Taking Liberties (43 page)

‘Make 'un slippery, so's the preventives can't grab 'em,' Zack told her.

‘Are they likely to? I thought the coast was clear.' She was on edge. She approached the group of men. ‘I do not approve of this. I hope there will be no violence, Mr Gurney.'

‘Bless your heart, no,' he said, ‘but 'tidd'n the coast as got to be clear,'tis inland. We've got a fair way to go afore dawn. Ready, my hearties?'

They began to move off, a lander holding the reins of each pony, a batsman walking by his side.

The Dowager stood in the doorway with Zack, Philippa, Dell and Mrs Hallewell, watching the cavalcade as it left the forecourt. Simeon was peering from the inn window.

With the wind dropping to a light breeze, it had become cold and the ponies' hooves were wrapped to make no noise on the hardening ground; the men wore soft boots. A sliver of moon gave just enough light to distinguish between land and sea but very little more.

An owl up on the hill screeched and screeched again, coming nearer. The Dowager heard Rachel Gurney swear. Leather creaked as the leading ponies were turned and came back to mill with those that hadn't left yet. Ralph was listening to a small, capering boy.

‘What is it?' the Dowager asked Rachel Gurney.

‘Trouble.'

The men went into a huddle. Rachel called the boy over. ‘What's to do, Jack?'

‘Preventives. Mam sent me down, saw 'un when she was shutting up the chickens. Under a bush by the gate, one was. An' I smelled another on the road down. Smokin'. Reckon there's a thousand on 'un up there, waitin'. Dad's goin' to give 'un what for.' The child was joyful.

Mrs Hallewell was wringing her hands. ‘Oh my Lord, oh my Lord.'

As Gurney came up, the boy trilled: ‘Smokin', he was, Dad. Smelled 'un.'

‘An' not paid the dang duty on ut, neither, I'll be bound.'

‘Give 'un what for, Dad.'

‘Reckon we'll have to.' To the Dowager and Rachel, he said: ‘Bastards.'

‘Will they attack?' Diana asked.

He consoled her, thinking she was worried for herself. ‘Not yere, ladyship. He's a-waitin' to follow us, I reckon. Trail us to our customers and nab they along of us. How many men's he got up there, I'd like to know.'

‘Can you not go another way?'

‘Cliff path? They'd see us from the hill, they ain't blind. Smell the ponies too. Stink'd travel on the breeze. And us don't want to be battlin' on a cliff drop.'

She didn't want them battling anywhere. ‘Unload then. You can put the goods in the well. Put them in the cavern if necessary. Travel them another night.'

He looked around at the waiting men. ‘And pay these buggers twice over? Danged if I do.'

He's going to force his way through the cordon, she thought. There'll be killing.

Beside her, Philippa said: ‘Why don't we create a diversion?'

Rachel Gurney stared at her. ‘Maid's right, Ralph. That's what us'll have to do.' She took charge. ‘How many other ponies we got in the village?'

‘Five, I reckon,' somebody said. ‘That's with the one as fetches the milk, but he ain't too vitty.'

‘Get 'un up yere,' Rachel ordered. ‘All on 'em.' She turned to Ralph: ‘Us'll need some more if 'tis to look proper. You'll have to unload a few of yourn.'

Grumbling, he ordered the contraband to be taken off four of his ponies.

‘Get those tubs round the back to the well,' Rachel told him. She turned to Mrs Hallewell. ‘Maggie, when we'm gone, you get the spare goods down that bloody well fast as ee can. Ralph'll have to take 'un another day. You'll need . . . how many to help ee? Joan, Betty, Tabby, you'm big strong women, you help Maggie. Now, how many've I got to come wi' me?'

‘Six.' Philippa had been keeping track. ‘And you've got nine ponies. I'm coming.'

For the first time Rachel Gurney was at a loss. ‘Don't think the Missus would like tha-at.'

‘I'm coming,' Philippa said.

Dell stepped forward. ‘And so am I.'

‘Grateful,' Rachel said, shortly. ‘Wrap up warm in summat dark. Now then, Maggie, we'm a-going to need every empty you got. Here, you lads, go round the yard and roll me out the empty barrels.'

‘This is nonsense,' the Dowager said. She caught Philippa's arm as the girl hurried past her into the inn. ‘You cannot take part in this. Dell, I forbid you. There might be shooting. Mrs Gurney, please consider: there is no need to put all of us in danger.'

Rachel paused to look at her, then nodded towards the lane. ‘Nicholls is lyin' in wait up there and if he don't see ponies go by, he'll come down yere to find 'un. My man risked his life for these yere goods,'tis money from they as keeps us all through the winter and that bastard ain't havin' 'un.' She came up and disengaged the Dowager's hand from Philippa's sleeve. ‘If so be the maid's offered, I'll take her and thankful.'

As Philippa and Dell went running upstairs for their cloaks, Rachel tapped the Dowager's shoulder, quite kindly. ‘Now you go indoors, ma dear, close the shutters and shut the door. Zack'll look after ee. This is no work for the gentry.'

She returned to giving orders. Empty tubs and barrels were being rolled out to the forecourt and strapped to the diversionary ponies.

The Dowager, going upstairs, met Philippa on the landing as she emerged from her bedroom, wrapping a cloak around her. On seeing Diana, the girl's face set like limestone. ‘I . . . am . . . going,' she said.

‘Me and all.' Dell had emerged from her room, swathed in a purple shawl.

‘It appears that I am too,' the Dowager said, irritably. ‘Where's that hooded pelisse of your mother's?'

Philippa followed her into Makepeace's room to find it. ‘Are you sure?' she asked.

‘No, I am not. I regard this venture as most ill advised. However, the alternative is worse. What your mother will say to it, I cannot think.'

‘She'll say well done.'

‘Undoubtedly she will,' Diana snapped. ‘The woman has criminal tendencies.'

Her stomach was clenching and unclenching with nerves. Had she not offended public opinion enough? She thought of poor Robert when they told him his mother was locked up in a Devon bridewell for misleading the Revenue.

But for a Pomeroy to earn the contempt of a Gurney was not to be tolerated.

Downstairs the village women had taken off caps and aprons, everything white, and were wrapped in cloaks and shawls, reminding the Dowager rather nastily of the dark female figures that stood at the foot of the cross in paintings of the crucifixion.

Zack and his brother were separately and energetically commanding Rachel to take them with her as protection.

‘Us'll need to be nifty,' she told them, impatiently, ‘and there's neither of you two old buggers can run.'

She saw the Dowager with surprise. ‘Good on ee, ladyship,' she said, ‘but pull that hood up or they'll see that pale head o' yourn,'tis like a beacon.'

Diana decided that England would win the war quicker if it sent Rachel Gurney to lead its army in America.

The men with the contraband ponies had already moved off towards the bridge, ready to take the cliff path when they were sure that the Revenue was following the women. Young Jack Gurney was to be the go-between.

‘Take a batsman or two with ee,' his father was saying to Rachel.

Diana stepped in. ‘No. No violence, whatever happens.'

‘Good luck to ee then.'

Mrs Hallewell hurried up to Rachel. ‘You'll be needin' this.' It was a goad.

Rachel took her pony's reins and set off, the Dowager pulled on her pony's reins to set him going, Philippa pulled on hers and the others followed with theirs up the lane.

It was just under a mile to the farm, another mile to the brow of the hill and the turning to Plymouth, a steep, twisting climb between hedgerows and trees that shut out the light of the stars. The ponies' hooves tapped on the packed earth and sent an occasional stone rattling down the incline with what sounded to Diana like rolls of thunder.

Am I the only one who's frightened? There was no sound at all from Rachel up ahead; from behind she could hear mere excited little puffs from Philippa's mouth.

Babbs Cove women are bred for this sort of thing. She remembered Zack telling her how, on another occasion, his mother and most of the other village women had been taken to Plymouth gaol charged with possessing contraband and eventually, as was usual, found not guilty by a smugglers' jury. After their release, every jug, cup and bowl in the prison was discovered to be missing.

Virtually blinded, she found other senses coming into play. The smell of pine: they must be passing the tall fir you could see from a boat. And that was lanolin: some of Gurney's sheep. And
that
was the milk pony who always took his revenge on going loaded by farting horribly. Sudden rankness: a fox? Cow pats. The night was full of stinks. It must be like this for a dog, she thought, an alphabet of scents forming themselves into descriptions.

The heavy flap of an owl's wings overhead. Further off, something, perhaps the fox, disturbing a pheasant so that it rattled away in squawking flight.

There was a configuration on her left, a gate, just outlined against the stars, the land beyond it falling steeply down to the cliffs. Gurney had been right: shapes moving against the backdrop of the sea would be noticeable.

Tobacco
. Oh God, they were passing through the cordon. Best Virginian. They were being watched.

Ahead, Rachel Gurney kept up her steady pace without a falter. Diana's ears picked up a whisper begun at the back of the line and passed forward, quieter than the breeze's rustle in the branches. Philippa lengthened the rein on her pony to move up beside her. ‘They're following.'

It was then that fear left the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole. Not so much left her, perhaps, as was joined by an aggressive thrill, the excitement of the cheat, the acid invigoration of sheer spite. Was this how criminals felt? If she stood in the dock for this, it would at least be a stance. It wasn't just Nicholls, it was all authority she was trying to hoodwink; it was the stratagem of the impotent against Aymer, against rules that worked only in favour of the already puissant.

The white top of a gate pillar: the track to the Gurney farm and, somewhere under a bush, another watcher. She thought of the Revenue men rising when the ponies had passed and coming after them on heavy-booted tiptoes, like comic villains in a play. A titter rose terribly in her throat and she had to put her hand over her mouth to stop it.

I was born to this. I am a smuggler
manqué
. She was Puck, leading foolish mortals into the depth of the forest. Follow us, my dears, every step is mischief.

By the time the top of the hill showed against the stars, she was panting so hard she couldn't have heard an army if it had been behind her.

For the first time, Rachel turned to show the white of her face. ‘Ready?'

She slowed, allowing the other ponies to catch up. The lane had widened to join the road, trees edging it. A fingerpost stood on an island of grass. It had been a stiff climb; steam rose from the ponies' backs to mingle with a mist that was beginning to gather round their feet. They could smell Dartmoor.

It was silent up here. For the first time, Diana looked back. There was nothing in sight behind; either they had been fooling nobody or Nicholls's men had stopped just out of sight, waiting to find out which way the ponies would go.

Suddenly Rachel pricked her pony's backside with the goad. Diana brought her hand down hard on the bony rump of her beast. Neighing in protest, the animals set off at a gallop down the road to the right, their loads rocking, followed by the rest.

The women picked up their skirts and ran like deer to the trees on their left, then dropped into the bracken and stayed still.

Diana got out her handkerchief to wipe the sweat off her face, saw how white it was, and put it away again.

A minute or two later, the night produced men: ten, twenty, thirty at least, gathering on the fingerpost island. There was a shout. ‘There they go, look. I can hear 'un. Bastards is runnin'.'

‘Where?' It was Nicholls.

‘East. Towards Salcombe. Come on, lads.'

Even then, with the rest of his pack giving chase down the hill, Nicholls didn't move but stood outlined against the sky, a solitary hound whose nose was telling it the quarry was near.

Go, Diana willed him,
go
.

At last he shrugged and set off after his men.

‘Poor ponies,' whispered Philippa.

‘A worthy sacrifice.'

Rachel stood up and they followed her down, taking the field paths in case the preventives came back. Nobody said anything.

Halfway to the cliffs, they saw a moving frieze of men and animals outlined against the sea, heading west.

It was then that they began to laugh, all of them. Dell let out a wild, Celtic paean. Diana heard an eldritch cackle coming out of her own mouth that turned into a choke from Rachel Gurney's appreciative slap on her back.

When they reached the Pomeroy, Dell, Diana and Philippa were carried into the inn on the shoulders of the Dowager's cheering female tenantry.

IT became known as The Night We Fooled Nicholls and they were immediately punished for it.

Dawn had just broken when Nicholls himself and two dozen of his men descended on Babbs Cove like wolves on the fold, breaking down doors with musket butts in a raid that made no pretence of being anything other than revenge.