"Go ahead. Touch it."
Richard leaned over her shoulder, his breath hot by her cheek. Bridget pulled instinctively away from his rancid, scrubby beard, but she couldn't help reaching out with a horrified fascination.
"Go on," Richard breathed harshly.
It was cold and rough under her fingers – hard, rusted, eaten away by time and ground to dullness with sweat and misery. This was what it was like touching evil.
What he was doing with it, she couldn't imagine. But it was there. Real. Three hundred years old, and it had lost none of its craven power. It was like meeting the eyes of a decrepit old rapist – ancient, feeble, but with none of his evil gone.
The bridle.
***
"I can't believe you're talking to him." Judy had wrinkled her nose that afternoon, chatting over sandwiches at her desk. "You heard about him 'bumping' into the secretary in the break room, didn't you? Right up against the cabinets?"
Bridget grimaced. "Oh, I know. He talks directly to your tits. And that beard. It smells like something died in it."
Judy gave a theatrical shiver. "Ugh. That is so nasty! So what are you doing with him?"
Bridget sighed. "I don't know. He came in last week – when the power went out?" Judy rolled her eyes, and Bridget nodded. "Yeah, creepy. Caught me in my office. I couldn't even pretend I was working with the lights out. He started looking over the books by the window, and he saw my dissertation. Then I couldn't shut him up."
Judy frowned. "Him? Women's discourse communities in 1680's New England?"
"Yeah, I know," said Bridget. "But he saw the title, and then he said he had one. I thought he was making it up, but he knew exactly what it was. And get this – Massachusetts. He swears he's got papers on it."
"I thought you said they only had them in England?" Judy asked.
"They did!" said Bridget. "I couldn't find a record of one anywhere in the colonies. Nothing came over. It might be a mistake in the papers, but still. It's here, or at least it sounds like it's here. He said he got it up in Vermont and it came with documentation – brought over for a village in the 1660's. If that's really true, it's a piece of history no one has ever published on."
"Yeah, but you know why
he
probably has it," said Judy. "He doesn't look the women's studies type to me."
Bridget nodded, chucking her Coke can in the trash. "You're not kidding. But I want to see this. You know what it would mean." She struggled for a comparison, glancing around at Judy's shelves. "It'd be like ... you finding a letter from the Gawain poet. It would be that big."
Judy laughed. "Ah. So you mean something that an amazingly small number of people would get very excited about, with the rest of humanity blissfully unaware?"
Bridget grinned. "Academic publication, baby," she said. "That's the name of the game."
Judy smiled. Then she went more sober, and her eyes met Bridget's.
"Just be careful, OK? Because – let me guess. You're going to his place to see it."
Bridget blushed, then nodded slowly.
"OK," said Judy. "I don't want to be a noodge. But leave me his number? Then we can do dinner or something, and if I don't see you ..."
Bridget had laughed, but a little shakily. Their eyes met a long moment. Then she'd written the number and address out – the same he'd given her the day before. She'd left with a smile, both of them passing it off, but the little ball of tension that started in her gut hadn't left her since. Bridget had gone back to her office and settled into her chair, musing over the blue-cloth binding and gold letters down the spine of her dissertation.
The Scold's Bridle: Discourse, Dissent, and Silence in 1680's Plymouth.
***
Now she was touching it. Richard's wheezing presence faded from her mind as her fingers brushed over the pitted metal framework. It was a perfect specimen. The hooped metal cage to fit the head. The locking buckle to close the trap. And the bit. She shuddered as she touched it. A hard, heavy trefoil of iron, forced into the mouth when the cage was closed about the head. She slipped a finger underneath it and felt. Yes. An especially nasty version. There were small pyramidal points on the underside of the bit, spiking down into the tongue of the wearer.
How long, she wondered. How long the torment? Two hours was common. Four nothing unusual. Six, even. Once, at least, a woman had worn one more than a day – "so that the blood was forced out of her mouth," she thought, seeing the words on the fading page where she'd read them. A farmer's wife. She'd been driven through the streets with the bridle on her head and a rope about her neck like a dog.
"And that is the punishment which magistrates do inflict upon chiding and scolding women; and I have often seen the like done to others." She murmured the words aloud before she realized that she had spoken, and startled as Richard crowded in at her elbow.
"Yes," he said, "and look. Have you ever seen that before?"
Bridget shook her head as he touched the long metal rod fixed to the back. She'd noticed it already. She'd never seen anything like it, in person or in pictures. It was a straight, heavy bar nearly three feet in length, with leather straps and an iron buckle at the middle. The leather was cracked and nearly perished with age, so brittle that she didn't dare touch it – but the bar looked ancient as well. Original construction. She was sure of it.
"A ramrod," breathed Richard, running his finger lovingly down its length. Bridget felt a prickling discomfort as he caressed the thing. She would have stepped back, but there was nowhere to step; he'd crowded in behind her at the table, and now she felt with a sudden chill how close and tight it was in the corner. She forced herself to respond calmly as she looked for a way to edge out around him.
"Really? I've never seen one on a bridle."
"Oh yes," said Richard. "This is a very special piece. I don't think you'll see another like it." He looked, Bridget realized, much too interested. And in an instant, she didn't give a damn about that bridle. She never wanted to see it again. As a symbol, an historical artifact, a metaphor for the devoicing of a minority discourse community, it was a fascinating concept. But here in all of its ugly reality, it was starting to make her sick. It drew her eyes like a hideous corpse, and she wanted nothing but to be out of that house.
"You know, I really don't feel all that well –" she began, trying to slide past him. Richard carried on quietly, never looking up from the bridle – but never moving out of her way, either.
"The rod attaches down the woman's back," he said, stroking a squat, stubby finger along the metal brace. "Then she can't speak or bend. Or sit, even – see? It's too long. Down past her spine. She'd have to stand." His eyes took on a distant, dreaming look as he petted the obscene thing, and Bridget pressed back into the corner. In a moment of cold, clarifying fear, she realized, as her eyes darted about the room, that she was looking for a weapon. Richard's blank, mild eyes came up to meet hers, and he gathered the bridle up from the table as he stepped toward her into the corner.
"They used to hang the bridle by the chimney to let her know what to expect," he said, raising it slowly toward her face. Bridget shook her head, her mouth silently framing a protest. "I wonder if they chained her to that hook – once they had it really on her."
One tiny, sickened corner of Bridget's mind noted his straining erection, the dark spot of wetness spreading where his pants were tented by the press of his cock. Then, with a convulsive effort, she threw herself past him toward the door.
He struck her hard in the small of her back, and she tasted dirt and carpet as she slammed into the floor. It knocked the sense out of her; he'd hit her like a linebacker, driving into her body in ruthless, brutal blow that shot the breath from her lungs. She tried to crawl out from under him, but he slapped her hard, open-handed but with all of his might, so that her head rang with it. Her hands gripped and clawed at the floor, but he jammed his knee between her shoulder blades and crushed her to the ground. His hands closed on her neck, fierce and brutal, and a moment later, with a frantic struggle that ended in a scream, she felt the bridle slip over her head.
The bit jammed into her mouth. She tasted iron and ancient blood. She screamed again, but the pain was instant and searing, lacerating her tongue. She choked and tried to pull back, but Richard forced the cage shut around her head and shot the lock into place. As screams of desperation welled up within her, he forced his knee into her spine, grinding the sharp, iron-cold pain of the ramrod into it. Then he shot the leather bands under her. He was buckling them, she realized, her mind reeling. She struggled, but feebly; she could hardly draw breath now, with his weight crushing down on her chest and her mouth crammed with the dead, heavy thrust of the iron.
It was done. Bridget lay sobbing. She could feel him over her, feel, even, the nauseating stab of his erection jamming into her back. The sick fucker. She tried to crawl away from him and he let her, standing with his back against the door. Weeping, pawing helplessly at the wall –
you sick, fucking bastard!
