ESCAPE AT NIGHT

A quiet dbate in the pitch black of a horse-drawn coach at night.

THE COACHMAN'S HOLIDAY - 11

ESCAPE AT NIGHT

“Get a move on, Annie!” hissed Dave Wasp as the horses, apparently as aware of the need for subtlety and silence as he was, stood patiently by. The rest of the party had hurried to get their possessions and themselves onto the coach as quietly as humanly possible, and all but Annie were in their seats.

“Just a minute. I ain’t as young as I was once,” gasped Annie Anon, struggling to push her few possessions in an old cloth bag onto the roof of the coach. Jane leaned down to help her and smiled teenage encouragement to the older woman.

“That Countess woman’ll hear and be after us,” grunted Harry, “and I’ll bet she’s got an army of thugs ready to stop us if they hear one little whisper from us.”

“She’s fast on,” giggled Annie, “I gave her a little drinkie in Jane’s silver goblet and she’ll not wake for hours, and when she does I wouldn’t like to be the one with her head!”

With Annie safely on top of the coach in her usual seat, and with Jane, David Wasp’s teenage daughter, sitting comfortably between the old crone and the driver he hissed an almost silent command to the horses and they responded with barely a sound. His skill as a coach driver under even these circumstances was consumate.

The coach crunched forwards. The rain had stopped by then and there was a misty kind of moonlight almost illuminating their way. Dave had lit the coach’s own lamps, but they were little more than a warning to others that there was a coach on the road. It can hardly be said that they did much in the way of illuminating the dark road ahead.

“I’m trusting the horses,” whispered Dave, “and I hope my trust hasn’t been misplaced,” he added as the offside wheels of the coach dropped for a moment into a hidden pot-hole before being dragged out by the power of six horses.

Inside the coach the passengers had settled down and already three of them were fast asleep, snoring. The other three, brothers Tom, Dick as well as the wiry Harry sat gloomily trying to see each other and failing in the nearly absolute pitch black of the interior of the vehicle.

“There’s one good thing coming from this,” ventured the skinny Harry after a great deal too much silence.

“And that is?” ventured Tom.

“We’ll get home in time for a good hearty meal, and a day early,” replied Harry. “After all, we should have covered a good half the distance by dawn, and we’ll still have all day to do the second half.”

“Dawn’s around five o’clock,” grunted Dick, “and it’s well past one already, what with having to wait for the daft old woman.”

“You mean your mother,” said Harry softly, “a man should be more generous when he curses she who gave him being in the first place, don’t you think?”

“She sold us,” explained Tom. “The government took everything from her when the Mayhem woman was in charge of taxes, and she was forced to either sell us and buy food with what she got for us or actually eat us herself before she starved to death.”

“So she sold us,” added Dick, “and I dared say we were better off being sold rather than eaten. I don’t think I’d have liked being part of a crusty pie or a sausage roll.”

“I sometimes wonder,” growled Tom, “I mean, we’ve made something of our lives and might even call ourselves borderline wealthy having inherited from our affectionate foster parents, but it’s not the same as being with your own flesh and blood...”

“You two make me sick,” scoffed Harry, “making out that you’re badly done by yet look at you, waist-lines like you’ve both got take a bit of good steak and victuals to build up and can’t be made by eating the sort of thin gruel and turnip soup you might have had to live on if you’d stayed with your kin.”

“What do you know about it?” sneered Tom.

“Quite a lot,” came the quiet reply, and it was just as well that the two brothers could see very little in the pitch black of the coach, for the expression on his face was suddenly knowing and thoughtful. “I, too, came from poverty,” he added quietly, “and when I was still a nipper I ran away to join the army and fight for my king and country for a wage. It seemed the only thing I could do, that or die in a ditch. Once I was in uniform, and that uniform was something I had to pay for, penny by penny, week by week, I was sent to fight our foreign foe, and that was a life-changer, I can tell you.”

“How?” asked Dick, who despite himself found himself interested in the little man’s story.

“I discovered the truth,” said Harry quietly. “The wars weren’t being fought for honour or decency opr even glory but for wealth! Yes, friends, wealth! Oh, we were told that battle was glorious, that killing our foe was noble, but behind it all was wealth and riches for those who ordered the battle but wouldn’t fight themselves. One country, and it’s not the whole country, no, not by any means, but the leaders of that country, a handful of men, always men and never women, see personal advantage by defeating another country in battle, so armies get raised. Youngsters like what I was, or simpletons, and I was probably one of them too, and ne’er do wells, and yes, I might have become one of those, get ordered into an army with harsh punishments for doing anything they’re not told to do and even some things they are told to do if the one as does the telling gets it wrong…”

“But the glory!” protested Tom, “they say there’s glory on the battle field!”

“Glory in blood? Glory in men weeping because of the pain of severed limbs and life-stealing gashes to their imperfect flesh? Glory in death, as the dead lie still, and no priest to whisper his nonsense over their corpses? Glory in the sneakers, those who have assumed victory even in defeat, as they sneak amongst friend and foe alike as they lie gasping their last or still in death, and stealing what little poor trinkets they can from them? And all so the handful of powerful men can claim their reward, claim their riches, claim what wasn’t theirs but now is because of the bloodshed?”

“That sounds like traitor’s talk and treachery to me!” spluttered Tom.

“Have you been on the battlefield amongst the young men dying?” asked Harry. “Is that where you get your right to use words like traitor and treachery? Have you smelt the blood in the air around you? Is that what gives you the right to lord it over those that have?”

“Maybe not, but I know what honour and glory are,” retorted Tom.

“You do?” asked Harry quietly, “then I hope, one day, you’ll tell me what they might be and how a poor boy bleeding into foreign soils, in abject pain and approaching his god with tears in his eyes can possibly understand those twin deceits,” hissed Harry, “now shut your foolish mouths and let an old soldier sleep!”

“Of all the…!” snapped Tom.

“Easy, brother,” urged Dick, “maybe the man has something… who can tell? Maybe he has seen that little bit more than we have… maybe we need to understand.”

“What? When we were nearly sold for pies and sausage rolls by our own mother?” snapped his brother, but he had the sense, at that to, slump in his seat.

And in the near pitch of a dark night the coach rolled on.

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 02.06.18