Cauldron of Fear

by Jennifer Jane Pope

  The statements against her, if they really existed, had probably been obtained with promises of reward, and any 'evidence' against her merely fabrications initiated by Crawley himself. Grandma Hannah had lived all her life simply enough in her cottage, which had belonged to her father before her. Nathan Pennywise had been aptly named, for he saved, invested money in the watermill with James Meldrew's grandfather, sold his share in that some years later and bought land, little pockets of acreage all about the area, all of which were then, as now, rented out to local farmers.

  His careful investment was not worth a great fortune, not by any means, but the rents that came in every quarter day mounted up and neither he, nor his daughter after him, ever had profligate tastes. Matilda never questioned Hannah about money, but she knew there must be a small nest egg somewhere, and what she knew surely must be fairly common knowledge in Leddingham and the area about it.

  Somehow Crawley had gotten wind of this; an aged woman, her young granddaughter and no other living relatives that anyone knew of - they offered themselves as easy prey to anyone unscrupulous enough to take advantage, especially if that advantage could be taken, at least to all appearances, by using the law. The hysterical witch hunts of Matthew Hopkins's day were a thing of the past, but witchcraft was still a crime in England and news still filtered through of another unfortunate being hanged, probably for no greater sin than living on her own, or having a lazy eye or deformed hand. Ignorance, Matilda knew, was a terrible thing, even more terrible all the time people like Crawley existed to exploit it.

  And in this case, she, Matilda, was the easiest route to whatever money Hannah had salted away. Undoubtedly, Crawley would offer the old woman her granddaughter's life in exchange for gold. It was blackmail, but he would not be crude enough to state it as such. No doubt he would tell Hannah that it was a tribute to God, paid to his servant, who would then intercede with the Almighty on behalf of Matilda's soul.

  Meantime, however, the way she had been treated thus far and the way in which Jed had spoken suggested that Crawley might see this situation as the chance to avail himself of more than just pecuniary rewards. Matilda pictured the hawk-nosed man's cruel eyes and thin lips and shuddered at the prospect...

  The warmth of the late summer sun was fast fading as it dipped towards the far hills with what seemed to be growing speed, and the shadows of the trees and the huge barn structure stretched far across the deserted meadow, as the heavy timber-sided wagon lurched unsteadily up the rutted dirt track behind two disinterested looking cobs.

  The driver, a thickset fellow of indeterminate middle age, dressed simply, though in good quality cloth, pushed his floppy hat to the back of his head, scratched behind his right ear and then hawked up a huge glob of spittle, which he expelled towards the bushes with surprising velocity. Like his horses, he seemed little interested in his surroundings and looked tired and dusty, evidence of a long day's journey.

  As the plodding horses drew close to the barn they slowed and stopped, both without any visible or audible sign of instruction from the man. One snorted and tossed his head, but even this seemed a half-hearted effort, whilst its companion remained motionless, only the occasional twitch of its ears distinguishing it from a statue.

  The driver hawked and spat again, studied his unused whip with the air of someone who has just remembered something, and placed it tidily on the bench seat at his side. He stretched his shoulders back, arching his neck and just caught in time the hat that was too loose fitting to stay in place under such duress. Then, with a sigh and a grunt, he began to climb down from his perch, landing heavily on the hardened mud as the door at the end of the barn swung open.

  'You're nearly two hours late.' The speaker was a younger man, perhaps not yet thirty, with dark hair cut close to his skull, in the Puritan fashion. He wore polished leather breeches and a stiff leather waistcoat, over a loose-sleeved shirt of pale lemon silk, and moved as languidly and easily as the older man moved stiffly.

  The driver grunted and gave him a look of contempt. 'Military had the road blocked half the morning,' he said, without any hint of apology. 'Wagonloads of cannon going down to Portsmouth, along with a few hundred casks of powder, so I heard. They don't like the likes of us getting too near that sort of convoy, so all other travellers have to wait up till they're well clear. Not that I'm complaining, mind. Wouldn't want to be anywheres around that cargo if'n a stray spark from a pipe went the wrong place.'

  'You could have looked for another route,' the younger man suggested. 'I don't like the idea of you and this wagon just standing around, especially not in a crowded area.'

  'Master Hawkin,' the driver said flatly, 'if there were another road I'd have taken it. As it stands, the only other way would have been around the back of Harting Hill, which be about twenty miles off the beam. These two nags are willing enough and they'll plod all day and all night if'n I ask 'em, but you're talking another four hours, maybe five, so if'n I'd gone that way I'd not have been here much afore ten tonight, if then.'

  'And your cargo has been well behaved?' George Hawkin said, ignoring the driver's explanation as if it were totally unimportant.

  The older man nodded. 'Quiet as four little corpses,' he said. 'Sleeping like innocent babes and unlikely to wake afore midnight, if'n I'm any judge. Swallowed their medicine good as gold and out like lights not ten minutes after.' Sam Perkins did not like George Hawkin very much, but then that was not really surprising, as Sam did not like anyone really, himself included when he was in his cups.

  But in addition to Sam's general lack of sociability, there was the fact that George, in his opinion, had ideas far above the station of a man whose father had been a swineherd all his life and whose mother had worked in the scullery of a country house that had not even been very grand. Quite how Hawkin had risen to become Roderick Grayling's steward at Grayling Hall, Sam had no idea, but then the nobility were a rum lot at the best of times, and the Graylings among the rummest.

  Still, he reflected as he trudged around to the rear of the wagon, they paid him well, both for his work and for his ability to keep a still tongue in his head, and the job had occasional little perks, just so long as George Hawkin never got to find out. He reached up and inserted a heavy key into the formidable lock that secured the equally formidable door, turned it and swung the thick oak section to the side, revealing a sight that most anyone else would have found remarkable, if not bizarre, but to which both men had long grown accustomed.

  The three young women lay side by side, a thin layer of sacking between their near naked bodies and the rough hewn planks that formed the floor of the wagon. They lay on their backs, their faces, eyes closed in drugged sleep, facing upwards, arms by their sides, wrists cuffed there to the thick leather belts that had been laced and locked about their slender waists and from which further straps, roughly elongated triangular in shape, descended to cover their sexes, passing between their thighs and locking again to the lower edges of the waist belts at the small of the back. They would, Sam knew, remain in these chastity-enforcing devices for several days, with further humiliating refinements yet to come.

  'Pretty little trio, b'ain't they?' he chuckled. In the pocket of his breeches the other key, much smaller than the one he had used to unlock the wagon door, seemed to grow larger and his hand went inadvertently to where it pressed against the thick woollen material, as if to satisfy itself that the bulge there was only in Sam's imagination. He wondered what Hawkin would say if he knew that Sam had that particular key, or how he frequently made use of it during stops in the journey down from south London.

  He chuckled again, but this time to himself, as he wondered how many little Sams there might now be, running around somewhere out beyond the seas, in the Orient, or maybe in the New World, for these girls, despite their initial rigorous training and 'breaking in' period would always be well on their way to their new masters long before any evidence of what he had been up to might show.

  'Papers all in t
he box there?' George Hawkin said tersely, leaning in to slide the small walnut-veneered portfolio towards him and not deigning to comment on the physical attributes referred to by the older man.

  Sam sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. 'What d'ye think, George Hawkin?' he snapped. 'Think I'm beyond seeing to a few simple details, is it? Don't you forget, lad, I remembers youse when you was runnin' around barefoot and damned nearly bare-arsed, and I bin runnin' this damned wagon up and down for his lordship and now his boy maybe twenty-five years in all now. Never lost a wench and never lost a scrap of the damned paperwork in that time, neither!'

  'And never learned to read any of it, either,' Hawkin rasped, tucking the box under his arm. 'Well,' he said, turning on his heel, 'don't just stand there, start bringing them inside.'

  'Me?' Sam cried, feigning indignation. 'Where's that good-for-nothing lad William then? I'm a bloody driver, not a porter.'

  'Then you'd better start keeping better time,' Hawkin grinned evilly. 'I sent the lad off for his supper an hour since, so there's just you.'

  'Supper?' Sam echoed. 'Some of us ain't had bleedin' dinner yet.'

  'The sooner they're inside, the sooner you get fed,' Hawkin pointed out. 'And there's a little extra treat for you tonight. Master Roderick has picked out a nice bed-warmer for you, very handsome little blackamoor wench we bought a week or so since. Ladies maid, she was, and great big eyes.'

  'Big eyes and small teats, I'll wager,' Sam replied sullenly. 'All the same, these black wenches, and they jabber away all the time you're tuppin' them, all in their heathen tongues. What about the lady she was maid to?'

  'Hah!' Hawkin made a wry face. 'You don't think the young master would waste quality like that on the likes of me, let alone you? No, that one is already heading east and a good bounty she's fetched. Fair-haired, sweet-faced and tight-crossed legs - at least, when she first got here. Not a day over twenty and probably a virgin, but she seemed a quick learner and there's only one stiffness she'll have from now on.'

  Jane Handiwell wriggled into the tight breeches and began lacing them even tighter about her generous hips, finally drawing the wide belt about her waist and fastening the ornate cat's head buckle and cinching herself as tightly as possible.

  Turning, she studied her reflection in the tall mirror and pursed her thin lips. Yes, she thought, ruefully, with her hair tied back and the masculine shirt, she made a more than passable male - better than she made a woman, she added bitterly, and her thin nostrils flared momentarily, but her anger had no time to grow, for a quiet knock on the bedroom door heralded the arrival of her maidservant, Beth.

  The seventeen-year-old orphan already boasted a larger bust than her mistress and wore tops that plunged away to reveal plenty of it, the laced bodice pushing the twin globes into prominence. Her hair was red, a deep gingery mane that steadfastly refused to obey even her most ardent attempts to control it, and the freckles on her cheeks ran their own riot in sympathy.

  Jane considered her own thin, straight black hair and her lips twitched again, but she knew she should not take it out on Beth, for the poor girl could not help her innate prettiness and only displayed so much cleavage as she did on Jane's specific instructions. Those breasts, Jane knew, were as much hers as they were the younger girl's, and Beth worshipped her mistress with a devotion that bordered on fanaticism.

  'Nearly ready, miss?' Beth whispered, closing the door quietly behind her. 'The master's left for his cousin's at Petersfield and I've saddled up Marquis ready for you. He's in the usual place, just behind the three oaks.'

  'Good girl,' Jane smiled and bent to plant a kiss on Beth's cheek, fondling one breast familiarly as she did so. She felt Beth tense and let out her customary low moan, her eyelids flickering closed and then open again. 'Later, my sweet,' she cooed. 'Be in my bed and make sure it's nice and warm for when I return, eh?'

  'Yes, miss,' Beth smiled widely, her green eyes sparkling with anticipation. 'And I'll warm a bottle of brandy for you.'

  'Warm it between your bubbies then, my little dove,' Jane grinned. She reached for the frock jacket that hung across the foot-rail of the bed, and Beth immediately took it from her, holding it up so that her mistress could slip her arms into the sleeves the more easily. Then, as Jane sat upon the edge of the bed, Beth knelt to slip her feet into the sturdy riding boots, lacing them and fastening the three additional buckles on each.

  'You be careful tonight, mistress, please?' Beth said, standing up again and straightening her skirts. 'There's talk that Lord Grayling has been onto the magistrates to get army patrols on the roads at night. Too many people complainin', especially the coach companies. Fair crippling their trade on the overnights, so they say.'

  'Lord Grayling hasn't been at the Hall these past six months,' Jane chuckled. 'He's in the Indies, they say, looking for new ways to line his deep pockets.'

  'But the son is still here, mistress, and they do say as how he's a harder nut than his pa, so they do.'

  'There's no nut that can't be cracked, if'n it's hit right,' Jane retorted. 'And Roderick Grayling is no exception to that rule,' she added, with a malicious grin. 'He's no threat to our little game, so don't you worry that fuzzy little head of yours with such nonsense.'

  Beth looked unconvinced, but she turned, opened the closet and took out the long black cape and held it up for Jane to put on and fasten the neck clasp. The tricorn hat completed the outfit and Jane returned to the mirror for one final inspection. Yes, she thought, in poor light and especially once she donned her mask, she would pass easily enough for a man, and besides, the only people close enough to make any objective judgement would be too busy looking at her two things than her face.

  The two pistols were a pair, bought during a visit to London, from a gunsmith who had assured Jane that they were of a unique design, handmade by a craftsman in India and designed so that although they fired a smaller ball than was usual, their accuracy surpassed any other hand weapon he had ever tested. And he had not been misleading her, Jane knew, for she could drop a rabbit at fifty paces with either weapon; no mean feat in an age when firearms were still very much at the stage of hit-or-miss.

  Carefully, Jane hefted the beautifully balanced pistols, weighed them lovingly for a moment or two, and then tucked them through the specially adapted belt.

  'Right then, my little kitten tongue,' she said, regarding Beth kindly, 'I'm off to the hunt, or I'll be late and my friends will start worrying, knowing them as I do. Make sure the side door is unbolted once everyone else is asleep, and don't forget my warm brandy. The nights are growing chillier out there now and I'm sure I'll be needing something to drive away the cold, eh?'

  Sarah Merridew's schooling had not extended to biology, and she had no idea of just how many bones there were in the human body, just that now, she thought, there seemed to be an awful lot and every one of hers ached from the constant jolting of the coach. The small square of blanket she had earlier folded and placed carefully beneath her bottom did little, if anything, to cushion the repeated impacts, and how she now wished she had been able to afford the extra two shillings it would have cost to travel in one of the more luxurious coaches that plied the route from London to the coast.

  She sighed and turned to look out of the window, into the gathering gloom of the imminent night. Two shillings extra - it was scandalous. Men in London worked two or three weeks to earn that much, and heaven alone knew her funds were now sparse enough. Medical bills, funerals - four of them - bribes to no end of officials, bribes to get her out of that area of the city in the first place, new clothing to replace everything she had been forced to burn...

  A small tear welled up in the corner of one eye and threatened to spill onto her pale cheek, but she swallowed hard and steeled herself against giving way now. After all, she told herself fiercely, there were hundreds - no, thousands - of people in just as bad a situation as herself, many of them far worse, for the plague outbreaks had more than decimated some areas of the g
reat capital city and some families had been wiped out entirely.

  She had to consider herself lucky, that's what her father, rest his soul, would have told her. He had been the last to die, following her mother, her brother and her older sister, all in the space of just a few weeks. Fortunately, the unseasonably heavy rains had served to dampen down the spread of the disease, but Sarah paid men to burn everything nonetheless. Informed opinion was that infection was carried in the very fibres of clothes, and fire was the only certain way to end it.

  She shook her head sadly. So much education and science in London and still something like that had been allowed to happen, and everyone powerless to stop it. It was inconceivable that such a thing could wreak so much havoc in a modern world like this. After all, this was 1659 and mankind had surely left the dark ages far in the past by now? At least, she told herself, it was unlikely she would see another such outbreak in her lifetime.

  The coach rattled on, the wooden bench seat seemingly becoming harder and harder with every mile that passed beneath the creaking wheels, and she wondered how much further, how much longer, before they stopped for another change of horses and the blissful opportunity that would give for her to stretch her aching limbs, if only for a few minutes.

  Outside it was just about dark, which meant it was around seven o'clock. Had they really only been on the road for less than three hours? It seemed like thirty-three and there were still another seven hours to go, at least. It would be past two in the morning before they reached the Black Drum inn and, although the clerk at the coach office had assured her there would be a room available for her, even at that hour, somehow Sarah felt it a very un-christian hour to be arriving anywhere.

  'At least there will be a bed,' she murmured. She turned from the window and looked across at the only two other occupants of the coach, a pale looking young man, possibly not much older than herself, whose mode of dress suggested he was a cleric of some kind, and a homely woman approaching old age, who sat huddled and swathed in several layers of cloaks, a worn bonnet pulled down over her head so that it obscured most of her face. A nanny, an old servant, maybe a housekeeper, Sarah surmised. Another unfortunate who could not indulge to the extent of an extra two shillings' worth of comfort, though at least her matronly figure meant she had more natural padding between her bones and the uncompromising oak boards.