Moonspun Magic (2 page)

What bloody man is that?

—S
HAKESPEARE

S
he heard the footsteps.
His
footsteps, eerie echoes down the long eastern corridor, closer, nearly to her door. Now they were slower, as if he were hesitating, but only for a moment, only long enough for her to feel a spurt of hope. Then louder, a lengthened stride, as if he were now hurrying. So close now.

Victoria stared straight ahead in the darkness. She sat up in her bed, her movements as silent as the clouded half-moon outside her window, terrified that somehow he would know that she was awake, that she was aware he was there. Her eyes never wavered from the bedchamber door.

The footsteps stopped. He was standing in front of her bedchamber door now. She could see him extending his hand, see his fingers flexing about the brass door handle, clasping it, squeezing it inward.

Nothing happened.

She wished she could see the large, old-fashioned brass key in the lock, her protection, her only protection against him.

She heard the door shake as he squeezed the handle, then, in frustration, shook it hard.

Why wouldn't he go away? Oh, please, make him go away.

The key rattled loudly in the lock. He was exerting great pressure. Suddenly the heavy key fell to the floor, making a loud cracking sound on the bare wood, like a pistol shot. She jumped, stifling a cry.

There was no sound now. She could see his face changing as he came to understand the sound, see him becoming slowly enraged as he realized that she had locked him out. The door was strong and thick as Drago Hall itself. It wouldn't yield.

She held her breath, waiting for him to call out.

Her heart pounded—loud, fast strokes. Could he not hear her heartbeat? Feel her fear of him?

She could see his gray eyes, darkening now, dilating with anger and cold in the night gloom of the vast eastern corridor. In the daylight they would be as light and clear as Ligger's newly polished silver.

“Victoria?”

His voice was soft and compelling. She stuffed her fist in her mouth, not moving.

“Open the door, Victoria.”

Now the master's voice, threaded with steel but still quiet, soft-sounding. She'd heard it rarely, normally directed at servants, and they'd been frantic to obey. She remembered once he'd turned on Elaine and spoken to her in that tone. Bright, strong Elaine had cowered.

What to do? She couldn't answer him. Perhaps he would believe her asleep. The thought of him believing that she was deliberately disobeying him made her flesh crawl.

She'd come to live at Drago Hall at the age of fourteen after the marriage of her first cousin, Elaine Montgomery, to Damien Carstairs, Baron Drago. Victoria, starved for affection, had adored him then, seen him as the hero, the perfect gentleman, and he'd
treated her with careless affection, giving her the kind of attention he occasionally bestowed on Elaine's pug, Missie, or his small daughter, Damaris.

But no longer.

When had he begun to look at her differently? Six months ago? Nanny Black had teased her about being “late to grow on the stalk.” Whatever stalk was in question, evidently Damien now believed her grown enough. She wanted to yell at him, scream at him to leave her alone. She was his wife's cousin, for pity's sake. Didn't a man owe loyalty and fidelity to his wife?

The minutes passed. He said nothing more. Her heart continued to pound in slow, loud strokes. The door handle rattled again suddenly, then abruptly stopped. Her breath caught in her throat. She heard his footsteps going away now, fainter and fainter down the eastern corridor.

She remembered suddenly the summer that one of his hunters had hurt its leg in a trap. He'd shot it. Then walked away, tossing his gun to one of the white-faced grooms.

She had to do something. Because if she didn't, he would win. He would trap her and do just as he pleased with her. She would tell Elaine, she had to tell her cousin. Even as the thought sifted through her mind, she was shaking her head. Tell Elaine that her husband wanted to ravish her young cousin? She swallowed, picturing her humiliation when Elaine laughed at her, shook her head, and berated her for spouting such ridiculous, such
mean
nonsense. And she would. Unlike her husband, she was loyal and faithful.

She couldn't stay here at Drago Hall. Not now.

Victoria lowered her face into her hands. She was shaking, but there were no tears. The feeling of helplessness was paralyzing. No, she thought, shaking
her head, no. How could he want her? It made no sense. Elaine was beautiful, with her lustrous black hair and her pale green eyes, and accomplished, her fingers nimble with needlework and the keys of the piano-forte. And she was carrying his child, his heir, as he said every day now, as if saying it over and over would produce the male child he wanted. Elaine was his wife;
she
had no deformities. Surely he knew about her leg, Elaine must have told him. Victoria touched her fingers to the ridged scar on her left thigh, probing lightly at the now relaxed flesh, the smooth muscles. Once, when she was fifteen, she had run away from a teasing Johnny Tregonnet, run too hard and long, and Elaine had seen the result—muscles knotting, bunching beneath the jagged scar. She'd tried to be kind, but she'd been repelled at the sight.

How could he possibly want her? She was ugly, as defective as that poor hunter he'd shot.

Very slowly Victoria eased down under the goose-feather quilt. The night was long. She was cold, inside, so cold, and she was afraid.

She thought of David Esterbridge, but four years older than her almost nineteen. He'd proposed to her three times since the previous January. He was kind to her, generously persistent, weak, and the only child under his father's thumb. She didn't love him. But what else could she do? At least David would protect her. She would make him a good wife. Yes, she would. She would marry him and he would take her away from Drago Hall.

Away from Damien.

 

There were eight men in the beam-ceilinged drawing room of Treffy, the small hunting lodge owned by the old infirm Earl of Crowden. The caretaker had died and no one had told the old earl's steward. The
steward wouldn't have cared in any case, for Treffy was falling apart and the old earl's heir surely wouldn't want the expense of putting it to rights. The lodge had been built in 1748, in the boring time of George II, and it was small by the standards of the time, boasting only seven rooms. It was, further, too isolated for most tastes, set in the middle of a thick maple-tree thicket. It was only three miles from the town of Towan, and Towan but half a mile from Mevagissey Bay. There was always the smell of the sea in the air, a feeling of dampness that lingered on clothes, and on the seats of chairs, and in the bed linen, what there was of that left.

The eight men weren't concerned about dampness that night, or about any other lack of Treffy. In three minutes it would be midnight. They were ready, prepared for the upcoming ritual. Each had a preassigned position, each was to be standing facing the long table.

Rites and rituals, that was what the Ram demanded. Nothing was spontaneous. All actions were governed by rules, rules that the Ram had made and continued to make or change or modify when it suited him.

All eight men were dressed in black satin robes, their heads encased in black satin hoods. There were slits for their eyes and holes for their nostrils. There were no mouth openings. The satin was thin enough so that their speech was easy and not slurred. Their moans were perhaps muffled a bit, and that was as the Ram wished it.

The Ram had a book, a thin blood-red-vellum-covered book that only he could read. It was his guide, he would say. No one questioned the Ram anymore.

All enjoyed the wickedness of anonymity.

All were enjoying the spectacle of the
fifteen-year-old girl who was lying on the scarred old oak table, her hands and feet pulled away and bound easily but securely with soft leather cords. She was clothed only in a long black velvet gown, her feet bare and clean, thank the powers.

She wasn't particularly toothsome, one of the men had remarked, but the Ram had only shrugged and said, “Her body more than compensates for the plainness of her face. You will see. She is also a virgin, as the rules state she must be.”

What the Ram didn't say was that he had duly paid the girl's father ten pounds for her virginity.

And so they were waiting. The Ram had said that midnight was the hour she was to be broken in. They'd drawn lots from the pottery bowl, an ancient piece the Ram said had come from a ship of the Spanish Armada, blown to bits by Queen Bess's sailors, and wrecked off the shores of Cornwall.

The Ram very calmly walked to the table, bent down, and kissed the girl full on the mouth. She whimpered, but no more. She'd been fed enough drug to do nothing more. Slowly the Ram walked to the end of the table. He freed her ankles, and slowly, as if to a strange cadence, he pushed her legs up, bending her knees until her feet were flat on the table. He told her to keep her legs open.

He looked at one of the men, the one who had drawn the first lot, and nodded. Johnny Tregonnet was ready, more than ready, he was eager, and he was rough as he drew up the girl's gown, baring her to the waist.

The Ram had once stated, “A woman's uses are below her waist. Her breasts are nothing but a distraction.”

No one knew if he had taken this from the red-vellum guidebook or from his own capricious nature.
No one really cared, though a sight of really full breasts would have titillated some.

She bled as she was supposed to. Not copiously, for she was a peasant girl. The Ram remarked that peasant girls were like the stolid, gritty animals they tended. He then motioned for two of them to hold her legs wide, for she was growing tired.

She was deeply asleep from the drug when the eighth finished. It didn't matter, said the Ram easily. It was better that a woman remain silent. It was a blessing.

The men were relaxed and drinking steadily now. This part of the ritual was a bit of an annoyance. To drink their brandy, they had to turn their faces away, lift their hoods, drink, then lower the hoods back into place before turning back to face the others. Each turned to look at the girl upon occasion. She lay in the shadowy light from the fireplace, now lightly snoring from the surfeit of drug the Ram had fed her.

The Ram sat a bit apart. He drank sparingly. He'd given them this girl to keep them in line. None of them, he mused many times, had the depth of spirit to truly become part of the rituals that nurtured a man's soul. They were allowed to plow a girl only when he deemed it proper, and at no other time. He'd quoted from the book on that point: “The man's sex is to prove to the female that he is the dominant, the master, the superior of the species.”

The Ram told them further that such proof wasn't all that necessary in terms of repetition, for women knew themselves mastered, knew themselves the inferior, knew themselves the weaker.

Several of the men doubted that sincerely. Particularly the two who were married. The Ram, as if sensing their recalcitrance on this point, said strongly that the drug didn't diminish the female's knowledge that
she was mastered, it merely kept her from voicing her beliefs too loudly, which would be an irritant.

No one knew that the girl's father was ten pounds richer from this night. That was the Ram's private counsel. It would have lessened their sense of wickedness if they'd known.

Vincent Landower wondered aloud if the girl could be pregnant. He looked at her as he spoke. She was still snoring, her legs splayed, the velvet bunched below her breasts. He thought a pregnant woman as appetizing as a gutted trout. And he voiced aloud his revulsion.

The others laughed, but the Ram didn't. He said it would be interesting, his voice pensive, if she were. Which one of them would the child resemble?

“Perhaps our leader,” said Johnny, guffawing loudly. “Yes, a Ram. That would shock the neighborhood!”

The Ram ignored that bit of levity and said after a few moments, “We will not meet until the first Thursday of October. At that meeting you will enjoy a surprise. That evening, after the surprise, I will tell you of our plans for All Hallows' Night.”

Paul Keason, who had drawn the fourth position, felt in private moments that any emphasis on satanism, on cults, and on warlocks and covens was bloody nonsense. He didn't want to be a budding satanist or warlock. He wanted to push the limits of what was wicked and unlawful and leave it at that. He suspected that most of the men felt the same way. But to achieve what it was they wished, they had to pretend serious interest in all the Ram's rites and rituals, which were becoming more elaborate and complex as time passed. All Hallow's Night was a night for an innocuous party, that was all. He looked at the Ram, relieved that he couldn't see his expression. Then he recalled the promised surprise.
Another girl, more than likely. Perhaps he would draw the first lot instead of the fourth. He looked over at the Ram, sitting silently, looking as dignified as one could in the ridiculous black hood and long full robe. He wished the Ram hadn't made that particular rule. No one was supposed to know who any of the others were, which was silly. All of the men knew each other, with or without the hoods.