“Stay low and stay out of sight!”
Artus passed another long glance behind him, making sure one last time that there was no one watching them, before crawling through the foliage, between the birch trees, and finally slithering out of the hole in the wall. Once he was through, he took off at a dead run, straight east through the knee-high wet grass.
Maitland didn’t dare turn around to watch him. She pulled Marybelle and the twins close, wondering how she was going to explain Artus’ absence to Hobelar when he came around. And she knew, without a doubt, that he would come around at some point. She was fearful of that moment, fearful she wouldn’t be able to lie her way out of the situation and Hobelar would take it out on the children. The only way to prevent that would be to remove the children entirely.
Perhaps they should all escape, too.
Looking around, Maitland was on the hunt for anyone who might be looking their way, but the reivers seemed sleepy and dazed as they started their morning fires. She tugged on Phin.
“Phin,” she said. “You must help the children to escape. Can you do this?”
Phin couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years of age, a skinny child who rarely said a word. He nodded fearfully, perhaps understanding danger more than most. All of these children had suffered such terrible hardships at Edenside, with Laird Letty in charge, so they understood self-preservation.
“But ye?” he asked anxiously. “Will ye come?”
Maitland wasn’t sure that she should. She really only wanted the children safe and if Hobelar or another reiver saw that everyone was gone, the search would be on. Maitland thought, perhaps foolishly so, that if she at least remained behind, perhaps they wouldn’t go after the children. They would still have a hostage, a prize to use against Thomas.
It was a chance she was willing to take.
“Nay,” she whispered, grasping the child and turning him for the hole in the wall. “Take the children with you and scatter. Some of you run one way and some of you run another. Split up. Find a village or people who can help you and tell them to take you to Sir Thomas at Wark Castle. Can you do this? Can all of you do this?”
By this time, Marybelle and Nora were listening and they were starting to cry, frightened of what they were being asked to do. Maitland stroked their faces, touched their little heads, trying to convince them that this was the right thing to do. She handed Roland over to Nora and Renard over to Marybelle, insisting they each take charge of a little one. Phin was already moving for the damaged wall.
“Come on,” he hissed at them. “Get down and crawl. Crawl with me!”
Maitland watched as the five of them slithered through the foliage, between the trees, and finally to the hole in the wall. She held her breath as Marybelle and Nora had to lift the twins through to Phin on the other side. When she finally saw the girls slip through, the relief she felt was overwhelming. At least now, they’d have a chance.
Please, God, keep them safe!
Now, Maitland had her own plans to make, plans to keep the reivers fooled for as long as she could to give the children enough time to get far away. Keeping her eye on the men moving about in the early morning hour, she began to rip up some of the foliage on the ground, making little piles of it. When she had several little piles, she threw the horse blanket over them, patting it down to make it look like huddled children were sleeping beneath it.
But Maitland remained nervous; oh, so nervous. She knew that at some point, Hobelar and his men would return and she could only hold them off so long with a story of sleeping children. But for now, the children were running off, and no one had noticed as of yet, so the more the seconds ticked away, the more Maitland had hope that the children would make it to safety. As the rain pounded and the lightning flashed, she sat and she waited.
Her wait wasn’t a long one, unfortunately. As she sat there, her hand on one of the bumps under the blanket to make it look as if she were comforting a child, Hobelar appeared out of nowhere. One moment, there was no one nearby, and in the next, that wild-eyed outlaw was standing just a few feet away.
The expression on his face turned Maitland’s blood to ice.
*
“Did you seethat?”
The question had come from Thomas. He and the others had just crossed a river with thigh-high water and were huddling in a row of rain-soaked trees within sight of the old ruins of Castle Heton when they suddenly caught sight of a child bolting through the wet fields. He took it for an animal at first until he saw skinny arms flailing. It took Thomas a moment to realize that the child was Artus.
“My God!” Desmond gasped. “That is one of Mae’s children!”
Thomas nodded, his heart pounding at the sight. The excitement and the fear that Maitland and the children had been found were overwhelming. As he’d hoped and prayed, Castle Heton was the right place. They found what they were looking for. He’d thank God for the good fortune when he had the time but, at the moment, he had serious things to accomplish.
God would understand.
“Go, Des,” he said, waving a sharp hand at the man. “Go and get him. Hurry!”
Desmond vaulted over the branch that was in his way, charging out into the field and heading straight for the panicked child. As Thomas and his brothers and nephew watched, Desmond intercepted the child and grabbed him around the waist, racing back with him clutched against his torso. But it was then that they saw more children falling out of a hole in the old castle walls– five children to be exact. The children started running in different directions, some towards them, some away from them. Thomas pointed to the scattering horde.
“Go,” he commanded. “Get the children. Get them back to Northwood!”
Scott, Troy, Patrick, Blayth, and Markus charged from the shelter of the trees, each man going after a particular child. Thomas left the shield of the trees as well, rushing across the field, trying to stay low as he approached the crumbled wall that signified the ruins of Castle Heton. He ran past Troy as theman was heading back to the trees with a little girl in his arms, and then Patrick doing the same with a tiny little boy clutched against him. All across the field, his brothers and nephew were collecting children and taking them to safety. That left Maitland and Thomas was going to rescue the woman or die trying.
He’d already made that decision.
