Bondmaiden (6 page)

‘You’re to ride the horn this evening,’ she announced, ‘the pair of you. Be here straight after the vesper-bell.’

‘Lia too?’ Tilda asked in dismay. ‘But… how can she? She’s a virgin.’

‘Well she won’t be after tonight, will she?’ Dagna snapped. ‘Bathe before you come and get changed. I know you’ve only just come from the river, but rules are rules. “Freshly bathed and wearing clean smocks” is what Holmann insists upon, remember?’

Tilda nodded glumly. ‘Just the two of us, is it?’

‘No, Clady and Kerta get to ride it too. Don’t be late.’

Tilda stared at the departing figure and sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry, Lia, I didn’t think they would include you in it,’ she said. ‘But at least when Prince Baran finds out he’ll have Holmann’s balls cut off.’

‘What is it, exactly, the horn?’ Lia asked, not really wanting to know.

‘Its proper name is Old Nick’s horn,’ Tilda explained. ‘Old Nick being the devil, you understand. It’s a cow’s horn really, sticking up through a hole in a stool. You have to straddle it and impale yourself, then move up and down. They make you fuck it, in effect.’

‘No!’ Lia squealed.

‘You haven’t heard the worst yet,’ Tilda said. ‘They smear it with pepper paste so it feels hot inside you, I mean, like you’re on fire. That’s how it got its name. It’s supposed to represent the fires of hell that sinners suffer, or something.’

Lia shivered. Of all the ways she might have lost her maidenhead she could think of none worse than this. She wished it was Durwin taking her to bed, or Prince Baran, or even Holmann, old and horrible as he was. Dear Lord, she thought, even Helma’s three soldiers were preferable to such a torture!

The rest of the day passed dreadfully slowly, and though Lia tried not to dwell on what was to come it was hard keeping her mind on her work. Tilda was quiet too, busy with her own thoughts, and when the chapel bell rang she took Lia through to the washroom, which Kerta and Clady were just leaving.

‘How many times is this for you?’ Clady asked gloomily.

‘My second,’ Tilda said.

The seamstress sighed. ‘Me too. It’s Kerta’s third, isn’t it?’

Kerta nodded, looking no happier than the rest. Though she was older than the others and not exactly pretty, Lia thought Tilda’s description ‘plain as a pikestaff’ was a bit harsh.

‘They don’t want you too, do they?’ Clady asked, turning to Lia. ‘Someone told me you’re a virgin.’

‘She is,’ Tilda said. ‘But they don’t seem to care.’

‘Prince Baran will have something to say about that,’ Kerta muttered.

‘He won’t be happy, and that’s a fact,’ Clady concurred. ‘Anyway, we’d best leave so you can get ready. Good luck, to all of us.’

‘Good luck,’ Tilda echoed.

The two left, and after Lia and Tilda had bathed and dried themselves Lia picked up the bucket of water, intending to empty it down the drain, but Tilda told her to leave it where it was. ‘We’ll want to wash the paste out afterwards,’ she said. ‘We’ll be desperate to, in fact.’

They put on clean smocks and made their way to the kitchen. Holmann and Dagna were already there, as were Clady and Kerta, and to Lia’s dismay she saw that Jarold was there too. From what Tilda had told her this would be bad enough without having him leering at them into the bargain. Then next to the table, which was again covered with sacking, she saw the dreaded horn itself, and gave an involuntary shudder. Creamy-white in colour and fully seven inches long, it poked up through a hole in the seat of a tall stool. The hole wasn’t in the centre but rather towards one edge, and the horn tilted back at a slight angle. She was relieved to see that the tip had been cut off and replaced with a piece of smoothly rounded bone, which at least put to rest one of her several fears.

‘Lia,’ Holmann said sternly, ‘watch closely what happens here. Wilful, immoral young women must suffer for their sins, as these three are about to suffer. They’ve disgraced themselves by their shameless behaviour, and will soon be in immense discomfort. If you want to avoid their fate you’ll shun such wickedness and be virtuous, honest and obedient at all times.’

For a second or two his words didn’t register, but when they did relief swept through her like a flood of warm water, although all too briefly, for Dagna obviously had other ideas.

‘She shouldn’t get off so lightly,’ she muttered crossly. ‘Anyone can see she’s a troublemaker. She should take a turn on the horn with the rest.’

‘How can she?’ Holmann snorted. ‘She’s a virgin, as you well know.’

Dagna gave a nasty laugh. ‘The way Durwin’s been sniffing around I’m not so sure. I’d check her if I were you; you might be in for a shock.’

With a curse and a look that promised the direst of consequences if Dagna’s insinuations were true, Holmann pulled up Lia’s skirts, but as a crude finger probed her his face cleared. ‘Still intact, thank the saints,’ he sighed. ‘And make sure you remain so, girl. I’ll be having a word with that cockroach on the subject, never fear. The rod’s as well suited to a boy’s rump as a girl’s.’

Dagna’s disappointment at the news was plain to see, but she didn’t give up so easily. ‘It’s just her word against ours when and how she lost it,’ she said. ‘Who’s to know what she was before tonight?’

‘Plenty of people,’ Holmann said. ‘Tilda warned off the guards; the sergeant told me so. By now half the castle must know there’s a new virgin in the kitchen, and it’s only a matter of time before Prince Baran finds out and sends for her.’

Dagna frowned, and for a moment it seemed her desire to see Lia on the horn had been thwarted. But then her face cleared. ‘We could turn her around, couldn’t we?’ she suggested hopefully. ‘She could take it up the back passage.’

Holmann stared at Lia thoughtfully, clearly weighing the possibility. He nodded slowly and her hopes, having been raised a second time, were dashed once more. ‘We could,’ he said, ‘though even that’s not without risk. She might tear her hymen by straining, what with the pain and all. I don’t want to chance it, so she’ll just have to watch this time. Watch and learn…’

Dagna still wasn’t happy, but the final decision had obviously been made. She shrugged, and Holmann proceeded with the business at hand.

‘You all know how this works,’ he said. ‘You’ll each do fifty squats, and I mean proper ones, not half measures. I want to see your arse touch the stool on the way down and your legs straighten on the way up, is that clear? Jarold will count for you, so you don’t need to worry about how many you’ve done. Keep your hands behind your back and your head up so we can see your face. Clady, you’re first.’

While the plump girl was undressing, Dagna picked up a wooden pot and scooped out a handful of grey paste, which she proceeded to spread thickly on the horn. When she was done Clady went forward, though with obvious reluctance, so at a nod from Holmann Jarold set down wooden blocks on either side of the stool. Then with a hand on the youth’s shoulder for support, Clady stepped onto the nearest block with one foot, swung her leg across and planted her other foot on the other block. She reached down and grasped the horn, then lowered herself slowly, guiding the tip into her vagina. She gasped as it breached her, but continued to sink down till she was properly impaled. Carefully, and still relying on Jarold’s shoulder to steady her, she took first one foot then the other off the blocks and set them down flat on the flagstones. Jarold then took the blocks away and Clady stood up straight, her hands clasped behind her back, the tip of the horn, Lia noticed, still just inside her.

‘Very well,’ Holmann said gravely, ‘begin.’

Clady began to raise and lower herself, with Jarold counting aloud as she did so. By the time he’d reached fifteen she was gasping, though whether from her efforts or the burning of the pepper paste Lia didn’t know. On she went, her face growing redder by the minute. ‘Twenty-nine… thirty… thirty-one… thirty-two…’

By this point Clady was groaning loudly, her mouth hanging open and her eyes shut. Her suffering increased with each passing second, and by forty she was whining pitifully, clearly in distress. She began to quicken the pace, going faster until her large breasts were bouncing, her face twisted in pain.

‘Forty-eight… forty-nine… fifty!’

Clady strained up onto her tiptoes, obviously wanting as little of the horn inside her as possible, and looked at Holmann pleadingly; but the overseer slowly shook his head.

‘A fair enough performance to begin with,’ he said, ‘but very poor at the end. No half measures is what I said, but your arse barely touched the seat for the last five. So you’ll do another five, and I want to see them done right.’

Clady’s face crumpled at his pronouncement and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Please, master—’

‘I can soon make it ten, if you wish!’ Holmann threatened harshly, and Clady’s entreaty died on her lips, as tearful and trembling she thrust down on the dreadful horn once more, Lia fearing the task surely beyond her. And yet, despite her tribulations, the plump girl somehow managed to drive herself on, her movements stiff and jerky, her legs shaking as she forced herself up and down, and finally, mercifully, the extra five were complete.

At a nod from Holmann, Jarold put the blocks back in place, and Clady dismounted in a reversal of the mounting process. She shuffled to the table and lay on her back, raising her legs and spreading them wide apart so Holmann and Dagna could examine her.

‘Very good,’ the overseer mused. ‘This new pot of pepper paste is fierce stuff.’

‘I told Berta to make it extra strong,’ Dagna said.

‘You did right. These three need a sharp lesson.’

He fingered Clady for a while longer, then nodded and told her she was dismissed. She sat up carefully and slid off the table, snatching up her smock from the floor, and without even pausing to put it on she crept out of the room, her hand pressed between her legs as though that might somehow quench the fire inside. Her departure raised smiles on her tormentors’ faces, and Holmann chuckled.

‘It’ll be a while before she’s tempted to give a man the eye, I reckon. There’s nothing like a hot crack for cooling the ardour, I always say.’

‘You warmed her up good and proper, master,’ Jarold said with an ingratiating nod of the head.

‘Aye,’ Holmann said, ‘and we’re not done yet. Kerta, get them things off. Let’s see how you fare on the prong.’ As Kerta took off her smock, Dagna spread fresh paste on the horn. ‘Lay it on nice and thick,’ Holmann said, his eyes on Kerta all the while. ‘No need to stint.’

Jarold, his face wearing its customary leer, also watched with keen interest as the laundress stripped. She dropped her clothes to the floor and stood up straight, seemingly unaware of the men’s attention, for her own eyes were firmly fixed on the stool with its gross appendage.

Kerta stepped forward, apprehension and determination showing in her eyes in equal measure. With the blocks and Jarold’s shoulder to aid her she mounted the stool and grasped the horn as Clady had done. She positioned herself over the tip, took a deep breath, and impaled herself. The blocks were removed and her ordeal began.

It was soon clear that Kerta – older and no doubt wiser than her predecessor – was determined not to repeat Clady’s mistake. She set a much slower pace right from the outset, pushing down on the horn in a deliberate, measured fashion till her bottom was firmly on the seat, then rising smoothly until her legs were straight. She even paused for a heartbeat at both extremes, so that even the most critical of observers must surely be satisfied with her performance.

Even when it became apparent that the pepper paste was being keenly felt, she still refused to vary the pace. Her face grew tight and her shoulders stiff, but that was all. She didn’t wail or whine as Clady had; indeed, the only sound to be heard was a soft, tormented groan that escaped her lips on each down stroke.

She rode the horn for long minutes in this manner, and though she was obviously in great discomfort she hung on grimly to the end. Jarold’s count reached fifty, and she could finally dismount. It had been a sober lesson in self-control, and Lia hoped she could do even half as well when her turn eventually came to ride the horn, as it surely would, Dagna would see to that.

Kerta slumped on the table and spread her legs for her examination, which she endured stoically and in silence. Holmann and Dagna declared themselves satisfied, and Kerta was duly dismissed, although unlike Clady she paused long enough to put on her smock in a final show of fortitude, and then walked out with considerable dignity.

Now it was Tilda’s turn, and it seemed to Lia that her friend had taken Kerta’s example to heart, for she moved at the same steady pace as the older woman and with the same sense of deliberation. In another way she was very different, however. Kerta had stayed almost silent for the whole session, whereas Tilda was moaning right from the start. There was a grimace of pain on her pretty face too, which Lia thought couldn’t be due to the paste, not this early. And then she realised what it was. Tilda must be tender still from having been abused by the rod the day before, and now here was Old Nick’s horn with more of the same treatment.

If the others remembered it they showed little sympathy for Tilda’s plight. ‘Just look at her,’ Dagna jeered smugly. ‘Doesn’t look so clever now, does she?’

‘No, that’s settled her down right enough,’ Holmann agreed, ‘but I should have organised this session long before now. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been lax.’