A THIEF IN THE MORNING

Disaster strikes as the coach breaks a wheel in pot-holes.

THE COACHMAN'S HOLIDAY - 13

A THIEF IN THE MORNING

Dawn was well alive and its golden light shone all around. The dawn chorus of a thousand birds was slowly descending into a quiet satisfaction that mankind has been forced into wakefulness by a thousand beaks yet again. The coach, pulled by its team of horses, was over half way back to its home town when…

CLUNK… GRIND … CLATTER...

A splintering sound announced that a wheel had given up the ghost.

The whole coach slewed to one side and leaned at a grotesque angle whilst the horses pulled it to an almost sudden standstill.

Driver Dave Wasp jumped down, stared at the shattered wheel and shook his head.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” was all he said.

“I’ll bet it’s a foreign wheel, driver,” grunted Tom. “You can always tell foreign stuff. It doesn’t last. Made on the cheap from all sorts of rubbish, I’ll be bound.”

“This wheel was made in our own workshops,” protested Dave, “it’s the road at fault: pot-hole after pot-hole taking their toll. Not even the proudest home-produced skills could stand up to what this coach has had to stand up to as we’ve raced against time through the night to get well clear of the criminals who were going to steal it and my horses.”

“Then it’s you, driver,” replied Tom with the self-assurance of the unintelligent. “You’ve been battling the elements too hard, driver, you’ve failed in your duty to your passengers.”

“Mon ami, I have never heard … how you say? … so much twaddle in my life, and I’ve heard some!” declared the Belgian lace-maker, Pierre.

Tom huffed and puffed, glanced at his brother who was shaking his head sadly, and decided to keep quiet, at least for the moment, but somewhere at the back of his head the word compensation cropped up.

“”There’s a sign over there, dad,” gasped Jane, who had jumped down more sedately from her perch next to the driver’s seat.

“Let me see,” he grunted, and ran to where she was pointing.

“Apparently there’s an Inn less than a mile away,” he said when he returned, “and where there’s an Inn there’s probably a wheelwright not far away. Look, my friends, it’s going to take some time for the wheel to be fixed because, by the look of it, it’s a bad break. But it’s not far to the Inn advertised on that board so if we all make our way down the road we’ll see how quickly it can be put right. Jane, you stay here with the horses.”

“Yes, dad,” said the girl, all be it reluctantly.

“I’ll stay with her,” volunteered Annie Anon, “after all, my old legs aren’t always up to a long walk down broken roads.”

“Thanks,” whispered Jane, gratefully.

“The trouble with being a co-pilot is you have to sometimes do what you don’t want to do, girl,” grinned Annie, “and anyway, we might have a chat about my plans.”

When Dave and the remainder of the passengers had started their walk down the road to the Inn, Annie led Jane back onto the roof of the coach where her two poor bags of luggage were.

“Take a look in here,” she said with a knowing grin.

Inside one of the bags and carefully wrapped in her spare clothing was a pile of round, yellow coins.

“Gold,” breathed Jane.

“Sshhh!” don’t tell the world!” cackled Annie, “and it’s with this gold that I’m going to invent knickers for ladies to wear, nice flimsy garments with pretty lace to be worn against the skin so that when a sudden wind tugs the lady’s skirts, folk won’t see her flesh and her modesty will be intact!”

Carefully and secretively she rolled the gold back into her spare clothing and tucked it away in a bag that looked so scruffy it was in stark contrast to the precious metal that it held.

“And my silver goblet. You can have that too,” grinned Jane.

“Only if it’s yours without any other soul having an honest claim to it,” Annie told her, somewhat firmly. “The tale you told, about a family moving towards hard times throwing a valuable goblet your way sounded, how shall I put it, a bit strange to me.”

“They thought it was stolen...” said Jane quietly, “and it wasn’t. It’s just that I’d polished it like I had to because I was ordered to do the task, and instead of putting it back where it had been I’d put it somewhere else … not with my stuff, I weren’t stealing it, but I were tired and ready to sleep for a month, and I accidentally put it in the wrong place. I don’t know how it came about, I truly don’t, but that’s what happened. When the Master was told that his goblet had gone missing, ‘cause that’s what they thought had happened, that it had gone missing and was stolen by a thief, he blamed me ‘cause I’d been the one doing the polishing, and I was ordered to leave the house after my stuff was searched and they couldn’t find it...”

“You poor dear,” murmured Annie.

“Anyway, I was on my way out, in tears and miserable, wondering what I was going to do next and how I was gong to explain to my dad how I’d been dismissed from the most menial job in the neighbourhood, and for thieving at that, when someone must’ve found the goblet where I’d accidentally put it, and you’d think that’d cheer the Master up, but it didn’t: it put him in such a rage that he leapt on his horse and chased after me with the goblet in his hands, and when he reached me he hurled it at me.”

“I trust it missed! Silver can come keen,” murmured Annie.

“Oh, it missed me and it landed in a pile of horse droppings,” sighed Jane. “The master saw where it was and when I picked it up with all that mess, that s**t dripping from it, he shouted as I could keep it because who was ever going to want to drink out of it again knowing what had been in it? And he rode off, cursing and swearing like a trooper, right back to his Big House.”

“And that’s truly what happened, Jane?”

The driver’s daughter nodded her head and retrieved the goblet from amidst her own possessions. “Look,” she said, “even though you put stuff in it for that dreadful countess woman to drink, there are still smears of poo all over it. You can tell where it’s been, especially the bits clogging up the hallmarks...”

Annie was about to smile knowingly and acknowledge the filthy state of the goblet when there was a sharp crack in the air.

“I’ll have that, my beauty!” shouted a harsh but female voice.

“Treesa Mayhem,” hissed Annie, “by all that lives and breathes, it’s Treesa Mayhem! I’d know that evil voice anywhere!”

“And any other silver you might be hiding!” snapped the highwaywoman, waving a pistol in the air and snatching the goblet from Jane’s grasp.

“That’s mine!” gasped Jane.

“It’s mine now,” screeched the highwaywoman, “and I’m off! I doubt there’s anything else of worth on that tip of a coach!”

The girl burst into tears as her one precious possession was so cruelly snatched from her and its new owner galloped away into the trees that lined the unmade road, leaving the tragic spectacle of a broken coach lurching on its damaged wheel and two women in speechless shock crying on each other’s shoulders.

TO BE CONTINUED...

© Peter Rogerson 04.06.18