“I have a cold and savage tongue, Phoebe, I know it. I was unwontedly harsh this morning and I will try not to be again. But I need your word that in future you will come to me at the first sign of trouble.”

“I did come to you about Meg,” Phoebe reminded him, lifting her head from his chest to look up into his face.

“I won’t fail you again,” he promised quietly.

“But you’re not always very accessible,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Well, that probably won’t change.” His voice lost its earlier softness. “At least not while this damnable war continues. And Cromwell and his ilk pick fights among-” He stopped abruptly. “But that need not concern you.”

He scribbled down her spine with his thumbnail and then stroked her flanks in a quick light caress. “Let us put this behind us now, my sweet. Get dressed quickly. It’s long past suppertime.”

Phoebe had forgotten that she was naked. She glanced down at herself with an air of such surprise that Cato burst into laughter. “I really do believe that if I hadn’t reminded you, you’d have wandered out of here without a stitch on,” he declared. “Hurry now.” He turned to the door. “Everyone will be waiting supper for us and then I must go back to headquarters.”

“You won’t be back tonight?” She couldn’t hide her disappointment.

“No. This business with the king’s escape will take hours to thrash out.” He left the chamber.

Phoebe wrapped her arms around her body in a convulsive hug. Her skin seemed warmer, more alive than usual where Cato had touched her. And there was a wonderful warm spot deep inside her, as if a lamp had been lit.

In her head she could hear his voice reading Dudley’s speech… her creation into which she’d poured so much of her heart’s hunger… a world of her own where two lovers could express their love and their need without fear. She’d responded to his reading without thought, the words flowing so naturally from her lips. And for a moment, just a moment, she had thought that Cato had been living in that same dream world.

Much later, after Cato had left for headquarters, Phoebe went to Meg’s bedside.

The room was lit by a single candle on the bedside table, but Meg was awake, her face white and shadowed against the pillows.

“How are you?” Phoebe sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. It seemed thinner, almost clawlike, the fingers lacking their usual strength.

“I’ll mend,” Meg said.

Phoebe squeezed her hand. “Cato had the witch finder whipped for vagrancy and he’s turned the vicar out of his living.”

“Harsh,” Meg observed.

“After what they did to you?” Phoebe exclaimed softly.

Meg shook her head. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord.” She gave a short laugh. “No, I have no sympathy with those two. But I’ll be sorry if he took revenge on the villagers. They can’t help their ignorance.”

“No,” Phoebe agreed, although she couldn’t rid her mind of the image of those hate-filled faces seeming to press against her.

“Giles said at supper that he’d arrested Ben from the Bear and Gabriel Benson, and he was going to have them put in the stocks in the morning. His men had discovered that they’d incited the others, but Cato said he’d changed his mind, there’d been enough violence. He told Giles a night in the jail would give them enough of a fright. I think that’s right, don’t you?”

“Aye,” Meg said. “Punishing superstition is no answer. We have to eradicate it.”

“What will you do now?”

“Go back,” Meg said. “Do what I always do.”

“You could bear to help those people again?” Phoebe shook her head with a shudder of disgust. “I don’t think I could bring myself to speak to any of them again. Except perhaps Granny Spruel.”

“It’s understandable.”

“But you will go on helping them?”

“If I can gain their trust again, yes. There’s more to physicking than herbs and simples, Phoebe. The mind is often as much in need of healing as the body. If I can show them the evil of superstition, then I’ll not have wasted my time.”

“You’re such a good woman,” Phoebe said fiercely. “They don’t deserve you.”

“As if that had anything to do with anything,” Meg scoffed. She closed her eyes. “I’m tired, Phoebe.”

“I’ll leave you to sleep.” Phoebe bent to kiss her. “I’ll come back in the morning.”

She went to her own deserted bedchamber and looked at the large empty bed. Then, grabbing up her nightrail, she picked up the candle and made her way to Olivia’s bedchamber.

Olivia stirred and said sleepily, “Is something the matter?”

“Do you mind if I share your bed?”

“No, not at all.” Olivia moved up accommodatingly and sat up, blinking sleep from her eyes. “I’d be glad of the c-company. Every time I c-close my eyes I see that dreadful man with his pins.”

“I know.” Phoebe threw off her clothes and scrambled into her nightgown. She slipped beneath the covers. “I wonder what’ll happen now that the king’s escaped.”

“Maybe the war’ll be over.” But Olivia didn’t sound too convinced. “I c-can’t even remember properly a time when there was peace. Can you?”

“Just,” Phoebe said. “But Cato once said that even when it’s over it won’t really be over. He said it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. Just like he wouldn’t talk about what’s going on at headquarters. He started to say something and then stopped. Why won’t he tell me these things?” She leaned over to blow out the candle and lay down beside Olivia.

“It’s so maddening,” she muttered.

Chapter 17

“It’s so frustrating, Meg!” Phoebe paced Meg’s bedchamber impatiently, returning to her theme the next morning. “Why should men have this attitude? Women are just as capable as they are. Maybe we’re not such good soldiers, although Portia’s as good as any man, but there are other things we’re better at. And we can have opinions, can’t we?”

She came to a standstill beside the bed, where Meg sat up against piled pillows. Phoebe was glad to see that she was looking much more herself this morning, the light back in her shrewd eyes, the humor returned to her fine mouth. Her hair hung in long plaits over her shoulders, making her look younger than Phoebe had ever seen her. The long sleeves and high neck of Mistress Bisset’s borrowed nightgown hid the bruises and puncture wounds of her ordeal, but the striped cambric swamped her, so that she looked much frailer than usual.

“We can have opinions and give advice and good counsel. Can’t we?” Phoebe demanded.

“Without doubt,” Meg said with a serene smile. “But I doubt that husband of yours will ever accept that.”

“But he must!” Phoebe wailed. “I don’t want to be left out of everything that matters to him… kept swaddled in some cocoon, told that I mustn’t bother my pretty head with male concerns. Not that I have a pretty head,” she amended.

“What you have is a deal more attractive than mere prettiness,” Meg said, her smile broadening.

“Oh?” Phoebe’s interest was piqued. “What’s that, then?”

“Character,” Meg replied.

“Oh.” Phoebe was disappointed. Character seemed like a very dull endowment when compared with beauty and elegance.

“And brains,” Meg continued.

“Well, much good they are if no one acknowledges them or lets me put them to good use,” Phoebe said, aggrieved.

“Why would you want to be involved in your husband’s self-important absorptions, anyway?” Meg said. “In my experience, men are always attaching too much importance to trivialities.”

“But the war isn’t trivial.”

Meg shook her head. “It’s about power, Phoebe. Wars are all about power and greed. Men’s obsessions. Women deal in life and death; birth, sickness, health. Those are the warp and woof of existence, not the posturing and pronouncing and proselytizing that make men believe they’re running the world as they kill each other for their own self-interest.”