Devil's Mistress Read online

  “If I’ve been receiving my gossip right, even our governor—who cares not to take a firm stand—is willing to assist ‘departures,’ shall we say? In certain cases.”

  “Those of his friends, Rikky. Powell is not among the elite of this society. He’s a poor farmer, nothing more. This will be done on our own. Two men guard the rooms and Brianna has been free to come and go. She will leave; then I’ll take on the guards and smuggle Powell out to the waiting ship.”

  “I’ll pick up Brianna,” Rikky offered.

  “No, you will not. Because you intend to stay here. I will not be able to come anywhere near Massachusetts once this is accomplished—at least, not until this madness dies out.”

  “Oh, come! I’m a lord of the realm!” Rikky declared.

  “Still, I’d not have you involved.”

  Rikky waved a hand in the air. “None would dare accuse me.”

  Sloan was about to protest, then decided the matter could be settled later. “We will see.”

  “I think, though, Treveryan, that you should see Powell yourself,” Rikky said slowly. “He has great faith in you.”

  Sloan scowled darkly. “I’ve no wish to meet with his wife again, except when I must.”

  “I’ll get her out tomorrow morning. Then you can speak with Powell without any confrontations.”

  Sloan agreed to the plan. Rikky picked up Brianna in his splendid coach to take her shopping along the wharf. He convinced her that she needed an outing. Sloan waited until he saw the coach disappear, then received permission from the guards to see Robert.

  Robert was sleeping when Sloan entered the room, and for a chill moment Sloan started. His cheeks were so gaunt and narrowed that for several seconds Sloan believed he was staring at a corpse. But then Powell opened his eyes, and there was still fierce life in their dark depths.

  “Treveryan,” Robert muttered. A small smile touched his dry lips. “Is this why my wife has departed?”

  “Aye,” Sloan said bluntly.

  Robert’s smile deepened sardonically. “When I am gone, Treveryan, see that she finds happiness. She suffers with me and pines for you. When I am gone, I will thank God that she has you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sloan demanded harshly. “I’ve come here to talk about saving your life. By God, man! You were not meant to be a martyr!”

  Robert closed his eyes for a moment, still smiling, a little bitterly. “Whether they hang me, or the Lord takes me on his own, we both know that I am dying.”

  Sloan emitted a sound of impatience, and Robert opened his eyes to survey him. “Treveryan, my wife prefers to be blind. I grant her that illusion. I am dying. I saw your face before you knew I was awake; you looked like a man staring upon the ragged refuse of a soul departed. We both know that I am dying. My great fear is that I will not do so soon enough to see Brianna swept from this turmoil.”

  “I promised you,” Sloan said hoarsely, “nothing will happen to her. And I’ve come to tell you that the time has come. We will make good our escape.”

  Robert sighed, staring up at the ceiling. “When?”

  “August nineteenth.”

  “The day of the hangings.”

  “Aye.”

  Robert seemed to digest that information. “She won’t do it—she’ll be convinced that a move would kill me. Don’t tell her anything. When the time comes, just see that she obeys.” He tried to pull himself up to a sitting position. “You’ll do that for me, Treveryan? For by heaven, I’ve no strength to fight her.”

  “Aye,” Sloan said softly, “I’ll do it.”

  Powell surveyed him with his curious dark eyes.

  “She’ll hate you for it.”

  Sloan did not reply to that. “Stop concentrating on death, Powell. The sea air can do many a wonder for a man.”

  “As you say, Treveryan,” Robert replied, smiling ruefully. “I’ll not break faith with you, if you will not with me.”

  “I will not, Powell.”

  “One more thing, Treveryan.”

  “And that is?”

  Powell winced, drawing a deep ragged breath. “When I am gone, take your son. Give him what is his. I gave him all that I could, and that was much love. But when I am gone you must take him, with or without his mother’s consent.”

  A trembling had started inside Sloan’s gut, and again he wondered fiercely why Robert Powell couldn’t have been a cruel bastard, a man to fight or despise.

  “You promised not to harp on death!” Sloan said harshly.

  “I am not harping, but I am saying now what I will not be able to later. Now, I am done with it. I give you my most solemn vow that I will do my utmost to live.”

  Sloan left him then—pleased that at last they were coming near to action. The Sea Hawk lay in the harbor, waiting and ready. Sloan had no doubt that he would overpower the guards with no difficulty, leaving them trussed up, and departing with Powell. A nightmare was coming to an end.

  All that was left was the wait for the day to arrive. As he always had, Sloan came to the sea to wait; he spent his twilights on the wharf, staring out at his ship, thinking on a dismal future. Because Powell was not lying; he was a dying man. Sloan knew the face of death—he had seen it in Alwyn.

  And what then? Brianna would be heavily laden with guilt—he knew her so well. She would blame herself, and she would blame him. He stood with his feet planted far apart, his hands on his hips, and his fingers tightened convulsively as he muttered angrily to the breeze, “Damn her! This time, I do damn her.” Well, she could rot in whatever hell she chose to make for herself. He was done with it.

  But then, there was Michael. His son. Robert Powell had given Sloan his blessing to take the child and to give him his natural inheritance. And, by God, he would! Perhaps Brianna could deny and repel him, but the child was his, and he would take him, with or without his mother’s consent, just as Robert Powell had charged him.

  Sloan counted off the days, and on the eighteenth he awoke with a feeling of lightheartedness. He felt like a man in his thirties again, in his prime—rather than like a man worn beyond his years. One more day. Tomorrow night, he would be at sea again, facing the wind, feeling the wheel beneath his hands. And, by God, he would cure himself of this! He would live again. He would leave Powell and Brianna in New York—with the child, as long as Robert lived. He would not have to be a part of Robert’s death, and when the time came, he would come for his son.

  In the meantime, dammit, he would live! Without war, without continual pain—without insanity such as this!

  Perhaps he would go to London—make a new peace with William and Mary, which would be necessary if he were accused of abetting the escape of a witch. Court life would be colorful and filled with women in whom to bury himself, and forget her.

  Storm clouds were brewing to the east, but the morning, remained bright. He wondered idly where his host had gotten to, since Lord Turnberry was not by nature an early riser. He was staring toward the water, sipping at scalding tea, when he started, hearing the sharp slam of the door at the rear of the house. Rikky came striding toward him; his handsome features were drawn and he was alive with tension.

  Sloan was quickly on his feet, eyes narrowed as he watched his friend’s approach. “What is it?” he demanded. He felt the invasion of a dread that tensed his muscles, tore at his gut, made a mist of the day around him.

  “I’ve just come from the home of some of Stoughton’s kin. There’s to be an examination at Corwin’s house, Salem, at ten this morning.” He drew a deep, shaky breath. “They’ve pulled in Brianna.”

  Chapter Twenty

  There was something very frightening about the way they came for her. It was not like Scotland, where she could hope to run and fight, nor was it like England, where she’d been condemned before she was caught.

  It was all very quiet, and very polite. The constables were just at the door, and then they were handing her the warrant—and insisting that she come with them immediately fo
r her examination.

  She handed back the warrant. “This is absurd, and I can’t possibly leave my husband. He is very ill.”

  Her show of cool outrage didn’t make any difference. She was told that a woman would be sent to stay with Robert, and she might have a minute to take her leave of her husband, if she so chose.

  Brianna closed her eyes tightly, then entered the bedchamber with a heavy, heavy heart. She was not so frightened as she was worried. Forcing a smile, she tried to show him a face of complete bravado. “It seems, my husband, that it is my turn to stand before these fools!”

  His eyes closed. “No!” he gasped. His pallor terrified her, and she sank to the bed at his side, holding his cheeks between her hands. “Robert! Have faith in me—I am not afraid of them. Believe me when I say that I’ve met the devil in the flesh already in Matthews; these men at least take time to question, misguided as they may be. Oh, trust me, Robert, it will be well!” She paused, gathering strength and will. She’d never spoken about Sloan to him; now she had to. “Robert, no matter what happens, whether they condemn me a thousand times over, I will be all right. Treveryan will spirit us away. And I am not on trial yet—I must go up for examination first.”

  He opened his eyes, and his fingers came, trembling, to her cheeks. He touched her softly, as if to memorize the contours of her face and the feel of her flesh. She cried out and leaned against his chest, holding him tenderly.

  “Goodwife Powell!”

  The constables were pounding on the door. Her time was up. Robert threaded his fingers through her hair. “No fear, my love, know no fear.”

  She tried very hard to smile at him. “I am not afraid, Robert, except that they are taking me away from you. But it will not be long; it cannot be long.”

  “No,” he said. “It will not be long.”

  She hurried to the door, then smiled back at him. “I love you, Robert,” she told him, and then she rushed out, before her courage could fail her.

  When the constables reached for her arms, she wrenched herself away. “You needn’t escort me. I see no girls yet whom I might afflict with my gaze or touch. And I am perfectly capable of walking on my own.”

  When she was taken to the home of one of the magistrates for her examination, she almost lost control. Some of the ministers were debating furiously against the use of “witch’s teats” for evidence, but prisoners were still being searched for such things on the body. And though her clothing was not cruelly stripped from her as it had been in England, she was taken to a private room by several goodwives and told that she must disrobe or have the matter removed from her hands. Seeing that a protest would serve her only further humiliation, she shed her things and stood in silent lockjawed fury and misery while she was poked and prodded and felt with disgusting intimacy. Nothing so cruel as the prick was used here, nor did it seem necessary. She had a small mole on her shoulder, and the goodwives were solemn as they surveyed it.

  “We will look again later,” one of the matrons promised her, meaning to be kind. “Perhaps it will be gone.”

  “No! It will not be gone!” she assured them. “It has been there since I was a child, and therefore, if I am a witch, I’ve been one for years!”

  She had good reason to regret her outburst later. From the private room she went before the magistrates. She was ordered not to look away, and so she could not see the group of girls and young women who screamed and cried as if they were poked by knives—but she heard them. Her arms were held now by the constables, and she was not allowed to shake them off. All she could do was stare straight ahead.

  “Who afflicts you?” the magistrate demanded of the girls.

  “Goody Powell! Oh, she strangles me! Where she touched me in the flesh, she strangles me now! Help me, dear Lord, I cannot breathe!”

  “Oh, I see her! There she sits upon the structure beam; it is an incubus of Satan that she suckles, a creature like a wolf!”

  A cacophony of voices rose, high and shrill and so profuse that order was lost for several minutes.

  “Why do you afflict these girls?” the magistrate demanded of her.

  “I do not!”

  “Then who does?”

  “Their own sickness!”

  “You merciless witch! Appease their pains!”

  She was dragged to the girls and forced to touch them. They quieted, and the matrons were brought forward. The kindly women stated that she was perfect in flesh and form, except for a mark upon the shoulder. Before the testimony was done, one of the girls started shouting out an oracle again, stating that the devil, too, had found her perfect, and cherished her for his sabbaths.

  “Oh, you will rot in hell for a liar!” Brianna could not help but scream out.

  One of the constables wrenched her arm. She was not behaving very well for a Puritan goodwife standing before the duly chosen law.

  A farmer stepped forward then; a man she was certain she had never seen before. But apparently she had seen him, somewhere, because he knew of her.

  “She were a witch in the old country, sirs. My brother did hear that she was tried and condemned in England.”

  “Goody Powell—is this true?”

  Chills eased their way through her, slowly, seeming to numb her against thought and speech. She could not lie. If she were caught in a lie, nothing else she said would have any bearing.

  “I was condemned—but by a puppet court, and by a man later recognized as mad.”

  The screams started up, and the girls were hushed. Someone came up to say that she had looked at his cows—and that the animals had consequently drowned themselves. She realized then that the man was a villager who had frequently cut his cows through their vegetable garden—and whom she had ordered not do so again.

  “She cursed my cows, she did!”

  “What do you say, Goody Powell?”

  “That if I were a witch, I would take myself from this room.”

  “Not even the devil has power so great,” she was told solemnly.

  This evidence she could fully scorn, but then an elderly woman came to the front and spoke with a soft fervor. “She did ruin her husband, she did. She forced him to wed her when they were at sea—I knew a woman on the same voyage, you see. Goody Ratcliff said that her child was born too early, and that the devil had charged her to find a human father, within God’s chosen fold. Goody Ratcliff, too, had a dream in which she saw this woman come to Husbandman Powell at night, and force him to set his hand to the devil’s book. How else would Robert Powell have come before us if he had not been tempted by the likes of her?”

  Brianna felt ill—maybe she was the cause of all of Robert’s troubles.

  “Goody Powell!” The magistrate addressed her sternly. “Did you bring the devil’s book to your good husband and set him into a life of wizardry?”

  “He is no wizard!” she snapped back.

  And then, curiously, the room went silent. She was not allowed to turn, so she couldn’t see.

  But she knew that the firm strides approaching the magistrates’ bench belonged to Sloan. She could feel his presence, and his air of power seemed to bring lightning to the room.

  “On what evidence do you try this woman?” he demanded.

  “We are not trying her here today, we are examining her.”

  “On what suspicion?”

  The magistrate sighed patiently. Sloan was, after all, Lord Treveryan—famed for his adventures under King William’s command.

  “Witchcraft, my lord, the torture and torment of innocents. She was a known offender once—”

  “Do you charge her for England, then?” Sloan’s voice thundered out. “For I have in my possession papers clearing her, signed by our sovereigns William and Mary themselves!”

  He should have been ordered out of the room; but no one thought to order him. One of the magistrates spoke up.

  “My lord, we do not charge her for England. We charge her for the mischief she causes here.”

  “Then I wo
uld take her into my custody until her trial.”

  “My lord, I cannot allow that to be. She will be remanded to the Salem prison, until such date for trial is set.”

  “Ohhhh!” One of the girls screamed. Brianna took a chance to turn about. It was one of the youngest of the accusers, a girl of about twelve. She was clutching her side and twisting around vehemently. “He strikes out, too, I feel his sword. He is angry, and he moves about the room with his blade flashing!”

  There was silence. No one had, thus far, gone to such extremes to accuse a lord, a known friend of the king.

  In that silence Sloan’s face hardened with the dark fury of a brewing storm. When he spoke, it was with a calm and grating elocution more frightening than the quick barbs of the magistrates.

  “Should I hear my name mentioned—just once—I’ll have a writ sworn out immediately charging two thousand pounds for the defamation of my good character!”

  He looked magnificent standing there, rigid with his fury, green eyes like a rage of fire. He wore a blue velvet frockcoat, fawn breeches, and high black boots. No hat adorned his head and his hair was dark and neatly clubbed. Never had he appeared so much the nobleman, or the knight ready to do battle.

  “Now, then.” He turned back to the magistrates. “When will we see legal procedures here? When will concrete evidence be laid, and those who wish to testify in her behalf be given the chance to speak?”

  The magistrate cleared his throat. “At the trial, my lord.” Brianna believed that if they hadn’t already come this far, the man might well have let her go, convincing the girls that they were “mistaken” about her identity. Powerful names had been mentioned before, without the accused ever being charged. It was one of the reasons that people were beginning to whisper on the street.

  And Brianna was certain it was also a reason she could not be set free now; damning testimony had been given against her. If she did not appear for trial, the common folk would be wondering how it was possible that someone influential—or with an influential friend—could escape the net of the godly men determined to clear Massachusetts of the devil’s clan.