Merivel A Man of His Time by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online

Road.
    Inside the coach I found myself with five companions of assorted fortunes. One of these was a Minister of God and he (putting me much in mind of Pearce’s way of conducting himself in the world) chose to bless our little company as the horses began to struggle forth and the wheels of the coach to turn. Nobody asked him to do this, but he did it anyway, and this I find I do dislike among the very pious, that they must always
assume
a man’s soul requires their Intervention, without first politely enquiring whether that soul wishes it or not.
    Another of our number, a Landowner of some corpulence, thanked him after this blessing was given and said: ‘I am much at peace now, Reverend. I had been prey to imagining Highwaymen coming down upon us, but henceforth I shall fear no such thing.’
    The year was running down into December and the night was frosty. Clean straw had been strewn upon the coach floor and we all, in time, reached for this straw and began to heap it about our legs, to try to warm them.
    I attempted to doze, but I was seated between the Reverend’s lank bones and the Landowner’s greasy rump, and could find no way to balance myself between these two disparate nubs of flesh, and so felt forced to hold myself upright, as though about to rise from my seat. And then what did the Man of God and the Man of Substance do but fall towards each other in their noisy sleep
behind me
, so cutting off absolutely my body’s contact with the seat’s back.
    Opposite me were three women, in their middle years and so much resembling each other that I took them for sisters, or even triplets, born in the same hour. What preoccupied them chiefly was the enormous basket of provisions they had brought with them for the journey, and they passed between them legs of Chicken and spiced Meat Patties and salted Radishes and a flask of Ale, consuming everything as though indeed they were never going to eat again.
    After a while of their identical gobbling, drinking and munching, I found myself in the grip of a most frightful hunger, and I took the liberty to remind them that, in France, the food was said to be most abundant, diverse and excellently prepared. But they merely reminded me with identical sniffs of disdain that it was ‘as well to be furnished with our own good larder’.
    ‘True,’ I said, ‘and alas, I myself did not bend my thoughts towards any larder whatsoever for this journey to Dover’, hoping to get from them a small Patty or at least a chicken wing, but they chose to ignore my evident distress. All they offered me was a Radish, which, being bitter, brought to my stomach an unwelcome excess of bile, and I found myself disliking the triplets intensely and feeling sorry for the woman who had borne them.
    Some long time after midnight, I (being the only person still awake inside the coach) heard the sound of hooves approaching fast from behind us, and our conveyance began to judder and tremble as the Coachman cracked the whip over the poor nags labouring through the dark, spurring them to something like a gallop. Still the other rider came on, nearer and nearer, and then I heard a shout: ‘Put up! Put up! Or I shall take your lives!’ And I knew that, despite the blessing given out to us by the Reverend, we were now about to lose our lives or our limbs or our
livres
to a Kentish Highwayman.
    With much whinnying of the horses, and tearing and grinding of the wheels on the flinty road, the coach was pulled up. This terrifying, lurching stop woke my fellow passengers, who looked about them like children, all damp from their dreaming, and searching in vain for their mothers or their nurses.
    ‘Do not fear,’ said I with a smile. ‘’Tis assuredly only a Highwayman!’
    And I must admit it did amuse me to see, by the guttering light of the coach lamps, the Shock on all the faces, and to witness their sudden scrabbling, as they attempted to shovel their possessions further under the seats. One of the