Taking Wing

Brigands on the Road

Rain spatters Isabel’s new traveling cloak as she steps outside on the morning of her departure. Everything about the journey feels borrowed: new boots, new gloves, and new travel bags, as though she’s playing the part of some other girl in a play rather than living her own life.

John, one of Aunt de Vere’s servants, has come to escort her. His tone makes plain what he thinks of the arrangement. He asks, none too kindly, whether she believes she can get up onto the horse by herself. He clearly expects a pampered Londoner to sit a saddle like a sack of potatoes. Isabel tells him stiffly that she can manage, thank you, and that she has ridden many times before. Then she swings herself up before he can offer a hand. John springs up nimbly in front of her. The two of them are to share the one horse the whole way to Northamptonshire.

England’s public highways, Isabel knows, harbor all manner of alarming characters, from mumbling, wandering beggars to dangerous highwaymen and brigands. Even fine lords and ladies think it wise to ride pillion with a trusted manservant rather than risk the road alone. It’s a small comfort as they set out that she isn’t traveling entirely unescorted, whatever she thinks of John’s manners.

Isabel’s family gathers to watch her go, silent as figures in a painting. Alice stands on the step with baby Hope in her arms, whispering something that makes the toddler wave dutifully, though her eyes stay puzzled.

Father, who has managed to avoid Isabel’s gaze for weeks, suddenly fixes his eyes on hers as if he fears he’ll never see her again. For one wild moment, Isabel is certain this was only ever a test, that he means to relent and call her back inside. Perhaps if she’d begged him then, he would have changed his mind. But she’s too hurt to beg, and he’s too proud to ask. So she looks down and fusses with her glove fastening until the moment passes.

Lifting her chin, Isabel tells John to ride on when he’s ready. He makes a clicking sound. The horse tosses its mane and trots off over the gleaming wet cobbles, harness jingling.

They’ve barely cleared the courtyard when Meg comes flying around the back of the house, shawl thrown over her head, and presses her own lucky charm into Isabel’s palm. It’s a round, dark stone with a glistening rose-colored stone embedded at its center like a heart. Her mother has threaded a ribbon through it so Isabel can wear it around her neck. Meg closes Isabel’s gloved fingers over it, begs her to be brave, and says that if God wills it, they’ll meet again. Isabel thanks her softly and promises to keep it always.

John, still disapproving, announces that they have many miles yet to travel and must go the long way round first, delivering a parcel of Aunt de Vere’s good physic to an apothecary near London Bridge. Isabel doesn’t look back as they ride away from Father’s house.

Isabel sits proudly in the saddle, telling herself she won’t cry. She thinks that if she must leave her home and family, she would rather have galloped straight out of the city and put it behind her at once. Instead they’re forced along narrow, crowded streets clear across London. The horse, unused to city traffic, has to be coaxed by John between shouting street vendors, dirty farm carts, and fine coaches before they finally reach the premises of a well-respected apothecary.

Isabel waits on a drafty bench while the elderly man scrutinizes a letter from Aunt de Vere through a magnifying glass and writes back a lengthy reply. The whole time, she feels strangely unreal, as if she were no longer a person at all but simply another parcel her aunt’s servant has been sent to deliver.

Only afterward do they join the stream of riders, carts, and pedestrians flowing over London Bridge. It turns out to be little more than a continuation of the same narrow, cobbled street, houses and shops jostling closely on either side. At the far end, a mob of screaming crows picks at the grisly heads mounted on poles. Isabel passes beneath them in a daze of misery. Only one thought keeps beating through her mind like the pulse of a drum—he sent her away, he sent her away, he sent her away. Gradually the noise and stink of the city fall behind them. Past Islington, the houses grow more widely spaced until there is nothing left but dripping trees and hedgerows lining the queen’s highway.

Several hours into the journey, their horse stumbles, and they’re lucky not to be thrown. Dismounting, they discover it has cast a shoe. So John and Isabel walk the animal several miles to the nearest village and wait at the local inn while the blacksmith fits new shoes. The delay costs them their arranged stop at the post house in Saint Albans. What should have been a two-day journey now stretches into a third.

Instead they’re stranded overnight at a tumbledown village tavern, its innkeeper obviously drunk. His slatternly wife brings them food, but the sight of the greasy stew turns Isabel’s stomach. She’s nearly asleep in her chair by the time the woman finishes her work and is free to show her upstairs.

Since Isabel has no female chaperone, propriety won’t allow her to sleep alone. So she’s forced to share the innkeeper’s wife’s bed while the husband sleeps below. It’s a thoroughly unpleasant arrangement. Isabel is fairly sure the woman has never cut her toenails in her life. The snoring is loud enough to rattle the floorboards. And the mattress is crawling with fleas. She wakes covered in angry red bites.

Downstairs the next morning, the innkeeper’s wife presents Isabel with a slab of cold, evil-smelling pie. Isabel thanks her politely and says she’ll eat it on the road, privately planning to leave it in the first convenient hedge. She ducks out through the tavern door, lightheaded with exhaustion, and finds John already in the courtyard, saddling the horse. The rain has cleared, and spring sunlight glints off the puddles in the lane as they set out again. John tells her that if all goes well, they should reach her aunt’s house by noon the next day.

Small birds sing all around them, every bush crowded with tiny new buds. The scent of violets and primroses drifts over the fields. For the first time since leaving home, Isabel feels something like relief at being away from London’s stink.

After some hours, John turns them off the main highway and into an ancient forest. He remarks, somewhat grudgingly, that she needn’t be afraid of so many trees, since it will shorten their journey by several hours. Isabel feels faintly uneasy at the thought. But after her sleepless night, the steady rise and fall of the horse’s gait lulls her into a light doze.

Isabel jolts awake to furious shouting as several masked men come charging out of nowhere on horseback. John swears and digs his heels into the horse’s flanks, trying to outrun them. But the first brigand draws level and lunges for the reins as the rest close in from every side.

The horse rears in terror. By some miracle, Isabel manages to cling on. But John is thrown, striking his head heavily against a tree root.

Isabel scrambles down, screaming, and beats at the nearest rider with her fists. But he only shakes her off and tells her, quite calmly, to scream all she likes, since there’s no one nearby to hear her. Looking past him, Isabel sees dark blood staining John’s face and throat where he lies motionless on the ground. The man glances down at him and pronounces him dead with plain satisfaction, without bothering to look closer.

The man swings himself up onto Isabel’s horse. He and the rest of the brigands gather up her belongings and gallop off into the trees, leaving her alone in the ancient forest with nothing but Meg’s charm around her neck and her chaperone’s body at her feet.