The Accidental Bride (19 page)

The next instant, the cat came flying back into the kitchen, racing footsteps sounding on the path close behind him.

“Phoebe . . . Meg . . .” Olivia burst into the kitchen, her hair flying loose from its pins, her breath coming in gasps. “They’re c-coming!”

“Who are?” Phoebe had jumped to her feet, sending her cup spinning to the floor in a dark splash of blackcurrant.

“The village . . . they have the witch finder,” Olivia panted. “They’re a few minutes behind me. Meg has to hide!”

Meg drew herself up to her not inconsiderable height. “I’m not hiding from a rabble,” she said.

“But you
must
!” Olivia insisted, her eyes wild, darting around the small kitchen.

And then they heard the sounds. It was the sound of feet, the soft rumble of voices. Then the cat flew out of the cottage, fur on end, his tail a thick bush. He leaped onto the roof of the cottage with a loud meow of outrage.

The crowd appeared out of the trees. It was the whole village, Phoebe thought in stunned horror. The men were in front. They carried heavy staves; behind them swarmed the women, some carrying babies, some with children clinging to their skirts.

“Olivia! For God’s sake, get out of here!” she cried before
the mob had reached the gate. “You can’t be found here!” For some reason it didn’t occur to her that what was not meet for Lord Granville’s daughter might also be wrong for his wife.

“In the apple loft,” Meg said calmly. “Go quickly. Phoebe’s right. When they’ve gone, maybe you can go for help.”

Olivia hesitated, then she turned and scrambled up the ladder into the loft.

Phoebe and Meg with one mind stepped out of the cottage, side by side, presenting a united front to the incoming tide.

In the middle of the front line strode a tall man in a frieze cloak and a flat-crowned, wide-brimmed black felt hat. He carried a thick walking stick and a large leather pouch at his waist.

“Is that the witch?” He stopped and pointed at Meg with his stick.

“No!” Phoebe exclaimed, pressing her foot on Meg’s to gain her silence. “And just who might you be, sir?”

He stepped forward. “I, my good woman, am the witch finder. And I am here to find a witch.” His voice boomed through the quiet, and the villagers at his back shifted and murmured in agreement.

“I am not your good woman!” Phoebe declared, incensed. Her only hope of prevailing was to intimidate this man and his rabble with her own status. “I am Lady Granville, and my husband is the representative of the law in this country.”

“Aye, ’tis true,” one of the leading men said.

“Indeed it is. And you should know better than to have truck with this nonsense, Bill Watson!” Phoebe jabbed a finger at him.

“Be silent!” boomed the witch finder. “I have the authority to seek out witches across the land. And I fear no one in the exercise of my holy work.”

“Where’s the vicar?” Phoebe demanded. “He’s the one supposed to be concerned with holy work.”

“The vicar has given his blessing. The devil is among us and must be cast out,” the witch finder droned. “You will stand aside, woman, and let me do my work.”

“I mostly certainly will not!” Phoebe planted herself in front of Meg, arms akimbo. Meg was silent, seeming to accept Phoebe’s tactics. Phoebe had no idea whether the natural authority of her own position as Cato’s wife would carry any weight in the face of this muttering crowd. But it was all she had if they refused to remember her as a friend.

The witch finder suddenly drew something from his leather pouch. It was a long, thin needle. “I smell not one witch but two,” he said. “You did well to send for me, good folk.”

“May the devil take you and damn you to hell!” Phoebe cried, not sure whether anger or terror was holding sway. She couldn’t believe this was happening, and yet she knew it was a nightmare lived all too often across the land.

The witch finder spun around to face the crowd. “You heard her curse me. You heard her call upon the devil. Seize them both. We’ll prick ’em and find the mark of the devil.”

“You touch me and you will answer to Lord Granville.” Phoebe raised her hands as if she could thus ward off the throng who had begun to move towards the two women.

There was an unmistakable hesitation and she had a moment of hope. But the witch finder knew how to command a crowd.

“If there be no mark, then they have nothing to fear. Only the guilty would resist the test. Will you go on with the devil in your midst and watch your children die, your crops fail, your cattle fall where they stand?”

“No . . . no . . . no devil!” a woman cried at the back. It was the woman whose child had died. She pushed forward, her face contorted with hatred, her eyes crazy with grief. “She killed my child.” She pointed at Meg. “She put a curse upon him and my baby died.” She spat directly into Meg’s face.

It was the signal for the rest. They surged forward and
Phoebe and Meg were both surrounded. Hands grabbed at Phoebe, wrenched her arms behind her back, tied her wrists with rope. She cursed them, using every expression she had ever heard in barnyard and stables.

And yet rough as they were with Phoebe, they manhandled Meg with a savage brutality, scratching and punching her as they trussed her. A yowling shriek that truly sounded like the devil shivered through the air, and a black bundle, hissing, spitting, claws tearing, flew through the air to land on the back of one of Meg’s captors.

He screamed as the cat’s claws dug into his back, and the witch finder gave a bellow of satisfaction. “The familiar!” he cried. “I have no need of pins. We’ll swim the witch.”

“Aye, swim the witch . . . swim the witch.” They took up the chant, and Meg’s cat loosed his hold and leaped back up onto the roof again. For a second he was visible on the gable, and then he was gone in a black streak.

Phoebe struggled for breath. “You cannot swim for a witch without finding a mark,” she said desperately. “It is not permitted. You cannot do that. You know you cannot.”

She could think now only of buying time. If it meant they had to endure the ordeal of the pricking, then so be it. Once Meg was trussed, wrists to ankles, and thrown into the freezing river, she would drown. If she held her breath and came up again, seeming to float, then they would burn her for a witch. There was no salvation, short of a miracle. But while there was time, there was time for a miracle.

“Aye, she’s right,” Bill Watson said slowly. “We’ve to do this accordin’ to law an’ custom. ’Tain’t right otherwise.”

There was a murmur of agreement, and the witch finder, after a moment when he seemed to assess the mood of the crowd, said, “ ’Tis all the same to me. I smell witches, but if you want proof, then you shall have it. Bring them.”

He strode through the crowd, who parted before his staff like the Red Sea before Moses’. They surged around Meg
and Phoebe and drove them after the tall figure of the witch finder.

Phoebe stumbled along, conscious not of her own ills but of Meg’s. Meg’s face was scratched and bruised. Her gown had been torn and her breast was exposed, but her expression was grimly determined. She would show this rabble not the faintest sign of fear.

In the apple loft, Olivia stared out of the small round window as the procession surged away. Then she half jumped, half fell down the ladder to the kitchen. Meg’s carving knife lay on the breadboard on the table, and Olivia grabbed it up. She had no idea what she could use it for, but just possessing a weapon made her feel better.

She pulled the hood of her cloak close about her face as she set off after the mob, running through the woods parallel to the path until she came up with the stragglers. In their heated excitement they paid no attention to the tightly cloaked new arrival slipping into their midst.

T
hey were borne in savage triumph to the village and
onto the green where the stocks and the whipping post stood.

“Where’s the beadle?” Phoebe demanded in a last-ditch attempt to avert this horror. “You cannot conduct this business without the beadle.”

There was a moment’s hesitation. “And you cannot conduct it without the Justice of the Peace,” she continued on a rush of ascendancy. “Send for the Justice.”

“The Justice has no say in the matter of witches,” the witch finder declared in stentorian tones. “Strip her and seize her to the whipping post.”

He advanced on Meg and was about to rend the collar of her already torn gown when he gave a shout of triumph.

“Aha! She carries a serpent’s tooth at her neck.” He grabbed the thin string that held the tooth Phoebe had drawn, and snapped it. He held it up for the crowd. “See, the serpent’s tooth.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd!” Phoebe cried. “It’s her own tooth. I pulled it for her myself.”

“It takes a witch to defend a witch,” the finder said in triumph. The crowd’s murmur became full throated and Phoebe felt the terror she had so far held at bay begin to overwhelm her.

Two men rushed at Meg to seize her to the whipping post, and Phoebe closed her eyes under a wash of despair. Once the witch finder began his poking at Meg’s naked flesh with his long pins, looking for the devil’s mark, he would find it.
Not an inch of her skin would be left untouched; the most intimate crannies would be prodded. Every tiny blemish he would prick and they would bleed, but eventually he would find one that didn’t bleed. This witch finder would ensure that he found his witch, but he would give the crowd a good show before he did so.

Phoebe knew as Meg did that there were witch finders who would use a pin with a retractable point. At some point, when the crowd was sufficiently worked up, they would apply that pin and it would draw no blood. Their fanatical love of their profession, if thus it could be called, permitted any subterfuge. And Phoebe knew that they had here such a witch finder.

And soon it would be her turn.

But for the moment she was standing ignored, her hands bound behind her, all her senses straining towards Meg, who was lost to view in the crowd.

Olivia glided away from the throng. Phoebe’s heart jumped as she saw her. Olivia seemed to stroll away, casually, as if the scene no longer interested her. A couple of heads turned in her direction, but then the witch finder gave a cry and the mob surged forward jostling for a view.

Olivia stepped behind Phoebe. She knelt so that she was obscured by Phoebe’s body and began to saw at the bonds with the awkward carving knife, terrified she would cut Phoebe’s wrists. Phoebe held her breath and let her head droop as if in defeat, surreptitiously spreading her legs to give Olivia more of a shield.

The last strand broke. “Run!” Olivia hissed. “Before they finish with Meg.”

“I can’t leave her.” Phoebe knew they were wasting precious time, but her feet seemed planted in the ground.

“You c-can’t do her any good here!”

Phoebe saw her point. She turned and raced with her, across the green to the tangle of narrow lanes running off the
main street. Every minute she expected to hear someone cry the alarm, but the interest in Meg and the witch finder was at fever pitch, and all eyes were riveted to the finder’s long pins as they slid into Meg’s flesh.

They reached the corner of Church Lane and stopped, panting for breath.

“What can we do?” Phoebe demanded on a gasp as she bent double trying to catch her breath. “We have to rescue Meg.” She looked desperately towards the village green. “Dear God! What can we do?”

“If they swim her, she’ll drown!” Olivia said, agonized. “Should we go for help? C-call my father?”

“There’s no time,” Phoebe said. She felt sick and exhausted and stupid.

A great shout went up from the rabble, and Phoebe and Olivia shivered at the surging triumph of the sound. And then the calls of “She has the mark . . . the devil’s mark. Swim the witch . . . swim the witch . . .” went up.

The crowd parted as the witch finder came through, brandishing his long needle. And only then did they notice the absence of their other victim. “Where’s the other witch?” he demanded in ringing tones.

A murmur grew from the crowd and it became clear to the pair in the lane that Lord Granville’s tenants were having second thoughts about pursuing his wife.

The witch finder tried to arouse them once more, but now that Lady Phoebe was no longer in front of them, they had no stomach for a second round of pins. They had their witch, they didn’t need two, and particularly one of Lady Phoebe’s standing.

They turned back to Meg, who lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, and “Swim the witch” rang out anew.

“We have to get to the river first.” It was all Phoebe could think of. Once at the riverbank maybe inspiration would come. “We’ll move much more quickly than the mob.” She turned and darted down Church Lane, leading the way
through the lychgate and across the churchyard into the field beyond.

The field sloped down to the riverbank where Brian Morse was sitting his horse, his gun raised as he sighted on a flock of mallards that had broken cover under an onslaught from Cato’s hounds.

Brian fired and a duck tumbled from the sky, its blue-green breast luminous as it fell through sunlight. The dogs shot into the rushes to retrieve the bird, and it was then that Brian saw the two figures racing across the field towards him.

“Well, well, what have we here?” he murmured, sliding his gun into the loop on his saddle. Something was awry.

“Oh, you have a horse!” Phoebe exclaimed as she reached him a few paces ahead of Olivia. “Thank God for that! We can do nothing without one.”

“Yes, you have to help!” Olivia stated with a ferocious glare.

“They’re bringing our friend to the river to swim her for a witch,” Phoebe explained in a tumble of words. “You have to ride them down, pull her onto your horse, and ride with her to safety.”

“I have to do
what?”
Brian stared at her in disbelief. “What in the name of the devil are you talking about, Phoebe?”

“Don’t bring the devil into this!” Phoebe snapped. “We’ve had more than enough of him already. Oh, listen, they’re coming.” She grabbed his mount’s bridle, completely forgetting her fear of horses. “You have to
do
it. Ride them down, particularly the witch finder, and get Meg. Do you understand?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, don’t be obtuse!” Olivia exclaimed, stamping her foot in exasperation.

The sound of the mob grew closer. Brian glanced down at Phoebe again and there was calculation in his eye now. Would it benefit him to help her in whatever this craziness was?

Probably, he decided. Banked favors had their uses. He turned his horse to face the crowd seething towards them along the bank.

Immediately he saw the woman they were dragging along behind the tall figure of the witch finder, who strode out in front. Brian recognized in his eyes the glitter of the fanatic. He’d met his like before. They too had their uses.

“Where should I take her when I have her?” He shifted in the saddle, gathering up the reins. The horse sidled beneath him, sensing the preparation for action.

“To the manor,” Phoebe said. She and Olivia had moved behind Brian so that they were not immediately visible to the mob. “God knows what those bastards have done to her. She will need physicking.
Hurry!”

“You’ll need to take Phoebe too,” Olivia stated. “They’ve lost her once. If they lose Meg, they may well lay hands on Phoebe again.”

“They’ve taken you . . . taken Lady Granville . . . up for a witch!” Brian whistled through his teeth. He could almost find it in him to feel sorry for Cato.

“Don’t worry about me!” Phoebe cried in an agony of apprehension. “Get Meg before they swim her.”

Brian looked down at her for a second. Then he rode down the witch finder.

The man seemed to freeze as the piebald stallion pounded the bank towards him, clods of earth flying from beneath his great hooves. And then the animal was rearing over him and he could see the white underbelly, the thrashing hooves above his head. He flung himself sideways, but he was a hair too late and he went down with a shriek of pain beneath a flying hoof that caught him on the shoulder. The crowd was for a moment too stunned to move, then as the stallion reared again, they jumped to all sides and Meg was alone, naked and slumped in her bonds.

But she looked up as the horse came to a halt beside her.
Brian leaned down with his sword unsheathed and slashed the rope that bound her wrists. Meg needed no instruction; she jumped for his stirrup, grabbing the hand he held down to her. Brian hauled her up to the saddle in front of him and rode through the now milling bewildered mob.

“Up,” he said to Phoebe, holding down his hand. She grabbed it and hauled herself up, scrambling for purchase on his boot.

“Meg . . . Meg . . . how hurt are you?” She tried to reach around Brian to touch Meg.

“Keep still, girl!” he commanded as his horse tossed his mane with a snort.

Phoebe retreated hastily, fighting her fear as the horse took off immediately.

“I’ll follow you,” Olivia called. She had her hands on the dogs’ collars, holding them back as they strained towards the excitement of the mayhem on the riverbank.

Phoebe clung to Brian’s belt as the beast hurtled up through the field, away from the river.

The wind whistled past her ears and she could find no breath to speak, and she was too scared to let go of Brian’s belt long enough to try again to reach a comforting hand around him to Meg. It was cold, the wintery sun offering no warmth. Meg must be freezing; her own teeth were chattering, but that was aftermath rather than cold.

C
ato had just mounted his horse at the front step of the
house, preparing to ride to headquarters, when Brian’s horse galloped onto the gravel sweep.

Cato couldn’t believe his eyes. Brian held a naked woman on the saddle in front of him; behind him Phoebe clung for dear life, her face white as a sheet, her jaw clenched.

Brian reined in so suddenly, the horse skidded, digging in his rear hooves and nearly sending Phoebe sliding over his
rump. She managed to save herself just in time and rumbled sideways instead, succeeding by the skin of her teeth in landing on her feet.

“Cato . . . my lord . . . the witch finder is come. They took us up and have hurt Meg so sorely.” The words came through violently chattering teeth, and Cato could barely make head or tail of them.

He swung down from his horse and automatically put a steadying arm around her as she rushed up to him. He looked to where understanding might be found. “What’s going on, Brian?”

Brian dismounted in almost leisurely fashion. “I was fortunate enough to effect a timely rescue, my lord. The witch finder and the mob were at the river. They had this woman—”

“Who would be grateful if someone would have the decency to give her something to cover herself with,” Meg interrupted in sharp accents.

“Oh, Meg, how thoughtless of me. Take this.” Phoebe moved out of Cato’s encircling arm and tore off her cloak. She held it up to Meg. “How badly did they hurt you?” she asked distressfully. “I could do nothing—”

“Seems to me you did all that was needed,” Meg broke in, wrapping herself in Phoebe’s cloak. “I’m not drowned in a freezing river, am I?” She tried to smile but her mouth seemed numb and a violent convulsion of shivering ripped through her.

“Who is this woman?” Cato demanded.

“I can give you the answer myself, Lord Granville,” Meg declared, her tone remarkably robust. “The bastard of a witch finder didn’t take my tongue. I’m generally known hereabouts as Mistress Meg, the healer.”

Cato grasped at a familiar straw. Phoebe had talked of such a friend in the village. A friendship he had forbidden.

The woman looked at death’s door, wrapped in nothing but Phoebe’s cloak.

“Come, you need to be in the warm.” He reached up and lifted her to the ground, but when he set her down, her knees buckled and she would have slid to the ground if he hadn’t supported her.

“You there! Trooper!” He called over one of the troopers who’d been observing the scene with unabashed curiosity. “Carry Mistress Meg into the house. Ask Mistress Bisset to have a care for her.”

“Oh, you made it safely!” Olivia was shouting as she came round the side of the house, having taken a shortcut through the home farm. The dogs bounded ahead of her. “Is Meg badly hurt?” She arrived panting. Her face was very white, her lips so pale as to be almost blue.

“Olivia! What has happened? Are you ill?” Cato looked at his daughter in concern. “Tell me what’s happened.” He passed Meg over to the trooper and bent to take Olivia’s cold hands in his.

“Oh, it was so frightening,” Olivia said, catching her breath on a sob. “We were in Meg’s c-cottage when the witch finder c-came for her. And they took Phoebe too, so I had to rescue her when they had her bound on the village green, but we c-couldn’t save Meg from the pricking, and then . . . then . . .” Olivia hesitated fractionally. “Brian was at the river and he rode them down and rescued Meg.”