The Reverend Horace Cotton paused. He was forty-five minutes into the sermon and had as long again to go. He took a sip of water as he stared down at the two prisoners. One was weeping and the other was resisting, so he would try harder.
He took a breath, summoned his powers, and preached on.
===OO=OOO=OO===
No horsemen came down the lane. The sound of their hooves sounded loud on the London road for a while, then they faded and at last vanished in the heat of the day. Somewhere, very far off, church bells began ringing the changes after matins.
'So what are you going to do?' Mackeson asked again, this time with an undisguised note of triumph. He sensed that the wreck of the coach had ruined Sandman's chances and his pleasure in that gave him a kind of revenge for the humiliations that had been heaped on him over the last day and two nights.
'What I'm going to do,' Sandman retorted, 'is none of your damn business, but what you're going to do is stay here with the carriage. Sergeant? Cut the horses out of the traces.'
'I can't stay here!' Mackeson protested.
'Then start bloody walking,' Sandman snarled, then turned on Meg and Sally. 'You two are riding bareback,' he said.
'I can't ride,' Meg protested.
'Then you'll bloody well walk to London!' Sandman said, his temper slipping dangerously. 'And I'll make damn sure you do!' He snatched the whip from Mackeson.
'She'll ride, Captain,' Sally said laconically, and sure enough, when the team was cut from the traces, Meg obediently scrambled up the unfolded carriage steps to sit on a horse's broad back with her legs dangling down one flank and with her hands gripping the fillet strap that ran along the mare's spine. She looked terrified while Sally, even without a saddle, appeared graceful.
'What now?' Berrigan asked.
'Main road,' Sandman said, and he and the Sergeant led all four horses back along the lane. It was a risk using the London road, but the horsemen, if they were indeed looking for the missing carriage, had taken their search southwards. Sandman walked cautiously, but they met no one until they came to a village where a dog chased after the horses and Meg screamed for fear when her mare skittered sideways. A woman came out of a cottage and slapped at the dog with a broom.
A milestone just beyond the village said that London was forty-two miles away. 'A long day ahead,' Berrigan said.
'Day and night,' Sandman said gloomily.
'I ain't staying up here all day and night,' Meg complained.
'You'll do as you're told,' Sandman said, but at the next village Meg began to scream that she had been snatched from her home and a small indignant crowd followed the plodding horses until the village rector, a napkin tucked into his neck because he had been plucked from his dinner table, came to investigate the noise.
'She's mad,' Sandman told the priest.
'Mad?' The rector looked up at Meg and shuddered at the malevolence in her face.
'I've been kidnapped!' she screamed.
'We're taking her to London,' Sandman explained, 'to see the doctors.'
'They're stealing me!' Meg shouted.
'She's got bats in her belfry,' Sally said helpfully.
'I've done nothing!' Meg shouted, then she dropped to the ground and tried to run away, but Sandman ran after her, tripped her, and then knelt beside her. 'I'll break your bloody neck, girl,' he hissed at her.
The rector, a plump man with a shock of white hair, tried to pull Sandman away. 'I'd like to talk with the girl,' he said. 'I insist on talking to her.'
'Read this first,' Sandman said, remembering the Home Secretary's letter and handing it to the rector. Meg, sensing trouble in the letter, tried to snatch it away and the rector, impressed by the Home Office seal, stepped away from her to read the crumpled paper. 'But if she's mad,' he said to Sandman when he had finished reading, 'why is Viscount Sidmouth involved?'
'I'm not mad!' Meg protested.
'In truth,' Sandman spoke to the rector in a low voice, 'she's wanted for a murder, but I don't want to frighten your parishioners. Better for them to think that she's ill, yes?'
'Quite right, quite right.' The priest looked alarmed and thrust the letter back at Sandman as though it were contagious. 'But maybe you should tie her hands?'
'You hear that?' Sandman turned on Meg. 'He says I should tie your hands, and I will if you make more noise.'
She recognised defeat and began to swear viciously, which only made the rector believe Sandman's claim. He began using his napkin like a fly-swatter to drive his parishioners away from the cursing girl who, seeing that her bid for freedom had failed, and fearing that Sandman would pinion her if she did not cooperate, used a stone watering trough as a mounting block to get back onto her horse. She was still swearing as they left the village.
They trudged on. They were all tired, all irritable, and the heat and the long road sapped Sandman's strength. His clothes felt sticky and filthy, and he could feel a blister growing on his right heel. He was still limping because of the damage he had done to his ankle jumping onto the stage of the Covent Garden theatre, but like all infantryman he believed the best way to cure a sprain was to walk it out. Even so it had been a long time since he had walked this far. Sally encouraged him to ride, but he wanted to keep a spare horse fresh and so he shook his head and then fell into the mindless trudge of the soldier's march, scarce noticing the landscape as his thoughts skittered back to the long dusty roads of Spain and the scuff of his company's boots and the wheat growing on the verges where the seeds had fallen from the commissary carts. Even then he had rarely ridden his horse, preferring to keep the animal fresh.
'What happens when we get to London?' Berrigan broke the silence after they had passed through yet another village.
Sandman blinked as though he had just woken up. The sun was sinking, he saw, and the church bells were calling for evensong. 'Meg is going to tell the truth,' he answered after a while. She snorted in derision and Sandman held his temper in check. 'Meg,' he said gently, 'you want to go back to the Marquess's house, is that it? You want to go back to your chickens?'
'You know I do,' she said.
'Then you can,' he said, 'but first you're going to tell part of the truth.'
'Part of?' Sally asked, intrigued.
'Part of the truth,' Sandman insisted. He had, without realising it, been thinking about his dilemma and suddenly the answer seemed clear. He had not been hired to discover the Countess's murderer, but rather to determine whether or not Corday was guilty. So that was all he would tell the Home Secretary. 'It doesn't matter,' he told Meg, 'who killed the Countess. All that matters is that you know Corday did not. You took him out of her bedroom while she was still alive, and that's all I want you to tell the Home Secretary.'
She just stared at him.
That is the truth, isn't it?' Sandman asked. She still said nothing, and he sighed. 'Meg, you can go back to the Marquess's house. You can do whatever you want with the rest of your life, but first you have to tell that one small part of the truth. You know Corday is innocent, don't you?'
And, at last, at long last, she nodded. 'I saw him out the street door,' she said softly.
'And the Countess was still alive?'
'Of course she was,' Meg said. 'She told him to come back the next afternoon, but by then he was arrested.'
'And you'll tell that to the Home Secretary?'
She hesitated, then nodded. 'I'll tell him that,' she said, 'and that's all I'll tell him.'
'Thank you,' Sandman said.
A milestone told him that Charing Cross lay eighteen miles ahead. The city's smoke filled the sky like a brown fog while to his right, glimpsed through the folds of darkening hills, the shining Thames lay flat as a blade. Sandman's tiredness vanished. Part of the truth, he thought, would be enough and his job, thank God, would be done.
