was crashing past, and she fell onto the grass of the road’s centre, the breath driven from her body, and she heard the horses slowing as the tangled, broken mess of the phaeton dragged them to a stop.
The man laughed.
Campion’s right hand was on one of the splintered spokes of the wheel, fractured in the crash so that the varnished wood, picked out with yellow paint, was now sheared into a wicked point of fresh timber.
There was pain all over her. She was dazed, but she swung the feeble weapon at the shape above her, kicked, but then her makeshift spear was held and a foot was clamped heavily on her ankle.
The man’s breath rasped loudly in his throat.
For a second he did not move.
Her vision cleared. She could not see him at first, so bright was the sky about his head, but she could smell him. He pulled the broken spoke effortlessly from her hand and tossed it far into the gorse.
He chuckled hoarsely as he knelt beside her. She struck at him with her right hand, but he caught her wrist and forced it to the ground, then seized her left wrist. She saw his face and screamed.
He was unshaven. There was an open sore by his right eye. He looked like any vagabond, any tramp, except that his skin was oddly pallid as though he had been in a sunless prison. His face was scarred by old boils. His hair was lank, littered with straw ends, and his mouth, as he leered at her, was filthy with blackened stumps of teeth. His nose was flat and crooked, as though it had been broken repeatedly. He felt hugely strong to her. She had a glimpse of a great barrel of a belly, dirty where his rags gaped to show a red boil, and she lashed out with her right boot, sobbing, but he put his knee between her thighs, pinning her by the skirts, and his spittle dribbled onto her face as he leered above her.
‘You be nice to me, you be nice! I’ll make it easy on you if you be nice to me, girly!’ He laughed as she tried to kick at him. ‘Don’t do no good fightin’, girly. I be one of the Fancy, I was.’ As if to demonstrate his point he let go of her left wrist, and his fist, that had been bruised, skinned and broken by the bare-knuckle fighting so loved by the gentry, slammed into her belly.
The breath was pushed again from her, she lay helpless, pounded by the blow, and she felt the vomit rise with the panic.
She could not move. The blow had hurt her. He let go of her other wrist that hurt from his cold grip, and pushed her woollen cloak away from her body. He laughed. ‘Pretty.’ He moved his knee, grunted, and hauled her skirts up. ‘Oh, pretty! Pretty!’
She screamed as he touched her thighs, lashed at him with both hands, but he just laughed and caught her fists, and held both her slim wrists in the huge grip of his left hand. She felt as if her wrists would snap as she tried hopelessly to pull away from him.
She was powerless. She tried to kick at him as he fumbled with frost-chilled fingers at the string which held up his ragged trousers, but he just laughed at her feeble efforts. ‘You be good, girly!’
She twisted, jerked, and could do nothing. Her thrashing dislodged the collar of her cloak and the man saw the gleam of the gold chain she wore at her neck. He had untied his trousers and now he reached for the chain.
He tugged the chain free, his fingers scrabbling at her throat, and she twisted away, the sickness thick in her gorge, and then he let go of her wrists, gripped the cream linen dress she wore beneath her blue, fur-lined cloak, and jerked her with savage force as he tore the dress down to her waist.
He hit her hands out of the way, hooked his fingers on her petticoat, and she screamed again as he tore at it. The force of his tearing hands lifted her body from the grass and, as the petticoat ripped open, she fell back, screaming and sobbing.
He was kneeling over her, straddling her body, and she could feel his spittle dripping on her cold, naked breasts. His nose was running, dribbling to his mouth. He was laughing, the laughter choking in his slavering throat, and he forced her hands aside to look at her body and he laughed. ‘Pretty girly, pretty, pretty girly.’ He held her arms on the ground.
‘No!’ She screamed. ‘No! No!’
He leaned back, the better to see her, and she could smell his breath like ordure and hear the air rasping in his throat. He let go of her arms and she clasped them over her breasts and then she felt his hands tugging at her waistband and she struck at him and he slapped her stingingly on the face. ‘You be good, girly! You be good!’
She tried to kick him, but his weight was on her thighs, and he laughed as he took from somewhere in his rags a small, rusted knife and began to saw at the dress’s belt. His trousers had fallen to his thighs. He grunted as he ripped at the cloth, beat her hands aside again, and cursed as she twisted desperately and the tangle of cotton and linen snatched the small blade from his hand. He thumped his fist onto her bare belly to make her quiet. His orders were to disfigure her, to scar her, to pox her, to scab her, to make her a thing that no man could ever desire. He fumbled for the knife, impatient to cut her clothes off, then, losing patience as she twisted so desperately beneath him, he raised himself up and simply pulled her skirts above her waist and forced her legs apart. ‘You be good now, girly! You be good!’
She screamed in despair. The scream sobbed helplessly as she twisted and then, from nowhere it seemed, came rescue. Into her lonely place of horror came help.
It came with a shout, with the thunder of hooves, with a cry of alarm from the man who pawed at her and who suddenly scrambled away, gibbering and shouting, and Campion clutched her torn clothes to herself, rolled over, and it seemed as if the air was filled with the noise of hooves, the shadow of a great horse that pounded within inches of her head and she had a glimpse of a mounted man who held a streak of light in his hand.
‘No!’ her attacker shouted. His shout was one of pure, sudden terror. He stumbled, one hand holding his trousers, the other warding off the sudden brightness of the long sword. Campion’s eyes were closed. Over the thunder of hooves, over her attacker’s cry for mercy, she heard the hiss of steel in air. Then silence.
Except it was not silence. She could hear the hooves on the grass. She could hear the creak of a saddle, the chink of a curb chain.
She pushed herself to her hands and knees. She vomited.
‘Madam?’ The voice was crisp, educated, and solicitous. ‘Dear Lady?’ The man had dismounted, had come close to her.
She shook her head. Her breath came in huge, stomach-heaving gasps. She was on all fours and she could see the scraps of her cream coloured dress hanging down by her breasts. A small, rusty knife was on the ground beneath her. She sobbed.
She screamed as something touched her, but the man’s voice was gentle. ‘Quiet now! Quiet! Gentle, dear lady!’ A great cloak was dropped about her shoulders, a cloak that enveloped her. It smelt of horses. The man’s voice was soothing, as if he spoke to an unbridled colt. ‘Quiet now. Gentle now!’
Slowly she knelt up, clutching her own and her rescuer’s cloak about her torn clothing. Her fur bonnet had fallen on one side of her face and she shuddered as she felt his hands put it back into place, but his touch was gentle and she was glad of it.
‘Dear lady?’
She looked up.
Her rescuer was in uniform. The sight was somehow astonishing. Here, on this lonely heath, was a cavalryman in his finery, a blue jacketed and breeched uniform, bright with red facings and
