It was Warren who got his weapon out the quickest, his sword was cleared before the deadly little Rollins was even firmly in Yorke's grasp. Quickest, but too late. A fellow to the left of him made a movement, low and sweeping, with what Warren, before it hit him, thought was a flail. By luck or horrible facility it took the hanger blade almost at the guard and broke it neatly off. As Yorke's blunt pistol emerged into the light his chest took the full weight of two men, both of whom attacked his head with clubs. Drunk or not, a third man caught the Cyrus Rollins as, knocked from its owner's hand, it described a graceful arc over the melee. Its patent pan-guard had not been displaced.
Overwhelmed and clearly helpless, both men avoided fighting back beyond saving their faces from too-deadly hits. They were to be taken, they assumed; this party was not likely to be the instigators, there must be men behind them, the men, maybe, they'd sought. Yorke's eyes, one bruised and closing, found his older consort's, frankly to be reassured. To kill them would be purposeless, surely?
But the men were wild with rage and drink. They tore Charles Warren and Charles Yorke from out the snug room with the utmost savagery, smacking, kicking, hitting them with knobby clubs. By the time they had them in the yard, both were bloodied, the younger dazed almost to the point of disability. Warren, still compos mentis, tried to get a fix on faces, for the future satisfaction that would come from hanging them, but they came and went, and thronged and throbbed, and hallooed deafeningly as they rained down blows. It was raining, too, black and steadily, hissing from the leaves all round the yard in the windless silence of the summer night, gushing from the gutters, falling in a curtain from the thatch. He picked out the large, loud villain in the curly hat and pigtail, he noticed several times the small man with the shining, vicious eyes, he saw a ginger fellow, a country stumbler who stayed back a ways, face set and maybe showing fright. But mostly it was jumble, men in coats, some wigged, some in heavy cloaks, some in short seamen's breeches, slops. All, or almost all, consumed by anger.
There were lights still in the inn, dim through the country glass, but no further sounds, no screams from Mrs. Cullen or the hare-lipped girl who helped her. There had been men around to drink the nights before and in the mornings, but Yorke and Warren had no hopes by this; they would either stay well clear if they heard or saw this mob or more like had set it on or were a part of it. No aid from travellers, either; the inn was on a road more fairly called a track, which led from nowhere great to somewhere less important, as Yorke had coined the jest some days before when they had chosen it as perfection for their purposes. Not so perfect for survival, though, as they stood and stumbled in the rain, their feet and wrists jerked free of clothing to receive their bonds. They were to have one horse between them, it would seem, a big horse, extremely strong, that Warren caught himself admiring, in spite of all, and drunk or not, the bumpkins did their knots like angels. Not angels, seamen. Not bumpkins, men of free trade. But men, it looked, of awful wickedness.
Yorke, struck in the face by a flail armed certainly with lead and truly deadly, was unconscious when they put him up. His eyes were open, now and then, but they did not see, and one bone of his cheek appeared collapsed, to fill out slowly as a great black livid swelling bloomed and blossomed. The horse stood stolid in the rain while they jerked and slid him into place, snorting only gently as a rope was fastened underneath its belly and hauled taut, a rope that held Yorke's ankles fast together. His chest, raked by spasmodic coughs, was laid along the horse's neck, his joined wrists bent underneath his belly. Warren was allowed an upended cask to step up from, and swung his leg across with some sort of dignity. He sat motionless as his ankles were lashed underneath, and tried to pull Yorke's torso upright to save him from falling sideways when they should set off.
As the assailants mounted, Warren did a head count, not complete. Ten at least, probably more, but as they bucked and wheeled around the blackness of the yard accuracy became guesswork, more or less. There seemed to be nobody in command, and no idea of any form of discipline, or sense. Warren assumed they were being taken off to talk to someone, otherwise why not just have killed them where they sat? But as they moved out from the inn, his confidence grew less. Some of the men had whips, one a flail, three had cudgels. Defenceless, gripping the fabric of Charles Yorke's coat to try and steady him, Charles Warren played the stoic as the blows and cuts came on to him, and he wondered at their frenzy and their hate. A whiplash split his cheek, a rough stick grazed his temple, then dislodged his wig, then raised his scalp. The head in front of him, lying on the horse's neck, received repeated blows, and one bold hero prodded at it with his sword point until Yorke's blood ran thickly on to the horse's hair.
In the Hampshire rain, in the noisy, drunken silence of the peaceful, violent night, Charles Warren began to doubt that they would ever see the light of day again.
Two
Miles to the north of them, not far south of London, the rain was soaking and insistent, though similarly soft and almost silent, undriven by the faintest wind. William Bentley, drenched through his cloak and coat right to the skin, was saddle-sore and weary, and sick at heart. He was on his way to join a ship in Deptford, and he had been riding there since morning. He was not alone, but almost wished he could have been.
The man beside him, tall and ungainly on his hack, was something of a prattler. Preceded by an express the night before, he had turned up at the crack of dawn, and gone about the house as if he'd been at ease. He had taken breakfast like a long-lost cousin, chattering to William and his father before formal introductions had been completed, and bowing to his mother and his sisters in a rather ill-bred way, and smiling. William was going back to sea again, he did not want to, the girls were heartbroken, and his mother had to keep her own opinions to herself. Midshipman Samuel Holt, though surely much too old to have not yet made lieutenant, was like a careless youth. He even did not fade or merge, or drift into the scenery, when the last farewells were made, and William reached down to touch his sisters' fingers one last time. Father, as a contrast, had gone about his business on the farm ten minutes previously.
At first, the weather dry and decent, the two young men had travelled side by side. Sam Holt had brought up many gambits, little snippets of his life and times, many opportunities for Bentley to respond, but the conversation, in the main, had been one-sided. William, aware, had explained he was not a talking sort of fellow, who spent much time alone. But he was also aware, at times, that his demeanour and expression spoke something different, of disaffection and a mild distaste. Truth was and this he could not tell a stranger, even hint at the idea of resuming the naval life, which had been disrupted violently for him some years before, was a form of mental anguish. So Holt, out of politeness, perhaps a desperation of his own, had talked the miles away, and had not seemed to mind Will Bentley's taciturnity. The rain, however, when it came, might have been a relief, who knew? As the road bogged and the horses tired, they could ride apart, in damp cocoons of silence, where Will, at least, could brood and ponder.
It was cash, the oldest, sharpest goad, that had resealed his fate as Navy officer. He had wanted, and tried, to leave the service, had refused all blandishments, cajolings, threats for some long time. His relations with his father never warm had frosted, and a dip in Bentley fortunes never explicated had led him to a realisation that threats of excommunication from the family and the home were not idle ones. On paper his sea-time was good, to their lordships -who knew not the half of it his experience was excellent. He had been ill, true, a good excuse for the hiatus, but now his bronchial problems were all cleared up. Uncle Daniel Swift, roped in to take a hand in it, insisted that if he worked hard at navigation and 'got in the thick' again, there was no reason in the world he should not resume his rise. William, who refused point blank to contemplate his uncle's aid, or get advancement on his back, or even consider any offer of a shipboard place with him, made his own approaches to the Office and the Admiralty, speaking in his letters more of desire to resume than bleak necessity. Truth was, he did not want to starve.