The Humiliation of Redman Dane
Chapter 8
For all his arrogance and his self indulgent sybaritical tastes, Redman Dane was a strong, athletic, and healthy young man, the wasp attack he had suffered could well have killed a weaker or older man, yet he survived. However, due to the trauma and venom pumping though his veins, his naked body fell limp in his saviour, the shepherd’s arms, and he slipped into a merciful unconsciousness.
Aaron carried the beautiful youth into the hills, and to his lonely croft, where there would be shelter from the storm, which the country raised 30 year old sensed was coming. Carrying an adult male, caused little effort to a man well used to carrying 200 to 300 pound sheep on his back, and within a short period, he was laying Redman’s lithe but now motionless bodyon the single simple rustic bed, in the small attic space which passed for a bedroom in his rustic home.
Redman was on the edge a coma for for the next 40 hours, delirious and unaware of his surroundings or who was with him. During those hours Aaron nursed him with great care and tenderness, applying simple balms and country brewed remedies, inherited from his mysterious grandmother, to help the young man’s wounds and ease his pain. As he did so, he marvelled at the loveliness of his patient’s body.
The local country maidens held no interest for the Sheppard, who had long ago accepted that his passions leaned towards a forbidden love. Therefore, he briefly had to battle with the temptation to let his hands wander from those areas in need for medical care, to more intimate regions.
Then over the next few hours, Redman began to speak, at first just feverish and muddled words which made little sense. Gradually, as time passed the words became more coherent, and, as the Sheppard listened he became first intrigued and then angered by what he was hearing. Reman’s anger and cruelty came pouring out, as did details of his crimes and unkind acts, acts to which the conscious Redman would never have confessed, were being exposed to the ears of a lowly country Shepard.
Also, as Redman spoke, he revealed his identity, and Aaron was shocked to discover that he was nursing the son of the most eminent families in the four counties. He quickly arranged for word to be sent to Dane Hall, that Redman was alive and being cared for.
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Lady Dane seemed decidedly unconcerned on hearing that her “favourite” nephew had been the victim of a wasp attack and was being nursed back to health in a peasant cottage “It appears the boy survived!” she smiled “At least he has the family constitution. As he’s being cared for, he had better stay there until he’s able to sit in a saddle. The change of scenery will do him good!”
She then wrote a short note on her crested light purple vellum notepaper repeating that view and ordered that a boy deliver it to the shepherd’s croft.
Hia Aunt’s letter was presented to Redman when he finally came round from his delirium, and, as one might expect, it was not well received. How could her ladyship have been so dismissive after the ordeal he had just endured, why had she not immediately sent a carriage to collect him, so he could recuperate in civilized conditions more suited to his station, instead of the ovine smelling hovel he was currently enduring.
As anyone who knew him could have predicted, Redman had been a very difficult patient. Appalled by his surroundings and his perception that he was not being afforded treatment commensurate with his social position, he was in a foul mood and more than willing to let, the kindly Sheppard, Aaron, know it. When he was not complaining and insulting his host and his home, he was sullen and sulky, refusing to acknowledge the older man’s presence.
On receiving his aunt’s note, in a temper tantrum reminiscent of a five year old child, he picked up a bowl of bean and carrot coup which Aaron has recently served him with and threw it at the wall.
For Aaron, who was, himself still nursing numerous wasp stings, received whilst saving Redman from the swarm, and who had given up his own bed, and much of he meagre supplies to nurse and feed the beautiful but ungrateful patient, this behaviour was becoming increasingly irritating.
Throwing precious food across the room was to prove the final straw which broke the noble peasant’s patience. “You’ll have to clean that up!” he gowled.
“I’ll do no such thing!” snapped Redman “Do you think I’s some skivvy?”
“You made the mess, you will clean it up!”
“How dare you speak to me like that, know your place!”
“Clean it up, or I’ll put you over my knee and spank you over privileged lilly white bottom Cherry red!” growled the Sheppard.
“Do that and I will have you hung peasant!” snapped Redman. The words had hardly left his mouth, before he was dragged from the bed and carried, struggling kicking and protesting, down the stairs to the small kitchen area .
Redman was a fit and strong young man, bur Aaron, who had spent much of his adult life carrying full grown Ewes and rams on his broad, muscular back, was infinitely the stronger and more powerful man. As such, Reman’s resistance was to no avail.
Upon reaching the kitchen, Aaron pushed a small stool from the fireside to the middle of the room and and firmly placed one booted foot on it. He then threw Redman face down over his knee. “This is what you have been asking for!” he said.
Aaron the shephard then proceeded to deliver 30 hard smacks to Redman’s upturned bare bottom. His huge weathered and leather-like paw of a hand pounding down on it’s tender target, each blow made all the more painful by the livid, and still sensitive, healing wasp stings on which it landed.
Redman struggled, kicked, yelled and threatened but there was nothing he could do but endure the onslaught until it ended.
When it did end, Aaron pushed Redman off his knee, and, without a word turned and walked out of the tiny dark room. He knew what he had done was an assault on the social hierarchy of the time, and he knew the risk he had taken, but he was also aware of an immense sense of satisfaction.
Redman watched him go, his eyes blazing with fury. He had never felt so insulted, being punished by a governess of a footman was bad enough, but there, at least had been placed in positions of authority by people of Redman’s social class. Being assaulted by someone like Aaron, a peasant, of such inferior standing, was an outrage.
Bullys can not tolerate humiliation, and Redman had been humiliated.
Aaron the Sheppard had made a deadly enemy.
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Later that day Redman’s footman and sometime disciplinarian, Able Griffiths arrived to check on the patient at Lady Dane’s request, and bringing Redman some clothes and boots, and. He was shown to the attic bedroom, but as Redman was sulking and pretending to be asleep, he quietly left the clothes and returned downstairs to acquaint himself with an old friend.
It was some years since Able and Aaron had last met, but they had known each other well as boys and then as adolescents. Before entering service , and in a wilder period of his life, Able had spent many days in the high hills behind the village, and much of that time he had spent with the young Sheppard boy Aaron Tanner.
During those fleeting sun-drenched days and balmy nights, between dependent childhood, and the need to earn a living in the adult world, the two boys had become close, perhaps closer than Able would now wish to remember. But he did remember, and so did Aaron.
Like a mist closing in across the moorland, those memories came flowingback to both men as they stood silently in what passed for a parlour in Aaron’s tiny cottage.
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Redman was bored with pretending to be asleep, he was also hungry, having thrown his breakfast at the wall, he had not eaten since the night before, and his stomach was feeling empty. He slipped out of the bad and still naked, made his way down the tiny staircase towards the kitchen where he hoped to find food.
He began to open the door and then stopped frozen in his tracks and momentarily stunned by what he saw.
It took him seconds to take it in, startled by what he was seeing. He had heard tell of acts of intimacy between some men, but he had never expected to see it, or to know such a man.
Redman was not a moralist, and neither, surprisingly was he a bigot, what he saw did not excite him, but neither did it disgust him, what it did was present him with an opportunity and Redman had never met an opportunity he was not willing to exploit. He quickly crept back up to the bedroom, and dressed in the clothes which Grifiths had brought him. He then climbed out of the window , and using some timbers leaning against the side of the cottage, quietly lowered himself to the ground.
He then ran off down the hill path towards the town, a broad grin on his his face.
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It was almost an hour latter when the door to Aaron Tanner’s cottage flew open, and Redman stormed in accompanied by two police constables. “There they are!” he cried “What did I tell you!”
The men had been lying in each other’s arms, the shepherd wearing only his britches and and Able in nothing but his underwear. They quickly leapt to their feet, grabbing for their clothes, but there was no denying the evidence of the officer’s eyes. They were men of their time and they had committed what they knew to be a crime, they had no defence.
Surrendering to a sudden passion, brought on my sweet memories of a gilded past, had changed their lives forever.
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Redman was feeling very pleased with himself as he chatted casually with the police officers by the prisoner convict carriage.
“What is likely to happen to them?” he asked
“Hard to tell Sir, its down to the beak.” replied the older policeman “They don’t hang buggers now, more’s the pity, but they are likely to get hard labour, the judges in this circuit are not a very tolerant bunch.”
“They could get deported” said the younger policeman before adding with a laugh “It’s a tough life for their type in Botany Bay”.
The constables then climbed onto the front of the carriage and with a flip of the whip , spurred the horses off down the country lane, taking their handcuffed human cargo off to whatever fate the state would decree.
Griffith, of course, had no further use for his horse, providing Redman with the means to ride home to Dane Hall. Uncomfortable as the ride was, he remained in good spirits, and pleased with his day’s work.
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Later that evening, as he enjoyed a glass of his favourite sweet Madeira wine, Redman felt an overall glow of satisfaction. It seems that his luck was changing for the better.
But was it luck, or was it his own brilliance which had vanquished his enemies? It was he who had consigned the old witch Gallagher to a wheelchair, and his quick thinking which had ensured that Griffiths and the impertinent leather handed peasant would be breaking rocks in a prison yard for the foreseeable future.
It was only what they deserved for the outrages they had committed against him.
It felt good to be a winner for a change, it made him feel powerful, it made him believe that he could achieve anything. He had successfully removed three people who had offended him from the picture. Now only one person stood between him and the life to which he was convinced he was entitled.
He was on a winning streak, and it was time to remove the final obstacle to winning the ultimate prize. A newly emboldened Redman Dane happily began to plot his next move.
Lost in his thoughts, he failed to hear the faint creek of the floorboard by his door, or the rustle of starched cotton, as another long-forgotten enemy passed by outside.
To Be Continued …