Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall by Vengeance Thwarted

round the village green.
    “There’s the Turners’ cart,” the woman said. “She can go back on that as far as the farm and then maybe they’ll spare someone to take her home from there. I’ll just run in for the jug and do you bring her round the house, Gideon.”
    Bel found herself hustled past a cabbage patch and out onto the corner of the green where suddenly there was life and activity, children running across the grass with earthenware jugs, a few Scottish soldiers loitering about, and Sam Turner standing up on the farm cart ladling out milk from the churn. Fingers of sunlight stroked the green between the elongated shadows of the cottages. The mist had lifted. It wasn’t how she had hoped to see Sam but somehow life was in progress again and the complete indifference of the people to the horrible thing above the village helped her to put on a show of normality herself.
    Sam looked down at her with raised brows but lifted his hat in a mock salute and shrugged his shoulders when the man Gideon asked him to take her to the farm.
    “Ay, when I’m done here. Who wants eggs as well?” He was collecting the pennies in a leather pouch slung round him and Bel, in all her torment of mind, found a little flame of admiration spurting up at his cool self-possession and handsome looks. What she would say to him she had no idea.
    When he was finished with customers he held out one hand to her and she felt the man Gideon lift her up to grab it. She scrambled into the cart beside him. Sam clicked his tongue and the horse moved off round the track. Bel kept her eyes well averted from the hill behind them.
    “So Mistress Arabella, why were you up so early?” he asked. When she said nothing he peered at her. “Of course you don’t answer to that. So, Bel, what were you doing? You’ve been crying.”
    It was hard to speak when she couldn’t wipe out the image on the hill. Her voice came out in a squeak. “They hanged that man. I saw him. Why is he still there?”
    He shrugged again. “What did you go and look for? He’s there as a warning. I daresay they’ll take him down in a few days.” He was looking at her again, a little curiously. “Whatever are you wearing on your head?”
    She snatched off the cap. “I knitted it. Don’t laugh.”
    He did laugh and she wanted to die.
    Then he said seriously, “That evening – when the stack was fired – why did you not go home at once? The robber saw you He said there was a fat boy.” He chuckled. “Of course I knew it was you though no one else believed him.”
    A coldness like a knife went down her spine. “He said that? Yes, I saw him. After he went away I took your breeches off. But tell me about it. What did he say?”
    “Your father gave him a sort of trial with a jury an’ all. Didn’t you know that? I had to be a witness.”
    “How could you be? You hadn’t seen him . But you knew I was there. Why didn’t you tell? Then they might have believed him. Did you lie when you’d sworn on the Bible?”
    “Never. I said I saw no fat boy, which was exactly true.”
    “Oh!” This was her honest hero! “But you knew it was me. If you’d said so you could have saved the man. You made him a liar.”
    He was looking at her in astonishment. “Did you want your father to know you’d been playing with me, worn my breeches?”
    “I don’t care about his anger. If you’d spoken up they might not have hung that man.”
    “Why not? What are you saying? You fired the stack?”
    “Of course not!” She rushed the words out. “How could you think I would do such a thing?”
    “Nay, I didn’t. So I protected you. You should be grateful. I knew if he’d seen you he must have been hanging about – watching for the coast to be clear, hoping to get another hen even after he was shot at. But when he couldn’t he took his revenge. Why should you speak up for him? I think he was a simpleton. He seemed to be trying to lay the blame on this fat boy but at last he