Race Before the Wind

Copyright © Jill Salkeld 1988

Part One: 1814-1815

The Poacher

Chapter Seven

After six bone-jarring hours on the road, with Amos unable to avoid the potholes as daylight faded, Tom was past caring what his reception at home might be. In fact, Marie Elderfield said very little. She left Madame Vaillant downstairs interrogating Gaspard, and stood wringing her hands and uttering the occasional moan of shocked pity, while Jessica helped her son out of his clothes and into bed.

At last she said in real distress, "Oh Tom, why must you do such things to worry me?"

"Nothing for you to worry about," he muttered, lying down carefully. "I'm all right, maman....Please go to bed."

But she sat down on the edge of the coverlet. Jessica at once protested, "He's worn out, Mrs. Elderfield. It was a horrible journey. He simply can't take any more tonight."

"I am leaving for Lymington with our guests in the morning," she said quietly. "Angelique has been helping me to pack."

Tom blinked; the suddent capitulation was hard to believe. "Do you really mean it?"

His mother smiled sadly. "I have been wilfully blind for too long. I thought: my son is very young, he lacks judgement and caution and, without my influence, who knows what he might dare to become? But Angelique has enabled me to see.... My son is not a child. He breaks the law and deals with London game-higglers, and I have lived in adequate comfort on the proceeds. It appears that now he is also a county champion, I cannot influence him. I never could. Yes, my dear, I shall go to Lymington, and at Christmas you may fetch me home."

Tom waas so shamed by this speech that he could not bring himself to answer any of it except the last sentence. He patted his mother's hand. "I'm glad you're going," he said.

"Such exquisite tact." She bent and kissed him; a dry, light touch, like a blessing. "Sleep well, my dear."

But he passed a sleepless, wickedly uncomfortable night, and in the morning wasted half an hour listening to the sounds of frantic activity, taking almost as long again to dress before finally easing his way downstairs.

Jessica, not having expected him to surface, thrust a glass of golden liquid into his hand and told him to go back to bed. He shook his head, amused by her bossy manner.

"Been there all night, Jess. Very boring. What's this stuff?"

"French brandy. Gaspard is leaving us the bottle."

Tom was not aware that his face gave anything away, until she added, "If you still feel like that about last year, darling, you should tell him. Hear his side of the story."

He acknowledged the sense in this with a rueful grimace. "You've really fallen for our M'sieur Vaillant, haven't you?"

"Well.....you could have taken your Ma south, but you didn't, because of the pheasant-shooting. It's too easy to blame Gaspard."

He knew she was right, but for curiosity's sake alone, there was a question he wanted answered. Just before the carriage left, he managed to draw Gaspard aside for a moment, and said civilly enough, "Not so fast with the goodbyes, mon cher. I thought you were going to explain about last winter. That's the season for smugglers, not saltern agents. Get a promotion did you, in one of the big gangs?"

Gaspard arched his brows, and adjusted the points of his green swansdown waistcoat. "There are good prospects on the coast, Thomas, for ambitious young men fluent in two languages."

"Tell me again in a year or two." He watched Jessica climb into the carriage and arrange a blanket across his mother's knees. "When I've built up some apital here, that'll be the time to get wed and move south."

Gaspard looked unconvinced, but as they crossed to the waiting carriage he was already assuming a tragic expression and begging the ladies to hurry with their farewells, lest he should be totally u nmanned at being parted from the beautiful Miss Tandy.

Until this moment, Tom had felt only an immense relief at his mother's decision to go with the Vaillants, convinced that a few months of sea air and amiable company, in the town she loved, would restore her health for the winter. Now he was suddenly in doubt, feeling her thinness and fragility as he gingerly embraced her, and seeing the aching sorrow in her eyes as the carriage drove away.

She called to Jessica, who ran alongside for a short distance, "Take care of him!" - and Tom hung his head and limped back to the cottage. His mother's final words stayed with him like an echo, and he knew that she did not expect to return.

Marie Elderfield's departure caused a change in routine at the smithy cottage. Jessica had lost her chaperone, and neither Sacheverell Tandy nor Obadiah would consent to her staying overnight there, alone with Tom. Making the best of the situation, the girl rode to the forge every day on one pretext or another. Mace seldom accompanied her these days. Still keenly in pursuit of a shipbuilding career, he had switched his loyalty to the village carpenter in the hope of securing an apprenticeship.

The trip to Botley had given Mace an additional interest. He and Jessica took to spending Sunday evenings at The King's Head, reading aloud from their father's copy of Mr. Cobbett's weekly news-sheet. The locals held that meddling in politics was a strange pastime for a girl and a twelve-year old child, but Harry Colbourne was glad to give the new ideas a hearing. They brought him custom from neighbouring villages.

For Tom's part, beating Hanson had exorcised more that one ghost; and having become friendly with Ned Farminer and his young wife, hewas ready to forget the past and admire Jessica for her 'meddling'. It was time that labourers found a public voice; and William Cobbett, with his blistering eloquence, was one of the loudest, most aggressive voices in all England. Often Tom went to hear the readings, making use of the time to catch up on Amos's news; for her had started poaching again a fortnight after the singlestick match. Amost was anxious over recent changes in Wooldridge's attitude and policy, and he tried frequently to persuade Tom that the risks inherent in the trade were beginning to outweigh its advantages.

"I';ll tell you straight," he said one December evening, scowling into his beer, "I wouldn't get panicky at the first whiff of shot, as we both know, but Wooldridge is playing his hand close. He doesn't tell us things like he used to - not until it's too late to leak inforation. You're bagging more game that all the rest put together, and Sir Charles knows it. He's out for your blood."

"Sir Charles mustn't count his conies before the traps are sprung."

"That's another thing - the traps are moved twice a week now, and there are more guns. A lot more. The tenant farmers are being encouraged to set them, too - especially Scadding, his woods being a haunt of yours. For God's sake Tom, you used to be the one with a brain in your head. Can't you ease off for a month or two/"

But the allowance Tom sent to his mother was already a serious drain on his savings. With a smaller income from Higgler he would be lost.

He started work early that night, having arranged to meet Jess at her own house by midnight, a ruse they sometimes employed when Amos was on duty and the family asleep. Tom grinned smugly in the dark, increasing his pace alongside a hedgerow to combat the penetrating cold. The moon was up tonight, glistening on the frost. Perhaps this winter would be as bad as two years ago, and there would be skating again on the Tandys' pond.

He shifted the gun to hang more comfortably inside hissmock, and ducked among the trees that bordered Scadding's land. There were voices beyond the next clearing; this was a favourite spot for the keepers' sentry-go. Brushes with over-reacting to Wooldridge's supposed change of tactics. What could the head gamekeeper do, that he had not tried a dozen times already?

Within seconds, Tom had his answer. The trap was set full in the path; the stick which he held in front of him snapped in two as the great jawsclanged shut. A couple of small, unseen creatures scuttled off through the undergrowth - and the keepers; low conversation ceased.

Tom began to run, ducking wildly past briars and the sharp ends of branches that tore at his face and hands. Someone fired; a signal only, for now the yells of excited pursuit came from all around him. No direction promised safety. Amos was right; there had never been so many watchers in Scadding's woods.

They had moved the traps. The guns too, maybe. No time for caution, or the fear which he had believed conquered. But fear was present, waiting in shadow, a darkness at his back urging him onward faster, ever faster through the brambles and the slanting inconstant moonlight whicgh might save or kill him now.

He leapt and dodged the shots, running until the blood pounded in his ears. The older men tired quickly but the young ones kept after him, enjoying the chase, maybe guessing his identity. Maybe shooting to miss.

He could not take that chance. Glimpsing the wicked teeth of a second trap he leapt high and clear and landed neatly, only to stagger off-balance as his shoulder caught a lopped bough. He turned to see three shadows following, one paused to aim and fire, and the shot slammed into the tree where Tom's hand had rested a second earlier.

Another hundred yards and it seemed the men were losing him. Bounding across a frozen stream he slipped and trod though the think cust, icy water gushing inside his boot as he scrambled for purchase on the far bank.

A fourth man came racing out of the deep shadows under the trees.

Tom doubled back along the stream, the new pursuer sprinting to intercept him; and the man launched himself at Tom with a howl that, even in his fear, he recognised as a terrified warning.

In the instant their bodies collided, Tom's foot caught a length of stretched twine. As he fell beneath his captor, the report of a shotgun only inches from his head shattered the night and rang in his ears long after the sound had died.

Silence lay thickly on the woods. Momentarily dazed by the fall, he thought the blast had made him deaf. Then, in the distance, a keeper shouted, and Tom knew the unnatural quiet around him was real. There was no sound but that of his own laboured breathing, and the calls of the hunters as they raced towards the noise of the shot.

The shot, fired at point-blank range, from a spring-gun whose barrel would swivel up to kill a falling man. And the watcher who now lay so quiet, almost stifling him, this man had pushed Tom out of the firing line in time to save his life.

Tom shoved the body aside and knelt up. The moonlight filtering between the branches was merciless, leaving nothing hidden. The young man muyst have died instantly, and the shock to Tom was such that he forgot the keepers, forgot everything as grief and horror overcame his initial sick revulsion. For he knew the youth too well not to recognise him now, even lying in bleak moonlight with half his face blown away.

It was Amos Tandy.

Tom stood up, slowly, as in a nightmre, his sticken gaze never leaving the mess of blood and brains and shattered hone. The keepers' voices were drawing nearer; they josted him into a realisation of his own imminent danger, and with a sobbing breath he turned and blundered among the trees. The frozen stream shone with a luminous uncanny brightness, threading between the willows. Tom cleared it successfully, then fooled his pursuers with a charp change of direction. The voices were fainter, dying in the night.

A moment later, sounding far away, someone yelled in rising horror, "Mr. Wooldridge! Oh Jesus Christ.....Here! Over here!"

Amos had been found. Tom forced his way through a net of brambles, clawed up a steep bank on to the path he knew and ran without looking back.

In the Tandys' parlour Jessica sat huddled over a tattered copy of 'Mansfield Park', with no light but that of the hearthfire. Having read the same page five times without taking in a word, she glanced again at the cloth. Another hour to waste until midnight.

She had accepted long ago that loving Tom meant choosing to endure heartache, anxiety, nail-biting hours alone. She had learned to cope with fear and had little patience with huis mother's whining; for Mrs. Elderfield had tried to possess and subtly cage her son and had won only his pity.

But tonight....tonight Jessica felt close to panic. She told herself not to be a fool, Tom was not even late.

And yet, suppose Jonah Wooldridge had moved the traps again. Suppose Tom was hurrying, thinking of her, not guessing his danger.....

She would go out to meet him, just this once. After all, who was to know or care? The household slept.

Even as she crossed the hall she heard it; not the usual futive scratching at the door, but the heavier, more urgent thud of a fist. Jessica ran and opened the door wide, and Tom pushed past her, with so little regard for secrecy that she whispered, "Hush, what are you thinking of?" And then, seeing his white, scratched face, and the dark smock blotched and spattered with dreadful stains, "You're hurt! Tom!"

"It's not....my blood." He stumbled on the words, his voice breaking, "There's been.....an accident, Jess. He was taking her into the parlour, pushing her gently into a chair, squatting before her to clasp her hands. His body shook as if with ague.

"Jessie...."

"No, oh no," she whispered. If Tom had killed her brother she could not bear it; she would have lost them both. Better to die than face that. "Was it you? Was it?"

"They were after me, I - I didn't know about the gun. They never set one there before. They can't have told....told Amos till he came on duty. I'd have been killed for sure if he hadn't brought me down -"

"Oh God." Jessica also was trembling uncontrollably, choking back the sobs that might wake her menfolk. "You left him.....like that?"

"I couldn't help him, Jessie."

She must not think about it; not about Amos lying dead in the cold woods.

"Obadiah will raise a hue-and-cry," she said. "With Rob and the others. They won't be looking for evidence. If they catch you, they'll kill you."

"I'm not scared of Obadiah, nor Rob Hanson. But Sir Charles, he'd get me transported for this. I'd never see you again. Oh Jessie, Jessie....." His hands enveloped hers, crushing them. "I could stand anything except losing you. If you'll only come with me now, to Lymington, we'll get wed, buy a place, just like we always planned. I f you'll only come...."

Seeing the pain in his eyes, the terrible uncertainty, Jessica wondered how he could doubt her. She loved him, she would have gone anywhere - to Van diemen's Land itself - just to be with him.

She stretched out her arms, and when Tiom with a groan of relief drew her close she clung to him, as though his youth and pride and stubborn optimist were the source from which her own courage must spring.

But every moment now was precious. Jessica climbed the stairs alone, and by candlelight wrote to reassure her father, clearing Tom of any blame for Amos's death and mentioning London as their most likely destination. To Mace, who could be trusted, she told the truth, writing with great neatness so that he would have no trouble in deciphering the Vaillants' address. She crept into the child's room and slipped this very private note under his pillow. Mace did not stir. Jessica kissed him lightly on the forehead, and left him sleeping.

She had no idea whether she would ever see him again.

Chapter Eight

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