They fed her, then they took her to her room and locked her in. It was a pleasant place enough, with a bed adequate for the business, some chairs, a cupboard and a table, but the dormer was too high to get a view out of, except of sky, and had been nailed or jammed to open only its fixed amount. Like the room she'd shared with Dennett, it had a closet off, where she found a pail and a jug of water and some soap. For clothes, Sue and Joan left only shifts and a flimsy gown for keeping off the draughts, and nothing for her feet. If she was to run, she would run naked in the world. Deborah sat down to wait.
Her fate, if coming, took a good long time. On the first day, when the women washed and left her, she spoke to no one else for many hours. Dorothy brought her supper, but it was a Dorothy much changed. Remembered as Milady's confidante, a robust country type brimming with life and vigour, she was cowed, enfeebled, with welts upon her face and one closed eye. She hardly spoke, but Deb got the message plain enough: this was how women ended up who defied the magistrate, the justice of the peace. Later, when they brought food next morning, Joan and Sue crowed at her reduction. She'd thought, they chirruped contentedly, that she was Lady Muck. One more false step and she could join her mistress, in the grave.
"How did her mistress die?" asked Deborah, bluntly. "Did he kill her, to make way for me?"
But, "Good heavens, no!" they twittered, she just 'stunk herself away'. Her head blew up to twice its natural size, until it burst one morning 'in a storm of pus'. They pitched it horribly, but they were shifty all the while, and quickly left when she pursued the subject. Joan, going, warned her almost sternly to be 'careful what she put abroad, or asked'. Deb lay on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and guessed the truth but knew she'd never know.
That day she spent many hours lying on her back and staring, for nobody returned to talk, or feed her, or to rape her or seduce her come to that, nor even to propose her as the lady of the manor and Wimbarton's wife. She thought of many things and wished that she could read, because there was a Bible, and became frantic with both thirst and boredom. She slaked her thirst with water from her washing jug, which she'd made soapy earlier, but the boredom would not go away. She found it quite peculiar that she could be bored, in such a situation, when her recent life had had so many turns and twists and upsets, but it was so. She thought of Will, and the fun they'd had, and found it funny and a little sad he thought he loved her, maybe did. Much good it would do the both of them, fine chance of that! Which led her on to Wimbarton. He would come and have her, and if he liked it and the fates were right she might last a month or two until she was thrown out, or became an under kitchen maid to Joan or Sue or Cook or whoever superseded Dorothy. Or she might fall pregnant or get killed, who knew? She remembered Will again then, and the beauty of his small, slim body, pale but muscular, and hoped the magistrate, unclothed, would not be completely vile. As she went asleep she thought of Cecily, but only briefly. At least she, Deborah, still had her life.
Next morning she was right, her time had come and no escape. Joan and Sue brought breakfast, warm water, even a towel, and they were full of merriment at the morning fun planned out for her. They gave advice, pretended to, which boiled down to smile but not to laugh, never to laugh! Then made that hard for her by referring, archly, to the birthmark on his inner thigh, and his twisted knee, and the fact his prick would rise from a nest of hair all grey and sparse and straggled. It would rise though, Joan averred, which was more than some old pigs could manage, so at least she would enjoy herself. They made the whole thing sound like a circus, or a theatre show.
When he came in, the magistrate was not so jovial. He had a bitter face, and he did not disguise his purpose or let her think he might find pleasure in it. Once more she thought of bulls, remembering watching fascinated as they'd doggedly tramped from cow to cow to do their duty, as if all they wanted was to get it over with. He did not speak, excepting for a greeting grunt, nor did he take time to get ready. He was dressed in a loose smock tucked into breeches, which when he released them allowed the smock to drop so that he was still covered to the knees. The famous grey mare's nest and pudding stirrer were thus obscured, except for a bulge in the smock material that rose and fell in a slight rhythm, as if there were an animal in there, and breathing. He stepped out of the ankled breeches, and his pair of soft slip-shoes, and advanced towards her with intent, so that Deb could only drop back to the bed. In his right hand for fear she planned to claw at him, perhaps he held a short, sharp knife.
Deb, as she sank back on the bed, realised she still had not formed a stratagem for dealing with this situation. She did not want this man although he was not half so old or vile as Sue and Joan made out she did not want, above all else, to lie with him, she was rendered hollow by her staring lack of choice. But as he forced on her, she lifted up her shift, and rolled her backbone into the yielding stuff, and moved her knees apart, for him to widen with his advancing thighs. As he hauled up his smock she glimpsed the club quite long and massive, much bigger than her lover Will's thrusting, indeed, from a bed of grey-white curls. Then her head was back, her knees jerked up, and he pushed into her, his feet firmly on the ground, a forceful, painful, stab. Her eyes stayed open, his did not, but she kept her face composed politely, just in case he peeked. Four times he stabbed at her, five, six, seven, eight, with his upright leg bones pushing out her yielding ones, his hands clamped on her knees, the handle of the dagger digging in. Then he grunted, stopped, and stood more upright, eyes still shut, pumping in his stuff. Then blew air out of his closed lips, jerked backwards and his smock dropped down, and the dagger clattered to the floorboards as he took his hands away. He wiped his brow, his doxy smiling up at him, as if content.
"Good," he said. "You're a pretty little piece. Next time I'll look at you all over." And he left.
Gunning was drunk, but not so drunk that Lieutenant Kaye could notice. Gunning could keep his feet like any seaman, and the act of pilotage down the Thames on a racing ebb came to him as second nature, so it appeared. The dangerous manifestations of his state, a refusal to give way to other ships however tight their situation until it was a hair's-breadth off too late, and a wild aggression that moved him to seize the wheel when the helmsman made a move that he thought lily-livered, were mainly done when Slack Dickie was not looking, or were disregarded with an approving eye. Kaye was in a hurry, and Biter was moving fast. When one enraged captain shouted imprecations at them of the very vilest, his quarterdeck only fifteen feet from theirs, he only nodded at him insolently, lifting a rope's-end as if offering a tow, the deepest insult in the sailor's canon.
At breakfast time, however, he was not half so jolly. His two midshipmen were invited not for the pleasure of their company, but for a roasting. Black Bob served them, but he was sadder and more obsequious than ever, and was clouted when he raised a smile. Kershaw was also called, but hardly spoke a word, as if he'd been forewarned. Kaye was in the mood for hectoring.
First, their lateness of return. They had been released for five days, they had taken six (which was almost true). Second, their infernal insolence, to greet him on arrival not with apologies but with demands for further leave of absence. Third, the reason for their going, to aid the Customs House, as if those idle villains needed aid, as if those ingrates ever did a thing for Navy men except to harass them for trifles that officers, at least, brought in of right. And what had they discovered, he demanded, what had they achieved to justify his loss of them (not that they were any loss, damn sure they weren't!)? This, when Sam answered stiffly and evasively, put him in a greater passion, because he knew from Wodderley's first letter that their task concerned some missing officers and that the matter could in no wise be discussed. Did they find them, he demanded to be told, had they found the dogs, and if not why not, and if so why did they want more time for gallivanting? It occurred to William at about this time that Gunning was not the only member of the after guard that had been sluicing brandy.