Young Bess - Part Four free porn video

Young Bess ? Part Four By Jane Howard Synopsis This story takes place in the early 18th century about James, a young British aristocrat from an important political family who learns that his beloved sister Sheila has disappeared. His famous uncle, Isaac Newton, arranges for him to be transformed into a beautiful young girl with the new name of Elizabeth Radcliff. Now completely unrecognizable, Elizabeth (or Bess as James is now called) is taken on as a servant in the home of Sheila?s husband, Mr. Montfort in order to find out what happened to her. On his first night in service as Bess, James meets a rogue?s gallery of villains headed by the infamous Philip, Lord Wharton. Following an altercation Bess is abducted by John Villiers, the handsome but decadent scion of a noble English family, and is subsequently abandoned by him in the woods. I do apologize for taking so long to submit this current chapter. I have been a little sad. But now I am happy again and it is time to move our heroine?s story along. Special thanks to Bruce, DD, Joanne, Sophie Andrews and Felicity for your kind comments about the previous chapter. Please note that YOUNG BESS is fully copyrighted and cannot be reprinted or reproduced in any form without the express consent of the author. Chapter 4 I awoke to the sounds of my own screams and it was not until I had exhausted my need to scream that they stopped. Sitting up, I tried to remember the horribly distorted and frightening face that had made me so upset, but I could not. The threads of the dream unraveled like a piece of unsatisfactory crochet my mind pulled it into nothing but indiscriminate strands of this and that. All that I remembered was what I have already written down, that the face was horrifying and threatening. A deep sense of foreboding haunted me for some time thereafter, because I have always held the opinion that dreams are prophesy and I feared a future in which I would be confronted by the creature with that terrifying face. I asked God aloud to reassure me that such a time would never come. To my dismay, if not my total amazement, I was given no answer. All I heard around me was the screaming rhythmic symphony of the cicadas, crowding round each other in their loneliness. On the practical side of things, I awoke with a great thirst. That problem was easily solved. I had only to return to the stream, hold my long golden hair back with both hands and lie down and drink like any animal of the forest. When I was done I wiped my mouth and cheeks with the back of my hand but as I did that, I realized that I was hungry. Indeed, I was dizzy with a ravenous hunger that had lain suppressed inside me until my thirst was assuaged. All I had eaten in the past twenty-four hours was just the bit of bread and cheese that Mary had given me at the stable. Looking around, I realized that such berries as I might forage from the nearby bushes were concealed from my sight by the near dark conditions that prevailed. Indeed the area abounded with berry bushes of every type, but I could not tell in the poor light around me whether the berries were safe to eat or not. The moon was beginning to set and so it was getting darker. Famished as I was, the most important task I faced at that moment was getting to safety. Which way to go? I had no idea. Even in the best of times, my sense of direction was rather poor. Under these conditions, there was really no direction that inspired me. It would make just as much sense to spin round a few times and go forth from wherever I stopped spinning. In the end, that is precisely what I did. Of course, if one is dizzy to begin with, spinning around like a top will not help the condition. Having solved one problem about which way to go, I now had another problem of keeping my balance. Just a few hundred yards from my starting point, I fell down twice. The first time was not a problem, since I fell on my rear and was insulated somewhat by its fullness. It was still something of a shock, though, I can assure you. The second time I fell into a patch of briars and scratched my ribs on the thorns. When I touched myself there, I found a tear in my dress and my fingertips were capped with small drops of blood. ?Damn it all!? I said to myself. ?If there are wild dogs in these woods, they?ll be trailing the smell of blood on me soon enough!? There was nothing to do but to keep moving ahead, and to hope that by some intuition or by some act of providence I had chosen my direction wisely. And so, buoyed up by hope and hope alone, I made my way another half mile or so. The way was hard as the ground was uneven and my thin slippers were poor protection against the sharp stones and sharper twigs that stung the soles of my feet. I kept telling myself that I was going in the right direction, and that at any moment I would see something familiar, like the lights glowing in the windows at Montford?s house, or that I would suddenly find myself in Montfort?s gardens, surrounded by roses and statues of nymphs. As one might expect, nothing of the sort happened, and, if anything, I was becoming more lost than before. There was a trickling sensation in my side, and I hoped that it was perspiration, and not blood dripping down my ribs. I felt myself becoming ill at the thought that I might be bleeding so freely. But since only one side of me had the symptom and the other did not, common sense told me that I was indeed in difficulty. I was becoming increasingly lightheaded and feared the onset of a fainting spell. I am rather proud of what I did then, although you may think me foolish for not having thought of it earlier. I ripped away some of the hem of my skirt and wrapped it twice around my injured side and knotted the makeshift bandage as tightly as I could. It helped somewhat in that the pain was lessened and the flow of blood from the wound was stemmed. Most important, this simple act of self-help increased my confidence that I could be resourceful in an emergency. Now, you may consider me a simpleton for not thinking to do the obvious immediately, but I assure you that it would not have occurred to James to do it at all. As I have mentioned, I am not very brave, and I have always tried to be careful with my body and that to shun all danger in the first place is the best course of action. My idiot of a brother had consistently observed that I was unmanly in that respect. He should but see me now! There could not be much more done to make me less of a male than hadn?t already been done by Goody Whitfield. Except for part of my mind, I was completely female. I wondered whether that fact in itself gave me less character than any man possesses. That issue was a means of taking my mind off the graver issue of surviving my present circumstances. Besides, I don?t think my brother?s observation about men and bravery was very correct, since I doubt that there are many men who would willingly undertake the experience of birthing a child, for example, if given the choice. Yet, women endure it routinely and in some cases, where the birth is difficult, with great courage -- even die to bring a baby into this world. If you are a man can you honestly say that you would willingly undergo what a woman undergoes and have a child torn from your belly in order to preserve your posterity? I also considered where I stood on the same question. I was in a unique position to answer it. I was James. Yet, I was also Bess. Was I more Bess than James now? Clearly, I felt that I was. Nevertheless, I decided I would put myself to the test so I cleared my mind as best I could and focused only on the single issue of motherhood with all the scrupulousness, all the strictest standards of integrity to which I could hold myself. It is agonizing for me to be self-critical, and I normally do my best to avoid it. But in the end my conclusion was I would have a baby. There must be, however, certain conditions already in place. I had to truly love the father, and, equally important, the father must truly love me. I would not give birth to a baby born of rape and would turn my case over to the women who knew the secret ways of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. I would not give birth to a child born out of incest. I would not use pregnancy as a contrivance to separate a man from his gold. But I would gladly give birth for love?s sake, even if my life were to be endangered in the process. I would risk it gladly. Those were my conclusions?hypothetical as they might be. I felt vindicated, I felt proud, and I felt less afraid than before as a result of these intellectual explorations. I was, after all, a member of the sex, temporary as I might be in belonging to it, which perpetuated our kind. My God! Where were all these peculiar thoughts coming from? Childbirth indeed! Why, I had never even had carnal knowledge of another human being. I was not even sure how the act was performed, although I had my suspicions. But let us not put the cart before the horse. Horse? The allusion to a horse reminded me once again of Tom the stable boy. It was true that there was that one instance where I had rubbed myself against Tom, but that was merely an experiment?. One could not become pregnant through the simple act of two bodies rubbing together, could one? No! That might only be feasible with marsupials?a possum or a kangaroo, for example. But if I were indeed pregnant by some process of osmosis or absorption, whatever would I do? I could not return to my boy?s body, as I still planned to do, and present myself to my mother in a state of pregnancy! Good Lord! I was raving! I touched my brow and it was hot. Whatever had stuck into me when I had fallen the second time must be making me ill with fever and turning me delirious. Thus it was that when I saw a light in the distance I did not know whether it was real or whether I only imagined it. As I came closer to it, I saw that it truly was a light and not a delusion. The light was coming from a wood fire in a small clearing surrounded by copses of linden trees. My first thought was to call out to whomever had set it. However, I was not so far gone in fever as to forget the lessons I had learned earlier that evening. Until I knew whether friend or foe was sitting around that fire, caution was the priority. I got on all fours and crawled closer to the clearing. Secreting myself behind a bush I was able to see and hear all that I am about to relate to you. Crouched around the fire were Philip, Lewis and Beaseley. The Hollinshead twins were nowhere to be seen. Although from the look on his face, I could tell that Philip had already wrapped himself in his habitual sardonic arrogance, the other two were quite morose. Beaseley was holding a puppy, no doubt the one Montfort had given him as a gift. There was something innately peculiar about the picture that he and the puppy presented together. Beaseley was a violent, evil man with a red slash for a mouth and a high forehead crisscrossed with crude lines and scars set above a protruding brow under which were recessed two glowing eyes surrounded by fearsome shadows. Those eyes glared out at the world without either compassion or understanding and I believe that the man would have been otherwise utterly inert like a large stone, or a fallen tree trunk were it not for his obvious lusts. His dread appetites and his great hunger to satisfy them were, it seemed to me, the only motivations he had for moving his disgusting bulk from one place to another. In contrast, the puppy was so adorable, so innocent and accepting of everything, even of Beaseley! I had always wanted a puppy of my own ? a cute chocolate and white beagle with pretty soulful brown eyes. And I had the very name for him assuming I ever got one ? I would call him Little Johnny, after Mr. Villiers! Even thinking the name cheered me somewhat, although my imaginary puppy?s namesake had abandoned me in the woods and left me to die. But my spirits were dampened again when I saw that Beaseley had begun holding the pup around the neck with both of his huge hands. Philip stood up to stretch his back and said, ?This is a pretty pass we are at, Mr. Beaseley! All your doing, I dare say.? ?I done me best, milord,? replied Beaseley. ?Your best, sir? Your best? If this is your best sir, then I should jolly well like to see your worst, sir!? ?I?m sure I?m very sorry, milord.? Pacing back and forth, Philip dismissed Beaseley?s apology with a limp wave of his hand. ?Let us summarize, Mr. Beaseley. You have failed to locate Mr. Montfort?s wife. You have failed to convince Mr. Montfort to tell us where his wife might be, and you have now caused us to be driven from his home and turned us into fugitives. The law will be at our heels momentarily, Mr. Beaseley. Our stratagem to use Mrs. Montfort as a hostage in order to obtain her father?s cooperation in our attempt to overthrow the government of our buggering King and save ourselves from the gallows is in ruins! Tell me wherein you have succeeded in anything, sir?? To my great distress, I saw that as Philip identified each of Beaseley?s failings, the brute?s grip on the pup?s throat became tighter and tighter until the dog?s tongue lolled and his poor little puppy eyes began to bulge out of his head. ?I have recovered the lady?s hat, milord,? explained Beaseley, as if that act was sufficient compensation for his other failings. ?You have recovered what?? asked Philip, raising his brow and cocking his head to the right. ?Mrs. Montfort?s hat, milord.? To my great relief, Beaseley freed the dog from his grip in order to retrieve a lady?s hat from a sack lying near him on the grass. He then rose and made his groveling way to where Philip stood and handed the hat to him. Philip examined it in the light from the fire, turning it this way and that way. I recognized the hat immediately as my sister?s hat. At last, Philip said very thoughtfully, ?There are brown spots on this hat. What are these brown spots, Beaseley?? ?Blood, I should reckon,? replied the kneeling Beaseley in a most regretful tone. ?Blood, you say!? ?Aye!? Philip was so cavalier about everything that it was impossible for me to be certain whether he was genuinely shocked, or only pretending to be so. ?I am most perplexed, Beaseley. Were I not so reluctant to become an accomplice to a murder after the fact, I would ask you two questions. The first would be how you came to know that this was Mrs. Montfort?s hat, and the second would be to ascertain why you are so confident that these spots are indeed what you claim them to be and not smears of cow manure or merely wine stains?? ?I can explain?,? Beaseley began. ?No you will not, sir! It is one of the privileges of my position in society that I am excused from complicity in any crime, no matter how monstrous, so long as I can claim on my honor as a peer of the realm that I am ignorant of the facts! Therefore you will tell me nothing! You will be mute until I have left this place! Then you are free to share what you know with our good friend Louis. In fact, I command you to do it!? At the mention of his name, Louis, who had as usual remained quiet and unobtrusive, stood and bowed in acknowledgement of having heard Philip?s instructions. His oily complexion, reflected in the light from the fire, his bright black eyes, and his smile, which revealed his long fang-like eye teeth, reinforced my earlier impression that he resembled nothing so much as a snake preparing to strike. He took the hat from Philip?s hand. ?As always, I?m at your service, Philip,? Louis said in his most ingratiating manner. I swear that Philip stared at Louis in the most bizarre way for a moment, and that whatever that look meant, Louis understood it. Then Philip turned his back on them both and trudged away deeper into the woods until the crunching sounds made by his boots gradually diminished into silence. Louis approached Mr. Beaseley and put his arm upon his shoulder as if they were the best of friends. ?Tell me now, Beaseley,? said Louis quite jovially, ?how did you come to possess this marvelous hat?? ?I shall be much relieved to get this all off my chest, Mr. Louis,? promised the grateful Beaseley, who proceeded to relate the following story. ?I was only doing as Lord Wharton obliged me to do. When we first came here to kidnap Montfort?s wife and hold her captive until her father did what Lord Wharton wanted of him, whatever that was?. I was never clear about the politics of the thing, truth be told.? ?Don?t bother about it,? said Louis. ?Just get yourself to the part about the hat as quickly as you can.? Beasely continued his narrative. ?But what I did understand was that we were there to kidnap the lady. No sooner were we in at the front door, then she was out the back one. I saw her go. That hat caught my eye. I?m thinking it was just coincidence she had the hat on. I?m thinking she was already on her way out for a walk or such like. I?m the only one who saw her going. No one else saw her, but I did. There was no time to stop and explain myself. So, without thinking much more about it, I gave pursuit and followed her into the woods. She was a fleet runner, I?ll say that for her?? ?Fear is a potent motivator for the muscles,? suggested Louis. ?P?haps you?re right there, sir. For, to put it plain, she was outdoing me in the foot race to wherever she was heading, and I was getting winded, I?ll tell you no lie?? ?Don?t blame yourself too much, Beaseley. She did have a head start,? commented the ever-diplomatic Louis. ?Bu? she were wearing a dress, fancy shoes and holdin? onto her hat, and I still couldn?t catch her!? ?There! There!? said Louis, patting the disconsolate brute. ?I?m such a disappointment to meself and others!? Beaseley began to wail a bit, but he calmed himself down all on his own, and that horrid glint returned to his eye as he went on to finish his report. ?What happened after that was that she had run herself out. She stopped cold. I didn?t know why at first, then once I got closer to her I seen that she was standing at the edge of a ravine that ran a long ways on either side of where she was standing. She was trapped between me and a good long fall.? ?You were careful, I hope,? suggested Louis. ?Oh, I surely was! I didn?t want her injured in any way. Just wanted to get her back to Lord Wharton is all. So I crept up on her talkin? very calm, very calm indeed. I said for her not to be afraid and no one was going to hurt her. I told her I only wanted to bring her back to her own house all safe and sound like.? ?Did she say anything to you in reply?? asked Louis. ?Bloody well did! She threatened me with every consequence from hangin? to hellfire if I didn?t leave her be! Called me a shower of names I couldn?t repeat in polite company, I?ll tell ya! I didn?t know a well- born lady would know such words as them. But the upper classes always been a mystery to me?making a great show about holdin? their teacup properly one minute and the next they?re rutting with a hunchback in the barn. At least, that?s one thing I heard about ?em. Anyways, she was cuttin? me up royally with that sharp tongue of hers!? ?Abuse like that could cause a man to lose his head!? observed Louis. ?Not me, sir! No, sir! I?m a man for doin? the job I?m given. I knew what I had to do and I done it. So I crept up on her very cautious-like, talkin? nicely to her all the while. But despite my care, she would keep takin? a step back and another step back until she fell into the ravine, screamin? the most offensive language at me, sir, on her travels downward, until I heard her body crash into the bracken at the bottom. That finally shut ?er up!? ?Silence is golden. What did you do then?? asked Louis. ?It bein? late afternoon, there were too many shadows in the ravine for me to have a proper look at what was what. By the time I found a way down for myself and got back to the place where I guessed she?d taken her fall there were nothin? there for me to discover but that hat you?re holdin? in your hand.? ?Nothing else at all?? ?Not a bit. Well, except for?.? ?Yes? Go on, Mr. Beaseley. ?Except for???? Beaseley hesitated. The scene was frozen for an instant with Beaseley staring intently into the fire and the smiling Louis regarding him with the same false benevolence with which he had begun his interrogation. As for me, I knelt where I was with mouth agape and barely breathing for fear I would miss a word of the story. Only the puppy moved. Up to that point he had been exploring here and there and sniffing about as puppies will do. But to my alarm, he began to work his way closer and closer to where I was hidden. The last thing I wanted was for him to draw attention to my presence, and I sincerely hoped that a stray leaf or a particularly fascinating bug would send him off in another direction. ?There was one other thing,? Beaseley said at last, breaking up the disturbing tableau. ?Yes?? replied Louis. ?I can?t be sure I was in the exact right place, but I think I was because I found the hat. The foliage all around that spot was flattened as if someone had been trampling on it, or as if something had fallen there and then been dragged off. I don?t think it was her haulin? herself off somewhere. I would have found her if that were the case. I?m not so slow moving as to be unable to catch an injured woman crawling about on her hands and knees, Mr. Louis. I searched the area as thorough-like as I could and she was not to be found. No. Something big enough to cart her carcass off had gotten to her before I did. I tracked them marks until they changed into somethin? else. Whatever it was had picked her up and carried her from that point, ?cause I found footprints pushed deep in the mud. But I don?t know of any creature that can make tracks like those. That?s when I heard the sounds comin? from somewhere out there in the distance?.? ?What kind of sounds were those?? asked Louis. ?Don?t know?. Howlin,? growlin,? a bit of snufflin?, maybe?.? ?I assume that was the point at which you lost your nerve,? Louis concluded. Beaseley?s shoulders fell. He began to weep wholeheartedly and said at last, ?I did, Mr Louis! I climbed out of that ravine as fast as I could! I am a most craven coward! I admit it!? He then decided that he dared not tell Philip what had happened. Instead, he kept silent and hid the hat against future need. He had returned to the woods many times afterwards, in the hope that he might solve the mystery of the body?s disappearance and gain credit for himself, redeem himself somehow. Since he never did find any bones or other evidence of human remains, there was always the chance that Sheila had survived and was being kept concealed somewhere. To his way of thinking, if anyone knew the answer to that part of the puzzle, it was Mr. Montfort, and this evening, in his frustration, Beaseley had taken to beating the man, hoping to force an answer from him. That tactic might have worked, he said, if only Philip had permitted him to pummel Montfort properly. Alas, Philip had shown scruples in that instance and had forced Beaseley to forbear. There was nothing left to do after the whole enterprise had failed, but to tell all that he knew and then flee the country, and that?s what he?d decided to do while they were all sitting around the fire tonight. He said he felt much better now that he had confessed. ?Confession is good for the soul,? said Louis. ?Come away with me. I have a place for you to go where no one will trouble you,? ?That?s kind of you, Mr. Louis,? answered Beaseley. ?I tried my best, and it didn?t work out is all.? ?I do understand,? said Louis, turning Beaseley in the direction he wanted him to take, which was the same general direction that Philip had gone in earlier. I had a premonition just then. I feel as if the whole little patch of forest that I was hiding in was a part of it. All of the night sounds stopped, even the breezes stilled themselves?not a cricket chirped, not a branch rustled for several pregnant minutes. The scream, when it came, was short and sharp?followed by the crack of small branches breaking and at last a thud?and I knew that surely one of those two men was no more. As to which one, that detail I did not know, not having actually seen his demise, but reviewing their conversation in my mind, I assumed it was the clearly expendable Mr. Beaseley. And good riddance to him and his filthy memory! I found him chargeable in the matter of my sister?s death and I had no sorrow for his passing whatsoever. The tears that I cried then were unquenchable. I grieved. I mourned. My sense of bereavement was without depth or breadth. Sheila was utterly lost to me and there had been no last words to share, no final embrace, nothing. Oh, how I hoped there was a Heaven, for if there truly were such a thing as Paradise she would surely, in her ineffable goodness, be in it! Although it was childish to do so, I pictured her floating on a celestial cloud and in my imagination I created different gowns for her to wear until I pictured her in a pink one that I thought particularly suited her. You may find it strange that I occupied myself with such ideas, but the exercise soothed me somewhat. I needed to forget that Sheila?s remains had more than likely ended as food for the predators and insects that lived in the wood, and contemplating her in such a morbid condition as that was a poor alternative to designing a dress for her eternal travels in the air! At last, I laid myself on the ground. I must have slept again, because the next thing I knew the puppy was nuzzling my face with his wet nose and making the most pathetic of whimpers. I supposed he was feeling lost and lonely as well, and I picked him up and gave him a nice rub all round his head that he liked very much. How I wished that I could be as easily distracted from my troubles as he was from his! It all came back to me then, and my tears were renewed in torrents with just as great an emotional intensity as had been there the first time. To think that Sheila was the unwitting victim of a madman?s insane plan to blackmail my father, and that she had died because of the ineptitude of a half-witted kidnapper! To make matters even worse she had then been eaten by wolves or ogres or who knew what! It was really too much for me! Worse still, there had been no opportunity to share a final moment of consolation and affection. There would be no chance of it now, as her remains had apparently been scattered to the four winds! If only I had something of Sheila?s to remember her by?some little memento or souvenir! She would not seem so irretrievably lost to me if I had something of hers to keep. Then I remembered the hat. Louis had dropped it on the ground when he was taking Mr. Beaseley off to be killed. I could retrieve it if I wanted to do so. Was the idea too gruesome? I thought not. The campfire had died out by that time. I rose from where I was and, tucking Little Johnny under my arm, I made my way to where Sheila?s hat was lying. Reaching down to pick it up, I observed that my side no longer hurt, and had not been bothering me for some time. It is a phenomenon of our behavior as human beings that once we are freed of physical pain, no matter how troubling it may have been, we take our recovery for granted and promptly forget the condition as if it had never existed. How I wish that the same was true with our grief! But that is not the case. Even in the midst of our happiest times, we can be struck with a reminder so piercing that our joy vanishes like the fleeting rainbow after a summer storm. I picked up the hat and held it to my breast. I raised it to my lips and kissed it. It smelled strongly of mulberries. As I puzzled over the unexpected odor, I heard a howling and a growling and a bit of snuffling, followed by the sound of the trees of the forest being rended and torn apart, followed by the footfalls of something extremely large drawing closer and closer until its hot breath seared my neck. I broke out into gooseflesh all over my body. I was frozen in place. Little Johnny leaped from under my arm and stood barking at whomever or whatever was standing behind me. ?I?ll learn yer not to piss in my pot, yer ungrateful wench!? said a very loud and threatening voice. Turning round, I took a good look at the speaker. I would have assumed that the words came from Goody Whitfield, were it not for the fact that the creature with bloodstained teeth I stood facing was not of this earth. End of Part Four