by Hope Tarr
Resting his forehead against Beelzebub’s smooth side, which even now put him in mind of the sleek ebony of the Frenchwoman’s hair, he closed his eyes and prayed. For forgiveness at having come closer than he’d ever thought to come to taking carnal advantage of a woman’s fear and weakness. For the willpower to put from his thoughts the Frenchwoman’s flashing eyes, saucy smile and comely body, the image of which even now crowded his thoughts and caused his wretched flesh to harden and heat.
But mostly he prayed for Claudia Valemont and for the chance, should their paths cross again, to make amends to her. Whatever her real reason in setting out on her own for Linlithgow, she was in need of help, God’s help, indeed.
Claudia had learned to ride for the same reason she’d done many things—because Phillippe had wished it. Even so, the rebel within her had balked against the enforced lessons and she’d retained little beyond the rudiments of keeping her seat. Certainly she’d never before saddled her own horse, mounted without the assistance of a groom or ridden astride. And yet standing on the threshold of the stable, she acknowledged she was about to do all three.
But then she’d never before stolen her mount, either.
Fumbling in the darkness, she followed the smells of leather and saddle oil to the tack room. It was dark but someone had thought to leave a lantern alight. Standing on tiptoe, she took it down from its peg along with one of the saddles. Shouldering the latter, she started back down the aisle between stalls, stopping at the one nearest the stable door where she’d set down her valise.
The stall gate opened on shrieking hinges. Teeth clenched, she pushed her way inside. The beast, a swaybacked draft horse, lifted its head as she approached, nipping at her hair and slathering the side of her face. Armed with neither carrot nor sugar cone, she pushed the burrowing muzzle to the side and reached up to lead the horse out toward the mounting block. To her horror, the action set off a jingle that, to her sensitized ears, sounded like the pealing from the bell tower of Notre Dame. Feeling her way in the semidarkness, she found still more bells woven into the braided mane.
Zut, alors! Just her luck, she must have happened upon a tinker’s horse.
As if picking up on her tension, the beast balked. Nearly dropping the lantern, Claudia leapt clear of a kicking hoof. Blowing the loose hair out of her eyes, she edged forward to try again.
A loud creaking had her whipping about but too late. The door to the stable was thrown open, admitting a beacon of light and the sudden shout of “Halt, thief!”
Heart flying to her throat, she raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sudden rush of blinding light.
“As ye value yer life, step away from that horse.”
Squinting, she counted five men, six if she were to include a sleepy-eyed ostler, standing just outside the stall door. At least one among them, the innkeeper, was armed. Hearing the telltale click of a pistol hammer being cocked brought to mind the bloody, battered bodies of the pigeons and morning doves Phillippe had loved to “hunt.” The image of her body equally bloodied and battered and lying limp on the straw-sprinkled boards threatened to send her legs folding.
“Please, messieurs, there is some mistake.” Futile though it was, she backed up, lifting her free hand to ward them off. “I have done nothing wrong. I am no thief.”
But it was a lie, and their eyes, hard as stones as they advanced on her, told her they meant to show no mercy.
And worse even than their hands taking bruising hold of her arms, than having to stand by and watch as they rifled her things, was that in her heart of hearts Claudia knew it, too.
Despite being seized and then tossed into a prison cell to pass the night on a flea-ridden pallet unfit for a dog, Claudia somehow managed to keep up the illusion that the events of the past four-and-twenty hours were all part of an intricate and truly awful dream. At any time she would awaken to the bucking of the mail coach, to Madame Smith’s snoring and Monsieur Brumble’s hand insinuating itself on her knee.
Not paradise, by any stretch of the imagination, but not a gaol cell in the Selkirk Tollbooth, either.
It wasn’t until the following morning, when her gaoler arrived to lead her from her cell, that reality struck in the heavy shudder of shackles being clapped about her wrists. Staring down at the thick bands of solid iron encasing them, Claudia felt a frozen, fixed horror start to overtake her. She’d seen first her lover and then her mother bound thus and led away and in both cases they’d been dead within the week. And so in Claudia’s mind shackled hands were inextricably linked to the guillotine, to the mob’s pitiless roar, to blood and pain and death. Even though she doubted they meant to go so far as to cut off her head, she couldn’t seem to leave off shaking—or to take that first seemingly huge step over the cell threshold.
“Come on wi’ ye. I’ve no got all the day.”
Her gaoler, a whiskey-breathed, hairy skeleton of a man known as Wallis, jerked her outside. The sharp reek of urine and despair hit her in the face like a wave as they cut across the semicircular courtyard; the din of prisoners’ spoons clanking against metal bars and hoarse shouts of “Let me out” followed her to the narrow flight of curved stairs. Single-file they started up, the gaoler poking her along, cursing at her when she hesitated. The slimy stones seemed to close in with each halting step; halfway up, both her teeth and knees had taken to knocking together like balls on a billiard table.
At the top a second guard materialized to throw home the bolt, and the iron-studded door leading to the great world beyond the prison walls miraculously opened. They emerged into the muddy patch of prison yard, and Claudia gulped down the blessed sweetness of the rain-soaked air and blinked against the almost blinding haze of sun breaking through the cloud-soaked sky. A nettle shrub grazed the back of her hand as they came up on a lych-gate, and she fixed her mind on the slight sting to keep the fearful numbness at bay.
She’d been expecting the pillory at best, the scaffold at worst, so when she emerged on the other side to see a square wattle-and-daub structure instead, she relaxed a fraction. From the outside it looked benign, charming even, with a clutch of ivy running along its façade, and the whole bordered by hedge, the cheerful orange-red berries of which still clung to life. It wasn’t until they drew up to the front steps that the rumble of raised voices from within caused Claudia’s heart to quail and her feet to falter.
The gaoler’s ham-handed shove at her back sent her stumbling through the square doorway. Pausing to regain her balance, she looked up into sudden, dead silence. Ahead of her was a gallery filled with rough-hewn benches, a narrow aisle cutting through the center to the platform fronting the room.
“Ga’ on wi’ ye, then,” came the impatient voice at her back. “Them be waitin’.”
Heart quaking, she started down the aisle, the focal point for row upon row of scowling, stiff-backed Scots, their hard stares boring into her and their communal silence drumming her ears as if it were the most deafening of dins. Sprawled at the end of one bench was her attacker from the tavern. He turned his bruised face up to hers and a gloating smile twisted his thin lips.
Mon Dieu, je regrette…
Her armpits damp, she reached the front of the chamber. Two short steps led up to the platform where a lean-faced man of middling years and garbed in sober black, presumably the judge, presided over a polished oak writing desk. A large leather tome lay on the desk before him along with a wooden gavel resting to his right. On the step below him stood a wizened old man, knobby knees and shrunken shanks visible beneath the folds of his faded kilt. One of the two draughts players from the tavern, she thought, but before she could decide he came forward to reclaim her from the gaoler, who then faded into the background. Laying a palsied hand upon her arm, he steered her over to a raised wooden box, a set of three wooden steps leading inside. Set at an angle, it both faced the judge and afforded the prisoner within a peripheral view of the gallery. The prisoner’s dock, she thought it was called in English, and her stomach gave a t
reacherous heave.
“Mind yer step,” he counseled in a rusted voice and then released her to open the gated door.
Holding it for her, he mumbled some incoherent phrase, which she took as an invitation to enter. She did and then turned to face the front of the room, flinching as the gate whined closed behind her. Boxed in on all sides, she thought, and felt the bile blaze a trail from stomach to throat. She gripped the bar with both hobbled hands, the wood worn smooth and slipping beneath her clammy palms, and turned her gaze on the judge. A smart crack of his gavel called the assembly to order. Over the buzzing filling her ears, she strained to hear as the crime for which she stood accused was read aloud.
Returning to his post, the old man unfurled a scrolled writ and, with obvious self-importance, began to read aloud, “She who stands afore us is one Claudia Valemont, late o’ Paris, France, and accused o’ the crime o’ horse thievery, Your Worship.”
On the word “thievery,” panic plowed into her abdomen like a fist. Not only did she stand accused as a thief but, Mon Dieu, she really was one! She had stolen that horse or at least had given her best effort to doing so. Under English law, was one still considered to be a thief even if the object of theft was never quite…thieved?
Mon Dieu, je regrette…
Prayer fell off in favor of ticking off the possible punishments. Dunking and trial by fire were reserved for accused witches, the pillory for lesser crimes, such as lying and scandal mongering. Branding, yes, that was the usual punishment for thieves, in France at least. Most often on the upper arm but sometimes the mark of shame was burned into the center of the forehead instead. Shaking, Claudia reached up and touched her fingertips to the smooth expanse of clammy brow.
Mon Dieu, je regrette…
Based on what little she recalled of her governess’s lessons on English common law, she didn’t think the accused was permitted to speak on his or her own behalf. Just as well, really, for even if the English words were to miraculously find their way to her tongue, she wouldn’t know what to say, how to frame her problem. On the one hand, revealing her noble parentage was her trump card, her best and perhaps only chance of avoiding whatever punishment they meant to mete out. Though she was a bastard, noble blood—the Aberdaire blood—ran in her veins just as surely as if she’d been born of a union blessed by the Holy Church. And yet illegitimate and half French, she expected her welcome in her father’s house to be tenuous at best, her place by no means assured. To arrive as a convicted felon, a common horse thief no less, all but guaranteed that His Lordship would send her packing.
And then what will become of me?
The future loomed too large a concept to even get her muddled mind around; better to focus on the present and whatever it was the bailiff was proclaiming.
“Thievery of a man’s horse, indeed of any property judged tae be o’ greater worth than five shillings, is tae be hangit by the neck ’til dead.”
The room exploded into a cacophony of gibberish; bright, curious gazes fixed themselves upon the spectacle of Claudia’s sweating face. Death by hanging! Could it be she’d outwitted a bloodthirsty Parisian mob, survived a perilous sea crossing in a smuggler’s sloop and crossed league after league of British soil only to come to this?
Digging her nails into the smooth wood, she allowed she now had no choice but to surrender her future in order to save her life. “You cannot hang me,” she cried out, pushing the words over the dry lump in her throat. “My father is a very great man, a nobleman. An earl, as you say in English. And Scottish,” she added on afterthought, hoping that alone might weigh the odds in her favor.
She’d expected stunned silence but instead ribald laughter exploded from the gallery. “Och, but dinna be sae modest, dearie. Faith but ye maun be the daughter o’ King Geordie himself come tae Scotland for a wee goodwill visit,” shrilled one squat matron.
Applause and more mocking laughter greeted that statement, encouraging yet another to shout, “Aye, a royal princess indeed, though wi’ all the taxes the Sassenachs levy us, ye’d think she maun be able t’afford a decent dress.”
Claudia started to reply, to explain, but the gavel drowned out her rasping and called the room to order. “Silence! Silence I say.” Addressing himself to Claudia, the judge inquired in an almost gentle tone, “Have ye any people in Scotland who might be summoned to stand witness for your character? If ye’ve a father, earl or no, ’twould behoove ye to give up his name.”
A bead of sweat struck her rib and streaked down her side like a tear. It was hopeless; it was over. They thought she was a madwoman. Nothing she said now would make any difference. Better to accept her fate and die with honor as her mother had, as had so many of her countrymen, than to beg and plead and grovel only to meet the same wretched end.
Head bowed, she said, “I cannot claim the protection of a name that has never been mine to own.”
The judge heaved an audible sigh. Shaking his head, he asked of the gallery, “Is there no one to bear witness for this puir wretched woman?”
There was a pregnant pause and then he struck the gavel once, twice…
“Hold! I will speak for her.”
Heads whipped about and necks craned for a glimpse of the owner of the deeply timbred masculine voice. Claudia joined them, stretching her neck to peer back over her left shoulder.
She caught her breath for it was none other than Jack Ketch—Campbell—breaking free of the latecomers crowding the back of the chamber to stride forward. Muffled murmurs marked his progress from aisle to platform steps. Passing by the prisoner’s dock, his gaze brushed over Claudia, and she felt the warmth of those amber eyes holding hers like a consoling caress.
The judge hefted his gavel again and cracked it once, then twice, calling the assembly to order. On the third strike the roar dropped to a low buzz. “Jack Campbell has the floor.” To Jack he asked, “What have ye to say, Jack Campbell, that might be brought to bear on this puir wretched woman’s behalf?”
Looking Mistress Valemont’s way, albeit briefly, had been a mistake, Jack allowed. He’d meant to offer solace, some unspoken reassurance that all would be well, yet the sight of her, pale-faced, hollow-eyed and visibly trembling, had threatened to undo him, tearing at his heart to the point of physical pain. Gone was the braw lassie who had so boldly made her way through the taproom but the day before. In her eyes he saw that she was counting on him to save her—clearly this was his God-given chance to make amends—and yet in his heart he knew that she’d meant to steal that horse. What could he possibly say?
Feeling the assembly’s gazes boring into his back, hearing the shuffling feet and prodding coughs, he filled his lungs with a deep breath. Exhaling slowly, he willed his image of the crowd to dissolve until only three people remained in the room: the magistrate, Duncan MacGregor; himself; and Claudia Valemont.
Calmer now, inexorably more grounded, he began, “No an hour before the alleged theft, Mistress Valemont was set upon by one of our lads drinking at the tavern.” Aware of Callum watching from the back of the room, he continued, “’Tis certain he meant no real harm, but bein’ foreign and no used to our rough country ways, the lass dropped to the floor like a stone and cracked her head.”
Duncan would, of course, have heard of the brawl in the tavern. “Ye mean to say she maun have addled her pate?” He cast a long, assessing look in Claudia’s direction.
Not daring to risk a second glance, at least not until she was out of danger, Jack kept his gaze fixed on Duncan’s stern countenance and nodded. “Aye, Your Worship, I ken it to be a distinct possibility. Ye’ve but to mark the great bruise on her face to see how hard hit she was.”
Frowning, Duncan looked beyond Jack to address the floor. “There are witnesses who can substantiate this claim?”
Jack didn’t hesitate. “Aye, there are. Milread the tavern wench for one.”
Milread popped up from her hastily taken seat on one of the benches at back. “Aye, ’tis true. She was out cold for nigh
on a half hour.”
Jack turned partway around and shot her a grateful smile, not only for speaking up but for earlier having left the tavern to come and fetch him. If it hadn’t been for her, news of Mistress Valemont’s plight might not have reached him until she was well and truly beyond his help.
His gaze picked out the innkeeper and his smile fell. “Alistair can bear witness as well.”
Beneath his powdered peruke, Duncan’s lifted brow creased like a washboard. “Alistair, this is true?”
The innkeeper had been keeping his silence but now he rose to stand. Fiddling with his drooping stock, he admitted, “Aye, it is,” although he looked none too pleased about it. A raucous lot Callum and his cronies might be, they were also his best customers, spending nigh on every coin they earned in the taproom. “I, er, dinna see as it had any bearing on the case, Yer Worship.”
“Did ye no?” Shifting his hawklike gaze back to Jack, Duncan said, “As Lord High Executioner for the Crown, ye maun come into contact with all manner of rogues and scalawags, is this not so?”
From the prisoner’s dock a gasp sounded and though he fought the urge to turn about, Jack felt the sharpness of it like a knife in his heart. Well, at least she knows now I’m no the blacksmith, he thought, then turned his attention to answering the question. “Aye, milord, ’tis true enough. Before they can set out to meet their Maker, they must by necessity keep company with me.”
A salvo of raucous laughter fired about the hall. Jack felt the vibration like a wave breaking over his back, but he held his shoulders straight and his gaze on the judge.
Order restored, Duncan continued, “And is it your opinion then, your professional opinion, that Mistress Valemont is one among their ranks?”
“Nay, milord, I dinna ken her to be such as they. As to whether she meant to ‘borrow’ the tinker’s wee horse or no, I canna say, but I can say for certain that she wasna in her right mind at the time. I had occasion to meet up with her again just before she went inside the stable, and she struck me as being verra—” he turned halfway about to spear Claudia with a warning look, “—confused.”