Beloved Enemy (8 page)

The poultice went into a wicker basket covered by a checkered
napkin, together with a plentiful supply of fresh bandages, and Ginny crept
downstairs to the dining room. The wall panel sprung open as her foot pressed
the requisite floorboard, and she was inside, the concealed door closing behind
her as her knowing fingers found the catch. She remembered the story of how her
grandfather had summoned locks
m
i
th
s from London to achieve this marvel. Since Henry
VIII's reformation, when Catholic priests had found refuge in the secret
passages and chambers of the houses of their sympathizers, most newly built
houses of the nobility contained in their plans some such hiding place. Her
father
'
s father, with a fascination for all
things mechanical, had constructed his own, utilizing every device known to the
age. John
R
edfern, in his turn, had kept the
mechanism well oiled, although the priest's hole and the secret passageway had,
in his lifetime, only been used in play by his tomboy daughter and her equally
mischievous cousin.

It was ten shallow steps to the stone chamber, and she
whistled softly to reassure the captives that the intruder was not be feared.

"What do you do, coming from the house?" Edmund was
on his feet, still shaky, but his color was better, although, like Peter, his
complexion carried the waxen tinge of long days away from fresh air and light.

"
How
strong do you feel?
"
she asked, setting down her burden.
She explained her plan rapidly, even as she
en
couraged
Edmund back to the pallet and swiftly applied the poultice to a wound that was
much less red and swoll
en
. She changed the bandage, nodding
with satisfaction. "There is no seepage of fluid, Edmund. If you avoid
wett
in
g the bandage on the crossing,
then
it will not need to be changed for several
days."

"How am I to manage the cliff path, Ginny, with o
nl
y one hand?"

"On your backside, as we used to do." She fashioned
a sling from the napkin, securing his arm against his chest.
"
You will go between us, but you must
not attempt to use this arm."

"You were always overfond of giving orders," Edmund
grumbled, even as his eyes shone with the prospect of activity and release.

"Indeed." She grinned through her tiredness and the
desolation she could not admit, even to herself. "And
on
this occasion, my friend, you will obey."

Edmund tugged one of the long braids that no
w
hung down her back. "I will, general, because I
must. Bu
t
when this is over, we will refashion
things, will we not?"

She smiled because she could not answer the question that
referred to their agreed future. "Come, I will go first and spy out the
land. My presence on the cliff top will require little explanation if there are
watchers."

They followed her down the steps that for once held no
terrors for her. What power did ghostly imaginings have over the reality of the
executioner
'
s axe, the pile of straw, stained by
the severed head? That would be their fate. There could be no other if they
were discovered, unless it
was
the
hangman's noose in Winchester jail.

She cracked open the heavy stone door at the stairs' foot,
listened, and heard only voices carrying faintly from a distance. They would
surely not guard the cliffs or keep a watch on the blank side of the house that
faced only the unfriendly sea? The expanse of springy turf stretched to the
cliff edge, offering no shelter, only the possibility of a headlong dash. But
there was no one in sight, no patrolling soldier with pike and musket.

"
'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.'
"
She shot a smile over her shoulder,
and Edmund again pulled a braid.

"
Ginny
was always more inclined to mind our tutor than I, Peter." He was doing
his part, no wounded passenger but a whole man, not one weakened by loss of
blood and captivity, a man undaunted by the prospect of the open cliff top and
the goat's trail on slippery sand leading to an unknown, battlestrewn future.

She heard his resolution, and it stiffened her own. "You
must run. We cannot help you until we reach the path
.
"

"I know it. I have strength enough."

Ginny ran then, crouching low as if she could thus be
invisible on the wind-swept headland, paying no heed to the two behind her, knowing
that she could not afford to slow her pace. She was the hare to their hounds,
and
they
could keep her pace . . .
would
keep
her pace until it was possible to hide beneath the cliff overhang and regather
strength.

The path was there, invisible to all but the accustomed eye.
For others there was simply the sea stretching to a horizon, broken only by the
Needle Rocks. Ginny paused for the barest second to hitch her skirt into her
belt. She kicked off her sandals and tucked
them
also into the belt, leaving her legs bare from the knee down. Peter and Edmund
were behind her as she slipped over the cliff, her feet seeking purchase in the
sand. She grasped the tendril of a scrubby bush with her uppermost left hand,
steadied herself, and reached with her right to help Edmund who sat down
abruptly, his slithering fall prevented only by her feet barricading the path.
She moved down in the ungainly manner of a crab, allowing Edmund to slide the
few feet necessary to give Peter room to come over the cliff and onto the path.

Edmund's face was sheened with the sweat of pain and effort,
his breathing labored. Peter, unwounded but affected by the days of fearful
inactivity, also needed time to recoup. They could afford a few moments, and
Ginny stood sideways on the path, her bare feet gripping the sand as she
listened for the hue and cry that would tell them they had been spotted. There
was nothing but the call of the gulls.

"
You
can manage with one hand, Edmund,
"
she
whispered, again with that reassuring, teasing smile.
"
For this once, you need have no fear
of returning to the house with
torn
britches."

"Maybe not, but I have no desire to face the world with
a scraped and ill-covered posterior
,
"
he retorted. "I shall contrive, never fear, if you will but move
yourself."

Ginny went down the incline backward, one hand on Edmund's
ankle to control the speel of his descent
,
as
Peter crouched above, protecting the injured shoulder as best he could. When
they reached the cove, Edmund's color had changed to an alarming waxen yellow,
and the eyes
that
had been bright before were now dull
in the aftermath of the first battle won. Ginny reached for his wrist to feel
his pulse that was rapid, but not dangerously so.

"
You
must rest in the cave whilst Peter and I launch the dinghy."

The cave was cool and damp beneath the cliffs, and the
sailboat on a wheeled trailer offered mute salvation. Edmund sank into a
corner, his back against a rock.
"
Help
me," Ginny said to Peter. "I am able to do it alone, but it will be
faster with two."

Peter, who knew nothing about such things, followed her
instructions, lending his weight as she swung the trailer around so the
dinghy's bow faced the sea. They ran across the sand, hauling the trailer
behind them, and at the shoreline, she swung it again, pushing both trailer and
boat, stern first, into the shallows.

"Take this back to the cave, and fetch Edmund." It
was a terse instruction that Peter Ashley obeyed because Virginia Courtney knew
what she was doing. Knee deep now in the water, she was unfastening the boat
from the trailer, pushing the dinghy free as Peter dragged the trailer clear.
She then held the boat's painter and tossed her sandals over the bow into the
boat.

Peter ran the now-light burden to the cave, shoved it to the
back, and helped Edmund to his feet.
"
She
was always thus," Edmund said with a gasp of effort. "No tree was too
high, no cliff too steep for Ginny."

Peter smiled grimly, supporting the wounded man around the
waist.
"
In this matter of sailing, my friend,
I am glad to yield authority to one who knows. I do not care for the sea."

Alex, order restored in the orchard, searched the house. She
had disappeared again, and this time he must find her himself. He longed to see
her, ached to whisper i
n
her ear his delight in that mole she
had, high on the inside of her right thigh, the bruise, like a ripe plum, on
her hip. Had she acquired it thumping open the door of barn or dairy when her
hands were full? He wanted to know.

She would be on the beach, of course. She had told him last
night that
that
was her special place.

Alex strolled across the cliff top, hiding his eagerness
beneath the commander
'
s swagger. Halfway down the broad
path to Alum Bay, the only path that he was aware of, he saw her. She was not
alone as she pulled a boat on a wheeled trailer to the water's edge. Alex began
to run in the same blind panic that had informed his search of the preceding
night. He could not lose her, now
that
he had found her, whatever Royalist treachery she was engaged in. Royalist it
most certainly was, to judge by the long hair and broad sash of the man helping
her. Alex saw her swing the boat into the sea with all the expertise of one
well versed in these matters, saw the man run up the beach with the trailer
until he was lost to sight. Alex's feet pounded on the path, and he was
thankful for the light clothes
that
he wore,
the lack of armor that made it easy for his fit body to eat up the yards. The
long, broad path descended diagonally to the beach, and when he reached the
bottom,  he was hidden from the shoreline by an outcrop of rock at the water's
edge at the extremity of the cove.

He saw the man reappear, together with another whose arm was
in a sling and who staggered like one whose strength was at a low ebb. Ginny
was holding the boat in the shallows, up to her knees in the water, and as the
two men drew close, she pulled the dinghy back to the shore. He heard her
voice, clear in the sea air. "You must remove your boots if you do not
wish to land with wet feet."

The two men did so,
the
able helping the injured. They handed them to her, and she tossed them into
the
dinghy to join her own before stretching her free
hand to steady the men as they clambered aboard.

She would not go with them, would she? Not after last night?
But he saw her hitch herself over the stern, hoist the gaff-rigged sail that
stood crosswise to the mast. She held the boat into the wind as the uninjured
man followed her instructions and dropped the rudder into the slots and secured
the pin.

Alex ran across the beach then, and as he did so, the man
stood up, rocking the frail craft, a flintlock pistol in his hand.

Ginny saw Alex a second after Peter, the second necessary for
the pistol to appear.

"
You
cannot!
"
She struck his wrist with all the
force of which she was capable. "He is unarmed, Peter."

For an instant the tableau remained immobile. The dinghy held
into the wind by a slim brown hand on the tiller, the sails flapping uselessly
until the hands would draw tight the sheets, push the tiller to the right, and
so catch the wind; an unarmed man on the beach, his body targeted by the
cumbersome barrel of the pistol; two men in the boat, one crouched by the mast,
incapable of action, the other holding the weapon that wavered and then dropped.