Raven's Bride (6 page)

The gray mare whickered softly and pawed the ground, impatient with being ignored. With a sudden start, Anna brought her mind back to the present. She would not darken the day with her evil remembrances and her even more wicked thoughts. She had a task to perform.

Giving the mare one last pat, she turned away from her with some regret. She didn’t long to possess the horse herself—she had not the means to keep even a modest hack, let alone a mare fit for the new queen herself to ride. The mare’s spirit, combined with her gentleness, had attracted Anna from the moment she had walked into the marketplace, and she would like to stay and breathe in her soft animal scent longer. But her mother needed a donkey cart.

She turned away from Lord Ravensbourne and the hungry look in his eyes, and accepted the arm of his uncle, Mr. Melcott, who had materialized at her elbow and was murmuring offers of assistance in her ear. Mr. Melcott, a wool merchant from London who was staying with Lord Ravensbourne for some weeks, had accompanied them both to the small horse market in the nearby village.

“I know you have some business to transact,” she said to her cousin, dismissing him as politely as she could to escape from his unnerving gaze. “Do not let me delay you. Mr. Melcott has offered to help me conduct mine.”

Lord Ravensbourne looked black at her words, but, after a long moment of silence, he nodded. “Send the footman to find me when you are done. Melcott, you know where I am.” And he strode away without another word.

Mr. Melcott tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, just as her father had done when he had been alive. “You like the mare?” he asked her, his voice grave.

“Who would not?” she answered lightly. “But she would not do for my purposes. She is far too well-bred to lower herself to pull a donkey cart. I doubt her pride would suffer her to be harnessed to such an indignity. She would kick up her heels and off with her traces in no time at all.”

“You are too pretty a young lady to ride in a cart. Were you my daughter, I should give you a carriage to ride in, and fine jewels to wear.”

She was little pleased at the implied criticism of her father. Besides, she disliked the tone in his voice. “Better ride in a cart than have to walk.”

Melcott, with his sober black woolen cloak, his tall-crowned hat and the plain buckles on his black shoes, dressed just as her father had done. With his weather-beaten face and slightly hooked nose, he even looked a bit like her beloved father. In temperament, however, they were far apart. Her father had been loving and gentle, while Melcott seemed distant and at times severe.

Melcott had returned to Norfolk, the place of his birth, to remove himself for a while from the dissipations of the king and his new court in London. During his time in London, Melcott had built himself up as a prosperous wool merchant and was now retired to the country to enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Anna’s father had approved of hard work and making your own way in the world, lamenting how frivolous England had become under the restored monarchy, and how silks and satins and foppery had replaced sobriety and religion and the love of the Lord. Mr. Melcott, too, clung to the old ways, just as her father had done, though with more fire and brimstone and fear of the Devil than her father had ever preached.

Although Mr. Melcott’s talk sometimes revolved more around profits and losses than Anna thought could be easily reconciled with Christian charity and the grace of God, he seemed to be an honest, hard-working man. He didn’t look at her as if she were a sweetmeat ready for his palate. He didn’t cause her stomach to be filled with uncomfortable flutterings, and her face to burn when he did so little as glance at her.

She felt safe with him.

The sun was getting high in the sky before Anna found a smart blue cart for her mother to ride in, and a dun brown donkey with sad, silent eyes to pull it.

With a small gesture, she pointed out her choice of animal to her escort. He pursed his lips for a moment, then gave a considered nod. “That one looks sturdy enough.”

They stepped up to donkey’s owner, a quiet woman in a faded shawl. On one hip she balanced a thin, pale baby, while a ragged urchin clung to the hem of her tattered gown.

“
What will you take for the donkey?” Melcott demanded.

The woman named a price Anna thought reasonable. She opened her mouth to close the deal on the spot, but Melcott forestalled her with a quelling look. “I’ll take care of it,” he said to her in a low voice. “It is my Christian duty to see that your youth and inexperience aren’t taken advantage of.”

He turned towards the woman and gestured dismissively at the animal. “He looks like he’s had a hard life.”

The woman fixed her gaze on the ground and shuffled her feet together. “We allus took good care of him.”

Melcott circled the donkey, taking care to keep well away from its wicked-looking back hooves, before forcing the donkey’s mouth open with a practiced hand and examining the beast’s teeth with a critical eye. “How old is he? Nine? Ten? Eleven years?”

“Seven, sir.”

Melcott raised his eyebrows and looked disbelieving. “Seven? Are you sure?”

“W...we raised him from a foal,” the woman stammered.

Melcott stood silent for a moment, then named a price just under half what the woman had asked for.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir. I just couldn’t take that for him. He’d be worth more than that cut up for my lord’s dogs.”

He raised his price by a small margin.

The woman hesitated.

He rapped his cane smartly against the ground. “Take it or leave it. It’s my final offer.”

The woman's forehead creased into a frown, but at last she nodded. “I’ll take it.”

Melcott stepped back again, a satisfied smile on his face. “There, you see, I got you a good bargain, just as I said I would,” he said in an undertone to Anna. “The beast would fetch double that tomorrow, if you were to take him to the big market in Norwich and sell him there.”

Anna stepped forward to pay, her small stock of coins heavy in the leather bag. She counted out the price that the woman had asked for at first, and after a couple of seconds of hesitation, added an extra precious silver penny. The woman needed the money far more than she and her mother did. She would not forget her father’s lessons in charity, even though he was no longer with her to remind her of them.

The woman stared at the money Anna put into her hand and raised a pair of eyes that shone with an almost desperate hope. Anna closed the woman’s hand over the money, and was rewarded with a sweet smile.

The man with the cart to sell had bold eyes, a thick, red neck, and a strident voice.

“Hey, pretty miss,” he called to her, as he saw her eying the cart uncertainly. “Come give me a kiss, and I’ll give ye a fine bargain on the cart, and whatever else yer may take a fancy to. What say ye to that now?”

The knot of men standing around him, foaming tankards of ale in their hands, laughed uproariously at his suggestion, and crowded around her, encircling her in their midst. Their breath smelled of sour ale, and their bodies of rank sweat. Their voices were coarse and mocking.

Anna stood in the middle of the throng, clutching Melcott’s arm in a death grip, and willing her legs not to shake. Like wolves, they needed only to smell the fear on her and they would attack.

“Come give me a kiss instead,” offered one of them, as he swiped the ale foam from his coarse lips with the back of his hand, “and I’ll give ye something better than a bargain.”

“Nah, ye don’t want to kiss him, my pretty,” shouted a third. “He’s been eating onions, like, and his breath stinks worse than common. As for me, my breath is as sweet as any fine lady’s.”

“Yeah, when she speaks out of her arse,” said another, and there was a burst of ribald laughter.

They were crowding her now, nigh on close enough to touch her skirt. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she thought she would die. She looked up at Melcott, begging him without words to rescue her.

“Don’t let them worry you,” he said, his voice betraying his unease. “They mean no harm.” He moved half a pace in front of her and waved his stick at them. “Be off with you now, there’s my good lads, or I’ll have the law on you.”

His words had the opposite of their intended effect. Instead, the men’s mood turned ugly.

The first man stopped in his tracks and gave Melcott an evil glare. “What did the old parson say?”

The group closed around them, and their voices grew louder and more angry. “Old Crop-ear called us his ‘good lads’ and threatened to set the constable on us. What do you say about that, eh?”

“I’d say he needs to be taught a lesson.”

“And his piece of skirt, too.”

“She needs to learn the difference between a puffed-up old bag of wind and a real man.” And he jutted his hips out in an obscene gesture.

Anna could almost see them salivating as they drew ever nearer.

“I bet she’s dying for it.”

“What do you say, fellows?

Onion-breath reached out and brushed the back of his hand across her breast. She shuddered at his touch and shrank back into Melcott’s side.

“She’s a pretty filly, and no mistake. High time she was broken in.”

“And ridden by a proper man, too. Not an old dotard with a wizened up prick so small that she canna tell whether he’s coming or going.”

There was another burst of laughter and they crowded closer, jostling Melcott out of their way, heedless of his shrill protests and yelps of pain as he was tumbled to the ground.

Anna stood, frozen with fear, as Melcott was rolled beneath their boots. She knew they would have no more pity for her sex than they did for Melcott’s age. It seemed an eternity of fear, waiting for the horrid inevitable, before their hands were groping and pawing at her hair, her clothes, her breasts. She tried to fight them off, but she had only two hands, and she was slow with a benumbing fear. And there were so many men to fight off.

The pounding of her heart and the rushing in her ears drowned out all other sounds. Dimly she was aware of a high-pitched keening.

Then, all at once, the crowd around her lessened. Lord Ravensbourne appeared like an avenging angel, picking her tormentors off the ground one by one and tossing them aside like the dirt they were, until he reached her side.

Anna felt a wave of relief so strong she could barely stand wash over her. Her legs buckled at the knees, and she had to grab on to her cousin’s arm to hold herself upright.

He picked her up in his arms as if she were a feather. “Did they hurt you?” He sounded angry enough to throttle them all single-handedly.

Anna shook her head. “No,” she whispered, clutching the front of his jacket as if he were her hope of salvation. “You rescued us before they had time to do much more than just frighten me.”

Lord Ravensbourne took a purse full of coins from his pocket. “Here’s a fair price for your cart,” he spat, as he tossed a handful of silver onto the ground in front of the cart-owner, who lay sprawled in the mud where he had been thrown. “And consider yourself lucky you are still alive to spend it.”

“They meant to hurt us,” Melcott complained in a high-pitched whine, as he picked himself up and limped after them to the carriage, shaking the dust off his jacket and knocking the dents out of his tall-crowned hat. “They were king’s men for sure, and have no respect for Godly men. They were panting for my blood. You have my gratitude for your timely rescue.”

Lord Ravensbourne inclined his head to his uncle. “I am glad I was in time to be of assistance. And you, my dear young cousin,” he said, as he lifted Anna into the carriage, and tucked a rug around her lap, “can cease your trembling now. You are safe.”

Anna nodded obediently, but for some strange reason, her teeth were chattering violently, and she could not will them to stop.

Lord Ravensbourne held out a hip flask to her. “Drink,” he commanded her. “It will warm your insides.”

Anna took a swig of the spirits inside and felt it burn all the way down her throat to make a fire in her stomach, repelling the icy cold that had her in its grip.

“Another,” he commanded her.

Anna took another gulp. Her head was spinning now, but at least she was no longer shivering. A dizzying sense of thankfulness washed over her, and she silently gave her thanks to her Creator.

Twice now He had sent Lord Ravensbourne to her in her moment of need.

Twice, Lord Ravensbourne had saved a life. First her mother’s. And now hers.

God must have a strange sense of humor,
she thought fuzzily, as she drifted off to sleep to the gentle rocking motion of the carriage,
to send her a fine Lord to be her guardian angel.

“
Anna, Anna, come see the present Tom has bought you.”

At the first sound of Charlotte’s voice, Anna put down the book she had been reading and rose to greet her visitor.

She had been home a week since her near disastrous visit to the horse market and had not ventured outside since, except to tend to the vegetable patch in the back of the dower house. Even then, she felt better when her mother was within sight. Charlotte had come to visit her every day, usually escorted by Mr. Melcott, and Lord Ravensbourne had come to see her three times. They had all been very kind to her, and respected her wish to remain indoors.