Page 213 of Feathers in the Wind
‘You’re going to leave a pot of gold on my kitchen table?’ I asked.
‘No, under your hearthstone,’ Dame Alice replied.
‘My hearthstone?’
‘You have wondered why the cottage is so important?’
I stared at her. ‘There are three hundred and fifty years of occupation between today and my time. Whatever you leave is sure to be found.’
She just smiled. ‘Does it look as if your hearthstone has ever been moved?’
I shook my head.
‘Well then, trust me. Now, Jessica, you must go. Godspeed.’
* * *
At the stablesI found Christian and his nurse standing with a stable boy who held the reins of an elderly, dapple-gray mare.
The nursemaid held Christian close and I could see she had been crying.
‘You’ll take good care of him?’ she exhorted me as I swung myself into the saddle and arranged the bunched skirts as best I could, slinging my handbag across my back. I held out my arms for the child, wondering how I would manage a horse and a wriggly two-year-old, but Christian came to me meekly.
I encircled him with my arms and he looked up at me with wisdom beyond his years in his eyes. The same color as his father’s eyes.
‘We’re going on a long journey, Christian,’ I whispered. He curled against me and stuck his thumb in his mouth.
The maid sniffed. ‘I’ve put his things in the saddlebag, ma’am. His favorite wooden horse...’ She trailed off and the tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.
I leaned down and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll take good care of him, as you have done.’
The stable boy handed me the reins and I put my heels to the horse. Of course I knew how to ride. I had been through my ‘horsey’ phase as a teenager but it had been many years. I hoped I would recall the basics as I urged it forward. The little animal proved to be biddable and responded to my touch.
As I looked back at the house. Dame Alice stood on the doorstep. She raised her hand and I inclined my head, hoping against all things logical that her power would not fail her today.
Keeping a grip on the child made the short journey by necessity, slow. I picked my way through countryside bearing no relation to twentieth-century Northamptonshire and I trusted to my instinct alone that we were on the road to Chesham. Relief flooded me as I saw the familiar church spire of St. Matthews rising above the trees.
As I turned down the lane toward the river, I gave an involuntary cry as I recognized my cottage, still readily identifiable, although somewhat more rustic than its modern incarnation. The same weathered stone wall ran along the lane. Smoke curled from the chimney and chickens picked through the refuse in the yard that would become my garden in three hundred and fifty years.
I turned the pony off the laneway into the woodlands running down to the river. I knew the place that would give me the best vantage point to see the bridge and the village. We would wait there for whatever would come to pass.
I dismounted from the pony and lifted Christian down. He looked up at me with his large, trusting eyes and my heart shattered into pieces. I had saved the lives of many children but this one demanded my love and I knew in that instant he had it, completely and unconditionally, as if he had been my own child. I found a flask containing some sort of ale, a couple of apples and a large piece of pie in the saddlebag.
‘Horsey?’ Christian asked and I found the little wooden animal and gave it to him.
He sat with a thump, his bottom well padded by his heavy skirts. A funny little bundle of boy, I mused, as I spread my skirts and laid out our picnic.
Above me dark clouds had begun to gather, foreshadowing a storm within the hour. I drew back under the shelter of a large oak tree and hoped the rain would not be too heavy. Umbrellas were yet to be invented and we were likely to get soaked.
There had been activity at the bridge and from my vantage point, I could see the bulk of Nat’s men lined up on the far side of the river, identifiable in their blue uniform jackets. A smaller reserve would be on this side of the river. Their voices carried across the water and I scanned the ranks, seeing Nat’s wide-brimmed hat with its distinctive feather. A tall man for his time, I might have known he would have been at the front and center of his men. Why wasn’t he wearing a helmet? Had foreknowledge made him careless of his life?
The enemy was out of my line of sight but I sensed from the tension in the ranks of Nat’s troops, they were not far away.
Some part of me had thought the battle of Chesham Bridge would be just like one of Alan’s musters. How could I have been so naive?
The parliamentarian forces fired the first sally and several of Nat’s men crumpled and fell. A wounded man screamed in agony. All my instincts as a doctor cried out for me to help but I knew I could not interfere. I didn’t exist in this time and my priority played beside me, making little neighing noises, impervious to the sound of battle.
A mighty yell went up, and for the first time, I saw the red-coated soldiers as they bore down on the thin line of Nat’s men. I knew from Alan’s account of the battle Nat’s men were outnumbered three to one. In the cold light of the twenty-first century, that was just a number. In the fading light of a summer day in 1645, it meant everything.
