Instinctively, I reached for the knife that Bors had given me, but I was too slow and the men too experienced for me to surprise them. One of them stepped forward and pinned my arms to the bar. “Please,” I begged. “This is all a misunderstanding. I’m not selling my body. I’m not a whore!”
It was as if they couldn’t hear me at all, blinded as they were by frenzied lust. A second man hiked my skirt up and I felt his rough, greasy fingers on the inside of calf, then my knee, then my thigh, and I screamed at him to leave me alone, but it did no good.
As they handled me, the barmaid’s voice rose above the hammering of my heart. “It was us who took Angelica to the sheriff. Everyone said she’d worked her dark magic on you. How else could something that had been so pure become so wicked?”
Desperately, struggling against their grip as I begged them to stop, I searched for a means of escape, but I could find none. A third man stepped forward and clapped his hand over my mouth, then tore my blouse from my chest. My eyes filled with tears as I fought with all my might, screaming against his palm for help. But when I looked through the men, the barmaid had abandoned me, and the pub had emptied except for these strangers.
These five men meant to take me by force, and I was utterly and completely powerless to stop them. I tried kicking them between the legs, but the fifth man grabbed my ankles. “Lads, this is going to be a fun ride!” He crowed as he reached down to undo the buttons on his britches.
One of them grabbed hold of my breasts and forced me back onto the bar so that I was completely exposed to them all, and in that moment their lewd comments ceased, the pub falling silent.
“Fuck me to hell, look at that—” The one who had me over the bar pulled his hands from my breasts like they’d been burnt.
I felt the others fall back all at once. They scattered from me like cockroaches fleeing the light.
“Get the fuck away from her, before she gets us all killed,” a second one said, his eyes wide. He looked like he might vomit at any moment, and the five of them moved in unison.
I slumped as they scrambled for the door, leaving me alone and half-naked in the filthy pub, the tears streaming freely down my cheeks as I sobbed into my trembling palms.
It took me mere moments to collect myself, straightening my torn skirt back around my legs as best I could, and as I did I tried to make sense of what had just happened, but it was impossible.
One instant, they were heated with desire to take me against my will. Then the moment they saw me, I had repulsed them. I was grateful that they’d let me go, but also ashamed by how truly hideous I must be for my body to inspire such a change in five drunken men.
Once I was able to stand, I did, and gathered up my torn blouse, pressing it to my bare chest as I ran back in the direction of Angelica’s, letting myself sob freely and openly under cover of night.
Sure that Bors must have been repulsed. After his lust faded, his need for release sated, he found an excuse and rode away desperate to be released from what was not clearly just a cunning man’s conquest of yet another virgin.
He’d used me. Toyed with me when he asked me to marry him in jest.
As the tears burned down my cheeks, I could almost hear his laughter in the wind.
I truly was now a whore.
Bors
It had been one hell of a long ride. Muddy roads from the recent rains slowed my pace and my stallion went lame just as the garrison came in sight beyond the next valley.
After I tended to my business and secured what I’d come for, I borrowed a bay mare from the stable master, who owed me a favor, and rode back with my stallion in tow. Every fucking minute away from Sara felt like an eternity.
Now, as I rounded the corner and closed in on Angelica’s cottage, I slowed for what felt like the first time since I’d left her. Instead of the warmly lit windows I expected, the cottage looked cold and dark, and I knew there was something amiss. “Fuck.”
I hopped off the mare and tied the horses to the post on the roadside. Then, approaching the house, I called out for Sara and Angelica, but got no answer. I drew my blade and went around the back of the cottage, keeping my steps centered and silent, listening for any sound at all.
I entered the house from the rear door and lit an oil lamp in the corner. The kitchen was just as I’d left it. A check of the bedrooms revealed the same. A window on the first floor had been broken, but it had been covered with a board and there were no fresh shards of glass. There were no signs of struggle, but the house was empty. The whole situation was fucking eerie and it gave me a very bad feeling.
Whatever had happened, it had caused both Sara and Angelica to abandon the safety of their home. A wave of panic and anger rolled through me. Sara’s father was behind this, I was sure of it. That son of a bitch. If he’d laid a single finger on Sara—or Angelica, for that matter—I’d kill him with my bare hands.
Outside the window, a twig snapped. I kicked open the back door, blade brandished. I thought I was ready for anything, fucking anything, any fight, any confrontation…
But I wasn’t ready for what I saw—not even fucking close. Starting down the garden path was Sara, barely illuminated by the weak moonlight. Her clothes were torn, her hair was a mess, and her shoulders were bare. Even in the dim light, I could see she’d been crying. Someone had attacked her. That much was crystal clear. And I swore to myself there and then, that whoever it was would beg for mercy before I cut them down.
I slid my blade into its sheath, closed the space between us in three long strides and took her in my arms. “Tell me who did this to you. Tell me what happened.”
“You’re back,” she said, her hand pressed to her lips, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Thank goodness, you’re back. I thought it was all a cruel joke…” She was unsteady on the uneven stones of the path and looked as though she might be about to fall.
I dropped my blade and scooped her up in my arms. “What happened? Tell me. What happened to you?”
At first, she tried to be strong for me, but I could tell from the way she embraced me that something, or someone, had terrified her. “I’m fine. Really, I am. Please don’t worry. I’m okay,” she said. She wiped away her tears with her small palm but still her lips and chin trembled. “I was sure you’d left forever.”
She was reassuring me too much for it to be the truth. Her words sounded forced... “Never. Now, don’t lie to me, my angel. Tell me.”
Sara shook her head. “Never mind me. I’m worried about Angelica. They’ve taken her—the sheriff is holding her on suspicion of witchcraft. They’re planning to try her. They’re out for blood, Bors. We have to help her.”
Angry though I was, I wasn’t surprised. In this place, a woman who used her mind or her body was damn near guaranteed to be labeled a witch. But I’d known Angelica a long time, and I knew the sheriff, too.
The situation wasn’t quite as bad as Sara might think. “If the townspeople are after her for witchcraft,” I told Sara, “the safest place for her tonight is in that holding cell.” What she didn’t know, or could not have known, is the sheriff had been a discrete paying customer of Angelica’s in his days before he found his wife and from what Angelica confided, he was always decent as well as satisfied.