CHAPTER 14

HOWEVER…

… thirteen hours of hard riding north of London, it was raining with a peculiar viciousness, as if the blustery night had a score to settle with the small and often overlooked county of Rutlandshire, and had determined that if it couldn’t drown it by dawn it would at least wash it away into the featureless oblivion of the neighbouring Lincolnshire fens.

On an exposed stretch of the Great North Road, five miles out of Great Casterton, a solitary carrier’s cart was making slow progress through the relentless squalls, horses head-down and hunched against the downpour, the driver so tightly wrapped in his oilskin coat that he appeared no more human than the lumpy bales and boxes lashed down beneath the tarpaulin behind him. The only illumination on this lonely road came from the dim lanterns swinging from the front and back of his cart.

A sudden flash of lightning turned night to day for a jagged moment, revealing a stark T-shape by the side of the road made from a tall pole topped with a horizontal crosspiece.

The oilskin bundle pulled back on the reins, slowing the horses, and then took his whip and reached backwards, prodding the tarpaulin at the rear of the cart.

“Bowland’s Gibbet!” he shouted in. “Bowland’s Gibbet!”

The tarpaulin shifted and coughed, and then something slithered out from beneath it, two boots splashing into a deep puddle as a hidden passenger dropped off the tail of the cart.

For a moment the carrier could see him quite clearly in the glow of the tail-lantern, a thin youth, a little taller than average, his body wrapped in a high-collared serge overcoat that was clearly a worn hand-me-down from a much larger man. He wore a battered hat pulled low over his forehead, and the lower part of his face was swathed in a chequered muffler wrapped several times round his neck. His eyes were the only visible features, flashing briefly in the dull lantern-light as he bobbed his head and raised a hand in silent thanks.

“Bowland’s Gibbet!” repeated the carrier, “and the main gate to Gallstaine Hall beyond.”

He pointed his whip at the roadside gallows, and then aimed it across the way to a high wall topped with iron spikes. Fifty yards further on the wall was broken by an ornate pair of gates set back from the highway, clearly the main entrance to some great estate beyond. He turned and cracked his whip and the horses leant resignedly into the wind-driven rain again and headed on into the foul night.

“And good luck to you, young man,” he shouted over his shoulder, already re-swaddling himself in his oilskin.

The youth watched the tail-lantern swinging away, leaving him alone and lightless in the centre of the road, and then he drew his coat more tightly round himself and ran down the wall until he got to the gate.

There was no lodge house and the gate was, on closer inspection, unusual: beyond the thick wrought-iron bars, where you might have expected to see a driveway snaking off towards some large house hidden in the elegant parkland beyond, there was only a blackness even darker than the surrounding night.

It was not the gate to a driveway.

It was the entrance to a tunnel.

The young man found a brass bell handle set in the stone gatepost and yanked it hard several times. In the distance he heard a bell jangle, and a dog started barking. A door opened in the side of the tunnel and light slashed across its width, revealing that it was floored with coconut matting and vaulted with brick. It was also wide enough to easily accommodate a carriage being driven down it.

A large brindled mastiff hurtled out of the door and charged the gate, barking and snarling with such gleeful savagery that the boy stepped back a yard, even though the bars kept the animal from him.

“Down, Saracen! Down, you devil!” snarled a man’s voice, every bit as ferocious as the dog. The gatekeeper limped up behind the brute and wrested it back from the bars. Behind him a small child with a dripping nose appeared, rubbing sleep from his eyes and carrying a bull’s-eye lantern. The gatekeeper snatched the light from him and held it up to the bars.

“Who is it?”

The young traveller stepped forward, bobbed his head in a silent greeting, and then reached inside his coat, fumbling for something. He produced a letter and took off his hat to keep the rain from it as he held it out through the bars, keeping one eye on the barely restrained dog. The gatekeeper took the folded paper and looked at the name inscribed on it in thick slashes and curlicues of black ink. It read, “To the Viscount Mountfellon–By Hand–Most Urgent and Private.”

He flipped the envelope and examined the crimson blob sealing it on the reverse. The wax bore the imprint of a grinning skull above a deeply incised motto reading “As I am, you will be”.

Most skulls grin because the lack of any skin robs them of any viable alternative: this skull not only grinned, but positively gloated.

“Right,” he said. “Whitlowe! Running Boy! Letter for his Lordship; cut along sharpish!”

And he handed the letter and the lantern to the small child who sniffed once more, wiped his nose and then turned and sprinted down the tunnel, the circle of light bobbing around him steadily diminishing as he sped away from them into the dark.

The gatekeeper turned back to the soaking youth on the other side of the gate. He leaned forward and opened the shutter on the lantern, increasing the light playing on Amos.

“See your face?”

Amos unwrapped the muffler. His green eyes were a startling counterpoint to the burned caramel colour of his skin. The gatekeeper nodded as if he’d made a great discovery.

“You’re a darkie.”

This wasn’t news to Amos. Nor was it something he ever forgot, indeed his “brothers” made a point of reminding him of the fact at every opportunity, the only variation in the monotony of their practice being the seemingly endless litany of new and unkind words they dredged up from the teeming docks and market gutters to describe the visible effect of the mixed strains in his ancestry. So he didn’t react to the gatekeeper’s comment. He just looked back at him with an entirely neutral expression.

“You to wait for a reply?”

He nodded. The gatekeeper gave him a sly smile.

“So who’s the letter from then?”

The youth shrugged and said nothing.

“Come on, cully,” said the man in a wheedling tone. “Just a natural interest as to what must be so important to be delivered so late and in such weather…?”

The messenger again kept quiet. The gatekeeper scowled at him.

“Don’t say much do you, cully?”

He shook his head.

“You stupid or something? Cat got your tongue? Or just haughty, like?”

The youth shook his head again, shivering at the rain runnelling down his neck as he unwound his muffler and pulled out an oval brass plate he wore around his neck on a worn leather strap. There was just enough light from the door in the side of the tunnel for the gatekeeper to read the letters stamped into it:

The gatekeeper’s lips moved as he read the words slowly, then gave a snort of unkind mirth as he stepped back and looked at the dripping boy.

“Not intelligent enough to stay home and dry on a wet night though, are you?”

Amos rolled his eyes and made a dumb show by which the gatekeeper was invited to open the gate and allow him inside the mouth of the tunnel, out of the weather. The gatekeeper in turn made a pantomime of shaking his head.

“No one inside the gates without his Lordship’s permission. Don’t worry though, darkie: you just stop there until we see if there’s a reply. You can’t get any wetter.”

With that he turned on his heel, leaving the dog to sit and stare at Amos on the other side of the bars, and disappeared back into his cubby and closed the door, cutting off the slash of light so that all Amos could see was a distant glow from the running child, who was now out of sight beyond the initial incline of the tunnel. He put his brass badge back inside his coat with a well-practised and fatalistic sigh, shook out his muffler and made a kind of hood which he then tied over his hat, and retreated into a natural recess made by the gateposts that gave at least the illusion, if not the strict reality, of protection from the unending downpour.