THE CHAINS OF FATE an utterly compelling and romantic historical saga (The Heron Quartet Book 2), page 4
And so I stood there, resting my cold weary body against Goblin’s smooth dark warmth in the dim stables, absently stroking her neck and running my fingers through the long silky strands of her mane, and dreaming of what I longed for most, which was Francis: riding Goblin with that characteristic, casual, cat-like grace, flinging a hawk from his fist in the gentle, green Suffolk countryside around Goldhayes and watching its pursuit of pigeon or partridge with the same sharp vivid eagerness as the bird; or discussing politics or warfare or horses with his brother Edward, reliable, solid and knowledgeable, two brothers quite dissimilar in looks and temperament, and yet with a remarkably deep, unadmitted friendship. And that friendship surely, had Ned survived Edgehill, would have prevented that final disastrous rift between Francis and Simon. I clenched my hands on Hobgoblin’s mane and squeezed the tears behind my tight-closed eyes, as my desperate longing for Francis, for his warmth and humour and the knowledge that he loved and wanted and needed me, and no other, threatened to overwhelm me completely.
Goblin flung up her head and turned abruptly, almost knocking me over. Suddenly snatched from my reverie, my eyes snapped open in the gloom and, staring, beheld one of Byron’s men, a lean and ill-favoured youth I had previously noted to be one of the rotten-most apples in a particularly unpleasant barrel, standing not two or three yards from me.
His eyes lingered on me in a way which lifted the hairs on my neck: and I became suddenly very frightened indeed. Were I to scream with all the breath in my lungs, no one likely to help me would be within earshot, and it was all too likely that the soldiers summoned by my cries would want to participate, too, in the rape I saw writ plain on that pocked and leering face.
‘Hello,’ said the soldier, in a soft insinuating lecherous whine. ‘Look what I’ve found here, all alone and no one to hear … come here, my pretty sweetheart, and let’s have a bit o’ fun while no one’s about, eh?’
He was blocking my route to the stable door and safety. I said nothing, my eyes and mind frantically searching, desperately seeking escape. ‘Come on,’ said the horrible, sneering slimy voice, ‘there’s no call to be so uppish, I know the likes of you, all hoity toity to them what’s lower and a whore once you get them on their backs, you fine ladies are all the same … Come on, if you don’t struggle I won’t hurt you, and I ain’t had no complaints yet.’
‘Probably because they’ve never known any better, poor things,’ I snapped back, a flash of temper overcoming my fear. I had seen something that gave me a sliver of hope, a pitchfork stabbed into a pile of filthy straw a yard or so behind my tormentor: but I was allowed no chance to snatch at it. The man’s slow brain had worked out the implications of my foolish taunt, and before I could move he pounced. With terror I felt his arms lock about me and gasped as his hot stinking breath assailed my nostrils before his wet loose mouth came down upon mine: and then fury gripped me, cold and calculating. My mouth shut tight against his assault, I relaxed for a second and then, with all my strength, kicked him hard upon the shin with my stoutly-shod foot.
It must have hurt not a little: he swore, staggered back, and slackened his hold. I followed that blow with another, to a far more tender and vulnerable part of his anatomy, and as he released me and doubled up, retching, I whipped the pitchfork from its pile of straw and held it firmly braced in front of me like a pike, the narrow vicious tines pointed steadily at his stomach. ‘Try that again and I swear I’ll kill you!’
Gasping, scarlet, his sweating face raised itself suddenly into view, contorted with frustration and rage. ‘You filthy little bitch, I’ll get you for this, I’ll cut you to ribbons, we’ll all have you one after the other and when we’ve finished with you — ah!’
Sick with disgust and fury, I could tolerate his obscenities no longer, and jabbed him savagely with the tines. ‘And I’ll tell your corporal every word of what you’ve just said, you foul-mouthed rapist, and since my cousin is a good friend to Lord Byron, you’ll not hear the last of it, I can tell you. Go on, back — get back!’
Blustering, he slunk backwards, and at every step I prodded him with the pitchfork, not particularly caring how hard I did it. Brought up short by the wall, he stood glaring balefully at me. Then the anger all drained abruptly out of him as he read the intention in my face. With a vicious and overwhelming sense of satisfaction, I let him see that I was enjoying his fear: and then, choosing my spot carefully, stabbed the pitchfork savagely so that the prongs entered the wooden wall of the stable, one each side of his dirty scrofulous neck. One tine slashed his skin, I was glad to see: and then I left pitchfork and tormentor quivering alike against the wall, and fled from the stables.
I was sick into the midden, and sick again by the kitchen door: I staggered in through it, shut it with a desperate force as if all the Furies were outside, and, leaning against it, burst helplessly into tears: all my fury vanished in the shock and weakness of reaction. Fear also made me weep, for I knew how dreadfully close I had been, in my loathing and rage and terror, to killing him.
Grainne and Mistress Morrison offered their bewildered comfort, and when I had mastered myself and explained what had happened to overturn me thus, they were united in their outrage and indignation.
‘I’d not have had your delicacy, Thomazine,’ said Agnes grimly, ‘I’d have pinned him to the wall through his gullet instead of either side of it. And now I reckon we’d best go and tell your tale to the corporal before he hears t’other side of it.’
And so we made an aggrieved and purposeful delegation to the young corporal, fortunately finding him dicing in the barn before my assailant could track him down: and the thinly-disguised sneer on his face when I began my tale vanished, I was pleased to see, when I made mention of Lord Byron, and my cousin’s acquaintance with him. Whether complaints to his Lordship would ever have had any result, I doubted very much, but the mere threat of it was sufficient to ensure that we remained comparatively unmolested, so much was their general feared. And my tormentor was punished by a vigorous flogging.
But even if my waking self attempted, with some success, to push my unpleasant experience to the furthest corners of my mind, my dreams all too often reminded me of how horrifyingly narrow had been my escape, and I would wake sweating and shaking with my terror at the fates which had almost befallen me, the one only a little worse than the other: to be raped, or in self-defence to resort to murder. I too had learned my lesson, and from thence none of us, from ‘Old Harry’, a slow old man in his late sixties, down to the scampering Jasper, ever ventured out-of-doors unaccompanied. It was plain that without our support and help, and the solid presence of the convalescent Holly, it would go ill with Agnes and her little family: and that in itself was an excellent reason for further delaying our departure, had it not been made quite clear to us that, friends in high places or no, we were all virtually prisoners within the bounds of the farm, lest we in any way aid the besieged garrison or attempt to convey intelligence to any attacking force. By Christmas I was frantic to be gone, to continue this journey that I had undertaken so casually: never thinking once of the dangers of war that had overtaken us, never thinking of the peril and anguish caused to Grainne because she was Irish, or the responsibilities placed upon Holly as our protector, or the risks to the health and happiness of the children. I felt guilty now, on my companions’ behalf, and knew, none better, how we were balanced on the slenderest of knife-edges. One false move, one rash deed, and we would find ourselves ravished or plundered or with our throats cut, as had so dreadfully happened to a group of hostile civilians, some no more than children, in Bartholmey church at Christmas. If Byron’s men could stoop thus low, they were quite capable of inflicting harm on us: and though they fought for the King, I was beginning to hate them.
The siege dragged on. The weather turned colder still, and the River Weaver froze over. Our Christmas was chill and cheerless, with a scanty fire and precious little feasting, although we sang and made merry for the children’s sake, and turned Jasper’s breeching into an extra celebration. The soldiers had consumed far more than their share of our food, without the slightest intention of reimbursement, and with besieged Nantwich and its market closed to us, times were lean. Every day the cows and horses had to be tended and fed, food prepared, and wool spun and carded with our blue chilblained fingers. Snow fell thickly, and for a week nothing moved anywhere save for the frozen cattle in the field nearest the farmhouse, subsisting on hay and straw and what they could dig from under the snow. Lying packed in the one bed for warmth with Grainne and the children, and shivering despite the blankets and quilts piled on top of us, I began to realize what it was like to be poor, and cold, and hungry; to understand the insecurity and terror visited upon anyone without an assured, regular supply of food during such a winter as this; and to know that if matters went on as they did, there would come a point next week, or next month, when there would be no bread, nothing to give the children, and we would all starve.
Despite the weather, an attack on Nantwich was launched on the eighteenth of January, and repulsed by the stalwart defenders. Byron’s men suffered some losses: only seven of our twelve uninvited guests returned the next day, my attacker happily not amongst them, and for the sake of the fretful, hungry children we were grateful. But further deliverance was at hand, for Sir Thomas Fairfax, Black Tom, was said to be marching to the relief of Nantwich: and for the first time in my life, I prayed for the success of the Parliament men, almost as hard as I prayed for our deliverance from any involvement in the fighting.
An abrupt thaw on the night of the twenty-fourth of January heralded the arrival of Fairfax’s army. Our soldiers were hastily summoned to join their regiment in the small hours: they marched out in the softening, damp air through snow that clung wetly and soggily to their shoes, and clogged the horses’ hooves, and we were free at last. It was as if a black shroud had been lifted from our lives: we listened keenly all day for the sounds of battle, and were rewarded in the afternoon by the flat distant thuds of gunfire.
It was not until the next day that we discovered what had happened, how in the thaw the River Weaver had flooded, hurling down bridges and cutting off Byron’s cavalry on the east bank from his Foot on the west. Fairfax was thus able to concentrate on attacking the Royalist Foot, with the help of Brereton’s men who had sallied forth from Nantwich to take their enemies in the rear, whilst holding off Byron’s Horse with a small detachment. By dusk it was all over, the Royalist Foot dead or prisoners, and the Horse fled with Byron to Chester. Good generalship on the Parliament side, despite Fairfax’s rag-tag-and-bobtail army collected from all over the North, had triumphed over bad luck and tactical error.
With a strange mixture of eagerness and reluctance, we began to make our plans for departure. Reluctance on my part at least, because despite my overwhelming need to be with Francis again, to salve my bruised, exhausted mind and body in the balm of his need and love and laughter, leaving Nantwich to continue our journey to Catholm was the final commitment, after my three-month’s respite, to the sin of adultery and the crime of abandoning my child.
I would not admit then, even to myself, that I was afraid of what might be waiting for me, at the end of our long road to Catholm.
There were tears on both sides as we said our farewells one chilly damp dawn in late February — for the sudden thaw had brought heavy rain and flooding that had delayed our departure two weeks past the day we had originally intended. I had earlier tried to press upon Agnes some payment for our stay, but she indignantly waved it aside. ‘Money? No, Thomazine, I don’t want no money. The way you helped us all, and kept those villains from our throats, that’s payment if it was needed.’ I was touched and, despite her strong feelings, left on the clothes-press in the chamber Grainne and I had shared, the ring that Dominic had given me on our marriage. The dark heavy gold glinted sullenly against the black-stained oak, the menacing dragon’s head crest of the Drakelons delineated only fitfully by the dim early morning light, and I reminded myself of what Dominic had done, and went out of the room with no sense of betrayal.
*
As on the first half of our journey in September, everything now seemed to conspire against us to slow us down, so that a Puritan would instantly have seen obvious signs of God’s displeasure at the sinful purpose of my travels. Rain fell frequently, the roads were thick glutinous mud well-nigh impassable even for a horse, and floods were commonplace. Drake ran on ahead of us, as was his habit, and once, out of sight, fell into a water-filled pothole that must have been four foot deep, and nearly drowned before we reached him. It became obvious that, despite his long convalescence, Holly was by no means fully restored to health: probably the lack of nourishing food and sufficient warmth and rest at the farm had delayed his recovery. Typically, he plodded stoically on, ignoring the warning signs of returning illness, and after five days’ travel in appalling weather, collapsed with a fever. Fortunately, we were able to get him to a reputable inn not too far away, and after a week’s nursing he appeared to be returned to his normal robust health. With weary thankfulness we resumed our journey, so slow and so much beset by misfortunes. I had thought that nothing could be worse now than the disasters we had already endured, but still bad luck and inclement weather bedevilled our progress, so that we made on average barely seven or eight miles in any one day. Grainne’s mare developed an inability to keep her shoes, and cast four on successive days, so that most of them were spent hunting for blacksmiths. We were accosted by soldiers in Lancashire, who fortunately were deceived by Hobgoblin’s bedraggled ungroomed appearance and demanded only to know our business and destination before letting us continue, and by footpads in the Kent valley, a half-dozen miles before we entered Kendal. Holly drove these off easily enough, for they were armed only with cudgels and were obviously not expecting to face pistols, but we were further delayed by the necessity of finding a Justice in Kendal, to whom we had to deliver a groaning footpad with Holly’s bullet in his arm. It would have been easier to have left the man on the ground by the roadside, but the day was ending and he would not have survived the frozen night: and I did not want anything else to weigh down my burdened conscience. So we spent two days in Kendal, a bustling wool town amidst the grim fells, and then continued on our way.
By now the road was no more than a rough, stony, treacherous track worn by the packhorses that were the only means of transport in these parts. It wound between the huge endless bulks of the great fells: bisected by rushing chilly streams, frequently obliterated by piles of rocks and boulders that had fallen in the winter’s frosts and gales, or vanishing in a sudden slough of green moss or mud like a young lake, formed from rain and melted snow. Frequently we had to dismount and lead our exhausted stumbling mounts through or around such obstacles: our pathetic little procession, three adults, two children, four horses and a dog, toiling wearily up and round and down and along the endless road. We seemed utterly dwarfed by the enormous rocky hills, the highest mountains I had yet seen, incomparably grander and more threatening, with their heather and scree and boulders and streaked patches of old snow, than the green gentle hills of Oxfordshire or Suffolk. Those twenty-odd miles between Kendal and Penrith were the longest and most wearisome that ever I had travelled: expecting a village, a farm, a friendly face around each corner of the road, and seeing only more of this apparently endless, dreary desolation. Three days we spent on that dreadful track, and just as, at long last, we toiled gratefully into Penrith by the last light of the sinking sun, I discovered that Hobgoblin had gone lame.
It was to be expected, given the nature of the appalling conditions we had endured, but it was nevertheless a most bitter blow. Had it been one of the other horses thus afflicted, we could perhaps have sold it and purchased another, but not Hobgoblin. As we bespoke rooms in one of the town’s inns, I wondered in despair whether we were ever going to reach Catholm. In two weeks’ time, impossible though it seemed, it would be April, though as spring came late to this chill bleak inhospitable country there were few signs of it other than frail shy snowdrops and catkins, and daffodil spikes in sheltered places.
The only cure for Goblin’s strained off-fore was rest, and we had perforce to stay in Penrith until she was sound again. It was the largest town in those parts, situated in a valley between wooded hills, and beside Oxford seemed little more than a sizeable village. There was nothing to do save sit in our chamber and stare out of the window: for throughout our stay, or so it seemed, it poured with rain. Worry about our dwindling store of coin, hidden in a money-belt I wore round my waist beneath my petticoats, added to our other anxieties, and I, depressed and exhausted by the rigours of our journey, became shamefully bad-tempered and impossible. Grainne did her best to cheer me, and the children and Drake were a great help. It was here that Henrietta decided to heave herself off all fours and stood and took steps for the first time; and here that Jasper made his greatest strides in learning to read, using a crudely-printed chap-book Grainne had bought from a pedlar. But despite these diversions, and the walks we took around the town and along the river when the rain cleared, the days crawled past. At long last, however, after the slowest fortnight I have ever experienced, Hobgoblin was pronounced sound and fully recovered by the ostler of our inn, who had been tending her daily with poultices and liniments, and had lovingly restored her to her former spectacular glossy beauty. And so on the third day of April, seven months after we had left Oxford, we set out on the last lap of our journey.
