Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (16 page)

She had shivered a little with excitement and the chill night air as she sat there on her restive horse, murmuring to it as though it were a human being, a childish habit that she had never outgrown. ‘Quiet, Fleury. She will come, I promise you. Wait! you will see. We will have good sport tonight.'

And sure enough her attentive ears caught at last the sounds for which she waited so impatiently, the steady clipclop of horses' hooves, the rumble of wheels. She edged her horse to the side of the road. Peering out cautiously she could see in the moonlight the dark but unmistakable shape of Lady Kingsclere's smart new chariot. Fool! she was travelling unescorted, except for the coachman and two footmen, one on the box, one behind in the boot.

As the chariot approached, Barbara experienced a stab of trepidation. Supposing the men-servants showed fight? Supposing she or her horse were recognised? What kind of a figure would Lady Skelton of Maryiot Cells cut if she was discovered in this perilous foolery? Then she thought of the ruby heart, heard Henrietta Kingsclere drawl, ‘It was your mother's jewel, was it not?'

She drew a deep breath, spurred her horse forward and with pistol levelled at the coachman's head called on him to ‘Halt!'

After that it had been amazingly simple. The cowardice of the Kingsclere retainers had to be seen to be believed. The fat old coachman had dropped the reins with a wheezing groan, the footmen had sat as huddled up and unresisting as half empty sacks of flour. The window of the chariot was lowered. The face of Henrietta Kingsclere, large and pallid between the folds of her hood, was thrust out.

‘Good sir, have pity on a defenceless woman,' she implored.

Barbara felt her stomach contract with a violent spasm of laughter. It was all she could do to shout in a hoarse, strange voice, ‘Your jewels!'

Lady Kingsclere clasped her hands together and protested in extreme agitation, ‘No! No! I am travelling in great simplicity. I have not a jewel with me,' the moonlight glittering on her diamond rings as she spoke.

Her cloak had fallen apart, and Barbara's keen eyes had seen something dark lying on her wide expanse of bosom. So she had come away in full dress from the supper party, where she had been flaunting her newly-won jewel for all to see. Frantic to retrieve her treasure and to be away, Barbara wrenched open the chariot door and tore the pendant from off the screaming woman's neck. But a flash of caution warned her that a real highwayman would not be content with a single jewel, and so she dragged the big diamond brooch from Henrietta's corsage, ripping off a piece of lace with it, and seizing her limp hand stripped it of its rings. For all her wild excitement part of her brain
remained cool and watchful, and her fingers in their riding gloves worked nimbly without a fumble.

She thrust her booty into her deep pocket, covered with her pistol one of the footmen who, shamed by his lady's squeals, was attempting to scramble out of the boot, wheeled round her plunging horse and galloped off down the lane. She could hear Henrietta's voice screaming hysterical directions, the servants shouting, the coachman trying to turn the chariot; but, mounted on her swift Fleury and knowing every short cut in the district, she could afford to laugh out loud in her triumph and relief.

When she was sure that she had evaded pursuit – if indeed those white-livered menials had any real intention of pursuing her – she drew rein; then, waiting till the clouds had passed, she pulled the pendant from her pocket and, with face uplifted to the moon and the restless night wind, pressed the ruby heart ecstatically to her lips.

Yes, it had been a delightful night, and the best of it had been when the news of poor Sister Kingsclere's misadventure had come to Maryiot Cells. How sedulously she had joined in the exclamations of dismay and sympathy, declaring herself as shocked beyond measure, enquiring solicitously if Henrietta had been very frightened and hurt and what jewels she had lost, crying, ‘What, my ruby heart too! I will own that I grudged losing it even to her, but when all is said and done she is one of the family and had promised to leave it to my daughter in her will. But to think of my mother's
sweet jewel in the hands of a knavish highwayman – oh, that is ill beyond expression!' This in such a pitiable voice that she had felt quite deceived by her own self!

It had been enjoyable in the extreme to hoodwink these stupid, complacent folk. As if any person of sense could care what happened to Henrietta Kingsclere! (To do Paulina justice she had been the only one who had said tartly, ‘People who travel these roads at night decked in all their jewellery deserve to lose it.') Barbara herself had felt very much better since she had committed this violence, mild as it was, against her sister-in-law. She felt that she would be able to bear Henrietta's patronage in future with Christian patience and exemplary equanimity!

She would not be able to wear the ruby heart in public – perhaps never again – but it would be there, locked up in her jewel case, her secret treasure, to be taken out, fondled and gloated over when the tedium of life became unbearable.

This source of private satisfaction had enlivened and sufficed her for about a week. Then an odd restlessness had crept over her. There had certainly been a vast amount of personal gratification in robbing Henrietta Kingsclere but, looking back on it, what a tame affair the robbery itself had been. It would have been more enjoyable had there been some element of danger attached to it. It had gone off far too easily. The abject cowardice of Henrietta's attendants had not enabled Barbara to do justice to her own courage and resource. It flattered her to remember how nimbly she had worked. She believed that she could attempt a more difficult robbery with success. No doubt she had much to learn, but she had all the qualifications for a successful highwayman,
daring, good horsemanship, a quick eye and hand, coolness, and a firm disregard of other people's feelings.

So she mused, thinking it no wonder that so many spendthrift sons of good family, so many people of all classes, in fact, from disbanded soldiers to scholars, took to the Road. It would be a new thing, she thought, her nostrils quivering a little, if a lady of quality joined the fraternity, not so much for love of gain, but because life was so cruelly dull and grey and empty…

And so it came about that the neighbourhood was scared that autumn by talk of the highwayman whose depredations were said to equal in daring any committed in recent years. He worked alone, always after sunset or at dawn, seldom spake, and seemed by his figure to be young, perhaps little more than a youth. Mr Riggs, riding home from a visit to his father-in-law, with his wife pillion behind him, had been waylaid in Carter's Lane and obliged to hand over his purse and his wife's pearl necklace. A coach containing Squire Mainwaring and his daughters, travelling home from the waters at Bath, had been attacked near Woburn by this same rascal (it was believed). The servants had fired on and missed the robber who, in return, had shot one of the servants in the arm and, in the confusion, had gone off with a small iron box containing valuables which one of them was holding.

The extraordinary quickness and dexterity with which this fellow worked was commented upon. It seemed that he could wrench an earring from a lady's ear (no considerations of chivalry apparently deterring him) before she could let out a shriek, and it was seldom that he made his escape without bearing some trophy with him.

And in the dawn Barbara Skelton would trot quietly up the dark yew glades of Maryiot Cells, her lovely face uplifted to the cool air and the paling sky, her slender body sweating beneath her man's coat from her recent exertions, her mind strangely relaxed and satisfied.

Young Lady Skelton sometimes lay very late abed those autumn mornings, her languor raising great hopes in her mother-in-law's breast. And when she got up on these occasions she would go out, wearing her little black velvet coat edged with white fur, and a hood, her skirts tucked up to display her pretty silver-laced petticoat, pattens on her feet, and go for a long stroll down by the river. This too her mother-in-law approved of, for gentle walking exercise could not harm a breeding woman.

The good lady would have been less approving and considerably startled could she have seen her daughter-inlaw digging vigorously at the roots of the oak tree whose bough overstretched the path between the Abbots Pool and Purgatory. It was here that Barbara made the caches in which to conceal the jewellery and money that she had wrested the previous night from their lawful owners.

She had no very clear idea what she intended to do eventually with these valuables. Perhaps one day she would be able to dispose of them – money in abundance was never to be despised, as Sir Ralph's frequent lectures since the Kingscleres' visit on the subject of her gambling debts, and his insistence that in future she
should confine her card playing to gleak
¹¹
and cribbage, reminded her.

Meanwhile it pleased her as she dug away at the moist, good-smelling earth with a little trowel and, slipping on a pair of gloves so that she should not stain her shapely white fingers, thrust the wrapped-up jewels and coins into safety, to recall the exploit of which they were the trophy; the restless wait in hiding, the breathless moment as the sound of hooves or wheels announced the victim's approach, the plunge into the road, the shouts, the startled faces, the brutal joy of seizing this man's purse, that woman's brooch, the swift homeward flight across country by devious ways and tracks.

Winter came with its heavy rains, turning roads and ditches into a uniform quagmire of mud, and flooding them so badly that in places it was hard to see where streams ended and roads began. One night Barbara sank up to her saddle girths in mire. Few people travelled at night as the winter closed in, except those who were obliged to it by extreme urgency. Barbara settled down sulkily to months of inaction.

The winter had never before seemed so interminable; never before had she waited so impatiently for the spring. Of what use to her were sickly snowdrops and dangling catkins, when the lanes were still of the consistency of mud porridge? Only when several weeks of dry weather succeeded each other did her spirits revive.

The last few mornings had been frosty; in the wan March sunshine the daffodils shone strangely bright and golden in the milky grass. Old Lady Skelton trusted that this untimely frost would not harm her seedlings. Young Lady
Skelton, walking out in her velvet cloak and hood, rejoiced to see how path and track had hardened up.

She closed the drawer of the cabinet now and, strolling to the window, stared out across lawn and river. Outside the breeze would be sharp, but here indoors, with a fire still burning and the sunshine pouring through the leaded casement windows, it was easy to cherish the illusion that spring had come with warm finality. In the clear blue sky the pearly clouds sailed by.

The Dowager Lady Skelton said, ‘I believe that we may consider winter at an end at last. Do you mean to venture out, Barbara dear?'

Barbara laughed softly. ‘Yes, I shall venture out.'

‘One night's good fortune under the stars.'
¹

The house was asleep at last. No, not the house but its inhabitants. Sir Ralph snored alone in his bed with the mulberry-coloured hangings; Barbara was a light sleeper, and her restless tossing and turnings (for it was at night that the futility of her existence gnawed at her most keenly) had so disturbed Sir Ralph that he had agreed, if somewhat grudgingly, to her suggestion that they should occupy separate bedrooms. Old Lady Skelton, having taken her nightly syrup of gilly-flower cordial, would be lying with folded hands, her face fretful but innocent under its nightcap, her dumpy, sturdy little body endeavouring in sleep to recover from the effects of all the strange potions with which she dosed it during the daytime. Agatha Trimble most likely would have sucked herself to sleep with a sweetmeat tucked in the corner of her large, ugly mouth. Cousin Jonathan would be a mountainous, snuffling lump of flesh under the bedclothes. Paulina might well have her smooth cheek pillowed on a book. In every attic and closet servants would be drowsing, except where some couples indulged their furtive amours.