Campion wept. The pain was dreadful. Her back was bruised, bleeding in places, and the leather belt had strapped her on legs, belly and arms as she had scrambled away from his fury. She said nothing; she could hardly hear her father.

Her lack of response angered him. The belt whistled again, she called out and the lash cut into her hip. The black dress hardly dulled any of the force.

Matthew Slythe’s breath was hoarse in his throat. He was fifty-four now, yet still an immensely strong man for his age. “Naked! Woman brought sin into this world, and a woman’s shame is her nakedness. This is a Christian house!” He bellowed the last words as he brought the belt down again. “A Christian house!”

An owl hooted outside. The night wind stirred the curtains, wavered the candle flames, made the great shadow on the wall shiver.

Matthew Slythe was shaking now, his fury subsiding. He put the belt about his waist and buckled it. He had cut his hand on the buckle but he did not notice. He looked at Goodwife. “Bring her down when she’s tidy.”

“Yes, sir.”

This was not the first beating she had been given; she had lost count of the times that her father had harnessed God’s wrath to his right arm. She sobbed, the pain blurring everything and then Goodwife Baggerlie slapped her face. “Get up!”

Elizabeth Baggerlie, who had been honored by Matthew Slythe with the name Goodwife after the death of his wife, was a short, fat-waisted woman with a shrewish, raw-boned face and small red eyes. She ruled Werlatton Hall’s servants and she devoted her life to the extermination of the Hall’s dust and dirt as her master devoted his to the extermination of Werlatton’s sin. The servants were driven about Werlatton Hall by Goodwife’s shrill, scouring voice, and Matthew Slythe had given her also the governance of his daughter.

Now Goodwife thrust Campion’s bonnet at her. “You should be ashamed of yourself, girl! Ashamed. There’s a devil in you, that’s what there is! If your dear mother had known, if she’d known! Hurry!”

Campion pulled the bonnet on with nerveless fingers. Her breath came in great, sobbing gasps.

“Hurry, girl!”

The household was awesomely quiet. The servants all knew that the beating was taking place, they could hear the belt, the screams, the terrifying anger of their master. They hid their feelings. The beating could happen to any of them.

“Stand up!”

Campion was shaking. The pain was as it always was. She knew she would not be able to sleep on her back for at least three or four nights. She moved like a dumb thing, knowing what was to happen, submitting to the inescapable force of her father.

“Downstairs, girl!”

Ebenezer, one year younger than his sister, sat reading his Bible in the great hall. The floor shone. The furniture shone. His eyes, dark as sin, dark as his Puritan clothes, looked unfeelingly at his sister. His left leg, twisted and shrunk at birth, stuck out awkwardly. He had told his father of what he had seen and then listened with quiet satisfaction to the searing cracks of the belt. Ebenezer was never beaten. He sought and gained his father’s approval by quiet obedience and hours of Bible reading and prayer.