Soul of the Fire

Dalton smiled to himself. "You liked her, didn't you, Fitch?"

"Well, sir, I don't know. It's kind of hard to like a person who hates you. Kind of wears you down, after a time."

Dalton could plainly see the boy's feelings for the girl. It was written all over his face, even if he denied it.

"Well the thing is, Fitch, this girl might of a sudden be interested in causing trouble. Sometimes girls get that way, later. You will someday come to learn that. Be careful of doing what they ask, because they will sometimes later want to make it seem they never asked at all."

The boy looked bewildered! "I never knew such a thing, sir. Thank you for the advice."

"Well, as you said, she got no more than she asked for. There was no force involved. Now, though, she might be having second thoughts, and be looking to cry rape. Much the same as Claudine Winthrop. Women who are with important men sometimes do that, later, to try to get something. They get greedy."

"Master Campbell, I'm sure she wouldn't-"

"Inger paid me a visit a little earlier."

Fitch lost a little color. "She told Inger?"

"No. She told him only that she refused to deliver here to the estate. But Inger is a smart man. He figures he knows the reason. He wants what he figures to be justice. If he forces this girl, Beata, to charge a man, the Minister could be unjustly subjected to ugly accusations."

Dalton stood. "You know this girl. It may be necessary for you to handle her in the same way you dealt with Claudine Winthrop. She knows you. She would let you get close to her."

Fitch lost the rest of his color. "Master Campbell… sir, I…"

"You what, Fitch? You have lost your interest in earning a sir name? You have lost your interest in your new work as a messenger? You have lost your interest in your new uniform?"

"No sir, it's not that."

"Then what is it, Fitch?"

"Nothing, sir. I guess… like I said, anything that happened is no more than what she asked for. I can see that it wouldn't be right for her to be accusing the Minister of something wrong when he didn't do nothing wrong."

"No more than it was right for Claudine to do the same."

Fitch swallowed. "No, sir. No more right than that."

Dalton returned to his chair. "I'm glad we understand each other. I'll call you if she becomes a problem. Hopefully, that won't be necessary.

"Who knows, perhaps she will think better of such hateful accusations. Perhaps someone will talk some sense into her before it becomes necessary to protect the Minister from her wrongful charges. Perhaps she will even decide that butchering work is not for her, and she will go off to work on a farm, or something."

Dalton idly sucked on the end of the pen as he watched Fitch pull the door closed behind himself. He thought it would be interesting to see how the boy handled it. If he didn't, then Rowley surely would.

But if Fitch handled it, then all the pieces would fall together into a masterful mosaic.

CHAPTER 40

Master Spink’s boots thunked on the plank floor as he strode among the benches, hands clasped behind his back. People were still sobbing about the Ander women. Sobbing about what was done to them by the Haken army. Fitch thought he'd known what the lesson was going to be, but he was wrong. It was more horrible than he could have imagined.

He could feel his face glowing as red as his hair. Master Spink had filled in a lot of the sketchy parts of Fitch's understanding of the act of sex. It had not been the pleasurable learning experience he had always anticipated. What he had always viewed with longing was now turned to repugnance by the stories of those Ander women.

It was made all the worse by the fact that there was a woman to each side of him on the bench. Knowing what the lesson was going to be, all the women had tried to sit together to one side of the room and all the men had tried to sit on the other side. Master Spink never much cared where they sat.

But when they'd filed in, Master Spink made them sit where he told them. Man, woman, man, woman. He knew everyone in the penance assembly, and knew where they lived and worked. He made them sit all mixed up, next to people from somewhere else, so they wouldn't know the person next to them so well.

He did that to make it more embarrassing for them when he told the stories of each woman and what was done to her. He described the acts in detail. There wasn't a lot of sobbing for most of it. People were too shocked by what they heard to cry, and too embarrassed to want to call attention to themselves.

Fitch, for one, had never heard such things about a man and a woman, and he'd heard a lot of things from some of the other scullions and messengers. Of course, the men were Haken overlords, and naturally they weren't at all kind or gentle. They meant to hurt the Ander women. To humiliate them. That was how hateful the Hakens were.

"No doubt you all are thinking," Master Spink went on, " 'that was so long ago. That was ages ago. That was the Haken overlords. We are better than that, now, you are thinking."