The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) Read online

  Spur shook his head. “If you were not so inebriated, you would recall I never interfere with female serfs.”

  “Gossip says otherwise.”

  “Gossip has me coupling with flocks of ewes as well. Do not believe everything you hear. In truth, I seduce neither virgins nor commoners nor anything that goes bah, bah.” He rolled his eyes. “Bad blood in it. No half-peasant whelps of mine will overrun this domain. When I couple, only royal loins do me.”

  “Balls,” Talon said under his breath.

  “No balls. A delicious honeypot. Lady Margret, the dowager of Lord Ubert the Magnificent, awaits our carnal pleasure upstairs in my solar.”

  Talon’s spirits rallied. His expression went from uncharacteristically morose to its usual merry cast. “Then why linger here?”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Upstairs in Spur’s bedchamber, Margret met them with open arms. Lavish in her nakedness, with a height of nearly equal proportion to her girth, she hugged them to her ample breasts. Was that his brother’s spine cracking? For sure his own backbone shuddered.

  Margret kissed them—Talon first, then Spur. “Ye gods! I have been alone far too long. At the sight of you two bonny lads, my cunny fair gushes for joy.”

  A downward glance told Spur the lady told no lie. Ubert had been known as the “Magnificent” for a good reason, and Margret’s copious wetness bespoke of her grieving.

  Next the lady grabbed them each in a choke hold. “Quit the coyness, my black-haired pets, and strip off! I am already deprived. Dickering about only makes me hornier.” After clunking their foreheads together, she let them go.

  Spur looked to his elder sibling. “Damnably rude to refuse such a gracious invitation.”

  “Highly impolite.” Talon folded his arms over his massive chest. “Uncivil in the extreme.” He mouthed to Spur, I only hope we live to see sunrise.

  In an instant, their garb littered the rush-covered solar floor and Margret was sinking to her dimpled knees, her gaze bouncing back and forth between them.

  “’Pon my word,” the widow exclaimed. “The view is even better at eye level. And double of everything too.” Tossing back her flaxen hair, she cupped her plump pigeons in her palms and smacked her berry red mouth.

  Lady Margaret was poised to begin.

  Spur closed his eyes, eager for the milking of those agile berry red lips.

  And like a dream come true robust sucking commenced.

  Alas, the lady did none of it on him.

  Lifting his lids, Spur blinked at the brightness of Talon’s gloating grin.

  Merde! Second place again.

  Chapter One

  Mitri pulled the wicking jig from the vat of melted beeswax, then placed the ten strong lengths of dipped wool strings on the trestle table to harden.

  There! All done.

  The subtle scent of clover wafting around her, she stretched to a slow stand. As village chandler, she worked long hours making candles, and the constant bending over the hearth’s fire led to back cramps, an occupational hazard of her trade.

  Fortunately the recompense for her labors made the tedious chore all worthwhile.

  Her erotic candles brought better than fair value in London. According to the local merchant who traded them for her at market, frustrated wives of absent knights snapped them up by the bundle. Though she made chaste white ecclesiastical candles for churches too, her phallic-shaped tapers—turgid and thick, with wide, domed tips—were what put fresh eggs on the trencher and savory chicken in the pot.

  Some might feel shame for the scandalous nature of her enterprise. Not she! Someone had to look out for the fairer gender.

  All over the kingdom, lonely wives pined away for absent warrior husbands gone off a-battling without a care for the forsaken spouses they left behind, lonely and frustrated. What was a married woman to do—wait for her bliss until warfare ended?

  Harrumph. Warfare never ended. And females had needs, same as men.

  Despite prevailing opinion, chastity belts did not gird the loins of every abandoned wife; some remained faithful without a lock and key. Where was the disgrace in looking for a little comfort every now and again, if only to endure the long separations?

  Women did get desperate. Apart from humping a stallion, she offered a solution, an alternative to venturing out to the stables in the dead of night.

  Mitri wrinkled her nose. All that hay! Flies too. And those swishing horse tails! Not that she would know anything about that, personally. Nay, nay, neigh.

  Her candles offered guaranteed release. And she included helpful pictorial instructions with every transaction. Who could argue good quality for fair coin?

  Thus far, no one ever had.

  Not one customer had ever returned her candles with the complaint of unfulfilled expectations. Her beeswax tapers produced the required results. Long and short—and hers were always long—her wicks worked!

  She would not tell the village crier, however. Whilst ’twas grand knowing that, in her own small way, she brought joy to others, she kept the illicit nature of her occupation strictly to herself. Only her sister knew what occupied the majority of her time.

  After kneading the knots at the base of her spine, Mitri hoisted up a leg, anchoring her foot on the stone hearth, and then whipped up her kirtle. The worn wool bunched around her waist. Bared below and throbbing above, she reached for a particularly stout candle.

  Oh my. What a prime specimen. She always kept the best of the lot for herself. In the literal sense, this wax phallus had been made just for her.

  Her fingers moving hungrily over the dildo, she panted in anticipation.

  Not too long ago, panting in anticipation was as close as she would have gotten to actual penetration. A virgin then—a virgin still, at least in the strictest definition of the word—she had been anxious to keep her maidenhead intact for her future husband. But on her last birthday, she had arrived at the sad realization that no suitor would ever court her.

  Her painful shyness stood in the way of wooing.

  She could not even imagine the possibility of holding a young swain’s attention. And so, upon turning eight and ten, she finally gave in to the achiness besieging her. To mark the special occasion, she had allowed a very handsome wax taper to have its way with her. That portentous night, she lost her innocence.

  Of the act, not of men.

  Though a candle had dispatched her maidenhood, her ignorance of the male gender remained as intact as ever.

  Only now she was ruined.

  Even if by some miracle she ever was courted, only the most trusting and loving of suitors would believe she had never known a man’s caress, would accept that, despite all evidence to the contrary, he had been her first lover. In truth, she lacked the confidence to put such trust to the test. And so she would never reveal to anyone how she had lost her maidenhead. Of how, in her yearning for a rough and hard mating, she had taken matters into her own hands and discovered that what other maidens might construe as pain, she construed as ecstasy.

  She shuddered. Stripping herself naked like that would take more courage than she possessed.

  Oh, to be more like Ysenda! Her herbalist sister had not a shy bone in her entire body. Outgoing rather than reserved, Ysenda was forever seeking out ways to amuse herself and entertain others.

  Especially men.

  Not Mitri. Since losing her parents in late childhood, she always ran and hid at the first sign of a strange male, be he of threatening countenance or pleasingly favored.

  But she could always rub herself, and did, whenever the spirit moved her.

  A happenstance of alarming regularity of late. Rubbing herself had quickly become her fondest delight. Such were the pleasures she had found in clover-scented beeswax.

  The harder and rougher the better.

  In and out between her trim thighs the fat taper went, the phallus moving feverishly, high enough to hit her needy spot just right whilst still sliding freely back and for
th within her sopping moistness.

  Pained tears stung her eyes. Though passive in all other respects of her life, she was no shrinking violet in this. Rocking and writhing, her hips lifting to receive the plunging dildo, her wiggling bottom demanding more, she worked the candle until the wax nearly melted.

  Almost there…almost there…almost…

  There, at the very pinnacle of sensation, she stopped. Tilting her head, she hearkened to the thumps coming from outside her portal.

  Were those marching feet?

  The rumble moved ever closer, the mighty stomping causing the dried rushes covering her home’s dirt floor to crackle and jump.

  Boots! Heavy marching boots approached the little thatched-roof cottage she shared with her sister. Allowing her raised skirts to fall to her ankles, she next placed the candle aside, then wrung her hands together. What to do; whatever should she do?

  Ysenda would know what to do. Her brave older sister would not stand here cowering. Nay, she would not! She would fling open the portal, shelve her hands on her hips, and shout out a warning to the owners of those marching boots, demanding an explanation as to why they had come here to their remote homestead so far off the beaten path. But her brave older sister was not here now. Ysenda had left at dawn to collect woodland plants for dye making and would not return until the sun went down, leaving Mitri to tremble alone when a pounding came at the portal. Not dull knuckle raps they were either, but sharp strikes as with rocks and hammers.

  Or cudgels, the sort of clubs used in warfare.

  She had yet to digest the awful meaning of that when weightier blows fell. And shoulders. Armored shoulders all pushing against the barred portal. Then battering, as if several men had picked up a fallen tree trunk and rammed it against the frame. Most peasants like them had only a cloth curtain or, at best, a skinned animal pelt covering the entrance to their dwellings, but theirs was made of solid wood. Her long-deceased father had taken such pride in his splendid oak portal, an entrance built to last. Strong enough to withstand an army, he had always said.

  Craaaackkk.

  Before her widening eyes, the thick oak planks splintered and then shattered, the wide timber boards breaking apart altogether and taking the flat iron bar laid across the portal with them.

  Thieves?! Had a band of outlaws besieged the little cruck cottage?

  Across the land, famine had overtaken every village and farm. Most everyone was half-starved these days, and robbers ran rampant, stealing from poor and rich alike, using the proceeds of their lawlessness to fill their empty bellies.

  A shudder later, she conceded a far worse lot than thieves beset the cottage.

  Through the gaping hole in the plastered wattle and daub wall climbed five men-at-arms, all with weapons drawn.

  “T-t-take what you wish,” she stuttered. “Only leave me be.”

  A pathetic entreaty. Her valiant sister would not have let fear freeze her, would not have almost wet herself with trepidation. Not Ysenda! She would have picked up an iron poker from the hearth and defended them both.

  But Ysenda was not here now, and a lout was pushing his face close to hers, the fetid aroma emanating from his body withering Mitri’s nostrils.

  “Live you here alone, wench?” He sneered through his conical helm’s nasal guard.

  Mitri managed a whispered, “Aye.”

  That lie represented her only defense against evil. That and a silent prayer.

  Please, God, keep Ysenda safe in the woods. Prevent her from venturing back here.

  For her courageous sister would have indeed picked up that iron poker by the hearth, and she would have swung it bravely too, not allowing the makeshift weapon to drop from her hand…

  Until the soldiers ran her only living relative through with their swords. A slash and her most near and dear would lie dead.

  Not Ysenda. At all costs, her vibrant sister must live.

  Mitri squared her shoulders. In the space of the next few heartbeats, her whole world would turn upside down, but she would make sure no harm befell her too-brave sister.

  “I shan’t st-st-struggle,” she stammered, her heart hammering in her chest. “Do what you will to me, but not here in the house of my dead parents.”

  For if God had yet to hear her petition and Ysenda did return, her brave sister would discover this foul-scented man-at-arms attacking her, come charging to the rescue, and be killed in the attempt.

  Stay gone in the woods, sister. Please, God, keep Ysenda safe.

  Mitri looked up into her attacker’s squinty eyes, rheumy and red with hard spirits. “Take me elsewhere. I pray you, sir, not to violate me in my own home.”

  Her plea fell upon deaf ears. In front of the stone hearth, where Mitri had just a few moments before been busy making candles, her attacker tore at her neat woolen garb, ripping her simple kirtle to the waist.

  She refused to cry out. Cleared farmland surrounded the cottage. Dense woodlands lay immediately beyond. At this point in the day, Ysenda would be gathering herbs at the very edge of the tree line. A high-pitched scream would perchance carry there. Upon hearing the sign of her distress, her sister would not think to save herself. Nay, she would run bravely back here.

  Biting back her fright, Mitri made no sound. Instead she retreated deep within herself, where this soldier could do her no hurt. ’Twas as though she looked at herself from some distant place outside her body—a star, mayhap—observing the event unfolding, a spectator at her own rape.

  Her disgusting assailant removed his helm, and his flabby lips came within a stinking breath of her face. She stood still, bracing herself against the outrage rising in her throat as he removed a mail gauntlet with his yellowed teeth and wrapped his now bare stubby fingers around her naked nipple. His snout rooting to the hollow in her neck as if he were rummaging, he pinched her tender flesh.

  Mitri willed herself to feel naught.

  “No time for that now,” someone barked. “Bundle up everything of value, then torch the roof. We move to the next farm down the road upon finishing here.”

  “What of taking the wench with us for later use, Commander Axehand?”

  “Aye,” answered the leader. “But mark you this, one and all share seized bounty. For now, take her outside, away from the flames. She is red enough already with all her blushes.” He guffawed.

  “Aye, her fair cheeks glow like fire,” her assailant snorted and ripped the modest white coif with its attached veil from her head. After trampling the symbol of her chastity under the heel of his filthy boot, he then yanked the leather cord from the bottom of her plait. He raked a hand through her loosened hair. “Plain brown,” he said in disappointment. “I had hoped for chestnut tresses or raven black or even golden. But come dark, all women look the same. This plain, brown-haired one will do us, I reckon.”

  With a hard shove, the pig-nosed soldier sent her tottering out the splintered portal. Once outside, a pull on her hair ended her forward motion.

  He turned her round to face him.

  “Remain here,” he spat, saliva spraying.

  The man-at-arms made no attempt to tie her.

  Why would he, she thought, utterly dazed, so confused and shocked by her ordeal she could hardly think, never mind make a break for it. Much akin to hunted deer before the arrow strikes, she simply stood there.

  And even if she could bring herself to act, to move, to flee—where would she go? There was no escape from the destruction.

  Smoke billowed in the air, blocking out the sun and painting the sky gray. Ashes floated on a breeze coming from the demesne of Lord Harold, the baron to whom Ysenda and she paid their annual tithe.

  In despondency, Mitri hung her head. Evidently naught would escape the torching—not Lord Harold’s estate, not the outlying farms, not the only home she had ever known. The entire region appeared to have gone up in flames.

  Her world had turned upside down, and she had nowhere to go.

  Save to an honorable death.

/>   These men-at-arms would spill their seed within her and then pass her around to the rest of their troops. Better to end it cleanly. Better to throw herself into the bonfires up at Lord Harold’s manor estate than have Ysenda return and discover her bloodied body used up and broken, then tossed like refuse on the road somewhere. And even if she did somehow come through the repeated assaults, she would most likely live out the remainder of her days an invalid and a burden to her sister.

  Mitri shook her head. Nay, Ysenda would be far better off without her. She would not be her sister’s responsibility, a weight holding her back. She would not be a yoke around Ysenda’s neck. Her sister was a survivor; even in these dire circumstances, she would make her way in the world—providing she did not have Mitri, a timid mouse afeared of her own shadow, dragging her down.

  The burning settlement was more than a stone throw’s distance but less than a half-day’s journey. Mitri headed there.

  Avoiding the main road and keeping to the cover of bushes, she hid from group after group of retreating soldiers. The men-at-arms left the besieged area like rats from a sinking ship. Laughing and jeering, drinking their horns of ale, the cruel warriors related tales of how earlier that same day they had fanned out over the countryside , plundering and raping and killing as they went. Their victims had probably pleaded for a swift death as opposed to a slow incineration, and these murderers celebrated!

  Pray, over what did they rejoice?

  Surely not over a few sacks of stolen cabbage!

  One soldier held up a skin of mead. “Death to the usurper, King Stephen,” he toasted. “Long live the Empress Matilda, the true and rightful heir to the throne of England and our future queen.”

  After the cheers died down, the soldier continued his speech. “And this day, our commander, Axehand, has contributed mightily to that end. The settlement here is no more. All five score villagers are dead and Lord Harold with them. Let this be a warning to others who support the pretender to the throne.”

  And then Mitri understood. Insurrection had sparked this destruction. ’Twas common knowledge that Harold, the baron landlord up on the hill, was a loyal supporter of King Stephen. These must be Matilda’s men, bloodthirsty mercenaries to a one, come to destroy a loyalist’s holdings.