Innocence Enslaved (9 page)

Chapter Five

Trying not to disturb the others, Emilia muffled her sobs with her pillow. There would be questions she didn’t want to answer if she woke them with her weeping. She had disgraced herself enough with her wanton actions and didn’t want to make matters worse with an uncomfortable explanation to Alice and Muriel. What would she say anyway? She couldn’t make sense of her behavior and had no idea how she would explain it to Corbet come morning.

A gentle touch on her shoulder made her flinch. She twisted, letting out a yelp of surprise when she saw Muriel crouched next to her bed.

“Was he rough with you? Are you in pain?” the young woman asked in a whisper.

“No. He didn’t hurt me.” She swiped at her tears with her fingers. “I’m sorry I woke you. Please, go back to sleep.”

Muriel ignored her request and promptly sat on the edge of the bed, reaching a hand out to gently stroke her damp cheek. “If you aren’t in pain, why do you cry?”

She studied the girl for a moment. She was close to her own age, with brown shoulder-length hair that was messy from sleep and hazel eyes that sparkled in the moonlight streaming in from the window. She was tall and had long outgrown the snug cotton gown she wore that showed off her womanly shape. Her concern made Emilia suspicious.

“Why are you talking to me? For three days, all I got were stares and one-word answers. So why speak to me now?”

Her pretty face twisted with regret as she glanced over at the softly snoring woman in the other bed. “Because mother said I should not. She told me not to befriend you until we learned more about who and what you were about.”

“It is hard to learn anything about a person by ignoring them.” She shifted, lying more on her back. She winced at the pressure on her still warm and tender backside, the mild discomfort conjuring up an image of Corbet, making her sex tingle.

“I’m sorry for that, truly. I couldn’t let you lie here and weep any longer. You have done so every night since you arrived, though tonight you cry harder. What did he do that has you so upset?” Muriel’s face was filled with both sympathy and curiosity.

She desperately wanted to confide in someone, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she looked away from the girl and out the window, admitting simply, “He spanked me for taking the book.”

“As he should have. You had no right in his study or taking his things.”

“I know, but there’s more,” Emilia admitted in a small voice, then decided her humiliation couldn’t get much greater and told her flatly, “I got excited while he spanked me. I wanted him to…” Now that she’d said the words aloud, they sounded much worse, and she couldn’t bring herself to finish.

“To what?” Muriel asked while shifting and trying to see her averted face.

“I can’t say. It’s too shameful,” she muttered, burying her face in her hands.

“It can’t be that bad and maybe if you tell me and clear your conscience, you’ll be able to sleep.”

“You won’t repeat it?”

“I promise. Besides, who am I going to tell? Mother doesn’t gossip and I never leave the farm.”

Blinking back tears, she looked at the other young woman. Maybe she was right. Her mother always said that confession was good for the soul. “The spanking, it caused me to have feelings.”

“What kind of feelings?”

“They were strong and made me want—” She paused to clear her throat before she continued, “I wanted him to deflower me.”

“You’re a dove?” Muriel asked, putting a hand to her mouth. “But we thought he bought you as his pleasure slave.”

She nodded, another sob rolling up from her chest. “He did and now I have acted the part.” Her face went back in her hands, her words slightly muffled as she poured out her heart to a young woman she didn’t know. “I behaved more like a harlot than an untried innocent, raising my hips vulgarly and moaning as he struck me. I was burning with need for him and I don’t understand why. Afterward, he seemed angry and dismissed me, sending me to bed.”

Silence hung in the air for a long moment. Was Muriel as appalled as Corbet? She peeked through her fingers to see, noting only confusion in the other girl’s eyes.

“It gets worse,” Emilia explained. “I did all of this after he said he’s not keeping me. I knew of his plans and still I wanted him to—I would have willingly given him my innocence while knowing in a few months’ time, he will take me home.”

“That should make you happy.”

“It does, though it hurts that he doesn’t want me.”

“You like him.”

“I do, Muriel. He saved me from a terrible fate, paid thousands in silver, and hasn’t asked anything of me in return. I barely know him, yet I find myself longing for his touch, for his kiss, and more.”

“He is a good, honest, fair man, a very rare thing in Lancore.” Muriel took Emilia’s hand in her own. “Or it could be that he’s very fetching. He appeals greatly to women. That is why so many girls in town seek to be his wife.”

“So he told me,” she sniffled as she stared up at the ceiling. “That brings up another question. Why wouldn’t he want another wife?”

Muriel got real still, glancing at her mother once before saying, “He vows he will never take another. That is why she was so cross when Master Corbet brought you here. She became angry when he told her to give you one of Sara’s dresses. I shouldn’t have been listening, but I couldn’t help it.”

“Sara. She was his wife who died?” Muriel nodded, checking over her shoulder once again at her mother. “How did she die?”

Muriel’s head turned slowly back. “Mother says I am too young to know, that a girl my age does not need to hear such stories. She doesn’t know that I have heard the tale whispered many times.”

“Tell me.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“To be so devoted to her six long years later, he had to have loved her very much.”

“That is what they say,” Muriel replied.

Emilia’s mind raced, wondering how horrid Sara’s death had been. It had to have been very bad for no one to speak of it. “Was it in childbirth?” It pained her to think of Corbet losing both his wife and child at once, what he must have endured.

“No. Mother said they tried to conceive, but it wasn’t God’s plan for them.”

“Then how? Was it a riding accident? Did thieves come upon her?” Terrible things started to drift through Emilia’s mind. She thought about Lancore’s reputation of loose morals. What if his wife had been abducted and—she closed her eyes.

“Muriel, I shall go mad with my wild notions if you don’t tell me what happened.”

“Hush, you’ll wake mother, or worse, you’ll wake him and we’ll both pay the price.”

“I won’t sleep another minute until I know.”

“Fine,” she relented. “Unlike the master, I will require compensation, however.”

“Name it,” Emilia agreed though she had nothing of value to pay.

Muriel leaned in a little closer. “Teach me to read and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“It’s a deal. Tell me now and we’ll start your lessons tomorrow.”

Grinning, she practically bounced to her feet. “Not here,” she uttered low as she took Emilia’s hand and pulled her out of bed. On silent feet, she led her down the stairs and to the kitchen, which was at the back of the house and well away from the bedrooms. She lit a lamp and pulled up a stool at the scarred prep table. “Sit and I’ll tell you what I know. I warn you, though, if you couldn’t sleep before, this will not help. It isn’t a sweet dreams sort of bedtime story.”

Emilia climbed up on a stool across from her and leaned on her elbows. “Tell me.”

“Master Corbet wasn’t always the well-to-do merchant you know him to be now. It’s true, he wasn’t dirt poor like many in Lancore, but he was the only son of a youngest son and at the time, hadn’t come into his portion yet. His parents had passed and his uncle had taken him on as an apprentice to learn the family’s leather trade. It was in his travels for this job that he met Sara Boren. She was the eldest daughter of a farmer who lived near the center of Lancore and the lord’s manor home. He passed by and stopped in often on his delivery rounds. It was love at first sight, so the story goes, but times were hard and her father had other plans for young Sara.”

“He promised her to another?” Emilia asked. “That’s what my father planned for me.”

“Yes, however, it isn’t what you think. Let me back up a bit. You know that slavery is legal in Lancore.”

She snorted. “Of that I am well aware.”

Muriel met her eyes with all seriousness. “I know that you are, yet it wasn’t always the case. In the time before King Nordman came into power it had become an exception, not the rule of the day. The district, and the realm as a whole under Athelmas the Altruistic had moved more toward a free system for the lower classes. Indenture still happened in extreme cases of poverty, though slaves were almost nonexistent. Then the kingdom was thrown into sudden chaos when Nasty Nordman murdered his way to the crown.”

“It is punishable by death to speak of such things,” she said in a low whisper.

“You mean how he had his two elder siblings killed to clear his path to the throne? And when being the next in line wasn’t good enough, he committed the unpardonable sin of patricide?”

“Muriel.” Emilia’s hand clutched her chest. “You mustn’t say such things and risk being overheard.”

“I don’t care,” she stated emphatically. “No one believes good King Athelmas succumbed to a rare and questionable illness within only a few weeks of both crown princes’ suspicious deaths. There is no proof, however, and without it a cruel monarch took the throne. Ordinarily, such a thing wouldn’t touch a poor farm girl such as myself, but it was the new king’s cruelty and greed that put the evil Lord Ervin in power in Lancore. Thusly, I blame Nordman for mother’s and my fate. We weren’t slaves before Ervin, we were free.”

“You are slaves?” Emilia gasped. “I thought I was the only one.”

“Master Corbet now owns three, including you, me, and mama, but we weren’t taken and auctioned like you. We were enslaved because we were poor.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“In Lancore, under Ervin, poverty has become a sin worse than thievery, rape, or killing your own father evidently. Our freedom was taken from us because we didn’t have the coins to pay Ervin’s usurious taxes.”

“How terrible!”

“Yes, it was awful for years and would still be if not for Master Corbet rescuing us.”

Emilia hadn’t realized tears had begun to trickle down her cheeks or that her hand had flown to cover her trembling lips until Muriel reached for it.

“I told you it wasn’t a pleasant bedtime story. Are you sure you want to hear the rest?”

“You can’t stop now.”

She laughed softly. “I suppose not, though I have gotten away from the one I meant to tell about Corbet and Sara Boren, but they are intermingled. It was a sad day for Lancore when Nordman became king and set Ervin as liege over the district. A previously moral and honorable community quickly descended into corruption and sin under the perverse new earl. Short of the lords of the land overthrowing a powerful king, the people had little choice except to turn a blind eye to his depravity. If a citizen spoke up they were punished. Nor could they leave, because this was their home and if they did, few could afford the fees to buy into a new district.”

“He sounds like a tyrant!”

“Yes, and it only got worse. Ervin was so greedy, he set about padding his coffers with the hard-earned coins of his citizens. Taxes tripled immediately and fines for the merest of offenses rose tenfold. It crippled most common folk, including my mother and father, as well as Sara Boren’s family. He gave those who couldn’t pay up little choice: either give over what little they had and become tenants for the state, indenture oneself to repay the debts that would continue to accumulate while serving—that was much the same thing as enslavement—or in Phillip Boren’s case, sell one of your ten children for a price.”

Emilia inhaled sharply and cried, “No! A father couldn’t be so cruel.”

“When he has nine other mouths to feed and times are rough, often a father feels like he has no other choice.”

“He sold Sara, didn’t he?”

“He tried to.”

“Corbet put a stop to it. Please, say that he did.”

“He offered for her, but there was a problem. Ervin wanted her badly. If Corbet saved her from indenture through marriage, she would still be subject to
jus primae noctis
on her wedding night.”

“I’m not familiar with the term.”

“Another of Lord Ervin’s rules. Well, to be fair, it is an archaic law from the dark ages, though it hadn’t been used in hundreds of years. Until Ervin.” The hatred she held for the man was clear in her bitter tone.

“But what is it?” Emilia pressed.

“It is Latin for ‘right of first night.’ It gives the overlord the option to take a new bride of a vassal on their wedding night, no matter the groom’s protests unless he pays an exorbitant waiver fee.”

“You mean he takes her virginity?” Her mouth twisted in disgust. “That is repulsive.”

“That is Lord Ervin.”

“Surely Corbet paid the fee.”

She shook her head sadly. “Set at three thousand pieces of silver, it is a rare husband that can afford the extortionate price.”

“So much,” Emilia murmured. It didn’t escape her that he couldn’t afford to pay to save his bride-to-be, yet had paid that exact sum for a pleasure slave he didn’t want.

“To farmers and tradesmen, it’s a veritable fortune and Ervin knows it. It gives him the ability to have whatever maiden he wants and none dare gainsay him. Petitions were sent to the king, but they went unanswered. In response, the fathers and would-be husbands of the district began holding weddings in secret, thereby thwarting Ervin’s access to the doves. When he learned of this he became enraged and quickly instituted a new law. Marriage banns must be read at the manor and the intended bride presented to his court for inspection. The purpose is undeniable. It gives Ervin the option to pick the comeliest of the young doves to violate on her wedding night.”

“He is perverse.”

“Agreed. Many thought to ignore him or pay the penalty, but he set the penalty for the lawbreakers costly as well. The nuptials are declared invalid and the father and groom jailed. The maiden’s penance is the most severe, however, which is indenture at the manor as Ervin’s personal servant for whatever time he deems fit or until the family raises three times the normal and already near impossible fine. Some of the early violators are still indentured to this day, their families unable to raise the funds.”