Ondine Read online

  “You are the king—”

  “I rule by Parliament,” Charles said huskily. “I do not ever

  forget that my father’s head was severed from his body; I rule by

  the law. I am fond of my neck and the crown upon it.”

  , A week later Warwick traveled the streets again in his coach,

  homeward bound for North Lambria. The coach came to a halt, and he leaned from it to speak with Jake, serving then as his coachman. “Why do we stop?” he queried.

  “A death procession, my lord,” Jake replied. “A lot of three poor wretches, bound for the Tyburn Tree.”

  Warwick gazed out the window. Crowds gathered about a cart as it moved down the street. He saw a youth, an old man—and a woman.

  The woman turned suddenly. She was filthy, tattered, but something about her compelled his further scrutiny. Her hair, tangled with filthy straw, still caught the sun’s reflection. It was long, waving, and curling down her back, a rich auburn when the sun caught its highlights. She was young … surely less than two decades of life had passed her by. She held her chin high. Her face was smudged and filthy, but her eyes burned with a haunting defiance. She was thin and pathetic.

  Yet it was not with lust or love that he looked upon her. Warwick Chatham’s eyes narrowed, and he tried to imagine her scrubbed and scoured. Her life would be forfeit in a matter of minutes.

  And wasn’t any extra moment of life precious?

  “Jake!” he said suddenly. “I’ve heard tell that a man or woman can be saved from the gallows if taken in marriage before the rope is pulled. Is that true, Jake?”

  “Aye,” Jake muttered. “So reads the law.”

  “Jake,” Warwick commanded tensely, “follow the procession.”

  PART I

  Ondine

  A water nymph by legend;

  one who gained a soul through

  marriage to a mortal.

  Tyburn Tree May 1679

  Chapter 1

  The worst part was feeling the noose around her neck, grating harshly against the tenderness of her throat, itching and bruising until she longed to scream and wrench herself free.

  But she had promised herself that she would not scream, that she would not create any more of a show for the spectators than they were already going to see. She reminded herself that she was no martyr. It would be best to die as a common thief, rather than to have her head severed from her neck on a charge of treason. She could~at least assure herself that she had fought a valiant battle against the odds. She’d lost, and now that it appeared her last hope was gone, she was determined not to falter—or further entertain a rabble that found amusement in death.

  “How are ye doing, girl?”

  As the cart jolted along, Ondine turned to the old man beside her who had voiced the question. His dark sunken eyes were full of sadness, and she longed to reach out and comfort him, but she could not, for her wrists were shackled together.

  “I think that I would be doing fine, Joseph, had they but waited to tie the noose …”

  Her voice faded away as she noted a pair of scruffy children following alongside the cart. Children! Mother of God! What kind of a woman urged her offspring to ogle suffering and death? But then, since they had first been dragged from Newgate an hour ago, she had been appalled by the throngs of people who had crowded the streets for a glimpse of the hanging. And the people had followed them from Newgate to St. Sepulchre, when she and Joseph and a terrified youth known as Little Pat had been given nosegays. The crowd was still with them now as they traveled down Holborn, High Holborn, St. Giles High Street …

  “We’re coming to the corner of Endell and Broad Street,” Joseph warned Ondine.

  Again she glanced at his dearly beloved face, wrinkled and etched from a life of poverty. “I’ll not drink myself to a stupor to amuse this rabble,” she told him with softly spoken dignity.

  Joseph smiled wanly at the girl, seized with a heartache that had nothing to do with his own impending death. He was old, he had seen enough of this life and was ready for the next. But the girl! She was young, and before Newgate gaol had robbed her bones of flesh, her cheeks of color, and her hair of luster, she had been very beautiful. Even now, with filth dusting her translucent features and her clothing reduced to tattered rags, there was something fine about her. Perhaps it was in the way she stood, straight and proud, her chin high, her blue eyes shimmering with dignity and defiance.

  His heartache was for her, for her youth. She had the vitality and exuberance of a spring morning, a natural exhilaration for life. Her true nature, beneath an outer layer of determination and fierce cunning, was sweet and sensitive; even in the bowels of hellish Newgate she had looked to her fellow man, sharing a crust of molded bread with anyone who appeared in greater need. She had cried out furiously against their jailors. She had planned an escape for herself and Joseph that had almost succeeded. And if she hadn’t paused to care about Little Pat, she would have escaped.

  Joseph gighed. This girl, this Ondine, was surely not the common lass she had claimed to be when she had joined their group of poor and homeless in the forest. She moved with too great a grace, spoke with too melodious a tone. She had dressed in rags, but her manner had been that of a lady born and bred, even if she had fought against injustice with the rugged verve and vigor of a fishwife! She had defended them all, and they had accepted her with no questions. She was a mystery they had never attempted to solve.

  And it seemed that the mystery would die today. Joseph was suddenly furious. They were going to die for trying to live. Maddie, Old Tom, and crippled Simkins last week, and today the three of them. They had committed no crime but to struggle to eat. Joseph did not care for himself, but that they were to take this girl with all her spirit and snuff out her life—that was a crime.

  “Drink the ale that they give you, girl,” Joseph advised. He swallowed suddenly and painfully as he struggled to speak the truth kindly. “Sometimes the rope … sometimes ‘tis not quick. Don’t mind these gawkers. The ale can make it easier. Let it.”

  Their procession—the two of them and Little Pat in the cart, the friar who waddled beside it, two guards, the black-cowled executioner, and the magistrate—came to a sudden halt. They had reached the Bowl, and as was the custom, the innkeeper came out, and they were offered ale.

  Ondine hesitated before stretching her wrists to the limit of her shackles to accept the cup offered her.

  I am not afraid, she tried to tell herself. I am not afraid. God knows that I was guilty of no sin against Him. Every step that I have taken, I have taken with care; I could have changed nothing. And now I must find serenity and not be afraid.

  But she was afraid, and still unwilling to accept her fate. God! How she had longed to clear her father’s name of the injustice offered him in death. She had dreamed of returning home to avenge that death and prove the devious treachery behind it. But she’d never had the chance. Along with the beggars in the forest to which she had run—the kind people who had become her friends— she was to die. She accepted the ale and prayed that it would give her courage so that she could scorn those who so unjustly took her life and made a mockery of her death.

  Ondine drank deeply and discovered that the bitter ale only added to her misery. With each swallow the noose about her neck chafed her throat, and the liquid running through her offered no warmth, no courage to sustain her.

  The spectacle at the Bowl came to an end, and the cart began to move once more. Ondine tried to close her mind to the shouts about her, to the hoots and catcalls of the men who told the executioner she would be more sport alive. They were nearing Tyburn Tree now, the three-legged structure where their ropes would be tied. Then the horses would be whipped to frenzy, and she, Joseph, and Little Pat would dangle by their necks until dead.

  Let it be fast, God, Ondine prayed silently. She felt a dizziness sweep through her so that she thought she would falter and fall as she saw the open galleries that flanked the gall
ows, galleries where spectators paid two shillings apiece for a bird’s-eye view of the execution.

  The galleries were filled.

  Ondine closed her eyes. She could feel the sun on her face, and a soft damp breeze that promised rain swirled lightly about her cheeks. She opened her eyes. She would never see the sun again.

  Ridiculous things came to her mind. She would never know what it was like to be clean again, to feel her hair, freshly washed, fall softly about her shoulders. She would never run across a meadow, pluck a wildflower from a clump of dew-damp earth …

  “Hold fast to God, girl!” Joseph said softly. “For His is a better world, and He knows the goodness in you and will be there to embrace you.”

  Die—no! She couldn’t be about to die! She would fight until the end. She would kick and scream and bite—and gain nothing, she told herself bitterly. There was no escape now. She would not give the crowd its money’s worth!

  She tried to nod and found that she could not; movement was tightening her noose.

  They were beneath the gallows. The fat friar was muttering unintelligible benedictions, and the executioner was demanding to know if they had any last words.

  Little Pat started to scream, begging for his life, crying out his fear. Ondine bit hard into her lip. The lad couldn’t have been more than fourteen, and he had been condemned to die for cutting down a tree that happened to grow in an earl’s forest. Not unlike her own “crime.”

  And the spectators were enjoying every minute. Ondine stepped forward in the cart. She did, indeed, have a number of last words.

  “What is the matter with you?” she demanded, her voice ringing out loud and strong and clear. A murmur rippled through the crowd, and then a hush followed. “Can you truly enjoy this boy’s plight? If so, I pray that you find one day that you are in dire need of the two shillings you paid for your seats, and that you find you are tempted to fish a stream that belongs to some gentry, just to feed your empty bellies. Suffer with this boy! Else you could well find that his suffering could be your own—”

  “Hang her!” a furious voice cried out, and the chant was quickly picked up by those who wanted a show, not a sermon that could touch their hearts with guilt

  “Hold your peace!” cried out Sir Wilton, the local magistrate.

  He was silent as the crowd toned down once again, and in that silence Ondine looked miserably to Joseph. “What are they waiting for now?” she begged him, suddenly anxious to have done with it.

  “Marriage offers.”

  “Marriage offers!”

  Joseph shrugged. ” ‘Tis custom, girl. Just like the travesty of this procession, just like the cup of ale. If a lad will step up and marry ye, girl, ye’U be set free.”

  Ondine stared about her at the crowd. There was not a man in sight who would not gag her if he touched her. They were lecherous and filthy, the lot of them. And yet her heart had quickened, for in these seconds she knew how deeply she cherished life. She thought she would face anything just to live.

  “I’d love like heaven to take on the girl!” cried out a potbellied balding merchant. “But me wife ‘ould have us both beaten to death before nightfall!”

  A roar of laughter rose like the wind. Filthy scum! Ondine thought. Perhaps she would rather die than be touched by the likes of him. Her eyes narrowed sharply. Marry, yes! The words would mean nothing to her except escape! The leering buzzards! If one would only offer for her, she could live—and then teach him what rot he was before disappearing.

  And then she thought of her own appearance—and her smell! Dear God, but what two weeks in Newgate could do to one! She knew her hair was tousled and wild, streaked with bits of hay and dirt. Her cheeks were pinched and filthy, and her ragged gown hung about her like a muddied sack. No one would ask for her.

  “Well, then,” began the magistrate, “I’ve no maid for the old man or boy, and no lad for the girl. The hanging will commence—”

  “Wait up there, guv’nor!”

  Ondine was startled to see a sprightly little man jump close to the three-legged structure called Tyburn Tree, that instrument of misery and death. Tears sprang to her eyes. He was an ugly fellow—short, sallow, with a beak for a nose—but his dark eyes were bright and warm, and there was a whisper of command to his voice. He was not one of the lascivious gawkers. He was decked out as a coachman. His breeches and jacket were a dignified black, his shirt white. His appearance was that of a well-kept servant, yet he spoke as one accustomed to voicing his own mind.

  “I’ll wait up for a moment, I’ll warrant. What is it, then? Do you wish to wed the girl?” The magistrate guffawed loudly. ” ‘Tis the only way a jackanapes with such a face could hope to win a wench of youth or beauty—be that beauty filthy and grimed!”

  “I’d have a word with the girl,” the ugly little man said. He came close to Ondine and spoke softly, not willing to entertain the crowd with his business.

  “Be ye a murderess, girl?”

  Ondine shook her head, aware that she barely kept the tears that hovered in her eyes from spilling down her cheeks. She’d been accused of murder—but not here, and not now. And she was guilty of nothing.

  “Yer crime?”

  “Poaching.”

  The ugly little jackanapes with the warm eyes and beak nose nodded, smiling at her not unkindly.

  “Would ye be willing to wed to escape the hangman’s noose?”

  The executioner began to laugh loud and laboriously, the sound muffled by his black face mask. Apparently he had been close enough to hear the words of the swarthy little man.

  “Ha! Tis like as not the maid would choose death o’er marriage to the likes of you, gnome!”

  The little man flashed a look of scorn to the executioner that silenced the hooded man immediately.

  The thought of refusal had never entered Ondine’s mind. She had been wondering furiously at the terrible seconds between life and death, imagining one moment the feel of the sunshine and the breeze, and the next moment … the rope snapping tight. She might have died instantly, entering what great chasm she did not know. Or perhaps she might have strangled slowly, knowing horrible agony as the sunshine paled to webbed shades of gray.

  And this little man, this ugly little gnome of a man, had come to save her. She began to feel guilty, knowing that he was a good man and not a cruel one, and that despite his kindness, she would have to leave him, too. If he was serious, if she managed to live!

  “Sir,” she said loudly for the benefit of the crowd, for she could, at the very least, commend his kindness to those who mocked him. “I would gladly wed a beast of the forest, a dragon or a toad, so dear to me is life. I should be forever grateful to call you husband, for you are none of those, but a man of greater mercy than any who calls himself gentleman here.”

  The jackanapes smiled at her reply, then chuckled softly. “‘Tis no toad you’ll be receiving, but some might say as that ye have joined up with a beast of the forest—or a dragon, mayhaps. ‘Tis not me ye’ll be marryin’, girl.”

  “Here! Here!” the magistrate protested. “The law does not hold for you to take the girl away for another! You wed her here and now, as is the law, or she swings—”

  “Stop!” was suddenly roared in interruption. “If you must bluster out the law, I charge you to uphold it!”

  The voice, coming from the rear of the crowd, was deep and sure, accustomed to authority and brooking no opposition. Ondine frowned, trying to stare through the crowd and discover the speaker.

  Then the crowd began to mumble softly and give way to the num. Ondine emitted a little gasp when she saw him, for he watt not one of the common crowd.

  He was a tall man and appeared to be more so because he was lean, and his clothing—tailored tight-fitting breeches, elegant ruffled white shirt and frock coat—clung to the handsomely pro-portioned muscles with a negligent flare. He was obviously of the aristocracy, but though he had condescended to the ruffled shirt, there was nothing else frilled about
him. His hair was a tawny color, not at all curled, but clubbed severely at his nape. He wore no beard or mustache, and though his features were handsome— his cheekbones high, his nose long and straight, his eyes large and wide set beneath arched chestnut brows—he had a look about him that was unnerving. His face was … hard. But something about his eyes was chilling. Ondine thought, surprised that she could think this at such a time. They were bright, sharp, alert, and thickly fringed with lashes, but like his features, they were hard.

  And, apparently, they made as much an impression on the magistrate as they did upon her, for he stepped away from the cart as the man stepped forward. It was not just that the man was obviously of the nobility, it was the threat he offered as a man. His appearance was arresting and promised an uncompromising danger, should he be crossed.

  Ondine saw a glimpse of warmth about him as he nodded briefly to the little jackanapes, a single brow raising as if the two exchanged a thought, the thought being that the magistrate was a man contemptible, beneath dung. A slight smile seemed to tug at his lips, but it vanished quickly so that she thought she might well have imagined it.

  “I am the man who wishes to wed her—here, and according to the law. I wish to speak to the girl myself,” he said, and without awaiting a reply, he turned to Ondine. She noted that he blinked briefly, offended by her scent, but then he proceeded to speak.

  “What was your crime, girl?”

  She hesitated only briefly. “I killed a deer.”

  His brow knit into an incredulous frown. “You’re about to hang for killing a deer?”

  “Aye, my lord, and it should not surprise you,” she heard herself say bitterly. “The deer belonged to a certain Lord Lovett— or at least it lived upon his property. ‘Tis your kind that has sent me here.” Her own kind, she reminded herself dryly. But she had been with Joseph and his fellows through the long nights at Newgate and aligned herself with them.

  He lifted a brow, and she quickly wondered why she had chosen to offend him, and then she wondered why not. That the ugly little serving man might marry her, she had found possible. But not mis man, not a member of the landed gentry. Hope had become a twisted torture, a macabre jest. And since he was certainly not about to marry her, he was nothing more than curious. And since she was about to die, she might as well quell his curiosity with a truth that was offensive.