The Highwayman's Curse Read Free Page A

lard.
    I remained alert for anything to fear.
    As we came near the good road – newly laid by King George’s men, we had been told by a garrulous old woman from whom we had bought hot pies in a village the previous day – we would need to know which way to go. As if reading my thoughts, Bess spoke to the boy now. “We will take you home, but you must tell us which way.”
    The boy seemed not to hear her. His eyes were closed. My heart lurched. I had had a tutor once who had died as silently as this, lolling in front of me as I dully recited some lines of Shakespeare and wished I could be somewhere else. Was this boy dying now? He must not! We needed him alive. If he died, what would we do with him? How would people not think we had caused him harm? And the old shepherd, too, when they found him.
    â€œBess! Waken him! He mustn’t sleep!”
    Bess pushed the boy’s shoulder. And again. He stirred, opening his eyes. The fear in his face was pitiful and I turned away.
    â€œWhich way is your home?” she asked. By now we had come to the crossroad, where our path met the new road. One way went south-west before veering quickly to the west, the other east.
    In a valley to the north-west, some distance away, I saw a tall tower, square, with parapets, and slits for windows. Perhaps you would call it a castle, though it consisted of nothing more than that tower and a low wall surrounding some small, separate buildings to one side. The tower itself stretched towards the sky. Near by was grazing pasture, enclosed by stone walls which I think were newly built from the look of them. Many sheep, their winter coats long and straggly, grazed there.
    And that was when I was struck by a thought which I should have had as soon as we found the shepherd’s body. If he had been a shepherd, where were his sheep?
    I noticed the boy looking towards the tower, alert now, his eyes like metal, a crease on his forehead. He shrank towards Bess. What was in his mind?
    â€œWhich way must we go?” repeated Bess, with annoyance in her voice. And perhaps fear. I cannot speak for her but I know that I did not find it easy to put from my mind the memory of that old man’s throat ripped open by a murderer’s knife.
    The boy, after some hesitation, pointed. Southwest. In that direction we set off, knowing not what we should meet. Or whom.
    â€œOn your head be the consequences,” Bess had said. I could not forget that.
    And so it was that a rush of fear went through my body as I saw them first. Riders, five of them, approaching us fast.

Chapter Five
    B ess and I pulled our horses to a standstill and they stood, tossing their heads and breathing hard. We glanced at each other. I pointed to my hat and she pulled hers down a little so that the corner covered her face the better.
    We each kept a hand resting near a pistol. We would not draw our swords now – but would do so if it became necessary. Bess, I knew, would use the boy to her advantage – she would drop him or use him as a shield. As would I have done. Our loyalty to each other was greater by far than any care for the child. Though we may have disagreed on some things, we would act as one on this.
    We must do what had to be done, and think afterwards. This was something I had learned by now.
    Kicking our horses to a trot, we moved towards the riders. My heart beat faster. But I have known worse fear, much worse.
    They were a ragged group. The leader rode a sturdy chestnut pony, bred for the terrain, thick-coated and shaggy-maned. The man wore loose trousers and a mud-brown jacket, a black scarf tied round his tree-trunk neck, a soft brown hat on his head, with thin dark hair hanging below it, and a beard flecked already with silver. He was perhaps thirty, or less, and I did not like his eyes: deep slits beneath hooded eyebrows. But then I did not much like the look of any of them. With mostly unshaven faces, hair loose about their shoulders,