Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (11 page)

After some concern voiced by Attwater about who would make breakfast (quickly dealt with), Charles lifted himself onto the stallion’s broad back and tapped his flanks. The animal started quickly forward, incredibly quickly compared to the old mare and cart, and it took a time before he felt in control of the beast. The two made for Eastgate Street at a brisk pace, then for the Dee bridge and the highway beyond. Charles felt immensely pleased with himself and the turns in his life as he moved down the great road, the horse trotting impatiently beneath him. From time to time the stallion would snort loudly and shake his mane as if wanting to run.

Near Hatton, Charles left the highway for a more direct and less-used track toward Tattenall through the rolling wooded countryside. Feeling more confident, he allowed the stallion to break into a canter along the empty byway, then gave him his head. As if thankful to be free of the stockyards, the animal immediately lengthened his stride to a full gallop. The trees and brush by the roadway rushed past in an exhilarating blur. Charles leaned close over his neck to urge the stallion on. They jumped a small stream without breaking stride and started at a tearing pace around a blind bend in the road with high trees on either side, when he suddenly saw a horse and cart with a startled brown-and-white form on its bench directly in their path. He jerked the stallion’s reins and saw the cart horse rear wildly as he flashed past, brushing his leg painfully on the cart’s side. There was a sharp feminine exclamation and then a crash as the cart overturned. He pulled the stallion to a halt and turned its head to start back. The stallion reluctantly agreed, breathing heavily and snorting as he did so.

The wagon lay on its side in the road, its driver a jumble of brown dress, white shawl, and petticoats sprawled beside it. Appalled at what he’d done, Charles rode to the wagon, dismounted, and knelt by what turned out to be a young woman in some distress. She had pushed herself to a sitting position and was holding her left arm tenderly in her lap, her bonnet badly askew.

“Are you hurt?” Charles asked stupidly.

The girl looked at him with eyes narrowed in anger and pain. “Thou wilt please see to Maggie,” she said sharply, jerking her head toward the gray mare. The horse lay kicking on her side, prevented from rising by the harness and shafts of the overturned wagon. Charles rose and heaved the cart onto its wheels, then took the mare by her bridle and helped her stand. She was scraped on one side and seemed to be favoring her right foreleg. He stroked the mare’s muzzle to reassure her, then ran his hand down her leg, feeling for a break. The stallion also meandered over to see if anything interesting might be happening and introduced himself by giving Maggie a playful nip on her mane. Charles led his horse across the road and tied his reins firmly to a bush.

“Your mare is a little bruised. I don’t think anything’s broken,” he said, returning to the girl. “How about you?”

She raised her head and glared at him with moist eyes. “Thou hast broken my arm.” She clutched her forearm against her chest and lowered her head, rocking back and forth. Charles studied her for a moment while he tried to decide what to do. She was a severe-looking young woman, he decided, with pinched features, about seventeen or eighteen. She wore a simple brown dress without collar, ribbons, or lace, now muddied and torn on the side where she fell, a similarly dirtied woolen shawl, and a bonnet that had slipped over toward one side of her head. She had on brightly polished black leather shoes over white stockings. She was no crofter or herdsman’s daughter, he thought; her dress and shoes were too finely made. But the drab clothing and absence of any finery seemed to rule out her father being some sort of merchant or landowner.

“I’m very sorry. It was entirely my fault,” he said, trying to get her to look at him.

Her head shot up. “Yes, it wert thy fault. Thou wert very, very reckless, racing along like that. Thou couldst have murdered someone.”

“All right,” Charles said evenly. “Let me see your arm.”

“Don’t thou touch me,” she said fiercely, but fresh tears came to her eyes. “It pains me terribly. I think it’s broken.”

“Let me see,” Charles insisted. He brushed some dirt off her shoulder. “Come on. It’s not going to do you any good to sit there holding it until it becomes really painful.”

Reluctantly she relaxed her hold on the injured limb and moved it a small way from her body.

“This may hurt a little,” he said, running his hand as gently as he could over the sleeve covering her arm. He’d done this or watched it done dozens of times on board ship, where broken and cracked bones were commonplace. She nodded wordlessly and fixed her eyes on him so intently that he felt self-conscious as he worked his way from her wrist along her arm. When he was halfway to the elbow, she gave a sharp cry and he relaxed his grip.

He’d felt the place where the bone, the smaller of the two in the forearm, was broken and partially displaced. “I’m going to sit you on the back of your wagon,” he said soberly. “There’s no point doing what we’re going to have to do down here in the dirt.”

“Is it really broken?” she said tensely. “I heard something go snap when I fell.”

“Yes, it’s broken,” Charles said. He put one arm behind her shoulders and the other under her knees and lifted her off the ground, setting her upright with her legs hanging over the back of the wagon bed.

“What art thou going to do?” she asked through tightly clenched teeth.

He breathed in deeply, trying to find his nerve. He knew he was about to cause her considerable pain, more than he already had, and he didn’t relish it. “I’m going to set it and then fasten a splint so it won’t move around.” He avoided her eyes.

“Will it hurt?”

Charles nodded. “It’s going to hurt very badly for a short time. You’re going to have to be brave and hold as still as you can. It won’t take long.”

He noticed that she was still watching him intently, as if debating whether she could trust him. Their eyes met, hers large and round, a startling clear gray, and unwavering. Then her shoulders relaxed and she seemed to accept him, or at least she was resigned to his helping her. For a moment he took in her eyes, her clear pale skin, and the outline of her face. She had high cheekbones with a narrow nose and slightly pointed chin. Her lips were pressed together in a thin, pale line. Locks of light brown, almost blond hair escaped from her bonnet. He saw that she was not severe-looking at all.

“You stay right here,” he said, trying to regather the composure that had suddenly left him. “I have to collect some things.” He pried a narrow slat from the side of the wagon and broke it in two over his knee. Then he went to where he’d tethered his horse. He took a pocket knife from his trousers, opened the blade, and cut one of the leather reins from the bridle. The boards and the leather strap he lay in the wagon beside her hip.

“Ready?” he asked, standing in front of her.

She nodded, not daring to speak.

“All right. I’m going to pull on your arm until the bone slides back into place. That’s the part that will hurt the most,” he explained. “After that, it’ll be all with the wind on our quarter and sailing by and large.”

She smiled thinly and nodded again.

Charles turned his back to her and held her upper arm tightly between his own arm and his side, awkwardly aware of the fullness of her breast against his elbow. “You haven’t told me your name,” he said conversationally.

“I’m Penelope—” She gave a sharp piercing shriek as he pulled on her wrist, felt for the break and let the bone slide back into place. “Oh, damn, oh
damn
!” she cried, choking back tears.

“I’m very sorry I had to do that,” Charles said, then added, “Are you all right?” He was still holding her arm as carefully and firmly as he could between his own. He could hear her breathing in gasps and felt her chest heaving against his arm. She had courage, he’d give her that.

“I think so,” she said in a whisper. “Art thou done?”

“All except for the splint,” he said, relaxing his grip and turning. He reached for one of his boards and held it under her forearm. “You didn’t finish telling me your name,” he continued, placing the other on top.

“Penelope Brown,” she said, her voice stronger. “Who art thou?”

Charles took the leather strap and put one end between his teeth; the other he began to loop firmly around the boards, immobilizing the bones in her arm between them. “Charles Edgemont, from Tattenall,” he said as he was tying the ends of the strap together. “My friends call me Charlie, and I need your bonnet.”

“My bonnet? Why?” she said, her hand moving to the bow under her chin as if to protect it.

“It’s either your bonnet or one of your petticoats,” Charles said happily. “I need to make you a sling.”

“Oh,” she said, and her face reddened. She pulled one of the long straps and the bow came undone. “The bonnet, I think.” She held it out to him as her hair slipped down around her shoulders.

Charles placed the bonnet under her arm and tied the long straps together over her shoulder, pushing some of her hair away to do so. The soft strands felt like silken spindrift against his fingers.

“Well, Miss Brown,” he said clumsily, “if you tell me where you live, I’ll take you home.”

“My name is Penelope Brown, not Miss Brown,” she said with a small smile. “And I live near Gatesheath, not a mile from here.”

He saw that, with her hair softening the outline of her face and her mouth broken into a smile, that she was startlingly pretty, maybe beautiful. Charles stood silently staring until her eyes met his. “I’d best change the horses,” he said, hastily looking away. “Yours will be all right given a little time, but I think it’d be better if mine pulled your cart for now.” He retreated to busy himself with the horses. Finally, after some difficulty with his stallion, who apparently thought himself above pulling carts, he had the mare tethered behind the wagon and his horse hitched between the shafts. He returned to the back of the wagon and saw that she had been watching him, her expression softer than before. She smiled, her head cocked slightly to one side.

Unexpectedly, Penelope Brown reached out with her good arm and gently touched the dressing on the side of Charles’s head. “Thou art injured,” she said. “How camest thou by it?”

Reflexively Charles raised his hand to the bandage, and his fingers brushed against hers. “An accident at sea,” he answered brusquely. “It’s almost healed.”

“Is that where thy expression, ‘with the wind on our quarter,’ cometh from?”

“The same,” Charles said.

She looked at him curiously for a moment, then asked, “Wouldst thou help me down, please? I don’t want to jump.”

“Of course,” Charles said, his awkwardness returning. He put his hands on her waist and set her gently on the ground. He saw she was tall for a girl, perhaps half a head shorter than he. She smiled up at him, and he quickly said, “Here, I’ll help you up in the front.”

This proved awkward. He lifted her by her waist up to the two-foot-high step, then supported her while she pulled herself onto the bench with her good arm. When Charles climbed up, he felt embarrassed about the intimacy of the contact between them and hardly dared look at her.

“Thank thee,” she said at length. “Not for crashing my conveyance, doing injury to my horse, and breaking my arm, but for the gentle way thou looked after Maggie and for not being upset with me when I screamed and swore. I think thou art a Christian person.”

Charles studied her profile out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be obvious. “I’ve seen worse,” he said seriously, “much worse. You were very brave.” He fell silent.

“The sun is almost down,” she observed.

“Yes?” Charles said, wondering at the change of topic.

“Dost not thou think we should start? It’s straight ahead and the first turning on the right.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and quickly took the reins and flicked them. The stallion started forward.

After they had found the turning and were well along the lane to her home, she asked, “Doth thy horse have a name?”

“No,” Charles answered. “I just bought him today. Do you have any ideas?”

She sat in thought. “What dost thou think of Pendle?”

At first Charles had been a little taken aback at her use of
thee
s and
thou
s. They were archaic pronouns that had long gone out of style in most of England, especially in the navy. But as she talked, he found he enjoyed the way she spoke. It suggested in his mind a certain intimacy between them. He assumed she spoke to everyone that way, though, and had no idea why. “Pendle?” Charles repeated. “Why Pendle?”

She gave a small laugh. “He’s so large. When thou art mounting him thou couldst say thou wert climbing Pendle Hill.” She smiled prettily at him.

Charles hadn’t the least idea why anyone would name a horse after a small mountain in northern England, but he loved the sound of her when she was happy. He gallantly said, “Pendle it is.” He flicked the horse’s reins. “Git up, Pendle,” and the stallion broke into a trot.

She started to laugh again and then stopped and said, “Oh, my arm hurts.” After that she fell increasingly silent, leaning against him for support and shivering. He stopped the wagon, removed his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

He hurried the horse as best he could while trying to minimize the jolts and rattles of the cart on the uneven dirt lane. Occasionally Penelope groaned and once cried out when a wheel hit a rock in the roadway. It was becoming more dark than light, and it was difficult for Charles to see some of the smaller bumps and ruts.

“There,” she said, pointing to a track on the left. He slowed to take the turn and walked the stallion up the lane toward a large stone house with lights showing on both floors. Several figures emerged from the doorway before Charles brought the wagon to a halt.

“Penny, is it thee?” a man called as the wagon neared.

“Yes, Father,” the girl answered weakly.

“What is this?” the man said, seeing Charles’s horse in the harness, and then, on seeing Charles, “Who art thou?”