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

Dory squeezed the mug a little harder. “You’re done, you old sot. I’m going to the feast, and I don’t care what you’re buying in the morning. Now go on home ’afore I get my husband.”

Sands tossed a Virginia sixpence onto the table and retrieved his coat from the chair. “To hell with both of you.”

“Devil curse you,” Carla spat.

Sands gave a little bow on his way out the door, his thinning hair flopping over his face. He thought he’d go to the wig maker on the morrow and do something about that. Perhaps get a good tricorne as well, now that he could afford it. One thing could be said about the widow Huxley: she kept her promises. Not like his stinking, rot-gut former employer, who had kept him on staff for the better part of a decade and had still treated him like a serving hand.

“Piss on you,” he said to the empty street, and belched.

It took a moment to orient himself. Dory had pulled the shutters closed on the tavern windows, and the moon had disappeared behind the clouds. There were lights at the mill, but damned if he’d spend another night elbow to elbow with the common folk, holiday or not.

He stumbled in the vague direction of his new estate. Nothing stirred on the road. Perhaps everyone was at the mill, groveling at Sloop’s feet. Or perhaps they were indoors, warding themselves against the night.

Not Sebastian Sands.

He didn’t believe in such superstition, no matter what he’d said at the gallows. Oh, ’twas a good and necessary fib, he supposed, making sure that pompous gill-flirt ended at the bottom of the river, but he didn’t believe the girl was any more an agent of the Devil than he was himself. She was just an obstacle. A necessary obstacle, if he was to come into his own before he got too old for it to matter. Sands had suffered a great many indignities in his forty-nine summers, and he did not intend to die as destitute and humiliated as his own poor father, who toiled day and night at the Hammersmith Iron Works until his heart gave out, and was now buried in a pauper’s field not unlike the one north of his own hard-won estate. No, he was better than that, and if he had to get his hands a little dirty in the process…

“Well, ’tis her own bloody fault, then, isn’t it?” he said to no one in particular.

He reached into his coat for his spare flask, and his hand instead closed round a vial of a different sort. He pulled it out and stared at it. “What do we have here?”

He knew exactly what it was, of course. It was the vial of powdered witch’s thimble he had been using to poison John Ashford. What it was doing in his coat, however, he didn’t know. He had tossed it into the bay well before the girl’s trial, and he had been alone when he’d done it. At least, he thought he had thrown it into the bay. There was no sense keeping it now. He hurled it toward the water. There was a small splash.

It was followed by something else. The soft rustle of leaves. A whisper, mayhap.

“Who goes there?” he called.

No one.

Then it came again, the sound of a small voice, almost inaudible in the wind. Three words that made no sense: “That be why.”

“What’s it?” he called.

The sound of skittering feet, moving away from the road and toward the town parish. His hand dropped to his belt, finding the gentleman’s pistol he now carried. His whip was back at the stable, soon to find another hand to wield it. “Come on, now. Come out!”

He pulled his powder horn and primed his weapon. Like as not, it was a band of young thieves, and he was not about to be caught alone with his trousers about his ankles. He cocked the pistol and began to creep farther up the road.

There came another noise, a sound like wood straining in the wind. Back and forth it went, vacillating in a slow, steady rhythm.

Creak…groan. Creak…groan.

Sands stopped. The smell of something rotten breezed past his nostrils, and even through the haze of The Fancy’s liquor, he felt his spine grow rigid.

The clouds suddenly cleared, and the light of the moon shown down upon the path. He stood before the gallows. Someone had noosed the drop, and upon the rope hung the lifeless body of Charles the red-haired carpenter, his face blackened and his tongue drooping from his mouth. His feet swayed back and forth in the breeze, pulling his body against the rope.

Creak…groan.

Then the child’s voice came again, loud and clear from beneath the platform. “That be why she’s a witch!”

Sands stumbled and fell onto his rear. The pistol hammer snapped down, and the shot flew off into the night.

A set of yellow eyes appeared in the gloom. Where there had once been a child’s voice came a low, angry growl.

“What’s…” Sands began.

Then the wolf came charging from out of the darkness, its jaws spread wide in a bloodthirsty grin.

Chapter 22

At the end of the mill was a long, low space where came lumber from the cutting platform until it could be properly sorted and bound for transport. Every year on the fifth of January, the drop was cleared and swept, and upon the dirt floor were set five long tables, round which gathered the townsfolk to dine and be merry, to mark the passing of the new year, and to celebrate the generosity of Blackfriar’s two most noble families. The food was said to be the best in the colonies, and for both the week before and the week after, many folk could talk of nothing else. There was spitted pig and pickled pheasant, sweet candied stuffing with great mounds of potatoes, roast corn with cream butter, piles of fresh greens, and of course, Marianne’s famous ginger cakes, with