Chapter Text
Sixty-five days.
It had been a little over two months since Robert Hennessey, the Earl of Poynton, was killed during the Queen’s rescue at Broadwater Hall in Tottenham.
For two months, the nation publicly celebrated Nell Jackson as a heroine; a longer length of time, now, than the woman had suffered as a dreaded monster and enemy of the London area.
Privately, not all looked upon Jackson with such admiration.
The last sixty-five days had been miserable; hardly the mild summer weather Jackson had enjoyed while she travelled with her merry band of misfits. In that last week of September, the unspent heat of the summer seemed to accumulate and punish everyone stuck outside; even through the grim layer of clouds, the heat of the sun beat mercilessly down upon England’s south, most days, leaving gardens and forests alike weak with thirst. When it did rain – which was, of course, still often – it drenched every living thing in an inescapable humidity; then, as predictable as the blackening of the sky each night, a sickness-inducing chill would settle upon the land. Then, starting in October, that same chill had begun to expand, claiming even the daylight hours; the rain came breathtakingly cold and sometimes had ice mixed within.
It was one of those cold nights following one of those rainy days when Thomas Blancheford and Sofia Wilmot came to the distressing realisation that they were out of food – again.
‘You shall have the last of the bread,’ Sofia said in a tone that she hoped would leave no room for argument, just loud enough for her brother to hear her over the drizzle seeping through the forest canopy. Her filthy garment had become much looser after two months on the run, giving the rain an easy path as it dripped between the greasy strands of her disorderly hair, under the neck of her dress, and down her spine, causing her to shudder every now and then.
‘What, and crack my teeth? It went stale a week ago,’ her brother said through chattering teeth. She was tempted to point out that they had not had the bread for more than a few days, but it seemed unnecessarily pedantic, considering his condition. He was never in a good mood when it came time to change his bandaging.
Warily, he watched her unpack their meager medical supplies. Even before her hands came near him, his face twisted in pain. His palpable misery hurt her heart and made her hands move with even more gentleness than she already employed whenever tending to his wounds.
Not that he was ever truly happy now – nor had he been, ever since he killed their father. It was only when they had stolen spirits to drink that he was anything besides morose. Sofia did not like spirits much, as they made her feel stupid – something she hated feeling or being seen as. The numbing effect they offered was not worth it to her. Even worse, she disliked the version of Thomas he became when he drank.
‘Soak it to soften it,’ she hissed. ‘Obviously. Surely, you know this by now.’
She looked up at her brother’s pale face, which still plainly expressed the immense pain he was in. While she had insisted to him for the better part of two weeks now that he did not have wound-rot, the realist in her knew she was lying to him, but the loving sister in her was too afraid to voice the truth.
‘Do you know if the water is boiling yet?’ she asked as she stood up. She went to wipe her bloody fingers on her dress, but stopped – even in its wretched state, she did not want to befoul it further.
‘No,’ he softly said, even though he did not check. Instead, making a faint noise of discomfort, he reached around himself to finger the bandaging she had just finished tying around his abdomen. She reached down and pulled his hand away to stop him.
‘Don’t.’
He sighed through his nose, his face pulled into a grimace. She thought she saw, in the fire’s glow, his eyes watering with pain. Gingerly, he lowered himself until he was reclining upon the blanket; like most nights, they had it stretched out upon the uneven ground to serve as the closest thing they had to a bed.
Sofia sat down near him, her back in front of his knees.
He wasn’t being too grumpy that night – a fact which only made her nervous.
‘I wish we still had the boar meat.’ He had said the same thing every night for over a week, ever since the carcass had begun to rot. He had still said it even after they had both gotten sick from eating it.
‘We would probably be dead if we were still eating it.’ Sofia rolled her eyes.
‘Maybe we should try to kill another.’ It was another suggestion he had made repeatedly.
Sofia turned to fix him with a stern look; he only stared at the flickering golden-hued stretch of ground that lay between their blanket and the stones they had laid in a circle to contain their small fire.
‘You were gored by the last one.’
‘And now,’ he said heatedly, ‘I know what not to do!’
‘And now you’re injured and could be –’ She stopped herself short of putting words to his possible fate. More gently, she told him, ‘Thomas, I don’t have it in me to help you kill a boar.’
Thomas laughed a little, to which she raised an eyebrow at him.
‘I’m not sure I’d want your help, after the way you butchered the last one.’
It had been Thomas who had started butchering the carcass after they had killed the creature; he insisted he do it despite the fresh injuries to his arm and abdomen, which had been its parting gifts. As revenge, after it was dead, he had tried to snap off one of those red-tinged tusks from its lifeless face – but it was too difficult with only one good arm. When he had finally given up on defacing the corpse, he had taken up their only knife – hardly the ideal tool for the task at hand – and then stared down at the hairy belly of the beast, trying to decide where to begin cutting.
Neither of the siblings had ever needed to prepare their own food, never mind butcher an animal. Perhaps they should have aimed for lesser prey once their supply of stolen food had been used up; but it was a boar they had crossed paths with, and a boar that Thomas had slain with a lucky shot of his equally-stolen pistol.
Butchering proved to be a far more difficult task than either of them had been equipped to handle, which led to them arguing. Sofia would tell him where he should cut and he’d snap at her, telling her not to distract him. Hunger had made their tempers fierce.
Next thing they knew, the boar’s belly had burst open from the inside. The creature’s insides gushed from it in a great arc: blood, fat, sinew, offal, and – as they discovered later, amongst the leaf litter – two of its ribs were cast in a horrible spray all over Thomas and everything else that had been in his direction, including their supplies; but it had not hit Sofia, for she had been stationed on the beast’s other side. The crouching pair had frozen in shock. It was the look of terror on her Thomas’s blood-saturated face which made Sofia remember the danger of her magic – something which had, at some point in their survival, grown volatile and unpredictable and ceased to be caged by Latin incantations.
What boar meat had remained intact they had made last as long as they could. It had been difficult for Sofia to be near Thomas, never mind eat with him, because of how badly his clothes reeked; and the only replacements he had were equally ruined, also having fallen victim to the gory deluge. Sofia wanted to say that it was purely coincidence that it had only come from the beast's stomach, which kept her from being hit, but she knew, in reality, that her accidental burst of magic had been targeted at him, because of their arguing.
‘Thomas, I’m...’
‘There was a certain style to it,’ he said with a weak grin. ‘I looked fearsome.’
‘You looked vile.’
‘Yes, but it was effective, Sofia!’ He groaned from raising his voice; he continued in a murmur which was hard to hear through the drizzle: ‘They were quick to line up after they saw me.’
She reached out to touch the yellowish bruise on his cheek, the one the carriage driver had given him. He shied away, turning his face.
‘Yes, Thomas,’ she drily said. ‘They were all very compliant.’
‘Old bastard,’ he muttered. Then he turned his glassy eyes upon her. His expression was something between admiration and unease. ‘You put him in his place.’
For just a second, the corners of Sofia’s lips pulled up slightly; she couldn’t help but take some pleasure in the power she had been able to draw in that moment when her brother needed protection.
‘I won’t be able to do that again,’ she whispered. Frustration began to simmer within her.
It was not for a lack of want.
Sofia's magic was waning. At first, she thought it was due to having no books to study, to use to refresh her memory of spells, so she had taken to practising what she could remember. Eventually, she realised with dread that her impotence was due to the very same lack of energy that had made her slow and weak; an effect of sixty-five days with limited food, constantly being on the move, and poor sleep – for how could anyone feel rested when they hadn’t retired to an actual bed in two months?
It made her sick to think of herself as broken, like some once-spirited horse, but it was a thought that plagued her incessantly. In her life, she had endured years of unhappiness without complaint; without weeping or allowing herself self-pity; without showing weakness to anyone – and in two months, that fount of willpower – once brimming and seemingly endless in those naïve days of childhood – had finally run dry.
If Poynton hadn’t given her a taste of what life was like with personal agency, perhaps she would have been less bitter over her fate. The experience of being valued for her intellect and competence was intoxicating, much like the magic. The power she finally had held – that of a kind which was normally only given to men – was nothing like the limited functions and qualities her sex was afforded, and it had made her feel alive for the first time in many years.
She had not felt such security since she had outgrown the confining safety of girlhood, when she had been dragged kicking and screaming into the future that awaited her as a woman. In the glaring clarity of her inescapable fate, she had finally noticed the framework that had been built around her while she spent her childhood playing and believing herself to be wise beyond her years. That dreadful illumination had come far too late – the new life closing in around her, sealing her within those social standards as solidly as brickwork, would be her lifelong coffin. At times, because some aspects of her personality already aligned with those expected of all proper women, Sofia would find herself disliking some parts of herself: her innate quietness and thoughtfulness, her responsible nature. But she did not want to – would not – deny who she was in a vain attempt to reject growing up.
Be pleasing to the eye. Be modest. You must not interrupt when men are speaking.
Typical instructions she had been taught long before she could understand the inequality inherent in them.
‘I know that women are, at times, put in situations that seem very unfair. Such is the duty of your sex, I’m afraid; just as we men have our own great burdens.’
Her father had once told her that in a moment when she had sought comfort. It had made her feel immeasurably worse, but had also made her realise that, no matter her feelings, she was fighting an inevitability; the jaws of a lion were closing in around her head and her arms were too weak to maintain her grip on its slimy teeth – and it would be in her best interest if she could only find the will to shut her eyes, accept her fate, and brace herself for the snap of its jaws. Maybe then the pain would be made more bearable by the illusion of choice.
It had been a conversation about her looming marriage, naturally, during which her father had shared that wisdom.
Now, after two months of clawing for survival, she wondered if she would willingly endure another three years of being married if it meant she and Thomas had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs.
Sofia tried to keep her shaky, despondent sigh quiet enough so her brother would not hear. Her eyes stung and her throat ached from the fire’s smoke.
‘Thomas, we need to find you a surgeon. Before this gets worse.’ She turned to face him, tears sliding down her cheeks and melting the icy raindrops. ‘Before this kills you.’
His expression was unfathomable. Through his new shirt – already dirty – she could see his chest rising and falling in shallow, pained breaths. She turned away from her slowly-dying brother in anguish, eagerly accepting the rage that surfaced inside her as a replacement.
‘Damn Jackson,’ she growled. ‘Damn her to Hell.’
The fire flared unnaturally bright for just a moment, then faded to its former weak glow; it was hardly enough to boil the water they had put on, and a few seconds of the intense blaze would not change that.
‘Sofia, don’t,’ Thomas warned.
‘It was so noble of her, letting us go free like this –’ Sofia gathered a handful of her once-beautiful skirt, lifting it just enough to show the ragged hem, then threw it back down. ‘– to live like hunted animals.’
Just as she had grown impatient with Thomas’s whining about food, he had grown weary of her rants about Nell Jackson. Nevertheless, she was fired up, so she continued:
‘And now, winter is nearly upon us, and we shall freeze.’
He said nothing; his mood was one of sulking rather than anger, it seemed. Sofia reached past the edge of the blanket and picked up a little stick, which she began to break into pieces. They sat there, waiting for the water to boil; Thomas fidgeted with his bandages with a grimace on his face; Sofia used her already-dirty nails to pick the fine layer of bark off the pieces of stick, her expression that of a scowl.
‘Sofia?’
‘What?’ she snapped. Then, feeling guilty, she more gently repeated, ‘What?’
‘I dare you to try some of the horse feed.’
The worst part was that Sofia was so hungry, she almost considered it. They had nothing else. It had been a miracle that they had even found a pot with which to cook what little food they had obtained – through theft, like nearly everything else.
Sofia had little compassion now for their victims, but at first, it had made her feel very guilty; after all, they themselves had been robbed within a week of their departure from Broadwater Hall. The irony of fate had been cruel.
In one fell swoop, they had lost nearly everything they had, besides only the clothes on their backs. Their horses, jewellery, supplies, garments to change into – all had been taken by a band of highwaymen.
But the worst of the losses, in Sofia’s opinion, had been the documents, letters, and books which she had gathered in a hurry: Poynton’s belongings which he had taken to Broadwater Hall. Incriminating, yet useful letters; formal agreements with his signature and those of other Jacobites; and – what she desired above all else – his books on the occult.
In the rush that followed Jackson’s merciful sparing of their lives, Sofia had taken whatever she could from Broadwater that she hoped would be useful in getting the support of Jacobites whom she and Thomas had known, particularly ones who would see Poynton’s death as an opportunity for their own advancement within the future king’s court. She had thought that, whether through coercion or by proving their continued loyalty to the cause, Poynton’s papers would have been their greatest assets.
They had come out of the robbery stripped of nearly everything. Sofia knew she should have felt grateful that the highwaymen did not take the clothes off their backs, but she was far too bitter over their sustained losses. But it was by their one mercy – that of leaving a lady clothed – that she and Thomas had kept their one tool, the one which aided them when they chose to resort to highway banditry themselves: for nobody had looked up her skirt, and thus, nobody had found the pistol she had quickly stowed within her stocking. Luckily, one pistol had been all they needed to rob a group of travellers themselves – and one pistol had eventually led them to acquiring a second, so they could each wield one.
But Sofia no longer had it in her to be grateful for what little they had; not when they could have kept everything, had Nell Jackson only listened to her. She and Thomas should have been in their home these last sixty-five days. Sofia should have been reading in her room that night, not in the woods watching a fire struggle against the oppressive dampness.
All her losses had plagued her for the better part of two months, consuming any quiet moments when she was not actively planning their next move. The likelihood of the blasted highwaymen even being able to read proficiently seemed slim; there was every chance that they had no idea the value of what they had taken – especially the books. The thought of them being burnt for warmth or else sold to someone unable to use them ate away at Sofia’s thoughts.
She put the blame on Nell Jackson just as much as the fools who had taken from them.
‘I will not forget this.’
She thought often of that promise she had made to Jackson. At the time, there was some gratitude in the statement; now, any gratitude she felt toward Jackson for not turning them in had since burnt away, leaving only a grudge.
One day, Sofia would make her feelings known to Nell Jackson. Until then, their survival was Sofia’s focus.
‘In the morning, let’s move closer to that town. We’ll catch the first person we see.’ Sofia nodded in determination as she spoke, but Thomas had turned his face away from her.
‘I will not let you die. You’re my responsibility. And... Thomas...’ Her voice broke as she turned teary eyes upon her wounded brother: ‘You’re all I have left.’
She spotted him once again fidgeting with his bandages; she again grabbed his hand and dumped it on the blanket, far away from his wound. He plucked at a loose string there, instead.
Sofia stood and checked the water, which was finally ready. She found the near-empty bag they were keeping their food inside and reached into it, fishing out the rock-hard piece of bread. She and Thomas had learnt by that point that it was wise to give any food they had a thorough brushing with a clean cloth or at least their hands, lest they find out the hard way that ants had gotten at it. She dipped one side of it carefully into the hot water, holding it there.
‘I will fix this.’ Sofia’s voice was thick. ‘I’ll get back what was taken from us – everything.’
‘We don’t even know where they went with our stuff.’
‘Our house, our land,’ Sofia continued. She held out the soggy bread for her brother to take. ‘I will find the books and papers, and I will get us back our dignity and our good family name.’
Thomas shook his head at his sister’s words, clearly at a loss. He sighed and finally bit into the meal. Her stomach ached with hunger at the sight.
‘I promise,’ she said too softly for him to hear.
The drizzle waned as the night went on, leaving the crickets and nightbirds to fill the silence that fell between the forsaken siblings.