Devil's Mistress (2 page)

The fire was lit.

“Burn, witch! Burn!” The cries rang in a chanting crescendo.

The flames rose in an outer ring, soaring to touch the sky, but not brushing Pegeen. In between the angry flashes of blood-red, bright orange, and brilliant yellow, her face could be seen, her eyes staring upward, a blue as beautiful as the sky. Then her face was blotted out by a wall of flame.

She emitted one high-pitched, shattering scream that rent the air as cleanly as the stroke of a knife. Its echoes held the spectators in a haunting silence.

She was dead before the flames touched the hem of her skirt, asphyxiated by the pummels of dense smoke that turned the gray air almost black.

She was spared the hungry consumption of her flesh by the fire, but the spectators were not. The terrible scent, acrid, permeating, embraced them, held them in a grip of mortal terror. It stung the eyes, it filled the lungs, it hideously pervaded their senses and their souls. Many were held in the dark grip of their conscience, ready to cry out now against the horrible death. But it was too late.

The crowd remained silent. Pegeen, the witch, the lady, the healer, was gone. To move, to speak now, could do nothing for her. She was in God’s hands while they were still alive. Matthews and his men watched for any reaction with sharp eyes.

But suddenly, from the rear of the crowded throng, a scream rang out, again and again, shattering, haunting echoes of the first, wave after wave of agony, of despair, of abject horror. The screams were, in fact, so similar to that first one emitted by the witch, that even Matthews was seized for a moment by chills that tore through his spine. It was as if the witch were still alive, mocking him.

He shook off his trembling and started walking through the crowd, searching out the perpetrator who had momentarily terrified him. It was difficult even for his determined stalking frame to pass through the people who hovered there in confusion, looking about. The smoke was very thick; people hacked and wheezed; ladies brought little sachets of fragrance to their noses in futile attempts to escape the stink of death.

Finally, the witchfinder saw the girl.

Again the chills of trembling terror temporarily debilitated him. He was stunned; caught motionless by fear. For as her screams had mocked had haunted him, so did her appearance.

Her hair was black, as black as a moonless night, so very dark and glossy that it might have been indigo. It was loose, and it waved in curls over her shoulders, down the length of her back.

Her skin was as pure as snow, as smooth as marble. Her coloring was ashen at the moment, but beneath her pallor lurked a complexion of ivory and rose. Her tense, white lips were full and shapely. Matthews could imagine, as he stood in his paralyzed state, that when she laughed her mouth would be like a rose, red and soft, and would taste like wine, sweet and potent.

She
was the witch! Oh, sweetest Jesus! He had burned the witch, but she had come back. The devil had taken her from the flames, given her succor, and brought her back to haunt him, tempt him, beguile him, rob him of his senses and his manhood.

The townspeople knew who she was. This was no ghost to haunt them, but merely Brianna, Pegeen’s niece. She had lived in the forest with her aunt, growing wild and beautiful beneath Pegeen’s gentle tutelage.

Those who had opposed the execution, and those who had held doubts, no longer wavered. They had watched one die in the flames.

Enough. They saw Brianna now—in the wake of that terror—for what she was: young, with all the loveliness and freshness of youth. She was one of them and they were proud of her exceptional beauty. Perhaps they hadn’t the nerve to risk their own lives, but if they could, they would help her.

Matthews kept staring at her, trembling inwardly.

She looked like Pegeen MacCardle but she was much younger. She was a girl still, but a maiden as tempting as ripe fruit, in the full bloom of youthful grace. In a plain dress of simple gray homespun she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen walk the earth.

Something stirred within Matthews’s state of spellbound fear. That something was desire, as riddling and gripping as the fear.

The look she gave him was of the most contemptuous disgust and horror he had ever witnessed. He was, he knew, from the clear message in her crystal-blue eyes, more heinous to her than the lowest of rats or snakes.

Fear suddenly passed. Desire remained. And fury. She was definitely the spawn of the devil. Only the devil could make a woman so provocative that she could reduce a man to a trembling, mindless creature lost to carnal thoughts and to dreams of her tempting ripeness …

How dare she stare at him with fire burning brightly in her blue eyes, full of accusation and loathing! Only the devil could lift her chin so, could give the look of haughty aristocracy to the delicate features of this mere peasant girl.

This witch! The devil’s own!

He lifted a bony finger and pointed it toward her. “Seize her!” he cried out. “In the name of James II, Lord of all England, Scotland, and Wales, I accuse thee …”

Brianna MacCardle heard the words faintly—they came to her from the depths of a thick gray fog. Death had stunned her; horror held her tightly in a vise. Pegeen was dead. Oh, God, she was really dead. They had dragged her to the stake, tied her there, and set fire to her. The air stank with the scent of her charred flesh; it was too horrible to believe or fully comprehend.

Now this man, Matthews—the witchfinder—was staring at her.

His dark, probing eyes were on her. In them she could see a reflection of fire—the fire of the stake. He was calling her “witch” …

And she turned to run.

Huddled in an alleyway, Brianna remembered that she had been strenuously warned by those neighbors who had loved Pegeen not to come anywhere near the execution. But since the day when the men had burst into her aunt’s cottage and dragged Pegeen out into the midday sun, Brianna had been living a nightmare of confusion and horror.

She had been in the woods when the men had come. From the shadows of the huge and sheltering oaks that surrounded the little cottage, she had seen her aunt taken away.

The shouts in the streets seemed to be coming closer. Brianna tore down another alley, leaning back against the rear wall of a bakery. She was somewhat shielded from view by a series of grain crates, and she took the opportunity to breathe in great gulps of air. Closing her eyes, she couldn’t help but think back.

She had been stunned when they took Pegeen, shocked into immobility. When the truth of what was happening seeped through to her dazed mind, she had torn out after them, scattering the herbs and roots she had been collecting along the way.

The men on horseback—with her aunt their prisoner—were halfway down the road before she had panted her way to the front of the cottage. Needles of pain shot through her healthy young legs, and through her laboring lungs. She had paused only a second, then started to run again, her bare feet pounding down the dirt lane with a speed almost equaling that of the horses.

But Mistress Willow, their nearest neighbor in the forest, had managed to stop her, hurling her rounded form upon that of the slip of a girl.

“Brianna! You mustn’t go after her!” Mistress Willow pleaded, tears in her eyes, as she looked into the accusing eyes of the girl. “There’s naught you can do now, girl.”

“They’ve taken her … Pegeen … They’ve taken Pegeen. The witchfinder has taken Pegeen …”

Mistress Willow cradled the girl against her. “Pegeen is in God’s hands now, girl. And you can’t help her—but you can get yourself arrested too! We can do naught but wait, child, and pray that the Lord intervenes.”

But the Lord did not intervene.

Until the very last moment Brianna had prayed that he would. Pegeen MacCardle had been the kindest, most gentle person alive. She loved the forest, she loved the creatures. And she loved Brianna. She had spent her life caring for the ill and wounded—her neighbors, and any creature, great and small. Her determination to heal had brought her to the stake. The wife of a farmer who had been cured of croup by Pegeen’s potion of herbs had accused her of “bewitching” her husband because the husband had revered Pegeen as a saint in thanks for his life.

Brianna opened her eyes. Had she come far enough? No. The voices had been distant but now she could hear them more clearly. She pushed away from the wall of the bakery and ran blindly eastward, through the alleyways between huddled houses, smiths, and barns. Once again she found seclusion beneath an overhang, and paused, breathing deeply, feeling the pain ravage her again.

Pegeen! It was impossible that she was gone—so brutally, so cruelly. Orphaned at eleven when her parents had both succumbed to a plague, Brianna had at first been sent to live with her mother’s family, the Powells, in England. They had been kind people, but strict Puritans, and after life with her handsome and fun-loving father, it had been quite a change. They were also extremely poor, and knowing that she had been a burden to them had hurt Brianna terribly.

Robert, her second cousin and ten years her senior, had tried very hard to convince her—but to no avail—that she was added help, not a burden. He was a religious, serious young man, but his dark eyes had always been warm and tender and he had spoken to her in the gentlest of tones. Then Pegeen had come, and immediately she had loved Brianna. Both the Powells and Brianna knew that she would be loved and cherished if she returned to Scotland with Pegeen.

During the eight wonderful years Brianna had grown up in the small woods home of her aunt, she had come to know that Pegeen MacCardle was very simply, very basically, one of the finest human beings alive. In an era when blood was shed over the slightest discrepancy in belief, Pegeen was truly good. Her religion was the forest; her God was one of goodness.

Oh, yes—the Lord should have intervened!

But he hadn’t, and Pegeen MacCardle had died.

When Brianna had realized that no miracle was going to occur, she had lost all sense of reason in the face of horrible reality. And so she had come to face Matthews, official witchfinder.

Her heart caught suddenly and skipped a beat. She could hear him again—Matthews!

“Find her! Find the witch!”

He was close, oh, very close! And it seemed that the alleyways were full of whispers, full of the sound of running feet. She turned a corner and collided with a wizened old man. She almost screamed but he touched a finger to his weathered lips.

“Run, girl, run!”

She had to run. But there seemed to be nowhere to go; no safe place. Run—because if she did not, she, too, would become charred flesh and ash in the wind …

Desperation and deep-rooted instincts for survival spurred Brianna’s young limbs into fluid action. She couldn’t cry for her aunt; she couldn’t even afford the time to feel her pain. It didn’t matter. She was numb. Her feelings and emotions were deadened by horror.

She raced north through the city; behind her she could hear the shouts of the king’s men as they lashed out against the pressing throng that detained them. They couldn’t move against the sea of humanity.

Brianna began a zigzag course, one that started to take her westward as well as north. A new sound, rasping, heaving, reached her ears.

It was the sound of her gasping breaths; it mingled with the rush of the blood that filled her ears like the sound of waves, and with the terrible thudding and pounding of her heart.

The woods, she thought. She had to get out of the city and into the woods. She could find shelter in the dense forests; there were caves and crannies and cliffs and she could disappear as easily as a doe—until she could find a way back to the Powells! Oh, yes! They would help her now. Robert, or his father, would know what to do, how to hide her …

She couldn’t seem to outrun the smell of burning flesh, or the sound of the chase behind her.

She ran down another alley rank with the stench of emptied chamberpots and decaying garbage. A cat, skeleton-thin, screeched in her path, arching his back. She tried to run around it, but the panicked creature bolted with her. She tripped over it, and sprawled into the mud and dust and garbage. Spitting dirt out of her mouth, she scrambled to her feet.

“This way,” cried a soldier of the crown.

“Down the alley!” shouted another.

“Suffer not a witch to live!” returned the first voice.

Brianna lost all conscious thought and logic as she heard the voices of the soldiers. Like a cornered rat, she had no reason. She would have kicked and clawed and bit at stone to escape her pursuers.

As she rounded the corner, she left behind her the alley of the slums. A scent of salt and tangy sea breezes finally began to clear that of the acrid smoke.

She came upon a row of dockside houses. Not elegant mansions, but townhouses that belonged to sea captains and merchants.

Across from the townhouses were the docks and ships, everything from tiny fishing boats to the massive merchant ships and the men-of-war that sailed across the Atlantic to the Colonies.

And beyond that there was nothing, except the sea, as gray and tempestuous as the sky.

Brianna paused for a moment, drawing in great gulps of air as she pivoted about on her toes, desperately seeking a hideout. Her zigzag course had taken her into a trap of her own making.