The Devil's Mistress Read online

  The beat began to build toward climax. The figures twisted and writhed in ever-increasing patterns, their arms and legs spinning in some frenzied and unknowable dance.

  She approached the light, now mere steps from its edge. There was no sense of hurry, only the constant, inevitable pull toward the flames.

  The figures reached to the ground, pulled up animal skins which had been laid at their feet, then drew them over their bodies as capes. There was one final shout, a great joining of rhythm and voice, and then they dropped to the ground like stones. All was still.

  The girl who had once been Isabella stepped into the circle.

  Chapter 20

  “Came you to pay what is owed?”

  From out of the night stepped a woman with flowing, dark hair and an elegant, regal face. A crimson robe hung about her shoulders, open at the front to reveal the sensuous lines of her sex. The Nothing was silent as the woman rounded the fire pit and came to stand before her.

  “My child, look at the state of you,” said the Lady of the Hill. “So much pain for one so young. Surprised am I you had the strength to come so far.”

  With no preamble, no thought or conscious intent, the Nothing lunged. But where there had been a woman was now an empty robe, which slipped through her talons and fell to the ground in a tangle of cloth. She tripped and went sprawling down, landing on top of one of the skin-clad forms. There was a sound like rattling wood, and the figure crumpled into the earth.

  The Nothing picked herself up, finding naught but a broken skeleton beside her. All around the circle, skeletons. The skulls of the dancing figures stared out from beneath their skins, hollow and motionless in the flickering light.

  “Who is this creature who attacks me in my home?” The Lady’s voice, echoing from somewhere beyond the flames. “Is she perhaps a vengeful spirit?”

  A sound like the scuttling of feet. A chorus of laughter from the dark. The Nothing spun in place, but there was no one there.

  “What is your name, child?”

  She ran toward the voice and nearly collided with a tree. At the edge of the light was naught but a dense and impenetrable forest, grown so close together as to seal her in.

  “Be not silent,” the Lady said. “If you wish me to come, speak your name.”

  The Nothing beat her fists against the tree, then let out a wail so dolorous and pitiable it might have woken the dead. She crumpled to the ground, a lifeless doll in a playground of the damned.

  The Lady’s voice, both wondrous and terrible, said, “SPEAK. YOUR. NAME.”

  Nothing, the girl mouthed. My name is Nothing.

  “No.” The Lady was suddenly standing before the fire, her glorious form back lit by the flames. “Your name is Isabella. You came to me once when you were in need.”

  The Nothing shook her head.

  “Aye, ’twas you then just as surely as you sit before me now.”

  No, the girl mouthed. Liar. Liar!

  The Lady sat beside her and took her cheek within her hand. “I spoke true to you, child, though you were too blind to see it. I told you your father would die heedless of your efforts. Did you not believe me? His path was woven the moment his partner died. Did you think your Thomas would share the mill with anyone, that his mother would let him?” She shook her head disapprovingly. “The only thing that staid Thomas’s hand was his desire for you. Perhaps not love as you would think of it, but it was love of a sort. Love that you snuffed when you came to my door.”

  The Nothing shook her head again.

  “’Twas not your fault, child, but it was your hand. The threads are as you made them.”

  And then Nothing discovered she was not Nothing at all, but a terrified girl who had once held the world within her palm, and now held the jagged, blackened remains of her heart in its place. She moaned into the Lady’s arm.

  “There, there. All is ’twas meant to be. You are here with us now, a child of the night. You were always here.”

  The girl Nothing wept. She had never known her mother, who had died bringing her into this world, but in that moment, she knew a mother’s love.

  When at last she had no more tears to give, the Lady brushed a stray lock from her face. “Do you wish to make it right?”

  She only stared, having no idea what the woman meant.

  The Lady stood and took three paces toward the fire. “Do you wish to make those who have harmed you suffer? Do you wish retribution upon them?”

  The girl Nothing continued to stare. She thought of Thomas and his preposterous lies upon the platform. She thought of Sloop, of Sands, of the deceitful and cunning Marianne, so confident upon her witness chair. She thought of her father, who had died for trusting the best in people, and of Jacob, who had died hanging from a tree. These two, most of all. Would she see them avenged, now that they were gone forever?

  She nodded. Yes.

  The Lady turned and extended her hand. “Then dance with me.”

  She took the Lady’s palm, not at all certain she could dance in her current state. Then the drum resumed, and she found her feet moving on their own. The Lady moved with her. Eye to eye they were, palm to palm, twirling and revolving in the light.

  The figures upon the ground cast off their animal skins and rose up, not as skeletons, but as people once more. They were women all, bare-skinned and lovely in the glow of the crackling fire. The girl Nothing gasped.

  One of the women went to the flames, where hung a small pot, and began to mash the contents with a stone pestle. The others paired off and began to dance, five couples spinning within the circle.

  The beat of the drum increased. The women danced faster. They were laughing, and whispering, and catcalling at the Lady. In return, the Lady smiled, and all at once, released the girl Nothing from her grasp. The other couples did the same, and the Nothing found herself face to face with a new partner, a woman with curly black hair and a beauty mark upon one cheek. The woman took up the dance once more, leading the girl in a fast and delicate sway.

  The drum increased again, and again. Each time, the women switched partners. The girl Nothing danced with a young woman not much older than herself with freckles upon her neck and nipples the color of a blooming rose. She danced with a woman with dark skin. A woman with blue stones in her ears and gorgeous gray hair that hung down to her waist. This last kissed her full on the mouth and then giggled like one of the children from the town circle.

  There was another switch, and another. Then she was back with the Lady, who spun her in a furious, unrelenting twirl, so quick the world seemed a blur all about her. Then the Lady stopped, and the two of them were standing at the pot before the fire.

  In the bowl were the crushed remains of little arms and legs, each no bigger than her hand. The town’s missing boy, ground to pulp and left to cook over the Lady’s fire.

  The woman stuck her left hand into the boiling mash, heedless of the burning heat, and withdrew her bloody palm for the girl to see. Her voice was but a whisper, yet it cut through the noise of the drum like thunder through rain. “Will you pay me as you have promised, child?”

  The girl Nothing stared, thinking not of the boy’s family, but instead of the gift that had been left for her upon the beach, the gift that had summoned her so aptly and turned her upon this path. The gift of meat, and life, and purpose. Such a simple thing. One impossible to resist.

  She took the Lady’s hand and licked her fingers, savoring the taste that drained over her shortened tongue and drizzled into her throat.

  The whole of the forest came alive, resounding with the cries of beasts from every dark corner of its reach. The howl of the wolf. The chirp of the insect. The cheer of the women by the fire. The Lady clasped her by the palm, and the two began to dance once more.

  The girl Nothing closed her eyes, feeling the surge of a sudden and undeniable power. Feeling herself spinning faster than she ever thought possible. Feeling her feet rise from the dirt and
drift into the air above.

  “Who are you?” the Lady whispered. “Tell me, as you would tell them.”

  And though she had no tongue, a voice as strong and unbreakable as iron issued from her mind. “I am Isabella of the House Ashford,” it declared, “and you will fear my name. All of you.”

  Part III

  Chapter 21

  Sebastian Sands slammed his mug onto the table. “Another round!”

  Though the town had grown threefold since the Ashford’s former master of house had first set foot inside its borders, there was still but one tavern where an ailing man might quench his thirst after a hard day’s labor: a mud-caked hovel called The Fisherman’s Fancy, built upon the shifting soil at the edge of town just downriver from the sawmill. The tavern turned a fine trade in the afternoon when the young men under Thomas Huxley’s employ came to grab supper, but after dark, it became a dim and dingy place frequented only by those desperate for cheap liquor and stubborn enough to ignore the smell of unwashed feet permeating the interior. On the Twelfth Night, ’twas a veritable tomb.

  “I said, another drink,” he burbled. “Talking to myself, I am. What’s it?”

  Carla Peabottom frowned at him from behind the counter. Carla was a stout, mousy-haired woman who in the parlance of polite company, was said to have excellent birthing hips, and in the more vulgar vernacular of the common folk, was said to have a bosom wide enough to feed a dozen swine. Any man unwise enough to remark as such in her presence—or get on her bad side at all, really—was liable to end up tossed over the porch rails into the bay, with a missing coin purse and a black eye to boot.

  After a moment’s deliberation, she poured another draught and brought it to the table. “Aren’t you going to the feast?”

  Sands grumbled something rude and grabbed the mug. Foam sloshed over the sides.

  “Why are you drinking anyhow? You on about that drowned girl?”

  “No. Celebrating.” Sands raised the mug and almost failed to find his lips. “Got me a new property, I have. Servants and all. Going to be a proper lord come morning.”

  Carla looked as if she had been on the verge of tossing him out by the short hairs, but she was curious now. “What’s in the morning, then?”

  “Paperwork,” he grumbled.

  “Paperwork? You mean, you sign the papers to the house tomorrow?”

  “Aye, that.”

  She leaned forward. “Which one is it? One of them new cottages up the hill?”

  “The place on the north road with the wall. With the stables.”

  “John’s place?” she said, billowing a waft of sour milk breath over the table. “They’re giving you John Ashford’s home?”

  Sands retreated to his mug and tried to shove his nose in it. “Buying it, I am. Paid for in more ways than one. Now let me drink, woman.”

  Carla seemed to hear the first bit loud and clear, the second not so much, and the third bit not at all. “Have you a candle to find your way home? ’Tis a dark night.”

  “Know the way, I do.”

  “You know I’m a widow, ay? I haven’t forgotten how to keep a man warm if the journey home proves too long and cold for him.” She put one leg up on the chair opposite and lifted her skirt, exposing a line of vein-covered ankle.

  Sands tilted back in his chair so far he splashed more liquid over the table. “Piss off, you old cow.”

  “What? I never!” Carla made to slap him, but Sands grabbed her by the wrist and bared his teeth.

  “What’s all this?” Dory Tuttle, the scrawny, balding woman who had spit on Isabella in the town circle, appeared from the kitchen, torturing a wet mug with a rag. “Both of you going on like an old married couple.”

  “An old married couple? The only thing this one’s fit for is a good dunking his self,” Carla said.

  Sands grimaced. “Didn’t say no to my coin, though, did you?”

  Dory squeezed the mug a little harder. “You’re done, you old sot. I’m going to the feast, and I don’t care what you’re buying in the morning. Now go on home ’afore I get my husband.”

  Sands tossed a Virginia sixpence onto the table and retrieved his coat from the chair. “To hell with both of you.”

  “Devil curse you,” Carla spat.

  Sands gave a little bow on his way out the door, his thinning hair flopping over his face. He thought he’d go to the wig maker on the morrow and do something about that. Perhaps get a good tricorne as well, now that he could afford it. One thing could be said about the widow Huxley: she kept her promises. Not like his stinking, rot-gut former employer, who had kept him on staff for the better part of a decade and had still treated him like a serving hand.

  “Piss on you,” he said to the empty street, and belched.

  It took a moment to orient himself. Dory had pulled the shutters closed on the tavern windows, and the moon had disappeared behind the clouds. There were lights at the mill, but damned if he’d spend another night elbow to elbow with the common folk, holiday or not.

  He stumbled in the vague direction of his new estate. Nothing stirred on the road. Perhaps everyone was at the mill, groveling at Sloop’s feet. Or perhaps they were indoors, warding themselves against the night.

  Not Sebastian Sands.

  He didn’t believe in such superstition, no matter what he’d said at the gallows. Oh, ’twas a good and necessary fib, he supposed, making sure that pompous gill-flirt ended at the bottom of the river, but he didn’t believe the girl was any more an agent of the Devil than he was himself. She was just an obstacle. A necessary obstacle, if he was to come into his own before he got too old for it to matter. Sands had suffered a great many indignities in his forty-nine summers, and he did not intend to die as destitute and humiliated as his own poor father, who toiled day and night at the Hammersmith Iron Works until his heart gave out, and was now buried in a pauper’s field not unlike the one north of his own hard-won estate. No, he was better than that, and if he had to get his hands a little dirty in the process…

  “Well, ’tis her own bloody fault, then, isn’t it?” he said to no one in particular.

  He reached into his coat for his spare flask, and his hand instead closed round a vial of a different sort. He pulled it out and stared at it. “What do we have here?”

  He knew exactly what it was, of course. It was the vial of powdered witch’s thimble he had been using to poison John Ashford. What it was doing in his coat, however, he didn’t know. He had tossed it into the bay well before the girl’s trial, and he had been alone when he’d done it. At least, he thought he had thrown it into the bay. There was no sense keeping it now. He hurled it toward the water. There was a small splash.

  It was followed by something else. The soft rustle of leaves. A whisper, mayhap.

  “Who goes there?” he called.

  No one.

  Then it came again, the sound of a small voice, almost inaudible in the wind. Three words that made no sense: “That be why.”

  “What’s it?” he called.

  The sound of skittering feet, moving away from the road and toward the town parish. His hand dropped to his belt, finding the gentleman’s pistol he now carried. His whip was back at the stable, soon to find another hand to wield it. “Come on, now. Come out!”

  He pulled his powder horn and primed his weapon. Like as not, it was a band of young thieves, and he was not about to be caught alone with his trousers about his ankles. He cocked the pistol and began to creep farther up the road.

  There came another noise, a sound like wood straining in the wind. Back and forth it went, vacillating in a slow, steady rhythm.

  Creak…groan. Creak…groan.

  Sands stopped. The smell of something rotten breezed past his nostrils, and even through the haze of The Fancy’s liquor, he felt his spine grow rigid.

  The clouds suddenly cleared, and the light of the moon shown down upon the path. He stood before the gallows. Someone had noosed th
e drop, and upon the rope hung the lifeless body of Charles the red-haired carpenter, his face blackened and his tongue drooping from his mouth. His feet swayed back and forth in the breeze, pulling his body against the rope.

  Creak…groan.

  Then the child’s voice came again, loud and clear from beneath the platform. “That be why she’s a witch!”

  Sands stumbled and fell onto his rear. The pistol hammer snapped down, and the shot flew off into the night.

  A set of yellow eyes appeared in the gloom. Where there had once been a child’s voice came a low, angry growl.

  “What’s…” Sands began.

  Then the wolf came charging from out of the darkness, its jaws spread wide in a bloodthirsty grin.

  Chapter 22

  At the end of the mill was a long, low space where came lumber from the cutting platform until it could be properly sorted and bound for transport. Every year on the fifth of January, the drop was cleared and swept, and upon the dirt floor were set five long tables, round which gathered the townsfolk to dine and be merry, to mark the passing of the new year, and to celebrate the generosity of Blackfriar’s two most noble families. The food was said to be the best in the colonies, and for both the week before and the week after, many folk could talk of nothing else. There was spitted pig and pickled pheasant, sweet candied stuffing with great mounds of potatoes, roast corn with cream butter, piles of fresh greens, and of course, Marianne’s famous ginger cakes, with John’s lottery items inside. The feast began at sunset and continued until well after dark, until the children were fit to burst, and the adults were roaring drunk. ’Twas Blackfriar’s oldest tradition, a time-honored holiday celebrated by early settlers and newcomers alike.