the portrait.
At this point in Kathryn’s musings, the carriage had jolted to a halt. Kathryn felt a sharp stab of fear as she noticed a tall, gaunt figure, wrapped like herself in a dark cloak, waiting to board the coach. But the figure turned to mount, and Kathryn saw it was a man. It was not Donner, the girl realized with relief, only to know a new fear a minute later. For how could she have accepted so quickly the idea that Donner could have known of her flight already . . . could be able to pursue and find her so easily? She was seriously attributing to the Irish peasant woman powers verging on the supernatural! With such a psychological advantage, Donner would be a dangerous antagonist. Kathryn shivered as the tall man shouldered his way into the crowded vehicle. The coach did not start up at once. Instead, the red, weathered face of the guard appeared at the still open door.
“We’ll be stoppin’ ¼ere a matter o’ twenty minutes to change ¼orses and,” with a heavily-emphasized wink, “let Tom Coachman refresh hisself. So if any o’ you wants a bite o’ breakfuss, now’s yer time!”
Grumbling, most of the passengers climbed awkwardly down onto the dew-slimed cobbles and straggled into the inn. Only Kathryn and the gaunt stranger kept their seats. The man did not seem inclined to speak, and Kathryn was glad of it. She closed her eyes wearily, and tried to find a more comfortable position against the side of the coach.
After a few minutes, there was a clatter of nailed boots on the cobbles. Kathryn opened her eyes. Red-face was thrusting a great steaming mug of tea toward her with one hand, while in the other grimy fist he clutched a huge sandwich of thick slices of meat between two chunks of bread.
“It’s for you, Missus. Yer Ma gi’ me the ready to get ye a bite an’ sup when we stopped to change. So here ¼tis, as promised.”
Voicing her thanks, Kathryn managed to accept the mug with her free hand, but she couldn’t endure the sight or smell of the food. “Please, no. I am not well. Just the tea.”
The guard shrugged and turned back to the inn, munching at the sandwich as he went. Kathryn sank back against the seat and worked the mug up under her heavy veil. The tea was scalding, black, and heavily sweetened. She managed to get some of it down, and after a moment began to feel the better for it. By the time her fellow-passengers came out to the coach, grumbling at the haste with which they had had to snatch their food, she had finished the tea and was in a slightly more cheerful mood.
The trip from that point was sheer misery. The coach had been overcrowded by the presence of the gaunt man. The roads became worse the further they got from London, so the coach lurched and jarred and swayed. After one particularly vicious jolt, which threw the fat woman next to Kathryn heavily against her, Kathryn briefly lost consciousness. Her plight did not attract attention, however, since, having said nothing during the trip so far, her silence was not remarked. And since her face was concealed by the veil, and she was wedged so tightly between the fat woman and the side of the coach that she was fixed in an upright position, no one realized that she had fainted.
For the rest of the trip she was in limbo—half-dozing, grimly enduring the pain, quite oblivious of either her companions or the scenery. Eventually, about twelve hours after they had left London, the guard helped Kathryn to descend before a large inn which boasted the sign “GEORGE AND HORSE.” He got her satchel out of the boot for her, pointed the way down the pleasant, almost empty street to a small, white building set back from the road.
“Yonder’s Crown Inn, Missus.”
Kathryn tried to thank him for his kindness as she pressed a coin into his hand, but he was already turning away to close the coach door and mount to his seat.
She trudged down the street, clutching on to the last of her strength. “Just to the Crown,” she told herself. And then, “Just till I speak to the landlord, and give him the letter to Richard Bennet . . .” She held on grimly to the promise of a quiet room and a bed that would not jolt or sway. But there was a