She tugged at the strap and let down the window and hung out. The Quicksilver was travelling in a line of coaches and mail coaches, one lighting the way for the other. She could see their torches flaring up ahead, but as for the scenery at the side of the road, she could not even make out where she was.
She sank back in her seat with a little sigh and jerked up the glass.
She found the other passengers awake and looking at her with varying degrees of outrage. ‘Have you no consideration for others?’ demanded Mr Judd. ‘My wife is most delicate. Are you not delicate, my dear?’
‘Yes, Mr Judd,’ said his wife in a low voice.
Then the young lady’s companion gave tongue. ‘I have a delicate chest,’ she said, tapping that huge part of her body. ‘Do not dare to open that window again.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Hannah mildly. ‘I wondered where we were. A friend of mine has a house outside the village of Kensington and he told me he was working on the gardens and I was anxious to see the improvements.’
‘And could you see anything?’ asked the girl. Her eyes appeared to be a sort of greenish-grey, Hannah noticed.
Hannah shook her head. ‘The fog is very thick,’ she said. ‘We are travelling slowly in a convoy with other coaches and mail coaches.’
‘We shall never reach The Bath at this rate,’ said Mr Judd crossly.
Hannah thought the young lady opposite muttered, ‘Good,’ but could not be sure.
After they seemed to have been travelling for a considerable time, the coach stopped. Hannah looked out again. ‘Why, we have only reached The Half-Way House at Knightsbridge,’ she exclaimed.
‘Disgraceful!’ said Mr Judd. ‘Is it not?’
He glared at his wife, who had been half asleep. She promptly sat up straight and said, ‘Yes, dear,’ in a mechanical voice.
The coach door opened to reveal a waiter with a tray. He handed round tankards containing a steaming-hot mixture of milk and rum and nutmeg.
‘What is in this?’ demanded the companion suspiciously.
Hannah realized the young lady was looking at her with a sort of appeal in those strange eyes of hers. ‘It is an innocuous beverage,’ said Hannah.
By the time the companion had sipped hers and discovered there was a large measure of rum in it, the young lady had finished hers off.
At last the coach moved off again, crawling over the cobblestones of Knightsbridge. The cold was intense. Hannah, although she was wrapped in a fur-lined cloak and was wearing two flannel petticoats under her dress, began to feel quite sick.
She buried her feet in the straw on the floor, seeking warmth and finding none.
‘I am so very cold,’ said Mrs Judd suddenly.
‘We are all very cold,’ said her husband repressively. ‘Contain yourself.’
She is going to say, ‘Yes, dear,’ thought Hannah, and Mrs Judd did.
It was all very well for her husband, thought Hannah crossly. He was enveloped in a greatcoat over a coat and breeches and two waistcoats. His wife’s cloak was not very thick and under it she was wearing a sky-blue muslin gown.
Because of the thinness of fashionable gowns, it was estimated that at least eighteen thousand women dropped dead of cold during the English winters. When Hannah had read that figure in the newspaper she had thought it a wild exaggeration, but now she was not so sure. Women had even abandoned their stays. It was almost a point of honour to appear in all seasons in the most delicate of muslins.
The girl opposite Hannah suddenly leaned forward and held out a gloved hand. ‘I am Miss Belinda Earle,’ she said, ‘and this is my companion, Miss Wimple.’
Miss Wimple bridled. ‘Really, Miss Earle. Such familiarity.’
‘And I,’ said Hannah pleasantly and firmly, ‘am Miss Hannah Pym and very pleased to make your aquaintance.’
Miss Wimple tapped Belinda again on the wrist as a warning against further intimacies, but Belinda, whose spirits seemed to be recovering despite the cold, ignored her.
‘And why do you journey to The Bath?’ she asked Hannah.
‘I am travelling because I like travelling,’ said Hannah. ‘I have never been to The Bath and wished to see it.’
‘In a freezing fog? In mid-winter?’ Belinda sounded half-incredulous, half-amused.
Hannah gave a reluctant laugh. ‘I am ever optimistic, Miss Earle. I am sure the sun will rise and we shall find ourselves out of the fog. At least in this procession of coaches, we shall be safe from highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, unless the ghost of the Duke of Richmond’s page appears to haunt us.’
‘Who was he?’ asked Belinda. She shrugged off her companion’s hand crossly. ‘Miss Wimple, if we are to pass this freezing cold, uncomfortable journey, it would help to be amused. Tell me about the Duke of Richmond’s page, Miss Pym.’
Hannah settled back in her seat. She had read a great number of books about the highways of England and the adventures that had taken place on them.
‘His name was Claude Duval,’ said Hannah, ‘and he was the greatest of highwaymen. He was born at Domfront in Normandy. His father was a miller and his mother a tailor’s daughter. He travelled to Paris and did odd jobs for Englishmen and eventually made his way to England in time for the Restoration, where he entered the service of the Duke of Richmond. He was a gifted and elegant ruffian. He gamed and drank and soon took to villainy to help pay his debts. He was finally arrested at the Hole in the Wall in Chandos Street, committed to Newgate, arraigned, convicted, and condemned, and on Friday, January twenty-first, 1670, executed at Tyburn. He was only twenty-seven years old. It was said he was a man after Charles the Second’s heart and not unlike him, except that he was better looking. It was also said that the king would have spared Duval if he had had his way.
‘Duval was buried in the middle aisle of Covent Garden Church. The ladies made up the largest part of the crowd in attendance. Flambeaus blazed and the hero was laid under a white marble stone on which you can still read this inscription:
DU VALL’S EPITAPH
Here lies Du Valclass="underline" Reader If Male thou art
Look to thy Purse: if Female to thy Heart.
Much Havoc has he made of both; for all
Men he made stand and Women he made fall.
The second Conqu’ror of the Norman Race
Knights to his arms did yield and Ladies to his Face.
Old Tyburn’s glory, England’s illustrious Thief,
Du Vall the Ladies’ joy; Du Vall the Ladies Grief.
‘His name was spelled D-u-v-a-l, in one word, but on the tomb it is Anglicized and spelled ‘D-u V-a-l-l, two words. ’Twas said that ladies travelled over Hounslow Heath praying he might stop their coaches.’
‘How romantic,’ sighed Mrs Judd.
‘Fiddlesticks,’ said her husband. ‘A thief romantic? Of what can you be thinking, Mrs Judd?’
‘My apologies, my love,’ said his wife faintly. ‘It is the intense cold, you see.’
‘Do not utter such foolishness again,’ he snapped.
The coach lurched and began to roll forward, gaining speed. Hannah looked out of the window. They were clear of the fog and the sky was turning light grey. But they were now past Kensington and she would have no opportunity of catching a glimpse of Thornton Hall or of its gardens.
‘We shall breakfast soon,’ she said cheerfully. And after a few miles, the coach rolled into an inn yard and the stiff and frozen passengers climbed down.
Hannah thought in that moment that there ought to be a hymn of praise to the English coaching inn. Blazing fires greeted them, and the air was redolent with the smells of hot coffee, fresh bread and bacon.