Newt's Emerald

Chapter Three The Search Begins

Truthful left for London the next day, accompanied by Agatha, an ancient groom called Tom, and a young footman called Smith. The Admiral still lay out of his senses most of the time, but he swam into consciousness every now and again, long enough to understand that Truthful was going early to his Aunt Ermintrude, and he approved.

Agatha had not approved, of course, but she came around after several hours of coaxing from Truthful. “Lunnon” was not a good place, she said, but a breeding ground for wickedness and a veritable stage for the display of all kinds of vice and depravity. Truthful countered this with the fact that they would be part of the household of Lady Ermintrude Badgery, who was, she felt sure, an absolute model of propriety. Agatha gave a strange half-smile, half-scowl when Truthful said this, but uttered no further protest.

It did not occur to Truthful that she could have merely ordered Agatha to accompany her to London or leave her service. The maid had been with her since she was ten, and had to some degree achieved a kind of grumpy superiority over her mistress.

But Truthful’s coaxing did the trick. Agatha was at her side as the young lady looked out the window of her father’s rather ancient and distinctly unmodish post-chaise-and-four, holding the strap as the conveyance rattled and lurched its way along the London road.

At first, the novelty of travelling without her father sustained Truthful, but that was soon replaced by a weariness brought on by the discomfort, and the total lack of conversation from Agatha, who sat silently next to her, doubtless brooding on the evil city that lay ahead.

After several hours travel, Truthful’s weariness gave way to a troubled sleep, filled with dreams of the Admiral’s feverish stare and his virulent accusations. His voice seemed to fill Truthful’s head with shouts of anger, growing louder and louder until she suddenly woke and realised there was shouting, but they were shouts of alarm, not of anger.

For a muzzy second she wondered where she was. Then even as Truthful realised she was in the carriage, the vehicle tilted over at an alarming angle. There was a resounding crack as something broke behind them. Truthful was flung to the floor, Agatha fell against her, and then they were both hurled against the door as the coach came to an abrupt halt and rolled over onto its side, accompanied by the panicked neighing of the horses and the shouts of footman and groom.

Truthful lay stunned for a moment, then pulled herself out from underneath a semi-conscious Agatha, and climbed up the now vertical bench, using the leather hand-straps to good advantage. She struggled with the door for a moment, then flung it open like a hatch, and popped her head out, only to have her hair blow back in her face in a most disorderly way, her bonnet having slid to the back of her head. Below her, Agatha raised herself up on one elbow and hissed “Lunnon!”

But Truthful saw they were still in the country and many miles from London. Their own coach had been run off the road and into a ditch adjoining a large pasture, and was the subject of much attention from half a dozen curious cows. A little further on, a mail coach was also turned over in the ditch on the other side of the road, and people were climbing out of it (or picking themselves off the road) and shaking their fists and swearing at an old gentleman in a disreputable driving coat. The coachman, Truthful thought, and clearly the man responsible for the accident.

At that moment, Smith the footman saw Truthful perched precariously half out of the carriage door and hurried over.

“Are you all right, milady?” he asked anxiously.

“Yes, thank you, Smith,” replied Truthful calmly. “But what has happened to Tom?”

“I’m here milady,” said a voice from the front of the coach, followed by the emergence of the angry groom. “If we don’t have two of the horses lame at least, if not worse, it’ll be a surprise, and thank heaven they’re not the Admiral’s own! There just wasn’t anything I could do, milady. I do beg your pardon.”

“Don’t worry, Tom,” said Truthful. “I can see what must have happened. The road is far too narrow here, and on a bend too! I thought the mail coaches were driven more carefully than the common stage, but I see that is not the case!”

“Well, for the most part they are, milady,” said Smith. “But I reckon it weren’t one of the regular coachmen at the reigns. That old gager there probably paid them off in gin to let him ply the whip. I saw him at the last change a-buying them blue ruin or somesuch.”

“Paid them off in gin!” exclaimed Truthful, much shocked. “I am sure that is distinctly against the law, and clearly very dangerous to all concerned. I shall have a word to say to that fellow.”

She started to climb further out the door, but got stuck till Smith climbed up and lifted her out and handed her down to Tom, much as they had done when she was a small child, for both were old family retainers.

She had just got firmly on the ground, and was in the process of dealing with her bonnet and recalcitrant hair, when the old “coachman” hurried over, crying out: “How-de-do! I do beg your pardon, ma’am. A most unfortunate miscalculation. No-one hurt, I trust?”

“That no-one has been hurt is due more to good fortune than anything else,” said Truthful sternly. “I intend to report you to the relevant Authorities at the next town. Bribing mail coachmen to let you drive and crashing a mail coach into another conveyance is surely a most serious crime.”

“Oh, the authorities know all about me,” said the old man cheerfully. “Besides, I am the authorities in these parts. You could report me to me, I suppose. No? I would prefer it if you allow me to assist you on your way, and make some slight amends for the trouble I’ve caused. Who do I have the honour to address?”

“I am Lady Truthful Newington,” said Truthful, rather taken aback by the man’s cheerfulness and obvious good breeding, even though he wore strange clothes and had the trace of some peculiar accent. “My father is Admiral the Viscount Newington. And you, sir?”

“Charmed,” replied the old man. “I’m Otterbrook, don’t you know.”

“Oh,” said Truthful. “It is an honour to meet you, my lord Marquis.”

She had read about Lord Otterbrook, the fourth Marquis of Poole. He was known as the “colonial peer”. A rank outsider for the title, he had been a remittance man in the Americas, the Orient and finally the colony of New South Wales, succeeding to the title only when the main line of the family managed to get themselves killed in various land and naval battles and hunting accidents. It was said the last Marquis had died of apoplexy at the thought that his eccentric cousin would inherit after all. Particularly as his successor was merely an indifferent diviner, rather than possessing any of the more socially acceptable magics of glamour or persuasion.

“What seems to be the damage, hmmm?” enquired the Marquis, pacing around the carriage to look at the underside. “Ah, a broken axle. And your leaders lamed? I shall have to convey you myself, Lady Truthful. My curricle should be along shortly.”

Truthful felt a blush rising across her neck at his words. Here was someone old enough to be her grandfather, trying to compromise her reputation before she even arrived in London!

“Oh no, that won’t do, will it,” added Lord Otterbrook suddenly, seeing her colour. “Forgot. Respectability and all that. Couldn’t fit your maid anyway. Bye the bye, where is your maid? Or respectable aunt, or whatever. Must have one tucked away somewhere, what?”

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Truthful. “My maid. She’s still inside. Agatha! Are you all right?”

There was a deathly silence for a moment, then Agatha’s voice came grumbling out the open door.

“I might be better if we weren’t a-going to Lunnon — and perhaps we ain’t.”

“Quick, Tom, Smith — help Agatha out. Oh, I am sorry, Agatha!”

She turned around just in time to see the glint of yellow metal, and the two men pocketing something. They ducked their heads guiltily at her, and climbed back into the carriage to assist Agatha.

“Just a little ointment for their hurts, physical and spiritual,” said Lord Otterbrook, chuckling. “Gold works wonders for anything short of broken bones. Even broken bones, sometimes. I have decided that I shall send a post-chaise back from Maidstone for you, though it may take some little while.”

“You are most kind, sir,” replied Truthful, somewhat stiffly. She still felt it was all his fault that she had been delayed at all.

“I know, my dear,” commiserated Lord Otterbrook. “You think I’m a silly old fool who’s quite queered your entire journey. Well, I shall have to make my amends. What can I—”

The sound of horses on the road, and the blast of a horn behind him interrupted the old man, and he turned to look over his shoulder. A curricle rounded the bend with a pair of high-stepping thoroughbreds perfectly under the one-handed control of the tiger, who was about to blow another peal on his horn. The peal sounded, he dropped the trumpet to hang from its lanyard, and brought the vehicle to a beautiful two-handed halt between the overturned carriages.

“A proper mess you’ve made of it, milord,” said the tiger, critically surveying the wreckage. “I did warn you. Top-heavy, I said, and not at all the article you’re used to. And you supposed to be able to see tomorrow before it happens and all—”

“Yes. Yes. You were quite right, Gully,” interrupted Otterbrook genially. “Now, we must get on to Maidstone and arrange a carriage for this young lady. Lady Truthful, I most humbly beg your pardon. I shall send a coach as soon as I may.”

He heaved himself up beside his tiger, and added, “Please present my compliments to your father, and recall me to him. Say I remember the house fire very well.”

“You know my father?” asked Truthful, surprised. The Admiral was not a sociable person. “And a house fire, I think you said?”

“Yes,“ replied the Marquis. “We met in America. We watched their White House burn together. Rather an imposing sight. He said he would rather it was Carlton House burning. Ha! Ha!”

Truthful blushed.

“I’m afraid my father and the Duke of Clarence have a feud going back to when my father was a lieutenant in the West Indies and the Duke a midshipman. Unfortunately Father also holds the Duke’s brothers in low esteem, including the Prince Regent.”

“Well, no harm in that,” said the eccentric peer. “I hold him in low esteem myself, for all he’s a friend of mine! He means well, but he ain’t got much up top. Goodbye!”

The curricle sprang away, rapidly accelerating past those passengers of the mail coach who had decided to walk on instead of waiting for the next passing vehicle or a replacement coach to come back from Maidstone.

A snort behind her recalled Truthful to the emergence of Agatha, who had just descended with the aid of the two hard-pressed male servants.

“Hardly out of the ’ouse and this happens,” grumbled Agatha. “It’ll get worse, milady. Mark my words.”

Indeed, thought Truthful, it did get worse. Agatha grumbled without pause for the two hours they waited for the post-chaise. She grumbled for the half hour it took to transfer their luggage, and she only stopped grumbling when the carriage moved off because the motion, so she said, made her feel so ill she couldn’t speak.

It was a very tiring journey, and near midnight before they came to London. Truthful was almost too tired to marvel at the lights of the Gas, Light and Coke company, or at the crowds who were still abroad when all good country folk would be well abed.

But at last they came to Lady Ermintrude Badgery’s imposing house in Grosvenor Square, and were met by Dworkin, the anxious butler, and a flurry of footmen and maids, and for Truthful at least, immediate transfer to a large, ostentatious room wallpapered in green and silver and completely dominated by the most comfortable of feather beds.