She left the hard wood that supported her and stuck close to the foliage as she pressed onward. She could see light through the windows of the palace. She was close enough to hear laughter – women’s laughter, and music. She heard strings and a plucked instrument – maybe a harpsichord. She wouldn’t know a harpsichord by sight and knew little of it by sound, but that was her uneducated guess.
Behind the great house, the mountains loomed as dark, judging shadows. They were covered by snow much of the year and left this land trapped to its own resources much of the winter. Tonight, the air had an unusually sticky, warm wetness. In the era when kings and knights bought land in blood off the end of the sword, those mountains were great protection.
Now, kings and lords traded lands and lives with clasped hands and the scratching of quills through ink. Her father had told her this land had changed to the hands of another king in just such a deal and that’s what this grand ball was about. Nobles of a new king positioned above her father’s lord were come to be wooed and wined and danced and more.
As Bessella reached the wall and peered through the bars of the closed gate, the music and laughter sounded the same as other parties she had snuck this far to hear through the walls. Under the charge of a new king, crops had grown the same, animals fed the same, and her father’s hammer rang off hot iron with the same, crisp tone. Somehow she thought the party must be different. She had worn her finest dress because she planned on this night to go further and find out more than her previous spying quests.
Bessella seized the edges of the stones on the gate column and began to climb. She climbed often as a child in clothes better suited for such play, but she was eighteen seasons old now. She was more shapely and now wore a dress designed for things other than play. Despite her disadvantages, her hands found the top edge of the wall and she let out a high-pitched squeal contained in her. It wasn’t a joyous sound nor exactly one of contained pain. It was a sound she had heard from the woods as she followed older girls sneaking off with boys. Once, she had followed another peasant girl with the lord’s son Thomas. Bessella had snuck close enough to see that time and at Thomas’s command the girl had removed the fleshy shaft that stood stiff like the trunk of a tree and she had used her mouth upon it. Bessella had touched herself where the weak tingles had started.
She wondered if Lord Ramsey’s son Thomas would be at this ball as well. Perhaps he would take another girl aside for ungodly commands of the flesh. Bessella felt weak and she slipped. She let out another high groan and the sound made her feel naughty and dirty. She heaved herself back up and over the stone wall. Her skirts caught on the rough blocks and pulled up as she let herself down on the master’s side of the wall. They drew up high enough that the night air teased the sweat that coated and glistened over her bare buttocks and exposed sex. Her breathing came heavy and lusty as she dropped to the ground and recovered herself with her skirts. A proper dress required under skirts and fine undergarments, but she could afford none, so Bessella wore none.
As she smoothed down her skirts, her hands traced the curves of her backside and the growing heat between her legs. She felt the urge to lift her skirts again and feel the master’s close cropped grass on her bare skin. She could touch herself and bring out the higher thrills as she listened to the music of the royalty.
Bessella had now gone farther than she had dared before. It was by just a few steps and over one wall, but it was a world beyond where she should rightfully be. Her father had explained the difference between a palace and the lord’s house. She couldn’t imagine anything grander than the house towering over her. He had explained that both were royalty, but not the same. She still did not understand. Both the distant king and Lord Ramsey held her life and her father’s life in their hands. They traded them like trinkets and played with them as they wished. Should she get caught, Lord Ramsey had the right to let fall his full wrath upon her and her father by proxy.
She knew she should go back in the same way she knew she should never be there in the first place, but this was not a night for going back. Before she realized, her feet were carrying her forward and she was standing in the light of a partially opened exterior door. It was unguarded and she leaned inside.
***
***
Bessella heard the laughter that was high and shrill like the girls in the woods made. She swallowed and felt the familiar tingles. She smelled the wax of candles and the aroma of fine meats cooked in rich sauces. Her mouth watered.
She expected to hear the music more clearly, but this close it was lost in the footfalls of the dancers. In the flickering light of the hall, she imagined that the undulating shadows were the dancers being twirled by the touch of grand lords being commanded to move and perform under the fingers of the men.
She had to see for herself.
Bessella slipped inside with her back to the doorframe to avoid disturbing the open door further. Her breasts had grown over the years to a size that betrayed her stealth this night. Her dress hung on the wood and pulled down and open in the front. Her nipples found the air and the night cooled her sweat slicked flesh as her bosoms spread out in their unexpected freedom. She gasped.
She looked into the hallway and saw a shadow cross the wall from the grand ballroom at the far end. From the shape of the legs and frame cast on the wall, she believed it was a man passing just inside the archway. She imagined him stepping out and looking toward the night to find Bessella herself with her breasts exposed and her back straight against the door. The thought was exciting and terrifying and her chest heaved as she drew in air. She waited a moment longer to be sure no one was coming and secretly wondering what would happen if someone did – maybe Thomas with his shaft stiffening at the sight of her. Bessella felt warm wetness bead over the folds between her legs inviting her own touch – the only touch she had ever felt up to that point, at the thought of Thomas’s touch and command.
She reached out and fought with the snagged material on the door. It wouldn’t come. She stroked the edge of the material thinking she might have to rip her ruffled bodice just to get free. If she did, she would have to flee never seeing the secrets of the nobles’ ball and possibly never showing her finest dress again. Disappointment swirled with her dark excitement.
The dress came free without damage, but the door creaked open a few more spans. The hinges creaked and popped. Bessella’s eyes widened and she looked at the light on the walls for approaching, angry shadows. The dancer’s steps sounded through the floor and vibrated up her legs which were already tingling with fear.
As no one came, she thought about the grease her father used to lubricate metal connections. The lord could use lubricant himself.
She took the moment avoiding discovery as a sign that she was meant to flee. This was the spirit world giving her one last chance to leave whole. She knew that is what she should do, but Bessella was not doing what she should this night. She was violating rules and the order of things. She was a peasant girl standing uninvited in the doorway of the lord of the land. She was teasing the world of royalty in their celebration. As they traded her life and body around like a thing that belonged to their fancy, she was forcing herself onto their world.
She pictured herself slipping into the ballroom. The lords and ladies would think she was one of them. They would dance her and spin her not knowing who she was. They would feed her their fine meats, pushing them past her lips letting their juices slid down her throat. They would touch and guide her with their hands like she was their fine lady instead of their dirty, servant girl.
***
Bessella rejected her opportunity for escape and salvation. She entered and followed along the wall in the low light. The air inside was stale and smelled of sweaty bodies. She imagined the hot skin and musk of the lords and ladies. She pictured them stolen away to the woods with shafts out and dresses folded above their heads. Bessella licked her lips. She expected the air inside the lord’s palace to be fresher like outside in the fiel
ds when the flowers were blooming wild for spring. The house had higher ceilings and broader passages than she had seen before and she expected it to be like the outside trapped within.
Bessella peered around the corner and inhaled. The chandeliers were so high and large that she could not imagine how the candles were lit around their rim nor how the chains held them aloft. Tables that seemed larger than the trees if they were turned on end were lined with meats and casks of wine, but also displays of fruit that she had never seen in their land. She couldn’t picture how they had come to be here except on the wings of angels. They were built into artful sculptures on the tables that were barely touched. They were as beautiful as she imagined they were delicious.
She wanted to enter and just feed herself until she was sick. The lords and ladies danced or reclined around the room drinking and ignored the impossibly grand food.
The dresses were not of this world. The skirts were as large as palaces themselves as they spun on what must have been hundreds of skirts. Bessella imagined they would have to wear them forever for all the time it would take them to shed them off. She began to wonder if that is why Thomas took the peasant girls to the woods instead.
Their hair was stacked upon their heads in golden curls that put the fruit sculptures to shame. Their bodies were pieces of art from head to hem.
Bessella sighed and looked down at her own dress which indignantly showed the womanly curves of her body instead of the grand curves of the dresses of the noble ladies dancing. She would not blend in. They would never mistake her for one of them. Her eyes stung and she felt wildly foolish for ever thinking that she might. She would never walk among them or taste their fruit. She resolved herself to merely watch their dancing and spinning from the edge of the archway. That would be her reward for daring to venture this far.
She ran her fingers through her long, straight hair and imagined what the sculpted stack on her head would feel like.
Someone grabbed her by her hair from behind and pulled her backward away from the arch. She was bent backward to stare up at the angry face of a man in a powdered wig. She felt her breasts bunch up near the top of her dress as she moaned from the awkward angle of her body.
He growled. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m lost. I will leave.”
“You lost yourself over a wall and closed gate?”
He pulled her along past the arch and into a dark room. He threw her into the side of a desk and she fell to her backside with her back to the carved wood and her single skirted dress bunched up around her knees. He leered at her and she pulled her skirt back down to her ankles.
He took a step toward her and Bessella folded her arms in front of her. A light entered the room and another man in a white wig lifted the lantern aloft to cast light across the room. “What goes here, steward?”
The man stood straight and stepped aside. “We have an intruder, master attendant, sir. She was attempting to disrupt the banquet.”
“I was not,” Bessella protested.
The man with the lantern looked down at her. “You were invited then, my lady? Are you from the courts of the Castille or the grand niece of our Lord Ramsey, perhaps? I should sweep you into the ballroom with your royal escort in you finery and announce your arrival, should I?”
Bessella looked away. “No, I will leave.”
She began to realize that these were the servants and not the nobles that had discovered her. Even they were dressed far finer than her finest.
“I think we are past that opportunity,” the master attendant said.
***
“I’ll deal with her, if you like,” the steward that had held her hair and leered up her skirts offered.
“I would not like,” the master attendant said.
Bessella said, “If you let me go, the lord will never know that you failed to keep me out of his hall. I’ll be gone and he’ll think you provided the perfect evening instead.”
The men looked at one another. She believed that she had convinced them.
The master attendant smiled and shook his head. “You do not know your station, do you now?”
The steward said, “She is the smith’s daughter.”
“Lord Ramsey’s smith?”
“The same.”
Bessella swallowed. “Please, let me go. Don’t tell. I’ll do anything.”
The men exchanged looks again. The master attendant said, “She is Ramsey’s servant. He will decide what is to be done with her.”
“No, please,” Bessella begged from the floor.
“Be still and silent,” the steward ordered.
The master attendant hung the lantern on a stand high on the wall keeping the parlor with its shelves, upholstered furniture, and wooden desk dimly lit. “Keep her here until I return. Do not touch her. She is Ramsey’s to deal with. Understood, steward?”
The steward nodded. “Understood.”
The attendant closed the door leaving her alone with the steward inside.
“Please, don’t hurt me or my father. Let me go. I’m begging you.”
“Stay where you are or I will push you back into place myself,” he growled. “When Lord Ramsey gets here, you will wish I had been the one to take you.”
Bessella swallowed, but stayed seated and silent. She did not know what he meant by what he said, but she did not like it.
The door opened and Lord Ramsey entered in bright silk clothes and cape. “Leave us. Tell my attendant to wait outside until needed. See that my guests are well washed free of their thirst in my absence, steward.”
The steward bowed low. “Yes, my lord.”
He left and closed the door.
“Stand up, wench,” Ramsey ordered.
Bessella stood pulling at her dress with her shoe. The material pulled down askew, but she was too afraid to straighten it again. He looked her up and down.
“I’m told you are my smith’s daughter that has snuck into my formal reception honoring my dear friend and liaison to my new king. Do you wish to disrupt the grandness of my honoring of my friend Count Hellor on this occasion? Is that your purpose here, smith’s daughter?”
***
“No, my lord, I beg your mercies.”
“I was not aware I was in the place of granting mercies this night,” Ramsey shouted. “All my charity and goodwill were focused upward toward the king through his nobles not downward to disobedient daughter’s of servants.”
“Yes, lord, I’m sorry.”
“Not sorry enough,” he said. “Your name?”
She said, “Bessella. The other servants call me Bessa or Bess.”
“Am I another of your little servant friends?”
“No, lord.”
“But you forgot that tonight, didn’t you?”
“No, lord.”
He advanced on her and she bowed her head. He grabbed her chin and pulled her head up to face him. “You say the words ‘lord’ and ‘no’ together far more than is natural. You do not say no to your lord so often. Do you understand, you impetuous, little girl?”
She choked out. “Yes, lord, yes.”
“I could have you killed for this and your father with you for this offense on this occasion.”
“No, lord.”
“What did you say to me?”
“I … please, lord. Mercy, my lord. Anything you ask, my lord.”
“I have to ask, do I?”
“Anything you wish. Anything you command.”
He let go of her neck. “You have been very bad tonight.”
“Yes, lord.”
“You deserve punishment for your sins against me and the nature of things.”
“Yes, lord.”
“Turn around away from me with your hands upon the top of my desk.”
She did as she was told and watch their shadows dance at an angle along the wall between the shelves beyond the desk.”
“Bend over … further.”
She did as she was told and felt the
stressed material of her dress fall open in front over her bosoms. She did not dare to lift her hands to fix it.
“Lift your skirts.”
***
She took her hands off the desk and shook as she fought to remain bent with her hands supporting her. “How far, my lord?”
He laughed behind her. “Now that is a far better spirit. You will lift them all the way and show me everything you have to offer.” His voice became breathy in a way she did not understand. “Everything.”
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