But the Lord did not intervene.
Until the very last moment Brianna had prayed that he would. Pegeen MacCardle had been the kindest, most gentle person alive. She loved the forest, she loved the creatures. And she loved Brianna. She had spent her life caring for the ill and wounded—her neighbors, and any creature, great and small. Her determination to heal had brought her to the stake. The wife of a farmer who had been cured of croup by Pegeen’s potion of herbs had accused her of “bewitching” her husband because the husband had revered Pegeen as a saint in thanks for his life.
Brianna opened her eyes. Had she come far enough? No. The voices had been distant but now she could hear them more clearly. She pushed away from the wall of the bakery and ran blindly eastward, through the alleyways between huddled houses, smiths, and barns. Once again she found seclusion beneath an overhang, and paused, breathing deeply, feeling the pain ravage her again.
Pegeen! It was impossible that she was gone—so brutally, so cruelly. Orphaned at eleven when her parents had both succumbed to a plague, Brianna had at first been sent to live with her mother’s family, the Powells, in England. They had been kind people, but strict Puritans, and after life with her handsome and fun-loving father, it had been quite a change. They were also extremely poor, and knowing that she had been a burden to them had hurt Brianna terribly.
Robert, her second cousin and ten years her senior, had tried very hard to convince her—but to no avail—that she was added help, not a burden. He was a religious, serious young man, but his dark eyes had always been warm and tender and he had spoken to her in the gentlest of tones. Then Pegeen had come, and immediately she had loved Brianna. Both the Powells and Brianna knew that she would be loved and cherished if she returned to Scotland with Pegeen.
During the eight wonderful years Brianna had grown up in the small woods home of her aunt, she had come to know that Pegeen MacCardle was very simply, very basically, one of the finest human beings alive. In an era when blood was shed over the slightest discrepancy in belief, Pegeen was truly good. Her religion was the forest; her God was one of goodness.
Oh, yes—the Lord should have intervened!
But he hadn’t, and Pegeen MacCardle had died.
When Brianna had realized that no miracle was going to occur, she had lost all sense of reason in the face of horrible reality. And so she had come to face Matthews, official witchfinder.
Her heart caught suddenly and skipped a beat. She could hear him again—Matthews!
“Find her! Find the witch!”
He was close, oh, very close! And it seemed that the alleyways were full of whispers, full of the sound of running feet. She turned a corner and collided with a wizened old man. She almost screamed but he touched a finger to his weathered lips.
“Run, girl, run!”
She had to run. But there seemed to be nowhere to go; no safe place. Run—because if she did not, she, too, would become charred flesh and ash in the wind.…
Desperation and deep-rooted instincts for survival spurred Brianna’s young limbs into fluid action. She couldn’t cry for her aunt; she couldn’t even afford the time to feel her pain. It didn’t matter. She was numb. Her feelings and emotions were deadened by horror.
She raced north through the city; behind her she could hear the shouts of the king’s men as they lashed out against the pressing throng that detained them. They couldn’t move against the sea of humanity.
Brianna began a zigzag course, one that started to take her westward as well as north. A new sound, rasping, heaving, reached her ears.
It was the sound of her gasping breaths; it mingled with the rush of the blood that filled her ears like the sound of waves, and with the terrible thudding and pounding of her heart.
The woods, she thought. She had to get out of the city and into the woods. She could find shelter in the dense forests; there were caves and crannies and cliffs and she could disappear as easily as a doe—until she could find a way back to the Powells! Oh, yes! They would help her now. Robert, or his father, would know what to do, how to hide her.…
She couldn’t seem to outrun the smell of burning flesh, or the sound of the chase behind her.
She ran down another alley rank with the stench of emptied chamberpots and decaying garbage. A cat, skeleton-thin, screeched in her path, arching his back. She tried to run around it, but the panicked creature bolted with her. She tripped over it, and sprawled into the mud and dust and garbage. Spitting dirt out of her mouth, she scrambled to her feet.
“This way,” cried a soldier of the crown.
“Down the alley!” shouted another.
“Suffer not a witch to live!” returned the first voice.
Brianna lost all conscious thought and logic as she heard the voices of the soldiers. Like a cornered rat, she had no reason. She would have kicked and clawed and bit at stone to escape her pursuers.
As she rounded the corner, she left behind her the alley of the slums. A scent of salt and tangy sea breezes finally began to clear that of the acrid smoke.
She came upon a row of dockside houses. Not elegant mansions, but townhouses that belonged to sea captains and merchants.
Across from the townhouses were the docks and ships, everything from tiny fishing boats to the massive merchant ships and the men-of-war that sailed across the Atlantic to the Colonies.
And beyond that there was nothing, except the sea, as gray and tempestuous as the sky.
Brianna paused for a moment, drawing in great gulps of air as she pivoted about on her toes, desperately seeking a hideout. Her zigzag course had taken her into a trap of her own making.
