The Hostage Bride (31 page)

Giles whistled. “Ye do reckon she’s gone bad, then?”

“I don’t know whether she’s bad so much as gullible,” Cato said. “If I’m right, then she’ll pass on this information as soon as she hears it, and if I’m wrong, then we’ll make sure he hears it anyway.”

Portia felt sick. Her hair seemed to lift as her scalp contracted.

She became aware that the voices were fading, then the light was extinguished, but she remained pressed to the tunnel wall until complete silence fell again. When she was certain she was once more alone, she stepped forward out of the tunnel and found herself in a large vault. She could smell the oil of the extinguished lamp. It was very dark, but she could make out the shapes of coffers stacked against the walls. She opened one and stared at the bright glitter of silver, the duller glow of gold, the sparkle of gems, that seemed to throw light into the darkness.

She touched the objects. Candlesticks, chalices, silver plates. There was jewelry too. Rings and broaches. A treasure-house of altarpieces, domestic chattels, personal jewelry. All of precious metals and gems. And all intended to enrich Parliament’s coffers. Maintaining an army in wartime was a hugely expensive business. The king was as strapped financially as the rebels. This hoard would give either side a huge advantage once the spring fighting began.

Rufus Decatur would give anything to get his hands on this. And Cato knew it.

Portia let the lid of the coffer fall. The thud in the vast chamber sounded like a drumbeat, and her heart speeded. But silence fell again. She could make out the shadow of an opening in the far wall and went toward it. Another tunnel stretched ahead, but it was wider and higher than the one from the moat. She followed it, thinking furiously.

She had to warn Rufus of the trap. Cato was right. His enemy would have eyes and ears on the alert across the
countryside. Nothing that Cato Granville intended escaped the notice of Rufus Decatur. He’d attempt to capture Cato’s treasure, and he’d be captured himself.

The tunnel ended at the bottom of a flight of steep stone stairs. At the head was an oak door. Portia felt a chill of anxiety as she laid her hand on the latch. What if it was locked from the other side? But the hasp lifted smoothly and she slipped through, finding herself in one of the sculleries leading off the kitchen.

There was no sound but the loud ticking of the tall case clock in the kitchen and the hiss of a flaming log in the great hearth. Portia made her way via the back stairs to her own chilly chamber, where she sat on the bed behind the closed door, hands knotted in her lap, her mind racing.

So Cato believed she was a spy. A gullible naïf who didn’t know what she was doing. A wave of indignation washed through her at the thought of how Cato intended to use her. She was to bait his trap! Well, blood ties or no, she was going to do the opposite.

But how? Unfortunately she didn’t have the channels of communication with Decatur village that Lord Granville assumed she had. And it wasn’t as if there were friendly postmen willing to take such a charged message across the wintry landscape of the Cheviot Hills in the middle of a war. She had no way of discovering one of Rufus’s spies, and she couldn’t wander the countryside dropping hints in the hopes that they’d fall on fertile ears.

The answer, of course, was simple. She would have to go herself.

The cold thought rose in her brain that once she’d left Cato’s roof on such an errand, she’d never be able to return to it. She would be utterly adrift.

But she knew she had no choice. She couldn’t stand aside and watch Rufus go to his death.

She crawled under the covers and shivered through a fitful doze. In the harsh gray light of dawn, she rose and began to move about the chamber, packing up her few belongings. She would have to go on foot. A daunting prospect, but she couldn’t take one of Cato’s horses, and Penny had been sent
back to her owner as soon as she’d been bated and rested. Cato had not imparted to Portia the content of the message he’d sent back with her, and Portia had preferred not to know.

It was a four-hour ride to Decatur village, so it would be around a twelve-hour walk. And once she reached the bleak featurelessness of the Cheviot Hills, she would have no landmarks, only whatever prods her memory might give her. But she could look for the sentry fires. That ring of fire high on the hilltops would guide her from a good distance away.

She would need wine and food. Water she could find along the way. She had very little money left over from what Giles had given her in Edinburgh, but conscience forbade her using that for this purpose. Reluctantly she laid the two silver shillings on the washstand. Then she went to the kitchen to scavenge. It was still very early and only a sleepy scullion was about, poking at the fire and yawning his head off. He didn’t acknowledge Portia’s presence.

It seemed too short a time from the moment of decision to the point when she was ready to leave, but for such a momentous undertaking her preparations were minimal. She had a flagon of wine and a package of bread, cheese, and cold meat wrapped in a cloth. She was wearing britches under her riding skirt. Two pairs of stockings. A thick woolen cloak and gloves. Her few keepsakes were distributed throughout her various pockets.

Now all she had to do was bid farewell to Olivia and manage to get herself out of the castle without drawing attention to her departure.

The second task was going to be the easier, Portia knew as she made her way to Olivia’s chamber.

Olivia was still asleep, but she awoke when Portia shook her shoulder gently. “What are you doing so early?” She sat up blinking, regarding Portia with puzzlement. “Why are you all dressed to go out?”

Portia sat on the side of the bed. “I have to go back to Decatur village,” she said. “Your father has set a trap for Rufus and I can’t let him fall into it.”

“No, of c-course not,” Olivia said, her gaze fixed wonderingly on Portia’s face. “But what trap?”

Portia explained and Olivia listened, her brows drawn together over her deep-set eyes.

“Will you c-come back?” she asked, but the bravery in her voice, the pain in her eyes, told Portia that Olivia knew the answer.

“You know I won’t be able to. Your father will never welcome me again.” Portia leaned over and kissed Olivia’s cheek. “But this isn’t goodbye. Somehow I know it isn’t. I don’t know where I’ll go after I’ve warned Rufus. But I’ll try to get a message to you, to let you know what happened.”

She frowned in thought, then was struck by an idea. “I tell you what, I’ll leave messages on the island in the moat, under that boulder where the ducks gather when it rains. Look for something there whenever you can. Promise?”

“I promise.” Olivia forced a smile. “Go!”

Portia kissed her again quickly and stood up, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Just one more thing.” Her voice was urgent, eyes intent. “Olivia, you must pretend to know nothing about me … about why I’ve left or where I’ve gone. Can you do that?”

“Of course.” Olivia sounded indignant that Portia should have doubted it. “Now go before I start c-crying.”

Portia hesitated for a second and then left before she gave in to her own threatening tears.

She left the castle through the wicket gate in the north keep, telling the guard that she was going to feed the ducks. It was such a common occurrence that the man merely nodded, exchanged a few words about the weather, and let her through.

It was full daylight now. The sky was clear and there was very little wind. It seemed auspicious weather for the trek that lay ahead. The path dropped steeply into the valley, then wound its way for several miles along the valley floor before climbing up into the first series of hills leading into the Cheviots.

Portia walked briskly, swinging her arms, humming to herself to keep up her courage. When she could, she walked parallel to the roadway, concealed behind hedgerows. A lone woman was easy prey for anyone with hostile intent, not to
mention the troops of soldiers who regularly crossed her path. Fortunately, tramping feet, the fluting of martial pipes, and the steady beat of the drum heralded the latter’s approach in plenty of time for her to seek concealment.

She ate some of her small store of food at noon and rested for a while, but it was too cold to sit for long on the hard ground, even with a hedge as windbreak at her back. She passed a few hamlets and several isolated cottages, gradually becoming aware that the shadows were lengthening as the light was slowly leached from the sky. She a been walking since eight that morning, and each step was becoming an effort. She had no idea how much farther she had to go, and once it was dark, not only would she never find her way but the already freezing temperature would plummet. She would have to find shelter. Some cottager would surely take her in.

The countryside had so far borne few signs of war, but that changed just after Portia had reached her decision to seek shelter. She had been walking down a narrow lane with high hedges on either side. A faint smell of lingering smoke was in the air, but she put it down to a farmer’s bonfire or late stubble burning, until the hedge suddenly gave way to open fields on either side of the lane.

The fields were burned to the bare earth; trees, so painstakingly planted as windbreaks against the vicious gusts blowing off the hills and the moors beyond, were scorched skeletons against the darkening sky. The skeleton branches had rags dangling from them, and as Portia approached she saw that the rags were corpses, hanging from nooses, twisting in the freshening wind. They had been there for several days, and they bore the insignia of Lord Newcastle’s royalist troops.

Portia turned aside, retching in disgust at the stench of corruption, the eyeless sockets, and the great flocks of black crows circling and cawing around their carrion feast.

A pathetic whimpering came faintly from the ditch alongside the gallows field as she stumbled away from the atrocious sight. She tried to ignore the sound but it went on, pathetic and yet insistent with a kind of last-chance desperation, and finally she turned back, averting her eyes from the gallows as she tried to trace the sound.

Its source proved to be a puppy, not more than five or six weeks, Portia judged. Not old enough to be motherless, certainly. It lay in the ditch, liquid brown eyes staring up at her from beneath a matted curly fringe. Its coat, in a most improbable shade of mustard, was a tangle of burrs and knotted curls.

“Oh, what an unprepossessing little thing you are,” Portia murmured, feeling an instant bond with the abandoned waif. She bent to pick it up. It shivered against her, all skin and bone and wet hair. A scrap of material fluttered around its scrawny neck. It was a piece of a royalist flag.

Portia glanced involuntarily to the killing field. Had this puppy been a troop mascot? It seemed likely. A mascot left behind to starve in the aftermath of atrocity.

“Come on, then, pup. For some reason, I get the impression you and I are two of a kind.” She tucked the creature under her cloak, against her heart, and felt the rapid fluttering of its own heart and the involuntary tremors, which slowly died down as the puppy warmed up.

Now she had to find shelter for the two of them. It was almost full dark, and what little warmth there had been in the day had fled under the rising wind. Portia trudged down the lane, even more wary now. The barbaric troop of parliamentarian soldiers who had committed that atrocity could still be around, and even if they were long gone, the local inhabitants would be afraid and more than ordinarily suspicious of a stranger.

She came to a hamlet about two miles farther down the road. The cottages were shut up tight, only the thin plumes of smoke from their chimneys indicated habitation. She chose the cottage nearest the small church and, with a boldness she didn’t feel, knocked on the door.

There was no answer. She knocked again and waited. No sound, no sense of life. And yet she knew someone had to be sitting before the fire whose smoke curled from the roof. She knocked again and called softly, reassuringly. Maybe if they heard a woman’s voice, they would open up.

Nothing. She walked back into the lane and surveyed the house as it squatted in a bare vegetable patch. The windows were shuttered, showing not a speck of light.

Portia shivered. She had never before felt so completely alone, and she was very frightened. She was as frightened of the cold, of the impossibility of spending a brutal February night without shelter, as she was of human attack. The puppy whimpered. The animal must be starved. Was it old enough to eat bread and meat and cheese?

But first they had to get out of the night. The sky was black with cloud, utterly lightless, and the wind was rising. The church would offer sanctuary. It would be cold and hard, but they would be out of the wind and safe from human interference.

She opened the lych-gate and trod up the path to the church door. It was a small Norman church, a huddle of gray stone, with a rose window over the arched oak door. Portia lifted the latch and pushed, praying that it wouldn’t be locked. The door creaked loudly as it yawned open onto the dark, damp chill of the vestibule.

She stood accustoming her eyes to the darkness, and slowly the font, the long rows of pews, the glimmer of the altar, took shape. Maybe there were priest’s vestments in the sacristy, something at least that she could wrap herself in. There was the altar cloth, but that seemed somehow sacrilegious.

She approached the altar and sat down on the top step against the communion rail, unwrapping her cloak to lift out the puppy.

“So, what sex are you?” It was too dark to see, but her searching fingers found the answer quickly enough—definitely female. The little creature licked her hand and whimpered again.

Portia set her down and opened the cloth package of food. The puppy scrabbled frantically against her knee as she smelled the meat. Portia took her knife from her boot and cut the meat up into the smallest pieces she could and laid them down on the altar steps. The puppy seemed to sniff and the offering disappeared.

“I have a feeling your need is greater than mine,” Portia murmured, cutting some more. She fed all the meat to the puppy and drank the wine, feeling it warm her on the inside at least. She contemplated lighting one of the altar candles but decided that showing a light would not be wise. She had
no idea what kind of reception she’d receive from the hamlet’s inhabitants, but from what she’d seen of the shuttered cottages, it was wise to assume that it wouldn’t be friendly.