The Song of the Siren

“I will detain you no longer, ladies, but bid you farewell.”

He picked up Clarissa and kissed her. Then he took Harriet’s hand in a very courtly manner, bowed, kissed it then kissed her lips.

It was my turn. He drew me to him; he held me fast. Then his lips were on mine.

“How dare you!” I cried.

He whispered: “I’d dare much for you, sweetheart.”

Then he laughed. “Into the coach,” he cried, “all of you.”

He gave one fleeting look through the window and was gone.

Harriet sat back in her seat and stared at me.

“What a strange adventure! I didn’t think being held up on the road was like that.”

“I doubt it ever was before and ever will be again.”

She looked at me oddly.

“A most gallant highwayman.”

“One who has taken my purse, my locket and your bracelet?”

“And the sugar mouse’s tail,” piped up Clarissa. “Though I gave him that. Do you think he’ll remember not to eat it all at once?”

The grooms were at the door, white and shaken.

“God help us, ladies,” said the driver. “They were on me before I had a chance.”

“The blunderbuss in the coach didn’t prove much use,” I said. “Have they taken anything of yours?”

“Not a thing, my lady. It was you passengers they were after robbing.”

“They didn’t take much,” I said.

‘It could have been worse,” agreed Harriet. “Get back and drive on as fast as you can. We want to get to an inn before it’s dark.”

We rattled on in silence for a while. Harriet was looking at me very intently.

I shut my eyes and thought about him. He was back. How like him to have chosen this way to let me know. For I was sure he had known whose the coach was. He had meant to surprise me. I should see him again soon, I was sure of it.

I pretended to be asleep. I had to escape Harriet’s searching gaze. She had known.

We had betrayed something. Or she had guessed.

Clarissa was soon fast asleep and once again I marvelled at the way in which children could accept the most extraordinary happenings as the natural course of life.

The first thing she said was: “He was nice. I liked him. Will he come again?”

“Do you mean the highwayman?” said Harriet. “Good heavens, no.”

“Why won’t he?” asked Clarissa.

Neither of us replied and Clarissa did not press for an answer.

Benjie was delighted to see us back. He said it seemed like years that we had been away. I had been thinking so much about Hessenfield since our adventures with the highwayman that my conscience worried me; and when that was the case I always tried to make up for my deficiencies by being especially affectionate to Benjie, which always delighted him. At such times I often thought what a happy lot could have been mine if I had only been of a different nature.

Benjie was horrified to hear of our adventure with the highwayman. “It’s the coach,”he said. “These people think those who ride in coaches are very rich.”

Gregory reproached himself because he had not come with us, but Harriet said perhaps it was better that he had not been there.

“He was one of those gentleman highwaymen we hear of,” she said. “He took pity on two women travelling with a child. He really dealt with us very gently. Do you agree, Carlotta?”

I said I thought she was probably right.

We had been back two nights and were in the winter parlour, a small cosy room at the back of the east wing with windows which overlooked the shrubberies.

It was dark and the candles had been lighted. Gregory remarked, as he did frequently, that the evenings were drawing in and he could notice the difference every day.

A fire burning in the grate, throwing flickering shadows over the panelled walls, and four candles guttered in their brackets on the wall. Harriet was playing the spinet and occasionally breaking into song. Gregory was sprawling contentedly in a chair watching her, and Benjie and I were playing a game of chess. It was a typical evening scene at Eyot Abbass and one I had shared many a time.

And as I sat there looking at the chessboard and deciding on my next moves, I was aware of a shadow, or it might have been some instinct which made me look up-but I did so.

Someone was outside looking in. Someone tall, wrapped in a dark cloak ... and I knew who it was.

My impulse was to shout: “Someone is outside.” But I restrained myself.

What if he were caught in the grounds? If they released the dogs he might well be.

He would be captured and I knew what that would mean. I had heard enough at my grandfather’s table to understand that it would be a feather in the cap of anyone who brought about his capture. We should be applauded for giving up one of the Queen’s enemies.

You fool, I thought. Why do you play with danger? Why do you have to risk your life?

I looked away from the window and back to the chessboard.

“Your move, Carlotta,” said Benjie.

I moved a piece without thinking.

“Ha!” said Benjie triumphantly. And a few moves later: “Checkmate.”

Benjie always liked to analyse a game.

“It was that bishop’s move of yours. Till three or four moves back you were on the offensive. You lost your concentration, Carlotta.”