Chapter 2
Huddled in an alleyway, Brianna remembered that she had been strenuously warned by those neighbors who had loved Pegeen not to come anywhere near the execution.
But since the day when the men had burst into her aunt’s cottage and dragged Pegeen out into the midday sun, Brianna had been living a nightmare of confusion and horror.
She had been in the woods when the men had come. From the shadows of the huge and sheltering oaks that surrounded the little cottage, she had seen her aunt taken away.
The shouts in the streets seemed to be coming closer.
Brianna tore down another alley, leaning back against the rear wall of a bakery.
She was somewhat shielded from view by a series of grain crates, and she took the opportunity to breathe in great gulps of air.
Closing her eyes, she couldn’t help but think back.
She had been stunned when they took Pegeen, shocked into immobility. When the truth of what was happening seeped through to her dazed mind, she had torn out after them, scattering the herbs and roots she had been collecting along the way.
The men on horseback—with her aunt their prisoner—were halfway down the road before she had panted her way to the front of the cottage.
Needles of pain shot through her healthy young legs, and through her laboring lungs.
She had paused only a second, then started to run again, her bare feet pounding down the dirt lane with a speed almost equalling that of the horses.
But Mistress Willow, their nearest neighbor in the forest, had managed to stop her, hurling her rounded form upon that of the slip of a girl.
“Brianna! You mustn’t go after her!” Mistress Willow pleaded, tears in her eyes, as she looked into the accusing eyes of the girl. “There’s naught you can do now, girl.”
“They’ve taken her … Pegeen.… They’ve taken Pegeen. The witchfinder has taken Pegeen.…”
Mistress Willow cradled the girl against her. “Pegeen is in God’s hands now, girl. And you can’t help her—but you can get yourself arrested too! We can do naught but wait, child, and pray that the Lord intervenes.”
But the Lord did not intervene.
Until the very last moment Brianna had prayed that he would.
Pegeen MacCardle had been the kindest, most gentle person alive.
She loved the forest, she loved the creatures.
And she loved Brianna. She had spent her life caring for the ill and wounded—her neighbors, and any creature, great and small.
Her determination to heal had brought her to the stake.
The wife of a farmer who had been cured of croup by Pegeen’s potion of herbs had accused her of “bewitching” her husband because the husband had revered Pegeen as a saint in thanks for his life.
Brianna opened her eyes. Had she come far enough?
No. The voices had been distant but now she could hear them more clearly.
She pushed away from the wall of the bakery and ran blindly eastward, through the alleyways between huddled houses, smiths, and barns.
Once again she found seclusion beneath an overhang, and paused, breathing deeply, feeling the pain ravage her again.
Pegeen! It was impossible that she was gone—so brutally, so cruelly.
Orphaned at eleven when her parents had both succumbed to a plague, Brianna had at first been sent to live with her mother’s family, the Powells, in England.
They had been kind people, but strict Puritans, and after life with her handsome and fun-loving father, it had been quite a change.
They were also extremely poor, and knowing that she had been a burden to them had hurt Brianna terribly.
Robert, her second cousin and ten years her senior, had tried very hard to convince her—but to no avail—that she was added help, not a burden.
He was a religious, serious young man, but his dark eyes had always been warm and tender and he had spoken to her in the gentlest of tones.
Then Pegeen had come, and immediately she had loved Brianna.
Both the Powells and Brianna knew that she would be loved and cherished if she returned to Scotland with Pegeen.
During the eight wonderful years Brianna had grown up in the small woods home of her aunt, she had come to know that Pegeen MacCardle was very simply, very basically, one of the finest human beings alive.
In an era when blood was shed over the slightest discrepancy in belief, Pegeen was truly good.
Her religion was the forest; her God was one of goodness.
Oh, yes—the Lord should have intervened!
But he hadn’t, and Pegeen MacCardle had died.
When Brianna had realized that no miracle was going to occur, she had lost all sense of reason in the face of horrible reality. And so she had come to face Matthews, official witchfinder.
Her heart caught suddenly and skipped a beat. She could hear him again—Matthews!
“Find her! Find the witch!”
He was close, oh, very close! And it seemed that the alleyways were full of whispers, full of the sound of running feet. She turned a corner and collided with a wizened old man. She almost screamed but he touched a finger to his weathered lips.
“Run, girl, run!”
She had to run. But there seemed to be nowhere to go; no safe place. Run—because if she did not, she, too, would become charred flesh and ash in the wind.…
Desperation and deep-rooted instincts for survival spurred Brianna’s young limbs into fluid action. She couldn’t cry for her aunt; she couldn’t even afford the time to feel her pain. It didn’t matter. She was numb. Her feelings and emotions were deadened by horror.
She raced north through the city; behind her she could hear the shouts of the king’s men as they lashed out against the pressing throng that detained them. They couldn’t move against the sea of humanity.
Brianna began a zigzag course, one that started to take her westward as well as north. A new sound, rasping, heaving, reached her ears.
It was the sound of her gasping breaths; it mingled with the rush of the blood that filled her ears like the sound of waves, and with the terrible thudding and pounding of her heart.
The woods, she thought. She had to get out of the city and into the woods.
She could find shelter in the dense forests; there were caves and crannies and cliffs and she could disappear as easily as a doe—until she could find a way back to the Powells!
Oh, yes! They would help her now. Robert, or his father, would know what to do, how to hide her. …
She couldn’t seem to outrun the smell of burning flesh, or the sound of the chase behind her.
She ran down another alley rank with the stench of emptied chamberpots and decaying garbage.
A cat, skeleton-thin, screeched in her path, arching his back.
She tried to run around it, but the panicked creature bolted with her.
She tripped over it, and sprawled into the mud and dust and garbage.
Spitting dirt out of her mouth, she scrambled to her feet.
“This way,” cried a soldier of the crown.
“Down the alley!” shouted another.
“Suffer not a witch to live!” returned the first voice.
Brianna lost all conscious thought and logic as she heard the voices of the soldiers. Like a cornered rat, she had no reason. She would have kicked and clawed and bit at stone to escape her pursuers.
As she rounded the corner, she left behind her the alley of the slums. A scent of salt and tangy sea breezes finally began to clear that of the acrid smoke.
She came upon a row of dockside houses. Not elegant mansions, but townhouses that belonged to sea captains and merchants.
Across from the townhouses were the docks and ships, everything from tiny fishing boats to the massive merchant ships and the men-of-war that sailed across the Atlantic to the Colonies.
And beyond that there was nothing, except the sea, as gray and tempestuous as the sky.
Brianna paused for a moment, drawing in great gulps of air as she pivoted about on her toes, desperately seeking a hideout. Her zigzag course had taken her into a trap of her own making.
As she spun about, the gray of the sky was brilliantly lit by a jagged streak of lightning. A peal of thunder followed so quickly, it sounded as if the heavens had split. And as if the sky had truly been torn asunder, rain began to fall in torrents.
Brianna stared desperately about herself once more, blinking against the rain.
At the far end of the townhouses she could make out a sign.
It creaked and swayed beneath the wind and rain, but she could make out the words.
HAWK’S TAVERN. Knowing only that she could not stand awaiting capture in the pouring rain, she raced for the three rickety steps that led to the tavern’s door.
It was gray inside, almost as gray as it was outside. The air was heavy too; but heavy with odors that were pleasant to the senses. The delicious scent of fresh bread was in the air; the appetizing scent of braised and seasoned meat.
Brianna stood against the door for a second, wide blue eyes scanning the tavern.
There were rough wood tables about the room, a fireplace against the far wall that offered a mellow, comforting heat.
A number of the tables were filled with male customers—crusty old sea salts, from the looks of them.
But, Brianna noticed, her heart giving a little leap of relief, there was another woman in the room.
She was dressed in a rather startling low-cut gown of red, and she sat with one of the sailors.
There were also females waiting upon the tables, two of them, both engaged at present in slamming down tankards of ale and hunks of mutton before boisterous customers.
Brianna prayed desperately that she had enough coins in her shoe to purchase a tankard of ale. If she could slip quietly into one of the shadowy corners of the gray room, she could bide a little time.