Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (2 page)

When the thicker dark of a timber wall materialised among the trees he grinned with relief. At least he had fresh water in his leather bottle from the waterfall but the loss of the chicken shamed him. Nat needed food to give him strength and he himself was ravenously hungry.

He felt round the wall to the door and pushed it open. As it hung lopsidedly from one hinge it scraped the floor and Nat stirred and groaned out, “Dan?”

Daniel knelt beside him and raised his head and held the water bottle to his lips. Nat gulped eagerly.

“I dropped the bird. Forgive me. There was a bang. My shoulder. It’s bloody but it’s nothing much. A scratch.”

Nat reared up in the darkness. “You were shot at?”

Daniel nodded vigorously.

“Did no one follow you?”

Daniel shook his head.

“The fat boy saw me but he went away after the bang. There was some fire. The wind was blowing it along.”

“Do you mean gunfire? The wind carried the sound?”

“Fire on the ground. I got the water to bring you. Have some more. Are you well now?”

But Daniel knew his brother was not well. He could feel his body shaking with the fever. He himself was never ill. Their mother often said, “You, Daniel, are my strong boy. There is often a little runt with twins. Nat is the little runt.” It was hard to understand that because Nat had grown to within an inch or two of Daniel’s height now that they were both nineteen and though Nat’s shoulders weren’t as broad, he was usually hale and hearty. More than that, his body was as quick and agile as his brain. He would not have lost the chicken, Dan thought sadly. What can I do for him now?

He lay down close to him and wrapped his arms round him to make him warm again. In a few moments he was asleep.

Nurse carrying a candle put her head round the bed curtain. “Oh my lady, here she is asleep in bed as ever was.”

Bel could picture the head of her mother peering above stubby Nurse’s square face – the long slender nose, oval chin, the smooth black hair twined with one of her silvery drapes, the hard dark eyes.

“She hides deliberately out of mischief.. She shall be locked in her room tomorrow. See to it.”

Bel heard the door close and the key turn in the lock. She had had worse punishments. At least she could get up now and undress, all in the dark and carefully pour some water from her brass ewer into her basin so that her face and hands would look clean in the morning. She laid her clothes neatly over the back of the box chair in the window, except for her torn pinafore which she pushed to the bottom of the linen chest in the corner. Finally, she found a clean shift and slipped into it and sat on the bed for a while brushing her hair and thinking of Sam and how she could get back to see him when her imprisonment was over. She was sorry now that she had hacked off her dark curls lately. Sam had looked hard at her but said nothing.

Outside her room there seemed to be some running about and excited talk but she couldn’t make out the words. Maybe the robber had been caught. She hoped he had. She slipped into bed again.

A few minutes later her door was unlocked and Nurse crept to the bed, pulled back the curtain and gently shook her.

“Now, Bella, you tell me where you were all that time. I looked in all the places you hide and told her ladyship you must have been under one of the servants’ beds because I’m too stiff to get down to look, but I did look and you weren’t there at all. Did you sneak outside like you’ve done before?”

Bel thought quickly. If the robber had been caught and they knew she had been wandering in the woods when marauding Scots looters were about she could be locked up all the time. She would have to confess the one really secret place which she knew she would never dare to enter. She grinned up at Nurse. “Don’t tell anyone, Nan, but I was in the
priest’s hole
.”

Nurse started back, her candle lighting up her fear-filled eyes. “You know about that! How could you?”

“I heard them talk when they moved me here from the room next to Henrietta. They said it was to make a little chapel, but I knew there was more going on. They said workmen were repairing the wall in the dining-room below and they kept the door locked till it was finished but it wasn’t that. They made a hole in the floor where my bed head had been and some steps down and a false wall below and that’s where their priest goes when he stays here. I knew the dining-room was smaller but they put a screen there and pretended it wasn’t.”

Nurse put her finger to her lips. “Nobody’s to know that. There’s people out in the wicked world would come in and tear the place to pieces till they found him and then they’d kill him.”

Bel couldn’t help another grin though the place had fearful associations. “
I
won’t tell.”

“No, don’t you dare and don’t you ever go down there again. I can’t think how you got in and out without anyone seeing you, you naughty girl.”

“Oh I have rabbit’s ears. You’ve told me often. I can hear the rustle of a skirt from far away. I know when the coast’s clear and when it’s not.”

“Well, don’t you ever pull a trick like that again and I won’t tell her ladyship. You’re not supposed to be in the chapel at all since you made such a rumpus there the first time they let you go to Mass.” Her voice changed and Bel heard a surprising note of sympathy as she added, “Mind, I hold no truck with Popish things myself but I keep my mouth shut in her Ladyship’s hearing. And you’ll have to grow up, my girl, and learn a bit of wisdom yourself one of these days.” The habitual tone of hectoring was back. “And you’re to be locked in tomorrow and I’m not to talk to you. Eh, ay, you’ll wear me out in my old age if you go on like this.” And out she went, locking the door, with not a word of goodnight.

Bel was used to being in disgrace with everyone and now that she was in love with Sam Turner she didn’t care. She lay awake thinking how being in love had changed many things. Perhaps even the priest in his hole was no longer frightening.

It was a day three years before when she had found her former bedroom unlocked for once. She had seen Mary the maid taking candlesticks downstairs to polish and wondered if she might not have locked the little chapel up again. So she had tried the door and peeped round and looked straight at a hooded head emerging through the floor. It had vanished at once and the trapdoor with its rug draped over it had shut with a bang. But even while she stared it had been cautiously raised again and the whole man had emerged with his finger to his lips. She had never seen him close to because he always slunk about with his hood up but now he threw it back and stood tall over her cowering figure. He was as fierce and beautiful as an avenging angel and his voice was stern.

“Miss Arabella, why are you never at Mass with your mother and sister?”

“I go to Church with Father,” she had breathed back.

“But that is not the true church. Do you want to be a lost soul?”

His voice had softened as if he’d just realised she was only a child so she had straightened up and barked back at him, “Oh I’m a lost soul anyway. Everyone says I’m wicked.”

He had reached out a hand to her then and there was something more devilish than angelic about his smiling eyes and she had run, slamming the door behind her. Ever since then she had avoided the chapel and if she knew the priest was in the house she kept to her room. Sometimes she heard Henrietta ask her mother, in an odd wheedling voice, “When is Father Patrick’s next visit?” If her father was by, Bel sensed his heavy disapproval in the air.

The thing between men and women was a sinister mystery to her then but especially – she was sure – if it involved a Popish priest.

Now that she was thirteen and had spent the afternoon with Sam she realised for the first time what it meant to feel an attraction. Sam was open and as innocent as the day. He wasn’t beautiful like Father Patrick – a Satanic beauty she decided - but he had strong, honest features and she wanted to be with him again soon so she must be in love.

Just before she fell asleep she had a moment of faint but real sympathy for Henrietta.

CHAPTER 2

Daniel woke to a bright day shimmering at every crack in the ramshackle hut. His shoulder was sore and stiff with encrusted blood. That was nothing. He looked at Nat who was at last sleeping like a baby, his breathing steady. How hungry he would be when he woke up!

I must get him food, he thought to himself. I mustn’t fail again.

He went out, dazzled by the dappled light on the stream. Mustn’t go east this time. There would be other farms. He set off westward but the stream course forced him south. Somewhere that way was the big town called Newcastle where he and Nat had been with the English army for a while. But when they started marching again, Nat had got the camp fever and they were left behind. Dan had a picture in his head of throwing their pikes and uniforms into a ditch. There was another picture of him rowing Nat across a river in a very small boat. They had wandered in woods. It was frightening being away from home in Darrowswick where he knew all the footpaths, but Nat was with him – even if he had to half carry him. Now he was alone. That was bad, but he could find Nat again if he kept to this stream. There must be food somewhere and he was now dressed as a peasant not a soldier. He had liked marching but he could never stick his pike in a horse’s belly or in a man below his breastplate.

Watching the stream he saw big flat stones in it leading across. That was tempting. He liked the idea of jumping from one to the other.And there was a chimney ahead as well, among the trees. He could see the smoke and smell something cooking which made all the juices in his mouth rise up and shout, “Hunger!”

I will ask politely, he thought. If they are Christians they will feed the starving.

Slithering down the bank he hopped across on the stones. Another time he would have gone back again for the fun of it but hunger made him follow the path to where it joined a lane. There was a whole village ahead he could see now, low houses clustered round a green with a church tower peeping over the top. He knocked at the door of the first cottage which stood on its own.

A woman peeped round the door, gave one look and slammed it in his face. He could hear her yell to someone inside. Two men appeared, one from each side of the house armed with pitchforks. They were shouting, “Here’s the villain,” and more people, men, women and children began emerging from their cottages.

The figures dotted the green like a festival day but they were not happy, they were not dancing. They were running towards him and brandishing sticks and stones.

“A crust of bread,” he began to say as the pitchfork men grabbed him, one each side. He looked hopefully towards the women and children for signs of charity in their faces. A tiny boy snatched up a stone from the road and threw it with astonishing aim. Daniel was so surprised to see it coming that he didn’t dodge it and it hit him above the left eye.

“Belay that,” shouted one of the pitchfork men to the child. “We’ve got him safe. You could have hit us.”

Daniel heard the voice but for a moment he was stunned and saw nothing till he felt his arms being pinioned to his sides.

Many more voices were yelling round his head.

“We should string him up now.”

“Put him in the stocks.”

“Take him to Sir John.”

“Someone run and tell Turner we’ve got the man fired his stack.”

“Are we sure? He’s not dressed as a Scots soldier.”

“Look at his flaxen hair and the wound on his shoulder where Mr Robert winged him.”

“Has he got anything to say for himself?”

Daniel felt his cheek slapped. He blinked and saw red fierce faces crowding close.

“Speak up then. You went looting from the Scots army. You stole a chicken.”

“Ay and when Master Robert shot at you, you hid and came back in a fury and fired the stack. That’s a hanging offence that is.”

“Can Sir John deal with him?”

“Why not?”

“The Scots’ Commander is the law now. He’ll not punish his own for firing one of our stacks.”

Daniel heard the maze of words but the pictures in his head were confused. The words didn’t fit them. There had been fire – that was true enough. He could see the picture where flaring straw was running along the ground. A gust of wind had brushed his cheek at the same time. But that picture had stopped, perhaps when he turned to run away. There was also quite clearly – though it had been half dark at the time – the shape of the fat boy slithering down the tree trunk. He liked children and in the pale blob of the boy’s face he had felt the eyes looking at him, but he didn’t know if it was a kindly look or a hostile one. What had happened then? The boy had vanished. Was that before or after the fire picture?

A woman’s voice said, “Why don’t you answer, you Scots villain?”

That at least was not right. They were angry because they thought he was from Scotland. He tried to find the face that had spoken so he could beam at it and reassure the woman. He wanted to tap his chest but his arms were fastened to his sides with a piece of rope. He nodded his head at the many faces around him.

“English,” he said with confidence. “English army.”