“Let it fall,” he shouted, as if to a band of soldiers.
She stood there, naked except for her new sandals, petrified, eyes squeezed shut, trying to cover herself with her hands.
“By the Holy Cross,” she heard him scream. “I will kill you now if you do not obey me. Take your filthy peasant’s hands away.” There was not a bat-squeak of pity in his words.
Tears poured down her cheeks as silently she prayed to St. Katherine the Martyr. Her eyes still shut, as if by not seeing she could not be seen, Christine lowered her hands.
“Aye, a goodly sight, that it is. Fine curves, strong legs and you have cleaned yourself,” said Sir Richard, as if he were appraising a fine horse. He took the wine jar off the table and sent his goblet away with a sweep of his arm. “Lay yourself upon the table. You can hide your shame. Lay on your belly along the table. Do it! Now!”
Her legs would hardly obey her, but she kneeled upon the bench and then forced herself to flatten her body across the table. Trembling in every muscle and teeth chattering, she felt utterly exposed, her body as white as the cloth on which she lay. She sensed her tormentor moving behind her and felt something tight around her right ankle and then her left as her legs were forced apart and tied fast with cord to the trestles beneath the table.
“Nay!” she screamed. She squirmed to unloosen the ankle bonds, but Sir Richard was too quick. He seized her wrists and forced them down and apart as he tied them to the thick trestle supports.
For a minute the lord surveyed his trussed prize, reliving his own sexual past. His wife, cold, always absent, thank God, a marriage forced upon him, a coupling of vast estates, not ardour. And before that, the beatings, the endless humiliations at the abbey. Isolated in Northumberland, far from family, sent to learn how to read and write about the saints; the bribes of the abbot, a leg of chicken perhaps, some stale bread more often, the whippings if he cried after he was tied and sodomised…Anger rose like bile, and he wanted to kill every living thing in creation, so that no one would know of his ignominy.
He raised his sword and gazed at her helpless, heaving, fleshy rump. Much better to thrust his steel into that instead of the bones in her back, more satisfying…
Sir Richard was brought back from the brink by a prayer he recognised from his schooldays, as Christine wept and prayed to all the saints she knew.
“Hold fast your tongue, and cease that prattle. Cease that noise, I say, or I will cut out your tongue, girl. Do not doubt my words.”
Christine did not. She managed to stifle her prayers.
Sir Richard’s mood swung back from frenzy to mock sympathy: “Few women of your position have tasted their lords. Consider this an extra wedding gift.” As he spoke, he stroked the contours of her back with the flat of his sword. “Hush, woman, a stallion-ride to hell is better than a feast of swords.”
Sir Richard loosened his leather belt and pulled up his robe as he positioned himself at the end of the table. He swallowed a deep draught of wine from the jar and swilled it around his mouth, then projected a mouthful of red spittle into his cupped hands. He rubbed them together enthusiastically, before rolling up his sleeves. Grunting at his own inspiration, the knight scooped a lump of goose-fat from a small wooden tub on the side-bench and anointed her rear, pausing to admire his handiwork. Satisfied with this preparation, Sir Richard pulled the girl towards the end of the table; the bonds stretched her arms and she screamed, but the movement allowed him to bend her almost at a right angle.
Then, legs astride, as if preparing for combat, he thrust himself hard into her. For a second, the breath was squeezed from her body. Then a red-hot searing pain ripped through her insides. The sound that emerged from her mouth was not so much a human scream, but more like the last mortal cry of a hunted deer. A long, eerie animal noise filled the large room. “Sweet Jesus, let me die,” she shouted.
“This is the devil’s ride, Christine,” he gasped. “The coupling the learned Greeks did applaud. I will leave the other to your husband. Be thankful that I leave a virgin for him.”
He pushed himself deep inside her, the more savage his penetration the better the revenge on those who had abused him in his youth. Every murder and every rape were steps to the complete oblivion of his shame. In his few reflective moments, he rationalised these actions as his physical confession, an atonement, a purging of his memory. His erect phallus was a sword of redemptive justice. Thus inspired, he grasped her hips to keep himself engaged while her screams and pain stoked his lust. “Aye…aye…this be a ride indeed…scream on then, girl…I…break my horses when they whinny thus.”
In his final thrusts, Sir Richard grasped the back of her neck with both his hands; Christine, shouting, crying, choking for breath, prayed for death to end her agony. She felt she was being crucified on her master’s table. As he reached his grunting climax, he collapsed on top of her with his full weight and sunk his teeth into the nape of her neck. The extra pain devoured her ebbing strength and she lost consciousness for a few blessed seconds.
As suddenly as he had attacked her, Sir Richard extricated himself from his victim. Half-heartedly, he wiped some of the blood from his stomach, and swiftly adjusted his clothing. His lust spent, he quickly undid the bonds.
Almost tenderly, he said, “Put on your dress.”
But she could not move nor speak; her wounded body pulsated with pain and her breath rattled from her parched mouth. With her arms stretched out, as if in rigor mortis, she appeared to be nailed to the wood. Roughly, he pulled her from the table and laid her along the side-bench.
“Compose yourself, girl. Here are five groats. If you speak of this again, you and yours will be ejected from this demesne. Be sure of that. You are a virgin still. Be thankful that I have taken my pleasure thus. Here, take this cloth and sop up those tears. I will summon the priest and he will compose you before you go.”
Christine still did not move. Sir Richard picked up her discarded gown and propped her up on the bench. Pulling up her arms, he dragged her clothing over her. Christine slumped trembling back on the bench and, lying on her side, hunched her ravaged body into a foetal ball. In her trauma she prayed silently to God for strength. The sin of Sodom, she knew, was like murder and oppression of the poor, sins which cried to heaven for justice. Her love of God and family had been despoiled by hurt, and anger, and fear. And vengeance. All these emotions ran around her brain like screeching demons.
Sir Richard walked to the antechamber door and called to the priest: “Father, this maid has been bad afflicted by the dropsy. She began to foam and shake and I tied her to the table for the moment in case she did me or self a hurt. I have tended her with wine. Take her with you and pray for her…Call my doctor to her home and leech her well. Charge me all the potions. For her wedding day she must be strong. I will call for a horse and wagon to help her on her way. Be sure my kindness in this event is announced to all who wish to know, and that you were present for all the stages of this fit.”
Father Peter thought, but could not say, “To Christine it must have been the Stations of the Holy Cross.”
When the priest entered the room and saw the prone figure of Christine, an immense anger welled up inside him. The murder of his patron was his first thought, followed immediately by his concern for Christine. He started to rush to her, but Sir Richard raised the flat of his hand to stop him. The priest ignored him, but the crusader’s powerful sword arm propelled the priest to the floor.
Sir Richard strode dramatically to Christine as she lay frozen on the bench. He kneeled in full concern and knightly grace. “Christine, be strong. If I hear that you have not recovered well, I may have to summon you again. I will hear from the doctor how you progress. Farewell.”