CAULDRON OF FEAR
by
JENNIFER JANE POPE
Cauldron of Fear first published in 2001 by Chimera Publishing. Published as an eBook in 2011 by Avid eBooks.
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This novel is fiction - in real life practice safe sex.
This eBook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The characters and situations in this eBook are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright Jennifer Jane Pope. The right of Jennifer Jane Pope to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Author's Preface
The seventeenth century was a time of great change in Britain. The Elizabethan Age came to an end at the century's beginning and a Scottish King, James VI of Scotland, son of the ill-fated and tragic Mary Queen of Scots, came to the English throne as James I.
When the autocratic and headstrong Charles I succeeded him, it quickly became clear that the country was heading for confrontation of the worst kind - civil war. The eventual victory of the Parliamentary forces and the subsequent execution of a king who refused to concede one iota of what he considered his God-given rights, brought to power Oliver Cromwell, who, although he refused to accept the crown, ruled the country with a rod of Puritan iron.
Eventually, following Oliver Cromwell's death and the short-lived period of hapless misrule under Cromwell's son, Richard, the late King's son would return from exile in Europe as Charles II, and a new age of enlightenment and scientific reasoning would begin.
However, at the time our story begins, the country and its inhabitants are still steeped in superstitions and lore that even the Church has been unable to penetrate fully; in fact, with its witch hunts and executions, particularly the excesses of Matthew Hopkins, the notorious Witchfinder General, the Church played more than a small part in ensuring that fear and ignorance continued.
Some might say that this was deliberate and that the Bishops and their minions had a vested interest in ensuring that the largely uneducated populace remained as unenlightened as it had for centuries; certainly, Britain was a country of largely two extremes: the rich and powerful were very rich and powerful, whilst the poor were generally little better off than the animals they tended.
As for the rights of women, they simply did not exist, but then the same could be said of the rights of at least nine out of ten of the male population, too.
Few people will not have heard of the Great Plague and of the Great Fire of London that is generally accredited with finally cleansing the streets of the capital of the virus that was responsible for decimating the population, but the Great Plague of 1665 was nothing more than what many had been predicting would happen over many years previously.
Sporadic outbreaks, mostly in London, but also in Oxford, Derby and in one or two other large cities, had been killing people for decades, though the authorities did little about this. In fairness, there was probably little they could have done, short of levelling entire cities and rebuilding them on a far more modern and hygienic scale.
The 'Commonwealth' period, as the years of Cromwell's virtual dictatorship are generally referred to, was the worst period of flux in an age when the so-called civilised world was evolving at a rate faster than at any time since the days of the Roman Empire.
It is easy, with the precise science of hindsight, for us to look back and see how easy some of the answers could have been. However, for those who lived in the times, efforts towards progress were fraught with seemingly insurmountable problems and the fact that the government of the country had now fallen into the hands of a man who brought new depths of meaning to the word incompetent.
The privileged minority, looking down from the top of the pile, saw only the potential seeds of revolution and their own, eventual, deposition. 'Give them an inch, etc' was never more soundly an echo of blinkered insecurity than it was then. Fear at the top, fear at the bottom - a guaranteed recipe for a society in which the avaricious, particularly the truly cunning avaricious, could wreak their own particular brand of havoc and insanity. The whole country had become a cauldron - a Cauldron of Fear.
- I -
The girl was young, fresh and virginal, even her shaven skull unable to disguise her basic, innocent prettiness. Jacob Crawley, standing in the shadows at the far end of the vault from where she hung chained against the rough stone wall, licked his thin lips in anticipation.
Quietly, with a lightness of step that belied his fifty-something years, he moved closer, until he hovered at the very edge of the pool of orange torchlight that illuminated the captive wench, his black hair and the long black cape he held about his tall frame blending with the darkness behind him and rendering him all but invisible. He saw her eyes were closed and guessed that she was probably fallen into a light sleep of sheer exhaustion, despite the pain her enforced position would be growing in her shoulders and arms, and in the stretched muscles of her calves and thighs as they tried to take some of her weight via the tips of her toes that barely touched the cold floor.
Her breasts, distorted somewhat by her stretched posture, were small and firm, the nipples prominent and deeply coloured, as yet unmarked, per Crawley's strictest instructions. He grinned maliciously to himself, knowing they would not remain thus for much longer.
Between her taut thighs, her shaven pudenda pouted alluringly, the chains at her ankles holding her legs apart just sufficiently to prevent any attempt at modesty, and Crawley felt a cold shiver of lust crawl slowly up his spine. This one, he thought, was far too good to waste on the scaffold, far too sweet a fruit to plant in the chill earth beyond the consecrated ground of the churchyard. No, he chuckled, this one would not be broken, though he knew she would probably require a taste of his own peculiar skills and more than a modicum of bending before she would be totally satisfactory.
Not that the process would take that long; it seldom did. Two days, three at the most - three days that would to her, however, pass like a millennium, so that when Crawley finally granted her even the smallest measure of relief and the chance to avoid the fate to which she would by then have consigned herself and probably even craved, she would take it gratefully, no matter to what level of degradation she must surely know she would sink.
Crawley shuffled his position, the muscles in his right thigh having stiffened in the damp air, and the slight sound brought the girl immediately awake again, her wide brown eyes flickering from side to side in alarm.
'Who - who's there?' she cried, her voice thin and wavering in her terror of the unknown. 'Please,' she wailed, when Crawley made no reply, nor moved to reveal himself, 'please, whoever you are, take pity. I am no witch; surely you must all know that by now. Ask in the village, as I said, everyone will tell you.'
'Oh, people always tell me what they think I will believe,' Crawley replied, breaking his silence at last, though still remaining back from the light, 'at least, in the beginning.' His voice betrayed his north country roots, though many years had softened the harsher edges of his accent. 'Satan woos his brides to proliferate his evil lies, but the Good Lord has bestowed on me the gift of cutting through them.'
'Sir!' Tears welled up in the girl's eyes and began trickling down cheeks that were already stained. 'Sir, I am no bride of the devil, nor do I lie. I fear God and worship our saviour and a more devout girl you will surely never find.'
'You are Matilda Pennywise, of the Parish of St Jude?' The girl nodded, swallowing hard. Crawley inched forward, so that his outline was now visible to her, but only as a deeper shadow. 'Speak girl,' he commanded. 'Are you, or are you not, Matilda Pennywise?'
'Yes!' Matilda gasped. 'Yes sir, indeed I am... sir,' she added, as an afterthought.
'That's better wench,' Crawley cackled, 'you seem to be learning something at last.' He coughed, clearing his throat. 'Then, Matilda Pennywise,' he continued, after a carefully judged pause, 'you stand accused of several counts of witchcraft, sorcery and consorting with unholy forces.'
'No!' Matilda shrieked. 'No, it's all lies, as God is my witness—' Without warning Crawley leapt forward, his right arm swinging in a wide arc, the open palm of his hand slapping into the girl's unprotected cheek with such force that she would have been knocked off her feet, were the chains not holding her upright. She let out a howl of pain, not least because the full weight of her body had momentarily been transferred to her already tortured upper limbs.
'Silence!' he roared. 'Heresy, to invoke the name of the Lord God you have betrayed.' Matilda was struggling to regain her balance and clearly scarcely heard him, but Crawley knew his words would sink in eventually.
'You are all the same, you Devil's spawn harlots, every single one of you,' he intoned. 'Yet I shall save your unholy soul, mark my words. You will return to the arms of the heavenly master cleansed of your foul wickedness, else my name be not Jacob Crawley!'
Harriet Merridew pushed the small window of her bedroom as far open as the creaking hinges would allow and leaned out over the cill, breathing in the crisp, early morning air and looking up at the pale blue sky above. She smiled, shook her tangled mane of fair hair, and let out a deep sigh. The fourth fair day in succession and the harvest now three-quarters gathered in. If the weather held another forty-eight hours...
The previous year's harvest had been a near disaster, half the crop ruined by rain and unseasonable hailstones, so that Harriet had been forced to sell off from an already dwindling livestock in order to pay bills and taxes and to keep herself and her almost permanently bed-ridden father through the ensuing twelve months. It had been a close-run thing, especially after four of the remaining cows had taken sick and died from the rot disease, rendering them worthless as meat and fit only for burning.
And when one of the sows died giving birth to a troublesome litter, only many weeks of salted pork and Harriet's grim determination to retain their independence prevented her from finally accepting yet another of Thomas Handiwell's proposals of marriage. She shivered at the thought now, for the prospect of a lifetime sharing Handiwell's bed was more than she could believe she had ever contemplated, no matter how desperate their situation might have been.
Not that the man was unpleasant to look at: he was, after all, a fine figure, with broad shoulders, strong back and good legs, his black hair long and thick, if slightly greasy. And he had means that might attract many another female, for his inn, the Black Drum, stood alongside the main highway between London and the busy naval centre of Portsmouth, down on the south coast, and he had twice built extension wings to it in order to accommodate the constant influx of weary travellers seeking rest and replenishment for the night.
He was also not an unpleasant fellow. Slightly terse and given to the odd oath at times, true, but not unkindly and with an even disposition and definitely in love with Harriet, as his eyes and gauche manner betrayed whenever he was in her company. No, Harriet reflected, as she withdrew back inside the room, Thomas Handiwell would make a good husband again, as he had clearly done for his long dead first wife, but for someone other than Harriet herself.
Ye gods, she chuckled, he was at least as old as her own father, if not perhaps a year or so older, and his own daughter, Jane, had been at least three years old by the time Harriet had been born, as Jane herself had been quick enough to point out on more than one occasion when the two young women met.
'He's becoming a silly old fool,' the sallow complexioned innkeeper's daughter had remarked, shrewishly, when Harriet delivered the last pig carcass to the Drum back at the beginning of June. 'Marry you indeed. He'll make himself an even bigger laughing stock and probably kill himself into the bargain.' Her thin lips curled maliciously and there was no disguising the hate in her eyes.
'If the stupid oaf must take himself another wife,' she had continued, her narrow nose wrinkling in distaste, 'then he should look to someone more his own age, someone who'll keep his feet warm in bed and not tempt him to racing around the bedchamber.'
'Someone who will possibly die before he does, you mean?' Harriet suggested, and immediately regretted her words, though she knew she had hit the nail squarely upon its head. Jane Handiwell did not want her father dying and leaving his well-gotten gains to a wife who might even outlive herself. She had not remained at the inn, cooking, cleaning and managing the house just for some flighty usurper to march in on her pretty heels and snatch away her inheritance.
'Poor Jane,' Harriet whispered to herself, as she opened the top drawer of the heavy oak chest and began rummaging through the clean underthings there. 'Poor plain Jane with your twisted humour and silly jealousies. Why you won't believe me when I say I have no intentions of marrying your father, heaven above knows, but then a mean spirit bleeds itself hardest, and no mistaking.'
Her name was Miranda Parkes, but the people here persisted in calling her Kitty, not just refusing to acknowledge her real identity, but actively punishing her with their cruel whips if she dared try not responding to the name they had given her, let alone when she tried to insist that they use her correct title.
'Here you are, Kitty,' the young overseer had told her, gripping her jaw between a powerful thumb and forefinger and jerking her face up towards his own. 'You're Kitty here and you'll be Kitty from now on, unless your new master decides to rename you.'
'But I'm not a slave,' Miranda squeaked, defiantly. She clenched and unclenched her fists in desperate frustration, but her wrists remained strapped to her hips as they had been when she first recovered consciousness in this awful place. 'I'm not a slave,' she repeated, futilely.
The overseer, Adam, released his grip and pushed her away. 'Is that so?' he smirked. 'Well, you look like a slave, right enough, for no free woman I ever knew would stand before men shamelessly showing off her titties like you do.'
Miranda felt her cheeks redden, for she had almost managed to forget that she was kept so terribly near naked. 'It's not my choice to be like this,' she whispered, lowering her eyes, grimacing as she saw how hard and extended her nipples appeared. 'If you would permit me, I'd cover myself suitably.'
'I think your appearance is suitable enough,' Adam laughed, 'for a slave girl.' He slapped the short leather crop against his high boot, making Amanda wince. 'And that's what you are, Kitty, whether you like it or not, so the sooner you start learning how a slave should properly behave, the easier it will be for you.' He flexed the crop meaningfully.
'So,' he said silkily, 'what's it to be, or shall I add a few more stripes to those rosy little bottom cheeks?'
Kitty winced again, for if the immediate pain of the whipping he had given her that first evening had faded, the memory had not, and she did not have to try too hard to recall each of the six burning stripes he laid across her buttocks. She let out a long breath. 'I don't want to be whipped again,' she said, quietly.
'Master,' Adam reminded her.
She sighed again. 'I don't want to be whipped again, master,' she corrected. 'What is it you want me to do?'
'Whatever I tell you,' he said, smiling now. 'It won't be that hard to learn, I promise you. Now, step up closer and present those slave girl titties for my inspection.' Swallowing hard, Amanda took a pace forward and forced herself to draw her shoulders back, thrusting her generous mounds into even greater prominence. Adam's free hand reached out, hefting the left breast carefully, kneading one side gently with his thumb. To her chagrin, Amanda felt a tremor run up and down her arched spine and an involuntary squeal escaped her lips before she could check it.
'Very good, Titty Kitty,' Adam purred, evidently pleased with the reaction to his touch. 'Look down now, see how your teats swell to my caresses. Why, I swear that if you weren't wearing your slave harness you'd throw yourself wantonly upon me, you brazen little trollop.'
He let the whip drop at his feet and his left hand began to explore, but this time much lower down, pushing between the stiff leather strap between her thighs and searching, first for her recently denuded mound and then for the swollen lips that had begun to throb as though developing a will of their own.
'Ah, naughty Titty Kitty,' he breathed, his mouth close to her right ear. 'What's this then, are we all wet down here? And so hot, too. Would you like me to take care of this hungry little cunny, Titty Kitty?'
'Yes, master.' Amanda could not believe she had said that, and was on the point of drawing back when commonsense and self-preservation interceded. To resist, even to object, could only bring one inevitable and painful result and after all, she told herself reasonably, she was no virgin. Besides, she had to admit, he was handsome, even if his manner was brutish.
Slowly, she raised her face until her eyes met his. 'Yes, master,' she repeated, quietly but surprisingly calmly, 'I think I should like that very much.'
Matilda hung awkwardly against the unforgiving stone blocks, shifting her position every now and then, at least as far as her chains would permit, in an effort to bring a measure of relief to a few different muscles in turn. However, with her toes barely touching the floor, there were few options and gradually her limbs were beginning to feel numb through their agonies.
'Dear God,' she whispered, half opening her eyes to peer into the gloom, suspecting that the gaunt, black-garbed man was there somewhere, watching her ordeal, 'dear God, why is this happening to me? You know only too well that these are nought but foul lies.' She closed her eyes again, groaning and trying to draw more air into her lungs.
Was this, she wondered, what it felt like to be crucified? She had heard, somewhere, that it was not the nails through hands and feet that killed, but the position of the condemned, whereby the chest finally collapsed and no air then reached the head. James - James Calthorpe, the miller's son - had told her that, hadn't he? James had been educated, sent away to London, his father's money buying him a future that wouldn't involve humping heavy sacks of grain and flour and long hours toiling to keep the unreliable mill machinery grinding.
James Calthorpe knew many things, Matilda knew. He knew about other countries, Europe, the new cities in the new world across the ocean. He hadn't visited them personally, of course, though he had assured Matilda that he would - and soon - but he told her of the books in the universities and libraries, shelf upon shelf of learning and knowledge, where a man could spend a lifetime of days reading and still not have touched upon one tenth of what was there.
And James knew of many things much closer to home, especially of those secret places that Matilda thought were known only to her, and just how and when to touch, caress, kiss these places and invoke in her sensations that drove her to forget everything her mother and aunts had ever told her. Perhaps, she reflected mournfully, this was her punishment; the wrath of God unleashed upon her for those stolen moments of passion in the various small barns behind the watermill.
They had done things that Matilda knew were wrong, sinful, against the teachings of the Church, things the pastor had told the entire congregation would be certain to condemn their eternal souls to the fires of everlasting Hell. She had been wicked and now she was being punished.
'No!' she cried out, her eyes snapping open. 'No!' It was not right, she was not right. The Crawley man had said she was a witch, that she had consorted with devils and imps. James Calthorpe was no angel, to be sure, but he was no devil, that much Matilda knew beyond doubt. No man could be more flesh and blood than he.
'Please!' she cried into the echoing darkness. 'Please, you must believe me. I'll swear on the good book, I am no witch. Let those who accuse me do so to my face and swear their oath likewise and in the church itself, before the altar!'
Francis Calthorpe regarded the old woman quizzically. Everyone in the village knew Hannah Pennywise, but no one could ever really say they 'knew' her, as he was want to tell his wife on frequent occasions. Of course the majority of the locals, little more than ignorant peasants in Francis's eyes, regarded her as a witch and openly said so, though never, naturally, within her hearing.
Francis did not subscribe to this point of view, though he had to agree that Hannah was slightly odd. She was old - very old - though nobody could say her exact age and nobody dared ask her directly, and she looked stiff and frail, though she walked briskly everywhere, banging her cane into the ground as she went. Moreover, though the passing of the years had taken its inevitable toll, enough remained to indicate that, in her younger days, Hannah Pennywise had almost certainly been a handsome woman.
That evidence was also reflected in her granddaughter, Matilda, a fine looking young woman, if also slightly unconventional in her ways, a trait that Francis proscribed to her earlier upbringing in London, where women, so he heard, were beginning to behave slightly more independently, despite the supposedly strict Puritan regime of the Protector, Cromwell.
This combination of beauty and wilfulness was doubtless what had attracted Francis's son, James, to the girl - that and her obvious intelligence and an education far better than the average village female was ever likely to have benefit of. Given her character, Francis could see his son was quite possibly courting trouble for himself in the future, but then James was a strong character in his own right and was of an age whereby he was entitled to make his own choices - and mistakes.
'Mistress Pennywise,' Francis said at last, dusting down the front of his apron, but simply creating a further cloud of flour between them, 'my son left for London yesterday, to the best of my knowledge. Of course,' he added with a wry smile, 'you may be in a more privileged position than I.'
Hannah sniffed and leaned on her long staff, shaking her head.
'He may have left for London, Master Calthorpe, but he was supposed to be calling in to see my lass before he travelled,' she said. 'They were to meet at the crossroads and dine at the inn, but I am told that neither of them ever arrived there.'
Francis raised his eyebrows. 'I see,' he replied slowly. 'Well, perhaps he decided to delay his departure. Perhaps, well, perhaps many things. Young people today do not necessarily observe the proprieties of past ages.'
'Yes, well I know what you're thinking, Francis Calthorpe,' Hannah growled, 'but in this particular case you're quite wrong, I think. Besides, where would they go? They would hardly ride to London together on the one horse, would they - unless you're going to tell me your lad had a spare mount with him?'
'No, that he did not, I can say for sure,' Francis said, shaking his head. 'Though he could, perhaps, have hired another mount at the inn.'
'No,' Hannah said, 'I already told you. He never went to the inn.'
'Then I don't know,' Francis admitted, holding up his flour-covered hands. 'But I shouldn't worry overly much. It was a warm night last night, so they could - well, they could easily have fallen asleep somewhere.'
'They could, aye,' Hannah said, 'but I'm damned certain they didn't. Something is very wrong and I can feel it. Trouble is,' she added, turning to leave, 'I don't know what and I don't know where. Not as yet, anyways.'
'That young woman could do a lot worse for herself, I'm telling you,' Thomas Handiwell grunted. 'There b'ain't so many eligible fellows around these parts, in case you hadn't noticed.'
From the other side of the well-worn oak bar counter, Ned Blaine tried not to smile. Ten years younger than Thomas, Ned had been happily (for the most part, anyway) married to his childhood sweetheart for getting on for two decades, a union that had brought forth nine surviving offspring, six of them male, and the eldest two female children were now both around marriageable age and themselves not that much younger than the object of Thomas's desire.
'Fair enough, Ned,' Thomas continued, 'there's a difference of more than a few years—'
'More'n a few, Thomas,' Ned interjected, but Thomas appeared, or chose to appear, not to hear him.
'A few years, I'll grant you,' he said, 'but I have good health and a good home to offer here.'
'Wench has a home already,' Ned pointed out. 'Barten Meade's a fine house.'
'Once, mebbe,' Thomas grunted. 'Place is going to rack and ruin now, or ain't you been over thataways lately? Hardly surprising, really. Girl like that can hardly be expected to keep a place like that in good repair.'
'Well, that's right enough, I suppose,' Ned conceded. He stared down into the bottom of his pewter tankard, regarding the dregs quizzically. 'Maybe one or two on us could go over and offer the odd helping hand, just to be neighbourly and Christian, like.'
'Place'd need more than an odd hand, I'm telling you,' Thomas snorted. 'Hasn't seen a lick of wash these past five years, I'd wager, not since Oliver Merridew took properly to his bed and Harriet paid off the Walden lad.'
'Aye, well, that's another thing, ain't it?' Ned remarked, scraping his pot pointedly along the bar top. 'Wench ain't goin' t'leave her father now, is she? Thinks the world of him, and no mistakin' that.'
'Wouldn't expect her to leave him,' Thomas grunted. He reached across and took the tankard, turning towards the nearest of the ale casks behind him. 'Told her plain enough, I did. She can bring her father here and I'll bring in a proper nursemaid to take good care of him. Not only that, I can put up the money to hire on enough hands to have their farm up and running again as it should be.
'There's fifteen acres at least should have been under the plough this season, 'cepting they couldn't afford to keep a ploughman on long enough to turn it all. That's a devilish waste, and no mistaking.' He turned back and placed the brimming pot back before Ned, who seized it greedily.
'If'n they had any sense they'd sell off what they can't till regular,' Thomas went on.
'Or sell off half of it and use the money to bring the other half under the plough,' Ned added, wiping the thin froth from his upper lip with the back of one less than clean hand. 'Tried suggesting that, have you?'
'Tried,' Thomas replied mournfully. 'Tried and failed. She won't listen, that one. Wilful to a fault. T'ain't right.'
'She be female,' Ned chuckled. 'Females ain't right, not like men. Got udders instead o' brains and—'
'That's enough of that sort of talk, Ned Blaine,' Thomas snapped, cutting the younger man short. 'I thought better of you, a married man with girls of thine own not that much of an age different.' He looked up and down the deserted bar, as if fearful that someone might have overheard his companion's words, but it was still very early and the place deserted.
'Aye, well, then there's little you can tell me about the so called fairer sex, is there?' Ned grinned. 'Think your self lucky thou've only got the one female to contend with.'
'I'd think meself luckier if I had the two,' Thomas mused. He reached beneath the bar, brought up a heavy glass and a bottle of brandy, uncorked the latter and poured himself a generous measure. Ned took another gulp of his ale and wiped his mouth again.
'T'ain't going to be, Thomas,' he said. 'Sooner you accepts that as the truth, easier it'll sit on you. It'll ride easier with your Jane, too.'
'Jane will do as she's told and accept whatever I decide,' Thomas said bluntly. 'She's not too old, nor yet too big not to get my belt across her backside and I'm still master in this house, if none other as yet.'
Adam Portfield cinched the second breast strap tighter and stepped back to admire the results of his adjustments. The girl, Kitty, was certainly well endowed, but now the tightened leather about the base of each bosom thrust it into even greater prominence, and the cuffs he had added above her elbows, drawing them closer together by means of a linked chain, forced her to stand with both magnificent globes thrust enticingly towards him.
He reached into his pocket and brought out the miniature cat-o'-nine-tails. Unlike it's bigger sibling, favoured so much in the navy, this implement did not have little lead pellets braided into the tips of each thong, nor were the thongs themselves more than flat strips of soft hide, for this whip was intended for purposes other than simple punishment. Adam had seen slave women come to orgasm under these flailing fronds and, for all his youthfulness he liked to think he had perfected its use.
'Tit whip, Titty Kitty,' he laughed, seeing how the helpless girl's eyes had grown round at the sight of the little cat. 'I'm going to punish those provocative melons of yours and punish them till you cry for me to tup that pretty little cunny instead.'
'But, master,' Kitty whimpered, 'I've already asked you to do that, haven't I?'
'Yes, but too easily, Titty Kitty,' Adam sneered. 'I like my wenches to be hot and writhing, so they dance on they end of my cock like wild demons. Now, stand still and hold your ground, else I'll kneel you down and truss you there.' He stepped forward and, with a flick of his wrist, sent the nine strips humming through the air. They landed about Kitty's left nipple, already engorged from the stringent bondage of her breasts. She let out a high-pitched squeal and jumped backwards, but there was really nowhere to go inside the barn stall.
Again the flails snaked out, this time at her other breast. She gasped and groaned, staggering back against the timber partition and Adam saw her eyes roll, before she screwed them shut. The third and fourth blows landed with equal precision, reddening the area around each pouting teat and Kitty writhed against the rough wall, growling and mewling. Her eyes opened again, slitted now as she peered at her tormentor through a haze of tears.
'Bastard!' she hissed, but Adam noticed how she was pressing her firm thighs together. 'Noooo!' she wailed, but now stood more erect, making no attempt to lessen his target area.
'Brazen little bitch,' Adam taunted and added two more blows, one to each side. 'I do believe you're starting to enjoy this as much as I am.'
- II -
The two men were the same who'd brought Matilda to the cellar dungeon originally, how long ago now she could only guess, though it seemed like a lifetime since she last breathed fresh air.
Neither of them was local and she guessed they must travel about with the Crawley creature, for he would need his own men to assist in the execution of his dreadful duties. Not that Matilda knew anything of the man personally, but she had heard of his kind; feared figures who travelled the land, searching out witches, terrifying entire areas with their awful retribution. There had been one name that instilled terror throughout half the realm, but Matthew Hopkins was reputably dead, ten years ago at least, maybe more, and with him had gone the worst of the fear that his name and those of his ilk had represented.
Witch finding, James had assured her, lost all credibility since the death of the old king. This was a new world now; a world where superstition would have no place, swept aside by a tide of knowledge and education. Yes, there were still a few backwaters where the successors of Matthew Hopkins could still ply their deadly trade, but they were few and far between, isolated pockets of ignorance in an otherwise much better informed society.
Matilda had never considered Leddingham to be a backwater, however. Standing alongside one of the main highways to London, it was only a small rural village, admittedly, but the newssheets from the capital arrived only one day late and the talk in the inn was as informed as any she had heard, save when in James's company, of course, and during those days when she had lived in London herself.
So why here? And why her? Why had Jacob Crawley come to the village and just who had made such ridiculous allegations about her? And where was James? If only James were here, surely he would put an end to this nightmare? Surely someone from the village would tell him what was happening?
For the moment, however, it seemed obvious that James remained in ignorance of her situation and the whys and wherefores were unimportant. For the moment she was here, naked, her head shaved, her wrists chained and facing two men whose dull eyes offered little comfort.
'Don't know why he always insists on cutting off their hair,' the taller one said, shaking his head. 'This one had such pretty curls. Seems a dreadful waste if'n you ask me, Jed.'
His companion looked darkly at him. 'Hush your mouth, Silas Grout,' he hissed. 'If his eminence hears you I'd not want to be in your shoes. Ours ain't to question the likes of him and well you should know that by now. His moods are bad enough o' late, so don't give him any reason to act worse.'
'Just saying, that's all,' Silas muttered. 'Besides, I should worry what his high and mightiness thinks. I'm startin' to get a bit fed up with all this travellin' about. We've hardly bin three days in the one place this past twelve months. I reckon this witch huntin' business is near on finished. Don' reckon half the ones we catches is really witches anyway.'
Watching the two men through slitted eyes, Matilda saw what she thought was a glimmer of hope. 'That's right, sir,' she gasped, astonished at how cracked and dry her voice sounded. The two of them stopped, looking at each other and then back at her. Swallowing and trying to moisten her lips with her tongue, Matilda pressed on. 'You're right,' she croaked. 'I'm no witch and there will be plenty of people in the village who'll bear me witness. If one of you would just go and fetch Mr Calthorpe the miller, or his son, James. They'll tell your master the truth.
'Or my own grandmother,' she added hastily. 'Her name is Hannah Pennywise and she lives in the third cottage along from the mill. She's lived in this village all her life. Everyone knows her.'
'Probably knows her for a witch herself,' Jed, the shorter man growled. 'Witchin' runs through entire families, everyone knows that. Maybe honest people would be too afeared to say ought agin her.'
'Then who's accused me?' Matilda demanded. 'Surely I have the right to know at least that much?'
'You have the right to whatever Master Crawley decides,' Jed replied blandly. 'Master Crawley holds papers from three bishops and from Parliament itself. He's an official witchfinder with the best reputation a body could want. He knows a witch when he sees one, so it don't really matter who first testified as to what you really was, does it? He's got all the evidence, all writ down proper, according to the law, plenty enough to hang you right now, but he's decided to have one last try at saving your soul first.'
'He has?' A flicker of new hope sprung up in Matilda's breast. 'Then please, take me to him. I'll swear my love to the one God.'
'That I'd bet,' Silas grinned. 'But then anyone'd swear anything, with the shadow of the noose over their pretty necks, wouldn't they?'
'Then what?' she protested. The two men exchanged looks again.
'You'll soon see,' Jed retorted, grinning, though with little humour in the expression. 'And so will your grandma. Master Crawley has a special penance for witches he thinks he can save.' The way he laid emphasis on the last word made Matilda's flesh crawl and suddenly, despite her pain - perhaps because the pain was focussing her thoughts - she thought she understood quite clearly what this nightmare was really about.
The statements against her, if they really existed, had probably been obtained with promises of reward, and any 'evidence' against her merely fabrications initiated by Crawley himself. Grandma Hannah had lived all her life simply enough in her cottage, which had belonged to her father before her. Nathan Pennywise had been aptly named, for he saved, invested money in the watermill with James Meldrew's grandfather, sold his share in that some years later and bought land, little pockets of acreage all about the area, all of which were then, as now, rented out to local farmers.
His careful investment was not worth a great fortune, not by any means, but the rents that came in every quarter day mounted up and neither he, nor his daughter after him, ever had profligate tastes. Matilda never questioned Hannah about money, but she knew there must be a small nest egg somewhere, and what she knew surely must be fairly common knowledge in Leddingham and the area about it.
Somehow Crawley had gotten wind of this; an aged woman, her young granddaughter and no other living relatives that anyone knew of - they offered themselves as easy prey to anyone unscrupulous enough to take advantage, especially if that advantage could be taken, at least to all appearances, by using the law. The hysterical witch hunts of Matthew Hopkins's day were a thing of the past, but witchcraft was still a crime in England and news still filtered through of another unfortunate being hanged, probably for no greater sin than living on her own, or having a lazy eye or deformed hand. Ignorance, Matilda knew, was a terrible thing, even more terrible all the time people like Crawley existed to exploit it.
And in this case, she, Matilda, was the easiest route to whatever money Hannah had salted away. Undoubtedly, Crawley would offer the old woman her granddaughter's life in exchange for gold. It was blackmail, but he would not be crude enough to state it as such. No doubt he would tell Hannah that it was a tribute to God, paid to his servant, who would then intercede with the Almighty on behalf of Matilda's soul.
Meantime, however, the way she had been treated thus far and the way in which Jed had spoken suggested that Crawley might see this situation as the chance to avail himself of more than just pecuniary rewards. Matilda pictured the hawk-nosed man's cruel eyes and thin lips and shuddered at the prospect...
The warmth of the late summer sun was fast fading as it dipped towards the far hills with what seemed to be growing speed, and the shadows of the trees and the huge barn structure stretched far across the deserted meadow, as the heavy timber-sided wagon lurched unsteadily up the rutted dirt track behind two disinterested looking cobs.
The driver, a thickset fellow of indeterminate middle age, dressed simply, though in good quality cloth, pushed his floppy hat to the back of his head, scratched behind his right ear and then hawked up a huge glob of spittle, which he expelled towards the bushes with surprising velocity. Like his horses, he seemed little interested in his surroundings and looked tired and dusty, evidence of a long day's journey.
As the plodding horses drew close to the barn they slowed and stopped, both without any visible or audible sign of instruction from the man. One snorted and tossed his head, but even this seemed a half-hearted effort, whilst its companion remained motionless, only the occasional twitch of its ears distinguishing it from a statue.
The driver hawked and spat again, studied his unused whip with the air of someone who has just remembered something, and placed it tidily on the bench seat at his side. He stretched his shoulders back, arching his neck and just caught in time the hat that was too loose fitting to stay in place under such duress. Then, with a sigh and a grunt, he began to climb down from his perch, landing heavily on the hardened mud as the door at the end of the barn swung open.
'You're nearly two hours late.' The speaker was a younger man, perhaps not yet thirty, with dark hair cut close to his skull, in the Puritan fashion. He wore polished leather breeches and a stiff leather waistcoat, over a loose-sleeved shirt of pale lemon silk, and moved as languidly and easily as the older man moved stiffly.
The driver grunted and gave him a look of contempt. 'Military had the road blocked half the morning,' he said, without any hint of apology. 'Wagonloads of cannon going down to Portsmouth, along with a few hundred casks of powder, so I heard. They don't like the likes of us getting too near that sort of convoy, so all other travellers have to wait up till they're well clear. Not that I'm complaining, mind. Wouldn't want to be anywheres around that cargo if'n a stray spark from a pipe went the wrong place.'
'You could have looked for another route,' the younger man suggested. 'I don't like the idea of you and this wagon just standing around, especially not in a crowded area.'
'Master Hawkin,' the driver said flatly, 'if there were another road I'd have taken it. As it stands, the only other way would have been around the back of Harting Hill, which be about twenty miles off the beam. These two nags are willing enough and they'll plod all day and all night if'n I ask 'em, but you're talking another four hours, maybe five, so if'n I'd gone that way I'd not have been here much afore ten tonight, if then.'
'And your cargo has been well behaved?' George Hawkin said, ignoring the driver's explanation as if it were totally unimportant.
The older man nodded. 'Quiet as four little corpses,' he said. 'Sleeping like innocent babes and unlikely to wake afore midnight, if'n I'm any judge. Swallowed their medicine good as gold and out like lights not ten minutes after.' Sam Perkins did not like George Hawkin very much, but then that was not really surprising, as Sam did not like anyone really, himself included when he was in his cups.
But in addition to Sam's general lack of sociability, there was the fact that George, in his opinion, had ideas far above the station of a man whose father had been a swineherd all his life and whose mother had worked in the scullery of a country house that had not even been very grand. Quite how Hawkin had risen to become Roderick Grayling's steward at Grayling Hall, Sam had no idea, but then the nobility were a rum lot at the best of times, and the Graylings among the rummest.
Still, he reflected as he trudged around to the rear of the wagon, they paid him well, both for his work and for his ability to keep a still tongue in his head, and the job had occasional little perks, just so long as George Hawkin never got to find out. He reached up and inserted a heavy key into the formidable lock that secured the equally formidable door, turned it and swung the thick oak section to the side, revealing a sight that most anyone else would have found remarkable, if not bizarre, but to which both men had long grown accustomed.
The three young women lay side by side, a thin layer of sacking between their near naked bodies and the rough hewn planks that formed the floor of the wagon. They lay on their backs, their faces, eyes closed in drugged sleep, facing upwards, arms by their sides, wrists cuffed there to the thick leather belts that had been laced and locked about their slender waists and from which further straps, roughly elongated triangular in shape, descended to cover their sexes, passing between their thighs and locking again to the lower edges of the waist belts at the small of the back. They would, Sam knew, remain in these chastity-enforcing devices for several days, with further humiliating refinements yet to come.
'Pretty little trio, b'ain't they?' he chuckled. In the pocket of his breeches the other key, much smaller than the one he had used to unlock the wagon door, seemed to grow larger and his hand went inadvertently to where it pressed against the thick woollen material, as if to satisfy itself that the bulge there was only in Sam's imagination. He wondered what Hawkin would say if he knew that Sam had that particular key, or how he frequently made use of it during stops in the journey down from south London.
He chuckled again, but this time to himself, as he wondered how many little Sams there might now be, running around somewhere out beyond the seas, in the Orient, or maybe in the New World, for these girls, despite their initial rigorous training and 'breaking in' period would always be well on their way to their new masters long before any evidence of what he had been up to might show.
'Papers all in the box there?' George Hawkin said tersely, leaning in to slide the small walnut-veneered portfolio towards him and not deigning to comment on the physical attributes referred to by the older man.
Sam sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. 'What d'ye think, George Hawkin?' he snapped. 'Think I'm beyond seeing to a few simple details, is it? Don't you forget, lad, I remembers youse when you was runnin' around barefoot and damned nearly bare-arsed, and I bin runnin' this damned wagon up and down for his lordship and now his boy maybe twenty-five years in all now. Never lost a wench and never lost a scrap of the damned paperwork in that time, neither!'
'And never learned to read any of it, either,' Hawkin rasped, tucking the box under his arm. 'Well,' he said, turning on his heel, 'don't just stand there, start bringing them inside.'
'Me?' Sam cried, feigning indignation. 'Where's that good-for-nothing lad William then? I'm a bloody driver, not a porter.'
'Then you'd better start keeping better time,' Hawkin grinned evilly. 'I sent the lad off for his supper an hour since, so there's just you.'
'Supper?' Sam echoed. 'Some of us ain't had bleedin' dinner yet.'
'The sooner they're inside, the sooner you get fed,' Hawkin pointed out. 'And there's a little extra treat for you tonight. Master Roderick has picked out a nice bed-warmer for you, very handsome little blackamoor wench we bought a week or so since. Ladies maid, she was, and great big eyes.'
'Big eyes and small teats, I'll wager,' Sam replied sullenly. 'All the same, these black wenches, and they jabber away all the time you're tuppin' them, all in their heathen tongues. What about the lady she was maid to?'
'Hah!' Hawkin made a wry face. 'You don't think the young master would waste quality like that on the likes of me, let alone you? No, that one is already heading east and a good bounty she's fetched. Fair-haired, sweet-faced and tight-crossed legs - at least, when she first got here. Not a day over twenty and probably a virgin, but she seemed a quick learner and there's only one stiffness she'll have from now on.'
Jane Handiwell wriggled into the tight breeches and began lacing them even tighter about her generous hips, finally drawing the wide belt about her waist and fastening the ornate cat's head buckle and cinching herself as tightly as possible.
Turning, she studied her reflection in the tall mirror and pursed her thin lips. Yes, she thought, ruefully, with her hair tied back and the masculine shirt, she made a more than passable male - better than she made a woman, she added bitterly, and her thin nostrils flared momentarily, but her anger had no time to grow, for a quiet knock on the bedroom door heralded the arrival of her maidservant, Beth.
The seventeen-year-old orphan already boasted a larger bust than her mistress and wore tops that plunged away to reveal plenty of it, the laced bodice pushing the twin globes into prominence. Her hair was red, a deep gingery mane that steadfastly refused to obey even her most ardent attempts to control it, and the freckles on her cheeks ran their own riot in sympathy.
Jane considered her own thin, straight black hair and her lips twitched again, but she knew she should not take it out on Beth, for the poor girl could not help her innate prettiness and only displayed so much cleavage as she did on Jane's specific instructions. Those breasts, Jane knew, were as much hers as they were the younger girl's, and Beth worshipped her mistress with a devotion that bordered on fanaticism.
'Nearly ready, miss?' Beth whispered, closing the door quietly behind her. 'The master's left for his cousin's at Petersfield and I've saddled up Marquis ready for you. He's in the usual place, just behind the three oaks.'
'Good girl,' Jane smiled and bent to plant a kiss on Beth's cheek, fondling one breast familiarly as she did so. She felt Beth tense and let out her customary low moan, her eyelids flickering closed and then open again. 'Later, my sweet,' she cooed. 'Be in my bed and make sure it's nice and warm for when I return, eh?'
'Yes, miss,' Beth smiled widely, her green eyes sparkling with anticipation. 'And I'll warm a bottle of brandy for you.'
'Warm it between your bubbies then, my little dove,' Jane grinned. She reached for the frock jacket that hung across the foot-rail of the bed, and Beth immediately took it from her, holding it up so that her mistress could slip her arms into the sleeves the more easily. Then, as Jane sat upon the edge of the bed, Beth knelt to slip her feet into the sturdy riding boots, lacing them and fastening the three additional buckles on each.
'You be careful tonight, mistress, please?' Beth said, standing up again and straightening her skirts. 'There's talk that Lord Grayling has been onto the magistrates to get army patrols on the roads at night. Too many people complainin', especially the coach companies. Fair crippling their trade on the overnights, so they say.'
'Lord Grayling hasn't been at the Hall these past six months,' Jane chuckled. 'He's in the Indies, they say, looking for new ways to line his deep pockets.'
'But the son is still here, mistress, and they do say as how he's a harder nut than his pa, so they do.'
'There's no nut that can't be cracked, if'n it's hit right,' Jane retorted. 'And Roderick Grayling is no exception to that rule,' she added, with a malicious grin. 'He's no threat to our little game, so don't you worry that fuzzy little head of yours with such nonsense.'
Beth looked unconvinced, but she turned, opened the closet and took out the long black cape and held it up for Jane to put on and fasten the neck clasp. The tricorn hat completed the outfit and Jane returned to the mirror for one final inspection. Yes, she thought, in poor light and especially once she donned her mask, she would pass easily enough for a man, and besides, the only people close enough to make any objective judgement would be too busy looking at her two things than her face.
The two pistols were a pair, bought during a visit to London, from a gunsmith who had assured Jane that they were of a unique design, handmade by a craftsman in India and designed so that although they fired a smaller ball than was usual, their accuracy surpassed any other hand weapon he had ever tested. And he had not been misleading her, Jane knew, for she could drop a rabbit at fifty paces with either weapon; no mean feat in an age when firearms were still very much at the stage of hit-or-miss.
Carefully, Jane hefted the beautifully balanced pistols, weighed them lovingly for a moment or two, and then tucked them through the specially adapted belt.
'Right then, my little kitten tongue,' she said, regarding Beth kindly, 'I'm off to the hunt, or I'll be late and my friends will start worrying, knowing them as I do. Make sure the side door is unbolted once everyone else is asleep, and don't forget my warm brandy. The nights are growing chillier out there now and I'm sure I'll be needing something to drive away the cold, eh?'
Sarah Merridew's schooling had not extended to biology, and she had no idea of just how many bones there were in the human body, just that now, she thought, there seemed to be an awful lot and every one of hers ached from the constant jolting of the coach. The small square of blanket she had earlier folded and placed carefully beneath her bottom did little, if anything, to cushion the repeated impacts, and how she now wished she had been able to afford the extra two shillings it would have cost to travel in one of the more luxurious coaches that plied the route from London to the coast.
She sighed and turned to look out of the window, into the gathering gloom of the imminent night. Two shillings extra - it was scandalous. Men in London worked two or three weeks to earn that much, and heaven alone knew her funds were now sparse enough. Medical bills, funerals - four of them - bribes to no end of officials, bribes to get her out of that area of the city in the first place, new clothing to replace everything she had been forced to burn...
A small tear welled up in the corner of one eye and threatened to spill onto her pale cheek, but she swallowed hard and steeled herself against giving way now. After all, she told herself fiercely, there were hundreds - no, thousands - of people in just as bad a situation as herself, many of them far worse, for the plague outbreaks had more than decimated some areas of the great capital city and some families had been wiped out entirely.
She had to consider herself lucky, that's what her father, rest his soul, would have told her. He had been the last to die, following her mother, her brother and her older sister, all in the space of just a few weeks. Fortunately, the unseasonably heavy rains had served to dampen down the spread of the disease, but Sarah paid men to burn everything nonetheless. Informed opinion was that infection was carried in the very fibres of clothes, and fire was the only certain way to end it.
She shook her head sadly. So much education and science in London and still something like that had been allowed to happen, and everyone powerless to stop it. It was inconceivable that such a thing could wreak so much havoc in a modern world like this. After all, this was 1659 and mankind had surely left the dark ages far in the past by now? At least, she told herself, it was unlikely she would see another such outbreak in her lifetime.