Chapter Three #2
For the briefest instant he was suspended between earth and sky, the roar of the swollen burn rising to meet him.
Then the river struck his face like solid stone, the icy water sucking him down, deep below the surface, where the current seized him at once, tumbling him helplessly through darkness toward whatever fate waited downstream.
***
He allowed himself only a moment to recover once he finally managed to drag himself onto the narrow shore.
He was certain the dense foliage, heavy with late spring’s green and crowding the shoreline, would work in his favor, concealing him from those intent on finding him.
He had no illusions about his own importance, but neither did he believe for a minute that his captors would simply peer over the bridge and suppose he had not survived the fall, abandoning the search before it had even begun.
His chest heaved as he fought to draw a full breath, the icy water having stolen nearly all the air from his lungs.
Every inch of him ached. His shoulders, never fully recovered from weeks suspended by bound wrists, throbbed, and his ribs protested every breath he managed to pull into them.
Somewhere in the river he had struck stone with his left hip, and it now burned fiercely.
He took a tentative step, then another, limping at first as pain shot from his hip into his thigh.
He felt clumsy and laden, his soaked tunic and breeches clinging heavily to his body, water dripping steadily from his hair and sleeves.
Every branch he brushed sent another shower over his head, and before long he could no longer tell river water from rain.
After only a few hundred paces, he turned away from the burn.
It was the easiest path north, the river a guide back toward Scotland.
And for that reason, it was a trap. The English would expect him to follow it.
He veered into the trees, seeking the thickest part of the woodland, a place that could swallow a man whole.
Bram angled left, climbing gradually over uneven ground softened by weeks of spring rain.
Moss-covered stones shifted beneath his boots, forcing him to place each step with care.
Tangles of hazel and young ash crowded together so tightly in places that he was obliged to alter his course, mindful always to keep the loose iron cuff clenched tightly in his hand lest the jangling chain alert the English to his direction.
The running proved almost as difficult as fighting the river had, and twice he stopped, more from necessity than caution, waiting for the pounding in his chest to ease before pressing on again.
Still he climbed, knowing the higher ground would afford him a better sense of the country, and perhaps, if fortune favored him—though the gray sky did not—some indication of which way lay north.
He studied the woodland constantly as he moved, searching always far ahead for the best path to make, cataloguing what lay ahead, fallen oak, a crooked birch split by lightning, a series of moss-covered boulders, and two rowans growing from the same root, the ground all around them empty.
He’d gone perhaps another twenty paces when something made him stop. He held very still and listened, expecting to hear English voices, the thud and thump of hoofbeats, expecting to discover pursuit was closer than he would have hoped.
Half a second later, he realized what had given him pause—the rain had stopped.
He frowned, glancing around slowly. The rain hadn't tapered off as a passing shower would. It had simply stopped. One moment it was falling, the next it was not. The dripping woodland fell silent, holding its breath.
Then the rain returned, but now it seemed as if it came not from above, but all around him, hissing through the leaves in a sudden rush that sent a pale veil of mist swirling upward from the forest floor.
It rolled between the trees in a widening circle—though it was disturbed by no wind that he could feel—until it reached the place his eyes had been fixed upon only an instant before, the barren ground encompassing the two rowan trees.
The mist drifted aside just then and... a woman stood there.
Bram’s mouth fell open. She hadn’t stepped from behind a tree or walked into the clearing. One moment the space was empty; the next, she was simply there. She had appeared.
He would have sworn before God Himself that the place had been empty a heartbeat earlier. He knew it had been.
Yet there she stood, scarcely twenty paces away, looking as startled by his presence as he was by hers.
Pale hair, the color of ripe barley beneath the summer sun—and seeming completely dry—spilled loosely over her shoulders, stirred only slightly by the swirling breeze that seemed to have brought her here.
She was neither richly nor poorly dressed, yet nothing about her clothing resembled anything he had ever seen before.
A strange white garment clung to her arms and body, ending oddly at her hips. Her skirt, painted with tiny flowers, stopped well short of her ankles, revealing shockingly bare legs. And her shoes—mere straps and woven soles—were wholly unsuited for the wild. Nothing about her made sense.
It was how she’d arrived, how she’d simply appeared. One moment the ground before him had been empty. The next, she stood upon it. He’d watched that very patch of woodland only a heartbeat before. There had been no woman, no movement, no horse, no sound of approaching footsteps.
Have I finally lost my senses?
Now, of all times? After enduring months of captivity without once doubting his own mind?
Nae, he was not mad, he reasoned, deciding that she wore an expression similar to his own, dumbstruck.
Her brows had drawn together, her lips parted slightly, and her eyes, wide and searching, remained fixed upon him as though she, too, struggled to understand what she saw.
They stared at one another for an inordinate length of time, the rain falling again, softly but insistently around them.
At last, reminded by instinct more than reason that every passing moment endangered him, Bram asked starkly, in the English he had heard far too often these past months, “How came ye to be here?”
She blinked. “I... I don’t know. Who are you?” Her gaze dropped to the manacle in his hand, and the one still attached to his wrist.
Neither of them had moved, but Bram did now. He shook his head once, as though to clear it, and began backing away. His instincts screamed at him to run. Was she flesh and blood, or some woodland spirit sent to lead men astray? He had no intention of being captured while he lingered to find out.
He turned sharply, angling away from her, careful to give the impossible woman a wide berth.
“Please—wait!”
Bram didn’t slow, and he didn’t look back.
“No, please!” she called again, desperation breaking through her voice. “Help me!”
He’d gone no more than a dozen paces when his stride began to falter. Keep moving, he told himself. Every moment brings them closer. The gallows at York are waiting. But with each step he forced himself to take, a strange resistance grew, as if he were walking against a powerful current.
It was not pain that slowed him, though he had plenty of that. This was something altogether different.
A feeling he’d never known before coiled deep in his gut, as if every step away from her was a betrayal of some sacred duty.
The conviction came so suddenly, so completely, that Bram slowed again, frowning.
He’d never felt compelled toward a stranger, let alone one who appeared from thin air.
If she were a child or an injured traveler, the impulse would make sense—his father had taught him that strength was meant to serve others.
But this woman was whole and able. She had no claim on his protection.
Why, then, did every instinct urge him to return?
He clenched his jaw and forced himself onward another several paces, though each one seemed more difficult than the last. God’s wounds! What was wrong with him?
He stopped altogether then, his breath coming hard as he stood among the dripping trees, rain pattering softly upon the leaves above.
“Lord love a sinner,” he murmured as he turned around.
She stood where he had left her, staring at him. Her chest heaved, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her fear was a raw, visible thing.
Then, faintly through the rain, came the unmistakable crack of a man’s voice carrying among the trees.
Bram lifted the hand still bound in iron and motioned sharply toward himself. “Come—ere they discover ye as well.”
She turned toward the sound, then back to him, her eyes wide with indecision. Bram began backing away, watching her. If she was a fool, he would leave her. But after a heartbeat’s hesitation, she gathered her strange, flowered skirts and ran toward him.