Ondine Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bowl, and as was the custom, the innkeeper came out, and they were offered ale.
    Ondine hesitated before stretching her wrists to the limit of her shackles to accept the cup offered her.
    I am not afraid, she tried to tell herself. I am not afraid. God knows that I was guilty of no sin against Him. Every step that I have taken, I have taken with care; I could have changed nothing. And now I must find serenity and not be afraid.
    But she was afraid, and still unwilling to accept her fate. God! How she had longed to clear her father’s name of the injustice offered him in death. She had dreamed of returning home to avenge that death and prove the devious treachery behind it. But she’d never had the chance. Along with the beggars in the forest to which she had run—the kind people who had become her friends— she was to die. She accepted the ale and prayed that it would give her courage so that she could scorn those who so unjustly took her life and made a mockery of her death.
    Ondine drank deeply and discovered that the bitter ale only added to her misery. With each swallow the noose about her neck chafed her throat, and the liquid running through her offered no warmth, no courage to sustain her.
    The spectacle at the Bowl came to an end, and the cart began to move once more. Ondine tried to close her mind to the shouts about her, to the hoots and catcalls of the men who told the executioner she would be more sport alive. They were nearing Tyburn Tree now, the three-legged structure where their ropes would be tied. Then the horses would be whipped to frenzy, and she, Joseph, and Little Pat would dangle by their necks until dead.
    Let it be fast, God, Ondine prayed silently. She felt a dizziness sweep through her so that she thought she would falter and fall as she saw the open galleries that flanked the gallows, galleries where spectators paid two shillings apiece for a bird’s-eye view of the execution.
    The galleries were filled.
    Ondine closed her eyes. She could feel the sun on her face, and a soft damp breeze that promised rain swirled lightly about her cheeks. She opened her eyes. She would never see the sun again.
    Ridiculous things came to her mind. She would never know what it was like to be clean again, to feel her hair, freshly washed, fall softly about her shoulders. She would never run across a meadow, pluck a wildflower from a clump of dew-damp earth …
    “Hold fast to God, girl!” Joseph said softly. “For His is a better world, and He knows the goodness in you and will be there to embrace you.”
    Die—no! She couldn’t be about to die! She would fight until the end. She would kick and scream and bite—and gain nothing, she told herself bitterly. There was no escape now. She would not give the crowd its money’s worth!
    She tried to nod and found that she could not; movement was tightening her noose.
    They were beneath the gallows. The fat friar was muttering unintelligible benedictions, and the executioner was demanding to know if they had any last words.
    Little Pat started to scream, begging for his life, crying out his fear. Ondine bit hard into her lip. The lad couldn’t have been more than fourteen, and he had been condemned to die for cutting down a tree that happened to grow in an earl’s forest. Not unlike her own “crime.”
    And the spectators were enjoying every minute. Ondine stepped forward in the cart. She did, indeed, have a number of last words.
    “What is the matter with you?” she demanded, her voice ringing out loud and strong and clear. A murmur rippled through the crowd, and then a hush followed. “Can you truly enjoy this boy’s plight? If so, I pray that you find one day that you are in dire need of the two shillings you paid for your seats, and that you find you are tempted to fish a stream that belongs to some gentry, just to feed your empty bellies. Suffer with this boy! Else you could well find that his suffering could be your own—”
    “Hang her!” a furious