“Yes, Father,” he bows, shuffling his way toward the far end of the hallway.
“You’ll beat Mariel for simple lust?” she spits out with an animated whisper, as if I alone can hear her.
“What are you doing here?” I spit back.
“I came to plead for my friend.”
“And you have nothing else to say?”
She stares at me with her eyes coming to rest on my robe.
“No. I have nothing else to say, Keven Brannoch.” She levels me with a look that would like to climb right inside my soul and break it apart.
“Then you have no business with me. This chapel and this confessional are a sanctuary for those that sin, that they might find purification. You are no friend to Mariel Ducheal. She’s been ordered to cease her relationship with you and she will if she wishes to have a marriage.”
“You blame me for her, don’t you?”
“I think you blame yourself. But I don’t have time to discuss this. Within the next half hour, Mariel will be purified and we can all move on.”
I hold myself back with a coldness I’ve never displayed with her—even when I’ve come on sexually cold. I speak to her as a priest, as I’ve spoken with authority to hundreds of women and men. And she shrinks back just as all the others. I’m not sure whether to be glad of it or in tears for what I’m losing.
***
Ah, this one does her penance like a pro. We’ve had a few of those. My father used to tell me of the ones that enjoyed the ritual and kept coming back for more, until they were finally sent to the repository. That was a bitter part of the Utopia I’m glad was swept away before I took the helm of the church. Yet, looking at this one, I shudder, afraid that she was meant for that other world.
She lies on the packed dirt floor, face down, naked. Her body is pristine never having felt a lash, I’m sure. She’s veers from proper form with her legs slightly parted—that only enhances her sex. I suspect it’s throbbing against the ground. The ground itself throbs with energy and she seems one with it now. Her graceful arms are spread wide as though she embraces the earth and her lips seem to kiss it lovingly. So relaxed, I don’t believe she’s frightened at all.
I have the five foot lash in my hand, and scooting a stool to her side, I sit. I can already feel my loins tremble. Despite the fact that it’s just the two of us and the aide at the door, the chamber is crowded with anticipation. I think I’m seeing Teagan in her place wishing I could purify her now.
“I’m going to suggest to your fiancé that he prepare a leather and whip you regularly.”
I think I hear Mariel sigh.
“I hope he’ll understand the purpose, for if he allows himself to give you what you need, perhaps he’ll save this marriage and make it last. I do wish you well.” I motion to the aide and he comes to Mariel’s side. As he reaches for her hand, she begins to rise. Her thighs look like jelly trembling.
The design of the rack is to keep such trembling to a minimum. She’ll face the crossed pieces that make a capital “X” against the wall, then sit with the small bar wedged into her crotch. My aide helps her wriggle onto the hard rod. As short as she is, her feet won’t touch the floor which would make her discomfort all the more apparent. Mariel half turns to me with pure sexual heat pouring from under her heavy eyelids. While her ankles are being tied wide against the lower half the “X” she raises her hands above her slightly and leans her chest toward the top. Her breasts caress the beams above as though she’s aroused.
Only when the aide takes her hands from her do I see a wince of fear across her brow. He cuffs her right wrist and draws it high stretching her body as far as it is capable of reaching. Repeating the bondage with the other wrist, my supplicant has become immobile for a beating that the ancient ones say will purify not just her body, but drive deeply into her soul where she aches for redemption. I won’t argue with their premise, though I am sure this one will require more than one treatment with the lash to get inside her soul. Hers is as raunchy as my lover’s, and in need of agony as much as Teagan’s.
I make her wait, watching how she shifts uncomfortably on the bar. I credit the old ones with the brilliance to fashion this vile device so the penitent is constantly reminded while she’s being lashed that this is about a sexual crime. Her crotch alone will hurt for days after—so I’m told.
Standing back I find myself recalling the years I did this regularly, all with the mounting confusion of a man not right with his job. Now, it seems too easy, given the target for this. With it all coming clear to me—how this sassy one manipulated her world to get her prime sexual satisfaction—I finally rear back to let the lash gleefully rip the air and land on her virgin skin.
She moans like she’s having sex.
I strike again, finding the implement a joy as I grip it forcefully in my fist. I admire my scowl, the dark thoughts brewing in my brain and then, the look of Mariel Ducheal’s back side as rip after rip of the leather scalds the skin, turning it from a flat and uninspiring canvas to a splashy crimson, etched with one line after another.
I move facilely from her shoulders to her ass and thighs. As I do, I watch fascinated as her crotch bobs on the bar. The girl becomes one messy nightmare of raw skin—none of it is broken, all just painfully screaming with a heat that seems to rise off the surface and grab my cock. Her cries are never howls of anguish, but retain a fluid erotic quality that suggests from the very first strike her pussy is getting off on these extremes.
I bear down hard, lay the lash on heartily and with a speed that doesn’t allow her to think and certainly not to identify each strike on its own. She begins to writhe less purposefully, with frantic energy, and I sense some pain in her expression for the first time. I bear down more and rip one after another against her nakedness as I’m allowed to by law, wondering as I do, what holy man in the ancient time devised this method of purification. How many times did that priest get his cock off to the flood of sexual power that exudes from the female form at such a moment?
I pause for a time and stalk her, gaze into her face, noting the strangely peaceful expression. I can’t help but think of Teagan and what I have lost. Knowing that this girl cannot be purified so easily, I take my place behind her and begin again. With unrelenting passion I feel myself taken to a peak, orgasmic in nature. But without a typical climax, just a mental one, I diminish the intensity until I finally stop.
“A cane,” I make the order to Andres. He’s jerked from a mesmerized moment of his own, and finally scampers to the closet to find what I need.
Wasting no time now, I lay into the miserable bitch, cutting her across the shoulders six times and across her enflamed ass another six. She howls loudly with a voice that will echo through this sanctuary all night and greet the next remorseful woman that enters my confessional. I’ve made these cuts bite deep and they will not fade for days. With the last of the twelve rent against the top of her thighs, the cane splinters and I throw it to the ground.
“You’ll marry your fiancé tonight, if he’ll still have you. He’ll abide by my counsel to keep you faithful, because I’m afraid otherwise, you are hopeless.”
My words sting, even to me, and I see a shudder traverse the bitch’s body end to end. Perhaps it is just an orgasmic one, perhaps she feels the fear. Perhaps she feels shame. I have done all I can do to enlist her better reason. I’m still half a mind to send her South. But I still cannot condemn her to that chaos.
Chapter Eight
When I think of the color blue, I think of the sky when the sun shines, and the sea when I look down on it from a bluff above. I think of the delicate blue buds of wildflowers breaking out of the frosty ground in the foothills in spring. I think of clear music, and water running its way over my skin. And now, I think of Keven’s eyes at the door of his confessional. Forever, my experience of blue will be altered, and a chill will transit up my spine. The man I accosted in that moment was just a fragment of the one I came to love—and still do. But I can’t lo
ve him anymore. That is impossible.
As surely as he took a lash to Mariel’s ass today, he’s taken a lash to our love and laced it with rancor from which it won’t recover.
I am furious. I tear into the house and rip my weaving into shreds, throw black dye across the picture I painted while thinking of him. I slash at my own clothes, swearing that I’ll burn them because I remember him saying how he loves me in lavender and purple. I think I’m losing my grip on sanity and I don’t really care. I only need a few things to take with me and I scrounge around under my bed to find the old satchel I brought with me from the South. It’s dusty, but a rag is good enough to clean it for where I’m going. I’m almost finished packing when I hear a firm rap on my door.
No! I won’t answer. Even if he knocks again or peeks in the window, I won’t go to him.
“Miss, please answer.” Someone’s calling me out of my frantic insensibility. And it is not Keven’s voice. I dizzily make my way to the door, thinking for a moment I’m going to faint. I must stare at the messenger blankly because he looks at me as though wondering if I’m awake. Maybe he thinks I’ve gone mad.
“I have this from the Brannoch priest,” he says, holding out a starched paper envelope. It crumples as I take it from the man’s hands, a finer parchment I’ve never seen or felt. The crackle of the paper assaults my ears as I open the note and read Keven’s long hand scrawl.
“Please return with Andres, Teagan. Nothing can be salvaged with silence.” Keven Brannoch.
And he even signs his full name. Though I’ve thought little of this Brannoch priest since I first became aware of the man’s power in Utopia, apparently that power impressed me—through osmosis perhaps. I find myself hardly able to keep the paper in my hand.
“I’ve been instructed to tell you that there have been serious charges made against you. If you choose not to respond to this message, the provincial magistrate will send his officer to bring you in.”
“I was packing to leave. My home is in the South. Perhaps the Brannoch priest and his provincial magistrate would be just as happy if I began my journey now.”
“I don’t think so, miss,” he says. The young priest is quite a sight in his leather britches and plain cotton shirt. He has the look of Cabot—what he might have looked like when he was younger—dark trimmed hair, sculptured features and a controlled countenance that’s frightfully alluring. In another world I might have invited the young man in for tea. Perhaps it is the look of Cabot that makes me take him seriously—even though I don’t know why I should bother with this summons. I’m sure there is little left to salvage of my lost relationship. I would like to spit on the Brannoch priest, but I know that would likely get me punished worse. Other than that, I can’t see what could possibly be gained by a confrontation.
I go with Keven Brannoch’s young aide regardless.
The village is curiously quiet after the free-for-all earlier. The merchants are closing their stalls for the night. Some are packing their crates into motorized carts. The smell is choking and casts a dirty haze on the marketplace that reminds me of the cities in the South.
I follow the young priest, wondering if we are noticed by the few that remain in the village, though it seems everyone is too busy to wonder why a woman of obviously dubious intentions is crossing the square behind a holy man.
The chapel feels as cold to my skin as it did when I entered in the afternoon, though now there is a dampness in the air—the breezes bring in fog from the sea which is hanging just over the ridge above the village. I expect that by the time I leave that fog will have swooped down and encased the houses and establishments until the sun rises again and burns it away.
We walk through a different part of the church building, through what appears to be a ruin. We pass near the confessional, but turn before we get to that corridor. Another hall leads to a staircase winding through a oak paneled turret. At the top the door stands open. The young man that looks like Cabot, motions me to enter though he doesn’t follow me. Instead, he closes the door at my back and I’m face to face with the Brannoch priest once again.
“Sit, Teagan.”
I hear his voice sound more like the man I love, and the expression in those blue eyes is not so cold. He sits behind an ancient desk, not in robes this time, just his causal clothes. The blue of his eyes exudes a charismatic style that seems on the surface so unassuming. He appears so relaxed, I’d think he’s just wiped his brow after making kindling of a young tree. Seeing me hesitate, he moves out of his chair and in front of the desk. His head cocks boyishly and there is just the flicker of a smile on his lips.
“I don’t think I’ll be staying long,” I find myself saying.
“That’s okay, I just wanted to talk about what happened today.”
If only I could go to him freely but my feet simply won’t move.
“I wish you’d sit, please.” His eyebrows raise expectantly, and he extends his hand. I stare at it thinking of the dozen ways I’ve known that hand to exact pleasure from me whether with brutality or tenderness.
“Did she enjoy it?” I ask.
He drops his hand and his expression turns puzzled.
“Mariel, did she enjoy being beaten?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“I’m sure she did. I’ve known for some time she was creating her crimes to have this judgment come down on her. Her fiancé seems like a nice fellow, but that is not what she really needs.”
He nods as though he agrees. “I did the best I could with her.”
“And your best was denying her access to me?”
“I am bound by laws, Teagan,” he explains. He sounds so rational and in control. I am not.
“But apparently not when you fuck me.”
“You’re angry,” he says.
“Oh,” I smirk, “so you notice my sarcasm.”
“I understand.”
“Tell me, how is it possible for the highest holy man in the Utopian world to lie to a worthless female wanderer? I don’t observe the customs of your world, but even I have a certain reverence for what purports to be holy.”
“Holy is not the word I’d use to describe myself. It’s my guess you’ve seen the ancient texts and have formed a higher opinion of my station than it warrants.”
“No. I haven’t done that at all. I make my observation from the people around me, and how they speak of you. Perhaps you’re the only one that doesn’t honor who you are.”
“Perhaps.”
He still looks at me kindly waiting for me to move closer. That infinite patience I’ve noticed in him so many times rides right at the surface of his demeanor. Now I understand so many of his mannerisms seen inside the framework of a priest masking himself in a humble man’s attitude.
“How could you lie to me?”
“I haven’t lied, Teagan. Not a word I’ve told you has been dishonest.”
“Then that makes you especially cunning—that you could twist the truth so easily to have what you want. You declare your love for me, but refuse to let me know exactly who it is that I was loving in return. Of all my many lovers—and yes there have been many—you are the most deceitful and the one with the cruelest heart.”
“Would I have had you if I’d told you who I was the first time we met?”
“No.” I state flatly.
“And why is that?”
“My cunt would never had risen to the occasion even if your cock had.”
“Because I am a priest.”
“Because you are priest. Yes.”
“And is your lust lessened, now that you know who I am?”
“Are you saying you had to be dishonest to know me?”
“I am.” He cocks his head again in that boyish way of his. “And you’re proving my point.”
“You should be above such things.”
“I’m a man, Teagan. But I was only half a man. I had half of Utopia thinking I must like men more than women, I’ve been so curiously celibate. My
lusts aren’t common ones, and the calling into which I was born cruelly thrust those lusts in front of my eyes, as if to mock me. I was becoming only half a priest as well, until I met you.”
“Oh, so I’ve redeemed you?” The razor edge of my sarcasm breeds fire.
“You’ve made me see that my lust wasn’t wrong, but simply who I am. Does that sound too trite?”
It sounds beautiful to me, that what I am could redeem a priest. But I’m still furious.
“Please, Teagan, come sit with me. Please.”
He pulls two chairs away from the desk, and I stare at them blankly.
Despite my fury, I can’t hold back any longer, but I do still want to rip him apart. Taking the chair he offers me, we face each other and he leans forward, taking my hands in his. The instant of his touch, the warmth spreads through my body, and I feel it residing in my belly and my heart, and from both those places my groin feels an awful jolt of desire.
“If I thought you would not have bolted from me, then I would have told you.”
“Then you don’t have much faith in me.”
“You said yourself, you would not have had an affair with the Brannoch priest.”
“I don’t know what I would have done, Keven,” I tell him, honestly confused now. “But the shock you gave me today has made me so angry …”
“I know you’re planning to move South. If there is any way I could prevent that, if there is anything I could say.”
“You want me to stay, for our affair to continue?”
He nods.
“And how’s that? You keep meeting with me covertly, come to my house whenever you want? I become your mistress, like the Provincial Lord, Knowland, has a mistress? You’d be living a lie.” I shake my head. “Though I suppose it’s hardly different than it’s always been. I guess living a lie isn’t a problem for you.”
“It has been from the beginning. You can ask my Provincial Lord, Knowland.”
I don’t have to ask, I believe him. This affair between us has locked horns with his birthright as a priest and has been responsible for a hundred looks he’s cast me—those that were weary and sad and pensive and even angrily moody. I treated those looks with compassion then, why not now? Or is my compassion really just a second away, locked inside with my love for him?
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