Thief Catcher by John Drake

Author:John Drake [Drake, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-04-27T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Barnesford Hall, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

9.30 a.m.

Wednesday 25th April.

The fifty-mile journey from Hill Street to Barnesford Hall took over eight hours with five changes of horses pounding neck-or-nothing through the night with lights burning, and its two occupants wrapped in their greatcoats and trying to sleep in the lurching vehicle.

Slym and Sir John were expecting to cover the distance in well under five hours. But at the last stage of all, at the Bear’s Paw, Aylesbury, no amount of gold could conjure a change of horses out of the ostlers; for the Mails had been through and taken every beast that was fresh. So willy-nilly there was a wait of two hours while the least-exhausted animals got some of their breath back, and even then it was only a still-tired, two-horse team that pulled Sir John’s travelling chaise out of the stable-yard and on to the road north-west to Barnesford.

It was full, bright morning when the chaise passed through the gilded gates that guarded the entrance to Barnesford Park. The Sempril family crest was worked into the great screen of wrought iron, hung between pillars of squared marble, topped with giant stone pineapples. Tired as he was, Slym was fully awake and staring through the lowered sashes at every detail and blade of grass. For this too was a first time for him. The first time he had ever entered one of the great parklands centred upon a palatial house that far, far more than any London residence, were the focus of the power of the nobility. In these great houses, easy in their magnificence and glorified with the treasures of ages, the nobility had their homes, their names and their being.

Slym looked directly ahead, through the big front sash, past the postilion. Distantly ahead, at the end of a mighty row of mature elms, he saw the huge grey-stone house and sighed with pleasure. This, truly, was the real thing of which Carlton House was a vulgar imitation.

He glanced at Sir John, half asleep and shifting in his cushions two feet away. Slym was a proud man, to whom envy of any kind was a stranger, but now he was struck with envy of Sir John for the easy assurance with which he had spoken to the 11th Earl of Barnesford’s gatekeeper, who’d looked at the splendid vehicle, with its arms displayed on the door – Sir John had been right about that – and then he’d knuckled his brow and thrown open the gates as if to his own master. And then, damn-him if Sir John hadn’t just settled in his corner and gone back to sleep again!

Slym even had to shake Sir John awake when the chaise curved around the huge Italianate fountain: tritons, nymphs, sea-horses and mermen spouting and blowing in front of the high run of stone-flagged steps that led up into the entrance hall of the central wing of Barnesford Hall. The chaise slowed, swayed and stopped and the postilion dismounted, to open the doors and throw down the steps.

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