Trapped at the Altar

“Then mount up and follow me. I’ll have a fire lit soon enough.” He rode over to the coach to talk to the laboring men.

“Can you get on Sphinx, Tilly?” Ari led the horse over to the boulder. “Stand on the rock and climb up behind me.” She mounted, holding the horse steady as Tilly scrambled onto his back behind her. Ivor nodded and took the lead, heading along the track the way he’d come.

The barn was little more than a rough shack, which, judging by the smell, had once housed goats. It had a loft, though, reached through a rickety ladder. “We can sleep up there,” Ari said instantly. “And the men can stay down here. The horses can bed down in the sheds over there.”

“There should be enough dry bedding inside the coach.” Ivor was relieved to see Ariadne return to her usual assertive self. She’d looked such a miserable, half-drowned waif when he’d seen her on her rock a few minutes earlier that he’d felt a stab of anxiety. She was such a diminutive creature, she’d looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away, huddled and shivering in her soaked cloak.

“Tilly and I will light a fire, if you get some of the men to bring in the bags that have bedding and provisions.” She unclasped her sodden cloak, holding it away from her with an air of distaste. “If we can get a really good fire going, maybe we can dry some of this stuff.”

“Can’t light a fire without wood,” Tilly stated, looking around. “Where are we goin’ to find dry timber around here?”

“I’ll check the sheds,” Ivor said swiftly. It wouldn’t do for Tilly to lose heart, either. “Stay here. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Ariadne climbed the rickety ladder to the loft. The roof seemed intact, and it was dry, at least, and the floor, although dusty, seemed clean enough. “We’re in luck, Tilly,” she called down. “There’s a pile of straw here, and it doesn’t seem too moldy. Come on up and help me fashion a mattress.”

Tilly climbed the ladder, her head poking through the hole in the floor as she surveyed the loft. “Certainly seems dry enough,” she conceded, bringing the rest of her body into the low space. She tackled the straw, and Ari left her to it, going back down just as Ivor returned with an armful of wood.

“It’s damp, but I think it’ll take eventually.” He dropped the wood in the center of the shed. “We need something to get it to light.”

“If we break that up . . .” Ari pointed to a wooden feeding trough. “It would act as kindling. It seems dry enough.”

Within an hour, the fire was lit, and the men came in, divesting themselves of their dripping cloaks. The coach, newly mended, was outside, the horses tethered in the sheds with nose bags.

Tilly was stirring the aromatic contents of a large copper kettle set on a trivet over the fire. She looked up as the men entered and said sharply, “Before you all get too comfortable, someone fetch me the sack of potatoes from the coach and that bag o’ flour. These rabbits had little enough on ’em to feed us all, but a few potatoes and some nice ’erb dumplings will bulk it up. Oh,” she added, as one of the men turned to go outside again. “And I think I spotted some carrot tops over by the side of that shed. Overgrown, most like, left over from someone’s garden, but better than nothing, I reckon. And,” she added as an afterthought over her shoulder, “more water, if I’m to make dumplings.”

Tilly’s word was law on this journey. She was the source of all domestic comfort, dispensing food, medicine, and advice freely, and she seemed to relish her role. It was vastly different from her subservient position in Daunt valley, where, like most of the women, her job was to keep her mouth shut and do as she was told while attending to the men’s needs.

Two of the men set up a beer keg in one corner of the shack, and the men gathered around with pitch-coated leather tankards. Ivor opened a flagon of wine and poured two cups. “Ari?” He held out one cup.

“Thank you.” She took it, drawing closer to the fire.

“Are you warmer now?” he asked, standing beside her.

“Yes, much. And if we can keep the fire in all night, we should have dry clothes by morning.” Cloaks were spread out around the fire, steaming gently. She would have liked to change out of her damp riding habit, but their quarters were too crowded and confined to make that practical.

“We’ll keep it in,” Ivor assured her. “The men will sleep around it, and someone will have sufficient interest in keeping it fed.” He drank from his cup, staring sightlessly into the fire.

Ariadne hugged her arms around her, taking occasional sips from her cup, wondering how this strange awkwardness had come upon them. They were uncomfortable with each other, their conversations stilted at best but mostly just simple exchanges of information or instruction. Ivor was no longer the careless, happy-go-lucky companion of her childhood or the comfortable confidant of later years. And the memory of those few nights of lovemaking was so distant and indistinct they might not have happened at all. Ever since that night when he’d said that without her feeling love, making love meant nothing to him, he had made no move to touch her, even when their sleeping arrangements afforded them the privacy. Every night, she dutifully took a spoonful of Tilly’s potion, but she was beginning to wonder if there was any point to it anymore. She was certainly in no danger of conceiving at the moment.

She moved away from him as the men came back with Tilly’s shopping list, and taking out her knife, began to peel potatoes. At least while she was doing something useful, she felt less bereft. She could feel Ivor’s eyes on her as she bent to her task, but after a moment, he turned away from the fire and went to join the men at the beer keg.

Tilly glanced once at Ariadne, a sharp, shrewd assessment, before she returned to chopping ancient, wrinkled carrots and their green tops into the stew. Most nights, she slept in the same space as the married couple. When they were lucky enough to find an inn with a separate bedchamber, she slept on a mattress outside the door. But she was fairly certain that for the last several weeks, there had been little activity in the marriage bed. Miss Ari was looking peaky and unhappy, Sir Ivor sometimes black as a thunder sky.

The rain began to let up as night fell. Ivor lit the lanterns, and the little shack took on qualities of warmth and comfort and safety that in the daylight would have seemed impossible. Tilly dished up rabbit stew and dumplings, the beer and wine flowed, and the Daunt men ate and drank, sang and joked, leaning back on piles of baggage, as easy and comfortable as if at their own fireside.

These men had spent many a worse night, Ariadne reflected, watching them from her own corner of the fire. They had sat out on frozen beaches with their lanterns, drawing ships onto the rocks; they had raided farms at black of night, they had robbed horsemen and carriages on the wilds of Bodmin Moor and returned to the valley at dawn, as merry as Robin Hood’s men. Although none of their spoils went from the rich to the poor.

She stole a glance at Ivor. He, too, seemed at his ease, as if he’d shared in those dubious adventures, but he never had. He had never been included in anything outside the law, and now, of course, they knew why. They were to be respectable, their respectability based on a midden of ill-gotten gains. Her mouth twisted at the cynical reflection. But it could be argued that without the repression and persecution of Cromwell’s Protectorate, the Daunt family would have continued on the path of righteousness.