Authors: Jane Feather
Reckless Angel
Reckless Angel
“Odd's bones, Sir Daniel, I swear 'tis but a maid!”â¦
It was a week later when Tom rode up toâ¦
“Y'are a milksop, Will,” declared Henrietta in disgust, picking dirtâ¦
It was the end of September when they arrived inâ¦
“I think perhaps I will seek my bed.” Will yawnedâ¦
“Stand still, Elizabeth.” Mistress Kierston shook her head in exasperationâ¦
Henrietta tried. In the five days of Daniel's absence inâ¦
It was an hour before Harry left Lizzie's bedchamber. Itâ¦
Henrietta awoke before Daniel. Still infused with resolutions, she slippedâ¦
It was a week later when Daniel, shaking snow offâ¦
“Nan, do stop dawdling.” Henrietta reached for the child's hand,â¦
It seemed to Henrietta that she had been at seaâ¦
Madrid: a landlocked city of narrow, winding streets and wideâ¦
“A wise woman, my dear Doña Drummond, always ensures sheâ¦
When she awoke, she was still alone, and she knewâ¦
“Oh, my heavens, Henrietta, you poor dear! But of courseâ¦
“'Tis time Elizabeth was abed, Master Osbert.” Mistress Kierston appeared,â¦
“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Sir Daniel!” Breathlessly, Willâ¦
Will was pacing miserably around the small chamber of hisâ¦
It was a night of unrelieved dark when the Frenchâ¦
Mistress Osbert, on her arrival the following afternoon, was muchâ¦
A surgeon came into the barn at dawn. Harry's makeshiftâ¦
“O
dd's bones, Sir Daniel, I swear 'tis but a maid!” The trooper was on his knees beside a crumpled figureâjust one crumpled figure among the many littering the field; some were silent, others shrieked their agonies to the night sky, yet others moaned their prayers for surcease with the helpless resignation of the vanquished.
Daniel Drummond swung down from his big black charger, whose head drooped listlessly in the August warmth. “How can that be, Tom?” He joined the trooper beside the inert body. “A maid in this charnel house?”
The body stirred, moaned, eyelashes fluttered upward, and Daniel found himself looking into a pair of enormous brown eyes now clouded with pain. “I want Will. Where's Will?” a small voice croaked, then the eyes closed again.
“Sweet heaven,” muttered Daniel, unfastening her buff leather jerkin stained heavily with blood at the shoulder. Had there been any doubt as to the sex of this victim of the three-day battle of Preston, it was quickly resolved. Beneath the coarse linen shirt were outlined two unmistakably feminine hillocks. He had heard tell of the women who donned a trooper's britches and buff jacket, took up pike and halberd, and followed their men into battle, but he had never come face-to-face with the phenomenon before. This partic
ular example seemed remarkably young for such devotion to love.
“'Tis a pike thrust, I'd say,” muttered Tom, peering at the ugly wound. “There'll be parties searching for the wounded soon enough; we'd best leave her to them and be on our way, else ye'll be languishing in a Roundhead prison.”
“Aye.” The Cavalier agreed absently, but he did not immediately straighten and get to his feet. His fingers were probing the wound. “'Tis not excessively deep, I'd say, but there's no saying when she'll be discovered. She could bleed to death before a stretcher party arrives.” He gestured expressively around the battlefield, its grim scene shrouded by the night, only occasionally brought into stark relief when the moon appeared fleetingly from behind the scudding clouds. Figures were moving among the bodies in a curious crouching run. They could be as easily robbing the dead and wounded as offering succor, Daniel thought with somber realism.
“We'll take her with us.” He spoke with sudden decision, tearing off his sash. “She'll fare as well with us as leaving her here.” He bound the wound as tightly as he could, and the deep blue of the sash darkened with ominous rapidity.
“We'll not make much speed,” grumbled the trooper, looking anxiously around. “Not with a wounded maid on our hands. I don't mean no disrespect, sir, but if we're taken, you'll be as much service to her as a dead fish.”
Despite his anxiety, Daniel smiled at his companion's customary lack of subtlety. “I'll not argue with ye on that score, Tom, but we're still taking her. She's no more than a child, not much older than little Lizzie.”
Tom shrugged. The decisions were not his to make, although it did occur to him that if this girl in trooper's clothing were indeed little more than eight years old, matters had come to a fine pass in this land torn by civil strife. He took the still figure from his master while
Sir Daniel remounted, then handed her up before mounting his own sturdy cob. “Where to, sir?”
“We'd best keep off the roadsâ¦strike out across country,” responded Sir Daniel. “They'll be looking to round up the runaways.” A bitter smile twisted his lips. “As God is my witness, Tom, this is the last time I'll run from those foul, treasonous bastards.” Prophetic words, but he was not to know that. He touched spur to his mount, and the charger seemed to summon up the last reserves of strength as he surged forward into the night, away from the ghastly field where agony and death hung like a miasma over the spectral shapes.
They rode for four hours, until dawn streaked the eastern sky and he could feel the beast beginning to founder beneath him. The body in his arms had stirred little, only an occasional whimpering cry indicating that she still lived. They came upon a small copse where a green-brown stream flowed sluggishly over flat stones, and Daniel reined in.
“We'll rest a while here, Tom. 'Tis secluded enoughâa spot for cowherds and milkmaids, not soldiers.”
“'Tis to be hoped they're not cowherds and milkmaids in search of the reward to be won for a betrayed Cavalier,” muttered Tom, dismounting to take his master's burden from him. He laid her on the bank of the stream and stood frowning down at her. “She bears no insignia; 'tis impossible to tell whether she fights for King or Parliament.”
“Whether her lover does,” corrected Daniel, removing his steel helmet with a sigh of relief. The rich, flowing locks of a Cavalier tumbled in dark profusion to the deep lace collar at the neck of his doublet. “I suspect 'tis love, not politics, that motivates this maid.” He unfastened his breastplate and flexed his arms, stretching luxuriously. “Do you see to the horses and I will do what I may for her.”
Kneeling down, he gently eased off the girl's leather jerkin. His sash was soaked and dark with blood. As
he began to unfasten it, her eyes opened again. “I want Will,” she said clearly. “Where is he?” She made a move as if to sit up.
“Easy now.” He restrained her with little effort, but panic flared in her eyes.
“Leave me be. Who are you? What are you doing?” The panic edged a voice that he noted with interest was refined, bearing no trace of peasant dialect.
“I just wish to help you,” he said. “Unless I much mistake, you have taken a pike through your shoulder.” He drew aside the sash and took the torn edges of the shirt, ruthlessly ripping them apart to lay bare the wound where fresh blood still bubbled up to add another layer to the caked gash.
Her mouth opened on a cry of pain, but she closed her lips tightly, enduring his examination in stoic silence, although, when he washed the dried blood away with the sash soaked in the stream, tears squeezed out from beneath her closed eyelids, making tracks in the gunpowder dirt on her cheeks.
“'Twould seem the bone is untouched,” he said thoughtfully, “but I fear the muscle is torn. I will bind it tightly, and you must try not to move it at all.”
“I do not wish to move it,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “It hurts so much.”
“Y'are a brave girl,” he said in encouraging approval. “How are you called?”
The look that crossed her face reminded him forcibly of little Lizzie trying to decide whether to fib her way out of a troublesome situation. “Harry,” she said, closing her eyes.
“Mmmm,” he murmured. “An unusual name for a maid, is it not?” There being no reply, he attempted another tack. “Who is Will?”
Her eyes opened again and the pain they showed this time was not simply physical. “I expect he is dead,” she said. “I saw him fall just before this⦔ Her hand fluttered toward her shoulder. “Just before I felt this dreadful burning, then I don't remember anything else.” There was a short silence while he bound
up the wound, unable to offer reassurance and unwilling to lie. “Did we lose the day?” she asked finally.
“Parliament won the day,” he answered her. “The king's army is no more. I do not know whether that means ye have won or lost.”
“Lost,” she said. “I am so thirsty.”
So he had a fugitive Cavalier on his hands. Better that than the other, he decided. Attempting to restore the daughter of a stout Parliamentarian to her father could prove a mite awkward in his present position. He drew forth a tin cup from his knapsack, filled it with water from the stream, and held it to the girl's lips. She swallowed, choked, swallowed again. “Am I going to die?”
“I trust not.”
“I do not mind if I do, now that Will is dead.” Her lip trembled. “I wanted only to die at his side.”
Daniel frowned at this romantic extravagance. “Far be it from me to deride the power of love, my child, but that is arrant foolishness. I trust your father will know what to do with you when you are returned to him.”
A look of mulish obstinacy settled on the dirty face resting against his shoulder. “I am not going home.”
Daniel did not trouble to take up the cudgels on this issue. It was hardly imperative at this point. “Try and rest a little.” He laid her down on the ground again, fetched his cloak, and rolled it up to make a pillow. The cob was deprived of his horse blanket to provide covering for the invalid, and having made her as comfortable as circumstances permitted, Daniel lay down himself, his head resting on his saddle. “Wake me in two hours, Tom, and I'll stand watch while you sleep.”
The sun was high in the sky, however, before Tom eventually woke his master. “I've seen no one, Sir Daniel, but the maid's in a bad way,” he informed him. “Fever's high.”
Daniel swore softly. “Take your rest, Tom. We'll start off again at sundown.” He went over to the girl, who was thrashing on the ground, muttering incoher
ently, crying out in pain when her restlessness caused her to jar the injured shoulder. Her skin burned to the touch; the hectic flush on her cheeks and the lack of awareness in the brown eyes bespoke fever of an alarming height. He soaked his kerchief in the stream and bathed her face, holding her still as she tossed away from him with a violent protest.
There was little he could do as the day wore on and she roamed in the world of delirium. The wound was inflamed, the surrounding skin red and puffy, and the dread specter of mortification raised its inevitable head.
Daniel paced the little copse, while Tom slept and the horses grazed. It was obvious they could not continue their flight with the girl in her present state. But to seek help would be to court discovery. Could he leave her somewhere? Find a doorstep and abandon her in the dark of the night, hoping that she would find a succoring soul? Better to have left her on the battlefield at Preston. Moved by her plight, he had acted on an impulse that now struck him as foolishly chivalrous. But he must now live with the consequences of that impulse. Live with them or die with them, he thought with a humorless smile, under no illusions as to what betrayal and capture would mean: sequestration of all his lands and property, imprisonment, interrogation, and possibly execution. If he could reach home safely, avoid being taken as part of the spoils of battle, the worst he would face would be the crippling fines imposed on a Malignant.
Of course, there were as many for the king as for Parliament across this divided land in this year of our Lord, 1648, and his chances of finding a refuge with one of the former were as good as those of being betrayed by one of the latter.
An unearthly shriek filled the copse and Tom started up in alarm, shaking the sleep from his eyes. “Eh, what was that?” He stared around him. “Sounds like a banshee.”
“'Tis the maid,” Daniel said over his shoulder as he tried to hold her still, to calm her with his touch
and voice. “I must needs find a chirurgeon for her, Tom, but I'll not have you bear the risk with me. Make your own way into Kent. I'll follow when I am able.”
“Nay, sir,” Tom declared stoutly. “I'll not leave ye now, not after all that's passed between us.” Bending over the stream, he splashed water on his face and head, shaking his head vigorously like a shaggy dog after a swim so that the drops flew in a fine spray.
“I appreciate your loyalty, friend, but there's no call for both of us to take the risk.”
“Aye, there is,” replied Tom, imperturbable. “Ye'll have need of a spare pair of 'ands, seems to me.”
Daniel shrugged. “As you will.” He held the cup to the girl's lips again, and she drank greedily, although she seemed not to be inhabiting the conscious world. “Let us eat before we start out. There's a morsel of bread and cheese left.”
It was no more than a morsel and did little to satisfy the hunger of grown men. “We'd have to show ourselves soon enough anyway,” Daniel remarked, saddling up his charger. “A man cannot live upon air and water.”
Tom grunted his acquiescence, tightening the girths of the cob. “I'll hand the maid up to ye, sir, if'n y'are ready.”
“As ready as I'll ever be.” Daniel received the burden still wrapped in the horse blanket. For the moment she was still, although her sleep was uneasy, judging by the flickering eyelashes. He looked down at her face intently. Despite the knitted cap that hid her hair and the dirt and the hectic flush, high cheekbones, a slightly snub nose, and a prettily shaped mouth indicated a pleasing countenance. “I wonder who the devil she is, Tom. I'll swear she's gently bredâ¦certainly has no business roaming the battlefield at the side of some young sprig she fancies herself in love with.”
“Nay, should be plying her needle by the fireside,” agreed Tom, “or minding her household tasks like any other proper damsel. A wild, hoity maid she must be!”
He tut-tutted in emphatic punctuation of this judgment, one with which Sir Daniel could not find fault.
They rode through the gloaming, keeping off the main thoroughfares. It was full night before Daniel saw what he had been looking for. A cottage, smoke curling from the chimney, candlelight in the lower windows, stood isolated beside a stream where a mill wheel turned ponderously. A small kitchen garden and a few apple trees were the only signs of domestic cultivation, but the wheat in the field beside the cottage was half harvested and it was to be presumed that the mill provided its owner with a reasonable living grinding his neighbors' crops.
“I'll sound 'em out, Sir Daniel,” Tom said. “'Tis hard to tell whether I be for King or Parliament, but if they sees ye first they'll be in no doubt.”
Daniel nodded. Tom's yeoman's garb bore no distinguishing features, but he himself wore the lace, the sash, and the long hair of a Cavalier. “Have a care.” He drew his horse into the shadow of a weeping willow beside the stream. The girl in his arms was babbling now, fighting the arms that held her, calling out for her Will. He clamped a hand over her mouth lest she betray them should the cottager turn out to be unfriendly to the king's cause.