The memory of the Gentle Rogue had always hung over our village . . .
BY KITTY-LYDIA DYE
Set in the 1700s
AS long as I refused to believe in ghosts, they’d never frighten me. I kept telling myself that as I hovered by the churchyard.
All the children said it was haunted, and today my cousin had taunted me that I wouldn’t last even an hour here after twilight.
But I knew I’d win the dare and the doll my cousin promised.
I crouched by the pond and skipped stones across, fingers dripping with mud.
One, two, three, four splashes. I kept going, trying to hit the other side.
Daylight faded between the trees, their crooked fingers carving the sky.
A glow flickered within the church’s bell tower.
They said the Gentle Rogue had died nearby during the Civil War, killed by the Roundheads he tried to rob.
Now the elements had worn his grave smooth and his ghost wandered the highways, eternally loyal to a forgotten king . . .
The stars grew dim. Maybe if I dawdled on the path I might fool my cousin that I was here longer.
I stood too quickly. My head swam, vision tilting, and I tipped straight into the pond.
Moss-speckled water smothered my scream.
Someone plunged in, grasping my shoulders.
I was hauled on to the rushes and a fist pounded my back.
“You!” I coughed. “You’re the little gargoyle!”
He looked offended.
Shame flushed my cheeks. It was what everyone called the boy because he skulked about the church.
Then he offered his hand.
“Lucky you’re a good throw. I was coming over to ask how to skip stones.”
I grinned in relief. I could make amends.
“I’ll be happy to once we’ve got dry clothes. I’m Sarah-Anne.”
Pondweed squelched between our fingers.
“You can call me Cedric.”
“Do you think Sarah-Anne knows where her man’s gone?”
The vicious whisper cut through me like a knife.
“She’ll deny it, same as her mother did,” the conspiratorial reply came.
“Her husband made out he was working the ships, until he was spied in Yarmouth with another family.
“The poor dear wasted away from a broken heart.”
All morning I’d sat
through this, their voices louder than the drum of milk hitting buckets.
I swallowed the nauseous wriggle in my throat.
Ten years had passed since Cedric pulled me from the pond.
Even with us about to marry, people still thought the worst of him.
“You don’t suppose the Gentle Rogue got him?”
Talk of the legendary highwayman had been on the rise, too.
“There’s talk of the ghost turning nasty. Some soldiers who thought him flesh and blood shot at him.
“Now folk see the Rogue drenched in blood and with flames for eyes –” The barn door rattled open and a man’s broad silhouette filled the space.
One of the milkmaids shrieked, ducking into her stall.
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