Dangerous in Diamonds - Madeline Hunter [85]
Soon he faced the first of them, the ones still running even though they were miles from the city.
A young man stopped to catch his breath. He noticed Castleford and his eyes widened with alarm.
Castleford trotted his horse over. “You have nothing to fear from me. What has happened?”
“Army and yeomanry,” the young man gasped, bending, hands on his knees while he caught his breath. “There’s people dead and more wounded, and they are arresting who they can. Was calm enough, for all the size of it. Then the army came, and—” He shook his head. “Was terrible to see and desperate to be in. There was no place to go, there were so many. I thought we’d all trample each other before we got out.”
He moved on, walking now, as if in speaking of it he realized he had reached safety. Castleford moved his horse forward.
More people now. Some angry and looking to fight, others terrified, others so dejected they wept. He kept to the side of the road and watched them file past, filling the road, aiming for their towns and villages and homes.
There were wounded among them. A woman with blood on her skirt limped amid the stream, aided by a man. The crowd jostled her and the man lost hold and she went down. The feet kept coming. Some stepped over her, but more did not.
Castleford pushed his horse into the river of bodies. “Give her to me,” he said to the man.
The fellow looked up the horse’s mass and at its rider and hesitated.
“Give her to me, you fool. I will get her to safety.”
The man picked her up, lifted her, and helped her sit behind the saddle.
“You can follow,” Castleford said.
“She ain’t mine. I’ve no idea who she is.” With that, the man joined the exodus.
“Is your husband here?” Castleford asked over his shoulder.
The woman’s head lolled against his back. “He be back there in the city. On the ground. Dead, maybe. He told me to run.”
“We will learn what became of him later. Hold tight now.” He turned his horse and joined the fleeing workers going east.
It took longer to return to the cottage than to come from it. Eventually he turned up the little lane. He noted that the low wall surrounding the front garden did not deter people. Some just swung over and trod through the plantings, trying to avoid the thick crowd now filling the road. Others came in and paused, looking at the cottage.
That was the danger with a crowd on the run, he thought. It turned into a reckless force with no regard for property and sometimes little for life itself. It made some feel that they could do things they would not normally do, and it broke down social restraints.
He deliberately used his horse to crowd the men who dallied and hooked the side of his coat back so the pistol showed.
He cleared the garden, but there would be more. No one would really be safe for several hours at least.
He got off the horse and helped the woman down. Daphne had been watching, and the door opened as he carried the woman to it.
He entered the cottage and saw at once that he had been disobeyed. That door had opened at least once while he was gone, and perhaps several times. Three new faces looked up at his arrival. Worried faces. Terrified eyes.
He set his burden down. “She has a wound.” He gestured to the blood on her skirt. “Her leg, I think.”
“I will get water,” Daphne said. She walked toward the back of the cottage.
Castleford made sure the door was bolted, then followed her.
“Who are they? The other women?”
“Friends of Margaret’s. They were exhausted and frightened and took sanctuary as they passed.” She set about pouring water into a basin. Her hands shook while she reached for a basket of rags. “They killed a woman, they say. They killed one of the speakers named Mary Fildes. It was as if they deliberately went after her, they say. Others died too.”
His jaw had been tight for an hour now, and his anger flared. “The damned fools.”
She straightened and glared at him. “Who? These poor people who bore no arms but were cut down by sabers?”
“All of them, damn it, on both sides. These workers, for thinking