Dark Angel (10 page)

As they crested the hills and saw the expanse of the Pisuerga River far below them, the rain began. The day had begun clear, but for the past hour the clouds had been gathering and the wind rising. No scattered raindrops warned them. The rain came abruptly, a heavy sheet of water that quickly turned the ground to mud, making for a dangerous descent to the river.

Adam went slowly, checking frequently on the progress of the mule. His cloak and boots were drenched, but the wind had died, rendering the cold less intense. He looked back at the others. Caroline's pale face was half obscured by the hood of her cloak, but he saw her smile in reassurance. Emily, hidden beneath Hawkins's cloak as well as her own, was trying to catch the rain in her outstretched hand.

Bare rock gave way to scrub and then to trees and shrubs. By the time they reached the Pisuerga the rain had stopped, but the river before them was swollen by the deluge. Adam handed the mule's bridle to Hawkins and rode to the river's edge. Deeper than the Odra and far less quiet, the water here moved by swiftly, carrying branches and leaves on its roiling surface. Adam was not sure that he could trust the mule or even Caroline's small horse to swim it. Wearied by the long ride, conscious of the sharp throbbing of his wound, he turned his horse about and rode back to the others.

"Can we have a camp?" Emily asked. She had been uncharacteristically quiet during the last hour of their descent, and fatigue showed in her drawn face.

Adam hesitated, weighing prudence against present need. "It's a busy country," Hawkins said quietly, a frown marring his normally cheerful countenance. Adam looked round, not too quickly, and saw two men watching them from a turn of the river a hundred yards or so downstream. They were peasants, to judge by their black caps and shabby black coats, and though it was too far to see their faces, neither appeared young. They had apparently been on a foraging expedition, for they carried great packs of twigs and branches on their backs. Aware of his scrutiny, the men turned away and proceeded down the river.

"There'll be a village nearby," Hawkins said. "They wouldn't have come far for wood."

"Can we visit it?" The hope was apparent in Emily's voice.

"I'm afraid not," Adam said, noting the disappointment in the child's eyes. "I don't want to advertise our presence. Our horses may be too tempting a target."

Emily looked puzzled. "Would they hurt them?"

"They might try to steal them," Caroline said. "We'll have to ride on."

Relieved at Caroline's calm acceptance of their situation, Adam tightened his hold on the mule's bridle. "Upstream, I think. If the rain holds off, the river should drop soon, and we may find an easier place to cross." He looked across the broad valley through which the river flowed. The hills rose again in the distance, less rugged than those through which they had passed but steep enough to hide them during the night.

It was a good half-hour later before Adam decided it was safe to attempt the river, and then only because dark clouds from the north promised a fresh bout of rain. The mule was the problem, for it carried their own provisions and the more important provisions for the horses. The animals could scarcely exist on the meager fodder available in this bleak country. He checked the packs again. Their contents were wrapped closely in oilskin and should survive a wetting. Leaving his own horse to Hawkins, Adam took off his boots and cloak, fastened them to his saddle, and led the mule into the water.

It was deeper than he had expected, reaching to his waist and then to his chest, and the mule, tugging against the bridle as the water rose around his legs, was soon forced to swim. They came up quickly on the other side, both man and mule nearly losing their footing in the mud of the bank. When they had reached firm ground and the mule was safely tethered, Adam turned back to the river and uttered a loud "Damnation!" His own horse, riderless, was in mid-stream, swimming valiantly toward the bank. Hawkins had transferred Emily to Caroline's care, the better to manage his horse and her own, which he was leading by the bridle. The brown mare tossed her head in fear, or perhaps merely surprise as her footing disappeared from under her, but Hawkins's firm hand had her quickly under control.

"You bloody fool." Adam met them as they scrambled up the bank and took the bridle of the brown mare from Hawkins's hand. "Are you all right?" he asked Caroline when he had led her to drier ground.

"Of course I'm all right. You mustn't blame Hawkins. It was my idea to follow you. I didn't see why you needed to cross the river a second time." Caroline relinquished Emily into Adam's arms, jumped down from her horse, and set about wringing the water from the lower parts of her cloak. Adam watched her as though she were a stranger. How much she had changed. The woman who had swum the river without complaint was tough and resourceful. There was no trace of the girl who had been quick enough to run into danger but as quick to demand that she be rescued from her own folly. Caroline straightened, shook out the folds of her cloak, and looked at Adam. "I've never swum a river before. It was—"

"Exciting," Emily put in. "Can we do it again, Mr. Durward?"

Caroline laughed. There was some color in her face, and save for the drenching she had taken in the river she seemed no worse for the experience. "I don't think the horses would be pleased by the experience," she told her daughter. "They got wet and you didn't."

Emily put out her hand. "We're all going to be wet."

It was true. The rain had begun again and they remounted, spurring their horses into the semblance of a trot, then slowing down because the mule had set its own pace. It was easier going in the valley of the Pisuerga, the green a welcome change from the umber of the rocky hills through which they had been traveling. The moved away from the river a mile or more, then turned south, making for a farther range of hills. "That's the village," Emily said, her sharp eyes picking out the cluster of stone houses across the river before the others had seen it. "They won't take our horses now."

"Devil a bit," said Hawkins, who had reclaimed her as his riding companion. "Give us an hour now, and we'll be snug for the night."

"More likely two," Adam called back.

Hawkins made a face. "Ah, the man never could tell time. It's an hour, I say, and we'll be snug and dry."

Emily was faring better than the others under Hawkins's cloak, but even she had not escaped the rain.

Caroline turned round to look at Hawkins. "You're an eternal optimist. Where, pray tell, are we to dry our clothes?"

"The Lord will provide, Mrs. Rawley. And if He fails, I'll take a hand myself."

Caroline laughed. Since their fording of the river her spirits seemed to have lightened and she sounded more like the girl Adam remembered. She had never been a timid child and she could never resist a dare. Adam felt his own spirits improve. Caroline might have grown up, but she was still Caroline.

The rain ceased to be an intrusion and became an integral part of their journey. It disappeared into the hard ground, barely impeding their pace. The land was flat, with little to give variety to the yellow earth or to mark the distance they had come, save the growing size of the hills before them.

When they reached the base of the hills they entered a thick scrub of spiny bushes, rosemary and thyme, not yet in bloom, and gorse and stunted oak. The scrub vanished as they climbed the rocky hills, coming at last to a narrow path that indicated the way was traveled.

Hawkins dismounted and handed Emily to Adam's care. "Hold on, I'll see what I can find."

"Where are you going?" Emily asked from the shelter of Adam's arms.

Hawkins grinned. "To provide. The Lord seems to be busy."

They waited perhaps a quarter of an hour. The rain slackened, then stopped altogether. The clouds passed, but the sky was growing dark. They would have to stop soon in any case and there was scarcely room, between the rocks that rose on either side of the path, for both the animals and themselves to spend the night. Emily settled herself more comfortably against Adam. She was so small, so vulnerable, yet she trusted the world and bore the joy that had been her mother's. But the child was tired, and Caroline, from her silence, must be weary too.

Hawkins returned with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. "Not far now," he said. "Shelter. I've found a cave."

Adam breathed a prayer of thanks. They would be dry at least. He jerked the mule to attention, motioned Caroline to follow Hawkins, and set off after her. "A cave," Emily said to herself, "a cave, we're going to live in a cave." Ten minutes later they drew up before it and she sat forward with wide-open eyes. "It's got a door. It's like a house."

"Locked, I suspect," Adam muttered.

"I'll manage." Hawkins was on his knees before the keyhole. He inserted his knife, then discarded it and pulled out a piece of metal shaped like a long flat nail from one of the capacious pockets in his coat.

Caroline watched him with surprise. "Is there nothing you can't do, Hawkins?"

Hawkins continued his assault on the door. Then he swung it outward and looked back at her. "I promised Emily, you see."

Caroline grinned. She dismounted and approached the door, then drew back in apparent alarm.

"I know," Hawkins said. "It takes some getting used to."

Adam brought Emily to the door. "It's a wine cave," he said as she wrinkled her nose at the pungent odor. "The hills are riddled with them. The doors are intended to keep people out, but I think we're entitled to borrow it for the night."

"Not the best vintage, perhaps," Hawkins said, inhaling the sour smell with evident pleasure, "but not the worst either. I wouldn't mind sampling the lot."

"That would be stealing," Emily said.

"Not if we leave them proper payment. Which we will. We have coins, but naught to drink."

Caroline had removed her sodden cloak and was now pulling her skirt up between her legs. "I'll look for firewood," she said. "Emily, you help too."

There was scant wood to be found, but enough. By the time Adam and Hawkins had unsaddled the horses and mule and settled them in the lee of a bank of rock a short distance away, Caroline had a small fire going in the mouth of the cave. They had left the door ajar to allow the smoke to escape, but inside, on the far side of the fire, it was distinctly warmer than their camp of the night before. The smell of wine mingled with the scent of drying wool from the cloaks spread over the casks. Adam saw Caroline's dark blue dress beside them and realized that she had been wearing two. "For warmth," she explained, "and it saved space in the pack." She pulled Emily's dress over her head to reveal a second one beneath it as well.

Hawkins had broached one of the barrels, filled three cups, and passed them around. Adam sank down before the fire, grateful for its warmth and the warmth of the deep red liquid. The firelight turned the walls of the cave to gold. Caroline had loosened her hair to let it dry and it spilled over her shoulders, catching the light and echoing the gold of the walls. A tripod held their single cooking pot over the flames. It would be an hour before their supper was ready, but Adam was barely conscious of hunger. He felt a great sense of well-being. One part wine, he thought. One part having survived this day. And one part Caroline. The hurts they had done each other were washed away, and they could look in each other's eyes and see no more than the fellowship of sharing an adventure. Adam shifted his position so he was not looking directly at her. No more, that is, if he were careful. He would not let her see into his soul.

The wine blurred even this last fear. He watched Hawkins and Caroline fill the cooking pot. Their meat was gone, but they had corn and chickpeas and onions and garlic and a large bunch of thyme that Caroline had picked as they came through the scrub. He would never hope for a better meal, and after it was finished he lay down by the fire and gave himself up to sleep.

He did not know what woke him. The fire had gone out and he rose to close the door and shut out the chill night air. He stayed a minute to look up at the sky, dark and clear and littered with stars. Then he heard the murmur of voices and knew that was what had woken him. He slipped out the door, closing it quietly behind him, and moved toward the sounds. A French patrol, at this hour? Unlikely. He heard a laugh and a word or two and understood. They were Spanish, and Mother of God, they were after the horses.

Chapter Five

There were at least three of them, maybe more. Adam did not wait to find out. He returned quickly to the cave, awakened Hawkins without a sound, and indicated that he should follow. "Spanish," Adam whispered when they were outside and the door was closed behind them. "They've found the horses."

"Bloody hell." Hawkins had thought to bring his knife and he clutched it now as he followed Adam at a near run, their stockinged feet making no sound on the path. As they neared the small clearing where they had tethered the horses, Adam pulled back, flattening himself against the rock. Hawkins followed suit. One of the intruders was standing not a dozen yards away, moving his head slowly to scan the darkness ahead. Apparently satisfied, he turned away.

They mustn't lose him. Surprise was their only weapon. Adam bent down, found a pebble, and sent it skittering along the path. It made the barest whisper of sound, but it was enough. The intruder spun round, then moved forward cautiously. Adam waited, willing the man to take another twenty steps. Another ten would do, but the man would not take even that many. He stopped, shrugged, and turned back the way he had come.

And in the next instant Hawkins was upon him, one hand clasped over the man's mouth, the other holding a knife at his throat. "Be quiet, my beauty, or I'll cut off your balls and stuff them—"

"Somewhere unpleasant." Adam was beside them. He watched their captive's eyes open wide with terror, the whites gleaming in the cold light of the moon. He was young and slight, barely more than a boy. And, Adam determined quickly, he was unarmed. "Take us to the others," Adam whispered. "No sound, now. Understood?"