With food in my stomach, my young body soon regained its strength, but my mind and spirit, thrown down by my father’s death and the dreadful manner of it, were not so easily salved. Here too without the aid of Mistress Jenny I might have given myself over so completely to despair that either I would have choked my heart with grief or damned my soul with self-destruction. But she held me to her like a mother and whispered words which, though I did not understand them, contained messages of comfort.

She was not much older than me, but had already been married to Gowder for some years, and not yet had any children who might have been a solace to her, for there was little else in her life to take pleasure from. So it was as a child that she saw me and saved me, though I think it was the prospect of having a young body around the farm to do all the most toil-some tasks that tipped the balance in Gowder’s mind. From the start I was made to work harder than I’d ever known, and when my best efforts did not satisfy the brothers, which was often, I was urged on with kicks and blows.

At first they used to hobble my ankles with thick rope and lock me in at night, but after a while they did not bother with the hobble. Without it, I could work harder, and where could I run to? The countryside here is wild and terrible, the harshness of winter tightened its grip on the land with each passing day, and they knew that every hand would be against a runaway, particularly one foreign in speech and appearance.

Besides, though I was daily at the mercy of the two men I had cause to hate worst in the world, here also was my only friend. Without Jenny I think they would have let me starve to death. But she was constant in her care, providing food and warm clothing, and when she was found out, as was inevitable, despite threats and blows, she stood up to the Gowder men and told them that if not out of Christian charity, then out of simple self-interest they ought to be glad someone was taking care of such a good and strong slave. I think they saw the sense of this for thereafter her visits to me were more open.

I know all this because within a few weeks I was able to speak and understand many basic words, and when she saw this she set about teaching me more.

Things changed gradually between me and Jenny. At first she saw me as a child and when the season of our Lord’s birth arrived, which even these heathen men celebrated, I wept like a child at the memory of my family’s feasts and worship the previous year. Then she took me in her arms and comforted me as a child.

But I was no child, and the more she saw me every day, the clearer this must have become. As snow melted and trees began to shoot, my body seemed to share the returning warmth and I found myself beset by lewd dreams in which sometimes I sported with my affianced bride Maria and sometimes, God forgive my weak flesh, with Jenny.

I did not dare believe that she might have any such thoughts of me, not knowing what I learned later of her revulsion at finding herself bound to a man little better than a beast, and who rutted with her like a beast, not as a man should with his married wife.

One night in the barn I awoke from one of my dreams. In my agitation I had pushed to one side the sacking which acted as my bed linen and I lay there feeling the drafts of cold night air playing over my fevered flesh.

Then, as my eyes unraveled the gloom, I was aware of a figure kneeling by me.

It was Jenny, looking upon my naked arousal. I reached out to her. And she did not turn away.

That was the first time.

It was sinful I know, Father, but even as we took pleasure in it, we gave comfort too, and with each successive time, the comfort felt as strong as the pleasure, and surely that makes it not altogether sinful?

Soon I began to feel almost happy. Perhaps that is why I deserve punishment, not for taking pleasure with another man’s wife, but for finding happiness in the house of the man who had murdered my father.

So God punished me. We grew careless. Gowder and his brother went off to market. We thought they would be away all the day, staying late to drink with their cronies. Jenny took me into the house. It is a comfortless place compared to my father’s villa, but after the barn, it felt luxurious. We made love in the morning. Then I went to do my chores. Late in the afternoon I went back into the house and we made love again.

And Gowder came into the room and caught us.

His rage was terrible to behold. He drew his knife, the same with which he had slit my father’s throat, and hurled himself at me. Naked and supine, it was all I could do to grasp his arm and prevent him from plunging the blade deep into my chest. But his strength was so much greater that within a very brief space he must have prevailed and skewered me to the floor had not Jenny flung herself upon him, her fingers tearing at his eyes. He responded by swinging his elbow at her head with such force it drove all sense from her and she slumped backward on the floor, but her intervention gave me space to thrust Gowder off my body and roll aside into the fireplace. He came after me. As I pushed myself upright, my right hand rested on a heavy fuel log. He drove the knife at my throat. I ducked aside. And I swung the log at his temple.

He fell like a tree. I went to help Jenny who still lay with eyes closed though I could see she was breathing. But before I reached her, I heard a cry from the doorway and turned to see the other Gowder, Andrew, standing there. For a moment he seemed so astounded by what he saw that he could not move. And in that same moment I rushed to the narrow window and forced my naked body through it.

I feel shame now to think I left Jenny, but I knew beyond doubt that Andrew would finish what his brother had begun and I had no strength to resist a second onslaught.

So I fled, I knew not where. Naked and afoot in strange and rough terrain, I had no hope of escape but flew on the wings of fear. But when eventually I heard, distantly at first but getting ever closer, the mingled hubbub of angry voices and excited barking which warned me of pursuit, terror clipped the wings it had given me. Finally I collapsed in the midst of a small wood and prayed the trees would hide me from my pursuers.

Vain hope. The dogs found me first and might have finished me if their owners had not beaten them off. Perhaps this was done out of charity, yet I cannot thank them, for what Andrew Gowder purposed for me was far worse than the rip of a dog’s fangs.

They raised me to a tree and bound me there. I could not understand all they said but they called me murderer, which I did understand and then my heart sank at the thought that my blow had killed Thomas Gowder. For his foul murder of my father he deserved to die and I had the right to be his executioner. But having killed one of their own number, now I knew I should not look for even the doubtful succor of judgment by whatever law these savages observed.

Even then I had no anticipation of what was to happen next.

In the fitful light cast by the torches that they bore, I had observed Andrew Gowder standing aside hacking at billets of wood with his dagger. Now he came toward me. Still I did not understand. But when I felt the splintered point of the wood against the palm of my hand, then I understood.

I screamed before he struck. With each blow I screamed more. My hands, my feet. I did not think such pain could be, and a man still live. And finally, just when I thought that at least the worst was over, he took his dagger and sawed through the rope that bound me to the tree, so that in a trice all the weight of my body fell forward and I was held by those dreadful wooden nails alone.

I think even some of my tormentors were shocked by what they had done, for through my agony I was aware of a sudden silence. Even the dogs ceased their yapping.