by Robyn Carr
“Do they fester?” Wescott blustered. “And who would know that better than I?”
“I had no part in your family’s tribulations,” Stephen sneered. “Would you seek to aggravate my father by an attack on me? That would only show your ignorance. I was but a boy when Worcester was fought.”
Wescott’s face paled into cold stone and his black eyes caught light off the moon and were set sparkling. He gave a brief nod, as if in mock deference to Stephen’s logic. His words were as stiff as the look on his face, spoken slowly and with measured wrath. “Of course, Master Kerr. You were no older than I.” Jocelyn noted that Stephen swallowed once, with apparent difficulty.
Wescott went on, his voice still commanding but the rage controlled. “Have you raped the lass or merely beaten her?”
“She is my property,” Kerr shouted. His voice sounded almost womanly to Jocelyn when heard against the thunder of the stranger’s.
“I believe I asked you a question, Master Kerr,” Wescott rumbled with threatening clarity.
Stephen seemed to flout the immediate threat this man posed. “Why would you care? Unless you want her for yourself.” His voice raised in giddy laughter. “Aye, a grand twist, should you fight me for a peasant whore. Do you covet my property, Wescott?”
The young man at her side took her chin in his hand and turned her face to inspect her wound. It was the first time Jocelyn had given any notice to him and was stunned to find a lad not much older than her own brother. She looked then at the entire group, and though she couldn’t judge their leader’s age, she saw that one man was as old as her father, one was youthful and quite handsome, and two were no more than five-and-twenty at the very most. The young lad who held her face in his hand had a gentle touch and soft, fragile features, qualities she couldn’t quite reconcile with the dark explosion their arrival had caused.
“I’ve seen how the Kerrs value their property, “Wescott growled. He looked toward Jocelyn. She tugged at her torn bodice and met his eyes.
“He’s hurt her cheek,” the young man at her side reported. “Doesn’t speak. I trust he’s beat her senseless.”
She felt the dark eyes bearing down on her and was suddenly chilled through to her bones. Instantly she knew that if this man meant to do murder, no struggle would stay him. Yet there was an air of a firmer control all about him, a feeling that he would find no pleasure in raping and slaying defenseless women to prove his power. The characters in the scene before her changed as her fear disappeared and she felt a new strength. The devil was the serpent who groveled in the dust and sprang out at defenseless innocents in the dark of night and the angel of deliverance thundered upon him in the blackest rage.
“The wench crawled upon my road to free her brother from my prison,” Kerr attempted, his voice whining with protest. “He’s held for trying to kill me. ‘Tis a just penance for an attempt to murder his lord.”
“Tried to kill you?” Wescott laughed. “Are you certain he didn’t try to protect his wife whom you would rape, or his child whom you would use for an anchor on your yacht?”
“He has no wife,” Jocelyn shouted. “He is but four-and-ten and held no weapon.” Her voice sounded like a trumpet to her own ears, and the moment she spoke she saw the glittering dark eyes bent to her again. It was not fear that set her trembling but the energy that seemed to travel in his gaze. “I meant not to free him, sir, but to give him food. In the village they said he was dying.”
“Dying,” Stephen grumbled. “He’s taken the lash for what he would have done, but he’ll live—long enough to hang for it.”
Wescott edged his horse closer to the young Kerr. “You disgust me with your lash. It doles out daily punishments that are unearned. Your people are broken and weeping and your murdering lot will never cease.” He looked again toward Jocelyn. “Get the lass gone,” he ordered his man. “She is no part of this.”
Jocelyn turned and fled into the trees, awaiting no further orders. Her bare feet were as swift and sure as any doe fleeing a hunter’s arrow. And then she stopped. The moment she felt a solid curtain of brush and vines between herself and the road and firm dampness under her feet, she crouched where she was and listened carefully. No one, not even Kerr in his insatiable rage, would follow her here.
“You’ve been warned, Wescott. You risk everything by avenging a peasant whore.”
“The wench has nothing to do with what my hand aches to give you, Kerr. You and the whole of my lord’s bastards. I only wish the lash fell to your hide once for every person murdered on these lands.”
Kerr laughed hysterically, as if none of what had been said penetrated his skull. “When we finally rid the roads of thieves that ride in the night, I trust there will be no murder on these lands. But ‘tis hardly possible, when the king grants lands to highwaymen,” Kerr said accusingly.
The silence that followed was long and heavy, and Jocelyn shuddered as though she knew what was coming. The moon was high and bright. She did not want to hear the sound of more horses, nor the sound of battle on this road. She worried that Stephen Kerr would be considered away too long and his riders would return to look after him.
“Strip the shirt from his back,” Wescott ordered.
There was the sound of rustling and scuffling in the road, and Stephen’s voice rose high in protest. “Don’t be a fool, Wescott,” he shouted. “One mark and my father will—”
The sharp snap of the whip and the scream of its victim pierced the night, and Jocelyn jumped at the sound. There was a thud as Stephen Kerr fell to the ground.
“Whining dog,” Wescott sneered. “You’d give fifty lashes to a boy half your age, but you can’t stand under one. Take that mark to your father and tell him it is from me. And tell him too that I should not be considered tame, though I am stayed for the moment.”
Jocelyn heard the beat of the hooves as Wescott and his riders left the scene, and knowing Stephen Kerr lay still on the road, she began to move silently toward her village. She parted the brush and vines skillfully and her footsteps were completely noiseless. She moved thusly for a good distance until she paused again at the sound of voices and hovered, frightened, to listen.
“It was farther, I tell you, where we left him with the wench.”
“It’s too much to hope that Wescott took him and has him tied in some rude stockade of his own.”
“It’s more likely he finished with the wench and hid in the bushes ‘til Wescott passed, as we did.”
“If my stars are kind, we’ll find his body along the road.”
Jocelyn recognized from the conversation that these were the riders that Kerr had sent away, and further, that they knew Wescott had passed in the direction of their lone and unsupported master. That they loved him little gave her a slight lift, but they would not raise an argument to save her and so were not worth much more than Kerr in her eyes.
“I tell you it’s further on,” the first man repeated. “With any luck, he’ll be already home to Dearborn.”
Jocelyn waited patiently until she could no longer hear their voices and then continued to plod slowly and silently through the woods along the road.
Bowens Ash was a smattering of lowly houses scattered over a rolling hillside that encompassed carefully plotted gardens and grazing animals. It was northwest a full day’s travel to Worcester, the nearest town of any consequence being Edgehill.
The larger fields were Lord Kerr’s. The few decent homes belonged to gentry in the merchant trade or wealthy farmers who rented from Lord Kerr. Some of Lord Kerr’s henchmen, the bailiff and the master of the guard, had two-story homes, but most of the village folk had tiny nests they shared with their animals. They were repaired regularly with mud and rocks, and their floors were dirt. The walls barely kept out the winter chill. Crops were scant for most people, and there were only a few hens and rabbits to be butchered from time to time.
Jocelyn’s father lay on a straw pallet near the cooking fire. Jocelyn stirred a pot of potatoes and peas
and would have felt rich with a slice of pork to add. The smell of meat was uncommon in their small home. Two young children also lay sleeping, neither awakened by the sound of her entrance.
Jocelyn acclimated herself to her home, trying to identify the familiar things around her to shake off her fear. On the table lay the slate, the one her father used to teach them the spelling of a few words and a small amount of ciphering. And then she noticed the mug and bowl beside it. Her heartbeat picked up. She had cleaned the dishes after the evening meal, set a new pot to simmering for them to break the fast, and the dough was rising in a bowl. Earlier, when everyone had fallen asleep, she had crept out of the house with her basket of food for Peter. The bowl and mug had not been there then.
She looked toward her father and touched her torn bodice fearfully.
“Aye,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ve been about, but I knew you had gone.”
“I, ah...I tried to reach Peter, Papa. I meant to bring him some food. The women who serve Dearborn feared he was dying.”
John Cutler sat up slowly, wearily. He rose and went to the table, pulling out the chair and sitting down.
“You deliberately deceive me and disobey me, Jocelyn. In everything I command you. You were not about helping Peter, but more likely flirting with some young plowhand or juggler or—”
“But Papa, I was, “she declared in a rush, moving closer to him with pleading in her voice and on her face. It was then that John Cutler took note of the torn dress and her cut cheek. She backed away a bit, pulling the fabric together more, although she had it fixed so that her breasts were not exposed.
“What trouble, this?” he asked, indicating her face.
“ ‘Twas Stephen Kerr who stopped me, Papa, and would have used me, mayhaps killed me, but for a stranger who came upon us. Papa, I think it good and likely Stephen Kerr killed that woman who—”
“Hush, Jocelyn. That blasphemy would end your life the quicker. What stranger?”
“A big man with a rich horse and a whip the length of this room. Kerr called him Wescott.”
“Ah, the vermin is back. And mind you, when you talk of murder and thieving that we’ve seen, more is the like that Wescott had a hand.”
“He saved me from Stephen Kerr.” She shrugged. “And he did not hurt me. Why do you speak of him so?”
Cutler gave an impatient flourish of his hand as if to dismiss the subject, but he answered just the same. “His family was not considered a bad lot when Lady Waverly owned Dearborn. They were neighbors; the Wescotts held Braeswood, which joined with Dearborn, and they got on decently. But the Wescotts lost all in the wars, and the heir, Sir Trent, as he is to be called upon his return, spat in the face of God at his portion of bad luck. Aye, he cast about as a hired soldier and ofttimes highwayman, as it’s told. And the rumor is that the king, more than aware of his misguided past, rewarded him handsomely and titled him just the same.”
Jocelyn cocked her head slightly and looked at her father. It was not difficult to picture Wescott as a rogue, but it was rather hard for her to imagine him indecent, if he hated Stephen Kerr. “How can we know for certain that Wescott is to be feared?” she asked.
“He did not bow to the ways of The Word and the Protectorate, child,” her father blustered. “He fled his home and his country and went abroad with sabre drawn to spill more blood. If rumor of his criminal past reaches us from other countries, it must be truth. And if one-half is truth, he is the devil himself.”
“But Papa, he—”
“Aye, I’ve heard he’s a way with the women and that one look and a maid of little sense is smitten, so listen with care, Jocelyn, that you don’t sell yourself to the devil. ‘Tis a well-known fact the devil has more allure than the Almighty. That is the way of it.”
Jocelyn hung her head to avoid her father’s eyes. He was staunch in his faith, having studied as a young man with the clergy. It was a fact that he once expected to have some position in the church, but instead pursued farming and traveled to Bowens Ash to many, his bride possessing this small, nearly insignificant plot of farmland.
In the early years, before the war, there was good to be gained from John’s learning, for he shared his knowledge with his wife and children. As war broke out and the countryside lay torn, with soldiers in huge numbers assaulting their villages and the means to fill the pot and patch the roof growing more difficult, John clung more tightly to his religion and had no patience for the children’s natural questions and curiosities. He found anything pleasurable also to be sinful.
When Jocelyn was nine years old, her mother died giving birth to her youngest brother, Warren. From that point on, she recalled having committed at least one blasphemy and one sin every day, if she were to consider her father’s reprimands. Once, at the age of fourteen, she was seen talking at length to a stable boy four years her senior. Her father procured the services of a midwife to have her examined to assure him of her chastity. She was too mortified to talk to any males other than her father and brothers since then, but remained even more intrigued by the sinful things her father feared.
Villagers talked about John Cutler with a fair amount of amusement, for while all the poor clung more tenaciously to their faith than the rich, John’s values were yet stricter than most. The men of the village joked that while Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan, beside John Cuder he looked like a cavalier with the pox.
John Cutler met the king’s return with elation at first, thinking it a final end to the war and, like most commoners, grateful to anyone who would bring it to an end, regardless of his politics. But soon, as he heard of the return of the theater, dancing in the palace, and the king’s having a mistress who was a married woman, bearing his child and living in Whitehall, he was finally aghast and claimed that anyone of noble breeding was a hopeless sinner condemned to eternal fire.
And Jocelyn, hearing this, would gaze off into the starlit night and wonder what it must be like to wear a fine gown and dance.
“What trial is this that my daughter is the cause of my son’s fate? Would that the Lord would give Peter back to me, that I might yield some other token of my faith.”
“Papa! ‘Twas not my doing. Stephen Kerr—”
“—saw you and raised the toll I was to pay to your dowry for your virtue,” he finished for her. “It is the test I’ve seen on my stoop since the day you were given to me—the task of protecting you until I give you to your husband. And for nigh on five years you’ve made it hellish, the way you prance about to make yourself known to the men of the shire.”
“Papa, I don’t,” she protested, near tears at having him attack her again. She couldn’t see his reason, she never had given him cause to find her so suspect. And his years of berating her for her womanhood had only caused her to see herself as less than comely.
John Cutler’s refusal to turn over his daughter or her goat, the totality of her dowry, had moved Stephen Kerr to tie him to a post in the center of the town for three days, a punishment that nearly killed him. It was the fear that he was dead that prompted Peter to fling himself foolishly at Kerr, as if the slight boy could avenge his father. That was the whole of the event. In the few days that Peter had been kept a prisoner, John had healed and rested, and nearly his first act of strength was to blame the entire thing on Jocelyn.
“Your virtue hangs by the barest thread. Are you still a clean maid?”
“Papa!”
“You’ll go to Cross Tyson in the morning and tell him the wedding must be now. I can’t guarantee your maidenhood another day, out in the night with missions and moonlight scampering. Mark me, child, should he turn you out when he finds you used, make no mistake, I am not your father then.”
“Papa,” she said, trying to reason with him and ignoring his cruel accusations. “Cross has not helped us one whit, though he knows full well the weight we’ve carried. It makes me think he holds our family in some shame, that he makes no effort to buy Peter’s freedom for you. Would it not be simpler
to ask this man Wescott for help? He already hates Stephen Kerr and—”
“You are naught but a witless fool if you cannot see that you’d get no better from Wescott than you would from Kerr.”
“But better than from Cross?” she asked brazenly.
John Cutler’s hand came out sharply against her cheek, the feel of it a familiar discipline to her uncautioned remarks. “Cross is a decent and God-fearing man and is not obligated to me in any way but to trade a bride gift for a virgin who is strong and will bear him sons. Don’t disgrace him with any whorish plottings again. And leave this house again without my permission, and you will not be let in the door upon your return.”
Jocelyn turned away from him and would not cry or rub the cheek, now abused almost beyond her endurance. The cut had opened anew and she dabbed at the fresh blood with the bottom of her skirt, her eyes clear. She had not cried from even the most wicked punishment since her mother’s death. The tears that had drained her young body then seemed to be exhausted, and there were no more.
“There’s a man’s curse,” her father mumbled behind her as he found his pallet for a few hours’ rest before cockcrow. “Ever there is a woman close at hand to befuddle his life and throw his destiny down a cliff. Poor Peter...God hold him, if he is yet alive. O Lord, grant me one reprieve for the sake of my son and let this strife come to rest...”
His voice droned on and Jocelyn heard his depressing prayers, a familiar backdrop to her nights. She knew her father would be renewed if Peter could come home unharmed. When the room quieted and the sound of John Cutler’s even breathing filled the space around them, she sought out clothing that belonged to her younger brother. Once garbed and appearing as a peasant lad, her thick black curls tucked under a cap, she knelt beside the children’s pallets. Sarah, nine years old, did not stir when Jocelyn kissed her, and Warren, age seven, snorted and turned over as if he were sleepily escaping the pestering cat.
