Bell Weather by Dennis Mahoney Page A

bright second had regarded her with sympathy. “She mustn’t be forgiven. She has injured you and injury requires proper justice. Think upon your lessons. Lex talionis. You have seen it in the Book of Light, as well as in the histories of clans and ancient kings. Even our own common law demands equality of recompense for certain types of crime.”
    Molly sobbed and shook her head, knees buckling underneath her.
    Nicholas faced their father with a grave, princely dignity. “A thief would lose his hand.”
    “Yes,” Bell said.
    “A man who killed his neighbor’s ox would have to pay an ox.”
    “He would.”
    “And if a rider dropped his reins, distracted by a bellman, and trampled a child in the street,” Nicholas said, “should the bellman himself be trampled, or the bellman’s own child?”
    Bell hesitated briefly with a flicker of his eyes. “One should never drop the reins. The rider is to blame.”
    “Then you should lose a tooth,” Nicholas told his father. “It was you who lost control in a moment of distraction.”
    Bell straightened up and answered with a grin: half a dozen of his pale beige teeth, neatly ordered. “I have told you more than once you have a future at the bar.” He offered Nicholas a handkerchief, immaculately white and monogrammed B. “Still, she must be punished,” he continued, looking down at her. “Tell me, Molly: did Frances start the chase or was it you?”
    “It was me.”
    “Then Frances lied.”
    “No.”
    “She either chased you or she lied. Which is it now? The truth.”
    “That isn’t fair!” Molly said, twisting free with her heart beating quicker than a bird’s.
    “Very well,” Bell said. “I will hold you and Frances equally responsible. Unless you choose to bear the total punishment yourself.”
    Molly nodded in defiance.
    “Twice the count or twice the force?”
    “Twice the force,” Molly said, bravely as she could.
    “Nicholas, your shoe.”
    Her brother paused just long enough to register objection, but then he raised a leg without unbalancing his stance and popped the left shoe off his heel. It was stiff, silver buckled, with a black leather heel. Lord Bell lifted Molly by the armpits—he held her so infrequently, it came as a surprise how powerful he was—and took her to a chair, where he sat and bent her over, belly down, upon his thigh. She focused on the highly polished floor and held her breath, unable to see her brother with her hair fallen wild in her eyes.
    Her father raised her skirts, exposing her to view, and said, “You are no stranger to discipline, Nicholas. You have learned to bear the blows. It is time you learn to deal them. Twenty for her and twenty for Frances. Land them flush and keep them firm, straight across the buttocks.”
    No! Molly thought. Oh, he wouldn’t ever hurt me!
    Her horror was assuaged when Nicholas refused.
    “You must,” Bell said, “or I will give her eighty.”
    Make it eighty or a thousand, only never one from Nicholas! Molly shut her eyes, dizzy from the blood swirling through her head. The first smack upon her bottom blew the air from her lungs.
    “Very good,” her father said.
    Another smack, even cleaner, made her squirm and kick her feet.
    “Hold her legs if she obstructs you.”
    Molly dropped her legs. She wouldn’t cry or make a sound. She’d imagine it was Father, and she wouldn’t raise her heels and force her brother to restrain her. The next several blows struck tears from her eyes. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. The sting had risen to a fire. Another and another, steady as a drum, until the pauses seemed to hurt as badly as the whacks. The twentieth was red, the thirtieth was white, and then the colors bled together and she shut her eyes and wept. She drooled upon the floor, contorting her expression till her face ached, too. When it finished, she was stupefied.
    Abruptly she was upright and facing them again, her bottom so inflamed it seemed impossible it wasn’t still exposed and being