Reckless Angel

by Jane Feather

  She stood looking down at the blood-streaked scrap in stunned wonder. “’Tis a boy, Julie.” The baby was lying quite inert in her hands, and she tentatively lifted him upright. At the movement, the tiny mouth opened and a squall filled the room. Henrietta breathed a sigh of relief even as she wondered what else she should do.

  “Give him to me,” Julie’s voice was a mere thread.

  Henrietta laid the baby on her breast. “Keep him warm, and I will go and fetch someone. I do not know what is to be done now.”

  She hurried up to the attics where the servants slept, waking old Jenny, who shrieked as she saw Henrietta’s blood-stained hands but then became reassuringly competent. Henrietta watched closely as the business of birthing was brought to a tidy close, determined that in future she would know how to do it all herself. She felt a surge of envy for Julie, her labor done, a healthy son at her breast, a smile of peace and contentment on her lips. What would it be like for her, five months hence? Would the child she delivered have a father? Would Julie’s child? But such thoughts had no place in the joy of this moment. She bent to kiss her friend, to touch with a wondering finger the tiny creased forehead of the baby.

  “You will stand his godmother, Harry?”

  “Joyfully,” she said. “I do feel I have a rather special interest in him, after all.”

  Julie smiled. “Will favors Robert. What d’ye think?”

  “I think that if that’s what his papa wishes, that’s what he should be named,” Harry said with a smile. “I believe he’s going to have red hair.”

  “Is the baby born?” The excited whisper came from the door. Henrietta turned to see the two girls, in smock and nightcap, peering wide-eyed around the corner.

  “Aye,” she said, beckoning them in. “How did you know?”

  “I heard all the noise,” Lizzie said importantly. “And I remembered how ’twas when Nan was born.”

  “But my mother died,” Nan said matter-of-factly, clambering onto the bed. “Julie isn’t going to, is she, Harry?”

  “No,” Henrietta said firmly, adding her own private “God willing” to herself, as she watched the children exclaiming over the infant and Julie’s proud presentation of her son. It was a hazardous and unpredictable business, this giving birth, and it would be a week before they could be truly certain that the mother would not fall victim to the scourge of fever.

  “I think we should leave Julie to rest now,” she said, lifting Nan from the bed. “You can come back later this morning.” She shooed them out of the chamber and went to her own to dress. The sun was now up and she had much to accomplish before she left for London. Mistress Osbert’s arrival could not be long delayed.

  Chapter 21

  Mistress Osbert, on her arrival the following afternoon, was much less restrained than Lady Ellicot when informed by a serenely resolute Henrietta of her intention to follow the drum.

  “Do not be absurd, Henrietta,” she said crisply, tying a capacious apron around her ample waist. “You will stay here like a dutiful wife and await your husband’s return.” She turned to the stair. “Now take me to my daughter-in-law and my grandson.”

  “When did you see Will and Daniel?” Henrietta did not bother to argue, but started up the staircase.

  “Just two days past. I left immediately to come here. They were both well, but poor Will was in a fever of anxiety about his wife.” Mistress Osbert strode briskly upward. “Sir Daniel bade me tell you to be patient and of good cheer.”

  “Where were they going?” Henrietta turned to the left at the head of the staircase.

  “To Worcester. His Majesty and the army were three days’ journey from that town and Cromwell was marching upon it also. ’Tis to be expected that the battle will be fought there.” Mistress Osbert gave the information in level tones. She had endured ten years of war and had reached some measure of acceptance. Her husband had retired from the battlefield, but her son had taken his place. It was the lot of women to watch and wait, patiently and in good cheer.

  Worcester. Some sixty miles from Oxford…as far again from London. Could she reach there in time for the battle? She would learn more in London. Henrietta flung open the door to Julia’s chamber. “See who is here, Julie. Will’s mother is come.”

  She stood aside then, watching with a smile as Mistress Osbert enfolded her new daughter in a fierce embrace, wept over her grandson, and instantly took charge. That was one responsibility she had fulfilled, Henrietta decided with a satisfied nod. Julie had no further need of her.

  Lizzie and Nan were summoned to meet Mistress Osbert, who accorded them a thorough examination and pronounced them prettily behaved and a credit to their father. She turned kindly eyes upon Henrietta, noticing that the girl had an abstracted air.

  “My dear child, you have done beautifully,” she said. “I always knew you would not fail when you were called upon. But your husband says y’are with child, and I think ’tis time you took a care for yourself.”

  “I intend to, madam,” Henrietta said. “I am leaving for London in the morning.”

  Mistress Osbert’s jaw dropped. She was not in the least accustomed to being gainsaid, for all that she knew Henrietta Ashby to be a willful, unbiddable girl. A mewling cry from the crib by the window distracted her. “We will talk of this further, Henrietta.” She bustled over to her grandchild.

  “Come.” Henrietta drew the children from the chamber. “I wish ye to gather together your belongings. You will know what you both will need, Lizzie, in the way of clothes…not too much because we will take only two horses. Nan may ride pillion with me.”

  “We are going to ride all the way to London?” Lizzie’s eyes shone at the prospect of such an adventure.

  “We will stop one night upon the road,” Henrietta said. “But we must leave at daybreak.” Left to herself, she would have set out immediately, riding through the night, but she could not do that with the children, any more than she could expect them to make the journey in one day. There was no one here with whom she could in good conscience leave them. The two Mistress Osberts would remove to Oxfordshire as soon as Julia was fit to travel, and Daniel would not wish to be beholden to Will’s mother in such an instance, not when he had entrusted his daughters to their stepmother’s care.

  Mistress Osbert found Henrietta adamant, calm but fearsomely determined. The older woman held no authority over her. Only Daniel Drummond had the right, legal and moral, to compel his wife’s obedience, and he was not here to do so. Henrietta and the girls set off for London on the first day of September, as the first gray streaks of dawn lightened the sky.

  They reached the city by mid-afternoon of the following day, and Henrietta, who had not allowed herself to consider what she would do if Dorcas was not to be found in the narrow lane off Paternoster Row, felt her heart speed as they ascended Ludgate Hill. Nan was asleep, now slumped in front of her, held within the circle of her arm, Lizzie still gamely sitting her own mount, but the child’s weariness was palpable. Then they were there, outside the familiar house, and the stoop gleamed as white as ever, the cobbles were swept, the brass shone, the windows winked in the afternoon sunlight. Dorcas was definitely to be found.

  In a strange way, Henrietta felt as if she had come home. Dorcas, tiny and voluble as ever, bobbed, exclaimed, hugged, kissed, and brought instant relief of anxiety and fatigue. She was overjoyed to see the children, wept a little at their likeness to their mother, then recovered briskly as she remembered Henrietta, who might be uncomfortable at such an observation.

  “Harry’s going to find Daddy,” Lizzie confided, “so we’re to stay here with you.”

  “Where is Sir Daniel?”

  “With the king,” Harry said. “I would go to him, but need to be sure of the children’s safety.”

  “I remember the last time,” Dorcas said. “Sir Daniel wasn’t best pleased, as I recall.”

  The execution of Charles Stuart. A lifetime ago. Henrietta shook her head ruefully. “Mayhap he will no
t be this time, Dorcas, but I must go nevertheless. There’s talk of a battle to be fought at Worcester.”

  “Aye,” Dorcas said somberly. “But ’twill take ye all of two days to reach there. Ye’d do best to stay here until there’s news one way or t’other. The town criers are busy enough these days, crying the news from the rooftops…and gloomy enough it is, for the most part,” she added. “The English militia are flocking to Cromwell, there’s few who’ll join a Scottish army…invaders, they say they are, even though it’s His sainted Majesty as heads ’em.”

  The Royalists were going to lose this last battle. Henrietta had always known it in her heart, as she knew that Daniel had known it. But he had had to sustain his commitment until there was no possibility of doing so. Death would bring an end to that possibility…She could not bear his death, so it would not happen.

  “Nay, I’ll journey to Oxford tomorrow, Dorcas,” she said. “I cannot kick my heels here, waiting for news.”

  She set off again at dawn, riding through the streets of London and out into the countryside, taking the Oxford road. At Henley she heard the news. Battle had been joined that day at Worcester.

  She could not bear Daniel’s death, so it would not happen.

  She rode on, stopping in villages to discover if there was more news, but there was only the anxious buzz of speculation. Laborers leaned upon their pitchforks in the fields. Women gathered on the village greens, their menfolk outside the taverns. On more than one occasion, she came across a fanatical Puritan preaching in the open air hellfire and damnation to all those joined in the treasonous, blasphemous battle with the forces of good. The audiences muttered and shuffled, the temper of the crowd uncertain.

  She rode into Oxford in the late afternoon. Crowds milled in the city streets, anxious speculation on every lip, in every eye. The city had been for the king since the long struggle had begun in 1640. The vast wealth of the university had gone to swell the king’s coffers in the early days of the war. Now fear and hope hovered, trembled in the air.

  She could not bear Daniel’s death, so it would not happen.

  Her horse was quivering with weariness after the third day’s journeying. Henrietta reined in outside a small hostelry, where the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff creaked in the chilly wind, newly sprung with the scent of autumn. Her mount hung his head and blew wretchedly through his nostrils, and she dismounted with a guilty pang.

  The inn was busy, but bed space was found for this lone traveler, and stabling for the horse. If the innkeeper thought there was anything untoward in a woman of obvious rank traveling without maid or groom, he did not say so. Times were such that nothing was questionable, and the lady’s coin was as good as any.

  Henrietta was too tired to eat, but she forced herself to swallow soup and bread. For some reason, the nausea that had plagued her for the last two months had vanished, and it occurred to her that a body could only concentrate on one thing at once. Fear, determination, and exhaustion were quite enough to be going on with. Symptoms of pregnancy were superfluous.

  She fell into a dark and dreamless sleep, undisturbed by the snores and tossings of her bedfellow, the plump wife of a local farmer journeying to assist at the confinement of her sister. Battles being fought at Worcester, some sixty miles distant, concerned the lady only insofar as they might impede her journey.

  The hubbub in the street at first failed to penetrate Henrietta’s stupor, and she woke only when her bedfellow sat up with a great cry of, “Mercy me, whatever is it? Is it a fire?”

  Henrietta sprang from bed and ran to open the casement onto the broad thoroughfare of St. Giles. The crowds below, cloaks over their nightclothes in many instances, were surging toward Carfax. The words “Defeat…Great victory…God save His Majesty” mingled, a confused jumble drifting up to where she leaned out, straining to make some sense of the turmoil.

  “There is news of the battle,” she said tersely to her companion, dragging her gown over her head, hooking the bodice with trembling fingers, pushing her feet into her boots. Then she was out of the chamber, running down the stairs, past the innkeeper, who stood in shirt and nightcap in the open door staring at the crowds streaming past, and out into the street, joining the throng.

  “What is the news?” she demanded of the man at her side.

  “The crier is at Carfax,” he told her. “We’ll discover soon enough.”

  She could not bear Daniel’s death, so it would not happen.

  At Carfax, the town center, where the four main thoroughfares met, the crowd jostled and eddied. On the raised dais, the crier stood ringing his bell, the sound to Henrietta’s fearful ears urgent and menacing. At last, the bell ceased and he lifted his voice over the seething mass of humanity come to hear his message.

  He cried of a decisive victory on September third at Worcester for Cromwell’s New Model and the English militia who had fought at its side. The Scots and the Royalist forces were scattered…King Charles fled, a fugitive in his own land from his own subjects. Cromwell’s army had taken prisoners…many prisoners. The hunt went on for others who had dared to take arms against the legal government of the land, and most particularly for one Charles Stuart, who, like his father, had caused so much English blood to be shed upon English soil. All honest citizens were enjoined to watch for fleeing Royalists, to apprehend them, to report any sightings to the military authorities.

  The bell rang again, and again the news was cried for any who had failed to hear it the first time. Henrietta moved as if in a trance, pushing her way out of the crowd, where voices swelled in anger, in triumph, in sorrow.

  She could not bear Daniel’s death, so it would not happen.

  But something had happened to him, she could feel it at the very core of her being. She must go to Worcester without delay. But she could not use the horse that had brought her from Glebe Park. The beast had all but foundered that afternoon. She would have to find a livery stable and see if they would be willing to provide her with a fresh mount in exchange for the mare. But she would not find a livery stable in operation at four o’clock in the morning. Thoughts and plans chased themselves through her head. She was thinking with cool dispassion, and it was the same dispassion that returned her to her bed until daylight. She was carrying Daniel’s child and had promised him to take care of that responsibility. Exhausting herself was not consonant with fulfilling that promise.

  Later that morning she rode to Worcester. The lanes were clogged with the jubilant members of Cromwell’s army, regular soldiers and members of the various county militias, who had rallied to Parliament’s call. Disbanded after the victory, they were returning to their homes, and there were many to greet them in the villages they passed through. No one took any notice of a woman on a rawboned piebald gelding.

  At Evesham, she came across a disheveled group of Royalist prisoners in a tavern yard where their guards were quenching their thirst at the ale bench. She rode over to the prisoners. They were all Scots and none had news of a Sir Daniel Drummond or a Master William Osbert. She offered them money to ease their plight, but they declined, telling her with a degree of gallows humor that since they were to be detained as guests of General Cromwell what need would they have for coin.

  They wished her luck with her search, and she went on, reaching Worcester at nightfall. The town was full of Parliament’s soldiers, officers of the New Model, men of horse and men of foot. All, without exception, bore the triumphal mien of victors.

  “I pray you, sir, where will I find General Cromwell’s headquarters?” Henrietta leaned wearily down from her horse to address a foot soldier lounging against a wall, picking his teeth.

  “Eh, what’s a lass like you a-wantin’ with the general?” he asked, genially enough.

  “I am looking for my husband,” she said, seeing no reason to dissemble. “He was at the battle, and I would know if anyone has news of him.”

  The soldier pushed away from the wall. “There’s been plenty on such a quest this day. �
�Eadquarters ’as been busier than a bull in the cow pen.” He pointed down the street. “Last buildin’ on the right. Can’t miss it, but I wouldn’t be too ’opeful. No one knows anythin’ much at present. ’Tis too early.”

  “Aye, well thank’ee for your help.” She rode on. If Daniel was alive, she would be as likely to have news of him here as anywhere. A Royalist prisoner, perchance, would have seen him. If he was dead…But he was not dead, because she could not bear that. The conviction served as talisman, ensured that she kept hope in the forefront of her mind, gave her the strength to ignore her fatigue.

  But when she reached the headquarters building and dismounted from her horse, the ground came up to meet her, and a black fog swallowed her.

  Daniel Drummond sat with his back against a tall elm tree and watched the party of Roundheads, pikes at the ready, approach him. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, the wrist smashed by a heavy stave. Pain and a weariness greater than any he had ever experienced now rendered him semiconscious, but he could still feel the satisfaction of relief that Will and Tom had finally seen sense and left him, when it had become clear that he could not keep up with them. Had they had horses it might have been different, but they had all lost their mounts in the bloody fray and had fled the field on foot.

  Will and Tom had made their own escape under cover of darkness, and he had stumbled on until the excruciating pain finally brought him to his knees. He had been sitting here ever since, throughout the remainder of the night and through most of this day, drifting in and out of reality as he waited for the inevitable moment of capture.

  What a day of useless, bloody carnage yesterday had been! In his ears, he could still hear the moans and screams from the dying; the stench of blood was trapped in his nostrils; his eyes still held the images of writhing bodies, of the severed head that rolled under his charger’s hooves the instant his horse had been shot from beneath him.