Beloved Enemy, page 32
“I have been sent to bring you back to the village,” he said, peering over her shoulder to where a toothless crone sat by the fire, stirring something in an iron cauldron. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as a wall-eyed cat brushed against his leg, and he took an involuntary step backward, away from whatever witchcraft was contained in the dilapidated hovel.
“I am not coming back,” Ginny stated flatly. “I have supped full of horrors these last days, and I will not lay my head in a place where the gibbets swing beneath my casement. You may come for me in the morning, when you are ready to leave. I will stay here with Dame Barton, who has much wisdom to impart.”
“There are no gibbets,” Diccon said uneasily, wishing he were miles away from the ancient dame and her cat and the aromatic contents of that cauldron in the spider-hung cottage. “The prisoners are to be taken to Nottingham, and the general doesn’t wish you to roam the countryside alone.”
The old woman cackled scornfully at this. “She’ll be coming to no harm,” she said, “too much sense and too much knowledge, that one, for all that she’s got a babe’s head on her shoulders.”
“You flatter me, dame,” Ginny laughed, before saying seriously to Diccon, “There are to be no hangings?”
Diccon shook his head. “We’re to stop early for the day, give the men a chance to cook a decent supper and look to their clothes and armor. We’ll all be glad of the respite.”
“And the general?” she inquired, eyebrows raised. “What is his mood? Perhaps I would still be better advised to pass the night here with Dame Barton?”
“I could not say.” Diccon shuffled his feet, embarrassed. “He did not appear greatly annoyed after you had left.”
“Then I will return, but not yet. You may go back and tell the general that I am quite safe, and that I am learning from Dame Barton, who has knowledge of some most effective simples.”
Diccon had little doubt of that, although for preference would have substituted the word spells for simples. But he had no authority over Ginny and could see no alternative to his returning to the village empty-handed. “May I, at least, say what time you will come back?”
“Before supper,” Ginny reassured him. “Dame Barton has little enough for herself, without sharing it.”
“True enough,” the old dame said with another cackle. “But there’s nettles aplenty out back. They’ll make a fine soup, if someone’s prepared to pick ’em.”
“Off you go, Diccon.” Ginny gave him a little push. “You are not at all comfortable here, and I am wasting precious time. There is much I would ask Dame Barton.” She closed the door on him firmly, and the lieutenant remounted and rode disconsolately back to the village.
“Could you not find her?” Alex demanded, anxiety rasping harsh in his voice.
“I found her, sir, with an old dame some two miles away. She said she would return for supper, but wished to talk with the crone.” Diccon grimaced. “Unsavory place it was, sir—smelled of witchcraft.”
“Oh, do not be absurd,” Alex reproved briskly. “This fear of witches grows to epidemic proportions. I’ll have no further talk of it.”
“Sir.” Diccon saluted stiffly, hurt apparent in every line of his rigid body.
Alex controlled his quivering lip. “You are dismissed, Lieutenant.” When Diccon had gone, he turned back to the others, gathered in the kitchen of a substantial farmhouse that was to provide their quarters for the night. “I’ll not encourage this rabid talk of witches. It grows worse the further north we march. It is getting to the point where every old woman with a cat and a little skill at physicking is suspect.” Knowing that did little to ease his mind at Ginny’s prolonged absence. If she was in suspect company, exchanging recipes and cures, picking herbs in the fields, she could easily fall foul of superstitious countryfolk. He sighed in weary exasperation. He was no longer concerned about her rebel activities; the Royalists hereabouts were on the run, the uprisings quelled, and there was little harm she could do to Parliament’s cause. Neither was he afraid that she would attempt to leave him. But now, it seemed, he had something else to fear from her lone wanderings, and attempting to forbid those wanderings would inevitably lead to a major confrontation.
When she eventually appeared, however, she brought him something much more pressing to worry about. She burst into the farm kitchen, drawing off her gloves, tossing her hat onto the table. “There is dysentery in the camp, Alex.”
Alex groaned. “How do you know?”
“As I was coming back, a corporal waylaid me, wanting to know if I had anything to help him because he’d been stopping every mile or so along the march today, he and the rest of his troop.”
There was silence as they all absorbed the implications of this. Dysentery would run like wildfire throughout the division, the march would have to be slowed to a snail’s pace to accommodate the need for constant stops, and the men would grow weaker by the day. “As far as I could gather,” Ginny went on calmly, “it is only the one troop so far. I told the sergeant to dig separate jakes for them and pitch their tents away from the others. They should cook and eat separately. It would be best not to march tomorrow, so that it can be determined if the outbreak has spread further, and those who have it can be immediately isolated.”
“God’s death! I cannot afford another day’s delay,” Alex exclaimed, pummeling his clenched fist into his palm.
“If you do not, you will be able to make little speed in a day or so when the entire division is afflicted,” she pointed out unarguably. “At present, the symptoms do not appear to be severe, and we can hope to keep it contained. I can help a small number of men, but not the entire division. I do not have sufficient sulphur.”
Sulphur, Alex thought. What the devil had sulphur to do with dysentery? Presumably yet another of Ginny’s mysterious but potent healing formulas. He paced the quarry-stone floor until he could accept the inevitable, if not with a good grace, at least with resignation. “Very well, we will remain here tomorrow. It will provide the opportunity to drill the division and smarten things up. There has been some laxity on the march. I will leave the arrangements to you, gentlemen.” He nodded at his colonels. “I will hold a review of the troops on the green at ten tomorrow. It will be a sight for the villagers and will inspire the men.”
“Presumably not as well as a hanging,” Ginny muttered, unable to help the sardonic comment. The room emptied as if by magic, leaving only the general and his troublesome lady. “I crave pardon,” Ginny said swiftly. “That was unnecessary.”
“Since you emerged victorious in the matter, I would have to agree that gloating over your victory is indeed unnecessary,” Alex responded in a tone as dry as dust. He filled a cup with wine, took a slow sip, regarding her over the rim. “I cannot help what you do not like, Ginny I would spare you if I could, but these things, while unpleasant, are necessary.”
“Unpleasant!” she exclaimed. “Is that what you call the floggings and the pillory and the hangings? The torture of a helpless prisoner with no information of value is a mere unpleasantness?”
“The men need an outlet for their fury,” he said. “You forget that they face battle and disease, that they have been forced to leave their families for the second time in seven years, and all because there are those too stubborn to acknowledge the truth of final defeat.”
“I cannot accept that.” She turned from him. “My energies go in saving lives, General, not in taking them. In relieving suffering, not in creating it. We can never reach agreement on this.”
“Then can we agree to differ, sweetheart? I cannot bear to be so estranged.” He spoke softly, surprising Ginny, who had expected a snap of impatience at her refusal to see his point of view. “I listened to you this afternoon and will do so again, although I cannot always promise to follow your advice.”
“That is concession, indeed,” Ginny said with a shaky little smile. “I cannot bear to be estranged, either, my love, but I cannot bear the unnecessary shedding of blood. In battle . . .” She shrugged. “There, it is necessary, I suppose.”
“Will you come upstairs?” he asked quietly. “I have great need of you.”
In the chamber abovestairs, they resolved their differences in the only way they could, in the ephemeral joining of bodies that brought the joining of selves, and the reaffirmation of the magic that bound them through all divisiveness.
Chapter Eighteen
“Colonel Bonham, will you tell the general that I am gone to have further speech with Dame Barton?” Ginny came into the kitchen the following morning, drawing on her riding gloves.
“You will not watch the review?” the colonel asked. “It will be a rare sight.”
Ginny shook her head. “I do not doubt it, sir, but I have not had the luck to find such a one as Dame Barton in many months. I will sit at her feet and learn this day. Perhaps she will have some new insights into the dysentery or will know where I may acquire more sulphur.”
Colonel Bonham smiled. “I will inform the general, Ginny. May I tell him what time you expect to return?”
Ginny frowned. “I do not really know; it will depend on the dame and what plans she has. Perhaps you had better say not before supper; then he will not worry, and if I am back earlier, it will not matter.”
The colonel bowed gravely at this very sensible proposition, but he was unprepared for the reaction when he passed the message on to the general.
“Damnation!” Alex swore. “I do not wish for her to roam the countryside, and particularly not in the company of witches and warlocks!” Colonel Bonham coughed. “Oh, I do not mean that exactly,” Alex sighed. “But it is how such folk are designated by the ignorant in these parts, as well you know. I will go in search of her after the review, although how I am to bring her back without a scene, I cannot imagine. Mistress Virginia Courtney does not take too kindly to restrictions on her movements, as I am sure you are aware”.
The colonel confessed that he had indeed noticed this on one or two occasions, and Alex chuckled ruefully, leading Colonel Bonham to reflect that the advent of Mistress Courtney in his life had wrought some changes for the better in General Marshall, had certainly had an agreeably softening effect on the rigidly principled commander.
When Ginny reached Dame Barton’s cottage, she discovered she was not the only visitor. A distraught, middle-aged couple, holding a pallid, inert baby, huddled against the inside wall, watching in the gloom as the old woman mixed a paste in a mortar, grinding it with a pestle and muttering to herself.
“Good morrow, dame,” Ginny greeted her cheerfully, pushing through the door. “What’s to do?” She smiled inquiringly at the couple.
“ ’Tis the babe,” the dame said. “Has a sleepin’ sickness.” She grunted. “Folks don’t come near the old woman most times, ‘ceptin’ when they’re scared to death of death itself.”
“May I see the child?” Ginny held out her arms, and the mother gave her the baby.
“It is our only child, mistress,” she said in a low voice. “A miracle after all these years, and there’ll not be another; I’m at the end of my time.”
Ginny nodded and carried the infant out into the sunshine, laying it on the grass and beginning to unwrap the swaddling blankets from the little limbs. The father demanded with nervous anger to know what she was doing. “I wish to see him properly,” she replied, examining the naked body carefully. “How long has he been like this?”
“A week,” the mother answered. “He was quite well until a week ago. You know of these things, mistress? Like the dame?”
“Dame Barton has more knowledge than I,” Ginny replied, “but I have some small skill, although I confess this puzzles me. There is nothing to indicate what it could be.” Wrapping the child again, she handed him back to his mother and returned to the cottage. “What think you, dame?”
“Somethin’ lackin’ in the milk,” the old woman said briefly. “Seen it several times.” She put the paste on a broad, damp green leaf and rolled it tightly, then stood up, groaning as her stiff limbs creaked, hobbling outside to where the couple waited. “Give him this, goodwife, and find a healthy wet nurse as soon as may be. Your milk’s not good.”
With hastily garbled thanks and the exchange of the leaf for a coin, the couple made off with the baby across the fields. Ginny watched them go, her lip curled slightly. They could not wait to get away from the old dame and her dilapidated cottage and her potions, until the next time they found themselves in straits desperate enough to warrant the dangerous contact.
The morning passed rapidly and pleasantly in the fields and hedgerows where they gathered flowers, herbs, and berries, Ginny listening and noting all the while as Dame Barton imparted her wisdom in throwaway statements. It was early afternoon when they returned to the cottage, and at the sight that met them, Ginny went cold and sick with fear.
A crowd milled around the cottage, brandishing staves and rope. The wall-eyed cat hung head down from the branch of the sapling, and the dame’s few sticks of furniture, her cooking pots and scraps of linen were flung higgledy-piggledy onto the grass. Dame Barton gave a great cry of sorrow and anger when she saw the murdered cat and tottered toward the group, who turned faces, twisted with the fear that breeds unreasoning hatred, toward the two women. An ugly murmur rose and swelled, and the group advanced on them.
“What is the matter?” Ginny tried to sound calm, to keep her voice from shaking. “What business have you with Dame Barton? You have no right to—”
“Rights!” someone exclaimed. “Witches have no rights. Seize ’em!”
“No! You are mad—let me go—” Ginny fought the hands that grabbed her; kicking, clawing, and spitting, she struggled against inevitable captivity, but they caught her wrists, bending her arms up against her back so she cried out in pain, yanking on her hair until she thought it would be pulled from her scalp. “I am no witch!” she yelled frantically, feeling the rough cord pulled tight around her wrists, seeing Dame Barton on her knees, sobbing as she was punched and kicked while they bound her hands also.
“The witch finder’ll tell soon enough,” the middle-aged woman of this morning hissed, bringing her face close to Ginny’s. “My babe’s going to die because of your witchcraft, yours and the dame’s. I heard you whisper your spells over him when you laid him naked on the grass, poking at him, laying the devil’s curse on him.”
“You are talking nonsense.” Ginny tried to turn her head away from the hot breath, fetid with rage, that blasted her face, but her head was held fast by whoever still hung on to her braid. “There were no spells, and I did not touch the child except to see if his limbs were whole.”
The woman hit her in the face with her open hand, using the full force of her arm, and Ginny fell into a shocked silence, as her ears rang and she tasted the blood from her cut lip. There were no words to convince this mob of her innocence, but if they were to be taken to the witch finder, then at least she would hear the charges laid clearly, and perhaps they could be answered.
The mob dragged them through the fields, Ginny stumbling as she was poked and prodded, and her heart went out to Dame Barton who had neither youth nor strength to help her counteract the roughness of her handling. Where were they taking them? Not to the village where the division was quartered, but away from it, so there seemed little chance that someone who knew her might see her plight and come to her aid. It would have to be a substantial hamlet if it boasted a witch finder.... The reflections raced through her head as she thought of and as quickly discarded plans for escape. There were none, unless some miracle brought rescue, or with sweet reason she could convince a mob mad for vengeance and an implacable witch finder with his pins.
Alex had little time throughout the morning to give thought to his wandering mistress. After the review he went on an unannounced walk through the camp, stopping to talk with the troopers as they scrubbed clothes in wooden washtubs, bent over their cooking pots, cleaned armor. The general joked and laughed with them, listened to grievances and opinions as if they were of genuine importance to him in the business of commanding the division, and gave short shrift to an incensed surgeon complaining about the orders given to isolate the troopers with dysentery. Such a precaution seemed ridiculous to the chirurgeon, unheard of in all his days in the army. “Well, now you have heard of it,” General Marshall said curtly, “and I’ll hear no more from you, unless you’ve a wish to visit the guardhouse!”
He strode back to the farmhouse, his good mood somewhat dissipated, and gave orders to Jed to saddle Bucephalus. “Diccon?”
“General?” The aide-de-camp appeared instantly.
“Furnish me with directions to this dame’s cottage,” he demanded, cutting a slice from the loaf of barley bread on the table, taking a deep gulp of ale. He listened while consuming this hasty repast, then went back outside to where Jed was waiting with his horse.
“Like me to come too, General?” Jed asked.
“By which you mean that you’ve a mind for the outing,” Alex responded with a chuckle. “Aye, by all means bear me company.”
It was a peaceful ride on a sunny afternoon across the fields to the stone cottage, and the two men rode in the companionable silence that came from long intimacy. As the cottage came into sight, Alex let fly a string of oaths, spurring Bucephalus forward, Jed on his sturdy cob pounding behind. A small boy was picking through the pathetic heap of Dame Barton’s possessions as Alex flung himself from his horse before the animal had come to a full stop.
“What the devil’s been going on here?” He shook the lad vigorously, and the boy whimpered, his eyes wide with a fright that stoppered his tongue.
“Easy now, General,” Jed said. “If he’s got anythin’ to say, you’ll not hear it if you shake him like a terrier with a rat.”
Alex’s eyes fell on the dead cat swinging from the tree, and with another oath he pulled his knife from his belt and cut the animal down.
