Page 33 of By the Sword
A sore head would be the least of Jonathan’s problems, Kate thought, as her heart hammered beneath her bodice. She had never told a lie in her life.
The guards gave the back of the wagon a peremptory search.
‘On your way then, Master Rowe,’ the first guard said, giving the rump of the horse a firm slap. ‘With this rain, it’ll be a slow road home today I wager.’
‘Her whole, her whole, her whole estate is seventeen pence a year…’ Jonathan concluded drunkenly.
Behind them, the guards laughed.
The breath returned to Kate’s lungs.
‘Well done,’ William said. ‘Keep it up till we’re out of sight and then we’ll put the lad in the back.’
Jonathan groaned and leaned his head on Kate’s shoulder.
‘Here dwells a pretty maid…’ he muttered.
‘That song is quite disgusting,’ Kate said.
‘But it did the trick,’ Jonathan muttered.
***
‘Kate, we’re home.’
From where she sat in the back of the wagon, Kate raised her head and looked up at William’s sodden back. The rain dripped off her hat into her eyes. Jonathan lay on the floor of the wagon, covered by sacking to protect him from the rain while she supported his head in her lap to try and minimise the jolting of the cart on his injured shoulder. Tom, with the carefree abandon of youth, slept curled up beside her. They were all soaked to the bone and exhausted by the strain of the long and trying day.
‘I’ve never been so glad to see Barton’s gates in my life,’ William observed as he turned the wagon through the gates into the courtyard of Barton Manor.
Suzanne stood on the porch of the house, a shawl clutched around her shoulders.
‘I’d not expected you home until the morrow,’ she said.
‘What are you doing here, lass?’ William asked.
‘I got Kate’s message from Selby and came to see the house was in order before they returned. I thought they would be with you?’
‘We’re here, Suzanne,’ Kate spoke up from the back of the wagon.
‘What’s going on?’
Suzanne pulled the shawl over her head and picked her way across the muddy yard to the wagon. She stood staring at the trio huddled beneath the wool sacks.
Kate shifted Jonathan’s unconscious weight and stretched her stiff, cold limbs as Tom sat up, rubbing his eyes.
‘What do you mean by this? Who is this man, Kate?’ she demanded, indicating Jonathan. ‘Thoroughly sotted by the smell of him. William, what were you thinking..?’
‘Oh for the good Lord’s sake, Suzanne,’ Kate blasphemed. ‘We doused him in ale as a ruse to get us past the gates.’ She stopped herself from saying that part of the plan had been William’s idea.‘He’s not drunk. He has a pistol ball in the shoulder and he’s lost a lot of blood. Today’s soaking won’t have helped.’
‘Shot?’ Suzanne stared in disbelief at her sister. ‘Who? Why? And how do you come to have him with you?’
‘Later, my dear.’ William came around to the back of the wagon and took charge. ‘Give me a hand here, Dickon. Take his legs. That’s right.’
Dickon and Ellen had, by agreement left York well after the others, but they had caught up with the lumbering wagon a few miles out of York and travelled on together.
Not without some difficulty, the two men managed to carry the barely conscious Jonathan up the stairs to the guest bedchamber. They deposited the injured man on the bed, and William looked around at his wife and her sister.
‘Well, Kate, now what?’ he asked.
