A BLACK CAP AND A ROPE

A strange tale from the two silent travellers in the coach

THE COACHMAN'S HOLIDAY -14

A BLACK CAP AND A ROPE

The only sober people returning from the Inn where they had hoped to find (and had successfully found) a wheelwright were the Wasps, David and Jane: David because he was the driver and knew his responsibilities and Jane because she had yet to develop a taste for anything intoxicating, being a mere fourteen years of age and delightfully innocent - at least that’s what she had led her parents to believe and it may well have been true. Even the Wheelwright was merry, his voice raised in song higher than anyone else’s.

But, alcohol apart, the repair to the coach was achieved in some kind of record time. The luggage, cases of it, was taken from the roof, thus lightening the coach, and then the old broken wheel was removed and a brand new one fitted. It was just as well there were standardised fittings or the whole task might have taken longer. But the new wheel slipped on nice and easily, was tightened onto the axle and the coach was as good as new.

Then their luggage was replaced onto the roof and they were ready to set off. Jane climbed up onto the driver’s seat and she was followed by Annie Anon, whilst the rest of the passengers milled around, taking their time to empty hastily filled bladders behind whatever concealment they could find.

“You may have noticed,” whispered one of the two passengers who had hitherto kept themselves very much to themselves to Dave and had yet to contribute to this tale, “you may have noticed that me and this fellow here haven’t been the soul of the party, so to speak, in fact have been quiet as church mice at a funeral.”

Dave nodded. “I had,” he murmured, “in fact, I only know you as Mr Smith and your companion as Mr Jones.”

“And that will be enough familiarity,” nodded Mr Smith, “for we are not like ordinary folk on a turn at the coast for a bit of sun and sea and sand. Oh no, we’re not. You see, Mr Jones here is on his way to be hanged!”

“He’s what?” spluttered David Wasp.

“He’s on his way to be hanged,” repeated Mr Smith. “It’s a sad enough tale, if you want to hear it and if Mr Jones don’t mind it being made sort of public.”

Mr Jones nodded in a sombre sort of way even though the whiff of his breath was as soaked in ale as was everyone else’s.

“Mr Jones here,” began Mr Smith, “Mr Jones here is a callous thief and robber of all that is worth robbing. So it is said and so it was proved in court by one of them there legal bods who can twist black until it turns white. It was like this, according to Mr Jones, and it’s a tale that will bring tears to the cruellest of eyes. In fact, I’ll let Mr Jones tell you himself if he so chooses.”

“I’ll tell all,” grunted Mr Jones with a leery sort of grin, which anyone on his way to be hanged might expect to have. “I was sleeping like the innocent I am, in my own bed and on my own, with my missus out at her kinsfolk, who were dying of the plague, they said, and had begged her to help ‘em in the dying, the good Lord damn it, when I heard a noise in the parlour down our flight of stairs. So I went down the stairs silent as a mouse, like a man might if he’s half afraid of being clobbered by a bandit, and there, in my parlour, I saw a shadowy figure with a sack in his hand and a light in the whites of his damned eyes.

“I wasn’t so sure what to do because I’m no great pugilist and not so young as I might have been a few years back. A young scallywag would soon get the best of me, I can tell you! So I watched, trying to make up my mind how to go about saving my missuses trinkets and suchlike from the hands of an evil man when it struck me as there was summat familiar about my thief. I’d seen him before, and that was plain as the nose on your faces.”

“It’s a hard story to hear without tears pouring down your face,” put in Mr Smith. “Pay you good heed to the man!”

“I am,” protested Dave Wasp, who most certainly was.

“Well, I knew who it was, so help me,” continued Mr Jones. “You see, he had the distinctive shape of my good lady’s own brother, the very swine she’d gone to help die of the plague! He had his nose, his hair, his whole face, and I know this from personal accidental observation, his crooked old willy! I saw that as plain as day, for he was pissin’ in the very corner of our parlour as he tucked our trinkets into his robber’s sack!

‘What you doin’, our Bert?’ I asked, for that was his name, Bert, and he looked at me and gave me that manic grin of his and said, clear as I’m talkin’ to you, ‘I’m taking my sister’s stuff to her, ‘cause she’s found fresh flesh to roll with in the sack and don’t want you any more, an’ she’s going to prove as you stole the stuff, and what’s more, that you’ve stole everyone’s goods and chattels for miles around and for ages and ages.’”

“It’s a right tragic tale,” sighed Mr Smith. “Anyway, Mr Wasp, pay attention to this bit!”

“Aye,” continued Mr Jones, “pay attention good and proper. As I said, he was pissin’ in the corner and I know full well that in, what, hundreds of years from now there’ll be stuff called DNA or summat daft like that, and it’ll be in his piss and prove beyond any shadow that it was him as robbed us. But on this day and at this time there ain’t nothing like that and a close look at his piss would be a right for anything as namby-pamby as DNA would be a waste of time.

“Anyway, he trolls off with his sack filled with my missus’s trinkets, and I don’t know what to do. I was all of a dither, I was, all of a dither, as any man in that boat might be. Then the sheriff’s man calls and says to me as I robbed my missus! That I’ve been going round and round the town robbin’ and stealin’, and I was taken to the lock-up, and that’s a sour and smelly place, you can take it from me, and I was locked up and sent before the beak. And I knew my time was up when I saw who the beak was, for he was the very father who had sired my missus! He was my own father-in-law, though there weren’t much law about him, I can tell you!”

“It’s a crying shame,” sighed Mr Smith.

“That it was,” sniffed Mr Jones, “’cause when I’d pleaded my case he put that black cap of his on his head and said as I was to hang from the neck till I was dead, and that’d get me out of his family’s life once and for all! And if it weren’t for Officer Smith here I’d have hanged already, but he took sympathy on my sorry state and granted me one wish, which was for a few days at the seaside so as my soul might go more easily to heaven. An’ that’s why I’m one of your passengers, Driver Wasp, a condemned man on his last ride in life, may the Lord have mercy on my soul.”

“That’s terrible,” muttered Dave, not knowing what else to say.

“That it is,” said Mr Smith, “and you see, I’m an officer of the courts and I’m in charge of Mr Jones here, and a more gentle gentleman never breathed, I can tell you that!”

Whilst the story was being told and Mr Smith was wiping crocodile tears from his eyes Annie Anon had been poking in her bags, looking for an old rag with which to wipe her leaking eyes, and then, in a heart-stopping moment, she noticed something. She scrabbled around, and she still noticed it.

“Help!” she shrieked, “I’ve been robbed! It’s gone! It’s all gone!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 05.06,18