"Ma forgot to bank the embers with ashes last night,” Sally prattled, "and no amount of puffing and fanning is going to get any spark to blaze again.”
Clarissa used the tongs to pluck a few hot coals from the fireplace and put them into the scoop.
"Pa would be in a real tizzy if he’d known Ma had gone and forgotten," Sally volunteered.
"Well, we cannot have that, can we?" Clarissa looked at the girl, really looked at her. She was dressed in a long muslin over-blouse and a calico skirt and was barefoot.
Sally saw her looking and wiggled her dirty toes nervously.
Clarissa recalled how cheerless her own childhood had been. Great stress had been put upon an erect carriage, and she had been systematically tortured to achieve it. She had sat for a couple of hours every day strapped to boards to keep her from slumping. She had been forced to wear stays with needles built into them to prick her tired little waist when she relaxed for an instant. And she had been made to walk about balancing books on her head for poise. Even as a child, she had worn all of the panoply of her mother, including hoops, heels, and masks.
What would it be like to go barefoot?
After Sally scampered out, Clarissa headed for her retreat, a rustic bench of bent hickory saplings placed in the alcove of a grape arbor at the side of the cabin. As usual, the sweet smell of honeysuckle beckoned her beyond the arbor.
A few days after her arrival at Henrico, she had discovered the arbor, its rustic bench, and the honeysuckled arch which led to an almost hidden path through bramble and thickets down to a secluded section of the riverbank carpeted with budding raspberries.
Glancing around to make certain she wasn’t observed, she sat down on the bench, removed her red-heeled shoes and, rolling down her garters, peeled off her fine stockings, edged with stiff lace. Like Sally, she wriggled her toes in the tufts of grass. "Mmmm."
Then, collecting her stocking-stuffed shoes, she plowed through the honeysuckle vines and gingerly picked her way through the thicket to the bottom of the hill. A small breeze ruffled the water. She stared across the broad river at the black wall of forest on the other bank. It was so silent out there.
How often over the past weeks she had stood there, hoping to espy an English ship sailing up the James with news. But she knew it would a full two years before Nigel could come for her.
At least she had known love. She had experienced his kisses, when both he and she were immersed in a wine-red rapture in which thought had no part.
He was thinking of her now. She knew it. She could imagine him in his cell. He knew she had fled to the Virginia colony. She had only to wait.
Chapter Eight
A covey of quail scattered into the underbrush at Modesty's noisy tread. She had never known such blasts of heat or such heavy rains that left only more steaming, hostile air. She sweated constantly except when the breeze blew faintly off the river in the mornings and evenings.
With a curse, she swatted at devilish mosquitoes that circled her, getting into her ears and nose. She shoved tangled vines and creepers from her path in her search for chestnuts. Since Mad Dog had brought her to his farm a fortnight before, she had developed a craving for the delicacy. Hot, steamed chestnuts and a tankard of Mad Dog's peach brandy before bed at night . . . aye, that was about as close to heaven as the likes of her would ever get.
Unless she counted Mad Dog’s bed. And Mad Dog’s mouth. And Mad Dog's hands, stroking her breasts.
She could count on one hand the number of times in her two weeks as his wife that they had lain in lovemaking: one single time.
It was as if the day’s intense sunlight exposed their aversion for one another. But under the cover of darkness, their tremendous awareness of each other made their sleep restless. Enclosed within the bed's mosquito netting, they would turn their backs on one another in an attempt to constrain that passion for lovemaking that had been demonstrated so tumultuously the day he had brought her to his cabin.
Mayhap that was why Mad Dog brought out the gallon stoneware jug of peach brandy every evening to ease the tension that mounted each night before they went to bed.
Shifting her basket to one arm, she knelt amidst rank-smelling grass to pick some large trumpet-shaped violet flowers, when a voice commanded, "No!”
She whirled around. An old crone, as gnarly as a swamp cypress, pushed her way out of the bushes. She had straggly gray hair and a hide as tough and brown as pigskin. Over her calico skirt she wore a soiled, sleeveless tunic of tanned hide that fell halfway to her thighs. "Yew must be Juana," Modesty said.
"No!" she said again, pointing to the clump of tall, stalky flowers. "Jimsonweed.”
Modesty lifted her shoulders to show her confusion. "Aye?"
“Jimsonweed. Jamestown."
Modesty understood—that the jimsonweed was a corruption of the name for the colonial capital. "Poisonous?" she asked, standing to face the witch of the woods.
"Drives vacas loco.” The old woman made a corkscrew motion at her temple with an arthritic finger. "Turns hombres into fools who wallow in their own caca."
Modesty grinned. Between the old woman’s English and Spanish and the hand gestures, she got the drift. "So does ale.” She thought of the peach brandy.
Juana grinned, displaying tobacco-stained teeth. A wad of tobacco was tucked behind her bottom lip. "Ale is bueno.”
Grateful for a visitor, even one with whom she couldn’t communicate that well, Modesty said, “Come with me. We shall go to Mad Dog’s cabin and drink." With her free hand, she made a motion of tipping a tankard to her mouth.
The crone nodded vigorously and fell into step beside her. "Mad Dog—you are his mujer?”
“His woman? His wife? Aye, he bought me.” For now, she silently promised. What with the witchcraft trial, she might have to lie low for a while, but somehow, someway, she meant to find a way back to Jamestown and finagle passage back to England.
"Mad Dog bought me, tambien.”
Modesty darted a startled look at the old woman. "He bought yew as well?"
“Si. From the Arrohattoc. For many beads and a bell." She slid Modesty a sly look. “You like to bed with Mad Dog?”
“What?”
"You like che-ise? All one with him? Under him?"
Modesty flushed. "About this much”—and she snapped her fingers to show how little she cared about bedding Mad Dog.
"St. Mad Dog big man." She spit a brown stream of tobacco juice. "Good in bed, I bet- cha.”
Modesty refused to comment further on this delicate subject. By this time, they had reached the cabin. Modesty set her basket on the board table and dipped a gourdful of peach brandy from the crock into a leather noggin that she passed to Juana before pouring one for herself.
The old woman quaffed her own in one gulp, then gave a wide tobacco-stained grin and snapped her fingers. "This much." She snapped her fingers again and bobbed her head.
Modesty realized that Juana thought the gesture meant “a lot.” She poured another nogginful for the old woman, who again tossed down its contents.
Then Juana padded over to Mad Dog’s pipe box hanging on the wall. Used to hold and protect the long church warden pipes of breakable clay, the box had a bottom drawer for tobacco. The Spanish woman took a fresh plug of tobacco and dipped it behind her lip, then grabbed up the broom of hemlock twigs and began sweeping the dusty floor. "I work.”
Modesty, who had done everything for herself, found this help to her liking. With that chore being attended to, she was free to prepare dinner, the light meal of the day—little cakes flavored with honey that she slid in the oven on a flat, wooden shovel. They were still warm from the oven when Mad Dog and Jack returned from work.
“Hola, Juana," Mad Dog said and strode over to the mantel to restore his fowling piece to its resting place. To Modesty, he said nothing. Neither of them spoke if they could avoid it. He crossed to the tin basin to wash his face and hands with the harsh lye soap.
Jack, his
rough linen shirt filthy with grass stains, flashed Modesty a wink as he passed by. Gone was his scraggly beard. “Something smells good.”
It certainly wasn’t Juana. She gave off an offensive odor which reminded Modesty of rancid grease.
The hungry men ate quickly, as did Juana. Usually during the meals there was little exchange of conversation beyond the scope of the next day’s work or an idle comment on the weather.
Jack shared the news that he had seen a family of intrepid raccoons feasting in the corn field. “I managed to frighten off the maize thieves," he said with his easy grin.
Modesty was learning that between the wolves, wildcats, and black bears, which Mad Dog said preyed upon the cattle, and the caterpillars that he described as rolling in like an invading army to devour the barley and wheat, farming in the colony was a precarious occupation.
While old Juana cleared away the trencher and spoons made of wood and horn, Modesty steamed the chestnuts she had collected. When she looked up, Juana was trotting out the cabin door without a backward glance.
Mad Dog was taking tobacco from the drawer at the bottom of the pipe box and appeared to think nothing of the old woman’s silent exit.
Modesty placed an old shaving bowl filled with the chestnuts on the table and lit a bayberry candle against the encroaching darkness. Glad for the diversion of Jack’s presence, she made the mistake of offering him a tankard of the potent home-brewed brandy.
He glanced questioningly at his master.
Mad Dog said nothing, only tapped the tobacco into the clay bowl of his church warden pipe.
Taking the man’s silence as assent, Jack sauntered to the board table and hefted the jug of brandy to his mouth, then wiped it with the back of his dingy sleeve. His smile was whimsical, lovable, almost droll. “Like old times at Bridewell Docks, eh, Modesty?"
She nodded warily and darted a glance at Mad Dog. Calm as a lion at his waterhole, he sat on the stool and drank his brandy and smoked his pipe.
Jack swung a leg over the bench and sat opposite her at the table. Pouring himself a tankard of the brandy this time, he began to reminisce about the plague of 1605. Mad Dog set aside his pipe but continued to drink and listen.
"Aye, I remember that time well,” Jack was saying as he stared lost in thought over his tankard. "Each day was like a nightmare. I was a mere lad of thirteen at the time.”
"Our house had a red cross painted on its door,” Modesty said and took a fortifying swallow of the mind-numbing brandy. "And the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us.’ He didn’t. Me brother took sick and died.” The image of his bloated, black corpse was always with her.
Jack’s blue eyes burned brighter them the candle. "My older brother got a job driving one of those dead carts.” He took another deep draught of the brandy. "I would ride with him, calling out ‘Bring out your dead.’ The stench was ungodly.”
Her attention was drawn to Mad Dog, who had put away his tankard and picked up a knife. She watched him begin to whittle new teeth for a wooden rake.
“You’re handy with the knife,” Jack observed. He was by now obviously quite in his cups or he would have remembered to address Mad Dog as Master.
Mad Dog glanced up from beneath the slash of his dark brows. “I perfected my technique while the Star Chamber was sitting.”
“’Ow so?" Instantly, she regretted her question. His leering gaze told her that he, too, had drunk more than was his usual and that his tight rein of self-restraint was unleashed.
He continued to whittle. In the candlelight, the blade flashed with rapier swiftness. "As a barrister, I passed out sentences or let people go on the basis of favors, money, or property exchanged. I made no moral judgments. I based my actions on expediency despite the cruelty I deliberately incurred.
“Then, while the Star Chamber was sitting, I did something that I believed was in the king’s best interest. Something quite horrible."
A look flickered across his face that Modesty couldn’t identify. An awful look.
"I used every faculty and all my intellect to change its outcome. And it didn't work. I went insane. Bloody insane. I went running through the chambers off the Palace Yard, where the well-to-do prisoners from the court at Whitehall were temporarily kept. I killed all of them. Guilty or innocent. Male or female.” He held up the blade and stared at it unseeingly. "I slit their throats."
In the silence of the room, Modesty’s gasp was audible.
Jack shot unsteadily to his feet, tipping over the bench. His eyes roamed anywhere but at her or Mad Dog. "Time I was retiring."
Mad Dog pinned her with his steady gaze. ‘"Tis time we were retiring also."
If she had believed in a God, she would have dropped to her knees and blubbered a prayer right then and there. In lieu of that, she sprang up, accidentally knocking her empty tankard off the table. "I’m not,” she declared. "I feel like dancing. All night." She held out her arms. “Jack, me darlin’?"
He swept her a gallant bow, then gave her a buffoonish grin. "I yield the floor to your husband, milady.”
Her heart was pounding too loudly for her even to hear Jack take his leave. With terror, she watched Mad Dog advance, knife in hand, toward her. His slate-colored eyes were glazed from his hard drinking. Then, with movements too fast to follow, he sent the knife spinning haft over blade into the joust beam high above her head.
At the thud, her lungs noisily quaffed air like a thirsty horse at the trough. She looked above her, at the still quivering knife, and she quivered in response.
"Shall we retire?” he asked, this time with inordinate politeness.
She nodded.
He merely touched the back of her waist, guiding her toward the bedroom. If he became violent . . . she could only hope he was drunk enough that she could fight him off. She recalled a Jamestown wife at the church and her stories on how hard it was for wives living on isolated farms since there were no checks on a husband's physical abuse.
In the bedroom, the embers cast a wicked red light on Mad Dog’s roughly hewn features. The enlarged pupils were twin fires. The slight curve of his mouth mocked both of them, their denial, their repressed passion.
Her chin trembling, she began to unlace her bodice.
"Your fingers fumble," he said in that low, richly modulated voice. His big hands moved hers aside and, with patience unusual in her experience with men, deftly stripped the laces from their eyelets so that her bodice fell away.
"’Tis that time for me monthlies."
"I know.”
She could feel herself blushing, her cheeks surely as crimson as the glow of the banked coals. Of course, he would have espied her freshly washed rag strips draped across the elder bushes to dry.
With a whooshing sound, her overskirt fell about ankles. “And it matters not a whit to me, goodwife. 'Tis the blood of life. I have seen too much of death."
Only her linen smock guarded her nakedness—that and her coif. It covered her naked head. He reached to untie its strings, and she shrank away. "Please... yew know I feel shamed without me head covered." Stubby tufts of hair were growing back, as scratchy as the bristles she had scrapped from the hog that Mad Dog had slaughtered this morning.
"You don’t have to feel shamed unless you choose to do so." Off came the coif. Then he did something strange: he aligned his hands at either side of her head and pressed. Gently pressed. "If I could but squeeze all the caprice and craftiness and carelessness from this fickle head of yours—”
“—yew would be bored," she said, surprising herself at her own audacity.
“I would have myself an obedient and trustworthy wife." He lowered his head and brushed her resistant lips with his. He paused.
In the silence, a log fell to pieces on the hearth.
He repeated his act. This time his mouth lingered on hers. His tongue separated her lips and stroked her tongue, as if daring her to respond.
She was inexperienced with this dallying. Sex was an act of urgency, to be rapidly eng
aged in and completed upon the spilling of the man’s seed. Despite her mental resistance, she felt a glow of pleasure deep in her belly. Why not? she thought. Tomorrow, as intoxicated as they both were, neither of them would probably remember this.
Her tongue answered the challenge . . . dueled with his. Aroused, she grew bolder. Her tongue traced even the tops of his teeth, swept his mouth’s hot, wet recesses. Their tongues entwined, withdrew, and engaged again. She reveled in the sweet taste of his mouth.
He made a sound in his throat that was like a muted roar.
At once, she ceased her seductive attempt at kissing. She tilted her head back to stare up into his hot, glittering gaze. Her mouth suddenly felt parched.
"Your training," he said quietly, “is more extensive than I at first perceived. A common wench with an uncommon passion. While you are not of the class of Lady Clarissa, still, how fortunate I am to find a woman who can match my own passion, after all."
His words seared her soul like a hot iron. Her damp lashes blinked back a betrayal of weakness and a slow, contemptuous smile curl her lips. "Passion? So far, yew have behaved like a randy goat."
Like flint struck by steel, his gray eyes gave off sparks. His voice, however, resonated with languid curiosity. “Do I now?" He drew her smock down over her shoulders. His callused hands caressed her flesh as they moved the linen down the length of her arms.
"Aye, yew do." Her breasts were bared. Her nipples, burned under his gaze, grew hard. She wanted to cover her breasts, but her arms wouldn’t move. His touch had a lethargic affect on her.
“Amends are in order then." He drew the shift on down past her hips and let it slide to the floor. "You have to understand that at an early age I discovered sexual pleasure," he said casually, "and I continue to rediscover it endlessly." His hands were on her hips and then easily sprang loose the knotted drawstring that secured the damp rag strip between her legs. It, too, slithered to the floor.
With a gasp, she covered her eyes with her hands.
"There is no need for embarrassment," he continued casually as he shrugged out of his leather jerkin.
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