Beloved Enemy, page 33
“Took ‘em for witches,” the boy babbled. “Both of ’em, the young ’un and the old.”
“Where?” Alex snapped.
“To the witch finder—in Mowbray,” his informant replied. “Swim ’em, like as not.”
The color drained from the general’s face, leaving it gray beneath the suntan. “How long ago, boy?”
The lad squinted up at the sun and frowned. “Sun was over yonder trees,” he said, pointing.
“A good two hours, I’d say, General,” Jed put in quietly. “We’d best get a move on.”
Ginny closed her eyes against the sounds, the smells, the press of bodies jostling her in the market square of Melton Mowbray. A trestle table stood in the center of the square, beside it the witch finder in a suit of broadcloth worn shiny with age and none too clean. Dame Barton was laid upon the table, rough hands stripping the frail old body, exposing to the crowd the wrinkled skin and sagging breasts, the fleshless thighs and haunches. Ginny tried to blank out her mind, tried not to think of what they would do to her when they were finished with the dame.
The charges of witchcraft were jumbled, a mishmash of stories involving stricken crops and cows with the murrain, of mother’s milk turned sour, and someone’s aunt struck down with agonizing pains and a doll stuck with pins found in the barn. But the most damning evidence came from the parents of the child for whom the dame had provided medicine. Upon receiving just a touch of the white paste on the tip of his tongue, the babe had gone into violent convulsions and was now worse than before. In vain, did the old woman protest that that was an effect to be expected, that the child would not die, that they should continue with the potion, and with a healthy wet nurse he would regain his strength.
They pointed the finger at Ginny, who had muttered curses over the helpless babe, had stripped him and laid him down on the grass, prodding at his limbs with evil bewitchment, so that they would convulse and twist. There was nothing to be said in defense, Ginny thought, as the lethargy of desperation crept over her like a paralysis. They would examine her for the mark as they were doing with the dame. The witch finder would stick the long pin into her flesh to see if she would bleed, and then, because the evidence would not be conclusive, they would swim her, throw her bound into the river to see if she would sink or if the pure water would reject one who had dishonored her baptism by becoming a witch. Either way, death was inevitable.
They had finished with the dame now and cries of, “to the river to swim the witch,” went up. The scrawny, naked old woman was carted off to the riverbank, and hands seized Ginny and flung her onto the table. Again she tried to close her mind, to take herself out of her body so that she would not feel the shame of exposure, but she could not blank out the hands on her skin, rough and calloused, as they pulled away her clothes, and she could not shut out the ribald comments as she felt the warmth of the sun on her body, laid bare upon the table. The witch finder would discover the mole that so delighted Alex, high up on the inside of her right thigh, and he would stick the long pin into its center to see if it would bleed, and if it did not, it would be proved the witch’s mark. She did not know if it would bleed, knew only that she wished for death, now; that there was nothing in life that could compensate for this degradation, or for the appalling fear that set her limbs quivering and black spots dancing behind her eyelids. The witch finder raised the long, sharp pin, drove it into a small freckle on her abdomen, and the black spots coalesced and swallowed her in merciful oblivion.
The two horsemen pounded down the dusty lane that led into the village of Melton Mowbray. There was no sign of life, the cottages with their front doors standing open, their tenants gone to view the spectacle in the square.
Alex had feared for himself on many occasions; he had known the liquid weakening of his gut, the uncontrollable shaking of his legs and hands that preceded the moment of danger, then the cool, clear flow of adrenaline once he was in the midst of the worst. Now he was afraid for someone other than himself, and the symptoms were the same, but there was no relief because he was not facing the danger himself. Bucephalus, unused to the spur, thundered into the market square, rearing up on his hindquarters at the unkind prod. The crowd around the table fell back, gazing upward in fear-struck wonder as if the devil himself had come amongst them on his black charger. And, indeed, the man with the blazing green eyes, flourishing a broad sword, the sun glinting off the close-cropped auburn head could well have emerged from satanic depths, so wrathful was his mien.
Alex saw the still figure on the table, the silky smooth skin that he could feel just by looking at her, the tactile curves of bosom and hip, the soft dark triangle at the base of her belly that would yield to his curling fingers.... Then he saw the bright spot of blood on her belly, harsh against the whiteness of her skin; he saw the man in his worn, shiny suit holding the pin from which blood dripped; and with a bellow of rage, he flung himself from his horse, cutting a swath through the crowd with wide sweeps of his sword.
Jed stilled Bucephalus with a symphony of low, clicking noises, gathering up the reins, averting his eyes discreetly from the table and its inert offering. Then the sight was blocked out by the broad frame, and pandemonium broke loose as Parliament’s general raged, heaping curses and threats of perdition on a now-terrified mob, who shrank away from a man who had the power to carry out those threats, who could hang every man jack of them for traitors if he so wished. The witch finder went down to the cobbles under a fist that brought instant unconsciousness, and Ginny came back to reality as she was pulled into a sitting position, an arm, familiar in its strength, behind her back, the comforting, familiar scent of Alex driving away the nightmare as her head was buried in his shirt. Her arms were pushed into long sleeves, and she was no longer naked under the sun and the burning eyes of strangers in the middle of a market square.
For a moment, almost overpowered by relief, Ginny thought she would swoon again as Alex picked her up in his arms and pushed his way through the stunned crowd to where Jed stood holding the two horses. Jed took the burden while Alex mounted, then reached down for her, and throughout Ginny was unable to say anything, shivering and shaking with the aftermath, her throat dry as the desert, her tongue seemingly swollen against the roof of her mouth. Then, as the certainty of safety finally became fact in her mind, that the arms around her, the broad, shirtless chest at her back were real and not figments of a fevered, petrified imagination, she remembered Dame Barton and what they would be doing to her, those who had taken off the one witch, more interested in the new sport of swimming the crone then staying to watch the witch finder prick the young one.
“Alex . . . Dame Barton . . .” She struggled to sit upright on the saddle. “You must save her. They have taken her to the river to swim her.”
“Dear God, Ginny! Is it not enough that I have to pluck you naked from the filthy hands of those swine, without—”
“Please ...” she whispered, the gray eyes haunted, bright with intensity. “She is old, and they have hurt her already. They will murder her if you do not do something.”
He was defenseless against those eyes, against the pleading for his compassionate response to the suffering of an old woman who meant nothing to him, was just another victim of superstition and fear, her only difference from all those others lying in the fact that she had attracted the friendship of Virginia Courtney. He turned his horse to the river.
Jed kept his own counsel as he followed on the cob. If the general chose to ride bare-chested around the countryside, with a seminaked woman on his saddle, rescuing witches from the river, it was not Jed’s business. However, if asked, he would venture the opinion that Mistress Courtney had the devil’s own ability for finding trouble, and if the general had a grain of common sense, he would keep a close eye on her in future.
A small stone bridge traversed the river, and as they reached the middle of the bridge, Ginny gave a cry of outrage and would have flung herself from Bucephalus if Alex had not grabbed a handful of his shirt at her waist. The old dame was a waterlogged bundle bobbing in the middle of the river. On the banks on either side stood a jeering crowd of men, women, and children throwing sticks and stones at the bundle, from which thin gray wisps of hair straggled on the brown surface of the water. What had once been Dame Barton went down beneath the water as a plank of wood struck her head, then bobbed up again.
Bucephalus pounded across the bridge and onto the far bank. Alex leaped to the ground and snatched a hooked pole from the hand of a laughing farmer, whose jeering mirth ceased abruptly at the palpable fury radiating from this man. Ginny had been left on Bucephalus and, while she would willingly have essayed the leap to the ground way below, was conscious of the fact that Alex’s shirt barely reached her knees and she could not possibly leave her perch with any decency.
Alex fished at the inert bundle with the hook, catching at last on one of the ropes that bound it. He drew the old woman to the bank and waded into the shallows to lift the sodden, shapeless mass that now bore little resemblance to humanity.
Ginny pressed her hand to her mouth as she swallowed the bitter lump of nausea that rose in her throat. They had tied the dame, bent double, her wrists bound to her ankles, and the figure lay in this contorted position, water dripping from the thin gray straggles of hair on her body where blood streaked from the missiles that had found their mark. One eye hung loose on the thin cheek, and Ginny, careless now of modesty, fell from Bucephalus and crawled into the bushes to vomit helplessly in disgust and shame at man’s inhumanity to man.
Alex cut the bonds and straightened the pathetic, saturated, shrunken frame of what had once been a woman, that still bore all the marks of womanhood, but as a travesty. What would Ginny expect him to do now? Exact vengeance on this brutish, now-silent group? On one or two of the faces there stirred a flicker of conscience as the mob fury died and they saw what it had led to. It was hard to imagine there would have been anything evil or menacing about that ruined bundle lying in a puddle on the grass.
“Bury her!” Alex swung round slowly, his eyes hard as he stared at each member of the crowd. “Decently!” He turned to the soldier, standing rigid by his horse. “Jed, see that it is done. If it is not, bring word to the camp, and I’ll have every man, woman, and child pilloried!” Without waiting to see the effect of his words, he went over to the bushes where Ginny still crouched, no longer retching but sobbing weakly, his shirt clinging damply to her back where the cold sweat filmed.
“It is done,” he said gently, stroking her back. “You must begin to put this behind you now.” Bending, he drew her to her feet, lifting her ravaged face as he wiped it dry with his kerchief. She made no protest, submitted in silence to being lifted again onto Bucephalus, averting her eyes from the scene at the riverbank.
“You!” Alex pointed suddenly at a woman in a long, fringed shawl. “I want your shawl.” He tossed a coin on the grass in front of her and twitched the garment from her shoulders. “You may replace it with the clothes you ripped from your witches!” He handed the shawl up to Ginny. “Put this around you, you cannot possibly enter the camp in only that shirt.”
Ginny recoiled from the garment as from something loathsome, but she knew he was right and grimly wrapped herself in the voluminous folds of material that came well below her knees.
They rode back to the encampment in silence, Ginny still shivering periodically, Alex struggling with his anger now that he knew he had her safe. His earlier, dreadful fear for her was still vivid in his mind, and he did not think he would ever be able to banish the image of her inert body, lying exposed in the market square, or the image of what had once been Dame Barton and the thought that half an hour later, and it would have been Ginny he fished from the river.
There was no possible way their return could be accomplished without drawing attention—not when the general had no shirt and Mistress Courtney was bare-legged, barefoot, and wrapped most strangely. Alex looked neither to right nor left as he rode into the village and up to the farmhouse. Ginny, who had suffered so much already this afternoon she had thought herself immune from ordinary mortification or embarrassment, found that she was wrong. Her cheeks flamed at the concerned faces of the officers gathered around the farmhouse door, and the minute her feet touched ground she fled upstairs, clutching the shawl around her.
“What the devil happened, sir?” Colonel Bonham followed Alex into the kitchen. “Is Ginny hurt?”
“No—by some miracle,” Alex returned shortly. “At least, she is unharmed physically. There are other wounds that will take considerable healing.” He poured ale from the pitcher and drank deeply before telling the colonel the full story.
“Should I send a detachment to Mowbray, sir, to aid Jed?”
“Aye, that you can, Nick. ’Tis a good thought, though Jed’ll stand in no need of support. But a show of strength against those murdering louts will not come amiss.” Alex drained his tankard and went upstairs to the chamber he shared with Ginny. The door was locked. “Virginia, open the door.” He kept his voice low, without annoyance, but there was no response. He repeated the request calmly, listening for any sound beyond the oak. When, again, there was nothing, fear began to nibble at the edges of his calm. What was she doing? Her experiences of the afternoon could have been enough to overset reason . . . No, that was ridiculous. Ginny was level-headed, always rational. He tried again.
“Ginny, if you wish to be alone, I understand, but I want you to unlock the door.”
Ginny, curled on the bed like a small, wounded animal, heard the sounds of his words but not the sense. She remained still and silent. Alex felt the nibbling fear threaten to blossom into full-blown panic. “If you do not open this door by the time I have counted to five, Virginia, I will have it broken down!” It was no idle threat, half-a-dozen broad soldiers and a battering ram, and this solid, iron-hinged door would crack like a boiled egg. Three of his officers appeared at the head of the stairs, drawn by his voice that was no longer even. Alex swung his booted foot at the door with full force and bellowed, “One!”
The violent sound penetrated Ginny’s daze, and her eyes snapped into focus. Another kick accompanied a shouted, “Two!” She leaped from the bed, suddenly totally aware of her surroundings again. Her fingers fumbled with the bolt, yanking it back as the door shivered beneath a third blow. The door flew open with such violent force that she was obliged to jump backward, catching a brief glimpse of the startled faces behind a livid Alex. “Don’t you ever lock yourself in again, do you understand me?” He was in the chamber, and the door slammed behind him on the interested group.
Ginny just stood and looked at him, blinking, for the moment speechless. “Do you understand?” he repeated, glaring at her, hands firmly planted on his hips. Ginny nodded. “Quite apart from the fact that I was concerned for you, my possessions were behind that door, and I need a clean shirt,” he said rather more quietly, somewhat mollified by her total lack of resistance.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Somehow, I didn’t seem to hear you properly.”
“Mmmm.” He scratched his head, his expression softening. “Well, perhaps you had better wash out your ears, because I will not tolerate a repetition.”
“No,” Ginny agreed meekly. “Shall I pass you a clean shirt?”
Alex looked at her suspiciously but could see not a flicker of her usual mischievous teasing in the gray eyes. She appeared subdued to the point of being cowed, but instead of gratifying him, this condition merely served to rouse his anger again, as yet further evidence of this afternoon’s terrors. “I have something to say to you,” he stated, “and you had better listen carefully because I only intend saying it once.” He took the shirt she handed him with a muttered word of thanks, waiting for some reaction to his uncompromising statement. When there was none, he continued in the same tone. “Not only will you never again leave the camp unescorted, but you will go nowhere without my specific permission. If I am not available to give it on any occasion, you will wait until I am. Do I make myself clear?”
Ginny felt the first slight stirrings of annoyance piercing the numbness. She did not think, at this moment, that she would ever want to leave the camp again, with or without an escort, but that was something for her to decide. “There is no need to use that tone of voice,” she said, turning to pick up the shirt that she had discarded earlier.
“There is every need!” Alex swung her round to face him. “I am not prepared to endure such an afternoon again. If you dare go off without my permission, so help me, I will—” He stopped, unwilling to articulate the threat that came easily to his lips but that he knew he would be unable to fulfil.
“You will what?” Ginny taunted, some of the old fire back in her eyes.
Suddenly he smiled. “A wise man, my dear Ginny, does not utter either threats or promises that he knows he cannot keep. Promise me you will do as I ask.”
“I will promise not to leave the camp unescorted,” she said slowly, “and I promise that I will tell you where I am going beforehand. Will that do?”
“Perfectly, since any escort you have must have my permission to accompany you, it all comes to the same thing, it seems to me.” His eyebrows lifted, lightly mocking, waiting for the flare that would tell him she was almost back to herself again. But instead she crept into his arms, burrowing against his chest, and he carried her over to the bed, lying down with her, stroking her hair while she wept the pure tears of release and eventually fell asleep, drained but cleansed.
Chapter Nineteen
Nottingham Castle was a gray, forbidding mass of stone, Parliament’s pennant flying from the keep. There were other, less attractive decorations adorning the castle walls, but Ginny now scarcely noticed the severed rebel heads. There was too much to do worrying about the living, without fruitless anguish over the long dead.
The division was to be quartered overnight within the castle, the general and his officers, because of overcrowding, in a requisitioned inn in the town. Alex reached this agreement in consultation with the castle’s governor, then came over to Ginny who, in her usual retiring fashion in unfamiliar surroundings, had seated herself in a corner of the messroom while waiting for dispositions to be made.
“Where?” Alex snapped.
“To the witch finder—in Mowbray,” his informant replied. “Swim ’em, like as not.”
The color drained from the general’s face, leaving it gray beneath the suntan. “How long ago, boy?”
The lad squinted up at the sun and frowned. “Sun was over yonder trees,” he said, pointing.
“A good two hours, I’d say, General,” Jed put in quietly. “We’d best get a move on.”
Ginny closed her eyes against the sounds, the smells, the press of bodies jostling her in the market square of Melton Mowbray. A trestle table stood in the center of the square, beside it the witch finder in a suit of broadcloth worn shiny with age and none too clean. Dame Barton was laid upon the table, rough hands stripping the frail old body, exposing to the crowd the wrinkled skin and sagging breasts, the fleshless thighs and haunches. Ginny tried to blank out her mind, tried not to think of what they would do to her when they were finished with the dame.
The charges of witchcraft were jumbled, a mishmash of stories involving stricken crops and cows with the murrain, of mother’s milk turned sour, and someone’s aunt struck down with agonizing pains and a doll stuck with pins found in the barn. But the most damning evidence came from the parents of the child for whom the dame had provided medicine. Upon receiving just a touch of the white paste on the tip of his tongue, the babe had gone into violent convulsions and was now worse than before. In vain, did the old woman protest that that was an effect to be expected, that the child would not die, that they should continue with the potion, and with a healthy wet nurse he would regain his strength.
They pointed the finger at Ginny, who had muttered curses over the helpless babe, had stripped him and laid him down on the grass, prodding at his limbs with evil bewitchment, so that they would convulse and twist. There was nothing to be said in defense, Ginny thought, as the lethargy of desperation crept over her like a paralysis. They would examine her for the mark as they were doing with the dame. The witch finder would stick the long pin into her flesh to see if she would bleed, and then, because the evidence would not be conclusive, they would swim her, throw her bound into the river to see if she would sink or if the pure water would reject one who had dishonored her baptism by becoming a witch. Either way, death was inevitable.
They had finished with the dame now and cries of, “to the river to swim the witch,” went up. The scrawny, naked old woman was carted off to the riverbank, and hands seized Ginny and flung her onto the table. Again she tried to close her mind, to take herself out of her body so that she would not feel the shame of exposure, but she could not blank out the hands on her skin, rough and calloused, as they pulled away her clothes, and she could not shut out the ribald comments as she felt the warmth of the sun on her body, laid bare upon the table. The witch finder would discover the mole that so delighted Alex, high up on the inside of her right thigh, and he would stick the long pin into its center to see if it would bleed, and if it did not, it would be proved the witch’s mark. She did not know if it would bleed, knew only that she wished for death, now; that there was nothing in life that could compensate for this degradation, or for the appalling fear that set her limbs quivering and black spots dancing behind her eyelids. The witch finder raised the long, sharp pin, drove it into a small freckle on her abdomen, and the black spots coalesced and swallowed her in merciful oblivion.
The two horsemen pounded down the dusty lane that led into the village of Melton Mowbray. There was no sign of life, the cottages with their front doors standing open, their tenants gone to view the spectacle in the square.
Alex had feared for himself on many occasions; he had known the liquid weakening of his gut, the uncontrollable shaking of his legs and hands that preceded the moment of danger, then the cool, clear flow of adrenaline once he was in the midst of the worst. Now he was afraid for someone other than himself, and the symptoms were the same, but there was no relief because he was not facing the danger himself. Bucephalus, unused to the spur, thundered into the market square, rearing up on his hindquarters at the unkind prod. The crowd around the table fell back, gazing upward in fear-struck wonder as if the devil himself had come amongst them on his black charger. And, indeed, the man with the blazing green eyes, flourishing a broad sword, the sun glinting off the close-cropped auburn head could well have emerged from satanic depths, so wrathful was his mien.
Alex saw the still figure on the table, the silky smooth skin that he could feel just by looking at her, the tactile curves of bosom and hip, the soft dark triangle at the base of her belly that would yield to his curling fingers.... Then he saw the bright spot of blood on her belly, harsh against the whiteness of her skin; he saw the man in his worn, shiny suit holding the pin from which blood dripped; and with a bellow of rage, he flung himself from his horse, cutting a swath through the crowd with wide sweeps of his sword.
Jed stilled Bucephalus with a symphony of low, clicking noises, gathering up the reins, averting his eyes discreetly from the table and its inert offering. Then the sight was blocked out by the broad frame, and pandemonium broke loose as Parliament’s general raged, heaping curses and threats of perdition on a now-terrified mob, who shrank away from a man who had the power to carry out those threats, who could hang every man jack of them for traitors if he so wished. The witch finder went down to the cobbles under a fist that brought instant unconsciousness, and Ginny came back to reality as she was pulled into a sitting position, an arm, familiar in its strength, behind her back, the comforting, familiar scent of Alex driving away the nightmare as her head was buried in his shirt. Her arms were pushed into long sleeves, and she was no longer naked under the sun and the burning eyes of strangers in the middle of a market square.
For a moment, almost overpowered by relief, Ginny thought she would swoon again as Alex picked her up in his arms and pushed his way through the stunned crowd to where Jed stood holding the two horses. Jed took the burden while Alex mounted, then reached down for her, and throughout Ginny was unable to say anything, shivering and shaking with the aftermath, her throat dry as the desert, her tongue seemingly swollen against the roof of her mouth. Then, as the certainty of safety finally became fact in her mind, that the arms around her, the broad, shirtless chest at her back were real and not figments of a fevered, petrified imagination, she remembered Dame Barton and what they would be doing to her, those who had taken off the one witch, more interested in the new sport of swimming the crone then staying to watch the witch finder prick the young one.
“Alex . . . Dame Barton . . .” She struggled to sit upright on the saddle. “You must save her. They have taken her to the river to swim her.”
“Dear God, Ginny! Is it not enough that I have to pluck you naked from the filthy hands of those swine, without—”
“Please ...” she whispered, the gray eyes haunted, bright with intensity. “She is old, and they have hurt her already. They will murder her if you do not do something.”
He was defenseless against those eyes, against the pleading for his compassionate response to the suffering of an old woman who meant nothing to him, was just another victim of superstition and fear, her only difference from all those others lying in the fact that she had attracted the friendship of Virginia Courtney. He turned his horse to the river.
Jed kept his own counsel as he followed on the cob. If the general chose to ride bare-chested around the countryside, with a seminaked woman on his saddle, rescuing witches from the river, it was not Jed’s business. However, if asked, he would venture the opinion that Mistress Courtney had the devil’s own ability for finding trouble, and if the general had a grain of common sense, he would keep a close eye on her in future.
A small stone bridge traversed the river, and as they reached the middle of the bridge, Ginny gave a cry of outrage and would have flung herself from Bucephalus if Alex had not grabbed a handful of his shirt at her waist. The old dame was a waterlogged bundle bobbing in the middle of the river. On the banks on either side stood a jeering crowd of men, women, and children throwing sticks and stones at the bundle, from which thin gray wisps of hair straggled on the brown surface of the water. What had once been Dame Barton went down beneath the water as a plank of wood struck her head, then bobbed up again.
Bucephalus pounded across the bridge and onto the far bank. Alex leaped to the ground and snatched a hooked pole from the hand of a laughing farmer, whose jeering mirth ceased abruptly at the palpable fury radiating from this man. Ginny had been left on Bucephalus and, while she would willingly have essayed the leap to the ground way below, was conscious of the fact that Alex’s shirt barely reached her knees and she could not possibly leave her perch with any decency.
Alex fished at the inert bundle with the hook, catching at last on one of the ropes that bound it. He drew the old woman to the bank and waded into the shallows to lift the sodden, shapeless mass that now bore little resemblance to humanity.
Ginny pressed her hand to her mouth as she swallowed the bitter lump of nausea that rose in her throat. They had tied the dame, bent double, her wrists bound to her ankles, and the figure lay in this contorted position, water dripping from the thin gray straggles of hair on her body where blood streaked from the missiles that had found their mark. One eye hung loose on the thin cheek, and Ginny, careless now of modesty, fell from Bucephalus and crawled into the bushes to vomit helplessly in disgust and shame at man’s inhumanity to man.
Alex cut the bonds and straightened the pathetic, saturated, shrunken frame of what had once been a woman, that still bore all the marks of womanhood, but as a travesty. What would Ginny expect him to do now? Exact vengeance on this brutish, now-silent group? On one or two of the faces there stirred a flicker of conscience as the mob fury died and they saw what it had led to. It was hard to imagine there would have been anything evil or menacing about that ruined bundle lying in a puddle on the grass.
“Bury her!” Alex swung round slowly, his eyes hard as he stared at each member of the crowd. “Decently!” He turned to the soldier, standing rigid by his horse. “Jed, see that it is done. If it is not, bring word to the camp, and I’ll have every man, woman, and child pilloried!” Without waiting to see the effect of his words, he went over to the bushes where Ginny still crouched, no longer retching but sobbing weakly, his shirt clinging damply to her back where the cold sweat filmed.
“It is done,” he said gently, stroking her back. “You must begin to put this behind you now.” Bending, he drew her to her feet, lifting her ravaged face as he wiped it dry with his kerchief. She made no protest, submitted in silence to being lifted again onto Bucephalus, averting her eyes from the scene at the riverbank.
“You!” Alex pointed suddenly at a woman in a long, fringed shawl. “I want your shawl.” He tossed a coin on the grass in front of her and twitched the garment from her shoulders. “You may replace it with the clothes you ripped from your witches!” He handed the shawl up to Ginny. “Put this around you, you cannot possibly enter the camp in only that shirt.”
Ginny recoiled from the garment as from something loathsome, but she knew he was right and grimly wrapped herself in the voluminous folds of material that came well below her knees.
They rode back to the encampment in silence, Ginny still shivering periodically, Alex struggling with his anger now that he knew he had her safe. His earlier, dreadful fear for her was still vivid in his mind, and he did not think he would ever be able to banish the image of her inert body, lying exposed in the market square, or the image of what had once been Dame Barton and the thought that half an hour later, and it would have been Ginny he fished from the river.
There was no possible way their return could be accomplished without drawing attention—not when the general had no shirt and Mistress Courtney was bare-legged, barefoot, and wrapped most strangely. Alex looked neither to right nor left as he rode into the village and up to the farmhouse. Ginny, who had suffered so much already this afternoon she had thought herself immune from ordinary mortification or embarrassment, found that she was wrong. Her cheeks flamed at the concerned faces of the officers gathered around the farmhouse door, and the minute her feet touched ground she fled upstairs, clutching the shawl around her.
“What the devil happened, sir?” Colonel Bonham followed Alex into the kitchen. “Is Ginny hurt?”
“No—by some miracle,” Alex returned shortly. “At least, she is unharmed physically. There are other wounds that will take considerable healing.” He poured ale from the pitcher and drank deeply before telling the colonel the full story.
“Should I send a detachment to Mowbray, sir, to aid Jed?”
“Aye, that you can, Nick. ’Tis a good thought, though Jed’ll stand in no need of support. But a show of strength against those murdering louts will not come amiss.” Alex drained his tankard and went upstairs to the chamber he shared with Ginny. The door was locked. “Virginia, open the door.” He kept his voice low, without annoyance, but there was no response. He repeated the request calmly, listening for any sound beyond the oak. When, again, there was nothing, fear began to nibble at the edges of his calm. What was she doing? Her experiences of the afternoon could have been enough to overset reason . . . No, that was ridiculous. Ginny was level-headed, always rational. He tried again.
“Ginny, if you wish to be alone, I understand, but I want you to unlock the door.”
Ginny, curled on the bed like a small, wounded animal, heard the sounds of his words but not the sense. She remained still and silent. Alex felt the nibbling fear threaten to blossom into full-blown panic. “If you do not open this door by the time I have counted to five, Virginia, I will have it broken down!” It was no idle threat, half-a-dozen broad soldiers and a battering ram, and this solid, iron-hinged door would crack like a boiled egg. Three of his officers appeared at the head of the stairs, drawn by his voice that was no longer even. Alex swung his booted foot at the door with full force and bellowed, “One!”
The violent sound penetrated Ginny’s daze, and her eyes snapped into focus. Another kick accompanied a shouted, “Two!” She leaped from the bed, suddenly totally aware of her surroundings again. Her fingers fumbled with the bolt, yanking it back as the door shivered beneath a third blow. The door flew open with such violent force that she was obliged to jump backward, catching a brief glimpse of the startled faces behind a livid Alex. “Don’t you ever lock yourself in again, do you understand me?” He was in the chamber, and the door slammed behind him on the interested group.
Ginny just stood and looked at him, blinking, for the moment speechless. “Do you understand?” he repeated, glaring at her, hands firmly planted on his hips. Ginny nodded. “Quite apart from the fact that I was concerned for you, my possessions were behind that door, and I need a clean shirt,” he said rather more quietly, somewhat mollified by her total lack of resistance.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Somehow, I didn’t seem to hear you properly.”
“Mmmm.” He scratched his head, his expression softening. “Well, perhaps you had better wash out your ears, because I will not tolerate a repetition.”
“No,” Ginny agreed meekly. “Shall I pass you a clean shirt?”
Alex looked at her suspiciously but could see not a flicker of her usual mischievous teasing in the gray eyes. She appeared subdued to the point of being cowed, but instead of gratifying him, this condition merely served to rouse his anger again, as yet further evidence of this afternoon’s terrors. “I have something to say to you,” he stated, “and you had better listen carefully because I only intend saying it once.” He took the shirt she handed him with a muttered word of thanks, waiting for some reaction to his uncompromising statement. When there was none, he continued in the same tone. “Not only will you never again leave the camp unescorted, but you will go nowhere without my specific permission. If I am not available to give it on any occasion, you will wait until I am. Do I make myself clear?”
Ginny felt the first slight stirrings of annoyance piercing the numbness. She did not think, at this moment, that she would ever want to leave the camp again, with or without an escort, but that was something for her to decide. “There is no need to use that tone of voice,” she said, turning to pick up the shirt that she had discarded earlier.
“There is every need!” Alex swung her round to face him. “I am not prepared to endure such an afternoon again. If you dare go off without my permission, so help me, I will—” He stopped, unwilling to articulate the threat that came easily to his lips but that he knew he would be unable to fulfil.
“You will what?” Ginny taunted, some of the old fire back in her eyes.
Suddenly he smiled. “A wise man, my dear Ginny, does not utter either threats or promises that he knows he cannot keep. Promise me you will do as I ask.”
“I will promise not to leave the camp unescorted,” she said slowly, “and I promise that I will tell you where I am going beforehand. Will that do?”
“Perfectly, since any escort you have must have my permission to accompany you, it all comes to the same thing, it seems to me.” His eyebrows lifted, lightly mocking, waiting for the flare that would tell him she was almost back to herself again. But instead she crept into his arms, burrowing against his chest, and he carried her over to the bed, lying down with her, stroking her hair while she wept the pure tears of release and eventually fell asleep, drained but cleansed.
Chapter Nineteen
Nottingham Castle was a gray, forbidding mass of stone, Parliament’s pennant flying from the keep. There were other, less attractive decorations adorning the castle walls, but Ginny now scarcely noticed the severed rebel heads. There was too much to do worrying about the living, without fruitless anguish over the long dead.
The division was to be quartered overnight within the castle, the general and his officers, because of overcrowding, in a requisitioned inn in the town. Alex reached this agreement in consultation with the castle’s governor, then came over to Ginny who, in her usual retiring fashion in unfamiliar surroundings, had seated herself in a corner of the messroom while waiting for dispositions to be made.
