Marri's Approach (Brackish Bay) (17 page)

“Stir the stew.”

I obeyed, eying them as subtly as I could. There was a blonde, her eyes still puffy from too many tears, the black-eyed one who'd spoken, and a brunette who was by far the eldest.  Despite the lines on her face and throat, she still managed to exude raw sexuality. Their tent was brash, a sort of beacon for those who wanted someone to use and abuse. Who would care if a whore was mistreated?

After a time my cramping empty stomach got the best of me. I hadn't eaten for a day and a half.

“Please, may I take a taste?” My stomach chimed in with a ferocious growl, and then the elder was beside me, bowl in hand, ladling it up for me and handing it over with a smile and a spoon.

“Here, eat up, poor thing. Didn't he feed you at all?”

“No, madam.”

She tsked. “That's the bargain. They provide for us if we serve them. Did you serve Bernard?”

“Yes.” She shook her head. “He gave me these clothes, though.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Were you naked, child?”

I thought about the slave dress I'd been wearing. “Practically.”

She tsked again. “Well, then, I see why he didn't feed you, also.”

I nodded, slurping up the stew as genteelly as I could. The black-haired one accepted a bowl from the brunette and eyed me while she ate.

“What tribe are you from? You don't look like one of ours.”

I shrugged. “I don't know. My mother never told me.”

“What's her name?”

“Veronica.”

The women shrugged. “We don't know her.”

“I didn't think you would. We lived far to the east of here.”

The blonde looked up finally from her tears. “Why do you wear that collar?”

I stuck a finger in it, twisted it tight, wondering what I should tell her. Fortuna? Any suggestions? Fortuna intervened another way.

“So this is the new whore?”

I turned around to see a gorgeous man a little older than myself, his eyebrows swept back from his hawkish nose, and long dark hair caught up in a braid. He had a cruel edge to his mouth that both excited and warned me.

“Yes, sir.” I arched my back, thrusting my breasts towards him, and let a sensual smile touch my lips. “How may I serve you?”

“You may not.” He sneered at me. “Who knows what filth you carry?”

Humiliation shot through me, turning my cheeks red and starting a tremble in my lower lip. “My apologies, sir.”

Bernard was with him, and he indicated me. “She's Katherine's cousin. I told her if the girl rejects her, she'll be left in the woods when we move on. Should we just send her away now?”

“Katherine's cousin?” He snorted. “Either you're lying, or the whore that bore Katherine is. Jacqueline didn't have any siblings, and none of mine would have fathered you.”

I bit back bile. So this was Katherine's father. How poorly he valued her mother. I attempted to look properly shamed.

“I apologize, sir, for claiming kinship when I had no right to. I thought Bernard would believe me more if I did.”

Bernard's face was stormy. He reached for me, jerking me to my feet as my bowl fell from my lap, spilling the rest of the stew.

“You lying little whore.”

Ramon snorted as Bernard shoved me over a low branch on a nearby tree, and for the first time I was grateful for the excess of clothing, since it protected my hips and belly from the rough bark. He reached up and cut a switch from the tree, only bothering to remove the smaller branches, but leaving it rough surfaced. I took a deep breath, girding myself for pain.

He didn't keep me waiting. The skirt he flipped up, then the underskirt, and then he ripped the bloomers open. Somehow the violence of it sent a cold fear through my heart, and then he was whipping me with the switch. I cried out, my toes drumming the ground. I was sore from the long ride and from the captain's attentions, and my buttocks hadn't quite healed from the last time I'd been seriously spanked when Roy had taken a belt to my ass. As it was, the switch was vicious in its own right, drawing stinging, burning lines of fire across my bottom and thighs. I could feel the white-hot burn with each strike. I wailed, then it warmed to an itchy pain that I knew rubbing would only make worse. He whipped me continuously, allowing no respite. Despite it all, I felt my nether lips thicken and swell, a drip of lubrication slipping down my slit. The rough edges and bark on the switch cut little scratches across my skin.

When I couldn't bear it any more, I tried to kick him. That was, Fortuna, obviously the wrong move. I found myself shoved so far forward that I lost my balance and had to place my hands on the muddy root below my face to support my weight, and then he whipped the switch down the back of my thighs.

I hated it when my thighs were spanked. I hated it even more that Bernard was doing it, hypocritical Bernard who liked to use whores and give nothing of value in return. Every line of fire was excruciating, scratching and snapping until I could feel a trickle here and there. I gave in. Unable to resist any longer, I began to cry in earnest, my legs hanging limp and still while the switch continued to fall.

When my whole backside blazed, from the top of my hips to the backs of my knees—and the few lashes that had landed
there
jerked screams from me—Bernard broke the switch across the backs of my thighs. I sagged, relief at the absence of new strikes. He walked away, leaving me there, incapable of returning to standing on my own.

Ramon walked to me and grabbed a handful of my swollen welted flesh in each hand. “So who are you?”

“I'm just a friend. Someone who met Katherine in passing.”

“She doesn't need any friends like you, stupid whores who lie and cheat and steal from good women and men.”

“I didn't steal anything!”

“You're wearing clothes that aren't yours, aren't you?” he said.

“I served Bernard! I did what he told me to do!”

“I doubt whatever you did was worth those clothes.”

He squeezed harder, and I cried out.

“Please! I'm so sorry!” He pulled me back off the branch, and I stumbled, falling into the mud. I curled in a heap by his boots, weeping. “Please forgive me. I'm so sorry.”

He walked away. I heard Katherine's voice in the distance. It was strained, higher than I remembered it being.

“Who's that, Papa?”

“No one, just some stray whore that Bernard picked up.”

“She doesn't look like one of ours.”

“No, she claimed to be your cousin, so Bernard whipped her.”

“Oh.” I could see her pause, her form beautiful but constrained in the heavy clothing. “May I speak to her?”

“No. Don't bother. She'll just lie.”

“Yes, Papa.”

She continued to follow him as he walked away, and my heart broke. Why was she calling that brute Papa, as if it were proper? Especially when he didn't seem to acknowledge her as his own? Fortuna, where are William and Amadeus?

The brunette brought a water skin. “Here. Drink. You'll need it.”

My voice was broken and hoarse. “Thank you.”

I drank as much as I could, and then she patted her lap.

“Come, lay your head down.”

I did, and before I realized it, I was asleep, worn out from the beating. It was night when I woke, and the brunette was shifting me over.

“Come into my tent, sir,” she said.

I watched hazily as a man followed her inside, and not long after, there were rhythmic grunts. I stared at the fire. What a horrid life, Fortuna. The other women were dancing around the fire, sashaying, singing, calling to the men in lewd voices. Men came and went while the women took turns using the tent, or disappearing into the woods. I lay where I was, too tired to do anything else.

A man in a cloak kicked me, and I turned towards him. I couldn't see his face, but he seemed familiar somehow. I waited, unsure what I should do.

“Are you the new whore?” The voice was gravelly and deep. I nodded. “My turn.”

He pulled me to my feet and then shoved me into the tent. I cried out when I landed on my ass. He closed the flap carefully, and then landed over me, his hands braced on either side of my body and holding his weight up. I flinched away from him, but spread my legs obediently.

He lowered his face until I could feel the heat of his breath on my ear. “Don't say a word, Marri.”

William! I bit my lip to keep from exclaiming with joy. He began to do pushups, his body brushing mine as it lowered, and I stifled a giggle at the pretense.

“Not long after you left, Katherine snuck off the boat when she realized how many horsemen were around this dock. Amadeus and I followed. She found her father.”

My whisper was little more than breath. “I met him.”

“He doesn't claim her as his daughter, but he values that she's a virgin, and that she could be a bargaining chip.”

“Bastard.”

“Quite so,” he said. “Somehow he's gone from being an unclaimed son, himself, to leader of his tribe, not a position he got to by being tolerant. So he'll use her, but that is all.”

“We have to get her out of here before she ends up married to some nasty political alliance.”

“Yes.”

“Can't we just pick her up and ride out?” I said.

“Can you imagine our Katherine standing for that?” I shook my head. “She has to make the decision. And we have to be ready so that when she does, we can act immediately.”

I let my fear and sorrow color my whisper. “Tony said you didn't exist.”

He shrugged, a difficult thing to do while doing pushups. He was fit, for an old man.

“They shun us. As long as we do not try to participate, as long as we stay in the shadows and away from decent folk, they will not harm us. But we are invisible.”

“That's awful!”

“It doesn't matter. Katherine matters.”

“Yes.”

He grunted, sounding like a man in the throes of spilling his seed, and it was all I could do to keep from giggling. Sometimes I forgot how good an actor William the Poet, William the Storyteller, was.

“You stay strong, Marri. I don't know why you're here, but you'll be able to get closer to her than I will.”

“How?”

“You're smart and resourceful. You'll find a way.”

He stood up, dropped a necklace on the blanket beside me, and left the tent. I rearranged my clothing and tucked a clean cloth between my legs—I needed it for my arousal, even if I didn't need it from William's visit—before exciting the tent. The women didn't pay any attention to me, but instead continued plying their trade.

When morning came, they counted up the payments, my necklace included. It was made of painted beads, and I thought I recognized Amadeus's hand in it. It made me nostalgic.

“You can stay with us, but you'll have to earn more than that in a night.”

I bowed my head. “I'm sorry. I was hurting too much.”

The brunette beckoned to me. “Let me see.”

We went into the tent, and she flipped my skirts up, then sucked in her breath. “Bernard can be brutal.”

“Yes.”

She applied a salve that burned, but she patted my back when I wiggled. “It will hurt at first, but it will clean the wounds. You have many scratches that broke the skin, and if they get infected, your life is in danger.”

I froze, heart thumping. Gods, what I wouldn't give to be back in the cities, not in the gods-forsaken wilderness with a bunch of primitive horsemen. Dammit, Fortuna, can't you make it easy for Katherine to leave?

Days began to blur. I lived in the tent with the other women—Marsillia, Nester, and Edith—and served the men who came calling. We ate together, endured insults and mistreatment together. When possible, I took their beatings for them. Most men were not so particular whether they whipped one of the others or me, especially if I took the blame for misbehavior. While the women never thanked me for it, I noticed a grudging admiration when I was able to bed multiple men in the same night that one had taken his belt to me for tripping blonde Nester when she danced with him, causing him to stumble. Not that I had actually tripped her, but I apologized as if I had.

They seemed to believe it was somewhat my due for being new, for not actually being one of their tribe. But at the same time, the fact that I bore it without complaint bought me some respect. I was sore and bitter much of the time, though I hid it well, and the pleasure that came from mingling pain and sex did much to sooth my resentment.

Too soon, the people began to pack to leave. It was only a week, and I felt an unparalleled urgency to get Katherine free before they moved on to gods only knew where. I walked through the camp, looking for her, determined to talk some sense into her, when I found her sitting beside Ramon as he discussed which camp they were going to next.

“Katherine!” I called.

Ramon glanced at me, anger in his dark eyes. “How dare you interrupt me?”

I dropped my eyes to the ground. “Please forgive me, sir. I just wanted to be sure my lady Katherine was well.”

“She's well.” A pause. “Though she's not a lady. Don't give her pretensions.”

Ah, Fortuna, now or never.

“She is,” I insisted. “She's a great, elegant, and wonderful lady who is highborn and beautiful.”

Katherine smiled at me, recognition in her face before she frowned a little in confusion.

He snorted. “Highborn? Hardly. She's a whore's get, and her only redeeming quality is that she hasn't followed her mother's twisted path.”

Katherine turned her face to him, eyes wide in shock.

“But, Papa! Didn't you love Mama once?”

He snorted again. “Love? Gods, no. She was a wanton little whore.”

“She loved you! She wanted to marry you!”

“Of course she wanted to marry me. Many women did. And if she had, she'd have been forgiven her whoring ways.”

“She was
virgin
!”

He shook his head. “Not a chance.”

Katherine's voice turned low and deadly, and inside I cheered. Good girl!

“You are calling my mother a liar, you ungrateful bastard. I came to you because I wanted to know you. I wanted to know the other half of my blood, to love you for giving me life. But you—you insult her; you insult me. How
dare
you?”

He flinched when she spat the word
bastard
at him, and I remembered William's words—Ramon’s own father had not acknowledged him. I could see the hurt flash in Ramon’s eyes, but it was his own fault. He'd had a chance to make it up to her, a second chance to acknowledge the child he'd fathered, but only if he believed her mother. And he didn't.