As Meat Loves Salt

Not daring to call out, Walshe fell to whining for pardon. ‘O Jacob,’ says he, ‘you see it is only me, pray let me go,’ and all the time he was looking out for his father, but I had taken care to get the trees between us and any help that might come to him. At last he fell silent, gaping at me much as he had gaped from the protection of my brother’s arm.

‘What of dear Zeb?’ I mocked. ‘Not here, is he?’

The moonlight showed me tears on Walshe’s cheeks. He was panting with fear, breast rising and falling beneath his white shirt. Show him, said the Voice, what becomes of a boy who insults a man.

‘Well, little warrior.’ I pushed him up against the tree and pressed my left hand hard over his mouth, and just tickled his belly with the point of the knife before driving it in. He tried to push away my arm with both of his but could not, and his struggles were so feeble that the savage fit in me was still not worked off. I pulled the knife down and out, and feeling my fingers warm and wet from the blood, I said to him, ‘Let us see what Jacob will do now.’

Twisting his arm again to keep him in front of me, lest he bleed on my coat, I wrestled him over to the pond. On seeing where we were headed he turned his face to look up into my eyes, and I tightened my grip on his mouth, and smiled and nodded. By the time we got there he was very weak, and too confused to call out when he got his chance. I held him by the legs into the deep water at the side of the runway. There was not even much splashing.

‘It was dark,’ I pleaded to Caro. ‘Else I should never – I took him for a robber—’

My wife clamped her hands to her ears.

‘Caro, hear me.’ I reached up and prised the hands away.

‘You put him in the pond! O you should have brought him back – fetched a surgeon—’

‘Too late, he was dead. I thought to hide the corpse. Besides, he was a Judas, they all of them meant us harm—’

Caro cried, ‘O what do I care what they meant!’

‘I am telling you how it was!’

‘You killed him. And here have I been—’ She began weeping again, a breathless, driven sob. ‘Here have I been – wondering – if I drove Patience away. We had words that day.’

‘Do you hear me? Patience—’

‘Patience saw it.’ Caro’s voice was become a lash. ‘And for that she left, and returned.’

For once her quick understanding struck fear into me.

‘Who knows? Possibly she heard.’ I tried to keep my voice calm.

‘All this because he spoke against you!’

‘Not for that, not at all,’ I said. ‘You don’t listen.’ I tried to put my arm around her but she rolled off me and lay by my side. ‘Caro, I was set on in the dark, Walshe set on me—’

There was a scuffling in the leaves and Caro spoke from somewhere above my head. ‘I am going back to Beaurepair.’

‘Don’t you understand?’ I was exasperated: there she stood as if nothing had happened. ‘You cannot go back.’

‘I shall try whether I can or no.’

‘You read the pamphlets and stole the gold with the rest of us,’ I answered. ‘As for Walshe, I did it for you. He would have—’

‘Did it for me!’ Caro screamed. There was a sharp pain in my side: she had kicked out, and not in jest. ‘When you didn’t know what he was! How, for me?’

My side throbbed. ‘Another kick,’ I promised, ‘and you’ll wish you hadn’t.’

‘Don’t ever say you did it for—’

‘Enough! The thing is done. You stay here,’ and I sprang up.

Caro leapt back, panting. ‘You let me contract myself to you.’

‘You cannot go back,’ I hissed. ‘Do you want us to be taken?’

‘You were keeping ahold of me until the betrothal. I don’t know you, O God, God help me.’

‘O but you do know me, Mistress.’ I stepped forward to where her voice had been, but found she had moved further off. I heard her pushing through branches. Then a frenzied whisper: ‘Zeb, Zeb! Zeb, wake, please, O God, Zeb—’

I closed in on her voice as it floated upwards from where she crouched over my brother’s body. There was a faint slapping sound which I took for her patting his face. Zeb groaned once or twice, and Caro shrieked, ‘He’s here! He’s—’

I was upon her before she had time for more. Pawing my brother like that, calling myself, her lawful husband, He…! I dragged her upright by the hair and forced her along with me, ignoring her wails, until we were some yards off, tussling all the way.

‘Lie down,’ I said.

‘Jacob, let me—’

Amorous propensities heated by struggle, whispered the Voice. Other men took their pleasure, even with sluts like Patience, whilst I, a loving fool, had waited weeks, months for a wife who at the first trial offered to leave me. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down. The wedding gown was heavy and in the dark I knelt on it. My fingernails tore in trying to hitch it up. A squib exploded in my head: she had hit me in the eye. I brought my fist down on her face as if chopping wood. She commenced screeching, and I gave her another, and another, until she learnt better. At last all I could hear was stifled gasps.

‘Now keep still,’ I said.

Her thighs under the robe were damp and cool as mushrooms. My hand gouged between them, found the soft place where I would slake myself. I undid my breeches.

‘Jacob, please.’ Her voice quavered; she coughed and snorted and I guessed her nose was bleeding. ‘Zeb hears you.’

Again I saw her hand move under his shirt. ‘Let him.’

‘Please, Jacob, Jacob.’ Caro’s tears and spittle all but choked my name. ‘How will you feel tomorrow?’

‘Married.’

She whimpered, mingling prayers and sobs as I pushed into her. She had still her maidenhead; I drove in hard until the flesh gave way and I was packed tight.

‘You’re killing me!’ Caro shrieked. ‘Killing!’

I pushed harder, for mastery.

‘Zeb!’ she screamed.

‘Keep him away if you love him,’ I snarled. ‘I’m able for him, too.’ Let him hear that. Let him hear all – let—

The spasm was upon me and it was intense unto agony. I heard myself growl. Teeth clenched, I crushed my hips against her, the pleasure surging in me so that for a moment I was nothing but that, I was dying, and even as I let go the gasping of the flesh slowed, slackened and I knew where I was and who lay with me. Heart pounding, I collapsed onto her breast. Caro at once shifted under me so that my body slipped out of hers. She then tried to pull the gown over her thighs, but my weight prevented it.

There was silence apart from our breathing.

From the side of the stream came Zeb’s voice, timid: ‘Caro?’