I heard his voice, the low, febrile tone of it, and my heart froze in my chest. I picked up the pitch fork with which I had been baling hay, and held it in front of me to ward off the unspeakable danger which vibrated in the crusader's voice.
It had happened to so many of my friends, and now it was happening to me. I had been surrounded by a traveling band of crusaders, the most merciless of those who preyed on the poor folk.
And then behind me I heard my sister shriek. Three of the crusaders had grabbed her, and wrenched her garments from her. Naked, she now quivered, nailed to the merciless, fleshy spear of one of the trio of marauders.
I lunged, and heard the metal clank of the tines of the pitchfork against the mail which protected the crusader's entrails.
With a hollow laugh, he wrenched my meager weapon from my hand, and grasped me roughly by my shoulders, pushing me to the thick matting of hay which covered the barn floor.
With a brusque wrenching motion, he ripped my gown from my quivering, defenseless body, leaving me nude, subject to his lurid stare.
"A pretty wench!" One of his companions remarked. A crusader dropped his breeches, his long manly rod standing straight out from the thick bush which covered his loins.
And then my screams were mingled with those of my sister's, as I felt his manhood devastating my virginal hole.
I wept as I heard the lewd laughter around me, that laughter which was the death knell of my happiness. I was despoiled, no longer worthy of the decent attentions of any man.
And yet, strangely enough, despite the despair which welled up in my young breast, as his thick, cruel meat thrust into my womanhood again and again, other, more demanding sensations captured my attention-a carnal upheaval which threatened to overthrow my sanity and all my humanity-a powerful upsurge of pleasure which left me a mindless, rutting animal wallowing in my own degradation.
Chapter One
Looking back on it all now, I wonder at the tortuous twists and turns of fate. It has been a long, agonizing time, and my fate has hung in the balance for many moons.
But my trials will soon be over.
I am sitting in the Convent of the Sacred Heart, writing this by the light of a candle. Aside from the occasional skittering of rats' feet somewhere within the stone walls, there is silence, and to some degree, considering the travail of my life, a form of peace.
It all started four years ago. I was fourteen. My sister, Lucia, was thirteen. We were all the kith and kin of my noble parents, who lost their two sons in two different wars.
At the time, all I knew was that my older brothers had died, within the space of a year in strange parts of the world, fighting. I was not lettered, and I was not interested in wars.
Peasants always know wars. It doesn't matter where the war is, sooner or later, the peasant pays for it, suffers for it, dies for it.
Either we are victimized by soldiers returning home, or by foreign soldiers, who travel in bands after an army has been disbanded. They raid the countryside, foraging for food and wealth.
For what other reason does a man take himself to foreign shores, but those promises of their leaders for wealth and fame and glory? Such promises I have learned are vain, vain, vain!
What the men seem to learn in their travail, is that hope is easily shattered like a crystal glass; that life is cheap, and honor a vain puff of smoke on the horizon, always receding before his progress.
But enough of my ranting. I write, trying to sort out the tangled skeins of my life and my sister's life. She sleeps, peaceful, seemingly unaware, on the cot behind my desk.
She was always meeker, more placid than I, always able to endure better. I rail against the winds that batter our poor, helpless heads, instead of resigning myself to the will of God which put these trials in my path, supposedly for the good of my soul, and therein lies my tale.
It started on a mild autumn afternoon. My sister and I had been put to baling hay, while the hired hands were reaping the wheat.
My father wasn't poor and he wasn't rich. Life was a struggle for us, a struggle made more severe by the loss of his two sons.
To a farmer, his children are his wealth, hands to help with the plowing, the reaping, the keeping of the kine and the work of the house. My father had lost half, nay more, of his wealth.
Women aren't worth that much except for breeding sons, and cooking, and keeping the home, but my father had been forced to use us for this labor.
It was a fairly good harvest, and except for a couple of bands of marauding soldiers, we in our neighborhood had been fairly free of pillagers. We could all look forward to a comfortable winter.
I rather enjoyed the work, being a bit of a hellion, but my sister hated it, hated the heat, the blisters on her hands, the way her fair skin tanned under the sun's rays.
I cared not for such trivia, being basically down-to-earth, and glad of my position. I could look forward to a life as a peasant's wife, and if I were fortunate enough, I would bear him many sons.
Only noblewomen needed to concern themselves with soft white hands and fair complexions. I would always work, and I enjoyed the work.
As we bent and rose, like reeds in the wind, doing our work, I noticed a thick black cloud on the horizon.
"Father! Father!" I called. He was supervising some workmen in the next field. He turned toward me. I remember that last glimpse I had of him, his face red, gleaming with a thin patina of sweat, his shoulders broad, his body thick with years of unremitting labor. His expression, curious and at the same time stem, like the upright man he was, fell on me.
I pointed to the smoke. It was coming from the direction of the neighboring farmer's estate. That would be Goodman Ronald DeWaverly. Already there was talk between him and my father, Goodman Pierce Wight, about a possible liaison between me and Goodman DeWaverly's son, Ebbet. I would have liked that match very much.
He was tall, well-made and a hard worker. He had a hearty laugh and a nice way about him that pleased me. The only fly in the ointment of my happiness was that he had a reputation for hard living, and he was a bit fond of intoxicating spirits.
He ran with a group of other young men, the sons of some of the more prosperous farmers in our county, and many were the tales I had heard of some of his mischievous exploits.
But that had only made him more attractive to me, although I did feel some anxiety about how well he might settle down to wedded life. A good woman is next to useless if her husband is not good, also.
My father saw the smoke, frowned, and then called to two of his more trusted men. They unharnessed the two horses from the plow, sat astride them, and galloped off to see if there were trouble, and if they could be of assistance.
I stopped for a moment, to rest my aching back, and then went back to my work. The sun had not traveled far when I heard the thump of horses' hooves on the earth, and again I looked up.
Lucia, working beside me, also bestirred herself to notice.
Lucia and I, although sisters, are very different. Lucia looks like my mother. She is delicately-made, slender as a reed, and very blond. Her blue eyes are fringed with golden lashes.
I take after my father. I am tall, strongly-built, although spare of frame. My breasts are full, my body ripe. My hair is jet black and my eyes, like my father's, are a clear, strange green.
My mother was forever accusing my father of being a warlock, and me of being a witch because of those strange green eyes.
"Maria, what is it?" my sister asked me, her eyes traveling from the horizon, where I could see four horsemen headed our way, and to me, looking for assurance.
I recognized one of those horsemen. It was my father.
Carrying my pitchfork, I ran toward the company, as they got closer.
"There are marauders in the neighborhood," my father said, coming abreast of me and my sister. "A band of about fourteen, according to DeWaverly. They have raped and killed his wife, and fired his house.
"Go you, and take your sister, to the barn, and hide there. Do not come forth until I have called you. They are supposed to be heading in this direction."
Grabbing my sister's hand, I ran with her toward the barn. The loft would be an ideal place to secure ourselves. We would bury ourselves under the hay heaped up there.
The other three men were farm hands of DeWaverly's. No doubt the men would all join forces to repel the starving, lawless, disbanded soldiers. I had opportunity to curse them heartily, until Lucia, from our hiding place beneath the hay, cautioned Christian charity.
"They are souls like us, made in the image of God," she said mildly. "You should be praying for our safety and the successful outcome of the men's efforts to repel them, instead of cursing like a man and displeasing God."
I sighed. I could see the sense of her argument. I always could. I just had trouble remembering that I should pray instead of curse, and bite my tongue instead of coming forth with a quick answer, for which I was known.
I tried to say my beads, but my heart beat hard against my ribs. I heard much noise and yelling in the fields, and then cries of anguish assaulted my ears. I had no way of knowing who was winning the battle, no way of knowing the condition of my mother, preparing our evening meal in the large, low farm house not half a mile distant.
Surely, if there had been time, my father would have sent her to the barn to abide with me and my sister. The soldiers would not be attracted to it, since all the animals were let out for the day.
The sounds of the battle became fiercer, and seemed to come to the wooden walls of the barn itself, and then there was an enormous silence-a silence broken suddenly by the loud moaning of one of our cows.
I knew what that sound portended. They were slaughtering our cattle for food.
Lucia started to whimper, and I pulled her into my arms.
"Hush!" I whispered. "We must be absolutely silent. Say your prayers."
She subsided, and quivered in my arms. Our hiding became an excruciating exile in which we were totally isolated from any knowledge of our condition, or the condition of our parents.
The light which spilled in golden filaments through the chinks in the wooden barn, faded, and turned into a somber gloom which matched my mood.
I could hear voices, strange voices, spilling through the growing twilight, and I knew that the marauders held sway in our fields.
Later on, I could smell the flesh of our slaughtered cattle, being cooked, and my heart froze in my breast. What about my father? What about Goodman DeWaverly and the field hands who had mustered forces to defend against these rapacious, cold-hearted wanderers?
And then, as I gazed through a gap in the straw which was heaped over us, I saw the double doors of the barn opened. Again fear seized me. The man who first entered was extremely tall, and well-proportioned.
He was lit from behind by several camp fires, and the lurid glare of the flames lit up hair that was the color of a roan horse-a strange, dark red that I had never seen before.
Even from the loft where I was secreted, I could see his eyes blazing, and the smell of the cooked flesh of our cattle came more strongly to our nostrils.
The man strode into the barn, his metal armor, partially removed, chinking in the cavernous darkness.
"We can bed down here," he said to two men who appeared behind him, flanking his broad shoulders from my high perspective.
"You, Coverly, will keep the first watch," the man ordered. "I will take Roger and Beyl and rest up on that hill. Bring that hay down, it will serve."
My sister clutched at my waist convulsively, and her hands were ice cold when I placed my hands on hers to steady her. I gripped the pitch fork which I had brought with me more tightly, and breathed deeply to steady my erratic heart beat.
But we were doomed-from the first we had been doomed.
The man called Coverly ascended the wooden ladder which led to the loft, and kicked at the hay, causing a large mass of it to fall to the floor of the barn. The gesture revealed my sister's feet.
"Ehh! What have we here?" Coverly bellowed.
I heard my sister shriek as Coverly grasped her by her ankles, and wrested her out of my protective gasp.
I did not think. I acted. I tossed off the hay which concealed me, and rose, the pitch fork brandished.
Lucia was screaming and trying to kick her feet as Coverly held her, leering at her. I lunged, and heard the metallic sound of the metal tines banging against Coverly's armor.
Of course the pitch fork didn't breach his mail, but the force of my lunge knocked him off balance. He teetered on the edge of the loft, and pitched over, falling into a pile of hay on the floor of the barn.
Immediately, all the forces of hell descended on us, or I should say, ascended.
Coverly got up, unscathed from his fall, and bellowed, and instantly, several other crusaders were upon us in the barn. Two of them ascended the ladder, and one of them wrenched the pitch fork from my hand, as I stood with my back to the wall, my sister behind him, trying desperately to defend ourselves.
I was no match for their lawless strength.
Scratching, kicking, and biting, I was picked up in the arms of one of the crusaders, and rudely thrown down to the floor of the barn. My fall was broken by the hay, but I was momentarily stunned.
Lucia was also thrown down. She was caught in the arms of one of the crusaders waiting at the foot of the ladder. As I struggled to recover from my stunned state, I heard a ripping sound, and my sister's cries became more piercing.
The crusader who had caught her as she fell had ripped her gown from her body. I blushed for shame when I saw her delicately-shaped, nude flesh exposed to the vile gaze of the laughing crusaders.
I had no doubt what our fate was. Several of the crusaders gathered around her, and then two of them grasped her by her wrists, spreading them wide, above her head, while two more crusaders wrenched her legs apart, revealing her secret flesh.
I shook my head, and stood, staggering slightly, still weak from the impact of my fall. I saw the pitch fork near the ladder where the man called Coverly had thrown it. I rushed for it, meaning to assault the men who were brutalizing my sister.
But once again fate interposed between me and my designs. The fate took the person of the tall, red-haired man who had first walked into the barn. He laughed, his eyes flashing with an obscene merriment.
"Come here, little girl," he said. "I have something for you."
I brandished the pitch fork, meaning to impale him on the metal tines of it before he could have his way with me.
His voice was low, febrile, and my heart froze. There was no denying the lascivious intent vibrating in that low-pitched tone.
It had happened to so many of my young friends over the years, from the neighboring farms and in the neighboring villages, and now it was happening to me. I was surrounded, cut off from any escape, should I have chosen escape.
But that was out of the question. There was my sister, and I had to get to her, to save her, if possible, from the unspeakable fate which awaited me.
And then behind me, I heard her shriek. The man named Coverly had crouched between her legs, and before my horrified gaze, I saw his naked, pulsating shaft disappearing into her womanhood. I watched, immobilized for a moment in my horror, as my sister's body stiffened with the pain and unspeakable degradation being inflicted on her.
Infuriated, I lunged, and heard the metal tines of the pitch fork clanking against the mail which protected the entrails of the crusader who confronted me. I bellowed like a wounded bull, and pushed forward, seeking desperately to kill the man.
He staggered backward slightly, but laughed at my futile endeavor. And then he wrenched my meager weapon from my hand. Grasping me roughly by my shoulders, he threw me to the thick matting of hay which covered the barn floor.
Leaning over me, he grasped the collar of my gown, and ripped it from my quivering defenseless body, leaving me nude, subject to his lurid stare.
"A pretty wench," one of his companions remarked, as other crusaders gathered around to watch my humiliation and my defeat.
"And an uncommonly spirited one," my ravisher declared. Before my terrified gaze, he dropped his breeches, and I saw his long manly rod, standing straight out from the thick bush which covered his loins.
It was the first time in my life I had seen such a sight, although I had heard it described by those of my friends who were already married.
He crouched between my legs, which had roughly been pulled apart in the same fashion as my sister's, my arms held hard by two other crusaders.
I stiffened, and struggled mightily, trying to evade his long hard shaft, and then my screams were mingled with Lucia's, as I felt his cruel spear piercing my womanhood.
My never-tried womanhood opened painfully. His cock seemed to be a firebrand which seared my virginal flesh, as he thrust inward, nailing me to his flesh.
His manhood devastated my virginal hole. I felt his fleshy battering ram ripping through the membrane which had signaled my virginity, felt his spear prying deeply into my quivering secret flesh, as he took his pleasure of my helpless body.
My blood welled up and flowed turgidly down around his cruel shaft, as he lunged inward until he was buried to the hilt in my wounded womanhood.
I bit my lip, trying to hold back the tears of shame and pain which filled me when I felt his pillaging prick devastating my hole, my life, blushing with shame as the lewd laughter and the obscene comments of the crusaders around me assaulted my ears.
I was despoiled, no longer worthy of the decent attentions of a man. The best I could hope for in my life was a long, arid sojourn, locked outside any hope for happiness I once entertained.
Such was the unwritten law of the land. And my sister, my poor sister! She was now in the same state!
Grunting, the red-haired crusader began to move in me, drawing his massive rod to the tip and then thrusting inward.
I felt his hard shaft abrading the delicate pink flesh of my womanhood, intensifying the burning pain which had gripped me since he had penetrated me.
His lusty sword thrust into me, over and over again. I was determined not to beg or cry or plead. The damage was already done. There was nothing left to do, except to exact vengeance if that were, indeed, possible.
My anger sustained me during that night of holocaust. The red-haired crusader, having done his worst with me, remanded me to his other soldiers. One by one, they violated me, spewing their slimy man juices into my quivering, burning pussy.
My sister's constant screams dinned in my ears. The screams had reached a bizarre pitch, and I feared for her sanity.
I, trying to conserve my strength, moaned when the pain became too harsh, but held back my more violent responses.
My arms and my legs ached from being so unnaturally stretched. My throat was a burning cavern, as I strove to breathe, the breath harsh in my pain-constricted throat.
One by one, my body was pierced by the crusader's massive rods, their fleshy stalks battering my inner sex flesh until it burned with agony.
And then I saw, through pain-filled eyes, another man standing over me, grinning, his cock still erect. As I observed it, I saw the traces of blood from my slain virginity on it.
"Ranulf!" the man laughed, applauding, as he crouched between my legs again. I gnashed my teeth in a fury of humiliation mixed with a raging anger.
"Yes, I!" he hollered at his men, "Give way! The wench is mine! I have taken her treasure, and I am entitled to her."
With a loud growl, he lunged into my again, his thick spear spreading the walls of my pussy wide, the mushroom-shaped tip of his cock butting against the fleshy roof of my womanly channel.
By now my abused womanhood was running, like a sore, from the thick cargo of man juices which so many plundering pricks had spewed into me. The thick slime of the crusaders' lust acted somewhat like a salve which soothed my wounded internal membranes.
I did not experience so much pain.
"So, how fare you, little lady?" he asked, smiling at me. I lifted my pain-wracked head, and spat at him. I watched the spittle land on his cheek, and flow downward.
His cock was now buried in my pussy. I wished at that moment, that there had been claws running up and down my soft, abused, violated tunnel. I should have closed my burning walls around his prick, like the avenging mouth of Moloch, and ground his manhood from his body.
I expected anger for my gesture, but instead, the man called Ranulf laughed, and wiped the spittle from his cheek with the back of his hand.
He started to move in me again, his long, hard rod, longer than the others' and thicker, rubbing against the soft pink walls of my sex.
And then, in spite of my rage, my prostration, my degradation, strange wild feelings started to happen in the depths of my belly, feelings the likes of which I had never before experienced.
I shivered as I felt a fiery procession of pleasurable sensations gripping my inner sex flesh.
Ranulf grunted, and his massive spear pillaged my pussy with increasing frenzy. By now, I had learned just when a man was about to pour forth his heavy load.
His hairy sacs of flesh, suspended beneath his wondrous pole, slapped against my naked ass cheeks, as he pumped the depths of my womanhood over and over again.
Around him, his men cheered him on with lascivious shouts, and lewd remarks.
My sister was still screaming, as I felt a strange tumult take hold of my womanhood. Like a fire, it started in a small point, deep in my cunt, and then spread outward, the pleasurable flames licking at my entire body as I quivered beneath Ranulf's powerful loins.
I felt a nectar of my own oozing from my wounded pussy flesh, flowing downward, lubricating his long dry spear as he pierced me over and over again, and then I shuddered as my mind seemed to float away on a wild sweet wave of insanity.
My mind did not seem to be involved in the strange wildness that surged through me, but it was sweet, sweet beyond words. I felt as if I had faded away from the cruel circumstances to which I was bound, floated into a world of self-forgetfulness, where everything is easily remedied.
It was my first orgasm, a fact I was to realize some time later, when I had collected my thoughts sufficiently to take hold of the experience before it buffeted me to death, as it nearly did my sister.
My hips seemed to surge upward, as his cock snaked into the wet, slimy depths of my pussy.
I had no control!
My newly-opened hole seemed to turn into a gaping, sucking mouth, as I felt my pussy walls convulsing, and the convulsions spread outward, until I squirmed and jerked against the men holding me, as if I had been afflicted with St. Anthony's Fire.
I couldn't help myself. It was a wayward wildness that took possession of my flesh as if it were a demon, and wracked my body so that I had no control over it at all!
And the pleasure kept mounting. My ears rang as the juices boiled in my entrails, heating my body to a feverish pitch.
Ranulf's hands moved to my budding, rounded breasts, and I felt his fingers digging into their fleshy wealth. The sensation of his crude hands on my sensitive breasts only heightened the strange carnal storm which seethed in me.
I closed my eyes, and felt my body stiffen. I wondered as it happened if I weren't being taken possession of by the devil himself, but the sensation was intensely pleasurable.
My honey flowed heavily from my hole, spewing out around the hairy base of Ranulf's prick, wetting the hairs which framed the base of his cock.
The sweet devastation which had wracked my body faded slightly, seeming to flow away like waves receding from a shoreline, ebbing and flowing, and leaving my body quivering with a warm sensation which I liked exceedingly.
I had made no sound during this strange upheaval, my throat dry and unable at this time to make any sounds. I could feel sweat gleaming on my soft violated flesh, could feel, as Ranulf's cock spewed forth its heavy load for the second time in my cunt, the sweet tingling of my sex.
The respite of pleasure helped to restore some of my fast-fading sanity, and my strength.
"Hah!" Ranulf cried, pulling out of me brusquely, and rising, "twice mine!"
The men laughed. I became frightened again on account of my sister. She wasn't screaming any more. She was babbling, and laughing.
I turned my aching head in her direction. She was no longer being held by the crusaders. They were having their way with her without any protest on her part. She just babbled and laughed, as if she were a child in a crib.
Every extremity of my body stiffened, and my hands and feet turned to ice. The crusaders had not only stolen her virginity, but sucked her mind from her as well.
"Ranulf, the horses are ready. Shall we fire the barn and the house?"
"Leave them alone. They have provided sport enough!" Ranulf laughed, as he walked toward the door.
When I followed his progress, I noticed that the darkness was giving way to light. It was dawn.
One by one the crusaders covered their lewd stalks with their breeches, and followed Ranulf out through the door. Then I heard the heavy stomping of many horses, as they rode off.
For a long time, I lay stewing in the juices of my defloration, regaining my strength.
My sister was silent now.
I rose and winced with the pain which flowed through me. Those heavy, aromatic juices flowed from my much abused hole, as I staggered toward Lucia.
She was asleep!
Frightened more for her now, than for the bleak life which was ahead of us, I staggered to my ripped gown, covered my nakedness, as best I could, and half walked, half crawled over the fields to where our farm house was situated.
It took me a long moment to open the door, afraid of what I would find inside.
And it was much, much worse than I had expected.
My mother lay on the floor, naked, much-raped herself. She was dead. The entire contents of the house were topsy-turvy.
I heard the loud, piercing cry which issued from my throat, as grief overwhelmed me at the sight of my mother's body.
For one sinful moment, I contemplated putting an end to my sister's devastated life, and to mine.
But my own sanguine disposition came to my aid, and I was to regret that hopefulness many times later.
Chapter Two
Ranulf and Coverly!
The litany of these two hated names kept me alive and active for the next few hours. I went to the little garret which I shared with my sister, and pulled out a gown for her and one for me.
Then I went back to the barn. Lucia was still asleep. I awoke her with some anxiety. She looked at me and smiled.
"Maria! Is it time to get up?"
"Oh, dear Christ!"
My sister's voice had the accents of her childhood; the smile was ineffably sweet, and the eyes devoid of the intelligence which once blossomed in them.
Keeping my wits about me and restraining my tears. I pulled her to her feet, cooing at her, encouraging her.
"I don't feel well, Maria," she whimpered.
Well did I know why!
"It will be better in a little while, Lucia. Come on. We must bathe."
I took her down to the river, and scrubbed the two of us vigorously. Lucia splashed and played like a five-year-old, and the pain I felt in my heart was so fierce that only my anger sustained me in life.
My washing was so vigorous because I was hoping to wipe off the stain from our bodies, that unseen stain which occurs when a woman has unlawful carnal knowledge of a man, but I knew it was no use. I could have scrubbed the very skin from our bones, and it would not have altered the facts.
It would have to be told.
After we had dressed, I led her back to the barn. I could not bring her home to face the unspeakable sight of our dead mother. I sat her down on the eastern side of the barn, where the sun was beginning to warm the earth.
Remembering her exceptionally complaisant temperament, her obedience to simple commands, I felt assured that she would be safe and would obey me.
"You stay here until I clean the kitchen and start the hearth in the fire. Be a good little girl, will you?"
Lucia looked at me with her blue, vacuous eyes, and, smiling sweetly, nodded. She leaned against the barn wall, and looked around her. She started to sing a little roundelay she had learned as a child, and I, my mind almost wrenched from the moorings of sanity, rushed back to the house.
A long arduous task awaited me. Alone, to keep my mother's shame from the knowledge of the world, I buried her. Wandering around, I found the bodies of my father, two field hands, a horse, and Goodman DeWaverly.
I buried my father beside my mother. I was not finished my task until after the sun was at its zenith.
Then, and only then, I walked into the kitchen, and started a fire in the hearth.
Going back to the barn, I retrieved my sister. She had remained exactly where I had left her.
I brought her back to the kitchen. She was puzzled at the condition of the large, low room, and plagued me with questions. I merely told her I would tell her later what it was about.
Then I put her to bed. She curled up sweetly, and fell instantly asleep, and only then did I feel secure enough to look for help.
The DeWaverly farm was in worse state than our farm. Their farmhouse and barn had been burned to the ground. Scattered around were the bodies of several men, including Ebbet's.
I trudged the six weary miles to the village, to sound the alarm.
The crusaders had passed through the village, and there was much weeping and wailing. I went to the tavern where we were wont to sell the beer for which we were famous in the county and met the owner.
He was standing bleakly by the window. In one corner of the large, hospitable room, a group of women were weeping and wailing with two younger girls. One of those girls was Goodman Freere's own daughter.
"What news, Maria?"
In clipped accents, I told him.
"Aye, my own little girl, too, and the Covington lass," Goodman Freere said, putting his arm around my shoulder, and pulling me close against him comfortingly.
"Well, there's nothing for it but to put on a good face, and hope for the best."
"We must be put away," I whispered, "and they have driven poor Lucia mad."
"Always was a delicate little creature. You're made of sterner stuff. Now, don't you worry. I shall send my sons to bury the dead, and you and your sister shall come here to live, until I can contact your relatives in Mayberry."
I looked at him, thoroughly puzzled. He turned, and clapped his hands, his red face sad but determined-looking.
"Enough! Enough! Cease, I said!" he bellowed at the women who were keening. "Tis the horse gone from the barn, the milk spilled, but we will put on the best face we can. We must live. Enoch! Palma!"
His two handsome, good sons came out from the back.
"Go you, and take whoever else is willing, out to the DeWaverly's and the Wight's to bury their dead. Bring Maria and Lucia back with you. We will have them here."
"Here, husband!" his wife exclaimed. "Why, three despoiled girls..."
"Four! They carried off Martha, Jane and Bettina, and you need help. Perhaps some good yeoman without a too fine expectancy will take a fancy to the wenches and marry them. And you need help. Maria's a good girl, and Jessica will learn," he said, indicating his own rather indulged daughter. "Catherine will learn, too, won't you, my dear?"
The sobbing Catherine lifted her head and nodded.
"There you have it!" the good man exclaimed to his mollified wife. "We must make the best of things. Give them beds and food. They are sore in need of refreshment, and so, woman, am I!"
He gave his wife a mighty slap on her plump behind, and then followed his sons out of the door of the inn.
I drove with Enoch and Palma out to the devastated farmland, and my own sorrow softened, as I saw other burning houses, other corpses, littering the fields.
It was well after nightfall when we came back to the inn with my sister in tow. She had not changed, but was, thank the good Lord, meek and docile.
There was the inn which was all awry to be put in good order. Goodie Freere, in her grief, had done nothing to set things straight.
My hands were blistered from using a pick and spade with the rest of the men, and some of the more hardy women. There were many dead to be buried, and the job was not yet completed. Not all the farms and cottages which had been raided had been searched thoroughly.
While Enoch and Palma summoned more men from the village, I set to work to put the inn of our protector in good order. My sister, thankfully, was obedient to simple commands, and I could have her fetch and carry water and soap.
The crusaders had behaved like beasts in the houses, had even stabled their horses in the main room of the inn. There was much ordure to be cleaned out, and it was worse, far worse, than mucking out the stalls in a barn where you expect such offal.
By dawn the men were returning, their torches spent, with more sad tales to tell. They carried with them two women and four men, all who had survived in the countryside.
I had put on a pot of stew and fed everyone. By now my blistered hands had broken, and I had wrapped linen around the bleeding, raw meat of my palms, in order to bear the weight of the ladle as I dished out food.
The next few weeks were arduous, to say the best of them, as people slowly recovered from the despoiling marauders who had attacked us.
There was still the question of the status of me and my sister. I became quite helpful to Goodie Freere, who accepted me with some complaisance if not outright love, and I was able to teach Jessica and Catherine what they needed to know in order to run a fine roadside inn which was much frequented. I even enjoyed the work.
My poor sister required the minimal watching of a very good child, and as the weeks progressed, she seemed to get better, although there was no doubt that she would never be quite the same again.
Even she proved useful with small onerous tasks and she persevered in them with a childish diligence which was alternately heart-breaking and pleasing.
And then my aunt, Lady Anthea Crawden-Hope, came into the picture. Summoned by Goodman Freere, she arrived in a coach and four, all bustle and laces and velvet, and all righteousness, as well.
Of course the idea of our working as tavern girls was totally repugnant to her. She immediately made arrangements for Lucia and me to be shipped to a convent.
"You'll have a good dowry with the proceeds from the sale of the farm," the woman said, dismissing all objections.
The night before we were to leave, Goodman Freere summoned me to the kitchen. He pushed a glass of beer in front of me, that amber brew which had come only the month before from our own farm.
"Sit, girl," he said, frowning.
I sat.
"I am sorry to say that I regret having summoned the officious dame who was your sweet mother's sister."
I nodded and sipped the heady brew, mourning my father and my mother.
"It was my intention to provide comfort and solace for you both, not that you should be buried behind the brick walls of a convent. Why, these days, convents are terrible places for innocent, helpless young girls."
"What can I do, Goodman Freere?"
The innkeeper leaned forward, his powerful forearms braced on the polished wood of the table.
"In this country, girl, do you know that any article agreed to by force, is not legal?"
"Explain yourself," I said, regretting my ignorance.
"For instance, it is a long-held notion that a woman who gets deflowered before her marriage night is not worth her salt, ehh?"
"True, but the nobles in the county who take a fancy to a bride may take her before her husband!" I retorted.
"Tut! Tut! Tut! You are not arguing against me, and keep your hot tongue in your head for a moment. 'Tis true what you say, and the husband is forced to take his bride when she is returned by the noble. Now, I and many men hold that a woman who is raped-especially in these times of big wars and little wars and considerable confusion-is not really spoiled."
I sighed, understanding the drift of his argument and appreciating his kindly sentiments, but not knowing how they applied to me and my sister.
"After all, you have not been loose, have not put horns on a man's head. In effect, someone stronger than you has forced you to do that which you would not do."
I remembered the strange sweet carnal ecstasy which had gripped my flesh and lowered my blushing face.
"Listen well, Maria," Goodman Freere said, tilting my head up by putting his work-calloused palm under my chin.
"I'm listening," I said.
"Palma has taken a fancy for you. He would like to have you for his wife, if you see fit."
I gasped and my face blanched.
"You would make a good inn-keeper's wife. Maria, and I have told him that I am pleased with his choice. He will inherit the Golden Hinde when I am gone, and I know you will care for my wife if she lives past me.
"Jessica will be spoken for. Arden Langley has four sons, and the youngest, who will ship to sea within a year, is interested. They will move away so that Jessica's tragedy will not be known."
"I-I don't know what to say," I whispered. "Or, indeed, what to do! We have already been accepted at the Convent of the Good Hope."
"In our land, a promise that is forced from some one, is not binding upon that person," Goodman Freere said. "That is our common law, and it saves us from the greed of the nobles who tyrannize us. So, if, when you take your vows, you reserve in your head the fact that there is a man who is willing to care for you, and that you do not wish this life, then you are not bound to it!"
"But if Palma wants to marry me," I exclaimed, "then why not just have him declare his intentions to my aunt?"
"I have already approached your aunt on the subject. As you know, your mother's family did not approve of her alliance with your father, and your aunt does not approve of your being a common country wench. She will bury you behind convent walls-and all to please her own vanity. She even told me she was glad her sister was dead, that it eliminated the disgrace from her family."
"But she's not even landed gentry!" I retorted.
"True," Goodman Freere said, wagging a finger at me, "but the purpose of our little talk is to find you your own happiness in life. Now, do you accept Palma's intentions for you?"
"Why yes!"
"Good!"
Goodman Freere patted my cheek with his calloused hand. He rose from the table, quaffed the last of the beer, and slammed the glass down heartily on the table.
"I leave it to you, Marie Wight, to find your way back to your home, ehh? You must also find a way to keep us informed of your progress."
I rose, staring at him in disbelief, and then a grim determination filled me.
"Agreed!" I said, quaffing the last of my beer as token of my intent.
"I thought so," Goodman Freere said. "Now you must finish packing. The coach will be ready in an hour. Oh, and watch out for the clergy.
"We have some good men of the cloth about us, but don't forget that most of them are corrupt, dissolute third and fourth sons and daughters who have been forced as you have been, into a life they do not want! They could prove your downfall!"
"I promise," I said.
Palma was smarter than his father.
In the morning, before Aunt Anthea came for us, he approached the table, all smiles and most of them for me.
"You must put your intention in writing," he said. "I spoke to my father, and a written document is better."
I could write-with difficulty, and after much travail, I managed to make up a document which all thought to be satisfactory.
I wrote: "I, Maria Wight, declare that I am being forced against my will by my aunt, Anthea Crawdon-Hope, to enter the Convent of the Good Hope, which she has dowered and over which she is protectress, in order to keep my sister and me from society.
"I am spoken for by Goodman Palma Freere, whose father has declared his honorable intentions to my aunt, and has been rebuffed by her.
"I hereby declare that I will take the first opportunity in my power to remove me and my sister from a life which we consider to be onerous to us, and for which we are not fitted."
I signed it, and gave it into Palma's keeping.
"It would not do to antagonize the lady. She has money and, therefore, power, but once we have done what we have to do, she will be helpless, I think," said Palma.
He kissed my hand, and then said to me, "Of course, the lovely Lucia is always welcome here, too. I expect to see her with you."
Armed with some semblance of hope, I led my sister to the carriage. My aunt did not deign to descend from the carriage to greet the kindly people who had been our hosts and protectors.
So much for overweening pride and the perquisites of status, however acquired.
The Convent of the Good Hope presented a forbidding aspect as we approached it. Situated at the top of an enormous hill, it commanded a view of the entire countryside. Our road was narrow, and wound around the foot of the massive hill, the grim aspect relieved once in a while by broad meadows opening off thick woods. It looked like a prison.
The postilion had pulled his saber out, and he and the outrider were obviously on the alert.
"What's the matter, Aunt?" I asked, noting the defensive anxiety of the men.
"These hills hold brigands, disbanded soldiers, and marauders. But not to worry. They are riff-raff, and they are mortally afraid of the gentry. We are most effective against them."
Even as she said these words, an armed band descended on us. The horses were swiftly removed from their traces, and the driver, postilion and outrider were killed.
I had a bizarre inclination to laugh hysterically, as the carriage door opened. My aunt, who was sitting on the side which was opened, was pulled unceremoniously from her seat. She fell on the dirt road, an undignified heap of lace and black velvet, her cap askew, shrieking in high-pitched staccato yips, which set our assailants to laughing uproariously.
My aunt was wealthy enough to afford the luxuries of undershifts, petticoats, and undercoats, as well as drawers which hid her sex. Her paraphernalia had fascinated me the first time I had met her. Who had ever heard of such things? At least, among the poor.
With these vague thoughts bothering me in my moment of panic, I clutched my whimpering sister, who laid her soft, golden head against my breast, so trustingly that I swear I felt like a mother would, holding her babe.
And then the life seemed to drain out of me, leaving me cold as stone, as an apparition appeared before my eyes, which I would have rather not seen.
My aunt was being dragged off toward some bushes by the side of the road, yipping and squealing like a stuck pig.
The man whose face appeared in the aperture of the open carriage was familiar, it was the man who was called Ranulf.
"Well, well, well, it is a small world, indeed," he laughed, reaching in to grab me.
I clutched my sister fiercely against me, and kicked out at him. I caught him with the heel of my boot squarely in his groin. He went down, bellowing. Behind him appeared other fierce faces. One drew a sword and menaced me with it.
I had nothing with which to defend myself. My sister was sobbing hysterically now, and I caressed her, as Ranulf recuperated from the blow I had delivered.
Just as one of the men was reaching in to grab me, Ranulf staggered to his feet, his face twisted with pain.
"Hold! This bitch is mine!"
Reaching in, he wrenched me from the carriage, his eyes burning with wrath.
"Foul bitch!" he snarled, bringing his mouth down hard on mine. He took my breath away. Raped I had been; but kissed, never! I felt the hardness of his lips separating mine, and then felt his tongue invading my mouth.
Once again, I felt that strange upheaval of sensations in the pit of my belly. I must confess that since I had been raped, I had experienced them in various forms which plagued me.
I would feel hot rushes, and my secret fluids would pour from my ravaged hole when I was doing dishes, washing floors, serving meals-even when I was on the verge of sleep. And sometimes those feelings would wake me up, and keep me from my much-needed rest.
Now I was locked in the derelict soldier's arms, and I felt my heart hammering lawlessly against my breast as he took his lawless kiss from me.
He broke the kiss and glared at me.
"Please," I gasped, finding the courage to beg, "take me if you must, but spare my sister. Your soldiers have destroyed her mind!"
His eyes lit with an unholy fire. He looked into the carriage, at Lucia, quailing in the far corner.
He held out his hand.
"Come on, pretty little girl. Come on," he said, his voice strangely soft. Lucia started to wail, and the expression on her face alarmed me.
"Call her!" Ranulf demanded.
"Lucia, my pet, my sweet, come on. You're safe with your Maria."
Lucia scrambled across the seat, reaching out pathetically for me. I grasped her around her waist, and assisted her from the carriage.
"Renard!" my captor bellowed.
The strangest apparition yet appeared before me. He was slightly twisted in his shoulders, and quite short, barely reaching my waist.
His expression was strange, too, a combination of intense adoration as he gazed at his flaming-haired master, mixed with the mischievousness of a small boy.
"Take the little girl to the cave," he said, pushing Lucia toward him, "and play with her. Give her food if she is hungry, and tell anyone who sees her that she is Ranulf's wench. Hear me, boy?"
"Yes, master," the boy said, taking my sister's hand. Strangely enough, Lucia's tears subsided as the boy coaxed her away from the wild scene of mayhem which surrounded us.
"Come, girl, I shall show you where the cowslips blossom, and where the robin red breast keeps his nest. If you're good and obey me, I shall let you fondle one of their eggs."
"Keep your hands off the birds' eggs, you young scalawag!" Ranulf cried, as he threw me over his saddle.
"Maria!" Lucia cried, holding out her arms to me.
"I'll come back, Lucia. Be good!"
"She'll be back," the strange Renard said, caressing my sister's golden hair. There was something so child-like about the strange creature, that I felt assured she was in good hands.
Ranulf sprung up behind me, and kicked his horse, which started off at a wild gallop. I watched my sister, until I could no longer see her. Renard was leading her up a circuitous path, away from the melee. The last thing I saw was my aunt's black velvet dress being thrown high in the air.
I heard a loud cheer, mixed with the quavering scream of my violated aunt. I had no sympathy to waste on her.
Ranulf galloped up the hill, and then off the road through a winding path broken through the thick forest.
He stopped at a grassy knoll, and dismounted easily, pulling me off the horse.
"So, we meet again," he said, when he had pushed me to the ground, and stood over me, his powerful legs spread, his hands on his hips. He started to remove his armor.
"Take your clothes off!" he snarled.
Blushing to the roots of my hair, I obeyed, hoping to save my sister from further grief by this obscene accommodation.
He was awesome to behold without his armor-as awesome as he was with it. His lurid, fleshy stalk stood straight out from the dark-red bush which surrounded it.
He lay down on the grass beside me and pulled me hotly against him.
I stiffened in his embrace, mortified that I was condemned to this obscenity, but even as thoughts of resistance filled my mind, my body denied them. I felt a hot rush of excitement, as once again his lips pressed mine.
I was repulsed by the thought of a man who took more care of a nest filled with a robin's eggs than he did of the maidenhead of a human being, but I couldn't deny my own growing passion, and to my shame, I surrendered to it, my body quivering against his hard flesh, waiting for the feel of his manly rod in my secret hole.
Chapter Three
Below us, I could hear the turmoil as the stray, plundering soldiers fought for carnal rights to my aunt.
But there was a small isle of relative peace, if one didn't consider my tumultuous thoughts, my flayed conscience, as Ranulf grasped me hard on my round buttocks, and pulled my womanhood hard against his hairy loins.
Once again his mouth covered mine, and I felt his rude hand covering my rounded breasts. The pink buds of flesh which crowned my rounded breast puckered hotly with the harsh contact of his palm.
And then I felt it tingling with strange sensations which were extremely pleasurable.
I moaned against his mouth, feeling my excited state in spite of myself, in spite of my determination to merely sacrifice myself for the sake of my sister.
Ranulf's tongue invaded my mouth and I felt it exploring the roof of my orifice. A thousand wonderful sensations rippled through my excited body, as his hand caressed first one breast, and then the other, and his tongue invaded my mouth.
He pushed me over onto my back. I felt the moist, cool grass against my heated flesh, felt the tiny pin-prick sensations of stiffened blades digging pleasurably into my throbbing flesh.
He pushed my legs apart. My inner sex flesh flowered outward like hot, lascivious pink petals of some obscene flower. They were swollen and throbbed hotly with the passionate blood which surged through me.
His hands moved greedily over my body, his hands covering every inch of my flesh. His massive fleshy spear throbbed lewdly across one of my thighs.
I gasped and quivered with an increasing but still pleasurable pressure as his hand cupped my womanhood. His finger pried into the glistening crevices of my pussy, and I felt him rubbing up and down over the pink flaps of flesh.
I couldn't believe the wild turmoil which seethed in my womanhood, as his hands moved over my body.
Like a wanton, I responded, feeling as if ever fiber of my flesh were a heated pin-prick of carnal fire. I really started to believe that this marauder was a demon sent from hell; that in his presence my soul became possessed.
He rolled over between my legs, and crouched, the head of his massive manhood pressed against my quivering, wet sex flesh.
I cried out as he thrust inward, spreading my pussy walls wide. I felt the wild throbbing of his lusty lance, as he thrust inward, until his hairy balls pressed against my quivering naked ass.
He grunted, and worked his arms under my back, pressing me hard against him. I tried, I really tried, not to respond to his monstrous ravishment, but my body was stronger than my will.
The look in his eyes was fiery as he crushed my mouth again. He started to move in me, and there was no pain this time, only a strange, intense pleasure, the likes of which I had only begun to taste that fateful, awful night in the barn.
His hard smooth chest pressed my breasts flat, and my nipples tingled hotly against his flesh, as he drove his lusty spear into me over and over again. I felt all the juices of my desire well up and flow downward, lubricating his prick as he drove it into the teeming reaches of my womanhood with increasing frenzy.
His hairy balls slapped roughly against my quivering ass cheeks, and the wiry hairs which covered them tickled the sensitive skin of my buttocks. I felt a monumental shudder of delectable bliss surging through me, as he invaded the depths of my secret flesh with increasing ardor.
I bent my knees up, pressing the soles of my feet against the grass, and I started to arch upward, wanting to feel more and more of his huge, hot shaft buried in the depths of my fleshy tunnel of lust.
The tingling sensations which invaded my pussy flesh spread outward until my whole body was quivering with the rampant lust which filled me. I felt my overheated flesh becoming wet with sweat, as Ranulf lunged into me repeatedly, his throbbing, hot spear driving me berserk with sexual wildness.
I thought that I was losing my mind, as my hips arched upward. I drove my swollen pink flesh against his hairy loins with increasing fury, as my body seemed to spread, to melt with the heated lust which possessed it.
The tiny, fleshy button at the apex of my furry delta of delight seemed to become inflamed. It shot wild shards of pleasure through me. Like arrows, every sensation pierced my flesh.
My mind was a sodden mass of lustful pleasure as I surrendered to Ranulf's hot, hard body.
Impaled on his throbbing, hot spear, I felt the fleshy abrasion of his cock against my creaming, quivering inner flesh. The tingling sensation intensified, until my cuntal walls closed in around the hard, hot rod which was pillaging my once virginal cleft.
I forgot my shame, my humiliation, the fact that this man was ravishing me. The only concept which my mind seemed able to retain was the sweet insanity of carnal bliss.
Now I know what it was that drove people into each other's arms. Now I knew why young girls were so eager to get married-to be bedded before their banns were announced.
Paola Lembrini was a case in point. She was round-bellied when she finally approached the village priest. I had wondered at her over-eagerness, but now I knew.
The hot sensations built in me, as Ranulf's hot prick thrust inward with increasing speed and strength.
He had mounted me like a rutting stallion, and he was taking me now the same way.
My cunt seemed to get warmer and warmer, and with the rising heat, there was more pleasure. My whole body arched upward, as if I would have buried my flesh in Ranulf's flesh.
He felt his embrace tightening, as he pressed me against him. His cock seemed to swell in my creaming cunt, and the heat of it struck sparks of intense pleasure in the depths of my quivering womanhood.
As the hot searing waves of pleasure shot through me, I became light-headed. I thought for a moment, as I felt the sweet spasm of my orgasm rushing through me that I was going to faint.
My body squirmed convulsively against Ranulf's body.
He grunted, and then lunged into me with incredible violence, jarring my body on the soft earth where he had pinned me.
I felt the thick stream of hot man cream flowing from the tip of his prick, flooding my already teeming womanhood, and oozing in frothing streams down my convulsing pussy walls.
Again and again Ranulf thrust into me, each inward thrust watering my overheated womanhood with another spray of his cum cream.
His juices were like a fragrant, pungent balm, heightening my own pleasure as I wallowed in the carnal release which had flooded my being.
Ranulf growled loudly as he thrust inward one last time. I felt the warm flow of his juices in my convulsing cunt, and then, with a shudder, he collapsed.
His warm sweat poured from his body and wet mine, as I lay beneath him for a moment, wallowing in the sensations of pleasure which still infused my womanhood.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, his cock still lodged tightly in my warm, wet tunnel, and grinned at me.
"Mine thrice!" he said, gutturally.
"Nay, not yours at all," I said defiantly.
"Not mine? Why I have had you the first time and transported you well with orgasm twice since, and only I, brought you off, I would wager!"
"But my mind isn't yours, and the only reason you have my body is that you're a tyrant."
His jaw dropped, and a dangerous flush of anger suffused his cheeks. But then a moment later, his eyes sparkled and he laughed merrily.
"By my faith, you are a saucy wench. I've a mind to keep you by me forever."
"To point the finger at your tyranny? To accuse you, without speaking, of your infamy? I wonder that you are so careful of birds' eggs when you are so careless of human beings."
"I care for the birds' eggs because I will eat them-as I will eat you if you don't mind your pert tongue!" he said, pulling out of me and sitting up.
He got up, his powerful buttocks rippling as he walked to his horse. He pulled off a goatskin, and drank from it, and then offered it to me.
"What will you do?" he asked me, as I sipped the warm wine it contained.
"Go to the convent as my aunt has ordered, for a little while," I said.
"You will be sorry. If you think I, and my men are harsh, you know nothing of the clergy."
"I have heard," I said, unimpressed, more interested in attaining my ultimate ends.
"Why go? I shall take you with me."
"I don't want to go with you! You have murdered my parents, and half the villagers whom I have known!"
"I am also good. I saved your sister from being driven more insane."
"You also drove her insane in the first place," I retorted, my anger getting the better of my good judgment. I cradled my head on my knees, by now totally unaware of my nakedness, and I wept.
"So," Ranulf said, tilting my chin up, and staring at me for a moment, "then I am at least partially your friend, and you owe me a favor."
"I have already given you what no king's ransom could buy-and that you stole. You have ruined my life!"
"Your life is more important than mine, you impertinent hussy?"
"Do you work? Do you toil to make the wheat you eat? Do you pay taxes? Do you till the fields of the idle nobles who waste their heritage in just the kind of vicious sport you have indulged in?" I cried.
Ranulf stood up.
"Enough of your raillery. Get dressed. I will set you and your sister on the road."
He leaned down, his keen eyes burning into mine.
"But you remember what you have said! The only reason I have not cut your defiant life short is that I am an easy-going man, and a kindly one!"
"Hah!" I muttered, but beneath my breath. I dressed quickly and silently, not wanting to exacerbate the strange tyrant any more than I already had.
He threw me roughly over his saddle again, and took me to where Lucia was playing with Renard.
She was covered with cowslips. The strange misshapen creature had woven garlands of them and covered her golden hair, and. there were necklaces of them around her neck.
"That road leads to the Convent of Good Hope," Ranulf said, leading us down to where the coach now stood, idle and horseless on the dirt path.
"That's where our aunt was going to take us," I said. I looked around.
"Don't look for your aunt. She has money and we are holding her for ransom. Go your way, and keep a civil tongue in your head the next time you meet your superiors!"
I walked a few paces down the road, Lucia singing and playing with the lovely flowers which decorated her gown and hair.
Then I swung.
"You are not superior to me!" I cried. "You have murdered and pillaged. I have grown wheat for bread and brewed beer for thirsty workman to drink! Time and God will show which of us is superior!"
I shook my fist at him, and then turned, the hair on the nape of my neck curling with fear. He had already threatened to cut my life short. I lived with that fear until we had turned a corner of the road, and I could look behind me. He had not followed.
The road was wearisome, and we ascended upward at a snail's pace. Just before we came to the large grilled gate of the convent, I looked up a steep incline of rock.
Sitting astride his horse, on the top of that rock, stood Ranulf, his helmet hanging from the pommel of his ornate saddle.
He raised a hand, almost mockingly, in salute. From his height, I heard his laughter spilling down toward me.
"We shall see, little spitfire, whom you prefer-the clergy or me! We shall meet again, and that I promise you!"
He swung, the last rays of the afternoon sun lighting in his strange, red hair, causing the strands to flash, and then he was gone.
"Are we going home soon?" Lucia asked me in her sweet sing-song voice.
"We are staying here for a little while, and then we shall go home," I said to her, ringing the large bronze bell on the side of the gate.
I heard shuffling footsteps, and then saw a wizened old lady standing before me, peering at me through the grilling of the gate.
"What do you want?" she snarled.
"I am Maria Wight, and this is my sister, Lucia. We were being escorted here by my aunt, Madame Anthea Crawden-Hope. We have been waylaid by brigands."
The woman stared at me for a moment, and then I saw her mouth curl into a sneer.
"You lie, gypsy," she said. She turned her back and walked way through the cobbled court yard.
I had suffered all the contempt which I wanted to. Imperiously, I started to ring the raucous bell, demanding entrance.
The old woman came back with stones which she threw through the grilling at me and my sister. I pushed Lucia behind me and kept on ringing the bell.
"Sister Feronia! What is this infernal noise?"
"A child of the devil, mother Madeline!"
Behind the wizened, nasty-tempered old lady, stood a tall, regal woman. There was nothing in her demeanor or aspect which resembled the good nursing sisters with whom I was acquainted from the village beyond mine. They ran the Lazaretto where those with infectious diseases and the plague were assigned.
This woman looked worldly, her expression reminding me more of my aunt Anthea's in its worldly wisdom.
Strangely enough, a shudder went through me, as I recognized the depths of evil possible in the woman, the coldness, the superciliousness.
I wished ardently right now for my questionable friend, Ranulf. Much as I loathed him he was a known quantity. What I was looking at was a moral world I had never seen before, and it terrified me.
"What are you doing here? This is a place of peace, a place of God."
"We are of God!" I cried angrily.
"You have the aspect of sin," the woman sneered. "State your case."
Again I related our identity and the hazards we had encountered on the road.
"Open the door, Sister Feronia."
The wizened old lady took a huge key from her girdle, and inserted it in the key hole. The gate swung open with a horrendous creaking, and it took much effort to open it enough for me and my sister to pass through.
That frightened me even more. It obviously was not opened often.
"Come with me," the imperious woman ordered. She turned brusquely on her heel and walked toward the high, arched doors which led into the convent.
I felt as if I were being led into a prison from which there was no escape. Just once I looked behind me, panic-stricken. Sister Feronia had already closed and locked the gate. I had nowhere to go but forward to whatever fate awaited me.
The nun called Mother Madeline walked silently down a large, gloomy corridor. The gloom was only slightly alleviated by tall, stately beeswax candles set in priceless silver sconces at regular intervals on the walls.
At the end of the long corridor, she turned left into another corridor. This one was more richly ornamented. There were brilliant Turkish and Oriental tapestries hanging from the walls, and many-candled sconces burned brilliantly.
She opened a door, flung it wide, and then stepped to one side.
"Enter!" she commanded.
Leading Lucia, I did as she requested. She closed the heavy door after us, and then walked to a large arm chair.
While we stood in front of her, dusty from the road, hungry, thirsty, and very tired, she surveyed us with her cold, light eyes. They were like the eyes of a cat, but not like mine, which were green. Hers were yellowish.
My hands got clammy with fear as I submitted to her gaze.
Once again I was asked to explain my presence in the convent. When I had told my story, Mother Madeline rang a bell and another dark-garbed woman appeared.
"Take this gypsy to the left wing. Bathe her and give her something to eat," she said, indicating my sister Lucia.
"Yes, Mother," the woman said, holding out her hand. Lucia ran to me, and clung to me.
"Go with the good sister. I'll be with you presently," I said, stroking Lucia's fine gold hair. Lucia obeyed, as she always did.
"You will come with me, arrogant, little heathen," Mother Madeline said.
"I am not a heathen!" I retorted.
I was shocked when, in response to my retort, the headmistress, for such she was, slapped me brutally across the face. I staggered backward, stunned, and then she grabbed me just above my elbow.
Her hands which were large and fine and white, had a power that was almost frightening. She propelled me through the door, and down the corridor to another door.
This one was low, and covered with brass studs. There was a huge brass lock on it. She pulled a key from her chain and unlocked the door, and then pushed me through it. Walking in after me, she turned, locked the door, and then pushed me in front of her down a long, dank, dark corridor. Again the darkness was alleviated only intermittently by burning tapers.
We went to the end of the corridor, to another door. Using another large key, the prioress of the convent opened the door and pushed me inside.
The room was dim and large. In one gloomy corner, I saw what I thought was a pile of rags. But the rags stirred and a horrendous moan issued from them. My heart seemed to swell in my breast and fill my mouth.
"Take off your clothes!" Mother Madeline barked.
I looked at her, immobilized by the obscenity of the order. She had walked toward one of the stone walls. All the walls were covered with strange-looking and frightening instruments.
It could have been the interrogation chamber of the notorious Inquisition of which I had heard. I shivered as she walked back toward me, brandishing a whip in her hand.
Again a moan of agony issued from the pile of rags.
"Be quiet, Sister Regina, or I shall add to your woes!" Mother Madeline expostulated.
The moans subsided to a breathy whimper, which only heightened my own horror Mother Madeline snapped the whip, and I shrieked as it landed on my shoulder, leaving a large rent in my gown through which I could see a red welt which the leather whip had raised.
"Down on your knees, heathen. I shall teach you humility, and I shall also extract from you the wages of your unchaste life!"
I got to my knees dumbly, staring at the cruel, haughty woman. Once again she applied the whip to my shoulders. I winced, but restrained the cry of pain which had welled up in my throat. I bent forward, my head on the cool stone of the floor and submitted to the whipping which Mother Madeline gave me. The whip dug into the flesh of my back, ripping my gown to shreds. When my flesh was fairly exposed, she began to apply the whip to my buttocks.
As the burning heat surged through me, I felt other, strange sensations welling up in my womanhood, sensations which I now understood were sexual arousal. This puzzled me, and once again I began to suspect that I was possessed by some demon who had taken charge of my will.
Why, I wondered, would become sexually aroused from being taken by force? And how under God's good heaven could I become sexually aroused from torture?
My head was aching, and my back felt as if there were not one inch of unflayed skin left on it. In effect, this was correct, although Mother Madeline had not broken my skin at all. But she had systematically beaten my soft flesh so that it was red, stinging, and burning with a demanding kind of pain which seemed to possess my entire body.
She finally dropped the whip and walked closer to me, and lifted my face up by grasping a thick hank of my dark hair and pulling on it. Her eyes glowed with a strange light which was not unlike the light I had seen in Ranulf's eyes, as he had raped me.
"Now you will service me, witch," she said.
I frowned, not knowing what she meant.
"You are the devil's own child," the nun said. "And I intend to purge that devil out of you by means of your own filthy habits."
And with that threat, the nun raised up her black gown, and hooked it in her leather belt. My eyes widened again with shock, as she revealed her love mound, covered with a dark brown pelt of curly hair. I could smell the pungent odor of her aroused womanhood, could even see the juices glistening from the pink flesh which pouted luridly from between her white outer lips.
Her grip on my thick, glossy black hair tightened as she forced my mouth toward her sex. I gasped, and tried to struggle, to get away from her, to prevent her from doing the unspeakable, filthy thing she was demanding of me, but my strength was not equal to Mother Madeline's.
"The devil is so deceptive," she purred, as she pressed my face against her odorous womanhood. "He pretends to be so innocent. Start licking!" she shrieked at me, rocking her hips against my mouth.
I felt the oily moisture of her womanly juices staining my mouth. Shocked as I was, I also knew I had to survive. I did as she requested, my stomach turning over in my belly.
Behind me, I heard the whimpering and the hair on the nape of my neck curled, as I dug my tongue into the woman's pussy, loathing her physical control over me, the demands she was making.
I heard her moan, gutturally, and thought to myself that it was she who was of the devil, not I. Never, in a million years, would I have thought of performing so vile a service!
She pressed my mouth harder against her pussy, and I heard the wet noises of my tongue as I licked up and down the soft, swollen folds of her womanhood.
After a while, the taste of her juices became less loathsome to me. I had never examined at close hand my own womanhood, although my curiosity had often been stirred, and now I explored with my tongue, the petal-like folds of flesh, the strange little nubbin which I knew brought such pleasure, situated at the top of her cunt cleft.
I delved into her moist and odorous slit, driving my tongue from the tip of the little nubbin, which seemed to elongate, to slither out from between folds of pink flesh which surrounded it, and down over her crevices to the tiny hole from which drops of desirous nectar were oozing.
The more I licked at her sex flesh, the harder her hips rocked against me. I could feel a tremor of excitement gripping her firm thighs as she pressed her hairy mound of love against my mouth with increasing frenzy.
As her own frenzy increased, I felt the wayward rise of my own passions in the depths of my belly. My own juices flowed heavily as I continued to lave her pussy lips, my tongue searching out the most secret folds of throbbing flesh.
For one brief moment, as I wallowed in her desire, and my own sexual arousal, I despaired, thinking that perhaps she was right-that I was indeed a creature of the devil!
Chapter Four
Mother Madeline's hips were moving in a circular motion which was lascivious in the extreme, and her very motions, the strange, feral sounds she was making as her sexual fever took possession of her, aroused me even more.
I felt my own pussy lips swelling with the strange passion which filled me, and the nectar of my own desire stained the soft inner flesh of my thighs.
I closed my eyes. My blood beat at my temples, and my ears rang with the strange erotic upheaval which had seemed to possess my body like some carnal demon.
"Ohh, yesss!" the woman hissed.
She threw her head back, her mouth open wide, and a strange, high shriek issued from her throat.
Her hips were now undulating back and forth, snake-like, and a great gush of her hot cream flowed from her hole. I licked furiously, feeling that perhaps what was expected of me was that I should take in all of her lustful liquid.
I did, my tongue running furiously up and down over her palpitating folds of pink meat. Nor did I cease my labors until her body had subsided somewhat.
She exhaled loudly, and bent forward slightly. She released her grip on my hair, and then stared at me. I was awed, and I must admit, fascinated.
I had never, until that moment, suspected that any human being was capable of such an action as the one I had just performed.
"You are of the devil," she snarled. "Admit it."
"No," I said, shortly, disgusted, bewildered, and exhausted.
"We shall see, you spawn of Satan," the woman snarled.
She wrenched me to my feet, and then threw me against one of the walls. I sank down, growing increasingly frightened. I had heard tales of maidens captured and kept in dungeons and never again seeing the light of day.
While I was thinking these dismal thoughts, she walked toward me, and clamped my wrists in manacles, drawing me to my feet and pushing my arms over my head.
I looked down at my ripped robe, which no longer provided decent covering for my wealed body. I shivered slightly, feeling my burning back pressing against the cold dank stones of the room.
"You will have time to think," the woman said, smiling at her handiwork. She walked quietly to the door and left me to my thoughts.
The silence was oppressive, and my shoulders began to hurt, as I stood against the wall. The manacles cut into my flesh, and much of my body was exposed by the rents in my gown which hung in tatters from me.
And then in the dimness I heard a strange, sibilant sound. At first I couldn't quite make out what it was, until I saw the pile of rags moving in my direction. It was quite a terrifying experiencing, watching this dark, formless mass approaching me.
As the pile of rags which Mother Madeline had referred to as Sister Regina came closer, I understood how she was propelling herself-by pushing her arms far in front of her, and then dragging the rest of her body after her.
I held my breath as the bizarre specter got closer and closer to my trembling, burning body, and then in the dimness, I saw the white face looking up at me.
She was round-faced, and her eyes burned with an unholy light.
"What crime are you guilty of?" she asked. Her voice was hoarse. It seemed to come from the depths of an enormous cavern.
"No crime."
She laughed, and the laugh sent shivers up and down my spine.
"Then," she finally replied, "you are guilty of the crime of innocence. You will suffer more for that than you will for any other crime."
I wanted to shriek. I wanted to kick this woman away from me. She frightened me and enraged me at the same time.
"Go away," I whispered.
"I will, I will," Sister Regina said hoarsely. "But I shall come back. I can help you."
I heard the harsh sliding sound again, and it faded away. Sister Regina went back to her corner, and moaned loudly. The sound shot through me as if I had been pierced with a lance, and it hurt like a lance!
For long hours, I languished in the manacles. I could find no position which would rest my wracked body.
For all the fear it occasioned, the sound of the bolt being shot, and the door opening provided an almost infinite relief.
Mother Madeline walked in again. Behind her, stood a frocked man. He was tall, and his facial aspect was not such that would give me solace. His face was, if anything, ravaged by some inordinate passion. I was not skilled enough yet in the ways of the world to determine just what evil did declare itself on his features.
He walked toward me and gazed up at me, and I knew as surely as I knew I was manacled in this dungeon, that this man was absolute evil incarnate. I shuddered, summoning all my powers to resist this man who wore the garb of holiness.
"This is the slut you talked of?" he asked.
A loud moan issued from the corner where Sister Regina crouched, it sounded like the bellow of a wounded animal.
"Yes, father," Mother Madeline said.
"Confess your sins," the priest said, his voice cold, demanding. I remained silent. I remember my mother having said once that you can't argue with the devil. Keeping this in mind, I kept my impulsive tongue in check.
The priest reached forward, and wrenched my frayed garment from me, exposing me fully. Then he laughed, and that laugh echoed evilly in the vaulted chamber. From Sister Regina's corner, another monstrous moan emanated.
I started to sweat, and I trembled violently.
"Let us see how innocent she is," the priest said.
I held my breath as he lifted his soutane, and, in a gesture similar to Mother Madeline's, hooked it into his belt. His manhood stood straight out, a lurid, evil stalk sprouting from his thick pubic bush.
I tensed as he walked toward me, his face lit with a lustful leer. He grabbed my legs behind my ankles, and lifted my legs up so that they straddled his waist, and then he arched his hips forward.
I screamed as I felt his massive rod piercing my womanhood. He thrust inward brutally.
Somewhat aroused still from my obscene rendering of sexual service to Mother Madeline, he didn't hurt me as the crusaders had hurt me, but I winced as I felt the brutal abrasion of his prick against my delicate, much-abused inner sex flesh.
He pushed inward until his sword was buried to the hilt in my quivering cunt.
"She's no virgin. The devil has already claimed her!" the priest bellowed. Again I held my peace, and resigned myself to his hard, cruel rod as he started to move in me.
He pulled his prick out to the tip and then lunged in ferociously, his cock head butting against the fleshy roof of my little sex cave. I couldn't believe the wildness with which he worked his will on my quivering helpless body.
As he fucked me, Mother Madeline stood by, watching, her eyes alight with the same evil passion which infested the priest. I began to wonder if I weren't unclean, not because of my own wrong-doing, but because of the repeated subjection to the evil of others.
I closed my eyes, trying to blot out the horrible spectacle of the priest violating my womanhood. I clenched my fists.
My shoulders were a burning raging pain, and my pussy became fiery, as it began to respond to the fleshy rod which pierced it.
Again and again he lunged powerfully into my pussy, and in spite of all my determination to resist the lascivious excitement which gripped me, I was helpless.
It was again as if my will had no dominion over my body. My inner pussy flesh tingled hotly, and my juices welled up in my hot, invaded tunnel, pouring down over the priest's powerful sword of lust, lubricating it, easing its passage in and out of my pussy.
I started to gasp as the heated sensations surged through me. In the corner, Sister Regina was bellowing now, her moans rising and falling like some dumb beasts. I could hear her squirming around on the floor, as the priest's prick pillaged my pussy like a rutting stallion!
I had the eerie sensation that I was transported from earth to Hell itself, that I had died and been consigned to my eternal fate, and yet that sweet spastic pleasure consumed me, gripping my entrails, causing the honey of my womb to gush forth in lavish slimy streams.
My flesh crawled, and was covered with goose flesh, as the evil man continued to lunge into my womanhood, and then I felt the walls of my cunt closing in rhythmically around his hard-driving battering ram.
The hot, insane pleasure spread through me, gripping my cunt which seemed to close in on itself like a soft fist, and then spreading outward, until the iron manacles which held me suspended from the stone wall rattled with the violence of my convulsions.
The sweat poured from my overheated body, and I could feel the muscles of my buttocks contracting and relaxing as I drove my hips against his hairy loins, which had become wet and matted with the thick nectar of my errant passions.
At the height of my delirium. I felt the hot wet kiss of the priest's jism pouring into my overheated cunt. His juices mixed hotly with mine, and swelled the slimy tide which poured out of my secret little hole.
The convulsions peaked, and I would have sworn I had been struck by lightning. Behind my tightly-closed eyelids, bright flashes of light went off, and the heated light seemed to seep through my body, which was being consumed by the flames of ecstasy which coursed through me.
"Arrgh!" the priest bellowed, lunging into me with such force that his hairy loins jarred my suspended body. His cock, like a fountain, kept spewing the warm slimy contents of his loins into my wracked womanhood.
The spasms of delight which had gripped my body faded softly, until I quivered with a warm feeling of relaxation which was strange, considering my position.
"You were right," the priest said, as he pulled his massive, cruel sword from my violated hole, "she is possessed. Her response to my manhood is proof enough of that.
"Give her a hot enema with holy water and see if that will drive the devil out of her."
"Very good, Father DeRoche," Mother Madeline said.
Two other nuns were summoned after the obscene, evil priest had left, and they released me from my bonds, restraining me, face down on a tall stone which stood in front of a huge fireplace.
They threw logs in the fireplace until a roaring fire was going. At first, it was soothing to my chilled, beaten flesh, but then the room became oppressively hot.
With terror-filled eyes, I watched the two nuns at their labor, and in the lurid, flickering light of the fire they seemed like two demons with the head demon, Mother Madeline, standing in the background, supervising.
Sister Regina's moans had become so insistent, that Mother Madeline had whipped her brutally, until the groans subsided into piteous whimpers.
"Would you like to suffer the wrack again, Sister Regina?" Mother Madeline asked her, her voice quivering with malign humor.
"No, Mother," Sister Regina whimpered.
"Then cease your diabolic noise!"
She accented her last command with another brutal flick of the whip she had used, and again turned her attentions to me.
My position was more humiliating than any I had ever been in. I had been bound to the stone block face-down, my arms stretched out in front of me, secured to iron manacles, driven into the stone. My knees had been bent up under me, so that they touched the soft, curved underside of my breasts. My buttocks were high in the air.
I could not understand how such an obscene position would drive a devil out of me, if, indeed, I were possessed, but I didn't think that was what these evil women had in mind.
One of the nuns had placed an iron pot over the blazing fire, and I could hear it bubbling, and now they were ladling the boiling water into a large goatskin bag. At one end of the bag was suspended a long tube made of the entrails of some animal, and attached to that was a huge glass elongated bubble which was hollow. I knew what it was for, and I trembled for my very life.
The water was boiling, and it had to do damage. I clenched my hands and pulled hard on the manacles, but soon realized the futility of my struggling.
I gnashed my teeth together in a fury of impotent rage, as one of the nuns brought the bag over to the foot of the block, in front of my exposed asshole.
"Very well, apply the enema," Mother Madeline said, when the nun holding the bag said they were ready.
The other nun took the large glass tube, and shoved it roughly into my nether hole. I blushed for the shame I felt when I felt that long tube invading my unmentionable parts.
The tube spread my asshole walls wide, and created an uncomfortable pressure.
"Release the holy water!" Mother Madeline ordered.
I screamed as the nun who had inserted the tube in my asshole untied the string which held the tubing closed. The hot water flowed down the tubing, and the goatskin bag, held high by the other nun, jerked obscenely as the water emptied out of it and into my burning guts.
All my struggles were useless as I felt the boiling water searing my entrails, moving farther and farther into my belly. The agony was so great that I retched, but there was nothing in my stomach to be emptied, and I tasted my own bile.
The pressure which was building as the water surged out of the goatskin bag and into my wretched bowels increased until I thought I would explode. I felt my belly expanding as the water filled me.
The pain was monumental. I was stiff with the burning sensation which surged through me as the brutal nuns emptied the goatskin bag into my wounded after passage.
Then the nun removed the large glass tube from my asshole, and the three of them gathered around my wretched, quivering body.
"Good!" Mother Madeline exclaimed. "She is quiet. The devil is gathering his reserves for a battle. Let us beat him out of her."
With that, all three nuns removed leather whips from the wall, where they hung on hooks, and as I struggled to retain the burning contents of the enema they began to beat me mercilessly, uttering cries of rage.
"Come forth, Satan, and be defeated!" one of the nuns cried, as the thick whip landed on my naked buttocks.
I had clenched my muscles together. For all the burning pain of the enema, I was mortally afraid of soiling myself. To me that would have been the ultimate humiliation, but as I struggled to restrain the massive waves of heated water which strove to gush out of my bowels, I felt cramps gripping my gut.
I clenched my teeth together, gnashed them, as I was assaulted by the whips of the three nuns. At the same time, I strove with every inch of my power to withhold the horrible boiling load of liquid with which the cruel nuns had filled my belly.
I was sweating prolifically, and I could feel my strength leaving me, as the burning mass of water surged in my belly.
Strangely enough, the heat seemed to fill my whole body and even my womanhood, also exposed to the lurid gaze of the nuns, started to gush with pussy cream. I felt the honey seeping out of my overheated cave of lust, and blushed even more deeply that I could not control the deep, dark tides of my passion.
The nuns desisted from their horrendous beating, only when they were thoroughly exhausted.
By this time, my body felt like a rock, as I persisted in my endeavor to retain the burning contents of my rectum.
"Release her, and let us see if the devil flees from her evil body," the evil headmistress said.
I was released from my bonds, and then led by one of the nuns to a large chamber pot. There, in full view of these harpies, I was forced to squat. For one vain moment longer, I tried not to release the agonizing contents of my belly, but then they came gushing forth, while the nuns laughed.
"Perhaps she is saved," one of the nuns said, when I had finally finished with my vile chore, and been handed a linen cloth to clean myself up. That was an unexpected mercy. I had been afraid they would leave me to swelter in my own filth.
"Tie her up again, and we shall see in the morning," Mother Madeline said. "We shall leave her for twenty-four hours to contemplate her sins. Then we can, perhaps, save her soul."
Once again I was left in the darkness. At this point, I must confess that my womanhood was astir with wild raging excitement such as I had never felt before. It had started when I had felt the profound relief of emptying my bowels, and it continued, as if a ghost of the monstrous heat from that boiling water were titillating me.
I felt as if my soul were going to be consumed with the lascivious responses which filled my body. I had always been able to control my sexual curiosity and those feelings of sexuality which every now and then had teased me.
But since my rape, I had been constantly plagued. I felt slightly diseased, sinful in the extreme, and at the moment, for all my relief, despairing.
Once again I heard that hissing sound, as Sister Regina crawled toward me. her rough garments scratching against the stone floor of the cell.
"How are you?" she asked.
I looked down at her bleakly, and didn't answer. Instead I felt tears of desperation trickling down my cheeks.
"Listen," Sister Regina said, "and listen well. What men say of you is not the truth-not ever! That is, unless they are good men. The people who inhabit this convent are not good people. They are evil. They are wretched cast-off souls who wallow in their own rage and despair, and like the devil, they want company to justify their wretchedness.
"It is not for me to say why life is so wrong, why such things happen, that parents will discard their children, throw them to the Church, like children going into the blazing mouth of Moloch. It is not for me to know why the Church does not examine their fitness better.
"But it is so, whether we like it or not, and we are poor, ignorant people, petty little sinners looking for salvation. What is important for you to know is that you, like all the poor people, have endured great privation and misery.
"Do not, my little one, rail against them, or hate the God who watches over us all because he has picked you for this time of pain, for this test of your strength.
"Pray instead that you will find in your heart more compassion for others, the grace to forgive those who offend you. Therein lies your salvation-not in the fear that you may be possessed. That matter rests with God alone, no matter what that blighted priest and prioress say, and he will dispose of you in his infinite wisdom and mercy. Have you heard me?"
I looked down. at her, and felt my aversion for this poor suffering soul fade in the light of an enormous warmth.
"But I have sinned," I said.
"Pshaw! Haven't we all? We are weak! That is why God died for us. But forgive yourself! You have been forced to do what you would not do! And forgive those who wounded you so piteously. For they, poor wretched souls, are more to be pitied than you if you keep your faith alive and strong!"
"Why are you here?" I gasped, awed at her wondrous wisdom in the face of such degradation.
"For such a crime as yours, my darling. Innocence. Not unstained, I might add, but nevertheless, there is a meager virtue in me that I prize above all my sins and failings. I will die here, and soon, but not, I promise, before I have assisted you in whatever way I can. They think because they have crushed both my legs in the press that I am totally helpless, but I have lived here many years and I know things about this fortress of evil that they will never learn."
Then I told her about my sister.
"Ahh," Sister Regina said, nodding, "I must think. Do you pray for me very hard that I may be inspired to assist her, too."
She crawled back to her corner, and crouched low, moaning every now and then with the pain that wracked her tortured limbs, while I stood in my manacles, and felt the harsh grip of rage leave me.
And I did pray. More than the exhortations of my sister, or the good village priest, or my mother, this woman's words had fallen like a soft balm on my heart.
For a while, I know I slept because I started suddenly, and realized that the horrible dungeon in which I had been immured, had faded away. I felt somewhat stronger, and far more hopeful than I had felt for a long time.
My eyes glanced at the corner where Sister Regina was crouched, and I gasped with true terror.
She was no longer there, nor in any other part of the dungeon where my eyes could see. I writhed in my bonds, my heart constricting with the fear I felt.
Had she been an apparition? Had she died while I sagged, unconscious in my bond?
I suddenly felt an enormous moral responsibility for her. We were sisters in sin and suffering, and she had provided me with the most powerful moral relief I had ever had.
When I look back on it, her words had so touched my heart that she changed me for life. She had been a blessing from God, and I was more wracked with the fear for her safety than I was for my sister's well-being.
Time seemed to stretch into an eternity of suffering and waiting, as I struggled to resign myself to the manacles which held me to the wall.
And then I heard that sibilant sound of her rough serge garments dragging along the stone floor. I heard a rumbling sound, and, looking in the direction from which the sound came, I saw a large, black hole gaping in what had been a solid wall.
Through this aperture came the crippled nun. She dragged herself up to me, and I saw her white face peering up at mine.
"I am afraid I am going to have to use your body for a crutch," she said. "Can you bear with the pain I shall cause you?"
"Anything, dear Sister Regina, anything that will help you."
With a great cry of pain, Sister Regina hoisted herself up to her crushed feet, crawling up my body. Her nails dug into me, and the weight of her body dragged at my agonized shoulders. But I clenched my teeth, as she made her way to an upright position.
Then I saw that she had a key in her hand. She released one of my hands from the manacle which held it, and then sank to the earth, sobbing.
Again she looked up.
"Here!" she gasped. "You must do the other yourself."
I clutched at the key in her hand, and after some painful struggle, unloosed the other cuff.
Then I bent lovingly down to the nun. She was, I discovered, dying, and my heart almost broke.
Chapter Five
Her face had the stark whiteness of those who are dying, and a copious sweat poured from her features.
"You will," she gasped, her voice getting weaker and weaker, "pray for me?"
"With all my heart!" I cried. "I shall take you with me."
"No, leave me to my God who will be kinder than those in whose care his Church has placed me. Listen carefully. Go through that opening," she instructed, pointing to the dark hole. "On the other side, is a low tunnel. To the right of that opening there is a switch. Pull it to close the opening, so that you will not be followed.
"Follow the tunnel, which curves, until you feel a gust of air in your face. Then you can stand up. Keep pressed against the wall to your right, and follow that until you hear water falling. Then sit and wait for dawn, which will light your way. Follow the light at the end of the tunnel. There you will find your sister waiting.
"I have given her a draught of medicine to keep her asleep so she will not wander. Then go your way, and may God give you happiness and peace."
"I cannot leave you," I gasped.
"You must! I cannot tell when the prioress or Father DeRoche will return. Hurry! Go now. At the end of the tunnel, where your sister lies sleeping, you will find a gown for yourself. Go!"
Reluctantly I left the good woman who had been my savior. I could not betray her heroic sacrifice by nullifying it with vain loyalty. She was dying, and as surely as I know I am writing this, I know she rests in God's arms for her goodness.
Once inside the dank, dark tunnel, I fumbled around until I felt the switch, and then I heard the rumbling sound which closed the stones. It was a mystery, how that wall had moved, but I had no time to contemplate it.
The tunnel was exceedingly low and as Sister Regina had said, it curved tortuously. It also seemed to go downward. Occasionally, as I crawled, I felt furry creatures, or large bugs crawling across my hands or feet, and I would stifle a shriek, not knowing how much sound could be heard.
Finally I felt the dank rush of air against my face. I crawled a few paces more, and then cautiously stood up. I banged my head against the edge of the opening leading into the tunnel, and for a moment, saw stars. Then I felt for the wall to my right and I followed that until I heard, faintly, and then with growing clearness, the sound of rushing water. I crouched down on the dank earth, to wait for the light.
Once again time seemed to stretch into an eternity. I had no idea how long I had been in this convent, no idea how long I had been in my bondage. I spent my time praying for the eternal happiness of Sister Regina, and I have spent many waking moments since with such prayers on my lips.
Finally, a faint grayness seemed to suffuse the damp cave. By now I was cramped and cold. The grayness increased, until, as the dawn rose, I saw its source-straight ahead of me. To my left was a huge waterfall The cave slanted downward, and I followed the light. The cave led into another tunnel, the floor always going downward, until it opened out into another large cave, which was warmer.
By now I could no longer hear the rush of water from the fall, but ahead of me I saw sun, beautiful sun, streaming through a narrow slit which obviously led to the outside.
This cave was filled with lichen, and little flowers which love the dark. At the low, narrow entrance, I found my sister Lucia, sleeping peacefully, curled up in a sweet little ball.
I could just imagine the untold agony her deliverance had caused Sister Regina. Beside my sister was a pile of cloth. It was a respectable, warm black serge gown with a white collar and cuffs-much finer than anything I had ever worn. I noticed that my sister, too, was clothed in the same garment.
I put it on, covering my wetted, naked body, and then shook Lucia. She was difficult to awaken, but I felt secure where I was.
I finally did manage to awaken Lucia, who smiled at me brightly, and embraced me ardently.
"Did-did you have a good time?" I asked, wondering if they had dared to abuse one so blasted by fate.
"No, not really. They left me all alone in a dark room, and I'm hungry. They only fed me on bread and water, but then this nice woman crawled to me, and said she would give me a sweet if I would come with her and be quiet. She said you were waiting for me but couldn't come yourself."
"And did she give you the sweet?"
"Yes. And then I got sleepy, and she said to say my prayers and sleep because when I woke up, you would be here."
"That was a very nice lady," I said to Lucia. "You must always, always pray for her."
"What was her name?"
"Sister Regina. Now come. We must be going."
We crawled out onto a small plateau. We were near the base of the mountain on which the Convent of the Good Hope was perched. I had traveled downward, through the heart of the mountain.
I had only one thought now, and that was to get back to my village, to Goodman Freere, and my intended, Palma. At first, I traveled cautiously, using the woods, but keeping the high road in sight for fear of getting lost.
I passed the section of the road where Ranulf had accosted us. The carriage had been pushed off the side of the road, and lay upside down at the bottom of a steep ravine. Lucia, remembering in some childish way, whimpered, and clung to me.
I dared not abuse her childish faith and tell her that everything was all right. We would be traveling for at least two days, and I was seriously contemplating traveling at night in order to reach our haven.
But then, as night fell, I realized the folly of my intention. There was no way in the profound blackness of the night, to distinguish landmarks, and never having traveled from my village, I was insecure at best.
I did find a small cave just off the road, and hastened to secure myself and my sister in it, to protect us from the elements. During the night it rained, and by dawn, the new-washed landscape showed itself bleak and chilly. The sky was still overcast, and seemed to press down upon us, as we continued on our way.
Our heavy garments were a blessing to us, as we suffered the buffeting of the wind. By noon, as best as I could tell from the light, Lucia was whimpering, with hunger, and I was weak from it. We had to find a farmhouse or a cottage where we could get something to eat, or I should never make it to my home!
Desperate, I decided to stay on the road, which provided a better view of the surrounding countryside. A stream of smoke from a friendly hearth would guide me to sustenance. And then I remembered that I would be coming as a beggar, since I had no money.
Perhaps several weeks before, I would have quailed at that thought. My pride would have recoiled at the idea.
But I had been through so much, and the softening influence of Sister Regina had already begun to work its sweet effects on my soul. We staggered on our weary way until, through a break in the trees and brush which lined the highway, as it curved around, it opened out on the right to reveal a large meadow. On a hilly eminence at the end of that meadow stood the country manor of some lord.
The fields were filled with workers, and even in the lowering light which threatened more storm, the sight before me was a cheerful one.
We stepped down from the road, and headed toward the workers. They were simple folk like us. They would have to be compassionate to us in our straitened circumstances.
I approached the first man in the field, and told him we were orphans whose parents and farm had been pillaged by foreign crusaders; that we were going toward the village of my birth because I had relatives there who would care for us.
My shock was extreme when, instead of responding with compassion, the man merely acted annoyed and pointed toward the manor house.
"I can give ye nothing! Go there. That's where the lord Briarly lives."
The manor house was a considerable distance from the fields, and my sister and I trudged wearily toward the large castle, our stomachs grumbling from lack of nourishment.
Before we reached the house, we were accosted by some of my lord's retainers, who came upon us on horseback, having been out to the hunt.
"Here be two lovely morsels!" one of the richly-clad men exclaimed. "What do ye here?"
Again I explained as simply as I could. Again I was shocked by the lack of compassion. Instead, the response seemed to be one of extreme glee.
I understood why when the man who had addressed us initially, reached down and scooped my sister up onto the front of his saddle.
Lucia set up an ungodly screaming which heightened the mirth of the men, but annoyed the man who had molested her.
"Let her go!" I cried, attacking the man's legs trying to pull my sister away from his grasp.
I was kicked in the belly for my pains, and sent sprawling. While I was still stunned, I was scooped up onto another horse by another of the lord's retainers.
"Fair game for our sport, ehh, Raymond?"
"Ay, fair enough, if this blond beauty will stop screaming. Silence, I say!"
Lucia was by now hysterical to the point of insanity. I scratched and bit at the man who had pulled me up in front of him, but he merely laughed.
"Raymond!" he called to the man who had my sister, "let me show you how to handle a wench with no one to speak for her!"
And with that he delivered a cruel blow to my jaw with his clenched fist. I saw stars, and then faded into unconsciousness.
When I awoke, my head and jaw aching miserably, I was naked and spread-eagled on the ground. I immediately started, my head rearing up from its hard pillow of tamped-down earth, and was slapped back into submission.
"Just keep your tongue in your head!" snarled the man who had slapped me. He was crouched between my legs, which were held by two retainers. Another one had grasped both my wrists, which were pulled over my head.
I screamed as the man's massive ramrod pierced through my much-abused hole, and the cry of protest and anger was counter-pointed by the laughter of the men watching.
Desperately looking for my sister, I turned my head from side to side and finally saw her, slightly behind me, and spread-eagled in similar fashion on the ground. My heart bled for her, and then I noticed, with some relief, that she was still unconscious, her body jarred loosely, lasciviously by the man who was fucking her, while others stood around, waiting their turns, their lusty rods exposed and stiff with their concupiscence.
The man who had impaled me on his thick rod started to move in me, drawing his prick out to the tip, and then slamming inward again. At first, the lunging of his harsh, cruel rod in my wounded womanhood abraded the delicate inner flesh.
I felt the burning sensation of my sex flesh being rubbed raw, and then his face turned red; he grunted; and then the tip of his rod spewed forth its libidinous load of lust.
The thick slimy cream spewing into my wounded hole, seeped down over my lacerated inner membranes and soothed the fiery pain.
When he finally pulled out of me, and the second man took the first one's place, his inward thrust was not nearly so painful. I closed my eyes and tried to divorce myself from the obscene sexual tyranny to which my sister and I were being subjected.
My body, however, responded as it usually did, and I felt the seething tumult of sexual desire roiling around in my womanhood.
My own juices started to flow, commingling with the lurid moisture of my first rapist, and eased the passage of the thick rod of lust now pumping in and out of my pussy heartlessly, and with a strength which jarred my body.
The man who had raped me first, reached down as he observed the second fucking me, and began to play roughly with my burgeoning tits. I felt my nipples puckering.
My mind may have been cognizant of the concept of shame, but my body knew no such morality. It was like a wanton, responding ardently to the prick which sawed in and out of my teeming womanhood.
I felt my sexual temperature heighten to a feverish pitch, felt the pink petals of my sex flesh, being battered by the man's hairy loins, swelling and throbbing with a heated lust of their own.
My clitoris popped out of its fleshy sheath, that sheath I had first examined with my tongue on the prioress's pussy, and it tingled with a seething heated excitement of its own, which added to the wild welter of passion which surged through me.
I could feel my sweat pouring from my overheated body, as my cuntal walls started to close in rhythmically around the cock of the man raping me.
Even the rough, bestial pawing of the man who had captured my tits in his hands added to the strange insane excitement which possessed my body and took it out of my rational control.
My hips arched upward as the man's hard, thick rod started to gush its heavy, odorous load of liquid lust into my pussy. His balls slapped against my quivering, humping ass cheeks as he relieved his lust in the depths of my teeming womanhood, and then he pulled out, was almost yanked off me by the third man, waiting behind him.
His prick was thicker than the two preceding men, and I winced as I felt his thick shaft of meat stuffing my tiny hole. As if the first orgasm I experienced were not enough, the pumping of the third man's prick in and out of my womanhood set up another tumult of lusty pleasure in the depths of my cunt.
I felt my womb close in on itself, seeming to clench tightly like a fist, only to loosen and then clench again.
The carnal wildness which surged through me transported me from myself, drove me wild with a scintillating ecstasy which clouded my mind, and for one brief, exquisite moment, softened my trials and the humiliation to which I was subjected.
Lost in the pleasure of the fleshy pandemonium which reigned in my seething womanhood, I felt the third man's prick spewing forth its hot heavy load of man juice.
His humping motions jarred my body, which seemed to have bloated, distended beyond its normal boundaries, pulsating sweetly with a thousand tingling sensations that made me think of a vivid, star-spangled sky in a dark, crystal-clear night.
My body stiffened at the height of my sexual crisis, as if I had been shot through with a bolt of lightning, and my entrails seemed to melt in the heat which filled me, oozing out of my stuffed fleshy channel, as my rapist discharged his viscid load into my seething womanhood.
My ears rang with the blood which boiled in my body, suffusing my flesh with a ruddy glow. My flesh gleamed with a thin patina of sex sweat, as the man emptied his balls into my quivering fleshy sheath.
I felt as if I were on fire with the fires of Hell as I writhed in the insensate throes of the orgasm which seized me and shook me as a giant demon would, but the sensations were totally pleasant, if bizarre.
The third man was replaced by a fourth. In between the carnal seizures which created such sweet havoc with my body, I checked on my sister, who was being ravished as grossly as I.
Fortunately, she was still unconscious and I began to fear for her life, I watched her lovely, pale face lolling to one side on the ground. Her body was bounced wildly, as the man taking her reached under her bare buttocks, and gripped them in his rough, violating hands, arching her hips up.
I watched his rod appear and disappear as he sought the reaches of her unconscious womanhood.
And then I turned my concentration to my own ravisher, who was plunging his cock into my burning, aroused pussy. I could feel the walls of my flesh nest closing down on his hard-driving prick in another paroxysm of carnal delight. The spasms surged through me insanely like lightning flickering across a hot summer sky, transporting me with a raging bliss which almost drove me into a faint.
And then I experienced another strange sexual practice, as one of the men, impatient with waiting, straddled my bare breasts, and thrust his long rod into my gaping mouth.
I gagged as I felt the fleshy rod butting against my throat, blocking off what little air I had.
"Suck on it!" he cried, as he made the same pumping motions in my mouth that the man violating my womanhood was making in my pussy.
Perhaps I had something to thank Mother Madeline for. Having learned that there are sexual practices other than the one into which I had been so rudely initiated, I was more prepared for this man, and sucking on his cock, bringing my tongue into play caused him to shoot his load into the depths of my throat in enough time for me to catch my breath as he withdrew so that I didn't strangle to death.
The taste was pungent and musky. I wasn't sure if I liked it or not, but then, nothing I had experienced sexually was conducive to any pleasant feelings about the most intimate act between human beings-and, I was discovering, the most abused.
Again and again my womanhood and my mouth were invaded. Again and again I was wracked with the wild, pleasurable convulsions. But I was becoming exhausted, and it didn't appear to me that the men were willing to desist in their lewd labors.
My head was throbbing with exhaustion, and the awry state of my being because of the carnal wildness which had possessed me, and then I heard the drumming of horses' hooves on the ground, approaching quickly.
"Stay, what goes here!" a deep and commanding voice cried.
The din which had hammered in my ears as the men made gross riot with the bodies of me and my sister, ceased suddenly, and the silence almost crushed me it was so dense and so sudden.
The man who was searing my sex flesh with his hard firebrand pulled out of me, and stood, crouched between my splayed knees.
"We found these wenches, sire..." began the man Raymond, who having despoiled my sister, had come to take his pleasure from me.
"Found them?" the man exclaimed.
I looked up at a tall, slender man, dressed in black velvet. On the wrist of one gloved hand was a hooded hawk. The other held the reins of a magnificent white stallion, the likes of which I have never seen.
"They are beggars, sire, gypsies!" exclaimed a man.
"Cover them, and bring them to the manor!" the man ordered, "and not another one of you is to lay hands on them!"
The men hastened to obey. My gown was thrown to me, and I dressed hastily, feeling filthy, and abominably used if not by fate, at least by mankind. I hastened to my still unconscious sister, and dressed her tenderly, grateful that she was still breathing.
Then we were carried to the huge hall of Lord Briarly, where we were ushered into his presence. Lucia was placed on a couch, where she lay quietly, her face pale, her features slack and uncomprehending.
"What are you doing here?" the man commanded. He was sitting in a large, arm chair at one end of the hall into which we were led.
I explained what had happened to my sister and me.
"Foolish woman," he finally said. sneering, "you have asked for what you received. It is a judgment of God on your forwardness. Women may never travel the countryside like harridans and gypsies! This, if you had been well-reared, you should have known!"
"I! I know that most of the men I have met who are supposed to be well-born are despicable thieves, liars, knaves, the worst of men preying on the best!" I cried hotly.
"What!" he gasped, his face livid with rage, as he leaned forward in his chair. "You dare to speak thus to me?"
"You are a beast to make judgment on innocent victims of man-made circumstances. I would curse you from the bottom of my heart if I did not fear for my own immortal soul!"
"I am your superior, a lord of the realm, and you dare take issue with me?"
"You are not my superior!" I cried. "Let me go, and my sister, to seek my family!"
"You have been ruined and therefore cannot for the sake of possible scandal, be loosed among others who are innocent. I will care for you out of the kindness of my heart.
"Tomorrow, with my head housekeeper, you shall be escorted to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which I patronize. There you will learn to live decent lives. You will be better cared-for than if you were among your own sort."
I didn't know whether to scream with rage, or keep silence. I trembled from the soles of my feet up to my head.
How dare this creature-this man who had responsibility for the beasts who had attacked us-how dare he pass judgment on me for being attacked?
And yet, what could I do?
I heard my sister stir and rushed to her.
She was weeping as she regained consciousness and yet seemed to be relieved that we were not on the road.
She asked again for food, and the lord of the manor remanded us to the care of the head housekeeper, who was requested to keep close watch on us, and see to it that we were fed. Once again we were condemned to imprisonment in a convent because of the rash, cruel judgment of an uncaring man.
I seethed in my rage, wanting only to avenge myself on the man's insensate stupidity.
But once again the image of Sister Regina crept softly into my heart and I found myself on my knees, begging forgiveness for my own impotent rage, and for those who had offended me and my sister.
I renewed my determination to escape the ugly circumstances which surrounded me, but to be more circumspect in my expressions of defiance.
However, my vow was solemn and I was determined to fulfill it with my life if need be.
I and my sister would return to our village, to the kindly, loving good folk who had nurtured us in our first great trial, and who would provide a loving haven for us in our life.
When morning came, and the head housekeeper summoned us from the small room where she had confined us, I was determined, and silent.
Not one word did I have for the housekeeper or the cruel lord who had invested us with the guilt of those who had victimized us.
As we left in the carriage, his anathemas for my devilish pride and ingratitude were ringing in my ears.
I merely smiled.
I had much more important matters to concern myself with than railing against a man whom I could not defeat, nor convince.
I left him with his anger and sense of grievance, and even found in my soul some small ounce of pity for his hardness of heart.
Such a man could not be happy, but I and my sister could, and would be.
And that hope held me up for the next three years, until now.
Chapter Six
It was a long, tedious ride. I listened to a long-winded lecture from the smug house keeper with regard to respect for my superiors. I bore it in silence, but when the large stone convent finally hove into view, for all my misgivings about again being immured within stone walls, I actually experienced a sense of relief.
The postilion approached the gate and rang the bell. It was answered promptly by a plump-faced, rosy-checked nun whose cheerful aspect gave me some warmth.
"I've brought you two wenches from my lord Briarly," the housekeeper said. The nun reached for her keys and opened the door, and smiled broadly at us when we walked through the gate.
"Come this way. The prioress is in her closet," the woman said.
This convent was far less gloomy than the Convent of the Good Hope, and the prioress was not what I had expected at all.
She was tall and fair, and she was reclining on a tapestried couch amid a colorful welter of pillows.
"Mother Reata, the lord Briarly has sent us two more members of our family!" the plump nun announced breathlessly, after she had knocked on the ornately-carved door and was told to enter.
"Come in, come in," she drawled, waving to us with a beautiful white hand.
The housekeeper made a profound bow which Mother Reata graciously accepted. Then she invited us to sit down.
"My lady, the lord Briarly rescued these two orphans from their ravisher's yesterday evening, and he has asked that you give them asylum."
"Oh! How is it that they were assaulted?" the woman asked, taking a sweetmeat from a silver dish, and eating it.
"They had been ravished before by soldiers, my lady, and they were orphaned. This one, the dark-haired wench, was traveling with her sister to some village where they are supposed to have relatives."
"Bold lass, you are," the woman said, but without any sign of disapproval. She pushed the silver dish toward me.
"Be so good as to have a sweetmeat. They are exceptionally fine. They come from Florence."
I reached out and timidly took one, and gave it to my sister.
"Say thank you to the kind lady," I whispered to Lucia. She looked at Mother Reata and smiled.
"Thank you, ma'am."
"You may call me Mother, dear. What's the matter with her?" the woman asked me.
"She-she's been like this since the crusaders attacked our farm, Mother," I said.
"Oh. Poor child. Well, greet Lord Briarly for me," the woman said, dismissing the housekeeper. "And, if he meets my cousin, the Lord Fairfax, would you tell him that I send my regards, and look forward to his visiting me."
"Yes, my lady," the housekeeper said, rising and bowing again. "And you!" the housekeeper said harshly to me, "what have you, to say to my lord Briarly?"
"I have something for him," I said, reaching for the housekeeper's hand. She allowed me to take it and turn it palm-up, and then I spat in it."
"Oh, you surly, ugly-tempered wench! You deserve your fate! God is punishing you for your arrogance, and if my lady Reata has any sense she will punish you, too!"
Wiping her hand on her apron, she bowed again curtly to the still-reclining, elegant woman and left the room.
I sat in my chair, trembling, waiting for the blow to fall, but there was none.
"You shouldn't have done that," the woman said mildly.
"The lord Briarly is not God," I retorted. "And I do not think he has a right to dispose of my life. I want to go to my village, not remain here."
"But of course that's impossible, my dear," Mother Reata said. "And since Lord Briarly does have power of life and death over his subjects, and you are in his territory, of course he can dispose of you as he pleases- just as he can dispose of me."
"How is this?" I asked, curious. "You're a noblewoman. Nobles can do as they please!"
Mother Reata's response to my remark was a light, silvery laugh.
"No, not always, my dear. I am the lord Briarly's fourth daughter. It was his will that I come here. But it's not a bad life. I think you will like it here. But you must learn to curb your tongue. Wait and watch, and resign yourself. You are, after all, a mere woman, and a peasant one at that. Here, take another sweetmeat, and then go with Sister Maria. She will show you to your room, and tell you what your duties are.
"If you are hungry, tell her to instruct the cook to prepare something for you to eat."
She rang a silver bell and the plump-faced nun appeared.
"Sister Maria, take them to two adjoining cells, and then instruct them in their duties. See to it that they have something to eat and drink."
"Cells!" I exclaimed.
Again Mother Reata laughed.
"That's what we call our sleeping chambers," she said. "They do look like cells, but they're comfortable."
Our sleeping chambers were, indeed, austere, but comfortable. There was a narrow bed with a crucifix above it, a desk and chair, and a press for our clothing, and a chamber pot under the bed.
The rooms each had one window, high up, and barred.
Apparently, however, the sleeping arrangements were the only austerity practiced in the Convent of the Sacred Heart, as I discovered the following day. Lucia and I retired early, after a light meal which was ungrudgingly prepared for us by the cook, an older nun called Sister Sophia.
Lucia and I were to be part of the household staff. We were kept busy from morn till night, but the work was not onerous, and the nuns who inhabited the convent were cheerful and patient mistresses.
Most of them were the daughters, legitimate or otherwise, of noblemen and royalty, and the convent was well-endowed. They were a fascinating, rather debauched lot.
There were secret visits in the night, and whispers occasionally reached my ears of strange doings in some of the more remote chambers of the massive convent.
The public rooms, and the common living chambers of the nuns were elegantly furnished. My sister and I polished and swept them, and kept them clean, but of course we were not allowed in them, nor did we eat in the large gorgeously refectory where the nuns had their meals.
But we ate the same food as they did, and we were well-provided with clothes, and other necessities of life, and instead of planning an immediate escape, I resigned myself to the comfortable living which the convent provided.
Eventually, I managed, with the help of Sister Maria, who could write, to smuggle a note out through one of the tradesmen who came to the convent, directed to the inn of Goodman Freere. I had no idea if he received it since there was no way he could return a message to me.
Sister Maria was as sweet and helpful as she could be, but just as indolent and debauched as the rest of the women consigned to life among each other, rather than the normal, married life that a peasant woman could expect. I learned a lot from these women, and some of my prejudices about their so-called privileged life were dispelled.
The only time there was any semblance of the ordered life of prayer which the nuns were supposed to be living was when a clergyman would come to visit. Then the nuns would arise before the dawn had lit the eastern sky, and they would repair to the beautiful chapel to chant matins and lauds.
But the visits were few and far between and the clergy did not seem to look, too deeply into the souls of the women. if anything, most of them appeared to be just as lazy and resigned to their status.
Once in a while, a great preacher or clerical saint would visit, and then the whole moral tone of the convent would alter radically. I couldn't believe the differences among the clergy!
There were those who had been forced into the life, and those who had accepted it from self-sacrificing goodness, and whose every word sparkled with Christian goodness and saintliness.
But there just seemed to me to be too many of the other kind, the rapacious ones, the evil ones, like Father DeRoche, and then there was the Cardinal Copague, who was rumored to be Mother Reata's lover.
As the year progressed the good life and regular hours caused my sister and me to prosper. I achieved my full height and my body blossomed into young womanhood. I was rather vain of my looks, without really considering the effect of them on others.
But beauty, like any other quality in life, is a two-edged sword, and I learned what I should have learned with the crusade who had so drastically altered my life and the life of my sister.
She would, it appeared always be a child, but a good one. She did her chores unstintingly and looked to me for everything she needed, and the instructions I could give.
She was the darling of the convent, and the woman cosseted her, and petted her. It didn't alter the basic sweetness of her nature.
One afternoon, Cardinal Copague made a visit. As usual, I answered the door, and took his cape, to hang it in the room assigned for such outer wear. I had thought perhaps he looked at me more keenly than usual, but I dismissed it.
What would a cardinal, the third son of a duke, want of a mere peasant girl? I should have known better! Lulled by the relative security of the convent, I had forgotten the bestial assaults on me and my sister by the crusaders, and by the retainers of the lord Briarly.
I was in the washroom, boiling water for the tubs, when Sister Feronia rushed in, breathless.
"Quickly! You must bathe and change your clothes and go to Mother Reata's closet. She wants you right away!"
I frowned, wondering what she could want with me, but hastened to obey. I bathed myself, and changed my garments into the Sunday one, which was for best, and presented myself at the ornately carved door.
I entered when Mother Reata had acknowledged
my knock, and
found her, reclining as usual on her couch, with the cardinal sitting in a huge armchair, near her head.
"Here she is," the woman said, smiling at me. "Come forward. The cardinal is pleased with you."
I looked at the rather corpulent man, at his intense eyes. And then I shivered, noting that his eyes were raking my body lewdly.
"Tell the wench to remove her gown," the cardinal said, abruptly to Mother Reata.
"N-no!" I gasped, clutching at the collar of my simple gown.
"Don't be foolish, Maria," Sister Reata said in that purring, lazy voice of hers. "You're not a virgin any more, and it doesn't hurt to make friends with a Cardinal. Besides, I'm curious myself."
I stood for a moment, rooted to the spot. It wasn't shock. I had heard enough of the doings in the convent to know that most of the women inhabiting it were far from pure, but I had truly thought that my days of sexual abuse were over.
And then I realized that until I was prepared to escape, to get safely back to my village, I was dependent on this woman, and angering her or the cardinal would not do at all. I had, had long, silent hours in which to meditate, and think, and I had done some battle with my impulsiveness. I was more circumspect now.
Reluctantly, I slipped the gown up over my head, and then the thin cambric undergarment.
I now stood nude before Mother Reata and the cardinal, blushing.
"Quite, quite lovely," Mother Reata said, bestirring herself. She rose from the couch, and pointed to it, indicating that I should lie on it.
"Yes, for a peasant girl, she has an uncommon share of beauty," the cardinal said, rising from his seat with a lewd smile on his face.
Mother Reata sat in the chair vacated by the cardinal, and he stood by the couch, looking down at me.
I realized that Mother Reata was going to observe these proceedings. Her eyes glittered with lust, and her breast rose and fell convulsively. There was a hectic flush on her face, and I noticed that she was caressing one of her breasts.
The cardinal quickly unbuttoned his soutane, and then dropped his breeches, stepping out of them.
Corpulent as he was, his body was firm and fit, and his ramrod was immense. I shivered, partially with disgust, but also, God help me, with that sexual tension which I had learned to expect, and which still plagued me.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and his powerful, thick hands reached for my breasts. He caressed them, and a thrill of pleasure shivered through me, as I felt his hands digging into the fleshy wealth of my tits.
Then he pinched my pink nipples between the thumb and forefinger of each hand until the pink little nubbins of flesh were puckered and tingling with a pleasure which surged through me, heightening my erotic excitement.
He moved his hands down over my flat, hard belly, and then caressed my thickly-furred love mound.
He licked his lips, and I watched his face flush with his own passion, as he spread my legs wide.
My pink pussy meat flowered outward, glistening with the juices of my desire which had oozed from my pink sex channel.
Beside me, near my head, I heard Mother Reata sigh softly. Looking at her swiftly from the corner of my eye, I realized that she had lifted her black gown, and her hand was caressing her own love mound.
Since I spent long solitary hours in my cell fingering my sex flesh myself to achieve that sexual upheaval which I found so delicious, the sight of another woman doing it excited me even more.
The cardinal crouched between my legs, bracing his hands on either side of my body, and pressed his huge fleshy sword against my honeyed hole.
Then he thrust inward. The balm of my desire coated my inner sex flesh, so that his thrust was not painful, but instead extremely pleasurable.
I felt my tight little tunnel spreading wide, as he pushed inward, groaning loudly with lusty pleasure.
I felt his thick, hairy balls pressing against my quivering ass cheeks, and a shudder of intense carnal bliss gripped me, as I felt his massive rod of meat throbbing powerfully against my pussy walls.
"Oh, lovely!" Mother Reata gasped.
"Yes, she is delectable," the cardinal said. He started to move in me, still braced over my body, so that I could look down over the soft expanse of my flesh and watch as his rod appeared.
It gleamed with my juices, and the sight of his thick spear cleaving through my flesh again, disappearing in my wet hot nest, aroused me still more. When I gazed to my right, where Mother Reata was sitting in the seat, I noticed that she had pushed her buttocks forward slightly, and spread her thighs wide.
She was rubbing against her own pink flesh with two long, slender fingers which gleamed with the syrup flowing from her womanhood.
I turned my attention back to the cardinal who was pumping in and out of my pussy, his powerful buttocks rippling with his motions.
I bent my knees up, and spread my thighs wider, and there was no conscious design in the gesture. It was pure sexual wildness which once again, like a demon, a hot, demanding demon, had taken possession of me.
As the cardinal lunged inward, his hairy loins pressed against my pussy meat, which swelled and throbbed with sexual pleasure.
The little pink button of delight popped out of its fleshy nest, and tingled, shooting lightning-like flashes of heated ecstasy through me.
I felt as if I were going to faint with pleasure, felt as if my insides were going to melt as the passion mounted in my body.
My breasts swelled with excitement and my nipples stood out like sentinels from the soft white roundness of my tits, as the cardinal plunged into the teeming well of my lust over and over again.
Mother Reata moaned and the cardinal started to thrust into me faster and harder. By now, his hair-covered loins were wet and glistening with the nectar flowing in lavish quantities from my cunt.
His cock was like a firebrand. It burned my sex flesh, and enthralled me with wild flashes of bliss, as he continued to pump in and out of me.
I could feel the slime of my desire oozing out around his massive shaft of flesh. The thick cream flowed down my ass crack and pooled on the tapestried couch beneath my quivering ass cheeks.
I couldn't help it. I just had to respond. My hips started to buck upward as I sought to suck in more and more of the cardinal's fleshy rod. His hairy loins slammed against the pink inner meat of my pussy, stimulating it so that it pulsated passionately.
I closed my eyes and moaned softly as the cardinal's lusty spear drove through my secret flesh, inflaming me to such a pitch that I writhed wantonly against his hard-thrusting loins.
I felt the fiery pin-pricks of passionate pleasure tingling through my sex flesh, and I quivered. My body gleamed with the sweat which flowed copiously from my overheated skin, and goose flesh formed on my smooth flesh, as the sweet, chaotic pleasure mounted.
I was delirious with carnal delight, as the cardinal continued to thrust into me, his prick wreaking a sweet devastation in my quivering cunt.
My pussy walls started to close in rhythmically around his fleshy rod, and the pressure mounted until I was afraid I would explode, as sometimes the bottles of beer fermenting in my father's cellar would explode.
My blood boiled through me, and even my mind seemed to partake of the marvelous excitement which seethed through my flesh, taking possession of me totally.
As my sexual crisis reached its pitch, I felt the warm wet kiss of the cardinal's jism against my inflamed inner womanhood.
His cock seemed to swell to greater size, and it lurched insanely as he emptied his manly juices into me.
Beside me, Mother Reata gasped loudly, her breath hissing through her passion-constricted throat. I could hear her bouncing and squirming on the chair as she obviously reached her own peak of carnal delirium.
The cardinal's prick pried into the secrets of my womanhood with one final violent thrust, and then his heavy body, sweating and warm, fell on top of mine, as I quivered with the pleasurable aftermath of my lustful surrender.
The cardinal grunted and pulled his massive staff out of my dripping chamber of delight, and then sat up. He grinned at me, and then patted my belly.
"A natural," he said, laughing.
"You may dress," Mother Reata said, smiling at me. I put on my under garment and my gown, and then stood before them. Mother Reata had not even bothered to lower her own gown, and the cardinal was now staring at her blond-haired pussy with the same hot lustful gaze that he had stared at my body.
"Here, love, take some wine, and then go back to your chores," Mother Reata said, pushing the wine flask toward me.
My hands were trembling with the excitement I had just experienced, and I poured some wine into a crystal glass and drank it. It warmed my belly and made my distress milder.
For in spite of all my response to sexual matters, it still distressed me that my body could be so wayward that I would indulge in unlawful carnal intercourse, or be forced to do it, and respond so wantonly.
I bowed to the cardinal and Mother Reata, and left the room. After that I was frequently called to her closet when she was entertaining the cardinal. I serviced not only him but her also.
She was always good-natured and pleasant with me, and several times even gave me silver coins for my troubles. But I felt guilty for my wanton surrender to the pleasures of the flesh, and still wondered if I were possessed of a demon.
I mentioned it to Mother Reata one afternoon, after we had spent time together. I forced myself to ask her about my moral condition.
She laughed heartily, and then patted my cheek.
"Don't be foolish, child. Of course not. If you were possessed of a demon we should all know about it by now. You're just a healthy little animal, that's all. Now go, and don't think about it any more."
And so two years passed.
I can't complain about them. On the whole they were peaceful, and we were secure, well-fed and well-treated. I had acquired any number of skills working in the convent. I could weave and sew. I could cook fine dishes, and make delicately-flavored preserves.
I stored all this information away, knowing that it would be valuable for an innkeeper's wife. The more I thought about it, the more my plans grew. The inn which Palma would inherit could be one of the finest in the country and to this end I labored unceasingly to learn everything I could.
I practiced my writing so that I became skilled at it, and read everything I could lay my hands on in the convent. I must confess that some of the books in the possession of the nuns, were shamelessly obscene or bawdy, and in the evenings, when they would gather around the fire, I could frequently hear them singing rather indelicate songs.
It occurred to me that I was getting rather smug and complacent, and should be thinking of a way to remove myself from the convent without being caught. This would be difficult, but not impossible. There was no proper surveillance of the members of the convent, and several of them slipped out on several occasions to meet lovers.
But then something happened which turned everything topsy-turvy not only in the convent, but in the whole kingdom.
It started when a tradesman came to the door of the convent one day, selling vegetables.
Sister Sophia was bargaining with him, when he suddenly moaned and collapsed. Of course, Sister Sophia bent over him to see what had happened, and then she straightened up, gasping.
She rushed straight to Mother Reata's closet.
"The tradesman from Craik farm!" she gasped.
"What about him?"
"He has collapsed and died at the front gate, Mother. He has the marks of the Plague on him!"
"Are you sure?" Mother Reata asked, rising from the couch.
"Quite sure. I remember the last Plague."
Mother Reata sighed.
"There's nothing to do but to bury him. Send Maria to the village for help, and tell her to inform the aldermen. Bother! How long did the last one remain, Sister Sophia?"
"For almost two years, Mother."
"Well, our visitors will surely not be coming with such frequency. Oh, burn the vegetables. I assume you didn't take them into the Convent."
"No, of course not, Mother."
I had heard about the Plague, but we in the country seldom got it with the same violence or in the same numbers as the people in the cities, but it was with trembling legs that I rushed to do my errand.
When I returned to the convent, I was accompanied by a physician and two men assigned by the mayor of the village to bury the dead man, and to burn his effects.
Unfortunately, he was only the first.
Chapter Seven
It was a terrible time, and as the Plague made inroads into the lives of all of us, it also became a time of total unrestraint. Brother preyed upon brother, roving bands of refugees from the cities ravaged the countryside looking for food and clothing.
In the convent, things remained the same, but became more riotous, as if the thought of death only made the dissolute women more determined to indulge to the full their lawless appetites.
Fortunately, we had enough money so that we did not lack food, and wherever possible, we stored food in the cavernous cellars of the convent.
It was my having assumed this chore one day which led to the discovery of the secret exit.
I was storing barrels of wheat which we had bought from a neighboring farmer, when, in one corner of the chamber, I noticed a spring, not unlike the one in the Convent of the Good Hope which Sister Regina had pointed out to me.
Curious, I pressed it and heard the wall rumbling. The stones slid backward, and a gust of wind blew in my face.
Looking around cautiously, I perceived that no one was present. I rolled one of the barrels carefully in front of the exit, and walked into the tunnel. This tunnel was tall and narrow, and I was able to remain upright, until I saw a faint gray light at the end of it.
Like the Convent of the Good Hope, the Convent of the Sacred Heart was situated on a high eminence.
The light came from a narrow opening in a cave into which the tunnel led. I was halfway down the hill on which the convent stood, and I perceived that the way to the foot of the hill, and the road, was in easy stages.
Having made note of the entrance, I went back through the tunnel to the opening into the storage room. I pushed the spring, and closed the secret exit and then pushed several barrels near the opening to preserve it from discovery by others.
There was no question of my leaving the convent now, since the conditions of the roads, due to the plague, were horrendous. I realized that my sister and I were much safer in the convent. I would have to abide in patience until the proper time came when we could leave.
Our convent was well-fortified, so we were safe from assault by most of the marauders who preyed on the decimated villages. All day a thick black pall of smoke hovered on the horizon on the outskirts of the town, where the officials were burning the property of those dead of the Plague, and at night, the pall of smoke turned into a lurid red glow.
The sound of the death bells became as common and unremarked as the beat of one's own heart.
And then one day, I was summoned to Mother Reata's closet. The woman was reclining languidly on her couch, as usual, and she motioned to me to sit down.
"Tonight we're having a celebration. The new count of Devon will be in the company of my dear friend the cardinal. He has spoken quite highly of you to the count, and the man is looking forward to meeting you. Prepare yourself to be summoned."
I was slightly shocked and my expression was noticed by Mother Reata.
"Well, what is it?"
"I-I should think a man grieving the passing of his father would much rather remain in solitude."
Mother Reata laughed.
"There are other ways to become a count, as this man has done. He married into the family which has been impoverished. He has a lot of money which he acquired in the crusades."
"All the more reason to avoid carnal revelry, my lady, is it not so?"
"Nonsense! Some women are equal to the sexual tasks set them and others are not. The countess of Devon is of the latter kind. But you shall see. I understand he is a very handsome man, so you will not be displeased."
When I was summoned into Mother Reata's closet again, there were several other nuns in attendance.
Mother Reata had set Sister Wilhelmina to playing the lute. Sister Solange, who was one of the cast-off mistresses of the king, was laughing on the knee of a tall, dark, good-looking fellow who had his hand inside the bodice of her gown.
Mother Reata was sitting beside Cardinal Copague. The cardinal's hand was under her skirt.
Sister Loretta was engaged in carnal intercourse with another man, both of them nude, and writhing erotically together. The sight of these people engaging in libidinous revelry, aroused me, as it usually did.
"Ahh, here she is! Ranulf, here is the lovely little animal I was talking about!"
I gasped, and my face blanched when a man, dressed in the richest velvet with ermine trimmings, turned from the table where he was pouring wine.
He laughed, and his eyes glowed.
"You spoke well of her. Come here, my little wench!" he said.
I knew instantly that he recognized me, but he chose not to acknowledge that fact, apparently, to the cardinal, and for some reason, I felt rather glad that he hadn't. I felt that it would be embarrassing to the cardinal to know that the man who had slain my virginity was his friend and a count!
And yet, I didn't think he deserved a wife. I repressed the thought as I approached the man silently.
"She does not appear glad to see me, your Excellency," Ranulf said in a bantering tone of voice.
"Leave her be, and give her some wine," the cardinal said. He had got to his knees, and his head was disappearing under Mother Reata's skirt. His tones became muffled. "She's a quiet one, but intelligent. She will not whine and say she has the headache!"
"Indeed! Will you have a glass of wine?" he asked, as I came abreast of him. I accepted the proffered goblet and drank deeply. I enjoyed wine, especially when my sexual services were required. It relaxed me.
"And so, my little Maria he murmured, his breath puffing moistly on my ear he was so close, "how have you fared?"
"Well, thank you."
"Thank you, my lord!"
"I have only one Lord," I said, somewhat haughtily, I'm afraid. And yet, for all my dislike of the man, I felt the shudder of excitement coursing through me, felt the honey of my desire oozing out of my tiny hole, coating the soft inner flesh of my thighs.
"Hah! You haven't changed, except that you have become lovelier."
He loosened my thick black tresses so that they flowed down my back to my waist, and began to run his fingers through them. The sensation was marvelous and I felt as if I were becoming weak with heated desire.
Around me, the revels were becoming more bawdy.
Sister Solange was now impaled on the meaty nail of her partner, her legs straddling his thighs, facing him.
Mother Reata was writhing and moaning, her face flushed, her features distorted with lust, as the cardinal serviced her with his tongue.
Sister Loretta was now crouched on all fours, and her partner was rutting furiously, having mounted her as a dog mounts another dog.
"You do not think well of your wife?" I asked, as I felt his hand moving underneath my thick tresses. He caressed the nape of my neck and my spine crawled with pleasure at his touch. He was not so rough as he had been in our prior couplings.
"Of course not! She has a title, and my son will have a title. I had money which she needed. She is a silly, whining little cur with teeth like a horse, and no desire for my body at all. I shall abide her bed only as long as it takes me to get her with child.
"How is it that you came here?"
"I escaped from the Convent of the Good Hope," I said.
"Indeed! Did you like your sojourn there?"
"It was worse, I think, than Hell!"
"Blasphemy!" Ranulf quipped, laughing softly, his hand now cupping my full, melon-shaped breast. "In Hell there is no hope, and you are singularly gifted with that fortunate virtue. How did you get here?"
I told him my adventures with the Lord Briarly's retainers, and his sending me here.
"Ahh, the Lord Briarly. He's dead, you know."
"I didn't know that. He was the father of Mother Reata."
"It isn't necessary for your superiors to inform you of their family affairs."
"I have no superiors," I said, as Ranulf unhooked the bodice of my gown.
"Still the same arrogant farm girl, ehh?" he smiled.
He put one hand inside my opened bodice, and I shivered as I felt his palm against my naked breast. My nipple puckered hotly, and tingled with the pleasure which was growing in me, like a heaving sea.
With his other hand, he grasped my wrist and pressed the palm of my hand against his hard, hot bulging meat. I caressed it and the heat from his manhood seemed to surge up my arm and ripple through my body, causing my blood to boil.
"Not arrogant. I am too helpless before those who have power and money. Just contemptuous that so few of higher social station are so meager in moral stature," I replied.
Ranulf laughed heartily.
Mother Reata shrieked as she writhed in the throes of her sexual climax.
"You might make a good philosopher," Renulf said. "But you will never be a diplomat."
"I have no care to be either," I replied.
"Then hold your tongue and kiss me, because I have no care to be castigated by a silly, peasant wench," he ordered, not without some asperity.
For all the sexuality in which I had been involved, I had never made a move of my own to initiate such couplings, and I had no intention of doing so now.
"You kiss me," I retorted, my voice low. "I will give you nothing of my own free will."
"So!" he laughed. "You want it as usual, then?"
He removed his hand from my breast which he had been fondling, and grasped a thick hank of my hair, turning my face toward his.
His lips crushed against mine and I felt his tongue sliding into my hot oral cavity, wet and moist. He raked it against the roof of my mouth, and for all my resistance, I sagged against his body, feeling the hardness of his manhood against my love mound.
The cream of my desire flowed lavishly from my cunt now, as he slipped my gown roughly off my shoulders. It fell to the floor at my feet. I had not worn the undergarment to facilitate matters.
He pushed me to the thick Oriental carpet which covered the floor, and stood over me, pulling off his rich velvet garments, all the while staring at me with eyes greedy with lust.
I looked at him impassively, feeling my heart tripping hard against my rib cage, feeling it swell with the heated passions which would overcome me, no matter how I resisted.
He fell to the floor on his knees, spread my legs wide, and pressed his powerful, hard pole against my honeyed door of delight.
He thrust inward, and I gasped at the hot sweet pleasure which welled up in me as I felt his hard, heavy shaft of flesh rubbing against my inner, well-oiled sex flesh.
Having buried his lusty sword to the hilt in my pussy, he fell on top of me, pressing me hard against the carpet.
"So, you will not give me what I want? Then I shall take it again, as I have taken you before!"
I glared at him, squirming against his hairy loins as the delicate pink petals of my sex flesh swelled with throbbing excitement.
"You can take me, but you will never truly have me, or own me," I said.
As if he would give the lie to my self-confident statement, his lips came down and crushed mine again, and his tongue invaded my mouth.
He started to move in me, drawing his massive pole out to the tip and then thrusting inward again, violently.
The violence of his coupling only enhanced my own sexual excitement.
I felt the juices of my hot little tunnel flowing wetly down around his fleshy pole.
As he lunged inward, I bent my knees up, pressing the soles of my feet against the carpet, and I bucked up against him, drawing his powerful shaft of flesh deeper and deeper into my quivering cunt.
There were times when I was fucked, when I felt as if my cunt were some kind of animal. It slept sometimes, but most of the time it was alive with a quivering, palpitating life of its own, which constantly reminded me of its presence by arousing me with flaming passions.
Those passions surged through me now as I quivered, impaled on his massive rod. He lunged into me over and over again, and his cock got hotter and hotter, as it abraded against the tight walls of my pussy.
I could feel his balls slapping against my ass cheeks, and the thick wiry hairs which covered his groin became wet and sticky with the love juices flowing from my stuffed hole.
His chest pressed my breasts flat, and the pressure of his weight on them intensified the throbbing excitement which had possessed my lovely mounds of flesh.
My nipples tingled with a thousand pleasurable sensations.
Around me the sounds and smells of the orgy rose and fell, adding to the wild welter of passion which gripped me in its hot fist and shook me into writhing abandon.
I squirmed and responded hotly to Ranulf's prick as it slid into my honeyed hole over and over again, each inward thrust sending waves of ecstasy coursing through me.
And then I felt his hands working under my undulating buttocks. He cupped them and kneaded the rippling muscles beneath the soft smooth flesh as I mashed my pussy meat against his hairy, slimy-wet loins.
My little love button popped out of its wet nest and burned with a seething arousal of its own which made me weak, as the enormity of my passions washed over me, taking possession of my heated body.
I felt the heat and wetness of Ranulf's body melding with the heat and wetness of mine until I would have sworn that our bodies were fused together in the wildness of our passion.
His mouth continued to cover mine, and our saliva mixed as he thrust his tongue into my mouth with almost the same rhythm that his cock was thrusting into my pussy.
I felt the tingling flecks of heated pleasure gripping the soft flesh which sheathed Ranulf's hard-driving prick. They scintillated through me, until my whole body seemed to expand and contract with the mounting passion I felt.
Ranulf groaned loudly against my mouth. The speed of his thrusting became faster. The strength of his lunges jarred my body pleasantly, as I surrendered wantonly to the hot carnal bliss which suffused my body with such sweet warmth.
I shuddered violently and then felt the paroxysms of pleasure surge through me faster and harder, until my cuntal walls convulsed, and closed tightly around Ranulf's huge spear.
His cock seemed to swell in my pussy, and it got hotter. It seemed to cleave through my belly and pierce my passion-constricted throat. I felt a sweet, quivering tension grip my flesh. For one moment, as the passionate pleasure peaked, my body felt like a rock, a shell of a rock, rather, with a melted core that boiled with heat.
And then I started to writhe even more wildly under Ranulf's hard-driving flesh. My ecstasy had turned me into a mindless, rutting animal.
I squealed as I felt the warm, thick waves of Ranulf's manly juices pouring into the seething cauldron of my desire. His thick cream mixed hotly with my fast-flowing honey, and swelled the slimy tide which oozed out of my pussy.
My hot hole felt as if it had turned into a yawning, sucking mouth, which was sucking the juices out of Ranulf's manhood.
He thrust inward one last time, and then his body collapsed on top of mine.
As his body relaxed it seemed to spread, covering mine as if he were a warm blanket of flesh.
His heart beat against my right tit, and I squirmed hotly on his prick, glad for the sweet release I had just achieved, and for the pleasure I had felt.
He pulled out of me, and we sat around, naked, drinking wine and eating fruit until the cardinal suggested that we engage in another form of entertainment.
I had learned much during the conversation. The whole country was afflicted with the Plague. Perhaps millions of people had died, and even the royalty and the nobility were not immune to it.
Thousands of people who could afford it, had taken to living on ships in the rivers and off the shore, to escape if that were possible. Boatmen were paid to bring them supplies.
The Lazerettos were full and people were sealed in their own houses with those of their families who were dead and dying of the pestilence.
Ranulf, along with the cardinal, was on his way to a seaside villa where they intended to wait out the Plague. Ranulf's wife had left the day before with the rest of her family.
The Plague was not only infesting my country; it seemed to have spread throughout the world. It was far more intense and widespread than ever had been experienced before.
I was glad for my safe harbor and even glad to provide the illicit sexual services required of me in order to remain here.
Occasionally, as the months had passed, I had thought of the Freeres and Palma. I wondered if they had got my message, or even if Palma would wait for me. After all, it had now been over three years.
But I had to be patient. There was nothing else for me to do but wait out the worst of the Plague, and then leave as swiftly as possible.
My little hoard of silver coins which Mother Reata indulgently gave me, was growing, and with this I was sure I could hire a coach.
The cardinal suggested that I and Sister Solange should service each other.
Sister Solange was reluctant. After all, I was merely a peasant girl!
"No matter, you are a peasant girl, too."
"I was mistress to a king!" Sister Solange declared at Mother Reata's observation.
"The former mistress of a king, and cast-off at that," Sister Wilhelmina said, laughing. She plucked the strings of the lute, and sang a bawdy song about a king between the sheets of a commoner.
Sister Solange blushed, and I think she agreed to perform with me merely to stop the mockery.
For a brief moment, as we adjusted ourselves on each other's bodies, I felt sorry for her humiliation.
As a peasant girl, humiliation always hurt, but one was prepared for it, and accepted it in stride. But for someone who had thought that offering herself to a king would enhance her social status, it must have been very painful to find herself cast-off and worse than useless.
Therefore I was more careful than usual, as I pressed my tongue against Sister Solange's pink meat. I had decided that she should have the maximum pleasure which my mouth could allow, and I serviced her so admirably, that the cardinal threw me a golden sovereign.
I gasped, when I picked up the solid gold piece.
"Thank you," I said.
"No matter! Perhaps we can find you a yeoman to marry," the cardinal replied. "That is, after this pestilence has taken its course. That can be your dowry. It would buy a cow."
I found myself once again impaled on the hot prick of the cardinal. He fucked me furiously, his massive spear cleaving through the pink flesh of my hot hole with an ardor I had seldom experienced.
While he took his pleasure from my body, Mother Reata watched and again dabbled with her pussy meat, until her body writhed with carnal release.
It was dawn before the men left.
"I do not know when we shall meet again," the cardinal said, kissing Mother Reata's hand. "But I hope it will be soon."
"Farewell, my dumpling, until we shall meet again, and meet we shall!" Ranulf laughed, blowing me a kiss.
After the rest of the nuns had retired to their cells for sleep, I cleaned the closet of Mother Reata, and then repaired to the kitchen where I had breakfast duties.
Sister Sophia looked gloomy.
"Goodman Smithfield was here today to deliver produce. He says fully half the town is wiped out. He wants us to pray."
"It's not a bad idea, really," I said, as I helped prepare the breakfast. Lucia always set the tables and helped me serve. She was already busy with her preparations, singing happily.
Sister Sophia looked at me dourly for a moment.
"I think you do not belong here at all," she said.
"Do any of you?" I asked.
"We are merely cast-off surplus daughters of noblemen who wouldn't keep us, but I think you might have a little more faith than we, and our way of life makes you cynical," the woman said thoughtfully.
"What's wrong with being cynical?" I quipped.
"Everything! It will erode what simple peasant's faith you have, and even if you feel oppressed by those who have more money and higher station, the fact of the matter is that you are the backbone of this nation."
I looked at Sister Sophia with some awe.
"I never expected to hear one of you say something like that."
"It is true, nevertheless, and I am too old and too disillusioned to care much about appearances."
She reached into the pouch which hung from her girdle, and brought out a coin.
"Here, take this."
"Why, Sister Sophia?"
I was amazed. Last night a gold sovereign and today another coin of silver.
"Because I will not use it, and perhaps it might serve you well some day."
"Thank you," I replied.
I added the silver coin to my growing hoard of coins, and continued to live, filling every day with as much learning and activity I could.
All my thoughts were increasingly on leaving the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and going home, home!
And what an innkeeper's wife I should make! I fully intended to make me and my husband wealthy. We would have our own substance in the world, and perhaps even be declared gentry, too.
The more I thought about it, the more feasible it seemed, especially with my newly-gained skills in fancy cooking.
Through all of this, Lucia remained her sweet, childish self, never swerving from her duties or her routine, always loved by the other nuns.
And so the year of the Plague passed.
The reports became more and more sanguine, as the Plague expended its strength.
And now I sit, waiting for dawn. There is a sexual revel going on in the chamber with the secret door, and I must wait for the revelers to depart before I slip out.
I have brought Lucia into my cell with me, so that I can leave swiftly before the morning fires are lit.
It is unfortunate that I have to depart during the day, but tonight the cardinal is returning, and I have no care to remain longer than I must, and I will surely be called to the revels, and after such a long absence, they will be prolonged.
I have informed Sister Maria that my sister is sick and that I will nurse her. She stopped into the cell just long enough to ascertain that it wasn't the plague. I had instructed Lucia to keep her eyes closed, and to breathe heavily.
They will leave me alone, depositing the food outside my door. If I am lucky, they will not suspect my absence from the convent until the evening meal.
Ahh! The revelers depart. I hear footsteps in the courtyard, the sound of pawing hooves on the Cobblestones...
Chapter Eight
Cleaning out a press, I came upon this manuscript.
Perhaps, for posterity, it would be good to finish it and preserve it, although I blush at its contents.
But it is true, nevertheless.
After the departure of the nuns' guests, I waited until the first rosy blush of dawn had brightened the window high up in my cell, and then I awakened Lucia.
The convent was still as we slipped quietly through the halls, dressed in the Sunday best gowns, with comfortable warm cloaks to cover us.
I took her into the cavern, and she meekly followed me as I opened the secret door, and we stepped into the dark tunnel. I closed the secret door behind me, blessing Sister Regina's help which had again come to my rescue, and with a hard-beating heart, I found myself for the first time in years, outside the convent walls.
We swiftly repaired to the road, and walked until we came to a tavern. Fortunately, a coach and four was just changing horses, and for two pieces of silver, the coachman was glad to add us to his passengers.
We sat in the coach in silence. Opposite to us were an old couple who chatted endlessly about their aches and pains and the ingratitude of their children.
Not a word did I hear about the Plague or the millions I had been told were dead.
In a town many miles down the road, the old couple departed. They were supplanted by two men who tried to engage me in conversation I kept my head assiduously averted, and looked out over the countryside. There were many farms which had been abandoned, a few had been fired, and stood gutted, scarring the landscape and reminding me of the roaming brigands who still decimated the countryside.
I heard from the conversation of the two men, who eventually desisted in their attempt to engage me in conversation, that there was another war overseas in which our country would probably eventually engage itself.
As the coach increased the distance between me and the convent, I began to relax somewhat. It was still painful, however, to pass certain points: the place where I had left the road to beg food of Lord Briarly's tenant farmers, who directed me to the awful rapists; and the place where my aunt's coach had been assailed by Ranulf and his brigands.
Ranulf who was now a count!
The ironies of life never cease to amaze me.
Finally we arrived in my village, and the tears streamed down my cheeks. It hadn't seemed to have changed in the four years I had been gone, except that it was shabbier, and seemed more quiet.
The coach stopped at the inn, and Lucia and I dismounted, and walked into the common room, along with the two men.
An older woman approached me. For a moment, she frowned, and then gasped. It was Goodie Freere.
"Are my old, sad eyes deceiving me, or is it Maria and Lucia Wight?" she gasped.
"It is, Goodie Freere. Peace to you and your family," I said.
"Ohh!" the woman wailed throwing herself into my arms and hugging me hard "There is no one left here but me!" she moaned.
I gasped and pushed her away from me to stare into her eyes, my hands upon her sagging shoulders.
"It is not true!" I gasped.
"It is only too true! The Plague has wrenched from me my whole family. Even Jessica and her husband and her two babes have been taken! There is no one!"
"Palma?" I asked shivering.
Goodie Freere sighed and lowered her head. "Palma found a woman from the next Village to marry. When we did not hear from you..."
"You did not receive my communication?"
"Nothing, Maria nothing! But even Palma, his wife and babe, have been taken from us. There is only I, to run the inn, and I fear I will have to sell it."
"Nonsense! I'm back and we will make it work"
"How? We have no menfolk to do the heavy work, to exercise the horses and put them in their traces."
"We will manage."
"Oh, but I am being rude!" Goodie Freere declared. "You must be hungry."
"Yes."
We went to the kitchen, where a good pot of stew was bubbling, and while we ate, I heard the news.
My aunt had been ransomed, and gone back to her estates with her husband. Goodie Freere had not heard from her since she had taken me and my sister from the inn to deposit us in the Convent of Good Hope.
The inn showed neglect. Of course the Plague had curtailed a lot of travel, and we could hope to better our fortunes, now that people were once again beginning to travel freely, but without food and horses, we couldn't hope to attract the kind of clientele we needed to pay for board and lodging.
"What about our farm?" I asked Goodie Freere.
"Oh, your aunt sold it to some strange man who is never seen. He uses the boys from the village to plant and sow. But even they have never seen him. They get their wages from his valet who does all his shopping in the village."
"That property was by rights ours!" I gasped.
"True, but if you take issue with your aunt, she may remand you back to the convent."
I tossed and turned sleeplessly that night, trying to come up with some solution to the problem, and by dawn I had only one: to go out to the farm my father had once tenanted, and which had been my home for fourteen years, to see this man.
It was a risk, because if he were at all friendly with my aunt, he might inform her that we were at large, and I might once again find myself Prisoner at that monstrous Convent of Good Hope, which my aunt patronized.
I explained the situation to Goodie Freere as I helped her to build the fires, and start the breakfast. There was only one tenant in the inn at the moment, but there was a post coach due at eleven that morning, and there would be customers for lunch.
I prepared one of the exquisite meals I had learned at the convent, instructing Goodie Freere how to tend it to keep it warm. She was amazed.
"We cannot charge the usual price for this fare," she said.
"Of course not. You try to charge double and see if you get an argument. If you do not, accept the money with good conscience. There are not many inns who would serve such delicacies and I have learned how to prepare more. All we want are the ingredients, but I can get them, I think. Now I will go to the farm and see what I can see."
I set out in my only gown. I had brushed it and the cloak so that I was respectable-looking.
When I reached the farm, I recognized Eban, one of my father's old hands. He was scything sweet grass in one of the fields.
"Good morning to you, Eban," I said.
The old, gnarled man stood up, his hand planted in the small of his back, and frowned at me. Then light grew in his eyes, as he recognized me.
"Is it Maria Wight?" he gasped.
"It is! How is it that you are still alive?" I asked, grasping his two extended hands and holding him warmly, glad for the familiar face.
"God only takes the good young," he said, smiling toothlessly. "How have you fared?"
I filled him in briefly on my last four years, and then asked if it were possible to see the owner of the farm.
"No one's ever seen him, but you could speak to his valet."
"What's his name?" I asked, as he walked with me toward the low farmhouse.
"Valet's name is Kidder. Don't know the name of the man who owns the place. Never seen him."
I knocked on the door, and a tall, rather rough-looking man opened the door. He leered at me when I introduced myself, asking to speak to the owner.
"He speaks to no one, Madame. But you can talk to me."
I was bewildered. I didn't even know myself why I came out here. Had it been to ask for some compensation because the farm was so unjustly wrested from my grasp, after my father had earned title to it? Had it been to ask for help? The farm certainly looked prosperous.
"It is important that I see him," I persisted.
"Why?"
"I-My father used to own this farm. It was sold after he and my mother were killed in ambush by marauding soldiers I think I may have some claim to it," I explained.
"Kidder! Bring the woman in here!"
From the inner room which was the parlor, I had heard a sonorous voice. Kidder looked at me for a moment, and then shuffled reluctantly to the door leading into the large room.
I walked in and found a tall, gaunt man sitting in an armchair. He was white-haired and rather handsome, if severe-looking.
"Come forward, wench," he declared.
I walked up to him, and stared into his eyes which were a piercing pale blue.
"Name yourself, and tell me how you think you can get your rights when you have none!" he said.
"I'm not sure I have rights," I said. "But then, I'm not sure I don't. The farm was sold by my aunt. According to her, the proceeds were supposed to serve as a dowry for me and my sister whom she consigned to the Convent of Good Hope."
The man leaned forward.
"What are you doing away from the convent?"
"I escaped," I replied, curtly, getting annoyed with the man's questions.
"So you did, ehh?"
He laughed, and I became rather uncomfortable as he stared at me. The silence as he observed me became intense and prolonged.
I was insatiably curious to find out why the man stayed in hiding.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Maria Wight," I replied.
"A peasant, I take it."
"Yes. And why," I asked boldly, "do you hide?"
"I hate mankind. I don't hide from it. I keep it from me. That's why I bought this farm. Once I had six sons. They are all dead now, dead in the crusades.
"I had three bonny daughters. The Plague took them. My wife has been gone for years. Death taxes ruined me, and I had to sell my estate. I engaged in various enterprises, and acquired enough money to buy this farm, which will keep me comfortably for the rest of my life. Does that answer satisfy you?"
"Partially," I replied.
"What do you want from me?" he asked again.
"Assistance."
I briefly explained to him my life's history, including the rape of my sister and me, the escape from the convent, our violation by the lord Briarly's men, his remanding us to another convent, my escape from that.
"Now there are my sister and the kind Goodie Freere and the inn, which would be an honest living for us."
The man smiled humorlessly.
"You are asking for a loan, perhaps?"
"Yes," I said, boldly.
The humorless smile turned into a more humorless laugh.
"I have a better proposition for you," he replied. I gasped and turned weak in the knees when he revealed it.
It was to marry him and bear him a son. I trembled at the thought of being coupled to this old, cynical man, to wasting my life on him, but then I thought, what good was I to any man?
I was forever ruined, and I was desperate.
In addition to financial aid, I would of course become his legal heir and eventually the farm would be mine-if I outlived him.
I agreed on the spot.
Three weeks later we were married quietly. Kidder still worked the farm and did the cooking, and I worked during the day at the inn.
And every night, I found myself locked in the arms of Francis Muirhead, who was the most vigorous old man I had ever met! Within a year, I had borne him a son, on whom he doted.
He never lost his hatred of mankind, but he tolerated me and the child well, and regained some of his humor.
He was hard and strong and vigorous. Every evening, he rode horseback for several hours, after the sun had gone down.
My life for that year was strange. Lucia remained with Goodie Freere, and I worked like a scullery maid during the day, and returned to the farm at night. But the inn was beginning to show a profit by the end of the year and my cooking was becoming justly famous throughout the countryside.
When my son, Justin, was about a year old, I came home to the farmhouse one evening, to find my husband dying. He had sustained a terrific fall from his horse.
The surgeon stayed with him for the night, but in the morning, he was dead. The will was in good order, and the farm was mine!
Kidder, for all his rough ways, was a good worker, and I paid him to come to the Golden Hinde Inn, leaving the farm in the care of Eban and his Son Martin.
It produced well, and augmented my income. By the time I celebrated my twenty-first birthday, I was comfortable, but not happy. I wanted desperately to be married.
And then one sunny afternoon a strange apparition appeared at the inn. He was tall, exceptionally tall, and well-made.
He had a thick head of black hair, piercing blue eyes, and he was dressed roughly, garbed like a soldier.
"Begging your pardon, ma'am," he said, respectfully.
"Yes, sir?" I asked. I was sitting near the fire, listening to the happy din of guests eating. On the rug near the hearth, my blond-haired son played with a little kitten.
"I'm a soldier, just returned from battle. Our army was routed and we had not been paid for six months I was wondering if I could do some chores to earn a meal?"
I looked at the tall, imposing, powerful man, and my heart softened.
"Why don't you plunder like the rest of them?"
The man lowered his head slightly, and shuffled his feet, and then he looked at me.
"Can't do it, ma'am. I remember the disbanded soldiers who set fire to my village when I was young. They carried off my sister. There was nothing left for me to do but go to war, to see if I could make my fortune."
"There's work for you here if you would be content to stay. We have stables which need tending."
He flashed a broad grin, and his white even teeth showed brightly in his tanned face.
"That would please me, ma'am."
"What's your name?"
"Brian Chatsworth," he said.
I introduced myself, gave him a meal, and he set to work in the stable. Brian was gold, pure gold! He knew horses, was a superb mechanic, and within a month he not only had set our shabby, meager stables to rights, but he had found four fine horses to add to our dwindling supply.
Within the year, I had married him, and now I found my true happiness. It had all happened one evening, when I had gone out to the stables to see the new bay he had bought.
"Fine-looking animal, ehh?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, patting the animal's velvety nose. "Are you happy here?"
"Tolerably," he said, looking at me keenly. I had been aware of a growing attraction to him.
He was looking fit.
He had put on flesh, and his figure was more magnificent than ever. Now dressed decently, he was handsome.
"What's missing?" I asked, loathe to leave his presence, and knowing in my woman's heart exactly why.
"A woman," he said.
I gazed at him for a moment too long, and found myself pulled against his powerful chest.
His lips crushed mine. He had a fine, glossy, thick moustache on his upper lip, and I shivered as I felt it tickling my own lip.
His tongue slithered into my mouth and all the heated passion of my youth surged up in me. I sagged against his chest, as he pulled me to the fragrant hay which covered the floor.
For the first time in my life, I gave myself readily to a man, and that attitude made a wild difference in my response.
For all the intensity of the sexual pleasures I had experienced, that had been forced on me, I was not prepared for the powerful wave of passion which now surged through me.
I cried out against his mouth, as his powerful hand caressed my breast. In moments he had unbuttoned the bodice of my gown, and his work-calloused hand was massaging my ripe, full breasts.
Having the child had only improved my figure, and hard work kept me slender and willowy.
My nipple puckered hotly against his palm. His tongue slithered into my mouth, taking possession of it, and I sucked on it, drawing it greedily, more deeply into my mouth.
Then his hand moved to my other breast, and he caressed that, until it swelled and throbbed with a seething life of its own.
I twined my arms around his neck, and then ran my fingers through his thick, glossy hair, as he pulled my gown up above my flat belly.
His hand cupped my furry love mound, and then I felt one of his fingers tracing the curved line of my cunt cleft. The finger pried deeply into the honeyed folds of my pink meat, and came away glistening with my juices.
I spread my legs, as he unlaced his breeches, and dropped them. I gasped at his thick wand of lust, which stood straight out from his thick pubic bush. I twined my hand around it, caressing it, marveling at the softness of the skin which sheathed such pulsating hot hardness.
There in the stable, with the soft snorting and pawing of the horses, surrounded by the fragrance of hay, I surrendered to his hot body.
He crouched between my legs and pressed his thick wand against my quivering honeyed hole.
I arched upward, too hungry to wait for his thrust and impaled myself on his lusty rod.
His thick shaft of flesh spread my pussy walls wide. I hadn't had a man in so long that I quivered at the threshold of a wild climax, as he thrust into my well-oiled orifice, until he was buried, balls-deep in my secret hole.
I moaned against his mouth as he started to fuck me wildly, drawing his spear out to the tip and then thrusting inward again.
His cock was so hot, so demanding that I would have sworn he was cleaving through my belly and issuing from my passion-constricted throat.
I threw my legs up in the air wantonly and wrapped them around his waist, as it rose and fell, driving his powerful manly stalk deeper and deeper into the wet reaches of my meadow of lust.
I felt the sweet holocaust of passion rippling through me, taking possession of me.
There was no longer any question of being possessed by the devil. I was enthralled with the sweet wildness, the willful power of his magnificent cock as he battered my tender sex flesh ardently, drawing from my body the raging pleasure which I had so long missed.
I could feel my sex sweat pouring from my overheated flesh, felt it moistening my gown, causing it to cling to my back.
Brian worked his arms under my back. My naked breasts, which peeped from my opened bodice, rubbed against his smooth, bare chest, and my nipples tingled as they made hot contact with his smooth, sweating flesh.
His heart beat powerfully against my breast and I clung to him with a fierceness akin to desperation.
In the warm sweet darkness of the stable, I surrendered to the animal wildness of my nature, responding with a fury I didn't know I had in me, to his hot, hard fucking.
His need washed over me in hot waves, enhancing my own growing passion. I felt as if I were melting, my flesh oozing front my bones in heated pools, as Brian's powerful prick plowed through the wet, overheated meadow of my lust, driving me crazy.
I started to writhe convulsively as a powerful orgasm ripped through me. I felt my cuntal walls closing in around his hard-driving manly stalk as he planted it again and again in the wet dark depths of my womanhood.
At the height of my sexual release, I felt the hot wet kiss of his manly nectar sweetening my quivering, chaotic cunt.
I felt as if I were drowning in sweet, slimy pools of the thick liquid as he emptied the contents of his balls into me.
But he did not stop there. Hungry for more, he continued to move in me, and once again, I found myself perilously close to that fleshy insanity which I loved more than any other experience.
I raked my fingers over his bare back, leaving welts behind to remind him of my passionate responses.
My juices poured out of me more heavily than ever before. I cried out in voluptuous agony, as I felt another climax stirring in the depths of my seething belly.
His hairy loins became wet and matted with the juices which poured from my pussy, as he lunged into me over and over again.
The love-making was different from anything I had ever known. There was no duress involved, no business proposition. It was simply the joining of one hungry man to a hungry woman, and I felt the aching need washing over me, enhanced by the power of his embrace, locked tightly in his sweating, powerful arms.
As he started to spew another load of hot cream into my cunt, his mouth moved from my mouth, down to the soft curve where my neck met my shoulders. He bit sharply and then sucked and the sweet sting caused wild heated flashes of excitement to flicker through me, like a summer lightning storm.
I gasped, and cried out again in the excess of my raging agony, as my pussy walls again convulsed around his powerful, hard-driving meat.
I was delirious with pleasure, enthralled with the way he had taken possession of my body, the powerful thrusts of his prick which pierced my inner sex flesh over and over again.
I arched upward, driving my passion-bloated pink meat against his hairy, slimy-wet loins. My love nubbin felt as if it were on fire as the waves of ecstasy possessed me, causing me to squirm like a mad woman under his hard, hot body.
When the storm of our passion had abated somewhat, he raised himself up on his elbows. I could feel the fine tremor of passion gripping him, rippling through his smooth warm flesh.
"I would like to marry you, Widow Muirhead," he said, his voice rumbling in the depths of his belly which heaved with his remembered passion.
"Oh, yes," I gasped, my own breasts heaving with my labored breathing. "Yes!" I cried, surrendering again to his love-making.
We parted at dawn, and within the month, we were man and wife. Of course, once I was his wife, all the property I had amassed became legally his, but Brian is a good husband, an honest and a fair man, and he is much loved among those guests who frequent the Golden Hinde for his hearty, blunt ways, and for his kindness and generosity.
Now I had a helper, someone strong on whom I could lean, a protector against the vicissitudes of life which had so victimize me as a young girl.
And no man could be kinder to my sister Lucia, or to Goodie Freere. I thought my happiness was complete when I married Brian Chatsworth, but even that happiness, apparently, wasn't enough.
It was as if life were trying to make amends for the blows it had delivered.
I keep adding to this journal only to make the record complete.
Below me, I can hear my children chattering and setting up a ruckus in the kitchen,
I now have four sons and four beautiful daughters. Lucia is in her element, and she cares for them and dotes on them. They are also the joy of the old age of "Grandma Freere," who is on in years, although still active.
But no longer does she have to work as hard as she used to, and neither do I.
Justin is out in the stables with the man he regards as his father. They are a close pair, those two and I enjoy watching them together. Justin seems to be acquiring the same keen eye for horses that Brian has.
Looking back on my life, I find it hard to believe how much has changed, and how rich I am in all the good things of life.
About a year after I married Brian, big with my second child, my first by him, my aunt, Lady Crawdon-Hope appeared at the inn.
It was Brian's idea, since we had the money, to build a new and better inn closer to the crossroads, which we did.
It is now considered the finest inn in the country, and our guests have become increasingly distinguished over the years.
She was curious to see what had become of the farm, having heard of the death of Francis Muirhead, and she was shocked, indeed, speechless when she found that the land which she had virtually sold out from under me and my sister was now legally back in our hands.
She called me a wanton hussy, and accused me of marrying Francis with those designs in mind. I merely smiled, knowing that, that was, indeed the case.
But I learned those arts partially through her agency, and I had scant sympathy for her when she realized that I was a respectably married woman whose husband doted on her.
When my aunt in her rashness chose to tell Brian about the rape of my sister and me, Brian scolded them loudly and enthusiastically for well over an hour and then demanded that she leave his house; that his wife was not to blame for the misery of wandering soldiers who preyed on the innocent, and that she was merely making trouble.
I have learned over the years to curb my unbridled tongue, and I refrained from reminding my aunt that she had been through a similar travail. Some people will always be deaf, dumb and blind.
But I wondered how my aunt's account would alter my husband's opinion of me.
After she had left, I approached him, touching the sleeve of his shirt. The warmth of my husband's body is a startling thing. He's a big, active man, and his flesh exudes that vitality which had always been so enthralling to me.
"Brian?"
"Eh?" he asked. He had his booted foot on the fender of the hearth, one arm leaning on the mahogany mantel piece.
"Do you think less of me?"
"Ehh?" he asked more sharply, rounding on me, his keen blue eyes fixed on my anxious face. He grasped me by my shoulders and shook me roughly.
"Did you ask for what you got?" he demanded, sharply.
"N-nooo!" I gasped, my teeth rattling in my head.
Holding me at my elbow, he led me up to the third floor of the inn which was our living quarters, and pushed me roughly into our bedroom.
"Woman, you're mine, and I will not have you doubting my love," he said. He pushed me down onto the bed, and his mouth covered mine hungrily. I squealed and surrendered to his hot, sweet kiss, moaning with erotic delight as his tongue took possession of my mouth.
Within moments, he had unfastened my gown and lifted it from my body, and then slipped off my undergarment.
In another moment, he himself was naked, and he had pulled me into his arms. I felt his stiff manhood throbbing between our pressed bellies and I reached between our bodies to caress his stiff, manly stalk.
I moaned as the tip of my finger caressed the small slit at the head of his cock.
Already his juices glistened there. I smeared the drop of cream around on his bulbous, mushroom-shaped cock head. I squirmed against his body as he kissed me, his work-hardened hands caressing my smooth back and my dimpled, firm ass cheeks.
I pushed against him, feeling my breasts flattening against his throbbing, warm chest. He rolled over onto his back, and I crouched at his hips, straddling them.
His hands moved from my back to me dangling breasts, which were still firm and he dug his fingers into their fleshy wealth as I pressed his cock against my quivering sex slit.
I wriggled downward on his wonderful manly pole, until I felt his hairy balls pressing against my ass cheeks.
I writhed wantonly, lewdly, on his hairy loins, feeling his wiry pubic hairs tickling my sensitive pink flesh. My inner sex meat had become swollen with my desire, and my little love button popped out of its fleshy sheath and sent wanton waves of heated bliss coursing through me.
I started to bob up and down on his prick, feeling the way his cock rubbed against the itching walls of my pussy, enhancing my sexual excitement.
"Oh, Brian," I gasped, against his mouth, "I don't doubt you, I don't doubt you at all."
"Good, woman," he grunted, once again caressing my ass checks which rippled as I rose and fell on his massive prick.
I thought his manhood would split me apart, as I thrust downward, driven to great speed and frenzy by my growing desire. I couldn't believe my happiness, and yet, to do Brian and my growing family justice, I accepted it, wallowed in it.
I leaned forward so that the tip of my breasts just brushed Brian's heaving chest. The nipples, stiffened with sexual excitement, brushed against his smooth skin, and his cock seemed to grow stiffer, harder, in my quivering pussy.
I felt possessed by the wild sweetness which surged through me, and yet I knew that the sexual power was one of light and not of darkness. I wasn't being violated. I was being loved and honored, and my lips sought Brian's as I sought through my body to convey my love, my need.
I rode up and down on his throbbing, hot shaft of meat, feeling the pressure in the depths of my womanhood increasing.
The pleasure was excruciating, as his hard hot rod rubbed against the itching, hungry walls of my cunt, driving me to distraction.
I thrust my tongue into Brian's warm sweet mouth. He bit on the tip of it and sucked it in more deeply, as I continued to rise and fall on his massive wand of lust.
My cuntal walls closed in around his fat cock as my juices started to gush out of my overheated cauldron of desire, making a slimy pool in his thick pubic hairs.
I felt as if I had become all cunt, a gaping, sucking, all-powerful pussy, as I rode my husband's prick with increasing frenzy.
He moaned, and his arms wrapped around my back as he crushed me against him. His hips started to buck upward, as I slid down on his thick pole, which was now oiled by the sweet syrup from my quivering cunt.
I was no longer a passive victim to any man's lust, but the active participant in my husband's love for me. I felt his thick rod driving deeper and deeper into my heated hole of love, as I continued to ride his huge rod.
The tingling in the depths of my sex flesh increased, and my heart pounded powerfully against my rib cage as I felt the delirium of a sexual crisis welling up in my seething womanhood.
I felt as if I were on fire, as my husband's prick swelled in my pussy and he thrust into me harder and faster.
My womb seemed to close in on itself, to clench like a soft fist, and then goose flesh formed on my smooth skin as a powerful orgasm ripped through me, seeming to tear my flesh to tatters.
I moaned loudly against Brian's mouth as the two of us battered each other in the convulsive throes of our sexual insanity.
I felt my husband's cock slit explode with a thick geyser of his warm cum cream. It flowed into my seething pussy and mixed with my own juices, swelling the slimy river which already oozed out of my well-stuffed hole.
The bed shook as my husband's powerful, muscular buttocks rose and fell, as he drove his prick into me.
My cuntal walls closed rhythmically around his hard-driving prick and the convulsions spread outward until my whole body writhed with the ecstatic madness which possessed me.
My sweat poured from my body and mixed with my husband's sex sweat. Our flesh as we struggled together in voluptuous agony, seemed to he fused with the heat and moisture of our love-making.
My husband's prick spewed the last of his juices into my sweet, quivering cunt, and then his body relaxed.
I rode his pole for a while longer, Savoring the last fading thrills of passion which had enthralled me, my pussy walls clutching at his still-stiff rod, as I sought to suck out the last bit of his precious juices.
With a great sigh, my body relaxed on top of his, and we lay wallowing together, until I heard the rumbling of coach wheels in the yard.
I raised my head, startled.
"What coach is this?" I asked, frowning.
Roughly, but lovingly, Brian almost literally threw me off him, his cock making a plopping sound as it slipped out of my hole.
It turned out to be a traveling band of players. They gave a show that night for an assemblage of guests and villagers whom we invited to the inn, and ever after that, pleased with their hospitable reception, they patronized our inn, spreading the virtues of its owners and the food far and wide, enhancing our business.
But the strangest of incidents occurred just a short while ago, about a fortnight.
I had just fed my happy, healthy brood of children, while Lucia waited on the customers in the inn. By now I had household help and a cook to whom I had taught the recipes, after swearing him to secrecy.
Out in the common room, before a blazing fire, Alderman Wycherly was drinking a stein of ale.
"Goodie Chatsworth!" he cried. "Bring out your children for us to see!"
There were in the inn that night a coach which contained six people going to a major city not far from the village. The coach had broken an axle, and they were required to lay up overnight while my husband fixed it.
And there were six hunters who had been caught in the woods behind the village during a heavy thunderstorm, which still raged.
Nanette, one of our serving girls, had already reported that they had asked for lodging for the night, and I had sent her to warm the chambers and fluff up the beds.
And seated around the huge hearth at one end of the room were the local gentry who came often of an evening to have a stein of beer or ale, and swap local gossip.
Of course I sent my brood out to visit with the men who took an avuncular interest in the children and enjoyed swapping a few words with them, and perhaps giving them a sweet or two.
Brian is an exceptionally good father, and my children are all extremely well-behaved. They are my pride and joy.
I walked out with my brood under my wings so to speak, and they rushed toward the group of older men who were waiting for them.
Justin stayed by Brian. Slightly older than the rest, he was more mature. Brian poured steins of beer for himself and Justin, and the two of them joined the men, as a closed coach with a coat of arms on the door, pulled up outside the door.
There was a covered porch surrounding the inn, and I had opened the double doors to freshen the lively room up somewhat.
Out of the carriage came a man whose appearance immediately, though without apparent reason, sent a chill of fear through me. With him was a very thin, almost skeletal woman. They were magnificently dressed, although the couch wanted some refurbishing. The coat of arms was flaking, and the veneer needed to be replaced.
The woman was whining when they came through the door, assisted by the driver, who carried a trunk.
"Yes, sir?" my husband said, coming forward.
"We need room for the night. One of the spokes on the rear wheel of our carriage has unfortunately broken in a rut," the man said.
I looked at him and gasped. It was Ranulf, the Count of Devon!
The woman was rather homely, and the lack of prettiness was further enhanced by a pettish expression. She looked as if nothing ever could please her.
"Really, my lord, is it necessary to stop here?"
"My lady," Ranulf said, quietly, his eyes flashing, "this is the Golden Hinde. It's the best inn in the country! You couldn't ask for better accommodations, and there are no country estates within a league of here where we might ask for shelter!"
The woman sniffed and sat down at a table near the large bow window. Ranulf sat beside his wife, obviously out of sorts, as Brian walked up to them after instructing the man of all work to take their trunks to a good room.
"Will you have something to eat, my lord?" Brian asked.
"Whatever you recommend will do. I have heard much of your kitchen."
"It's my wife's doing," Brian smiled.
A shout of laughter went up from the children. Alderman Wycherly was doing a trick with his white handkerchief.
"Are they yours?" Ranulf asked. I was standing near the hearth with Justin, trying to get my courage up to approach them as was only proper when distinguished guests came.
"Yes. That's my son Justin, standing with my wife, and those golden-haired girls are Catherine and Elizabeth. The two boys standing next to them are Roger and Martin. The little toddler is Francis, and he's sitting on Jessica's lap. The girl sitting on Alderman Wycherly's lap is Lucia."
"Beautiful, beautiful!" Ranulf said, his expression unfathomable as I finally walked up to the table.
"Good evening, my lord, my lady," I said, curtseying briefly.
Ranulf recognized me. I watched him start partially out of his chair, his eyes starting out of his sockets, and then he sat back down again.
"They do make a racket, don't they?" his wife said, referring to the children,
"If it pleases you, I shall send them to the kitchen. They are wont to socialize with the village elders when they come in the evening," I said.
"No, no, no," Ranulf said, waving his hand. "They are not noisy, really."
I hastened to set their table, and serve their meal. All the while, Ranulf stared at me, not able, apparently to get his eyes off me. I was exceedingly uncomfortable, and I was somewhat relieved when it was time to send the children to bed.
One by one, the guests retired. Ranulf's wife retired, and he sat before the dying fire, nursing a glass of brandy.
"Shall I put more logs on the fire?" I asked, coming from the kitchen, my work for the day done. Out in the stable, I could hear my husband's hammer clanking against the metal he would tame to his own will, in order to fix the axle and the spoke.
"No," Ranulf said. He looked at me then, and then took in the room. "You have done well for yourself."
I smiled, at the same time nervous.
Ranulf laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"The good are always rewarded," he muttered.
"That is not the way of the world, my lord," I said.
"Then, shall I put it another way?" he asked, rising. "You have a happy, prosperous home, and I am childless. Also, I am becoming impoverished by the way my wife squanders my money, and do you know on what?"
"Doctors," I said, matter-of-factly.
The hammering had ceased, and shortly thereafter I heard the heavy, reassuring tread of my husband's foot on the flagstone floor of the huge kitchen.
"Whatever happened to the cardinal, and to Mother Reata?" I finally asked, listening to my husband splashing water into the wooden tub to bathe himself.
"The cardinal died of the plague. The languorous Mother Reata still rules the roost at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. How did you escape it?"
