The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [144]
“They’ve gone out on the Annan road,” Quire said.
Fleck made no complaint at being woken at such an ungodly hour. He had spent the whole day, and much of the night, sitting high up there as the coach bounded along. Quire was coming to a certain admiration for the man’s dour resilience. He rode up there with him now, not wanting to be shut away in the body of the coach where he would see, or hear, nothing.
They followed the little police carriage out along the road running south-east towards Annan village. That was close by the border with England, and to ports where a man might find a boat to take him to Ireland. Hare—whatever he now was, whatever now resided behind his eyes—might be intent upon either of those paths.
They followed not by sight, for the darkness was still deep, barely touched, out on the far eastern horizon, by the first premonition of dawn. Instead they kept their distance, and paused now and again to listen for the rattle of the other carriage over ruts. If they heard nothing, they pressed on a little faster, but never so close as to risk being seen. There were in any case no turnings from this road down which a carriage was likely to go until well past Annan, as best Quire could think.
The sky slowly lightened, inching its way towards what looked likely to be a bright and cloudless daybreak. That would be some time yet, though. The moors that flanked the road were only grudgingly released from the concealing darkness. They made a great, wild land through which to ride. Not a tree in sight, for as far as Quire could see in the gradually retreating gloom. Just mile after mile of heather moorland, rising in a series of long, low waves, each crest growing fainter and losing its brown and green patterning in stages to a flat grey.
He had grown up amidst land like this, and found it familiar and comfortable then, but he had been gone from it long enough that it seemed to him to have something of the wilderness about it now. He had travelled a long distance from the boy he had been then. He did not know, as he swayed across the moors atop the Widow’s coach, whether the journey had been well done, or quite what its conclusion would be.
They crested a low rise in the road, and Fleck hauled unceremoniously at the reins, bringing the weary black horse to an abrupt halt. Quire shook his head and rubbed at his eye. He had been drifting, half-lost in a dull stupor of exhaustion. That cleared quickly enough when he saw that the police carriage was stopped, perhaps a quarter-mile ahead. There was not a cottage or a farm or a track to be seen in any direction, just the featureless heath. Quire jumped down on to the road. It hurt his stiff and tired legs.
“If you keep back out of sight, I’ll just wait here a bit and see what happens,” he said to Fleck who, as ever, silently did as he was told.
Quire was concerned that the big black coach would not get behind the skyline quickly enough, and would be seen, but there was no sign of life at all from the carriage up ahead. He laid himself down in the heather at the side of the road, and watched.
It did not take long. A single figure stepped out of the little carriage, and walked away from it, straight out into the heather, without a backward glance. The carriage slowly, inelegantly, turned about in the road and began to come back up towards Quire. He was not interested in it any more, though. He had eyes only for that lone figure, loping away from the road into the wilderness.
Quire ran back to the Widow’s coach, and threw open its door. Fleck watched him with mild curiosity; the most expansive emotion Quire had seen him display thus far.
“You’d best get back to Dumfries, I’d say,” Quire called to him as he worked. “Wait there for me till noon tomorrow. Or the morning after if you’re feeling generous. If you don’t see me by then, get yourself back to Edinburgh.”
He unrolled the sacking bundle. It had been thickly wrapped, the better to conceal its contents. He took the musket out first, and slung it over his shoulder. Then pouches of cartridges