Lady of the Highway Read online

  I was failing, I knew that. My fingers could no longer grip. My head weighed like a stone on my shoulders and I could barely stay upright in the saddle. I let the horse have his head and his hooves pounded through the lanes. The world was quiet, as if muffled. I was just aware of my head swimming, an icy coldness in my fingers, a pain in my chest like a red-hot brand.

  I had to make it. I gritted my teeth and gripped with my knees, hanging on.

  It was love I realised. That’s what I was clinging to. Love for this life, love for Jamie, love for the feeling of riding in the rain. When the four domed towers of Markyate Manor loomed into view I thought they were a mirage. They looked so near, yet so far away. We seemed to be galloping, yet they got no nearer.

  The reins slackened. I grasped a tuft of mane, but my hand could get no purchase. The horse slowed to a halt, but my body was heavy, unbalanced. I could not hold on. I fell, my cheek hit the wet grass, and the ground felt soft and welcoming, like a pillow.

  I’d failed. I hadn’t found Jamie. I tried to crawl towards the house, but my limbs were like water. I was going to die, and I’d lived a life in which I’d killed an innocent man, a man who would not let me be his friend. It was all I ever wanted, to have friends, to make a family for myself.

  I groaned, let myself fall back on the grass. Above me the stars gleamed like pinheads just peeking from their cloth of black velvet. I felt something in me pulling upward, a stretching, fluttering feeling, like a butterfly slowly uncrumpling its wings. Below me my body was inert, the stain across my bodice blacker than coal.

  Up I went until I was looking down from above.

  Figures running from the house. Cutch was there, I could see the top of his head, he was shouting, shaking me. And Abi with Jamie in her arms. They were distraught, desperate.

  I watched Cutch leave me and coil them both in his arms. Dear Cutch. It looked right. They looked like a family. The family I never had. It was going to be all right. They looked so heavy, so substantial in their solid clothes. And I was just a flicker, a movement in the air. But someone else was watching. A faint presence. Ralph. Though he was only a glimmer of warmth and excitement, like a blessing. I took one last look at the people below before I dissolved into love.

  Epilogue

  Abigail

  Many folk have asked me about that night, and sometimes I don’t answer. I pretend not to have understood, because it was a night full of confusion. People think I’m stupid, and sometimes that’s a good thing. Of course Cutch doesn’t, he knows the truth of me.

  When I look back now, it’s like a dream where I can’t get things in the right order. All I know is that news of Whistler’s death spread quickly, and fearing the worst, Cutch set off to search for us with two of the Diggers from the village, Ben Potter and Hal Johnson. Cutch followed the trail of the wagon – he recognised its wheel which was out of true.

  At Milbury House, they surprised us, coming from three different directions. They were big men and armed. Thomas tried to seize me, meaning to take us hostage, but I was too quick and slipped out of his grasp. I took Jamie and ran and hid behind the wall. I remember Jamie’s rattle dropping, and the feeling that Cutch would be sad I’d lost it, but there was no time to go back for it.

  Cutch fired twice. He missed on purpose, though he says he did not. Anyway, it was enough. Thomas was outnumbered and took to his horse. Hal and Ben went after him, but soon gave up. Their horses were farm beasts, not hot enough for the chase.

  In the silence, Cutch took off his cloak and wrapped it about us against the rain. ‘Better get to the manor,’ he said. ‘Can you ride? Tie Jamie in tight with your shawl, so he won’t fall off.’

  ‘Kate…?’

  ‘She’ll find us there, never fear. Out in this damp weather’s no place for any babe.’

  He was right. Solid, sensible Cutch. I almost wept with relief. As he helped me onto his horse, he took me by the waist. I looked into his face and it was as if I saw my name written there. I held his eyes a moment.

  ‘That Jacob’s a fool,’ he said.

  *

  Four years on now, and the manor is sold. Of Sir Simon and Thomas Fanshawe, we’ve heard no more. Rumour is, they’re exiled in France again, but in any case, they have no reason to return to the house now it belongs to someone else. Just as well. Bad blood, both of them. And I’ll never go back – too much pain stuck in those walls.

  I can see the towers from my window, and remember the first day I ever went there. How Kate sneaked up on me so I couldn’t hear her. I thought her too grand to be my friend then, but now I know she was the best friend I ever had. Apart from Cutch of course. That man – how he lifts my heart. Still can’t mend a wagon wheel properly, but Lord how I love him.

  Cutch took over Soper’s yard and now he is known all over Hertfordshire for the gentleness of his hired horses. Cutch is a good husband and father to Martha and Jamie, and now we have our own babe on the way. I feel the weight of my babe inside me and think back to Kate, holding hers a secret all that time.

  Lord, how I still miss her. She was one of those people who after she’d lived her life, you realised it was always going to be a short one. Funny how you can see it afterwards, as if you always knew. She and Ralph – both of them made more of sparks of fire than earthly body. Cutch says some folks are destined to live short, and burn bright. Me and Cutch, well, I reckon we’re slow coals.

  They say Kate’s become quite a legend in these parts. Everyone loves tales of highwaymen, especially a woman, but I can’t hear them so I keep quiet and let it grow. They talk of ghosts, but I’m too busy to be afeared of such things. It’s the living you need to watch out for, not the dead. But I’m glad in a way, because Jamie hasn’t much to remember his mother by, only these tales of daring and adventure. And a boy has to have something to dream of, that’s for sure.

  I look out of the window into the yard. Jamie’s running after Martha. He’ll never catch her, she’s like a young colt, now, and his legs aren’t long enough to keep up. She indulges him though, and she’s good with the little ones, keeping an eye on them for me. As usual, there are two or three other children playing too. I recognise one of them as Abel, Jacob and Elizabeth’s son. They’ve joined their hands in a ring and are chanting some ditty; I can see their mouths open and close in rhythm.

  Cutch comes in to wash his hands before dinner.

  ‘What are they chanting?’ I ask him.

  He listens a moment. ‘Some nonsense about buried treasure.’

  ‘Kate again?’

  ‘Suppose so. They never tire of it. Near the Cell, there is a well, near the well there is a tree, and under the tree the treasure be. They reckon she buried a hoard somewhere hereabouts.’ We laugh. He wipes his wet hands on my skirt. ‘Though I shan’t go looking for it,’ he says, linking his arms around my waist. ‘Reckon I’ve all the treasure I need right here.’

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  Historical Notes from the Author

  Highway Thieves in the Seventeenth Century

  Though legends of highwaymen are many, there is only one featuring a woman – Lady Katherine Fanshawe. Shadow on the Highway is the first instalment in her story, the real history which over the generations has become embroidered with myth, as have all the other highway stories. Lady Katherine was supposed to have disguised herself as a man and her identity was only discovered after she was wounded as she tried to gallop away from the scene of a robbery.

  During the English Civil Wars in the seventeenth century, many highwaymen were not ruffians at all, but well-bred men who had been dispossessed of their property. Sometimes they were Royalist officers who had no other livelihood after they were outlawed under Cromwell. These were men who were familiar with the newly invented pistol, which gave them
an advantage over their victims, who were usually armed only with swords.

  An example is James Hind, who held up the man who presided over the king’s trial. A zealot for the Royalist cause, Hind intercepted the judge, Bradshaw, on the road in Dorset. When Bradshaw tried to intimidate Hind, he retorted;

  ‘I have now as much power over you as you lately had over the king, and I should do God and my country good service if I made the same use of it.’

  Hind became a symbol of resistance for the Royalists, and he continued to help the Royalist resistance in Ireland by supplying them with gold for arms and weaponry. Grice’s behaviour in Lady of the Highway is based on men like Hind.

  However, the first popular highwayman people think of is Dick Turpin, who is probably the most famous one of all. He is supposed to have ridden from London to York on his faithful mare, Black Bess, in less than a day. Like most highway stories, this is also a legend, probably based upon another seventeenth century highwayman, John Nevison, known as ‘Swift Nick’, who early one morning in 1676 robbed a sailor near Gads Hill, in Kent. In order to provide himself with an alibi, Nevison apparently set off on a ride that took him more than a hundred and ninety miles in about fifteen hours. Nevinson was a Robin Hood-type character, who would redistribute his takings to the poor.

  Now when I rode on the highway,

  I always had money in store,

  And whatever I took from the rich

  Why I freely gave it to the poor.

  from the ballad ‘Bold Nevison’

  Dick Turpin, on the other hand was a ruthless, violent character known to many as ‘Turpin the Butcher’. Not the romantic hero we would like to remember.

  A much more dashing figure altogether was the Frenchman, Claude Du Vall.

  Here lies Du Vall, Reader, if male thou art,

  Look to thy purse. If female, to thy heart.

  Much havoc has he made of both; for all

  Men he made to stand, and women he made to fall

  The second Conqueror of the Norman race,

  Knights to his arm did yield, and ladies to his face.

  Old Tyburn’s glory; England’s illustrious Thief,

  Du Vall, the ladies’ joy; Du Vall, the ladies’ grief.

  from his memorial in St Paul’s, Covent Garden

  Du Vall was born in Normandy in 1643 to a family of millers, but later found work as a stable boy in Rouen, where he was hired by a group of English Royalists to look after their horses. He followed them back to England when Charles II was restored to the throne. By 1666 he was mentioned by name as a highwayman, though he was well dressed and well mannered, and never used violence on his victims. Du Vall soon became a popular icon with the ladies, who thought him gallant and daring. His haunts included the northern approaches to London, especially Hounslow Heath.

  Perhaps because they concentrated on the wealthy, highwaymen became popular heroes. Claude Du Vall only added to his notoriety when he danced with a beautiful victim on the heath and then let her wealthy husband go free for a purse of a hundred pounds. A Victorian picture by Frith shows the scene, including the companion in the coach who has fainted away with the shock!

  It was a treat to write about highway robbery from a girl’s point of view, and to imagine the anticipation of listening for that coach to rumble up the highway.

  Ralph Chaplin and the Real Lady Katherine Fanshawe

  (The Wicked Lady)

  Lady Katherine Fanshawe really did exist. Katherine was born on 4th May 1634 into a wealthy family, the Ferrers. Tragically, her father, Knighton Ferrers, died two weeks before she was born, and her grandfather shortly after, leaving her the sole heir to a fortune.

  A few years later her mother was married again, to the spendthrift and gambler Sir Simon Fanshawe. Unfortunately, Katherine’s mother died when she was only eight, leaving her at the mercy of the Fanshawe family. Sir Simon supported the Royalist cause and the king needed money to fund his army. Sir Simon conceived of a plan to marry off his nephew, Thomas Fanshawe, to the rich heiress, thus gaining control over Katherine’s wealth and land.

  During much of the English Civil War, Katherine’s uncle and husband were away fighting, and spent much of the latter part of the war in exile in France. Whilst researching this trilogy, the stories about Lady Katherine that I found really fascinating were the reports of her exploits as a notorious highwaywoman. What went on during her husband’s absence that would lead her to do the things she did? I decided there must be a long history, and that the answer could not be as simplistic as a lust for excitement.

  There are no historical records about Ralph Chaplin, although his name always appears in the stories. He is widely believed to have been Lady Katherine’s lover, and to have been a farmer’s son who turned to highway robbery. He was tried and hanged for the crime. Other than that, little is known of him, and I could find no archival records for his existence. That being the case, I have taken the liberty of giving him a fictional family, including a deaf sister called Abigail, and a whole book to himself, Spirit of the Highway. Whilst researching this last book in the trilogy, I took into account both the real history of the events of the English Civil War, and the legend of The Wicked Lady. I also discovered that Lady Ann Fanshawe, Kate’s aunt, wrote a diary, and I used this valuable insight into the period as part of my research.

  Lady Katherine Fanshawe (Kate), Ralph Chaplin and his sister Abigail also appear in my earlier books, Shadow on the Highway (Abigail’s story) and Spirit of the Highway (Ralph’s story).

  Roundheads and Cavaliers

  In the middle of the seventeenth century, England went to war – not with another country, but with itself. This was a war which came and went, with brief periods of peace between each bout of fighting. It spread to Scotland, Wales and Ireland and to all levels of society. The dispute was one in which both men and women were prepared to take sides on matters of principle, and fight for their beliefs to the death.

  In simple terms, the war was one between the king and his followers – the King’s Army, and Parliament on the other – The New Model Army, led by Cromwell. Sometimes these groups are known as Cavaliers and Roundheads. ‘Cavalier’ from the Spanish, caballero, originally meant a mounted soldier, but came to be used as an insult to denote someone who would put themselves above their station. ‘Roundhead’ was a term used to describe the short-haired apprentices who first came out in favour of Parliament.

  The fighting was over matters of political policy, and on how Britain should be governed. The differences between the two factions were complicated by their opposing religious views; the Anglicanism of the king versus the Puritanism of Cromwell’s men. The war began when the port of Hull refused to open its gates to the king, and in 1642 the king proclaimed war on his rebellious subjects.

  The English Civil War killed about two hundred thousand people, almost four percent of the population, and brought disease and famine in its wake. It divided families and stripped the land of food and wealth, as troops rampaged the countryside foraging and plundering whatever they could find.

  Towns were flattened, and communities dispersed. For example, records show that Parliamentary troops blew up more than two hundred houses at Leicester just to provide a clear line of fire, whilst four hundred more were destroyed at Worcester and another two hundred at Faringdon.

  There were nearly ten years of fighting and unrest. Some children barely knew their fathers as they had been away in the wars for most of that time. In effect there were three main periods of fighting, and this book is set just after the wars are over, when the king had been finally routed by Cromwell’s increasingly efficient New Model Army.

  The seventeenth century saw a king executed, followed by the establishment of a military dictatorship under Cromwell. It was also a time that transformed society, and gave birth to new ideas about political and religious liberty, as demonstrated by the Diggers and sundry other sects with alternative or utopian ideals.

  The Diggers


  The Diggers were the first group of people to try and live in what we would nowadays call a commune. Led by Gerrard Winstanley, the movement began in Cobham, England, in 1649, but rapidly spread to other parishes in the southern area of England.

  The name ‘The Diggers’ came from Winstanley’s belief that the earth was made to be ‘a common treasury for all’, and that all should be able to dig it, and provide themselves with what was necessary for human survival – food, warmth and shelter. The Diggers consisted mostly of poorer families that had no land of their own. They took over common land which was not already used, and began to cultivate it. They did not believe in enclosing the land, or separating one part of the earth from another.

  Rich landowners found these ideas threatening, and organised men to destroy the Diggers’ homes and ruin their crops in an effort to drive them off the land. The Diggers made several unsuccessful attempts to build houses in different locations, but were suppressed by the landowning classes and dispersed by force, and the communities wiped out.

  Although the Diggers were a short-lived movement, their ideas had a far-reaching effect, sowing the seeds of communal living and self-sufficiency for future generations. There is still a Diggers Festival every year in Wigan in England, where Winstanley was born.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to Peter, James, Fiona, Robert, and John who were my early test readers. Thanks also to Amy Durant and Miranda Summers my editors, and all the staff at Endeavour Press.