Sovay

  Virgil thanked her and rode off, glad to feel a good horse under him. A pretty girl. No, pretty did not do her justice. She was both less than that, and greater. Her good looks verged on beauty. She looked small as she stood on the steps to wave goodbye to him. She was very young to be facing alone the forces that were gathering round her, ready to snuff out the flame of liberty that had burnt so bright in that pleasant house. He checked his horse, half of a mind to go back to help her, but he merely lifted a hand in salute and spurred his horse on. It was his duty to warn others of the danger they faced, before it was too late.

  Sovay could settle to nothing and knew that this restlessness would not be dissipated until she had found her father and got word to Hugh in Oxford. She prowled the empty rooms and everything that she saw was suddenly newly precious to her.

  It was all in jeopardy, for if the house was seized, everything would be cast on the bonfire, or sold and dispersed. And why? For what reason? She looked up at the portrait that hung above the fireplace. Her father had a kind face, his mouth quirked at the corners as if he could not resist smiling and his dark eyes shone with intelligence. Plainly dressed, as always, slightly overweight, the buttons on his waistcoat straining a little, he looked very much the gentleman farmer in his buff-coloured coat and breeches, and his neat, light brown wig. It was a proud pose before his beloved Compton, his gun at his side and a dog at his knee. Sovay felt deep affection as she looked up at him. He was a good man, generous, kind to his tenants, always willing to listen, to help those in need. Why should he be punished? Because he had an enquiring mind? Because of what he believed? He believed in reform, certainly. He believed that all men should be able to vote in secrecy and that parliamentary seats should not be in the gift of men like Sir Royston, but was that sedition? Was that treason? Were all who believed such things to be silenced?

  Sovay slowly mounted the stairs, surveying the family portraits which looked down at the hall. Her mother as a young woman, dressed in the elaborate spreading skirts of twenty years ago or more. She was wearing a beautiful gown of pale pink satin, ruched and sewn with bows and bunches of lace that looked like overblown roses. She was sitting in a bower, roses of the exact same pale shade growing all around her. Sovay sighed. Her mother died when she was five.

  She turned at the top of the stairs and went into her mama’s drawing room. Sovay seldom came in here. She found it hard to bear. Although her mother had been dead for twelve years, her father insisted that there were fresh flowers arranged and that her tea things were laid just so. A collection of miniatures were grouped on the wall to the side of the fireplace: Sovay and Hugh as children. Hugh at about seven or eight had been a pretty child, with his high colour and blond curls, but he could never be mistaken for a girl. His collar and necktie were askew and there was a careless, unruly fall to his hair and the look in his eyes suggested a mischievous, rebellious nature. Sovay had been younger, not more than three or four. She remembered nothing of the sitting or the artist. The dark, solemn-eyed girl, with a bow in her hair, could be a stranger, although she did remember the puppy she was clutching to her. Hugh and Sovay together, a little older, dressed as Harlequin and Columbine. Sovay smiled, remembering how Hugh hated that portrait and was always hiding it. Their mother had commissioned the likenesses as her illness worsened. She kept them by her bedside, as though she could take their images with her.

  The last oval frame on the wall did not contain a painting at all, but a coil of her mother’s curling dark hair. Even encased here, and after all these years, it had not lost its lustre. Sovay turned away, eyes stinging with fresh tears. She could see that hair, lovingly dressed and combed by Mrs Crombie, spread over the pillow, arranged around her mother’s white, white face, whiter than the pillowcase.

  Sovay wiped her tears away and returned to the landing. It was up to her now to find a way to secure this household, to keep Compton from harm. Who would not fight for their family’s name, for their honour? Who could criticise her for doing so? She descended the stairs having decided upon a course of action.

  CHAPTER 3

  So Sovay’s career as a highwayman began. She felt no fear. She was filled with a steely sense of purpose and each time brought a fresh rush of excitement as she rode out and challenged the drivers to ‘Stand and deliver!’ She loved the anticipation as she waited on those bright summer mornings, surrounded by the song of lark and linnet and the heady scent of broom and gorse. Each day, she cut a fresh sprig for the luck it brought her. Certainly, she had experienced no mishap so far. Each time had gone as smoothly as the first, although she had encountered no runner or anything like one, just ordinary travellers. She did not relish taking their jewellery and money, since that was not her intention, and was careless in her larceny. If a passenger was poorly dressed, or was travelling in the boot at the back, or on the roof, she took nothing from them. She treated ladies with great courtesy, bowing, kissing their hands, and leaving them their rings and lockets.

  She did not keep the riches she gained. On her way home, she cast them away, dropping coin on the paths the children took out to the fields to scare birds, leaving gold on the heath to be found by poor furze-cutters, casting silver over hedges into cottagers’ gardens. All this, along with her swagger and gallantry, meant that every day that Sovay rode out her legend grew and the stories about her spread. She was named for the sprig of broom she wore on her hat. The mysterious Captain Blaze.

  She was just about to leave the stable, on yet another expedition, when a hand grabbed her leg. Brady stayed steady, but Sovay nearly jumped out of her stirrups.

  ‘Where are you off to, Missy, on this fine summer’s morning?’

  Gabriel Stanhope, the Steward’s son, stood looking up at her. He was grinning in a way that she found most infuriating, and showed no sign of letting her go. Indeed, his grip on her boot tightened as he waited for his answer.

  ‘Nothing to do with you. Let me go!’

  She had known him since they were children, babies even. They had grown up together. There had been a time when she had considered him as much her brother as Hugh. The three of them had been inseparable, running wild in the woods and fields. She had cried herself to sleep many a night, jealous of the friendship between Hugh and Gabriel, and would have done anything to win his regard, but now they were grown up and things had changed between them. They were still friends and she held him in great affection, but that did not extend to him ordering her about as though they were still seven and ten.

  ‘I’ll come and go as I please,’ she said, ‘and ask no leave of you.’

  ‘Oh, will you now? Dressed like that? It’s a dangerous game you play, Miss Sovay. They are talking in the inn about a new gentleman of the road. Only a slip of a chap, quite a charmer, but reckless and daring by all accounts. Someone has christened him Captain Blaze, for the yellow cockade he wears.’ He nodded towards the sprig of broom still on the brim of her hat from her last ride out.

  ‘Have they?’ Sovay settled back in her saddle. ‘Captain Blaze, eh? I like that.’

  ‘It’s not a joke, Sovay.’ He looked up at her. ‘I hope this madness has nothing to do with that fool Gilmore. He got taken down t’other day, by all accounts.’

  ‘That was different. Now I have another purpose. Much more serious.’

  She leaned towards him, breathing in his familiar smell of hay and horses and tack room leather. His thick red-golden hair was wet where he had sluiced himself with water. His sleeves were rolled up; his shirt was open to the waist, as if he had just finished washing under the pump in the yard. He hadn’t had time to shave. The copper glint of stubble dusted his cheeks. She looked down at his broad face, burnt brown from working in the fields with the men. His wide brow was creased with worry, his blue eyes clouded with concern.

  ‘There’s trouble coming, Gabriel, and I’m going to stop it. You have to let me go!’

  He did so with reluctance and as she rode off all he could do was stand and gaze after her. He
had no way of preventing her departure. She was daughter of the house. He strode into the stable, thinking to ride after her, bareback if need be. He knew the way she would take through the woods and out on to the common, knew the place she would stand and wait. He should stay here. There was trouble brewing. Rumours of revolution were sweeping the country, fuelled by events in France. The King and Country movement had started up again with a vengeance, with its demands for oaths of allegiance and its persecution of any known to be of a radical persuasion. Sovay’s father was not popular with everyone. He held extreme views on almost everything and the changes made on his estate had not been liked by all. These could be enough to bring him under attack, get his house ransacked. It had happened in other places.

  Gabriel saw his duty clear. He should stay here. Anyway, it was probably too late to stop Sovay now. What she was doing was madness, but she was brave and determined and would not be deflected. He had always admired her for that. She could ride and shoot as well as any boy, but she was heading into unknown danger. He could not help but worry for her. She was headstrong and stubborn with a temper on her which could eclipse any sense of caution. He remembered her and Hugh from when they were children. If you know someone then, you know them for life. They could throw a veil over their true natures: Hugh with his learning; Sovay with her ladylike accomplishments, but he remembered different. Mad, the both of them, competing with each other, neither with any sense of danger. He had got them out of scrapes without number, lied for them, taken the blame for them, suffered many a beating and never minded because he loved both of them in very different ways. Would he hang for her? That was the question now.

  He went to the tack room for his cloak and hat and took the blunderbuss down from the wall. It was an old-fashioned weapon, kept in case of intruders, but it was loaded and effective at close quarters. Beside, he didn’t have time to find another. He knotted a kerchief to pull up over his face, jumped on Belmont, the horse he had been about to put between the shafts of the hay cart, and galloped for the moor.

  Once up on the common, Sovay plucked a fresh sprig of broom. Captain Blaze. She smiled at the name as she inhaled the musky scent from the bright yellow flowers. She fixed the sprig to her hat with a diamond pin that she had acquired from some young fop and tucked some into Brady’s bridle.

  She stationed herself at the crossroads, adjusted the black eye-mask and green kerchief and loosened her weapons. Soon, she would pick up the sound of hooves on the flinty road.

  The horses slowed as they toiled up the long hill, but as soon as they reached the summit, the driver cracked his whip, ready to make a speedy descent. Sovay rode out and the horses shied but showed no sign of stopping. A guard sat next to the driver, weapons at the ready, another sat at the back. The coach company was taking no chances after the recent rash of attacks.

  The guard took aim as the coach swept past. Sovay felt the heat of the ball as it just missed her cheek. The driver yelled, and his long whip curled out again to lash the rumps of the sweating horses.

  ‘Stop!’ a voice called out from below her. ‘Do as he says!’

  Sovay glanced to the side to see that another had joined her. He was similarly disguised in hat and travelling cloak with a scarf pulled up to hide his face, but he was riding a heavy horse and wielding an ancient musket.

  ‘A clod on a carthorse,’ the driver spat over the side. ‘If I ain’t seen it all. Get out of my way!’

  ‘Carthorse he may be,’ Gabriel answered, ‘but he’ll have your rig over in a second.’ He waved the blunderbuss. ‘And this’ll blow a hole right through you. Do you want to try either one?’ The guard at the front looked nervous. The piece was ancient, but it could cut a man in two. ‘Throw your weapons down, both of you!’ Gabriel shouted as he rode up to join Sovay who had her own gun trained on the guard at the rear.

  A large face appeared and the window was filled with a man’s bulk encased in a Bow Street runner’s red waistcoat and blue jacket.

  ‘What’s the delay?’ he shouted up. ‘Drive on! Drive on, you scoundrel! Shoot the villains, you cowards!’

  The guards ignored him, throwing their weapons down. Gabriel nodded to Sovay, who rapped on the door of the carriage. The passengers alighted one by one.

  ‘Damned dogs!’ the man in the red waistcoat shouted up at the driver and guard as he got down. ‘In it together, I shouldn’t wonder!’ He brandished his staff at them. ‘I’ll find out if you are, you can wager upon it, and I’ll see the two of you hang alongside ’em. See if I don’t! You’ll not get a thing from me.’

  He turned to Sovay, his small eyes filled with malice. She walked Brady up to him and pointed her gun inches from his head.

  ‘All the better reason to shoot you then,’ she breathed down to him. At the click of the hammer, oily drops of sweat broke from the coarse pores of his face.

  ‘I carry nothing of value.’

  ‘What is in the wallet?’

  ‘Documents, merely. They have no worth!’

  ‘I’ll take it anyway.’

  ‘No, you won’t!’ He brandished his staff as if to strike her arm as she reached out towards him.

  ‘Drop it!’ Gabriel commanded. ‘Or I will blow your head off!’

  The stick clattered to the floor as the man stared into the wide mouth of the blunderbuss.

  ‘Give me the wallet,’ Sovay reached down for it. The runner showed every reluctance but a cocked pistol could be very persuasive. He handed the wallet over. It weighed surprisingly heavy.

  ‘The rest of you,’ Gabriel turned his gun on the cowering passengers, ‘hand over your valuables. Do not try our patience further or we will kill you all.’

  Sovay threw down her saddlebag and the terrified travellers hastened to comply.

  Sovay collected the bulging bag and Gabriel trained his gun on the runner.

  ‘Hand me the staff,’ he shouted down at him. ‘Quick about it!’

  The man was unwilling to obey, but valued his head. Gabriel took the stick from his hand and used it to urge his horse away. Sovay followed, spurring Brady to a gallop, crouching low over his neck in case the guard decided to let off another shot or two. They did not slacken their speed until they reached the margin of the forest.

  Gabriel unscrewed the brass handle of the hollow staff and read the paper rolled up within it.

  ‘The fellow was a tipstaff. This is a warrant for your father’s arrest.’

  ‘Give it to me!’ Sovay took it from him and prepared to gallop for the house.

  ‘Wait!’ Gabriel took hold of Brady’s bridle. ‘I find this action you’re taking hasty, Miss Sovay, very hasty. Not to say downright foolish. Posing as a highwayman could get you hanged!’

  ‘Then you would hang alongside me.’

  ‘I could not let you act alone.’

  ‘At any account, how could they prove it? A female highwayman? Who’d believe it?’

  She laughed and spurred her horse, her face flushed with such recklessness that Gabriel’s fear for her deepened.

  They were on the track for home when a boy darted into their path. He did not look at Sovay, thinking her a stranger. She had removed her mask, but still wore her scarf high, as if to keep the dust from her nose and mouth.

  ‘Mr Gabriel! Come quick! There’s men coming up the drive to the house.’

  ‘Men? What men?’

  ‘I dunno,’ the boy shrugged. ‘They ain’t troopers, nothing like that, but some of ’em got uniforms. They got poles and pikes and say they’re for King and Country. They’re shouting that Master’s under arrest and they’re here to see justice done. Sir Royston’s at the head of ’em.’ His young brow wrinkled. ‘Your father’s up the far cornfields. We been searching for Miss Sovay and she’s nowhere to be found, so your ma says to find you!’

  ‘How many are there?’ Sovay asked, forgetting her disguise.

  The boy looked up at her, curious, head cocked on one side, as though the stranger was suddenly familiar, then he shoo
k his head.

  ‘Dunno rightly,’ he answered, ‘but a goodly few.’

  ‘All right, Jack.’ Gabriel reached in his pocket for a penny. ‘Find as many men as you can. Tell them to meet me in the yard.’

  The barefoot boy scampered off, clutching the coin tight in his hand.

  ‘We’ll take the guns from the gunroom and any other weapons we can muster,’ Gabriel said to Sovay. ‘You stay inside. I’ll gather the men in front of the house.’

  ‘I will not!’ Sovay turned on him indignantly. ‘D’you think I’m going to hide like a vixen in a covert? I’m going to confront him. He can do nothing without a warrant.’ She reached over and clasped Gabriel’s hand. ‘Together we’ll see him off, and his rabble.’

  After some swift work by Lydia, Sovay appeared immaculately attired in a dove-grey lady’s riding habit. She held a whip in her hand and stood at the top of the steps in front of the grand portal staring down at the men massed before the house. Lydia was behind her, clutching a large steel bodkin with which, she’d announced, she was prepared to do considerable damage. Cook stood with Lydia, rolling pin at the ready. A grim-faced Gabriel stood with his men. They made two lines in front of the house. The first rank carried firearms, those behind carried whatever they could find, old swords, pikes and halberds, taken down from the walls of the hall, otherwise whatever they were working with at the time, but hayforks, billhooks, sickles and skinning knives made formidable weapons.

  For the most part, Sir Royston’s men were similarly armed. Some were in uniform. He had raised a troop of Volunteers, kitting them out at his own expense. Their uniforms had been designed by James, who was riding at the front of the ragged column, splendidly dressed in blue and cream, as proud as a captain of hussars, with one hand resting on the silver hilt of a sword, a plumed cap upon his head, a quantity of gold on each shoulder and tasselled braid across his chest. He looked ridiculous. Sovay heard a snuffle of suppressed laughter from Lydia and would have joined in herself had the situation not been so grave. Sovay surveyed the forces ranged against them. The men from Sir Royston’s estate were for the most part quiet, as if they didn’t want to be there but had no choice; the rest, who appeared to have been swept from every tavern in the town, were far more vociferous but for the most part drunk. Sir Royston himself was at the head of them all, his bulky figure balanced on a fine bay horse. He went to ride right up to the house, but when Gabriel’s men closed ranks and stepped forward, he reined his mount back.