Falconer's Prey

by April Hill

  “The most unfortunate girls were often punished by being purged, as well. Taken to the infirmary for several days in a row, where they were held in place over a stool while a long, thin tube was…inserted, so that she… until she was filled with cold water – cold water greasy with brown lye soap. Then, in that humiliating posture, she was birched or strapped horribly, and punished again for what the Abbess called… lapses in modesty. Many of the unfortunate girls returned very ill, and sometimes took weeks to improve. I know of at least two who fell so weak and ill, they later died.

  “The truly wealthy girls were rarely seriously corrected, beyond a few strokes on their palms with a cane. Because I came from a good family, and because my stepmother always provided generous sums to keep me at the Abbey, I was spared the worst of these things. I was whipped several times when I tried to escape and later, when my ‘madness’ was discovered, locked up much of the time in an attic room, but so many of the others….

  “Several times each year, one of the poorer girls was called to the Bishop’s study,” she continued, “and when she never returned, we were always told that she had taken ill, and returned home, but we all knew better. The Bishop had chosen the poor girl for his bed. When he was finished with the girls he chose, we knew not what became of them, but none was never seen again, or heard from.”

  In the darkness, Alice fought back tears. It was the first time she had talked about St. Mary’s at length, and she was puzzled why she was finally speaking about it now, with this man she barely knew, and had so disliked until the last few days. When the sadness of her memories overwhelmed her, she lay sobbing softly for several moments before Will Fletcher rose from the wide bed and came to sit beside her on the narrow window seat. For a long time, he simply stroked her trembling back in the darkness and when he picked her gently up in his arms and carried her to the bed with him, she didn’t resist.

  He said nothing more that night, nor did Alice. She lay in his arms listening as the rain began to fall again, and then fell softly to sleep, still trying in her confusion to bring to mind the exact color of Geoffrey’s eyes.

  * * * * *

  With the continual rain, the road upon which they were traveling to London had become little more than a rutted mire of mud and rock, and their progress south was slow and disagreeable. They had already been on the road for four days, and not yet reached Hockworth, the tiny hamlet some forty miles north of the city where Geoffrey had been languished at the Red Swan, while she was unable to leave Sherwood.

  If all had gone well, Alice knew, he would still be there, waiting. She had sent word for him to remain at the inn, but had no way of knowing whether or not her hasty message had been received. She had scrawled and then entrusted the note to the adoring young Arthur in the moments before she and Fletcher left Robin Hood’s camp, bound for Burden Manor. Sending Arthur on a possibly perilous mission had been a difficult decision, but she could think of no other way to notify Geoffrey of her long–delayed arrival.

  “I will see it there safely, Mistress, upon my life!” Arthur had sworn gallantly. “My mount is a swift one and I have traveled the Great North Road twice before, with your good uncle. In three days, your dispatch will be in the hands of your trusted friends in Hockworth, I swear it!”

  “You must be cautious, Arthur,” she said. “Haste is not as important as your life. Have you sufficient funds?”

  “Aye, lady. More than sufficient. You have been most generous.”

  “And how will you leave camp without drawing suspicion?” she asked, remembering the many watchful sentries who guarded access to Robin Hood’s hideout. “I fear you may have again told too many lies on my behalf and risk for yourself another thrashing at the ungentle hand of Bri’n the Blacksmith!”

  “There’ll be no need for falsehood, lady. I told Robin my mother had need of me,” he said with a small laugh. “And that, alas, is always true. No one will look for me until the spring planting is done.”

  “You have been a true friend, sweet Arthur.” Alice smiled as she kissed the boy on his cheek. “I will be in your debt the rest of my life. I am certain we shall meet again, when times are less perilous.”

  “Aye, Mistress.” Arthur blushed and fumbled with the pouch she had entrusted to him. “I bid you farewell, now. If you will give Lord Burden my good wishes, I would….”

  “Of course, dear friend. God speed!”

  And now, in order to bring to fruition the plans she and Geoffrey had made, she would be forced to deceive Will Fletcher again and her beloved uncle as well. As they neared the meeting place, Alice became even more apprehensive, knowing that she must contrive to slip away from Will Fletcher before they arrived in Hockworth and to secure, in some way, the important documents her uncle had entrusted to him.

  In the end, it was far less difficult to accomplish than she had expected. They stopped the following night at a grubby inn just to the west of Hockworth, and while a weary Will fell into bed and slept, she rifled his bag for the letters of credit and what money she could find. With that done, she left the inn, leaving behind a short note of apology, but no explanation. It took her several attempts to compose the note, and even longer to convince herself that there was no dishonor or betrayal in what she was about to do.

  She reached the Red Swan well before dawn, wet and exhausted. The disreputable costume she had worn since Sherwood was splattered with mud from the road, and the innkeeper gave her an odd look when she asked for John Yarrow – the name Geoffrey had given her. When he came down the stairs, elegantly outfitted in cloak and stockings of deep crimson, Alice believed he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She fell into his arms weeping with joy and relief, wishing only to stay within his embrace for days.

  Within a half an hour, though, they were in a coach and on the road, once again. By late tomorrow, with luck and fair weather, they would be in Dover, where they would board a ship to France and begin their future together.

  * * * * *

  Will Fletcher awoke to bright sunshine streaming through the inn’s grubby window. At last, he thought, here was a fine day for traveling. He noticed with a smile that Alice, always reluctant to rise of a morning, was already up and about, somewhere. Her slothful habits were apparently improving.

  The realization that she was gone didn’t take long.

  No one had witnessed her leaving and until he discovered the loss of Henry Burden’s letters, along with the fat purse of silver crowns and not a few gold sovereigns, Will feared that she had been taken against her will. Already feeling like a fool, he swore even greater vengeance on the lady when he learned that she had taken the trouble to release his horse from the stable behind the inn in order to slow his pursuit – and left him without sufficient money to settle with the irate innkeeper. Fletcher vowed to himself that when he found her, the Mistress Johnstone would pay for her infamy with a spanking she would remember in exquisite detail and with extreme displeasure when she was an aged and toothless grandmother.

  With no idea where she might have gone, other than the supposed destination of London, which he now knew to be fictitious, Fletcher recovered his horse, traded a pair of fine leather boots and what coins he had on his person for the night’s lodging, then rode off with no definite plan. Although the rain had stopped, the road was still muddy, and following a trail would be difficult – even if he found one. He was convinced that she would continue south – to Dover, possibly – but he knew only one thing with absolute certainty. An innocent and foolish Alice had believed the mysterious “Lord Geoffrey’s” words in his love letter to be real and honest. Will’s well–honed instincts and experience with evil told him that neither the letter nor anything else about the man was genuine – including his name.

  * * * * *

  Overcome and worn out by the events of the last few weeks, Alice was content to let Geoffrey handle what must be done to complete their escape. Will would attempt to follow her, of course, and that concerned her, but she had a fair
ly good head start, and with the rain ended, there were more travelers on the road. She rested her damp head on the soft red velvet of Geoffrey’s cloak and dozed as best she could while the coach bounced along the drying but badly rutted road south. They would stop for the night at the home of a friend, he had explained, so that she could rest properly before the always difficult trip across the channel. She woke once that day when they stopped to water the horses, and again when they found a tavern to have a simple meal.

  After they had dined and returned to the coach, Alice had hoped to ask more questions about Geoffrey’s plans for their journey, but she felt suddenly dizzy and her legs seemed weak and unsteady. Exhaustion, she told herself, relieved that she hadn’t had more to drink with dinner than she had. Geoffrey had ordered the wine to help calm her nerves, but finding that her wine had a slightly odd aftertaste, she’d drunk perhaps half of what Geoffrey poured into her glass. As she drifted back to sleep, nestled against Geoffrey’s shoulder, her last thought was that stopping at the old inn hadn’t been the most auspicious beginning for a long journey – let alone a honeymoon. The tablecloth was stained, the food served cold, and the wine had obviously turned.

  She was jolted awake when the coach wheel apparently struck a rock, or a bump in the road. Alice glanced out the window with bleary eyes, and saw that it was almost dark, now, and that they had stopped in the drive of a large house with dimly lit windows.

  “Have we arrived?” she asked Geoffrey, who was standing outside the coach, with the door open. He appeared to be assembling their papers into a small leather bag, presumably in preparation for their arrival the next day in Dover.

  At first, he seemed annoyed that she had awakened, again, but then he smiled, and reached across to pat her knee. “Go back to sleep, my love.”

  “But, where is this place?” she asked curiously.

  “One of the wheels has lost a hub on the road,” he explained. “We’ll be on our way again shortly, when it has been replaced. Please, darling. You’ll need rest for the crossing. The channel in spring can be an arduous passage.”

  Alice yawned, and was about to drift back into her comfortable cocoon of sleep, when she was roused by someone shaking her shoulder roughly. Before she could focus her eyes, though, she was pulled from the coach, a gag of some sort thrust in her mouth, and blindfolded. She kicked viciously at her unseen assailant, and was rewarded with a curse and a sharp blow to the back of her head. As she sank to her knees onto a cold stone floor, she heard a man’s voice, laughing – a hard, cruel laugh that seemed to be coming from very, very far away. And as she began to lose consciousness, she realized that the voice she had heard was Geoffrey’s.

  Chapter the Ninth

  Somewhere North of London, on The Twelfth Day of April in The Year of Our Lord 1193. God Save King Richard.

  It was cold and dark where she lay, and somewhere, water was dripping – from the roof perhaps. She could sense that she wasn’t alone on the floor, because someone was breathing close to her ear. From the sound of his or her muffled cries, it seemed quite possible that the unseen person was also gagged. Outside, or in an adjoining room, she could hear several voices, talking softly. There was an unpleasant, musky odor in her small prison, and the floor was slick with some equally disagreeable material.

  By rolling onto her side on the damp floor, she was able to just touch the back of the other person on the floor. Feeling lower, she found that the other person’s hands were bound behind his or her back, as were her own. A man, she decided, but of slight build. With a courage born of desperation, she prodded the slightly built man in the ribs, and tried to speak, though nothing particularly intelligible came out. He responded with unintelligible grunts of his own, but in their peculiar exchange of dialogue something became very clear to Alice. The voice, however muffled and hoarse, was a familiar one.

  Unable to communicate her wishes to her fellow–captive, she finally pressed her back and her chilled backside against his own in a manner that would have implied intimacy under different circumstances. In this position, she was able to get her fingers on the bindings on his wrists. Instantly, the man appeared to understand, and began to fumble at her wrists with his cold fingers.

  Perhaps because he knew so well the feel of the small signet ring Alice wore on her right hand, and perhaps due to the years he had spent wishing to hold the hand that wore the ring, Arthur Postelwaite recognized Alice only seconds after he had her hands in his. He turned onto his stomach, and with no thought at all for the pain entailed, began scraping his cheek and jaw against the rough stone floor, and continued doing so until he had pulled the gag from his mouth.

  “Mistress Alice!” he whispered. “It’s Arthur! What has?”

  Alice stiffened, and then turned to touch his face. Arthur put his cheek against hers, and with his teeth, and after several minutes, managed to loosen her gag and pull it off with his teeth.

  “How did you come here?” Alice whispered into his ear. “What is this place, and these people?”

  At that moment in his young life, Arthur would have given his life not to tell the lady he had worshipped for so long the terrible truth he had learned in the last two days.

  “The man you know as Lord Geoffrey, Mistress Alice… is… he is no friend.”

  Later, Alice would admit to herself that Arthur’s words did not shock her as deeply as she would have expected. With no understanding of how, or more terribly yet, why Geoffrey had betrayed her, Alice could only lie there numbly, trying in her fresh grief and bewilderment to put together the details and chronology of his treachery.

  It didn’t take long. It had begun at the Abbey, of course, during those blissful weeks when she had fallen impetuously in love with an elegantly dressed and handsome stranger – the bold French knight who had appeared out of nowhere.

  At first, everything about Geoffrey’s arrival at St. Mary’s had seemed like a dream. He had simply appeared in the garden one cold morning, out of the mist – or perhaps just the usual dreary morning fog that often lasted until midday. Sometimes, though, it seemed to Alice that she had conjured him – a knight of the Holy Grail. Come to rescue her from the dragon’s lair – or the Bishop’s Abbey, at least.

  But now, as she lay groveling on a filthy floor in a place that might well be as disagreeable as a dragon’s lair, she knew the terrible truth. Geoffrey, or whoever Geoffrey truly was, had not come to the Abbey as a pilgrim in search of God or spiritual enlightenment. He had been sent there to meet her and to make her fall in love with him. And how easy that had been for him! In the fetid darkness, Alice gave a small, bitter laugh. Now she had been kidnapped, and would probably soon be dead – all at the hand of the first man she had ever loved. A lesson learnt, but too late. She would have to be more careful in the future – if there were to be a future.

  And suddenly, she thought of Will Fletcher – the hunted outlaw who was quite probably the most decent, honest man she had ever known, other than Uncle Henry. She had lied to Will, and tricked him, and been nothing but trouble to him since the day they met. And unless she was very badly mistaken, she had begun to fall in love with him. Alice swore. A fine time, indeed, to realize her error – if it was an error. How was she to know if her feelings for Will Fletcher were real, after Geoffrey?

  Geoffrey, who had never once spanked her, but kidnapped her instead, and was doubtlessly planning to kill her. And yet, Alice reasoned, whose problem would her death solve? Surely, a lone maid, already cloistered away and deemed mad could not be seen as a serious threat – not to someone as powerful as the Bishop of Hereford or St. Mary’s Abbey, where lunacy was far from unknown. Had she truly been such a nuisance, why had they not simply sent her home – washed their hands of her and declared her unfit to ever become a nun, as she had certainly proven over these many years. What was she, other than a resident madwoman whose upkeep was paid regularly in gold sovereigns?

  Between bouts of frustrated weeping, Alice pondered all these questions and was l
eft with no clear answers. Throughout this time, well more than two hours, Arthur had kept as close to her as possible, allowing her to sob against his chest, and speaking softly into her hair, offering what comfort he could. Sweet, tender, worshipful Arthur, whom she had probably doomed by her own stupidity – caught in a web of deceit and perfidy, and all because of his loyalty to her, the most manifestly slow–witted creature that ever lived. Was it possible that Isobel the wicked step–mother, the greedy, the cruel, the vicious, had been correct, and that she was mad? Was that why Isobel had dropped so many gold sovereigns into the Bishop’s greedy pockets?

  And then, just that quickly, Alice knew. She knew who had sent Geoffrey, and why.

  Isobel. And for the money.

  * * * * *

  Will had ridden only a few miles before a tall figure stepped out from the brush that bordered the road and held up a warning hand. Even a furlong distant, Will recognized Little John and a moment later, Robin and Robin’s nephew, young Will Scarlett appeared at John’s side. Fletcher hailed them, slowed his horse and approached his friends at a lope.

  “Robin!” he cried. “What?”

  “Why in such a hurry, Will?” Robin greeted him. “Have you lost something?”

  Fletcher swore. “Alice Johnstone is gone!”

  Robin sighed. “Will, dear friend, have I not always told you to keep a close eye on your wench once you’ve caught her? Now I suppose it falls to me to find the lady and bring her back. Tell me, is there a French knave called Geoffrey in the thick of this?”