CHAPTER ELEVEN

CIVIL WAR

Together. Then apart, because two bodies couldn’t stay together when they were falling so fast, through darkness into deeper darkness.

Yet not completely apart. Sound linked them, something that he’d never experienced before when he’d traveled. Perhaps he’d just been deaf to his own screams. But here, for just a moment, he heard Kristin wailing, already starting to sound unlike Kristin, unlike anyone or even anything human, dissolving into the rush of the fall, into wind that filled his ears like surf. A final glimpse, a flash of skin, fingers, stretching to what they’d been ripped from. Those gone too. Then it was just Sky, alone, falling through the total dark…toward the pinprick of light far below, which instantly expanded into a hole wide enough to plummet through.

He had experienced the joining before. Entered a body; once, a Fetch.

He had never entered a dream.

Now, he did.

         

It was a dream. She knew that, knew that the tugging came from beyond it. Yet, for the smallest moment, she was able to make even that a part of the dream. Not a summons back to the peril of the day. She knew who tugged her, who wanted her to stay; stay, and make the day last forever in the tall grass between the tombstones, the shadow never moving across the sundial they lay beneath; the sun never leaving their skin; and the river—just there, just down the path beyond the churchyard’s gates—forever lulling them with the lap of water against pebbles.

And then came the sudden cold. She heard the storm hit, a season’s change in a moment, chilling flesh. She felt them begin to fall through darkness, felt her hand slip from his….

“No,” she cried. “No!”

Another hand was pulling her. Not his. Another voice calling. Not his. “Mama? Mama?” the wail came.

“Hush now, child. Hush.” Meg was as suddenly awake as she’d been completely asleep, pulling the small, trembling body of her son into her arms, immediately feeling, with a mother’s total consciousness, the thinness of him, his bones pressed against hers.

“You were asleep, Mama, and you were laughing and you looked so happy and then you were sad and you were crying and I…” The words tumbled out on heaved breaths, and she smothered his face to her shoulder, whispering nonsense to him, lulling and rocking him until he settled into her, fell into the fitfulness that passed for his sleep. Carefully, she leaned forward, lifted the edge of sailcloth that covered the dogcart before her.

“Gudrun,” she called, but her other child didn’t stir. Rarely did when Meg tried to rouse her. She loved sleep as much as her mother was wont to before the troubles, would stay forever in that world of dreams. She was ever hard to lull. Once asleep, though, she would sleep a moon and a sun if she could.

A little smile came as Meg cradled her one, stared at her other. It lasted but the moment that it took her to look beyond them…to the street that curved from where she sat, down to the great wooden gates of the city at Mickelgate Bar. Hundreds of bodies lay between her and them—slumped over carts, jammed into doorways, leaning against walls, squatting on the cobbles, every space filled. Hundreds more packed the cobbled lanes that fed down to the street called Mickelgate, tributaries to its river, the flood held back by those twin slabs of wood. Those doors had denied entrance to Parliament’s army for fifteen months, despite the savage hunger that had diminished all York’s citizenry, pushed every child’s belly out into a mockery of fullness.

She scarce believed the siege was soon to be over. York would still have held out for its king if half its garrison did not lie in bloody mounds upon the Moor of Marston, eight miles west. The army they’d marched out to join was meant to be their savior. Together they would scatter York’s besiegers in one great battle. But the day had gone against them. It was the king’s army that was scattered, leaving York to its pitiable remnants—more scarecrow than soldier.

Yet they had been offered warrior terms to yield the city: safe passage, under arms, to the nearest Royalist camp for any who desired it. Those who remained would make their own terms with the conquerors, most caring naught for victor or vanquished, caring only for bread.

Isaac moaned against her and she comforted him with soft words. She’d have stayed if she could have. This war, its reasons, were nothing to her. Her reasons were before her, fitfully asleep—Isaac, all of six, the fever pallor still upon him, mark of the sickness that had prevented them fleeing in a little more safety ten days before, when news of the defeat first came. And Gudrun, just four, sucking a shriveled thumb against her hunger, buried deep in a dream of plenty.

Her reasons. Leading them from one danger into another; a hard choice, yet none at all. Because he was coming. She could feel him as clearly as she had felt his hand in her dream, pressing her to stay. He waited now beyond those wooden gates. He would ride in with the conquerors. And he would take her reasons from her.

The leaving began when the iron cockerel atop the church of St. Martin-le-Grand was touched with dawn’s light. It came in a drumroll, inexpertly played, that sent a ripple down Mickelgate as men and women stood, clutched what little they had, looked back. Somehow the thick mass parted, like the sea before Moses, allowing passage down the middle of the street, toward the great doors that finally opened.

The city’s soldiers marched toward them; lurched more like, for the swaggering defenders were beaten men now, and many were drunk, though where they had found liquor in starving York amazed Meg. They came, half with eyes lowered in shame, half with them raised and challenging, pushing carts filled with wounded comrades, bloodied clouts on heads, legs and arms splinted, most giving off the same low moan as if from one tortured animal.

When half had passed, Meg bent to Isaac. She had her plan, such as it was.

“Here, love.” She reached into the cart, pulled out the dress she’d cut down and shaped for him.

“No, Mother!” he protested, but not as hard as he had when she’d first told him what he must do. And he was too weak to resist her strength, urgent now as the soldiers’ numbers began to thin and people gathered their belongings to follow them. She had positioned herself early on the street, so she could choose her place in the ranks. Not so tight to the armed men as to be among the first civilians; not toward their tail. Hidden in the middle of the mass.

Truly, the dress fitted ill. But clothes hang limp upon the famished. She draped a shawl over her son’s head, wound it around his face. “You see that family ahead? With the chicken in the hutch?” He nodded. “Walk close to them. We will be here, just twenty paces behind you. Do not look back for us.” She bit her lip, hesitating. “And remember what I told you: If you see your father, don’t look at him. Don’t call. Hide! It’s a game, yes?” She looked hard at him. “Do you understand?”

He nodded. He was trying to be brave, she could see. But his chin was quivering, and moisture was in his eye. “All will be well, Isaac.” She gripped his shoulder. “There’s food aplenty in Uncle Torvald’s house across the sea in Hareid. And he has dogs. Three spaniels to chase ducks with.”

Dogs usually did it with Isaac. He swallowed, nodded, drew the head scarf tighter around his face. “Do not look back,” she said firmly, pushing him off, turning fast so he would not see the tears she had caught from him. “Gudrun! Gudrun!” She bent to her other child, lying in the cart, shook her. But her daughter merely clamped her lips more firmly around her thumb, sucked harder. Meg straightened. Mayhap it is for the best, she thought. Doomsday would scarce trouble the girl if she had a mind to sleep. She would wake her when they were safe. If they were safe.

The last of the soldiers had passed under the stone archway. Citizens had filled the gap behind. Isaac had taken his place. The people began to move forward.

An older lady had sat beside them. She had played with Gudrun for a while just after midnight, had sung her the lullaby that had finally sent her to sleep. She shouldered her bag now, stepped into the road. “God’s blessings upon you,” she said.

The automatic response came: “And His Son’s love.” But the words almost caught in Meg’s mouth. God and Savior had forsaken the land, in this year of the Lord 1644, and she found it hard to speak the words that once would have comforted. Though, even as she lifted the handles of the cart and started forward, she knew that the man who almost certainly waited on the road beyond believed exactly the opposite—that God and Son had brought a righteous flaming sword to cleanse England of all sin.

They passed under the tower, out of the gate. On the other side of it lay wasteland, a ruin of hovels destroyed by the enemy’s bombardment to clear the ground for their assaults. The siege lines were a hundred paces farther on. They had been opened to let the vanquished out and the victors in.

Without a glance back, Meg left York, the city of her birth. Forever, she hoped, but didn’t pray.

She knew him long before she could distinguish his face. Recognized him in the way he sat his horse, as if he and the creature were one; centaur, not man and mount.

Matthew.

He was just to the side of the road, leaning forward, keenly studying all who passed, and she felt near faint with fear, knowing that stare would soon be upon her and hers. Yet she could not leave the studying of him, this man she had loved, the fruit of that love before her, asleep in the cart and twenty paces ahead.

He sat hatless under the already-hot July sun. For a keen moment she mourned the passing of the long black hair that she had teased, and pulled, and brushed so often. But long hair, he’d told her the last time she’d seen him, was a frivolity, a distraction to the Righteous, as was any adornment to the person. He was dressed, like all his Puritan brethren, in sober black, his white collar untrimmed with lace—he, who had loved lace as much as she had; more, laughing as they fought for the choicest pieces.

Look away! she screamed inside, pulling the wide-brimmed hat lower over her brow. She had lopped off the hair that he had so loved in his turn, hacked it to stubble, dyed that in cobbler’s black, no trace of spun gold to betray her. And she was thin, and had traded a crust for a tight dress to show her thinness more. There were no curves now for him to remember. She was just another poor, sick townswoman, surely, even to that falcon gaze.

Fifty paces. Forty. Isaac would pass him in moments. She forced herself to breathe. “Look away,” she muttered. “Look away now.”

If he looked away, if they passed him, it was half a day, less, to the rendezvous at the abandoned church on the banks of the Ouse. Uncle Torval had promised in his letter: a boat would be sent down the river each day for a week in midmorning. It would take them to his warehouse in Whitby. Another of his fleet would then take them across the sea to Norway, to her mother’s land. To safety.

And then, although she had not prayed, a miracle! Just as Isaac drew level, Matthew did look away, pulled by sudden shouting. A soldier to his right was forcing his horse into the crowd behind her son. “Bartholomew Maggs,” the man yelled.

“What’s that, Sergeant?” Matthew moved his horse a pace forward.

“Maggs, Captain Brakespeare,” the soldier replied. “Deserted the troop at Basing House this November past. Stole a pig when he went!”

He dismounted, began pulling a protesting man from the crowd by his collar. People moved past the obstruction quickly.

Twenty paces now, and closing. She looked up to see Matthew leaning down beside his horse’s neck. The man was bleating, “Not Maggs! Not me!”

“Take him out, then, Wainwright. Let us get a good look at him.”

“It’s him, Cap’n. Damned bloody deserter, pardon the words!”

Ten paces now. Less. Nearly level, and everyone looking at the uproar, nowhere else, except Meg looking between her feet, pushing, pushing…

“Stop him!” came the cry. At the edge of her vision, someone was scrambling away, legs clearing a hedge, other legs hurdling it in pursuit. She was level with him now, knew he had to be looking the other way.

The shot exploded. Mayhem followed, horses whinnying, more shouting; cutting through everything, a high-pitched wail of agony. But Meg didn’t even flinch. Not when she was so nearly free. So nearly…

“Father!” Even in the noise, the child’s sharp cry pierced. Gudrun had thrown back the canvas that covered her, had looked up….

Meg didn’t, couldn’t. She tried instead to build up some speed….

“Gudrun!” His voice called her, full of wonder, of joy. Then the next word came. Hard. “Margaret.”

She looked up then…into her husband’s eyes, through the gunpowder smoke, as his pistol slowly lowered.

“Margaret,” he said again, triumph in the tone, in those eyes, as he swung his legs off the horse.