Free A Chorus of Innocents by P. F. Chisholm Page A

should certainly bring in a woman to keep her company. She said she did, one of the boys’ mothers usually.
    Had she perhaps found a friend, someone who could comfort her ? It wouldn’t be easy in a place where everyone knew everyone else and their business, but Elizabeth supposed it could be done. She had never tried it but it was possible.
    So her lover comes with a friend of his and cuts off Jamie’s head. One of them rapes her, they leave, and Poppy rides about forty miles to her friend Elizabeth in England, without even a cloak against the wet. Why?
    She had made soused herring for their supper and taken trouble over it. Why would you do that if your husband was about to be killed and you knew it?
    There was another room downstairs—James’ large study—which Elizabeth hadn’t looked in yet. She went to it, carrying the taper, and found the door locked. She checked for a key but there wasn’t one. Infuriated, she pushed it hard and then put the taper on the table and went out the kitchen door and round the house to see if there was another way in. That part of the manse joined onto the church alehouse in the higgledy-piggledy way of old church architecture. If there was another door into the study, it was through the alehouse and at nearly midnight, it was locked and there was no one in the place to let her in. The village was as quiet and dead as a doornail.
    She went back into the house through the kitchen and as she passed into the hall and went toward the stairs to go to bed, someone hit her with a piece of wood.
    It cracked across the side of her skull and made stars cartwheel round the place, she went sideways and almost down and glimpsed white linen, thought briefly about ghosts, then grappled the very solid though small attacker. She was used to being hit; she wasn’t as shocked by it as someone who wasn’t. She twisted the arm up the back and managed to take the bit of wood away, although it had broken when it connected with her. The taper was still alight on the table and then she realised that it was an old face and white straggly hair plaited for sleep.
    â€œLady Hume?” she asked in astonishment.
    â€œYe’ll no’ get me again, ye wilna, ye bastard…Lady Widdrington?”
    â€œJesu, ma’am, why did you hit me?”
    â€œI didna.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI hit a reiver that was sneaking in the house. What are ye doing here?”
    â€œYou hit me with a piece of firewood and…” She felt her ear which had taken some of the blow though her cap had protected it a little.”…crushed my ear.” She shook her head to try and clear it. “What were you thinking, ma’am?”
    â€œIt was a reiver.”
    â€œNo,” said Elizabeth, “it was me. I was coming upstairs to go to bed. Are you quite well, ma’am?”
    â€œOh.” Lady Hume’s eyes had cleared. “Perhaps I was dreaming.”
    â€œYes.” She let go of the old woman’s arm and picked up the bit of firewood that had broken. “If I come to bed upstairs, will you knife me?”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Elizabeth rubbed her ear and blinked at Lady Hume. “Do you remember me?” she asked, “Lady Widdrington? Mrs Burn’s friend?”
    â€œOf course I do. Now the reiver’s gone, will ye come ben to bed?”
    Elizabeth was too tired and still muzzy from the blow to work out what was going on. She picked up the taper, gestured for Lady Hume to go in front of her and followed, feeling a headache on its way.
    There were four bedrooms upstairs and Lady Hume gestured to one where there were rushes on the floor and hangings on the wall to try to do something about the perennial chill from the stone. Really, thought Elizabeth abstractedly, you needed to put in paneling to get it to warm up a little. Sir Henry had required careful manoevring to get paneling installed