Bessie Bell and the Goblin King

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Oh, when I think o’ that family an’ their right dastardly treatment o’ Bess, I could break sommat! She ain’t the first, neither. Tis plain wrong, an’ someday I’ll find a way to give ‘em what they deserve. Thas a promise.

But Bess, now. Couldn’t have happened to a lass wi’ more pluck. Some misses, eh, ye turn ‘em out o’ they homes in the dead o’ night an’ they’d collapse into a fit o’ hysterics. An’ who could blame ‘em, considerin’? But Bessie Bell is made o’ sterner stuff. Off she went into the night, wi’ nowhere to go an’ no plan… an’ thas when the interestin’ things started to happen. I’ll say on.

The night was not so cold as Bess had feared, which cheered her a little. But it was also foggier than she had imagined, and she had not been able to procure a light for herself. She could see barely a yard in front of her face, and was obliged to move slowly indeed in order to avoid tumbling into a ditch. The sensation was strange: she could see little but swathes of white fog, and even sounds were muffled. She felt adrift in a cocoon of mist.

As such, she judged it wisest to keep to the road. She could not expect to find her way safely through woodland under such conditions, nor would it avail her much if she could. Her plan, such as it was, went no further than finding some wayside inn to sleep at for the night, even if it were in a stable. She had money enough for one or two nights spent thus, or so she hoped.

But she had misjudged how far out of the way was Hapworth Manor. She walked mile after mile, always following the largest road (as far as she could judge). Nothing occurred to raise her hopes; no lights shone in the distance, no promising sounds reached her ears. She could not even tell how long she had been walking. Time seemed to slow as she trudged on, and the sameness of the foggy world she journeyed through led her to feel, after some time, that she was making no progress at all.

The chill began to seep into her bones, and her hair grew wet and heavy under the clinging mist. Her body ached with weariness, and her thoughts were thick and sluggish with exhaustion. ‘Derri,’ she said at last. ‘I have to admit that I am not leadin’ us in any useful direction. And I have no notion what to do about it.’

Derritharn stirred in her swaddling cloak nest. ‘Tis a difficulty,’ she acknowledged. ‘I will stop sleeping, and start thinking instead.’

But Bess’s straining eyes alighted, at last, on something new: a faint light, shining in the distance. ‘Stay a moment!’ she said. ‘Feast yer eyes on that.’

Derri peeked out of the cloak, and squeaked her approval. ‘Perhaps it is an inn!’

‘That’s my thinkin’ too,’ agreed Bess. But she was forced to revise her ideas, for it soon became apparent that the lights were moving. ‘Nay! Tis a traveller. Mayhap a coach. One of them bigguns, wi’ the lanterns atop.’ Her heart lifted at the thought, for if it was a mail coach or some such, she could entreat the driver to take her up with it.

If she could contrive to halt it. The contraption approached rapidly, and soon she could hear the sounds of hoofbeats. It was driving faster than it ought, she thought, given the conditions. She had no light with her, nothing to announce her presence. Indeed, she was in danger of being run down if she tried to stop the coach, for the driver could not possibly see her until he was almost on top of her.

Ah well. If she did not make the attempt, she was like to perish of damp and chill and hunger before she found any shelter. She positioned herself in the road, near enough to the edge to jump out of the way if she had to, and waited.

‘BessBess…?’ said Derritharn as the hoofbeats grew louder.

‘Oh,’ said Bessie. ‘Aye, you’d better get down. I wouldn’t like for the both of us to be flattened.’

There was no time for more. Horses loomed abruptly out of the mist: a matched pair, black as night. Bess tensed, her heart pounding wildly as the equipage barrelled down upon her.

The horses snorted and neighed in surprise at finding an obstacle in their path, and one of them shied. Bess heard a male voice cursing. She waited until the last possible instant before leaping aside, heart palpitating with terror — and hope, that her foolish gambit had been enough.

For a moment it looked as though the carriage would not stop, and Bess’s spirits sank. It bowled on, sweeping past her in a flurry of wind and the scent of sweating horse, and was swallowed up by the mist once more.

But the sound of hoofbeats slowed, and then stopped abruptly. It was not the gradual fading of the horses disappearing into the fog, and Bess’s hopes rose again. She clutched a shaking Derritharn to herself and stepped back into the road, hurrying after the coach.

When she grew nearer to the vehicle, she was able to see at once that it was not a mail-coach after all, nor anything nearly so large — or so promising. It was a gentleman’s carriage, the kind that seated but one or two, and the driver was the sole occupant. Oddly, there was no sign of the lanterns she had seen in the distance.

Its owner sat up high, gentling his startled horses with soothing words. His head turned slightly as Bess approached, and she knew he was aware of her presence, but he neither spoke to her nor looked at her until his horses had ceased their restive behaviour and stood, quiet and calm, once more.

Then he stared down at Bess.

In the darkness, she could discern little about him. He wore a dark coat or cloak and a wide-brimmed rain hat, which contrived to conceal his figure and much of his face. She could neither see nor imagine the expression of his eyes, and must attempt to judge his reaction to her presence by the quality of his silence alone. Which was no easy feat.

Bess tried not to feel afraid, and failed. Weariness defeated her, and the remembrance of Edward Adair’s ungentle attentions of only a few hours before. She was in no fit state of mind to be encountering another lone gentleman tonight, by herself, and with no hope whatsoever of help, should matters go awry. But she could not retreat either, for he was her only hope of assistance.

‘You are out late,’ he said at last. ‘And alone?’

‘Yes, sir.’ His tone had not been altogether unwelcoming, but nor had it been kind. ‘I am in a spot of trouble, and must beg yer aid.’

She felt it to be a hopeless request as she spoke, for she knew herself to be far from the type of female he would have any inclination to assist. But he did not bark a negative and instantly drive on, as she had expected, and a flicker of hope flared in her heart.

He looked away, in the direction of his horses and the empty road ahead. Bess felt that his manner expressed some sort of frustration. ‘You may have it, provided that assisting you does not interfere with my endeavour.’

‘I need shelter,’ she replied. ‘An inn or sommat will serve me well, if you know of one in the neighbourhood. Failin’ that, a barn or a stable or anythin’.’

‘We are miles from any inn, and where there is no inn, there is no stable either.’

‘A farm?’ said Bess, with failing hopes.

He sighed irritably. ‘I haven’t the smallest notion. It has not occurred to me to consider the question of local farms.’

‘Fair enough. Them as drives carriages got no cause to worry about such things.’

‘Those, my dear girl,’ said the gentleman blandly, but with a hint of annoyance. ‘Those who drive carriages, and it is have in this context, not got. Quite apart from which, this is not a carriage but a curricle.’

‘That’s the way,’ agreed Bess. ‘Find fault wi’ my speech, and you set yourself nice and high over the likes of me.’ She smiled as she spoke, but her words were born of frustration. It was of no use to her for him to quibble, either about local geography or about her grammar.

The gentleman looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Some would call it unwise, to give sauce to your betters. Especially when that better is a stranger, and you are alone, and it is late at night.’

Bessie patted the nose of the nearest of his horses. ‘No sauce, sir,’ she said blithely. ‘I’m admirin’ yer strategy. Tis a sound one, and I’m thinkin’ you’ve had some practice.’

He sighed deeply, and the reins twitched in his hands. She thought for an alarming instant that he was going to drive away and leave her after all, but he did not. ‘Where did you come from, infernal wench?’

‘Hapworth Manor.’ Bess did not care to elaborate, but it did not appear that she needed to. He looked sharply at her as she spoke the name of the Adair family home, and his silence spoke volumes.

At last he said, ‘I should not feel interested in such a deplorable minx as I fear you will prove to be, but it seems I cannot help it.’

Bess grinned. ‘You know pluck when you see it, sir.’

‘That I do. Up you come, then. There is but just room enough, I imagine, though you will have to hold that bag of yours upon your lap.’

Bess clambered up at once, taking care neither to drop nor to reveal Derritharn, and settled herself upon the seat next to the gentleman. ‘Thank you for your help, sir. I was at me wits’ end.’

‘As well you might be. It is no night to be abroad.’ He set his horses in motion and the carriage — curricle — moved off at a smart pace. The wind was cold, and Bess sat huddled around Derri for warmth.

‘There is a blanket on the floor,’ he said briefly. ‘You may use it if you wish.’

Bess required no second invitation. She felt around upon the floor near her feet, and her frozen fingers soon discovered a heap of something thick and soft. She drew it over her legs and tucked her hands beneath it, grateful for the warmth it soon imparted.

Her reluctant companion was silent for some time, and she received the impression that he was concentrating too intently to have any attention to spare for her. He would have to, of course, in order to successfully drive his curricle through the darkness and the fog. Which raised the question in Bess’s mind: what manner of fool took any kind of carriage out on such a night? And alone, at that?

‘I suppose it’s an urgent endeavour,’ she said at last. The words emerged a little oddly, for her lips had frozen stiff in the chill wind.

He glanced at her sharply, as though he had forgotten her existence. ‘It is pressing. I ought, perhaps, to have warned you of its nature before I took you up. But leaving you behind alone would have been far more unwise, I believe.’

Bess absorbed that. ‘It is some manner of dangerous undertakin’, I collect.’

‘If it is successful. If it is not, we will merely be chilled to the bone and mightily bored.’ He glanced her way once more, and added, ‘Or rather, I will be. It is my hope that I will be rid of my passenger before too long.’

‘I ain’t the troublesome sort,’ Bessie offered.

‘You are already causing trouble. Or complications, which is much the same thing.’

‘Aye, well. ‘Tis all much more troublesome to me, as it happens.’

‘No doubt. Incidentally, “I am not troublesome” would be correct.’

‘Yessir.’

He stopped speaking abruptly, and she once again felt that his attention had travelled far from her. She began to say something else, but he hushed her with a few words, and she fell silent.

He reined in his curricle, and they sat in strained silence for some moments. He was listening hard, but she had no notion what he was listening for.

‘If you should happen to see eyes in the dark,’ he said after a time, and in a languid, conversational tone, ‘I beg you will mention the fact.’

‘Eyes in the dark,’ repeated Bessie. ‘Right enough.’

He said nothing more.

‘I suppose it’d be too much to ask why you are expectin’ to see such a thing?’

‘I have not time for your questions. Be silent, or I shall be forced to abandon you.’