Morgan’s Run

Posting inns were busy places, endowed with large interior courtyards in which grooms and horses trailing harness walked to and fro restlessly, ostlers ran in all directions, and servants bearing trays of refreshments tendered them to the prospective passengers. Finding the team of six horses not hitched to his vehicle yet, Richard paid two shillings for a seat on the box and went to lounge against a wall until Bath was announced ready for boarding.

He was still lounging there when William Insell ran through the gates and paused to look about, chest heaving.

“Willy!”

Insell came hurrying over. “Oh, thank God, thank God!” he gasped. “I feared ye might have left.”

“What is it? Annemarie? Is she ill?”

“Not ill, no,” said Insell, pale eyes goggling. “Worse!”

“Worse?” Richard grasped his arm. “Is she dead?”

“No, no! She has made an assignation with Ceely Trevillian!”

Why did that not surprise him? “Go on.”

“He came to see the hairdresser fellow next door-or so he said, but the next moment he was aknocking on our door, and I had not got up the stairs from the cellar when Annemarie opened it.” He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at Richard pleadingly. “I am so thirsty! I ran all the way.”

Richard disbursed a penny for a tankard of small beer for Insell, who drained it at a gulp. “There! Better!”

“Tell me, Willy. My coach will be called at any moment.”

“They made no secret of it-it was just as if they had clear forgotten I was in the house. She asked him if he wanted to do business with her, and he said yes. But then she did one of her flouncing acts-said the time were not right, you might come back. Six o’clock this evening, she said, and he could stay the night. So he went next door to Joice the hairdresser-I could hear him neighing through the wall. Then I waited until Annemarie went upstairs, and ran to find you.” His anxious face fixed its hang-dog eyes on Richard, begging for approval.

“Bath! Bath!” someone was shouting.

What to do? Damn it, he needed this job! And yet the man in him was outraged that Annemarie could prefer Ceely Trevillian to himself-Ceely Trevillian, of all men! The slur was insupportable. He straightened. “No job in Bath,” he said ruefully. “Come, we will go to my father’s and wait there. At six o’clock, Mistress Latour and Mr. Ceely Trevillian are in for a nasty surprise. It may be that he will never see the inside of a court for excise fraud, but he will remember what happens this evening, and so I swear it.”

How, wondered Dick, sensing terrible trouble brewing but not able to find out what kind of trouble, can I demand the truth from a thirty-six-year-old man, son though he is? What is going on, and why will he not tell me? That cringing creature Insell sits fawning at his feet-oh, there is no harm in him, but a good friend for Richard he is definitely not. Richard, Richard, steady on the rum!

At a little before six, just as Mag was about to serve supper to a pleasantly full tavern, Richard and Insell got up. Amazing how well he stood the rum, thought Dick as Richard walked an arrow-straight line to the door with Insell weaving behind him. My son is horribly drunk, trouble’s in the wind, and he has shut me out.

Twilight still infused the sky with a subtle afterglow because the weather was fine; Richard walked so swiftly that Willy Insell was hard put to keep up with him, the rage in him growing with every step he took.

The front door was unlocked; Richard slipped inside. “Stay down here until I call you,” he whispered to Willy, then ground his teeth. “With Ceely! Ceely! The bitch!” He started up the stairs, fists clenched.

To find the scene inside the bedroom one straight out of a classical farce. His lusty inamorata lay on the bed with legs akimbo, Ceely on top of her clad in his lace-trimmed shirt. They were heaving up and down in the traditional motion, Annemarie giving vent to small moans of pleasure, Ceely emitting grunts.

Richard had thought himself prepared for it, but the anger which invaded him drove reason from his brain. In one wall was a fireplace, beside it a scuttle of coal and a hammer for breaking down the larger chunks. Before the pair on the bed could blink, he had crossed the room, picked up the hammer and faced them.

“Willy, come up!” Richard roared. “No, do not move! I want my witness to see ye exactly as ye are.”

Insell walked in and stood gaping at Annemarie’s breasts.

“Are you prepared to testify, Mr. Insell, that ye’ve seen my wife in bed doing business with Mr. Ceely Trevillian?”

“Aye!” gulped Mr. Insell, trembling.

Annemarie had told Trevillian that Richard was drinking very heavily, but he had not imagined in any of his rehearsals for this moment what the sight of a very big man in a black rage would do to him; the cool and collected excise defrauder felt the blood drain from his face. Christ! Morgan meant murder!

“Damned bitch!” Richard shouted, turning his head to glare at Annemarie, quite as frightened as Trevillian. Shivering, she eeled up the bed and tried to retreat into the wall. “You bitch! You whore! And to think that I acknowledged ye as my wife to save your reputation! I did not deem ye a whore, madam, but I was mistaken!” His furious gaze went from her to the window-sill, whereon sat Trevillian’s watch, purse and fob. “Where is your candle, madam?” he asked, snarling. “Whores advertise for custom by putting a candle in the window, but I see no candle!” He reeled, staggered, sat heavily on the side of the bed and put the hammer to Trevillian’s forehead. “As for you, Ceely, ’twas you forced me to call this slut my wife, so you can take the consequences! I’ll have you up in court on charges of wife-stealing!”

Trevillian tried to slither away; Richard took his shoulder in an agonizing grip and tapped the hammer very gently against his sweating brow. “No, Ceely, do not move. Otherwise your blood will be all over this pretty white counterpane.”

“What are you going to do?” whispered Annemarie, sounding very afraid. “Richard, you are drunk! I beg you, not murder!” Her voice rose shrilly. “Put the hammer down, Richard! Put the hammer down! Not murder! Put it down!”

Richard obeyed with a spitting sound of contempt, though the hammer remained much closer to his hand than to Trevillian’s.

Think, Ceely Trevillian, think! He is murderous but not by nature a murderer-work on him, calm him, get this thing going in the direction it was intended to go!

Richard lifted the hammer amid Annemarie’s shrieks of terror and used its head to flick Trevillian’s shirt up around his belly. Then he looked at Annemarie in feigned amazement. “Is that what ye wanted? My, ye must be desperate for gold!” He didn’t know which one of the guilty pair he hated more-Annemarie for selling her favors or Ceely Trevillian for putting him in this cuckold’s situation by forcing him to indicate that she was a wife; so he hurtled, rum-impelled, down the only path he could see would make both of them pay. At least on this memorable evening and for however long after it that his rage endured. Not as far as a court, no. Not as far as a profit, no. But if he died for it, he would make them fear him and fear the consequences.

His hand shot out too quickly to see, took Trevillian by the throat and lifted him bodily to kneel in the middle of the bed. “I have here a witness that ye stole my wife, sir. I intend to prosecute ye for”-he hesitated, plucked a figure out of nowhere-“a thousand pounds in damages. I am a respectable artisan and I do not relish the role of a cuckold, especially when my cuckolder is a turd like you, Ceely Trevillian. Ye were willing to pay for my wife’s services-well, the fee has just gone up.”

Think, Ceely, think! It is going where I thought I would have to lead it without his aid. He is talking more, acting with less violence. The rum is slowing him down at last.

Trevillian wet his lips and found the words he had rehearsed. “Morgan, I acknowledge that ye have the right to take measures at law, and I admit that ye’d get some damages. But let us not air this matter in a court, please! My mama and brother-! And think of your wife, of her public reputation! Were her name to be bandied about in a court, she would be jobless and cast out.”

Yes, the rage was dying; Morgan looked suddenly confused, ill, at a loss. Trevillian babbled on. “I admit my guilt freely, but let me settle this out of court-here and now, Morgan, here and now! Ye would not get a thousand pounds, but ye might get five hundred. Let me give you my note of hand for five hundred pounds, Morgan, please! Then we can call the matter settled.”

Thrown off balance by this cow-hearted surrender, Richard sat on the edge of the bed wondering what to do now. He had envisioned Trevillian fighting back, resisting, daring him to do his worst-why had he envisioned that? Because of memories of the slim, crisp excise defrauder stripped in the moonlight of his fancy clothes and fancy