Chapter One
The Girl At The Whipping Post
Roslyn and Celia rode for miles inside the arms of their captors. They were given no food; there was no time for rest. Their fleet journey sent them though the dangerous woods, through two streams and across a river. Emerging on open land again, to a landscape shrouded in the golden glow of a late summer’s afternoon, Roslyn spotted a curiously familiar site. Though it had been over a year since her eyes had rested on Draydon castle, she recognized its battlements and the small village at its outskirts.
It was only then that Roslyn’s mind began to function.
“Sir, please, I am not properly attired. Is there something…?” She looked back and upwards at her rough guardian’s face, pleadingly. A guardian now, for he seemed more benign than dangerous.
“Indeed,” the man replied, sounding strangely more civilized than she first imagined him to be. That, too, would suggest that he meant her no harm.
“A cloak for the lady!” he called to one of the marauders behind him.
Minutes later, a dark cloak appeared that Roslyn quickly wrapped about her shivering shoulders, covering her thin nightgown. The thought had hardly registered in her mind that all this had happened while an unknown man had hold of her body in ways too familiar for any man, but perhaps a husband or lover. A twinge of undisclosed thrill made her shudder in places deep inside her body.
By the time their small party reached the village, it was clear that something was stirring in the tiny town. A throng of people had gathered in the square, their shouts and cursing leveled toward someone, at present, hidden from Roslyn’s view. Stomping feet. Canes raised in anger. The Lady’s heart beat with trepidation and thrill. Though she’d not been allowed to see such displays at home, instinct told her what was taking place. A few yards more along the stony road, which was now almost impossible to traverse with all the commotion, they halted on a small rise, which gave them a clear view of the terrifying sight.
Clothed only in a dirty shift, a fair-skinned girl was led toward a whipping post. Her cheeks were flushed; her hair a disheveled cloud of gold around her proud but terrified face. Though she aimed at being haughty, her attendants shoved her toward the post with such force, that she snarled back at them angrily, only to have one cuff her and she fell to the ground as if weightless.
“Good lord, what is happening to this world!” Roslyn exclaimed.
“The girl’s a traitor, they say,” the man behind her volunteered.
Indeed. But still Lady Roslyn would wonder what this traitorous female had done to earn such a ghastly sentence.
“Lash her to the post!” the cry rang out.
Hauled up the scaffold, the terrified girl was thrust against the tall stanchion, her arms raised above her head and her hands shackled to the post. So positioned, body squirming uncontrollably, she looked like laundry twisting in the wind. A knife cut through the slip of material that clothed her, freeing her back from any impediment to the bare flesh. Aware of her sorry state of attire, she now planted her body firmly against the post to hold what little was left of her shift in place.
How sad she looked, Roslyn thought, as the poor girl tried to maintain a bit of dignity in the midst of this terrible travail.
The first cut of the lash on the girl’s white skin created such a thundering crackle through the evening air that the watching young woman cringed. As if she felt the blow herself, she let out a scream, a small scream. The poor victim’s scream was boisterously loud. What followed was so brutal that Roslyn twice looked away. But something unknown brought her gaze back each time. Such a savage tremor filled her own tender flesh that she was shaking and nearly in tears, while the man behind her held her fast to his chest, as if knowing how she suffered.
“Let’s get along!” he finally called to the others in their party. He dug his heels into his mount’s flank and the horse moved forward toward the castle gate.
The last Roslyn saw of the girl, she clung to the whi
