Red Rose, White Rose. Joanna Hickson

her weight was nothing to arms honed by years of sword-play and archery, her soaked skirts hampered my stride so that I stumbled rather than ran towards my stoical horse who fortunately obeyed orders and stood firm, even as I threw Cicely face down over his withers and leaped up behind her. ‘Hang on for your life. I’ll stop as soon as I can,’ I yelled and dug in my spurs.

      He exploded away just as the first pursuers stepped onto firm ground and began racing towards us, scent-hounds baying with excitement. Cicely’s right hand closed on my leg like a vice as our hectic pace threatened to hurl her from the horse’s neck. I am not certain we would have made it but instinctively the courser threw up his head, tossing her back towards me so that I could wrap one hand in the cloth of her skirt, while the other handled the reins. She must have been winded and in pain but she made no sound and we galloped away as if fleeing from a battlefield, the important difference being that we were victorious. The only glance I managed to make behind me showed a dozen mud-spattered men spilling from the bog-path yelling in frustration. One was noticeable for his red tunic emblazoned with a white saltire cross and his shock of fair hair. The tall figure of Sir John Neville was familiar to me from sharing duties with him on the Scottish march. White-faced and wide-eyed, he looked like a man in shock.

       9

       The Raby Bath House

       Cicely

      Cuddy rode away from that accursed bog as if the hounds of hell were at his heels while I pitched and bumped over his horse’s neck, offering desperate but silent prayers to the Queen of Heaven. I had no breath even to murmur an Ave, every thud of the horse’s hooves seemed to force out what little air I managed to drag into my lungs and every so often I had somehow to raise my head for a life-giving gulp. Fortunately, just as I had started to fear I could hold on no longer, the pace began slowing and we came to a halt. When I fell to the ground my legs would not support me and I crumpled in a muddy, sodden heap under the horse’s feet, a safe landing place because he could not move another step. His head hung down and his sides heaved. We were both gasping like stranded fish.

      It was several minutes before I found the strength to sit up. By then Cuddy had dismounted and satisfied himself that there was no sound of pursuit before pulling me out from under the horse and unhitching his wineskin from the saddle-bow. He put it to my lips and I spluttered as the sharp liquid hit my throat.

      ‘How did … you know … where …?’ I croaked, unable to go on.

      Cuddy knew what I meant. ‘Intuition. Instinct. Second sense. Your mother sent me on a wild goose chase and look – I found the goose.’ He grinned. ‘After all, I am your champion.’

      I gave a weak smile and wheezed, ‘My champion …’ My voice cracked and failed once more.

      He bowed. He did not seem breathless in the least. ‘Glad to be of service. But you take the laurel wreath, Cis. How in God’s name did you manage to break out of the tower?’

      That was when reality hit me. Vivid memories came flooding back. I bit my lip to stop the tears and stifle the words threatening to spill off my tongue. I knew then that they would all ask the same question. How had I managed to get away from my captors? It was a question I decided there and then that I would not answer. Let them wonder. Except for Cuddy they had done nothing to help me. I did not owe an explanation. But had it not been for Cuddy, everything I had done to enable my escape would have been for nothing. I might as well have died.

      I shook my head and decided it was easier to speak in short bursts. ‘Not difficult. Bog was the problem. Frightening. Then I heard the horn. Tried to hurry. Fatal step – if not for you. Thank you, Cuddy.’

      Gradually I felt strength returning to my legs. ‘There is one more thing you can do for me, if you will,’ I said, taking another gulp from the wineskin and handing it back. ‘After you have helped me up, that is.’

      I held out my hand and Cuddy pulled me gently to my feet. I swayed and staggered and he steadied me, regarding me appraisingly, his gaze travelling from my sodden skirts to my dripping locks. I had not found my hat in the dark and I daresay my cheeks were streaked, for I had not managed to hold back all my tears. ‘I think I know what that one thing is,’ he said.

      ‘More intuition?’ This time my smile was rueful.

      ‘You do not want to return to Raby looking like a camp follower who has been caught in a thunderstorm.’

      I nodded. ‘Exactly.’ For the first time I glanced around me, taking stock of our surroundings. We were in a small clearing among mature trees. It could have been almost any wood in England. ‘Where are we?’

      ‘Houghton Forest. About ten miles from Raby. It will take us an hour to get there once the horse is rested. There is a stream over yonder. You could wash off some of the mud while we wait. When we get to Raby you can hide somewhere safe and I will fetch Hilda. She will know what to bring to restore you to your customary splendour.’

      He was teasing, his eyes twinkling, trying to lighten my mood, and I appreciated his restraint in not pressing me on my escape. Cuddy may have been conceived in a barn but his manners were castle-bred. ‘And Hilda knows how to hold her tongue,’ I said with a nod of approval. ‘But where would I be safe?’

      ‘There is an old bath house on a lake in the woods south of the castle. You can barricade yourself in there while I fetch Hilda. No one goes near it now but they say our father used to entertain there in days gone by.’ Cuddy gave me a look, which told me not to enquire about who the old earl had invited to a bath house in the woods or what the entertainment had been. Of course there were plenty of rumours, but in deference to my mother nobody ever talked about other ‘by-blows’ her husband might have sired on pretty girls around the various Neville territories. No others had joined the household. For some reason, in our father’s eyes, Cuthbert of Middleham had been special. Perhaps Cuddy himself did not know why.

      The bath house was no woodland shack. It was a domed, stone-built grotto perched on the side of a glassy mere which reflected a stand of magnificent trees that must have been planted when our great-grandfather enclosed the Raby hunting park a hundred years earlier. Although the trees were still leafless, waiting for spring to spread its canopy of green, the castle itself was not visible, but I knew it was not far away because in order to reach the place unseen we had skirted the village of Staindrop and entered the park like poachers, avoiding all well-used tracks. Staindrop stood only a mile from Raby; my father lay in its glorious collegiate church, under a marble tomb, beside his first wife. Cuthbert forced his way into the bath house through a wooden door, not locked or barred but swollen from winter damp, and left me with the wineskin, telling me he would be back within an hour.

      The bath house consisted of a single chamber. Stripped of any of the luxury or comforts it might once have contained, cobwebs festooned its walls, all hung about with insect carapaces; droppings of various small animals littered the floor and the curved steps that led up to the parapet of the round stone bath and, at the bottom of the bath, the remains of a deserted nest covered what I guessed must have been a drain for emptying the water into the lake. Outside, on the bank of the mere, I found a firepit where a cauldron would have been slung over the flames. My imagination conjured up a vivid image of servants fetching steaming bucket-loads from the cauldron, because surely nothing would have cooled the ardour of the ‘bathers’ more than icy water straight from the lake.

      I could not wait in the bath house. It was full of echoes, the ribald shouts of men and the lusty laughter of women, the splash of water on naked flesh, and I did not like it. My father had always been my image of the perfect knight, lord and sire. In recent days that gleaming icon had become tarnished by the stories I had heard and the truths I had learned.

      The silence and stillness of the mere drew me. I guarded against discovery by taking up a position a few yards from the bath house, hidden by the branches of a holly tree growing close to the edge of the lake. There I sat on a convenient log and I studied my reflection in the glassy surface of the lake.