Gallows Pole Page 2

  She peeled herself away from the wall of man at her back yet again and tried to keep her eyes open.

  No, Emmat thought, inhaling a deep draught of the damp night air, it was best to conserve her wits for whatever the executioner planned once he brought the cart to a stop. She had her suspicions, and they were neither unexpected, nor pleasant.

  * * * *

  There was just enough moonlight to distinguish the humble outlines of a house from the surrounding land. They were several miles outside of Buckingham by now, if Emmat’s sense of direction held, and it stood to reason, as well. Decent people refused to suffer hangmen to live amongst them, appointed by the law though they may be. Carrying out capital punishments was ghastly, unclean work, and they preferred its standard-bearers reasonably out of sight.

  The single-storey building loomed off to her right by the time the hangman reined the mare to a halt and dismounted. Emmat yawned and blinked wide eyes into the night, still in the saddle while the man moved to detach the horse from the cart. That accomplished, he led the beast around to what was probably a lean-to, as much of it as she could see in the darkness, before bothering to summon her down with a proffered hand.

  She ignored the gesture and pivoted out of the saddle on her own, determined to maintain that everything that had happened that day, from the time she set out on a stolen horse with a forged letter, had been her choice, and hers alone.

  No sooner than both her feet were flat on the ground then the most pressing of her poor choices had a grip like an iron fetter around her upper arm. The man seemed to like words about as much as bribes, which was to say hardly at all. There was no gruff ‘Go’ or ‘Move along’ to prod her: he stepped and she came with him, her heartbeat accelerating as he marched them towards the house.

  You can do this, Emmat.

  But what if she couldn’t? She didn’t know this man. He could be anything. Do anything.

  The angular recess of a doorway darkened a portion of the façade as they approached. A latch shrieked a metallic warning and hinges whined as the hangman thrust her ahead of him into a space blacker than the surrounding night.

  If there were windows, they remained shuttered. If there was a lamp, he didn’t bother to light it. When the door thudded closed behind them, Emmat knew darkness.

  The room was both confining and cavernous at once in the black. She stood still as a post, arms clutched in to her sides, afraid to take a step lest she trip over some chair or table leg she couldn’t see. A rustle of fabric behind her and something soft landed on the floor. Her eyes were wide, darting, but to no effect.

  The mass of a body brushed past her right arm and then shifted around in front of her, close so she felt the heat. Her hands drew up in a protective knot at her chest. A heavy male thigh stepped forward, making Emmat step back to avoid its intrusion into her space. The opposite leg followed and she moved again. Then the first leg again, but this time when she retreated in their unlikely dance the backs of her knees met something solid.

  Blunt fingertips landed in the centre of her chest and pushed, hard. Emmat toppled, knees bucking, and fell back with a whump. It was a bed. And now another person was joining her in it.

  You knew this was coming.

  The bulk of a bent knee pressed into the thin mattress near her left calf. She scrabbled backwards, but the other knee followed forward, pinning part of her skirts to the bed near her hip.

  A brief, wordless struggle ensued in which the weight of a man straddled her upper thighs while her feet kicked and her hands fluttered around like blind moths, battering ineffectually at an adversary she couldn’t see.

  He caught one of her wrists, and then both, fixing them as a pair above her head while Emmat growled defiance. Just because she knew it was coming, didn’t mean she had to like it.

  She refused to cease jerking and twisting in his grip, redoubling her efforts when the free hand began yanking her skirts out from between their bodies.

  He is going to have it. He is. But he can bloody well take it, because I am not going to give.

  The second she was bare, his hand was on her, fingers reckless, seeking. Emmat gasped and bucked. One of the knees shifted from outside her thighs to inside. Then its partner, nudging her open, spreading her to the darkness. To the hangman.

  Oh god.

  There was no preamble. Hand gave way to hot, hard inevitability, rooting for entry. The man had made his bargain, and now he was going to collect.

  You for him. I’ll only ask once.

  The echo of his words broke the spell and now Emmat wanted to ask. She went limp beneath him and, to her surprise, this stilled him also, though he remained poised for the plunge.

  “Why?”

  It was one word, the first spoken in hours, and it dropped in the blanketing darkness like a stone to the bottom of a well.

  The hangman let her breath be the only sound in the room for long moments before emitting what might have been the single bleak note of a chuckle. When he answered, his voice was wooden wheels rolling over a rocky path, slow and grinding.

  “You imagine a long line of women waiting for a chance to be the hangman’s wife?”

  “Wife!” Emmat thrashed again, jolted out of her lull. “What wife? Was there a ceremony I wasn’t awake for? A chaplain?”

  “You’re right,” he said, as though he hadn’t considered this. “I suppose this’ll count as fornication, then.”

  He was inside her. To the hilt.

  A strange man held her spread; thighs apart, wrists pinioned. His impaling cock nailed her to the bed. He began to move.

  Emmat’s breath became a length of rope, burning in and out of her throat in a long line that tied her tongue and drew her belly up tight.

  The hangman took her. A man who stretched necks and watched the feet dangle and jerk. A man whose face she’d never seen.

  With no particular amount of hurry, he sheathed himself as far as he could go, stretching her around his girth, claiming his part of the bargain. Emmat gasped and he withdrew, only to plough into her again, burrowing deep as though he belonged.

  He found a rhythm and settled in, leisurely at first, but picking up speed. Tight grunts of effort joined the all-too-real, all-too-wet clapping of intimate flesh, every damning sound louder for the black silence surrounding them.

  The lack of light heightened all her senses now, and as she squirmed under thrusting hips, pinioning arms, the potent stink of man made her lip curl.

  “You reek, Jack Ketch. Do you know that?” It was a small revenge, to insult him, but Emmat took it, quills out like a porcupine. “Have you ever taken a bath in your life?”

  “Then hold your breath.”

  He redoubled his efforts, pounding her now, reminding her of just how little her opinion mattered. She heard his breath quicken and felt his cock go harder, still. How had she forgotten this part?

  Oh no, he can’t! He—

  —came into her with a growl, seating his pubic bone against her mound, loosing pulse after pulse of hot seed into her womb.

  Emmat had endured most of the violation in relative silence, but this brought an actual yowl, her head thrown back by the force of her dismay.

  The man on top of her sluiced his spent prick in and out several more times, and she felt the fluid destruction leak out, trickling between her cheeks. Worse, when he collapsed, releasing her hands, his right leg remained between hers so her sopping, raw cunt had no choice but to kiss the muscle of his upper thigh. She could feel his slick erection subsiding as he breathed satisfaction at her ear.

  She lay there, limp, her sex aching with the heartbeat-thrum of use. Her eyes stared in the direction where she might find a ceiling, had any sort of lamp or candlelight broken the shrouding black inside the room. His arm spanned her ribcage like a fallen tree, which was fitting, as Emmat wandered lost in a forest of dread.

  The hangman. I’ve been ruined by the goddamned hangman.

  Was it her first time? No. Of course not. O
ne didn’t travel the circles Emmat had for any length of time and continue to lead a virtuous life. But bedding an executioner was another matter altogether.

  Whether he’d taken her or she’d given herself—a matter debateable in light of her agreement to, ahem, ‘fall on the sword’ for her brother—was entirely irrelevant. Men who worked at such a morbid trade made their homes outside the populations they served for a reason: no one wanted the stink of death hovering on the air. Even the poor bastards recruited to help build gallows needed to be cleansed and blessed by the priests before they returned to their families. Hangmen were almost as undesirable as the criminals they sent to the grave and everyone who came in contact with them carried their taint.

  And now Emmat lay, skirts still bunched at her hips, the damning token of their bargain still seeping out of her. Now it was not merely a matter of when and if she might escape, but how well she could keep the truth hidden if she did.

  In the stillness of her unease, Emmat felt time stretching, interminable. She remained paralysed, sunk into the prickly mattress for so long the mean odour of sweat and sex from the hangman vanished. Her nose must have judged it too much work to bother, and decided to give over. Then, like a beast calling out in a distant wood, came the snoring.

  The sound made her heartbeat quicken again, and thoughts that had been winding down began to twist back up, whirling tighter and faster in the dark.

  Peter was alive, wasn’t he? Emmat had done what she’d set out to do. Ketch had secured a night’s relief from it yes, but he would forget her in a week. Never mind that horrible business about ‘wives’. Drifting frets hardened into resolve. As far as she was concerned, this bargain stood fulfilled.

  It was her ankle that turned first. The foot rotated to the side, slow as dripping sap, and the leather of the boot she’d never shed slid under a male shin. Her lips thinned tighter than a mussel shell with effort and prayer until the entire, nerve-wracking extraction of her right leg was complete. The quiet, regular rasp of snores never faltered.

  Now her left leg reached for the floor, bent at the knee, straining like a vine seeking anchor. When her boot sole made contact and Emmat had some way to brace herself, she began the painstaking slide out from under the sprawling arm.

  Snakes shedding their skin did so with less care and deliberation. Her brow grew damp as she pulled herself, inch by anxious inch towards the edge of the bed. When her outer shoulder was free, and she could get her fingertips down to meet the wood of the floor, Emmat used the new point of balance to draw her body further, freer, still.

  The hangman snorted. Took a deep breath—the kind that would be accompanied by a yawn or a stretch.

  Emmat froze. Her muscles sang in hot protest at the weird, crab-like stance she held, two limbs touching the floor, one leg free on the bed, the other still partially buried. She wanted to squeal and stamp. She could not hold on like this—she couldn’t!

  Please, oh please oh please …

  Another loud snore. An opening flourish, and then the rasping song of the hangman’s sleep continued.

  Oh, dear god.

  Smooth as an oiled newt, she had the last of her right arm free. Emmat rolled from the bed and crouched on her hands and knees for a moment of silent, exhausted relief on the floor.

  Don’t mess about, woman. Get out of here.

  Shaking knees pushed her up and she grimaced as her skirts fell back into place. There would be no undoing what was done. The consequences, however, she could worry about somewhere else. Somewhere far from here.

  Emmat did her best to remember the direction from which he’d thrust her into the room and rolled the soft leather of her boots from heel to toe back towards the place she imagined the door to be. Her fingertips found a wall, trailed sideways, sideways…and met the doorframe, the latch.

  She remembered the metallic squeal it had made on their way in and ground her teeth, shook her head. Perhaps if she spat on it, the thing would turn—

  “Death is forever, you know.”

  Sudden wide eyes didn’t make the room any brighter. They hadn’t since the beginning. Her heart did its damndest to dash itself to death on the cage of her ribs.

  A fleeting hope for the ramblings of a man asleep was just that: fleeting. The voice had come clear and alert, yet casual. Almost conversational, as if what Emmat was doing at the door was incidental.

  She dropped her hand. Exhaled.

  “Are you planning to murder me, as well, then?”

  Even quiet, her words rippled out into the room.

  “You traded yourself for your brother’s death,” he said. “You expected one night would be a fair exchange for an eternity?”

  It was as if a fist had landed in her gut.

  So he doesn’t intend to forget in a few days.

  Emmat stood there like a fool, absorbing the darkness, the disaster.

  But her hand went back to the latch. Right. Perhaps a mad chase through the countryside would make a fitting end to her stupidity.

  “You can run if you like, Red Bird.”

  Fists came in pairs, oh yes they did. The second one landed, winding her.

  He knows. He knows who I am.

  “As of this morning,” he went on, “your brother’s a dead man. At least as far as the sheriff knows. No one will be looking for him.”

  Emmat swallowed, her eyes hot, prickling.

  “Unless I tell them.”

  The corners of her mouth threatened to turn. There was too much saliva in her mouth, too much heat at the tip of her nose, her cheeks. The man was relentless.

  “And you’ll be a pretty prize for the law as well. Won’t you?”

  Yes. Yes, she would.

  How had he even known they were siblings? It must have been the hair. It was always the hair. The man had probably put that together with her brother’s last name and matched the pieces back on the hill.

  He let her stand in it for a while, the door right there, latch in hand as she turned over all the implications. Leave and damn them both, her parents to mourn two instead of one. Stay and damn herself.

  I hate you. I bloody hate you, do you hear?

  Who it was, exactly, she hated, remained unclear.

  “Come back to bed.”

  Her chin tightened, wavering.

  She turned from the door, stepped towards the dark call of unfortunate choices.

  Damned, then. That’s what I’ll be.

  Part 2

  Save Me From the Wrath of This Man

  The cawing of a crow was the first sound Emmat heard that she was sure hadn’t come from inside a dream. Her eyes blinked open with no little struggle, swollen as the lids were from useless tears and rough sleep.

  The hangman’s house.

  The same wretched mattress from the previous night made a weak attempt to pad her bones. A thin wool blanket, whose texture she recognized from having endured a strange man’s lust atop it some hours ago, covered her now, from shoulder to feet.

  She fought the urge to stretch and lost, pointing her toes and rolling her ankles. Her boots were off.

  Something about this detail snapped her to full wakefulness. Emmat inhaled through her nose, her head whipping to look behind her on the bed.

  He was gone.

  She sat up in a rush, dangling her feet, blinking around the room. Now she could see, at least more than last night. Now it was just the subdued darkness of a well-shuttered room in the daytime: plenty of light leaking in between wooden louvers and doorframe to show her the disposition of her current prison.

  His entire dwelling appeared to consist of the one room. It housed the bed where she sat, a small, wooden table paired with a single chair, a number of mismatched chests lining the far wall, what looked like a wardrobe and a battered sideboard—each made level by chocks of wood wedged under a leg—a small fireplace, a bank of three shelves for cooking and eating necessities…and Emmat.

  She had neither drawn the blanket up over herself, nor removed he
r own boots. Not unless she’d done so while completely asleep.

  Why, then? Why had he done these things? The muted daylight available to her now should have helped Emmat make more sense of the tangle she was in, not less.

  But, no. The inside of the house looked normal enough for a man living on his own. When a person wakes in the abode of a blackguard executioner, they tended to expect something far less banal.

  Her normal urge to rifle through all the drawers and cupboards to see if she could find anything of value tickled at her, but she brushed it away as pointless. Where would the Red Bird go, after all?

  If a body relieves enough travellers of their purses—enough lone riders, enough carriages, enough drunken inn guests—and manages not to find themselves dangling in the sheriff’s picture frame for a year or three, they can expect a reputation to spread.

  Emmat had seen more than one crude image of herself tacked up in a public square, offering rewards for the capture of one “Lady Red Bird”, notorious highwayman. Or woman, as it were. The drawings never looked anything like her, but either way, this hangman had the measure of things.

  Even if she ran and succeeded in getting far enough away without a horse—while being pursued by men who no doubt would have horses—to evade capture, what about Peter? Was he bright enough to have gone into hiding? Fled the country altogether? Emmat thought not.

  Though now, without her dirty coin flowing into the house, her parents would come to know more problems than just her brother’s absence.

  Either path ran to no good end, but the one where she bolted and the law gave chase came down as the more terrible of the two evils. If she suffered herself to remain, at least Peter would have a chance. Despite her lack of regard for the little pillock, he was still her brother.

  She found her boots on the floor near the foot of the bed. Somehow, doing up their laces and standing upright on the ground cinched the matter into place. Emmat would stay and do battle with Jack Ketch.

  Her eyes went to the door at this thought. Just because she’d chosen not to run didn’t mean she had to spend the entire day cowering inside. The man might return in hours, or perhaps not for days.