‘My fault, Sir Francis,’ owned Hervey. ‘He’s still a bit green about carriage lights.’
The chaise’s lights made a sweep of the party as it turned full circle in the yard.
‘All set, Serjeant Armstrong?’ called Hervey.
‘Ay, sir,’ came Armstrong’s voice from the window. ‘It’s a press, but we’re in.’
‘Very well, Mr St Oswald, lead on if you please.’
The general obliged Hervey greatly as they rode to Cuckney by saying nothing, except the occasional reproof to his long-suffering ADC. The moon gave the evening an almost merry feel, as if they were off to a levee or a ball. The first mile they did at a walk, and only a milk cart passed in the other direction (on the whole, Sherwood was not a place to be about after dark). Then they made a good trot on the macadamized turnpike — eight miles an hour — with something still in reserve.
Plans were all made, orders had been given; there was nothing for Hervey to do now but enjoy the ride — and relish, perhaps, what was to come. He found himself humming ‘Rule, Britannia’, until he supposed it not quite apt, and then remembered another of Thomson’s ballads.
He had to search his memory hard for the rest, repeating the last line two or three times, so that more than once Johnson glanced his way.
‘Is tha all right, Cap’n ’Ervey, sir?’ asked Johnson in the nearest thing to a whisper he could manage.
‘Yes,’ Hervey assured him. ‘Never better!’
All Saints’ church clock struck the half-hour as they trotted through Clipstone. The village was ill lit and the street empty, but dogs began barking and soon there were faces at the windows, and braver ones at doors.
‘Five minutes!’ called Lieutenant Seton Canning some time later in the northernmost covert. Men began stowing canteens and tightening girths. Soon the other subdivisions would be doing the same, taking the time by the flickering light of a candle (what a todo it had been to find enough watches!).
The road party sped on, up a long incline to where an old beacon tower kept lonely sentinel, the driver checking his team at the top for a steady descent.
‘Mount!’ Seton Canning’s order was hushed but clear, and eight dragoons, their corporal and lieutenant put left foot into stirrup, pushed up with the right and swung into the saddle. They formed twos on the track at the edge of the covert, and in a few minutes were trotting across the Worksop road and onto the green bridleway for Cuckney.
There was no clock to strike the three-quarter-hour for Hervey and his men, for they were in the middle of the broad oaks which had built the nation’s wooden walls. There was nothing but the odd forester’s hut between here and Cuckney, not a light to tell the time by, either. But the pace had been steady and even: he knew they could be neither late nor early by more than a very few minutes. In another mile or so, when they reached the old ford on the Meden, he would close up and read his hunter by the carriage lights.
Cuckney church had no carillon, but Seton Canning was confident of his timing as he led his mare the last furlong before deploying in their cordon position, the other three subdivisions doing the same thing on the further points of the compass. The horses were quiet, to Seton Canning’s and all the corporals’ relief: it was going well.
The long-case clock in the parlour of the grange struck the hour. Henrietta glanced up. Nine o’clock — was that not the time when… She turned back to her novel, trying to remember what she had just read. And still she felt sick.
A pheasant started noisily from under Corporal Cook’s feet, its alarm call sounding loud enough to carry to Nottingham. His subdivision froze. They remained stock-still for a full five minutes, until a vixen’s bark nearby gave them their alibi.
The road party was late by a mere four minutes at the ford, and these they made up easily on the straight incline to Warsop Hill next, where Hervey halted the party at twelve minutes past nine.
‘We’re at the rallying point, Sir Francis,’ he said. ‘You can see our object quite clearly, yonder.’ There were only one or two lights a quarter of a mile distant, but they stood out distinctly on the open heath about the crossroads. ‘I’ll leave Cornet St Oswald, and he’ll come at the signal.’
‘Very well, Captain Hervey. Do you recognize it if I say “Bestir yourself, and then call on the gods”?’ He held out his hand.
Hervey took it and smiled. ‘I do indeed, sir. And thank you for it. With your leave, then?’ He saluted, took off his shako, reined about and kicked on.
A minute later the chaise rolled up to the hamlet at a steady trot, the driver expecting a signal to halt at any second. It came just short of the old turnpike lodge, a lantern swinging in the middle of the road. ‘What’s yer business?’ The challenge was in the rough accent of the county.
‘Master Cutler on ’is way back to Sheffield!’
The sentry held up his lantern and moved towards the nearside door. Serjeant Armstrong had already slipped from the offside one.
‘Show yerself, please, Master Cutler,’ called the sentry.
Armstrong sprang on him from behind. His forearm was round the man’s throat in an instant, stifling any sound. ‘Not a word, lad, or you’ll feel my sabre in your side!’
Private Scriven was out too, a regular pocket Atlas. They bound the man up tight with horse bandages.
‘Pistol to ’is ’ead, Scriven,’ rasped Armstrong. ‘Wait on Mr Oswald’s men to take him off!’ He leapt back inside as the wheels began to turn.
‘Well done, Geordie Armstrong!’ said Hervey to himself. He would tell Caithlin of it, with the greatest satisfaction.
They slowed to a walk to turn into the Crow’s Nest yard. ‘Who goes there?’ came another challenge, this time from the shadows, and no lamp.
‘Master Cutler, homebound. We’ve a lame wheeler. Have you a livery?’
‘No liveries!’
‘We pay handsomely,’ called Hervey from behind, seeing a window open partially in the loft and then close again.
‘Why don’t you put t’other ’oss on then?’
‘Because he’s shy of the traces!’
The inquisitor stepped from the shadows. ‘The Master Cutler, d’ye say? I saw ’im meself only a fortnight back at t’Goose Fair.’ He put his hand to the door.
Armstrong had it open before he could turn the handle, driving his fist in the man’s face with all his strength. There was a muffled cry, which had Hervey turning for the loft with his pistol. But no window opened.
‘Come on, then!’ Hervey called, jumping from the saddle and ramming his shako back on his head.
Out from the chaise sprang Armstrong, five dragoons and Wilks, all now with shakos on, including the Bow Street man, for that was the surest way of recognition in the half-light and, God forbid, the smoke.
Up the outside steps they went, Wilks porting the sledgehammer. A footboard broke under Hervey’s boot. ‘Who’s there?’ came from inside.
‘Enoch!’ boomed Wilks, and swung the hammer with all his force.
The door jumped from its hinges. In they burst.
On the road, St Oswald, the general and a dozen dragoons spurred to a gallop, and on the heath the cordon began walking in, sabres drawn, pistols ready, reins crooked on the arm.
‘Remember — no shooting without challenging first,’ bellowed Seton Canning. ‘And outside the cordon only! Outside only!’
A minute later St Oswald’s party was at the inn, seizing Luddites as they fled the yard in terror, and then
