“F…fire,” she answered. “She speaks of fire.”
Will had had no formal education but he had handled many emergencies in his life on a farm and he knew how to act quickly. “We must get the children and Meg out of here.”
“There is probably no danger. I’m sure my mistress was only rambling. I’m sure—”
“Yes, of course she was,” Will said soothingly. “Mayhap she was talking in her sleep. She has just had a baby. Sometimes women say odd things at times like that. I’m sure it is nothing, so you must go back to her and see that she is well cared for.”
“Yes, you are right,” Penella said gratefully, so glad for this man’s calm strength.
“Go on now. Go to bed. Everything will look all right in the morning.”
After she left, Will lost no time in waking Meg. He knew he had to get all of them out of there as quickly as possible. Since Meg had told him of the switch of the children, he had expected something like this to happen. Of course Alida would kill this boy who now threatened her own children.
Meg, good, sweet Meg, did not ask questions when her husband woke her and told her she was to sneak the children past the guard and get out of the castle grounds as fast as possible. She sensed that the children were in danger and that was enough for her.
Will went outside and distracted the guard with an exceedingly vulgar story while Meg held the sleeping children close to her and ran down the old stone steps. Once outside she pulled her shawl over her head and kept walking briskly toward the village. She thanked heaven that in these modern times there was no raising and lowering of the drawbridge. The truth of why John Hadley still lived in a castle was that he was too cheap to build a comfortable house. The thick stone walls were no longer needed for protection.
Once Will was sure there had been enough time for Meg to get away, he tried very hard to think. If there were a fire and babies were to have been burned, tiny bodies would be expected to be found. If bodies were not found, a search would be made and, alive, the boy would always be in danger.
It took Will only a moment to decide what he had to do. He did not like it and he thought that perhaps performing such a hideous deed would guarantee that he would not be allowed into heaven. But when it came to Meg and those children she already loved so much, he didn’t mind giving up heaven.
Leaving the castle, he went running toward the churchyard where the bodies of his twin sons had been laid to rest days before. If there were a fire, there would be the bodies of two babies found in the rubble.
Just before dawn a fire broke out in the old castle. The ancient oak floor joists went up like paper, making a blaze so hot the lead roof melted and rained down on the people of the courtyard. There was an attempt to put the fire out, but it
was too hot too soon.
In the middle of it John Hadley stood and screamed, “My son, my son,” over and over again. He would have flung himself into the flames to rescue the child but for half a dozen men holding him back. They could see there was no use, as the first room to go had been the top of the tower where the children were kept.
It was two days before the ashes cooled enough to go through the rubble and in it were found the bodies of two babies. There wasn’t much left of the old castle and everyone whose lives depended on the running of the estate waited in anxiety to see what John was going to do. By now the rumors of what had happened after the birth of the two babies had reached epic proportions. Some said that John’s wife had given birth to a monster. Some said that the boy was the result of Alida selling her soul to the devil in return for a son. Most people agreed that it was better that both children had died in the cleansing flames.
Some guessed at the truth but the ones who knew were wise enough to keep their own counsel.
What everyone feared was what would happen when John came out of the room where he had barred himself.
When he did emerge a week later, he was a changed man. His hair, once solid black, was now the color of steel. There were deep runnels down the sides of his mouth and there was a hard, cold, dead look in his eyes.
He rode into the courtyard on a violent horse, one that John had previously said was good only to feed the dogs, and its mouth dripped blood from the saw-toothed bridle he was using.
“What are you doing lying about?” he bellowed at people in the courtyard, and even his voice seemed to have changed. “There is work to be done,” he yelled. “I am going to build a house. A fine house. A house to honor my queen. Now get off your backsides and work!”
From that day forward there was no mention of the son who had died in the fire and John Hadley was a changed man. Before, he had been a man of simplicity, a man of great passion, of great loves and great hates, but now he seemed to have nothing inside him. He hated no one, loved no one. His only concern was in building a stone house, a beautiful stone house filled with beautiful things. It was as though he’d come to the decision that if he could not leave behind children who suited him, he would leave behind a house of great significance.
As for his wife, she too had changed, but for the better. Now her husband did not curse her or revile her. He no longer visited her bed but for that she was glad. In truth, John came to look at her as he would another man, and when he found out she knew something about gardens, he began asking her opinion.
As the years went by, their marriage was replaced with friendship and little by little, Alida’s hope began to come back to her. Some women would have hated their husbands to look at them with no warmth, but for Alida, the absence of hate in her husband’s eyes was almost love.
Never did she for a minute regret what she had done in setting the fire and killing the boy, and her own daughter as well. She felt that the two of them had died so her many other children could live now and in the future. Now there was no more talk of giving Gilbert Rasher all of her children’s property. In fact the man had shown up after the fire and said that John “owed” him even though the boy was dead. It was not his fault the boy had died. John had spit on the contract and walked away. Gilbert rode away and did not bother the Hadley family again, not even to claim the ten-year-old girl who was to have been his bride.
Nearly fifty miles away, Will and Meg Watkins bought a farm and settled down to raise “their” two children. Will never told his wife that on the night they left, he had stolen a bag containing six exquisite gold cups out from under the very arm of a heavily sleeping Gilbert Rasher. The cups were now hidden under the floor of the farmhouse, quite safe, one missing a ruby he’d used to pay for the farm, but otherwise intact. When the children were older he planned to give the cups to them.
He didn’t tell Meg the truth about the fire, about the burned bodies of the infants found in the rubble. He didn’t want her to think her precious babies were in danger or he feared she might never let them out the door.
He told her John had given him money to buy the farm and had wanted them to move away from the village where they’d both grown up because there had been cases of plague reported there. Will said that John and his wife were building a fine new house and many, many years from now he would want Meg to bring the children to him. Until then she and Will were to give them a safe, country upbringing.
All Meg cared about was that the children were hers. She was glad she wouldn’t have to take them to the castle and turn them over to someone else as soon as they were weaned. But just in case, she nursed them until they were two years old.
And after they were weaned and no one came for them, Meg seemed to forget that the children were not hers.