“God help him. He’s crossing the sands. No call to chase after him now, then. Fasten the dogs.”
“Hold on! There’s two on t’horse. He’s tekking someone. We’d best get after him.”
“Nay, Master Spearing.” Whose voice? Germaine’s, I think. “You’re drunk. You’re seeing double. There’s just the Scot.”
The voices fade into a garbled echo and soon we can no longer hear them. I slow Saint Hilda’s pace, and Robert tightens his hold on me. We ride in silence for a while. Suddenly, the eelgrass ends, and bare sand stretches ahead. At the same moment the first breath of sea breeze blows gently against our faces. I tense, and I can feel Robert also tensing behind me, but I dare not go faster for fear of missing our footing, now that the safe way is no longer marked.
“Why did you do it, Robert?” I ask him, over my shoulder, slowing Saint Hilda, picking my way. “Why did you come to the tower? It was mad.”
He rubs his face in my hair. “I think I was mad. I had to see you. I was so angry. You deceived me, and I wanted to see you in your tower again, I suppose because that was the place where you’d been my enemy before. I felt you must be a different person from what I’d thought. You hadnae told me about the raid. I had to overhear it from two hunters in the forest, and one of them your Cousin Hughie. I was just so angry with you, Beatrice. I wanted to shock and frighten you…”
“Well you did that all right.” I turn on him, angry myself. “Don’t forget what you did, Robert. Don’t forget that you raided us, unprovoked. One of our men died because of you.”
“It’s what we do though, isn’t it Bea. It’s just what we all do. Your people, my people. Don’t let’s part angry. I’m very sorry that I’ve put you in such danger. I can see now that there was nothing else you could do…” He does not finish, because suddenly Saint Hilda’s front hooves give way. I had lost concentration. She pitches forward with a terrified whinny, and I realise that we are into quicksand.
“Get off!” I yell at Robert. I tumble off, and Robert jumps down behind me. Saint Hilda steadies a little, now that our weight is off, but continues struggling to free herself, working herself further into the morass as she does so.
The breath is shocked out of me, but I try to speak soothingly to her, as between us we seize whatever parts of her we can. Robert has her tail and I have her mane. I wind my fist into it and pull, and tufts of warm, coarse hair come loose in my hands. I clasp my arms round her neck, and she wheezes in terror, baring her teeth, half choking. It is difficult finding a footing ourselves, but slowly we begin to reclaim her. In dismay, I see in the moonlight the sloppy, shifting surface edging closer to where Robert and I have a temporary footing. My own feet are starting to become embedded. With a grunt, Robert stoops and puts his shoulder under Saint Hilda’s belly. Slowly he pushes with his back, and slowly the horse’s legs suck free. Now Robert is sinking. I hook his arm into the stirrup – his bad arm is the only one which will reach – and back Saint Hilda on to firmer ground. Her eyes roll and her lips curl back in a grimace, as Robert’s weight threatens to pull her down, but when she realises she can lift her feet freely again, she slowly calms and stops blowing and tossing her head.
I grasp her face and kiss it. I kiss Robert as he struggles to his feet, legs coated in sludge. Tears pour down my cheeks, and down his. I kiss him again and say against his mouth, “Thank you so much. Thank you for saving her.”
He is gasping at the pain in his arm, but he holds me. He pushes his hands up through my hair and presses my face into his neck. He says, “I love you, Beatrice.” We kiss, hasty, desperate kisses, then we remount and ride on towards Gewhorn Head.
After that we go more slowly. The wind is getting up and the sea smell is sharper, but land is near now. Suddenly there is grass under Saint Hilda’s hooves, and the suck, suck of her footsteps turns to a dull beat. A high, tree-covered slope rises ahead. The moon vanishes behind a cloud. A dog howls, somewhere far distant to the north. I rein in Saint Hilda and we both dismount.
“Robert, you will need to find a way up through those trees, then go on north. Try to get to the monks at Cartmel. It’s north and a little west of here. They’ll help you, and see you on northwards. I have to get back fast now.”
Robert stares at me. “Beatrice, you can’t go back now. The tide’s coming. You’ll drown.”
I wrap my arms round him. “Goodbye, Robert. I shall never forget you. God bless you.” I kiss him and then jump back on to Saint Hilda. Robert grabs my shoulders and pulls me off again. My ankle twists in the stirrup and I cry out. He supports me with his shoulder under my arm, and frees my foot.
“Beatrice, don’t be foolish. You’ll never make it. Go home later. Say I captured you. Or… come with me?” He sets me upright, holds me tightly, kisses me long and hard. I put my arms round his neck and press against him, return his kiss and stroke his hair, then I pull away and step back.
“Robert, don’t you see, the choice has been taken away from us. If they find that I’m missing, nothing will stop them coming after you. If I’m at home, they will simply let you go.”
“There was a choice, then?”
I climb back into the saddle, the man’s saddle which Cedric put on my horse, and I wish I had my own more comfortable sidesaddle to help me travel faster. Robert is waiting for an answer, but I can’t answer him. He seizes Saint Hilda’s reins. “Listen, my darling, I don’t mind having them after me, if you’ll come. I’m afraid of what they’d do to you if they did catch us, but we have a good start. We can outrun them. With Saint Hilda, and maybe another horse at Cartmel, we can be in Scotland by the day after tomorrow.”
I snatch the reins from his hands. “No. There are people who know the way better than we do. They know the short cuts. They’d cut us off. Get away, Robert. You have the chance to get away. Don’t waste it. Don’t waste all this.” I turn Saint Hilda’s head towards the bay. She bucks and shies. The smell of approaching salt, and of the bones of long-dead horses, is in her nostrils. I drum my heels on her exhausted sides. She skitters sideways, turns round several times as if trying to dislodge me. Robert attempts to catch her head, but I crack the loose end of the reins across her soft neck and whisper, “Come on, girl. Are you trying to kill all three of us?” Hearing my voice calms her, and at last she breaks into a grudging trot, heading back towards the sea.
“Beatrice!”
I look back. “Robert, go!”
Saint Hilda levels off into a tired canter and I do not look back again.
Chapter 22
As we reach the sands Saint Hilda almost seems to know that we must follow the hoofprints of our outward journey. There is no eelgrass path here – we must have veered right away from it – but I scarcely need to guide her head to follow our earlier tracks. The wind blows harder and the moon is hidden behind cloud. Somehow or other my lace cap has stayed on my head through all this, but now the wind tears it off. My hair streams over my face, and for a few seconds I cannot see. I hold it back with one hand, and because for a moment I can feel Robert’s hands in my hair again, I almost turn back.
Half way across, the cloud shifts, buffeted by the tidal wind, and a dazzling white light fills the bay. The far headlands which I must reach look unfamiliar from this side, and very distant. Then I see it, a flat, smooth ripple of water moving in from the south-west.
In a frenzy I summon Saint Hilda’s failing strength, but I know it is no good. The local measure of the tide’s speed has always been ‘faster than a galloping horse’. That’s what they say when they warn children not to stray on to the sands. That’s what they say when unfortunate travellers have been too slow. There can be no doubt. The sea will reach me before I reach the shore.
The oncoming wave is black-green, the colour of rot, of water-weed, of the mould on turnips when they cave in slackly as you touch them, the colour of death. The salt wind stings my eyes, and Saint Hilda finds new strength and thunders across the bay like an animal demented. The wave reaches us as
I catch my first glimpse of the white chapel on the cliffs. Water sweeps beneath our feet, and I can no longer see the safe way to go. I head Saint Hilda in a straight line for the nearest point of the shore, and kick her into a flying gallop over the invisible sands. Spray flies up and soaks me. The wind rips at my hair and wraps it round my face. Seconds later, Saint Hilda falters. Her front legs give way. With a whinnying cry she buckles forward on to her neck. I crash over her head into the fast running tide. As I feel a gentle sucking at my limbs, I know that I have fallen in quicksand.
It is so cold. So dark. Icy water tasting like tears is in my mouth. Grit is in my eyes. At last the nightmare has me. I realise I have always known that it would, some day. The tales of childhood swathe me round and drag me down to their dead world. The sea is over my head. I have no sense of backward or forward, up or down. I cannot breathe. I have no knowledge of where to go for air.
A current is pulling me. In the midst of my choking, I sense that I have floated free. I thrash out with my arms, and my head breaks surface. Something more than a current is gripping me, a new terror. “Beatie, don’t struggle!” The voice is indistinct but near. In a sudden shock, the warmth of night air slaps my clothes to my back, and I am out. Water is pouring off me. I am free of it. Everything is dark; sea and night are indistinguishable and I cannot clear my eyes and ears of them. Then, with a thump, the warm neck of a horse is under my face. It smells of stables, sun on meadows, things I never thought to see again. I struggle to sit upright, thinking I am on Saint Hilda, then realise that I am astride a much taller horse, and that a strong, pale hand is holding the reins. The horse staggers. My feet are trailing in water. They are pulled to the side by the force of the flow, my right foot dragged under the horse’s belly.
“Slowly there, John! Follow me exactly,” shouts a voice. Somewhere ahead a light flashes.
“Keep going! I’m behind you!” An arm is round me, gripping me. We zigzag, following the light. The sea is tugging at my thighs now. The voice ahead comes back faintly over the wind, “Firm ground ahead. Fast as you can! Head for the outcrop and the white chapel.” Another horse becomes visible ahead as ours breaks into a futile attempt at a trot. Water surges up, splashes over my head again for a moment, and the horror returns. The animal’s neck under my hands bulges and arches as it battles to move forward. Then suddenly my legs feel warm and naked. The horse surges forward, and we both lurch violently back. The splashing ceases, and the sound of the horse’s hooves turns to a soft clucking noise underfoot.
In the white chapel they lay me on the cold stone floor. I am still choking out sea water from my mouth and nose. John Becker kneels down and wraps his cloak round me. “You might as well keep this one,” he says. “You’re wearing it more than I am.” I try to stop gasping like a fish, but can’t. I turn on my side away from him.
Eventually I ask, “Where’s Saint Hilda?”
John props me with his arm. “Her neck was broken. She didn’t get up again. I’m sorry.”
“She was in quicksand. She would have drowned slowly.” There is a terrible pain in my chest.
“No no no.” John shakes me. “She didn’t suffer. She was dead at once. Otherwise I’d have seen her struggle.”
Cedric, by the window, looks at him, and John glances away, and I am amazed that this man who tells us all not to lie, should be prepared to lie for me. I let it pass. There was no choice in the end, and now I have to find a way to live with what I did. In that moment I think the pity of it might kill me. Robert is saved, perhaps, but at what a terrible price. I look at my life stretching ahead, purposeless and bare. I look at these two men who saved it. I say to them, hearing the emptiness in my own voice, “Thank you for coming to get me. You could have been drowned yourselves.”
John stares up at the cobwebbed rafters. “I was afraid you were going to Scotland.”
Cedric gives him a world-weary look, then turns back to the window. “Look!” He puts down his lanthorn and hauls me to my feet. Over the bay a shadowy moon is shining through torn clouds. Far off across the water, a light flashes, an uneven, jumping flame, a lighted branch perhaps. “There he goes.” He passes the supporting of me to John, and raises his own lanthorn three times, so that the light of it fills the central window. It gusts and gutters as the wind catches it, flashing wildly its triple signal, the code for saved. “He knows you’re safe, now. He’ll get on northwards.” Cedric looks at me for a moment. “Beatrice… if we find you dry clothes, and I take you across at tomorrow’s low tide, you can still catch him at Cartmel.”
I am starting to shiver. My teeth rattle in my head and salt water springs again from my eyes and nose. John holds me in an uncompromising grip, and the heat from his cloak and arms creates an air of steaming damp around us. “She’s about to catch her death another way if we don’t take her somewhere warm quickly,” he says. “We’ll go home to the parsonage, Beatrice. Mother Bain will look after you and find you dry clothing. You’re really going to have to stop wearing this red silk, you know, the trouble it gets you into.”
I smile. I can’t help it. Despite everything, despite all the reasons for not smiling, I smile, and he picks me up and carries me out of the chapel to where his horse is tethered under a tree. Cedric follows, and grasps my face in his fish-scented fist. “Beatrice, what is it to be? You have to make up your own mind.”
John heaves me on to his horse. I look down at the Cockleshell Man. “Do you still want me to be your pupil, Master Cedric?”
He is silent, staring at me, then he says, “Aye, I do.” He turns, and I see that he is limping. He reaches his own horse and calls back over his shoulder, “That’s settled then.”
Mother Bain is sitting in a high-backed wooden chair, in her nightclothes, smoking a small clay pipe full of juniper berries. “So, it’s finished and done with, and we have all survived.” Her voice emerges from under swathes of linen nightcap which all but hide her face. She chews the stem of her pipe. “And yet…” She shakes her head as if impatient with herself. “… no matter.”
I am sitting on the opposite side of the parsonage’s kitchen hearth, wrapped in blankets, sweating by the fire’s fearsome blaze. Cedric and John are in dry clothes now. All our drenched clothing is steaming on a clothes maiden near the ceiling, next to a row of dead grouse which are hanging upside down to cure. I am being forced to drink a disgusting brew of dandelion, lavender and hyssop, supposedly to cleanse the sea from my system. We are all being quiet, so as not to wake James who is asleep in the room behind the hearth, or Verity, asleep upstairs. Mother Bain gets up to tend Cedric’s leg which was injured when he was whipped off his horse. John sits down in her place.
“We must get you back secretly to your room at the tower, Beatie. If your association with the Scot became known, you’d be an outcast. Even if you escaped retribution now, it would be held against you at the next raid.”
I nod. I have given up bothering to speak, since it brings on my ague.
“They all know the Scot took a horse from Barrowbeck. They saw him go. So it is logical that Saint Hilda could be missing.”
I turn my head away.
“You were in front of him on the horse, and it was dark. People who thought they saw someone with him were easily persuaded it was not so. There’s no reason for anyone else to know you were ever missing. I’ll take you to the edge of the clearing at dawn. If the watchmen see you, they’ll probably just think you’re up early. At worst they’ll think you’ve been with Hugh.”
I can feel a flush rising in my cheeks. “John…”
He goes on quickly. He doesn’t want me to explain. I notice how weary and grimy he looks. His dark hair is still sticking in damp curls to his forehead. He brings a low stool and sits close to me. “I’m glad you decided to come back, Beatie.”
I pull the blanket more tightly round me. He thinks Robert and I were lovers, and he doesn’t care. I’m glad not to have to explain, because I don’t know what I could say, how I could describ
e the strange and powerful bonding there was between Robert and me, feelings that are perhaps love’s closest kin. If these past months have taught me nothing else, they have taught me that our enemies are much like us, after all.
A blackbird starts singing wildly outside the window, even though it is still dark. I look round at the leaping firelight, at Cedric from whom I am going to learn how to heal, at John who may one day be something more to me. Then I look towards the window for signs of a new day.
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Acknowledgement
My warmest thanks for items of historical information go to
Chris Groenewald, David Pile, Lindsay Warden,
Susan Wilson of Lancaster Reference Library and Local History Archive,
Andrew White of Lancaster Museum Services,
Andrew Thynne of Preston Public Records Office,
the staff of Kendal Library and Senate House Library
and to my sister Phyllis, for help in updating my writing technology.
Copyright
First published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2002
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
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Text copyright © Maggie Prince 2002
The author asserts the moral right to be
identified as the author of the work.
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