i b8cff8977b3b1bd2 by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page B

sweetness was cloying, she bit down, and her teeth were jarred by the unexpected stone. She spat it out. I wish I was dead already, she thought
    An eternity dragged by. Then she heard a noise behind her and started in terror. Rats? - or ghosts? She huddled on the chest, her heart thundering in her cars.
    “Bess?” whispered a voice. “Are you there?” A boy came through from the bakehouse loft.
    “Jack!” She gulped and ran to him, flinging herself against him, clinging.
    “Hush,” he said awkwardly, patting her shoulder. “I guessed you might be here. They’re hunting everywhere. Oh, Bessie, what a coil you’ve got yourself into.” His eyes fell on the dates. “So you did take them, Aunt Lucy said you had.”
    “I didn’t mean to. I only ate one, it was nasty. Oh, Jack, we were going to the Fair and it rained - and the charm didn’t work for the sampler, Puck nor Robin Goodfellow nor any ,goblin came at all.”
    “What a baby you are!” The boy shook his head. “Elves do good deeds sometimes, they don’t help people who should have helped themselves.”
    Elizabeth gave a little whimper and sank back on the chest. Jack had always taken her side before, and now his grave voice sounded like his father; he even looked just like Uncle John, with the twinkle all gone from the sound eyes under high arched brows.
    “You must come down now, Bess,” said the boy more gently. “It’s best to face it and be done with it.”
    “I can’t! I can’t! They’ll kill me!”
    “Fiddle! They’ll but give you a flogging. That’s naught to be very much feared of, I’ve had plenty. Haven’t you?”
    She shook her head. She had been spanked once or twice, and her father had boxed her ears, but Thomas was too sickly and indolent for the corporal punishment of his eldest, and Anne was too gentle. Elizabeth looked at him piteously, wanting always to do as Jack said, and yet afraid. The dark lashes stuck out in spikes around her tear-drenched eyes, eyes called hazel, that were changeable in colour as a brook, gold-flecked brown, mossy green, or black pools as now. Her pink mouth trembled. The vivid rose had drained from her cheeks.
    Jack felt something peculiar stir in his chest as he looked down at the wan, big-eyed child. He had never been embarrassed by the affection between them, he had never thought of it particularly, nor realized that of the many womenfolk of all ages who surrounded him, he was perhaps fondest of this one. He bent suddenly and put his arm around her. “Come, little coz. I’ve always known you brave. D’you remember the day Black Brutus ran away with you? You kept your stirrups and sawed his mouth as well as any horseman in the land.”
    Aye, she had mastered Black Brutus that day, nor known fear, only a wild exultation, but that had been very different. “For you want me to, Jack,” she whispered, and taking his stubby callused hand, she stood up slowly.

    Elizabeth’s punishment was worse than anything she had imagined, and the whole family was assembled in the Great Hall to witness it. From the moment of her reappearance downstairs with Jack, she had been received with head shakings and cold stern looks. Some of these looks, like her mother’s, were sorrowful too, but even Anne Fones accepted the family verdict that Satan had somehow got possession of her daughter and must be beaten out of her.
    “It is for your own sake, Bess,” said Anne sadly. “For the sake of your soul, my poor child. Your Uncle John will conduct your chastisement. He has had more experience than your father in such matters, and also your father has a fit of his ague today.” She steeled herself against the fear in Elizabeth’s eyes, and being now in her fifth month of pregnancy, sank heavily to a seat in the circle of benches and chairs which had been arranged in the Hall. It was her mother’s exhortations which had brought Anne to such cool detached speech, but there was no doubt that her own lax discipline