Cauldron of Fear (9 page)

Adam stepped
forward, taking a hold of Sarah's upper arm. 'No one who knows you
would ever think that, Janey,' he said. 'Not in business, nor in
any other way.'

When the four
women had mounted and ridden off into the darkness, Adam turned
again to Sarah, studying her as he had before, but this time
displaying a lot more interest and apparent pleasure.

'Yes, pretty
one,' he said as he thrust her towards the barn, 'you are worth
every groat of the asking price. A week or two's work with you, and
I reckon you could fetch twenty times that price, to the right
buyer.'

Kitty was
astonished at how many other girls and women there seemed to be in
the place, for this was the first time she had been allowed to see
outside the two or three rooms within the barn-like structure,
where she had spent all her time since first arriving here.

Still with her
arms strapped securely to either side of her training harness, and
now with a broad collar of leather about her neck, which forced her
to keep her head abnormally erect, she was led out by one of the
youths who formed the core of Adam's assistants, thin chains
attached from her collar to the collars of similarly un-attired
females in front and behind her and then, when two coffles of ten
girls each had been formed up, they were made to trot around the
perimeter of the large meadow that stood behind the barn.

The young
handlers used whippy canes to make sure none of the girls tried to
slack, ensuring they maintained a brisk pace in the early morning
sunshine and that they all remained silent throughout, though Kitty
could not help noticing that four of the girls also wore thick
gags. She assumed this additional indignity had been imposed as
some sort of punishment and resolved that she, at least, would not
incur any displeasure.

Memories of
her encounter with Adam were still very fresh in her mind and, as
she recalled the events of the night before, she felt herself
becoming first warm and then wet. She shook her head, trying to
block out the images, not wanting any of the younger men to see the
evidence of her wantonness, but one in particular, a fair-haired
lad whom the others called Daniel, seemed to have singled her out
for particular attention.

Falling into
step alongside Kitty, he flicked at her bouncing breasts with the
tip of his cane and then flicked it against her buttocks.

'So you're the
one Master Adam calls Titty Kitty, eh?' he laughed. 'I can see why;
such a lovely pair of bubbies and so nice and firm, too.' He
stretched out one hand and stroked her right breast, which was
nearer to him. Kitty felt herself trembling at his touch.

'Well, Titty
Kitty,' he said, 'when the morning exercise is over I shall take
special charge of you; see if you're as good a poke as my cousin
reckons.' Kitty looked sideways at him, an expression of surprise
and alarm on her face. Seeing this, Daniel sniggered.

'Oh, thought
you were cousin Adam's private property, did you?' he cried. 'Well,
you'll soon learn that things don't work like that here. All you
wenches are common property once Adam's had first poke - all except
the two little piccaninny wenches, and they're reserved for his
lordship.

'Mind you,
that won't stop him tupping you, too, not once he sees you, Titty
Kitty,' he added, leering. 'So you'll get yourself a mouthful of
aristocratic cock meat before you're sold on, don't you worry about
that.'

'Sir,' Kitty
panted, lowering her eyes as she trotted, 'may I ask a
question?'

'Well yes, you
ask away, Titty Kitty,' Daniel said agreeably. 'What can I tell
you, slave girl?'

'I'm to be
sold, I know that,' she said, still not looking up at him, 'but
when will that be?' She trotted another couple of paces. 'And where
shall I go?'

'Ah well,' he
replied after a few seconds, 'that's a fair question, but the
answer will depend. With those nice bouncing boobies his lordship
will probably hold out for a good price, so I doubt you'll be
shipped out to the Indies with the next major consignment.

'On the other
hand, whoever bids best for their disposal might well decide to pay
a decent price for you as an extra, so who's to say? Or you could
end up going east, to the Orient. The Bey's agent is due quite
soon, I believe, and he'll be interested in a fair rose like you,
I'm sure.'

'An Arab, you
mean?' Kitty said plaintively. 'You mean I am to be sold into a
harem?'

'Not a harem
as such, I shouldn't think,' Adam told her, 'though you may be
lucky and have the Bey take you for one of his wives or concubines.
Usually the girls we send him go into a sort of stable, mostly for
the use of the Bey's favoured guests, once they've had their little
clitties cut off, that is.'

'What?'
Kitty's eyes were round with horror at this revelation, but her
tormentor simply laughed.

'Oh yes,
probably. The Bey will sample you himself first, and he won't mind
having a writhing little eel as his bed partner, but after that
it'll be the knife. They don't think their women should enjoy being
tupped, you see. Don't understand it myself. I prefer my wenches
hot and panting, the way cousin Adam says you were last night.
Seems a great waste, turning a panting whore into a plank of wood,
but then that's their business. Once they've paid, why should we
worry what they do, eh?'

James
Calthorpe recovered consciousness slowly. His head felt as if it
had been crushed by a huge rock and he felt sick in his stomach,
almost vomiting when he finally opened his eyes and made to sit up.
Gasping, he fell back, closed his eyes again and waited, trying to
control his breathing and clear his thoughts.

There had been
two men, that much he could remember, two men on horseback who had
ridden towards him on the hill road, talking to each other as they
approached, seemingly not interested in him at all, other than to
raise a hand each in salutation as they parted to allow him to
guide his own mount between them.

James, deep in
thought concerning a treatise he was currently reading, had barely
acknowledged them and so had had no warning of what followed. The
back of his head felt as if it had exploded in a ball of fire,
bright lights flashed before his eyes and he felt himself falling,
but he must have been already unconscious before he hit the ground.
Either that, or they had grabbed him and held him in the
saddle.

How long ago
the attack took place, how long he had been out for, he had no
idea. It was mid-morning then, that much he remembered, and the
thin shafts of light filtering in through the timber building in
which he now lay suggested it was daylight still, but whether he
had been out for merely a few hours or whether even a night had
passed in between, he had no way of telling.

Groaning, he
opened his eyes again and looked around, confirming what he had
seen the first time. He was in what appeared to be a small wooden
hut, built from roughly hewn and ill-fitted planks, with a single
window over which sackcloth had been nailed, and one rustic door.
There was dirty straw over half the floor, covering the packed mud
from which it had been made.

There was no
furniture, just a broken wooden crate turned upside down to form a
makeshift table, on which stood a pewter flagon and an earthenware
bowl in which lay three or four pieces of plain bread. To one side
of this stood an iron bucket and James did not need telling its
purpose.

From one side
of the hut to the other ran a heavy chain, secured to the timber
uprights at either end by robust staples. From the centre of this
chain ran another, which had been wound around his right ankle and
fastened with a sturdy lock. He did not need to experiment to know
that the amount of movement this allowed him would be insufficient
for him to reach either end of the first chain to even test the
efficacy of its fixings.

At length he
tried sitting up again, his hands clasped to his temples as he did
so and gritting his teeth in an effort to ignore the fresh waves of
pain his movements triggered. Slowly, he inched his way towards the
crate and reached out for the flagon, lifting it and sniffing
cautiously. Satisfied that it contained only water, he raised it
further and placed it to his lips, first sipping and then, having
doubly confirmed what his nose had told him, gulping greedily.

The water
tasted fairly fresh and the bread, when he tested that, likewise.
Replacing the flagon carefully, for he had no way of knowing when
it might be refilled, he hauled himself unsteadily to his feet and
looked around, peering towards the larger gaps in the timbered
walls in an effort to see what might lay beyond his immediate
prison.

When this
experiment yielded nothing, he paused, holding his breath and
listening intently, but save for the distant cry of a bird he could
not identify, all about was silent. With a sigh, James sat down
again, took another sip from the flagon and tried to think.

Matilda
shuffled wearily across the bare chamber to where the water bowl
stood on the recessed ledge, dragging the heavily weighted boots at
every step. She stood for several seconds, considering the tube
that Crawley had fixed to the crude wooden frame that now sat
across the bowl and then carefully lowered her face towards the top
of it, manoeuvring carefully to push the stem in through the slit
opening in the leather mask, alongside the awful prong of the
bridle she still wore over it.

The act of
sucking to draw liquid into her mouth kept forcing her tongue
against the sharp point, but her mouth and throat had become so dry
that she forced herself to ignore the pain until she had drunk
maybe a quarter of a pint of the musty water.

Finally,
standing erect again, she turned and surveyed the empty room, as if
by some miracle something might have changed in it while she was
drinking. How long since Crawley had brought her back here she had
not the slightest idea, though confined and bound as she was, it
seemed like a lifetime.

That, she
realised, was all part of his strategy. Pain and boredom combined
to break her spirit, probably even more effective than any rod or
whip. Here she was alone, anonymous, silent, listening only to the
sounds of her own laboured breathing and the steady pounding of her
heart, the thick leather hood magnifying these two noises out of
all proportion.

In the end,
she knew, she would be reduced to begging for release, willing to
offer anything, including her grandmother's carefully nurtured nest
egg, in order to escape this silence and to once again become a
living human being, surrounded by noise, lights, colours and
sounds, and free of the nagging pains that the clamps around her
tortured nipples kept sending throughout her body, reminding her,
as if she needed it, of her total abject helplessness.

In the end,
perhaps, this oppressive desolation might even drive her so far as
to welcome even the return of the man who was responsible for her
tortured plight...

What now,
mistress?' Beth looked up at Jane Handiwell, her huge eyes adoring.
Jane smiled back at her, cat-like, and chuckled.

'Now, Beth,'
she replied, 'I settle Harriet Merridew's nonsense, once and for
all.' She thrust back her shoulders, stretching her muscles,
knowing that her nakedness excited her maidservant all the more
when she displayed it so brazenly.

'I could
hardly believe my luck when the message arrived here to reserve the
room for the cousin,' she continued smugly. 'It was almost too good
to be true - an opportunity that t'would have been a crime to have
missed.'

'But I heard
your Pa tellin' as how he would put up the money for any ransom
demand,' Beth said uncertainly. 'An' surely, that'd mean that
Mistress Merridew would maybe feel she had to accept his offer of
marriage, wouldn't it?'

'Aye, she
probably would, the stiff-necked mare,' Jane confirmed. 'Far too
proud for her own good, but then she'd have probably accepted the
old fool eventually in any case. They're struggling at Barten
Meade, Beth, and no mistaking, plus her father is sickly worse than
ever. She wouldn't take my father normally, of course, but she's
the kind who'd marry a toad, if'n it meant she felt she was doing
her daughterly duty.'

'Then surely,
mistress, this will only hasten her to your pa's bed?'

'Aye, well my
big-titted and small-brained little sweetmeat,' Jane laughed, 'it
would, if'n I were to leave her on the loose to decide, but then
that's not in my plans, be sure of that. And, whilst my moonstruck
pater is away to Portsmouth, trying to drum up a few soldiers to
chase his own daughter though he doesn't know it, the time is right
to strike.'

'This brazen
whore has already confessed that she's a witch and in league with
the Devil himself,' Jacob Crawley sneered, looking around the dozen
or so villagers assembled in the churchyard. They were mostly men,
their eyes staring at the abject, naked figure on the end of the
chain leash he held, and Crawley had selected the small group after
careful consultation with Simon Wickstanner. The self-styled
witchfinder smiled to himself; their reactions were so
predictable.

'She has
already placed her mark to a full confession,' he continued, 'and
so it is possible that the Lord will decide that we should be
merciful with her.' There was a low murmur among the small
assembly. 'However,' Crawley continued, holding up a hand for
silence, 'I must first pray, for He has not yet revealed his wishes
to his humble servant.

'In the
meantime, you should return about your business, but let it be
known throughout the village that the whore, Matilda Pennywise,
will be set upon the green, as you see her now, tied to a stake and
set about with iron, that all may see how heretics, blasphemers and
witches shall come to shame.