Remembrance Read online

  Meg didn’t think anymore because all hell broke loose in the house as the maid Penella came running into the room to tell her ladyship that one of her daughters had just caught herself on fire.

  “Wait for me here,” Alida said, then gathered her skirts and ran from the room.

  For a moment, Meg sat where she was, not moving, too sleepy and heavy to move. Wearily, she rested her head against the back of the chair and for just a few seconds she dozed.

  She was dreaming and she knew she was dreaming but it didn’t make any difference. There seemed to be something she had to remember, but couldn’t. She and Will and the children were running, running through the woods at night, allowing no one to see them. In the dream, Meg was in a daze, the two babies clasped to her in a sling Will had rigged for her. He wanted to carry one child while she carried the other, but the babies screamed so when they were apart.

  “Come, Meg, we must go,” he whispered to her after one very short rest. “She will come after us soon.”

  With a start, Meg awoke and she was as clear-headed as she could be, considering the amount of wine she had consumed. She, Will had said. “She will come after us soon.” Quite suddenly, Meg understood everything. It was Lady Alida who had set the fire that night, trying to kill the boy who threatened her own children’s futures.

  Suddenly, things that Meg had not remembered for years began to come back to her, things that had been said that night when she’d first come to the children. Now she understood why Will had insisted on secrecy all these years. Meg remembered all the times she had argued with him, saying it wouldn’t hurt the children to go into the village now and then. Will rarely allowed them to go into the village except on market day and then only because he needed the help. Talis was great at selling produce, while Callie had a talent for displaying the wares so everyone wanted to buy from them.

  Now Meg understood. She understood why no one had come for the children, why no one was ever going to come for them. These people thought she and the children had died that night in the fire. And Lady Alida had set the fire.

  Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was a mother’s instinctive protection that made rage run through her body. In that moment, Meg learned how to hate. This woman, this…this lady had tried to kill one innocent child and had not cared that her own daughter would be killed in the process.

  Standing, Meg knew that she must get out of this place and get home. And what is more, she was convinced that Lady Alida owed the children for what she had done to them.

  Without another thought, not even for her immortal soul, Meg took a short, heavy silver candlestick off the mantelpiece and secreted it inside her skirt.

  The next moment she was running down the stairs, her face red with fear, her heart pounding. She had not gone three steps when a woman came running up to meet her with orders from her ladyship that she was to stay the night.

  What would Callie say to this? Meg thought. If she had Callie’s clever brain what would one of her story princesses say to get herself out of this mess?

  “Stay the night?” Meg gasped. “Have you not heard? This house is on fire.”

  “No, Lady Joanna fell against a log and her skirt caught on fire.”

  “I was there. I heard Lady Alida say that is what people are to be told. She is worried that everyone will run away and there will be no one to help put out the fire. But I do not want to risk being burned to death. Let me pass!”

  Within ten minutes the whole household was in chaos and, easily, Meg escaped through the shouting people. Twice she saw men looking about as though they were searching for her, but she had an advantage in that she looked like every other village woman.

  Meg traveled all that night, moving in the opposite direction of home. If she were caught, she did not want her captors to have any idea of the direction of the farm.

  On the second day she was walking past a stables when she heard two men wearing the arms of John Hadley asking for a woman of her description, accusing her of thievery. There was a reward offered for her that was at least twice the value of the silver candlestick. To hear the men tell it, Meg had stolen half of all that his lordship possessed. Meg knew that her time alive was limited—if she did not do something. No one could turn aside from the huge reward offered.

  What would Callie’s princesses do? she thought since that had worked before. She would disguise herself, was the immediate answer.

  Two hours later, Meg was gone and in her place was a crippled old woman with only one arm, with blackened teeth and a limp that made walking very slow. To keep people from coming too close to her, she filled her pockets with fish so old the cats wouldn’t touch them. Wherever she walked she cleared a wide path; children threw clumps of mud at her and told her to get away from them.

  She tried her best to stay off the roads, but it was hard going traveling across fields and through woods with heavy underbrush. At the end of the first week two Hadley knights stopped her and started to ask her questions, but Meg’s fear was so real and her supplications for mercy were so exaggerated that they could get nothing out of her. Her hysteria combined with her smell was enough to make them sick. They left her to her walking, muttering that she was crazy.

  Being so vile that people would not get near her made getting food difficult, so Meg spent the last three days of her journey without food.

  When, at long, long last, after close to a month’s absence, she arrived home, at the sight of her beloved farm, she collapsed on the doorway.

  Will was the first to see her. He came running from the barn, swooped her into his arms and carried her into the house.

  “You will hurt your back,” Meg managed to murmur.

  “You’re as light as the day I married you,” he said, his voice thick with tears he was trying not to shed.

  “I stink,” she whispered.

  “You smell of roses and nothing more,” he said as he carefully laid her on the bed.

  No one in her family asked where Meg had been. They were all too glad for her to be back to ask any questions. Talis made Callie tell a story that had Meg captured by gypsies, but due to her heroic nature and her superior wisdom, she had escaped and come back to her family.

  Although Meg never told anyone the truth, after that day she was a changed woman. In a way she listened to Will less, but she also listened to him more, listened to what he was not saying. She now knew that he was aware that the children’s lives were in danger, and instead of being the naive little wife who knew nothing, she worked with him in protecting them.

  But Meg also knew that the future of the children was very important. She was not going to allow that evil woman to deprive the children of what was their birthright. When she told Will she was going to hire a teacher for the children, he started to argue with her, but he took one look at her face and gave in. “I will find someone,” he said and she knew he would.

  Will always kept his word. He found Nigel Cabot in a ditch beside the road. When Nigel got drunk he stood in the front of the town and gave pretty speeches to try to earn more drinks. His clothes, despite the fact that they were worn ragged and filthy, were the clothes of a gentleman; his speech was like the boy Edward’s. One of the things he bragged about was that he had been a tutor in several noble households.

  When the town got tired of his cadging drinks, tired of his arrogant ways, they threw him out. Picking him up by the scruff of the neck, Will lifted him from a gutter filled with mud and various animal manures.

  “Can you read?” Will asked and had to shake the man to get him to answer.

  “Of course I can read. I’m no country lout who uses paper only to wipe his—”

  “I don’t care about the country folk. I want you to teach my son and daughter to read.”

  Nigel’s eyes opened wide. He had a keen sense of humor and to see this stolid country farmer asking him—him!—to teach his stupid, ignorant children their ABCs made him forget the muck on his face. Hauling himself up to his full height