Cauldron of Fear Read online

  CAULDRON OF FEAR

  by

  JENNIFER JANE POPE

  Cauldron of Fear first published in 2001 by Chimera Publishing. Published as an eBook in 2011 by Chimera eBooks.

  ISBN 9781780800646

  www.chimerabooks.co.uk

  Chimera (ki-mir'a, ki-) a creation of the imagination, a wild fantasy.

  New authors are always welcome, or if you’re already a published author and have existing work, the eBook rights of which remain with or have reverted to you, we would love to hear from you.

  This work is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The author asserts that all characters depicted in this work of fiction are eighteen years of age or older, and that all characters and situations are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Copyright Jennifer Jane Pope. The right of Jennifer Jane Pope to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This novel is fiction - in real life practice safe sex.

  Author's Preface

  The seventeenth century was a time of great change in Britain. The Elizabethan Age came to an end at the century's beginning and a Scottish King, James VI of Scotland, son of the ill-fated and tragic Mary Queen of Scots, came to the English throne as James I.

  When the autocratic and headstrong Charles I succeeded him, it quickly became clear that the country was heading for confrontation of the worst kind - civil war. The eventual victory of the Parliamentary forces and the subsequent execution of a king who refused to concede one iota of what he considered his God-given rights, brought to power Oliver Cromwell, who, although he refused to accept the crown, ruled the country with a rod of Puritan iron.

  Eventually, following Oliver Cromwell's death and the short-lived period of hapless misrule under Cromwell's son, Richard, the late King's son would return from exile in Europe as Charles II, and a new age of enlightenment and scientific reasoning would begin.

  However, at the time our story begins, the country and its inhabitants are still steeped in superstitions and lore that even the Church has been unable to penetrate fully; in fact, with its witch hunts and executions, particularly the excesses of Matthew Hopkins, the notorious Witchfinder General, the Church played more than a small part in ensuring that fear and ignorance continued.

  Some might say that this was deliberate and that the Bishops and their minions had a vested interest in ensuring that the largely uneducated populace remained as unenlightened as it had for centuries; certainly, Britain was a country of largely two extremes: the rich and powerful were very rich and powerful, whilst the poor were generally little better off than the animals they tended.

  As for the rights of women, they simply did not exist, but then the same could be said of the rights of at least nine out of ten of the male population, too.

  Few people will not have heard of the Great Plague and of the Great Fire of London that is generally accredited with finally cleansing the streets of the capital of the virus that was responsible for decimating the population, but the Great Plague of 1665 was nothing more than what many had been predicting would happen over many years previously.

  Sporadic outbreaks, mostly in London, but also in Oxford, Derby and in one or two other large cities, had been killing people for decades, though the authorities did little about this. In fairness, there was probably little they could have done, short of levelling entire cities and rebuilding them on a far more modern and hygienic scale.

  The 'Commonwealth' period, as the years of Cromwell's virtual dictatorship are generally referred to, was the worst period of flux in an age when the so-called civilised world was evolving at a rate faster than at any time since the days of the Roman Empire.

  It is easy, with the precise science of hindsight, for us to look back and see how easy some of the answers could have been. However, for those who lived in the times, efforts towards progress were fraught with seemingly insurmountable problems and the fact that the government of the country had now fallen into the hands of a man who brought new depths of meaning to the word incompetent.

  The privileged minority, looking down from the top of the pile, saw only the potential seeds of revolution and their own, eventual, deposition. 'Give them an inch, etc' was never more soundly an echo of blinkered insecurity than it was then. Fear at the top, fear at the bottom - a guaranteed recipe for a society in which the avaricious, particularly the truly cunning avaricious, could wreak their own particular brand of havoc and insanity. The whole country had become a cauldron - a Cauldron of Fear.

  Chapter 1

  The girl was young, fresh and virginal, even her shaven skull unable to disguise her basic, innocent prettiness. Jacob Crawley, standing in the shadows at the far end of the vault from where she hung chained against the rough stone wall, licked his thin lips in anticipation.

  Quietly, with a lightness of step that belied his fifty-something years, he moved closer, until he hovered at the very edge of the pool of orange torchlight that illuminated the captive wench, his black hair and the long black cape he held about his tall frame blending with the darkness behind him and rendering him all but invisible. He saw her eyes were closed and guessed that she was probably fallen into a light sleep of sheer exhaustion, despite the pain her enforced position would be growing in her shoulders and arms, and in the stretched muscles of her calves and thighs as they tried to take some of her weight via the tips of her toes that barely touched the cold floor.

  Her breasts, distorted somewhat by her stretched posture, were small and firm, the nipples prominent and deeply coloured, as yet unmarked, per Crawley's strictest instructions. He grinned maliciously to himself, knowing they would not remain thus for much longer.

  Between her taut thighs, her shaven pudenda pouted alluringly, the chains at her ankles holding her legs apart just sufficiently to prevent any attempt at modesty, and Crawley felt a cold shiver of lust crawl slowly up his spine. This one, he thought, was far too good to waste on the scaffold, far too sweet a fruit to plant in the chill earth beyond the consecrated ground of the churchyard. No, he chuckled, this one would not be broken, though he knew she would probably require a taste of his own peculiar skills and more than a modicum of bending before she would be totally satisfactory.

  Not that the process would take that long; it seldom did. Two days, three at the most - three days that would to her, however, pass like a millennium, so that when Crawley finally granted her even the smallest measure of relief and the chance to avoid the fate to which she would by then have consigned herself and probably even craved, she would take it gratefully, no matter to what level of degradation she must surely know she would sink.

  Crawley shuffled his position, the muscles in his right thigh having stiffened in the damp air, and the slight sound brought the girl immediately awake again, her wide brown eyes flickering from side to side in alarm.

  'Who - who's there?' she cried, her voice thin and wavering in her terror of the unknown. 'Please,' she wailed, when Crawley made no reply, nor moved to reveal himself, 'please, whoever you are, take pity. I am no witch; surely you must all know that by now. Ask in the village, as I said, everyone will tell you.'

  'Oh, people always tell me what they think I will believe,' Crawley replied, breaking his silence at last, though still remaining back from the light, 'at least, in the beginning.' His voice betrayed his north country roots, though many years had soft
ened the harsher edges of his accent. 'Satan woos his brides to proliferate his evil lies, but the Good Lord has bestowed on me the gift of cutting through them.'

  'Sir!' Tears welled up in the girl's eyes and began trickling down cheeks that were already stained. 'Sir, I am no bride of the devil, nor do I lie. I fear God and worship our saviour and a more devout girl you will surely never find.'

  'You are Matilda Pennywise, of the Parish of St Jude?' The girl nodded, swallowing hard. Crawley inched forward, so that his outline was now visible to her, but only as a deeper shadow. 'Speak girl,' he commanded. 'Are you, or are you not, Matilda Pennywise?'

  'Yes!' Matilda gasped. 'Yes sir, indeed I am... sir,' she added, as an afterthought.

  'That's better wench,' Crawley cackled, 'you seem to be learning something at last.' He coughed, clearing his throat. 'Then, Matilda Pennywise,' he continued, after a carefully judged pause, 'you stand accused of several counts of witchcraft, sorcery and consorting with unholy forces.'

  'No!' Matilda shrieked. 'No, it's all lies, as God is my witness—' Without warning Crawley leapt forward, his right arm swinging in a wide arc, the open palm of his hand slapping into the girl's unprotected cheek with such force that she would have been knocked off her feet, were the chains not holding her upright. She let out a howl of pain, not least because the full weight of her body had momentarily been transferred to her already tortured upper limbs.

  'Silence!' he roared. 'Heresy, to invoke the name of the Lord God you have betrayed.' Matilda was struggling to regain her balance and clearly scarcely heard him, but Crawley knew his words would sink in eventually.

  'You are all the same, you Devil's spawn harlots, every single one of you,' he intoned. 'Yet I shall save your unholy soul, mark my words. You will return to the arms of the heavenly master cleansed of your foul wickedness, else my name be not Jacob Crawley!'

  Harriet Merridew pushed the small window of her bedroom as far open as the creaking hinges would allow and leaned out over the cill, breathing in the crisp, early morning air and looking up at the pale blue sky above. She smiled, shook her tangled mane of fair hair, and let out a deep sigh. The fourth fair day in succession and the harvest now three-quarters gathered in. If the weather held another forty-eight hours...

  The previous year's harvest had been a near disaster, half the crop ruined by rain and unseasonable hailstones, so that Harriet had been forced to sell off from an already dwindling livestock in order to pay bills and taxes and to keep herself and her almost permanently bed-ridden father through the ensuing twelve months. It had been a close-run thing, especially after four of the remaining cows had taken sick and died from the rot disease, rendering them worthless as meat and fit only for burning.

  And when one of the sows died giving birth to a troublesome litter, only many weeks of salted pork and Harriet's grim determination to retain their independence prevented her from finally accepting yet another of Thomas Handiwell's proposals of marriage. She shivered at the thought now, for the prospect of a lifetime sharing Handiwell's bed was more than she could believe she had ever contemplated, no matter how desperate their situation might have been.

  Not that the man was unpleasant to look at: he was, after all, a fine figure, with broad shoulders, strong back and good legs, his black hair long and thick, if slightly greasy. And he had means that might attract many another female, for his inn, the Black Drum, stood alongside the main highway between London and the busy naval centre of Portsmouth, down on the south coast, and he had twice built extension wings to it in order to accommodate the constant influx of weary travellers seeking rest and replenishment for the night.

  He was also not an unpleasant fellow. Slightly terse and given to the odd oath at times, true, but not unkindly and with an even disposition and definitely in love with Harriet, as his eyes and gauche manner betrayed whenever he was in her company. No, Harriet reflected, as she withdrew back inside the room, Thomas Handiwell would make a good husband again, as he had clearly done for his long dead first wife, but for someone other than Harriet herself.

  Ye gods, she chuckled, he was at least as old as her own father, if not perhaps a year or so older, and his own daughter, Jane, had been at least three years old by the time Harriet had been born, as Jane herself had been quick enough to point out on more than one occasion when the two young women met.

  'He's becoming a silly old fool,' the sallow complexioned innkeeper's daughter had remarked, shrewishly, when Harriet delivered the last pig carcass to the Drum back at the beginning of June. 'Marry you indeed. He'll make himself an even bigger laughing stock and probably kill himself into the bargain.' Her thin lips curled maliciously and there was no disguising the hate in her eyes.

  'If the stupid oaf must take himself another wife,' she had continued, her narrow nose wrinkling in distaste, 'then he should look to someone more his own age, someone who'll keep his feet warm in bed and not tempt him to racing around the bedchamber.'

  'Someone who will possibly die before he does, you mean?' Harriet suggested, and immediately regretted her words, though she knew she had hit the nail squarely upon its head. Jane Handiwell did not want her father dying and leaving his well-gotten gains to a wife who might even outlive herself. She had not remained at the inn, cooking, cleaning and managing the house just for some flighty usurper to march in on her pretty heels and snatch away her inheritance.

  'Poor Jane,' Harriet whispered to herself, as she opened the top drawer of the heavy oak chest and began rummaging through the clean underthings there. 'Poor plain Jane with your twisted humour and silly jealousies. Why you won't believe me when I say I have no intentions of marrying your father, heaven above knows, but then a mean spirit bleeds itself hardest, and no mistaking.'

  Her name was Miranda Parkes, but the people here persisted in calling her Kitty, not just refusing to acknowledge her real identity, but actively punishing her with their cruel whips if she dared try not responding to the name they had given her, let alone when she tried to insist that they use her correct title.

  'Here you are, Kitty,' the young overseer had told her, gripping her jaw between a powerful thumb and forefinger and jerking her face up towards his own. 'You're Kitty here and you'll be Kitty from now on, unless your new master decides to rename you.'

  'But I'm not a slave,' Miranda squeaked, defiantly. She clenched and unclenched her fists in desperate frustration, but her wrists remained strapped to her hips as they had been when she first recovered consciousness in this awful place. 'I'm not a slave,' she repeated, futilely.

  The overseer, Adam, released his grip and pushed her away. 'Is that so?' he smirked. 'Well, you look like a slave, right enough, for no free woman I ever knew would stand before men shamelessly showing off her titties like you do.'

  Miranda felt her cheeks redden, for she had almost managed to forget that she was kept so terribly near naked. 'It's not my choice to be like this,' she whispered, lowering her eyes, grimacing as she saw how hard and extended her nipples appeared. 'If you would permit me, I'd cover myself suitably.'

  'I think your appearance is suitable enough,' Adam laughed, 'for a slave girl.' He slapped the short leather crop against his high boot, making Amanda wince. 'And that's what you are, Kitty, whether you like it or not, so the sooner you start learning how a slave should properly behave, the easier it will be for you.' He flexed the crop meaningfully.

  'So,' he said silkily, 'what's it to be, or shall I add a few more stripes to those rosy little bottom cheeks?'

  Kitty winced again, for if the immediate pain of the whipping he had given her that first evening had faded, the memory had not, and she did not have to try too hard to recall each of the six burning stripes he laid across her buttocks. She let out a long breath. 'I don't want to be whipped again,' she said, quietly.

  'Master,' Adam reminded her.

  She sighed again. 'I don't want to be whipped again, master,' she corrected. 'What is it you want me to do?'

  'Whatever I tell you,' he
said, smiling now. 'It won't be that hard to learn, I promise you. Now, step up closer and present those slave girl titties for my inspection.' Swallowing hard, Amanda took a pace forward and forced herself to draw her shoulders back, thrusting her generous mounds into even greater prominence. Adam's free hand reached out, hefting the left breast carefully, kneading one side gently with his thumb. To her chagrin, Amanda felt a tremor run up and down her arched spine and an involuntary squeal escaped her lips before she could check it.

  'Very good, Titty Kitty,' Adam purred, evidently pleased with the reaction to his touch. 'Look down now, see how your teats swell to my caresses. Why, I swear that if you weren't wearing your slave harness you'd throw yourself wantonly upon me, you brazen little trollop.'

  He let the whip drop at his feet and his left hand began to explore, but this time much lower down, pushing between the stiff leather strap between her thighs and searching, first for her recently denuded mound and then for the swollen lips that had begun to throb as though developing a will of their own.

  'Ah, naughty Titty Kitty,' he breathed, his mouth close to her right ear. 'What's this then, are we all wet down here? And so hot, too. Would you like me to take care of this hungry little cunny, Titty Kitty?'

  'Yes, master.' Amanda could not believe she had said that, and was on the point of drawing back when commonsense and self-preservation interceded. To resist, even to object, could only bring one inevitable and painful result and after all, she told herself reasonably, she was no virgin. Besides, she had to admit, he was handsome, even if his manner was brutish.