"That I did," Alan replied, expressing his doubts he'd done Burgess any favors. Lady Delia had put out some feelers for him as well, though with his lordship out of the country, there was little direct she could do without his presence.
"So the task is ended." She beamed. "And you may begin to pay attention to me again. How delightful. It's rare enough to have Roger out of the house, much less over in Holland, so I may be with my darling lad. I thought I would die of happiness to know that we'd have so much time free of interferences. Then the weather, and those Chiswick people… Did you miss me, Alan? Tell me you did. Tell me how much you did," she teased lazily.
Her long raven hair spilled over his chest and his face. Her large, firm breasts mashed down onto his chest as she rolled astride of him and held herself on knees and palms, breathing on his neck and into his ear, rocking back and forth, from side to side maddeningly.
"Better I show you instead," Alan laughed deep in his throat, taking hold of her bouncers and squeezing them, kissing her neck in return, eliciting her deep groans of impending bliss.
"Ummm, yess," she muttered, shaking with husky amusement as well. "Devour me, Alan. Ooooh, yess! Ummmm!"
Tumescent as a belaying pin, he slid back into her for the second time in half an hour, and she leaned back and flung her arms to the ceiling to ride St. George on his member, grinding her hips down against his, clasping him with her thighs and moaning with heartfelt abandon as his hands kept possession of her heavy breasts, leaning forward into his grasp with her hands clawed into his shoulders and grinning and crying out, wincing with each thrust and movement. Panting and grunting as their pace quickened.
She looked magnificent, perspiration sheened on her body, her nipples hard and rasping on his hungry palms, her soft thighs clasping and slipping with sweat and her heels under his buttocks to drive him deeper. Her hair was matted and a stray lock clung to the corner of her crumpled mouth as it hung open. Hot, burning dark eyes glowed down at him, urging him on, begging him for more…
"Well, damme!" a petulant voice interposed.
"Sufferin' shit!" Alan gasped, looking toward the door to espy a very thin, reedy Lord Roger Cantner standing in the doorway.
I think I've been here before, Alan thought sadly. Christ, this time I'm going to get my young arse killed!
"My dear," Lady Delia said, looking back over her shoulder, calm as you'd like, "you're back early."
"How… how dare…" Lord Cantner sputtered. "That young swine, behind me back, you whore!"
"Surely you must have known, Roger dear," Delia replied, still astride and making no moves to break away. "If not about Alan, then about any of the others." She did pull up a sheet to cover herself, Alan included, for which he felt only slightly grateful.
Get the fuck off, you cow! he screamed mentally. Let me get on my feet and out of here! I need clothing, and a head start!
"Me own wife!" Lord Cantner tried to howl in outrage. But it came out little more than a petulant screech.
"In name only, Roger, as we both are well aware. A wife may expect conjugal relations now and again," Delia said, smiling wickedly. "Of a successful, and pleasing, nature, n'est-ce pas?"
Lord Cantner put a hand to the hilt of his smallsword, and Alan gulped in total fear, his suntanned complexion aiming white as Delia's flesh.
But Lady Cantner only chuckled deep in her throat at that threat. "Would you run me through, dear Roger? Or Alan? That's murder, you know. Too public a thing to share with the Mob. And you might swing for it at Tyburn, even so."
Alan couldn't credit it. Under the secrecy of the sheet, she was stirring her hips once more, as if she wanted to torment the old cuckold into mayhem! And, God help him, what should have shriveled up like a deflated haggis was now hard as a marlinspike inside her!
God, I promise you, let me get out of this with a whole skin and I'll be good, I swear! he prayed silently. I'll marry Caroline Chiswick, I'll be monogamous as a bloody swan forever-more!
"Or would you rather go to Pickering Place and duel for your honor, my dear," Delia almost snickered. "Come slap him if you wish. I'll hold him down for you."
"For God's sake!" Alan finally gave voice.
"You little bastard!" Lord Cantner rasped, his sour little mouth working around what was left of his teeth. "Should have known when I come in on ye an' this bitch aboard that schooner, you all snivelin' on her tits, oh, I knew then ye were spoonin'' her yer cream-pot love even then! One o' me own I praised t' the skies!"
The hand had, however, dropped away from the sword hilt and both were wringing themselves in quandary. Alan felt a moment of hope.
"Murder, then, Roger dear?" Delia sniffed at her husband's indecisiveness. "A challenge to a duel? No? Then please be good enough, after me fruitless years we have spent together, to go away and make up your mind and leave me to my pleasures."
Lord Cantner stamped one of his little feet and gave out with another feeble bleat of displeasure. "Bedamned to ye, ye bitch! And Goddamn yer traitorous blood, Mister Lewrie! I'll see the both of ye in hell, I swear I shall. You'll pay. Oh, my yes, you'll pay. I'll have both yer heart's blood, ye see if I don't!"
But, amazingly, the old man quavered out another unintelligible warning, and doddered out the door, slamming it behind him!
"Well, I'm damned!" Alan gasped, going limp as Italian pasta against the pillows. "Christ, that's torn it! He'll have me dead!"
"He won't, dearest," Delia cooed, stirring her hips to revive him as coolly as if one of the servants had dropped off clean towels and departed.
"Easy for you to say!" Alan raved, after drawing a deep breath.
"Alan, don't flatter yourself; you're not the first," Delia said, giggling. "We've slept in separate rooms almost from the wedding night, and he knows his limitations at his age. Would he take the risk of dueling my darling lad? He shakes too much to hold a pistol, and the weight of a sword is quite beyond him for more than a minute. He's too stubborn to die and leave me everything. And too proud to ask Parliament for a bill of divorce. He's known about you."
"Then how could he play cards with me if he did? How could he stand to have me eat his fare?"
"What he knows is one thing," Delia grinned, leaning down to him once more. "What he wants others of his circle to know is quite another. They believe him capable in bed, and I give no sign he's not. I brought enough money to this miserable marriage to walk out anytime I cared to. So far, I have not. My family was rich Trade. He was respectable aristocracy. So we have no heir as of yet. Before he dies, I shall present him with what he wants most. Had he his wits about him, he'd have sent word on ahead from Dover he was returning. I expect the sea voyage upset him, poor thing."
"By God, you're a cool 'un!" Alan marveled. He'd thought he'd met some crafty, scheming women in his time, and had suffered at their hands more than once. But he'd never seen the like before. Even Mrs. Betty Hillwood back on Jamaica hadn't been this icy.
"If he hadn't been addled by mal de men I'd have known when to receive him back, and you would not have been in this predicament. We'd have been sitting around the card table, or truly having breakfast, when he arrived," she went on. "He'd have known what we'd been up to in his absence, but he'd have been spared the actuality."
"Well, he wasn't," Alan said, trying to lever her off him so he could get dressed and obey his instincts to take a long vacation in Scotland. Perhaps change his name and herd sheep with the Chiswicks down in Surrey until Lord Cantner had the good grace to die. "And he's seen the actuality. You said he has his pride. That means he'll get even, no matter what you think he'll do. You heard what he said. He'll hire himself some dockyard toughs to stop my business!"
"I give you my best assurances, dearest, sweetest, Alan, that he shall do no such thing," she said, laughing, hugely amused. "You don't know what a relief it is to end this pitiful charade at last. Just like that night he retired early, remember? Oh, I surely do. And we sat up playing backgammon until he was fast asleep?"
"Yes." It had been one hell of a night, sneaking into her chambers trying not to make a sound, tumbling onto the carpet before a ruddy fire, all the while the old man had snored in the room next door, and all night long, they had lurched fearful between strokes each time he'd coughed, muttered or turned over, only to begin again.
She pressed back down on him, trying to revive his flagging interest in the proceedings.
"I shall most like have to get out of town for a while," Alan told her. "I mean, I can't just trail my colors in his face, can I?"
"Oh, do spend some time in Bath! Warm spa waters, gambling in the Long Rooms. Beau Nash is dead and it's getting more lively, now he isn't there to demand decorum," Delia enthused. "I could join you there for a couple of weeks if you wish."
"Let's not press our luck, hmm?" Alan snapped. "Don't rub salt in the wound. I'll be an old hound, too, one of these days, and I'd surely kill the first young pup that sniffed around my wife!"
"How possessive you suddenly are!" she pouted. "Darling, if we must indeed be parted… give me something to remember you by."
"In for the penny, in for the pound?" he scowled.
"Something like that," she teased.
"Sorry, m'dear, I'm off like a bloody hare!"
"Cony, pack a bag for me," Alan said, back in the safety of his lodgings. "I feel the urge to take the waters somewhere."
"We goin' t' Bath'r Brighton, sir? Ahn't never been!"
"Somewhere. Anywhere. No, I'll need you to take this note to Courts' for me. I'll pack myself. Post some letters for me after. And get us a couple of horses," he added. "And make sure they're the fastest ones alive."
"Fer in the mornin', sir?" Cony asked in all innocence.
"Ah… hmm," Alan replied. "I should think tonight would be devilish fine."
"T'night, sir? If'n ya want, sir. 'Course, hit'd be 'ard t' find a decent inn that late on the road. An' the country a'swarmin' with 'ighwaymen now the vet'rins is outa work."
"We'll go well-armed," Alan told him. Count on being well-armed, he thought. He had a Ferguson rifle from his time with the Chiswicks, a saddle musketoon, his brace of naval pistols and another brace of dragoon pistols, his hanger, and there was a cutlass around somewhere for Cony to wear as well. Damned right, he'd go armed! He wouldn't put it past Lord Cantner to raise a battalion of pursuers, no matter what Delia thought, with a hundred guineas for the man who harvested his liver?
Cony went off with a note for the bankers, and Alan wrested a traveling valise from his armoire and began cramming things into it any-old-how. But he was interrupted by a scratch at the door.
"Ah, Abigail, my little chuck," he said, not pausing in his haste.
"I gotta talk to you, sir?" she said, tremulous as the first time he'd clapped eyes on her. "You packin' t' go some'r's?"
"Just for a couple of weeks." Alan shrugged it off.
"Alan," she drawled out, and he stopped packing long enough to take her in his arms, give her a fond kiss, and set her down out of the way.
"Be back sooner or later. We'll have more fun, hey?' "Don't know as I'll be here when you gets back, Alan me love."
"Oh? Why?"
"Well, the housekeeper'll prob'ly turn me out without no ref'rence," she intoned with a hard gulp.
"Did she discover about our little arrangement?" Alan asked, abandoning his packing once more. "How'd it happen?"
"I think I'm gonna have a baby, Alan," she managed to say, her lower lip quivering, and tears starting to flow from her eyes. "Yours."
"Well, shit, what next?" he sighed, and sat down at the table with her as her face screwed up and copious tears bubbled out.
"Alan!" she wailed. "Wha's gonna happen t' me? I can't care for a baby! I'll be out in the streets, an' no house'U take me on, not with a littl'un comin'. Alan, you gotta do somethin'!"
I knew it was too good to last, I knew it, I knew it! God, he thought miserably, remember that promise about swans? I think I meant it this time!
"Umm, are you sure, Abigail? Absolutely sure, I mean…"
"Hadn't had me courses this month. An' I get sick as anythin' o' the mornin's, I do! My stomach feels a little hard, too. Here, feel of it. Don't it feel diff'runt to you? I can't have no baby, an' me a spinster girl, Alan. Parish'll turn me out an' tell me t' move along t' the next. Same with that'un, too, I reckon. I seen it before, I have, back in Evesham. Girls havin' t' run off t' Birmingham, an' nothin' good at the end of it. But if I was t' be married, I could cry widow, blame it on a farmboy…"
"What? Married?" Alan exclaimed in shock.
"Yes," she bawled, putting her face down on the table and blubbering fit to bust. "Say you will, jus' t' let me have the record for the parish! I'm sorry! I thought we was bein' so careful, you with your cundum an' all. Don' let me be rooned, Alan, if you love me…"
In the middle of this, while Alan was trying to think of some way to escape being bound to the little mort for all eternity, there was another scratching at the door.
"Wait your bloody turn, damn yer eyes!" Alan barked with his best quarterdeck rasp, which startled Abigail into a fit of hiccups. "What?" he demanded, flinging the door open.
"Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy?" The messenger from the Admiralty sniffed at his unexpected greeting. He took in the bawling girl at the table, and gave another audible sniff.
"I am."
"Then this is for you, sir. If you will be so good as to sign here to shew I have delivered it to you? I have a stub of pencil, sir. No need for a pen," the old pensioner intoned with all the hauteur of a flag officer. "I was instructed to await your reply, sir."
Alan scribbled off his name and slammed the door in the man's face. He broke the blue wax wafer on the parchment and opened it to read it.
"Bloody, bloody, flaming Hell!" he muttered.
"Sir;
Our Lords Commissioners of The Admiralty have seen fit to offer you an active commission, the exact nature of which we shall be glad to discover to you should you deem yourself able to accept immediate Employment. You shall be appointed 4th Lt. into a Ship of the Line, the 80-gun 3rd Rate Telesto, now lying in-ordinary in the port of Plymouth, for three years' Commission in foreign waters.
Please communicate to us your Availability, or state reasons why you cannot fulfill a term of active service, pursuant to the customary usages such as loss of half-pay, reduction in seniority from the roll of commission Sea Officers, etc.
Yr obdt srvnt,
Phillip Stephens, Sec. to Admlty"
"God, I meant that bit about the swans, but this is a trifle extreme, don't you think?" he said to the ceiling.
"Wot?" Abigail hiccuped.
"Not you. Look, my girl. Marriage just ain't in the cards, see?" Alan told her matter-of-factly. "Yes, I'm going away. I've been ordered to go to sea. I'll give you some money to take care of you, and to see to your lying in. That's the best I can do."
"Oh, my God, you heartless bastard," she wailed.
"Twenty pounds to see you through, Abigail. And another twenty pounds so the baby's looked after. Tell people whatever you like. I can't marry you, and you know it. I'd make you bloody miserable."
"Miserable's I am now?" she spat, changing emotions quickly.
"Worse, most likely," he replied, trying to gentle her. He knelt down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders,
and held her even as she tried to shrug him off. "Look, girl, I'm fond enough of you. You're a sweet little chit, that you really are. There's plenty of homes would like a healthy baby, if you don't want to keep him, or her. You'll have about six years' wages for food and lodging, if you don't squander it on foolishness. And there are houses that'll have you. I'll write you a letter of reference if you want. I'll say you worked for me. Blame it… blame it on some sailor who took advantage of you on your day off. Tell the parish you were raped by some sailor you never saw before or since. Long's you have money to keep yourself, and you're not on their Poor's Rate, they won't care a whit."
"But you won't marry me," she sobbed, quieter now, and put her arms around him sadly.
"I'm going to foreign waters, Abigail. Three years and more. Dry your eyes, now. Call me a bastard if you like, but I'll try to do right by you, as much as I'm able. But marry you… I'm sorry."
He shooed her out, scribbled a quick acceptance letter for the Admiralty messenger, who fled before his old soul was corrupted any more than it most probably was, and sat down to relish a huge glass of brandy. God knew, he needed it about then.
Chapter 5
The more he thought about the arrival of the Admiralty's offer of immediate employment, the better he was resigned to it. A commission in foreign waters, far away from Lord Cantner's wrath, and any hulking minions he might hire, was probably the best thing. It also got him out of London, out of England, so little Abigail could not cry "belly plea" on him before a magistrate if she found his terms of settlement unacceptable, once she had a chance to put her little brain to work on them.
Surprisingly, Cony had seemed suddenly eager to go to sea with him as a seaman and cabin-servant as well. The Matthewses said they'd store his furnishings in the garret of his lodgings on Panton Street, though Sir Onsley had been mystifying as all Hell about why Fate had chosen that exact moment to bless him with active service. The old Admiral had made offers before, but nothing had ever come of them, and after three years' privation in the Navy, Alan was not exactly "cherry-merry" to go to sea again, though he showed game enough when Sir Onsley talked about the possibility.
There had come another letter from the Admiralty before the week was out, though, delivered by the same pensioner porter, and this one had advised him to travel to Plymouth at once, in civilian clothes. What had been the point of that, he speculated? At least, his route took him through Guildford, where the Chiswicks resided. It was the final disappointment to his feelings to learn that they were not at home. He sighed heavily, left a letter for Caroline with their housekeeper and got back on the road.
"I thinks they's a rider comin' up a'hind of us, sir," Cony warned. Once leaving Guildford, they had taken the coast road for Plymouth, from Dorchester to Bridport and Honiton, skirted south of Exeter for Ashburton across the southern end of the Dartmoor Forest. Highwaymen were rife with so many veterans discharged with nothing but their needs, but so far they had traveled safely enough in company with other wayfarers.
Ever since leaving their last inn that morning, they had seen no one, though when they stopped to rest their horses they had thought they could hear one, perhaps two, riders behind them. The wintry air was chill. Snow lay thin and bedraggled on the muddy ground like a sugar glace on soaked fields. Rooks cried but did not fly in the fog that had enveloped them. It was thinning now, not from any wind but from the mid-morning sun, and sounds carried as they do in a fog, easy to hear from afar but without any true sense of which direction they came from.
They were two men on horseback, with a two-horse hired wagon to bear their sea-chests, driven by an ancient waggoner and his helper of about fourteen. They had gotten on the road just before dawn, and now stood listening, about halfway between Buckfastleigh and Brent Hill. A lonely place. A perfect place for an ambush, Alan thought. He cocked an ear towards the road behind him, trying to ignore the creaking of saddle leather and bitt chains.
'"Ear 'em, sir?" Cony whispered. "Sounds more like two now."
"How far to South Brent from here?" Alan asked the carter.
"Jus' shy of a league, sir," the grizzled old man replied, looking a trifle concerned. "Maght be an' 'ighwayman, ye know. Lonely stretch o' road 'ere'bouts. 'R could be trav'lers lahk y'selves, sir."
"Let's be prepared, then," Alan ordered. The carter and his boy had bell-mouthed fowling pieces under their seat, and they took them out and unwrapped the rags from the fire-locks. Alan drew one of his dragoon pistols, checked the priming and stuck it into the top of his riding boot. That pistol's mate went into the waistband of his breeches. Finally, he freed his hanger in its scabbard so it could be drawn easily.
" 'Tis two men, sir," Cony muttered cautiously as two riders hove into sight on the slight rise behind them like specters from the mists. They checked for a moment from a fast canter, then came on at the same pace.
"Stand and meet them here, then, whoever they are," Alan ordered. He reined his mare out to one side of the wagon, while Cony wheeled his mount to the other side. The old carter kept his fowling-piece out of sight, but stood in the front of the wagon looking backward, with one hand on his boy's shoulder to steady him.
But once within musket shot, the two riders slowed down to a walk and raised their free hands peaceably. Alan kept his caution-they looked like hard men. One was stocky and thick, tanned dark as a Hindoo, and sported a long seaman's queue at the collar of his muddy traveling cloak. The second was a bit more slender, a little taller, though just as darkly tanned. He seemed a little more elegant, but it was hard to tell at that moment as he was just as unshaven and mud-splashed as his companion.
"Gentlemen, peace to you," the slender one began, halting his animal out of reach of a sword thrust. "We've heard your cart axle this last hour and rode hard to catch up with you. "Tis a lonely stretch of road, and that's no error. Fog and mist, and I'll confess a little unnerving to ride alone on a morning such as this."
Alan nodded civilly but gave no reply.
"Allow me to name myself," the fellow went on. "Andrew Ayscough. And my man there, that's Bert Hagley. On our way to Plymouth to take up the King's Service. You going that way as well, sir?"
"The road goes to Plymouth eventually, sir," Alan replied.
"Then for as far as you fare, we'd be much obliged to ride with you, sir," Ayscough asked, "if you do not begrudge a little company on the road, sir? Four men are a harder proposition for highwaymen than two. Our horses are fagged out. Being alone out here made us push 'em a little harder than was good for them. That and having to be in Plymouth by the first bell of the forenoon watch, sir."
"You're seamen, the both of you?' Alan asked, losing a little of his caution.
"Aye, sir," Ayscough admitted. "Down to join a ship. I've a warrant to be master gunner, and Bert there's to be my Yeoman of the Powder Room."
"Already down for a ship, hey? Not just going to Plymouth to seek a berth?" Alan queried further. The man looked like the sort to be a warrant master gunner. He even had what looked to be a permanent tattoo on one cheek from imbedded grains of burnt gunpowder. "I suppose there'd be no harm in you riding along for as far as we go. What ship?"
"Telestos, sir," Ayscough replied evenly.
"Alan Lewrie," he said with a relieved smile, untensing his body and kneeing his horse forward to offer his hand to Ayscough. "That's my man Will Cony. Cony, say hello to Mister Ayscough and Mister Hagley."
"Aye, sir," Cony intoned, still a little wary.
Near to, with his hands empty of weapons, one hand on reins and the other groping like a sailor out of his depth on horseback at the front of the saddle, Ayscough appeared to be a man in his late thirties to early forties. The hair was salt and pepper, worn long at the back in sailor's fashion. The complexion matched as well; scoured by winds and sun, and pebbled with smallpox scars. But the man's speech was pleasant, almost gentlemanly, and the eyes were bright blue and lively.
"Telestos, did you say?" Alan said as they began to ride along together, smirking a little at the man's unfamiliarity with the Greek pantheon. "What do you know of her?"
"She's an eighty-gunned, two-decked Third Rate, sir. Bought in-frame at Chatham in 1782." Ayscough chuckled as they headed west. "Completed but never served, she did. By the time she was launched and rigged, the war was over. And you know how eighties are, sir. Too light in the upper-works some say. Snap in two in a bad sea, some of 'em did. But Telestos had her lines taken off a French line-of-battle ship. Laid up in-ordinary for a while, then just got sold as a… trading vessel." Here Ayscough tipped him a conspiratorial wink. "Now she's to fit out as an Indiaman."
"For the East India Company?" Alan asked, a little confused. If he was to join Telesto as a Navy officer, what was the need for subterfuge about being an Indiaman? And Ayscough said he was in possession of a warrant for a King's ship.
"That's all they told me, sir," Ayscough commented with a shrug.
"Telestos," Alan said, feeling cautious once more. "That's Greek, is it not? I read a little Greek. Horrible language."
"Why, I believe 'tis one of Zeus' daughters, sir. The ancient goddess of good fortune," Ayscough replied brightly. "A favorite of mine, sir. She's always treated me well. Do you know, sir, you have the look of a seaman yourself, you and your man Cony. Might you be on your way to join a ship as well?"
"Only going to visit relations near Plymouth," Alan lied, not knowing quite the reason why he did so. "I know little of the sea. Nor do I care to, sir. Life is brutal, short and nasty enough on land for most people, is it not?"
"Ah, I thought you to be, sir," Ayscough said, frowning. "After all, you have what looks like seamen's chests in your cart. Why, at first, I fancied you to be a sailorman, sir. Perhaps even an officer. I've heard tell of an Alan Lewrie. A Navy lieutenant, I believe."
"Lots of Lewries here in the west, Mister Ayscough, but thankee for the compliment," Alan replied, now chill with dread. "One of my distant cousins, perhaps. My family is from Wheddon Cross. The Navy? God no, not me!" He pretended a hearty chuckle. "I mean, who in his right mind would really be a sailor?"
"I see," Ayscough said, pursing his lips. He put both hands on the front of the saddle and frowned once more, as if making up his mind. "Bert!" he shouted, digging under his cloak for a weapon!
"Ambush!" Alan screamed, raking his heels into his horse's flanks and groping to his boot-top for his pistol. He sawed the reins so his horse shouldered against Ayscough's as he tried to thumb back the hammer of his pistol.
Ayscough got a weapon out, a pistol, though he was having trouble staying seated. Alan lashed out with his rein hand, kicked Ayscough's mount in the belly, making it rear, and shoved hard. The other horse shied away, and Ayscough came out of the saddle to tumble into the slushy road.
There was a loud shot and a million rooks stirred up cawing. Time slowed down to a gelatinous crawl. Alan jerked the reins to turn his terrorized horse, saw Ayscough rolling to his knees to free his gun hand and begin to take aim. Alan's muzzle came up and he fired first. Missed! Thanks to the curvetting of the damned horse! Alan dropped his smoking barker, clawed at his waistband to get its twin, all the while looking down the enormous barrel of Ayscough's gun. There was another loud shot, another angry chorus from the wheeling rooks, and Ayscough grunted as the air was driven from his lungs. He pitched face-down into the slush, the mud and the stalings from myriad animals, his pistol discharging into the road with a muffled thud, his cloak flapping over his head like a shroud. The back of it had been rivened with a positive barrage of pistol balls.
"Cony?" Alan shouted from a terribly dry mouth, wheeling around to face the next foe.
"Ah'm arright, sir, no thanks t' the likes o' this'un!"
"Jesus!" the waggoner's lad said, trembling, in awe of having killed his first man. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" It was his shot from that fowling-piece that had taken Ayscough down: a mix of pistol and musket balls, bird-shot and whatever else looked handy.
Alan dismounted, handed the reins to the boy and pulled Ayscough's head up out of the mud, but the man was most thoroughly dead. So was Cony's foe, run through by his seaman's knife.
"Wot yew suppose t'was all about, sir?" Cony asked, dismounting and coming to his side. They were both shaking like leaves at the sudden viciousness of the attack, at how quickly two men had died and at how easily it could have been them soaking in the snow and mud.
"Something about that ship we're joining, I think," Alan said. "They must have something on them, some kind of clue. You search that one yonder."
"Bloody 'ighwaymen," the old carter grumbled as he got down from the wagon seat and began to strip off Ayscough's high-topped dragoon boots. He tried one against the sole of his worn old shoes to see if they would be a good fit, and grunted with satisfaction. "Wot'iver 'appened t' 'stand an' deliver', J asks ya? They wuz gonna kill ever' last' one of us'n, I reckon, an' then rob the wagon, too."
"Pretending to be honest seamen," Alan said shuddering. "Our lucky day you and your lad were so quick on the hop, sir. Cony and I would have ended our lives here if it hadn't been for you."
"Why, thankee, sir, thankee right, kindly," the old man preened.
Alan found a purse of gold on Ayscough's body: one and two-guinea coins, along with a goodly supply of shillings- nigh on one hundred pounds altogether! There was also a note written on foolscap, in a quite good hand. It described Lewrie and Cony, gave a hint of what route they would be taking, the name of the ship they would be joining, and an assurance that they would be staying at the Lamb and Flag Inn in Plymouth!
"Your lucky day, too, sir," Alan said, once the old carter had his new boots on and was stamping about to try them out. Alan counted out a stack of coins and gave them over. "I put a high price on my hide, and they'll not be needing these where they're going."
"How'd yew know, sir?" Cony asked, once he had turned Hagley's pockets inside out and helped lumber the corpse into the back of the wagon.
"Ah, well, you see, Cony," Alan sighed. "Ayscough there said the ship's name was Telestos, not Telesto. He claimed to have studied Greek, but he called her Fortune, one of Zeus' daughters. But it's common knowledge her name translates as Success, and she was one of Ocean's daughters. And Hesiod's Theogony is almost the first thing one reads in Greek, so he couldn't have been a real student."