Race Before the Wind

Copyright © Jill Salkeld 1988

Part One: 1814-1815

The Poacher

Chapter Five

During the whole of that summer of 1814, the national joy was shared even by those who had faced acute poverty in the long years of war. For a while, grievances were forgotten. Even the French could be tolerated since Boney's abdication and exile to the island of Elba. It seemed that the only person in all England who took no part in the celebrations was His Majesty King George III. The old King, quite mad, did not know the war was over.

For Tom it was the best summer he had known; despite the death of the beloved and ancient Belladonna, and his inability to afford a new mount. Free to channel his formidable energies in whatever direction he chose, he worked at the forge, kept a few chickens, tended the vegetable garden - and retired early each night to wake refreshed at three in the morning. A poaching expedition might take a couple of hours, and he seldom came home empty-handed.

He visited Jessica nearly every morning. Amos always worked at night now, and over breakfast the two boys would discuss any changes in the deadly pattern of traps and spring-guns. More than once this saved Tom's life, and he admitted to owing Amos a greater debt than he could ever repay.

In all respects except one, Tom was happy with his lot; but his determination not to sleep with Jessica was severely undermined by the girl's attitude. She would assert, with that shining look which both bewildered and delighted him, that as Tom would be rich some day it could not matter if they were obliged to be married tomorrow. She was not afraid of a few years of poverty.

"That's because you're not afraid of anything," he said once, panting slightly, watching an iron bar change from red to white hot as he pumped the massive forge bellows. "It'll only be a year or two."

"In the meantime," she said, not quite joking, "you might show me you'll be a husband worth waiting for."

He cuffed the sweat out of his eyes and attended to his work, but after this day Jessica seemed different towards him. Though she was still loving and eager to share his dreams, Tom sometimes caught her studying him with sadness or anxious doubt. This was usually when a poaching trip was mentioned, and he told himself that Jess was only concerned for his safety.

At Michaelmas he drove with her to the annual fair on Weyhill Down, buying her ribbons and lace until she cried out in despair, protesting that they would never save enough to be wed.

"Well, I like buying you things," he said jauntily. "And I'll work extra hard tonight to make up for it."

This pleased her even less; for with the coming of autumn, the silent pursuit of hares and partridges had given place to more hazardous work. On cold nights the pheasants roosted high in almost leafless trees, clear targets in the moonlight. Borrowing Mr. Tandy's shotgun, Tom could hit up to six birds with a single shot, making off fast with a full sack before the keepers came running. But whatever Jessica said about the risks, she did not try to pressure him into choosing another career. Of course not, he thought; how could she? She would have been out there with him, given the chance.

December came, with gales that penetrated every chink in door and window frames. Marie Elderfield spent most of her time huddled by the parlour fire, and as the winter progressed she developed a persistent cough and sore throat which nothing would cure. Jessica again regularly kept house at the smithy. Often, sleeping in Tom's bed while he gallantly occupied the parlour settle for a few hours, she rose before dawn to cook eggs and toast and crisp bacon for when he returned shivering with a sack of pheasants, his hair white with frost and his fingers almost too numb to hold a knife and fork.

On one such morning in February, an Andover physician called on Sacheverell Tandy to treat him for an attack of gout. Tom jumped at the chance to ask professional advice for a minimal fee, and escorted the doctor to visit his mother.

"He says she ought to go away somewhere," Tom confided later to Jessica, as they went out to inspect his latest acquisition among the hens. "I thought of writing to the Vaillants, sending her to them for the winter. Sea air is reckoned to be healthy."

"Easier for you, too," Jessica teased him. "No one to deceive."

"I can do that standing on my head anyway." He bent to catch the new chicken and stood examining her bedraggled feathers. "Been in a scrap again, haven't you, little lady?" A swift glance at Jessica. "What the doctor actually said is that it might be an early stage of consumption."

"Oh Tom. Oh no."

"Ma refuses to go to Lymington without me, and I can't miss the pheasant season here. Besides, she doesn't need me with her. Just thinks she does. What the hell am I to do, Jessica?"

Jessica felt an old jump of the heart; he had never asked her for advice before, was always totally self-reliant, too stubborn to reach out for help.

"I think," she said, "that you should invite the Vaillants here for a week or two. And I don't care how frightfully grand they are - if they're real friends they won't mind the cottage. It will be a novelty. And when they ask your Ma to go back with them, I'd lay bets she won't feel able to refuse."

For some seconds Tom said nothing at all. Then he gave her the dazzling smile which as usual made her weak with longing. "Come here, partner," he said, carelessly tossing the prized hen in the direction of the henhouse; and while he was kissing her Jessica forgot all her problems, and thought herself the happiest woman alive.

That night, unable to sleep for thinking of Jess alone in his bed upstairs, Tom lay on the settle listening to the rain. Perfect weather for netting partridges; the roosting pheasants might not be such easy game. He rose before eleven and donned the working clothes kept in a chest by the door. Inside the thick smock, below his right armpit, a loop of material held Mr. Tandy's gun butt securely. He damped the fire and went out into the night.

Black nights had long ceased to unnerve him. Choosing a strong stick, he beat the ground ahead in case of tripwires, moving fast with a confidence born of experience and superb physical condition. The wind and drenching rain were a bore, but not a hindrance. Having made such an early start, he calculated there would be time to shoot some birds, make his escape, and still net a few partridges into the bargain.

The trees he sought were close to Hatchley Hall itself, and the area was intensively guarded. Jonah Wooldridge was as protective of his lovingly reared pheasants as one of Tom's hens clucking over her chicks. Here the traps were moved frequently, and there were more spring-guns than on any other part of the estate. Tom slowed down and felt ahead carefully.

It occurred to him that he hardly felt tired at all. Why shouldn't he work like this every night, going to bed early and rising before midnight, to return home at dawn and sleep for a while before breakfast? A quick way to make a fortune…

The stick hit something that could have been a briar. Tom struck it aside - and the spring-gun beside the track clicked and swivelled, and fired its charge of shot with a flash and a terrifying report.

Tom's reaction was faster than his thought. That first click had been his only warning, but as the mechanism designed to shoot a poacher through the head swung the barrel upwards, Tom threw himself down flat on the wet, muddy track.

Winded by the fall, he sat up slowly. The black, squat shape of the spring-gun was only just visible even to his night-adjusted eyes. He could not see the tripwire. Dear God, if he had ducked a split second later…

This horror, narrowly avoided and now vividly imagined, forced him into action of a sort. He struggled to his knees and retched violently.

The he was scrambling up, cursing his dull wits; for the woods were suddenly alive with the yells of keepers alerted by the shot. Their voices came from nearer the village. If Tom sprinted for home, he would run straight into Wooldridge's men.

He left the woods and raced along the edge of a turnip field. Behind him a shout came clearly on the wind, "Halt, villain, or take the consequences!" The voice of Wooldridge himself.

Tom ignored him. The chance of the head keeper hitting a moving target in the dark was mercifully slim. The report from Wooldridge's gun set his heart pounding, but the shot ploughed harmlessly into the undergrowth on his left. Sacheverell Tandy's shotgun bounced against his hip as he ran. The thought of using it did not occur to him. If he did so, he would swing for it.

Wooldridge fired again; the shot went wide as Tom dived through a gap in a hedgerow. There were a couple more random shots, but Tom's zig-zagging route across the next field defeated the marksmen. He was in more danger of breaking an ankle than of being hit.

Even when the shooting ceased he kept running. Another five broad fields, a stretch of rough pasture. Rain blew hard in his face. His lungs hurt, his legs were like jelly; but he heard the men still, far off, in half-hearted pursuit.

Blinded by wind and rain, he stumbled at last into a barred gate, scrambled over it and dropped to the ground, boots squelching in the mud. Close at hand loomed Weyhill Down, and Tom groaned with mingled relief and frustration. He was outside Sir Charles's estate and way beyond the lands of the local tenant farmers - but he was miles from home.

He chose the circuitous route along the lanes. Nothing would induce him to cross the estate again that night. For a time he jogged to keep warm, but his leg muscles were quivering from the long chase and he walked most of the way, drenched and cold, lashed by the stinging rain. By the time he reached Hatchley, he was longing to crawl into a warm, dry bed. The recollection that he must sleep on the settle, which was lumpy and about five feet long, did nothing to raise his spirits.

The cottage was not in darkness. An unsteady glow showed under the door and through the parlour window. Damn it to heel, he thought. He could have done without his mother's tears and recriminations.

The hearthfire was lit and blazing, but it was not his mother who waited to greet him. Jessica Tandy, fully dressed and wide awake, uncoiled herself from a chair and stood up. Her huge eyes were very dark, her face impassive.

"I heard you go out," she said, with all the emotion of someone passing the time of day with a stranger. "That was four hours ago. You walked into trouble, I suppose.

"A spring-gun that Amos didn't know about. I'm all right," he added quickly, dragging the wet smock over his head and tossing it on to the chest, beside the gun. "Wooldridge chased me nearly to Weyhill. Surprised he didn't burst a blood vessel."

Jessica retrieved the smock and hung it nearer the fire. "You'd better take off those wet clothes," she said.

Tom stripped off his jerkin, neckcloth and shirt, then sat down and began tugging at one boot, laughing ruefully as his efforts failed to budge it. Jessica knelt, unsmiling, and removed the boots with a good tug at each.

"Come on, Jessie." He leaned forward to ruffle her hair. "We're not dead yet. Just one little smile, eh?"

Still kneeling at his feet, Jessica raised her eyes slowly, her solemn gaze lingering on his bare chest with its covering of fine blond down; then moving up to the broad shoulders, and the new, hard lines of cheek and jaw, and the way his hair was darkened to brown by the rain. She saw his discomfiture, too, knowing that habit he had of crinkling his eyes as though against rough weather or some less tangible foe. At sixteen, Tom Elderfield was a very attractive youth; in a couple of years he would be magnificent.

His hand was stroking her cheek. "Poor little girl, you've been really scared tonight, haven't you? I won't let them catch me, Jessie."

"I'm not a little girl. The worst you can get for a first offence is to be shot dead, or given a one-way trip to Australia or Van Diemen's Land. It couldn't happen to you, could it? Because everyone knows you were born to be hanged."

"Aw, Jess, don't talk of sad times that might never come..."

"It's now, I'm talking about. It's us. "Gripping his hands she stood up. "I don't want to change you, Tom. Just say the word and I'll be out there at your side. But if I lose you tomorrow or next week or next year, I don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking I never even loved you properly."

She stepped back, unfastening the copper hooks down the front of her bodice, her fingers deft and quick. Tom recovered from his initial astonishment and leapt up, really intending to stop her - but Jessica kicked off her slippers and shrugged out of the gown and thin petticoats, letting them fall crumpled about her feet. Her body, naked and softly curved, glowed golden in the firelight.

"Now say you don't want me, Tom Elderfield," she whispered, "and I'll leave this house and not trouble you again."

Tom hardly knew she had spoken. He stood helpless, awed, entranced, all his fine resolutions meaningless and lost. He had escaped out of danger tonight; he was free and alive and Jess was his girl. He loved her beyond bearing. Nothing else was real.

In the same instant that he moved, she stepped clear of the discarded dress. He bore her carefully down on to the settle, and peeled off the rest of his clothes while Jessica encouraged him with growing boldness and smiled into his eyes.

His exploration of her body was tentative at first, half shy; mouth and hands seeking confirmation of everything which had haunted his dreams at night and his imagination by day. Finally it was the knowledge of her pleasure that gave him confidence, making all shyness between them no more than a memory of childhood. When he thrust into her she gasped, but her body strained to welcome him, her hands dug into his back, urging him deeper until their bodies moved together and her soft cries were breathless with incredulous delight.

Afterwards they slept, until the fire died unnoticed and they woke shivering in each other's arms. Tom gathered up their clothes and led her upstairs, both of them laughing silently like guilty children. They made love again in the warmth of his narrow bed, and would gladly have stayed there all day content just to sleep and to savour each new journey of discovery. After a leisurely, experimental interlude which Jessica had found particularly satisfying, the girl leaned on one elbow and pushed back her trailing curls. He gazed drowsily up to her.

"I haven't been good to you, have it?" he said.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Her mouth curved in a smile of delicious wickedness, while her fingers traced invisible patterns on his chest. "But if you think we need more practice…."

Tom refused to be distracted. He caught her hand and held it fast. "All these months," he said, "I thought you were just impatient. I thought we wanted the same things."

"How lucky that we do."

He grinned, and they nestled closer. "You realise," he said, "that if I get you pregnant we'll have to marry at once and live mostly on the Poor Relief?"

"Somehow I can't see you living on the Overseers' charity, my darling. Your natural dishonesty would get the better of you."

"Ouch. And I'll have you know," he continued archly, "that poaching isn't a real crime, according to Ned Farminer, any more than smuggling is. Unless there's murder done, of course.

"Your nasty little friend Higgler would know all about that, I suppose." Jessica wrinkled her nose as if the very thought of Higgler was offensive. Then she smiled again, and freed her hand to place a finger to his lips. "Hush your silly talk, my darling. What does it matter? What does any of it matter? Together we're a match for the best and the worst of them."

"So we are," he said. He thought of his father dead beside the Andover road; of his mother huddled in her chair, dreaming of the town where she had been young and happy. So much goodness wasted, so many dreams thrown away in useless moralising and the fear of grasping what life could offer. He remembered the spring-gun, the flash and the deafening doubly sweet through having been so nearly lost.

Jess was right, together they could fight and win. Wasn't she born to it, after all? The daughter of a Mudeford beachmaster and a wild Irish girl, living by her father's heathen yet liberal creed, thumbing her nose at the conventions of polite society?

And besides, a life without the spice of danger would be no life at all.

Chapter Six

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