A scream tore from her throat as he pulled her hair again. “Brianna MacCardle, I bring charges that in the forest you did knowledgeably and willingly consort with the devil in the form of various animals. Confess! Save your immortal soul. Cry out now to the Lord, and admit your guilt, and He will find the mercy to allow you to enter His Kingdom.”
She was in shock, barely able to fight a flood of laughter, the charges were so ridiculous.
She spat in his face.
“You cling to the devil still!” Matthews cried, wiping his face with a white handkerchief and rising. He jerked his head at the two matrons. “Go now. With God as my witness I will drive the devil from her that she may enter God’s grace with death!”
Misery hung over Brianna so darkly that she barely noticed the women leave the room. The will to fight was being sapped from her. The room seemed to drift into light, then shadow, and back to light again. It was not the room, she realized, but the way she perceived it.
There was silence, a silence that allowed her to think and feel, and she wished she could do neither. She realized her state of abject humiliation, naked on her knees before this hideous creature, her hair spilling over her shoulders in tangles. She clutched her arms around her like a shield.
She thought of her battles with Sloan—of the many times she had feared him. She knew now that Sloan would never have harmed her, and that even the days of being vulnerable before him had been a time of beauty. But Sloan was a normal man, possessing all the best qualities of character and heart that could create a man. Matthews was not normal. And beyond her pain and fear and terror there was also the misery of feeling unclean, tainted and fouled by his very nearness.
He came to kneel beside her again, threading his fingers through her hair once more, and yanking at it so fiercely that tears sprang to her eyes.
“Confess your sins, girl. Confess to me now. Tell us of your fornication with Satan. Else we’ll leave you here. The shackles can be tightened about your ankles until they bleed. You’ll be bound and cast into the water again.”
“Bind me, cast me—I care not.”
He stood, and walked across the room. Her head was spinning, and she shivered with the severity of the cold that remained from the chilly waters, and from the damp room. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Matthews was before her, holding his lethal pick. “Confess!” he ordered. “Or, by God, I’ll find more of the devil’s marks upon you, until you bleed out your love for Satan.”
Sight of the pick brought her staggering to her feet, clutching the cold stone wall behind her. “No!” she cried, reaching out with her hands only to feel the merciless strike of Matthews’s hand across her cheek again, a blow that sent her sprawling back to the floor.
Torture was illegal by English law! she reminded herself dully, but “pricking” a witch for the devil’s mark was not. Ah, the law! How it was twisted for those who knew how to manipulate it. She had seen what they had done to her aunt. She had heard, even in Glasgow, what ghastly torments had been inflicted upon the poor wretches in Newgate prison. And now Matthews, she knew, one way or another—within the gray area of the law—would find a way to see that she confessed.
She hadn’t any more strength to fight him. He would prick her until she was a mass of blood, and he would hang her anyway. Tears stung her eyes, and panic rose within her. Then a weariness settled over her.
“If you would have me be a witch, I am a witch. I consort with the devil. He comes to me every night. I expect him to arrive any minute in a burst of fire to slit your throat and save me from your touch. Were I truly a witch, I could certainly demand that he do so. Now leave me be. Hang me! Have done with it!”
Exhausted, her eyes closed, she leaned against the wall, huddled there, naked. She expected him to call for the soldiers to take her away. But she heard nothing; instead she sensed him beside her, kneeling. Then he touched her hair, and she opened her eyes with new alarm.
“I can save you, girl.” His voice was very low, but held a ring of passion.
“Save me?” she whispered. What new manner of trick was this?
“Hold me. Hard, and close, and I will take the devil from the weakness of your body to the strength of mine!”
Brianna stared at him, incredulous, desperately trying to think with her pain-ravaged mind. His arms came around her. She felt his bony fingers over her breast, and she fought the raging desire to slap him and the nausea that almost overwhelmed her. It came to her with a sense of absurdity that almost sent her again into bitter gales of hysterical laughter, that he wanted her. Matthews—the great seeker of virtue and enemy of the devil—would save her if she would “fornicate” with him—rather than with the devil.
As his hands moved over her, she felt as if she were being touched by a creature so vile that she would never rid herself of his filth. Then she felt his touch no more, as she became numb, reverting to a distant place far within her mind. She hated him, loathed him—but enough to die?
The door was suddenly flung open.
“Matthews!”
An officer, bedecked with the ribbons and jewels of the nobility, stood in the doorway.
Matthews stiffened, dropped her as if she were fire itself, and rose. Then he fell to his knees, his hands clasped in supplication. “Almighty Father! Bless this, your servant!” He crawled to the officer at the door, kissing the hem of his cloak. “Darton—thank God! For this confessed witch hath almost taken me from His glory. Man—you have saved me.”
“Confessed?” the man inquired with a skeptical edge to his voice.
“Aye, confessed!”
The officer was looking at her, but Brianna could no longer see him. The blows to her head were causing everything to swim before her eyes. She wanted to speak, to retract her confession, and swear that the charges were absurd. But she could not make her lips move. All she could do was lapse in and out of consciousness, and pray that death’s embrace would be as gentle as this gray place, easing her from pain.
“Find clothing for her,” someone said, “and bring her before the court.”
When they brought her before the court she could not stand. She should have been fighting, declaring her innocence, but she could not speak. Dimly she heard the matrons give testimony to her “devil’s mark.” From a different world of mist and blackness she heard Matthews tell of how she had murdered—in consort with the condemned witch, Pegeen MacCardle, and Satan—one Mary Corcoran of Glasgow.
