the rain is coming down in bucketfuls. Let it give over. Why hurry?’

  The saddle was in the stable, then; that was something worth knowing.

  She said: ‘In any case it will soon be dark, monsieur, and the roads are terrible. Best take your dinner at your ease and stay the night, and make a good start at daybreak,’ and gave her husband a quick, sidelong look that chilled my blood.

  She had seen milord give me my pay, thirty guineas, and ten guineas over and above that, for a pourboire; besides, I had twenty guineas more in my purse, some of it my own money and some of it petty cash for travelling expenses with which milord had entrusted me and of which I had neglected to remind him. And I have seen a throat cut for five francs in wayside inns in Flanders!

  Morkens muttered in Flemish: ‘It’s dangerous….’

  ‘Fool!’ she said. ‘In a few days, after the battle, the whole countryside will be littered with stabbed carcasses. Who will count one more or less?’

  I said: ‘I beg pardon?’

  She said: ‘I was saying “More haste, less speed,” and telling my husband to go and kill a capon for dinner.’

  ‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘no doubt you are right. The weather is, as you say, impossible. I will go to my room and pack my little valise in readiness for the morning.’

  They had given me a horrid little closet of a room overlooking the yard, and smelling abominably of the stable; but I was glad of it now. If the window was too small to let the daylight in, it was not too small to let me out, and if I hung by my hands from the sill, I should have only a six-foot drop to the yard. So far, so good.

  Also, I had another idea. You know that I am still troubled periodically with my old Egyptian dysentery. When it begins to trouble me, I take ten drops of tincture of laudanum, which is nothing more nor less than opium. In case of emergency, I always carry a vial of it wherever I go. I took this vial out of my valise now, and slipped it into my pocket – a good two ounces of the stuff.

  Then I went downstairs and waited. Madame Morkens was roasting the chicken and her husband was setting the table. I guessed that their plan was to make me comfortably drowsy with good food and wine – he had brought up a couple of sealed bottles of his best from the cellar – and then, quite simply, knock me on the head. The woman alone would have been more than a match for a shrimp like me, to say nothing of her ox of a husband. I carried a little pair of pocket pistols, it is true, but I always keep my small-arms for use if all else fails.

  So. While we were picking the bones of the capon, I, pretending to be a little lively with wine, said: ‘Upon my word, madame, you are a cook fit for a king, and beautiful as a queen! And you, Mo
nsieur Morkens, are a jolly good fellow! I’ll tell you what – I’ll stand you a bowl of rum punch in the English style, and mix it myself according to Lord Whiterock’s own secret recipe…. You, old fellow, will be so good as to fetch me a bottle of rum, a bottle of brandy, and a bottle of port wine. You, madame, will get me lemons and sugar, nutmeg and ginger, cinnamon and cloves … and I see a fine old ale-bowl over there which will be the very thing to mix it in!’

  It worked. He went to fetch the spirits and the wine; she took her keys to the spice cupboard; and I, uncorking my bottle, emptied it rapidly into the bowl. It went without a hitch. In fifteen minutes the punch was mixed. Laudanum has a bitter, cloying taste, but the rum, the brandy, the port, the sugar and the spices that I mixed in that punch would have disguised it if it had been so much asafoetida. I insisted on filling immense bumpers. You understand – I had been taking laudanum therapeutically for twenty years or so, so that what I swallowed in my punch was merely a homeopathic dose. But the effect of the drug on the Morkenses soon became apparent. Their minds wandered; the pupils of their eyes contracted. They drank again and again, not knowing or caring how much they drank, never noticing that I had taken no more than one glass. All the same, they were tough, those two!

  It was eleven o’clock before Madame Morkens became unconscious. Her husband saw her fall across the table. He pointed at her, chuckling stupidly, and then rolled sideways out of his chair and fell to the floor with a crash. ‘Hodi mihi, cras tibi,’ I said, ‘today to me, tomorrow to thee, my friends…. And now I think I will punish you a little. A vindictive man would burn your inn over your heads. But I …’

  … In short, I went through their pockets, etcetera, for their keys. As I had guessed, it was the woman who had in her keeping the most important of the keys – one in particular, a little one, suspended on a piece of string which she wore about her neck. The key of the cash box, evidently. And where would they hide their cash box, these two? Unquestionably, under their bed. It was so. After twenty years in the Grande Armée one acquires experience in looting, eh?

  I found the loose plank, and had that cash box open in five minutes. It contained banknotes and gold to the value of about seventy thousand livres, which I stuffed into my pockets.

  Then I took my little valise, and put on my cloak and my hat, and went out. The landlord and his wife were stertorously snoring, almost as if their skulls had been smashed. I had nothing to fear from them. The great dog in the yard barked furiously, but luckily for me he was chained. I got into the stable with the aid of Morkens’s key, and lit the lantern, by good luck, in no time at all. I always keep my tinderbox dry, as you know. The saddle was hanging on a nail. It was a mouldering old English hunting saddle, but I made shift to buckle it on the mare Cocotte.

  I had my left foot in the stirrup, and was ready to mount, when I heard another horseman approaching.

  Now, the manner of his approach made me pause. A bona-fide traveller, coming to an inn at night, makes a noise, shouts ‘Landlord! Landlord!’ – is, in fact, in a devil of a hurry to get in out of the rain; especially on such a night as this was. Furthermore, I heard him speak to the dog in Flemish, and the dog was silent. A friend of the family, evidently. He tried the front door, and found it locked. Then, leading his horse, which was very weary, he came round to the back.

  Believe me when I tell you that I slid out of the stirrup and into the hay as I heard that fellow approach. His horse, alone, came into the stable before him; he had been there before – he knew his way. I could not see him; he was of the colour of the darkness, an iron-shod shadow, only I heard him walking and breathing.

  Also, I heard the rider knocking upon the back door of the inn, and calling in a kind of subdued shout: ‘Morkens, Morkens!’ There was no answer. He came stumbling and splashing back, cursing at the end of his teeth, and I heard him call the name of Cornelys. The rain washed most of his voice away; all the same, I heard him between the drops … ‘Cornelys! … Cornelys! …’

  Here, you may say, was the time to get out. So it was. But you know that there are times when curiosity is somewhat stronger than the desire to live. I had guessed that this night-bird, since he was in the confidence of Morkens, who was a cut-throat, must be some sort of highway robber – especially since he came quietly by night, on an exhausted horse. I wanted to know more, quite simply; therefore I waited, particularly after I heard him call for Cornelys the blacksmith, who was another thorough-going rascal.

  Cornelys came soon, with a lantern. By the sound of him I knew that he was booted and spurred: a nice way for a simple blacksmith to be, at that time of night, on a lonely road! Furthermore, his voice had changed somewhat since last I had heard it; now he spoke hard and tight. Following the newcomer into the stable, Cornelys said: ‘What’s this? What’s the matter with Morkens and Marie?’

  He spoke in Flemish, and in Flemish the other man replied: ‘Dead drunk in the kitchen.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Cornelys. ‘Can’t be. Not now!’

  ‘No? Go and see.’

  He went, but soon returned, grunting incredulously: ‘This night of all nights!’ The other man groaned. ‘What’s the matter with you, Klaes? Are you hurt?’ asked Cornelys.

  ‘No; tired, dead tired, Cornelys. Dropping where I stand,’ said the man who had been addressed as Klaes. Indeed, he sounded tired.

  ‘Makes no difference,’ said Cornelys the blacksmith. ‘In any case, it was I who was to carry the word. I am ready…. Well?’

  ‘Well,’ said the man called Klaes, speaking very deliberately, like a man who is drunk or used up. ‘Get it right the first time, Cornelys, because I swear I’m in no condition to repeat it … oh, dear God, how tired I am! … Listen carefully, now; the password is the English word, Ditch. Have you got that?’

  ‘Ditch,’ said Cornelys.

  ‘You will pass that word to Collaert’s vedettes,’ said Klaes.

  ‘Where?’ asked Cornelys.

  ‘Between here and Braine le Comte,’ Klaes said.

  ‘I will pass the word Ditch to Collaert’s vedettes between here and Braine de Comte,’ Cornelys said. ‘And then?’

  ‘Then you will be conducted at once to General Collaert of the cavalry, by his aide-de-camp, Brigadier de Beukelaer, who will have a fresh horse waiting. You will tell your message to Collaert in person. This is what you will say: That you come from Jan Klaes (that, of course, is myself). That Klaes has been compelled to take devious roads because he has been shadowed. That Jan Klaes has been forty-eight hours in the saddle, and therefore sends you to deliver to Collaert a message which should have gone in advance to Wellington at Brussels. … Is this fixed in your mind?’

  Cornelys repeated it, word-perfect. He was not the fool that he pretended to be…. Or was he? I don’t know. I have known congenital idiots, and nagging women, who had that same curious knack of repeating, with just such exactitude, precisely what vibrated the nerves of their ears. Empty domes throw back the most perfect echoes…. This Cornelys repeated the very inflection of the man Klaes, who, in something between a groan and a yawn, expressed approval, and then went on.

  ‘Excellent. You will say this to Collaert, then: Our man de Wissembourg, whom Collaert knows, has taken the place of Lacoste, as Napoleon’s guide. Napoleon is completely ignorant of the terrain around St Lambert. It is reasonably certain that the Emperor will deploy his cavalry before the plateau of Mont St Jean. This force of cavalry will consist mainly of Milhaud’s cuirassiers – twenty-six squadrons, supported by Lefebre Desnouette’s division. Altogether, between three and four thousand of the cream of Napoleon’s heavy cavalry…. Have you got that?’

  ‘I have. Continue.’

  ‘Good. Listen again: ‘If Wellington makes a show of English infantry on the plateau of Mont St Jean, behind a light covering fire of canister from the masked batteries on the Nivelles road, the odds are that Napoleon will make one of his master-strokes – his heavy cavalry, en masse, will charge the English infantry line, wi
th a view to smashing it and cutting the Allies in two, before the German reinforcements arrive; Blücher and Bülow being already delayed…. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly clear – not that I understand. Go on. It is written in my head as on a slate.’

  ‘You are neither expected nor required to understand, only to remember. Listen again: Before the French cavalry can reach the English infantry, therefore, they must cross a certain little road that runs across the plain from Ohain to Mont St Jean——’

  ‘Cross it, how?’ said Cornelys. ‘I know the Ohain road. Road? It is a ditch, twelve feet deep, banked up steep on either side. Mountaineers cross such a road, not cavalry. I know the Ohain road.’

  ‘All the better. Tell Collaert so, and answer clearly any questions he may ask. Meanwhile, remember again: If Wellington, having arranged his foot-guards above the Ohain road, draws the main charge of Napoleon’s heavy cavalry, he will break the head off Napoleon’s sledge-hammer, and break off the jaws of his tongs, too. It is Jan Klaes who says so, having received word from de Wissembourg, alias Lacoste, Napoleon’s own guide…. For God’s sake, is all I have said impressed upon your memory, Cornelys?’

  ‘Every word,’ said the blacksmith, ‘firm as print, clear as ink – aie – aie! What’s this?——’ He had put out his hand, instinctively stroking and stroking as blacksmiths will, feeling the back of the mare Cocotte. ‘– Why, may I die, if Morkens hasn’t saddled the Englishman’s mare!’

  ‘What Englishman? What mare?’ Klaes asked.

  ‘A bony dapple-grey, sixteen hands. I shod her myself today. Fed like a fighting-cock. Broken to shafts and saddle, and good for anything; a horse for a lady or a gentleman.’

  ‘What Englishman?’

  ‘Oh, a millionaire, a nabob. He left the horse as a tip for his valet; simple as that! Not to go into details: I guess that Morkens had her saddled and ready, knowing that my little gelding is a little too light for my weight. This dapple-grey will carry two hundred pounds over fifty miles of mud. A good idea!’ said Cornelys.