A few
seconds later she was on the ground in the darkened garden. Voices and laughter
came from the taproom, and the yellow glow of lamplight filled the open
casements behind her. She melted into the garden shadows, shinned over the
stone wall, and landed with a soft mud in the lane behind. A moment to fix her
direction east against her memory of the setting sun, and Ginny set off on her
mission of betrayal and rescue.
Chapter
20
"We've
so little ammunition left, Edmund, we may as well strike camp here and make our
way north." Joe Marshall paced the long gallery of Grantly Manor, his
shadow, caught by the flickering flame of the tallow candles, climbing huge and
insubstantial on the bare walls. He had his youngest brother's auburn hair, but
Joe's temples were silver, and threads of the same weaved through the long
locks curling on his shoulders. The set of the mouth and the jaw was similar,
but the elder's face was lined and drawn.
Edmund
Verney, thinner but tougher and wirier than he had been on leaving the Isle of
Wight, looked up from the musket he was cleaning. "I was thinking, ever
since we lost Jack Calvert on that last raid, that we've perhaps pushed our
luck far enough. Newton may be an indecisive, bumbling idiot, but even he's
going to decide he's taken enough at some point. I vote for the northern march.
We’ll come up with Hamilton's army near the border."
"Do
we go separately or as a body?" a young man with flowing locks and a blue
sash asked.
"Every
man for himself," Kit Marshall pronounced. "An entire troop, even one
as small as ours, would hardly escape detection in the countryside." He
peered out of one of the long windows, staring down at the overgrown driveway
below. The moon was full and something moved in the shadows of the box hedges
beside the drive. Frowning, he looked more closely, signaling with his hand for
silence in the room behind. All seemed still again in the garden below.
"What
is it?" his brother asked softly, coming to stand beside him.
"Thought
I saw something," Kit replied. "A figure over by those bushes. Who's
on guard below?"
"Will
Bright and Keith." Joe stared down, then stiffened. "Damnation, but
ye're right, Kit. Someone's down there and up to no good, I'll be bound. How
the devil did he get this close without alerting the guards?"
"Probably
asleep," Edmund said with a scathing grin. "Let us go and invite our
visitor inside. We must not show ourselves lacking in hospitality." He
drew his sword and went swiftly to the door, the Marshall brothers following.
Ginny
crouched in the shadows, looking up at the faint glow from the long windows
that must be from the gallery. The house was of simple design, long and low
with two wings set at right angles to the central portion. It was far from
grand, probably once the dwelling of a local squire, and nestling as it did in
a valley, separated from Nottingham by a low hill, was insignificant enough to
escape notice. She had come upon it by traveling due east as the prisoner had
said. There was a small hamlet about a mile down the road, and here was a
house. She had been walking for what must be close on two and a half hours.
This must be Grantly Manor. But how was she to declare her presence without
running the risk of being shot, or run through more likely since it was a
quieter method of disposing of unwelcome visitors?
The
question was answered for her with shocking abruptness. A hand came from
behind, clamping itself over her mouth and nose, and she felt the unmistakable
prick of something very sharp against her spine. The sensation kept her still,
and she hardly dared to breathe lest she provoke its penetration. The
suffocating clamp over her mouth prevented speech and she resisted the urge to
bite deep into the fleshy, salt-tasting palm.
"Sensible
of you," a voice spoke gruffly. "Let's get you in the light and see
what nocturnal visitor we have." The sword point pricked deeper, and Ginny
obeyed Ate prod eagerly, almost tripping over herself in her anxious haste to
keep ahead of it. The hand remained over her mouth, but as as they emerged into
the full moonlight, the voice said incredulously, "It is but a lad!"
Then, more incredulously yet, "Well, I'll be damned! It's a maid."
The hand left her mouth, although the sword remained at her back. "Just
what in the name of the good God is a maid masquerading as a lad doing here in
the middle of the night?"
Ginny
twisted her head to look up at her captor and gasped. There was no mistaking
the family likeness. It could be Alex, five years hence, who was returning her
scrutiny. "Joe or Kit?" she heard herself ask before questioning the
wisdom of such an inquiry at this juncture.
"Kit,"
the man said slowly. "It seems you have the advantage of me, girl, but not
for much longer. In with you." The businesslike prod drove her through the
suddenly opened door into a square hall. "Look what I've turned up in the
bushes," Kit said to the others standing there. "A maid in very
provocative clothing who knows Kit and Joe Marshall, it seems."
Ginny
had eyes only for Edmund, leaning carelessly against the newel post, looking
amused. Then the amusement died. "Ginny!"
"Yes,
it is I, Edmund," she said. "It is so wonderful to see you. I have
been so afraid for you, these last weeks, after Peter . . ."
"Peter?
You have news of Peter?" Edmund bounded across the hall to her.
Before
she could tell him, Kit Marshall expostulated, "Would one of you enlighten
the rest of us?"
"I
am as much in the dark as you," Edmund replied. "What the devil are
you doing here, Ginny? I had thought you safely on the Isle of Wight . .
." Then a shadow crossed his face. "Colonel Marshall . . . ?"
"Lieutenant-General,"
Ginny interrupted, looking at Alex's brother, dreading to see what she knew
from Joan that she would see — implacable enmity, murderous loathing at the
very sound of his name. It was exactly as she had feared. But the bellow came
not from Kit, but from another man who came in from the garden behind them.
"What
have you to do with that traitorous, rebel blackguard?" Joe demanded,
grabbing her arm so that she winced and Edmund stepped forward.
"Leave
her be, Joe," he said with sudden menace. "Your damn brother took her
prisoner when Peter Ashley and I escaped the Isle of Wight, and it's a score
I'll settle with him if I get the chance."
"Oh,
stop it!" Ginny exclaimed, unable to bear it any longer. "You are
wasting precious time. I did not come here to listen to your—" She
stopped. How could she possibly defend Alex in this company? How could she even
hint at the true nature of her relationship with the most detested man in
Parliament's army? She had come here to warn them against that man, after all.
She was on their side, not Alex's. The bitter dregs of that truth hung sour on
her tongue.
"What
did
you come here for?" Kit asked, belatedly sheathing his sword.
Ginny
stepped away from him thankfully. Even in the minutes since Edmund's
disclosure, she had been conscious of Kit as her captor, of the sword still at
her back. "Alex is at Nottingham Castle," she told them. "A
prisoner, before he died, told of your stronghold, but he died before he could
be —be persuaded to tell them the exact location." She swallowed.
"Alex is intending to come after you. He does not know, of course, that
Edmund is here, or you." She gestured to the Marshall brothers.
"How
did you know to find us? And what do you do in that traitor's company?"
Joe fixed her with a piercing green eye.
Ginny
decided on the lie that had once been the truth. "I am made ward of
Parliament, tantamount to prisoner, because I have been working for the king.
General Marshall has made himself personally responsible for me." She
looked his brothers in the eye. "It was a kindness on his part, since
otherwise I would have shared the fate of all rebel prisoners."
"How
did you find us, Ginny, if the prisoner died before furnishing our hiding
place?" Edmund asked in the silence that had followed her statement —a
statement that made perfect sense to him since he remembered the scene on the
beach at Alum Bay when Alex Marshall had taken her prisoner for himself.
"Another
prisoner, I do not know his name. He was close to death, but I tended him a
little, and when I said who I was, he mentioned Edmund. He told me how to find
you just before they took him away."
"Jack
Calvert," someone muttered. "Dark hair, blue eyes?''
"Aye,"
Ginny smiled with sad memory. "And unvanquished."
"Jack,"
stated Edmund quietly, and there was a moment's silence as they remembered the
dead.
"I
had thought to try to escape, to see Edmund again," Ginny resumed with
difficulty because she was uncertain how to put her original plan, which had
included returning to Alex. She decided it was not necessary to enter into
detail; they would assume her motive was escape pure and simple, and it would
do no harm to let the assumption he. "Then I heard talk of the planned
expedition, and I knew that I must come and warn you. You cannot defeat him,''
she said simply. "He has an entire division at his disposal, all the
ammunition he needs. The only thing he does not have is time. If he does not find
you, he will not take the time to pursue you because he cannot afford to. There
have been too many delays already — dysentery and such like." She
shrugged, loathing herself for the words of betrayal.
"How
soon will he come?" Kit asked, turning to the stairs.
"It
depends how long it takes him to fix upon this place," Ginny said,
following the others upstairs to the gallery. "He does not know that I
have come to warn you. He cannot know it, since he does not know of my
conversation with Jack Calvert. It is to be hoped that he does not yet know of
my absence either."
"But
we can assume we have little time" Edmund said. "Do we stay and
fight?" He looked around the intent circle.
"You
cannot," exclaimed Ginny without thought that her utterance had no place
in the decision these men must make for themselves and not at the bidding of a
mere woman. "You will not defeat him, I have told you."
"Hush,
Ginny," Edmund admonished gently. "We have heard you and are, indeed,
indebted to you more than we can ever repay, but this is not something in which
you can have a say."
"I
crave pardon, gentlemen." She went over to the window, depression and the
deep sense of loss creeping into every cranny of her soul. If they stayed to
fight Alex and lost, then she had thrown everything away. But she could not
appeal thus to Edmund, not without telling him the untellable truth.
The
discussion raged in the background, but the majority opinion seemed to be in
favor of flight. Only the Marshall brothers remained silent, and Ginny watched
them covertly. Their faces were closed and set, the eyes distanced as if they
saw something other than the scene in the gallery. It was not hard for Ginny to
imagine what they saw—their traitorous, rebel brother finally overcome at their
hands, and the family honor avenged.
"So,
we are agreed," Edmund, who seemed to be the group's spokesman, said
eventually. "We part company, those who will to go on to the border, the
others to make for the coast to take ship for Holland and join up with the
prince of Wales." He came over to Ginny, taking her hands and smiling at
her, the old Edmund of the reckless brown eyes. "We will try this venture
together then, Ginny, as so many before. In Holland we will prepare to return
in triumph and restore the king to his rightful throne. It is agreed."
Beneath
this plan lay the absolute assumption of their marriage. Ginny murmured
something that could have been consent as her inner turmoil roiled. Of course,
Edmund assumed that she had escaped for that very reason; it was their original
plan, after all, once they had left the Isle of Wight together. But how could
she even contemplate such a thing? And then what choice did she have? Alex
would see her desertion for the personal treachery it was; would see that she
had chosen loyalty to Edmund over loyalty to him, would not see the pragmatism
that lay behind her choice —that she had come down on the side of saving life.
Edmund would have died if she had chosen otherwise, but Alex, God willing,
would have survived in either event.
"What
say you, Ginny?" Edmund asked, puzzled at her hesitant reticence.
"You seem unsure."
"No
—no, I am not unsure, Edmund," Ginny lied, trying for a smile. "It is
just that everything is so confusing-happening so quickly."
The
explanation seemed to convince Edmund, who squeezed reassuringly the hands he
still held and kissed her in a fraternal fashion that made her want to weep for
a lifetime of lost passion —the secret of a passion that she knew she must now
take to her grave.
"The
rest of you must go," Joe spoke finally. "Kit and I will stay here.
There is something we must attend to."
"What
on earth do you mean?" Edmund demanded. "The two of you cannot stand
alone against an entire brigade."
"The
two of us can stand alone against our brother" Kit told him quietly.
"We have long waited for this opportunity. We will be waiting for him, and
when we have done what we must, then shall we take our chance. We will have the
advantage of surprise."