Chase the Dawn (3 page)

She turned her head with the care of experience to look in the direction of the quiet, regular breathing. The man—for that was all she knew of him—lay peacefully asleep on a straw pallet beside the empty hearth. A rudimentary spit and cooking pots were in the hearth below the log-and-clay chimney.

Something told her that this was no backwoodsman. She did not know what it was that convinced her of the fact, maybe an elusive knowledge based on a runaway memory. His voice, perhaps. That soft lilt was tauntingly familiar, though she had heard it so often in the twilight world of semiconsciousness that that memory could be explained. There was something about his hands that
didn’t match this primitive lifestyle. They were callused, the fingernails squared, short, and practical, but the fingers were long, sensitive, elegant. How did she know that they were not the hands of a man accustomed to tearing his livelihood from the elements?

Bryony frowned and wriggled into a more comfortable position. She did not know who she was; she did not know how she had arrived in this place; she did not know the day or the year or the month. But there were all sorts of things she did know. She knew about backwoodsmen, it seemed. She could add and subtract, multiply and divide in her head. She could remember lines of poetry and Latin verbs. She seemed to be able to reason perfectly well. She could give orders to her body, and they were obeyed—or, at least, she amended ruefully, they would be once she was physically stronger. In short, apart from some significant and clearly selective gaps, her memory seemed to be functioning perfectly well.

She was wide-awake. Was it yesterday that she had had the soup, or just a few hours ago? Impossible to tell; time just ran along without dividing lines when all one did was sleep. The urge to see something other than this log-enclosed space grew inexorably until it would have taken an indomitable will to resist. Since Bryony could see no real reason why she should resist the urge, the battle did not last very long. Casting a wary eye at the sleeping figure on the pallet, she sat up. The room remained on an even keel and continued to do so even when she swung her legs to the floor and stood up with exaggerated care. Her legs rather felt like jelly, but they did not collapse. Clutching the blanket securely around her with one hand, she shuffled to the door, using her
free hand to gain support from whatever solidly rooted objects appeared on the way. At the door, she looked again at the recumbent body. He must need his sleep, she thought with a considerate little nod. It would be most unfair to wake him up. And besides, maybe he would raise objections to this expedition. On that convincing thought, she lifted the wooden latch, biting her lip nervously in case the opening door should make some alerting noise in the night stillness.

Nothing occurred to disturb the quiet, and Bryony found herself outside, the door closed softly behind her. She stood still for a minute, breathing deeply of the freshness laden with the scents of pine needles, honeysuckle, damp moss, and river mud. They were all familiar smells, she realized as she identified each one. The ground beneath her bare feet was soft and springy, and she curled her toes luxuriously into the mossy turf, relishing the overpowering sense of being alive—a sense that seemed to carry a curious overlay, as if it were a possession only just now truly valued. Had she nearly died, then, when whatever had brought her to this place had happened? Her mind stretched again, but again there was only an abyss where there should have been memory. At least that was one memory that the man could fill in for her.

The sky was lightening as the first pale streaks of dawn, rose-tipped, showed in the east above the trees. Bryony made her way slowly to the edge of the clearing, sensing her returning strength with each step. Among the trees, her feet sank into the carpet of pine needles, which pricked the soles of her feet, and she jumped back with a little cry. The sensation had brought more than the simple ordinary sting. It felt like something else,
something that now hovered as a dark, amorphous shape in the wings of her mind.

Resolutely, she stepped forward into the trees, standing quite still on the prickly needles. All that happened was that her feet became used to the sensation. An owl hooted its farewell to night. A squirrel skittered across the ground in front of her and leaped at a tree trunk. A thrush twittered, and then the forest came alive as the dawn chorus ushered in the new day. The blanket-wrapped figure made her way through the trees in the direction of the water that she seemed to know instinctively was to be found within a few yards.

Benedict awoke as always at the first note of the dawn chorus. He came awake with no intervening drowsiness, and his first action was to look toward the bedstead attached to the far wall. What he saw brought him to his feet in one fluid motion, a soft, explicit curse on his lips. Pulling on his shirt, he went outside. The tracks of her feet were visible indentations in the springy turf leading to the trees. He sighed with relief—at least there was only one set of footprints. At the trees, the tracks stopped. The pine needles were too thick and resilient to bear any mark of her progress. He swore again, tucking his shirt into the waistband of his britches. Wherever she had gone, she had gone alone. But he had no idea what condition she was in, whether her mind was functioning sufficiently to enable her to find her way back, whether she had enough sense to recognize her body’s limitations.

“Bryony?” he called, softly at first, then with increasing power, although it went against all his instincts and experience to announce his presence in full voice. One could never be certain that there were no observers, no
ears to hear. And Benedict Clare could afford neither. There was no answer, and he stood for a minute, listening intently for any sound that he would identify immediately as not indigenous to the woodland. Nothing. Collecting an iron kettle from the cabin, he made his way down to the creek in search of her, reflecting with customary pragmatism that he might as well kill two birds with one stone.

He saw her at the water’s edge as he broke through the trees. The huddled, blanketed figure was sitting on the bank, chin resting on drawn-up knees, her raven’s hair falling forward to conceal her profile. She was rapt in contemplation of something, whether of the internal or external world he could not guess. Making no attempt to disturb her immediately, he simply went to the creek’s edge and bent to fill the kettle.

“Good morrow, sir.” Bryony came out of her daydream as his figure filled her vision.

He straightened, swinging the now heavy kettle easily from one hand, a little frown drawing the fine eyebrows together over glowing black eyes. “Good morrow, Bryony.” He trod across the grass toward her, each step seemingly invested with purpose. “You are somewhat restored, I gather?”

“I find myself so,” she agreed. There was something a little forbidding suddenly about his expression, and she offered a tentative smile. “You do not object to my taking a walk, I trust?”

He dropped to his heels beside her. “In future, you will do me the courtesy of letting me know before you decide to go awandering.”

“But I am not a prisoner,” Bryony objected, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. If his statement had been a
mere request, she would have felt no need to protest it, but there was a tension in the atmosphere, and the statement had been made in an authoritative tone that admitted no dissension.

“That is perhaps a matter for definition at some later point,” he said evenly. “There is much that you do not understand.” He stood up and reached down for her hand. “Come, the damp bank of a creek in the dawn chill is not the ideal place for the ill-clad and but newly recovered.”

Bryony allowed him to pull her up. “I do not understand what you have said.”

“No, there is much that you do not understand,” he repeated. “And it is possible that you must remain in ignorance. For the moment, you must do as you are bid, I fear, and control your curiosity.”

It was not a declaration to be accepted by anyone with a flicker of spirit, and Bryony possessed rather more than a flicker. “I do not think I can agree to that,” she announced. “Apart from anything else, I do not know your name.”

“That is easily remedied,” he returned, sounding amused rather than annoyed by the stiffness of her voice. “My name is Benedict, and you may call me Ben, if you wish.”

Ben … Benedict … She turned the name over in her head and found it pleasing. It suited him, somehow. Plain, yet elegant; strong, yet sensitive. Sweet heaven, she was becoming fanciful! Or perhaps she always had been? She had no idea what she was like, and no clues, either.

“How did I come to be here?” The question followed the previous thought naturally.

“When you have had some breakfast and I’ve had another look at your back, I will satisfy your curiosity as far as I am able. And we will see what we can do to jog your errant memory.”

The anointing took place under a veneer of dignity maintained by an apparently indifferent silence that neither of them chose to break. Once Benedict was finished, remarking with quiet satisfaction that she was almost as good as new, she was rewrapped in the blanket, and they returned outside to the sun-drenched clearing. Bryony broached a subject at the forefront of her mind. “Do I have any clothes, Ben?”

He shook his head. “Rags and tatters, lass. Not that they weren’t costly scraps,” he added. “Rose damask with a hooped petticoat, lawn and lace, and satin pumps.” He watched her for some reaction. “You were dressed for dancing.” When she looked at him blankly, he said, “What I would like to know is why, dressed like that, you were in the barn—presumably the hayloft, since we didn’t see you earlier—at three o’clock in the morning. The dancing at Trueman’s had been over long since.”

Bryony shook her head helplessly. “I do not know. Are you sure my name is Bryony?”

“Unless you were wearing someone else’s drawers, it is.” He chuckled. “I suppose it is possible that you dressed up in this Bryony’s clothes for the same reason that took you to the barn at that hour.”

“What were you doing there?” There was challenge in both her voice and her pansy-blue eyes. “Did you set the fire?”

Benedict chewed on a stalk of grass for a minute, then shrugged. “As it happens. But I was not to know the barn had an occupant other than the rats.”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“My reasons are my own,” he told her in that soft, definite tone. “And they are not what concerns us at present. Does the name Trueman mean anything to you?”

Bryony was inclined to reply that if he would not answer her questions, she did not see why she should answer his, but common sense told her that she would be merely cutting off her nose to spite her face. She thought, her expression twisted with the effort, but there was nothing there. “No.”

“Bryony is an unusual name,” he mused, regarding her through narrowed eyes, hoping that the casual comment would trigger an automatic response. “Always assuming that you did not borrow it for some nefarious purpose.”

She smiled a little at that and wondered if it could possibly be true. Somehow she hoped not. At least having a name that she believed was her own gave her some sense of belonging in the world. “It’s the name of a flower, is it not?”

“I believe so.” He sighed. “We are not getting anywhere, are we? For the most part, your memory is intact; there is just one large chunk missing.”

“But it is the most important chunk of all,” she maintained, suddenly desolate. “What am I to do?”

It was a question exercising her companion considerably, but more along the lines of what was
he
to do. He appeared to be stuck with this stray waif, and from what he had seen of her so far, she did not strike him as a particularly biddable creature. She had a potentially dangerous curiosity that he dared not satisfy.

A low whistle sounded through the clearing, and he
stiffened. He’d told William to come only under cover of darkness. He whistled back, a soft, trilling melody barely distinguishable from a bird call.

Bryony looked at him in astonishment. “You are signaling to someone?”

“Yes, someone that you may not meet.” He stood up. “Come into the cabin.”

“But why may I not?” She found herself being pulled behind him, as she clutched the blanket convulsively, and there was a quality to his hold that sent a shiver of apprehension down her spine. The gentleness had gone, replaced by a taut determination.

He did not answer her, merely swung her onto the bedstead. As she struggled upright, vociferous protest on her lips, he took a thin strip of rawhide from the shelf. “I am sorry, but this is necessary for your own safety.” The mouth, which she had seen only curved with amusement or softened with compassion, was now a thin line within the neat, rich copper beard, and his eyes no longer glowed; they were hard black stones that glittered without warmth. Even as she cried out in fury and sudden fear of this stranger, he took one of her wrists and bound it with the leather band to one of the forked poles that formed the frame of the bed. “I won’t be gone long.” He ran a finger between the hide and the skin of her wrist. “If you do not pull on it, it will not chafe. Just lie quietly and try to sleep.” Then she was left in the dim light of the cabin, a prisoner tied to the bed, with no identity, no name, no sense of self or of her place in the world.

When Benedict came out of the cabin, William was waiting at the edge of the clearing. His heavy peasant face was set in an obstinate glower, which caused
Benedict to sigh in anticipation of trouble in the offing. William was spokesman for the band, more because of his natural aggression than for any articulate tact.

Deciding to take the offensive, Benedict strode across the clearing, his face hard. “You were told not to come here in daylight.”

“The men want to know what ye be goin’ to do with her.” William’s balding head jerked toward the cabin. “Unless she be dead.”

“No, she is not.” Benedict moved into the trees, gesturing imperatively to William that he follow. Although he knew the girl could not get to the window, he never dropped the habitual caution that had kept him alive for the last five years. “She is my responsibility. You need have no fear that I will allow her to endanger anyone.”