Taking Liberties (52 page)

‘What does Rachel say?'

‘She knows they're not coming back.'

There had been no more snow, it was even beginning to thaw a little, but Sanders, hitching up the horses for them, said that from the look of the sky, they could expect more.

As they started off, she could only think of the bereft village she was leaving behind her but, bounced and thrown from side to side as the coach skidded over packed, melting ice, she was reduced to fear on her own account, and, worse, resentment.

All very well for Tobias to widen his vision across continents; hers had been reduced to a bed and a Frenchman. And, having found them, she was leaving both on a hopeless business, a fanciful sprig of an idea from an innocent. Stupid,
stupid
.

A dozen times she raised her hand to tap on the coach glass and tell Tobias to turn back, before letting it fall because she knew she wouldn't be able to frame the words that negated everything she had learned these past months—and couldn't live with it if she did.

Damn liberty, she thought, damn it. How right she'd been to recognize its indivisibility. Once you started handing it around, there was no end to it.

And I'm in love. I'm being asked to risk too much.

So her hand would go up again and then drop as the cycle of fear, like the dreadful journey, went on and on.

Plymouth had become slushy and irritable. The few shoppers stepped warily, pausing before jumping from one duckboard to another, casting fearful looks upwards at the soft lumps of snow sliding down the roofs, cursing fast-moving carriage wheels that thrashed thick, dirty water over their boots.

Why was he stopping here? Of course, the laudanum.

He helped her down and she went into the now familiar apothecary's shop with the coloured bottles sending a rainbow through the panes of its bow window. She bought two big bottles of the opiate and fought down the desire to drink one of them.

She must think of Tobias; she bought cough drops, ointments, wintergreen, herbs for strengthening, tisanes, a pomander to keep off the noxious effect of smells, and told the apothecary to package them for her.

He was standing by the coach door, waiting for her. She handed him the package. Smiling, shaking his head, he handed it back; they would search him.

She dithered, not knowing what to do. This was their only chance to say good-bye; she wanted to hug him, tell him how noble she thought him but already passers-by were staring at them both.

‘In you get, your ladyship,' he said cheerfully and handed her in. And that was that.

Fifteen minutes later, they drove through the gates of Millbay Prison.

Captain Stewart listened to the Dowager's errand with the expression of a camel regarding the last and unnecessary straw.

For all the pains he'd taken, 109 men had escaped through the tunnel and to date only 62 recaptured. Their lordships of the Admiralty were heaping condemnation on his head, as was the Plymouth Corporation. With largely the same resources, he was having to organize a search of Dartmoor and the coast for the missing prisoners and at the same time ensure he retained the six hundred and fifty-odd prisoners left to him.

Well, if she must collect her portrait now, she must, but it was not a good time. ‘Thompson, tell Corporal Trotter to go to hut four and fetch her ladyship's portrait.'

‘Thank you so much, Captain. I regret being a nuisance but I should like to thank the artist for his work and there is the matter of signing it . . . If he might be permitted to bring it to the cottage, I could be out of your way.'

‘Very well, but it must be done quickly.'

And it was. Ludicrously quickly.

Tobias drove the coach to the cottage door and accompanied her ladyship inside. Within minutes, they were joined by Joshua, the portrait and a disgruntled Corporal Trotter.

The Dowager's attention was for Trotter. ‘What a time you have had, poor man. These troublesome prisoners . . . Allow me to thank you for all your trouble. Is this the finished object? So difficult to see in this light, perhaps we could go up to the studio? No, no, Corporal, don't trouble yourself, we shall be but a minute while the boy signs it. My man will come behind to ensure my safety.'

Corporal Trotter didn't trouble himself; he sat on the stairs, nodding ruminatively at the five guineas that the Dowager had pressed into his palm.

Upstairs, Diana hissed: ‘No questions, Joshua, no time.' Tobias whipped away Joshua's cap, took off his own hat and wig and fitted them on the young man's head.

‘Take that jacket off, and the shirt.' For a moment, both men were bare above the waist, the dull light of the room reflected on black skin so different in shade that she knew one could never be taken for the other.

‘
All niggers look alike
,' Tobias had told her; it was the premise on which they were operating. ‘
All niggers look alike
.'

She heard Tobias say: ‘Can you drive, boy?'

She hadn't thought of that. And Joshua was saying No. He looked dazed. She watched Tobias unbutton his bright caped coat, pick up one of Joshua's arms and direct it into a sleeve with instructions. ‘Whip'th in the holder on the right of the box. Flick their backthides and they'll move. Hold the reinth like thith.' While he formed Joshua's unresisting hands round imaginary reins, the Dowager knelt and buttoned the coat round the boy. As she reached the last button she came face to face with home-made thongs on bare feet.

‘He has no boots.'

Tobias struggled out of his boots and tears began trickling down her cheeks. He'd have nothing, he would be so cold.

Finished. She stood up. Joshua was slightly taller but with hat, wig and the coat's high collar he would pass. Tobias, though, would not. Dell had dyed the flecks of grey in his hair but he looked what he was, a forty-five-year-old man, not a boy of twenty. Even in prison rags he managed to appear respectable.

There's no point to this; she didn't even want there to be.

Tobias was urging them both to the door. At once the enormity of what they were doing overtook Joshua. ‘I ain't leaving him here.'

Diana swung back her arm and slapped the boy's face. ‘Behave yourself. If I can, you can.' She shoved the portrait into his arms. ‘Hold it up and get down the stairs.'

She teetered on the tiny landing, wanting to say something meaningful, loving and, because there was still a lot of Countess in her, some appreciation of his years of service. Tobias pushed her gently forward.

Corporal Trotter was looking up the stairs, heaving up his bulk so that Joshua could pass with the portrait. As she reached him, he said, ‘Thank you for the 'preciation, ma'am.'

‘Thank
you
, Corporal.'

They were in the open air, the failing light and moist air accentuating Millbay's greyness. The entrance gates seemed lost in the distance. Joshua had put the portrait in the coach, he was climbing up onto the box—he hadn't opened the door for her.

But here was the blessed, blessed Trotter doing it instead, earning his guineas. She got in. The door slammed; she was in darkness.

She heard the corporal call, ‘Drive on, fella,' and then, more loudly, ‘Open them gates.'

The coach stayed where it was. ‘Drive
on
.'

He can't get the horses to move. We'll stay here. All I have done is deliver an extra man to prison.

There was a crack from the whip that startled the horse into a canter. The coach jerked forward and rolled down the track at a rate which only just gave Diana time to lean out. She had a second's glimpse through the mist of a fat militia corporal walking ahead of a black prisoner towards the hut compounds. Then the coach was rocking out of the gates and into the road, a threat to everything on it.

She kept expecting to hear the prison bell clang the alarm. Almost she wished she could; she would never rid herself of the image of Tobias trudging purposefully into darkness.

The bell still hadn't rung; he would be in the segregated but now.
‘All niggers look alike,'
he'd said.
‘All niggers look alike.'
Not to me, she thought. Oh, not to me.

Sanders had been right; it was snowing, and with energy. They would never get home.

Three times they were stopped by patrols searching for escapers, three times the Dowager smiled and congratulated the men on their vigilance and three times they were waved on. Nobody looked at her coachman.

It was dark by the time they were beyond the town and they had to stop while Joshua and the Dowager worked out how to light the coach lamps. Joshua was in a state of guilt and misery. ‘Why'd he do that? Why?'

‘He wants you to go back to America and speak for him.'

‘What's he want me to say? I don't know what to say.'

‘You will.'

She had to kneel on the seat inside the coach to direct him but she made mistakes. Once they were out in deep country, she called on Joshua to stop and got up on the box beside him in order to watch for fingerposts and turnings. Even then, if the horses hadn't known the way better than she did, they might have ended up at Exeter. She became so cold that she thought she was dying.

Joshua reined in and rummaged through the box under the driver's seat. He found a flask of brandy Sanders kept there along with a huge tarpaulined driver's blanket, made her drink and covered them both before driving on.

When she recovered, he told her why he'd become alarmed. When he'd been thanking her for what she had done, she'd said: ‘Thank
you
, Corporal Trotter.'

It began to snow again and they nearly passed by the signpost at the top of the hill but saw its pointing finger just in time. The horses took the bend fast, scenting a restful stable, warmth and hay.

Past Ralph Gurney's farm, past his labourers' cottages, the pine tree. Through thickening flakes of snow she could see the haze of light over the Pomeroy and the cottages. Where the candles of T'Gallants should have been burning high up on her right there was only darkness.

They've all gone to bed, she thought. I'll be getting in beside him in a minute.

The Pomeroy was busy. Lanterns in the stables showed Sanders and another man coping with horses and a coach—
two
coaches, and a covered wagon.

‘Coaching inn, is it?' Joshua asked.

‘Some travellers have mistaken their way,' she said wearily. There would be people, she was too tired to talk but she must give explanations, witness Makepeace's joy . . .

Sanders saw them and came running from the stables. ‘Afore you go in, ladyship . . .'

‘Help me down, will you?'

‘Don't go in yet. But it's all right, the Missus has managed it all.'

She was bewildered. He steadied her to the ground and led her to the window giving on to the taproom, pointing.

She looked in.

Their lips pursed, their backs very straight, the Earl and Countess of Stacpoole sat by the fire, apparently and unwillingly listening to Zack who had drawn a chair up to theirs. Standing with his back to the mantel, neat as ever, was Captain Nicholls.

‘I told 'un there weren't nobody home,' Zack said, hobbling towards her. ‘Nobody up at T'Gallants 'cepting Ma Green, I told 'un.'

‘And Dell,' Makepeace said, coming up behind him.

‘And the maid. Only her and Ma Green, I said.' Zack was winking at Diana and grimacing, emphasizing every other word like a bad actor. ‘You'd gone to Plymouth like a Christian, I said. For to get that poor soul medickyments.'

Alice swept him out of the way. ‘We have had the worst journey you can imagine, Mama. A risk to life, I promise you. We stayed with the De Veres at Exeter until the snow cleared a little and then with the Grantleys at Plymouth until it cleared again. Tabitha fell ill and I've had no lady's maid for a week. And to crown all no one at T'Gallants to let us in.'

She was replaced by Robert. ‘We were anxious to see how you fared, Mama. Not well, I see.' He was reserved but not unkindly; apparently the rancour of their last meeting was behind them.

Then Captain Nicholls. ‘I was so fortunate as to encounter the Earl and Countess on their way and offer my services in bringing them to you.'

‘And
what
we should have done without you, Captain Nicholls . . . the weather and
such
wild country,
no
indication of where one is . . . and no one to receive us when we get here!'

A florid face from the past. ‘My dear Lady Stacpoole, sit down, allow me to feel your pulse. As I feared, very fast.'

Kempson-Jones, who'd inflicted extra pain on Aymer in his last throes; it seemed no more strange that he had flown down from the moon than had the others. She couldn't get used to them; their beautiful clothes looked alien in the taproom as if they'd been lit for a stage performance. She had been put in the stalls of a theatre; she wanted to get up and go, the dialogue was frightening her.

‘Dr Kempson-Jones was so good as to be prevailed on, Mama. We are worried for your health.'

Behind them ordinary people went on with the only life she could understand. She saw Sanders signalling to Makepeace and Philippa. He was taking them outside, into the forecourt. Where they will find something to their advantage, Diana thought, quite clearly.

She sat where she was put while arrangements were made over her head. They travelled heavy; there were servants, talk of how to transfer luggage, mattresses and linen from the wagon to T'Gallants—Alice liked to take her own bed wherever she went; Robert had brought his favourite cook.