New Beginnings

Chapter 32: New Beginnings

When Caroline arrived at the house, she found Abigail around the back with the animals. The 2 embraced warmly.

“Why did she run away, Abigail?”

“She wanted adventure, not to spend the rest of her life in an isolated room even with me.” They cried for some time and Caroline told her she and Thomas would protect her now – that was a lot less than half true considering there was little if anything she could do against her husband.

“Thank you. Thunder’s going with father and Heather will be so lonely. Who will look after the chickens?” said the grateful sister.

“Why, where is Fanny?”

“Nobody told you? Fanny’s gone as well. Father and Francis are going to find them.”

“That does not make any sense. Why would Fanny just leave like that? She could easily have stopped Priscilla. The world’s gone mad.”

Once more the sisters burst into tears as the hugged.

So Abigail went to live with Caroline, thrilled by the thought of living in a castle and the prospect of a new life, but still thinking often about her sister and her imaginings of her fate. These tended to consist of day dreaming about Priscilla being locked in a dungeon and her offering to swap places.

Priscilla was finding it difficult to cope with the nightmare she had unknowingly walked into but a couple of the other captives comforted her as she hid in the darkest part of a room almost without light. Occasionally a beam of torchlight would enter the prison and once she had even been temporarily released into the sunshine to run the gauntlet of the leery eyes of the sailors so she was quite glad of the guards’ protection. There were at least 4 jailers that the escapee had seen, all huge with scimitars. They occasionally entered the girls’ room if they smelt trouble but did not seem nearly as threatening as those outside. Sadly they spoke not a word of English.

Fanny was more furious then scared and looked daggers at Nicos when she saw him during her brief glimpses of the sky. She had not yearned to go on any adventure being perfectly content with her life until that deceiving Cypriot had fooled her. Her companions appeared to be a mixture of English and French girls some of whom were certainly prostitutes. For now the former maid was ignorant of the presence of her mistress but, once they were reunited, Fanny would vow to keep Priscilla out of the harm such an unsuitable environment may cause a naive young lady.

Nathaniel and Francis were now fully prepared and about to start their ride to the south coast where the doctor would simply have to conquer his nerves in order to cross the channel. He had seriously considered knocking himself out until that section of the journey was over. Then the plan was to traverse Europe to the Bosphorous by following the Danube from Vienna almost to the Black Sea and then head south. It would a very education trip for both of them.

In London, the three for whom life was their plaything, had arrived on a mission. Because Samuel Atha was away, having to deal with family matters, Sir Thomas’s own plans for a functioning temple below his house had been put on hold. Michael had never been overly keen on the project and clearly would never be a true believer, but Lady Hannah was far more attracted to the idea and enquired whether she could become a High Priestess. Thomas had long since made up his mind that Caroline was entertaining in the bedroom but not suitable for other aspects of his life.

The two men had come up with another diversion. Earlier in the century there had been a series of clubs for would be hedonists, the most notorious of which was Sir Francis Dashwood’s club, The order of the Knights of St. Francis. Dashwood was an adventurer, prankster and libertine who had even become the second most powerful person in the land as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Many of these clubs combined a love of pagan ritual, fulfilling Thomas’s interests, with outright debauchery, which was almost Michael’s religion. The other groups had either died or had gone so far underground nobody knew where they hung out.

Meeting his soul mate Hannah had convinced the viscount that with diligent recruitment he could revive the idea more successfully. Having purchased, using Squires’s immense fortune, 2 large modern town houses, which they intended to connect at strategic points, at the end of a terrace in a very fashionable parishes of London, , Lord Thirsk declared The New Hellfire Club open.