Sir Apropos of Nothing

by Peter David

  For a moment, no one said anything. Then everyone (except the knights) jumped slightly as the thunder rumbled so loudly that it seemed to have taken up residence within the inn itself. Stroker was clearly unsure whether the knights meant trouble or not. He came halfway around the bar and stood there, leaving the broadsword that he kept behind the bar for trouble within easy reach. Although he must have been a bit concerned, for he was outnumbered and not in a position to display a true show of force.

  It did not, however, matter in the end. One of the knights—presumably the one of highest rank—took a step forward, his armor glistening in the candlelight. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly soft. “We seek a private room so that we may take food and drink and entertain ourselves in relative quiet, away from prying eyes. And we wish to have our own serving girl, who will attend to all our needs.”

  The fact that the knights had not immediately torn the place apart apparently emboldened Stroker, who coughed a couple of times loudly and then said, “And I am to provide this for you out of the goodness of my heart?”

  The knight reached into the folds of his cape and withdrew a small bag. He balanced it in his palm for a moment, as if weighing and considering the contents, and then he tossed it to Stroker in a casual underhand manner. Stroker caught it and glanced inside. Apparently there were enough gold coins within to satisfy even his avarice.

  “That should suffice to obtain the services we requested,” said the knight, and after a pause he added, “with funds left over to buy a round of drinks for everyone in this fine establishment.”

  This elicited a salutary cheer from the other patrons. There is no great trick to commanding the loyalty of a group of drunkards. Buy them drinks, and they’re yours.

  Now, it should be noted that during all of this Madelyne was watching from the corner, enraptured. She had seen but one knight in her life, and from what she told me, he could not begin to compare in magnificence to even the least of this group of soldiers who had wandered into her place of business. Unconsciously she began fiddling with her hair, straightening her potato sack of a skirt. Stroker must have noticed her fussing, because he turned to her and called her over. She came to him immediately.

  “You belong to those gentlemen for the evening,” growled Stroker, “and will attend to all their needs. Take them to …” He appeared to consider options, and then said, ” … the Majestic Suite.” He had raised his voice a bit when he said it so that the knights would hear. Most of them didn’t seem to care. The one who had been doing the talking tossed off a small salute.

  She stared at him blankly. “The what?”

  With an irritated nod of his head, he said, “The room in the back. You know.”

  She did indeed know the room in the back. It was hard for there to be any confusion, considering that there was only one room there. But it had never been called Majestic or anything else other than the back room. Madelyne, in many ways, was still rather naïve—at least until that night’s events were over—and she didn’t grasp that Stroker might be posturing for the benefit of the knights. So she mentally shrugged and guided the knights to the back room. Their apparent leader glanced around with an air of vague indifference and simply said, “This will do.”

  There was a long table down the middle, with benches on either side. The knights took positions on the benches and Madelyne proceeded to serve them. The knights did not address her directly, but instead talked among themselves in low, cautious tones. Madelyne suspected that they were discussing affairs of state, secret matters that were meant for the ears of knights and kings and none other. She made sure to keep the drink flowing, biting back her natural inquisitiveness and instead being content to bask in their presence.

  Minutes became hours. The storm had continued unabated, prompting a number of the customers to refrain from going outside. Consequently they had simply fallen asleep in their seats or at their tables, some of them with their drinks in hand. Madelyne moved among the snoring crowd, maneuvering effortlessly with more mugs of mead for the knights in the back room. The only other individual remaining awake at that point was Stroker. Nothing seemed to faze him.

  When Madelyne walked into the back room with the drinks, she felt a little trill of warning down the back of her neck. The knights were looking at her in a way that they hadn’t before. Indeed, earlier it had seemed as if they were barely noticing her presence, beyond the fact that she was the means by which they acquired more drink. But now they were studying her, appraising her, and apparently liking what they were seeing.

  My mother, the poor thing, was flattered. She ignored the little buzz of alarm and instead chose to be pleased that she was garnering that sort of attention from such noble personages.

  She placed the mugs down in front of each of them, thunk, thunk, thunk, just as she had repeatedly during the many hours prior to that. In those cases, their hands had immediately wrapped around the handles as if afraid that someone would burst in and steal their beverages. This time, no one did so. They didn’t appear to notice the drinks were there. Their concentration remained upon her.

  The fact that she was so much the center of attention actually emboldened her, when it should have warned her to get the hell out of the room … not that it likely would have made a difference. “Gentlemen … I know none of your names,” she said, imagining that she sounded rather saucy. “Here I’ve been serving you all this time, and we haven’t been properly introduced. I know you not … nor do you know me.”

  “We don’t need to,” said another one of the knights.

  “Oh.” She wasn’t quite certain what else to say in such a circumstance, with a reply that seemed so harsh. “Well …” She curtsied slightly and then said, “If you will be needing anything else, my name is—”

  She didn’t get the chance to tell them.

  One of them was on his feet, moving so quickly that she never actually saw him rise. He clamped a hand over her mouth, cutting off her sentence, and then he pushed her roughly onto the table. She cried out in surprise and confusion, but since her mouth was covered her cries were muffled.

  She heard a tearing of cloth, and was so disconnected from the moment that she didn’t fully realize, until the chill air washed over her, that her dress was being torn from her. Pieces of metal were clanking to the floor as several of the knights were divesting themselves of their armor. “Hold her,” growled one of them.

  The thunder blasted, and the room seemed to light up with lightning, and then of course even the infinitely naïve Madelyne understood what was to happen. She managed to get her teeth around the fingers of the knight who was muting her, and she sank her incisors deep into his flesh. He let out a yelp, reflexively loosening his grip, and then Madelyne cried out at the top of her lungs. With perfect timing, thunder smashed once more, covering her cries so that none heard her.

  That was, at least, what she believed. I think it perfectly likely that Stroker did indeed hear her cry out in fear and terror, but simply chose to do nothing. Why should he have? He had no particular love for Madelyne, and very great love for money. If she needed to be sacrificed upon the altar of his greed, then he would gladly twist the knife himself.

  The ironic thing is, it’s not as if my mother was a virgin, a delicate flower, or a prude. She worshipped the knights. They were like unto gods to her. They could easily, I suspect, have had their way with her if they had merely plied her with a drink or two and a few seductive words. I can’t say she would willingly have taken on the lot of them … but I wouldn’t have been surprised. But these were violent men, these knights. They were bloody bastards, is what they were. Warriors who had no grasp of niceties and sweetness. Oh, they likely had some notions of courtship and courtesy, but these things were reserved for noble ladies of standing … not ignoble ladies who were lying flat. Madelyne was not worth sweet words or seduction. These were men who were still riding the giddy euphoria that comes with war. They had displayed their armed might to one another, fighti
ng battles that the simple peasant could only guess at. Now they were eager to show their abilities of conquest in other realms. Realms that should have been, as far as others were concerned, of a gentle nature. But these were rough men, and gentleness was not for them.

  And so they took her repeatedly, right there on the table. Splinters lodged in her bare buttocks, and bruises were raised on her upper body where pieces of still-worn armor slammed into her when a knight moved atop her with less than caution. As for her lower body, well, at first she felt pain, but that was only for the first couple of “suitors.” After that she was numb as they continued to spear her with all the compassion that a butcher displays for a hog. The numbness very likely originated in her mind as sort of a fail-safe, and all sensation below her waist simply shut down.

  That was how the knights of King Runcible the Crafty entertained themselves that night. One after the other, and even the one who wasn’t a knight, he took his turn with her, and when they were all done, they did it again. By that point she was not even trying to say anything. She simply lay there like a battered sack of wheat, her thoughts in a very faraway place filled with dancing unicorns which approached her shyly as she, virtuous and without stain, held out her hand to them and let them gently lick her palm. Nearby her in her fantasy realm, the phoenix bird birthed itself once more. High overhead, a great purple dragon flew by, wings outstretched and lazily beating the air.

  She drifted off into that pleasant world, and there she resided until she felt some sort of warmth upon her face. Slowly her eyes fluttered open and she realized that it was streams of sunlight caressing her. The thunderous night had passed, and she had lain unconscious upon that hard wooden tabletop, her skirts hiked up around her waist, for who knew how long. The knights were gone, and the only thing to mark their passing was the soreness between her legs.

  Stroker walked in, and whatever it was he was expecting to see it certainly wasn’t that. For just a moment, surprise played across his face. Perhaps he felt a flickering of concern for the woman. He might have regretted his inaction of the previous night, for he must have known in his bones what the result was going to be; and maybe there was a spark of human compassion and guilt that clawed at him, which rattled his spine and chilled his blood.

  If there was anything like that, it passed quickly, and his normal scowl darkened his face once more as he said gruffly, “Get cleaned up. You look like crap.” He paused as if he was considering adding something, and then thought better of it, turned, and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  And thus was I conceived.

  It occurs to me, as I read over the previous narrative, that I may come across as cold or hardhearted. I have described to you, after all, the brutal and pitiless gang rape of my mother. I have done so in a fairly straightforward manner. Where is the passion, you might wonder? Where is the sense of outrage? Did I not care about the awful circumstances that resulted in my being placed upon this earth?

  Once, passion was all that sustained me. Anger burned brightly in my chest, and a sense of moral outrage consumed me. These were, after all, knights. King Runcible would boast at community fairs and such that they represented the best that mankind had to offer. They were to stand for fair play, for justice, for honor. My mother knew differently, of course. She knew what a pack of bastards they were. Either Runcible knew of their efforts and quietly endorsed them—in which case he was a screeching hypocrite—or else they acted without his knowledge, in which case his craftiness was a sham and he lived in quiet ignorance. But she said nothing. She kept her silence, as did the other girls who worked in the inn.

  They did so out of fear, of course. Oh, they could have gone to the king, tried to accuse an assortment of the knights of their crime. But Madelyne would have had trouble identifying the men in question, for they had kept their hoods up the entire time they had been there, and the dim light had continued to cloak them in shadows as black as their own souls. Even if Madelyne had been able to single out specific knights, she would have had no proof to offer. Her bruised body, even the child growing in her belly, could easily have been the result of any other assignation with the types of brutes who usually consorted with tavern floozies. To accuse a knight without proof would have been slander, and slander against a knight of the realm was suicide.

  So she said nothing. Indeed, as she rolled off the table and went to wash herself, she knew already that she was going to say nothing. She also claimed later, to me, that she knew even at that moment that I was already in process.

  I have no rage now. I have no pity now. It has all been burned out of me, exorcised after decades of experiences and strife, of trauma, of triumphs and almost immediate setbacks. I look upon my life and I am simply left shaking my head, wondering how I managed to contain all the rage that surged in me without spontaneously combusting or in some other way experiencing an abrupt end.

  My mother claimed it was because I had a destiny, and my anger was what I needed to survive.

  Perhaps she wasn’t all that naïve after all. Either that, or she simply learned from her harsh trials, just as I did, and dealt with it in her own way. At least she didn’t lose her mind. Certainly other women in that position might have done so.

  Or maybe she did, and I simply didn’t know, since I was a little insane myself. Maybe I still am.

  Chapter 3

  My mother needed money, for she supposedly knew immediately that she would be preparing for my arrival. And she knew where her potential for earnings lay.

  You see, what I neglected to mention in my earlier narrative is that when she awoke that next, sun-drenched morning, there was something of value upon her belly, in addition to something of value (albeit questionable) within it. It was a handful of coins, glittering in the sunlight. The oh-so-generous knights had left it there. Whether they intended it mockingly or sincerely, or whether they really gave it no thought at all, it’s difficult to say. It was far more for a night’s work, though, than she had ever received in all her time as a serving wench. The knights obviously considered it simply another form of service.

  Her trembling hand wrapped around the coins, and only then did she truly believe they were there.

  Money for sex.

  It seemed a rather elegant solution to her. She had dreams of building up a sort of nest egg that she could use to buy me … well … I’m not quite certain, actually. An education, perhaps? A career? A means out of poverty? She might not have had her plans fully formed at that juncture. She only knew that a means of making money had been handed her.

  Not that the idea of selling herself hadn’t flittered through her head before, particularly on cold nights when she would have done damned near anything just to obtain a bit of shelter. But she still had enough ties to her old way of thinking that the notion of such activities was repugnant to her. Well, her evening with the knights had certainly realigned her thinking on that. The thing that struck her the most was how she had managed to take herself away to a happy place of fantasy and escape. Hidden away in the innermost recesses of her mind, she had very much liked it there. The prospect of returning to that place was not unattractive to her. And if it was possible to earn money while doing so, why then … it was almost like a paid vacation.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if she had to worry about getting pregnant.

  And so my mother turned to prostitution.

  She didn’t quit her day job. She maintained her regular serving duties at Stroker’s, if for no other reason than that it provided her with shelter. But she quickly developed a keen eye for seeing potential customers in the daily parade of ruffians and vagabonds who would pass through the inn. Just as quickly, she grew skilled at letting them know in subtle—and sometimes unsubtle—ways that she could be easily had for a fairly reasonable price.

  Stroker became aware of her activities in short order. Far from being morally outraged, he had no problem with it. As far as he was concerned, he supported anything that provided encouragement for return
customers. He did, however, want to make certain that he benefited in the short term as well, and insisted on taking a portion of Madelyne’s earnings as commission. She didn’t argue the point. She was still bringing in more money, at a faster rate, than she would previously have thought possible, so she had no real reason to complain.

  In the meantime, she was quite aware of my presence in her belly. Fortunately I developed slowly and was something of a runt, even at my eventual birth, so the fact of the pregnancy was something she was able to conceal for quite some time. If Stroker had had a brain beyond the brutish canniness that passed for thought, he might have figured it out. What woman is available for entertainment every day of the month? Nonetheless, it slipped past Stroker for a good long time. Eventually, though, even he—the oaf—noticed it.

  In point of fact, someone brought it to his attention. A patron was lying flat on my mother’s belly when I decided that that would be a good time to announce my presence to the world. Imagine, if you will, the surprise of the patron to feel a fluttering but firm kick coming through my mother’s belly and bumping against his own stomach. He froze, as did she, for she knew what it was and he thought, but couldn’t be sure. Just to make sure that there was no doubt, I kicked a second time, and he leaped off her as if her insides had suddenly become shards of glass.

  “What the hell do you have in there!” he shouted.

  “In where?”

  “In your belly! Gods … you’re pregnant!” he said without waiting for her to reply. “I’m not the father! Don’t you dare say I’m the father!”

  My mother was not given to bursts of wit, but her reply was about as close as she usually came. “This is our first time together, you idiot,” she said. “What, you think you’re so potent that you not only impregnate a woman, but you do it retroactively? Skip the first six months of the term? Why not just have sex with a woman and cause the child to spring out of her head fully formed before you even put on your hat to leave?”