At the center stood Arthur Vance, the blacksmith, a thick-armed man with a red face and a talent for making his anger look like virtue. He was the sort of man who loved a hammer because it answered everything with force. He also loved attention, and the crowd gave it to him like a warm drink.
Two men held a girl by the arms. She could not have been more than fifteen. She was small, but she stood stiff-backed, eyes wide and dark as river stones. Her cheekbone was already bruising where someone had struck her.
Eleanor saw the proud line of her nose, the black braid down her back, the way she kept her chin lifted as if she would rather break than bow.
“Caught her with a sack of flour,” a woman screeched, pointing as though accusation was a weapon. “Right out of my wagon!”
The girl said nothing.
Her silence didn’t look like guilt. It looked like a last scrap of dignity being held in both hands.
Arthur Vance lifted a coiled whip as casually as a man lifting a rope.
“We have laws in Ashwood Crossing,” he boomed. “And we make examples of thieves. Ten lashes. Let it be a lesson.”
A sound ran through the crowd, half gasp, half satisfaction. Ten lashes could split a man’s back open. On a child’s frame, it was not discipline. It was a performance of power.
The girl’s eyes darted then, finally betraying her composure. They searched faces for mercy and found only hunger, not for flour, but for punishment.
