Cauldron of Fear (18 page)

Maybe his lack
of literary skills would be overlooked. Or maybe, he thought, as he
made his roundabout way back to where Billy was still sleeping, he
could ask Miss Harriet to teach him. Maybe he could offer to help
her on their farm, in exchange, for he knew she was hard pressed,
what with her father being so ill all the time.

And she would
surely understand his wish to be an officer, for hadn't Oliver
Merridew himself been a major in the King's army, before the war
between the King and Parliament? Of course, Major Merridew hadn't
fought in that war, because he was wounded before it ever started,
but he had been a soldier, an officer and a gentleman, which was
why Miss Harriet was such a lady, even if she did have to help milk
her own cows, which not many...

'Holy shit!'
Toby gasped, stopping dead in his tracks and his thoughts and
clapping one palm to his forehead. 'Holy bloody shit!' he repeated.
'Of course, that's what was wrong.' He shook his head and crouching
down, ran the last few yards to where Billy still laid snoring,
pouncing on his friend and shaking him awake unceremoniously.

'Wassamadda?'
Billy yelped, his eyes flying open wide. 'Wassup?'

Toby placed a
finger to his lips and the other on Billy's. 'Not so loud,' he
whispered. 'Nothing's up. The boat wasn't there yet and no one's
come, either. There's also no one else about, 'cause I've just
checked, but I've just thought of something.'

'Oh yeah?'
Billy struggled to sit up, rubbing his eyes. 'Like what? Like maybe
we should be home in our beds instead of trying to sleep against
some mouldy old tree?'

'No, you oaf,'
Toby snapped. 'Like try this.'

'What?'

'Well, let me
ask you something,' Toby said. 'Matthew pretended he needed a drink
from the river, so he could sneak a look under the bridge,
right?'

'So what? It
was a good ruse.'

'Exactly,'
Toby concurred. 'No one watching would think anything suspicious
about a lad getting himself a drink from the river, would
they?'

'Course not,'
Billy said. 'I've done that a few times myself, though the water
isn't as sweet here as it is from the well, nor from the little
stream over by Harper's Wood.'

'No and I
reckon only the likes of us would bother drinking here, wouldn't
we? And only then if we didn't have a water flask with us.'

'Well, I ain't
got a water flask anyway,' Billy said.

'Me neither,'
Toby said. 'But all the nobs have them, don't they?'

'So what? Nobs
are nobs and they have everything, because they're nobs,' Billy
said. 'That's what bein' a nob is all about; you can have whatever
you want.'

'Like Ellen
Grayling does, you mean?' Toby said, grinning.

Billy
shrugged. 'Well, she's a nob, ain't she? Her pa's got so much money
he could probably buy her anything she wanted.'

'Like that
horse of hers she rides about on?' Toby said. 'That big bay, with
the white blaze?'

'She's got
that other one, too,' Billy reminded him. 'The roan - the one they
reckon her pa had brought from the Arab countries especially for
her birthday.'

'Well, it
don't matter where it come from,' Toby said. 'What does matter is
how she rides it - either of 'em, for that matter.'

'You means she
rides like a man,' Billy said. 'Yeah, my mam reckons it ain't
proper for a lady to ride like that, nor to dress the way she does.
Why?'

'Well, think
Bill, think 'ard. You seen her ridin' around hereabouts as many
times as me, right?' Billy nodded. 'Well, just try and picture her
in your head. She uses a military saddle, yes?'

'And she wears
them boots with the little spurs,' Billy added.

'And what does
she have on her saddle?'

'Dunno,' Billy
said. He screwed his eyes tightly shut, trying to concentrate.
'There's a little thing on one side, where a soldier would carry a
musket, maybe, but she don't carry a musket in it.'

'No, she
don't,' Toby agreed. 'But what else does she have on that
saddle?'

'Well...
nothing really, except that leather water bag thing, the same as
the soldiers carry with them on their horses.'

'Yeah, that's
right
,' Toby cried triumphantly. 'She carries a water bottle and
I've even seen her drink from it, when she's stopped on the village
green to water her horse at the trough there.'

'So what?'
Billy demanded. 'Nothing unusual in that, is there? I mean, it
maybe ain't the right way for a lady to carry on, same as me mam
says, but then that Ellen Grayling ain't like most women, so
everyone reckons.'

'No, that she
ain't,' Toby said. 'But that ain't my point. What I'm wonderin' is
this: if she's got that water bottle, why would she want to stop
and have a drink from the river down under the bridge over
there?'

'You mean
she's been here tonight?'

Toby shook his
head. 'No, not tonight,' he said, 'but she stopped here this
afternoon, while I was watching the place. Went down to the edge,
just like Matt did an' scooped up some water. I thought she was
havin' a drink, but why would she, eh?'

'Maybe she
just wanted to splash her face?' Billy suggested, after a moment's
consideration. 'Gets pretty dusty on the roads this time of
year.'

'Yeah, well,
she could have,' Toby conceded, 'but I don't reckon she did either.
I knew something was wrong earlier, when I watched Matt, but I
couldn't figure it out to start with. Then it hit me, when I was
thinking about Miss Harriet.

'To start
with, why would a lady - even a lady like Ellen Grayling, drink
from a river, unless she really had to? And even if we suppose her
bottle was empty, if she drank using her hands or even if she just
wanted to splash her face, she'd wipe her mouth, her eyes, or
whatever. Only, now I think back to it, she didn't. All she did was
wipe her hands on her breeches and get back on her horse.'

'So what?'

'Well, think
about it, Bill.' Toby sat back, regarding his friend. 'What I'm
saying is this,' he continued, when no further comment was
forthcoming. 'Ellen Grayling didn't drink down there, nor did she
wash her face.'

'So what was
she doing there?' Billy demanded obtusely, and Toby's grin
threatened to split his face in two.

'That's a
fuckin' good question, Bill,' he retorted. 'An' right now, though
it seems a bit mad, I can only think of the one answer. An' also,
if'n I'm right, it's made me start thinkin' of another possible
idea, though you ain't gonna believe me, no more than anyone else
round here would!'

For several
minutes Hannah Pennywise stood in the middle of the woodland path,
poised as if she were listening for something, but the only noises
on the night air were the faint rustling of leaves in the canopy
above and the occasional plaintive hooting of a distant owl.

High above,
just visible through the narrow gap in the foliage immediately
above the track, the sky was clear and dark, a smattering of stars
winking or shimmering. The moon had settled beyond the hills and in
the woods, between the trees and among the bushes, it was very,
very dark.

The ghost of a
smile flickered over Hannah's gaunt features and she sniffed the
breeze and nodded. She bent to pick up the wicker basket laid at
her feet, squared her shoulders and began to walk, her ever-present
cane sending a hollow tap-tap echoing among the black, sentinel
tree trunks.

George
Billings had indeed gone along with almost every other male in
Fetworth and young Toby Blaine did not seem at all worried about
continuing the adventure without his stewardship, and so it was
that the three youths approached the bridge by the water mill at
shortly after nine o'clock in the evening.

Matt Cornwell,
a stocky boy with square pugnacious features, volunteered to go and
make sure the rowing boat had not already been returned to its
former station. 'I'll just wander along to the bridge and slide
down the bank, as if I'm getting meself a drink,' he said.

'Yes,' Toby
agreed, 'and then carry on walking over the bridge and up the lane
a-ways. Don't come straight back over here, in case someone's
watchin'. Right?'

Matt nodded,
grinning in the darkness. He laid a hand on Toby's shoulder. 'It's
right rum, this, ain't it?' he said. 'You reckon someone will come
along this way?'

'Sure to,'
Toby affirmed confidently. 'Stands to reason; they got to get the
boat back here, ain't they? And what better time to do it than at
night?'

'There's a lot
of night ahead of us,' Matt pointed out. 'Could be almost any time,
if'n they do come.'

'Which is why
there are three of us,' Toby said. 'We can take it in turns to
watch and to nap, if we start gettin' tired.'

'Well, I'm
tired now,' Billy Dodds, the third member of the trio
complained.

'Then you
settle down against that tree trunk there,' Toby said, pointing to
a horizontal bough that had clearly fallen at least a couple of
years before, 'and you get yourself a catnap now, see. I'll wake
you if'n I start gettin' tired an' you can take over my watch. In
the meantime, once you've checked under the bridge, Matt, I'm going
to scout a bit. I'm going around the back of the mill buildings
just to make sure there ain't anyone there looking out, like. I'll
give you a little while to walk on up the lane, then you sneak back
and get in among those bushes on the other bank. From there you'll
be able to see anyone who comes upstream in a boat.'

'An' what if
there's a boat already there?' Matt demanded. 'You want me to come
straight back here instead?'

Toby
considered this for a few seconds before shaking his head. 'No,' he
said. 'If the boat is already there, could be that whoever put it
there is watching out, so we need some sort of a signal.' He paused
again. 'I know,' he said, 'if'n the boat's there, you stop halfway
across the bridge and throw a couple of stones into the water.'

Without
further discussion the plan was put into operation. Matt Cornwell
backtracked through the undergrowth, to a point where he could
emerge onto the road without being seen from either the bridge or
the mill and then began to saunter back again, whistling tunelessly
as he went, apparently without a concern in the world.

Just before he
reached the bridge he stopped, half turned and looked up at the
night sky. Then with an elaborate show of wiping the back of one
hand across his mouth, he turned back again and moved towards the
top of the gently sloping embankment. He slid down the grass
incline easily, stood upright at the water's edge and then knelt,
stooping forward to cup his hands into the cold current.

At last, after
taking several scoops of water, he straightened up once again,
wiped his mouth with both hands and climbed back up the slope to
the road. Watching from his hidden vantage point, Toby waited with
bated breath to see if Matt stopped on the bridge to give the
signal, but the lad made no attempt to stop. Still whistling, he
carried straight on across and strolled slowly out of sight.

Toby turned to
Billy, but even in the darkness he could tell his friend had
already fallen asleep, for the muffled snoring sounded unnaturally
loud in the otherwise silent night. 'Lotta use you're going to be,'
Toby muttered to himself. Silently, he began to count, though only
to ten each time, for beyond that he had never been sure of the
sequence of the numbers. However, he did know that ten times ten
was a hundred and so, each time he reached ten and restarted, he
folded down one finger. If he counted to a hundred this way and
counted slowly, he reasoned, Matt would have enough time to sneak
back and watch the bridge, while he reconnoitred the rest of the
area on this side of the river.

However, as he
counted something started working somewhere in the back of his
mind, a little questioning niggle he could not quite put his finger
on. There was something curious, something he knew he should try to
get to the bottom of, but what exactly he wasn't at all sure.

'Bugger it,'
he whispered. 'What the hell is it? I know you're missing
something, Toby Blaine, and I just feel it in me water that it
could be important.'

The final
touch to Sarah and Kitty's costumes was added just before Prudence
allowed them to see their reflections in the long mirror that had
been hidden behind one of the wall drapes. Wide, jewelled bracelets
were snapped about both girls' wrists, a hidden locking mechanism
clicking into place.

Staring down
at hers, Sarah saw that there were two cunningly concealed
fitments, one on each, the left wrist shaped like a projecting
socket, the right a grooved prong. The one, it was clear, fitted
into the other, no doubt locking as securely as the bracelets
themselves; though extremely decorative they could obviously also
be used as a means to manacle the two wrists together.

Similarly, the
jewelled collars they wore had small but sturdy rings set in among
the fake gems, to which fine chain leashes could be attached and
this Prudence did. Satisfied that the clips were secure, she gave a
sharp tug on both leashes and walked the teetering girls over to
the mirror.

Sarah stared
at her reflection in sheer disbelief and her hands went
instinctively to cover her denuded crotch. She had felt less naked
when completely unclothed and certainly now, she saw, the bizarre
way in which they were both attired served simply to make them look
nothing more than objects for sexual gratification.

The two white
faces, with their painted eyes and painted little pouts of mouths,
gazed back in an almost bland fashion, the high piled hairstyles,
with their glinting array of pins, were nothing more than
mockeries. Standing perched upon their high-heeled shoes, their
stockings gartered in froths of ribbon and lace, their waists
pulled impossibly small inside the breath-taking corsets, arms
sheathed in smooth satin, the two girls, with their bared breasts
and rouged nipples had been prepared for one fate, and one fate
only.