Hannah sighed. 'Aye, that he can,' she said, 'but all the time he keeps her alive... well, she's worth more to him alive than dead, at least for the moment. If he paints her so that folk believe she can witch a priest into jumping off a ladder with a hemp rope round his throat, there's some who'll believe she'd be capable of anything and would pay the one remaining church fellow to make sure her powers can't reach them from beyond the grave.'
'I don't understand,' James said. 'You mean Crawley will demand payments from the villagers in return for some spurious promise that he can protect them against whatever powers Matilda is supposed to possess?'
Hannah nodded. 'You understand well enough. If that's not exactly what I think he'll do, it'll be something not that far different. I once watched a man not unlike Jacob Crawley do exactly that, and not just that one time either. All over several counties he worked his evil, though I only saw him the once in a village in Kent where a cousin of mine lived. It was a few years back now, maybe as many as a score, but the fellow's methods were just the same, and the simple country fools were in more terror of him come the end than they were of the so-called witches he went around stringing up everywhere.'
'Matthew Hopkins,' James whispered to himself.
'That'd be the one, the black-hearted carrion bastard! But how do you know of him? You'd have been no more than a wee sprig of a thing when last he was heard of.'
'Book learning, mistress,' James replied. 'Matthew Hopkins and accounts of his doings appear in several texts, but I had supposed the sort of superstitions he manipulated had long since died out.'
'Believe that if you like,' Hannah snarled, 'but then you just go back down to the village and take a look around at the faces and the eyes of the people. Fear lurks never far behind superstition and ignorance, and those two venomous fiends are never far beneath the surface, whatever polish people might put on it.'
'Some of us know better,' James protested. 'My father, Master Handiwell from the inn, Mistress Merridew and John Slane the smithy, to name but less than a handful, and if we all band together and speak out against this lunacy, people will have to listen. We are all respected people around here, even myself despite my lack of years. And then there's Sir Roderick. If I ride to the Hall and put the facts before him, then he must surely be forced to intervene, for when news of this reaches London there will be questions asked if he sits back and does nothing.'
'Questions, maybe,' Hannah retorted sourly, 'but I've yet to see a Grayling who worried enough to ever give an answer worth a penny. Grayling might intervene, but if he does so, it'll be for his own purposes, and I'd not trust that young whelp a foot further than I could throw him. There are things going on out there I wouldn't want to look too closely at, for I'd not like Roderick Grayling to suspect I knew even the first thing of his private business, not if I expected to live to see the end of the week!'
Kitty stared down at herself as Nathan continued tightening the laces at her back. The garment was made of soft leather like a jerkin that extended down to her lower stomach in a V-shape, though with two circular openings cut into its front through which her breasts protruded prominently from among the thick covering of feathers that had been stitched to the leather. The same feathered covering stretched down the leather sleeves into which her arms and hands had been pushed, the sleeves laced tightly so that the elbows were all but inflexible, and the fingers and thumbs held firm and flat in pointed mitten endings. Thin strips of metal had also been stitched to these sleeves, with more leather stretched between them and still more feathers stitched to this. It had taken someone a long time to make this bizarre garment, Kitty reflected, but it had also taken a very peculiar mind to envisage a design which, now that it was in place, gave her arms the appearance of wings while at the same time rendering them, and her hands, all but useless.
Nathan had laced up as far as the base of her neck and here he paused, stepping back and walking slowly around her to examine the effect. Apparently, he found it to his satisfaction for he smiled broadly and nodded. 'Very good,' he said, reaching out a hand to tug at one of her nipple rings.
Kitty flinched, but made no attempt to pull back.
'Plump breasts, and we'll make them plumper still, but first we need to get the head on you.'
The bird head was in fact a hood almost identical to the one Kitty had been wearing throughout most of her captivity, except that stiffened leather had been stitched over the outside of the mouth and shaped to form a beak which had either been dyed or painted a bright yellow. A big crest of blue, red and yellow feathers ran over the crown of her head from front to back, with more feathers shorter than those of the crest covering most of the rest of the hood, the neck of which, once it was laced closed, was intended to sit inside the neck of the jerkin Nathan now proceeded to lace higher still.
The effect of the two tightly laced necklines was that Kitty found she could now barely bend her head, and sideways movement was also severely restricted. And to make matters worse, the eye slits were surrounded on their outer edge by two small curved pieces of leather that projected outward, limiting her field of vision to a narrow arc enabling her only to see straight ahead.
'Now for these bubbies.' Smiling, Nathan moved around in front of her, and carefully moving the plumage aside began to pull on laces that ran through the soft leather at the base of her bosom. As the openings began to constrict, Kitty felt her breasts begin to bulge out and distend, and the pressure quickly caused a reaction in her nipples, which became even more engorged and prominent than usual. 'Now there's a bird fit for stuffing if ever there was one,' he declared.
Kitty bit into the fresh leather wadding between her teeth and stared mutely back at him, wondering if he intended to sample the bird before whatever was to come.
Nathan, however, was not yet finished with her costume. 'These boots,' he said, taking up the first one, 'have iron plates in the soles, so you'll find them a bit heavy, but that's the point; don't want you able to run forever, else the guests are likely to become bored. You'll also be thankful for them because at least they'll protect your feet and legs from stones and most of the brambles.'
Each boot was long, reaching halfway between Kitty's knee and crotch, and as she shuffled the first shod foot experimentally, she certainly felt the weight. She also felt her leg muscles being constricted as Nathan set about tightening the laces, and wondered if the footwear had been made with a far more slender girl in mind. But as she stood peering down between the twin mounds of her bulging breasts, she guessed the tight fit was deliberate, for her legs, sheathed now for the most part in gleaming brown leather, had taken on an altogether different shape from the one she was used to seeing.
While Kitty was musing on her transformation, Nathan once more returned to the bench and took up a short, tapering strap she saw was attached to a set of extraordinarily long feathers. On the other side of the strap, she also glimpsed two stubby protrusions of gleaming black leather, the one slightly longer and a good deal thicker than the other. Instinctively she tried to draw back, immediately understanding where these twin phallus objects were designed to go.
Her captor leapt forward and grasped her fiercely by the shoulder. 'Don't be a stupid little slut!' he hissed. 'This is your tail, and you're going to end up wearing it one way or another, so why not save me a lot of bother and yourself a good whipping? If I send you out to the hunt with a red arse, it ain't going to make a whit of difference to anyone, saving you, of course!'
Kitty's shoulders slumped and she felt as if at least half her strength had drained out of her body. He was right, of course. Resistance was futile. She would not leave the barn without the two dildos inside her, and the gorgeous tail plumage bobbing behind her. With a low whimper of surrender, she slowly moved her legs apart.
The two leather shafts had been pre-oiled and slipped into her easily enough, although the introduction of the rear one to her bottom hole initially caused an involuntary contraction of her sphincter muscles, so that she had to make a
conscious effort to relax them. That done, it slid in with surprising ease. As Nathan finished buckling the strap that held them in place and supported her tail, she began to experience a peculiar feeling of warmth and fullness, and when she took her first step, a mere half pace to keep her balance, the feeling intensified tenfold.
'Well, there we are.' He took several steps back and tilted his head from side to side, stepping this way and that and bidding her turn around slowly and display her tail feathers. 'Yes, very pretty indeed, Titty Kitty, but then you're not Titty Kitty any more, at least not for this afternoon. Now you're what his lordship calls a fucky-fucky bird, and by the heavens, come midnight, you'll most certainly have been fucky-fucked to a turn!'
'So, what exactly are we supposed to be looking for, Paddy?' Trooper Sean Kelly leaned against his musket and yawned.
Sergeant Paddy Riley scratched the side of his nose. 'To be honest with you, Sean, I'm not rightly knowing, not exactly, anyway. But a couple of ladies being held against their will would be as likely a starting place as any, and meantime, if we do have to knock over a couple of those murdering bastards, I'll not be losing too much sleep over it.'
'Well, they shot Hollis without even giving a warning. I'll not be having any doubts about what needs doing. Only thing that worries me, though,' Kelly continued thoughtfully, 'is that this place belongs to some earl, and us just a couple of humble troopers.'
'Humble or not, we're following a direct order from an officer, and it'll be his head on the block if there's trouble. We just make sure we keep our hides in one piece, and his,' Riley added, jerking a thumb at Toby Blaine, who was standing quietly by the side of the lane, head cocked to one side as if listening for something.
'Yeah, well, I'm not sure it's such a good idea to have the lad along,' Kelly muttered. 'He's not much more than a babe. Look at him, will you!'
'I've had troopers only a few months older than him,' Riley said blandly. 'The lad knows the lie of the land hereabouts, which we two don't. Isn't that so, young Toby?'
Without turning to look at them, Toby nodded. 'I know most of it, Mister Riley,' he confirmed, 'but not right into the estate. There's areas that are fenced off and patrolled by keepers all the time, so we never push our luck, not when there's rabbits enough elsewhere.'
'Sensible lad,' Riley grinned. 'Never go further than the pot's needs, that's what my da' used to say, probably still saying it, the old bastard. And yes, Sean Kelly,' he grinned fiercely at the trooper, 'I not only have a da', he actually did marry me ma and I do know him, contrary to certain stories going the company rounds.'
'Sure, and I know that, sergeant darling,' Kelly smirked, 'and didn't I grow up only a spit and a toss down the road from you anyway?'
'And probably listened to a few rumours there, too.' Riley shook his head as he turned back to Toby. 'Well then, lad, it's time we started on the serious stuff. We're relying on you to be a good scout and keep us out of trouble as far as possible. Reckon you can do that?'
'I'll try my best, sir,' Toby replied. 'And if Mistress Harriet is in there somewhere, I'd recognise her a half mile off, don't you worry none about that.'
Aye, Riley thought, and you're as sweet on the lady as a puppy for a lamb bone. As they moved off single file into the trees, he tried to prevent his mind from straying back to thoughts of another young boy, and a certain married farmer's daughter in Kerry County.
Sarah felt as if she had been stuffed close to the bursting point so the slightest motion sent searing spasms she could not identify coursing through her body. She scarcely dared move a muscle as she sat perched on the edge of the seat, and she made no effort to resist when Ross took each of her arms in turn and drew it out to secure it at the wrist to the horizontal beam that ran at shoulder height behind her. Once the wrist straps had been tightly buckled, another was passed about her throat and yet another about her waist so that, from the seat up, she was now held completely immobile. Beneath the seat two more beams projected out at angles just above the ground, and to the ends of these Ross shackled her ankles so her feet no longer touched the packed earth and her legs were drawn apart to lewdly display her naked and shaven sex.
Sarah made a futile effort to close her thighs, but even though she was still able to move her knees, doing so placed a terrible strain on her muscles and she quickly abandoned the effort. Blinking through the eye slits, she watched Ross where he stood before her, his face impassive save for a slight flicker of feeling in his eyes.
'How does your new throne feel now, princess?' he asked softly. 'I must say, you suit it beautifully, and now you must enjoy it for a while.' He started to turn away. 'I'm afraid I don't have any subjects for you just now, my lady,' he said mockingly, 'but I shall undoubtedly return to pay homage to your true crown before nightfall. Meantime, I shall leave you alone to enjoy some royal thoughts.'
At first Kitty found the heavy-soled boots most awkward, but as she moved along down the path ahead of Nathan, she discovered herself growing accustomed to their weight and the unusual angle at which they held her feet, so that she was soon moving with surprising ease and knew she would be able to run when the time came. How long she would be able to keep going, however, was a different matter altogether and she did not doubt Nathan's assertion that eventual capture was inevitable. She began to wonder if it was worth making any real effort to run in the first place, but as if reading her mind, Nathan quickly banished the thought.
'Fucky-fucky birds that are caught too quickly end up getting a special basting for the table,' he informed her. 'I've seen sluggish girls with their entire bodies looking like they've been baked in an oven for a couple of hours, with not a pink stripe between all the red ones. They never get caught quickly a second time.'
The hunt was scheduled to start from behind the house itself, a huge, two-winged building of dark stone with what appeared to be a recently added third wing of red brick jutting out at a most peculiar angle. The original structure formed a perimeter on three sides of an expansive lawn that was bounded on the fourth side by well-kept flowerbeds. Behind them were more tall grasses, bushes and trees that grew closer and closer together the further away from the house they went until eventually they merged with the main woodland.
As Nathan prodded her forward across the grass, Sarah saw that she was not the only quarry of the day: four more equally bizarre birdlike creatures stood in a group watched over by two liveried footmen, while a fifth female crouched on all fours, her features, except for her mouth and lower jaw, hidden beneath a wolverine mask, her entire body, save for her breasts, buttocks and crotch, swathed in a skin-tight suit of short fur. Kitty saw that where the fur did not cover her, the girl's flesh was a musky brown colour, and guessed she was probably of foreign origin, although not as dark as the African slaves she had seen in the past few months.
'That's Oona,' Nathan told her, noting her interest even though Kitty had tried to conceal it. 'Comes from the Indies and she's one of the master's favourites. She's a good hunting bitch, and they reckon she can sniff a warm pussy at two hundred paces if the wind's blowing in the right direction. If she catches you first, those teeth will make yours sing, believe me. You'll be glad of the cunt strap then, and you'd better pray the hunters come up before Oona gets it off you.'
Kitty felt herself turn cold as she stared at the wolf-girl. Oona, seeing the newcomer, looked up and bared her teeth, her long tongue lolling out of her mouth in a doglike fashion. Kitty bit into her gag and barely managed to stifle a whimper of terror as she turned her head away to avoid the piercing, primitive stare with which the girl seemed determined to pin her. If anything could encourage Kitty to run, and keep on running until the last dregs of strength drained from her legs, it would be the memory of those eyes and teeth.
When the shadowy figures first burst into the crypt and began stripping her bondage from her, Matilda Pennywise felt a surge of relief course through her body, but her rising spirits were just as swiftly dashed on rocks of despair as she rea
lised she was simply exchanging one captivity for another. And this one, even though the threat of imminent death had apparently been removed for the moment, was in many ways more frightening, and certainly more bewildering than what she had experienced at the hands of Crawley and his minions.
As she stood beside the other bird-girls now, despite the warmth of the steadily climbing sun she felt herself shivering with trepidation. She wondered what it was she had done to offend her Maker that he had thrown her into yet another pit of depravity and terror. At first she assumed these people must have something to do with that awful witchfinder, but as she listened to snatches of conversation, she came to understand that her new captors were something else entirely. Furthermore, as the women unmasked once they were away from the village, Matilda had been astonished to recognise one of them as Jane Handiwell, the innkeeper's daughter, and yet another as Lady Ellen Grayling, the daughter of the earl and younger sister of Sir Roderick.
Both physically and mentally exhausted from her ordeal at Crawley's hands, it took Matilda some time to realise the full import of her new situation. She had never seen Grayling Hall close up before, but she had glimpsed it several times from the hill across the wide valley, so she recognised its outlines. Looking about her now, she began to understand just why the Graylings kept the place so well guarded. This was a different world altogether, and a world no normal person would ever believe existed. Where Crawley's wickedness was based on a brutal greed, this was a reality founded upon lust alone, or so it seemed. It was a place where human beings were reduced to the status of animals, or even worse to helpless playthings for the amusement and satisfaction of people to whom morality was an alien concept. Their attitude towards their captives was impossible to describe. Matilda knew that not one of the men she had met so far had the slightest interest in her as a person. All she was to them was an object, a creature, a fucky-fucky bird as the fellow had called her when he forced the leather plug into her bottom and tightened the strap from which her long tail now sprang. She was a creature to be harried and hunted, and after that... she shuddered again, more violently than before, and fought against the salty tears springing into her hooded eyes.
The Devil's Surrogate Page 5
