The Devil's Mistress Page 12

  “These are wet,” Jacob said, feeling the hay. “Have you any kindling?” When she didn’t respond, he repeated the question.

  “Aye,” she said, a little too forcefully. “At the stove!”

  “What about an ax?”

  She nodded. “In the back. We use it for the stove wood.”

  “We’ll need to separate the pier from the tavern, to make sure the fire doesn’t spread.”

  “Dirt,” Hunter said. “An ax will take too long.”

  “Then I suppose I’ll build the fire.”

  Hunter looked toward the town. “I advise you do it now.”

  Jacob followed his gaze. Two more wolves stood at the edge of the pier, a mere thirty paces down.

  Chapter 27

  “Get back!” Jacob yelled, though toward the wolves or his companions, he didn’t know.

  Hunter unslung the bow and nocked another arrow. As soon as one of the animals was in his sights, however, they both turned and ran into the darkness.

  “They’ll be back. We don’t have much time.” Hunter sliced the ropes holding the bales in place. The hay spilled out onto the pier, and Jacob began to make a pile.

  As he worked, Hunter went into the tavern and returned with a giant bucket. He leaped down into the water and began to scoop mud onto the wood to block the spread of the fire. If he felt any discomfort from the icy waters, he did not show it.

  “What about me?” Carla said.

  “That kindling,” Jacob huffed. “Be quick about it.”

  The woman bustled inside, and true to her word, returned with a bowl of wood shavings from beneath The Fancy’s cook stove. Jacob spread them out over the hay. He had created a small semicircle at the head of the pier, one that wrapped in front of the path and led all the way down to the water. The hay wouldn’t burn forever, but he thought that with a little luck, it might last long enough to get everyone inside.

  “Are you ready?” he called below.

  Hunter jumped onto the pier and tossed the bucket down. “This is a damnable plan.”

  Jacob grimaced. He retrieved the torch and thrust it into the pile of wood shavings atop the hay. The pile caught at once, sending a burst of bright orange flame down the line of material. He cheered. Then, just as suddenly, the flame died. The kindling had burned up, but the damp hay had staunched the fire before it could take.

  Jacob looked at Carla, his mouth hanging open. “We need more, a lot more.”

  “That was all of it,” she said.

  Something whizzed past his head, and a yelp came from out of the dark. Hunter had loosed another arrow.

  “You’d better hurry,” the Indian said.

  Carla squealed and ran back into the tavern.

  Jacob looked at her unbelievingly, then took up the torch and thrust it into the hay once more. Nothing happened save for a sputter and sizzle at the end of the stick. The torch flame itself threatened to go out. He swore.

  Hunter let fly another arrow, and another, but the wolves had grown wise to his game. The shafts struck empty earth.

  “Jacob,” he called. The rest was unspoken. Get back into the tavern.

  Then Carla reappeared, lugging two arm-sized flasks labeled with a skull and crossbones. “Death Cider,” she explained. “Strongest stuff we got.”

  It took a moment to grasp her meaning. Then Jacob was taking one of the flasks, and the two of them were splashing the stuff from one end of the hay to the next. They emptied both, and Jacob thrust the torch in again. This time, a burst of blue flame leaped into the air, then settled down into a low, peach-colored burn. Almost at once, a choking cloud of black smoke rolled from the hay. It was, perhaps, more terrible than the flames.

  Hunter ceased his fusillade and drew a hand in front of his nose. “You are terrible at building fires.”

  Jacob ignored him and rushed to the end of the pier. “Here,” he yelled. He tried to yell again and discovered his throat still too swollen from his time at the noose.

  Carla took up the cry. “Over here, ye lumbering fools! Swim! Get over where ’tis safe!”

  There were a few shouts. Then a great tide of splashes as more and more people caught sight of the fire and began to swim. The wolves caught sight as well. There came a great gathering: twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty wolves leaping and howling on the other side of the black smoke, as if sensing the escape of their prey. They seemed to have almost no fear of the flames.

  “Take my baby!”

  Christina Morton appeared below the deck, holding her infant daughter up. Carla took her. The woman herself was followed by her husband, Henry. By Michael Gruebe, then Dory Tuttle. The Battone family, Jeff Sommers the tailor, and his wife, Heidi. All of the remaining survivors, swimming to the deck and clambering their way up. There were far too few. Jacob realized the weakest had already succumbed to the cold. Many more would be dead from cold sickness before the night was done.

  He helped those who could not climb on their own. They were aghast when they saw it was the boy they had condemned to die upon the muddy shore and the Indian who had once been buried in an earthen cell. Many cried for forgiveness. One of the men who had helped string Jacob to the tree fell to his feet and kissed the boy’s wooden leg.

  “Get up now,” Jacob said. “Go on, inside.”

  A monstrous scream came from the other side of the flames. The figure of a young woman stepped from the shadows. Ghost-like, she was, with jet black hair, and sunken eyes, and skin the color of the deep, blue sea. A creature who had once been the light and love of all of Blackfriar, and was now something else entirely.

  “Elly,” Jacob whispered.

  The young woman snarled, and all at once, one of the wolves charged toward the flames. It leaped through the smoke and hit the deck in a ball of fire. The tavern crowd shrank back as the creature—now bathed in flame—hissed and rolled toward them.

  Hunter stepped forward and swung his leg like a hammer. The kick landed in the beast’s ribs and sent it rolling into the water. The animal yowled and splashed, sinking into the watery abyss.

  A voice blew in upon the wind, both soft and menacing in its lilt. “Who are you?”

  Jacob looked at Hunter, who was readying an arrow, and stepped in front of him. “No. Wait.”

  “Out of the way.”

  “Wait,” Jacob insisted.

  He held his hands out, showing himself to be unarmed, then dropped into the mud next to the pier.

  “What are you doing?” Hunter called.

  The boy walked up the shore, both hands still in the air. Half a dozen wolves circled round him, barking and yipping, but none attacked.

  The voice came again. “Who are you?”

  “Elly,” Jacob whispered again. Then, louder, “I am your…your servant boy.”

  “My what?”

  The girl looked confused. She began to walk toward him, one hand rising as if to touch him. Jacob suddenly wanted to feel that touch. Needed to feel that touch, if only to make sure she was real and not some phantom of his imagination. She came within five paces, then her shoulder snapped backward. A look of fury bloomed on her face. There was an arrow in her arm, buried half-deep in the flesh of her bicep. She looked toward the pier, where Hunter was readying a second shot. Then, with a gleam of rage that looked nothing at all like the Lady Ashford, she howled.

  “Elly,” Jacob cried.

  “That is not my name!”

  A blast of wind rolled in from the forest and rattled the pier. Pieces of burning hay flew onto the roof of the building and ignited several patches of wood.

  “Inside! Get inside, ye fools!” It was Carla, motioning the crowd into the building.

  In the next moment, the dark figure was gone, vanished as if she had been sucked into the night itself. The wind quieted. The wolves turned and ran into the darkness, disappearing somewhere off into the town.

  Jacob returned to the water and climbed back up. Hunter had alre
ady retrieved the bucket and was using it to douse the new fires.

  “Why did you do that?” Jacob yelled. “Tell me why!”

  “Perhaps I should let you die next time.”

  “She only wanted to touch me. Are you listening?” Jacob grabbed the man by the wrist. “I’m talking to you, savage!”

  Hunter spun, drawing a knife and then halting an inch from Jacob’s head.

  “Are you going to kill me, too?” he asked.

  Hunter stared stoically at his companion, then withdrew, returning the knife to his belt.

  Jacob let go of his wrist. “I’m going after her.”

  “Then I go with you.”

  “No.”

  “I must.”

  “You will not harm her,” Jacob yelled. “She knows not what she does.”

  A great weight seemed to drop from the heavens and land upon his chest. He stumbled to one knee, wracked with a sudden and unassailable despair. His Elly had survived, aye, but she was different. The Lady of the Hill had worked her ways upon her. And at the end of the day, whose fault was it? Who had taken her to that evil place beyond the potter’s field?

  Hunter hauled him up. “There shall be time for this later.”

  Jacob stared up into the man’s eyes, finding no patience, nor forgiveness. He jerked free. “I cannot stop you from following me, but if you harm her, I swear—”

  “I understand,” Hunter said.

  “I do not need your help.”

  “I can track her.”

  “There’s no need,” Jacob replied, turning to face the other side of town. “I know where she’s going.”

  Chapter 28

  Thomas Huxley stood upon the balcony outside his mother’s study, frowning at the strange burst of light. Something was happening at the pier. If Sloop had chosen to put on a carnival show for Twelfth Night and he had missed it, he would have choice words for the old bugger. Of course, ’twould be his mother’s fault more than anyone’s. You need to appear bereaved, Thomas. The town will expect it. If that weren’t a merry farce.

  He had taken a glass of brandy to the overlook, and he sipped it thoughtfully. The truth was, the last thing he felt was bereaved. His fiancée was gone, true, but she had been a bit prudish. And he was so young to get married. There were many oats that needed sowing, and he had just the tool to do it.

  He went back inside and crossed to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. He was shirtless, but his chest had grown a recent coating of manly brown fur. He stood for a moment admiring it. “A good physicality is so important, wouldn’t you agree, Winifred?”

  The girl sat upon her knees in the center of the room, trembling as she gazed upon the floor. “Aye, Master Huxley.”

  He regarded her in the glass. “You’re quite disgusting, aren’t you? I can already see the swell of your belly. You’ll be fat as a cow erelong.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Fortunately for me, there are others.” He turned his eyes to the third figure in the room.

  Before Marianne’s ash wood desk sat a large metal basin, above which hung the beautiful, long-limbed form of the Huxley cook, Rosila. Ebony-skinned, with long, curly hair and pointed breasts, she was a bit older than Thomas’s personal house slave, but no less enticing. Thomas turned from the mirror and set his brandy upon the desk.

  “Please, Master Huxley,” Rosila said. “I don’t deserve this.”

  “Deserve? I didn’t deserve to have my betrothed so rudely taken from me, but we do not always get what we deserve. Do we, Rosila?”

  “Please. Madam Huxley would not approve. She—”

  “Madam Huxley likes to keep her son happy,” he said reasonably. “Now Winifred, if you would be so kind as to turn this woman, so that I might discipline her.”

  The girl did just that, rotating Rosila until her back faced the open part of the room. Rosila continued pleading, but her cries fell on deaf ears. She began to kick against the rope.

  “Careful there, you’ll tire yourself,” Thomas chided. “I do hope you keep some energy for later. Believe me when I tell you the worst thing you could do, my dear Rosila, is bore me.”

  “Let me down!”

  Thomas went to a small table where he had set his tools: a series of kitchen knives, a riding crop, a wooden rod, a loaded flintlock pistol—which he always kept for emergencies—and a cat-o’-nine-tails. This last he had purchased from a traveling monk under the pretense of self-mortification, a fact which brought tears of laughter to his eyes whenever he spoke of it.

  He took the whip. “Are you ready to be a good girl, Rosila?”

  “Tell me what I did! Please. Tell me what I did so that I won’t do it again. I swear, I’ll be good!”

  “Oh, Rosila,” he said indulgently. “You won’t just be good. You’ll be the best. I know you will.”

  The cat-o’-nine-tails flashed in his hand, and a series of red, ripe claw-marks appeared on her back. She bit her lip, her eyes watering with pain.

  “There you are,” he said, and struck her again.

  A whistling, sobbing sound escaped her. Thomas found himself chortling. He hit her a third time, and a fourth. A handful of cuts opened, oozing down her back into the basin.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he declared. “Winifred, do not let one drop get on Mother’s rug, do you hear?”

  “I hear, Master Huxley,” the girl croaked.

  Rosila, on the other hand, had only grown bolder. She thrashed again the rope, her body twisting and contorting. “Let me down! Let me down from here!”

  “Oh? Shall I stop?”

  “Piss on you!” she screamed.

  “Perhaps you shall, if I wish it.” He laughed. Oh, maybe ’twouldn’t be such a bleak evening after all.

  Then, as he drew back again, a breeze blew through the room and extinguished the candles. Someone touched his wrist. “Hello, my love.”

  “Ah!” He was so surprised, he dropped the whip. “Winifred, is that—”

  “I’m here. Has it been so long? Do you not recognize the sound of my voice?”

  Thomas spun, clutching at the shadow before him, but his hands grasped only darkness. His heart began to pound, a delicious and frightful sensation. “My…my little honey pumpkin? Is it really you?”

  Something leaned in and nipped him on the ear.

  “Do you not feel the touch of my skin? The taste of my lips?”

  A pair of hands grasped him by the head, and the figure planted a kiss firmly upon his mouth. She lingered a moment, then pulled away, her tongue tracing the line of his teeth.

  “Oh my. What is…” His eyes settled on the darkness, and for the first time, he could see something of her shape. It looked like Isabella, but it was—

  “You have been a bad boy, Thomas.”

  “I… No! You were the one who was bad, my sweet melon, poisoning your father. We were to be so…so happy!”

  A hand pushed him backward as if he were nothing more than a dandelion on the wind. The back of his legs hit the nearby couch, and he collapsed into it.

  “Lies, my dear.”

  “That was not my doing. It was…it was Mother! You know how protective she can be. She was afraid for my life. It’s why she made me testify. She didn’t see you as you really were…as I knew you were. She thought you were…dangerous,” he finished.

  “Did she?”

  The cushions on the couch burst apart, and four long vines grew from their leavings. They wrapped round Thomas’s arms and legs and pulled him onto his back.

  The figure climbed on top of him and knelt over his stomach. His body responded in kind, swelling in lurid anticipation. “You will be gentle on me?” he said timidly, hopefully.

  “First, I want you to see me.”

  The candle flames flickered back into existence, but the creature before him was not his fiancée. It was an earthy, hideous thing with filthy black hair and amber eyes. A
monster from the furthest reaches of Hell.

  Winifred screamed. She ran toward the door, but the creature snapped her fingers, and another vine wrapped itself round the exit. She turned to Rosila and snapped her fingers again. The ceiling rope unraveled into a series of straw-colored threads, and the woman fell into the blood-speckled basin

  The two women came together, clutching one another in front of Marianne’s desk. Then Rosila darted across the room and grabbed a knife from Thomas’s collection. She held it in front of her, alternately pointing it toward Thomas and toward the thing that had once been Isabella.

  The creature, in turn, looked back. “Came I to take something tonight, but I think it belongs to you. Will you take it?”

  “Rosila,” Thomas called. “Free me at once!”

  The sound of his voice brought a look of rage to Rosila’s cheeks, every bit as hateful as that of the witch. Then she seemed to realize what she was thinking and shrank back unto herself.

  “No matter what happens, no harm will come to you. This I swear.”

  The woman looked to her terrified companion, then back. She seemed ready to drop the knife.

  Then her former master spoke again. “Rosila, cut me free, or I swear to God I will cut your filthy eyes out and shove them up your arse!”

  Her face changed. Upon it was writ the memories of a thousand terrible days and a thousand terrible deeds, all perpetrated by the one before her. She rose to her feet and walked calmly across the room.

  But not to free him.

  Chapter 29

  Eighteen years prior, in the year of our Lord 1687, Marianne Huxley had come to Blackfriar as a blowsy young newlywed, and had toiled through the muck and the mire right alongside her husband, building not only what was to become the most profitable sawmill in the southern colonies, but the first homes of the town, right with her bare hands, not because she was poor, but because in the early days before Brendon came to power, there was no one in their employ, and industry did not wait upon the toils of men alone. Two years later, after they had met John Ashford—the mill’s most valuable investor—Marianne made a solemn vow to never again dirty herself in the mud like a commoner.