Philippa (51 page)

“They’ve burned the village,” the six-year-old girl said. “I was up in the west tower, and I could see it. And the fields as well.”

“These are terrible times,” Nursie muttered, catching the child’s hand and leading her from the corridor into the great hall of Stanton. She saw her master and mistress at the far end of the room. They stood by the large open fireplace in earnest conversation. “Here she is, my lord, my lady,” Nursie said as they reached the Earl and Countess of Stanton. She curtseyed, and then moved away, but Jane Radcliffe bade her remain.

“What we have to say concerns you as well, Nursie.” The Countess of Stanton looked both worried and sad. “Come, and let us all sit down.”

Adair climbed into her father’s lap, waiting to hear what her mother would say.

“You must save the child, Nursie,” Jane Radcliffe began. “The Lancastrians are moving toward the hall. My husband and I are known Yorkists. They have burned the village and killed everyone they could lay their hands upon. They showed no mercy to old or young, we have been told by the few who managed to flee to the hall. They will kill everyone here when they come. You must take Adair to he who fathered her. You must take her to King Edward. He recognized her at her birth, and when you tell him what has happened here, the king will take her into his own household. The queen will not be pleased, for she is a cold woman, but when I left her service, she swore she would remember me with kindness. Tell her for the peace of my soul to render that kindness to my child. It is my dying wish.”

“My lady!” Nursie cried, paling.

The Earl of Stanton put Adair from his lap. “Go and comfort your mother, my child,” he told her. Then he turned his attention to Nursie. “You are not a young woman any longer, Elsbeth,” he began, “but Jane and I must entrust you with our most precious possession, our daughter. The Lancastrians have almost finished marauding through the village and fields. It is several hours until sunset, and they will attack the hall before then. They will kill all they find. They must not find Adair.”

“But how can we escape them, my lord?” Nursie quavered. It was true she wasn’t young, but neither was she old. She wanted to live.

“There is a tunnel beneath the hall. At one end are horses, saddled. Their bags contain food for several days. And water. When you have entered the tunnel, lead the animals through it until you can see daylight. Then remain the night. By tomorrow at this time the Lancastrians will have departed. You will exit the tunnel. Ride south, Elsbeth. For London. Someone will know where to find the king. Take Adair to him. When you have found King Edward, tell any who would stop you that Adair is his daughter, her ladyship the Countess of Stanton, come to seek his protection. Do not allow anyone to prevent you from getting to the king, Elsbeth. Do you understand me?”

Nursie nodded. “I will go and pack what I can take for my little mistress,” she said, standing. “With your permission, my lord.”

He nodded. “Go.”

Nursie left the hall quietly.

“She is loyal, thank God and his blessed Mother,” Jane Radcliffe said.

“The last of my grandfather’s bastards,” he replied. “We were born in the same year. I always remember how shocked my mother was by Elsbeth’s birth. Why my mother thought he was no longer interested in things of the flesh as an old man, I do not know. I was five when he died, and I still remember coming upon him in a corridor going at a maidservant with robust vigor. He had the girl up against a wall, and from her cries it was obvious he was giving her pleasure.”

“John,” the countess murmured softly, “these are not stories for Adair’s ears. We have more important things to discuss with our daughter.”

“Aye,” the Earl of Stanton agreed. “We do.” He sat next to his wife on the settle and, taking Adair from her mother’s lap, set her before them. “Now, Adair, I would have you listen well to what we have to tell you. King Edward the Fourth got you on your mother. I was unable to give your mother a child, and the king desired her. But your mother is an honorable woman. She refused him. He persisted and came to me. I gave them my permission to lie with each other, provided he created Stanton into an earldom, and that he recognize any daughter born and provide her dower. But I would recognize a daughter too, and give her my name. I did not sire you, Adair, but you are my child nonetheless, and I have always loved you. Now, however, you must use your connection with the king to help you to survive what is to come. And always remember you are a Radcliffe.”

“What if I had been a boy, da?” the little girl asked him.

“The king would not have recognized you. Only I would have,” the earl explained. “But there is one other thing. Upon my death you become the Countess of Stanton in your own right, Adair. And I will be dead by the morrow.”

“Da!” the little girl cried, stricken. Her violet-colored eyes were large in her pale face. “No!”

“Adair, I cannot flee in the face of this Lancastrian incursion. Stanton has been my family’s home for centuries. Once it was only the Scots we fought. That we English now fight one another pains me, my child. Thrones mean little to simple folk. But I will defend my home until my last breath, and your mother has elected to remain by my side, though I would wish it otherwise,” the earl told Adair.

“Mama?” the girl looked at her mother. “Would you leave me?”

“Nay,Adair, not willingly. But I will not leave your father to face the futile wrath of the Lancastrians alone. We will defend Stanton together. Know this, my daughter: I did not love your father when we were first wed. But that is not unusual for people like us. Those of our station do not marry for love. I brought your father land and coin. However, I came to love him, and because I cannot imagine life without him, I will die by his side as I have lived by it. And because you are strong you will survive, and you will remember that I love you,” Jane Radcliffe told her only child quietly.

Adair began to weep. “I am only a little girl,” she said piteously. “I need you!”

“Cease that caterwauling immediately!” Jane Radcliffe commanded her daughter sternly. “You do not have the luxury of sorrow now, Adair. Not if you expect to survive past this day. I did not bear you to see you needlessly slaughtered by a pack of rabid partisan fools! You must seize the future, my daughter, and live to rebuild Stanton one day. The king, your sire, will see you have a husband, and by agreement with your father that husband will take our name. The Radcliffes will eventually return to Stanton. The Lancastrians can slay us, but if you live, we defeat them for good and all.”

Adair swallowed back her sobs. She stood tall and straightened her little shoulders. “I hate the Lancastrians,” she said in a grim voice.

“Hate,” the Earl of Stanton said, “is a wasted emotion, my child. Do not waste your passions on hate, Adair. Escape Stanton, and live for our family. Come, now, and give me a kiss, my child.” John Radcliffe held out his arms to her, and Adair flew into them, struggling to hold back her anguish. He stroked her sable hair gently, and then, after kissing her on both cheeks, he turned Adair to her mother.

Jane Radcliffe struggled with her own grief, but she would not give in to it. Enfolding her only child in her arms she held her close for a long moment. Then she, too, kissed Adair on both of her cheeks. “Be brave, my child,” she said quietly. “John Radcliffe willingly gave you his name, and you are his daughter, though another sired you on me. Always remember that, and bring no shame on the Radcliffes.”

Adair stepped back and looked at both her parents. She was only six years old, but suddenly she felt so much older. “I will remember everything,” she said, “but especially I will remember that I am a Radcliffe.”

“We can ask no more of you than that,” the Earl of Stanton told her.

Nursie came back into the hall carrying a small bundle. “We are ready,” she said.

“Did my serving woman give you the money pouch, and have you put it on?” Jane Radcliffe wanted to know. “There are two gold coins and a goodly number of silver coins inside it, Elsbeth. And did she give you Adair’s garnet velvet skirt? There are five gold coins sewn in the hem of it.”

“I have them both, my lady,” Nursie replied.

“Go south,” the earl said. “Where the sun rises is east. Where it sets is west. North is over the border into Scotland. South is away from it. Do not travel the roads. Keep to the fields, and be very cautious. Trust no one, Elsbeth. Adair must reach her sire safely. It is her only chance of survival. And yours.”

“My lord!”The bailiff ran into the hall. “The Lancastrian rabble are approaching the hall. We’ve barred the doors and shuttered the windows, but there is little else we can do. They will break in soon enough.”

“Rally those you can,” the earl said quietly, and the bailiff ran out with a nod.

Nursie picked a torch from the wall holder.

“Come,” John Radcliffe said. He led his wife, daughter, and Nursie from the hall, stopping to take a small lantern and several candles from a small cabinet as he went. Down into the cellar of the building. A large wolfhound arose from before the fire where he had been sleeping, and ambled after them, walking by Adair’s side.

“Beiste wants to come with me,” the little girl said, putting her hand on the animal’s head as they hurried along.

“ ’Tis not a bad idea,” the earl noted. “He’s intelligent and obedient, and will defend his mistress. Yes, Beiste will go with you, my child.”

Down into the deepest part of the hall they went, and down a narrow, dark corridor. When they reached the end of the passage the earl reached out, feeling about, and then suddenly a small, low door sprang open with a noisy creak. “Here is the mouth of the tunnel,” he said. Then he gave Nursie the candles he carried, and lit the lantern from her torch. “The other end of the tunnel is well hidden,” he told the older woman. “It opens out a goodly mile from the hall in the wood by Stanton Water. Do not come out until you are certain the Lancastrians have been long gone. Turn to the right when you exit the tunnel, and you will be headed south. Godspeed, Elsbeth, my kin.”

Nursie took up the earl’s hand and kissed it. “God bless you, my lord,” she said. “I will keep the bairn safe. My life on it!”

The earl picked Adair up and kissed her on the lips. “Be brave, daughter, and remember you are a Radcliffe.”

“I promise, da,” she answered him as he set her back down again.

“And remember how much your mother loved you, my darling daughter,” Jane Radcliffe said softly. There were tears in her violet eyes, but she would not shed them. “And be certain you tell your sire that the Radcliffes stood strong for him.” Then she hugged Adair before pushing her into the narrow little tunnel. “Farewell, Adair. God bless and keep you,” she called as her husband closed the hidden door and pulled a decrepit cabinet in front of it to conceal it even further.

“Mama?” Adair voice trembled at the sudden separation and the darkness around her. She jumped, frightened, as a hand touched her sleeve.

“ ’Tis me, my precious,” Nursie’s comforting voice said. “Come along now. We must reach the tunnel’s end as soon as we can.” Elsbeth—or Nursie, as Adair called her—knew that the sounds of the battle in the house above them would not be entirely drowned out by the depth in which they now stood. She did not want the little girl’s last memory of her parents and Stanton Hall to be that of screams and dying. So she hurried the child along the underground passage lit only by the scant light from the flickering lamp. The air was fetid, but chill. As they went she noted the corridor they traveled, while dug from the dirt, was buttressed with stone along the walls, and wooden beams above them. She had lived in this place her entire life, and never known of this tunnel’s existence.

The wolfhound went before them, sniffing, alert. When they reached the end of the passage it opened into a small cave with a narrow opening to the outside. There were, to Nursie’s relief, three stalls in which the two animals the earl had promised them were now saddled and tethered, placidly munching upon the hay and grain in their feed boxes. Beiste immediately went to each horse and sniffed and nuzzled it. The horses replied in kind.

“Now listen to me, Adair,” Nursie said quietly. “You must be very, very quiet. We do not want those wicked Lancastrians to find us here. They would kill us. Do you understand me?” Her mild gray eyes looked into the child’s violet ones.

Adair nodded. Her ears seemed to pick up just the faintest sounds of shouting, and she was almost certain that she smelled smoke, but she said nothing.

Nursie went to the horses and took the two blankets from the rear of their saddles. Entering the empty stall, she spread the blankets out. “Come, child. You must sleep now,” she told her.

“Will you sleep too?” Adair asked her.

“Not yet, my precious, but later,” Nursie promised as Adair lay down. She spread her wool cloak over the little girl. “What fun to sleep in a lovely bed of sweet-smelling hay,” she told the child.

“Will the Lancastrians kill my parents?” Adair wanted to know.

“Yes,” Nursie answered her.

“Why?” Adair’s eyelids were growing heavier, but she needed an answer to her question.

“Because they are loyal to good King Edward, and the Lancastrians are loyal to the mad old king, Henry of Lancaster,” Nursie explained as best she might. “Now that King Edward has returned to England he has been welcomed by the commoners, and the mad king sent packing. The Lancastrians are angry. They strike out at Yorkists whenever and wherever they can, my precious. But they will not get you! I have given my word to your father and your mother, my little lady. Nursie will keep you safe. Now you must go to sleep, for we have several hard weeks of traveling ahead of us.”

New York Times
bestselling author

BERTRICE SMALL