“We will comply with all their demands,” Lockwood says. “Most highwaymen are simply looking for easy money and to get away quickly. Things can be replaced.” There’s a loud thwack on the side of the carriage like someone’s slapped it. We all jump. Percy’s hand fastens around my knee. Lockwood blanches, then straightens his coat. “I shall reason with them. Do not leave this carriage unless I instruct you to do so.”
And into the breach he goes.
The three of us stay statued inside, the silence between us a very loud thing. The carriage shakes as the highwaymen unfasten the rest of our trunks from the roof. It won’t take them long to go through the little luggage we have with us and pick out the shiny things. Then they’ll let us go. And we will proceed to Marseilles with a bit less baggage and an excellent war story that will impress all the lads back home. That is what I tell myself in my head, though the brash instructions from outside seem to say otherwise.
Then the carriage door bangs open and the business end of a hunting knife is thrust in. “Out!” a man yells in French. “Sortez! Get out!”
I’m shaking like mad but I’ve got my wits about me enough to obey. Outside, I count five men, though I think there may be more on the other side. They’re all dressed in greatcoats and spatterdashes, their faces covered with black kerchiefs, and they’re armed with an impressive array of weaponry, though most look fancier than I would have expected from bandits. If the situation weren’t so dire, I’d comment on how quintessentially highwayman-ish they look, as though they borrowed the outfits from the theater.
Across from the carriage door, Lockwood is on his knees with his hands on his head, one of the well-costumed highwaymen holding a pistol to the base of his skull. Our coachman is spread-eagled in the ditch, the soil around his head dark. I’m not sure if he’s dead or just insensible, but the sight stops me in my tracks.
“On the ground!” a highwayman shouts at me. I have a history of reacting poorly when shouted at, particularly by men with French accents, and I freeze, stuck halfway out of the carriage, until Percy presses his fingers into my spine from behind. I stumble forward and fall to my knees, hands rising without my meaning them to.
Our luggage has all been gutted and the contents are strewn across the ground like a down of autumn leaves. I spot Lockwood’s toilet case, drawers all wrenched open and bottles smashed into glittering sand. Pieces of our backgammon board are scattered amid stockings and garters and snarled neckwear. One of the men kicks a pile of Felicity’s petticoats and they blossom like upside-down tulips.
One of the highwaymen shoves Percy to his knees at my side, Felicity on the other. Another ducks into the cab where we were just sitting. I hear him clattering around, then the toothy snap of a knife splitting upholstery, before he emerges with nothing but Percy’s fiddle case, which he tosses onto the ground and kicks open.
“Please, it’s only a fiddle!” Percy cries, reaching out like he might stop the man. I can see his hand trembling.
The highwayman handles the instrument gently, even as he shucks out the felt and tears open the rosin drawer like he’s looking for something. “Rien!” he calls to the man behind me.
“Please put it back,” Percy says quietly. “S’il vous pla?t, remettez-le en place.” And, to my great surprise, the highwayman does. Either he’s the most respectful bandit of all time, or he wants to keep it in good shape for when he pawns it.
There’s one man standing in the middle of it all who seems to be in charge, with a pistol hanging loosely at his side and the other men frantic around him. A gold signet ring on his finger catches the light. It’s large enough that, even from a distance, I can see it’s inscribed with a crest bearing the fleur-de-lis in triplicate. He’s staring hard at me, and above his kerchief his eyes narrow. I flinch. Someone grabs the collar of my coat from behind and hauls me up, but the leader calls, “Attends, ne les tue pas tout de suite.”
Don’t kill them yet.
YET? I want to shout back at him. What do you mean, yet, like our murder is the inevitable ending to this scene? We’re all more than willing to cooperate if they’d just take our things and let us be.
The leader jerks his pistol in my direction and all the fight in me evaporates. “Où est-ce?”
Felicity has her head down, fingers knit behind her head, but she glances over at me. I can’t make my brain remember a word of French after the declaration of our impending death, so I stammer, “What?”
“La bo?te. Ce que vous avez volé. Rendez-le.”
I translate a few words this time. “Where’s what? Où est-ce quoi?” I’ve no idea what volé is.
“La bo?te volée.”
“What?” I look wildly to Felicity for some sort of linguistic assistance. Her face is white.
“Il n’y a rien!” one of the men calls from the other side of the carriage.
The man holding me flings me to the ground so I’m on my back, looking up. The sunlight blots as the highwaymen’s leader steps over me, pistol swinging lazily at his side. My panic is a living thing. “C’est où?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying!” I cry.
He takes a step forward, his heavy black boot landing straight on my hand and easing down. My bones start to protest. “Do you understand me now, my lord?” he says in English.
And I wish in that moment that I were brave. I wish to God I were. But I’m shaking and terrified and out of the corner of my eye I can see our coachman’s body on the ground, blood seeping from his forehead, and I don’t want to die or get my fingers broken off like dry tree limbs. I haven’t a courageous bone in my body—if I knew what they were looking for, short of it being my own damn sister, I would have handed it over without a thought. But I’m clueless and helpless, and as the highwayman presses his foot down on my fingers, all I can think is, Nothing bad has ever happened to me before. Nothing bad has ever happened in my whole life.
“Stop it, we don’t know what you’re talking about!” Felicity cries. “Nous n’avons rien volé.”
The highwayman steps off my hand, but he keeps addressing me as he walks backward to Felicity. “What if I rip her fingers off? Perhaps you’ll tell me then.”