by Jane Feather
"My thanks," he murmured with a secret smile. It seemed an eternity-not since the early months of his marriage-that he had last felt true amusement instead of the twitch of cynical derision that passed for humor.
The road wound its way inland, dropping down from the cliffs, and the nag picked up his pace. They were approaching a crossroads when an immense din reached them. A raucous sound of pipes, clashing of pans, drumming of bones on tin, and a roaring surge of shouting, chanting voices mingling with shrieks and hoots of a mirth that had an unpleasant edge to it.
"Whatever is it?" Miranda peered around Gareth's substantial frame to look down the lane to the right of the crossroads. A group of ragged men came around the corner, blowing horns, drumming on copper kettles.
"Hell and the devil! We don't want to get into the middle of that!" Gareth pulled the nag sharply to the side of the lane until they were pressed up against the hedgerow.
"What? What is it?" The banging and shrieking was now coming from just around the corner on the heels of the group of music makers, prancing and bellowing as they approached the crossroads.
"The ride to rough music, if I'm not mistaken," Gareth said with a grim smile.
Miranda stared openmouthed as a procession emerged from the corner. An old man wearing only a pair of ragged drawers and a stained leather jerkin led the way on a donkey. On his head he wore a pair of paper horns and he blew on a tin whistle. Behind him pranced an old crone, kicking up her heels in a parody of a dance as she drummed with a wooden clog on a copper kettle slung around her neck. Behind her, brandishing a horsewhip and waving a scarlet petticoat, rode a man on a packhorse. He was blowing on a ram's horn, great bellows that sounded as pained as a gelded bull's.
Behind them came an ass with two riders tied back to back. A woman rode facing front, her large moon-round face scarlet, her eyes curiously blank. Behind her facing the animal's rump was a small man, very pale, his eyes frightened. The woman carried a wooden ladle with which she was beating the man around the head over her shoulders as he desperately plied the spindle and distaff he carried.
A group of men and women armed with clubs and staves marched beside the ass, encouraging the riders to keep at their appointed tasks with yells and insults and threatening gestures of their sticks.
The entire countryside seemed to be following in the wake of this strange procession, all making some kind of noise with whatever household object or musical instrument they'd managed to grab when they'd answered the call to the ride to rough music.
"What does it mean?" Miranda asked again, when the tail end of the procession had turned onto the road ahead of them.
Gareth's smile was still grim. "It's a country practice, otherwise known as a skimmington. When a man allows his wife the mastery, his neighbors are inclined to take exception. A man who is henpecked sets a bad example in the countryside and his neighbors have their own way of expressing their disapproval. As you just saw."
"But perhaps that man and his wife manage best if she holds the household reins," Miranda pointed out with a frown. "Perhaps she has the stronger character and is better at running things than he is."
"Such heresy, Miranda!" Gareth declared in mock horror. "You know your Scripture? The man is God's representative around his own hearth. You'll receive a rough hearing in this country if you hold to any other ideas."
"But perhaps he's a bad provider," she persisted.
"Perhaps he drinks and she has to take charge for the children's sake. Not that he looked as if he drank overmuch," she added consideringly. "He was very pale and I've noticed that most drunkards are red and have swollen noses."
"A woman's lot is to pay due obeisance to her lord and master and put up with whatever hand he deals her," Gareth said solemnly. "It's the law of the land, dear girl, just as much as it's the law of the church."
Miranda wasn't entirely sure whether he was serious or not. "You said your brother-in-law is henpecked. Would you have him and your sister take the ride to rough music?"
Gareth chuckled. "Many's the time I've wished Miles had a strong arm and wasn't afraid to use it. And there are many times when I'd dearly love to see my sister pay the price for a shrew's tongue."
"Truly?"
Gareth shook his head. "No, not truly. There's something utterly disgusting about a skimmington. But I would truly wish to see my brother-in-law stand up for himself once in a while."
The procession was far enough ahead now to enable them to follow without seeming to be a part of it, and he kicked the nag into reluctant motion again. But when they reached the next village, he was forced to draw rein again.
The skimmington had come to a halt outside the Bear and Ragged Staff and the participants thronged the ale bench and the small walled yard to the side of the inn. Potboys ran hither and thither with foaming tankards to quench the thirst of the music makers, who spilled out onto the lane that ran through the middle of the village, drinking, laughing, exchanging lewd jests.
But there was a brutal edge to the apparent good humor and as Gareth looked for a way around the melee a pair of beefy carters, red-faced with great knotted arms, exploded from the inn, locked in vicious verbal argument that rapidly deteriorated into blows.
A crowd quickly formed around them, chanting, yelling encouragement and obscenities. "God's blood," Gareth muttered. There was no knowing how ugly this would become and he was ill-equipped to find himself in the middle of an affray, particularly when he had Miranda to worry about.
"The couple on the ass," Miranda whispered urgently into his ear. "Look. They're over there and no one's taking any notice of them." She pointed to a corner of the inn yard where the ass and his bound riders stood in the full sun.
The ass was chewing from a nose bag and seemed impervious to the sun, but his riders were red-faced and sweating, drooping in their bonds. Lethargically the woman continued to swing her great wooden spoon over her shoulder as if she'd been doing it for so long her arm had become automated. The spoon didn't always make contact with her husband's bruised ears and cheeks but he still plied spindle and distaff as vigorously as before although they were no longer tormented by the crowd of stave-wielding threatening louts who had accompanied them on the ride.
"We can unfasten their bonds," Miranda continued in the same whisper. " They can slip away while everyone's occupied with the fight. If they can hide for a few hours, the people will lose interest soon enough, particularly after a few more tankards of ale."
Utterly astounded, Gareth stared at her over his shoulder. "Apart from the fact that it's none of our business," he said, "the crowd is already in a dangerous mood. I have no desire to incite them further."
&
nbsp; "Oh, but you can't leave them like that, not when you have the opportunity to help," Miranda murmured, her eyes intense with passionate conviction. "They're so miserable and surely they've suffered enough… assuming they even deserved to suffer. We have to untie them. It's our… our human duty!"
"Duty?" Gareth was dumbfounded. He found the style of country justice loathsome in many ways, but it was something a man endured with good grace, and without interfering.
"They don't even know we're here," Miranda said firmly and slipped from the nag's back. She darted across the yard, Chip dinging to her neck.
Gareth felt the quiet order of his existence begin to slip, and found himself moving the nag in Miranda's wake, positioning him so that Miranda was hidden from the sight of the excited, yelling crowd.
Miranda struggled futilely with the knots that bound the couple.
"Move aside." Gareth leaned over from the saddle and sliced through the knots with his poignard. Then he hooked Miranda's waist with an arm and hoisted her bodily onto the saddle in front of him.
"Hurry!" Miranda said to the bewildered pair still sitting on the ass. "You can get away if you're quick. We'll shield you."
"Oh, will we?" muttered Gareth, but he held the nag in place as the man and woman half fell from the ass's back.
"You great lumbering idiot!" the woman shrieked, belaboring the little man with the spoon in good earnest.
"If you 'adn't gone an' blabbed, none o' this would 'ave 'appened."
"Oh, give over, Sadie, do." The little man ducked the blows and began edging toward the far side of the yard. "Afore they catch us again."
Still railing at him, the woman took off in his wake, neither of them offering a word of thanks to their saviors.
"What a horrid woman. Now I'm beginning to think we shouldn't have helped them," Miranda said.
"Oh, I know we shouldn't have," Gareth said feelingly, glancing over his shoulder as a cry of rage went up behind them. Someone had seen the victims sloping off.
"All right, you miserable beast, let's see what you can do!" He struck the nag's flank with his whip and the startled animal reared up with a whinny of shock and leaped forward. Gareth's heels pressed into his flanks, driving the animal toward the wall at the rear of the yard.
Miranda gasped, her stomach leaping into her throat, as the wall came up with terrifying rapidity. It looked as if the animal was going to balk until again Gareth struck with his whip, and at the very last moment, the horse rose into the air and somehow cleared the wall, landing with legs asprawl in the middle of the innkeeper's kitchen garden.
Behind them, the cries of the rabble grew louder as men and women clambered awkwardly over the wall in pursuit. The mob had clearly lost interest in their original victims; good humor had given way to vicious anger, well oiled by tankards of ale.
"Hell and damnation!" Gareth glanced around the garden, which was enclosed by another wall. There was not sufficient room for the nag to take a run at it and in a minute they would be trapped and surrounded by a vengeful mob.
Miranda drew her knees up so she was kneeling on the animal's neck. "I'll open the gate." Before he could take a breath, she had launched herself at the wall. For a moment she seemed to hang in the air, then she had brushed the top of the wall with her toes and vaulted over. The gate swung open and the nag, now thoroughly spooked, bolted through it into a fetid alleyway between the inn and its outbuildings. Miranda had the presence of mind to slam shut the gate before she leaped aboard the horse behind Gareth.
"Oh, where's Chip?"
"He'll find us," Gareth said grimly, concentrating on holding in the panicked horse. He was beginning to wonder if the hot summer sun had addled his brain over the last two days; he could think of no other explanation for his present position.
"Oh, there he is!" Chip was racing on three legs along the alley behind them, chattering and waving his free paw. "Come, Chip. Quickly." Miranda leaned down, clinging with her knees, her head perilously close to the muddy ground, holding out her hand. Chip grabbed her fingers and vaulted into her arms, gibbering excitedly.
"How in the name' of grace are we going to get out of here?" Gareth could see no clear thoroughfare out of the village without having to pass in front of the inn.
Miranda sprang to her feet, standing easily on the nag's back, swaying comfortably with the ungainly motion. "I can see over the outhouse roof. There's a tiny path just to the right, behind the cesspit. Maybe that'll take us out."
She dropped back with a gasp as a rock flew through the air from the pursuing crowd, who had finally emerged from the garden.
Gareth wrenched the reins around and drove the now-panicked horse into the dark, narrow cut alongside the noisome cesspit. "I hope to God this comes out somewhere useful or we'll be trapped like rats in a sewer."
"It opens out into a field, I think."
Once they were in the open field, the sounds of the mob faded. Gareth sighed with relief. "If I ever feel the slightest inclination to go along with one of your compassionate impulses again, Miranda, remind me to lock myself up."
"We really couldn't have left them," she said simply.
"No," he said with another sigh. "I don't suppose we could have." The earl of Harcourt could have left them very easily, but he was beginning to see that the world was a very different place in the company of Miranda d'Albard.
"Lord love us, but that was a close one!" Bert threw back his head and breathed the relatively fresh air on Gaol Street as the great iron doors clanged shut behind them.
"Aye, I thought they was goin' to get us fer vagrancy, sure as hell," Raoul declared. "But, God's blood, don't it look fresh and free out 'ere?"
"Let's move along," Gertrude said. "We've got to pick up our traps, then we'll just find out where Miranda's got to, then we'll be on our way to Folkestone. Catch a boat there, shake the dust of this place off our eels."
"'Ow are we goin' to find the girl if half the citizens of Dover can't?" Jebediah demanded, contrary as always.
"Of course we'll find her." Luke was already ahead of the rest. "I'll ask in the taverns and the marketplace and at the carrier stand, while you get our things together. Someone will have seen her."
" Take me, Luke." Robbie hobbled after him, his little face screwed with anxiety.
"You'll slow me up." Then Luke took pity on the child. "Oh, very well. I'll give you a piggyback." He squatted for Robbie to clamber awkwardly onto his back. The child's slight body was no weight even for Luke's skinny frame, and he loped off into the town, leaving his fellows to collect their belongings from the quay, where they'd left them in charge of a sympathetic fisherman.
Chapter six
"My God, if it isn't Harcourt. Gareth, where have you been, man? It's been this age since we laid eyes on you."
The cheerful hail brought Gareth swingin
g round on the balls of his feet, an oath forming unspoken on his lips. Two men crossed the yard of the livery stable attached to the inn in Rochester.
"God, man, you look as if you've seen a ghost." The taller of the two, a stout, merry-eyed man in a doublet of scarlet damask embroidered with jet, laughingly slapped Gareth's shoulder with a jeweled gauntlet. "As whey-faced as a girl with her terms, eh, Kip?" He gave another booming laugh, turning for corroboration to his companion, a slimmer version of himself.
"Gareth, how goes it with you?" Kip Rossiter greeted the earl of Harcourt with a smile. "Take no notice of Brian, here. You know he can't keep an opinion to himself."
Neither opinions nor secrets. "I landed two days ago from France," Gareth said easily. "I'm trying to exchange a miserable nag, the best Dover could offer, for something that might get me home before the end of the year." He gestured to the horse who, now unsaddled, was cropping peacefully at a bale of hay.
"Lord, what a broken-down beast," Brian said in a tone of disgust. "You actually rode that creature, Gareth? Dear God, I'd rather walk."
"The thought crossed my mind once or twice,"
Gareth agreed with a laugh, his covert gaze darting across the livery yard on the watch for Miranda. "What brings you here?"
"We've been visiting the old man in Maidstone. Duty visit, y'know." Brian stroked his auburn beard, which like the rest of him seemed rather larger than life. Gareth nodded. The Rossiter brothers' cultivation of their ancient, irascible, and extremely wealthy male relative was a standing joke at court.
"Aye," Kip agreed. "Keep 'im sweet. He can't last much longer… Have you dined, Gareth? We're about to order a repast fit for the queen, as recompense for the gruel and stewed dry fowl that passes for victuals at the old man's table. Let's break a bottle together." Kip flung a friendly arm around Gareth's shoulder. "We've ordered a private parlor. No common-room company for us this day."
