A Dangerous Undertaking

by Mary Nichols

  She got up and went to the window, but it looked out on to the fen and the only signs of life were a few wild ducks and a heron or two. She could not expect help from that direction. She went to the door and listened. There was no sound. If only she could untie her hands, she might be able to make her escape. She looked round the room. It was furnished with a table and half a dozen chairs, a settle and a cupboard. There was a meagre fire, beside which lay a poker. Could she pick it up and, what was more to the point, could she wield it? She had to free her hands before she could do anything. Where was Nellie? They could escape together if the girl could pluck up the courage to help her. She began kicking at the door. No one came to her and she gave up, exhausted, and sank on to the settle.

  How long would it be before she was missed? If Penny had been at the Manor, it might not have been long, but her maid was with her mother. The groom might think to tell someone when the curricle did not return, but it would be hours before they thought of coming to Sedge House to look for her. Oh, why had she insisted on coming alone? Why had she come at all? Her uncle did not care what happened to her; he had made only a feeble attempt to stop the men tying her up. He was as afraid of them as Nellie was. Who were they? She did not think they were welcome visitors. Nellie had been right; there was something going on and she was in mortal danger.

  Was that curse at work? Was this to be her end? It was strange how her frame of mind had changed in a few short weeks from disbelief to belief, from confidence to fear. She supposed that living at the Manor, in an ancient house, surrounded by things from the past, it was hardly surprising that she had become as superstitious as the fen people. And so much had happened to her—falling through the ice, the accident with the knife which could have been a great deal more serious, being toppled over the banisters, and now this. She had fought against it, right until the time of finding Rosalind Pargeter’s gravestone. She was too weary to go on fighting. Was it time to give up, to let the curse take over? But how could she do that, when there was a new living being growing inside her, a child she must protect at all costs?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MARGARET heard the door being unlocked, and the leader of the men came in and stood looking down at her, a crooked smile on his face. ‘Quiet now, my lady?’ he queried.

  She nodded.

  He bent and ripped the gag from her mouth, knocking her head back and making her feel ill. ‘You keep quiet and I’ll leave it off.’

  ‘I’ll be silent.’ She looked up at him, but his expression did not soften. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Now who’s to say you won’t prove useful?’

  ‘Money? I’ll give you money if you let me go and allow Nellie to come with me.’

  ‘Do you take us for fools? No, my lady, we have other uses for you.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I had not thought of taking a hostage until you arrived so opportunely…’

  ‘A hostage? Why do you need a hostage?’

  ‘Safe passage,’ he said. ‘We are going to take you with us on a little voyage.’

  She bit her lip to stop herself crying out. A voyage meant the sea and a foreign country, France perhaps. They were obviously fugitives, but from what? She must remain calm. She took a deep breath. ‘Who do you suppose will pay a ransom for me?’

  ‘Your husband, my lady.’

  She began to laugh hysterically, rocking herself back and forth while the tears streamed down her cheeks.

  ‘Pray share the jest,’ he said.

  ‘My husband,’ she said between her sobs. ‘My husband will not pay. He wants me dead.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Henry said, coming into the room behind her. ‘You will be doing him a favour if you kill her.’

  The man spun round. ‘Do you think I was born in your stinking fens? Do you think I am as stupid as you are?’ He raised his hand and dealt Henry a violent blow to the side of his head which put him on his knees. ‘Be damned to that for a tale. I begin to believe you are not to be trusted.’

  ‘I have been a loyal servant of the Young Pretender and risked my life for his cause; what more do you want? Let the woman be—she is great with child. For the child’s sake——’

  ‘What care I for English brats?’ He kicked Henry as he struggled to his feet, spread-eagling him on the floor. ‘Now, get up and fetch the girl. We want something to eat before that lighter gets here, and provisions packed for the journey.’

  Henry scrambled up and hurried from the room, muttering to himself about ingratitude, and whose house was it anyway, but the other man ignored him.

  ‘You do not need me,’ Margaret said, trying to speak calmly, though her heart was beating so loudly that she thought they must hear it. ‘No one bothers about my uncle’s guests—they come and go as they please—but if you take me, then the servants at the Manor will come looking for me.’

  ‘I care nothing for your servants, my lady; my concern——’ He stopped and turned as one of the other men came into the room. ‘The boat’s been sighted, sir. It’s making its way up the cut.’

  ‘Then get everything on board.’ He hurried from the room issuing orders, and Margaret heard the men scurrying about to obey. She crept from the room and along the hall to the door.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ One of the men came after her and grabbed her arm.

  She struggled in his grasp, shouting at the top of her lungs, hoping someone might hear her. He slapped her face hard and then his hand was pulled away by Nellie, pouncing on him from behind. He yelled and turned to hit her. Henry came waddling along the hall to her aid, jumping on the man, and then everything was pandemonium as other men came in and began laying into Henry and Nellie, battering them about the head and body with the butts of their pistols and kicking them where they lay. Margaret, horrified, tried to go to their aid, but her hands were still tied. She kicked the man who held her and then tried to bite his hand. He yelled and hit out at her. She was saved by James. ‘Stop that! Bring her to the boat.’

  ‘What about him?’ The man indicated the unconscious Henry with the toe of his boot. ‘And the girl.’

  ‘They’re dead. Leave them. Come on; we’ve no time to lose if we’re to catch the tide at the sluice.’

  Margaret was gagged again and half dragged, half carried out of the house, across the garden and down to a large flat-bottomed boat which was tied up at the landing-stage. She made a last despairing attempt to stop them taking her on board, but they were prepared to manhandle her if she did not go willingly and, remembering her child, she shrugged them off and walked on board, her head high, but her spirits as low as it was possible for them to be.

  Roland reined in at the Winterford crossroads and looked about him. There were few people to be seen at that time of day, most being about their business, but he knew he had only to go to the smithy or the basket-maker’s, or one of the cottages, to find someone to talk to him. Any one of them would be able to tell him if his wife was alive and well. She might even have had their child a week or two early. She might even have died! It was something he would not allow himself to dwell on; he had left home in order to save her and he had to believe that that was possible or he could not live with himself. But anyone he spoke to would wonder why he did not go home and see for himself how she was; indeed, they would be shocked that he had even stopped to ask. Why should he not go home? Just for an hour or two, not to stay. He had hoped that absence might ease the pain but it had only made it worse. He wanted to be with Margaret more than he had wanted anything in his whole life, except that she should have that curse lifted from her and live to grow old. Could he ride up to the Manor, just to catch a glimpse of her?

  His quarry had gone to ground somewhere in the area but he had no idea exactly where. There were so many lonely habitations, so many isolated little islands in the fens, that they could be anywhere. They could have reached the coast and been taken aboard a ship. Was he on a wild-goose chase? Would he not do better to go back to his royal commander and admit failure? He patted hi
s horse’s neck. ‘Which way, Satan?’ he murmured. ‘Home, back to London, or on to Lynn?’

  ‘My lord?’

  He turned to see who had spoken and found himself looking down at the upturned face of Janet Henser. ‘Good-day to you, Mistress Henser.’

  The woman smiled. ‘So, you are come home?’

  ‘Is there any reason I should not?’

  She shrugged. ‘It is for you to decide whether it is wise to do so, my lord, not me.’

  ‘I do not intend to stay. I came only to reassure myself that Lady Pargeter is well.’

  ‘And risking all.’

  ‘I begin to think I was wrong to leave…’

  ‘It was decreed from the first, my lord. Everything is ordained from our first breath to our last.’

  ‘How can you say that? You are the one with incantations and cures, potions and remedies. You counselled me to go away. You convinced me…’

  ‘That too was ordained. If you had not gone away, you could not come back. And that is important.’

  ‘You talk in riddles. I will go home.’ He turned his horse to leave her.

  ‘Your wife is not there,’ she called after him.

  The horse pranced as he tugged on the rein to turn him back. ‘Not there? Then where is she?’

  ‘I saw her driving your curricle down the drove towards Sedge House.’

  ‘Sedge House!’

  It came to him like a revelation; Henry Capitain’s strange visitors, who arrived and departed and whom no one ever saw, were fugitives! It was clear as day now; Capitain was a Jacobite sympathiser and helping to ship the remnants of Charles Stuart’s rebel army out to join him. Sedge House was a place of safety for them while they waited for a ship. That was where his quarry had gone to ground. And Margaret had gone there! Was she one of them or simply an innocent bystander? ‘Why was she going there?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am not your wife’s keeper, my lord. She goes where she pleases. I simply passed her on the way.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else, apart from her maid and the groom?’

  ‘I saw neither maid nor groom, nor anyone else. She was alone.’

  ‘Go to the Manor, alert the grooms, fetch my lady’s maid and wait for me there.’ He rapped out his orders to Johnson but he did not wait to see if they were obeyed; the words were hardly out of his mouth before he spurred his horse to a gallop. Margaret would not help that rascally uncle of hers, would she? And even if she did, would she know what she was getting into? He smelled danger; it filled his nostrils and made his heart beat so that he found it difficult to breathe. Margaret. Margaret. He pictured her with Henry Capitain and that band of ruthless insurgents he had been following for weeks, and felt sick with apprehension. What would they do to her?

  The horse thundered along the drove alongside the dyke, covering the uneven ground as sure-footedly as a mountain goat, with Roland bent low over his neck, urging him to greater effort. He had to reach her and reach her fast. ‘God, let me be in time,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t let this be the end.’

  But he was first and foremost a soldier and he was not so distracted as to throw all caution away. There was little cover, but he had been a fenman all his life; he knew how to move invisibly among the greys and browns of the reeds that grew along the water’s edge. He stopped short of his goal, tied his horse to a willow and crept forward on foot. There was a lighterhouse tied up at the landing-stage, normally used as the lead vessel of a gang of fen lighters, taking a cargo from Cambridge to Lynn, calling at every little waterside village and town en route. It was usually pulled by a strong horse, ridden by a boy, but it also had a mast and a small sail for those occasions when the wind was in the right direction, and a little superstructure in the middle which served as a house for the crew of two or three. Today the lighterhouse was without its usual string of vessels. Roland could see no one on board and he dared not run across the open ground to reach it. He darted for the corner of the house, intending to use it as cover. It was then that he saw the door was open and there were two bodies lying in the hall, one of which was female, judging by the heap of pink silk and the slipper-clad feet.

  ‘Margaret!’ He turned away from the lighter and ran into the house, his heart in his mouth, and bent over the motionless forms. One was Henry. Roland realised he had been battered to death at the same time as he pulled him off the woman. It was not Margaret, but Nellie. He was so relieved that he found himself crying. And then she moaned. There was so much blood about, it was difficult to tell which of the two it had come from. He lifted her head on to his knee, and his riding-breeches were immediately stained with gore which oozed from a wound to the back of her skull. Her face, beneath its paint, was badly bruised and her breathing laboured.

  ‘I’ll get help,’ he said, looking round him, expecting to be surrounded by a dozen ruffians at any moment. Where were they? Why had they done this?

  ‘Tried to stop them,’ she muttered through swollen lips. ‘Tried to stop them… Henry…’

  ‘Where is Margaret? Where is my wife?’

  ‘Getting away… Go after them…’

  He did not need to know who ‘them’ were. ‘Where is Margaret?’ he repeated, more concerned with his wife’s whereabouts than where the men had gone.

  ‘Took her. Go after them. They mean to…’

  He hesitated only a moment before pulling a cushion from a chair and laying it under her head. ‘I’ll be back.’

  He dashed out of the house, uncaring whether he was seen or not, and ran towards the landing-stage. But the lighter had gone. He saw its red sail over the top of a bed of osiers as the wind took it out of the cut and into the river. He ran down to the boat-house in the forlorn hope that there might be a rowing-boat there, or that Margaret might have been left. He was disappointed on both counts and stood uncertainly at the water’s edge for a moment before turning back to the house.

  Nellie had not moved and her eyes were shut. He went to her and squatted at her side to take her hand. ‘Mistress Capitain, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was becoming weaker.

  ‘Where were they taking her?’

  ‘To the coast. Boarding a ship…’

  ‘I have to go after them. You understand? I have asked my man to fetch help. Someone will come. Can you wait?’

  Nellie managed a crooked grin which was grotesque in that poor damaged face. ‘I ain’t going nowhere.’

  He ran upstairs and into the first bedroom he came across, pulled the blankets from the bed and took them down to cover her. ‘I’m going back to the village to get help…’

  ‘No time. They’ll go…through the sluice…’

  He knew the significance of that. To get to the coast the lighter would have to ‘shoot the eye’ of Highmere Sluice, which was about fifteen miles downstream where a tributary joined the Great Ouse. In times of heavy rain or when the snow melted, the gates were shut to hold the flood-water on the higher reaches of the river and protect the downriver fields from inundation, but when the tide turned the gates were opened to allow river traffic through to the coast. The fugitives would have to approach at exactly the moment the tide turned so that the lighter could be carried through the open gates on the ebb. If they arrived too soon or too late, they would have to wait at the inn on the towpath until the tide turned again. The lighter was already well on its way with a favourable wind. The men would have unhitched the towing-horse and taken it on board until the cut turned and they could no longer make use of the sail, when they would take up the tow again. He had to reach the sluice-gates before they did, but he did not like leaving the injured girl.

  ‘Are there any servants to help you?’

  ‘No… Mistress Clark left… Could not stand Henry… He’s dead, ain’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thought so.’ She sighed and shut her eyes. ‘What are you waiting for? Go, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He patted her hand and dashed from the house towards the willow where he h
ad left his mount.

  He was barely in the saddle when he saw Janet Henser coming back along the drove, her basket on her arm. She was about to turn on to the track which led to her cottage when he hailed her. ‘Mistress Capitain has been hurt,’ he called. ‘Do what you can for her. I am going to Highmere Sluice. Tell the men.’ And with that he was gone, almost galloping along the drove away from the river and taking an old path across the fields.

  ‘Go, Satan, go!’ he said, digging his spurs into the animal’s flanks. ‘If you ever wanted to fly, now’s the time to do it.’

  While he was on the bridle-paths between the open fields, the going was good, but before long he had to strike out across marshy terrain. There were places where the silt of ages had accumulated to make paths a few inches above the level of the fen, but in winter these were not well-defined, especially if there had been heavy rain. He had to rely on instinct, watching the reed-beds and the willows, making note of where the osiers had been harvested, for that was usually a sign of civilisation. He walked the horse, looking for the hoof-marks of cattle, which could usually be trusted to find a firm way. He rode carefully, curbing his impatience and the temptation to make the horse go faster, for one false footfall would send him and his horse into the mere.

  He found his way on to higher ground at last, and stopped a moment to look across at the river, curving away in the distance, but there was no sign of the red sail. Was he ahead of the barge or behind it? Would the sluice-gates be open or shut? If they were open, the barge would simply glide straight through into tidal water. Once that happened he would not be able to keep it in sight, nor catch it up until it reached the coast. He had a vision of the fugitives sailing the barge right out to sea and taking Margaret on board ship with them. She was heavy with child. If anything happened to her… He gritted his teeth and spurred his horse.