Lady of the Highway Read online

  Elizabeth shot me a pointed look before she pulled her black shawl tighter round her ample chest and marched out.

  ‘You’re sure, Downall?’ Jacob’s eyes were glassy.

  Downall nodded, but he looked discomfited.

  Jacob bowed stiffly to me. ‘I owe you an apology, Mistress Fanshawe. Kate.’ He did not want to let go of the idea of my guilt, I could see it, but my eyes welled up at the sight of his attempt to be fair, to do the right thing under such circumstances.

  ‘No matter, Jacob,’ I said. ‘It’s a terrible thing. I’m truly sorry to hear about your father. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘It was such a shock, and she’s been wonderful. She’s helped me with Mother, and she says she’ll help arranging the laying out. You’d never guess she’s Abigail’s sister. They’re like chalk and cheese.’

  ‘Abi’s not what you think.’

  ‘No. Enough.’ He held up his hand. ‘Don’t talk to me of her. Nothing’s gone right for me since I met her. And now this – a black cloud hangs over me somehow. She took me for a fool. The thought of it disgusts me. Elizabeth’s right; Abigail always was the black sheep of the family.’

  ‘You’re wrong. Don’t believe everything Elizabeth says. Abi’s kind, and I can’t tell you why… but it’s not her fault.’

  ‘She had a babe out of wedlock. How is that “not her fault”?’ He shook his head in frustration. ‘No. When Elizabeth and I are married, Abigail will never be welcome in our house.’

  I took an involuntary step back. ‘You and Elizabeth? You’d wed that simpering bag of air?’

  Jacob’s face was immobile a moment. He stepped towards me in a sudden rush. ‘Watch your words Kate. You have few enough friends in the village. My father is dead. I’m constable sooner than I thought, and people will look to me for guidance. Elizabeth is a good match for me – she has the same values as I do. She wants stability, financial security. A decent life. Decency. Do you hear that? It’s a little valued commodity these days.’

  With that, he strode from the room. Behind him, the door banged shut.

  21: Stranger at the Window

  Mallinson dead. It beggared belief. He was the linchpin of the community. No doubt Downall thought I really had murdered him. I could not help feeling a little guilty pride; that he thought me capable of it, though I knew I should not. Downall’s lust for power made him prepared to ignore the fact his future wife could be a murderer. If it wasn’t so frightening, I would have laughed.

  But he had kept his part of our bargain, and I knew he would exact mine – to make me write to my stepfather. When I was sure Jacob had gone, I went to the stables and asked Cutch to intercept any servant sent to town with a letter to Sir Simon.

  As I suspected, that afternoon Downall made me sit and write to Sir Simon, begging him to return. The servant took my letter and went to saddle a horse. From my window I saw him in the yard, and watched Cutch try to persuade him to hand the letter over. The servant would not give it up. Downall had outwitted me. He must have guessed I’d try to divert the letter.

  Curses. Could there be anything worse? I’d summoned my stepfather home with my own hand. I gripped my skirts then thumped my fist down on the windowsill in frustration.

  *

  To my relief, Downall was absent most of the next few days. He rode out to St Albans and to Wheathamstead and offered employment at the newly refurbished manor to anyone lacking work. When I looked out of the windows, strangers were tilling the land, the kitchen was run by a new cook who called Downall ‘master’. But I could do nothing, except keep my door locked and keep well out of his way.

  When he left at night for his lodgings, it was as if I exhaled. My concern for Jamie meant I had to divert attention from myself. I slept in the day, an exhausted troubled sleep, for I rode out to the cottage every night to be with Jamie, only returning just before dawn.

  I was jumpy, Jacob’s father’s death had shocked me. Who would do such a thing? He had been popular, Mr Mallinson. Staid and fixed in his ways, but well liked. The fact that someone could shoot a constable on his own doorstep suddenly made the whole world feel unsafe.

  I armed myself well, and kept away from the edges of the woods, sticking to open ground. And I feared too that people would be looking out for me, would still think that I had something to do with it.

  ‘Do you think your husband is dead?’ Cutch asked me one night, as he handed me Blaze’s bridle.

  ‘I don’t care where he is.’ I shuddered; slipped the bit between Blaze’s teeth. My thoughts had been so full of Jamie, I had forgotten Thomas.

  ‘But you can’t make plans for you and Abi until you know. What if he was to turn up here tomorrow?’

  I stared at him. ‘He’s dead. No one’s seen him. He’ll be in a ditch somewhere with his throat cut by some roughneck Roundhead. Anyway, I’ve told you, it’s none of your business.’

  ‘But it is my business.’ He stood up, from where he had been filling buckets with grain. ‘You’ve lodged your bastard child on poor Abi, and she never asked for it. She’s not your servant any more.’ He took a step towards me, his face suffused with red. ‘Sir Simon stopped her pay. The few scraps you took down to her yesterday from the big house aren’t enough for what she does. She can’t work, she can’t go out. She can’t do anything. It’s not fair on her.’

  ‘I should think it’s an easy life, sitting around in her mother’s cottage all day with nothing to do—’

  ‘It’s half a life!’

  ‘And what do you think it’s like for me?’

  He had no answer. He threw on the saddle without looking at me. ‘You need to leave here,’ he blurted. ‘Go somewhere nobody knows you.’

  ‘Markyate Manor has been in my family for generations. It will belong to Jamie one day. When I am gone, and Downall and Sir Simon, and all those who would keep us from it.’

  ‘Do you think your son will care a hoot about the house? He will care about who brings him up. Whether that person has time for him, whether they care.’

  ‘Of course I care. Stop shouting at me.’

  ‘I’m not the one shouting,’ Cutch said. ‘I lost both my parents to the plague. D’you know how that feels? I was twelve years old. My whole future disappeared. And guess what? I remember nothing about the house, not a whit. But I can picture my mother’s face all right, the smell of her – starch, and the cinnamon from the baking.’ He paused and looked down, his face reddening. ‘Forget it, what I just said. But remember this – Jamie will care nothing for your fine house.’ He spat then, at my feet.

  The gesture shocked me. It was so much a gesture of the common man. ‘My son shall have both,’ I said stiffly. ‘A loving parent and an inheritance.’

  ‘Then you’d better start to work on the first.’ Cutch glared at me and picked up the two buckets of grain to go to the stables. ‘He thinks Abi’s his mother. That’s why he keeps bawling when you appear.’ Two minutes later and he was gone.

  *

  Cutch’s words had stuck in my thoughts like a fish bone in the throat. I loaded the provisions from the house kitchen into my saddlebags, guiltily squashing in as much food as I could fit. I would not have Abi think I was mean. I was about to leave when Cutch reappeared, stone faced, his horse ready saddled and bridled.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘Abi needs some company.’

  I did not answer. It irked me that he followed me all the way on his rough cob. It was still not quite dark when I got to the cottage. Abi went to walk with Cutch, to get out of the house. I could feel the atmosphere, sharp as arrows, as though they were both against me. They escaped me quickly enough, for Jamie was crying, and would not settle. I gritted my teeth.

  ‘I’m your mother, little man,’ I said, but he carried on grizzling. Cutch’s words kept repeating in my head. I was a failure. I’d failed to win the love of my own baby.

  In desperation, I sang to h
im, the Diggers’ song.

  With spades and hoes and ploughs, stand up now, stand up now,

  With spades and hoes and ploughs, stand up now.

  Stand up now, Diggers all.

  The song brought back memories of Ralph, but filled me with pain. It was like being torn apart. Abi was right. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was two people in one body; I had the heart of a Digger but could not make myself act that way, Lady Katherine of Markyate Manor kept intervening.

  My singing seemed to pacify Jamie though, and after I’d fed him and held him a while, he quietened, and his slow rhythmic breaths soothed me, and sent me into a doze. The fire was hot, ready for cooking, and the warmth made me sleepy.

  A draught. I felt there was something wrong before I saw it. Jamie’s eyes opened and he fell quiet, scanning the ceiling as if listening. One of the shutters had been pushed open. I shivered. I was sure it had been closed before. I had the prickling feeling I was being watched.

  A rustling outside the cottage made me call out, ‘Cutch? Abi?’

  No answer, yet I could hear sounds of movement. The hens?

  I stayed silent. A shadow, just a sense of a dark movement at the window. Then a pale shape. The eyes of a man. Looking in.

  I jumped up, put Jamie hastily in his crib.

  ‘Who’s there? What do you want?’ I called.

  The door opened and a man stood there in the doorway. Too thin for Cutch. His eyes wild, staring at me, above a cloth tied over his nose and mouth. The highwayman who’d made me strip. Some sort of rage seemed to emanate from him, an anger that shimmered round him like a heat.

  I fumbled for my knife, leapt up to put myself between Jamie and the stranger.

  He ripped the dark kerchief from his nose and mouth.

  Shock reverberated up my spine.

  ‘Did you think I was dead?’ Thomas’s face was twisted in an expression of scorn. ‘Well, you are not rid of me yet.’ He was gaunt, his clothes rank and ragged, from sleeping rough. His eyes raked over me with contempt.

  ‘Where have you been? We didn’t know—’

  ‘Is that the Digger’s son? I saw you feeding him.’ He stepped towards the cradle. ‘He sure as hell isn’t mine.’

  ‘No,’ I said holding the knife out in front of me to keep him at bay, ‘don’t touch him.’

  ‘He’s an ugly runt, isn’t he?’

  I shielded the cradle. ‘Don’t come any nearer.’

  ‘You think you can defend him with that pathetic little knife?’ He drew out his pistol and cocked it. ‘My uncle was right when he told me you were a beast that needs taming. But I never thought you’d turn away from the king’s cause.’

  ‘Thomas, please, I never meant you harm.’

  ‘But you never loved me either. How could you fall for that… that… farmer?’ His words were full of scorn. ‘You are my wife, Katherine. You were supposed to love me. We were wed in front of God. The same god that grants our king his divine right to rule. Yet you would turn to sin and damnation?’

  ‘I followed my heart. What is so wrong with that?’

  ‘Your heart. Pah. You talk like a common milkmaid. You were supposed to be my helpmeet, you were supposed to give me a son. Me, not that bastard Roundhead. Yet you barred your door against me! I thought you were just too young, that I should give you time.’

  ‘Be calm, I beg you! I didn’t want to—’

  ‘Shut your mouth. You protest too much. You betrayed me. Look at you, look at this hovel, not even fit for a pig to shit in. Look at yourself Katherine – how far you have dropped. My uncle told me you were like him – nobility. He thought I was marrying up. I used to think you were too good for me, but all the time you were lifting your skirt for that—’

  ‘Nobility?’ My voice grew hoarse with suppressed rage. ‘You don’t know what the word means. Sir Simon Fanshawe has not one drop of noble blood in his body, do you hear? You dare to talk to me of his nobility, when he whipped my back red raw?’

  ‘Because you were unruly, always have been—’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To rid the world of poison. The world’s got lost. Wives turn whores, and decent men like me are forced to live by their wits, preying on their lesser men, cast out from their own estates by men like Downall. Well, I’ll clean up this rotten part of the world. Starting right now. Let me pass.’ He pointed the gun at my chest and pushed me towards the cradle.

  Outside, the noise of a horse whinnying. I backed away, shielding Jamie, my little knife held before me.

  Thomas tried to push me aside, but I made a wild slash for his hand. I felt the blade slice through the cloth of his sleeve. He jerked back and the gun went off, sending a ball of lead into the thatch. There was an instant of silence, when straw and dust floated before me, before the door crashed inwards against the wall.

  ‘Kate!’ I looked up in time to see Cutch in the doorway.

  I threw myself over Jamie to protect him. He let out a yell as if his lungs would burst.

  Cutch had no time to prepare himself or draw a gun, but launched himself at Thomas. Thomas hit him hard across the face with the gun. Cutch reeled back, grunting in pain. At that moment a flash of understanding hit me like a fist in the guts. Thomas was no longer my milksop husband, he was the highwayman that had killed the Gawthorpes and that poor boy on the road. The man who had shot Constable Mallinson in cold blood.

  Cutch grappled with Thomas, but I was too stunned to move, except to hoist Jamie up into my arms and get ready to run. But Thomas swept one foot swiftly under Cutch’s legs, and Cutch fell heavily like a sack of grain. Thomas took the chance to barge past him, in a flurry of dark cloak, and out of the door.

  Cutch pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. ‘Who the hell was that?’ He stumbled outside and came back holding Abi by the arm. ‘I knew something was wrong when I heard the shot, so I told Abi to hide outside.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Abi said, her eyes flicking round the room. ‘Cutch… your face? Is Jamie all right? I saw a man—’

  I had Jamie in my arms and was pressing him tight to my chest. My breath panted in my throat. ‘Thomas,’ I managed.

  ‘Who…?’

  ‘My husband. He’s still here. In Markyate. He knows about Jamie.’

  22: Hunt for the Highwayman

  Jamie was in the old tithe barn at the back of the manor. It was draughty and cold, but a distance away from the house. I no longer felt he was safe in the cottage, and Cutch seemed to have taken both Abi and Jamie under his wing. I had not slept, because I had spent most of the night there, but lay down exhausted in my chamber at the dawn chorus. I must have dozed because shortly after the church bells had struck nine, Downall was at my door.

  When I opened it, his bulk filled the doorway, his beard straggling over his broad collar. ‘You’d better read this,’ he said, holding out a letter, ‘it’s just arrived.’

  ‘Why? What is it?’ I got to my feet and took it.

  ‘A letter to you from Sir Simon. Of course I opened it. It agrees to our wedding. He’s telling you to put out the banns.’

  I could barely think. The events of the previous night were tumbled in my head, the scene like something from a picture of hell. Thomas was alive. It changed everything.

  ‘Try to look a little more cheerful over the prospect,’ Downall said.

  ‘There is no point,’ I said with sudden satisfaction, tossing the letter down on the floor.

  ‘It was what your stepfather promised me. Now your husband is dead—’

  ‘Thomas is alive.’

  He stared at me, stock still.

  ‘He’s alive.’ I was triumphant. ‘It is he who rides the highway. He who killed Mallinson.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  Downall’s face tautened. He took my arm in a grip like iron tongs, ‘Is this true?’

  ‘All the robberies, all the dead on the road – it is he who is responsible, not I.’


  ‘Then I don’t understand… why do you ride out at night? Are you protecting him?’

  ‘No. I didn’t even know he was alive until last night. But you see,’ I could not keep the note of pleasure from my voice, ‘whilst he lives, you cannot marry me.’

  He stepped away, less certain. ‘No. I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. Thomas Fanshawe’s dead.’

  I stood very upright and tall. ‘Did you see him die?’

  Silence.

  ‘I thought not.’

  Downall raised his chin, and his eyes glittered with suppressed rage. ‘You say he is the highwayman. Then I intend to catch this highwayman, if it is the last thing I do. Then we shall see who it is that rides under the mask.’ He strode past me to the door. ‘And mark my words well, whoever it is, they will hang. I swear it on my life.’

  *

  As soon as Downall had gone, I hurried to the stable.

  ‘Jamie’s sleeping. Abi’s looking to him. What’s happening?’ Cutch said. ‘I’ve just saddled Downall’s horse. He was in a mighty hurry to leave. He quizzed me over what I’d said to Jacob; whether I’d seen you abroad that night, the night Mallinson was shot. Jesus, Kate, it’s a mess. I know where you were and what you were doing, but other people don’t. They saw you. Riding out that same night. Of course I’ve told Downall nothing. Said I was asleep in the hayloft as usual. Told him the same as I told Jacob. I heard nothing and saw nothing.’

  I shot him a grateful look. ‘Did Downall say anything else?’

  Cutch rubbed his hand through his flop of black hair. ‘Says he’s putting up a reward, wants the highwayman to hang. Don’t understand why – he’s always been lazy about fighting crime before. Is it because Mallinson’s dead?’

  ‘No. It’s because I told him it’s Thomas. He wants rid of him so he can control this estate. He wants to wed me.’

  ‘God’s breath.’

  ‘But Thomas won’t stand a chance, will he?’ I said. ‘Not once word gets out from Downall. Jack Downall can whip up a crowd out of nowhere. And Jacob will be right behind him, seeking vengeance for his father.’