The Devil's Mistress Page 6

  Chapter 13

  Jacob swung his fist, connecting with Sands’s jaw in a deafening crunch. “Run, Elly!”

  For a beat she stood paralyzed, watching the world erupt around her in a sudden, frenzied rush. The master of the house fell to the ground. The servants stumbled and shouted. Then the burly watchman reached for his pistol with a thunderous shout. “Out of the way!”

  The spell broke. Isabella pushed through the crowd and went rushing toward the side yard.

  “Seize her,” Sloop called. “Get her before she runs!”

  Isabella was already running, slipping out through the door and into the open air. Her mind was a wasp’s nest of confusion and anger. She had no idea where to go or what to do.

  Lily whined at her from across the yard. The sound awakened something in her—a distant plan, not quite formed—and she ran to the horse. The watchman was five paces behind and might have caught her were it not for a random puddle just beyond the chicken coop. One of his feet stuck in the mud, and he went toppling to the earth.

  Isabella held up her hands, trying to calm the mare as she approached. She untied the rope and leaped into the saddle.

  The watchman recovered and came huffing down the path. Sloop and Mister Sands had also come from the house, but they were even farther behind.

  Isabella spurred the mare. “Go! Hurry! Into the woods!”

  The watchman reached for the saddle but tripped a second time and went down again.

  Isabella looked over her shoulder. The man was getting up, but it was too late. Lily was galloping toward the tree line, and the house was disappearing behind her.

  When they were sufficiently out of sight, Isabella tugged on the reins and brought the horse to a slow trot. Her heart was beating so fast, she could hardly think. Ahead lay the familiar fork in the path, only this time, she needed to make a practical decision instead of a metaphorical one. In one direction lay the town of Blackfriar, along with everything she had ever known: the people of the town, the mill, her friends, her neighbors. In the other, only darkness. Silence. The vast expanse of the Virginia wood, stretching north through Nanticoke Indian territory up into Delaware.

  She couldn’t go to the town. Even if the townsfolk hadn’t heard the accusation, it would only be a matter of time before rumor and suspicion spread. On the other hand, she knew nothing about the wilderness, nor how to survive the wood. Then, she realized she wouldn’t have to survive on her own. There was someone else she knew. Someone who had much to answer for.

  Isabella put her head down and kicked Lily into a gallop.

  It was getting on dark by the time she passed the cemetery. Black clouds had begun to roll in overhead, blocking what little daylight remained. The graves were built in an open clearing where the trees parted, but she had no lanthorn to guide her this night. The fold of darkness had begun to close its fist over the entire forest, and as she rode past the gravestones, it took every ounce of concentration not to guide Lily afoul.

  At last the road narrowed, and a familiar, long puddle stretched before her.

  “Here,” she said, patting the mare’s neck. “’Tis just ahead, see? You needn’t be afraid.”

  The horse whinnied.

  From behind there came shouts and the thunder of hooves. Three or perhaps four riders coming fast down the road after her.

  All at once, Lily decided she’d had enough. She reared up with a terrible shriek and threw Isabella from the saddle. She fell backward into the mud.

  The shouts grew louder.

  Isabella rose to her knees, and Lily shrieked again, backing up the path. The horse turned, cantered fifty paces, then stopped as if waiting for her lady to join her. Isabella wanted to give chase, but the riders were too close. A small orange light bobbed up and down near the cemetery.

  She waved at the mare. “Go on! Get out of here or they’ll see you!”

  The mare grunted, suddenly unsure it wanted to run after all.

  With a cry of despair, Isabella turned and ran toward the narrowing path, the place she and Jacob had left the carriage the previous night. The old oak rose before her, a twisted gray giant with a dozen nightmarish arms. She retraced her steps, following not the path to the cliff, but cutting through the woods to the overlook, the way she had come back. It was exhausting work. The brambles were thick. They tore at her dress and bit her ankles like hungry rats.

  Then, the forest broke, and she was standing at the top of the cliff. The cottage would be just ahead, though the darkness was so complete, it was invisible. To her left, the sounds of the water crashing into the rocks, and the narrow strip where she had lost the lanthorn on her first jaunt.

  “I see her! There, do you follow?”

  “Aye!”

  The voices of the watchmen, now shy of their mounts. Their light was just behind the ridge and closing.

  Isabella moved forward, running, stumbling, loping along the edge of the cliff. The cottage should have been just in front of her, but she still couldn’t find it. It was too bloody dark.

  “Where are you?” she whispered. Then, shouting to the cliff side, “Where are you?”

  “Got her!”

  Something large and heavy hit her from behind, driving her whole body to the earth. Her mouth struck a stone, and two front teeth ricocheted into the back of her throat. She swallowed them, gagging, and choking, and crying as a fat man with hairy arms leaned upon her back. Just when she thought she might suffocate, the man took her by the hair and jerked her head from the mud. She opened her eyes, staring into the face of the large fellow from the kitchen, the one who had groped for the vial. He grinned at her, showing a mouthful of teeth as gray and rotten as the old oak at the head of the path.

  “There you are, my lovely,” he said.

  Behind him, the light of the candle shown over the hill, illuminating the cliff side where the house should have been. But the cottage itself, the Lady, the workshop of wonders…they were simply not there.

  They had vanished into the night as if they had never existed at all.

  Part II

  Chapter 14

  To the side of the town parish was an awning beneath which stood a hitching post and trough, such that horses might be sheltered during official gatherings and stay out of the rain. It was a low enclosure with thin beams exposed beneath the roof and two arched entrances at either end.

  It was here that she was taken, dragged in upon her back and then strung up by the wrists to a long strip of leather run from a ceiling beam. Hardly sturdy enough for a six-foot man accused of a child killing, but for a criminal of a younger and more feminine persuasion, it sufficed quite handily.

  The two watchmen stripped her of her clothes. First down to the shift beneath her bodice, then upon Sloop’s command, down to the skin. Her mother’s crucifix was the last remaining article, the only protection between her and the grim triumvirate.

  Sloop ripped it from her neck. “Search her.”

  The watchman from the forest approached first. “What are we looking for, sir?”

  “An open sore. A third nipple. Anything which may constitute the Devil’s mark. Do you understand?”

  The other watchman, a thin scarecrow of a boy not much older than Isabella, grabbed her by the legs and wrenched them wide. “Are we going to look in all her places?” he asked, and laughed.

  “Mind yourself, Wembly, or you may find yourself a slave to her charms.”

  Isabella wished she had charms. She wished she had magic enough to whisk herself away and never look back. Her and her servant boy. “I want to go home.”

  “This is your home,” Sloop said. “Here you will stay until we find the extent of your crimes.”

  And what a home it was. Damp, and rotten, and bitingly cold. Filled with the stench of horse manure, which hung in the air like a wet fog.

  Slowly, laboriously, the three men began to move round her. They only looked at first, and then the young one pinche
d the flesh beneath her left breast. She cried out, but instead of shaming them, it only made them bolder. Soon they were all touching her, prodding her, pinching her. Even Sloop picked a stick from off the ground and used it to pry open the cleft of her buttocks in search of an imperfection.

  She closed her eyes, but try as she may, she could not block them out.

  “Confess.” Sloop’s voice, as soft and mellifluous as a lullaby. “Confess, and tell us when He took you.”

  Isabella shook her head.

  “Was it in the wood? Was the boy with you? Perhaps you were made to lie with him.”

  Again, she shook her head.

  The three men continued to circle. Pinching. Squeezing.

  “Is it true His cock is split down the middle like a snake’s tongue?” the young one asked.

  Sloop stopped. His expression remained unchanged, but his round nose twitched ever so slightly. “Wait outside. Both of you.”

  “What?” the watchman said. “Raining out there, it is.”

  “Then I suppose you had better find shelter.”

  The young man looked as if he were about to protest, saw the tilt of the man’s head, and thought better of it. He nodded toward his older companion, and the two of them slumped out through the open archway.

  Sloop toyed with Isabella’s crucifix, wrapping it round one wrist, then the other. “It is only you and I now. You needn’t be afraid.” He moved a step closer, and his face softened. “Please, Elly. I have known your family from the time you were born. Spare yourself this pain and tell me why you did it. Tell me why you killed John.”

  Her head yawed back and forth. When it was clear she couldn’t speak, Sloop removed himself from the awning and returned with a blanket. He draped it over her shoulders. It wasn’t long enough to warm her legs, but it was long enough to cover her shame, and that was a miracle in itself.

  It was said Sloop had a young wife once, before he took up the cloth. A girl even younger than Isabella, who had befallen some unspeakable fate. Sloop still carried a locket of the girl’s likeness wherever he went. Isabella had often wondered at that. No matter how hard a man might be on the outside, no matter how strict the path of his conviction, there must be compassion if he still longed for his Gwendolyn. There must be.

  “Thank you,” she said, trying to sound as grateful as felt.

  “There you are. Now tell me why.”

  She tried again. “Please. I did not do this. I loved him. You have no idea how much.”

  “It was not you, Elly. We know that. Just tell us what happened in the wood, and I will see leniency is done. I owe your father that much.”

  Isabella shook her head. To tell him of the Lady would be the same as admitting guilt, and that, she could not do.

  The priest stared at her another long moment, then spat in her face. He departed from the enclosure without another word. Isabella watched him go, thinking surely someone would come to her aid. No one did. Her only companion was the cold whisper of the rain, pattering against the roof. She tried to stay strong, but when it became clear no one else was coming, she could take no more. She cried into the blanket until the weight of the long hours took her, and she finally fell into a restless and bitter sleep.

  Chapter 15

  In her dreams, she was back upon the cliff. Rain assaulted the countryside as if a gash had been opened in the heavens and left to drain over the earth. The cottage stood in front her, a mirage no longer, but a thing of stone and wood. There was something moving inside. A crack of lightning struck the sky, and a circle of figures shown beyond the window. They were skeletal, ghost-like things.

  And then a sharp pain cut across her back, and she was scrambling to regain her footing. She looked up expecting the residual tinge of lightning but found herself once more beneath the awning. Her wrists were still bound. The bright light of dawn shown in through the archways.

  There was laughter from behind her. Sebastian Sands stood coiling his whip beneath the awning, and at once, she understood. He had struck her. Her mind had conjured the image of the storm, and with his whip had come the thunder. A cruel imagining for a cruel trick.

  “Shall I hit her again?” Sands asked.

  Isabella’s mind cleared, and she discovered he was not alone. Tiberius Sloop stood at his side. He held up one hand to stay the master of house, then turned to his prisoner.

  “Will you confess now?”

  She shook her head.

  He walked to her and grabbed her by the hair. “Speak the truth!”

  Isabella tried to speak, but the man was no longer interested. Two of his fingers shot into her mouth, probing through the gap in her teeth like dirty slugs. She bit down but could only gum at him with her missing teeth.

  Then Sands was there, wrapping the whip’s cord round her neck and yanking backwards. Bright stars burst before her eyes. She thrashed and wretched, but the effort only choked her further.

  “Confess,” Sloop demanded. “Confess, woman!”

  Isabella gagged. Bile rose in her throat. She tried to speak, and all that escaped was a belch-like croak.

  “Confess!”

  The world began to dim. The possibility of thought became as distant as speech, and the world darkled. Was this to be death, come for her in this wretched place?

  ’Twas not.

  Isabella opened her eyes and discovered both men were gone. She hung at the limits of her restraints with both arms stretched overhead. Her wrists were raw. Her hands had turned purple while she slept. Nor was this to be the end of her humiliation. The stench of urine assaulted her nostrils, and when she looked down, she discovered she had lost control of her own functions.

  “Let it be over,” she prayed. “Please let them see the truth.”

  And what was the truth? Only two days prior, she had traveled to the end of the civilized world to find a woman with strange powers. A woman reputed to hold congress with the Devil. Isabella never doubted her own intentions, but her mind wandered. She began to dwell upon the possibility that Sloop had been right. That in trying to cure her father, she herself had been the one to kill him. She had never tested the potion. What if it had provided the illusion of health and killed slowly?

  Isabella had never believed such wickedness could exist in the world, but she believed it now. No matter who bore the blame—the Lady of the Hill or some other malicious creature—she had become a pawn in some horrific game, and quite possibly, the instrument of her father’s death. She began to weep, not only for her father, not only for herself, but because she realized the truth may never be known.

  Outside the archway, the sun rose to its pinnacle and began to descend. The long hours were the loneliest in Isabella’s life. She began to wish she had been abandoned. That she would go on hanging until she starved, so she would never have to face another soul again. She was not to be so lucky.

  A face appeared in the archway. Isabella steeled herself for the worst, but it was only Delia. The woman was carrying a bucket of fresh water and a damp cloth. She hurried to Isabella’s side and used the cloth to squeeze water into the girl’s mouth. Isabella tried to resist but found the needs of the body outweighed the needs of the mind. She drank long and deep, sucking the cloth with all the grace of a dog.

  Delia said not a word, but her eyes betrayed a deep and lingering fear. The depth of that fear stabbed Isabella’s heart.

  “Delia,” she murmured. “It’s me. Can you not see?”

  The woman said nothing but smoothed the blanket about Isabella’s shoulders. She was careful not to touch the girl’s skin.

  “Help me,” Isabella implored. “If you are still my friend, you must help me, Delia.”

  The old woman tried to speak and couldn’t. She was on the verge of tears. At last, she turned from Isabella and made the sign of the Lord’s cross. She ran from the enclosure with one hand over her face, shielding her eyes from the girl’s accusatory stare.

  “Free me,”
Isabella shouted.

  The burly watchman appeared in the archway. “Free you? Is that what you want?”

  Isabella stared at him. Delia was gone.

  The man pulled a knife from his belt and cut the strap where it was tied. “Like this?”

  Isabella slumped to the floor. She gained her feet as quickly as she could and stumbled to the opposite arch.

  The other young watchman stepped into her path. “Look at her, Rufus. Trying to escape, she is. Think we should stop her?”

  Isabella turned again, but the young one grabbed the leather strap as it trailed behind her. She reached the limits of the bind, and her feet flew out from under her. She hit the dirt with a painful thud.

  “There she is. Like a dog,” the young watchman said. “Are we going for a walk, doggy?”

  Isabella couldn’t walk, but when she heard the man’s voice, she discovered she could crawl. She rolled onto her hands and knees and began pulling herself toward the other exit. In her haste, the blanket once again fell from her shoulders and ended in the dirt.

  The older one laughed. “Look at that bare arse. Bet there’s a mark hidden in there.”

  “Thought we checked it.”

  “You saying you don’t want to check again?”

  Isabella crawled across the dirt and past the stalls. When she reached the opening, she came face to face with a pair of long, leather boots. She looked up, praying it might be Delia come back to save her.

  It was Marianne Huxley, standing there in her most exquisite Sunday finery.

  “Help,” Isabella croaked.

  The young watchman grabbed her by the hair, then wrapped the leather strip round her neck in much the same way as Sands had done. He pulled back, raising her head and strangling her at the same time.

  “Sorry about that, Madam Huxley. Prisoner almost got free.”

  “That’s quite all right. You may ease that. I should like to speak to her.”

  The watchman gave Isabella a kick in the rear, then eased the strap. “Behave yourself, dog.”