The Devil's Mistress by David Barclay (summer reads txt) 📗

as soft and mellifluous as a lullaby. “Confess, and tell us when He took you.”

Isabella shook her head.

“Was it in the wood? Was the boy with you? Perhaps you were made to lie with him.”

Again, she shook her head.

The three men continued to circle. Pinching. Squeezing.

“Is it true His cock is split down the middle like a snake’s tongue?” the young one asked.

Sloop stopped. His expression remained unchanged, but his round nose twitched ever so slightly. “Wait outside. Both of you.”

“What?” the watchman said. “Raining out there, it is.”

“Then I suppose you had better find shelter.”

The young man looked as if he were about to protest, saw the tilt of the man’s head, and thought better of it. He nodded toward his older companion, and the two of them slumped out through the open archway.

Sloop toyed with Isabella’s crucifix, wrapping it round one wrist, then the other. “It is only you and I now. You needn’t be afraid.” He moved a step closer, and his face softened. “Please, Elly. I have known your family from the time you were born. Spare yourself this pain and tell me why you did it. Tell me why you killed John.”

Her head yawed back and forth. When it was clear she couldn’t speak, Sloop removed himself from the awning and returned with a blanket. He draped it over her shoulders. It wasn’t long enough to warm her legs, but it was long enough to cover her shame, and that was a miracle in itself.

It was said Sloop had a young wife once, before he took up the cloth. A girl even younger than Isabella, who had befallen some unspeakable fate. Sloop still carried a locket of the girl’s likeness wherever he went. Isabella had often wondered at that. No matter how hard a man might be on the outside, no matter how strict the path of his conviction, there must be compassion if he still longed for his Gwendolyn. There must be.

“Thank you,” she said, trying to sound as grateful as felt.

“There you are. Now tell me why.”

She tried again. “Please. I did not do this. I loved him. You have no idea how much.”

“It was not you, Elly. We know that. Just tell us what happened in the wood, and I will see leniency is done. I owe your father that much.”

Isabella shook her head. To tell him of the Lady would be the same as admitting guilt, and that, she could not do.

The priest stared at her another long moment, then spat in her face. He departed from the enclosure without another word. Isabella watched him go, thinking surely someone would come to her aid. No one did. Her only companion was the cold whisper of the rain, pattering against the roof. She tried to stay strong, but when it became clear no one else was coming, she could take no more. She cried into the blanket until the weight of the long hours took her, and she finally fell into a restless and bitter sleep.

Chapter 15

In her dreams, she was back upon the cliff. Rain assaulted the countryside as if a gash had been opened in the heavens and left to drain over the earth. The cottage stood in front her, a mirage no longer, but a thing of stone and wood. There was something moving inside. A crack of lightning struck the sky, and a circle of figures shown beyond the window. They were skeletal, ghost-like things.

And then a sharp pain cut across her back, and she was scrambling to regain her footing. She looked up expecting the residual tinge of lightning but found herself once more beneath the awning. Her wrists were still bound. The bright light of dawn shown in through the archways.

There was laughter from behind her. Sebastian Sands stood coiling his whip beneath the awning, and at once, she understood. He had struck her. Her mind had conjured the image of the storm, and with his whip had come the thunder. A cruel imagining for a cruel trick.

“Shall I hit her again?” Sands asked.

Isabella’s mind cleared, and she discovered he was not alone. Tiberius Sloop stood at his side. He held up one hand to stay the master of house, then turned to his prisoner.

“Will you confess now?”

She shook her head.

He walked to her and grabbed her by the hair. “Speak the truth!”

Isabella tried to speak, but the man was no longer interested. Two of his fingers shot into her mouth, probing through the gap in her teeth like dirty slugs. She bit down but could only gum at him with her missing teeth.

Then Sands was there, wrapping the whip’s cord round her neck and yanking backwards. Bright stars burst before her eyes. She thrashed and wretched, but the effort only choked her further.

“Confess,” Sloop demanded. “Confess, woman!”

Isabella gagged. Bile rose in her throat. She tried to speak, and all that escaped was a belch-like croak.

“Confess!”

The world began to dim. The possibility of thought became as distant as speech, and the world darkled. Was this to be death, come for her in this wretched place?

’Twas not.

Isabella opened her eyes and discovered both men were gone. She hung at the limits of her restraints with both arms stretched overhead. Her wrists were raw. Her hands had turned purple while she slept. Nor was this to be the end of her humiliation. The stench of urine assaulted her nostrils, and when she looked down, she discovered she had lost control of her own functions.

“Let it be over,” she prayed. “Please let them see the truth.”

And what was the truth? Only two days prior, she had traveled to the end of the civilized world to find a woman with strange powers. A woman reputed to hold congress with the Devil. Isabella never doubted her own intentions, but her mind wandered. She began to dwell upon the possibility that Sloop had been right. That in trying to cure her father, she herself had been the one