Tam Lin

Chapter One - Sample

Janet squatted, her petticoats tucked up around her knees as she peered anxiously out across the farmyard towards the dairy. Her bountiful breasts, trussed up in a tightly laced bodice, rose and fell rapidly as her heart pounded the rhythm of her passion. Would he dare to come? If her father caught them, the boy would be beaten, for sure. Maybe even she would not get away with lighter punishment this time, especially under the circumstances. But how was she supposed to resist, she thought, the most natural urge in the world? And besides, she had thought it over; she had decided it was worth taking the risk again. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she had an intuition that this boy might understand what she needed. What she wanted from him. As she caught herself rationalizing her behavior this way, she smiled. After all, wasn’t that just an excuse; did she really imagine she could resist anyway? Perhaps she was right, perhaps as her father said so often, spitting the words at her through angry, blistered lips: perhaps she was nothing more than a wonton, a hussy, and a brazen, immoral wench.

A noise startled her and she spun round on her heels, flicking dark curls from her emerald eyes, her creamy skin blushed like the ripened fruits in the storehouse below. The mellow aromas enriched the air with the intoxicating, sensuous perfumes of nature’s fecundity. Janet sighed and relaxed, her soft, blood-flushed lips framing a relieved smile: ruffling its russet feathers, a straying hen clucked and dropped clumsily from the open window onto the knotted oak boards of the hayloft floor. A shaft of honey- colored autumn sunlight glanced through the gloom, illuminating the swirling particles agitated by the bird’s rhythmic scratching amongst the straw and dust.

Outside, in the quiet farmyard below, a tethered shire horse clopped his hooves against the cobbles and swished his greasy tail to brush away the irritation of flies. Goats and geese lay drowsily in the soft shade of the rickety apple cart. It was late season and the farmyard rested quietly in the period of satisfied contentment between the end of harvest and the cold encroachment of the bitter winter months.

Janet turned back towards the dairy, the soles of her naked feet tingling as they twisted over the rough floorboards. Breathing deeply to calm herself, she closed her eyes in the warmth of the sun and savored the scent of the sweet hay, a memory of distant summer. Suddenly she heard the creak and clatter of the dairy door swinging open and shut. And there he stood.

Slipping back into the shadows, she watched as he wiped the sweat from his brow, running his hand through sandy hair. He shaded his dark eyes as he glanced briefly up towards the hayloft. The pail of rich, creamy milk he carried sounded a muted clunk as he poured its contents into the churn, tiny drops of white splashing over his bronzed, muscular arms.

Janet smiled. From the shady interior of the hayloft she scrutinized the taught muscularity of his lithe body, the contours beneath his leather breeches and loose, homespun shirt. Her eyes, bright as a cat’s caught in lamplight, hungrily observed her prey as he swilled the pail clean in the icily fresh water of the well. She lapped up the fluid confidence of his movements as he strode across the yard and the potency of his animal strength as he lifted the iron latch-beam across the dairy door. Then he turned and with no hesitation but for a quick glance back at the farmhouse, crossed the yard and vanished from Janet’s sight into the storeroom below her.

Janet stood up, lifting her skirts and slipped stealthily over the boards, standing behind the open trap door that connected the hayloft to the fruit store. She pressed her back against the wall, feeling the coarse, cold granite against her naked shoulders. From where she stood, she could just see the top of the ladder. She saw the slight movement of the shafts, heard the sound of a boot scraping on the lower rung. She drew her breath and waited, raising her leg quietly, her toes silently searching for the wood of the trapdoor.

A moment later, his tousled sandy head emerged through the opening, his powerful neck and shoulders. She saw his strong hands against the floorboards and his sinewy forearms flex as he hoisted himself up into the loft. The hen, surprised by this unexpected intruder, clucked and flapped its wings noisily, hopping back up to the window ledge in a chaos of dust and feathers: head cocked, startled eye vigilant.

Janet felt his presence, smelled the musky scent of his body as he stood there, quite still, his back to her, half shadowed in the mottled light. She heard her own breathing, felt the heat between her thighs, her bosom tight against the stricture of her bodice. And then through the muted softness of the air, the rich cadence of his voice, saying her name.

“Janet?”

She gently bit her bottom lip, wriggling her toes to gain a firmer purchase against the wood and then with a quick flick of her ankle kicked the trapdoor shut. The sound cracked the air like a musket shot. He span round, eyes wild, hand to the hilt of the knife tucked into his belt. She put a hand to her lips, stifling her laughter.

“Janet,” he said again quietly. His dark eyes glittered with unbridled desire as he stepped towards her, arms either side of her, trapping her against the wall: the hunted become the hunter.

Janet groaned as his right hand moved across her shoulder and up the back of her neck. He tangled his fingers amongst her thick, black curls, pulling her head back and pressed his mouth against hers. Her tongue explored the sweet, spicy flavors of his mouth as his other hand pressed urgently against her breast, the fingers skillfully unlacing her bodice, tearing the soft cotton beneath and releasing the fullness of her bosom. Her own hands now pushed under his shirt, roving over his back, sliding down to grasp his buttocks through the smooth leather of his breeches. She felt his hardening bulge straining at her groin. Then suddenly she pushed him away, slipping from his grasp and stepped aside, laughing.

“I’m not so easily caught,” she said, breathless. Would he know what to do? How to play the game?

She watched his eyes cast about the room, finally settling on a hempen rope that hung coiled on an iron hook in the wall like a serpent on the branch of a tree. Her eyes followed his hand as he reached out and lifted it down, grasping one end and letting the other fall loose to the floor. It hit the boards with a weighted thud. Yes, she thought, he knows. Janet took a step back away from him, deeper into the shadows. The hen clucked in alarm and flapped out of the window, returning to the sunlit farmyard below.

His face was serious now, the black coals of his eyes glowing with dark lust. He tested the weight of the rope in his hand. Janet turned to dash away but he caught her by the wrist. She wriggled to free herself but he held her fast, working quickly, deftly tying her hands together in a tight knot of coarse rope. She gasped as he yanked her to her feet and dragged her across the room, slinging the loose end of the rope over a sturdy beam and hoisting her off the ground, lashing the remaining length to the iron wall hook.

Janet flushed, hot with excitement as the rope grazed her wrists. She kicked out, wriggling and straining, suspended as he moved towards her. She spat at him.

“Steady now, my little wildcat,” he said in hushed, velvet tones, untroubled by her struggling. She felt his firm grasp as he took her ankles, swinging her legs over his shoulders. Despite her futile struggles, he lifted her petticoats, taking her bottom in his hands and sinking his head deep between her thighs.

Janet smiled now, allowing her eyelids to fall closed, the rich scent of her own sex heady in the air, mingled with the aroma of fermenting apples, as his lips kissed and nibbled the warm flesh of her thighs; his tongue, quick and light as the kiss of a snake, seeking her secret place. With her eyes closed, she experienced the fiery ardor of her body, of his body, of her flesh, of all flesh, at one with the animal passions of life. She felt his strong hands squeezing her firm buttocks, the fingers of his right hand playing down her crack, pulling her cheeks apart, toying around the entrance of the dark cave they found there, pressing into her. She felt the muscle of his tongue as it explored the contours of her labia, licking up the warm, pungent liquid that flowed now like the honeyed juice of ripened fruit. She squirmed with gratified relish, locking her legs behind his neck and thrusting her delicious pussy deeper into the source of her pleasure. She felt a wild, abandoned joy surge inside her, like a hot spring gushing uncontrolled from the rock that could no longer contain its force. His tongue now flicked and tickled around the hood of her swelling clitoris. His left hand spanked her buttocks as she moaned at the stinging pleasure of his dominance. His tongue now circled, now licked, now flashed over her hot point of passion, a shock of sensation striking at the core of her desire as summer lightening strikes the moist and ready earth. This one, she thought, is good. Better than all the others. She let out a short gasp as his finger penetrated her anus. She loved that. His tongue danced with urgent vigor over her aching clitoris, his lips sucking her juice, his left hand now pinching her stiffened nipples. She cried aloud in ecstasy, in pain, in blissful sacrifice: a wild, instinctual cry, as she shuddered and bucked in climax, her heels digging into his back, her thighs wet with love juice and sweat.

Her eyes opened to see his knife, clenched in his powerful hand, flash flame-like in a shaft of sunlight. The rope loosed at her wrists and her hands wriggled free as he lowered her down. Janet slung her arms around his neck, her legs still high, ankles crossed now behind his lower back and looked briefly into his eyes before pressing her lips against his, driving her tongue deep against his own. She could feel his huge member, hard and throbbing against her thigh. The scent of his skin, his sweat, his groin, intoxicated her. His strong arm wrapped around her waist, lifting her over him as he began to guide the full length of his swollen cock into her, but she kicked against him once more and with the feline stealth of a wildcat slinking through the undergrowth, slid from his grasp and slipped behind him, pressing her bosom into his back as one hand reached round to caress his chest and nipples whilst the other worked the length of his hefty, arching penis. As she pressed herself against the hot carnality of his flesh, felt the bestial power of his throbbing cock, feeling the tremors of orgasm still quivering through her own enraptured body, Janet thought to herself that there could be no greater pleasure in life than the excitement of giving herself like this, at first vulnerable, exposed, now powerfully in control: giving herself to the urges of this overpowering carnal desire. Yes, she thought, enflamed with lust as she felt his body turn round towards her, his hands now heavy on her shoulders, pushing her to her knees, as she took the huge shaft of his penis in her mouth and began to suck: yes, yes, she thought, I am brazen, a hussy; I am wonton! She squeezed his balls in her hand, felt his sack tighten and sucked harder, deeper on his pulsing manhood. She heard him groan and grabbing his buttocks pushed him deeper into her mouth as he shot his hot, salty load and she swallowed his seed, sucking again. Then she released him. His cock still crowed before her, immediately recovered, proud and hard and glistening. Janet breathed an astonished blasphemy.

He pulled her towards him, lying on his back in the hay. Janet pulled her petticoats up and straddled across him, lowering herself onto his aching shaft. Suddenly there was a heavy footfall. Someone was stomping across the yard. The fruit store door creaked and clattered. She heard the flap and squawk of a flustered hen. There was a muttered, fuming curse from below.

“Shit!” Janet heard the scrape of boots, the rattle of the ladder. She quickly stood up, letting her clothing fall back into place, hurriedly trying to re-lace her bodice over her bosom. She shot a quick glance at her lover who was scrabbling to his feet, desperate to stuff his still hard penis back into the tight leather of his breeches.

“Shit,” Janet breathed again, her breasts, nipples hard, still exposed. The trapdoor lifted. “Oh shit.” And into the soft gloom of the hayloft, amongst the newly agitated motes of dust picked out by the shaft of sunlight, emerged the red, balding, anger-bloated face of her father.

Janet stepped backwards, covering her exposure with her arms, her face reddening, not with embarrassment but with the residual heat of her passion and now a newly provoked sense of trepidation. She was at least relieved to see that the boy had managed to replace himself and clearly his anxiety had overcome any sense of continuing sexual arousal.

Her father heaved his short, podgy form through the trap door and stood dusting down his velvet, fur trimmed topcoat with chubby hands. He snorted through hairy nostrils, not looking at either of them, pressing his lips together and running his thick tongue over his top teeth. He waddled a few paces forward. He looked up and Janet saw his eyes narrow as he noticed the frayed knot of hemp still lashed to the cross beam and then, looking down, the length of remaining rope, curled like the serpent in the garden of Eden, mocking her for succumbing to its guile. She wondered if the boy would play Adam and accuse her before his Lord. But he stood straight, arms by his side, eyes lowered, waiting. The only sign of life in him the rising and falling of his breath. He was after all, she thought, a servant in the presence of his master. And as yet not a word had been spoken.

“Go and make yourself decent girl,” hissed her father quietly, every syllable squeezed through his crooked teeth, charged with barely suppressed rage. She saw his spittle, catching the light, discharged like sparks from the mouth of a dragon. “Wait for me in the house.”

Janet curtsied as best she could without revealing her bosom, her eyes downcast and moved herself quickly towards the trapdoor. As she passed her father, he caught her by the arm. His sweaty grip was tight. It hurt. It would bruise, she thought. She looked up. His eyes locked on hers, burning with a furious fire. She felt his wrath.

“Damnation, wench!” he shouted, physically shaking, then shoved her on. Janet fought back the sudden, hot welling of tears.

As she stumbled down the ladder and through the fruit store Janet noticed that some of the apples, pears and plums were already turning brown and over-soft, penetrated by flies and grubs, putrefying, rotten, the white bloom of death-mould furring the skin. Bad luck if your fruit begins to rot before the first frost, the old women said. Misfortune betides they’d mutter, and make the sign against the evil eye.

The cobbles were cold against her feet as Janet reached the farmhouse door. Far on the other side of the valley, beyond Seldom Forest and Carterhaugh Dell she saw black clouds mounting behind the dark silhouette of Castle Dorian, ragged against the skyline. The sunlight in the farmyard was weaker now. She shivered. The wind was picking up; there was a change in the air. The distant grumble of thunder echoed across the valley. There will be a storm, she thought.

As she put her hand on the cold iron door ring, Janet heard the first stinging crack of a horsewhip from the barns behind her and a young man’s stifled cry of pain. The tears spilled now from her eyes and wet her cheeks. She tasted the salt on her lips as she slipped inside and pushed the heavy door shut behind her.

Inside the house a log fire blazed and crackled in the hearth of the large parlor, reflecting a rich collage of red and orange warmth on the polished oak panels. The scent of smoldering pinesap and pipe tobacco spiced the hushed air. The house rested in a somnolent silence, stirring only in the creak of floorboards as Janet stole quietly to warm herself before the hearth. She re-laced her bodice and listened to the steady beating of the house’s heart; the slow clunk, clunk, clunk of the grandfather clock that stood facing her on the opposite wall. To the other side were the three leaded windows that looked out onto the farmyard and beyond to the crouching bulk of Castle Dorian. In the center of the room was a long, solid table draped in heavily woven cloth, over which hung an iron candelabra whose tallow candles sputtered and flickered, casting a dance macabre of shadows over the soot stained ceiling. The room suddenly darkened further as clouds obscured the sun. Another rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Janet turned to the fire and caught sight of her tear-stained face, eerily illuminated by a flash of lightening, in the ornately gilded mirror that hung above the hearth.

Janet licked her fingers and wiped the tearstains from her face. She rearranged her hair, retying the velvet ribbon behind her neck. Her heart beat fast in her bosom. She felt the rising bile of anger in her throat. She was a woman of age, she thought, what right did her father have to command with whom she should and should not enjoy the pleasures of the flesh? And to administer such punishments! Surely her father knew full well that it was she who had done the seducing, not the poor farmhand. No doubt he would soon remind her of her responsibilities as his daughter, and of the fact that she was now promised to a man. She smiled a bitter smile. What lies her father could tell himself! Promised to a man. Well, yes, but what a man and under what conditions! There was the scraping of boots outside and then the door flung open and crashed closed as her father stormed into the room, throwing his coat down on the table. Janet closed her eyes and did not turn round.

“Damnation child! Curses and damnation!” he fumed. He stood behind her. She felt the angry heat of his body. He scalded her, his words flying like sparks of accusation from the fire of his wrath. “How dare you behave in this way? No daughter of mine…damnation! May I remind you, you hussy that you are to be married? That your future husband is to arrive here this very evening to meet you? And where do I discover you? Cavorting with one of my farmhands in the hayloft! And God only knows what infernal perversions you were indulging you god-forsaken little whore!”

At this, Janet’s eyes flashed open and she span around on her father, her own face now alive with passionate mockery, and her voice quiet.

“I am hardly to be married. I am to be sold to Lord Dorian to be nothing more than the latest addition to his harem of concubines. Why, father, do you keep lying to yourself about this? It is hardly as if His Lordship is coming here as a suitor to court me with fair words and the gifts of his good grace; more like a farmer going to market to choose a good heifer or a mare for his stables! And you are the one selling me!”

It was as though she had dealt him a physical blow. She watched as her father doubled up, falling back on to the edge of the table for support, one hand across his stomach, the other covering his eyes. Is he ill? she thought, is he weeping, or has his anger overcome him? She was confused. Of course she hated what her father was doing to her now but it had not always been like this. She knew that for all his show of angry strength he was a weak man at heart. Only a weak man, she thought, would have such ready recourse to the furies of his temper and the punishments of his whip. He had always been, despite his small and stocky stature, a towering figure, and a standing stone on the wild moors of her emotional landscape. When she was younger, she recalled, he could be as gentle as he was now occasionally cruel. But those days seemed long ago and she knew that he still grieved the loss of a wife, the mother that she had barely known, and remained with her now only as the vaguest recollection of a gentle voice and bright smile. She reached out a hand to touch his arm. For a moment there was contact between them and then as suddenly he pulled away, turning his back on her and standing at the other side of the table. The room grew even darker and the candles flickered. Thunder cracked in the distance. Through the leaded window, Janet saw lightening flash again over the shadowed towers of the Castle. Although the storm was still some way off, she felt a bitter chill numbing her skin. She moved closer to the fire’s warming glow. Her father’s voice came quiet but intense.

“I pray you, Janet, do not make this more difficult for me then already it is. As you well know, I have…we have no choice.”

“There is always a choice.”

“What? To make paupers of ourselves? To cast ourselves out onto the streets penniless and homeless? If we do not agree to this arrangement the debts we owe to Lord Dorian will never be paid. Do you realize what that means, girl?” He turned to face her, fists on the tabletop, eyes of shining steel. “ It means our tenure here will be over and the land repossessed. The lands that I and my father and his father before him for generations past have farmed and known and loved as it were our own. And do you imagine that when land is repossessed in this way the debtors are treated with the dignity they once enjoyed as tenants? No! We will be cast out into the street and spat upon!”

“Could we not move on to another place and begin again?”

“And where would we go and how should we travel and what should we eat? With the Kingdom at war and the weight of taxes to pay for it making even the richest to tighten his belt…no, there will be no work and no charity. We will starve in the gutter or else in some godforsaken hedgerow, of no more use and no more valued than mangy dogs or crippled mules.”

“But father,” Janet pleaded, “couldn’t we leave the realm? Isn’t there a cousin, I heard you speak of him once, in Kingdom Farr? Would he not lend us help in our time of need?”

“Child, you do not understand,” said her father, his face softening in love and sorrow. She watched him, trembling, as he came round the table now and took her hands in his. “We will be cast out with nothing, Janet. Nothing. We would walk out of this house with only the clothes that we wear. We would never survive the journey to the Port, let alone muster the fare for a sea crossing to Kingdom Farr. Besides, my cousin is an impoverished cobbler, himself in poor health and I have not spoken to him in many years.”

There was a moment’s silence between them. Then her father spoke again.

“Doesn’t it grieve me to see my only daughter sent away like this? But I have thought it through. This way, you will be fed fine food, kept in luxury far from the cold of the night and the dangers of the world, no shortage of company…”

Janet pulled away from him. “I shall be kept a prisoner and a slave!”

“Damnation child!” her father cried, raising his fist. “I am offering you a chance to survive well fed and in good health and safety! And only in exchange for what you give freely to any wandering tinker or farmhand for nothing in return anyway! Do you not realize the rumors I have to quell in the town about my wayward, whore of a daughter? Besides, you know the arrangement. It will only be a few years. When you reach your thirtieth year, the agreement will be annulled, you will be released and the tenure secured. I am doing my best for you. Now, I do not wish to hear another word spoken about it. The decision is made and the decision is final.”

“But father, surely…”

“Lord Dorian will arrive tonight. The Master bedroom has been prepared lest His Lordship should wish to…” here Janet watched her father pause as he searched for the right words, for a delicate, diplomatic phrase. She spoke for him, but on her own terms.

“…Should he wish to test the goods before he makes his purchase?”

“Should he wish to spend intimate time with you before agreeing to the arrangement as is only proper for a husband and wife. Now go to your room and clean yourself. Your hair is disheveled, your feet black as a street urchin’s, your clothes soiled with dust and hay and you stink of carnality, as might an old whore. Now out of my sight! Out! Before my temper wins over my reason.”

In her room, Janet stripped off her dirtied clothes, poured the chilly water from the ceramic pitcher into the tin basin and washed, before dressing again in a tight-boned corset that lifted her ample cleavage provocatively, a primrose yellow blouse, pulled off the shoulder and a full skirt over freshly laundered petticoats. Then she sat in front of the polished silver mirror that had been a wedding gift to her mother and began to brush out her ebony hair with the ivory handled hairbrush her father had bought her as a gift one summer’s eve of long ago. That long ago summer, she had been but a girl, a mere strip of a thing and the hairbrush had been her most prized possession. Despite her then underdeveloped figure and juvenile demeanor, her hair had already reached its maturity of thick, black curls and she had loved to brush it before the glass, even as she did now. But, she thought, how innocent had been the pleasure then! In those days she always wore her hair long and loose. Never did she tie it back to the top of her head with a blood-red ribbon of velvet, revealing the graceful curve of her neck, the form of her pretty ears. Never then did she tease out a few locks over her eye, or down the side of her face, as she did now. In those far off days, she thought to herself, she knew that her hair was beautiful and in her womanhood, she thought, not only that, but she had learned what her hair was for and how to use it.

Janet stood and looked at herself in the full length of the glass. She thought of the rumors that she had heard about the way in which life was conducted at Castle Dorian, especially for the concubines. It had often been whispered in the village, amongst the gossips on a market morning, or their men folk gathered at a table outside the Inn on a summer’s eve, of the luxury in which His Lordship kept his women. She had also heard darker, more private murmurings about the secret pleasures that the women oftimes shared amongst themselves. And, of course, she had heard about their master, Lord Dorian. He loomed before her now in her imagination as a shadowy and dangerous figure but the sense of danger was edged with a thrilling excitement. She had heard that he could be cruel. But she had also heard that there could be lavish rewards for those women who best pleased him. And she had heard that he was a vigorous and talented lover; a real man not just another farm hand or laborer’s lad but a man of experience, wealth and distinction. Janet’s skin tingled. It was a challenge, she told herself. He was a challenge. Perhaps finally, in him, she would meet her match…

“Janet! What the very devil do you think you’re doing? How many days do you need to dress?” It was her father’s voice, thick with bluster, yelling up the stairs. “Get yourself down here at once. I have a job for you.”

Janet checked herself one last time in the glass, patted down her skirts with her hands and hurried to her father’s bidding.

When she entered the room she found him, fat knuckles curled into podgy fists, leaning on the windowsill and gazing out of the window at the distant storm still rumbling over Castle Dorian. She stood silently until he turned. She lowered her eyes in a mock show of lady-like demeanor and graced him with a low curtsy.

“Father?”

“Good god, child, if only I were fooled! Now hear me. I have been keeping vigil and clearly no retinue has left the castle towards the valley as yet and so I anticipate that His Lordship will come later, perhaps even after supper. The house is dour in this stormy darkness. I want you to go now and gather some flowers from the edges of the wood. Something bright, to cheer the place. And something scented to cover the odors of the yard that this evil wind is carrying into the house. Do you hear? Take your cloak and be quick about it.”

Janet took her cloak of green velvet from the oaken peg by the door and swung it over her naked shoulders. Then, pulling the hood over her head, made to turn the door ring.

“And Janet,” said her father, his voice now low and warning, “I forbid you to venture near Carterhaugh Dell, do you hear? For we know well who dwells there and what may come of you in passing by that accursed place.”

“Aye father,” replied Janet quietly and then, savoring the very threat of the name on her tongue, “Tam Lin.”

Lightening flashed. The stable door clattered outside in the wind.

“And he’ll not be for caring that you threw your maidenhead away to some jack-ass Innkeeper some years since! He’ll take you and have you all the same. He’s not a farmhand or a village boy, remember that Janet. Tam Lin does not play games. Get in the rough with the likes of him and there’ll be trouble for all of us.”

Janet turned as she reached the brow of the hill, bordering the edge of the woods, and looked back towards the house. Through the window, outlined in reflected fire, she saw the grave and tired face of her father watching her. She waved. He raised his hand slowly to return the gesture. Then Janet turned about, her raven curls shining like a crows wing in the sunlight, her eyes a flash of green emerald, and skipped merrily down the other side of the bank, took the path by the Twisted Oak and not even once looking back, headed through the brae and straight towards Carterhaugh.

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