Chapter 3 #4
The boy refused. Rose tilted his chin toward her and forced his face into the light, shocked that she had not noted his swollen cheek. His eyes blurred with tears, not pity for himself but clearly shame that she should see the bruise. Fury on his behalf burned in her chest. “Someone struck you.”
“He accused me of thievin’ and we got in a tussle.” As Jack spoke the words, his defiance faded. “He told me he’ll be fetchin’ the sheriff for givin’ him a bluidy facer, and the magistrate will transport me away forever.”
She looked at the pale-skinned boy whose hazel eyes seemed to fill half his face, and who had given away his single coin to buy a bonnet for her. “No one is transporting you anywhere. Come . . .” She tucked the puzzle box into her pocket. “You need a cooling rag for that bruise on your cheek.”
“But what are ye goin’ to do, Miss Rose?” He didn’t like to see her upset and he clearly worried he was the cause of her anger. “The mountebank be on his way to Chesters. We’ve no horse what can catch him now.”
Two days later, Rose set out of the abbey’s gates on the back of Roxburghe’s magnificent stallion.
Indeed his lordship did know horseflesh.
The horse had been restless to escape his paddock for days and, in the mood to oblige him, Rose had taken him out yesterday for a brief stint around the abbey. Today they would travel much farther.
She rode astride, wearing a pair of boy’s breeches and a woolen overcoat belted at the waist. She yanked her cocked hat lower over her brow and lifted her face to the sky.
Despite her fierce mood, she could not deny the afternoon was beautiful.
As a child, she had ridden the empty fields surrounding the abbey at night.
With only the moonlight at her back, she’d imagined herself a painted Celtic warrior.
Even in the bright sunlight and heat of the day, she felt a vague recollection of the child she’d been.
Never afraid. Never alone. Yet restless like this horse—in part due to an imagination that kept constant companion with her want for adventure.
Soon she slowed the stallion to test his gait and high-stepped him in a circle.
Leaning over to rub him affectionately, she held tight to the reins and studied his leg to reassure herself that he had healed.
She had already ridden six miles from the abbey over dale and hill, through the woods and around fields planted with rye.
The high-strung stud pulled restively at his bit, fighting his restraint.
“Take it easy, boy,” she said, catching the scent of campfire smoke. She straightened in the saddle and tented a hand over her eyes, locating the ribbon of gray smoke above the trees. “I see the smoke, too.”
The corner of her mouth crooked. She had specifically waited two days, when she knew the mountebank would be returning this way on his route back to Chesters. He never ventured far from the border.
The road wound its way another mile around a shallow stream through a tunnel of trees.
She followed the scent of cooking fish. The peddler’s gayly painted wagon filled with an assortment of wares and pots and pans dangling from the roof sat at the edge of the woods.
Two horses chomping on the high grass raised their heads and watched her dismount before deciding she was no threat and returning to eating.
She untied the two horses, encouraging them with a thwack on the rump to run away.
She tied the stallion reins to the wheel of the wagon and walked into the clearing.
The peddler and another man sat playing a game of dice over coins piled on a rock between them. She recognized the second man sitting with the mountebank as Geddes Graham even before he turned his head.
The peddler jumped to his feet. “Miss Rose,” the mountebank said, nervously wiping his greasy hands on his trousers.
He wore a checked waistcoat and greasy leather leggings, the same unwashed clothes she’d seen him wearing the last three times he’d come through Castleton, and for just a moment, she felt sorry for his circumstance, until she reminded herself that he’d cheated Jack of his coin.
“Mr. Rolf,” she said.
But it was Geddes whom she watched as his eyes widened a fraction on the stallion. The mountebank might be an opportunist and a cheat, but Geddes was a snake. Unlike most men Rose towered over, Geddes Graham made up for his lack of height in bulk.
“Why, if it isn’t our thorny Rose what come to visit us, Rolf,” Geddes said, resting his hand above the knife he wore on his hip like a shiny rapier sheathed in gold. “What brings ye to see the mountebank?”
The mountebank stepped eagerly forward. “Ye want a nostrum or other medicines for an ailment, Miss Rose?”
“Jack Lowell gave you a coin for a bonnet he did not receive. I want the coin back.”
Geddes snorted as he approached. “Jackie boy is a thievin’ scoundrel, Rose. That coin was no’ even his.”
“You are wrong. He earned that coin. And I want it back. Now.”
“Do ye hear that, Rolf? Our thorny Rose wants Jack’s coin back.”
The mountebank twisted his hands. “Now, ye can no’ be grudging any man an honest living, Miss Rose. Even someone as pretty as you—”
Geddes laughed. “Miss Rose, pretty? She’s as skinny as a fresh-hatched sardine, Rolf.
” His leer raked the natty jacket that fell just to the top of her scuffed boots.
“A man wants a woman beneath him who is no’ afraid of his touch.
Look at her, Rolf. One day, she’ll be a shriveled old crone like ol’ Nessa wonderin’ why a real man would never have her. ”
“I don’t see a real man standing in front of me, Geddes. I see an overgrown boy playing at being a man.”
Geddes’s eyes narrowed. He remained near enough that she smelled his fish breath. “Maybe you stole the coin the same place you stole that stud, Rose. How else would that brat get his hands on a coin?”
He made a move toward the stallion but she stepped into his path, startling him.
Rose slid the knife from its sheath on Geddes’s hip and, moving only her hand, inserted the blade between his legs, stopping him cold. “Careful, Geddes. I have never gelded a man. But if you move one inch nearer, I swear on my life, you do so at your own peril.”
“Bluidy hell, Rose,” he gasped.
“I mean what I say, Geddes.” She spoke to the mountebank without turning her attention from Geddes. “Mr. Rolf? I want that coin. Set it on the rock next to me, then move away.”
“Now, Rolf! Give her the boy’s coin. Can’t ye see she’s got a bloomin’ blade to me bollocks?”
The mountebank scurried to do as he’d been told. He put the coin on the rock then hurried to the clearing’s edge and stopped. Still holding the knife, Rose backed a step and scraped the coin from the rock. Without taking her eyes from Geddes, she slipped it into a small pocket inside her coat.
Rose narrowed her eyes on Greta Graham’s slovenly son as she backed toward the stallion. “The only reason you’re still in one piece is because I have a fondness for your mam. For some reason she loves you and I would not be the cause of her broken heart.”
“You ain’t no saint, Rose,” Geddes shouted as she stepped into the stirrups and reined the stallion around to face him. “One of these days you’ll regret you weren’t nicer to me.”
She threw the knife end over end into the ground between his boots. “But not today, Geddes.”
The horse sprang forward, clearing a fallen log and scattering the other horses. Behind her, the pair shouted obscenities but Geddes couldn’t catch her. She reached flat ground and finally allowed the stallion his head. The distance between them extended until she could no longer hear them.
She had no thought of returning to the abbey yet. She came on the old Roman road and cut through a flock of sheep, sending them scurrying in all directions. A farmer holding a scythe shouted at her, but even then she but waved at him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Herring.”
“Are ye daft, girl?” he shouted. “You’ll break yer bluidy neck.”
Even wearing breeches and a cap with her braided hair tucked beneath, people recognized her. Today, she didn’t mind as she skirted the village another pair of miles and left the road, careful not to ride through the vegetable gardens. A warm breeze tugged at her clothes.
She felt as if she were riding Pegasus through the sky. Even while a part of her knew she should not have taken that horse, another part cherished the freedom.
And a sudden memory of her childhood surfaced an impression that had stayed with her despite the years.
It confused her for it was from a time before the abbey and the man in her memories was not the evil man her mother was running from but of one who had once set her upon a pony and told her that one day she would know how to ride like the wind.
As Rose galloped Lord Roxburghe’s stallion through the high grass toward a crimson sunset, she no longer let herself worry if Mrs. Simpson was right about the wishing ring being dangerous. Tonight was a full moon.
By the time she returned to the abbey and reined in the stallion, her thick hair had unraveled from its plait, and streamed in windblown tangles to her waist.
Having given up on keeping the cocked hat on her head, she’d shoved it in her knapsack miles ago. The thought of spending hours combing out her hair did not make her regret ridding herself of the hat. Some decisions were like that, she realized—like borrowing the stallion for a day.
Yet, a sudden chill went down her spine. The horse tossed his head. She rubbed her hand along his neck. “What is it, boy?”
She looked toward the abbey. The late-afternoon sun shone on its stone walls like a beacon of light—or a warning.
The main keep tower, slightly higher than the abbey itself, also seemed to glimmer in the dying sunlight.
For a bare fraction of a second, she held the stallion’s restless pacing in check.
Friar Tucker lived and worked in the rooms that overlooked the fields. The curtains were opened.
The abbey had guests!