One of the young lads nearby heard me, and reached tentatively for the knot of my gag, but dropped his hand at once when Hodgepile barked at him.
“Leave her!”
“But—don’t she need to eat, Hodge?” The boy glanced uneasily at me.
“Not just yet she doesn’t.” Hodgepile squatted down in front of me, looking me over. “Learned your lesson yet, ’ave you?”
I didn’t move. Just sat and looked at him, infusing my gaze with as much scorn as possible. The cut on my finger burned; my palms had begun to sweat—but I stared. He tried to stare back, but couldn’t do it—his eyes kept slipping away.
That made him even angrier; a flush burned high on his bony cheeks.
“Stop looking at me!”
I blinked slowly, once, and kept looking, with what I hoped appeared to be interested dispassion. He was looking rather strained, our Mr. Hodgepile was. Dark circles under the eyes, muscle fibers bracketing his mouth like lines carved in wood. Sweat stains wet and hot beneath the armpits. Constant browbeating must take it out of one.
All at once, he stood up, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me to my feet.
“I’ll put you where you can’t stare, bitch,” he muttered, and marched me past the fire, shoving me ahead of him. A little way outside the camp, he found a tree to his liking. He untied my hands and rebound my wrists, with a loop of line wrapped round my waist and my hands fastened to it. Then he pushed me down into a seated position, fashioned a crude noose with a slipknot, and put it round my neck, tying the free end to the tree.
“So as you won’t wander away,” he said, pulling the rough hemp snug around my neck. “Shouldn’t want you to get lost. Might be eaten by a bear, and then what, eh?” This had quite restored his humor; he laughed immoderately, and was still chuckling when he left. He turned, though, to glance back at me. I sat upright, staring, and the humor abruptly left his face. He turned and strode off, shoulders stiff as wood.
In spite of hunger, thirst, and general discomfort, I actually felt a sense of profound, if momentary, relief. If I was not strictly speaking alone, I was at least unobserved, and even this modicum of privacy was balm.
I was a good twenty yards from the fire ring, out of sight of all the men. I sagged against the tree trunk, the muscles of face and body giving way all at once, and a shiver seized me, though it wasn’t cold.
Soon. Surely Jamie would find me soon. Unless—I pushed the dubious thought aside as though it were a venomous scorpion. Likewise any thought of what had happened to Marsali, or might happen if and when—no, when—he did find us. I didn’t know how he’d manage, but he would. He just would.
The sun was nearly down; shadows were pooling under the trees and the light faded slowly from the air, making colors fugitive and solid objects lose their depth. There was rushing water somewhere nearby, and the calling of the occasional bird in the distant trees. These began to fall silent as the evening cooled, replaced by the rising chirp of crickets near at hand. My eye caught the flicker of movement, and I saw a rabbit, gray as the dusk, sitting up on its hind legs under a bush a few feet distant, nose twitching.
The sheer normalcy of it all made my eyes sting. I blinked away the tears, and the rabbit was gone.
The sight of it had restored my nerve a little; I essayed a few experiments, to see the limits of my present bondage. My legs were free—that was good. I could rise up into a sort of ungainly squat, and duck-waddle round the tree. Even better; I would be able to relieve myself in privacy on the far side.
I could not, however, rise entirely to my feet, nor could I reach the knot of the line that circled the tree trunk; the rope either slid or caught on the bark, but in either case, the knot remained frustratingly on the opposite side of the trunk—which had to measure nearly three feet in diameter.
I had about two feet of line between the trunk and the noose about my neck; enough to allow me to lie down, or to turn from side to side. Hodgepile was rather obviously well-acquainted with convenient methods of restraining captives; I thought of the O’Brians’ homestead, and the two bodies there. The two elder children missing. A small shudder passed over me again.
Where were they? Sold to one of the Indian tribes as slaves? Taken to a sailors’ brothel in one of the coastal towns? Or onto a ship, to be pressed into use on the sugar plantations of the Indies?
I was under no illusions that any of these picturesquely unpleasant fates lay in store for me. I was much too old, much too obstreperous—and much too notorious. No, the only value I held for Hodgepile was my knowledge of the whisky cache. Once he had got within sniffing distance of that, he would slit my throat without a moment’s compunction.
The smell of roasting meat floated through the air, flooding my mouth with fresh saliva—a welcome relief, in spite of the growling of my stomach, since the gag dried my mouth unpleasantly.
A tiny jolt of panic tensed my muscles. I didn’t want to think about the gag. Or the ropes around my wrists and neck. It would be too easy to succumb to the panic of confinement, and exhaust myself in futile struggle. I had to preserve my strength; I didn’t know when or how I would need it, but need it I surely would. Soon, I prayed. Let it be soon.
The men had settled to their supper, the contentions of the day sunk in appetite. They were far enough away that I couldn’t hear the particulars of their conversation, but only the stray word or phrase borne on the evening breeze. I turned my head to let the breeze smooth the hair from my face, and found that I could see a long, narrow swath of sky above the distant gorge, gone a deep, unearthly blue, as though the fragile layer of atmosphere that covered the earth grew thinner still, and the darkness of space beyond shone through.
The stars began to prick out, one by one, and I managed to lose myself in watching, counting them as they appeared, one by one by one . . . touching them as I might the beads of a rosary, and saying to myself such astronomical names as I knew, comforting in their sound, even though I had no idea whether such names bore any relation to the celestial bodies I saw. Alpha Centauri, Deneb, Sirius, Betelgeuse, the Pleiades, Orion . . .
I succeeded in soothing myself to the extent that I dozed off, only to rouse some time later to find it now full dark. The light of the fire sent a flickering glow through the underbrush, painting my feet, which lay in an open spot, with rosy shadows. I stirred and stretched myself as well as I could, trying to relieve the stiffness in my back, and wondered whether Hodgepile thought himself safe now, to be allowing such a large fire?
A loud groan came to me on the wind—Lionel Brown. I grimaced, but there was nothing I could do for him in my present condition.
I heard shuffling and a murmur of voices; someone was attending to him.
“. . . hot as a pistol . . .” one voice said, sounding only mildly concerned.
“. . . fetch the woman? . . .”
“No,” said a definite voice. Hodgepile. I sighed.
“. . . water. No help for that . . .”
I was listening so intently, in hopes of hearing what was happening by the fire, that it was some time before I became aware of noises in the brush nearby. Not animals; only bears would make that much noise, and bears didn’t giggle. The giggling was subdued, not only muffled but repeatedly interrupted.
There was whispering, too, though I couldn’t make out most of the words. The overall atmosphere was so much one of excited juvenile conspiracy, though, that I knew it must be some of the younger members of the gang.
“. . . go on, then!” I caught, spoken in a vehement tone, and accompanied by a crashing noise, indicating that someone had been pushed into a tree. Another crash, indicating retaliation.
More rustling. Whisper, whisper, snigger, snort. I sat up straight, wondering what in God’s name they were up to.
Then I heard, “Her legs aren’t tied . . .” and my heart gave a small jump.
“But what if she . . .” mumble, mumble.
“Won’t matter. She can’t scream.”
That came through very clearly, and I jerked my feet back to scramble up—only to be brought up short by the noose around my neck. It felt like an iron bar across my windpipe, and I fell back, seeing blood-red blotches at the corners of my eyes.
I shook my head and gulped air, trying to shake off the dizziness, adrenaline racing through my blood. I felt a hand on my ankle, and kicked out sharply.
“Hey!” he said out loud, sounding surprised. He took his hand off my ankle and sat back a little. My vision was clearing; I could see him now, but the firelight was behind him; it was one of the young lads, but no more than a faceless, hunched silhouette in front of me.
“Shh,” he said, and giggled nervously, reaching out a hand toward me. I made a deep growling noise behind my gag, and he stopped, frozen in mid-reach. There was a rustling in the brush behind him.
This seemed to remind him that his friend—or friends—were watching, and he reached out with renewed resolution, patting me on the thigh.
“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he whispered, duck-walking closer on his heels, “I don’t mean you no harm.”
I snorted, and he hesitated again—but then another rustle from the bush seemed to stiffen his resolve, and he grasped me by the shoulders, trying to make me lie down. I struggled hard, kicking and kneeing at him, and he lost his grip, lost his balance, and fell on his backside.
A muffled explosion of sniggering from the bush brought him up on his feet like a jack-in-the-box. He reached down with decision, seized my ankles, and yanked, jerking me flat. Then he flung himself on top of me, pinning me with his weight.
“Hush!” he said urgently into my ear. His hands were grappling for my throat, and I squirmed and thrashed under his weight, trying to buck him off. His hands closed tight on my neck, though, and I stopped, my vision going black and bloody once again.
“Hush, now,” he said more quietly. “You just hush, ma’am, all right?” I was making small choking noises, which he must have taken for assent, for his grip slackened.
“I ain’t gonna hurt you, ma’am, I really ain’t,” he whispered, trying to hold me down with one hand while fumbling about between us with the other. “Would you just be still, please?”
I wouldn’t, and he finally put a forearm across my throat and leaned on it. Not hard enough to make me black out again, but hard enough to take some of the fight out of me. He was thin and wiry, but very strong, and by dint of simple determination, succeeded in pushing up my shift and wedging his knee between my thighs.
He was breathing nearly as hard as I was, and I could smell the goaty reek of his excitement. His hands had left my throat, and were feverishly grasping at my br**sts, in a manner that made it reasonably clear that the only other breast he’d ever touched was likely his mother’s.
“Hush, now, don’t you be scared, ma’am, it’s all right, I ain’t . . . oh. Oh, my. I . . . uh . . . oh.” His hand was poking about between my thighs, then left off momentarily as he raised himself briefly and wriggled down his breeches.
He collapsed heavily on top of me, hips pumping frantically as he thrust madly away—making no contact save that of friction, as he very obviously had no idea of the way in which female anatomy was constructed. I lay still, astonished into immobility, then felt a warm pulse of liquid under my thighs as he lost himself in panting ecstasy.