Beloved Enemy (49 page)

"What
the devil's been going on here?" He shook the lad vigorously, and the boy
whimpered, his eyes wide with a fright that stoppered his tongue.

"Easy
now, General," Jed said. "If he's got anythin' to say, you'll not
hear it if you shake him like a terrier with a rat."

Alex's
eyes fell on the dead cat swinging from the tree, and with another oath he
pulled his knife from his belt and cut the animal down.

"Took
'em for witches," the boy babbled. "Both of'em, the young 'un and the
old."

"Where?"
Alex snapped.

"To
the witch finder —in Mowbray," his informant replied. "Swim 'em, like
as not."

The
color drained from the general's face, leaving it gray beneath the suntan.
"How long ago, boy?"

The lad
squinted up at the sun and frowned. "Sun was over yonder trees," he
said, pointing.

"A
good two hours, I'd say, General," Jed put in quietly. "We'd best get
a move on."

Ginny
closed her eyes against the sounds, the smells, the press of bodies jostling her
in the market square of Melton Mowbray. A trestle table stood in the center of
the square, beside it the witch finder in a suit of broadcloth worn shiny with
age and none too clean. Dame Barton was laid upon the table, rough hands
stripping the frail old body, exposing to the crowd the wrinkled skin and
sagging breasts, the fleshless thighs and haunches. Ginny tried to blank out
her mind, tried not to think of what they would do to her when they were
finished with the dame.

The
charges of witchcraft were jumbled, a mishmash of stories involving stricken
crops and cows with the murrain, of mother's milk turned sour, and someone's
aunt struck down with agonizing pains and a doll stuck with pins found in the
barn. But the most damning evidence came from the parents of the child for whom
the dame had provided medicine. Upon receiving just a touch of the white paste
on the tip of his tongue, the babe had gone into violent convulsions and was
now worse than before. In vain, did the old woman protest that that was an
effect to be expected, that the child would not die, that they should continue
with the potion, and with a healthy wet nurse he would regain his strength.

They
pointed the finger at Ginny, who had muttered curses over the helpless babe,
had stripped him and laid him down on the grass, prodding at his limbs with
evil bewitchment, so that they would convulse and twist. There was nothing to
be said in defense, Ginny thought, as the lethargy of desperation crept over
her like a paralysis. They would examine her for the mark as they were doing
with the dame. The witch finder would stick the long pin into her flesh to see
if she would bleed, and then, because the evidence would not be conclusive,
they would swim her, throw her bound into the river to see if she would sink or
if the pure water would reject one who had dishonored her baptism by becoming a
witch. either way, death was inevitable.

They
had finished with the dame now and cries of, "to the river to swim the
witch," went up. The scrawny, naked old woman was carted off to the
riverbank, and hands seized Ginny and flung her onto the table. Again she tried
to close her mind, to take herself out of her body so that she would not feel
the shame of exposure, but she could not blank out the hands on her skin, rough
and calloused, as they pulled away her clothes, and she could not shut out the
ribald comments as she felt the warmth of the sun on her body, laid bare upon
the table. The witch finder would discover the mole that so delighted Alex,
high up on the inside of her right thigh, and he would stick the long pin into
its center to see if it would bleed, and if it did not, it would be proved the
witch's mark. She did not know if it would bleed, knew only that she wished for
death,
now;
that there was nothing in life that could compensate for
this degradation, or for the appalling fear that set her limbs quivering and
black spots dancing behind her eyelids. The witch finder raised the long, sharp
pin, drove it into a small freckle on her abdomen, and the black spots
coalesced and swallowed her in

merciful
oblivion.

The
two horsemen pounded down the dusty lane that led into the village of Melton
Mowbray. There was no sign of life, the cottages with their front doors
standing open, their tenants gone to view the spectacle in the square.

Alex
had feared for himself on many occasions; he had known the liquid weakening of
his gut, the uncontrollable shaking of his legs and hands that preceded the
moment of danger, then the cool, clear flow of adrenaline once he was in the
midst of the worst. Now he was afraid for someone other than himself, and the
symptoms were the same, but there was no relief because he was not facing the
danger himself. Bucephalus, unused to the spur, thundered into the market
square, rearing up on his hindquarters at the unkind prod. The crowd around the
table fell back, gazing upward in fear-struck wonder as if the devil himself
had come amongst them on his black charger. And, indeed, the man with the
blazing green eyes, flourishing a broad sword, the sun glinting off the
close-cropped auburn head could well have emerged from satanic depths, so
wrathful was his mien.

Alex
saw the still figure on the table, the silky smooth skin that he could feel
just by looking at her, the tactile curves of bosom and hip, the soft dark
triangle at the base of her belly that would yield to his curling fingers. . .
. Then he saw the bright spot of blood on her belly, harsh against the whiteness
of her skin; he saw the man in his worn, shiny suit holding the pin from which
blood dripped; and with a bellow of rage, he flung himself from his horse,
cutting a swath through the crowd with wide sweeps of his sword.

Jed
stilled Bucephalus with a symphony of low, clicking noises, gathering up the
reins, averting his eyes discreetly from the table and its inert offering. Then
the sight was blocked out by the broad frame, and pandemonium broke loose as
Parliament's general raged, heaping curses and threats of perdition on a
now-terrified mob, who shrank away from a man who had the power to carry out
those threats, who could hang every man jack of them for traitors if he so
wished. The witch finder went down to the cobbles under a fist that brought
instant unconsciousness, and Ginny came back to reality as she was pulled into
a sitting position, an arm, familiar in its strength, behind her back, the
comforting, familiar scent of Alex driving away the nightmare as her head was
buried in his shirt. Her arms were pushed into long sleeves, and she was no
longer naked under the sun and the burning eyes of strangers in the middle of a
market square.

For a
moment, almost overpowered by relief, Ginny thought she would swoon again as
Alex picked her up in his arms and pushed his way through the stunned crowd to
where Jed stood holding the two horses. Jed took the burden while Alex mounted,
then reached down for her, and throughout Ginny was unable to say anything,
shivering and shaking with the aftermath, her throat dry as the desert, her
tongue seemingly swollen against the roof of her mouth. Then, as the certainty
of safety finally became fact in her mind, that the arms around her, the broad,
shirtless chest at her back were real and not figments of a fevered, petrified
imagination, she remembered Dame Barton and what they would be doing to her,
those who had taken off the one witch, more interested in the new sport of
swimming the crone then staying to watch the witch finder prick the young one.

"Alex
. . . Dame Barton . . ." She struggled to sit upright on the saddle.
"You must save her. They have taken her to the river to swim her."

"Dear
God, Ginny! Is it not enough that I have to pluck you naked from the filthy
hands of those swine, without—"

"Please
. . ." she whispered, the gray eyes haunted, bright with intensity.
"She is old, and they have hurt her already. They will murder her if you
do not do something."

He was
defenseless against those eyes, against the pleading for his compassionate
response to the suffering of an old woman who meant nothing to him, was just
another victim of superstition and fear, her only difference from all those
others lying in the fact that she had attracted the friendship of Virginia
Courtney. He turned his horse to the river.

Jed
kept his own counsel as he followed on the cob. If the general chose to ride
bare-chested around the countryside, with a seminaked woman on his saddle,
rescuing witches from the river, it was not Jed's business. However, if asked,
he would venture the opinion that Mistress Courtney had the devil's own ability
for finding trouble, and if the general had a grain of common sense, he would
keep a close eye on her in future.

A
small stone bridge traversed the river, and as they reached the middle of the
bridge, Ginny gave a cry of outrage and would have flung herself from
Bucephalus if Alex had not grabbed a handful of his shirt at her waist. The old
dame was a waterlogged bundle bobbing in the middle of the river. On the banks
on either side stood a jeering crowd of men, women, and children throwing
sticks and stones at the bundle, from which thin gray wisps of hair straggled
on the brown surface of the water. What had once been Dame Barton went down
beneath the water as a plank of wood struck her head, then bobbed up again.

Bucephalus
pounded across the bridge and onto the far bank. Alex leaped to the ground and
snatched a hooked pole from the hand of a laughing farmer, whose jeering mirth
ceased abruptly at the palpable fury radiating from this man. Ginny had been left
on Bucephalus and, while she would willingly have essayed the leap to the
ground way below, was conscious of the fact that Alex's shirt barely reached
her knees and she could not possibly leave her perch with any decency.

Alex
fished at the inert bundle with the hook, catching at last on one of the ropes
that bound it. He drew the old woman to the bank and waded into the shallows to
lift the sodden, shapeless mass that now bore little resemblance to humanity.

Ginny
pressed her hand to her mouth as she swallowed the bitter lump of nausea that
rose in her throat. They had tied the dame, bent double, her wrists bound to
her ankles, and the figure lay in this contorted position, water dripping from
the thin gray straggles of hair on her body where blood streaked from the
missiles that had found their mark. One eye hung loose on the thin cheek, and
Ginny, careless now of modesty, fell from Bucephalus and crawled into the
bushes to vomit helplessly in disgust and shame at man's inhumanity to man.

Alex
cut the bonds and straightened the pathetic, saturated, shrunken frame of what
had once been a woman, that still bore all the marks of womanhood, but as a
travesty. What would Ginny expect him to do now? Exact vengeance on this
brutish, now-silent group? On one or two of the faces there stirred a flicker
of conscience as the mob fury died and they saw what it had led to. It was hard
to imagine there would have been anything evil or menacing about that ruined
bundle lying in a puddle on the grass.

"Bury
her!" Alex swung round slowly, his eyes hard as he stared at each member
of the crowd. "Decently!" He turned to the soldier, standing rigid by
his horse. "Jed, see that it is done. If it is not, bring word to the
camp, and I'll have every man, woman, and child pilloried!" Without
waiting to see the effect of his words, he went over to the bushes where Ginny
still crouched, no longer retching but sobbing weakly, his shirt clinging
damply to her back where the cold sweat filmed.