Page 13 of Burying Venus

‘A bit quicker, perhaps, Dermot?’ Robert called.

Stifling his curses, Dermot pushed the boy harder. No doubt his countryman thought him every bit a panting, simpering dog. And with each stair being so narrow, he had no time to stop, else he would surely falter. All he could do was hurry the boy onward with a few well-placed pushes; a thoroughly rough handling that did not please him.

As soon as his feet hit the floor, he thanked both the foreigner’s god and his own people’s, and turned to the left.

‘Wrong way, my boy,’ Robert said. ‘Why would you think to go anywhere yourself? Your friend knows to wait for my orders.’

Dermot made his way back to Robert’s shadowy figure, following the pair as best he could. It was then he observed them, realising their closeness with a start. Will did not pull away when Robert’s hand massaged his shoulder, nor as he trailed his arm and gave his wrist a sharp squeeze. Dermot could not understand this, incredulous Will submitted to the bastard’s groping.

The boy dragged his heels, which was no great surprise given indefinite imprisonment awaited. Dermot pushed him along as best he could, trail dimly lit and lined with doors concealing the grumbling wretches within, before Robert finally deigned open the door to an unoccupied cell and signalled for Will to follow. Surely if Dermot had been his companion he’d have been made to unlock it, prisoner or no. That alone made his stomach drop, for man’s constant ambition was to put his cock into someone sufficiently pleasing to the eye. Will was fair in his own right, handsome and of a good height with blond, luxuriant curls despite their poor conditions. Dermot himself hoped once. It was no wonder Robert, whose seed was so precious that spilling inside a woman might result in difficulties, took a man or two to bed. But not Will; his friend wasn’t a whore to be abused and tossed aside.

‘Dermot, with us at last,’ Robert said.

The woman was already chained to the wall, her sad arms shaking with the force of keeping herself upright, chest heaving with exertion.

‘Now the nephew,’ Robert said. ‘Dermot, you do the cuffs.’

Exhausted and eager to be free of the boy, Dermot pushed him to the wall, flinching when he cried out. He unwound his hands and clasped them tight in his own before hearing the great clunk that signalled the successful confinement of their captive.

‘There are a few ways you can tell a witch, you know. I have done some reading on this matter. While it is true we will have to call a man from the mainland, let me demonstrate,’ Robert said, walking to the boy as eager as Dermot had ever seen him. ‘I do wish he were a little older. And prettier. If he were a bit more like Aubrey, I dare say Dermot would be more interested.’

Thoroughly shamed, Dermot turned and glimpsed Will’s knowing glare, firmly directed towards him rather than Robert.

‘For God’s sake, just for my little shack! I’ve been living there for near six years, why do you torture my nephew?’ the woman cried.

Robert’s smile cowed Dermot into stepping back, rough exhales sounding as Robert laughed in amusement and tore at the boy’s shirt. He didn’t bother with the buttons, only ripped at the fabric until it was nearly ruined, falling in tatters beside his pristine boots.

‘I’ve hardly touched him,’ Robert said. His hands carelessly traipsed about the boy’s chest, finally coming to rest on a mole beneath his well-defined collar bone. ‘You see, madam, my goal was neither to torture nor molest him. It was simply to reveal what I knew to be there. The mark of a witch, that scorched spot burnt upon the skin.’

The mere idea that a mole would prompt such outrage was enough to jolt Dermot awake. This was his doing, after all.Without Maldred’s interference, Robert would be safely in his quarters writing treatises rather than taking on the task himself.

The woman appeared too astounded to speak. From her open mouth and sallow complexion, one might think she, rather than her nephew, was enduring the torture. ‘Knew it to be there, my arse. You took us for living off the land our ancestors bore us into!’

A sharp crack resounded, startling the prisoners from their soft, plaintive murmurs. Robert slapped the boy across the face, making him cry out, his head drooping uselessly under the force of a man who’d never gone without a meal.

‘No, my God!’ the woman screeched.

‘And which god do you pray to, madam? The one my fellows brought or your own pagan idols? And I thought we did away with vipers,’ Robert said. ‘No man born into a country has right to land. The man who owns it, in this case my father, holds it without question. And I can assure you, it is the same in the mainland. It is ours to rent as we so please, and the people who work on it, the peasants, must pay their due.’

‘Nothing but lies! The land was empty before I came and made it my home, growing vegetables and suchlike. I enquired if a farmer owned it, but the land belonged to no one, and all was rotten and sparse!’ she protested. ‘You lay off my nephew. Hurt me if you must, but don’t touch him.’

‘Indeed?’ Robert said, turning to the woman and acknowledging her for the first time. ‘I have heard of your kind settling wherever you please, farming the land as though it were your right, with no regard for the fact that my family were appointed by the king and rule nearby. It is insolence, a refusal to heed the laws of God and man, that has undone you. The island is ours, mine and my father’s, not yours.’

‘What on earth is going on?’ a voice groused from the hallway, strolling into the cell as if for another helping of dessert. ‘Robert, who are these people? They look to be servants?’

Peering at Lord Stanley, Dermot realised the fop referred to himself and Will rather than the prisoners themselves.

‘Yes, they are. They assisted me in the capture of this boy and woman, peasants who I believe to be witches,’ Robert said.

This said with such brusqueness made Lord Stanley startle, faltering until he was again at the cell’s threshold. ‘Witches?’ he echoed.

‘Yes. Like the tales we have heard from the mainland. This woman, you see, was living off our property not far from town. I dare say, I couldn’t believe it, but she confessed as much to me. I suspect using the land as a sort of refuge for her coven, which includes her own nephew,’ Robert said.

Lord Stanley stood dumbly, eyes flitting about the room, never quite focusing on any one person. ‘A boy witch, indeed?’ he murmured.

‘You would be surprised, father,’ Robert said, smiling off to the side where Will stood. ‘Some boys are masters of all kinds of enticements.’

Lord Stanley, thankfully, did not seem to understand. ‘Indeed?’ he said again. ‘A serious matter, to be sure.’