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  She shook her head. ‘Not a one of them, Master Tom. They was all too busy a-pigging thar broth.’ Her voice purred with the local brogue, but its tone was light and pleasing. She was a well-set-up lass, with a full bow and stern, older than the twins so probably closer to twenty than fifteen. However, her skin was flawless and smooth as the famous Devon cream, and a tangle of dark ringlets and curls framed her pretty chubby face. Her lips were pink, soft and moist, but there was a sly slant to her bright, knowing eyes.

  ‘Are you sure, Mary, that Master Billy didn’t see you?’ Tom asked insistently.

  She shook her head so the ringlets danced. ‘No. I looked in at the library afore I came, and he had his head in the books like always.’ She placed both her small hands on her hips, and although they were rough and red from her work in the scullery, they almost encircled her tiny waist. Both twins’ eyes followed the movement and settled on her body. Her full petticoats and ragged skirts reached halfway down her plump calves, and although her feet were bare and grubby, her ankles were slim. She saw their eyes, their expressions, and smiled with a sense of power over them.

  She lifted one hand and fiddled with the ribbon that held her bodice closed. Obediently both pairs of eyes followed her hands and she pushed out her breasts so that they strained at the retaining ribbon. ‘You said I would ha’ sixpence for it,’ she reminded Tom, who roused himself.

  ‘That I did, Mary.’ He nodded. ‘Sixpence for both of us, Guy and me.’

  She tossed her head and stuck out her pink tongue at him. ‘You’re a sly one, Master Tom. ’Twas sixpence each, a shilling for the two, ’twas.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Mary.’ He reached into the purse on his belt and brought out a silver coin. He flipped it in the air. It glinted in the soft light as it spun and he caught it on his palm, then held it out for her to inspect. ‘A whole silver sixpence, all for yourself.’

  Again she shook her head, and pulled loose the bow in the ribbon. ‘Shilling,’ she repeated, and the front of her bodice opened an inch. Both the boys stared at the sliver of white skin that was revealed: it contrasted startlingly with the sun-browned, freckled shoulders above.

  ‘Shilling, or naught!’ She shrugged with feigned indifference. At the movement, the swell of one fat round breast popped half out, leaving just the pointed tip still hidden but with the border of the ruby aureole that encircled her nipple peeping shyly from under the frayed edge of her blouse. Both boys were speechless.

  ‘Mice got your tongue?’ she asked saucily. ‘Methinks there’s naught for me here.’ She turned back to the staircase, flouncing her round bottom beneath the skirts.

  ‘Wait!’ Tom called, in a strangled voice. ‘Shilling it is, then, Mary, my pretty.’

  ‘Show me first, Master Tom!’ She looked back over her freckled shoulder as he scratched frantically in his purse.

  ‘Here you are, Mary.’ He held out the coin and she came to him slowly, swaying her hips in the way of the girls at the Plymouth docks. She took the coin from his fingers. ‘Do you think I’m pretty, Master Tom?’

  ‘You’re the prettiest girl in all England,’ Tom told her fervently, and meant every word. He reached out for the big round breast, which had now come clear of the bodice. She giggled and struck away his hand.

  ‘What about Master Guy? I’nt he first?’ She looked past Tom. ‘You never done it afore, have you, Master Guy?’

  Guy swallowed hard, but could not find his voice. He dropped his eyes and flushed darkly.

  ‘It’s his first time,’ Tom affirmed. ‘Take him first. I’ll go after.’

  Mary went to Guy and took his hand. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ She smiled at him with those slanted eyes. ‘I’ll not hurt you, Master Guy,’ she promised, and began to lead him to the far end of the crypt. Guy smelt her as she pressed against him. She had probably not bathed in a month and exuded a powerful odour of the kitchens where she worked, of bacon grease and woodsmoke, the horsy tang of her sweat, the odour of lobster boiling in the pot.

  He felt his gorge rise. ‘No!’ he blurted out, and pulled away from her. ‘I won’t – I can’t—’ He was close to tears. ‘You go first, Tom.’

  ‘I got her for you,’ Tom told him harshly. ‘When you feel it, you’ll go daft for it. See if you don’t.’

  ‘Please, Tom, don’t make me.’ Guy’s voice shook, and he looked back desperately to the staircase. ‘I just want to go home. Father will find out.’

  ‘I’ve already given her our shilling.’ Tom attempted to reason with him. ‘You’ll just waste it.’

  Mary seized his hand again. ‘Come along, now!’ She tugged at his hand. ‘There’s a good lad. I’ve had you in my eye, honest I have. You’re a fine pretty boykin, that you are!’

  ‘Let Tom go first!’ Guy repeated, frantic now.

  ‘Very well, then!’ She flounced towards Tom. ‘Let Master Tom show you the way. By now he should be able to find it blindfolded – he’s been there often enough.’ She grabbed Tom’s arm, and dragged him to the nearest coffin, which happened to be that of Sir Charles, the hero of Calais, and leaned back against it.

  ‘Not me only,’ she giggled up into his face, ‘but Mabel too, and Jill, unless they were both speaking a lie – and half the girls in the village, I’ve heard tell. It’s a ram and a half you are, Master Tom!’ She reached down and tugged at the laces of Tom’s breeches. At the same time she stood on tiptoe and fastened her mouth on his. Tom shoved her back against the stone coffin. He was trying to say something to his twin, rolling his eyes in Guy’s direction, but he was gagged by her soft wet lips and the long cat-like tongue she was thrusting deep into his mouth.

  At last he pulled his face free and gasped for air, then grinned at Guy, his chin wet and shining with the girl’s saliva. ‘Now I’m going to show you the sweetest thing you ever will lay eyes on if you live a hundred year.’

  Mary was still leaning back against the stone coffin. Tom stooped and, with practised fingers, loosed the drawstrings of her skirt to let the garment billow down and drape around her ankles. She wore nothing under it, and her body was very smooth and white. It looked as though it had been moulded from the finest candlewax. All three looked down at it, the twins in awe and Mary with a smirk of pride. After a long minute of silence, broken only by Tom’s ragged breathing, Mary lifted her blouse over her head with both hands, and dropped it on the coffin lid behind her. She turned her head and looked into Guy’s face. ‘You don’t want these?’ she said, and took one of her own plump white breasts in each hand. ‘No?’ she mocked him. He was dumb and shaken. Then she ran her fingers slowly down her creamy body, past the deep pit of her navel. She kicked away her skirt and planted her feet apart, still watching Guy’s face. ‘You’ve never seen the likes of this little pussy cat, have you now, Master Guy?’ she asked him. The curls rustled crisply under her fingers as she stroked herself. He made a choking sound, and she laughed triumphantly.

  ‘Too late now, Master Guy!’ she taunted him. ‘You had your chance. Now you must wait your turn!’

  By this time Tom had dropped his breeches to his ankles. Mary placed her hands on his shoulders and, with a little hop, pulled herself up, clinging to him with both her arms tight around his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist. She wore a necklace of cheap glass beads, which caught between them. The string snapped, the shiny beads cascaded down their bodies and scattered over the stone slabs. Neither seemed to notice.

  Guy watched with a strange mixture of horror and fascination as his twin pinned the girl against the stone lid of their grandfather’s sarcophagus, thrust and pounded against her, grunting, red-faced, while the girl thrust back at him. She began to make little mewing sounds, which rose higher and louder until she was yelping like a puppy.

  Guy wanted to look away, but he could not. He stared in dreadful fascination as his brother threw back his head, opened his mouth wide and let out a dreadful, anguished cry.

  She’s killed him! Guy thought, and then, What are we going to tell
Father? Tom’s face was bright red and shining with sweat.

  ‘Tom! Are you all right?’ The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

  Tom turned his head and gave him a contorted grin. ‘I’ve never been better.’ He let Mary drop to her feet, and stepped back, leaving her leaning once more against the coffin. ‘Now it’s your turn,’ he panted. ‘Give her your sixpennyworth, lad!’

  Mary was also breathless, but she laughed unsteadily, ‘Gi’ me a minute to catch my wind, then I’ll take you for a gallop you’ll not forget in many a year, Master Guy.’

  At that moment a sharp double whistle reverberated down the airhole in the roof of the crypt, and Guy jumped back with alarm and relief. There was no mistaking the urgency of the warning.

  ‘Cats!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s Dorry on the roof. Somebody’s coming.’

  Tom hopped on one foot, then on the other as he jerked up his breeches and hauled at the laces. ‘Get you gone, Mary,’ he snapped at the girl. She was scrabbling about on hands and knees, trying to gather up the fallen beads.

  ‘Leave those!’ Tom told her, but she ignored him. Her naked buttocks were marked with pink where they had caught the edge of the coffin – he could almost make out his grandfather’s inscription imprinted on the white skin, and he felt a ridiculous urge to laugh. Instead he grabbed Guy by the shoulder. ‘Come on! It might be Father!’ That thought put wings on their feet and they flew up the stairs, jostling each other in their haste.

  As they tumbled out of the vestry door, they found Dorian waiting for them, hiding in the ivy that covered the wall.

  ‘Who is it, Dorry?’ Tom gasped.

  ‘Black Billy!’ shrilled Dorian. ‘He’s just left the stables on Sultan and took the path straight up the hill. He’ll be here in a minute.’

  Tom gave vent to his most potent oath, learned from Big Daniel Fisher, his father’s boatswain. ‘He mustn’t catch us here. Come on!’ The three raced to the stone wall. Tom boosted Dorian over it, then he and Guy sprang over and pulled their younger brother down into the grass.

  ‘Quiet! Both of you!’ Tom was snorting with laughter and excitement.

  ‘What happened?’ Dorian piped up. ‘I saw Mary go in. Did you do it with her, Guy?’

  ‘You don’t even know what it is.’ Guy tried to avoid the question.

  ‘I do know what it is,’ Dorian told him indignantly. ‘I’ve seen the rams at it, and the dogs and the cocks, and Hercules the bull, like this.’ He rose on all fours and gave a lurid imitation, bucking and pumping his hips, sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, and rolling his eyes horribly. ‘Is this what you did to Mary, Guy?’

  Guy flushed furiously. ‘Stop that, Dorian Courtney! Do you hear me?’ But Tom gave a delighted guffaw and pushed Dorian’s face into the grass. ‘You dirty little monkey. I bet a guinea you’d be better at it than Guy, hairs or no hairs.’

  ‘Will you let me try next time, Tom?’ Dorian pleaded, his voice muffled – his face was still buried in the turf.

  ‘I’ll let you try, when you’ve got a bit more to try with,’ Tom said, and let him sit up, but at that moment they all heard the hoofbeats coming up the hill.

  ‘Quiet!’ Tom said, through his giggles, and they lay behind the wall in a row, trying to control their breathing and their mirth. They heard the horseman approach at a canter and rein down to a walk as he reached the gravelled area in front of the main doors of the chapel.

  ‘Keep down!’ Tom whispered to his brothers, but he pulled off the feathered cap and raised his head cautiously to peer over the top of the wall.

  William Courtney sat up on Sultan. He was a superb horseman: the art had come to him naturally, perhaps some instinct from his African origins. He was slim and tall, and as usual dressed all in black. This, apart from his skin and hair pigmentation, was why his half-brothers had given him the nickname he hated so vehemently. Although today he was bare-headed, he usually wore a wide-brimmed black hat decorated with a bunch of ostrich feathers. His high boots were black; his saddle and bridle were black. Sultan was a black stallion, groomed until he shone in the pale sunlight. Horse and rider were magnificent.

  It was obvious that he’d come to check the arrangements for his impending marriage. The nuptials were to be held here rather than in the bride’s home chapel, for other important ceremonies were to follow. These could only be held in the chapel of the Nautonnier Knights.

  He stopped at the front door of the chapel and stooped low in the saddle to peer inside, then straightened and rode slowly around the side of the building to the vestry door. He looked about carefully then stared straight at Tom. Tom froze. He and the other boys were supposed to be down at the river mouth, helping Simon and his crew with the salmon nets. The itinerant labourers, whom William hired for the harvest, were fed almost entirely on salmon. It was cheap and plentiful, but they protested at this monotonous diet.

  The apple-tree boughs must have concealed Tom from his brother’s keen gaze for William dismounted and hitched Sultan to the iron ring beside the door. He was betrothed to the middle Grenville daughter. It was to be a splendid marriage, and their father had haggled for almost a year with John Grenville, the Earl of Exeter, to agree the dowry.

  Black Billy’s in a lather to get at her, Tom thought derisively, as he watched his brother pause on the chapel steps to slap the dust from his glistening black boots with the heavy lead-weighted riding-crop he always carried. Before he entered the chapel William glanced in Tom’s direction once more. His skin was not black at all, but light amber in colour. He looked more Mediterranean than African, Spanish or Italian, perhaps. However, his hair was jet black, dense and shining, scraped back sleekly from his face and secured in a pigtail with a black ribbon plaited into it. He was handsome, in a formidable, dangerous fashion, with that thin, straight Ethiopian nose and the flashing dark eyes of a predator. Tom was envious of how most young women became flustered and fluttery in his presence.

  William disappeared into the vestry and Tom rose to his feet. He whispered to his brothers, ‘He’s gone! Come on! We’ll go back—’ But before he could finish there was a scream from the chapel.

  ‘Mary!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘I thought she had run, but the little dilly is still in there!’

  ‘Black Billy has caught her,’ gasped Guy.

  ‘Now there’ll be trouble!’ said Dorian gleefully, and leaped up to get a better view of the excitement. ‘What do you think he’ll do.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tom, ‘and we aren’t waiting to find out.’

  Before he could lead them in a precipitous retreat down the gill, Mary burst out of the vestry door. Even at that distance her terror was obvious. She ran as though pursued by a pack of wolves. A moment later William charged out into the sunlight, following the fleeing girl. ‘Come back, you little slut!’ His voice carried clearly to where they still crouched behind the wall. But Mary snatched up her skirts and ran all the harder. She was heading straight towards the wall where the boys were hiding.

  Behind her, William freed Sultan’s reins and swung up easily into the saddle. He sent the stallion after her at a full gallop. Horse and rider overhauled the running girl swiftly. ‘Stop where you are, you dirty little whore. You’ve been up to no good.’ William leaned over with the heavy riding-crop in his right hand as he caught up with her. ‘You’re going to tell me what you’re doing here.’ He slashed at her, but Mary dodged away. He wheeled the stallion to follow her. ‘You aren’t going to escape me, bitch.’ He was smiling, a cruel, cold smile.

  ‘Please, Master William,’ Mary shrieked, but he swung the crop again. It hissed in the air and she ducked under its arc with the agility of a hunted animal. Now she was running back towards the chapel, ducking through the apple trees, with William after her.

  ‘Come on!’ whispered Guy. ‘Now’s our chance.’ He sprang up and tumbled down the steep side of the gill, Dorian behind him, but Tom still crouched by the wall. He watched in horror as his brother
caught the running girl again and rose in the stirrups over her.

  ‘I’ll teach you to listen when I tell you to stop.’ He lashed at her again, and this time the crop caught her between the shoulder-blades. Mary screamed at a higher pitch, a cry of agony and terror, and collapsed into the grass.

  The sound of that shriek chilled Tom’s spine and set his teeth on edge. ‘Don’t do that!’ he said aloud, but William did not hear.

  He stepped down out of the stirrups and stood over Mary. ‘What mischief were you up to, drab?’ She had fallen all in a welter of skirts and bare legs and he hit her again, aiming for her terrified white face, but Mary threw up an arm and took the lash across it. It raised a bright scarlet weal and she blubbered and writhed at the pain. ‘Please don’t hurt me, Master William.’

  ‘I’m going to beat you until you bleed, and until you tell me what you were doing in the chapel when you should be in the scullery with your greasy pots and pans.’ William was smiling easily, enjoying himself.

  ‘I didn’t do no harm, sir.’ Mary lowered her hands to plead with him, and could not lift them again fast enough to meet the next blow that caught her full in the face. She howled and the blood rushed into her swollen cheek to colour it flaming scarlet. ‘Please. Please don’t hurt me any more.’ She buried her injured face in her hands and rolled over in the grass trying to get away from him, but her skirt was rucked up under her.

  William smiled again as he saw that she was naked beneath it and his next blow was delivered with relish across the soft white skin of her buttocks. ‘What were you stealing, bitch? What were you doing in there?’ He hit her again, and left a scarlet weal across the back of her thighs. Her scream struck Tom just as cruelly as the crop had sliced into her flesh.

  ‘Leave her, damn you, Billy,’ he blurted out, struck by an overpowering sense of responsibility and pity for the tortured girl. Before he had even thought about what he was doing he was over the wall and racing to Mary’s rescue.

  William did not hear him coming. He was absorbed in the sharp, unexpected pleasure he was experiencing from punishing this little slut. The sight of the scarlet lines on her white skin, her flailing, naked limbs, her wild shrieks, the unwashed animal smell of her all roused him keenly. ‘What were you up to?’ he roared. ‘Are you going to tell me, or shall I beat it out of you?’ He could hardly restrain his laughter as he laid a vivid scarlet stripe across her bare shoulders and watched the muscles beneath the soft skin spasm in agony.