Bondmaiden (10 page)

Lia just stared at him, barely able to take this in. ‘But why?’ she asked plaintively. ‘What does it mean?’

Durwin licked his lips nervously and turned away. For a second she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he shook his head and turned back to face her. Their eyes met and they were just Durwin and Lia again, who found comfort in each other’s arms at night.

‘Maggot didn’t tell us,’ he said, ‘but everybody knows. It’s happened once before, with Alda, Princess Magdalena’s bondmaiden. You’ll be moving up to the royal apartments soon, Lia. You’re wanted for special duties.’

The summons wasn’t long coming – the very next day, in fact. Lia collected her things and followed Maggot as before, and as before he led her to Velda’s bedchamber.

‘Ah, my dear,’ the lady welcomed as Maggot made his bowing exit, ‘I imagine you’re a little confused as to why you’re here. It’s all my doing, I’m afraid. I suggested to Queen Gudrun that you would make better progress with your training to become a lady’s companion if you stayed here, with me. The queen agreed, and you know the rest. Shall we make an immediate start on your second lesson?’

‘Y-yes, mistress,’ Lia said warily. Velda’s words hadn’t really explained anything, for she could hardly believe that so exalted a person as the queen would take an interest in her, a lowly servant. But here she was, with no choice but to do what Velda told her to do. And the first thing Velda told her to do, predictably, was take off her clothes.

‘Now then,’ Velda continued, as soon as Lia stood naked and meek before her, ‘you’ve probably guessed there’s a new word to learn. And that word is cunnilingus…’

Cunnilingus, Lia soon discovered, was the most wonderful thing.

At first, when Velda put her head between Lia’s thighs and began licking her, Lia was startled, even afraid, and tried to close her knees. But the woman raised her head and told her firmly to lie still and not to resist, then her tongue and lips went back to work. And so Lia lay there quietly, and slowly such feelings of pleasure stole through her that she no longer cared if it was proper for a lady to be doing this to a serf. She suspected Father Adalard, if he knew, would declare it to be a most terrible sin, but – and she risked her very soul by admitting it even to herself – she didn’t care about that, either.

Velda paused again some time later to rebuke Lia gently. ‘No, don’t close your eyes,’ she said. ‘Watch everything I do. Watch my tongue most especially, and try to remember how it feels when I do certain things, such as this…’

She dipped her head and flicked the tip of her tongue lightly but rapidly over Lia’s vulva. ‘And this…’ She took Lia’s labia between her lips and sucked. ‘And this…’

Velda tongued Lia’s clitoris vigorously, and sucked on it too, till Lia thought she would faint from pleasure.

‘You must try to remember everything I do and how it makes you feel,’ Velda said, pausing in her endeavours. ‘I’ll be testing you later, and shan’t be pleased if I find you haven’t been paying attention.’

And so Lia watched, knowing she would be punished if she didn’t concentrate. Though she certainly didn’t want that, still she found it very hard indeed to keep her eyes open and remember things, as Velda demanded, when all she wanted to do was lie back and let such wonderful feelings take her soaring up into the clouds, like the white doves the town released on Saint Ivar’s day.

Velda persevered, and in no time at all Lia was writhing and sobbing as the orgasm took her. Velda praised her afterwards, like before, and fingering her gently until she was quiet and still once more.

‘That was very sweetly done, my dear,’ she murmured. ‘Are you ready for your next test now?’ Lia nodded dreamily. ‘Good…’ the woman purred. ‘Well the test is, you must do the same to me as I have just done to you.’

Lia gasped in shock, but it was evident that Velda was perfectly serious, for she took off her beautiful blue gown, beneath which she wore a white silk under-tunic and silk hose that came just above the knee. And when she was utterly naked, wearing nothing but her necklace, she lay back on the bed and parted her thighs. Lia gasped a second time then, for Velda had no hair at all between her legs, so that her vulva pouted, pink and bare as a baby’s.

‘Come, child,’ she crooned, stroking a languorous hand over her smooth, shapely hips and thighs. ‘Let us discover how much you can remember.’

Astonished still, yet strangely excited at the same time, Lia knelt between Velda’s legs and bent her head to the task. Soon she was licking and sucking for all she was worth, determined to give a good account of herself; and though fear of punishment was certainly part of what drove her, there was also a desire to make the lady as deliciously happy as the lady herself had made Lia feel just a brief time before. And to judge from Velda’s soft moaning sighs and wriggling hips, Lia was managing to do precisely that. As the lady tossed and heaved and warbled in her climax most enthusiastically, her young pupil could believe she had been successful.

‘Lia,’ Velda gasped, ‘my dear girl, you pass the test! What a clever little tongue you have, to be sure.’

She lay awhile until her breathing returned to normal, then rose and put on her clothes. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘there’s someone I want you to meet… none other than Princess Elfrida, youngest daughter of King Ulric and Queen Gudrun. You are to be the princess’s bondmaiden. Come.’

And so, with Lia naked still and trembling, shocked by this latest revelation, she followed Velda out of her chamber, past a guard whose eyes nearly popped out of his head at the sight before him, into the royal apartments.

Princess Elfrida was golden-haired, slender, about Lia’s age, and lovelier even than the gilt angels in the nave of the great chapel. She lay on her bed playing with a black and white puppy, and didn’t seem at all pleased to see them.

‘Who is this person?’ she asked, frowning so intensely she suddenly wasn’t pretty any more.

‘This is Lia, princess,’ Velda said. ‘She is to be your bondmaiden.’

‘Well I don’t want her!’ Elfrida said sulkily. ‘Take her away! Why can’t I have Maggot back?’

‘All this has been explained, princess,’ Velda said patiently. ‘Maggot is no longer a boy and you are no longer a girl. It isn’t proper for him to attend you any longer. A princess of your age must have a bondmaiden, and you are to have Lia, as Princess Magdalena has Alda. Your mother the queen has declared as much.’

‘Well tell mama I won’t, you hear me? And I would never have
her
in any case.’ She stared scornfully at Lia. The puppy yapped and wagged its tail, and furiously she pushed it off the bed, where it landed with a yelp and promptly scampered away.

‘Lia is working hard to become a suitable companion and bondmaiden to a princess,’ Velda went on patiently, ‘and I think the princess in question should at least give her a chance to prove herself. I’m sure that when you’ve enjoyed her newfound talents for cunnilingus you’ll change your mind.’

For the first time Princess Elfrida looked interested. The frown disappeared and she regarded Lia thoughtfully. ‘Is she better than you?’ she asked.

‘I cannot keep servicing you, princess,’ Velda said. ‘I am bondmaiden to the queen, and my place is at her side. I’ve been neglecting my duties dreadfully of late, caring for you, but it can’t go on. Lia is to be your bondmaiden and you must give her a chance. Your mother has decreed it, and I wish it. Won’t you at least do that?’

Lia barely heard the end of the exchange for she was still reeling at the news that Velda wasn’t nobly born, but was a servant herself. She was bondmaiden to the second highest personage in the land, true, but a servant still.

‘Very well,’ Elfrida was saying, ‘I shall give her a chance, as you suggest. But if she doesn’t please me I shall have Maggot back whether you or mother or anyone else likes it or not.’

She bounced back on the bed as she spoke and drew up her skirts. She was wearing a pale gold satin robe with nothing at all underneath. Lia saw that her sex was bald, presumably shaved, just like Velda’s. She spread her slender legs wide and beckoned to Lia.

‘Come on then, girl,’ she said imperiously. ‘Let’s see if you’re as good as Velda claims. Lick me until I tell you to stop.’

Lia glanced anxiously at Velda, who nodded and smiled encouragingly. ‘Go to Princess Elfrida now, Lia,’ she quietly urged. ‘Do for her what you did for me. Show her what young women from Three Elms village are made of.’

Once again Lia was taken aback, for they hadn’t spoken of Lia’s past, so how could Velda know where she was from? The only explanation was that she’d enquired into Lia’s background, which was a sensible precaution, probably, in view of her new appointment as bondmaiden to a princess.

Feeling not half so confident of her abilities as Velda seemed to be, Lia moved forward and knelt in front of Elfrida. She lowered her head and began licking and sucking all over again. She was nervous at first, but soon grew more confident as Elfrida began to squirm and gasp, clearly enjoying her efforts. Lia concentrated on the princess’s clitoris, and in a remarkably short time Elfrida was climaxing, but that was not it over, for the princess kept her there by holding fast to her hair, and after she’d rested for a minute or two she ordered Lia to do it again, and in fact it took three orgasms before she seemed truly satisfied.

‘Very well,’ she eventually conceded, stretching like a cat and smiling dreamily, ‘I will keep you for now. You can sleep here, on the floor next to my bed. I might want more attention from you in the night if I’m not feeling sleepy.’

‘Not tonight,’ Velda said firmly. ‘Lia isn’t fully trained, nor has she been adequately groomed. I’ll bring her to you in a week’s time, by when she’ll be fit to enter your service.’

Elfrida’s frown returned and she thumped the mattress in frustration. ‘First you tell me I must keep her, then you say I cannot. It really is too much! You are doing everything in your power to annoy me, Velda, and now I shall beat you for it. Fetch the whip.’

Velda shook her head slowly. ‘Not the whip, princess,’ she said. ‘It will cut my flesh, and you know how the queen detests marks on her servants. If you truly must punish me you will have to use your hand. If that is not sufficiently severe then you may use the drub. Those are the only options your mother will countenance.’

‘The drub, then,’ Elfrida snapped. ‘Fetch it this minute. And you can expect extra strokes for impertinence.’

Velda disappeared for a few minutes, returning with a drub not unlike Holmann’s, except this one was square bladed instead of round, and had a number of smaller holes rather than one larger one.

At Elfrida’s command Velda removed all her clothes and took up a position astride a stool. She then leaned forward until her hands were flat on the floor, her buttocks thus perfectly presented for whatever treatment Elfrida wished to bestow upon them.

‘Count the strokes aloud,’ the princess commanded. ‘I haven’t yet decided how many it will be. It might only be twelve, but if you blubber I might make it two dozen, do you hear me?’

‘Yes, princess,’ Velda said meekly.

‘Good. And you, bondmaiden, kneel there beside her. That’s it. Now, use both hands and press on her back. When her bottom’s burning and raw she might try to rise, so you must press hard to keep her in place.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ Lia replied, obeying the instruction. Not knowing how she should behave in the presence of a princess, she modelled her demeanour on Velda’s.

When satisfied all was as she wanted it, Elfrida swung her arm in a vicious arc and fetched Velda a tremendous crack on her bottom, causing the woman to jerk on the stool and struggle to suppress a gasp. ‘One, my lady,’ she managed.

Elfrida continued to strike her as hard again, and again, and the count rose steadily. At twelve the princess paused, her brow glowing with a faint sheen of perspiration and her cheeks flushed.

She decided to resume the beating, and as the count rose Velda’s mounting distress could be heard clearly in her strained voice, and by the time Elfrida stopped, at the previously hinted at twenty-four, Velda was panting heavily between counts.

Lia helped her to her feet, whereupon Elfrida dismissed them both. They made their way back to Velda’s bedchamber, and the first thing the woman did was selflessly offer more advice to her young charge.

‘Lia,’ she said, sounding weary and in discomfort still, ‘you must always obey your mistress’s commands to the best of your ability. It’s a bondmaiden’s bounden duty to obey without question; otherwise she is at liberty to have you flogged most severely. Though the queen disapproves of severe punishments in general, in such circumstances she would be the first to support her daughter. Let me show you a lash so you’ll understand what anything less than total obedience and commitment to your mistress risks.’

She fetched the implement in question and handed it to Lia. At first sight it seemed not too threatening; a length of wood bound with braided silk cords that extended to form thongs. Lia swished it experimentally, thinking nothing of it until one of the thongs caught her calf. The pain was astonishing for so light a blow, and looking down she saw a thin red welt on her flesh, and examining the thongs more closely and saw that each was tipped with a tiny ball of lead.

‘They’re bonded to the silk with a special adhesive,’ Velda explained, watching her charge finger the tiny sphere. ‘To be beaten with such an implement is to suffer the fires of hell, I’ve been told. Fortunately I’ve never experienced it, and pray fervently that I never will. And you, Lia, must do nothing to bring it upon yourself.’