Turning the Stones Read Online Free Page B

mud-spattered in the moonlight with a spectral glow rising from their steaming coats, while the driver orders the men to form up and push the helpless machine. I hang back from the other women as we climb the hill, listening to the coach being manhandled behind us and the skitter of the drovers’ dogs. One of the passengers does all the urging, while skidding and unskidding the brake, and the driver calms the galled horses. There are no hedgerows here, only the fields and a great swathe of woodland like a frontier.
    The coach arrives at last at the crest of the rise and the driver stands up in his box to call us to come aboard. But he hesitates – and my pulse starts to quicken. He has swung around to stare with obvious strain in his bearing at a bend that lies in the road ahead. Then we all become aware of the reason for his alert – the reverberant hoof-beats thudding towards us. Not highwaymen, surely? Why would anyone bother to hold up a ramshackle night coach? Still, I tear into the field at the side of the road, although it is only a feathery sea of young barley that gives little cover. The woodland beingtoo far to reach, I throw myself down and burrow into the soft, damp crop. The hoof-beats come closer. I press into the cold earth, peering through the grassy veil of barley to see who it is that runs upon the coach.
    I can make out three horsemen. One of them, wearing a visor on his face, is pointing a pistol at the driver, and two others have come up on the rear of the coach.
    A muffled voice cries out, ‘Throw down your cargo, man!’ They are highwaymen after all.
    To my surprise, the driver decides to risk a flight. At a crack of the whip, his team leaps forward and the robber in front must yield to them. A shot rings out, but there is no stopping the coach, which takes off at a rattling pace. The highwaymen in turn spur their mounts onward and the drovers must call the dogs to heel. The dogs watch in a sulk as the pistol-men disappear over the brow of the next rise in pursuit of the Demon , and I clamber to my feet and brush down my damp skirts, feeling giddy with euphoria at my reprieve.
    My fellow passengers are flocking together on the road in indignation. An old man eventually makes himself heard. He insists, his words carrying in the stillness, that the coach was transporting cash concealed in bags of wool, placed on the run-down vehicle for disguise. This news delights me for now I see the mysterious men at the Saracen’s Head in a different light. They were interested in the Demon , not in me. At any event, the coach has disappeared with everyone’s luggage. The passengers set off in its wake, their strident review of the hold-up gradually receding into the night. I have no intention of being among their number when they totter into the next hostelry on the road, where an alarm will be raised, witnessessought and questions asked. How far it is to Reading I can only guess, but I hope that I will reach an inn before daybreak and find a coach to take me onwards to Bristol – and to France.
    *
    As I make my way along the hushed highway, I try to picture myself undertaking successful employment as a seamstress in an enchanting French town with cooperative weather. But this exercise only reminds me how scanty is my knowledge of France. I can conjugate a handful of verbs. I have read Montaigne’s essays in translation. I know that the currency is the livre. It does not seem very much to go on.
    My shoes begin to pinch and my stride shortens to a trudge. With only the sound of my breath for company, a feeling of desolation begins to creep over me. The signs of life in the air – a cock’s crow and the smell of chimney smoke – make me nervous. I imagine local yeomen rising for the day with a stamping of feet and a rubbing of hands as if to say, let us get on with the task of bringing miscreants to book.
    I pine for Sedge Court, even though my life there was dogged by insecurity. I miss the assurance