This Loving Torment

by Valerie Sherwood

  The door was unlocked and wrenched open so suddenly that Charity fell backward, tripping over her sheet and tumbling to the floor. The preacher, a vein pulsing in his forehead, his eyes bulging, stared at her long white legs as she struggled up and strove to cover her exposed breasts beneath the quickly snatched up sheet.

  “What new mischiefs this?” shrilled Aunt Temperance. “Do you look for whippin’?”

  “How long be she like this?” he asked sternly.

  “She did talk wildly at dinner last night,” volunteered Cousin Patience with a spiteful look at Charity. Charity yearned to slap her face.

  “This is my room,” Charity said, finally getting the sheet back around her and struggling to her feet. “While I was sleeping they removed my things. Then Cousin Matthew came in and Aunt Temperance locked the door—I fought him, but he’s very strong. He raped me, and I want it reported!”

  The preacher looked at her with narrowed eyes.

  “Calm yourself, Mistress Woodstock,” he said. “There be no need to excite yourself or make wild accusations.”

  “You can see for yourself this room has Matthew’s things in it. Hers be all in the attic,” volunteered Aunt Temperance contemptuously. “She did come here into his room last night like I told you, and did crawl into his bed while he were asleep to tempt him.”

  “He raped me!” screamed Charity.

  The preacher, who had just finished reading several impassioned works on witchcraft and was eager to find a case in his area, said sententiously, “Possessed. Possessed by the devil, if ever I did see such a case.”

  “That’s right!” cried Aunt Temperance joyfully. “She be a witch, all right! And she’s conjured up a spell on my poor boy!” She began to sob, watching him with bright eyes.

  “It signifies,” he said gravely. “Tis hard proof will be needed, however. Such evil as is centered in this woman could wreak havoc on us all. We must not countenance witches or demons in our midst. Of course—” he frowned—“if it should appear that her story be true, and the boy did rape her, it would make a very great difference, I am afraid.”

  “I did see her fly out of the window last night,” cried Patience triumphantly. “She did change herself into a great bird and fly out on a poker!”

  All were awed by this revelation.

  “That is ridiculous,” said Charity weakly. “I am no more a witch than you are. I came here to claim my inheritance from my uncle.”

  “That’s another thing,” cried Aunt Temperance, aggrieved. “She do intend to take this house from us! Where will we go?” She began to wail.

  The preacher looked shocked. These three were his charges, members of his congregation—Charity was not. “What devil’s trick be this, girl?” he demanded sternly.

  “Go away,” said Charity stonily. “Go away and send the law here. Let them deal with the situation. Or give me my clothes and let me go and fetch them.”

  “Send them I will,” he said testily. “I will send them at once that they may see you in your present unstrung state and judge what black mischief you be about! Good-day to you, Goodwife Arden, Mistress Patience.”

  The door banged shut after they went out and was again locked. In despair, Charity watched from the window as they had a long earnest conversation in the yard, which she could not hear, and then saw the preacher ride away.

  She lay back down on the mattress but leaped up as the door was unlocked again and Matthew entered. Regarding him with fear and loathing as he approached the bed, she wrapped the sheet more tightly around her.

  “No sense to act like that,” he chided. “I did see you naked already. Now think on it, should we not come to terms?”

  The law, she thought. The law was on the way here! Matthew was frightened! She had a momentary sense of triumph.

  He reached out and caught her feet, slid her down toward him, ran his hands up and down her legs, feeling the soft flesh, as she tried to struggle away. “Your time be short,” he warned. “They’ll be here soon. But if you did agree to marry me right now, we could say you was took by a fit because we had a lovers’ quarrel. Since Patience is promised to the preacher, he’d speak for you if we asked him—and maybe they’d let you go.”

  Let her go! He was the rapist! She struck at him in fury.

  “When they come,” he ruminated, “my intent be to save myself. I do be goin’ to tell them that you said how Goodman Tolliver had you down by the river bank, and before that some sailors on the ship. And how I did try to fight you off but you overcame me—you witched me.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “They’ll believe it,” he said earnestly, “on account of you did come here wearing harlot’s clothes and did talk so wild and crazy when the preacher was here. They’ll believe you do be a witch, Charity.”

  Charity shivered. She had once seen a pillar of smoke from a nearby town and been told it was old Grandy Morreton being burned as a witch. . . . She moistened her lips, her hatred for this pawing bully overcoming all other emotions.

  “I’d rather burn as a witch than live with you!” she cried.

  He let go of her as if her touch burned him. “I’ll plead no more,” he said in a surly voice. “Tis your own life you throw away. You be the one that’ll burn!” He went out, banging and locking the door behind him.

  They came for her later in the day—the town elders and the magistrate. They gave due consideration to her “harlot’s” wardrobe, her nudity beneath the sheet. They ripped off the sheet and, while she blushed red with embarrassment, searched her naked body for a “witch’s mark.” Finding none, they asked her endless questions. Finally, Aunt Temperance preferred charges against her and, to Charity’s stunned astonishment, the men took her away, accused of the crime of witchcraft in New England.

  Witchcraft!

  Clad in her oldest dress (a red one, carefully chosen by Aunt Temperance and thrust at her so she could “leave decent”), she was taken to Dynestown and thrown into a cell. Aunt Temperance did not come to see her, nor did her cousins—which Charity accounted her one blessing. There was no doubt in her mind as to why they were doing this. For the inheritance. Judging her by what they would have done in her place, they had not really believed that she would forswear the inheritance. They intended to make sure, for if Charity were out of the way, they were next in line to inherit.

  It put a grim light on her predicament.

  CHAPTER 5

  The trial was macabre.

  Aunt Temperance testified that Charity had cruelly bewitched her son, and Cousin Patience added the “flying out on a poker” incident with embellishments. Cousin Matthew shyly admitted that Charity had “swarmed all over him in the night” while he “did try manful to fight her off” but she had “overcome him,” adding under prodding the bits about Tolliver and the sailors. Her clothes were put in evidence and created a sensation. There was a great clacking of tongues as people peered at the contents of her trunks. But Charity grimly noted a certain wistfulness in the eyes of some of the younger women. Then a strange woman with wild eyes and a twitch came forward and testified shakily that her milch cow had gone dry the very night Patience had seen Charity fly out the window. The woman had looked out the window herself and seen a big bird fly across the moon, and the next morning the cow was dry. She insisted Charity must have put a curse on the cow.

  Charity was speechless with indignation.

  When she testified in her own defense, Charity found she was not allowed to say much, but she managed to get in the salient points, how her aunt had locked her in and her cousin had raped her.

  She looked right at the magistrate as she said that, and thought she detected a sympathetic gleam in his eye. In that she was mistaken. It was purely a lascivious gleam. He was imagining what she would look like without the red dress, without her petticoats, without—he saw her nude, climbing into his bed. Bending over him with her blonde hair falling down, her nipples brushing his face. He hardly heard her testimony, so full was his mind
of flashes of long shapely white legs and snowy breasts and rounded hips and a tempting parted mouth.

  As silence pervaded the courtroom, the judge realized that she had finished and, startled, he ordered the court recessed.

  Outside, he pondered that she must have bewitched him too. Something that must not happen to a magistrate. Burning was the best cure for that, he reasoned. A girl like this one with her challenging eyes and shocking ways would make desperate trouble in the community, turn neighbor against neighbor. His duty was clear.

  So, sternly, he sentenced her to death.

  To Charity it was all a nightmare. She waited to wake up.

  * * *

  In her cell, unable to eat the bit of tasteless gruel they had brought her, Charity finally drifted off to an exhausted sleep only to wake with a start at a small sound outside in the corridor. She tensed. The jailer had an evil face . . . Could that be him shuffling around outside her door?

  She sat up, thoroughly awake now, and saw in the dimness a shape outside the bars of her cell. She opened her mouth, determined to scream loudly, but closed it as Tom Blade's voice murmured, “Shush, witch.”

  Was she dreaming it or was the door to her cell opening? She stood up uncertainly.

  “Well, come on,” he muttered. “Don’t just stand there!”

  And she stumbled through the door and into the corridor where he put a hand over her mouth and whispered in her ear, “Walk soft and we’ll be out in no time!”

  Clutching his hand, trying to still the mad beating of her heart, she tiptoed along the dark corridor, waited while he felt in his pocket for another key, turned it gingerly in the lock. Then they were outside, breathing in the cool damp air of the summer night. She lifted her head; she had thought never to breathe the air as a free woman again. She turned to look questioningly at the man who had set her free.

  He was beckoning, moving away like a shadow into the night, and she followed to where two horses were tied beneath a tree.

  As she reached the tree a short broad fellow stepped out of the shadows and clapped a hand over Charity’s mouth, silencing her.

  “She were going to scream,” he grunted. And then, “Why’d you bring a wench, Tom? You know we’ve only got two horses!”

  “We’ll steal one for her then,” said Tom.

  The short man had inky black hair, a swarthy complexion and small black eyes. Taking his hand from Charity’s mouth, he shook his head vehemently. “These farmers around here might not follow the likes of us,” he said, “but they’d follow their horses clear down to Carolina!”

  “She can ride with me,” said Tom shortly, boosting Charity up to the saddle. “If I’d left her, they would have burned her as a witch.”

  “She’ll be our death,” muttered the other glumly, climbing aboard his own mount.

  “Charity, this is Bart Symonds,” Tom said. “If bribery hadn’t worked, he was going to try to break me out.”

  Charity looked at them both with new respect. Plainly she was in the company of bold men. But her fastidious nature was repelled by the slovenly Bart; nor did she like the way he looked at her.

  A moment later they were walking their horses over the soft sod, and moving quietly through the streets of the sleeping town. When they reached the last house there was a shout from a sentry who leaped up and fired a musket shot into the air.

  “Ride!” cried her companion grimly to Bart, giving his horse’s flank a whack, and they were off like the wind into the summer night.

  Charity felt her hair blowing wildly, and her skirts billowing as she leaned forward, held onto the saddle only by Tom’s arm. The men urged their horses on down the twisting lanes, and the hooves made a solid thumping sound on the rutted track.

  Bart Symonds sped ahead of them, left the road and they followed, thundering through a moonlit meadow, across a cornfield and down a path that led through a clump of trees to a stream. They urged their mounts into the stream. The horses went reluctantly, picking their way carefully among the rocks, splashing water on Charity’s torn red skirt.

  After that their pace slowed to save their mounts’ strength. Charity, perched on the saddle in front of Tom, swaying against him, could feel his hard thighs against her own. He held the reins lightly in one hand and kept the other around her slim waist. After a while he changed arms, and this time he placed his arm under her breasts so that their rounded softness bounced against his arm as they rode. Held so close against him like that, she had a strange feeling of warmth and security—and something else, a small tingling thrill she would not admit even to herself.

  By morning Charity was reeling in the saddle, her blonde head drooping, a dead weight in Tom’s arms. Finally, they pitched camp in a thick copse of greenery—which is to say they rolled off their horses, exhausted, and slept on the ground all day until the sun was low in the western sky.

  “Time to go.” Tom Blade tapped her on the shoulder and Charity sat up with a start. At first, she was unable to orient herself to the green leafy world around her, the damp earth under her torn dirty dress.

  A little way from her, Bart Symonds was already mounted on his horse.

  “The horses have been eating what grass they could find,” Tom said. “And they’ve watered at the stream. I suggest you follow their example.”

  “In what? Eating grass?” Charity felt more able to face things today; her sense of humor had returned.

  Bart frowned impatiently. Charity ignored him.

  Tom laughed. “I see I’ve met my match,” he said. “When you’ve had your fill of the water at the stream, we’d best get started. We’ve a long way to go before tomorrow morning. This isn’t safe country for us—not yet.”

  She didn’t ask where they were going. She didn’t care. Away, that was all she cared about. Away from vile relatives and filthy jails and bigoted judges and derisive townsfolk. She dashed cold water over her face at the stream and rose up, still stiff from her unaccustomedly long ride.

  That night they seemed to be riding in long slow curves. She guessed they were skirting little hamlets that had sentries who might be alert to challenge two men and a woman riding through the dark. Twice they crossed water, going downstream and out upon the opposite bank each time, and she guessed the men were considering that they might be tracked by dogs. It was a terrifying thought.

  As the moon waned in the sky and a false dawn appeared, Tom reined in his horse and found them shelter in a cave behind a waterfall. Charity woke feeling painfully hungry. The jail fare had been terrible, but she had now been without any food for two days.

  She staggered to her feet and looked around for Tom.

  He was gone.

  She ran from the cave and rushed out from behind the waterfall—and gasped as Bart appeared from nowhere and caught her arms, pinioning them to her sides.

  “Don’t go running out like that,” he growled. “Look where you’re going first.”

  “I was looking for Tom,” she said. “Let go, you’re hurting me.”

  His mouth curled in a nasty smile. His swarthy face was very close. “And if I don’t let go,” he said, “what will you do about it?

  “Let go of the lady, Bart,” said Tom’s voice. It had a cold ring to it.

  Bart’s hands dropped to his sides. He stepped aside and Charity saw that Tom was carrying some berries in his hat.

  “Best I could find,” he said briefly, proffering some to Charity. “But tomorrow we’ll have us a feast.”

  Bart grunted. “We’d have had us a feast today if you hadn’t been carrying double and slowed us down.”

  Charity hoped they would have a feast. She was certainly ready for one. Wearily, she dragged herself back onto the horse, and Tom swung up behind her as they started off through the gathering dusk. She was more aware than ever of Tom’s sometimes tightening arm beneath her bouncing breasts. She wished fervently the material weren’t so thin. She wished she weren’t so aware of him, tingling at the touch of his lean thighs against her
legs.

  By morning the trio had reached a little out-of-the-way inn, which they studied from a distance and then approached quite openly. It was a small stone edifice with its chimney already smoking, telling the world the scullery maids were up and about.

  “I’ve friends here,” Tom said with a merry smile. “Here they know Tom Blade for his generosity—not for his misdeeds!”

  He lifted her gallantly off the horse and, swaying against him, her eyelids heavy with fatigue, she followed him inside.

  Only the innkeeper was in the public room as they arrived. His face lit in a broad grin as he saw Tom and Bart, and they nodded amiably in response.

  “We’ll be wanting two rooms,” said Tom. “Food. Feed for our horses and currying—and the wench here’ll be wanting a bath and a comb and to have her clothes washed and mended. Can you manage it?” “Indeed I can,” said the innkeeper, rubbing his hands together as if already they felt the jingling gold. “First room on your right upstairs, Mistress. Bath’ll be right up.”

  Charity trudged up the stairs and opened the door on the right. It swung wide on a room that was small, clean, and had a tiny dormer window that overlooked the country road.

  All she could see was the big comfortable-looking square bed that occupied most of the floor space. With stiff fingers she began unfastening her bodice, but whirled around as the door opened and a curious eyed country girl struggled in with a wooden tub, which she set down in the middle of the floor.

  “You can get in,” she told Charity shyly. “I’ll be back with the water. It’s heating.” She disappeared.

  Charity dropped her clothes on the floor and sank down in the tub. In a little while the girl was back with a bucket of warm water which she poured over Charity, gave her a bar of rough homemade soap, and scuttled away for another bucket. By the time the second bucket of water had been poured over her fatigued shoulders, Charity felt a little better. She lavished soap on her eager body, rubbing away the jail filth and the dust of travel, and luxuriated in the warm water.