Penthesilea
Forum Administrator
 Offline
 Warrior Queen, DarkLady, Phoenix, Ghostbuster
Posts: 47422
Location: The Castle.....
Joined: Jun 21 st, 2006
Gender: 
|
A stand alone really short, short story.
Dec 15th, 2006 at 3:32am
|
Print Post
|
Another Handmaid’s Tale
Even if she had had a voice to cry out with when rescue came, the gag in her mouth prevented any outcry. And she was bound, hand and foot, and so couldn’t stagger out of the deep shadow into which she had been thrown. So she watched, silent, helpless and overlooked, when the rescue party, led by the Princess’s lover, arrived to rescue her. Judging from the speed with which they hustled Her Highness out of the dungeon cell, the Castle had not yet been taken by the irate King’s forces. Her Highness’s handmaid -- the only one who had been taken with her when they had been ambushed -- was on her own. To be fair to the men, they probably had not even seen her laying in the dark corner of the cell but Her Royal Highness had known she was there. And had said nothing. The rogue Lord who had taken them had given specific orders that the Princess was not to be touched. That protection had not extended to her attendant. She had been “shared” by the men who had survived the attack on the Princess’ procession as part of their pay. She had never known a man before that day. The unintended result of a Highlord’s fling with a servant girl, she had been abandoned by her mother at an early age, left to the indifferent care of the other servants in her father’s household. As she approached an age to attract male attention, her father made it plain that any man coming near her would be severely punished. And when a young man had defied that edict and had spoken to her during a festival, her father had had him beaten nearly to death. No one came near her after that and, in fact, it became a game among some of the servants to see who could be the most cruel to her.
When her half-sister had gone to the King’s Court to be seen by the young lords and find herself a husband, she had been sent along to be her maid because by that time she had learned the most important lesson of her life.. She was no one and nothing. She existed to serve and if she did her job well and escaped abuse it was a good day for which she should thank the Gods. It had been only pure bad luck -- the only kind that she had -- that she had taken the place of another girl in the Princess’s retinue for that trip. Her sister had done it to curry favor with the princess and it had worked because she was competent and discrete and kept secrets well. And as a consequence of her competence, she was bound, gagged and violated in a cold, damp dungeon waiting for her captors to discover that their prize had flown and only a lowly servant was left to be their hostage. That did not bode well for her survival in either the long or short terms.
Determined that if she was to die it would be on her own terms, she forced her aching body into a sitting position. From there, she worked her bound hands under her buttocks to the back of her knees and finally, she forced her feet through the circle of her arms and pulled the gag from her mouth. After that, it took only a few minutes to use her teeth to untie her hands. Shortly after that, her feet were free as well. She made her way to the still open cell door and peeked out. There was no one in the darkened corridor and no indication of which way the rescue party had gone. She knew that she couldn’t stay where she was. When the Princess’s escape was discovered, His Lordship would be furious and it was not outside the realm of possibility that a nameless servant girl would suffer for it. She remembered what had already been done to her and gagged. She could not vomit, there was nothing in her stomach, but she heaved for several minutes as she recalled what had been done to her and what she had been forced to do.
Finally, with a forlorn prayer to the Gods for guidance, she picked a direction and set out moving as silently as she could. She didn’t know how she would get past any guards she encountered but she decided she would work on that problem when it appeared. As she wandered, she thought about the fact that for the first time in her life no one was controlling her -- at least insofar as no one was giving her orders. It felt strange. She thought about being free -- what it would be like. And how she would survive. She thought about that as she tried to make the best choices as she navigated through the maze of the dungeon. After a while, she realized that she had nothing left to worry about. The dungeon had given way to a cave complex. Instead of heading out of the dungeon she had wandered deeper into the mountain. She was lost with no water, no food, no light and only the shredded rags of her servant’s uniform for warmth. She was going to die, alone and unmourned, in the dark. She cried for a while about that, the inherent unfairness of it all, but nothing in her life had been fair from the moment that she had been born the bastard child of a lord and a serving girl. “Fairness” was for Princesses who were rescued and legitimately born daughters as was love, kindness and simple concern. She thought then of the only person she could recall who had ever shown her the slightest kindness. He was a nobleman, not the highest but not the lowest either, who had paid court to her half-sister. She had done him a small service, nothing special, just fetched something that he had forgotten, and he had smiled at her and thanked her. Like she was a person, like she mattered! And she knew that he had meant it because he treated all the servants that way. From that moment on, she would have gladly died for him. And she had hoped that he would marry her half-sister -- even though her beautiful sister was a shrewish bitch with the morals of a cat in heat -- simply because the possibility of spending her life as a servant in his household was the only hope of paradise that she had. He had shown better sense than to propose and had left her half-sister’s circle of friends. He had never known how much the little servant girl had loved him or how much she had cried when he moved on.
Having nothing better to do, she walked a while longer, running her hand along the cave wall until she found a place where the wall bowed out a little making a small hollow in the stone. It had gotten very cold in the cave and she was grateful for it. Death by cold was quicker and much to be preferred over dying of starvation or thirst. The hollow was off to the side and out of the way -- even in a cave where her remains would never be found she made sure not to be in the way or to inconvenience anyone -- and she eased her abused and aching body down onto the stone. She hoped the cold would ease her body’s pain a bit before she died. It would be a small comfort but it was all she could hope for. That, and the fact that her lordly father would never know what had become of her and would likely spend the rest of his days wondering if she was off somewhere disgracing his family name. That brought a small smile to her face. She got as comfortable on the floor as she could, curling on her side with her arm under her head. She could feel what little heat was still in her body leach into the stone and she closed her eyes. She called up the image of the young lord’s smile in her mind and held it for as long as coherent thought lasted and then she slipped quietly into the dark.....
|
Pages: 1
A stand alone really short, short story. (Read 4205 times)
