Beloved Enemy (43 page)

Chapter
16

"God's
death, but this northern clime is fit only for the divil!" Giles Courtney
tossed the fiery contents of a metal pannikin down his throat with a disgusted
snarl and limped to the door of the thatched hovel, which provided
insubstantial shelter from the rain sheeting down across the Northumbrian hills
outside. Insubstantial, maybe, but its inhabitants were a deal luckier than the
massed army dripping under canvas beyond the door.

"Take
it easy, Giles. Have some more brandy." Lord Peter Ottshore pushed the
bottle across the table, exchanging a look with his companions. They could all
sympathize with a man when an old wound, exacerbated by damp and cold, pained
him anew. Giles Courtney had lain near death for nigh on two months, throughout
the horrendous weeks of the retreat, and only a miracle had saved his leg. He
was still far from strong, even after eighteen months holed up in the Scottish
Highlands after the surrender of Oxford. But Courtney was a difficult man to
sympathize with. He didn't suffer with grace or courtesy, and was overly ready
to use the injury as excuse to avoid duty.

"This
is a miserable billet we have found, by the Lord's name." James, Duke of
Hamilton, commander of the Royalist forces, pushed through the ill-fitting
door, slapping a sodden gauntlet against the palm of his hand. He tossed his
hat with its bedraggled curling feather into a corner, on the hard-packed earth
floor. "It's to be hoped we can get south of Durham before the rebels come
up with us. That rabble out there," he gestured contemptuously to the camp
outside, "haven't a soldier's bone between them. We need all the time we
can get to knock 'em into shape."

"Raw
recruits will be no match for the veterans of the New Model," a
fair-haired colonel agreed. "But it's hard to drill them in this weather.
Poor sods are soaked to the skin as it is, with small chance of getting
dry."

"Won't
do them any harm," Giles Courtney said sourly. "It's to be hoped they
don't turn tail and run at the first sight of Cromwell."

"You've
no cause to accuse them of cowardice, Courtney," the duke of Hamilton said
with an edge to his voice. "They're untried, but no worse, and it's
encouragement they need, not unfounded criticism. Aren't you officer of the
watch?"

Giles
Courtney flushed and muttered sullenly that he was, cramming his hat on his
head before going out into the dismal evening. Eighteen months he had spent
with this damned army, eighteen months of pain and discomfort with nothing to show
for it but the prospect of a suicidal battle, throwing virgin recruits against
the highly trained, disciplined veterans of Parliament's New Model Army. If he
had had any sense, he would have kept out of it from the beginning, but his
damned wife had thrown the death of her father in his face, and even his
mother, weeping though she was, had pointed out that he was the only
able-bodied man for miles around who had not declared himself for the king. And
just what the devil were his wife and mother doing now? Someone would have got
a message through to them after Oxford that he had been wounded near to death,
but the retreat had been such a disorderly scuttle to the north, no further
messages had been possible. Had he been conscious, instead of half out of his
senses with pain, he would have insisted on being conveyed back to Dorset, but
he had been bundled along with the baggage, tormented by surgeons. . . . And
now, whenever it rained, which it did without cease, the pain in his hip
blossomed exquisitely, and no one gave a damn. Virginia had some skill, as he
remembered. Not of the tender, womanly kind with soft murmurs and cool hands
and absolute attention to his every wish, even before it was articulated, but
she produced potions and ointments that had the power to alleviate.

Virginia,
his wife, bound to him with the indissoluble ties of duty. But, somehow, she
was not dutiful. He could not put his finger on it, but he knew it was so. She
did not contradict him, she was obedient, she lay beneath him without a murmur,
she waited on him and accorded him all the respect due to her husband. But she
was not truly submissive, truly dutiful. His mother had seen it from the
beginning, had attempted to cow her daughter-in-law, had encouraged her son to
assert his mastery in whatever ways were necessary. But there was something
about those gray eyes that had prevented him from using physical means of
subjugation, that had scared him even as it challenged him. It would not do so
in the future, he drought. War and wounds had toughened him, and no weak female
challenge would prevail again. The image of her body flashed across his mind's
eye, and his loins stirred. He hadn't had a woman for eighteen months. God
willing he would get back to the one who belonged to him, who could be spread
and taken whenever her lord desired. . . .

Ginny
looked down the hill, down at what once had been the peaceful, verdant orchards
of Kent. Now, there was only devastation, the fruit trees cropped for fuel, and
in vengeance, fields and gardens laid to waste. She looked at Alex, sitting
like stone on the charger's back, gazing at what used to be the fertile lands
of the Grantham estates. A gray stone manor house nestled at the foot of a
small hill, but its park was no longer green, just the red brown of churned-up
earth, scarring the countryside.

"Would
it not be best to continue on your way?" she asked softly.

"I
cannot. I have come this far and must go on. I must find out the worst, who is
left alive . . ." His lips twisted in a grim smile. "There will be no
welcome, of course. But if I may be of help, then I have to offer."

Ginny
made no reply as the cavalcade moved off down the hill toward Alex's home. It
was a small detour they made on the road to Scotland, and she had watched the
agonizing process of decision as he had weighed up the knowledge that he would
be regarded as an enemy at best, vilified as a traitor at worst by the kin whom
he sought to help. She had offered no opinion, knowing that in this matter not
even the lover had any rights, but a premonition of pain scudded over her soul
as they approached the house, the pain that she would feel at his wounds.

The
occupation of the Grantham estates had been thorough and vicious. The walls of
the park land were tumbled, there were great bare patches on the grassland,
where tents had been pitched and the blackened roots of tree stumps felled,
presumably for firewood. Rich, brown plow land beyond the park was overgrown
with thistles, with a few lean cattle scratching for subsistence. No smoke rose
from the chimneys, and as they drew closer, they saw that the windows gaped,
glassless, to the elements. The house looked shuttered and untenanted, except
for a clothesline in what had once been the kitchen garden where hung a few
garments flapping desolately in the breeze. Even the stone sundial had been
smashed, the branches of the apricot tree wrenched from their tethers against
the mellow stone wall so that they hung, broken, the fruit pulped on the ground
beneath.

They
rode beneath the gatehouse into the outer court, and there Alex gestured to his
officers to remain, and he went forward alone into the inner court. Some
instinct prodded Ginny into following. She looked up at the belfry and the
weather vane, symbols of normality that alone seemed to have been untouched by
destruction. Then a woman came out onto the steps, and Alex drew rein. Ginny
followed suit, keeping behind him, not knowing whether he was aware of her
presence or no; whether, if he was aware of it, he would bid her leave him to
face the uncertainty of reunion alone.

"What
more can you want with us?" The woman spoke slowly, weary with bitterness.
"You left little enough standing on the last occasion, but I am sure you
will find what little remains." She turned back to the door.

"Joan,
do you not know me?" Alex spoke, his voice sounding strangely unlike his
own.

The
woman turned, brushed a straggling wisp of faded brown hair from her eyes.
"Alex? It is you?" She shook her head in disbelief. "What have
you come for? To gloat? To see what we have become? You will find here only the
elderly and infirm, the women and the children. Your brothers are not here to
stand against you; your victory will be easy enough."

Alex
dismounted. 'Joan, I am here to do what I can for you." He walked toward
her, and she stepped back.

"You
dare to offer Parliament's succor to those whom Parliament has destroyed?"
The figure swayed, then crumpled on the step.

Ginny
leaped from her horse, reaching the step as Alex knelt, lifted the inert figure
against his shoulder. "She has but swooned," she said swiftly,
feeling for the pulse, lifting the eyelids.

Joan
Marshall opened her eyes, looking directly into the haunted ones of her
brother-in-law. "Lie still," he said urgently as she struggled
against him. "Ginny, what must we do for her?" He turned in appeal to
Ginny who had stood up again, shocked at the women's scarecrow thinness, the
face that had clearly once been pretty striated with deep lines.

"It
is exhaustion, I think," she said quietly. "Lady, may I help you to
your bed?"

"Not
if you don't wish for typhus," Joan Marshall said, her voice stronger,
acidulated now. "Take your army and leave us be, Alex. We've the sickness
in the house, and you'll not be wanting to come too close, not even to destroy?”

"Who
has it?" Alex asked, ignoring his sister-in-law's tone, brushing aside her
words.

"Little
Joe," she gave him answer, and the tired blue eyes filled suddenly with
the tears of utter desperation.

"Sweet
Jesus," Alex whispered. "He cannot be above six years old."

"How
many days?" Ginny asked, her voice sounding a note of brisk
matter-of-factness in the quiet court.

"This
is the ninth" the sick child's mother responded. "So far no one else
has succumbed."

"Has
the fever broken at all?"

"No,"
Joan shook her head, "he is wild with it, and I can do nothing to ease
him, although he will allow no one else near him." She stood up, allowing
the support of Alex's arm as if there was no energy left for the old quarrels.
"I must go back to him directly. I only came down because old Martha saw
your troops and was like to fall into a convulsion. You know how she can
be?"

Alex
nodded. "I am here to help, not harm, and I will tell her so myself."
He walked to the door, but Joan caught his arm.

"Alex,
you cannot go to them. They would cut out their tongues rather than speak with
you."

A
ghost of a smile hovered over his lips. "Then I shall not expect a
response, sister. I will do all the talking, but I must go inside in order to
discover what needs to be done."

"Take
me to the child, lady," Ginny said. "Perhaps I may be of help."

Joan
Marshall looked at her curiously. "Who are you that rides with
Parliament's army?"

"The
general's mistress," Ginny said with brutal candor. "Virginia
Courtney." She dropped a mock curtsy. "As good a Royalist as
yourself, madam, for all that I love Parliament's general and trail
Parliament's drum."

Joan
looked at Alex in bewildered disbelief, and he smiled faintly. "Virginia
is never one to beat about the bush, sister. She speaks only the truth.
Virginia, this is the Lady Joan Marshall, my brother Joe's wife." Then he
took Ginny's hand. "I do not wish you to enter the house, chicken."

"I
am not afraid of the sickness," she said calmly. "I have nursed three
people with it and have never fallen ill myself. It is a disease that passes me
by. But you should not enter, or allow any of the men to do so, lest it sweep
through the division."

Alex
frowned, remembering how four years earlier the scourge ot typhus had decimated
the armies on both sides of the fighting, killing more than ever died by the
sword. "I was afflicted as a child," he said, "so may enter with
impunity. But you are right, no one else shall do so."

"Then,
will you fetch my basket?" Ginny asked, "and bring it to me. I will
go with Lady Joan now."

Joan
looked hesitant, and Alex said gently, "Ginny has some considerable skill,
Joan, a gift aided with knowledge. Will you not trust her just because she
rides with me?"

Joan
passed a hand across her eyes. "I have no strength left for principles and
causes. I will leave that to the men. Kit and Joe have enough hatred for you,
Alex. You do not need mine, too."