Tales of the Huntsman

by M Palmeri

  “‘She is my step-daughter,’ the Baroness whispered. ‘Her name is Rosalie.’

  “Tossing in her sleep, her covers fell away, revealing yet more of her, a display the Huntsman found suspiciously well-timed.

  “‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’

  “The Huntsman felt it wiser not to answer.

  “‘She is. Of course she is,’ the Baroness hissed in his ear. ‘That is why you will kill her for me.’”

  Chapter Nine: Red as a Rose

  Richard continued his tale:

  “The Baroness then led her huntsman out of there and down the stairs, and then even further down into the cellars of her Keep. Down a long corridor and yet another staircase, lit only by the candle she carried, they came to yet another locked door. For this one she produced a small but ornate golden key.

  “‘Now you will learn more of my secrets,’ she told him, unlocking it.

  “Beyond was a circular chamber ringed with a number of locked doors, each with a shutter set in it for viewing whatever was inside (or perhaps for whatever was inside to look outwards, but all were latched shut). The chamber itself was equipped with a number of odd structures, the uses of some he could surmise. There was a framework similar to the one in the Baroness’ bedroom, and a sturdy slab the size of a small bed, set with rings around it for restraints. There was also a smaller bench, which reminded him of the butcher block in the kitchen, something that looked much like a carpenter’s saw-horse (but with a sharp wedge for a crosspiece), and a waist-high tripod. The walls and ceiling beams also bore an assortment of rings, ropes, chains, manacles, and windlasses.

  “The Baroness lit torches and led her Huntsman directly to one of the doors, opening the shutter to show him what she kept there. The air from within was stale and pungently musky. Inside, a slight, pale figure was curled up on the bare floor of a small stone cell. The Baroness began turning one of the windlasses, and chains tied to frail wrists began to haul the prisoner up to her feet, until she was almost hanging from the ceiling. Ragged reddish hair felt over her shoulders. Her face was raw from sobbing, eyes hollow. Her ribs and hip-bones were clearly visible. But she bore no sign of injury beyond what her manacles were doing to her.

  “‘I told you that I keep my beauty by extracting the essence of young women, and that this elixir is refined by pain,’ the Baroness reminded him. ‘But sometimes it requires more than pain.’

  “She unlocked the cell door so she could examine her victim more closely. ‘From time to time I will buy a girl, sometimes a whore who has used herself up too young, or a starving waif from a poor and desperate family. These I will submit to worse than I would mete out to my servants, because I value my servants’ ability to keep working. Then, on the Vernal Equinox, I will renew myself through ritual sacrifice. I have spent many years experimenting with ways to torture a girl, to prolong her torment and thus maximize what I can reap from her suffering. The ultimate agonies, however, are the ones that are ultimately lethal. I have used fire and hot metal, stretching, breaking, blades and pincers, water tortures, even impaling by inches. My conundrum is that I cannot readily drink from my victim and apply pain simultaneously, which would render the finest quality extracts. I require, therefore, another pair of skilled, strong hands.’

  “The Baroness idly stroked the girl’s stretched body.

  “‘This is Greta, just barely a woman and as yet untouched by man. I rarely find a prize of such purity. I plan to keep her intact until the last: she will experience no intimacy until she has experienced the profoundest agony, and then I will be the first and last to enter her. I have not yet decided on the method of her destruction, but your skill with a knife inspires me. Traders from the East have brought tales of cutting tortures that last for many hours, the victim enduring a thousand lacerations that avoid anything vital, or having their flesh sliced from them in layers like a tender roast.’ The girl struggled weakly as the Baroness’s long fingers toyed with her breasts. ‘Tell me, how do you expect the victim is kept from passing out during such torment?’

  “‘The head could be positioned below the heart,’ the Huntsman answered reluctantly, overwhelmed in his heart with sorrow for the poor doomed girl, but still fearing his mistress’ wrath. ‘Either by hanging upside-down or on an inclined surface.’

  “‘Excellent,’ the Baroness commended. ‘Then it is settled. I will enjoy her while you carve her. But I expect you will need some practice before the event, a rehearsal of sorts, so you can refine your technique. For this, Rosalie will serve.’

  “The Sorceress’ mood darkened then. ‘Now that she is a woman, her beauty mocks me: a reminder of what I was in my youth, what I struggle daily to maintain. But for reasons that are my own, I will not do the deed myself. Nor would I have it done in my home. You will take her into the woods. There is a stand of trees spaced ideally for staking a young body down across a stone slab in their center: it is an ideal altar—I have used it myself. It is even conveniently inclined to keep the blood to the head and keep the victim awake. You may do with her as you like, her body is yours. But I expect you to take the opportunity to practice, to experiment with the most exquisite agonies, making her last as long as you can.’

  “She shut the cell back up, but did not lower her shivering victim just yet.

  “‘The Spring Equinox approaches: let that be your appointed day. Do well, and you will be rewarded beyond imagining. Perhaps you will even begin to reap the rewards of my elixir yourself. Fail me, and you will become fodder for my own further experiments in agony.’

  “The Huntsman could hear the girl collapse in a heap on the cold stone floor as the Baroness spun the windlass loose. Then she took his cock in her hand and kissed him.

  “‘Come,’ she commanded. ‘The night is still young.’

  “With that, she led him back to where Rachel had been left.”

  Richard stopped then: Marie was pale, trembling. He reached out for her, but she recoiled, huddling deeper under her blankets.

  He got up, pulled on his breeches and tunic, and left her without a word.

  Marie kept curled in his bed as if afraid to move, her mind swimming with visions of horror that came all too readily, until sleep took her again.

  Her dreams filled with the tale as well, but she had become the poor girl in the dungeon, stretched out naked on a cold slab while sharp blades menaced her, teasing her helpless flesh…

  Screaming awoke her. It took her several moments to realize they weren’t her own.

  They came from below, her mind picturing a dungeon scene, but their closeness and clarity indicated the Great Hall as a more likely source.

  Pressures in her body dictated she make use of the chamber pot before wrapping herself in a blanket and going carefully to investigate. Stopping again behind the tapestry (and checking twice to make sure no one was about to grab her from behind again), she peered into the hall.

  The screaming was Sofi’s: the brash servant was apparently receiving her promised “punishment”. She had been spread-eagle bound to the head table, face up, so that her pelvis was at the edge. Her legs had been pulled wide apart and bound by long ropes to rings in the walls. Richard, his trousers dropped to his knees, was fucking her violently, but that was not what was making her scream.

  Ella was leaning over her, sharply tapping her nipples in rapid rhythm with a thin wand, making her keen almost hysterically. Then it got worse: Ella used the fingers of one hand to spread the girl’s labia and pull back the hood of her clit, and began whipping that with equal cruelty. The girl’s body began to slam against the table with the ferocity of her struggles. Ella kept her eyes on Sofi’s body throughout, her eyes filled with a blend of cool appreciation and something almost maternal—indeed, Marie could almost hear her cooing soothing reassurances and praises to her victim as she continued the torture.

  Also present were Rose and another girl, who looked similar to Sofi but softer, smaller. Rose held this girl naked in her lap, her arms and one le
g wrapped around her as if to keep her in place, whispering almost continuously into her ear as they both watched the spectacle from Rose’s chair. The girl seemed possessed by some anxiety (but not terror), struggling in Rose’s grip, biting her lip.

  Then all at once, the whipping stopped and Richard pulled out of his victim, dropping to his knees to devour Sofi’s quivering sex. Ella turned to Rose, who let go of her charge. The girl immediately threw herself into Ella’s arms. Ella kissed her passionately, then turned and flung her roughly onto the table.

  Rose, meanwhile, had slipped down under the table with unexpected grace, going directly for Richard’s sex with her mouth as he continued to consume Sofi, who had gone almost utterly limp under his soothing ministrations.

  Ella slipped out of her own dress in a flash, revealing fair-skinned flesh over a strong frame, with moderate soft breasts. But she was not fully naked: a leather harness like the one Rose had worn at the inn cradled her pelvis, under which Marie could see a patch of silky golden hair. As she turned to quickly retrieve something from her seat, Marie could see something more: the skin of Ella’s back and hips was scarred—like Sofi’s but much worse—with perhaps hundreds of random stripes, quite healed but still very visible even from a distance.

  Then Marie saw what Ella was fetching: she had set a phallus much like Rose’s, only hers was made of gold, into her harness. She turned back to her charge, pulled her legs apart forcefully, and—preparing the girl with her fingers—began to fuck her very much like a man would. In fact, if it weren’t for her breasts, Ella just then appeared very masculine indeed, especially by the look of enraged passion on her face.

  Appalled and fascinated at the same time, Marie watched until Richard spent himself into Rose’s mouth, after which they both freed Sofi and helped her up off the table. Ella’s work lasted a bit longer, until she fell back into her throne, drenched in sweat and winded. Her girl followed her, falling to her knees between Ella’s legs, pulling away the harness and burying her face where it had been.

  And Marie could see the other dark-haired servant girl’s naked back now, and she, too, bore the same telltale scars of brutal lashing.

  Marie slipped down to the baths and tried to soak away what her mind was reeling with. She washed herself out—fingers now able to slip inside herself without too much pain—feeling simultaneously soiled yet thrilled, both physically and personally. Her world seemed to be falling away from her, her life in her father’s house now more dream than real, and any dream she might have held for the future now lost to the senselessness of this new world.

  She had been taken by a man who was not her husband, and probably never would be. Indeed, she might now never have a husband, nor bear children (the lack of children on the estate and Richard’s apparent precautions regarding his seed reinforced this). She had, however, vastly enjoyed all that he had done to her, more than she ever might have imagined possible. Alone, exploring her newly changed body, she could admit that to herself, even take some small comfort in it. But it still made her feel dirty, impure, damaged, and most of all, lost.

  But he had told her never to be ashamed of her body, or any pleasure she took from it. He told her how people came to be trapped by fear and conditioning to feel dirty and ashamed about such things. And he had told her—back in her father’s house—how he would give her treasures beyond imagining, treasures that her stepsisters would regret coveting.

  With a grin and a shuddering giggle, she pictured them now: Daniella, Vivianna and Angelina, stripped naked, hung from ropes and tied to tables, spread open and violated by tongues and fingers and fists and cocks (of flesh and ivory and gold) and wooden pyramids, tormented by whips and wax and worse, their smug vanity wiped away by their screaming…

  Marie threw her hands over her eyes and bit down on her lip, curled into a fetal position in the embracing water, shivering despite the warmth, and feared she was losing her mind and worse.

  Richard found her in the baths some hours later, eyes closed but not asleep, as an idle hand would come up out of the water and trickle soothing rivulets down her face.

  She opened one eye just a bit as he got in the tub with her, just to confirm who it was and that no one else was with them. Then she shut it again and gave no further acknowledgement to his presence.

  “I am sorry if I upset you,” he told her gently. “But you must hear the rest of the tale in order to understand.”

  He waited for Marie to nod her consent, then continued:

  “On the appointed day, the Baroness had Rosalie fetched from her cell by her servants, provided with a festive red gown, and told she would be allowed a trip into the countryside, to enjoy the coming of Spring. The Baroness reminded her Huntsman of his duty as well as the consequences of failure, and sent him off with the girl as her coachman and sole companion.

  “For three days, they did not return.

  “On the fourth, just as the Baroness was beginning to fear she had been abandoned just as her former huntsman had done (taking with him the servant girl she had placed in his charge to execute, instead marrying her—the ungrateful fool), the carriage materialized, apparently empty, within the gate while she slept. Seeing it from the window of her chambers, she ran down to investigate, only to find her Huntsman waiting for her, standing obediently by her throne. She composed herself before approaching, and taking his hand, saw blood caked under his nails, staining the skin of his fingers as it had soaked deep into his pores. She was a bit surprised that this shocked her, but it thrilled her at well. She took her seat and bade him tell of his adventure.

  “He told her calmly and steadily of his deeds, of how he had taken the girl to the described grove on pretense of a picnic, bringing her to the stone. And there, drawing his knife, cut away her dress while she begged for her life, ordering her to lie down, and how complacently she cooperated with his tying her, hoping for mercy.

  “He said he told her first what was to become of her, and she bargained for her life. He bargained in return for her to take him willingly in her mouth, using her roughly until he choked her half to death with his seed. Then, recovering quickly, he tasted her terror and found it sweet, savoring her shame at her own body’s betrayal. Finally, he took her maidenhead with violence, and as he took pleasure in her, began to work with his blade.

  “He described in detail the process he had used, starting with experimental cuts, and how that had made her convulse as he raped her. He went on to describe hours upon hours of slow cutting, interspersed with sexual abuses, and how her suffering had given him strength he had never known, strength to continue through the night and into the next day, by which time she had begun to beg for death. She lasted until the third day, when most of her flesh was in tatters, except her sex, which he had saved for the last, resulting in enough blood loss to finally take her from life.

  “In numb silence, the Baroness listened to the tale until it was finished, at which time her Huntsman asked her: ‘Have I done as you have commanded?’

  “She admitted that he had, but found no words of praise. Indeed, it looked like the life had been drained from her. Then he asked her if she would like to see the fruits of his labors. Amazed by her own discomfort, she consented to this as well.

  “But instead of taking her to the woods, the Huntsman led her to her own dungeon. There, on the slab under a shroud soaked in blood, was the shape of a body.

  “‘Have I pleased you?’ the Huntsman asked as she looked at the shape under the shroud, still unable to lift it to see what lie underneath. ‘Have I done just as you commanded?’

  “‘Yes,’ the Baroness confirmed, her throat dry.

  “With a sudden smile, the Huntsman stepped forward and pulled the shroud back to reveal Rosalie’s face, unmarred. The Baroness screamed when the icy gray eyes fluttered open, and the blood-red mouth curled into a grin that exceeded her ‘murderer’s’.

  “‘Is that sufficient, Your Grace?’ the girl called out.

  “‘Indeed,’ replie
d a strong male voice. ‘More than so.’ And from the doorway appeared the Duke’s Inquisitor, flanked by half-dozen of his soldiers. The Baroness moved to draw her dagger (for what intended target we can only guess), but more soldiers appeared from the cells, along with some of the servants—more witnesses, two of whom supported the feeble Greta, now free of her chains—and the Baroness was quickly disarmed and put in manacles not her own.

  “Rosalie sat up, revealing herself to be nude but otherwise unmarked beneath her shroud, which had been artfully stained with animal blood. She was quick to cast the device away in disgust, its purpose fulfilled, despite all the eyes on her. One of the servants had a blanket ready to wrap her, and somewhat more modestly she approached the churchman, bowed to him and kissed his ring.

  “‘We have sufficient witnesses, as well as her own admission, to seal her conviction as a sorceress and murderer,’ the Inquisitor told her. ‘Your king and all the God-fearing people of this land are grateful to you, milady. The Duke himself has promised you whatever reward for your valiant act in unveiling this unspeakable evil festering in his lands.’

  “‘I have spoken with the Duke already, Your Grace,’ Rosalie replied with nobility beyond her years. ‘Though I would ask you yourself to perform me one service before you leave. In the interim, I invite you to stay the night. My servants will assure you sleep very well indeed.’

  “At this, two of the younger women took his holiness in hand and led him from the room. Turning to the guardsmen, Rosalie suggested to them that the Baroness would be well kept in her own prison, especially with their intimate company throughout the night. Then, taking Greta’s frail hands in her own to examine the girl’s ragged wrists, Rosalie added several suggestions of how their new prisoner might best be kept. Finally, she approached the Baroness herself, and whispered close in her ear: