The journey had been long and much more cumbersome than Miss Margaret Williams had anticipated. Mrs. Williams, she repeated to herself. She was Mrs. Peggy Williams now. She must accustom herself to the ruse that she was a widow for her son’s sake. She hated the lying, but it must be done, else, her son would be branded a bastard. She sighed, exhausted in body, mind, and spirit.
Having been granted her freedom after four long years of unwilling servitude, Peggy had expected the vigor of her release to bolster her journey to the far north. Rather, having lived within the confines of Blackwell house and seeing nothing but its dreary walls for so many years, she had found her reintroduction to the outside world nothing short of overwhelming. The streets were busier than she remembered; even the long country roads were filled with carriages and passersby waving and shouting at one another. Their cheerful greetings unnerved her. The villages bustled with activity, and there was always some festival or another that brought out the crowds in droves.
Sounds and smells that she had thought were long forgotten came rushing back to her. She had chosen to rent a horse and travel amongst the wagons filled with troubadours that went from town to town singing and plying their goods rather than stuff herself into the mail coach, although the journey would have been much faster by coach. The thought of being confined in such close quarters, even for a short while, left her shaking and nervous.
She had wanted to feel the open air on her skin and smell the scent of the wide-open meadows that bordered the roadway, even though the weather was quite cool. She might have already reached Northwickshire within a fortnight—and the small village where her son was supposed to be—had she chosen another means of travel, but the stop and go of her merry little band had given her the time to prepare herself, she hoped, for what lay ahead. He had waited four long years. A few more days could not matter.
Her son. Adam.
At first, when her friend and solicitor, the dear Mr. Crowley, had given her the information that she needed to locate the child from whom she had been separated, she had raced off to plan her travels without hesitation. Now… well, she was not quite delaying, but she was glad that she had taken the long route. She had needed to think. Needed to ponder all of the possibilities.
What if Mr. Crowley’s informant had been wrong and Adam had been removed to another location? The money that she had been given by the Duke of Manchester in restitution for her suffering seemed substantial, but she was a woman who, for ages, hadn’t had a guinea to her name. What if it was not enough to buy her son from the family to which he had been sold and also provide the two of them with a suitable living afterwards? She couldn’t very well take her child to beg on the streets. Worse yet, and her greatest fear of all, what if he did not want her? What if he did not even remember the mother from whom he had been parted at the tender young age of less than five years? What if he did not wish to see her? Or leave with her? What if the one thing that had given her strength these past years, the thought of starting a new life with Adam, was nothing more than a dream? She could not quite keep the abhorrent thought from her mind. What if he was happy where he was? What if he had made a home without her? What would she do?
What a wicked mother she was to wish years of unhappiness upon her own son. Of course, she tried to keep her thoughts focused upon a more positive outcome. Adam would recognize her in an instant and come running into her arms. They would embrace, and she would explain that she had never meant to leave him, and he would understand. He would accept her back into his life with all the gusto of the small boy who had once greeted her each morning with a smile and a kiss. They would be together again, a family, albeit a small one.
These long months on the road had given her time to think, to ponder the plan that had previously been filled with ridiculous fantasies of retrieving her son and then buying passage on a ship to a far-off land where she would never have to look at the cursed English soil again. Despite her fantasies, she had come to see that option as unreasonable. Where would they go? Certainly not to the colonies. That was no place for a lone woman and child, and she had no intention of marrying, even for the comfort of provisions or protection. Peggy was world weary enough to take care of herself these days, and she was certain she could care for Adam too, once he was back in her arms. That was all she dreamed.
So it was that she had decided to find a remote English town in which to settle, someplace far away from anyone who knew her or her troubles. There had been a small village between Nottingham and Lincoln that she had enjoyed. It had quaint little shops and kind people. Most of the neighboring land was filled with hard-working farmers and sheepherders, but her traveling companions had continued moving northward. She had thought it would be a good place for a boy to grow, but there were many such places. She would find a good town, a place for Peggy to start anew with her young son. She would find somewhere large enough to have protection and community, but small enough to go unnoticed by the world at large. Somewhere far removed from all of the horrors of her past in London. She was determined to purge all thought of her ordeal from her memory. She had been given a fresh start, and she was even more determined to make the most of it. There was only one thing missing. Adam. Soon enough, she prayed, that matter too would be a thing of the past.
The countryside was beautiful with the promise of summer on the horizon, although the spectacle of whispering willows blowing in the wind and the fields of wildflowers were lost on her in her introspection. She picked at her horse’s mane, setting plaits into the coarse hair to keep her hands busy as they walked a slow pace.
They had long passed the boundaries of most cities and made their way further north each day, which she thought was not the best of routes since the weather was getting cooler, but she could not complain. She had not wanted to wait another full year until the weather was more congenial. No. She needed to do this now. Adam had waited long enough, and so had she.
This far north, many of the deciduous trees had shed their leaves and stood stark against the sky, but the pines sheltered them along the road and broke the cold wind that swept across the land as they traveled ever further north.
The trees told a story of the coming winter. At first, in the wetter southern soil, there were golden willows, and although many of the English oaks’ green leaves had changed to brown, the tall trees stood resolutely against the wind. Soon, the wet land that the willows preferred became drier, and hawthorns with their bright red pomes dotted the landscape. At last, the colorful leaves were replaced by stark birch trees with their pale silver bark with only a few yellow leaves clinging to the branches. Rowans with their reddish leaves and orange-red berries gave a bit of color, but mostly, the deciduous trees were denuded.
They had taken the North Road and bypassed Halthaven entirely. With any luck, they would reach Northwickshire tonight, and shortly thereafter, they would reach a small village called Riversbend which was, according to Mr. Crowley, the place where Peggy might find her son.
Peggy was nothing but nerves all morning.
“Riversbend ahead!” the leader of their troupe called over his shoulder. He was a portly bard whose wife provided tinctures, tonics, and potions of affection to giddy young misses. The horses were spurred into a livelier step. All were eager to reach the village before dusk so that they might settle to their trades and rest the night. The children raced ahead to explore and find entertainments of their own.
Peggy hung back, her mount falling in beside the wagons that brought up the rear.
This was it. This was the moment for which she had been preparing for so long. She searched the horizon. Her son might be anywhere in the village, might even be right in the square playing as boys are wont to do, if only she could recognize him.
Her heart gave a thump. What if she did not recognize him? She had not thought of that. It was possible. At nine—nearly ten—years of age, he would be an altogether different child than when she had last seen him. In her mind, he was still barely more than a toddler, but now, she sighed, he was a boy, closer to manhood than infancy.
“It’s all right dearie,” Mrs. Banning, the bard’s wife, clucked from where she sat with her legs dangling off the back of the wagon that had pulled past Peggy’s creeping mount. “Chin up. It’ll all go as planned, and you’ll see, you’ll be goin’ south again with us at week’s end when the trade is over. There’s plenty of room in the children’s wagon with me boys.”
“Thank you, Mrs. B.” Peggy attempted a trembling smile. The woman’s words bolstered her, and she kicked the mare forward to keep up with her friend. Mrs. Banning was the only person to whom she had divulged the entirety of her sordid tale. The others knew that she had intended to join them on their northbound journey, but she had kept the details to herself. What a fool she would look if this were all for naught.
“Just remember that you’ve done nothing wrong,” Mrs. Banning had continued. “You didn’t abandon him. You were taken. There’s no fault in that. You’re here now, and that’s what matters. A boy needs his mum.”
Peggy nodded. She had been trying to convince herself of Mrs. Banning’s constant refrain for weeks but was struggling with the thought that Adam must have been led to believe that she had abandoned him. How could he think anything else?
“Perhaps he’s very angry…” she murmured for the thousandth time, once again letting the horse dawdle. With her inattention, the gelding snatched a lone bite of greenery. Peggy pulled up on the reins just as the horse came away with a significant stalk of thistle which she postulated could not be very tasty, but he munched contentedly through the bit as she kicked him into forward motion.
“Then you’ll tell him your truth, and he will see reason,” her companion replied as she drove the wagon beside Peggy. “He’s a smart child with you as his mum.”
Peggy’s eyes shot to the older woman in shock. “I cannot tell him all of it.”
“Why not? He’ll do better to know.”
Peggy shook her head. “Some of it can be shared, to be sure, but not all.” There were things that would have to wait until her son was older to reveal. She could gloss over her capture and involuntary servitude in London’s Blackwell house. She could even well tell him of the adventure of her escape and her journey to find him. But of his father… well, that was not a conversation that she had prepared herself to have with the boy. Soon enough he would know he was born outside of wedlock. She did not want to rush the matter.
“He’ll want to know why he was left on his own at a convent with no family.” The herbalist looked away from the road momentarily and pierced Peggy with a very motherly look of reprimand.
“I am his family,” Peggy replied. “That is all he need know.”
“Perhaps you are right.” Mrs. B. sighed. “But if my boys are anything to judge by, he’s of the age where he will have an endless stream of questions and the stubbornness to demand answers.”
Together, they laughed. The bard and his wife had three sons, and all of them were as precocious and devilish as young boys ought to be. They provided endless laughs and entertainment for the travelers and always found some way or other to wheedle out of their punishments.
“I won’t put the cart before the horse,” Peggy said at long last when they drew up to the first of the fences that surrounded the village. “My first objective is to find him. I will let his behavior be my guide.” She allowed herself a bolstering breath before lifting the reins and urging the horse onward with a touch of her heel.