Lord Monroe's Dark Tower: The Albright Sisters: Book 2 (17 page)

Claire took a handful of mud and hurled it at Abella’s impassive face. It landed with a smack on the girl’s left knee.

“You witch!” Abella screamed. “You maid of the devil. I tell Flavian everything. He know you for the demon you are!”

Claire was stunned. “Demon?” she said. Her eyes went hot with rage, “you’re a sick, mad nightmare! Turn away from me, I tell you.”

“I stay here. I stay here until your breath bubble in mud. Don’t reach down. You find bones of all those women Vav bring to watch me. They in that mud with you.”

Everything Claire believed about herself — her character, her comportment, her gentle nature — snapped. Like a wild thing, she hurled clods of matted rot at Abella, trying to pelt the girl in the face, the chest, the arms — but only succeeding in splattering the frightened mare and lowering herself deeper in the muck. “Get away! Get away!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Abella drew the reins, pulling her mount out of range. Even still, Claire could not stop. “Leave, leave!” she wailed, lobbing fists full of mud until her arms cramped and her lungs ached.

A rain of Spanish curses was the only response. The girl opened her mouth for a new tirade, and with the last of her strength, Claire hurled a clot that smacked between the parted lips. Sputtering and coughing, Abella spat, “You die now!”

Claire scarcely heard her. Panting, wheezing, beyond hysteria, she closed her eyes and stopped struggling.

“I get help,” the girl taunted. “Look, Lady Claire. I leave now. I get your lover to help you.”

Too tired, Claire clenched her teeth and refused to open her eyes. Every ounce of strength was gone. She lay back in the mud and felt it seep slowly into her hair.

“Watch me go!” Abella screeched, “Gallopy, gallopy up the hill and down the dell. I find Vav. I tell him, ‘She in peril. I so scared.’”

Robespierre moaned. The filly whinnied from the bank — a pitiful, desperate neigh to her dear friend.

Soon
, Claire thought. Soon the mud would fill her ears. Soon she would no longer hear Abella’s jibes. And oh so terribly soon, ooze would cover her eyes, slide down her nostrils, and cram her mouth.
Soon …

• • •

Squire Radcliff, a squat little man in a suit too tight for his paunch, stalked the shore of the freshly formed body of water. His every gesture bristled with righteous indignation. The fool reminded Flavian of a raccoon cornered in a vegetable garden. “Well Radcliff, you’ve done a fine job of watering my barley. How do you intend to harvest it?”

“Nothing but heavy rain caused that dam to break,” Radcliff shot back.

“You built a dam for drought weather only?”

“I’ve a right to some fishing on my property.”

Flavian kicked the flattened barley pinned to the ground by a layer of wet dirt. “This will cost you, Radcliff, for I’ll not take a loss due to your stupidity.”

“Ah, the fine aristocrat stealing from the poor working man … ”

Movement in an adjacent field pulled Flavian’s attention from his ranting neighbor. About a dozen cattle gathered at the water’s edge, mooing in confusion.

At a full run down the lane, came a ruddy faced fellow in a leather apron and boots. “Me cows,” he cried, “keep them from the drink!” Flavian recognized the man as Portis Smithfield, one of his tenant farmers. Poking from the depths of the pond were two posts that obviously held the gate flanking the lane. Married to routine, the cows wanted to be milked and get their feed. A cow with a piratical circle around one eye waded in and started swimming. Frantic moos followed her departure. In a moment, the whole herd might be in the water and in danger of blocking one another from dry land.

“They’ll be drowning!” Smithfield howled.

Flavian spurred Killen over the stone wall into the cow pasture. In the next second, he had the horse splashing into the flood. With his whip zinging in the air, he bellowed at the lead cow, her circled eye sullenly focused on him as she cut through the water. Though the freshly made pond was deep, it didn’t top Killen’s head. The horse reared and plunged like a dolphin, until the frightened cows turned before they had to swim. Behind him, he heard Betteridge-Haugh yelling “
Heyup
,” and the splash of the steward’s horse.

When the circle-eyed cow realized she swam alone, she panicked, and bellowing with great urgency, raced toward the herd.

“Radcliff,” Flavian shouted to the squire, “get your men to dismantle that section of the wall.” He pointed toward a rise at the edge of the pasture.

The squire puffed in his ill-fitting suit. “You’ll be crossing them on my land then.”

“I’ll be crossing them on your head if you don’t hop to. Do as I say or you’ll add every heifer that drowns to your bill.”

Radcliff motioned to his men. A small crowd of them had gathered in the last few minutes. Flavian watched with growing impatience as the men — sulky and unwilling — tried to argue their way out of the work. “Watch this vixen,” he told Betteridge-Haugh, indicating the stubborn cow.

Killen’s breath came in grunting snorts. The horse was tiring. “Come on, old steed,” Flavian urged, stroking the animal’s chestnut coat, “one more hop.” He pressed his heals to Killen’s side and headed the horse straight for the stone wall at the exact point where Radcliff’s men stood clustered around their master. “Aboard!” he shouted, employing a battle cry from his years in the Royal Navy. The men turned and scattered as Killen landed directly in their midst. “You’ll take down that wall, or I’ll herd you to it like those cattle,” he shouted, swinging his whip.

One man darted away, making a run for the woods. In seconds, Flavian steered Killen in front of him and landed his whip on the fellow’s shoulder. “Get to it, I say!”

“Bloody … ” Another whack with the whip cut the man’s curse in half.

Tucking the crop into his boot, Flavian grabbed the runaway by the collar, and with one powerful arm, lifted him off his feet. As the man squawked about being choked, about a bad back, about “hell to pay,” Flavian lugged him toward the cluster of frightened men. Dropping him at their feet, he said, “Any questions about what to do with that wall?”

They all backed away and went swiftly to work.

Portis Smithfield scrambled into the pasture and cooed at his livestock. He slung a rope around Circle Eye’s neck and gently tugged her away from the body of water.

By the time the men had dismantled the stone wall, the sun had burnt all the morning fog away. As the last of the cattle stepped through the opening, Flavian suddenly remembered he had another pressing matter that day.
Claire
. What was it she wished to speak with him about? He looked around. Had the ladies decided to stay home? That Abella would allow adventure to pass her by seemed very uncharacteristic.

The more he thought about his brief conversation with Claire that morning at breakfast, the more alarmed he grew. If she said she had something important to say, no doubt it was.

“Where are the ladies?” he asked Betteridge-Haugh.

“They saw ‘twas better to stay inside,” the steward said. “Besides that old Robespierre could scarce carry Lady Claire.”

Uneasiness gripped Flavian. “Why did you saddle Robespierre — he’s twenty years old.”

The steward folded his arms, looking uncomfortable. “Miss Abella insisted.”

Before the man uttered his last word, Flavian turned Killen down the lane. “Report to me later,” he shouted to Betteridge-Haugh. Before he heard the steward’s reply, he urged his exhausted horse toward Bingham Hall.

• • •

The first thing Claire became aware of was the translucent pink of sun shining through her eyelids. When she tried to open them, the lashes stuck, dried muck sealing them together. That’s when she remembered where she was. Rubbing her eyes on a filthy sleeve, she opened them to a scene of such desolation, tears rose, burning the lids with sudden heat.

She and the old horse had sunk lower in the mud. A fistful of Robespierre’s mane kept her afloat, but the horse’s back was completely submerged.

There were no signs of life at the edge of the bog. Abella must have grown bored and left.

Afraid to cry out in case the girl lay in wait, Claire shifted in the muck to search for a way out.

Robespierre nickered, lifting his grizzled head. “Oh, thank God you’re alive,” she said, overjoyed not to be alone. Then she listened. The filly would answer the old horse if she were within earshot. The only sound was the soft swish of wind over the moor.

A few yards beyond Robepierre’s muzzle, a tuft of grass grew higher than the rest of the deceptive blanket covering the bog. Claire moved her legs, and instantly dropped up to her chin. “Help!” she cried, “Somebody please help us!”

The rest of her body had grown numb in the cold water, but now her shoulders and neck stung in the chill. The sensation made her aware of the sun. Bright and hot, it must have warmed the surface of the water enough that she hadn’t died of exposure. Panting a little with fear, she looked at the brilliant blue sky and found solace. She closed her eyes and let the heat soak into her scalp, realizing she must have lost her beautiful Shako hat in the fall.

A few minutes later, she murmured, “No one’s going to help us, Robespierre.”

Taking a firmer grip on the horse’s mane, she forced herself to keep her legs still as she attempted to swim forward. A slight give in the muck gave her hope, but more of her body had to lie on the surface and she had to let go of Robespierre to be able to use both arms for thrust. Dread paralyzed her. “Calm yourself,” she commanded. The old horse, still and quiet until he sensed her movement, turned his head. In his brown eyes, she saw expectation. The animal trusted her to get them out. Taking a deep breath, she ducked her head below the surface and pushed with her arms against the viscous ooze. One, two, three strokes and her legs began to rise. She turned her head to the side and took a gulp of air. Putrid, rotting vegetation hung like a curtain over her mouth then back into the blackness — one, two, three strokes. Her arms ached with the effort, but she was past Robespierre now, only a few more feet to the grass hummock.

Midway through the last stroke, she smacked something substantial. Looking up, gasping for breath, she recognized the tuft and dragged herself onto the tiny island. Another hummock rose only a few feet away. Beyond that, the land rose firm, glorious, and dotted with rock faces baked white from the sun. Her mind emptied of every thought except getting to that rise. She stood, teetering with exhaustion, and jumped to the next hummock. Nearly losing her balance, she used the momentum to make the final leap to the rise. After that, everything went black.

In a restless dream, Claire’s mind examined over and over the image of Abella, curiosity in her brown eyes, watching as Claire flailed in the swamp. The hallucination jolted her awake, and a wave of grief and rage brought tears to her eyes. “I want you gone,” she said, clenching her fists. “I want you in an asylum for life.”

She sat up remembering Robespierre. The horse had not sunk further. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be sleeping. “You won’t last much longer, poor horse.” Especially once the sun went down. A team of men — a team of strong plow horses — that’s what was needed to save the animal’s life.

Robespierre stirred and chomped his bit. He seemed resigned, as if the horror of the bog had already swallowed him. That upset Claire more than Abella’s other misdeeds. No one, no matter how spoiled and insane, should senselessly destroy a creature’s life. The horse had done nothing, and yet he would end in torment. “Hold on,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’ll bring help.”

Though the sun had mostly dried her fine jacket with its gold frogs, now caked in mud, the garment was ruined. A fashionable pattern in pale blue merino, the habit was supposed to remind London society of the Albright family’s history of breeding top racehorses. Claire stripped off the jacket and hung it inside out over a bush. The blue would make it easier to find Robespierre. Next, she removed her gloves and used the inside to wipe muck from her face. At the top of the rise she looked out at the open moor, hoping to find a landmark. They hadn’t come far from the lane, if she could just find it again. Blast the fog. Without the morning sun, she had no bearing on the direction they’d traveled, except she knew they had been heading for the north pasture.

In the distance, she spied a likely row of trees. Since the moor stretched for miles in every other direction, she set off toward the greenery. As she walked, a terrible thirst burned her throat. Repeatedly, she longed to stray in a different direction in search of water, but she held her course. “I would give my diamond combs for a draught of ale,” she whispered.

At last, she dove between the outstretched arms of the closest tree only to find that the lane was not beyond it. Overcome with disappointment, she sank on the ground and pressed her forehead against the bark. She would have wept if she weren’t so parched. “What to do,” she said, “what to do next?”

She thought of Robespierre, of Abella and her sneering remarks, of Flavian and his arms around her at the lake. Using the trunk to hoist herself to her feet, she said, “I won’t die here, either.”

A branch on the next nearest tree hung low. As children, she and her sisters shimmied up a lot of timber. Arms trembling with exhaustion, she tied the hem of her shift just below her bottom. Bare feet would gain a better purchase on the bark. She unlaced her boots and removed her mud soaked garters and stockings.

The first limb seemed so high she doubted she had the strength to mount it.
And if I don’t?
She asked herself.
Then I succumb to Abella’s wishes and die
. A hard rod of determination replaced her fear. She backed away from the tree, and then giving herself a running start, hurtled toward it. At the last second, she threw her chest onto the limb and swung her left leg up and over.

Breathless from the effort, she lay with her cheek against the bark. “Get moving you lazy thing.”

Despite the adamant protests of her body, she began climbing. The limbs were closer now, and grew closer still as she ascended, though she often had to stop for rest.