“Talus, you are most gracious and Christian!” Nicklaus said warmly, patting his shoulder. “You spoil her still, although she's done nothing but bear false witness against you. And so, I shall punish her as befits her crime. Wenda, for your godlessness, you will be sent this very eve to a nunnery, and I hope they teach you what we have failed to. You will not be whipped, but you shall be stripped in front of his court and soundly birched—you have no modesty left to you, anyway.” He looked at her eldest brother. “Daniel, since she has shamed you and your brothers, you may do the honors of shaming her.”
Wenda could scarcely breathe. Her life was over! A nunnery? Stripped before the court? The ultimate shame… it was not something to be lived down. It was something she would have to endure forever.
“Nicklaus!” Talus sounded aghast at Nicklaus' sentence. “Nicklaus, no.”
“You were right—spare the rod, spoil the child,” Nicklaus replied with a shrug. She listened as Daniel's boots approached behind her. “It is no harm to us; she cannot be matched now, anyway. Let the ladies left here learn something from such a mistake.”
“Daniel, don't touch her!” Talus boomed. When Daniel did not stop, Talus turned and, without permission, pulled Nicklaus' sword from its sheath.
“You heard him!” Daniel seethed. “The lying chit deserves to be bared!”
“I will not have her shamed before the court. Do you hear me, boy?”
“Her shame means nothing to us now,” Daniel replied, and put his hands on her.
Wenda gasped as she felt her brother's punishing fingers on her shoulders, moving to rip apart the fastenings of her dress.
Talus leapt forward and punched Daniel in the face, knocking him backwards. The court was instantly in an uproar, but Wenda was still too shell-shocked to even look about her. She knelt there, continuing to shake like a cornered little mouse.
“Silence!” Nicklaus decreed, putting up his hands. Presently, everyone obeyed. “Talus, really, I know you have a soft-spot where she's concerned, but—”
“I will marry her,” Talus decreed firmly. The court's silence was like the grave. Wenda's shoulders hunched—she couldn't have heard him right. There was no way on earth that he would marry her freely after what she'd done to him. Talus continued more quietly, “I will marry her, so do not shame her before your court, I beg you. If you love me, you will not continue with this public display.”
“You will marry her?” Nicklaus asked, his eyes open wide.
He wasn't the only one that was incredulous. Wenda felt that if her heart beat any faster, it would beat itself to death! A cold trill ran down her spine as Talus glanced in her direction.
Suddenly, she remembered what her female cousins had told her. They had warned her that sex with any man was painful, nightmarish, and violent—something she would never enjoy. Talus, however, might be worse—he himself had warned her that he was not a gentle man. She had hoped that the marriage would be just a farce. Now, she wondered what she had been thinking. There was heated promise in Talus' expression now. He was actually going to marry her, and he seemed to be looking forward to it.
“If you will allow me, My Lord, the pleasure of your blessing, I will take her to wife. My honor will be her honor, her shame will be my own. Please have mercy on her and grant this request.” He sounded like he was in pain, as if it took everything in him to beg for her after what she had accused him of doing.
“It's not about my blessing, Talus. You're as a brother to me, of course you can have what you wish and I will bless all you do! But do you realize that you're just giving her what she wants if you marry her?”
“I will marry her, but I will not give her what she wants,” he gritted. “She will wish she was in a nunnery by the end of her wedding night, I have no doubt of it. And I will punish her, but it will be in the privacy of my own chambers, not like this.”
Wenda's blood turned to ice at Talus' firm promise.
Nicklaus was quick to say, “Of course, Lord Talus, I can deny you nothing. Marry her post-haste, and she is yours.”
“I will marry her now,” Talus decreed.
Wenda dropped her head, feeling winded and trying not to faint.
“Now?” Nicklaus echoed, shaking his head slightly as if he was afraid he had hearing damage.
“Yes,” Talus said confidently, his voice low and menacing. “I will marry her now, and I will punish her soon enough, as is my husbandly right.”
* * *
Wenda could feel her heart pounding in her throat, and she felt frozen there, on her knees, as Nicklaus called up a priest. She didn't know what was making her so anxious; this is what she'd wanted, after all!
When she gathered the courage to turn her head and look up at Talus, she wished she had continued looking at the ground. The dark look upon his face was unlike anything she'd ever seen. It was threatening, promising, and even slightly pitying.
She didn't want Talus to look at her like that. She should have seen it coming, but she hadn’t been able to imagine her 'old bear' angry with her. She certainly knew his look of disappointment, and over the years he had given her countless warnings of what would happen to her backside if she continued her misbehaviors, but he had never followed through. She hoped, and at the same time dreaded, that this would be one of those times. She hadn't known the pain or humiliation of chastisement, but she would do anything to remove the anger from Talus' eyes.
Nicklaus' hand lifted her to her feet and dusted off the front of her dress, as if she had been kneeling upon dirty ground and not polished marble, but then he moved his lips to her ear. “It worked out better than I could have planned for you, little one. But if you had only told me you wanted Talus to begin with, this could have been avoided—I would have plotted you together for the last year, not the last hour. I warn you this: be true to him, and I can only hope you learn obedience before he's forced to break that spirit of yours.”
Nicklaus' tone was so utterly different than it had been in the time since she walked into his audience chamber that she was taken aback. Nicklaus' words were ever-so-kind and his tone was gentle as it always had been when he spoke to her, but his hand tightly gripped her as if he was scolding her, not declaring that she was playing a part in his little play.
So he had known all along that Talus was not guilty, yet he was happy enough to pull their strings and make them play their parts? Actually, that was quite like Nicklaus to do! Still, it didn't explain Talus' bloodied face, or the dark look behind his eyes… If Nicklaus didn't have him beaten, than who had?
Nicklaus grabbed Talus' hand and then pulled her own until it was clasped into Talus' callused fingers. Talus held her tight, as if he feared that she was plotting to run out the back door. “I give her to you,” Nicklaus announced before the court, which was still jittering and jabbering wildly.
It didn't dawn on her until that moment that they were performing the ceremony right there and then! She'd never heard of a marriage being so quickly thrown together. Talus was the lord of his own manor, and he was even building a new one! He was wealthy, noble, clever, and he deserved better arrangements at least! “Now? We cannot marry now!” she argued.
No garter, no wedding dress… There were still tears drying on her face. Talus was bloodied and dirty! It seemed scandalous.
Talus yanked her until she was a mere inch away from him and snapped into her ear, “Shush, woman! This will be done; do not embarrass yourself any further by protesting now.”
She looked out of the corner of her eye and saw the priest walking up with a book in hand and she looked up at Talus. “None of this seems right! It's too rushed!”
He growled. “We don't have time now for the farce of romance. I will have your rights as your husband before the hour, and I will finally bring you to heel.”
She silenced quickly at his ominous words, and straightened her shoulders. They knelt before the priest and a veil was placed over them, at which time the whole chamber became silent. She felt
the priest bore his eyes through her judgmentally—which she understood—and she hung her head lower and lower so that by the time it came to the vows, her chin was nearly resting against her chest.
Her head rose as she heard Talus recite, very grumpily, “I take Wenda as my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, for fairer or fouler, in sickness and in health, till death us depart, if holy church will ordain it, and thereto I give my vow.”
She had never paid attention to what she had to say in return, but now that it was her turn, she found her vows to be more revealing and embarrassing than his own. She felt she had to swallow every second, nervous both to be in front of so many people and to make such a life-long vow. Not that she had any true option, since she'd rather be dead than in a nunnery. She forced out the words, “I take Talus deFirth as my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, for fairer or fouler, in sickness and in health, to be meek and obedient in bed and with my body, till death us depart, if holy church will ordain it, and thereto I give my vow.”
The ring exchange—where her mother's ring was put to use for the first time in eighteen years, as was their uncle's, who had been dead three years already—was nearly sweet, but even that seemed forced to her, and Talus' words still were spoken in a growl.
She was surprised that after the ceremony, despite the ring now on her finger, she did not feel any different. Certainly she had trouble looking at Talus as her husband. He didn't seem any different, either. He was still as angry as he had been fifteen minutes ago.
They signed a scroll the priest had begun to write up, and then at about the time other couples in an ordinary wedding might have left from the room, Talus loudly demanded that the birch be brought to him. Some people gasped at that, but for the most part the room remained silent… except for Nicklaus, who she could distinctly hear snickering.
“He went through all of this just to have the right to bare you for chastisement,” Nicklaus said in her ear, still snickering. “You cannot say it isn't true that you at least bring forth passion from him.”
She had never been chastised before; she had grown up without anyone raising a hand to her, but she'd seen boys soundly birched without even being bared. She had never wished to be in their shoes. She turned and grasped Nicklaus' robe and hissed, “Nicklaus! Please, do something! Talk to him!”
Nicklaus did not bother to even wear a serious expression. “I make it a firm rule not to get into disputes between husbands and wives, little one. Good luck to you.”
As soon as those words were said, Talus was handed a stout birch and he yanked her to his side as he led her into the hall with determination. He marched her past her bedroom and towards his own, and that was about the time when she truly realized the trouble she was in. “Talus, please—I'm so sorry. I can't apologize enough, or else I would!” she squeaked.
The damage had already been done; she was already married and people knew that now, instead of consummating the marriage right away, her husband was far more likely to use that birch on her bare behind. The shame, if she would have thought more about it, would have been sickening to her.
“Is punishment truly necessary? It's very unlikely I'd do it again, even if I wanted to!” she asked him, trying out the logical approach.
When he reached his bed chamber, he hauled her inside. The room seemed very lacking of furniture apart from a bed, and was still being cleaned by two footmen who were carrying the last of a broken chair in their arms. They promptly dispersed from the room when ordered.
“Remove your clothing,” he demanded—the first words he spoke to her as a husband. His tone didn't broach any argument.
She swallowed and moved her hands behind her. Some of the fastenings were impossible to reach. “I need my nurse,” she told him as he walked over to a bowl to wash his hands and face in the water. “I cannot undress on my own.”
“Your nurse would only get in my way,” he refused. She knew what he meant—her nurse was never known for having a strict hand. She was a meek woman, but extremely protective since for the first few months of Wenda's life she'd been her milk nurse. Her nurse would die before allowing him to punish her lady without a fuss.
“So then we're at an impasse,” she assured, sounding braver than she truly felt.
He dried his face and his hands and crooked his finger at her. “Come here and turn your back to me,” he ordered her. He both looked and sounded weary. Even though his face was clean, it still looked beaten and his eye was still swollen.
She hesitated, and her eyes widened. “You cannot undress me!” she gasped.
He tilted his head as if he was bracing himself for a battle. “Oh, yes I can. I can do a lot of things, now. Welcome to marriage. Come to me and turn.”
Her eyes shifted back and forth, and she felt uncomfortable in her own skin.
Apparently, he was running out of patience. “You do not want to make this birching even longer, I assure you. And that's exactly what you're doing.”
Unhappily, she walked to him and turned around. He bunched her long hair in his fist and then pushed it over her shoulder towards the front before she felt his fingers pry at her dress' hooks. She pressed her hands to her chest to keep her dress up on her front. Unfortunately, he was inclined to tug it off of her as soon as it was loose enough to do so. He forced it out of her hands and the cloth fell in a puddle at her feet.
She squealed, unable to help feeling ashamed at being so underdressed. Then he grabbed her shoulder, steadied her, and quickly began to unbind her bodice, and soon after, she was only in her chemise. She made unhappy squeaks as he was non-too-gentle about unlacing her and stripping her down, but he seemed less-than-sympathetic during the entire process.
Fortunately, he stopped when she was wearing only her chemise, stockings, and shoes. “Remove your stockings,” he told her, pushing her forward and then turning back to his bowl of water. “I want you only in your chemise, and then I want you to lift that up to your waist and bend over the bed.” He splashed water on the back of his neck, trying to remove the blood from his skin there as well.
She didn't want to, but she obeyed before he decided he'd rather remove her stockings for her. “Who beat you?” she asked him, finally.
“Your brothers, My Lady,” he responded tersely. He watched her reaction in the mirror and said in response to her look of shock, “Are you so surprised that young men might want to avenge their sister's honor? What got into you, I will never know. For the sake of our marriage, I will claim that there's a demon in you that I will spend endless hours driving out if need be.”
“Daniel, Peter, and Brock?” she asked, amazed. “I didn't think they felt that attached to me.”
“Apparently they are. If Nicklaus hadn't come in at the right moment, Daniel would have been pleased to remove my manhood. If Nicklaus hadn't devised a theatrical demonstration, my reputation would have been ruined. What sort of girl could make such a merciless slander?”
“A desperate one,” she replied quite tersely, finding herself annoyed that Talus had known all along that Nicklaus had been acting. “I didn't slander you for my own amusement, Talus, even though you seemed happy enough to humiliate me for your own.”
“Actually, we were curious as to how far you'd play your little farce, young lady. If you had let it go any further at all, I would have let Nicklaus send you off.”
She pursed her lips. “Is that a compliment or an insult? I can't really tell.”
Less than amused, he turned, picking up the birch. “Bend over the bed now.” The implement seemed ominous in the room, like it was another person altogether—an executioner.
She hadn't seen a punishment like he was planning for her, and she had no idea what to expect. She didn't want to find out, either. “Talus, I think you'll forgive me if you calm yourself somewhere for a day or two.”
“Husband,” he correcte
d firmly. “You will call me Husband from now on, at least for the foreseeable future. That's what I am now—your husband and your master—and you'll do well to remember it. Now obey,” he growled out the last two words and pointed towards the bed.
She looked warily at the bed, and although she felt foolish while walking towards it and bending over, balancing her weight on her elbows, she did what he bid her.
He came up behind her and pressed his large hand to the small of her back. She couldn't prop herself up on her elbows anymore as he pressed her chest down into the featherbed, leaving her bottom as the highest point of her body.
Then he lifted her chemise. “No!” she screamed, already trying to spin out of position before he even lifted the cloth past her knees. She had known it was coming, but as it was happening she realized that he'd be able to see… everything. It suddenly became a full-out wrestling match, only she seemed unfairly outmuscled.
“Control yourself!” he demanded as he tried to hold her in position and bare her. He never got the chemise further than her knees, and eventually he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her over his lap like she was a child. He crimped her legs skillfully between his own and pinned her hands behind her back. When he tried to lift her chemise this time, he succeeded. He pulled the thin garment up to the small of her back, where he pinned it and her arms together in the grip of one of his hands.
She tried not to think of all he saw, tried to remind herself that he had the right to see her completely nude, being her husband, but nothing she thought was working to relieve her plight. “I didn't want to spank you like a naughty child before your true discipline, but if you act like a child, you shall be punished like one.”
This position didn't seem so scary… until he slapped his palm down across her cheeks. He didn't pause for her to fully absorb the pain she felt biting into her flanks; he just kept smacking her, creating loud slapping sounds throughout the bedchamber.
For the first ten spanks or so she was certain she could bear this pain. After all, this was a punishment even children could handle. Soon, however, she was biting her tongue to keep from wailing. After about fifteen spanks, she started to gasp at the pain. “Talus! Talus, stop!” she began to demand.
Lords and Ladies: Two Medieval Spanking Novellas Page 8