Джорджетт Хейер - The Talisman Ring

Lucy, at first scandalized by the idea of a young lady setting out into the world alone, was not a difficult person to inspire. The portrait drawn for her edification of a shrinking damsel condemned to espouse a tyrant of callous instincts and brutal manners profoundly affected her mind, and by the time Eustacie had graphically described her almost inevitable demise in childbed, she was ready to lend her support to any plan her mistress might see fit to adopt. Her own brain, though appreciative, was not fertile, but upon being adjured to think of some means whereby a lady could evade a distasteful marriage and arrange her own life, she had the happy notion of suggesting a perusal of the advertisements in the Morning Post.

Together mistress and maid pored over the columns of this useful periodical. It was not, at first glance, very helpful, for most of its advertisements appeared to be of Well-matched Carriage Horses, or Superb Residences to be Hired for a Short Term. Further study, however, enlarged the horizon. A lady domiciled in Brook Street required a Governess with a knowledge of Astronomy, Botany, Water-Colour Painting, and the French Tongue to instruct her daughters. Dismissing the first three requirements as irrelevancies, Eustacie triumphantly pointed to the last, and said that here was the very thing.

That a governess’s career was unlikely to prove adventurous was a consideration that did not weigh with her for more than two minutes, for it did not take her longer than this to realize that her young charges would possess a handsome brother, who would naturally fall in love with his sisters’ governess. Persecution from his Mama was to be expected but after various vicissitudes it would be discovered that the humble governess was an aristocrat and an heiress, and all would end happily. Lucy, in spite of never having read any of the romances which formed her mistress’s chief study, saw nothing improbable in this picture, but doubted whether Sir Tristram would permit his betrothed to leave the Court.

“He will know nothing about it,” said Eustacie, “because I shall escape very late at night when he thinks I am in bed, and ride to Hand Cross to catch the mail coach to London.”

“Oh, miss, you couldn’t do that, not all by yourself!” said Lucy. “It wouldn’t be seemly!”

Paying no heed to this poor-spirited criticism, Eustacie clasped her hands round her knees, and began to ponder the details of her flight. The scheme itself might be fantastical, but there was a streak of French rationality in her nature which could be trusted to cope with the intricacies of the wildest escapade. She said: “We shall need the stable keys.”

“We, miss?” faltered Lucy.

Eustacie nodded. “But yes, because I have never saddled a horse, and though I think it would be a better adventure if I did everything quite by myself, one must be practical, after all. Can you saddle a horse?”

“Oh yes, miss!” replied Lucy, a farmer’s daughter, “but—”

“Very well, then, that is arranged. And it is you, moreover, who must steal the stable keys. That will not be a great matter. And you will pack for me two bandboxes, but not any more, because I cannot carry much on horseback. And when I reach Hand Cross I shall let Rufus go, and it is certain that he will find his way home, and that will put my cousin Tristram in a terrible fright when he sees my horse quite riderless. I dare say he will think I am dead.”

“Miss, you don’t really mean it?” said Lucy, who had been listening open-mouthed.

“But of course I mean it,” replied Eustacie calmly. “When does the night mail reach Hand Cross?”

“Just before midnight, miss, but they do say we shall be having snow, and that would make the mail late as like as not. But, miss, it’s all of five miles to Hand Cross, and the road that lonely, and running through the Forest—oh, I’d be afeard!”

“I am not afraid of anything,” said Eustacie loftily.

Lucy sank her voice impressively. “Perhaps you haven’t ever heard tell of the Headless Horseman, miss?”

“No!” Eustacie’s eyes sparkled. “Tell me at once all about him!”

“They say he rides the Forest, miss, but never on a horse of his own,” said Lucy throbbingly. “You’ll find him up behind you on the crupper with his arms round your waist.”

Even in the comfortable daylight this story was hideous enough to daunt the most fearless. Eustacie shuddered, but said stoutly: “I do not believe it. It is just a tale!”

“Ask anyone, miss, if it’s not true!” said Lucy.

Eustacie, thinking this advice good, asked Sir Tristram at the first opportunity.

“The Headless Horseman?” he said. “Yes, I believe there is some such legend.”

“But is it true?” asked Eustacie breathlessly.

“Why, no, of course not!”

“You would not then be afraid to ride through the Forest at night?”

“Not in the least. I’ve often done so, and never encountered a headless horseman, I assure you!”

“Thank you,” said Eustacie. “Thank you very much!”

He looked a little surprised, but as she said nothing more very soon forgot the episode.

“My cousin Tristram,” Eustacie told Lucy, “says that it is nothing but a legend. I shall not regard it.”

Had Sir Tristram been less preoccupied he might have found something to wonder at in his cousin’s sudden docility. As it was, he was much too busy unravelling the intricacies of Sylvester’s affairs with Mr Pickering to pay any heed to Eustacie’s change of front. If he thought about it at all he supposed merely that she had recovered from a fit of tantrums, and was heartily glad of it. He had half expected her to raise objections to his plan to convey her to Bath on the day after her grandfather’s burial, but when he broached the matter to her she listened to him with folded hands and downcast eyes, and answered never a word. A man more learned in female wiles might have found this circumstance suspicious; Sir Tristram was only grateful. He himself would be returning to Lavenham Court, but he told Eustacie that he did not expect to be obliged to remain for more than a week or two, after which time he would join the household in Bath, and set forward the marriage arrangements. Eustacie curtseyed politely.

She did not attend Sylvester’s funeral, which took place on the third day after his death, but busied herself instead with choosing from her wardrobe the garments she considered most suited to her new calling, and directing Lucy how to bestow them in the two bandboxes. Lucy, too devoted to her glamorous young mistress to think of betraying her, but very much alarmed at the idea of all the dangers she might encounter on her solitary journey, sniffed dolefully as she folded caracos and fichus and said that she would almost prefer to accompany Miss, braving the terror of the Headless Horseman, than be left behind to face Sir Tristram’s wrath. Eustacie, feeling that to take her maid with her would be to destroy at a blow all the romance of the adventure, told her to pretend the most complete ignorance of the affair, and promised that she would send for her to London at the first opportunity.

The forlorn sight of snowflakes drifting down from a leaden sky affected Lucy with a sense of even deeper foreboding, but only inspired her mistress to say she would wear her fur-lined cloak after all, and the beaver hat with the crimson plume.

Her actual escape from the Court was accomplished without the least difficulty, the servants having gone to bed, and Sir Tristram being shut up in the library with Beau Lavenham, who had come over from the Dower House to dine with his cousins. Eustacie had excused herself from their company soon after dinner, and gone up to her bedchamber. At eleven o’clock, looking quite enchanting in her riding-dress and crimson cloak and wide-brimmed beaver, with its red feather curling over to mingle with her dark, silky curls, she tiptoed down the back stairs, holding up her skirts in one hand and in the other grasping her whip and gloves. Behind her tottered the shrinking Lucy, carrying the two bandboxes and a lantern.

Halfway down the stairs Eustacie stopped. “I ought to have a pistol!”

“Good gracious sakes alive, miss!” whispered Lucy. “Whatever would you do with one of them nasty, dangerous things?”

“But, of course, I must have a pistol!” said Eustacie. “And I know where there is a pistol, too!” She turned, ignoring her abigail’s tearful protests, and ran lightly up the stairs again, and disappeared in the direction of the Long Gallery.

When she returned she was flushed and rather out of breath and carried in her right hand a peculiarly deadly-looking duelling pistol with a ten-inch barrel and silver sights. Lucy nearly dropped the bandboxes when she saw it, and implored her mistress in an agitated whisper to put it down.

“It is my cousin Ludovic’s,” said Eustacie triumphantly. “There were two of them in a case in the bedchamber that was his. How fortunate that I should have remembered! I saw them—oh, a long time ago!—when they put the new curtains in that room. Do you think it is loaded?”

“Oh, mercy, miss, I hope not!”

“I must be careful,” decided Eustacie, handling the weapon somewhat gingerly. “I think it has a hair-trigger, but I do not properly understand guns. Hurry, now!”

The snow had stopped falling some time before, but a light covering of it lay upon the ground, and there was a sharp, frosty nip in the air. The two females, one of them in high fettle and the other shivering with mingled cold and fright, trod softly down the drive that led from the house to the stables. No light showed in the coachman’s cottage, nor in the grooms’ quarters, and no one appeared to offer the least hindrance to Eustacie’s escape. She unlocked the door of the harness-room, pulled Lucy in after her, and setting the lantern down on the table, selected a bridle from the wall, and pointed out her saddle to the abigail. The next thing was to unlock the stable door, and to saddle and bridle Rufus, who seemed sleepy but not displeased to see his mistress. Lucy, dreading the consequences of this exploit, had begun to weep softly, but was told in a fierce whisper to saddle Rufus and to stop being a fool. She was an obedient girl, so she gulped down her tears, and heaved the saddle up on to Rufus’s back. The girths having been pulled tight, the headstall removed and the bridle put on, it only remained to attach the two bandboxes to the saddle. This called for a further search in the harness-room for a pair of suitable straps, and by the time these had been found and the bandboxes suspended from them, Eustacie had decided that the only possible way to carry a pistol was in a holster. A lady’s saddle not being equipped with this necessary adjunct, one had to be removed from a saddle of Sylvester’s, and buckled rather precariously on to the strap that held one of the bandboxes. It seemed to be far too large a holster for the slender pistol that was pushed into it, but that could not be helped. Eustacie remarked that it was fortunate there was snow upon the ground, since it would muffle the sound of Rufus’s hooves on the cobblestones, and led him out to the mounting-block. Once safely in the saddle, she reminded Lucy to lock all the doors again and to replace the keys, gave her her hand to kiss, and set off, not by way of the avenue leading to the closed lodge gates, but across the park to a farm track with an unguarded gate at the end of it which could be opened without dismounting.