Daughter of Satan by Jean Plaidy Read Free Book Online

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. Hehad 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.
    â€˜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 wouldget 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