Jane Feather - The Hostage Bride

Cato took it. The untidy scrawl was unknown to him. The letters wandered all over the paper as if the hand that had penned them had had little strength to hold the quill.

He turned the parchment over and inhaled sharply. The seal was his half brother’s. “I’ll not ride out this morning, after all, Jebediah.”

“Aye, m’lord.” The groom took the charger’s halter and led him back in the direction of his stall.

“Oh, you, lad.” The marquis paused, glancing over his shoulder at the abandoned messenger, who stood, his recaptured breath steaming in the bitter air, his nose scarlet with cold. “You’re from the mail office in York?”

The lad nodded vigorously.

“I didn’t realize the mails were still running.”

“They don’t always gets through, m’lord. But the carrier what brought the bag that this come in took safe passage from Lord Leven when ‘is lordship crossed the border.”

Cato’s nod of understanding was somber. “Go to the kitchen. They’ll look after you there before you return to the city.”

The marquis continued on his way, crossing the inner bailey to the great donjon, where the family resided. The blast of a trumpet came over the frosty air from the fields beyond the castle moat. It was followed by the carrying voice of a drill sergeant, the roll of a drum. But the marching footsteps of the drilling militia were muffled in the snow of the parade ground that had once been a peaceful wheat field.

The marquis entered the building through the narrow door. Pitch torches in sconces flickered over the ancient stone walls, lit the heavy slabs beneath his feet. Despite the tapestries hung upon the walls in the great hall, it was hard to soften the military, defensive nature of this inner keep that for centuries had protected the families of the house of Granville from the marauders and moss-troopers who menaced the border between Scotland and England, and from the lawless armies who had periodically ravaged the land since the Conqueror.

He ascended the stone stairs running off the hall, and the atmosphere changed, became more domestic. Windows had been widened and glassed, to let in both light and air, carpets softened the flagstones, and the tapestries were thick and plentiful. He turned down a corridor and entered his own sanctum in the bastion.

He threw off his thick cloak and drew off his leather gauntlets. A log fire blazed in the hearth and he bent to warm his hands, before straightening, turning slowly before the fire’s heat like a lamb on a spit, and breaking the seal on the parchment as he opened his half brother’s missive.

St. Stephen’s Street, Edinburgh, December, 1643

My dear brother, When you read this, you may be certain that I have gone to my just reward. The pits of hell, I have no doubt! But I willingly pay the price for such a life as I have had. (Ah, I can see your pained frown, Cato. Such an upright soul as you could never understand the pleasures of excess.) But know that I am now paying for my sins, such as they are, and grant me one boon out of the goodness of your heart and the charity that I know flows so sweetly in your veins! My daughter, Portia. She has suffered with me but should not suffer without me. Will you take her in and treat her kindly? She has no family claims upon you-poor little bastard-and yet I ask this favor of the only person who could grant it.

Ever your degenerate brother, Jack

Cato scrunched up the parchment. He could hear Jack’s ironical, mocking tone in every word. No doubt the man was now stoking the fires of hell, as unrepentant as ever.

He bent to throw the missive into the flames, then paused. With a sigh, he smoothed out the sheet, laying it upon the oak table, flattening the creases with his palm. When had Jack died? The letter was dated the previous month. It would have taken anything up to three weeks to reach Granville. Was the girl still in Edinburgh? Still to be found on St. Stephen’s Street? And how in the name of grace was he to find her with the border in an uproar?

He had known that sunny afternoon of his wedding two and a half years ago that civil war had become inevitable. King Charles had pushed his country too far in his pursuit of absolute rule. The worm, as embodied in Parliament, had turned. For two years now the country had been torn apart, with families divided brother against brother, father against son. There had been battles, many of them, and yet out of the hideous slaughter had come no decisive victory for either side. Winter had brought an end to pitched battle, and in the cold new year of 1643, the king’s supporters held the north of England. But they faced a new challenge now. The Scots army had raised its standard for Parliament and with Lord Leven at its head had just crossed the border into Yorkshire, bringing reinforcement against the king’s military strength in the north.

Cato walked to the narrow window in the turret. From here he could see his own militia drilling. A militia he had originally raised in the king’s name. The soldiers believed they were armed and ready to fight for King Charles at their lord’s command, little knowing that their lord’s loyalties were no longer a simple matter.

At the very beginning of this civil strife, Cato had seen no alternative to supporting his king and the royalist cause. It had seemed then morally unthinkable for a Granville to do otherwise than support his king in the face of civil insurrection.

He had raised men and money in the king’s name and continued to hold his border castle for his sovereign. But slowly, inexorably, the conviction had grown that the king’s cause was wrong… that the king was destroying the lives and liberties of his subjects. He was led astray by advisors who were mistaken if not downright evil, and no man who truly loved his country could support a sovereign so wrongheaded. So blind to the needs and rights of his people. Now, in the second year of war, Cato Granville was ready to turn his back on his king and raise his standard for Parliament and the cause of liberty.

And yet to oppose his sovereign went against every tenet of his heritage, and he had not yet spoken of his change of allegiance within his own walls, let alone declared himself publicly for Parliament.

But the time when he would have no choice was imminent, and each day he prepared himself anew.

Cato turned back from the window with a brusque impatient shake of his head and once more picked up Jack’s letter.

He’d seen the child but once, at his own wedding, the day they had beheaded Stafford on Tower Hill. He had only a vague memory of her. Thin, dirty, freckles, startling red hair, and Jack’s eyes, green and slanted like a cat’s, with the same sharp, mocking glitter as her father’s. She’d had the same insolent tone too, he recalled, his lip curling with remembered distaste.

He had enough to deal with at the moment without taking in an abandoned waif with neither family nor fortune to recommend her. He scrunched the letter again in his hand, prepared to toss it into the fire. And then again he paused. He could not refuse his brother’s dying request. A dying request had all the force of moral imperative, and however disinclined he was, he had to do something for the girl.

He left the bastion room and made his way down the corridor to the square dining parlor, where he found his wife and daughter at breakfast. He had the unmistakable sense that he’d interrupted something unpleasant.

Diana looked up at his entrance. Her mouth was a little tighter than usual, her fine hazel eyes snapping, her well-plucked eyebrows lifted in an irritable frown. But at the sight of her husband, the irritability was smoothed from her features as easily as a damp cloth would expunge chalk from a blackboard.

Olivia, her large black eyes slightly averted, pushed back her chair and curtsied before resuming her seat.