Page 71 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
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Charlotte sat wrapped in her cloak, on her bed, in the very corner of her tent, as the night fell about her.
Hirst had thrown her unceremoniously through the opening without so much as a word. He had given her a predatory leer as he had left, but that was all. Clearly, he was as excited about the prospect of her fate, as Charlotte was frightened of it.
She could hear the two men that had been stationed outside her tent talking to each other in muted voices.
“What have we got to guard the slip of a girl for anyhow?” one grumbled. “Surely, the Captain ain’t worried about the Scots sneakin’ in ‘ere and stealin’ her right from under his nose, is he?”
Charlotte heard the other man chuckle in an infuriating, knowing fashion.
“You aren’t half a dozy bastard, Cob,” he replied. “Why do you think that slimy Hirst fellow made us tie up the door with all this rope and then padlock the bleedin’ knot, aye? It ain’t to keep the Scotsout. It’s to keep the Captain’s daughterin.”
“I don’t follow you, Rogers, not at all,” Cob said.
Rogers gave an exasperated sigh. “She’s gone native––or so the rumors say.”
“That’s why we had to take her knife and letter-opener and all the other sharp bits, is it?” Cob asked.
“Nah, that was so she doesn’t try to cut her way out of the canvas. Or seduce you with her womanly wiles and cut your gizzard out,” Rogers said, with a laugh.
“So what, we ‘ave to guard her all night?”
“That’s right. She gets some supper through the little flap down there, but that’s it. No talkin’, no leavin’. She’s got a chamber pot in there for doin’ you know what. Then in the mornin’ she comes with us and we go off and storm the buggers who are responsible for shakin’ her faith in her country.”
“We goin’ to fight ‘em, are we?” Cob asked.
“Accordin’ to Hirst,” Rogers said, with relish, “we’re going to put the whole bloody place to the sword. That’ll show them Scottish dogs, eh?”
Charlotte listened to the talk of the guards for what seemed a very long time. Food came through the flap that had been cut into the bottom of the tent flap and she ate it with gusto.
There might have been a time, only a couple of weeks before, when despair would have taken her in its crushing grip in such a plight. Now though, she wolfed down the stew with a rare appetite, for she, Charlotte Bolton, had a plan.
And I won’t compromise it by not filling my belly beforehand.
She touched at the lining of her mother’s cloak as she ate. At the hem, where she had made the slightest alteration…
As fortune would have it, a thunderstorm rolled across the moor on which the English army was camped in the pitch-dark middle of the night. The rain came bucketing down out of the heavens, as if God was intent on washing the land clean. Thunder rolled and cracked across the brooding clouds, and the occasional flash of lightning illuminated the landscape for miles around.
Under the cover of the storm, Charlotte put her plan into action. Using her fingernails, she unpicked the double hem that she had sown into her mother’s cloak.
How right that it should be her cloak that I am wearing. How right it should be this cloak that will help me extricate myself from this current predicament.
From this secret compartment––a concealed pouch that even she had forgotten about making until she had been tossed into her tent and she had landed upon it––she pulled the knife that Edward had given her only a few days before.
A token of trust. The trust that he had in me, and the trust I could have in him.
Pausing only to press her ear to the sealed canvas of her tent flap and make sure that the guards were not about to enter for any reason, Charlotte pressed the point of the blade to the canvas. She had chosen a section of tent that would lead her out towards the picket lines. That was another thing about traveling with an army camp; one learned that, though the location of the camp might change, the actual layout did not.
The blade was, as she might have guessed with anything that Edward owned, meticulously maintained and looked after. It slid through the thick canvas as easily as if it had been paper. With some effort, Charlotte slit a gash that was big enough for her to slip through. Then, she pulled her hood up, and stepped out into the storm.
24
Thunder ripped across the night sky, making a din that made Charlotte picture God moving furniture about above the clouds. The rain was lashing down when she stepped out from the protection of her tent. So intense was her desire to find a horse and get out of the camp though, that her only acknowledgement of the awful weather was to pull her hood and cloak tighter about her.
Awful it might be, but I could not hope for better, as far as escaping is concerned.
It was a sign of how things had changed in Charlotte’s life that she had even escaped in the fashion that she had. Before, not being able to see beyond her own limitations or perceived skill set, she might have opted to try and trick or drug the guards outside with some herbal concoction whipped up from the stores that she had had in her tent.
