Like a puppet pulled by a string, he had to move when the length of rope attached to his manacles was tugged through the pulley until he was balanced on the soles of his feet, ankles double-shackled to those convenient iron pipes, arms above his head. To make it even worse he had to be blindfolded like a felon facing a firing squad in spite of the fact that his back was to the barred cell door. Damn them! Nicholas thought again, and in the darkness before his eyes and in his soul he concentrated his thinking only on what he planned to do to them all, one by one, if he was ever set free or managed to free himself. There were certain methods of torture perfected by the Comanche and Apache Indians that these arrogant, civilized, self-styled gentlemen had no conception of.
He refused the wooden bit that Brown offered him and clamped his jaws together instead; and because he had refused to read that ridiculous “sentence” out loud from the piece of paper Brown had diffidently handed him, his punishment tonight would be doubled, he’d been warned. Let it! Let them kill him and answer to the consequences before a real judge and jury if the hypocritical bastards dared. “You may begin now.” Newbury’s voice? How many of them were here to watch and gloat? Charles for one, no doubt. The lash wrapped itself around his torso in a stinging caress that made breath hiss through his teeth as his body flinched from it involuntarily. No, damn them, no! If they waited for him to cry for pity, for mercy, they’d see him in hell first! Only his body moved, and that without his being able to help it as he felt that first biting stroke of the lash repeated over and over and over until he lost count and concentrated only on breathing in and out and keeping his jaws locked together; feeling the sweat trickling down his arm and down his face and his sides while he waited for it to be over or to lose consciousness or...
Pain was nothing—did not exist. The old padres who had walked the Camino Real to establish their chain of missions had scourged themselves to mortify flesh and release the pure soul. Every day. Every single day—for the soul. The flesh meant nothing. Everything became louder; each sound magnified. The crack of the whip reminded him of the mule skinners he’d ridden beside, watching them practice their art with careless ease, getting a fly on the tip of a mule’s ear. Brown, if it was Brown, should become a mule skinner. Agony faded in and out, and the worst pain was in his arms as they were slowly pulled out of their sockets. He wanted to be able to stand on his feet, but his legs wouldn’t hold him....
“I think that is enough for one day.” Had he heard it or only imagined it? But suddenly everything stopped except the sound of his breathing, which was so loud that it sounded as if he’d been running a race uphill. “Very well, you can let him down now.” “He’s either an arrant fool or a stubborn knave, I wonder which?” “It might be difficult to...” Now the voices faded in and out of each other, and suddenly he was lying flat on his face and still alive, with his back aching atrociously; the only thing that kept him at least semiconscious.
“Has he had any water?”
“No sir, I didn’t know... He asked questions, mostly.”
“Ah! Well that was to be expected, I suppose. You can do something about that sore back later. Give him some water now. I want to hear him talk, if he can.”
Some of the water trickled into his mouth and some escaped down the side of Nicholas’s face. Newbury. He knew that voice, even if he still wore the damned bandage over his eyes. Newbury doing the talking, but someone else as well. All of them, perhaps, inspecting his cuts and weals. And the hell with them!
“Nicholas...” A sigh. “A pity you insist upon being so stubborn. This is not exactly enjoyable for any of us.”
“My noble counsel for the defense? Enjoyable—for you, I’m sure. What you bloody English would call your cup of tea, isn’t it, Newbury? Goddamn your hypocritical soul!”
“Your bitterness is understandable, I suppose! But you have to understand that you are no longer in some wild section of the United States, dear boy. Whatever you wanted to do should have been done less publicly. And it’s precisely as your counsel for the defense that I am here, believe it or not. You might not have to go through this ordeal day after day if you decide to be sensible instead of noble and relate the real story.” When Nicholas remained silent the Marquess sighed again. “My dear Nicholas, you were extraordinarily stolid today, but tomorrow is going to be almost unendurable; and the day after that...I know, you see, what the lash can do when it’s applied regularly and to what lengths you will go, in the end, to avoid it! If you don’t enjoy being whipped like a dog for pretending you did not mount a willing bitch— and one, by the way, who is the cause for your present predicament—you could save yourself a great deal of unnecessary pain by being truthful. No? Ah well, in that case I’ll leave you to the ministrations of the good Brown, then. A demain!”
Chapter 45
Newbury had been right. The second time was much worse than the first, and the time after that worse still. Worst of all, though, were the times when he had to suffer the application of what smelled like horse liniment and burned worse than the knife-blade kiss of the lash that was all he had to look forward to each day. That—and Newbury’s visits. And after a while he grew to sense when Newbury was alone and when he was not.
It was his raging anger and what they had called his stubbornness that sustained him those first few days when he was beaten first and then alternately cajoled and taunted. Alex—Alexa. He heard her name mentioned so often that he could sometimes hear it sounding in his mind like a tolling bell. Alexa—sweet Alexa, false, lying, treacherous Alexa! Did she know and gloat over the hell she had delivered him into? Alexa lying with Charles. Did she offer to be his willing whore and parade naked before him decked in jewels? Discreetly, of course. Privately. Ah, Alexa! What had happened to the sea-drenched, moon kissed mermaid with her innocent honesty? Alexa with the undressed
hair and the dimple when she smiled; with nails stabbing like knives when she turned vixen. Weeping with her mouth open like a bawling child. Had he really been the cause of the change in her? “After you...!” she had accused and she was probably right. If she was a bitch ripe and ready to be mounted, it must have been he who had shown her that lying with a man could be a pleasure instead of a distasteful duty. Bitch—whore—manufacturing sobs and moans of ecstasy as she pleased. Did she too come to watch and wait for the day when he would break? Did she know that Newbury wanted her and waited patiently for that day too? “And sometimes, why an honest whore’s the lady and ‘tis the lady who’s the dishonest whore!” “Ah, but how to tell, sir, which is which?” He remembered that much clearly out of all the mummery of that night, although he had forgotten by now how long ago that had been.
It was indeed the lady who was the whore, and a dishonest one into the bargain. But—deliver his one-time mermaid and his willing virgin to Newbury? Was he her father? It probably did not matter to Newbury, because he wanted too much to put scars on that silken gold skin while she screamed, and if it happened it would be, again, because of him.
“How many of them come?” he asked Brown one day. “Are there women among them too?”
“Well, my lord, I’m not supposed to tell, as you know, but as long as I don’t tell who, I don’t suppose... Sometimes it’s only the gentleman you know, sir. Sometimes there’s another gentleman too, and sometimes there’s three or four of them. And twice, sir, there was a lady, but she was all muffled up in a cloak with a hood so that no one could really see what she looked like.”
“Thank you, Brown. You’re an honest man, at least.”
“Sir... Sir, if you’d only...”
“No. It’s gone too far for that now, don’t you see that? It’s too late.” He laughed suddenly, and the sound of that laugh made Brown’s skin crawl, as he told Partridge later. “You see, Brown, I’ve realized that this is really purgatory, and I’m here to be cleansed of all my sins and the weight of the guilt of them. Christ, I might as well be in a fucking monastery, don’t you think? Being scourged instead of taking it upon myself to do so.”
And now, instead of pacing about the cell like a restless animal, Nicholas had taken to spending hours lying face down on his mattress without moving, except for the rise and fall of his breathing. He thought of things he hadn’t thought of for years and remembered incidents that had happened when he was a very young child, as well as certain other incidents in his life. And as for the whippings, when it was time he let them pull him upright and let what had to happen happen; and the pain meant nothing to him now, although sometimes he felt sorry for poor Brown, who seemed to feel the pain for him and always had to blow his nose heavily afterwards.
“You’re a fool, Nicholas,” Newbury said irritably on one of his visits. “All this for a woman—a bitch who deserves to be whipped instead of using you as her whipping boy. Do you enjoy this?”
“Did you enjoy being whipped in your Turkish prison, Newbury? And what did you do to try and save yourself?” Nicholas’s voice held only a faint curiosity, but to his surprise Newbury answered the question. “I did not enjoy being thrashed while the women standing behind their screens in Abdul Hakim’s seraglio giggled in their shrill voices and asked that the bastinado be laid on harder to make me scream and writhe more. No, I did not enjoy it— nor Abdul Hakim himself, nor the fact that I knew that my mother—my loving, tenderhearted mother—knew where I was and how I was and would not send the money for my ransom— my money—until she knew I was the only son left to inherit the title of Marquess of Newbury and to give her the money she needed to live on as she felt she needed to live. And then my ransom was paid, and I was expected to be grateful for that for the rest of my life—which she arranges for me. The great whore of Babylon, my Belle-Mere, who took lovers from among my friends while my poor old fool of a father was still alive and sucked them dry of their manhood before she spat them out like orange pips. Do you understand that, Nicholas? Have you not discovered yet what they are? Women who laugh while a man suffers and think themselves clever for arranging such a thing. And worst of all are the lady-whores, as you should know only too well. Like your Alexa, with that hair of hers that is as bronze shot through with gold and has eyes that can look as black as burning pitch, and has a soul to match, I’m sure. How she laughs as she twists and turns in bed with my besotted nephew and does to him everything she has done with you! She has taken a house close to his in the country, and he is more at her house and more often in her bed than he is in his own. Did she take away your manhood too and turn you into a eunuch?”
“Perhaps you have already seen to that, Newbury. You are obsessed with whores and lady-whores, and particularly with this one because she’s so like your mother, whom you hate and cannot touch. It was your mother you were describing just now as your words painted the portrait she has hanging in her room. You are far too fanatic, my dear Newbury! But how can I, in the position in which you have placed me, prove whether the whore is a lady or the lady a whore? It’s not a puzzle that concerns me any longer, you see.” Nicholas’s short laugh held something almost akin to amusement. “Why, I have become like a monk in a monastery who is scourged daily to drive out the devil in him. You should find yourself another more willing and able scapegoat, or be daring and try her yourself. It should be easy, to judge from what you tell me!”
Indifferently, Nicholas turned his head to the wall and might have been asleep in spite of the loudness of Newbury’s harsh breathing.
His bitch-mother. His mother! She had come here herself to enjoy the righteous sport of watching an uncivilized American being taught to mind his manners until she, like the others, had tired of waiting for their entertainment to become sport. She had mentioned recently that it had gone on long enough and there should be other ways to take care of the upstart little bitch—once she had married Charles and he had control of her money, of course. And even his friends who were members of the Judge and Jury Society had begun to look rather sheepish and pull at their whiskers as they said offhandedly that dash it all, old man, the fellow had more than paid his dues and had shown he had backbone, at least. “After all, old chap, we can’t commit murder, can we? And sooner or later there are questions bound to be asked, and it could be a deuced awkward situation for all of us, couldn’t it?”
Much to Brown’s surprise, Newbury sat there, almost as unmoving as Nicholas himself, for over an hour after any conversation between them had ceased. And now what? Brown asked himself uneasily when the Marquess, still without a word, picked up his hat and cane and departed. For God’s sake, now what?
Until his carriage had started on, the Marquess of Newbury managed to restrain his fury and even his thoughts, as well. Nicholas Dameron, his heir, was nothing more than a poor, besotted fool with more stubbornness than good sense and therefore to be despised as he deserved! He had, however, managed to point out something that he, Newbury, had surprisingly not realized for himself. The remarkable resemblance in coloring and even slightly in features between the two bitches, his mother and Alexa. Could she possibly be a by-blow of a by-blow of one of his dear uncles? Not impossible at all. But how the old bitch would hate it if he could tell her so and prove it! No wonder they seemed pressed from the same mold—both greedy, scheming, cunning users who hungered for power over people like the hungry needed food. Ah, no wonder the once-fair Adelina wanted her younger rival out of the way. And Alexa wanted another titled husband. Newbury gave vent to a sudden, soundless chuckle that curled his fastidious lips. Why not? Play the bitches against each other, and perhaps they’d destroy each other-in the end! But one of them, at least, he would have and use and make into his slave in the end like all the other fawning bitches he’d broken and brought to heel. In the end they all came obediently and even willingly to lick his hand and beg for his favors, his love! The sluts— wanting to delude themselves that the kind of treatment he meted out to them was indeed that. Lov
e! If he had ever been capable of that particular weakness in his life it had been his feeling for Victorine, the wife that he had chosen for himself; and for the infant daughter she had suffered untold agonies to bear for him. And his mother, his witch-mother, God rot her soul, had destroyed them too. Had laughed when she said to him, “My dear Gavin, they said it was the flu, you know. But perhaps she killed herself and your brat as well when she saw this!” putting a cutting from the newspaper that listed him dead before him. And from then he had allowed himself no weakness or vulnerability that could be used on him like a goad.