Part 7 (1/2)

He stuffed the purse into his pocket without looking into it. ”Thank you, ma'am,” he said, walking away from her backwards, not wanting to be impolite, but thinking of Clara still, the girl's face clear in his mind. He would do whatever was needed to find her that he knew but he was burning daylight, and Clara was further along the London road with every pa.s.sing moment.

Mother Laswell waved him on, shouting, ”Don't stint!” And then, ”Take the chaise, Finn! Shadwell will be driving a coach or so we must a.s.sume, a black brougham with a white squiggle. Send the doctor back to Hereafter if you find him at home!”

Finn was halfway to the stile now, waving his fis.h.i.+ng pole in the air to acknowledge her final shouted entreaty. He went through the gate in the hedge and loped up past the oast house and into the woods along the path to the farm, where he saw spilled blood and broken flowerpots on the paving stones near the back door. He set his pole against the wall he would want his creel and he knocked hard on the door. He opened it without waiting and shouted a greeting before walking in, where he found Mr. and Mrs. Tully standing next to the day-bed in the parlor. Kraken lay on his side, breathing heavily, his eyes shut. Finn begged their pardon for his hurry and ask Mr. Tully about the chaise.

But there was no chaise. Simonides had already taken it to fetch the doctor. The boy had gone off half an hour ago, Mr. Tully said, when Bill Kraken had staggered into the house and collapsed. It would be another half hour before the boy's return, and who knew how long it would take him if the doctor were away from home? They feared for Mother Laswell and Clara, Mrs. Tully put in, to which Finn replied that Mother Laswell was quite all right, and would be here soon, but what about the wagon could he borrow the wagon? It was no living good to anyone at the moment, Mr. Tully told him. This morning a wheel had seen fit to separate from its axle and fling itself into a stone, breaking two spokes, and wasn't yet repaired. Two hours would put it right, if Finn could lend a hand.

Out the window the evening gloom was descending. Real night was half an hour away, and Mother Laswell would arrive shortly with more advice for him, very good advice, no doubt, but...

”Is there a saddle for Ned Ludd?” Finn asked, and as soon as Mr. Tully said, ”Oh, aye,” and began to nod, Finn set out for the barn, through the French window, happy to see through the open top half of the Dutch door that a lantern was lit within. ”Where are you taking him?” Mr. Tully called after him.

”London!” Finn shouted back, and didn't wait to hear the reply.

There stood the wagon, with the wheel off but supported by blocks. The broken spokes lay on the ground, the new spokes waiting to be knocked into the hub. There were three saddles on a rail, and Finn looked at each carefully. A mule saddle hadn't much rocker, a mule being flatter in the withers than a horse. Having ridden all sorts, from zebras to camels to elephants, he quickly found it and hoisted it off the rail. He draped a blanket over the creature, stroking his cheek and whispering into his ear. He had cared for mules during his days in Duffy's Circus, and he had a way with them and their stubborn notions. Keeping them happy was the salient thing.

Dr. Johnson came into his mind as he was saddling the mule, specifically that he was making ready to abandon the elephant. He wished he hadn't said out loud that he would top off Johnson's food bins in the morning, because he was certain that the elephant not only had a long memory, but that he understood human talk fairly well, especially as regards food. He hoped that Mr. Binger would look in on him as soon as he returned.

Finn filled a bag with oats now, collected a nosebag, checked to see that the saddle was cinched tight, and walked Ned Ludd to the swing-gate that barred the open barn door. The mule stood looking out into the dusk when Finn drew the gate back, and for a moment Finn thought that he would refuse to leave the barn. But it wasn't so. As soon as Finn was settled into the saddle, Ned Ludd set out at a steady pace, as if he knew that they hadn't any time to waste, and within minutes Hereafter Farm had disappeared behind them. They soon pa.s.sed through the village and came out onto the London road, where a sign told him that it was six miles into Wrotham Heath. Finn felt the freedom of it, of the open s.p.a.ce fore and aft and to either side, and of having no one to answer to but himself and his duty to Clara.

The missing chaise from Hereafter soon hurried past in the opposite direction, Simonides driving, apparently having come from Doctor Pullman's house. The Doctor and Constable Brooke rattled along behind in the Constable's wagon. Simonides looked at Finn in surprise as they pa.s.sed each other, and Finn shouted, ”It's Clara!” although the message would not convey any meaning either to Simonides or Constable Brooke until they had reached Hereafter and heard the story from Mother Laswell. Finn wondered briefly whether he should return to the farm in order to borrow the chaise, but he would lose most of an hour doing so, and in any event he couldn't abide further waiting.

Clara returned to his mind now that he was settled and moving and had time to think. She was quite the most beautiful girl he had known, and he was certain that she fancied him at least a little bit, he thought, not wanting to press his luck. He thought then of what had been done to her mother what he had been told by Tommy earlier today at Hereafter but he set the thought aside.

There wasn't room enough in his mind for that sort of darkness, which took up an outsized amount of s.p.a.ce and cast its pall over common sense and muddled the immediate present. And as for the immediate present, Finn wished that he'd had time to bring a warmer coat. It would be a cold night, and his right shoe was still damp from plunging into the stream. Then he remembered that he had an unknown quant.i.ty of Mother Laswell's money in his pocket, although unless he happened upon a coat for sale, little good it would do him now. Better to have yesterday's newspaper to stuff under his s.h.i.+rt against the wind.

In due time the moon rose above the trees, for which he was thankful; several times now a coach or chaise had driven past, and only one of them the mail coach with headlights. He wanted to see and be seen, not edged off into the ca.n.a.l that ran alongside the road. Ned Ludd was happy with the ca.n.a.l, however, having stopped to drink deeply from it a short time back. If the villain Shadwell were driving a chaise or the brougham that he had driven yesterday, surely the vehicle would carry him and Clara into London long before Finn would arrive, and then the both of them would simply disappear into the great city. Finn would seek out the Professor at the Half Toad, as they had planned, but he would arrive in a state of shameful ignorance, merely a bearer of bad tidings. And of course there was no certainty that Shadwell and Clara were ahead of him at all, no certainty that they were bound for London, now that he thought of it.

His mind ran uselessly on various uncertainties until he recalled something his mother had once told him: ”With enough ifs one could put all Paris in a bottle.” And so he compelled himself to put the ifs aside. His destination was London until the destination changed for good reason. But what then? He would discover it in due time as was always the case, for good or ill.

He fed Ned Ludd oats out of the nosebag when they arrived in Wrotham Heath, where he bought a meat pie for himself at the Queen's Rest. Sitting beneath the gaslight that illuminated the road in front of the inn, he opened the purse that Mother Laswell had given him, feeling the weight of the several coins and looking through the banknotes, which would have seen him through six months back in the days when he was living hard. He unfolded the paper that was slid in among the banknotes and was startled to see that the likeness of Dr. Narbondo was drawn upon it.

This was very puzzling indeed something he could not have antic.i.p.ated even if he had put his mind to it. Mother Laswell had told him that a quant.i.ty of the handbills had belonged to the men who had taken Clara, and that had an ominous air, implying secret connections, perhaps real wickedness. The address was near the Temple. He knew the area well enough, grand houses, which made this all the more puzzling. What did a rich man want with the likes of Dr. Narbondo? All the money in the world, however, could not resurrect Narbondo from where he had gone, so it was all one.

An hour later Finn was well out into the countryside, with a line of trees on either side. Pastures stretched away in the moonlight, visible now and then through the trees. He came to the peak of a hill and saw that a farmhouse lay off to the right-hand side. It was brightly lit, comfortable looking, with smoke rising from the chimney. The sight of it made him aware of the lonesome night and of the long odds against him. He bent forward to have an encouraging chat with Ned Ludd, reminding him of their sacred duty to Clara. The mule's ears twitched, as if he were attending to every word. A mule had no concern with hopelessness, thank G.o.d.

A lantern appeared a hundred yards ahead, someone just then coming around a bend in the road a boy, Finn saw after a moment, about his own age, holding the lantern out in front of him so as to illuminate as much of the road as possible. The light showed his face clearly, and Finn saw that he carried a brace of rabbits and had a rifle tilted against his shoulder. He also wore a heavy wool coat.

”h.e.l.lo to you,” Finn said, reining the mule in when they drew abreast.

”h.e.l.lo to you, too, friend,” the boy said. ”Are you off to the races, then?” He wore a smile on his face, as if he thought that Ned Ludd looked droll, or more likely that Finn looked droll, riding upon the mule.

”Aye, racing into London,” Finn said. ”Dinner, is it, that you've got there? Are you from the farmhouse, then?” Finn saw that the boy's coat, although heavy, was worn ragged in places, and was stained with what might have been blood his hunting coat, no doubt.

”Yes and yes,” the boy said. ”And you?”

”From Aylesford. Can I ask you whether you saw a coach driven by a man in a green felt hat, a low, flat topper. If he wore no hat then he was bald atop. A girl might have been with him, riding inside, a blind girl with smoked spectacles.”

”I did, an hour back along the road, with its lamps lit, which is how I know it was your man. It was the girl caught my eye, looking out through the window. The coach lamp lit her face, do you see? She wore the spectacles like you said, although she looked square at me and pressed her elbow to the window, so I don't know as she was blind. I couldn't see her eyes through the spectacles.”

”An hour, do you say? Moving right along?”

”Aye. You'll not catch them between here and London, not astride a mule you won't, unless she can run like a thoroughbred. If you'd like supper, come along with me. You'll travel snug on a full stomach.”

”There's nothing in life I'd like better, but I cannot. But it'll be right cold before dawn, and if you'd part with your coat, I'd pay you double for it.”

”Would you now? How much?”

”Would a crown do it?”

”It would,” said the boy, and he divested himself of the coat and handed it up to Finn, who took out his purse and found the coin, which he handed over before pulling on the coat and putting his purse away inside it. ”Good luck to you, then,” the boy said, going on his way.

Finn set out again at a settled, steady pace, grateful for the coat. Now he knew where he stood. Catching up with the coach was impossible, unless it stopped along the way, which was unlikely. Perhaps it had put in at the Queen's Rest for a time, which would explain how it had been hereabouts so recently. He must pin his hopes on the address near the river, and if that came to nothing, then he would do what came next, which was unavoidable what came next was what one always did.

He let his mind wander as it would, and he looked up now and then at the moon in order to calculate the pa.s.sing of time. He held further conversations with Ned Ludd, who listened with great interest. For a time he fell asleep, awakening and catching himself as he was falling out of the saddle, and realizing that he was on top of a hill, and that there were the scattered lights of a great city ahead. Greenwich, he thought, and the Thames twinkling beyond, tall s.h.i.+ps moving downriver with the tide. Ned Ludd had found his own way while Finn slept, like Black Bess when she carried d.i.c.k Turpin two hundred miles from London to York in a single long night.

Gray Ned, he thought, An Heroic Mule. A mule could certainly be made heroic in a poem. He had never tried his hand at poetry, and so it was high time that he did. As a test he undertook to find a rhyme for ”Clara,” which seemed easy enough. But nothing came to him at first except Sarah, which, being her mother's name, would not do. Sahara, he thought with some satisfaction the great desert wasteland. But what would Clara be doing in the Arabian Desert, after all? Would she need rescuing?

He thought of George of Merrie England, astride the horse Bayard, riding into Egypt, and considered Finn Conrad, astride Gray Ned, riding into London Town to slay the dragon Shadwell. He tried his hand again at rhyming dragon, flagon, wagon saying sentences out loud in order to keep Ned Ludd amused. And so the time pa.s.sed, Finn trying to fix the better flourishes in his mind so that he could recall them later when circ.u.mstances lent themselves more readily to writing in his notebook.

It was still well before dawn when he pa.s.sed beyond Greenwich, traveling now among a growing throng of people going into London, many with full carts and wagons, bound for Covent Garden or Brick Lane or Portobello Road. When the western sky was pale and the stars faint, he rode along Borough High Street, past the church of St. George the Martyr, to which he tipped his cap. He turned into the courtyard of the George Inn where there worked a stableman that he knew, an ancient Welshman named Arwyn who had been stableman in Duffy's Circus, shortly before the death of Finn's mother, when Finn had left the circus for good and all.

There was a fire burning cheerfully in the yard, where he found Arwyn dressing the leather seat of a hea.r.s.e, the red-trimmed black paint glowing in the firelight. ”Well, Finn, you've come into London again,” Arwyn said to him. ”Last I heard you was oystering with Square Davey.”

”I'm in Aylesford now, living among good people. I've got an elephant to care for.”

”I've always liked an elephant,” Arwyn said, ”when they was treated right.”

”Strange carriage,” Finn said. ”Is Death putting up at the George?”

”So to say, but at St. George Church up the way. I put a polish on it before the day starts. Who is this fellow, now?”

”Ned Ludd. He'd have been the favorite of Duffy's Circus, Arwyn. A better mule never drew breath. Can you keep him for two days?”

”That I can. Put your money away, Finn.”

Finn shook Arwyn's hand, and a.s.sured Ned that he would return for him. As the mule was led away toward the stable, Finn pitched the handbill that he carried into the flames. It wouldn't do to be caught with such a thing about his person. He went into the inn, and ten minutes later set out across London Bridge, eating a breakfast of bread and cheese out of his hand.