Chase the Dawn Read Free Page B

few spoonsful her shrunken belly was sated, and she lay back with a sigh of repletion,too contented to worry about an answer to the question. Time enough after she had had another sleep.
    Benedict took the bowl and laid her down on the bed again. “By tomorrow, you will be able to do things for yourself, Bryony. Then we must try to jog your memory.”
    Bryony responded with an inarticulate mutter and turned on her side—a maneuver accomplished with only a twinge of discomfort. Sleep, warm and welcome, enfolded her.
    It was full night when next she opened her eyes. Gradually, the seemingly impenetrable darkness gave way before her accustomed vision, and she was able to make out the shapes of the simple furniture—the plank table and three-legged stools; shelves simply cut out of the log walls; the unglazed aperture that served as a window. Tonight it let in the soft, moist air of a Virginian summer night and the milky illumination of starlight, but the cabin would be bitter in winter, even with the wooden shutters fastened.
    She turned her head with the care of experience to look in the direction of the quiet, regular breathing. The man—for that was all she knew of him—lay peacefully asleep on a straw pallet beside the empty hearth. A rudimentary spit and cooking pots were in the hearth below the log-and-clay chimney.
    Something told her that this was no backwoodsman. She did not know what it was that convinced her of the fact, maybe an elusive knowledge based on a runaway memory. His voice, perhaps. That soft lilt was tauntingly familiar, though she had heard it so often in the twilight world of semiconsciousness that that memory could be explained. There was something about his hands thatdidn’t match this primitive lifestyle. They were callused, the fingernails squared, short, and practical, but the fingers were long, sensitive, elegant. How did she know that they were not the hands of a man accustomed to tearing his livelihood from the elements?
    Bryony frowned and wriggled into a more comfortable position. She did not know who she was; she did not know how she had arrived in this place; she did not know the day or the year or the month. But there were all sorts of things she did know. She knew about backwoodsmen, it seemed. She could add and subtract, multiply and divide in her head. She could remember lines of poetry and Latin verbs. She seemed to be able to reason perfectly well. She could give orders to her body, and they were obeyed—or, at least, she amended ruefully, they would be once she was physically stronger. In short, apart from some significant and clearly selective gaps, her memory seemed to be functioning perfectly well.
    She was wide-awake. Was it yesterday that she had had the soup, or just a few hours ago? Impossible to tell; time just ran along without dividing lines when all one did was sleep. The urge to see something other than this log-enclosed space grew inexorably until it would have taken an indomitable will to resist. Since Bryony could see no real reason why she should resist the urge, the battle did not last very long. Casting a wary eye at the sleeping figure on the pallet, she sat up. The room remained on an even keel and continued to do so even when she swung her legs to the floor and stood up with exaggerated care. Her legs rather felt like jelly, but they did not collapse. Clutching the blanket securely around her with one hand, she shuffled to the door, using herfree hand to gain support from whatever solidly rooted objects appeared on the way. At the door, she looked again at the recumbent body. He must need his sleep, she thought with a considerate little nod. It would be most unfair to wake him up. And besides, maybe he would raise objections to this expedition. On that convincing thought, she lifted the wooden latch, biting her lip nervously in case the opening door should make some alerting noise in the night stillness.
    Nothing occurred to disturb the quiet, and Bryony