Oxford Whispers (23 page)

Chapter
47

Stratford-Upon-Avon
–
March 1651

I DO NOT KNOW where my steps are leading me. I only know they are taking me away.

Away from the Shrieves House on Sheep Street, away from Oliver Cromwell and his cropped-haired followers, away from a husband I despise.

Not caring about my condition, Peter has insisted I follow him to Stratford, where Cromwell has conveyed him along with other young, Puritan leaders. My husband wants me in his sight every hour of every day, every minute of every night. But at this moment his mind is on political matters. I seize the opportunity to escape.

“Watch where you go,” an alarmed voice shouts at me, while horses neigh close to my ears.

I toddle away from the carriage and the cloud of dust it has created in the middle of Sheep Street. As with everything I do these days, my response is laborious. The cart passes me and I observe its load of sheep. Their journey from the Cotswolds Hills to Stratford will be the lambs’ last. Soon, they will be slaughtered and butchered.

This thought and their smell cause a bout of nausea. I close my eyes and my hands search blindly for the soft swelling where my child grows. This awareness both warms my heart and brings tears to my eyes. With my shoulders hunched, I start walking and retreat into myself again.

On Henley Street, I stop in front of a half-timbered dwelling. I know the house belongs to the descendants of the Bard, William Shakespeare. I have read some of his plays, despite being forbidden to, and I enjoyed them. My gaze shifts from the house to the crowd around me, not paying close attention until a figure stands out.

I flinch and leap back.

My hand flies to my chest in an attempt to calm my racing heartbeat.

On the other side of Henley Street is my Cavalier, more handsome and glorious than I remembered. Our eyes meet.

With a quick glance, I register the details of his attire, or rather the ones that are missing. No flowing locks escaping from beneath a broad-brimmed hat decorated with feathers. No hose of clean white linen topped with lace frills. My Cavalier is disguised as a Puritan of low rank.

My fingers touch my parted lips, unable to touch his.

I have to escape. I cannot talk to him, not today, not ever. I made a promise to myself when I married Peter and I must hold true to it.

Spinning on my heels, I hurry away from Henley Street, heading toward the River Avon, the billowing wind threatening to tear my hat from my head. The crowd becomes sparser. I steal a look over my shoulder. Robert is following me. I quicken my pace to a run.

“Sarah, please. Sarah, wait.”

Madness must have overwhelmed him. If anyone hears him calling me by name, I will be in unfathomable trouble.

His hand takes hold of my arm. With a brusque movement he pulls me to a narrow, empty alleyway.

“You owe me an explanation. I have come all this distance knowing you would be in Stratford with your new husband. I want to understand,” Robert tells me. A vein pulses on the side of his forehead.

“We cannot be seen together. This would be my end.”

“You were not always so concerned with your reputation,” he spits out. “Though you are a married woman now.”

I press my lips together, but a shameful heat warms my cheeks. “From what I have heard, you should worry too. Soon you will be married as well.”

Surprise makes him lower his eyebrows. “I have no alternative but to marry Lady Elizabeth. I have delayed it long enough. When I found out how you betrayed me, I had no other choice but to propose. I must protect my family, my title.”

I am not listening to him anymore. Betrayal? He must be delirious. He is the one who deserted our promises, our love.

“I never betrayed you. I waited. I waited until I had no time left …” I cannot tell him about the child, his child. I adjust my coat to better conceal my midriff. “You stopped writing.” I sound desperate. Pride makes my body stand rigid.

“I wrote to you every week. Wherever I was, I wrote. Have you not received my letters?”

I shake my head, my mind trying to decipher this mystery. I believe in Robert, I trust his word.

“And that night in December, you did not join me in the barn.” His fists and his jaw clench while he looks down at me.

“I do not understand.” Dread invades me, while the pieces start drifting into place in my head.

“I came and hid in the barn for a day and a night, waiting for you.”

“I hardly ever go there.”

“I told your sister. I succeeded in getting close to your house. You were not there, but you had said that Anne knew our secret.”

I swallow hard. “You told Anne.” My words trickle off. “She never told me.”

Robert pounds his fists against the wooden door. “The viper.”

My own sister betrayed me again. Telling Peter about my love for Robert was not enough for her. I want to give myself over to tears of anguish and let out a painful cry. Instead, I lean against the door frame. I expect to have trouble articulating, but my voice is dead when I say, “We must never see each other again.”

My head dipped against my chest. For the first time, I am grateful for this conical hat that I wear. Its large brim, decorated with an ugly buckle and belt, hides my face.

With all the courage I can muster, I lift my gaze to meet Robert’s own. I swear my heart has started bleeding. In his feverish eyes, I see he will not let go of me. He reaches out with a plea, refusing to accept the truth.

I have to leave. After a few dizzy steps I am back on the main road heading toward the waterside. Soon I stand on an isolated promontory staring down at the dark, tumultuous waves.

I want to disappear into the river and let the water drag my body down to its depths. I want to die. I curse my sister. I curse Peter, and the political chaos that separates me from Robert.

The child moves in my belly. And I know I have to live.

Chapter
48

MADISON’S JOURNEY back from Jericho was slow. Anger and shame had vanished to leave her hollow and listless. All she wanted now was to crawl into her bed and overdose on her Deep Sleep pillow mist.

Great Tom had never seemed so dreary. She looked up at the imposing tower, the gate to Christ Church, and its weight dragged her mood down even further. If that was possible.

“Maddie.”

She startled with surprise. She’d almost forgotten that other people inhabited the world. Lowering her gaze to her elbow, she noticed a gloved hand had taken hold of it. She followed the arm, found the shoulder, the neck and Ollie’s smiling face crowning it.

“Hey.” Engaging in a conversation felt like climbing Everest. Barefoot. In a bikini.

Ollie got the message. “What’s wrong?”

Madison waved him away and rushed inside Tom Quad, her head tucked down and her fingertips holding a faint sob back from her lips.

Oliver caught up with her and grabbed her elbow again. “You don’t get away from me that easily.” He bent his bony figure so that he could stare straight into Madison’s eyes. “Tell me why you’re crying.”

“Rupert broke up with me.” Big, strangling sobs. “Again.”

He gave a sympathetic look. “Do you want to get a cup of tea?”

Tea was the savior of the British people. No heartache was too weighty not to respond to the warm comfort of a cuppa. Right now, however, Madison needed a dollop of straight bourbon, a generous gulp of it, in fact. Anything to dull the pain, to forget.

Her silence had Ollie fumbling for the right words and delivering the usual soothing line. “It’s going to be okay.” And that said, he opened his arms and wrapped Madison in an awkward hug, rubbing her back.

His kindness felt like a balm spreading over her wounds.

“I’ve invested in an electric kettle,” she mumbled against his woolen jacket.

“Jolly good idea.”

Together, they entered the quadrangle where they lodged.

Madison was grateful Ollie hadn’t asked any questions. She had no words to express what she felt.

Scrambling through the contents of her satchel, her hand clasped the brass room key. She slid it into the keyhole and turned it counterclockwise. Then she stepped into her room and switched on the light.

Her heart shot a high-volt electrical jolt right through her muscles. Her stomach contracted. Her jaw gaped wide open. She backed away with quick, jerky steps and collided with Oliver.

She had no set destination in mind. All she wanted was to escape, to get away from the nightmare. Her friend blocked her flight. He force-marched her forward, matching his legs to hers.

“Shit,” he exclaimed. And then again, “Shit, shit, shit.”

Oliver abandoned Madison on the doorstep, powerless and staring down at the body of Miss Lindsey.

“Are you okay?” Ollie asked the censor. “Are you okay?” He laid his hand on her shoulder and gently shook it. No reaction.

“She’s dead,” Madison shouted, shaking her head in a vain attempt to deny it was happening.

“Call an ambulance,” ordered Ollie.

Her trembling fingers dialed 911. She got a the-number-you-have-dialed-has-not-been-recognized answer. Her numb brain took a few seconds to react. She redialed, but this time the correct emergency number for England, 999. When she delivered the information to the operator, her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. She hung up and took a slow breath. A disturbing but familiar smell made her nostrils flare. Memories knocked at the door of her consciousness, but she wouldn’t let them in. Couldn’t.

Ollie placed the tips of two fingers besides Miss Lindsey’s Adam’s apple. The woman had no pulse. Madison didn’t need to check for it herself. She knew. A body without a soul lay on the oval rug of her study.

Music drifted up from a room on the floor below.

Her friend’s hands started pushing down on the dead woman’s chest in an attempt to resuscitate her. Madison moved closer to the corpse and knelt next to Miss Lindsey’s head. The whites of her glassy eyes were now red, and tiny blood vessel had burst beneath her eyelids.

Although she didn’t want to, Madison had to touch the pale skin. Life had deserted the discarded shell, but once the flesh had held
warmth. Blood had run steadily on a predetermined route. A throbbing human heart had beat inside.

She had never touched a corpse before. Yet, when her fingers brushed the flaccid remains, the room around her collapsed into darkness.

Chapter
49

MADISON
FOUND herself lying down, sandwiched between a heavy blanket and an itchy mattress. Her glance darted around the room, but the movement of her head caused intense pain. She swallowed hard, an acrid taste filling her mouth.

Wherever she was, she didn’t want to stay here. An acute sense of danger thickened her throat. Even her Oxford bedroom with the body lying in the middle of it appealed to her more than the gloom surrounding her now. All her muscles ached with a weary stiffness, and her limbs felt too heavy to lift. She fought to keep her eyes wide open, but exhaustion took over and pulled them shut. Sweat dribbled from her upper lip. She was running a fever.

Struggling to breathe, she managed to turn her head. There, on a wooden table next to her bed sto
od a candle, the flame flickering in a draft of air. Madison squinted to make out the form a little more than an arm’s length away from her.

A crib. An antique, wooden one.

Supporting herself on her elbows, she raised her upper body to an angle that allow
ed her to see inside the child’s bed. A groan erupted from her mouth. The movement had put extra pressure on her midsection. What the hell had she been doing?

Then she heard a sound, not her own groaning, but a faint, sweet one. The sound of an infant crying.

Wrapped in white linen, the tiny bundle lay inside the crib, eyes wide open and fixed on the ceiling. Thick, dark hair covered her head. The baby was a “she.” Madison was certain of it. The strength of this knowledge struck her through the heart.

Fuzzy feelings, feelings she’d never expected to have, grabbed at her. She didn’t need to bridge the distance to the crib to hear the heartbeat of her child. A connection, a bond, linked her to her daughter, a love so strong it existed above and beyond every other thing in the world.

Maybe maternal instinct had kicked in, shouting at her to shield her baby. Or maybe she had heard the wooden floor creak behind her. But someone else was in the room. That presence made her shiver.

She already knew … She knew it would be Peter standing there.

Real, alive, in flesh and blood. Not the ghostly figure she had come against before. An ugly smirk distorted his face. He held his shoulders back, his head high and his hands anchored at his hips.

Horror froze her reason. She wanted to bolt from the bed and rush away from this threat. Her body wouldn’t budge.

“We are alone in the house now. Your sister has left. At last.”

Madison couldn’t muster the words to respond, but the baby interrupted the silence. Little sucking sounds escaped from her mouth. She was hungry. In a clumsy attempt to nurture the child, she tried to rise from her bed, at the same time reaching for her daughter.

“Do not touch Rose,” Peter ordered in a scathing tone.

Rose had been Sarah’s daughter, and Robert’s. The baby had been named in memory of the red rose Robert had given Sarah when they were children. Now that Madison was inside Sarah, she could see all that had happened until that moment.

Her brain started focusing on one thought: saving herself and the child. Loud breaths rushed through Peter’s heaving chest. His face was pinched, his features frigid. Danger lurked everywhere.

“I have waited for this moment for so long, since you announced you were with child.” Peter paced the room. “Only it was not my child, it was his. Your Royalist lover. Do you think you fooled me?”

“No.” Madison startled at the sound of Sarah’s voice coming from her lips. “But I beg you to forgive me.”

“You will not be pardoned for this. It is time for justice. A justice that I alone administer.”

“Whatever you have in mind, please spare her.”

“I will not hurt Rose, but you must die.”

A crazy laugh transformed his face into a grimace. Madison hated him.

“Why?”

“You will never see your daughter grow up, but your Cavalier will watch his own offspring being raised in the true Puritan way.”

“Please, Peter. For the love of God, please forgive me. I know I wronged you, but I love Rose so much …” Tears inundated Madison’s cheeks. She hadn’t carried the child, or gone through labor, but maternal love had taken hold of every cell in her being.

She kept glancing around the room, searching for a means of escape. There was none. Peter had stepped to the side of the bed. Now she remembered his smell: tobacco and lemongrass. The disturbing mix of both she had breathed in her Oxford bedroom when she’d found the dead woman.

He sat on the mattress, making it sink.

“It is time, my love. But do not despair. Your daughter will know the whore you were.”

“Why?” she asked. There was no fear in her voice anymore, only pure hate.

“If you cannot love me, you will not love anybody else. Not your Cavalier, not your own daughter.”

The baby started crying, seemingly aware of the danger they faced.

Her mothering instinct turned Madison into a hysterical fighter. She scratched at Peter’s cheeks. She pulled his hair. She screamed for help.

The pain she had felt before vanished. She was desperate to live, to live and care for her daughter.

But he was too strong.

His hands made their way to her neck, encircled it, and he tightened his grip. Her vision blurred, and her whole body convulsed.

Madison managed to catch a last glimpse of Rose. She heard the baby’s cry but couldn’t do anything to console her child.

Darkness swallowed her.

When she let out her final breath, Madison was only aware of the silent river of love running toward her baby. That and the smell of melting candle wax.