Exile’s Bane (5 page)

“Is it so selfish to want what belongs to me?” someone asked. In my terror, I grasped that it was my own voice.

He looked down at his clenched fist. The hand dropped away.

“We have spoken of this before. Why can you not be useful,” he went on, suddenly, inexplicably calm, “and accept this marriage? It will assure my hold on the isle. I will be able to control the man.”

“You intend to keep Tor House for yourself,” I stated, aghast at my own conclusion.

“Tor House is only suitable for an English lord.”

“But Tor House is my dowry portion. What was this betrothal based upon, if not my position as heiress of Tor House? Besides, Edward Gorgon is no English lord.”

His dark eyebrows went up, and his face tilted in surprise. “Wise little girl. But no, I have given Gorgon other incentives for your hand.”

He strolled back to the table, and I followed, trying to understand why he would do such a thing.

“You cannot do that, Uncle. Father settled Tor House on me as a freehold estate for life unless I marry; and then, it passes to my husband. A jointure, he called it.”

“Ah, yes. He did, my dear.” He nodded, somehow pleased.

He must have changed his mind, for he bypassed the table and went on to the record cabinet. I remembered the top two shelves of the cabinet as open-shelved and full of neatly piled record books. But they lay now hidden behind doors and a locked iron bar, which extended to the bottom of the cabinet. He unlocked the bar and searched among the sheaves in the bottom section of the cabinet. Finally he pulled out the long deed I remembered, with all its seals and ribbons.

“I was witness to his signing,” he said. His dubious cheeriness grated on my nerves. He turned with the deed, held it out for me to see. “The only witness. It has never been seen by anyone else. And so . . .” He strode across the room and threw it on the fire.

“No!” I cried, running after him. I bent and reached around him to pull the smoking deed from the flames. His fist entered my peripheral vision. Pain exploded in my head. In agony, I brought my hands up, and a whirling vertigo claimed me. The next thing I remembered was the rough carpet against my cheek. Arms snaked under my armpits and lifted me, positioning me to watch the last black fragments of the deed crumble into dust atop the lowering fire.

“It never existed. Just a figment of your questionable imagination,” he rasped in my ear. He withdrew his arms.

I dropped to the floor, narrowly missing the stone edge of the hearth. I struggled to unsteady feet, grasped the hearth mantel, and pulled myself upright. The room whirled around me. I tried to focus on the old battleaxe mounted above me.

When my strength returned enough for me to look around, I found him studying me out of dark, deadly eyes.

“You have no rights,” he said, his voice as hard as the steel of his rapier, aimed for my heart. “Tor House belongs to me as sole surviving male heir. You leave at first light tomorrow for the Isle of Man where you
will
marry Edward Gorgon.”

Chapter Four

In my teary-eyed stupor, I did not know where my uncle was or how he had summoned Wallace. I only knew it was Captain Wallace who gathered me up, led me out of the library, and down the long corridors toward the back of the house. My anger slowly returned and with it, my resolve.

“Let me go, Captain. I have to get away.” If I stayed, I would be forced to leave and marry Gorgon on the isle. I would never see my home again, and that terrified me more than my uncle’s wrath.

But Wallace ignored me, and we continued on. He stopped at a little used doorway set deep in the stone wall. He turned to me, face alight, his mouth set in a bitter line.

“Through this door and along the passageway, you will find yourself outside near the stables. I go now to release Mistress Carey. Wait for her.” My look of amazement must have pressed him to explain, for he went on. “The earl ordered her expelled from Tor House.”

My mouth dropped open in shock. I searched his face. Prince Rupert’s warning to the earl echoed through my mind, and it astounded me that my uncle would cross such a man.

“Your condition tells me your fate at his hands will be far worse should you remain here.”

I touched my temple, where a painful knot had formed. To elicit such a response from my loyal captain, it must have looked scandalous.

“I can give you enough time to clear the valley. But then I must report to Lord Devlin, insisting that you shoved me into the wall and fled through this doorway. Do not allow yourself to be caught, Lady Elena. There are places you can go, people who will support your claim. You must find them.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Your short sword is in its sheath with Kalimir’s tack, should you need to defend yourself.”

“Thank you, Captain,” I whispered fervently. I moved quickly through the door and down the passageway.

The stable was busy with stable boys running here and there. They were taking the horses out beyond the walls, even with the weather like it was. After three months of confinement, I could understand why the horse master would want to get his horses out to crop fresh grass, even if it was wet. From the shadows behind the stable doorway, a boy left the stable’s east aisle with two horses and took them past me out the stable door.

As soon as he passed out of sight beyond the gate, I slipped down the west aisle and into the back where Kalimir was stabled. The great bay had been wounded at Edgehill when my father died. The deep slash wound in his mighty shoulder had been slow to heal. He was a skittish stallion, though not around me, not anymore. I entered the straw-strewn stall and hugged his neck. He whickered, content. But his war sense must have detected my alarm, for he side-stepped, once, twice. I quickly got his bridle on, the blanket and saddle on his back, girth secured, and the sword that my father had given me strapped in its sheath on the saddle.

By the time I saddled Peg’s mare and led her to Kalimir’s stall, Peg herself came running down the stable aisle, her cloak waving around her. Distraught, her face beamed in a splotchy red agony of alarm.

“Wallace says I have to leave, that the earl has banned me from Tor House, like he did Thomas!”

Thomas, another of my father’s charities, had been brought to Tor House the year after Peg. We had grown up together, the three of us, me, Peg, and Thomas. But upon his arrival in 1642, without explanation, Uncle Charles had banished Thomas from ever setting foot near Tor House again, on pain of death.

“It is worse than that, Peg.”

“From Mrs. Lowry.” She pressed a rolled cloak into my hands. Her big cape flared open and displayed a clean homespun dress, which the good housekeeper had also undoubtedly supplied to her.

“I would rather a pair of pants,” I said.

“Oh, Elena. Ye can be so coarse.” Peg’s face screwed up in dismay. “Put it on. And how could things possibly be any worse?”

“The earl has denied my dowry rights.”

She bit at her lower lip and expelled a deep breath. “Did not thy father leave a dowry-paper?”

“The earl burned it. He made me watch.”

“Oh, Lord. What happened to thy face?”

“It does not matter. I will have Tor House back.” I whipped the cloak on, appreciative of its warmth as it settled about my shoulders.

A smirk twisted Peg’s full mouth and her brows went up, as though to say,
and how do you think you’ll do that
.

“For now, we must flee, you and I. But you don’t have to stay with me. It would be dangerous for you, in any event.”

“How so? What is it ye intend?” Her piercing brown eyes raked me from head to toe and back again, as though I had lost my mind.

“To get help, supporters.” A deep, shaky breath belied my outer calm. “We must go.”

Kalimir shouldered me, ready to run.

“Where will ye stay? How will ye eat? Though I know ye do not want to, thee would be better off staying here and accepting thy fate. I could join ye on the isle later. ‘Twould be safer.”

“If I stay, all is lost,” I said, tightening my hold on Kalimir’s bridle. I glared at her in defiance. “The good captain has given me this chance to reclaim what is mine, and I intend to take it. And since when did you prefer the safe route?” I asked her, nettling her, for if there was anyone who would take a chance on a whim, it was Peg.

She shrugged. We turned away from one another, both of us mounting quickly, for there was a great shouting out in the stable yard. Kalimir circled and I took advantage of the moment, one hand on the reins, to tuck my skirt under my legs. I then pulled him up short beside Peg, now astride her mare.

“Come with me, then. I’ll see what I can find for you in Bolton.”

“Bolton, is it?” she said, blatant suspicion claiming her face. “And Thomas?” She reached over and grabbed my rein hand, turning her mare back into Kalimir, who snorted and danced in offence. “Do not do this alone. My place is with thee. Has been, since the day thy father brought me out of Ireland.”

I nodded my head solemnly. “Let us go.”

No one to stop us, we charged out of the stable. We forced our way through a mob of unruly horses and frantic stable boys, then out the postern gate. At breakneck speed, we cut south across the huge, foggy, open bowl that Tor House sat in, not slowing until we passed the old cottar’s hut within the great stand of trees where the rutted track that was the Sheffington Road began. It was the longer route to Bolton, but I believed it would serve us well as it wandered among low hills where we would have cover within the small trees and dense brush.

An hour later, we let the horses rest until they stopped blowing, a cold mist settling around us. We moved on at a fast canter along the undulating roadway. The pale sun struggled to burn through the mist, a mere streak of brightness visible now, then gone as we descended into a low-lying, marshy area. Fitful rain showers came and went, wetting our hair and clothing. I shivered. It seemed to be getting colder. Rising fog swirled about the horses’ feet. We reined them in. Soon a blurry mist encompassed us, but we worked our way along, stayed in sight of one another, and struggled to make out the open track before us.

“I cannot see,” Peg said close beside me, peering into what appeared as a thick, gray blanket hung before us. “We’re going to get lost out here.”

“Maybe we should stop and take cover,” I suggested.

After a further lengthy time of struggle to see the open track before us, Peg stopped her mare in front of me. I asked after her. She shushed me, listening intently. The sound of hooves came to me then, coming up the low incline behind us.

I moved quickly off the track into wet, treacherous ground, some ways into the fog. Peg followed. We dismounted and led the horses into a tall stand of trees and underbrush that loomed down at us. We stood there within the prickly branches, unable to do anything to help ourselves other than to hold the horses’ mouths, to try and keep them from giving us away.

The creak and jingle of harness and the marching of many feet came from my left, deep in the thick mist. Men’s voices sounded. The fog thinned around us, and a troop appeared not fifty feet away. Stunned, my breath caught in my throat, for this was no house guard troop, but a small troop of Roundhead infantry led by a mounted officer in a severely cut black coat, a big black hat over cropped hair, and an old-fashioned lace collar that covered his shoulders. His sword and long pistol were the only things that denoted his rank.

“Damnation,” Peg cursed softly beside me.

I looked over at my sword hilt sticking up on the opposite side of Kalimir’s saddle, for what good it did me there. My father had taught me to thrust, to slash, and numerous simple defensive moves. I was his only daughter. The daughter he’d preferred to have been a son.

There were perhaps a dozen Roundhead musketeers in the round helmets they were named for, armed with matchlock muskets and the inevitable yard-long cord of smoldering matchcord, which they used to set off the charge in the musket pan. Live embers hung beside each man, little pink eyes in the mist. Each musketeer wore a bandoleer, as did our Royalist troops, hung with charge canisters, one canister per shot. Among the musketeers were a few pikemen carrying stout ash pikes with steeled points, to spit us on, I supposed, angry at their presence in Lancashire, which was my country and Royalist to the core. One particularly churly-looking musketeer cocked his head suddenly, then swung around in our direction. His smoking cord held over the firing pan of his musket, he aimed directly at our little refuge.

We dared not move or even breathe. My fingers ceased their gentle caress of Kalimir’s soft muzzle.

Of a sudden I could see my feet. The fog was rising.

There was long silence when no one moved, either in the ranks beyond us or around our little shelter. Another long moment went by. I prayed my stallion would continue to stand still.

“Move on. We not be shooting at ghosts now, Turner. Need to save our shot,” bawled the Puritan captain.

The musketeer dropped his matchlock with a scowl, and on they marched, the fog closing behind them. Peg and I looked at one another in shocked wonder. We waited, our feet cold and mucky in our ruined house slippers. After five, maybe ten minutes the fog rose until it hung above us, like a raised curtain.

“Thank God it waited to do that,” Peg whispered, watching the eerie fog lazing above our heads.

“It started while they were here. You did not see it?”

“Holy Mother, no.”

We mounted and moved on, wanting to gain ground while we could see. Within two miles, the road ascended again, the Roundhead troop long gone ahead of us.

By the time we came to the west branch of the River Croate, a half-mile or so above Bolton, the sun had peeped out. We stopped there to rest the horses and let them nibble at the thick tufts of grass that grew along the riverbank.

“Since we have gotten this far, we may have eluded the house guard, which is certainly after us.”

“Or that Roundhead troop scared them off.”

“Probably.”
Or at least conveniently, if Wallace is leading the chase.

“So is it Thomas Reedy’s house we are headed for?”

“It is the only place I know to go, Peg.” I patted Kalimir’s sleek shoulder. “Thomas has told me often enough that it would come to this.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” She studied me with disapproval. “Be thee careful around Thomas. His heart is dark.”

“I well know what he is.” I dismissed her concerns with a wave of my hand.

We went the next mile without incident. Then, coming up the incline that overlooked the city, a distant hum sprang up, like a far-off market crowd. Astounded, for I had heard of no market held here since the rebellion began two years ago, I topped the rise.

My mouth fell open in a groan.

Behind dilapidated walls, the high-peaked roofs of Bolton lay below us in a shallow valley. Dim sunlight reflected off hundreds and hundreds of metal helmets moving through the tight streets toward the central square.

“Go back. Quickly.”

“I cannot see,” Peg said, reining her mare around with Kalimir. “What is it?”

“Rigby’s Roundheads massed in the city. It looks like thousands of them.”

“That many?”

“The same helmets, the same smutty dress, the same Roundhead Puritans that kept us for months within our walls,” I complained, fuming with the injustice of an occupied Bolton.

I reined Kalimir to a stop some distance back the way we had come, beyond sight of the town.

“They would love to get hold of us, would they not?” Peg asked, wide eyes set on the palisade rim.

I could not answer. The acrid taste of ash blossomed in my mouth at the sudden thought of Duncan’s pleasure with his orders and his impressive leave-taking.

“Oh, my God,” I finally got out. “Prince Rupert sent Duncan to Bolton.”

“Ha. So, it was not Thomas ye thought to see in Bolton, but Captain Comrie. I should have known. Do ye think he has arrived?”

“No. There would be gunfire. He will ride straight into this nest of vipers, and they will be upon him.” I shook my head in a slow twist, my mind working feverishly.