The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles Read online

  Esau nodded his agreement with Phillipe’s decision. “The best coaching service in all England runs west to the port of Bristol. You can be away in the morning from the One Bell in the Strand.”

  “I have no idea what ship passage will cost,” Phillipe said. “Maybe I can work for it. Earn it for the both of us. I’ve probably saved enough to pay for the coach. But before we leave, I must get to Dr. Franklin’s house.”

  “Hardly seems like the time for a social call—” Hosea began.

  “That’s not the purpose. When I visited him before—”

  “You went to call on that American?” Marie interrupted. “When?”

  “Some days ago. Of an evening. You were asleep—”

  “You said nothing about it. Nothing.”

  “I intended to. Each time I got close to it, I stopped short—because I assumed you wouldn’t even listen to what he told me.”

  “About those barbarous colonies? You’re right.”

  “There are big, growing cities in America, Mama! And Dr. Franklin promised that if we decided to go, he’d write a list of printing houses where I could apply for work. Also give me a letter of recommendation—”

  Contemptuous, Marie was about to answer when Esau said:

  “Damn decent of him.”

  Solomon Sholto shook his head. “No—just typical of his generous nature. Phillipe, you will be busy enough packing your belongings. Esau, you and Hosea go to Craven Street instead. Rouse the doctor. Explain the situation—”

  “But please don’t mention the Amberlys,” Phillipe cautioned. “I hinted at the problem to Franklin but I didn’t go into detail.”

  Esau nodded as his father said, “Speed back as quickly as you can. Start immediately.”

  As the brothers struggled into their coats, Phillipe received a fresh shock. Marie was watching him. For a moment it seemed as though her eyes brimmed with genuine hatred. Then the emotion—if it was actually there—dulled; her expression became one of slack-lipped resignation.

  Her lips and cheeks were drained of color. She glanced away—brushed at a strand of loose hair with a vague, almost pathetic gesture. He could barely bring himself to look at her. He knew how she must be suffering—watching her one dream smashed beyond all repair.

  Well, he’d lived with that kind of thing too; he’d lost Alicia and survived. She could learn to live with her ruined dreams, now that their lives were at stake.

  One day she might come to understand that the decision forced on him tonight was made for both their sakes. One day she might accept—and forgive him.

  Strangely calm, he realized he might as well go the rest of the way.

  “While Hosea and Esau call at Franklin’s, I’ll borrow a quill and paper, if I may. I want to write a letter to Girard.”

  “Girard?” Mrs. Emma repeated.

  “The man who’s minding the inn for us. The place will become his—to keep or sell, as he chooses. We won’t be going back to Auvergne for a long time. If ever.”

  Marie refused to look at him.

  “I’ll find the writing things,” Sholto said. He turned to his sons. “On your way, on your way!—and take your sticks. Watch for anyone lurking. We want no more attacks by that vicious captain tonight. Your mother’s had quite enough excitement for one birthday.”

  “For a lifetime of ’em, sir!” said his wife.

  v

  Exhausted almost beyond feeling, Phillipe still managed to complete the letter, sand it and wax it shut. Mr. Sholto promised to post it.

  Phillipe leaned back and covered his weary eyes. He reflected ironically that once again they would be setting out with no more than the clothes on their backs—Marie’s casket, the securely wrapped sword—and one dream of fortune now exchanged for another.

  Mrs. Sholto packed them a small hamper of food as Phillipe dressed just before daylight. The elder Sholto once again dispatched his sons, who had come back from Craven Street. This time they were to survey the yard of the One Bell in the Strand, to see whether, by remotest chance, the one-eyed man had been noticed in the vicinity.

  The One Bell was a major coach departure point. But only one of many. The captain could not be expected to survey them all personally, even if he suspected that Phillipe and his mother might resort to immediate flight. Still, Mr. Sholto advised the precaution.

  When the sons came back with the Bristol coach schedule—the first departed at seven—they reported no obviously suspicious persons on the premises they’d scouted. But Esau did remind Phillipe of his own words—that there was no way of telling how many watchers—or of what identity—the Amberlys’ agent might employ.

  As the family set out on foot together from Sweet’s Lane—Mrs. Emma having insisted she would not be frightened out of seeing them off—it was just past six by the great bells. The narrow, twisting streets were still almost empty.

  Esau pressed a pouch into Phillipe’s hand. “The doctor sends you his commendation on your decision. He also expressed his hope that the list and letter will help secure you at least an apprentice’s job at a good printing house.”

  “I’m sorry you had to waken him,” Phillipe said.

  Hosea grinned. “Oh, we didn’t waken him.”

  Esau cleared his throat. “Dr. Franklin was—ah—entertaining.”

  “A damned smart-looking young flirt named Polly. His landlady’s daughter,” Hosea said. “Really, it was quite a scene. Franklin in his dressing gown—the wench in a filmy bed dress that would scandalize our dear mother. The doctor was ostensibly amusing the girl with tunes on a fiddle. But there was plenty of Madeira in evidence. I wonder if the old reprobate wasn’t doing a little fiddling of a different kind—”

  “Stop sounding so jealous,” Esau said. “Dr. Franklin’s relations with ladies other than his wife are entirely platonic.”

  “Or so he pretends in public,” replied Hosea with a knowing smirk.

  Annoyed, Esau changed the subject: “Have you any idea what your final destination will be, Phillipe?”

  “Whatever the destination of the first available ship.” Puzzled, he pointed to a second, smaller pouch Esau had taken from his pocket. “What’s that?”

  “As you asked, I didn’t reveal the reasons behind your abrupt decision. Nor mention the name you wanted kept secret. But I did suggest that you had been threatened with harm. Franklin immediately gave me five pounds to help secure your passage—and cursed the air blue in the process.”

  Astonished, Phillipe asked, “Why?”

  “You said yourself—you hinted to him that you’d encountered some trouble with persons of high station. Persons against whom you had no defense. He abominates that sort of thing. Also, he has a good opinion of you—and your ability to fit in where you’re going. Yes, he was most flattering. Said he judged you to be strong, determined, intelligent—and now, obviously capable of quick action when circumstances demand it.”

  Gil said I had the makings of a soldier, Phillipe thought wearily.

  Mama harped that I was a little lord. To Franklin I’m a printer’s boy of determined character—just what the hell’s it to be?

  Then, with a kind of cold, weary insight, he imagined that the truth was closest of all to this: he would know what he was only afterward, when he’d seen how it had all come out.

  “By the way,” Esau added as they trudged along, “Franklin’s not giving you a gift in perpetuity. He specifically charged me to tell you he expects the loan to be repaid one of these days. From the profits of your own printing house. He’ll be back in America eventually—and will make a point of collecting. He was smiling when he said it. But he wasn’t joking. I’d consider that another compliment.”

  “Franklin’s estimate of my abilities, and of opportunities in America, may both be overrated. By his own admission it’s not a peaceful country these days.”

  “More peaceful than London—at least for you,” Hosea put in. “Have a care. We’re almost to the Strand.”

  He ran
ahead, jumping over two bawds snoring dead drunk against a wall. At the corner Hosea looked right and left. Then he gestured the rest of them to follow.

  Phillipe began to feel a little excitement mingled with a sense of relief at being able to escape so quickly. The sun was starting to slant down between the rickety tenements now. The spring air was sweet and cool, tanged with the scents of the river and the smoke from London’s chimney pots. A bit more confidently, he tucked Dr. Franklin’s purse of money in a pocket and the pouch of papers in his belt under his coat.

  Hosea ran back along the shops of the Strand to inform them, “The express is already loading. A four-horse coach—and it’s packed. You’ll be lucky to find places on top. Better hurry.”

  They did, even Marie managing to keep up.

  In the noisy, clattering yard of the One Bell, Mr. Sholto helped Phillipe pay the double fare. Eyeing the crowd, Hosea and Esau assisted Marie in her climb to the top, and an uncomfortable seat on the flat roof. She would have only the rails for handholds.

  Phillipe noticed that the interior of the coach was indeed jammed with passengers: a large family; two black-clad parsons. He prepared to climb up the wheel spokes before all the room was taken by a third passenger mounting the other side—a hulking blackamoor in a sateen coat and breeches. Evidently the black was the servant of a portly gentleman rudely squeezing inside the coach proper, over the protests of the others.

  Mrs. Emma gave Phillipe a quick, forceful hug. She was crying, incapable of speech.

  The sons, then stern-eyed Mr. Sholto shook his hand.

  “I pray the Almighty protects you. And grants you a better welcome in the new land than you found in this one,” the printer said.

  Not looking back, Phillipe climbed the wheel to the roof of the coach.

  CHAPTER VI

  The Bristol Coach

  i

  SHOUTS FROM THE DRIVER and a blast from the guard’s brass horn warned of imminent departure. The guard hung his horn over his shoulder by a lanyard, hoisted himself and his blunderbuss up into position.

  Phillipe settled cross-legged on the roof of the coach. He slid the wrapped sword beneath his thighs and deposited the precious casket in the diamond-shaped space between his legs. The blackamoor, whose tricorn hat contrasted strangely with his apparel and the gold hoop that hung from the pierced lobe of his right ear, shifted a little to make more room. Phillipe nodded in polite acknowledgment.

  The blackamoor broke into a big grin, displaying a huge expanse of even white teeth. The man thumped his chest with an immense fist.

  “I be Lucas, sar,” he said in peculiarly accented English. “We ride a long way to the sea town, so we hang on tight, yes?”

  “I think you’re right,” Phillipe replied with amiable casualness. “The roads are probably none too smooth—Mama, hold onto the side rails!”

  Marie sat with her knees tucked up near her chin, her hands locked around them. The hands looked white, bloodless.

  And her lips were moving.

  Phillipe’s stomach tightened up. He leaned forward, touched her hand. She didn’t respond. She was speaking French in a monotone. Her eyes stared past him at the morning sky and saw nothing.

  Then he caught some of her words.

  “—and when this coach arrives at their door, I’ll tell them, ‘This is the little lord. Treat him as he deserves. It’s his birthright.’ ”

  Terrified, Phillipe shook Marie’s arm, said in French, “Mama, we’re not going to Kentland. This is the coach to Bristol. For God’s sake look at me!”

  Slowly, as if returning with difficulty from contemplation of some remote landscape of the mind, she appeared to take notice of the surroundings. Bleak lines showed on her face.

  “You must hold on to the rails or you’ll fall,” he warned, noticing that the Sholto family had all seen the peculiar expression on his mother’s face. They watched her with obvious concern. A scrawny man whose greasy clubbed hair shone in the sunlight also gave Phillipe a curious stare as he turned his bay horse out of the One Bell’s yard and clattered away up the Strand.

  “Please,” Phillipe pleaded, trying to pry his mother’s hands apart. “You must hold on!”

  Her eyes focused on his face. She said in French, “What difference does it make now?”

  The driver uncoiled his short whip, gathered up the traces of the four impatient horses. Phillipe reached over, seized the man’s shoulder:

  “Wait! I must get my mother down inside.”

  The driver growled, “We’ve a schedule to keep. We should have left ten minutes ago. Besides, there’s no room below.”

  “I’ll make room,” Phillipe said, already slipping over the side and skittering down the wheel spokes.

  He yanked the coach door open, face to face with one of the children in the traveling family, a bonneted little girl, perched on her father’s knee. Smiling, she was offering her small hoop to the portly man opposite. He in turn registered his dislike of children in general, and this one in particular, with an expression of pompous annoyance.

  Phillipe said, “I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen. My mother’s not feeling well. Is there space inside here, out of the wind?”

  “No,” said one of the parsons on the far side of the coach. “But we’ll make some. Stay seated, Andrew,” he added to his companion. “We’ll take turns riding on top.” He opened the door on his side and stepped out.

  While the driver continued to grumble, Phillipe helped his mother down again. He settled her where the churchman had been seated, placed the casket in her lap. She clutched it protectively. Then she began to mumble in French again. Phillipe heard the words little lord as he shut the door, clambered up and resumed his place along with the blackamoor and the shovel-hatted parson, who was already clutching the hat to his head with one hand while he gripped his testament with the other.

  The driver flashed Phillipe a glare, muttering, “Damned cheeky foreigner.” He uncoiled the whip, cracked it over the heads of his horses. With a jolt the coach rolled forward. The parson dropped his testament and seized the rail only just in time to keep from being toppled off.

  The coach clattered away from the One Bell. Phillipe waved at the Sholtos as their figures diminished and then disappeared altogether. He could think of nothing except his mother down below. Had the decision to make for Bristol, and the colonies, finally undone her? Unconsciously he tightened his hand on the rail, cursing the Amberlys and cursing himself. The blackamoor stared in astonishment.

  Phillipe paid no attention. Why couldn’t his mother recognize that they were going to a place that might afford them safety, and a fresh start?

  He knew the answer. It was not their ultimate destination that was at fault. He suspected she would have acted the same way if they’d returned to Les Trois Chevres. She had harbored her dream too long, to the exclusion of all others. Its destruction was in turn destroying her.

  The morning wind blowing over the coach roof forced him to squint into the jumbled distance of streets and buildings. But he saw only Marie—her lips moving; her eyes vacant; her hands gripping the casket like claws.

  He was desperately afraid for her sanity.

  ii

  Westward; the crowded streets and lanes became occasional cottages and gardens—then open country, as the coach took the post road to Bristol.

  The spring sun beat against Phillipe’s back, making him sweat heavily. But the enforced concentration required to hold his place on top of the swaying, jolting coach helped push the worries about his mother to the back of his mind.

  Lucas, the blackamoor, sat dozing, apparently quite at home with this risky mode of travel. The parson had tugged his shovel hat down next to his ears, and now used one hand to hold his open testament practically under his nose. How the cleric managed to read with all the bumps, the racket of hoof and wheel and driver’s whip, and the blowing dust that clouded over them, visibly soiling the white lappets of the parson’s collar, Phillipe couldn’t ima
gine.

  In an hour, though, he’d grown accustomed to swaying and bouncing and holding on. He even managed to relax a little. The sun’s warmth helped cheer him, as did occasional friendly waves from farmers laboring in the hay fields or maneuvering their vegetable carts to the road’s shoulder to permit passage of the speeding coach. The rolling, sunlit countryside brought Phillipe a sense of freedom, security—and direction—he hadn’t enjoyed since the encounter at Vauxhall Gardens. He’d be sore and aching when they reached Bristol tomorrow. But if that was the worst that happened, he could be thankful.

  He grew aware of the whites of the blackamoor’s eyes. When had the big man wakened? Phillipe hadn’t noticed. Lucas was watching the road behind them. The wrinkles on the broad ebony forehead made it clear the blackamoor had spotted something unusual.

  “Man on a horse, sar,” Lucas pointed. “Not there a while ago.”

  As the black man tapped the driver’s shoulder, Phillipe twisted his head around—and exhaled hard.

  The rider was pacing the coach perhaps a quarter-mile behind. Phillipe could make out only essentials through the dust churning up from the rear wheels. The rider was scrawny, his mount a powerful bay. Phillipe remembered seeing such a horseman depart from the One Bell a few minutes ahead of the coach.

  “Could be a gentleman jus’ riding,” Lucas shouted to his companions. “Or could be a road captain.”

  The driver preferred to take no chances. He immediately whipped up his horses.

  “In the latter event,” yelled the parson, “I will for once be thankful for the poverty of clerics. A highwayman would want nothing of mine.”

  Lucas surveyed the landscape skimming by on either side.

  Thickets and low hills now. Not a sign of a farmstead, nor any other riders or wagons anywhere ahead.

  The blackamoor growled, “Been robbed once before, on the Oxford coach. Sometimes, the captains don’ ride alone. That happen, everybody certain to be poor after.”