She slipped into the deserted lane, hugging the wall at her back. She would need a horse. There was no way she could escape on foot, not over the harsh and desolate landscape she’d seen on the journey here.
It was bitterly cold, and the thick, comforting smell of wood smoke hung in the air. She glimpsed golden light behind shuttered windows and occasionally the fragrant aroma of cooking as she hurried along the lane, keeping to the shadows. In those warm and cozy cottages, there were people sitting by fires, eating supper, sharing jokes, secure in their own place, in the camaraderie of their own kind.
Portia had grown up knowing herself to be an outsider, with no place of her own, no family to define her in the world. There was Jack, of course, but Jack wasn’t family in the way it was generally understood. He was simply the cause of her existence. She had tagged along behind him in exchange for a haphazard affection and a vague means of support… until she was old enough to support both herself and Jacks addiction. Now, as she flitted alone down the darkened lane, imagining the scenes behind the shuttered windows, her usual sense of isolation rose with renewed force. She was trying to escape from a place where she didn’t belong, to return to a place where she didn’t belong. The irony of the various situations in which she found herself usually amused her. It was a good defense against unhappiness. Tonight it failed her.
She was listening for a horse’s whicker, her nose twitching for the smell of a stable. And she found it soon enough.
Not one stable but an entire block of them in the center of the village, a neat, swept, cobbled yard in front of the building. But she saw immediately that her chances of taking a horse without detection were nonexistent. Light showed from both ends of the block, and the tack room door stood open. She could hear voices, the rattle of dice, and as she clung to the shadows, she saw a man emerge into the yard, unbuttoning his britches. He relieved himself against the wall and returned to the tack room.
Portia slipped back into the lane and disconsolately turned her step toward the river. She didn’t know why, except that it was a destination and she was not yet ready to accept defeat and creep back to her prison.
But when she stood on the bank, backed against the dark trunk of a leafless oak tree, excitement stabbed her. The frozen expanse meandered through the village, snaking away beyond the village boundaries, starlight glittering on its surface way into the distance. Way beyond the Decatur stronghold.
Rivers went places. Rivers were thoroughfares. There would be habitation, other villages even, along the banks of this one. If only she still had her skates…
Then she saw it. A sledge beached on the bank, its wooden runners curved and smooth as silk. Portia darted across, bending low to the ground although there was no sign of human activity here, no lit windows pouring sound and illumination. The riverbank was utterly deserted.
The sledge was piled with skins. It couldn’t have been better. If she couldn’t find other shelter, she could curl up in them until daylight, once she’d left the Decatur boundary far behind. Her heart surged. She knew now that she was going to succeed. This sledge and its perfect cargo had been put there by fate. She was destined to escape.
But how to propel it? Did they use dogs or ponies? Or did they pull it themselves? They’d need skates to do that.
Then she saw the pole, propped against the rear of the sledge. It was like a barge pole and presumably operated in the same way. One pushed oneself along the ice with thrusts of the pole. So simple… so wonderfully convenient.
Portia glanced nervously behind her, suddenly thinking this was all too good to be true. Maybe it was a trap, some devilish trap of Decatur’s to catch her trying to escape. She had no reason to trust him… to believe him when he said he wouldn’t hurt her. Prisoners of war were treated well enough unless they tried to escape. Then all the rules of safe conduct went by the board. If she was caught, what would they do to her? She would be fair game… if not for Decatur, then for his lawless band of savages. Sweat pricked on her forehead despite the cold. She had to escape; it was as simple as that. She would not be caught.
The sledge was heavier than it looked, and Portia was breathless by the time she’d managed to heave it down the bank and onto the ice. She was continually looking over her shoulder, expecting at any minute to see someone racing out of the darkness to challenge her. But the riverbank remained deserted and quiet, although strains of music and voices drifted through the still and icy moonlit night.
Once on the ice, the sledge became as light and maneuverable as a child’s boat. Slipping and sliding, Portia pushed it into the middle of the frozen stream, then climbed in and took up a position at the rear, the pole clasped firmly between her hands. She pushed off and the sledge with astonishing power shot away, gathering momentum across the ice. It was miraculous. She barely needed to push at all once it was moving. It occurred to her that of course she was going downstream, out of the high hills, so there was an advantage in the slope of the riverbed. Pure jubilation made her heart sing as the craft sped beneath her and the houses and lights of Decatur village whistled past. It was going to work.
The watchman at the first bend of the river saw the sledge when it was fifty yards away, a darkly moving shape on the bright white surface of ice. He gave a little grunt of satisfaction. He needed something to enliven the long, cold hours of his watch in the blind built into the topmost branches of a copper beech tree. His watch point was one of six that covered the river over a ten-mile distance from Decatur village. He lit a flare that would be picked up both by the watchmen in the hilltop sentry posts and his comrades along the river, and huddled closer into his fur-lined cloak as he kept watch on the approaching craft.
The sledge slid beneath his tree and he observed that the figure who drove it had acquired the knack of the pole. The sledge was fairly skimming along, singing over the ice. He recognized the vehicle as belonging to Bertram, the trapper, who sold his skins in Ewefell, some twenty miles downriver. Bertram wouldn’t be best pleased at losing both his sledge and a week’s worth of work.
Not that the sledge and its driver would get very far. The hilltop sentry’s torch had already flared in acknowledgment of the signal, and the master would be alerted within ten minutes.
It took less than ten minutes for Rufus to be informed of the illegitimate traffic on the river. And it took no time at all for him to guess who had given his sentries a little excitement in their customarily dull night watches.
He was in the middle of his supper, good food, wine, and company going some way to assuage the irritations of the day, and this piece of news did nothing for his temper. “God’s grace! How far does she think she’s going to get?” he demanded of the company in general. “Surely she can’t imagine she can dance out of here on a stolen sledge without anyone being any the wiser?”
“Seems that she does,” Will commented. “Shall I fetch her back?”
“No, dammit, I’ll go.” Rufus swung his leg over the bench at the long table and cast his napkin aside. “I was enjoying that lamprey pie,” he remarked with another surge of irritation. “The devil take the girl! I’m damned if I’m going to ruin my supper.” He swung back to face the table and took up his fork again.