Patricia Rice

Devil’s Lady

Patricia Rice

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Edition
February 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-243-3
Copyright © 1992 Patricia Rice

Dedicated to those who have allowed—and still
allow—past hatreds to supplant the hope of future happiness. Forgive
them, Lord, for they know not what they do.

1750

The November sleet bit bitterly into Faith’s thinly
clad shoulders. Clutching her bundle, she pulled her meager cloak
tighter, but the icy wind swirled between her legs and up her back. Her
chilblained hands ached all the way to the bones.

The sudden storm had obliterated what remained of
the afternoon’s gloom. Darkness shrouded the dreaded forest ahead,
mercifully disguising the blight of miserable landscape on either side
of her. The land rolled away in endless mud flats without sign of
habitation or even life.

Faith shivered and briefly closed her eyes against
the blinding sting of wind and snow. Her lashes turned to painful shards
of ice against her skin, and she moaned at this new punishment.

Her stomach felt as if it were flat against her
backbone. The emptiness inside hurt even more than the numbness in her
fingers and toes. The pitifully thin pieces of leather that had never
adequately protected her feet were now worn into holes as large as the
ones in her torn wool stockings. Unable to lift her feet, she tripped on
the hem of her overlong homespun skirt and heard the worn material rip,
but it scarcely seemed to matter anymore. Her mother was no longer
there to scold or lecture on the proper attire of young ladies.

An ancient stone wall lined the rutted road, and
Faith tried to imagine what it would be like come spring. The thorny
briars spilling over the top would fill with scented roses, and perhaps
larkspur and campion would sprout along the mud-covered base. If she
could just remember the hope of spring, she might find the strength to
keep moving in the direction of London.

At least Faith hoped she was still walking in that
direction. She could no longer remember when she had seen the last
signpost, or where. She wasn’t at all certain that she remembered why
she needed to reach London. The notion had been a nebulous one from the
first, born out of desperation and a need to have some direction.

If only she could sleep, just for a little while.
There had been no barn to rest in the night before, and the ground had
been cold and damp. And now it looked as if there would be no protection
again this night. Exhaustion blurred her senses and froze her mind more
thoroughly than the ice did her toes.

As the gloom of the forest gathered around her,
Faith clung to the sight of the wall along the road. The stones rose
higher now, and the thorns had become thick brambles beneath which
mounds of dirt concealed burrows for rabbits and other creatures of the
forest. Faith tried to imagine herself as a rabbit covered with fur,
snuggled warmly deep inside that cozy bank of earth, and envied the
animal its home. If only she could snuggle close to that wall and sleep
until the cold and the night passed.

As she tripped once more, it became increasingly
evident that she would have to lie down and sleep somewhere. She hadn’t
the strength to move her feet or lift her head, and even keeping her
eyes open was a struggle she had begun to lose.

Just a little while, she vowed. She would curl up
beneath the bank for just a little while. Sleep was impossible to find
anymore, but she had to rest, and perhaps if she pulled her toes up
beneath her cloak she might begin to feel them again. The thought became
more appealing as the sleet beat down harder and the barren trees
offered little cover against the wind.

The pale glimmer of broken stone offered the opening
she needed. Someone or something had broken through the ancient rock,
leaving a littered trail of debris and a cut through which one small,
forlorn waif could wriggle. Faith never hesitated. Perhaps the Lord had
sent this blessing as a sign that things would improve.

She no longer believed her father’s ecstatic
promises of wealth beyond her dreams to be had in the kingdom of heaven,
but she had to believe there was Someone still looking after her, or
she couldn’t go on. She had lost all else in the world; she would not
give up her beliefs.

As she wrapped her mud-colored cloak around her and
knelt behind the barrier of the wall to say the prayers she had said
every night of her life, the wind blew over her head and left her frozen
body alone. For this, she gave grace. Then, thoroughly exhausted, she
rolled up in an indentation of earth between wall and forest floor,
placed her small bundle of possessions beneath her head, and closed her
eyes and prayed for sleep.

It never came easily. To keep at bay the horrifying
images that haunted her dreams, Faith tried to imagine the future. She
had mistakenly thought she could find employment along this road. She
knew herself for a hard worker, but there didn’t seem to be a Christian
soul in all of England willing to part with a few coins or even a hot
meal for a day’s work.

Had it not been for the aid of her father’s
parishioners, she could not have come this far. She closed out thoughts
of her father, for they only led to that ugly morning... Faith squeezed
her eyes tighter and tried to concentrate on where her plans had gone
awry. If she could only find her faults, perhaps she could correct them
and things would improve on the morrow.

She knew her father’s parishioners had offered her
coins only to hasten her way out of town. She did not have the
experience to know whether it was their own guilt they tried to ease or
if they truly wished the best for her, but those coins had kept her from
the workhouse, at least.

She tried not to judge them too harshly for not
offering a home instead of money. They were poor, desperately poor, with
more mouths to feed than any could provide. Her father had tried to
show them the road to righteousness through the methods of hard work and
discipline taught by John Wesley, but work was not easily come by these
days. The gin on a Saturday night eased the bleakness. Faith knew all
that, and she tried to keep her father’s lessons in her heart.

But it was damnably difficult to feel kind toward
others when your toes and fingers were numb and your belly was empty. At
first she had sought out other Methodists. Wesley had taught to give
until it hurt, and her father had followed these precepts, sometimes to
the detriment of his own family. She had discovered other followers were
not quite so eager to accept this particular lesson.

After a few days of starvation, Faith had not been
quite so choosy in her search of employment. She applied at houses large
and small, to the good Church of England believers and to nonbelievers
alike. There had even been a few secret papists, but she had come to
realize religion was no indication of Christianity. The few Good
Samaritans who had actually given her food or money or a place to sleep
came from all ranks, and they were few and far between.

She sighed as her stomach gave a hollow rumble, and
she tried to find a more comfortable position amid the rocks and mud.
Exhaustion wasn’t enough to ease her mind to sleep. Every night she lay
still and questioned where she had gone wrong. Should she have been
humble? More proud? Should she have begged for work? Insisted? Should
she have cried and told her tale of woe? Should she have lied and given
some tale of her wealthy family in London?

She never found an answer. She simply quit
confronting anyone. By now she looked like any beggar. If people hadn’t
cared before, they would care even less now. She had learned that much
in these last few weeks.

She refused to cry. The tears would freeze, in any
case. She would make it to London somehow. Surely, in all that great
city, there would be room for one small girl willing to work her fingers
to the bone for a right to live. Perhaps, when she was strong again and
could buy good clothes, she might inquire about the families she had
never known. Perhaps. They had turned their backs on her parents, so
there seemed little hope that they would acknowledge her, but she so
desperately wanted a family again....

The tears were gathering beneath her lids, and Faith
forced them away with images of the rabbits in their burrows. Mayhap
London was just the other side of the woods.

The rattle and creak of the mailcoach racing
dangerously over the frozen, rutted road jarred Faith back to
wakefulness sometime later. It must be earlier than she thought for the
coach to still be abroad, but the darkness of the storm had the same
effect as nightfall.

She curled tighter in her cloak and wished she could
be squeezed on the wooden bench between all those warm bodies packed
into the lumbersome vehicle on its way to London. Undoubtedly there was
an inn down the road where they would stop for the night. The innkeeper
would bring them big mugs of hot toddy and steaming bowls of soup and
seat them before a roaring fire. She could almost feel the heat of the
flames, and her eyes closed drowsily at the warmth creeping through her
veins. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would reach that inn and apply for a
position....

The sound of gunshots and screams, neighing horses,
and violent curses jerked her awake once more. Fearing the nightmare had
returned, Faith forced her groggy senses to search the darkness.

 “Stand and deliver!” roared through the wind’s wail. Highwaymen!

Voices carried on the wind: the whining complaint of
women, the angry and helpless protests of men, and the resonant
commands of the thief. She had known these woods concealed the dregs of
society, but she had thought herself safe enough, since she had nothing
they could want. It had never occurred to her that she might act as
witness to their illegal acts.

Faith gulped as another shot rang out and a woman
screamed. If only there were something she could do, but she knew there
was not. Her fingers wrapped in the wool of her cloak as she tried to
shut out the sounds. They could not be too far away. There could be
thieves all along this wall, just waiting for some movement to betray
her presence.

She had no gun, no strength, no means but prayer of fighting their depredations. She prayed fervently, if not coherently.
Please, God, do not let those poor people be harmed, deliver them from their enemies, let me live another day
.

The sound of racing hoofbeats came closer, and Faith
stared wildly at the wall, praying its shelter would conceal her from
the horrors of the road. The wind rattled the barren branches of the
trees, and the icy sleet began again, pelting her with tiny shards that
pierced like knives where they hit her face.

The coach rumbled off, and she began to breathe once
more. Only then did the hoofbeats seem to pound just beside her head,
and a huge beast flew over the wall mere inches from where she lay.

She curled inside her cloak like a frightened
hedgehog. She couldn’t shut out the sight of the black cape billowing
like a thundercloud behind the alarming giant beast, half-man,
half-horse, as it flew over her head.

The hoofbeats thundered into the distance, but she still feared to breathe.

The horse had to be huge, bigger than anything she
had ever seen in her life. If it had breathed fire, Faith wouldn’t have
been surprised. And it had been blacker than the night sky, so black the
man on its back had blended in until they had seemed one heaving,
flying projectile of muscle and blood. She would remember the sight of
them lunging over that wall until the day she died.

And that day could be today, should the highwayman
discover she had seen him. Huddled in her cloak, Faith tried to discern
the sound of hoofbeats on the forest floor, but she heard nothing. She
would have to leave this haven from the wind and hurry on as soon as she
knew it was safe to scamper from hiding. The idea of walking a dark
road infested with thieves and murderers held no peril compared to the
possibility of the highwayman discovering her presence. Better the evils
of her imagination than the very real terror of that beast bearing down
on her again.