Moonspun Magic Read Free Page B

was to be broken in. They’d drawn lots from the pottery bowl, an ancient piece the Ram said had come from a ship of the Spanish Armada, blown to bits by Queen Bess’s sailors, and wrecked off the shores of Cornwall.
    The Ram very calmly walked to the table, bent down, and kissed the girl full on the mouth. She whimpered, but no more. She’d been fed enough drug to do nothing more. Slowly the Ram walked to the end of the table. He freed her ankles, and slowly, as if to a strange cadence, he pushed her legs up, bending her knees until her feet were flat on the table. He told her to keep her legs open.
    He looked at one of the men, the one who had drawn the first lot, and nodded. Johnny Tregonnet was ready, more than ready, he was eager, and he was rough as he drew up the girl’s gown, baring her to the waist.
    The Ram had once stated, “A woman’s uses are below her waist. Her breasts are nothing but a distraction.”
    No one knew if he had taken this from the red-vellum guidebook or from his own capricious nature.No one really cared, though a sight of really full breasts would have titillated some.
    She bled as she was supposed to. Not copiously, for she was a peasant girl. The Ram remarked that peasant girls were like the stolid, gritty animals they tended. He then motioned for two of them to hold her legs wide, for she was growing tired.
    She was deeply asleep from the drug when the eighth finished. It didn’t matter, said the Ram easily. It was better that a woman remain silent. It was a blessing.
    The men were relaxed and drinking steadily now. This part of the ritual was a bit of an annoyance. To drink their brandy, they had to turn their faces away, lift their hoods, drink, then lower the hoods back into place before turning back to face the others. Each turned to look at the girl upon occasion. She lay in the shadowy light from the fireplace, now lightly snoring from the surfeit of drug the Ram had fed her.
    The Ram sat a bit apart. He drank sparingly. He’d given them this girl to keep them in line. None of them, he mused many times, had the depth of spirit to truly become part of the rituals that nurtured a man’s soul. They were allowed to plow a girl only when he deemed it proper, and at no other time. He’d quoted from the book on that point: “The man’s sex is to prove to the female that he is the dominant, the master, the superior of the species.”
    The Ram told them further that such proof wasn’t all that necessary in terms of repetition, for women knew themselves mastered, knew themselves the inferior, knew themselves the weaker.
    Several of the men doubted that sincerely. Particularly the two who were married. The Ram, as if sensing their recalcitrance on this point, said strongly that the drug didn’t diminish the female’s knowledge thatshe was mastered, it merely kept her from voicing her beliefs too loudly, which would be an irritant.
    No one knew that the girl’s father was ten pounds richer from this night. That was the Ram’s private counsel. It would have lessened their sense of wickedness if they’d known.
    Vincent Landower wondered aloud if the girl could be pregnant. He looked at her as he spoke. She was still snoring, her legs splayed, the velvet bunched below her breasts. He thought a pregnant woman as appetizing as a gutted trout. And he voiced aloud his revulsion.
    The others laughed, but the Ram didn’t. He said it would be interesting, his voice pensive, if she were. Which one of them would the child resemble?
    â€œPerhaps our leader,” said Johnny, guffawing loudly. “Yes, a Ram. That would shock the neighborhood!”
    The Ram ignored that bit of levity and said after a few moments, “We will not meet until the first Thursday of October. At that meeting you will enjoy a surprise. That evening, after the surprise, I will tell you of our plans for All Hallows’ Night.”
    Paul Keason, who