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

in the main bedroom at Widdrington castle, but it had been worth it.
    There was a four-poster bed and a truckle under it as well, a jordan, and a couple of clothes chests and a table covered with clutter that Elizabeth couldn’t identify in the darkness. Lady Hume went and used the jordan and then sat on the bed and watched her every move like a little bird while Elizabeth got ready for bed.
    Despite the freezing cold, she took her gown and riding habit off because she wasn’t prepared to go to bed fully clothed for a second night running. She draped them on a clothes chest because Lady Hume’s clothes were on all the available hooks, dropped her petticoats, bumroll, and stays and left her stockings on because they were warm knitted ones. She shivered in her shift and started to pull the truckle bed out.
    â€œGet in wi’ me,” ordered Lady Hume. “There’s a hole in the truckle’s mattress and it’s aye cold.”
    There was indeed a hole in the truckle’s mattress, and it was indeed cold. But Elizabeth hesitated. She didn’t mind sharing a bed, what she minded was being hit on the head with firewood by an old lady.
    â€œGet in,” said Lady Hume. “That reiver’s gone and he’s hurt my wrist forebye.” She held out her wrist and Elizabeth saw that she had grabbed it tighter than she thought and there would be bruises in the morning. Well, she’d been stunned. “I’ll see to him if he comes back, hinny. Ye’re safe wi’ me.”
    Jesu, thought Elizabeth, I’m too tired and muzzy-headed for this. So she smiled and climbed in next to Lady Hume, who immediately curled onto her side.
    â€œNow curl into mah back to keep me warm there,” said the old lady. “Dinna kick, dinna wriggle, dinna talk, and we’ll hae a story to help ye sleep. Would ye like a story?”
    â€œAh…”
    â€œAy, I’ll tell ye of when I wis a girl and it wis all different, eh?”
    Lying curled into the old lady’s back with her ear throbbing and her headache setting in properly, Elizabeth thought that the last thing she needed was a story. She got one anyway.
    Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was a little girl called Agnes, which means lamb in the Latin, and she had three brothers called Ralph and Jock and Hughie, ay, Hughie like you, and they played nicely though sometimes Jock and Hughie were rough. Jock and Hughie were boys so they would practise with swords and spears and Agnes had to learn to be a wife so she had to learn huswifery and a little cooking, which she didn’t like, and needlework, which she loved. She had a beautiful piece of silk that she was embroidering for an altar front, for it was before the change and churches were pretty places, all fu’ wi’ pictures ye could make up stories wi’. And they were as happy as could be in their tower and farm with all their surname around them and so they were as happy as birds in a tree, as happy as conies in a meadow. Then Agnes went away to her aunt at the big castle to learn huswifery better and that was sad for then they weren’t together anymore and the boys were riders like their father and uncles before them.
    And then war came and Agnes rode away with her aunt from Bad King Henry’s men, she rode and rode, all day and night she rode for there was no telling which way to go, and all you could see was the smoke by day and the fire by night and she didna know what had happened to Ralph and Jock and Hughie nor any of her family, for Bad King Henry’s men were burning and killing all the way up the Merse to Edinburgh, the Rough Wooing they called it, for it was to get the little Queen to marry the little Prince Edward.
    And one day Agnes was in a wood and she had been riding and riding with her aunt’s people and the men around her frightened, and she fell asleep for she was very tired and when she woke up she was all