Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [144]
The crowd around them had fallen quiet, watching, listening.
“He got away,” Dominick said. “He—”
“Isn’t with his family.” Wilkins sneered at Dominick. “If the man got free, why isn’t he with his family?”
“So men like you can’t silence him.” Dominick glanced around for the Trower family. Not seeing them, he added, “Like they silenced Raleigh Trower.”
“What happened to Raleigh?” Kendall asked.
A murmuring rose like the wind.
“He’s—”
“Lying.” Wilkins raised his voice. “Trower took his boat out fishing, is all. You can go see for yourselves the Marianne is gone. And this redemptioner here”—he flicked a finger against Dominick’s nose—“was trying to run off with Tabitha Eckles. You can testify yourself, Letty Robins, that he and the midwife have been carrying on like the morally corrupt aristocracy this man comes from. Tell them, Letty.”
“It’s true.” Letty’s eyes blazed and a white line shone around her lips. “I told him to steer clear of her, but he insisted he had to see her. He promised me he’d return, but he lied to me. I trusted him, and he lied to me.”
Dominick stared at her. “Letty, I fully intended—”
“Then you expect me to believe that she led you astray?” Letty cried.
“No, no.” Dominick closed his eyes.
“Where is Tabitha?” Kendall asked.
Dominick shook his head. “I don’t know. That is, the last time I saw her, she was kneeling beside Raleigh’s cot.”
And he’d never seen anyone grieve as she had. She might claim she didn’t love Raleigh as a wife loved a husband, but she loved him as a friend.
“I’m afraid they’ll keep her so she can’t verify what I say,” he added.
“Or to ensure your English friends rescue you?” Wilkins jeered. “Mayor Kendall, you can’t believe this man any more than you can believe that incompetent midwife.”
The last two words struck Dominick with understanding. Of course. Wilkins was discrediting Dominick’s character as he had nearly succeeded in discrediting Tabitha’s, to protect himself from Sally Belote’s claim of paternity, from what Tabitha might have worked out from a dying woman’s ramblings. When he failed with Tabitha, Wilkins tried to kill her.
He wouldn’t fail with Dominick—he read it on Kendall’s unhappy face. Everyone knew through Letty and the girls that Kendall had declared he would whip Dominick then send him to the interior part of the state if he disobeyed the curfew again. Without Kendall accepting Dominick’s excuse for why he hadn’t been home by sunset, the punishment would be carried out, or Kendall would be shamed as a man who could be a leader, a mayor, a senator.
“I am telling the truth.” Dominick made one more effort to convince Kendall as he looked the man in the eye.
Kendall turned away and gestured to his groom. The man held a carriage whip. A whip much like the one Dominick’s father had used.
For a moment, the square turned black. He heard nothing. The warm summer wind felt more like a January frost. And the smells were the same—horse manure, damp wool, his own perspiration. Only a lifetime of training kept his back straight, his head high.
“Take him to the fence in front of my house,” Kendall said. “And bind his hands to it.”
“I’m innocent,” Dominick said in as clipped a tone as he could manage. “I do not deserve this punishment.”
He leaned against the gate as the same two men cut the ropes around his wrists and retied him to the top bar of the gate. What he was about to endure was nothing to fear. Like the beating his father had given him, it was only man’s punishment and didn’t matter in the end. Jesus had taken the true punishment for Dominick’s wrongdoing. Man’s punishment meant nothing but temporary pain. Because of Jesus’s pain, Dominick could be free in his heart, whatever his body suffered.
“Remove his coat and shirt,” Wilkins commanded.
Dominick didn’t need to ask how they would manage that with his hands tied. A tug on the back of his neck and sting against his skin, followed by ripping, told of a knife blade parting the fabric. Night air touched his skin.
The crowd gasped. His scars tightened.