Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall Read Free

you’ll wear me out in my old age if you go on like this.” And out she went, locking the door, with not a word of goodnight.
    Bel was used to being in disgrace with everyone and now that she was in love with Sam Turner she didn’t care. She lay awake thinking how being in love had changed many things. Perhaps even the priest in his hole was no longer frightening.
    It was a day three years before when she had found her former bedroom unlocked for once. She had seen Mary the maid taking candlesticks downstairs to polish and wondered if she might not have locked the little chapel up again. So she had tried the door and peeped round and looked straight at a hooded head emerging through the floor. It had vanished at once and the trapdoor with its rug draped over it had shut with a bang. But even while she stared it had been cautiously raised again and the whole man had emerged with his finger to his lips. She had never seen him close to because he always slunk about with his hood up but now he threw it back and stood tall over her cowering figure. He was as fierce and beautiful as an avenging angel and his voice was stern.
    “Miss Arabella, why are you never at Mass with your mother and sister?”
    “I go to Church with Father,” she had breathed back.
    “But that is not the true church. Do you want to be a lost soul?”
    His voice had softened as if he’d just realised she was only a child so she had straightened up and barked back at him, “Oh I’m a lost soul anyway. Everyone says I’m wicked.”
    He had reached out a hand to her then and there was something more devilish than angelic about his smiling eyes and she had run, slamming the door behind her. Ever since then she had avoided the chapel and if she knew the priest was in the house she kept to her room. Sometimes she heard Henrietta ask her mother, in an odd wheedling voice, “When is Father Patrick’s next visit?” If her father was by, Bel sensed his heavy disapproval in the air.
    The thing between men and women was a sinister mystery to her then but especially – she was sure – if it involved a Popish priest.
    Now that she was thirteen and had spent the afternoon with Sam she realised for the first time what it meant to feel an attraction. Sam was open and as innocent as the day. He wasn’t beautiful like Father Patrick – a Satanic beauty she decided - but he had strong, honest features and she wanted to be with him again soon so she must be in love.
    Just before she fell asleep she had a moment of faint but real sympathy for Henrietta.

CHAPTER 2
     
    Daniel woke to a bright day shimmering at every crack in the ramshackle hut. His shoulder was sore and stiff with encrusted blood. That was nothing. He looked at Nat who was at last sleeping like a baby, his breathing steady. How hungry he would be when he woke up!
    I must get him food, he thought to himself. I mustn’t fail again.
    He went out, dazzled by the dappled light on the stream. Mustn’t go east this time. There would be other farms. He set off westward but the stream course forced him south. Somewhere that way was the big town called Newcastle where he and Nat had been with the English army for a while. But when they started marching again, Nat had got the camp fever and they were left behind. Dan had a picture in his head of throwing their pikes and uniforms into a ditch. There was another picture of him rowing Nat across a river in a very small boat. They had wandered in woods. It was frightening being away from home in Darrowswick where he knew all the footpaths, but Nat was with him – even if he had to half carry him. Now he was alone. That was bad, but he could find Nat again if he kept to this stream. There must be food somewhere and he was now dressed as a peasant not a soldier. He had liked marching but he could never stick his pike in a horse’s belly or in a man below his breastplate.
    Watching the stream he saw big flat stones in it leading across. That was tempting. He