Breathless, Arletta knocked on Natalie’s cottage door, which was partly open.

“Soldiers… dozens of them, with horses… they surrounded the cottage…” 

Natalie reached for Brodie; and Arletta, with an involuntary sob, kissed his forehead. Still he slept. 

“Come,” Natalie said. She stepped into an alcove and placed Brodie in a small square box-like cot. Lifting a worn leather bag, she said, “There’s food and some coins and clothes in here, and this,” she lifted a small strong basket in which a real-life baby doll was wrapped, “this you take with you, and you follow the river north. If those soldiers come within eyesight, you must push the basket out into the river so that they believe you have given your babe to the elements instead of allowing them to capture both you and Brodie… you must promise to do that, it was Steele’s express command. Don’t try and run away, just push the basket into the current. It was specially made for the river. You must hurry. Leave now… I have a back door the same as yours… go… if you keep following the river north, the way it is flowing, you will come across the army with whom both your husband and my husband are camped. Yes, I’m in the same predicament, only I hope that the soldiers at your house will not harm me and the babe here… but they will be looking for you, not me… my mother has our daughter … I’m not sure…perhaps I will leave here… did they seem aggressive?” 

“Yes… the front ones, three of them, they crept toward our cottage with their swords drawn. I… I did not know their uniforms…”

“I … I think I’ll go. Janika will have to stay with Ma, but I’ll take Brodie with me…”

“How… how could they have found out about me?”

“Spies… and traitors,” Natalie said. “Go, please go. I do have somewhere to hide and must take Brodie there now. Go…”

Fear and doubt accompanied Arletta as she ran through the forest again, towards the river where she would journey north. She hugged the basket with the baby doll in it, to her chest, having slung the straps of the closed leather bag so that it was across her back. She did not stop running until she saw the river ahead and it was with relief that she slowed to a walk and was able to catch her breath. Such a strange feeling, to have left her baby with Natalie. She felt she was losing her reason. A wooden doll in a floating basket. What was Steele thinking? How could she put this basket into the river, even if it did contain only a doll? Tears pricked at her eyes and as they flowed, she blotted them from her cheeks, bowing her head into the long sleeves of her dress.