Page 18 of No Place in Time

A soldier pushed Finn toward the wagon where other young men stood. Some were stunned, some shouted, some were already bound with rope at their wrists.

He looked back at her once. His face was tight, his eyes sharp with warning. He shook his head as if to say, “No, don’t fight them.”

Then the wagon lurched forward, and he was gone.

The crowd closed in behind them. Sound rushed back all at once: bartering, carts creaking over stone. It was as if nothing had happened.

Cecily stood frozen. Her breath came fast, her hands shaking.

She forced herself to move. A woman passing in the opposite direction glanced at her and looked quickly away, the kind of look people gave beggars and drunks. She didn’t blame her. She could feel the mud-stiffened hem of her market dress slapping against her legs, the borrowed boots squelching with each step, strands of pale blond hair plastered to her face. She had been dragged through the road, more or less. She felt like it.

She didn’t know what to do, so she kept moving. She walked until the press of people thinned, then crouched beside the stone wall of a tannery. The stink of rot and lye clung to the air. Her stomach churned, but she swallowed it down and waited, listening and watching.

A woman passed.

“Where are they taking the young men?” Cecily asked her, keeping her voice low.

The woman looked at her sharply. “Ye don’t know?”

Cecily shook her head.

“They’re headed for Scotland, where the fightin’ be. They’re roundin’ ’em up outside the town,” the woman said at last. “Field beyond the blacksmith’s yard. Best stay clear of it.”

Cecily had to find Finn. At a distance, she followed the wagon that held other conscripted men until she saw a rough enclosure past the blacksmith. Men were sitting in the dirt, wrists bound with rope, their heads lowered. Soldiers paced lazily, looking bored, talking among themselves.

Soon she spotted Finn. He sat near the far edge. She hid and waited for night.

∞∞∞

When darkness had fallen, and only moonlight was available to guide her, Cecily watched as a guard wandered toward the hedge line. He stopped, turned his back, and relieved himself openly against the brush.

Heat rushed to Cecily’s face. She looked away, shocked and repulsed, her upbringing screaming at her to run.

Instead, she continued to wait.

When the guard moved off, she slipped toward a nearby supply cart. Her numb fingers fumbled under the canvas, finally closing around the hilt of a small knife. She crept to the fence, finding Finn in the dark. As she reached through the slats, the dull blade snagged on the thick rope. For a terrible second, it wouldn’t cut. Then a shout went up nearby. With a final, desperate slice, the rope snapped.

“Go,” she hissed, and he scrambled under the fence.

They ran.

A voice shouted. Boots pounded behind them. Cecily’s breath burned, her skirts tangling as she fled into the dark. Finn pulled her along when she stumbled in her heavy boots.

They did not stop until the sounds fell away and the night swallowed them whole.

When they finally collapsed beneath the trees, Finn turned to her, breathing hard.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

She met his gaze. “They were going to take you to Scotland. I couldn’t leave you.”

For a moment, he said nothing. Then he touched her hand once, quickly. “I wouldn’t have left you either.”

The moment she saw the town glowing behind them, she knew they were no longer merely lost.

They were now hunted.

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