The Talisman

!’
    The whip came down again, not the mild cough of a Daisy air rifle this time but the loud clean report of a .22, and Jack had time to think I know where that’s going , and then a large fiery hand clawed into his back. The pain seemed to sink into his flesh, not diminishing but actually intensifying. It was hot and maddening. He screamed and writhed in the mud.
    ‘ Bad! Most awfully bad ! Indubitably bad !’
    Each ‘bad’ was punctuated by another crack of Osmond’s whip, another fiery handprint, another scream from Jack. His back was burning. He had no idea how long it might have gone on – Osmond seemed to be working himself into a hotter frenzy with each blow – but then a new voice shouted: ‘Osmond! Osmond! There you are! Thank God!’
    A commotion of running footsteps.
    Osmond’s voice, furious and slightly out of breath: ‘Well? Well? What is it?’
    A hand grasped Jack’s elbow and helped him to his feet. When he staggered, the arm attached to the hand slipped around his waist and supported him. It was difficult to believe that the Captain who had been so hard and sure during their bewildering tour of the pavillion could now be so gentle.
    Jack staggered again. The world kept wanting to swim out of focus. Trickles of warm blood ran down his back. He looked at Osmond with swift-awakening hatred, and it was good to feel that hatred. It was a welcome antidote to the fear and the confusion.
    You did that – you hurt me, you cut me. And listen to me, Jiggs, if I get a chance to pay you back –
    ‘Are you all right?’ the Captain whispered.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘ What? ’ Osmond screamed at the two men who had interrupted Jack’s whipping.
    The first was one of the dandies Jack and the Captain had passed going to the secret room. The other looked a bit like the carter Jack had seen almost immediately upon his return to the Territories. This fellow looked badly frightened, and hurt as well – blood was welling from a gash on the left side of his head and had covered most of the left side of his face. His left arm was scraped and his jerkin was torn. ‘ What are you saying, you jackass? ’
    ‘My wagon overturned coming around the bend on the far side of All-Hands’ Village,’ the carter said. He spoke with the slow, dazed patience of one in deep shock. ‘My son’s kilt, my Lord. Crushed to death under the barrels. He was just sixteen last May-Farm Day. His mother—’
    ‘ What? ’ Osmond screamed again. ‘Barrels? Ale? Not the Kingsland? You don’t mean to tell me you’ve overturned a full wagonload of Kingsland Ale, you stupid goat’s penis? You don’t mean to tell me that, do yoooooouuuuuuu? ’
    Osmond’s voice rose on the last word like the voice of a man making savage mockery of an operatic diva. It wavered and warbled. At the same time he began to dance again . . . but in rage this time. The combination was so weird that Jack had to raise both hands to stifle an involuntary giggle. The movement caused his shirt to scrape across his welted back, and that sobered him even before the Captain muttered a warning word.
    Patiently, as if Osmond had missed the only important fact (and so it must have seemed to him), the carter began again: ‘He was just sixteen last May-Farm Day. His mother didn’t want him to come with me. I can’t think what—’
    Osmond raised his whip and brought it whickering down with blinding and unexpected speed. At one moment the handle was grasped loosely in his left hand, the whip with its rawhide tails trailing in the mud; at the next there was a whipcrack not like the sound of a .22 but more like that of a toy rifle. The carter staggered back, shrieking, his hands clapped to his face. Fresh blood ran loosely through his dirty fingers. He fell over, screaming, ‘ My Lord! My Lord! My Lord! ’ in a muffled, gargling voice.
    Jack moaned: ‘Let’s get out of here. Quick!’
    ‘Wait,’ the Captain said. The grim set of his face seemed to have loosened the smallest bit. There might have been hope in his eyes.
    Osmond whirled to the dandy, who took a step back, his thick red mouth working.
    ‘Was it the Kingsland?’ Osmond panted.
    ‘Osmond, you shouldn’t tax yourself so—’
    Osmond flicked his left wrist upward; the whip’s steel-tipped rawhide tails clattered against the dandy’s boots. The dandy took another step backward.
    ‘Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do,’ he said. ‘Only answer my questions. I’m vexed, Stephen,