Gallows Pole

by Eris Adderly

Is this what you wanted, Vane?

  She drew off, giving him the slightest graze of teeth before sinking back down to revel in his taste, his moans.

  In moments, he lost control of his hips. Emmat loosened her jaw, let him fill her mouth. Her own muffled whimpers came in as a higher note to join his deeper sounds—sounds she noted were now coming with less restraint. When he put a hand in her hair again and made a fist, she knew the time was short.

  Her coaxing hand moved to include his balls in the caress, cupping, tugging. The sin she wrought with her lips and tongue filled the room with an obscene, wet rhythm—small noises made loud, visceral by the lack of any competition save the rain.

  “God, I—”

  He bit off his own words through gritted teeth, shifting his backside to fit more of himself down her throat. Her efforts became erratic. Between his thrusting and her bobbing, she could only hope not to choke.

  Then he went hard as stone. His thighs clenched, hips seized into place.

  Muscle pulsed over her lower lip, behind her teeth.

  “Emmat!”

  The salt of him filled her mouth. First a taste and then the full measure, scalding the back of her tongue, payment for her wanton work. She swallowed him down, giving rather than having him take it from her.

  When his body let go and the fist fell out of her hair, Emmat drew away, sitting back on her heels. Blood rushed in her ears for a long, delirious moment. Her palms lay on her knees, jaw slack, the hangman before her catching his breath amid final small groans in a room as black as ever.

  Now…now what?

  But it was only too obvious. At least in this isolated, drunken pocket of time.

  Careful to choose the edge of the mattress away from the wall, Emmat moved from her place between exhausted thighs and settled her body on its side in the crook of Vane’s arm. The man was an unrepentant beast, but she could lash out at him for it tomorrow. She laid her head on his shoulder.

  His arm came around her waist and she felt the other hand jostling his breeches into place again. Then more commotion as his knees bent and feet kicked out.

  What is he …?

  Vane had the blanket bunching out from under them, leaning away from her just long enough to reach for it and haul it up to their chests. When he resumed his prone position, Emmat tucked in alongside his thigh, his chest, it was as though the entire scene were perfectly normal. As if this sort of thing happened all the time in the executioner’s lonely stone house.

  They had nothing to say to each other. Of course, Emmat could waste time fretting about how she’d allowed herself, and what would become, and so forth. But it would be just that: a waste. Nothing was certain anymore from one day to the next. Not with Bartholomew Vane interrupting her life.

  And because she somehow felt there hadn’t been enough trouble yet, Emmat slid her right hand up to rest over the weave of his shirt, in the centre of his chest.

  The hand at her hip twitched in a sleepy squeeze. His face tilted to where his chin rested on top of her head again.

  There were times when she could look backwards, see the entire road she’d taken clear as day, and still not have any idea how she’d arrived. And the road ahead? As clear as mud.

  * * * *

  Emmat jerked awake, whether to an ill-remembered dream or to the sort of moment that connects sleep and awareness with the terror of falling, she couldn’t be certain. Either way, she found herself staring in the direction of the ceiling, willing her heartbeat to settle back into a reasonable pace.

  It was still full dark, but her limbs carried the stiffness of at least a few hours’ sleep. Somewhere in the wee hours before dawn then, she estimated. Vane’s quiet, regular snoring came from beside her. His arm had fallen from her waist and dangled over the edge of the bed. And the rain had stopped.

  The warmth, the rise and fall of the chest of the sleeping man at her side opened a vast, frightening space over her head when Emmat considered its import.

  She’d been drunk before, and more times than she’d care to admit. The mornings that followed quite often had in common a sort of self-induced oppression. Whether that be the size and ache of her head, or the sinking awareness of a stranger’s boots beside the door, there would come the obligatory cries of Why? when she already knew the answers.

  Now with that same feeling come again, Emmat didn’t know where to turn. With Vane’s cock in her hand—her mouth, for pity’s sake!—her veins singing with the thrill of control, she’d been as sober as the day she was born. What was her excuse now? There was no drink to carry the burden of guilt. Just as with the bargain she’d made on Gallows Hill, it had been her choice. Her choice to taste him, to seek those restrained sounds of pleasure she could pull from his throat.

  And why …

  Emmat!

  Why her name? Why did he have to grind it out at that last moment, when he could no longer govern his actions, when he yielded release down her encouraging throat?

  The memory of it calling back to her—Emmat!—had a bloom of heat unfurling between her thighs.

  Ridiculous.

  Who was Bartholomew Vane? The goddamned Devil, himself? Some faceless adversary, sent to seduce her from reason one unsettling night at a time?

  And would she remain here, whiling away uncertain days in expectation of each new, unpredictable trial by midnight, for some indefinite period of time?

  It could not go on. Not while she kept her wits, that much was certain.

  Emmat forced a cough into the quiet of the room and waited, tense.

  Nothing.

  She coughed again, louder, and cleared her throat.

  Vane slept like a dead man.

  The sound of the steel, she thought, could be no louder.

  The process of extracting herself from the covers, away from the sleeping hangman, stretched her nerves near to the point of breaking. A moment more, and Emmat worried they might snap and she’d go tearing out of the house to leap about under the light of the moon, mad as a March hare.

  It seemed miles from the bed to the mantle. Her bare feet spread on the ground, silent and soft as wet clay with each step, sure he’d scuttle her plans at any moment the way he had that first night when she’d tried to run.

  Her fingers crept, blind but careful, to find the flint and steel in the place she’d laid them last. If her cough hadn’t been a sufficient test, she’d know it in short order.

  Providence answered her wordless prayer for success in as few strikes as possible, but not before she bit off a curse at the scrape of flint along a knuckle.

  In the bloody dark I have to do this, Vane.

  She suffered it. Got the lamp lit.

  At first, the light held up by her anxious hand revealed nothing more than the prone form of a man asleep. He was somehow less large, less of a threat, gone to the world this way. Why create such an elaborate fuss?

  A few soundless footfalls brought her back to the side of the bed.

  To look upon the man unhooded was to read an entire book at one glance.

  He couldn’t have been much older than her. A few years, at most. The guttering yellow light showed her dark hair, pulled back in a dishevelled queue. A heavy brow, though unlined in the peace of slumber, a strong jaw, a serious mouth, as his waking manners had made her imagine. A day’s worth of stubble or so dusted the left half of his face.

  The right half, from disrupted hairline down to exposed throat, was an illuminated history of fire.

  It had spared his mouth, but ruined his right ear. The skin was pink and white, in the poreless, waxy sheen of heavy scars. No hair could grow where whatever flame—and Emmat was sure that was what she saw—had licked him with its horrible tongues.

  And would you show your face, if you looked like this?

  The destruction disappeared beneath the edge of his shirt, marking the rest of him to some unknown extent, as well.

  To be the executioner made him outcast enough. But to live with this, he—

&n
bsp; Was looking at her.

  The air between them went from cool to boiling in a furious, welling heartbeat.

  Vane ripped the cover back, leapt to his feet, impossibly alert for someone so still mere seconds ago. A sharp, grey eye glared at her from the undamaged side of his face. Its milky counterpart saw nothing.

  “You don’t bloody listen, woman!” He stabbed an accusing finger at her as she backed towards the fireplace, mouth open, shaking her head.

  Emmat rid herself of the lamp with a trembling hand, returning it lit to the mantle. Her knees flexed to bolt with the crackle of violence and the bitter tang of her own stupidity mingling in the air.

  He was yanking on boots, however, not lunging for her. Then the cloak she’d been right about earlier. When it didn’t seem he was about to lash out in her direction, Emmat lifted a hand, took a breath to explain.

  A whirl of heavy fabric and the slam of the door wanted none of it.

  She rushed in behind him, swinging the door open again and thrusting her upper body out into the night.

  “Vane!”

  No answer.

  She heard the mare snort, the creak of leather. Hooves on the ground. For a moment the sound came closer, but then it moved off, unseen, the leftover clouds from the rain keeping any useful moonlight to themselves.

  Emmat stood there in her shift, staring out over the black aftermath, her wits battered by a storm of her own making.

  Would it have been better if she’d left it? How long could he have expected to maintain her ignorance? A matter of days? Months? Surely not forever.

  The hangman spent every day hiding his face behind the hood of his trade, an easy excuse to keep the fire’s destruction a secret. But the nights? At night, he relied on the dark.

  So what excuse did he have then, for bringing a thief into his bed? Did he expect to leave valuables lying around, unmolested?

  And how long, this time, before he showed himself at the door of the stone house again? Before Emmat could finish what she’d opened her mouth to say when he stormed away to the heavens knew where.

  Before her frustration for the whole sordid matter exhausted itself and, despite the man’s very real threats, she put her boots to the earth and did one of the things she knew how to do best: run.

  Part 4

  Tell Me That I’m Free to Ride

  The fifth day after Vane’s furious departure, the rain gave over and decided to take its desultory parade somewhere else. Not so for Emmat. Her initial panic at the hangman’s upset washed away after the first wet day cooped up inside the house. It had forced her to sit still and think.

  The longer he made her wait, the more stubborn she became.

  Running wasn’t going to solve any of her problems, at least not for any worthy stretch of time. It wouldn’t do any better for Vane. He would have to return. And she would wait for him. Whether she had anything useful to say to the man remained to be seen, but she’d resolved to confront him, either way. Sitting in one place keeping a vigil, however, was not how Emmat was accustomed to spending her time.

  This day, especially, had her buzzing in agitation, as it was the first dry enough to allow her out of the house for more than a few minutes.

  By the time the sun shone at its peak, every weed fringing the base of the well, the stone walls of the house—even the hay barn—lay limp, uprooted in any number of small piles. For want of a broom, a small branch of ash, retrieved from the treeline to the south, served to clear the cobwebs from every corner of the home’s single, neglected room. By dusk, she’d purged the barn of an impressive number of mice, though they’d likely return without regular intervention. Or a well-placed cat.

  It was not out of any burgeoning obligation to the hangman that Emmat scoured his property from end to end. Her days before this most recent turn of events had consisted of travelling, scheming, and bartering. Hiding and carrying out shady work in even shadier corners had filled her nights. No, the reason for her barrage of domestic activity now was that her skin was going to get up and crawl away if she sat still a single hour longer.

  If the man had been in earnest about claiming a wife, he would soon be the butt of his own jest. Her practice with this sort of thing was limited to what little she’d bothered to absorb during childhood and a hodgepodge of assumptions. She truly had no idea what being a wife entailed, just as Vane had taunted the night he’d stripped her of her clothes.

  Nor did she have any intention of learning, mired as she was in this bizarre purgatory of her own making. The potential consequences of running outweighed the rewards, which meant she wasn’t leaving with matters as they were. Yet Emmat also couldn’t bring herself to embrace the idea of staying for any significant amount of time.

  When she’d bargained herself for her brother’s life, she’d imagined a rough night’s work for her part of the exchange. Never anything so permanent as all of this.

  Marriage? The man was a stranger. And never mind that, he was the executioner. Could she go on letting him touch her with the same hands he used to haul bodies down from the noose?

  You worry about him touching you. Where was all this hand wringing when you took his cock down your throat?

  It had reached a place where, if things began to make sense, Emmat wouldn’t know what to do with herself.

  And how is that different from what you know now?

  It wasn’t. It wasn’t at all.

  * * * *

  The pair of crows hopped around beneath the spreading branches of the maple beside the hay barn, scavenging. Emmat was now able to tell one from the other by an unruly feather jutting low, untameable from a glossy wing. It was not a good sign. She’d been alone too long.

  It had been seven days. A week. Had he left for good?

  Vane hadn’t wanted her to see his face, for reasons now uncomfortably plain, but…to run? A severe reaction from a man who had subdued her more than once. The upper hand was his, ruined face or no.

  In a concerted black fluttering, the crows quit their foraging for the upper arms of the maple. Emmat’s eyes left the bucket she was raising from the well to skim the treeline, the road.

  A rider approached on a horse that was neither massive, nor black.

  Who’s this now?

  She hauled the bucket the rest of the way, keeping a wary gaze on the potential for trouble headed in her direction.

  The vague form atop the trotting bay materialized into cassock and cap. Her brows came down as she set the bucket on the ground.

  It can’t be.

  “Mrs Vane?” the older man asked, halting the horse a few yards from the well.

  But it was. The self-same chaplain. His voice would ring true forever in her ears. Emmat folded her arms over her chest. Said nothing.

  He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well.” Dismounted.

  “Are you, er …” The man didn’t venture far from the horse. His hands wrung together, defensive in the line of her glare. “That is, is everything …”

  “It’s as can be expected, Chaplain,” she said, ending his stammering.

  He nodded, her confirmation of his suspicions setting his mouth in a grim line as he turned to rummage in a saddlebag.

  “I’ve uh…I’ve brought you some things,” he said, coming out with a lumpy sack. “A bit of salt pork, a cheese, a few others. Some things a woman might want around the house.” Emmat’s frown deepened. “You’ll forgive me; I don’t exactly know—”

  “I’ve no interest in your charity.”

  “Oh no,” he said, eyes wide now as he approached with the bag. “When I last saw your husband, I offered my help and he wouldn’t have it, either. It’s no charity, Mrs Vane”—he dangled the bundle for her to take—“he furnished the coin for all of it.”

  She narrowed her eyes at the proffered bundle, as though he were handing her something poisonous.

  “Vane paid for this.” It was not a question, but somehow a statement she wanted to test against reality.

  “Oh
yes. He insisted. Please.” He pressed forward with the bag. Her mouth came into a hard line, but she relieved him of it at last, holding it at her side, unopened.

  The chaplain’s gaze made a brief tour of the property before circling back to Emmat. The man might as well have had his cap in his hands, rotating it through his fingers for all the discomfort he wore in his stance.

  “You know, he…he said nothing to me at all of a marriage before that night.”

  “It was a short courtship,” she said, voice flat as she held his eyes. Something akin to hope drained out of the chaplain’s face.

  “I see.”

  It wasn’t as though she could tell him she was a wanted criminal who’d only cornered herself into this predicament because she’d bribed an executioner with her own life.

  But the man had spoken to Vane both before and after the midnight nuptials. If their paths crossed with some regularity, perhaps he’d have an idea …

  “Did he happen to say to you when he’d be returning?”

  “I’m afraid he did not,” he said, brow creasing with credible disappointment at having no definite answers for her, “but I should think Sunday. I believe his circuit brings him back in this direction.”

  She made a face at this vague pronouncement, but the chaplain was already climbing back up into the saddle, cassock bunching awkwardly as he went.

  “And what day is it now?”

  “Thursday.” Her wilting lack of enthusiasm for this revelation had him making the meanest of efforts at comfort.

  “Would that I knew more, Mrs Vane,” he said, righting himself, taking up the reins, “but your husband has never been too fond of talk.”

  My husband. Emmat felt her lip wanting to curl.

  “You’re right about that, Chaplain.” Her bitterness would not be disguised. “I often wonder what made him take a wife in the first place, when his duties keep him away more often than not.”

  The bay shifted around under its rider now, eager to move, but the older man’s eyes had gone sombre. “A hangman’s lot is not a weightless burden,” he said. “He does what he must.”