"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, bare-root, 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 shiirt?"
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 amp 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
19
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.
"Chicken,
I have many matters to discuss with the officers here. We shall be in
conference until dinner and probably long into the night. Do you wish to stay
in the castle until after dinner? Or would you rather go to the inn now, sup
there on your own, and retire early?"
Ginny
frowned. The idea of spending the rest of the day alone in a strange inn in a
strange town was not appealing. "I do not wish to be in the way, but I
would prefer to stay here. If I may go freely among the men, I too have matters
to attend to, some physicking—one or two injuries that require attention . .
."
Alex
nodded. "Go where you wish within the confines of the castle, then, and I
will send Diccon to find you when we dine."
Ginny
went out into the inner courtyard. It was a dark, brooding cobbled square where
the sun was a stranger, unable to strike down over the high stone walls that
seemed perpetually damp, as were the mired cobbles beneath her feet. With a
grimace, she crossed the square and went through the arch in the wall that gave
onto the larger, sunnier outer court. Here there were soldiers, some of whom
looked slightly askance at the extraordinary sight of a young woman in their
midst. She approached the sentry at the main gate to ask where General
Marshall's division was to be found.
"Far
side of the keep, mistress," she was told. "On the west hill."
The sentry saw her bewildered expression as she looked around the courtyard,
trying to work out how to reach the far side of the donjon, and took pity.
"Hey! You!" He beckoned at a passing corporal. "The mistress
here has business with General Marshall's division, on the west hill. Show her
the way, will you?"
"My
thanks, trooper." Ginny smiled at the sentry, then at her escort, who
simply nodded, striding ahead of her toward one of the circular towers standing
at the corners of the court. She scurried after him since he seemed disinclined
to slow down for her through a bewildering series of long passageways, whose
gloom was but slightly alleviated by narrow slits high up in the walls. Heavy,
iron-barred doors with shuttered peepholes were set into the walls. Cells,
Ginny presumed, as she hurried after her guide, holding up her skirts to
prevent soiling them on flagstones that looked as if they had not seen a mop
and water in years. Alex had told her not to wear her britches on today's ride
to Nottingham, on the grounds that they would be in strangers' company
overnight, in the midst of an army that was unaccustomed to the sight of a
respectable female in such guise.
After
countless serpentine twists and turns, the corporal opened a door at the end of
a narrow corridor, and Ginny found herself outside the castle, at the top of
the grassy hill sloping down to the town. The slope was covered with tents,
hardly a blade of grass visible, and the scene under the afternoon sun struck
Ginny, after the dreariness of the castle, as immensely cheerful. The familiar
call of the bugle summoned and dismissed in its regulatory, incessant fashion
as she made her way, skipping over guy ropes, toward the formation of tents
flying the pennant bearing Alex's shield. Her escort acknowledged her thanks
with another curt nod, then turned, and made his way back to the castle.
She
spent a pleasant hour among men whom she now thought of in much the same way as
she had thought of the tenants and servants of the great house at Alum Bay. She
heard many a story of the families left behind as she tended to the minor
ailments and injuries and dispensed sulphur to the dysentery sufferers, who
seemed to be getting no worse,
at least, and the sickness appeared to be still contained. She left the camp
when the position of the sun and the smells of cooking from the braziers
indicated suppertime. No soldier, friendly or otherwise, appeared conveniently
to offer guidance as she went back into the castle, and Ginny resigned herself
to relying on her imperfect memory to lead her safely through the warren of
passages.
She
was halfway down one of these passages, not a soul in sight when she heard the
eerily familiar sound for which not even familiarity could provide inurement.
Ginny paused at the barred door in the wall, pressing her ear against it. The
moaning came again, low but unmistakable. Standing on tiptoe, she pushed back
the shutter over the jailer's peephole, but it was too high to afford her a
view of anything but the wall opposite. The cell was in almost complete
darkness anvway. She glanced up and down the passage. It remained deserted. The
groaning came again, but this time there were words, indistinct but
recognizable.
"God
damn your eyes, you miserable bastard! Come in, or get your black soul away
from that door, and let me die in peace!"
Obviously,
the occupant of the cell had heard the opening of the peephole and assumed his
jailer was casting a cursory eye over his prisoner. Ginny pulled back on the
heavy bolts. They were heavy and had not seen oil in many months. It took her
nearly five anxious minutes of alternately pulling and twisting, while the
bolts scraped in complaint, the noise sounding to her ears like the clamoring
of church bells in the damp silence. At last, the door swung open with a
protesting whine and Ginny stood in the doorway, accustoming herself to the
gloom, wrinkling her nose at the fetid stench.