Cauldron of Fear (32 page)

Finally Ross
reached up, took her hands and buckled leather cuffs around each
wrist, cuffs that were connected by a short length of chain, which
he then, in turn, attached to a small metal ring set into the front
of the saddle. The reins of her mount, it seemed, were not to be in
her own control.

'Perfect,'
Ellen declared. 'Thank you, Ross, you may go now, and take these
lads with you. Give them a tot of rum for their troubles. I can
handle matters from now on.' She looked up at Sarah again and
winked.

'Comfortable,
pretty?' she snickered. 'Or are you starting to get just a little
warm under all that stylish finery?' She took the reins from the
young groom and turned the horse towards her own mount. The sudden
rocking movement, gentle though it was, caused Sarah to sway in
unison, that movement in turn causing the phallus to feel as though
it were trying to rotate within her.

She first
groaned and then whimpered, trying without luck to clench her
useless fingers. Ellen wound the reins around the small pommel of
her own horse's saddle and turned back to grin at her over her
shoulder.

'Relax,
pretty,' she laughed. 'Just wait until we start trotting in a
minute!'

Alone in the
churchyard, Jacob Crawley perched on one of the worn gravestones
and took out the folded parchment again. The two golden guinea
coins that had been wrapped in it were now safely in the small
money pouch on his belt, beneath his cloak. Carefully he unfolded
the document and peered carefully at the neatly written words.

Master Crawley
, he read again,
the enclosed is a signal of my good faith, for I
would talk with you on a matter of great urgency and must meet you
in secrecy.

Come this
night, at eight of the clock, to the bridge by the mill, where you
will learn and receive something to your great advantage. You may
fear duplicity in this, but be assured you need not and may bring
your men with you, if you fear for your safety.

However, you must approach the bridge alone and you will see
me clearly at a distance and that I too will come by myself.
Meanwhile, beware the old witch's trickery, for she is more than
she seems
.

Crawley sat
pondering this curious missive for several more minutes. The
writer, he noted, referred to his men, in the plural. Given that
Jed had still not returned and that James Calthorpe had somehow
escaped from the hut in the woods, it seemed logical to suppose
that something had happened to him, though as yet there had been no
opportunity to despatch Silas to investigate. In all probability,
Crawley reasoned, Jed was already dead, probably taken by surprise
by the old woman, for Calthorpe showed no signs of having been in a
struggle.

Presumably Jed
had been half drunk by the time he set off for the woods the
previous evening and would have been easy game for anyone with
sufficient determination. Crawley shrugged. His loss, if he were
indeed dead, was inconvenient but not insurmountable; he would
easily find another recruit when the time came, possibly even among
these stupid villagers and meantime, Silas Grout was as cunning as
a fox and surprisingly ruthless for a man who took pride in being
able to execute his victims painlessly.

He came back
to the reference to 'men' in the plural. Unless the boy and the old
woman were far trickier than he thought - a possibility he was not
prepared to discount in the latter case - that reference discounted
them as being responsible for the note's origins. Besides, there
had not been time for them to have written it and arranged for the
stranger to deliver it to him.

Another
stranger.

Crawley's
brows beetled together. The first note and the first two guineas
had been similarly delivered, though by a different fellow
altogether and the handwriting in each case was different, though
both had come from educated hands, he could tell immediately. He
reached inside his cloak and produced the first note, opening it
out and holding it up alongside the later one. No, they were most
definitely different hands, and yet there was something about them
that was similar.

He sat for
another minute, motionless, concentrating, and then he realised
what it was.

'Aha,' he
muttered, 'I see now.' He chuckled, nodding. 'Both written by
women, unless I'm very much mistaken. Hmmm, very interesting...
very interesting indeed.' He folded both letters and put them away
together and then stood up, shaking the folds of his cloak so that
it once again hung straight.

'Well then,
little lady,' he whispered, turning towards the churchyard gate, 'I
wonder what it is that's so urgent, eh? Perhaps the example I've
shown with the Pennywise wench has frightened a few of you more
than I expected.'

Simon
Wickstanner slumped onto the empty front pew bench, breathing
heavily, sweat pouring down his face. He groaned, closing his eyes
and tried to find the words of a prayer, but every time he tried to
move his lips to form them, nothing seemed to come out right and
his tongue seemed to grow thick and stiff.

'Dear God!' he
gasped at last. 'Dear God, forgive me!'

He forced his
eyes open again and half turned, looking up to where the long
ladder stood now, its very top propped against one of the main roof
beams high above. It had proved surprisingly heavy to carry in from
the small barn that stood behind the church and it had taken all
Wickstanner's strength to raise it to its present position, but he
had refused to let the task defeat him.

Alongside the
ladder, the rope, taken from the tower bell and now with a
carefully knotted noose at its lower end, hung down, swaying ever
so slightly in the slight draught that always seemed to blow
through the building, though in Wickstanner's tortured imagination
its movement seemed to be beckoning him, reminding him of what he
knew he had to do.

Slowly he
forced himself to stand again and, on swaying legs, he moved across
to stand by the ladder, reaching up with one hand to confirm that
the noose was still at the correct height. With a stifled sob he
clung to the ladder, his entire body shaking, his earlier resolve
on the brink of disappearing.

Painless,
Silas Grout had assured him. Completely painless, like snuffing out
a lamp. Snap! Simple. Quick. Painless.

Simon raised
his head again, leaning back to stare up the length of the ladder,
and began counting the rungs as they appeared to narrow away into
the gloomy spaces of the high vaulted roof. Twenty, twenty-five,
thirty, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight...

Thirty-nine.
Thirty-nine steps to where the ladder leaned against the beam, with
a few more stretching above that point. He tried to calculate,
guessing at the spaces between each of the rungs, but his head
would not get itself around the equation. With a cry of
exasperation he gave up the struggle and reached inside his coat
pocket for the brandy flask.

It had to be
more than high enough, he told himself fiercely. Far higher than
that cursed tree branch from which they would hang Matilda. He
unscrewed the cap of the flask and raised it to his lips,
swallowing greedily and ignoring the way the raw brandy burned the
back of his throat.

'Damn you,
Matilda!' he screeched, shaking the now empty vessel towards the
altar. 'Damn you, for you surely are a witch!' He threw the flask
violently into the rows of pews where it rattled and ricocheted off
the unsympathetic oak, and deliberately drove his forehead against
the ladder, welcoming the sudden spearing pain, for he knew well
enough that his accusation was groundless.

Damn
yourself
,
Simon Wickstanner, a hollow voice echoed, mockingly. He looked up
and looked about him, unsure of whether the voice had been real or
just his own conscience, but the church was as empty as when he had
entered it and the main door was still securely bolted from the
inside.

'Yes, I am surely damned,' he whispered, tears dribbling into
the corner of his mouth as he spoke. 'Oh dear Lord, what
have
I done? What have I
done?'

Suddenly the
tears ceased. Blinking fiercely, Wickstanner drew himself upright,
turning to look again at the simple wooden cross on the altar. He
remained thus, motionless, for several seconds and then, turning,
began slowly to ascend the ladder, pausing only to collect the
noose and hang it over his right arm as he drew level with it.

Within a very
few minutes Sarah found that the persistent movement of the saddle
dildo inside her was creating exactly the same sort of sensations
her treatment at the hands of Ross and her subsequent experiences
with Kitty, the two slave girls and Ellen had produced.

Unable to do
anything to prevent what was happening, she was forced to remain
seated, outwardly the picture of refined, aristocratic womanhood,
inwardly a seething cauldron of rampant sexuality. As her mount
trotted dutifully behind Ellen's stallion, the pressures began to
rise and every nerve ending in her body was alive with raw
desire.

Within the
tight confines of her jacket, her breasts and in particularly her
newly pierced nipples throbbed mercilessly, her teats feeling as
though they had grown to several times their normal size, and
between her legs, as the leather shaft slid in an out of her
bouncing sex, Sarah could feel herself getting wetter and wetter by
the moment.

Ellen cast a
look back over her shoulder, grinning at the spectacle she had
created. 'Nice and comfortable, pretty?' she called out. 'My, but I
must say there's some colour in your cheeks, though you do sit your
mount so proudly!'

'I - I can't,
m-mistress!' Sarah managed to gasp. 'P-please, I... ooohhh!' The
first wave of orgasm drove what little breath there remained from
her body, which tensed like a bowstring. Only the cunning bondage
prevented her from toppling sideways, while the stout shaft with
which she was impaled triggered a reflexive instinct that made her
grasp the saddle pommel with her manacled hands.

'Well, pretty
one, whatever is the matter?' Ellen asked, giggling. 'That surely
is no way for a lady of breeding to behave in public! I shall have
to take my crop to your sweet bottom, I can see that now!'

But Sarah did
not hear the implied threat, nor would she have cared if she had,
for her treacherous body had taken on a life of its own, a life
that defied and superseded all the logic, learning and inhibitions
she had striven so hard to encompass throughout her young life.

As lights
began to explode before her eyes and a roaring of wind and
waterfalls thundered and echoed in her ears, she was dimly aware of
just one thing and an image of Ross, his erect penis standing
before him like a pikestaff, swam before her, taunting her with the
one thing she now craved and which, apart from the unfeeling
substitute that filled and stretched her, she knew her mistress
would not let her have, quite possibly ever again!

The sudden
crackle of musket fire was followed almost instantly by what
sounded like an angrily buzzing bee, passing so close to Toby's
head that he felt the wind from it. He ducked instinctively, but
his reaction would have been far too slow to save him had the shot
been on target.

Behind him a
tree branch exploded into a thousand spiralling fragments and at
the same time one of the troopers gave an anguished cry, clutched
at his chest and toppled slowly from his saddle, a dark patch of
crimson already spreading over the front of the brighter red of his
uniform tunic.

'Down men!
We're being attacked!'

Even as he
slid from his saddle and threw himself beneath the fronds of the
nearest bush, Toby could not help but laugh at the stupidity of the
young captain's cry. One man already down and another ragged volley
of shots was more than enough to render his observation
superfluous.

All around
him, it seemed to Toby that horses were rearing and whinnying, men
diving for cover, leaves and twigs flying as more musket balls
slammed their destructive paths through the foliage. From close by
two muskets opened up to return fire, but the shots were hurried,
badly aimed and in any case, Toby realised, none of them knew from
exactly which direction the sudden attack had come.

Another shot,
this time the report higher, sharper, as Thomas Handiwell fired his
pistol and then, for several seconds that seemed to stretch into
hours, everything fell silent once again. From behind a gnarled
tree to Toby's right he heard a muttered oath, followed by a
raucous cough.

'Keep your
heads down, lads!' This time it was the lilting Irish brogue of
Sergeant Riley that gave the order. His voice sounded calm, almost
detached. 'Reload quickly and wait for the order. No sense in
wasting good powder and shot on ghosts. Johnson, where do you think
you're going, lad? Get back behind your tree, before one of them
blows your fuckin' head off!'

'I only wanted
to see how Hollis was, sarge,' the man named Johnson cried. 'He's
just lyin' there, look, in the middle of the track, right out in
the open.'

'Look harder,
Hollis, m'boy,' Riley retorted. 'Ye'll see the lad's dead. There's
a hole in his chest youse could put yer hand in.'

'Ah shit!'
This was yet another voice. Toby wriggled into a better position
and peered out from beneath the curtain of leaves. Glimpses of
scarlet showed where three of the soldiers had taken cover and he
could see the corpse of the unfortunate Trooper Hollis laying
sprawled at the side of the track, about twenty paces in the
direction from which they had come, but the rest of the small party
were now invisible.