Gibbous House 19

Maccabi took his leave at last, after pressing on me a final glass of port and extracting my promise that I would avail myself of his services as driver of the phaeton at the hour of ten the following morning. He assured me the ride to John Brown & Son in Seahouses would be no less comfortable than the stagecoach. He promised that, to the best of his ability, he would answer such questions as came within his remit on the way. I should like to say I slept dreamless until the dawn, but the dream of bedlam and its gory end visited me nightly, though in all conscience, I knew not why.

At five past the hour of ten I presented myself in front of the Dirty Bottles. The phaeton and Maccabi were not waiting, but drew up the instant I appeared on the stoop. It rankled that Maccabi had not been inconvenienced; however, I consoled myself that he had merely driven the horse once more around the triangle of Fenkle Street, Market Street and the Narrowgate to give the impression of an ill-mannered tardiness. He did not descend to offer a hand in boarding or loading my admittedly sparse luggage, just smiled his saintly smile. I cursed him silently for a heathen jew.

The Great North Road out of Alnwick offers a view of Alnwick Castle from the Lion Bridge, designed by Robert Adam, as Maccabi began to inform me in the absence of any questions on my part. The most striking, and ludicrous, thing about the bridge to my eye was the rigid tail of the Percy Lion decorating the bridge, pointing our way along the road. No one knew if the rigidity of the tail was some visual joke in dubious taste or an indication of the sculptor’s shortcomings in his art. Maccabi seemed remarkably well informed about the ancestral seat of the Percy family and began to regale me with tedious details concerning their recent employment of a gardener whose given name of Lancelot was scarcely less ridiculous than his sobriquet of Ability or Capacity or some combination of the two.

My escort seemed completely unperturbed by my disdain for him, continuing merely with inconsequential chatter as though entertaining a small child or infirm relative. At one point, he reined the horse in to the side of the road, just beside a copse. He sat silent in contemplation, for which I was most grateful. It did not last; he began to list the avian riches of our serendipitous stop. Yaffles, screechers, boombirds, ragamuffins, thistlefinches and I knew not what. If I had had but one of my yellow scarves about my person, rather than in my baggage, I should have despatched him forthwith, no matter what riches awaited in Gibbous House.