The Talisman Ring (7 page)

His gyrations after that were bewildering, but apparently purposeful. It seemed to Eustacie, dutifully grasping the pommel, that they were circling round the thicket to the north. She could now hear plainly the sound of trampling hooves and snapping twigs.

‘We must give the poor devils something to think about,’ said Ludovic in her ear. ‘Don’t screech now!’

It was as well that he uttered this warning, for the immediate explosion of his pistol made Eustacie jump nearly out of her skin. She managed by the exercise of heroic self-control not to scream, but when a shot almost at once answered Ludovic’s she could not forbear a gasp of fright.

‘I thought that would tickle them up,’ said Ludovic. ‘Now for it!’

He wheeled the snorting, trembling Rufus, and let him have his head. Rufus plunged forward, crashing through the undergrowth with the maximum amount of noise and alarm; a shout sounded somewhere in the rear; another shot was fired; and Eustacie had the satisfaction of knowing that she was now fairly embroiled with His Majesty’s Excise Office. She removed one hand from the pommel and took a firm grasp of Ludovic’s coat, which seemed to her to afford a safer hold. He glanced down at her, smiling. ‘Frightened?’

‘No!’

‘Well, we’re going to have a trifle of a gallop now, so cling tight!’

They came out from the cover of the trees as he spoke on to a tract of more open ground. The moon was momentarily obscured by a drifting cloud, but there was light enough for the flying horse to be seen by its pursuers. Two shots cracked almost simultaneously, and Eustacie felt the arm that cradled her give a queer jerk, and heard her cousin catch his breath sharply. ‘Winged, by Gad!’ he said. ‘Now, who’d have thought an Exciseman could shoot as straight as that?’

‘Are you hurt?’ Eustacie cried.

‘Devil a bit!’ was the cheerful response. He looked fleetingly back over his shoulder. ‘Four of ’em, I think. Riding hard, too. You can always trust an Exciseman to follow his nose…That’s better.’

They were under cover again, and he let Rufus slacken his pace to a trot, bending him easily this way and that through the outskirts of the Forest. Eustacie, after a very little of this erratic progress, began to feel quite lost, but it was evident that her cousin knew the Forest like the palm of his hand, for they steadily penetrated further into its darkness. Behind them the pursuit sounded as though it were in difficulties, but they had not yet outstripped it, and once Ludovic reined in altogether to give it time to come nearer, and since it showed signs of abandoning the chase, fired his second pistol invitingly. This had the required effect; the Forest reverberated with shots, and they moved forward again, heading northward.

It was fully half an hour later before they finally lost the Excisemen, and Ludovic was swaying in the saddle.

‘You
are
hurt!’ Eustacie said, alarmed.

‘Oh no, only a scratch!’ he murmured. ‘Anyway, we’ve led them in such circles they’ll be hunting one another till daylight.’

Eustacie put her hands over his, and pulled Rufus up. ‘Where are you hurt?’ she demanded.

‘Left shoulder. I think we’d better take the risk and make Hand Cross.’

‘Yes, but first I will bind up your shoulder. Are you bleeding very much?’

‘Like a pig,’ said Ludovic.

She slid to the ground, stiff and somewhat bruised, and said imperatively: ‘Get down! If you bleed like a pig you will die, and I do not at all want you to die.’

He laughed, but dismounted, and found himself steadied by two small capable hands. He reeled and sank on his knees, saying: ‘Damme, I must be worse hit than I knew! You’d best take the horse and leave me.’

‘I shall not leave you,’ replied Eustacie, busily ripping the flounce off her petticoat. ‘I shall take you to Hand Cross.’

Receiving no answer, she looked closely at him and found to her dismay that he had fainted. For a moment she was at a loss to know what to do, but when she touched him and brought her hand away wet with blood, she decided that the most urgent need was to bind up his wound, and promptly set about the task of extricating him from his coat. It was by no means easy, but she accomplished it at last, and managed as well as she could for the lack of light to twist the strips of her petticoat round his shoulder. He regained consciousness while she was straining her bandage as tight as possible, and lay for a moment blinking at her.

‘What in – oh, I remember!’ he said faintly. ‘Give me some brandy. Flask in my coat.’

She tied a firm knot, found the brandy, and raising his head, held the flask to his lips. He recovered sufficiently to struggle up and to put on his coat again. ‘You know, you’d be wasted on Tristram,’ he told her. ‘Help me into the saddle, and we’ll make Hand Cross yet.’

‘Yes, but this time it is I who will take the reins,’ said Eustacie.

‘Just as you say, my dear,’ he replied meekly.

‘And you will put your arms round me and not fall off.’

‘Don’t worry, I shan’t fall off.’

Eustacie, finding a conveniently fallen tree-trunk, led her weary horse to it, and by using it as a mounting-block contrived to get into the saddle. She then rode back to Ludovic, and adjured him to mount behind her. He managed to do this, but the effort very nearly brought on another swooning fit. He had recourse to the brandy again, which cleared his head sufficiently to enable him to say: ‘Follow this track; it’ll bring us out on to the pike-road, north of Hand Cross. If you can wake old Nye at the Red Lion he’ll take me in.’

‘What shall I do if I see an Exciseman?’ inquired Eustacie.

‘Say your prayers,’ he replied irrepressibly.

No Exciseman, however, was encountered on the track that led through the Forest, and by the time they came out on to the turnpike road, a mile from Hand Cross, Eustacie was far too anxious about her cousin to have much thought to spare for a questing Excise-officer. Ludovic seemed to stay in the saddle more by instinct than by any conscious effort. Eustacie dared not urge Rufus even to a trot. She had drawn Ludovic’s sound arm round her waist, and held it there, clasping his slack hand. It seemed an interminable way to Hand Cross, but at last the lonely inn came into sight, a dark huddle against the sky. It was by now long after midnight, and no light shone behind the shuttered windows. Eustacie pulled Rufus up before the door and let go of Ludovic’s hand. It fell nervelessly to his side; she realized that he must have swooned again; he was certainly sagging against her very heavily; she hoped he would not fall out of the saddle when she dismounted. She slid down, and was relieved to find that he only fell forward across Rufus’s neck. The next moment she had grasped the bell-pull and sent an agitated peal ringing through the silent inn.

It was answered so speedily that Eustacie, who had heard rumours that Joseph Nye, of the Red Lion, knew more about the free-traders than he would admit, instantly suspected that he had been waiting up for the very convoy she had met. He opened the door in person, fully dressed, and holding a lantern, and looking a great deal startled. When he saw Eustacie he stared as though he could not believe his eyes, and gasped: ‘Miss! Why,
miss
!’

Eustacie grasped his arm urgently. ‘Please help me at once! I have brought my cousin Ludovic, and he said you would take him in, but he is wounded, and I think dying!’ With which, because she had been through a great deal of excitement and was quite worn out by it, she burst into tears.

The landlord took an involuntary step backward. ‘Miss, have you gone mad?’

‘No!’ sobbed Eustacie.

He looked incredulously out into the moonlight, but when he saw the sagging figure on Rufus’s back he gave an exclamation of horror, thrust his lantern into Eustacie’s hand, and strode out. He was a big man, with mighty muscles, and he lifted Ludovic down from the saddle with surprising ease, and carried him into the inn, and lowered him on to a wooden settle by the fireplace. ‘My God, what’s come to him? What’s he doing here?’ he demanded under his breath.

‘An Exciseman shot him. Oh, do you think he will die?’

‘Die! No! But if he’s found here – !’ He broke off. ‘I must get that horse stabled and out of sight. Stay you here, miss, and don’t touch him! Lordy, lordy, this is a pretty kettle of fish!’ He took a taper from the high mantelpiece, kindled it at the lantern’s flame, and gave it to Eustacie. ‘Do you light them candles, miss, and keep as quiet as you can! I’ve people putting up in the house.’ He took up the lantern as he spoke and went out of the inn, softly closing the door behind him.

A branch of half-burned candles was standing on the table. Eustacie lit them, and turned to look fearfully down at her cousin.

He was lying with one arm hanging over the edge of the settle, and his face alarmingly pale. Not knowing what to do for him, she sank down on her knees beside him and lifted his dangling hand, and held it between her own. For the first time she was able to see him clearly; she thought that had she met him in daylight she must have known him for a Lavenham, for here was Sylvester’s hawk-nose and humorous mouth, softened indeed by youth but unmistakable. He was lean and long-limbed, taller than Sylvester had been, but with the same slender hands and arched feet, and the same cleft in his wilful chin.

He seemed to Eustacie scarcely to breathe; she laid his arm across his chest and loosened the handkerchief about his neck. ‘Oh please, Cousin Ludovic, don’t die!’ she begged.

She heard a slight movement on the stairs behind her, and, turning her head, beheld a tall woman in a dressing-gown standing on the top step with a candle in her hand, looking down at her. She sprang up and stood as though defending the unconscious Ludovic, staring up at the new-comer in a challenging way.

The lady with the candle said with a twinkle in her grey eyes: ‘Don’t be alarmed! I’m no ghost, I assure you. You woke me with your ring at the bell, and because I’m of a prying disposition, I got up to see what in the world was going forward.’ She came down the stairs as she spoke, and saw Ludovic. Her eyebrows went up, but she said placidly: ‘I see I’ve thrust myself into an adventure. Is he badly hurt?’

‘I think he’s dying,’ answered Eustacie tragically. ‘He has bled, and bled, and bled!’

The lady put down her candle and came to the settle. ‘That sounds very bad, certainly, but perhaps it is not desperate after all,’ she said. ‘Shall we see where he is hurt?’

‘Nye said I was not to touch him,’ replied Eustacie doubtfully.

‘Oh, he’s a friend of Nye’s, is he?’ said the lady.

‘No – at least, yes, in a way he is. He is my cousin, but you must not ask me anything about him, and you must not tell anyone that you have ever seen him!’

‘Very well, I won’t,’ said the lady imperturbably.

At that moment the landlord came into the coffee-room from the back of the house, followed by a little man with a wizened, leathery face and thin legs. When he saw the tall woman, Nye looked very much discomfited, and said in his deep, rough voice: ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am: you’ve been disturbed. It’s nothing – naught but a lad I know who’s been getting into trouble through a bit of poaching.’

‘Of course, he would be poaching in the middle of February,’ agreed the lady. ‘You had better get him to bed and take a look at his hurt.’

‘It’s what I’m going to do, ma’am,’ returned Nye in a grim voice. ‘Take his legs, Clem!’

Eustacie watched the two men carefully lift her cousin from the settle and begin to carry him upstairs, and turned her attention to the tall woman, who was regarding her with a kind of amused interest. ‘I dare say it seems very odd to you,’ she said austerely, ‘but you should not have come downstairs.’

‘I know,’ apologized the lady, ‘but pray don’t tell me to go to bed again, for I couldn’t sleep a wink with an adventure going on under my nose! Let me present myself to you: I’m one Sarah Thane, a creature of no importance at all, travelling to London with my brother, whom you may hear snoring upstairs.’

‘Oh!’ said Eustacie. ‘Of course, if you quite understand that this is a very secret affair –’

‘Oh, I do!’ said Miss Thane earnestly.

‘But I must warn you that there is a great deal of danger.’

‘Nothing could be better!’ declared Miss Thane. ‘You must know that I have hitherto led the most humdrum existence.’

‘Do you, too, like adventure?’ asked Eustacie, looking her over with a more lenient eye.

‘My dear ma’am, I have been looking for adventure all my life!’

‘Well,’ said Eustacie darkly, ‘this is an adventure of the most romantic, and it is certain that my cousin Trist – that people will come to search for me. You must promise not to betray me, and in particular not my cousin Ludovic, who is not permitted to set foot in England, you understand.’

‘No power on earth shall wring a syllable from me,’ Miss Thane assured her.

‘Then perhaps I will let you help me to conceal my cousin Ludovic,’ said Eustacie handsomely. ‘Only I think it will be better if I do not tell you anything at all until I have spoken with him, because I do not know him very well, and perhaps he would prefer that you should know nothing.’

‘Oh no, don’t tell me anything!’ said Miss Thane. ‘I feel it would almost spoil it for me if you explained it. You’re not eloping with your cousin, by any chance?’

‘But, of course, I am not eloping with him!
Voyons
, how could I elope with him when I have only just met him? It would be quite absurd!’

‘Oh, if you have only just met him, I suppose it would,’ agreed Miss Thane regretfully. ‘It is a pity, for I have often thought that I should like to assist an elopement. However, one can’t have everything. You know, I feel very strongly that we ought to see what can be done for that wound of his. Not that I wish to interfere, of course.’

‘You are entirely right,’ said Eustacie. ‘I shall immediately go up to him. You may come with me if you like.’

‘Thank you,’ said Miss Thane meekly.

Joseph Nye had carried Ludovic to a little bedchamber at the back of the house and laid him upon his side on the chintz-hung bed. The tapster was kindling a fire in the grate, and Nye had just taken off Ludovic’s coat and laid bare his shoulder when the two women came into the room.

Eustacie shuddered at the sight of the ugly wound, still sluggishly bleeding, but Miss Thane went up to the bed and watched what Nye was about. In spite of their size, his hands were deft enough. Miss Thane nodded, as though satisfied and said: ‘Can you get the bullet out, do you think?’

‘Ay, but I’ll want water and bandages. Clem! leave that and fetch me a bowl and all the linen you can find!’

‘You had better bring some brandy as well,’ added Miss Thane, taking the bellows out of the tapster’s hands and beginning to ply them.

Eustacie, standing at the foot of the bed, watched Nye draw from his pocket a clasp-knife and open it, and somewhat hastily quitted her post. ‘I think,’ she said in a rather faint voice, ‘that it will be better if it is I who attend to the fire, mademoiselle, and you who assist Nye. It is not that I do not like blood,’ she explained, ‘but I find that I do not wish to watch him dig bullets out of my cousin Ludovic.’

Miss Thane at once surrendered the bellows into her charge, saying that such scruples were readily understandable. Clem came back in a few minutes with a bowl and a quantity of old linen, and for quite some time Eustacie kept her attention strictly confined to the fire.

Miss Thane, finding that the landlord knew what he was about, silently did what he told her, offering no criticism. Only when he had extracted the bullet and was bathing the wound did she venture to inquire in a low voice whether he thought any vital spot had been touched. Nye shook his head.

‘I’ll get some Basilicum Powder,’ said Miss Thane, and went softly away to her own room.

By the time the powder had been applied and the shoulder bandaged, Ludovic was showing signs of recovering consciousness. Miss Thane’s hartshorn held under his nose made his eyelids flutter, and a little neat brandy administered by Nye brought him fully to his senses. He opened a pair of dazed blue eyes, and blinked uncomprehendingly at the landlord.

‘Eh, Mr Ludovic, that’s better!’ Nye said.

Ludovic’s gaze wandered past him to Miss Thane, dwelt on her for a frowning moment, and returned to the contemplation of Nye’s square countenance. A look of recognition dawned. ‘Joe?’ said Ludovic in a faint, puzzled voice.

‘Ay, it’s Joe, sir. Do you take it easy, now!’

Remembrance came back to Ludovic. He struggled up on his sound elbow. ‘Damn that Exciseman! The child – a cousin of mine – where is she?’

Eustacie at the first sound of his voice had dropped the bellows and flown to the bedside. ‘I’m here,
mon cousin
!’ she said, dropping on her knees beside him.

He put out his sound hand and took her chin in it, turning her face up that he might scrutinize it. ‘I’ve been wanting to look at you, my little cousin,’ he said. A smile hovered round his mouth. ‘I thought as much! You’re as pretty as any picture.’ He saw a tear sparkling on her cheek, and said at once: ‘What are you crying for? Don’t you like your romantic cousin Ludovic?’

‘Oh yes, but I thought you were going to die!’

‘Lord, no!’ he said cheerfully. He let Nye put him back on to the pillows, and drew Eustacie’s hand to his lips, and kissed it. ‘You must promise me you’ll not go further with this trip of yours to London. It won’t do.’

‘Oh no, of course I shall not! I shall stay with you.’

‘Egad, I wish you could!’ he said.

‘But certainly I can. Why should I not?’

‘
Les convenances
,’ murmured Ludovic.

‘Ah bah, I do not regard them! When one is engaged upon an adventure it is not the time to be thinking of such things. Besides, if I do not stay with you, I shall have to marry Tristram, because I have lost both my bandboxes, which makes it impossible that I should any longer go to London.’

‘Oh well, you can’t marry Tristram, that’s certain!’ said Ludovic, apparently impressed by this reasoning.

Nye interposed at this point. ‘Mr Ludovic, what be you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘Have you gone crazy to come into the Weald? Who shot you?’

‘Some damned Exciseman. We landed a cargo of brandy and rum two nights ago, and I’d a fancy to learn what’s been going forward here. I came up with Abel.’

Nye laid a quick hand across his lips and glanced warningly in Miss Thane’s direction.

‘You needn’t regard me,’ she said encouragingly. ‘I am pledged to secrecy.’

Ludovic turned his head to look at her. ‘I beg pardon, but who in thunder are you?’ he said.

‘It’s Miss Thane, sir, who’s putting up in the house.’

‘Yes,’ interrupted Eustacie, ‘and I think she is truly very sensible,
mon cousin
, and she would like infinitely to help us.’

‘But we don’t want any help!’

‘Certainly we want help, because Tristram will search for me, and perhaps the Excisemen for you, and you must be hidden.’

‘And that’s true, too,’ muttered Nye. ‘You’ll stay where you are to-night, sir, but it ain’t safe for longer. I’ll have you where you can slip into the cellar if the alarm’s raised.’

‘I’ll be damned if I’ll be put in any cellar!’ said Ludovic. ‘I’ll be off as soon as I can stand on my feet.’

‘No, you will not,’ said Eustacie. ‘I have quite decided that you must stop being a free-trader and become instead Lord Lavenham.’

‘That seems to me a most excellent idea,’ remarked Miss Thane. ‘I suppose it will be quite easy?’

‘If Sylvester’s dead, I am Lord Lavenham, but it don’t help me. I can’t stay in England.’

‘But we are going to discover who it was who killed that man whose name I cannot remember,’ explained Eustacie.

‘Oh, are we?’ said Ludovic. ‘I’m agreeable, but how are we going to set about it?’

‘Well, I do not know yet, but we shall arrange a plan, and I think perhaps Miss Thane might be very useful, because she seems to me to be a person of large ideas, and when it is shown to her that she holds your life in her hands, she will be interested, and wish to assist us.’

‘Do I really hold his life in my hands?’ inquired Miss Thane. ‘If that’s so, of course I’m much interested. I will certainly assist you. In fact, I wouldn’t be left out of this for the world.’

Ludovic moved on his pillows, and said with a grimace of pain: ‘You seem to know so much, ma’am, that you may as well know also that I am wanted by the Law for murder!’

‘Are you?’ said Miss Thane, gently removing one of the pillows. ‘How shocking! Do you think you could get a little sleep if we left you?’

He looked up into her face and gave a weak laugh. ‘Ma’am, take care of my cousin for me till morning, and I shall be very much in your debt.’

‘Why, certainly!’ said Miss Thane in her placid way.

Ten minutes later Eustacie was ensconced in a chair by the fire in Miss Thane’s bedchamber, gratefully sipping a cup of hot milk. Miss Thane sat down beside her, and said with her friendly smile: ‘I hope you mean to tell me all about it, for I’m dying of curiosity, and I don’t even know your name.’

Eustacie considered her for a moment. ‘Well, I think I will tell you,’ she decided. ‘I am Eustacie de Vauban, and my cousin Ludovic is Lord Lavenham of Lavenham Court. He is the tenth Baron.’

Miss Thane shook her head. ‘It just shows how easily one may be mistaken,’ she said. ‘I thought he was a smuggler.’

‘He prefers,’ said Eustacie, with dignity, ‘that one should call him a free-trader.’

‘I’m sorry,’ apologized Miss Thane. ‘Of course, it is a much better title. I should have known. What made him take to s– free trading? It seems a trifle unusual.’