The All True Adventures (and Rare Education) of the Daredevil Daniel Bones by Owen Booth

Author:Owen Booth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-05-28T14:40:24+00:00

Rope

The last day before Captain Clarke B. is due to leave us for another couple of weeks and head off back up north again for some further business with his creditors, we arrive on the giant estate of one of the richest families in the region, where a huge party is being thrown with the cap as guest of honour.

As our convoy travels up the mile-long drive to the big house I notice the workers in the fields being guarded by men on horseback with whips and rifles, and point this out to my companions, but as everyone else is otherwise engaged in gambling or drinking or attempting to pleasure each other, my words are mostly ignored, and I don’t remark on it any further.

That evening I demonstrate the suit on the estate’s small ornamental lake before an audience of quiet farmworkers, who mostly keep their heads bowed and avoid eye contact with each other or anyone else, while the men on horseback patrol up and down the water’s edge. The captain then delivers the standard speech recounting his personal heroism on That Famous and Terrible Evening, which is translated by the now well-practised Andrea, who I have to admit has developed a fine voice for public speaking these past few days, before the cap adds some words about the personal qualities of the estate owners, including the history of their family in the region, and the many fine things they do for the people of the area. Our hosts – husband, wife, and five well-dressed children – look on proudly.

‘And as we stand on the edge of this new century,’ the cap tells them, ‘it is to people of vision and will such as yourselves that we look for guidance and leadership,’ and so on, and so on.

The announcements completed, the captain and his assorted hangers-on plus personal translator are then ushered into the house, where entertainments including dancing girls and acrobats have been laid on, as well as a grand game of cards, while I prepare to bed down in the stables.

But it’s not long after that I am disturbed by the sound of whistles, and shooting, and the barking of dogs, and the arrival in the stable yard of a party of four or five men on horseback, who are half dragging a young man and a young woman on ropes behind them. At all this noise the doors of the house are opened again, and our host re-emerges, followed by the rest of his laughing guests including the cap and Andrea, in time to see the pair of escaped farmworkers who have just been recaptured thrown to the cobbles and, at a nod from the master of the house, whipped twenty times each.

When the entertainment is finished – and by the end no one is laughing any more – the unfortunate farmworkers are taken away and the revellers turn and troop back into the house to see what thing will be put in front of them next, and what after that, and what after that besides.

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