Daughter of Satan Page 4

  ‘Then, sir, my looks belie my feelings. This girl has brought shame on herself and me. On me because she was in my charge; but I lay sick and so she escaped to her wickedness. On herself because the Lord has decided that she shall answer for her sins here below. She thought to escape, but she has learned that sins must be paid for. I have whipped her; she still bleeds from the whipping. And now there is naught to be done but turn her out of doors.’

  ‘What great sin is this?’ asked Richard, stroking the lace of his ruff with tenderness, as though he were more concerned with its set than with the troubles of a serving girl.

  ‘She is with child, sir. The wicked wanton creature! She’s been sneaking out at night to meet her lover, and now it seems he’ll have nothing to do with her. So she is left to bring her shame to me.’

  ‘Who is your lover?’ asked Richard.

  Luce hung her head and would not answer. Mistress Alton’s clenched fist punched the girl’s back.

  ‘Speak, you young hussy, when the master bids you.’

  Luce lifted her dark eyes to his face. ‘I . . . I cannot say, master.’

  ‘Has he bidden you to silence?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  Mistress Alton let out a snort of laughter. ‘She cannot say his name. It seems he came to her at night. It was no fault of hers, she says. I have heard that tale before. They cast their eyes upon the men; they follow when they’re beckoned, and then when they start to grow big, they play the innocent. “I did not know . . . It was forced upon me . . . ’Twas no fault of mine . . .”’

  ‘Leave the girl with me,’ said Richard.

  The woman hesitated, her mouth working, her eyes gleaming.

  ‘Sir . . .’ she began; but he lifted a hand impatiently.

  ‘I pray you leave the girl with me.’

  When he spoke in that tone – gentle yet very firm with a faintly threatening note in his voice – no one dared disobey him. So Mistress Alton went reluctantly out.

  ‘Now, Luce,’ he said, when she had gone, ‘come here. Sit down and tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t tell you, sir, for I don’t rightly know.’

  ‘Now, please,’ he insisted, ‘that is nonsense. I am afraid you will make me angry if you persist in this silliness. Who is the man? Come along. You must know. Tell me his name at once.’

  ‘I . . . I dare not.’

  ‘You dare not tell me! Now was it Ned Swann?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Luce, listen to me; tell me everything and, who knows, I may decide to help you. Do you think this man would consider marrying you?’

  ‘Oh no . . . no!’

  ‘He is far above you in station? You must tell him then, and I doubt not that he will find a husband for you. Why, girl, it is not the first time this has happened. Dry your tears, I dare swear a man will be found to marry you.’

  She looked at him then, shaking her head; and suddenly, tumbling from her lips came the whole story.

  It had happened thus:

  On the first night of Mistress Alton’s sickness, she and Betsy had left their attic and crept out of the house. That day Charlie Hurly had told Betsy that at midnight he was going to witness a very strange sight and he wanted her to accompany him. There were witches in the neighbourhood – many of them – and on certain nights they met to do homage to the Devil, to learn his secrets and to win great powers from him in exchange for their souls.

  Betsy had promised to go. She knew that it was possible on this night, and it was too good an opportunity to miss. But when midnight came she was frightened, and she asked Luce to accompany her. Luce did not want to go at first but, after a good deal of persuasion, she did so.

  After that the story became still more incoherent. It was obvious to Richard that Charlie had lured Betsy out in order to seduce her; it was small wonder that he was annoyed when she arrived at their tryst with her fellow servant.

  Luce then assured him that she had witnessed strange and diabolical things that night, but nothing more strange and more diabolical than the thing which had happened to her.

  Charlie had taken them to a clearing in the woods, and they had hidden behind trees and watched. Luce had seen wild figures dancing round a fire; she was sure they were not entirely human beings; some had the heads of animals, and they danced, taking partners and making gestures as though they were . . .

  She faltered, but he helped her. ‘As though they were inviting each other to fornication?’ he said.

  She hung her head. ‘Please, sir, I can say no more. Turn me out . . . Let me starve . . . Let me beg . . . But don’t ask me to tell you more, for I cannot tell it.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘you will tell me, for I insist.’

  ‘I should not have left the attic, sir. I knew that was wrong. I knew that was wicked. I shouldn’t have watched.’ She began to sob. ‘Then it wouldn’t have happened to me.’

  ‘Go on,’ he commanded.

  And she told him how suddenly she had found that Betsy and Charlie were no longer beside her; she was alone there among the trees, and before her eyes was taking place that weird scene in the clearing. But she was aware suddenly that she was not alone . . . for close to her was a figure, a figure clad in black from head to foot. She could not see his face, or indeed whether he had a face, as men had faces. She knew there were eyes that watched her; there were horns . . . Yes, she saw the horns.

  ‘And, sir,’ she said, ‘I was took with trembling, for I did know . . .’

  ‘What did you know, Luce?’

  ‘I knew, sir, that I was in the presence of the Devil himself. He came to me . . . and I tried to run, but I was stuck there . . . like I was chained, sir . . . and he came nearer and nearer . . . and I couldn’t cry out . . . nor could I move.’

  His smile was sardonic. ‘And then, Luce?’

  ‘He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.’

  ‘So he had a shoulder, then?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I did feel as though I were thrown over his shoulder. I fainted, sir. I fainted right away. I thought, sir, I was being carried straight to eternal damnation as Mistress Alton is always talking of.’

  ‘And when you came to?’

  ‘I was lying on the grass, sir. There at the edge of the wood where the bushes is thick . . . and I knew, sir, I knew what had happened to me.’

  He laid both his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. ‘Luce, are you seriously trying to tell me that you believe it was the Devil? Come, girl. You know it was a man dressed up as the Devil. You know it. Admit it. I have an idea that you know who the man is.’

  ‘No, sir. I swear I don’t.’

  ‘Do you swear it? Would you swear it on the Holy Bible?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that I would.’

  ‘Luce, you try my patience sorely. It is a trick that has been played on you.’

  ‘I do not think so. For there was another time . . .’

  ‘Another time?’

  ‘He came to me in the dark of night when I lay abed.’

  ‘What, in this house? Why did you not wake Betsy?’

  ‘Mistress Alton was sick. She was so sick that she wanted one of us to stay with her. So . . . Betsy stayed. I was alone that night. And I woke suddenly. It was dark . . . and I knew he was there.’

  ‘Did you faint that time, Luce?’

  ‘No, sir. That time I did not faint. I . . . I was awake all the time . . .’

  ‘And you persist that he was the Devil?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I know he was the Devil.’

  ‘Now, listen to me, Luce. I can understand your believing this incredible thing on the night in the wood, but not . . . oh, certainly not . . . when he came to your room. Think of all the men hereabouts who have looked your way and desired you. You must be aware of them.’

  She shook her head. She was crying silently, the tears spilling over on to her bodice. He looked at her swollen face with distaste and walked away from her
to the window.

  ‘I will give you a word of warning,’ he said. ‘Tell no one else this incredible tale. If you do, I fear there may be trouble for you . . . greater trouble than this bearing of a child whose father you do not know.’

  He turned to look at her standing there so miserable, so abject.

  ‘There are some who would say I should send you back to your parents. Would you like that, Luce?’

  She began to sob aloud.

  He spoke more gently. ‘Don’t make that noise, child. Go now. I shall not send you home if you do not wish to go. Instead, I will do my best to find a man willing to father your child. Come. You have been foolish – for you know you were wrong to leave the house when Mistress Alton forbade you to leave it – and this is the result of your folly. Try to remember that what has happened to you has happened to others before you. Go now. I promise to help you.’

  He watched her stumble from the room, and he thought how different she was from that graceful girl whom he had seen outside the church on Whit Sunday morning.

  That was the story of Tamar’s conception.

  Richard was as good as his word. He chose Ned Swann as a likely husband for Luce, but Ned was reluctant to take her. He had heard whispers as to the paternity of the child that made the marriage necessary.

  The Lackwells were not so particular. Bill Lackwell had often cast a lustful eye on the girl, and as Richard offered a small sum of money to go with her, Bill decided it was not a bad match.

  So Bill married Luce and almost a year after Luce had watched Sir Francis Drake leave the church with Lord Howard of Effingham, her baby was born.

  Tamar was a dark-eyed girl with the marks of beauty on her even in her earliest days. She was a bonny child, and some said that she was actually Bill Lackwell’s daughter; but there were many who did not wish to rid themselves of the belief that she was the child of Satan.

  TWO

  TAMAR, BEING MORE than ordinarily intelligent, quickly became aware of the difference between herself and other children, for, by the time she was five years old, Luce had three more to litter the one room of the Lackwell cottage. Tamar looked on gravely at the scenes which took place before her young eyes. She had seen the birth of one brother and the death of another. She had sat solemnly in her corner watching, for no one turned her out, and it was then that she first became aware of that awe – which in time grew to fear – with which she was able to inspire those about her.

  She made a little corner for herself near the fire – when there was one – the cosiest spot away from the window where the cracked oiled paper, which did the service of glass, let in the draughts. She collected coloured stones and made a boundary with them about her corner.

  ‘Nobody ain’t coming inside these stones,’ she said; and she had said it defiantly, expecting Bill Lackwell to kick the stones from one end of the earthen floor to the other, and to pick her up by her rags and lay about her with his calloused hands before he put her outside the door. But he did no such thing; he merely looked away from her, while her mother watched her with terrified eyes.

  Tamar was triumphant. Nobody moved the stones. When the other children came to take them their mother called them away – even their father growled at them; and Tamar kept the cosiest corner in that miserable room to herself.

  Tamar was interested in everything that went on in the cottage and outside it. The other children seemed to think of little beyond whether they would eat or whether they would get one of their father’s cruel beatings; it was true that Tamar did not have to think of the latter, as Bill Lackwell never touched her, no matter what she did, but food was a matter of great importance to her.

  On a stool, from which she rarely moved, sat old Grandmother Lackwell. She could hardly walk now, for when she had been dragged from the cottage to be tested that Whit Sunday night, her leg had been broken; she could only drag it along as she walked, and that with great pain. She would sit brooding – just sitting, her rheumy old eyes half closed, not seeing the cottage or its inhabitants, as though she were not there in that room but miles away.

  Tamar was interested in the old woman; she sensed in her that distinction which had unaccountably been bestowed on herself. The old woman did nothing for her keep, except now and then sell some of the herbs which grew in the patch round the cottage; she would send her customers out with instructions what to pick, and when they had done so, they would bring them into her. Then she would tell them what to do with these plants and what to say while they were doing it. She hardly ever received money, but a few days after these transactions, a gift would be laid at the door – rye bread or an egg or two. Bill Lackwell or Luce took them in and they would all share, no thanks being given to the old woman; but everyone knew that it was due to her that they came.

  But, reasoned Tamar, these gifts came too rarely to buy for the old woman her seat in the overcrowded cottage. Yet she was never spoken to harshly, never asked to move. They were afraid of her, as they were beginning to be of Tamar.

  One day the child sidled up to the old woman.

  ‘Granny,’ she said, ‘tell me about the herbs that grow in our patch.’

  Then one of the skinny hands touched Tamar’s thick black curls.

  ‘Fair and beautiful,’ mumbled the old woman, so that Tamar had to move close to her to hear what she said. ‘You will know what you have to do when the time comes.’

  So Tamar, pondering these words behind her ring of stones, knew that she was a very important person and one day would be more so.

  She lived her own secret life. When it was warm she slept out of doors. She liked that, and was sad when the colder nights came to drive her under the Lackwell thatch.

  Luce was no longer a slim young girl, but a tired woman, weary with constant child-bearing – her body thickened yet scraggy from the state of semi-starvation which was invariably her lot. The hair, which Mistress Alton had said was a gift from Satan, was now long, but it had lost its lustre and fell untidily to her waist. Out of the horror she had experienced during her first months as Bill Lackwell’s wife had grown a dull acceptance of her fate.

  She watched her eldest daughter with apprehension. Tamar was named after the river near which her conception had taken place; for such a child, Luce had felt, should not be named with a name that might belong to any child. She had anxiously awaited that moment when the perfectly formed feet might change to cloven hoofs. They remained perfect human feet. She felt the shapely head for those excrescences from which horns might be expected to grow. There was no sign of these. Tamar might have been anybody’s child, except that from an early age that brightness of eye, that shapely oval face and the perfectly moulded limbs, as well as a quickness of perception, distinguished her from others. The beauty was an accentuation of that which had been Luce’s in the days when she had served under Mistress Alton; but the other qualities did not come from Luce.

  Luce wanted to love this daughter, but it was impossible to overcome her apprehension concerning the child, and Tamar could not help but be aware of this.

  The little girl had been healthy from the day of her birth; she had remained unswaddled, for in Bill Lackwell’s cottage there were no swaddling clothes. This meant that her young limbs were free to kick and feel the fresh air, and certainly to enjoy a modicum of cleanliness which was denied more well-cared-for children.

  And so she grew – knowledgeable, longing to use her bright intelligence, missing little that went on around her. She saw the cruel treatment of her half-brothers and sisters by the bully Lackwell: she saw her mother suffering also from his violence, she saw their reconciliations and she knew what frequently happened under the rags on their bed of straw. She saw her mother change gradually from a shrivelled, bony woman to a big one, and she knew what that meant.

  She was six years old when the difference between herself and others became fully apparent to her.

  Betsy Hurly sometimes came to the cottage. Betsy had done rather well for herself, for she h
ad induced Charlie Hurly to marry her and was now mistress of the Hurly farm. The noisy, full-blooded farmer’s wife still hankered after adventures which varied only in a few details from those which had excited her before her marriage.

  One day she came to the cottage when only Luce and the old woman – with Tamar sitting in her corner surrounded by her stones – were there.

  Betsy brought an air of well-being with her, and in her quick way Tamar was immediately aware of how poor the place was when Betsy sat in it with her coarse worsted garments, which, while not as becoming as those worn by the gentry, looked rich compared with the rags of the other three.

  Tamar, polishing her stones, was aware of everything. Outside the cottage, Annis waited. Annis was Betsy’s eldest daughter – a few months younger than Tamar. Tamar looked at the child through the open door of the cottage, and Annis put out her tongue. But Tamar was more interested in the grown-ups than in the child.

  Betsy was saying: ‘Come on, Luce. You could if you wanted to. You know how to do it. Where’s the good in pretending you don’t? I know too much. Don’t forget you told me about it. ‘Tain’t much I’m asking. I’ll pay thee well for it.’

  Luce kept her eyes down. ‘What is it you want, Betsy?’

  Betsy said in a solemn whisper: ‘Jim Haines. Have you seen him, Luce? Nigh on six feet. What a man! But, my dear life, he don’t see none but that young dairy maid. I do want his affections turned to me.’

  ‘But, Betsy, you shouldn’t want such things.’

  ‘Don’t ’ee talk nonsense. Luce Lackwell. Should I be like you . . . let Bill Lackwell beat you sick and then give you child after child as you can’t afford to feed?’

  ‘’Sh!’ said Luce.

  But Betsy would not be silent. ‘Well, you did have a bit of glory once, didn’t ’ee? I bet that were a bit different from Bill Lackwell, weren’t it?’

  Betsy’s eyes slewed round to Tamar, who seemed to be absorbed in her stones.

  ‘Wasn’t it, Luce? A bit different, eh?’

  ‘Yes, it was then.’