Chapter 25
The servants ate in hall, huddled around the fire’s embers, picking morsels from the detritus of the lavish meal and from bits and bowls that had been saved in the cookhouse. The others ate well, but any appetite I had fled the moment Cuno’s hot breath touched my neck. All thoughts of food—and future, come to that—utterly vanished as I contemplated the night before me. I had never been with any man, and it was not with Cunomor that I would ever contemplate ending my virginity. The lout was not anyone I would remotely consider an acceptable bedmate, much less a lifemate. I know many may not set much store by such things, but I do. Perhaps priest Tomos’ beliefs and teaching have persuaded me in this; that, or the virtuous example of my mother and father. However it may be, there it was.
Now that it came to the time of trial, I was bereft, with neither friend nor champion to defend my honor. I was to be abused, despoiled, and violated—and there was nothing I could do about it. A more forlorn and pathetic wretch within those walls could not have been found that night.
So wretched and pitiful, in fact, I was not thinking clearly. I don’t believe I was even thinking at all. My firm resolve to be gone by morning might as well have been smoke on the wind, a candle snuffed out, the flame extinguished as if it had never been.
If the other servants noticed my distress—and at least one or another of them must have—they did little to relieve it. Beyond admonitions to “Eat, it’s good . . .” and “you’ll be hungry later . . .” there was no comfort to be had from them. It was only later, as the night drew on and I could avoid my fate no longer and I began preparing myself for the ordeal ahead, holding it at bay as long as I could, that a faint gleam of hope appeared.
I was standing over a heap of dirty bowls, staring at them in glum despair, unmoving when one of the Saecsen girls noticed my vacant stare, and asked what was wrong. Bless her. In truth, I don’t honestly know if she was Saecsen or Angli, but she nevertheless displayed something of the shrewd nature alleged of those tribes.
She had to ask again before I realized she was speaking to me.
“What is wrong?” I repeated. Then moaned, “Everything. Everything is wrong.”
At her sweetly sympathetic look, I quickly explained about Cunomor’s carnal plans for our night together.
She listened, nodding. I still see her kindly features soft in the rushlight. When I finished, she simply shrugged and, picking up a stack of dirty platters, replied, “Well, there is always pig’s blood.”
Pig blood?
Is that what she said? I could not be certain, so assumed I had misheard as I so often do. But it was also the way she said it that spoke to me. I repeated the words and followed her out to the trough where she began scouring the platters with wet sand. I came to stand beside her and told her I didn’t hear very well but that I thought she had said something about pig blood. She glanced at me, nodded, and went on with her work. “I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t know what that means.”
The girl gave a little half smile and finished the platter she had been cleaning by dipping it in a basin of water. She put it aside, upright against the trough to dry, and then, wiping her hands on a scrap of cloth hanging from her girdle, led me around behind the cookhouse and into the yard where the two boars had been bled that day. Beside the wall sat a basin filled with a dark liquid which she pointed to and said, “Pig blood.”
I stared at the basin in the dim light from the cookhouse, but nothing came to me.
She noticed my confusion and, taking the drying cloth from her girdle, she tore a strip from it, rolled it neatly, and dipped the edge of it into the basin. The blood was thick and sticky. When she handed the dripping roll to me, I began to catch her meaning. When she pointed to my groin all doubt fled. “Am I to put this between my legs?”
Again, she gave me that sly smile and nodded. “I has been known to work.”
She offered to help me with it, but I told her I knew what to do and, taking the cloth roll, I cast aside whatever modesty I might have had left, hiked up my mantle, and wedged the bloody cloth high up between my legs. The moist scrap felt cold and slimy, and my stomach lurched. But the thing was done.
“Thank you, . . . ah—I don’t know your name.”
She held her head to one side and regarded me curiously. “Aedita,” she said.
“Thank you, Aedita. I pray this works.”
She smiled, warmly, gratefully, and her eyes glistened. I imagine it had been that long since anyone had called her by name; longer still when anyone had last thanked her for anything, God only knows. She put her hand on my arm, squeezed it, and said, “Your luck with you, sister.”
There was nothing to be gained by delay. Aedita pointed me in the direction of Cunomor’s private chamber, my heart pounding as I fumbled along the darkened corridor. I stood for a moment before the door, then gave it a rap with my knuckles—I didn’t know if this politeness was observed in this part of the world, but it was in the house where I grew up, so I did it here. I heard a grunt from inside which I took to mean that I should enter.
A single rushlight burned near the sleeping place where Cunomor sat on a pallet piled with sheepskins. He stood and beckoned me nearer. I drew a deep breath and went to stand before him while he examined me—much as one would examine a cow or sheep for the chop.
Seizing my hand in a firm grip, he pulled me closer. He must have noticed my quivering, for he placed a hand on my back as if to steady me, and then passed that same hand over my breasts. I looked down at his groping fingers and restrained myself from biting them.
“Take off your clothes.”
Steadying myself, I untied my girdle and shoes. I drew my mantle over my head and stood there shaking in my thin undershift. He kicked it aside. “Everything,” he said, this voice thick with lust.
Slowly, I lifted my shift and pulled the blood-dipped rag from my legs and he saw it. Some of the pig blood had, of course, smeared the inside of my thighs leaving an unsightly stain and a little of the gunk had dripped down the inside of my leg. “It is my time,” I told him simply. I held out the bloody cloth to him and he recoiled in disgust.
“Get that filthy thing away from me,” he growled.
I stood holding the rag for a moment and made as if throw it aside. But he put a hand to my chest and shoved me away. “No! Not here! Get out,” he snarled, stepped back. “Leave me!”
Scooping up my clothes, I fled to the door. He called something as I left—something about meeting again in a few days’ time—but I did not stop running until I was once more in the darkened courtyard.
Look for me in a few days’ time, I thought, and good luck to you. For you will not be finding me here.