Cobb looked deep into her eyes. ‘If you’d have offered me that a year ago I’d have jumped at the chance … but things have changed. I have Adele now and I made her a promise that I’d come back.’
She grabbed him and kissed him hard on the lips. Cobb didn’t pull away as he realised what she was doing. She wasn’t kissing him goodbye, she was kissing her Rufus Cobb goodbye. Saying farewell like this because she had not had the chance to do it before, when she had lost him. She broke off and whispered, ‘Goodbye Rufus,’ and then she turned away to look out of the window, so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes.
‘Good luck with the revolution,’ he wished her.
‘Vive la Revolu-’ her voice cracked and she couldn’t finish the sentence.
He touched her briefly on the shoulder and then let himself out. As he walked away from the farmhouse he could feel her eyes boring into his back but he didn’t want to look back as it would only make it worse for both of them.
He made his way to the main road and then set off for Brimidgham.
***
Cobb arrived at Brimidgham and made his way to the Ox-Round. He wandered around until, as expected, Captain Luther Tendenning and his men came to the market. Esme had said that he did this most days.
Cobb followed him around surreptitiously, watching him. They were circling the market but Cobb wanted him in the centre where everyone could see him. The aim was not to hurt him but to embarrass him badly, so the more people he did it in front of, the better.
Finally Tendenning edged his horse through the crowds to look at a stall near the centre. Cobb bought some apples from a stall and headed over towards him.
As Tendenning poked around on a stall with his sword, Cobb threw an apple at him. It missed and sailed over his shoulder, unnoticed. Cobb took better aim and threw another that hit Tendenning on the head.
‘Hey Fat Boy!!’ yelled Cobb. ‘Yes, you! Over here!’ he threw another apple which bounced off his shoulder.
Tendenning stared at him in amazement. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘I want a word with you Fat Boy! Get over here!’ and to make matters worse he beckoned to him as if he were summoning him.
Tendenning forced his horse through the crowd until he faced Cobb. ‘How dare you shout at me like that?’
Cobb walked around the horse until he was looking up at Tendenning. He had picked his spot carefully and Tendenning’s horse was standing over a muddy puddle.
Cobb shouted at him, ‘I TOLD YOU TO STAY AWAY FROM THE WIDOW COBB!’ He grabbed Tendenning and pulled him from the horse. He went straight down, face first into the mud.
Tendenning tried to struggle to his feet but Cobb kicked his arms away from him, dropping him into the mud again. Once again he struggled to his feet and Cobb let him get up this time. Despite his wish not to hurt him badly, he allowed himself one punch in the mouth that knocked Tendenning back into the mud.
He stood there looking down at him as the crowd around him saw the infamous Commander of The Black Guard publicly humiliated. It was good fun but it soon came to an end as his men came running over to assist.
They grabbed Cobb who held up his hands and offered no resistance. But they punched and kicked him anyway. The sergeant, a large, buck-toothed, villainous looking chap took delight in punching Cobb repeatedly in the stomach as his men held his arms. Cobb managed to pull one arm free and slap the sergeant across the face.
Tendenning struggled to his feet and wiped the mud from his eyes. ‘ENOUGH!’ he shouted. ‘Take him to Castle Greystone. Hold him in my office, I will meet you there when I’ve cleaned up.’
With that he climbed back on to his horse and made his way out of the market place. His men followed, dragging Cobb with them.
***
The Grand Questioner, Torquelauda, looked out of his window as a muddy, bedraggled Captain Tendenning rode his horse miserably across the courtyard of Castle Greystone. Interesting, he thought, I wonder what has happened there. As he continued to watch from the window, he saw Tendenning’s men arrive with a prisoner.
Calling to an aide, Torquelauda sent for Tendenning to join him when he had cleaned himself up.
When Tendenning arrived at his office, Torquelauda kept him waiting in the outer office, just to let him know his place in the scheme of things. Tendenning waited, fuming silently, he wanted to attend to Cobb and here he was cooling his heels, waiting for the Grand Questioner. And make no mistake; he would wait as long as he was told. He wanted to keep his head.
Notionally, it was the Castilian Dons that ran Angleland, with the Black Guard as their muscle but really it was the Church that ran it and the Dons always deferred to it. And the most powerful member of that Church, here in Angleland was the Grand Questioner, Torquelauda. He wasn’t the highest in ecclesiastical rankings but he had the most power. On paper the bishops and cardinals were the more important men but secretly everyone feared the Grand Questioner and it would be a brave, nay suicidal, man of the cloth who would not allow himself to be guided by the Grand Questioner’s “suggestions”.
The door opened and an aide, a priest, beckoned to Tendenning. He checked his appearance, stood up straight, and marched boldly into the room. He stopped at attention in front of Torquelauda’s desk, waiting for Torquelauda to speak first. Torquelauda was reading a book and ignored him at first. In his robes he reminded Tendenning of a big, black bat.
After a moment Torquelauda carefully placed a bookmark in place and closed the book gently. ‘Ah, Captain Tendenning, you seemed a trifle … muddy, when you rode in today, anything interesting happened?’
‘No Your Worship, just an altercation with a local. It’s nothing that need concern you, I promise.’
‘Hmmm. That man who your Guard brought in, who is he?’
‘That’s the local that I had trouble with. It’s nothing though, I can deal with it.’
‘That wasn’t the question I asked you.’
Tendenning went red and began to get hot under the collar. Torquelauda had noticed that he had that effect on people.
‘No sir, of course not. He’s the relation of one of the locals sir, Widow Cobb. He’s the cousin of her deceased husband, he’s up from Kent, just visiting.’
‘Why has he been brought in?’
‘He attacked me in the market today. I think he’s jealous of my relationship with the Widow Cobb.’
‘You don’t have a relationship with the Widow Cobb, or anyone else for that matter. I am remarkably well informed you know. People … tell me things.’
‘No your Eminence but I was hoping that one day there might be something …’
‘Hmmm.’
Torquelauda sat there saying nothing, making Tendenning feel very nervous, he felt he had to say something to break the silence, so he blurted out, ‘Interesting thing though Your Worship, he’s the spitting image of the Widow Cobb’s dead husband. Identical in fact, I thought I was seeing a ghost.’
‘Really? I think I would like to see this man. You are not to touch him; I know your methods, Tendenning. In the meantime lock him up with the clown.’
‘Sir? I thought he was to be kept in isolation?’
‘Well, that hasn’t been too successful, has it? He’s told us nothing. Let’s see if mixing with others might loosen his tongue.’
‘We could always try torture.’
Torquelauda looked at him sharply. ‘That is not your decision, Captain. Do not presume to tell me how to conduct the Questioning. Now go and carry out my instructions.’
Tendenning saluted and headed for the door. He’d almost made it to safety when it happened.
‘Tendenning.’
‘Sir?’
‘Never question my methods again.’
‘No sir, sorry sir.’
When Tendenning had left, Torquelauda sent all his aides away. He steepled his fingers in front of him and pondered what Tendenning had told him. A phrase popped in to his memory, “Ye shalle knowe himm
e by his countenance, for he shalle be as familiare to ye as your own kin”
Could it be him… finally … was it time?
***
The Black Guards were holding Cobb in Tendenning’s office, waiting for him to arrive. They had emptied his pockets and taken all his belongings and put them on Tendenning’s desk. Everyone was impressed with the fob watch and even the pencil as they’d never seen such things before but they weren’t stupid enough to pilfer anything that Tendenning might want, he always got first pick of the spoils.
The door opened and everyone looked towards it but it was only the sergeant.
He said to Cobb, ‘Remember me?’
Cobb replied, ‘No, it can’t be … is it really you? Mother? No wait, that can’t be right, you don’t have a moustache. Wait a minute, weren’t you the winner of the Idiot of the Year Award? I was there when they presented you with the prize.’
The sergeant motioned for his men to grab Cobb’s arms and he punched him in the stomach a couple of times. ‘Funny boy, eh? How amusing do you find this?’ He hit him again and Cobb doubled over.
When Cobb got his breath back, he straightened up and looked the sergeant in the eye. ‘If you touch me again, I’ll slap you around the room like a red-headed step-child and not you or your friends will stop me. You got that?’
‘Yeah? Well we’ll see how tough you are when they put you to the Questioning. Or I might just take care of you myself.’
‘Don’t let your mouth make promises your body can’t keep.’
The sergeant swung at Cobb’s head. Cobb was unable to move out of the way as his arms were being tightly gripped, so he did the only thing he could, he lowered his head and took the blow on the forehead, rather than in the face. There was a quite audible CRACK! as a bone broke in the sergeant’s hand.
Cobb shook his head. God’s Damn it! That hurt! Cobb lashed out in pain and anger, first he kicked the sergeant in the lower stomach, below his breastplate. As the man bent forward Cobb kneed him in the face, then put his foot against the man’s chest and pushed him back across the room. The sergeant staggered backwards into the desk and collapsed to the floor, cradling his fist.
Just then Tendenning stormed into the room. ‘That’s enough. Let him go.’
‘But sir!’ said one of the Guardsmen, ‘he’s just beaten up the Sergeant!’
‘But you’re restraining him, how can he be beating up the Sergeant?’
‘He’s a slippery devil sir, he knows how to defend himself.’
Tendenning kicked the sergeant in the breastplate with a BOINK and told him to get up off the floor. To the ones holding Cobb, he snapped ‘Let go of him’.
They released Cobb and stood back.
‘It seems you have friends in high places,’ said Tendenning. ‘Someone saw you being brought into the castle and said you were not to be harmed. Hopefully they’re saving you for the Questioning,’ he told Cobb, malevolently. ‘It will give me great pleasure to attend that. And then when we’ve both had enough for one day, I’ll ride out and visit the Widow Cobb. Give her some company.’
‘I’d stay away from her if I were you,’ warned Cobb. ‘Or you may get more than you bargained for.’ Cobb meant it, he could just imagine Esme leading him into the woods for a picnic and then handing him over to the other members of the Lillibetans.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re in no position to threaten me,’ replied Tendenning.
‘I wasn’t, I was trying to save you.’
Tendenning frowned, Cobb had him puzzled. Given his situation, shouldn’t he be afraid of Tendenning? He looked down at Cobb’s belongings on the table; he saw the pocket watch and his eyes lit up. He picked up the watch and swung it on its chain in front of him. ‘But it looks like I will have to wait to enjoy your displeasure, those are my orders, you’re not to be harmed. However, in the meantime I can make use of what was yours and is now mine.’ Tendenning picked up the watch by the chain and swung it to and fro, he was implying he meant the watch but they both knew that he was referring Esme.
‘So for now, you can go and cool your heels in the dungeons. Take him downstairs and put him with the clown.’
The clown … Cobb hoped that meant Harlequin.
Friends Reunited
The jailer opened the heavy, wooden door of the cell, pushed Cobb in and closed the door behind him. Why do all my adventures lately seem to end up with me in a dungeon? he thought.
There was a thin ray of light coming through a small glassless window, high on the wall. It cast a bright beam of light into the centre of the cell but beyond that everything was dark. The place stank something awful. Ah, the dungeons, thought Cobb, this must be the place where smells come to relax and really be themselves.
Cobb looked around him ‘Hello, anyone in here?’ he ventured. After a moment what he had taken for a bundle of rags in one of the corners, began to move.
Cobb deliberately stepped into the light and said again, ‘Hello?’
The bundle of rags uncurled slowly. ‘What do you want? I told you to leave me alone, I’m sick of your damned questions. Why don’t you go and … Cobb! Is that you?’
Harlequin crawled forward on all fours. He looked to be in quite a state, his clown’s outfit was in tatters, his hair was long and greasy and he had grown a big, straggly beard.
‘Cobb, is it really you?’ he said weakly. ‘Have they got you too? Is there no end to their wickedness? Are we never going to …’ suddenly his tone changed and he got indignant, ‘wait a minute! What are you doing here?!? You’re not even from this world.’
‘I’ve come to save you … Columbine sent me.’
‘Columbine? Did she really send you? That means she still cares about me. Well at last, I can escape, you can get us out of here.’ He crawled forward on his knees and threw his arms around Cobb’s legs. ‘I’m ready, let’s go … okay you can go now … I’m ready …’
‘Well, we can’t go straight away. There’s this prophecy that we have to fulfil first.’
Harlequin looked up at him with a bleak expression on his face, ‘Oh Gods no, not a prophecy, I hate prophecies. We’re doomed. Somebody always dies when there’s a prophecy.’
‘Well, yes and in this case it has to be us.’
Harlequin groaned. ‘Cobb, you’ve got to get me out of here, it’s cold and damp, there’s rats, the food is terrible, they keep interrogating me … and I’ve been wearing the same underpants for six weeks!’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve come to get you out of here but we can’t go just yet.’
Harlequin let go of Cobb’s legs and crawled back into his corner. He pulled a tattered potato sack over himself as a blanket. Cobb heard a pathetic sob.
Cobb walked over and nudged him with the toe of his boot. ‘You wanna tell me what’s been going on here?’
‘Do I have to?’ said Harlequin, miserably.
‘You’ve got something else to do?’
Harlequin rolled over and sat up.
Cobb told him, ‘Look, I’ll take you out of here, I promise but for now we just have to play along. So tell me your side of it. Have they tortured you?’
Harlequin looked up at him, sulking like a small child. ‘You do know why I’m here in the first place, don’t you?’
‘Yes, and …’ it pained him to say it, ‘I’m grateful … and I’m sorry for what happened because of it. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened to you when you got here.’
‘And you know they made me human, don’t you? Look at me,’ he pulled at his hair and his straggly beard. ‘Growing hair and having to eat and go to the toilet! Going to the toilet! What idiot invented that? If I ever get back to heaven, I’m going to have a very strong word with the design department!’
‘Stick to the point,’ said Cobb.
‘Okay,’ said Harlequin, resignedly. ‘When I was first dumped here on this odious planet, I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I didn’t know how to support myself so I went to the nearest town,
found the market place and started to busk, singing and dancing to earn some money.
‘People went crazy. They grabbed hold of me and hustled me out of the market before the authorities saw me. I told them I just wanted food so they gave me some and then sent me away. This happened a couple of times until finally someone offered to take me to meet some people who would look after me, in exchange for my singing and dancing and telling jokes.
‘So I met these people called the Lillibetans who passed me around from one of their Lodges to another. It was great at first, they fed me and gave me lodgings in exchange for me teaching them all the jokes and songs that I knew. Then they became more interested in the things I would say between performances. All I did was tell them how I had seen life on other worlds, how life could be better for them. Just general chat, you know, I wasn’t preaching to them or anything.
‘Pretty soon that was all they wanted to talk about at the Lodge meetings. Instead of performing I ended up making political speeches. Speeches, songs, it was all the same to me, I didn’t care what I did, it was just another style of performance.
‘Then about six weeks ago, one of the Lodges I was performing at was raided and I was captured and brought to Castle Greystone, I’ve been in here ever since. I don’t know what happened to the others that were taken, I’ve been in isolation ever since.’
‘Have they tortured you, have they put you to this … Questioning they keep going on about?’ asked Cobb.
‘No. Funnily enough they haven’t. They keep taking me to speak to the Grand Questioner, Torquelauda. He asks me all sorts of strange questions but he always seems to shy away from having me tortured. I think he’s a little afraid of me,’ Harlequin held out his arms to indicate his general, dishevelled condition, ‘but I can’t imagine why.’
‘Hmmm, curious,’ agreed Cobb.
‘Well what about you, are you going to tell me about the prophecy that’s keeping me here?’
‘Well it appears that a couple of hundred years ago, some Magus told Queen Lillibet that just about now, the rule of the Castilians would be coming to an end and Angleland would be free.’
The Londum Omnibus Volume One (The Londum Series Book 4) Page 62