The Devil's Surrogate (6 page)

'Aye, that I
can,' Ned replied. He eyed his cup, which had been emptied the
moment Handiwell passed it to him.

Thomas
grinned, and the grin turned to a grimace. 'When you get back,
Ned,' he said firmly. 'Deliver the message and bring back a
suitable answer, and there'll be a couple more of those for
you.'

Ross returned
only a short while later, and to Kitty's surprise his usually bland
demeanour had vanished during his absence. Indeed, he looked
positively angry, and she wondered who might have upset him. When
he strode straight over to her she feared the worst, but if he had
been tempted to take his mood out on her there was obviously
someone with a greater right to her presence.

'Get outside
and go with Nathan,' he snapped. 'Make sure you behave yourself,
too, or when you finally come back here I'll have you perched on
the thickest rogering pole there is, and you'll spend three days on
it with thrashings every hour.'

Out in the
corridor, the dark-haired Nathan was waiting for her. Without
speaking, he hooked a leash onto Kitty's collar and gave it a sharp
tug before turning away and heading towards the outer door.
Helpless to do anything else, Kitty stumbled dutifully in his wake,
part of her glad to leave Ross's sinister barn behind her, if only
for the moment, and part of her wondering what other new
tribulations lay in store for her now.

Ten minutes
after leaving the barn, they came upon another one of similar size
and construction, but this one was much nearer to the main barn and
to the house and set in a broad clearing surrounded by trees. This
building was also different in that the windows along the eaves
were deeper, thus the light inside was much brighter.

'Now,' Nathan
spoke for the first time as he hustled Kitty into one of the
interior chambers, 'I'm going to release your hands and take this
harness off you, but don't go getting any ideas. No matter how fast
you think you can run, I can run a deal faster, and besides,
there's nowhere much to run to. This part of the estate is well
fenced, with a palisade a good ten feet high running through the
woods, so I might not even chase you, but just leave you out there
to wander around until you're starving fit to drop. And then, once
we get you back here... well, I doubt I need tell you what you
could expect.'

Glumly, Kitty
shook her head.

'Right then,
let's get this lot off you and get you ready for this afternoon,
shall we?'

It took but a
minute or two before Kitty stood completely naked. She stretched
and exercised her jaw, thankful to be rid of the wadded gag, even
though she suspected it was only for a short time, and although she
could now once again speak, she had learned enough in her short
time here to know that to do so without being bidden was most
likely to earn her a swift and painful chastisement.

'Now,' Nathan
said, walking across to a long bench lining the entire length of
one wall, 'I'd better explain, otherwise you'll likely make a pig's
ear out of the whole thing and his lordship won't be best pleased
with either of us. This,' he continued, holding up what Kitty at
first thought was a dead bird of astonishing proportions, 'is what
you'll be wearing. You're going to be a bird,' he added, seeing the
confusion on her face. 'You'll have wings, feathers and a beak and
everything except, of course, you won't be able to fly. I suppose
you can run?'

'Yes... yes,
master,' she stammered.

'Good,' Nathan
nodded, 'because this time the faster you run and the longer you
run, the better the sport. You'll have the run of all the woods and
the meadows within the fenced off area. It's a big area, so you can
keep going quite a ways before you hit the fences, and Sir Roderick
and his guests will be trying to find you. You can hide if you
want, but as you can see, this plumage is very bright and
deliberately so. You'll stand out pretty well and it'll take some
dense undergrowth before you'll have much of a chance at staying
hidden, so your best bet is to keep on the move. Understand?'

'Yes, master.'
Kitty swallowed before repeating, 'Master?'

'Yes?'

'What happens
if they don't catch me?'

'Oh, they'll
catch you all right. There's all manner of bird traps out there, so
I wouldn't worry your head about not being caught.'

'Then what
happens when they do catch me?'

Nathan
snorted. 'Same as happens with most birds.' He leered at her. 'You
get stuffed, my girl, stuffed until you're fit to burst, or until
whoever catches you loses interest or strength, and then you'll
like as not be shared around. Those tits are enough to satisfy a
good few appetites!'

Left alone on
her bunk as Ross followed Kitty from the room, Sarah began staring
about her for the first time. She saw that the centre part of the
room was occupied by three timber and metal structures that had the
appearance of frames, with various 'limbs' projecting at different
angles. Judging by the assortment of straps hanging from different
parts of these 'limbs', she realised these devices had been
designed to secure people in some way or another, and that her
presence here meant she would soon be strapped to one of them, at
which point their exact function would be revealed to her in a
manner that would leave little room for doubt or confusion.

It was not
long before Ross returned and Sarah knew her latest ordeal was
about to begin, for he now wore a tightly fitted pair of leather
breeches, leather riding boots, and apart from thick leather bands
about his wrists and throat, he was naked from the waist up.

'This is the first chamber, Sarah,' he said, speaking with
surprising softness. 'What you meet in this room, what you discover
about yourself, this will be as nothing compared to what awaits you
further along the passage. By the time you leave here, if you
ever
do
leave here,
you will be a completely different person; the old you will no
longer exist. Now, come forward.' He reached up, unclipped the
leather collar from about her throat, and held out his arms to
steady her as she swung her legs down to the floor. 'First, we
shall try what I call the Princess Throne.' He guided her past the
nearest structure to a most peculiar looking contraption occupying
the middle of the room.

Blinking,
Sarah saw its heart was a kind of seat; it looked like a wooden
chair from which the first several inches had been sawn off.
Furthermore, from the centre of what was left of it rose a highly
polished dark wooden rod, perhaps four or five inches in length and
possibly a little narrower in diameter than the flesh-and-blood
counterpart she could now see bulging beneath the tight leather of
Ross's breeches.

'Turn around,
slave girl,' he whispered as she came to the front of the seat, and
as she turned beneath his guiding hands to face away from it, she
realised it was quite high for a chair, as high as the mid point of
her thighs and maybe even an inch or so higher. Holding her
shoulders firmly, Ross guided her backwards. 'Now open your legs
wide and I'll help you sit on your throne, slave princess.' He
chuckled.

Behind the
mask Sarah's eyes widened in horror, for she knew there was no way
she could sit upon the chair without the gleaming wooden phallus
penetrating her most intimately. But as Ross continued to guide
her, she understood it was to be even worse than that, for it was
now apparent that it was not her vagina the rod was intended for
but her one remaining virginal, and very much smaller, orifice.

'Relax,
slave,' he whispered, feeling her tensing beneath his fingers. 'The
little beast is well oiled and it will not stretch you that much.
Come now, don't struggle against me, else I'll string you up and
take a real whip to you and then make you sit on a cock twice the
size of this wee thing.'

'We cannot
just skulk around here and let things take their course,' James
Calthorpe insisted. 'That madman could kill poor Matilda at any
moment, and us none the wiser.'

'He'll not
kill her yet,' Hannah Pennywise stated with an air of conviction
James found quite strange. They had returned to her cottage, where
she bolted the heavy door, and now she kept scurrying across to the
window and peering down the lane that led to the village. 'He'll
want to use her first, and not in that way, although I fear that's
already been done to the poor lass. No, young James, Crawley has a
readymade scapegoat in his hands helpless as you like. Yon fool
vicar-man's death will be laid fair and square at her feet though
we both know she had nothing to do with it, save it appears he may
well have regretted himself and not been able to live with the
shame of his doings. Aye, Crawley will guess as much too, and he'll
want to make sure he gets his corn from it.'

'But he can
only hang her once, can't he?' James pointed out.

Hannah sighed.
'Aye, that he can,' she said, 'but all the time he keeps her
alive... well, she's worth more to him alive than dead, at least
for the moment. If he paints her so that folk believe she can witch
a priest into jumping off a ladder with a hemp rope round his
throat, there's some who'll believe she'd be capable of anything
and would pay the one remaining church fellow to make sure her
powers can't reach them from beyond the grave.'

'I don't
understand,' James said. 'You mean Crawley will demand payments
from the villagers in return for some spurious promise that he can
protect them against whatever powers Matilda is supposed to
possess?'

Hannah nodded.
'You understand well enough. If that's not exactly what I think
he'll do, it'll be something not that far different. I once watched
a man not unlike Jacob Crawley do exactly that, and not just that
one time either. All over several counties he worked his evil,
though I only saw him the once in a village in Kent where a cousin
of mine lived. It was a few years back now, maybe as many as a
score, but the fellow's methods were just the same, and the simple
country fools were in more terror of him come the end than they
were of the so-called witches he went around stringing up
everywhere.'

'Matthew
Hopkins,' James whispered to himself.

'That'd be the
one, the black-hearted carrion bastard! But how do you know of him?
You'd have been no more than a wee sprig of a thing when last he
was heard of.'

'Book
learning, mistress,' James replied. 'Matthew Hopkins and accounts
of his doings appear in several texts, but I had supposed the sort
of superstitions he manipulated had long since died out.'

'Believe that
if you like,' Hannah snarled, 'but then you just go back down to
the village and take a look around at the faces and the eyes of the
people. Fear lurks never far behind superstition and ignorance, and
those two venomous fiends are never far beneath the surface,
whatever polish people might put on it.'

'Some of us
know better,' James protested. 'My father, Master Handiwell from
the inn, Mistress Merridew and John Slane the smithy, to name but
less than a handful, and if we all band together and speak out
against this lunacy, people will have to listen. We are all
respected people around here, even myself despite my lack of years.
And then there's Sir Roderick. If I ride to the Hall and put the
facts before him, then he must surely be forced to intervene, for
when news of this reaches London there will be questions asked if
he sits back and does nothing.'

'Questions,
maybe,' Hannah retorted sourly, 'but I've yet to see a Grayling who
worried enough to ever give an answer worth a penny. Grayling might
intervene, but if he does so, it'll be for his own purposes, and
I'd not trust that young whelp a foot further than I could throw
him. There are things going on out there I wouldn't want to look
too closely at, for I'd not like Roderick Grayling to suspect I
knew even the first thing of his private business, not if I
expected to live to see the end of the week!'

Kitty stared
down at herself as Nathan continued tightening the laces at her
back. The garment was made of soft leather like a jerkin that
extended down to her lower stomach in a V-shape, though with two
circular openings cut into its front through which her breasts
protruded prominently from among the thick covering of feathers
that had been stitched to the leather. The same feathered covering
stretched down the leather sleeves into which her arms and hands
had been pushed, the sleeves laced tightly so that the elbows were
all but inflexible, and the fingers and thumbs held firm and flat
in pointed mitten endings. Thin strips of metal had also been
stitched to these sleeves, with more leather stretched between them
and still more feathers stitched to this. It had taken someone a
long time to make this bizarre garment, Kitty reflected, but it had
also taken a very peculiar mind to envisage a design which, now
that it was in place, gave her arms the appearance of wings while
at the same time rendering them, and her hands, all but
useless.

Nathan had
laced up as far as the base of her neck and here he paused,
stepping back and walking slowly around her to examine the effect.
Apparently, he found it to his satisfaction for he smiled broadly
and nodded. 'Very good,' he said, reaching out a hand to tug at one
of her nipple rings.

Kitty
flinched, but made no attempt to pull back.

'Plump
breasts, and we'll make them plumper still, but first we need to
get the head on you.'

The bird head
was in fact a hood almost identical to the one Kitty had been
wearing throughout most of her captivity, except that stiffened
leather had been stitched over the outside of the mouth and shaped
to form a beak which had either been dyed or painted a bright
yellow. A big crest of blue, red and yellow feathers ran over the
crown of her head from front to back, with more feathers shorter
than those of the crest covering most of the rest of the hood, the
neck of which, once it was laced closed, was intended to sit inside
the neck of the jerkin Nathan now proceeded to lace higher
still.