Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“I did not! Step aside, my man!”

She may as well not have spoken. Head to one side, he looked her up and down in a considering way, eyes half closed, lips peeled back from equine teeth. “The question is, do I just take your guineas, or must I murder you? Were you bathed and better clad, might you be in a fact a gentlewoman? If ’tis so, I’d best kill you. Otherwise when Captain Thunder is maybe caught one day, you’d bear witness against him, eh?”

Prudence commanded her to be quiet, not to betray her origins, but that low she had not sunk. “Is that your name, Captain Thunder? Yes, indeed, Captain Thunder, I would bear witness against you in a court of law! You deserve the gibbet as well as the gallows!”

Clearly she puzzled him, gave him pause; women were prone to scream the house down, not answer him back. Skinny, filthy, alone, yet not reduced to terror.

“Give me the money.”

Her fists knotted over the reticule until their knuckles went white. “No! It is my money! I need it!”

The horse was patient and placid; when he laid hands on her the animal stood its ground as its reins were jerked about, apparently uninterested in the developing struggle. The plan Mary had been forming to set the horse plunging and kicking evaporated. Until now nothing in her life had revealed how physically strong she was; she surprised him with that strength as she fought to keep her money. He couldn’t even bend her fingers back to break them, so convulsive was their grip on her reticule. Wiry and agile, she slipped from his hold. Off down the road she ran, yelling, but within yards he overtook her, gripping her shoulders cruelly.

“Bitch! Cow!” he said, swinging her around and taking her throat in his left hand. His right crushed her wrists together until, nerveless, they released her hold on the reticule. It began to fall, was scooped up.

Mary went quite mad. One foot lashed out at his shins, a knee tried to reach his groin, her nails clawed at his face and drew blood-how dared this brute rob her!

But he had not let go her throat. A roaring invaded her ears, his face in front of her goggling eyes grew darker, less distinct. All fight left her; just as a crashing blow landed on her brow, Mary lost consciousness.

Moaning, sick to her stomach, she woke to find she was crumpled at the base of a huge tree, almost hidden by its buttresses. Drear light percolated through the leaves from overhead, and it was raining. Had been raining for some time, if her soaked clothing was anything to go by.

About an hour elapsed before she managed to drag herself into a sitting position on one buttress, there to ascertain her injuries. A very sore and bruised throat, bruised wrists, a great swelling over her right brow, and a piercing headache.

When she felt able to stand she began to search for her bags and reticule, but in vain. No doubt Captain Thunder had taken them off the road and pitched them into thick bracken, probably well removed from her own site. Though no wind blew on the forest floor, her teeth were chattering and her skin chilly to the touch; she was cold and hurt, and everywhere she looked were massive trees. This was no secondary-growth forest, for its denizens looked a thousand years old. Perhaps it was Sherwood; in which case, she was miles from where she had been. Then good sense reasserted itself-no, this was not Sherwood! It was some other immensely old forest in a county famous for them. Probably not even very extensive, except that when one was in it, all concepts of dimension were lost.

If she was to live, she had to find shelter against the encroaching night. After walking a small distance she found a beech rotted from within. It offered her enough protection to shield her from the rain; squeezed into the narrow cavity, Mary felt her spurt of energy peter out, and lost consciousness again.

The blow to her brow had been more severe than she understood, and would plague her for days to come with lapses of consciousness; when next she roused, night prevailed. She had slipped to sit upon the ground, but at least it was not raining. Then she fell into a kind of coma, restless and haunted with horrible dreams, but when her eyes opened, they found daylight. An experimental walk told her that she was not well; her whole body was in pain, and she fancied she was running a fever. I am coming down with a chill, and I am hopelessly lost. What to do, what to do? If only my head would stop throbbing!

He had meant this, she was sure. Captain Thunder, some local highwayman whose headquarters lay at the Green Man. By abandoning her in the depths of the forest, he intended she would perish from starvation and exposure, thinking thus to absolve himself of guilt for her death. Well, Captain Thunder, she thought, I am not going to oblige you by tamely lying down and giving up! Somehow I will find my way to the road.

The nook in the beech tree that had sheltered her was soft, mossy-didn’t moss grow on the north side of trees? And if it did, then the moss-free side was south. Only the woods lay left and right of the road! To walk south or north depended upon which side of the road he had chosen to dump her. Oh, the wretch! A true disciple of Satan! Eyes closed, Mary tried to put herself in the mind of a highwayman, and decided he would favour the left hand because that was the hand governed by Satan. But was left facing Chesterfield, or facing Mansfield? Mansfield, because the inn he frequented had been ahead of her, not behind her, when he accosted her. Therefore, said she, I will go south on the side of the trees not covered in moss.

How far would he have taken her? The trees did not allow a horse passage, so he would have had to carry her. Was he chivalrous enough to carry a lady as a lady ought to be carried-in his arms? No. Captain Thunder would have slung her over his shoulder, which meant he might have tramped as much as a mile inward from the road.

She marched along resolutely, but the pain in her bones was worse and the headache splitting. When she looked up, the lacy vault above wheeled ominously, and her legs seemed to drive though piles of wool. I am not going to die! she cried over the pounding of her heart. I am not going to die, I am not going to die!

Then in the distance she saw a break in the trees filled with sunlight-the road! She began to run, but her traitorous body was done with running; she tripped over a buried root and pitched flat out. The world went black. It is not fair! was the last thing she remembered thinking.

When she roused the next time she was across the withers of a horse, bent like a staple. She stirred and muttered unintelligibly, then realised that she was at the mercy of another captor, not a rescuer. Rescuers held a lady in their arms, captors put them across the horse’s withers. I never knew England was so stuffed with villains, she tried to say. Whoever rode behind her lifted her head and shoulders and forced a fiery liquid down her gullet. Choking, spluttering, she flailed at him, but whatever he had made her drink set her bruised brain to whirling; back she slid into that world of darkness and nightmare.

Oh, she was warm ! Exquisitely comfortable! Mary opened her eyes to find herself on a feather bed, a hot brick at her feet. Her limbs felt light, and she didn’t smell of horse excrement. Someone had washed her thoroughly, even to, as her fingers discovered, her hair. The flannel nightgown was not hers, nor the socks upon her feet. But the pain in her body had diminished, and her headache was gone. The sole reminders of her ordeal were the bruises on her wrists, throat and brow, and the ones on her wrists, which she could see, had faded from black to a rather repulsive yellow. Which meant that considerable time had gone by. Where was she?

She swung her feet out of the bed and sat on its edge, eyes wide in the gloom. All around her were stone walls, not man-made, but natural; a gap in them was covered by a curtain, and a natural stone seat had a wooden plank across it with a hole-a commode of sorts. There were two tables, one piled with simple food, the other with books. Both had a chair tucked beneath them. But by far the most magical thing about this place was its lighting. Instead of candles, which she had believed to be the only form of lighting, glass lamps stood giving off a steady glow from a flame protected by a chimney. She had seen such chimneys before, when a candle needed protection from a wind, but never this broad, steady flame poking through a metal slot. Below the slot was a reservoir of some sort of liquid in which the wide ribbon of wick swam. One of these lamps, she thought, intrigued, gave off the same amount of light as ten candles.