The King's Bounty

by Sara Fraser

  Seymour’s face twisted in shock at the sound of the well-known voice. Without looking at the young officer, he jumped across Jethro’s legs and ran. David gave chase, but the long strides of the older man rapidly lengthened the distance and he disappeared into the shrubland of the bogs. Warburton retraced his footsteps to where Sarah and Jethro were waiting. Seeing his cousin in such circumstances had shaken him badly and he snapped at Jethro.

  ‘What happened, Corporal Stanton?’

  Jethro told him what he could. That he had seen the civilian attacking the woman and had come to her aid. He did not tell of his previous encounters with the man.

  Warburton turned to Sarah. ‘She’s a handsome piece,’ he thought, ‘and has something of good breeding in her face and dress.’

  ‘Is this true, ma’am?’ he questioned. ‘Did the civilian attack you?’

  Sarah came from tough hardy stock. The terrifying ordeal she had undergone had not unnerved her and now she answered clearly and calmly, telling her questioner about the attempted rape. She claimed, however, that Seymour was a complete stranger to her.

  David was, if anything, the most upset of the three. There was not in his heart any great love for his cousin but they had grown up together and he felt the responsibilities of kinship strongly.

  ‘Is it true what my instinct tells me?’ he asked himself silently. ‘Can William have been the highwayman as well as the undoubted attacker of this woman? Is he mad, I wonder?’ With an effort he gathered his wits, and said aloud, ‘You have again done well, Corporal. I shall see that your officers hear of this.’

  Jethro glanced at Sarah and saw in her green eyes an expression of fear. He sensed what caused it, and told Warburton,

  ‘With all respect, sir, this has been a most painful occurrence for this lady. I’m sure that she would wish the whole matter to be kept solely between we three.’

  David hesitated for some time before replying. He also had no wish for this event to be publicized. He wanted above all to find his cousin and talk with him, discover what was causing William to behave in this insane way.

  Sarah agreed with Jethro. ‘I think the corporal is right, sir,’ she put in quietly. ‘This would be most embarrassing for me if it became a subject of gossip. I would much prefer to forget the whole incident. The man is so obviously deranged that I imagine he will not long remain at liberty anyway.’

  ‘Very well, ma’am,’ Warburton seized his chance. ‘I shall respect your wishes in this affair. It shall be a secret shared between us.’

  Sarah regarded him keenly, then asked unexpectedly, ‘Tell me, sir, did you think you knew the man?’ She saw the flicker of apprehension in the young officer’s soft grey eyes, and pressed a little harder. ‘Only I thought that I heard you call to him by name.’

  David shook his head. ‘No, ma’am,’ he said quickly. ‘You are mistaken, I’m afraid. Though such a mistake is understandable in a situation of danger and confusion. No! I did not recognize him as anyone I knew, I’ve never seen him before.’ He stopped speaking, waiting for her reception of his denials.

  She merely said aloud, ‘I must indeed have been mistaken, sir.’ Inwardly she thought that he protested too much. Jethro also thought that Warburton’s words were suspiciously vehement, and felt doubt rising.

  ‘And now, ma’am, I think that I had better escort you to your home and ensure your safe arrival,’ the officer offered. She shook her head, and rearranged her bonnet which had been knocked askew in the struggle with Seymour. ‘My thanks for your courtesy, sir, but there is no need for you to discommode yourself further . . . The corporal can escort me. I have much that I wish to say to him.’

  Wishing to be alone with his own thoughts, Warburton was happy to accede to her wishes without further discussion.

  He bowed. ‘My compliments, ma’am. I could not hope to leave you in better and safer hands.’ He nodded in reply to Jethro’s salute and walked on towards Portsmouth. Left alone, Sarah and Jethro looked at each other in a silence which was finally broken by Sarah saying, ‘I feel that I must give my rescuer a token of my gratitude.’

  She leant towards him and touched her soft lips to his. The kiss lengthened and deepened. They broke apart and she smiled brilliantly.

  ‘I’m so very very happy to meet you again, Jethro. I’ve thought much about you . . . There’s so much I wish to tell you, and to have you tell me.’

  Jethro returned her smile, feeling once more the certainty that he and this woman could mean a great deal to each other.

  ‘Then let us waste no more time in doing so,’ he said happily.

  They settled themselves comfortably on the shingle and began to talk.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Molly Bawn’s romantic dreams about William Seymour came brutally to an end on a narrow bed in the dirty, cheerless attic room above the sleazy beer-ken where she had first met him. It was more than a week since his abortive attempt to rape Sarah Jenkins and in that time Seymour’s underlying instability of character had threatened to break all bonds of restraint and burst out into insanity. The hatred he felt for both Sarah and Jethro Stanton festered in his mind and it took all the self-discipline he possessed to stop himself taking his pistols and hunting them down openly to blow their heads off. For eight days and nights, Seymour had forced himself to stay in the attic. The beer-ken owner brought him food and drink, and an old crone came in sporadically to dispose of his slops. Seymour hardly touched the food. He seemed to be able to draw what sustenance his body required from the flasks of fiery gin that he would reach for when he awoke and drain one after the other until the next collapse into sodden drunken sleep.

  On the evening of the eighth day, Molly came to find her lover. Wheezing for breath the squat, pock-marked landlord led the way up the steep rickety staircase that led to the attic; frequently he stopped to cough rackingly and spit using his filthy apron to wipe his wet mouth, while the hand holding the lighted candle shook so that the hot liquefied tallow spattered on to his hairy arm, causing him to curse aloud and set off another paroxysm of coughing.

  ‘I doon’t know as if Brady ’ull be pleased to see yer,’ he informed the girl.

  ‘Why, is he ill?’ she demanded.

  The man’s black-green stubs of teeth bared themselves in a grimace. ‘I reckon in a manner o’ speaking that he is, my wench. You’d do better to stay away from ’im, I reckon. He’s actin’ real strange lately, so he is.’

  ‘I’ll do no such thing,’ Molly retorted spiritedly. ‘It sounds to me as if Mr Brady’s upset or ill, and I’m not surprised to hear it. Living in this midden ’ud make a pig sick.’

  ‘All right, my wench, have it your own bleedin’ way,’ the landlord told her disgruntledly. ‘But doon’t you come abawlin’ to me arterwards, that’s all . . . Doon’t you come abawlin’ to me.’

  ‘There’s no danger o’ that, you fat bugger.’ Molly’s temper was well aroused by the man’s veiled aspersions against her beloved, and she promised herself, ‘If he opens his fat chops once more I’ll kick him where it hurts, so I will.’

  ‘Theer thee be.’ The man held up the candle so that its dull glow flickered upon the half-rotted panels of the attic door.

  Grunting and wheezing, he squeezed back past her, his stale-urine stink filling her nostrils, and descended heavily, the stairs creaking ominously beneath his weight. Molly, left alone in the darkness, felt with her hands for the door and pushed. It swung open, its rusty hinges groaning in protest. Lighted only by a small, broken-paned, rag-stuffed dormer window, the room was practically as dark as the stairway.

  ‘William?’ she called softly. ‘William, are you here?’

  She felt rather than saw a swift movement, and suddenly the hard round coldness of a pistol barrel rammed up under her chin to dig painfully into the soft skin. She shrieked faintly in fright and then felt a gust of hot gin-reeking breath on her face.

  ‘Who is it comes like a thief in the night?’ a man’s voice growled in her ear
, and so unlike was it to William’s normal tone that for a moment she feared it was a stranger.

  ‘It’s Molly . . . Molly Bawn!’ she blurted out, in a rising surge of panic.

  The man laughed softly. ‘Ahh yes . . . my sweet Molly. My own toothsome little bitch who’s not let me touch so much as her tits.’

  ‘Sweetheart, light a candle,’ Molly begged. ‘I knows you’m only teasin’ me, but it makes me nervous, so it does . . . Light a candle, honey.’

  The pistol barrel fell from her throat and she sensed the man moving away. Steel and flint struck sparks and tinder glowed redly. The man’s thin lips reflected in the red glow as they puffed gently to keep the spark alive. A small yellow flame leapt up from a greased spill and moved swiftly to set another larger flame burning in the oil lamp set on the crude-fashioned stool which, but for the narrow bed and wooden slop bucket, was the sole furnishing of the attic.

  In the oil lamp’s soft light, Seymour’s lean face was wolfish and held a strangeness of expression that Molly had never seen before. He wore only a pair of pantaloons and his hard well-muscled body glistened with sweat in spite of the chillness of the room. He had not shaved for days and the stubble on his face and neck glinted gold, as did his tousled uncombed hair.

  Molly’s breath caught in her throat with the intensity of her loving anxiety. ‘Are you ill, sweetheart?’ she questioned. ‘Are you ill?’ And went to him, holding out her arms.

  Seymour’s pale eyes feasted on the inviting curves of her body and he pulled her to him, his hands grabbing and kneeding the firm roundness of her hips.

  ‘I need you so much, Molly,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I need to have you under me on that bed, sweet Molly. Sweet little bitch!’

  She ached to help him, to give him whatever he wanted.

  ‘You shall, honey,’ she told him, and pushed him away while she slipped out of her cloak and gown and shift. He threw his own clothing off and unable to restrain his hungry impatience pushed her roughly down on to the bed. For a few seconds he let his eyes and hands roam greedily over the lush warmth of her flesh. She gazed up at him, her face dreamily loving and reached upwards with her white arms for his lean torso.

  ‘I love you, sweetheart . . . I love you so much,’ she told him. Then her eyes widened in shock. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  A guttural sound rumbled from deep in his chest and his teeth, glistening whitely in the lamplight, gave him the appearance of a ravening animal. His pale stare glazed and she saw the shadow of a tiny muscle start to twitch at the side of his eye. The guttural sound came again, and then, like some savage beast, he was on her.

  The nightmare dragged on and on and on and, experienced as Molly was in the violent lusts of men, never before had she suffered such brutality of sexual congress. Again and again he took her, using and abusing every orifice of her body. Biting and mauling at her breasts and neck and thighs and belly until her flesh felt as if it were torn and bleeding. He stifled her cries of pain and protest with his cruel hands and crushed his mouth on hers as he degraded her, until she was near fainting with suffocation. At long last his perverted desires reached satiation and he calmed. Finally he lifted himself from her tormented body and as though nothing untoward had occurred began to dress in his street clothes. Molly huddled on to her side, her fingers hesitantly exploring the raw wounds he had given her.

  ‘By God, but you’ve used me sorely,’ she choked out.

  ‘Be quiet, girl,’ he ordered sharply. ‘I have much to think about.’

  Her hot temper flared. She came to a sitting position and lifted her full breasts with her hands so that the blue indentations of his teethmarks could clearly be seen in the lamplight.

  ‘Look at that!’ she expostulated angrily. ‘You’ve served me like a tomcat serves a she, only a bloody sight crueller.’

  He didn’t look at her, but concentrated on the tying of his cravat. When he spoke, his words were cold and contemptuous. ‘I’ve used you as any man has the right to use a whore,’ he stated flatly.

  To Molly it was as if he had struck her physically. She stared at him, not wanting to believe that she had heard him correctly.

  ‘Why do you say that to me?’ she questioned shrilly. He ignored her, put the finishing touches to his cravat, slipped on his brocaded waistcoat, then lifted his blue swallowtailed coat from the foot of the bed. She snatched at the fine cloth and tugged hard.

  ‘I asked you summat!’ she shrilled.

  He bent forward and grasped her wrist in his strong fingers, twisting viciously until she cried out and released his coat. Seymour shrugged it on and straightened the set of it.

  ‘Come, girl, get dressed,’ he ordered harshly.

  She shook her head. ‘I want an answer,’ she insisted stubbornly. ‘I want to know why you said such a thing to me?’

  He sighed impatiently, ‘Very well . . . I used you like a whore because that is what you are, and have always been . . . A man may do as he pleases with purchased goods.’

  Tears smarted, and blurred her sight, but she fought to hold them back. ‘Yes, I was a whore,’ she replied quietly. ‘I’ve bin a whore for a good many years . . . It was either that or starve to death. But I’ve not sold my body for many months now, and God willing, I’ll never sell it again. I didn’t roger wi’ you as a whore rogers wi’ a flat . . . I came to you and gave myself to you in love . . . Doon’t treat me so cruel bad, William . . . I love you truly, and with you I never acted the whore . . . only as a woman who loves you. You’ve done things to me this night that I’ve never let any man do to me afore, no matter how wicked I might ha’ bin. But if you loves me as I loves you, then I doon’t care how much you hurts and degrades me in the bed. Some men am made that way, and if you are then I’ll bear it, all on it, and make you a good wife . . .’

  He gave a short yelp of laughter. ‘Wife?’ he demanded. ‘You? Be my wife?’

  The tears fell freely from her eyes and wetted her cheeks so that they glistened brightly in the lamplight.

  ‘Well then, if you doon’t want me for wife, have me as your mistress and let me keep house for you,’ she begged, her misery overwhelming her so that her voice choked with sobs.

  Seymour shook his head and sneered. ‘I need no whore to keep house for me. If and when I decide to set up house, then I’ll have a gentlewoman to share my bed and board. A lady who will be fit to mix with society and bring credit to me. Now get dressed, if you don’t want your head broken, for you must accompany me,’ he finished threateningly.

  It was Molly’s fierce gutter-devil temper that stilled her sobs, not his threats. Dashing the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand she swallowed hard and began to dress. Sullenly she pulled on her shift and petticoats, her gown and long black cotton stockings. She felt the aches of her abused body and the torment of her sneered-at love and used both feelings to fuel the anger and desire for vengeance that was already beginning to burgeon in her mind. She considered that this man to whom she had offered her devotion had betrayed her. Hardship, hunger, abuse, kicks, and blows she would have accepted from him, for these were the age-old gifts that men gave to women. It was the contemptuous rejection of her as a person that angered Molly Bawn.

  ‘Just you wait, my bucko,’ she promised silently as she dressed. ‘I’ll get me own back on you, and then you’ll see as how Molly Bawn is a woman worth having. You’ll be glad to ask me to live with you then . . .’ her thoughts momentarily softened. ‘And we’ll be happy together, sweetheart, I know we will . . . But first I’ve got to show you that I’m no soft silly cow, and humble you a bit as well.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘I do declare, Henry, this is a most pleasant and improving way of spending one’s day.’ Nathan Caldicott gestured about him at the squads of yellow-orange-clad convicts who were toiling in the outer ditches of Fort Cumberland, swinging pickaxes and shovels, wheeling loaded barrows or staggering along under the weight of the great slabs of rock which were used to line t
he floors and sides of the ditch.

  ‘I have to ask myself, who? Who else but the chivalrous Britishers would have gone to so much trouble and expense to bring us to this salubrious and delightful spot, and give us such an interesting pastime?’

  For all the heaviness of his thoughts, Henri Chanteur could not help but smile at the drollness of the bald-headed cadaverous American, leaning now on the handle of his pickaxe as if he were a dandy at his ease.

  ‘Hey, baldy! Keep that pick aswingin’,’ a militiaman standing on the upper slopes of the ditch shouted.

  Nathan Caldicott waved to him languidly. ‘I surely will, soldier boy. But at least allow me to draw a breath now and again . . . For as the good book tells us, man does not live by bread alone . . . he must also take in some oxygen.’ The militiaman’s heavy bovine face creased in suspicion.

  ‘Be you amaking mock o’ me, baldy?’ he demanded.

  The New Englander placed both hands flat on his bony chest. ‘May the Good Lord tear this sinful heart of mine from my body if I am either denigrating or disparaging you in any way, Limey.’

  Other prisoners noticed the exchange and ceased work to watch Caldicott bait the guard. Jethro Stanton, who was in charge of the guards on this section, saw the men stop work and hurried towards them.

  As he neared the guard, he heard the man say, ‘That be another thing I doon’t loike, Yankee. Being called a Limey.’

  The skeletal convict, who Jethro recognized as one of the newly transferred prisoners-of-war, raised his eyes to Heaven and assumed an expression of great piety.

  ‘Did you hear that, God?’ he said loudly. ‘This gentleman does not enjoy being called Limey.’ He looked directly at the guard. ‘My good sir, I understand your fully justified resentment at being addressed by that title. I want to assure you that I fully sympathize. Naturally any man such as yourself, who possesses a large degree of pride and sensitivity must hate being called a Limey . . . I know that I would. Why, I declare that I would sooner be called a hog, than called a Limey, and that’s the truth, so help me God!’