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from; In Defense of Eve

9: Rhonda

By noon she and her dun were exhausted; for the last mile she had dismounted and led the mare by checkrein to rest it and relax herself. Moreover, she was sore from riding hard and long without a saddle. Continually she sheltered her eyes from the sun as she squinted down and along the twisting trail hoping to see a home or inn—she knew she was still two day's ride from Castle City. Spacious rolling plains opened up beside the trail which became wider.

Finally she discovered a camp where two men were sitting round a smoky fire. A donkey and an old draft horse were tied to nearby trees. A battered cauldron was set on stones in the middle of flames. The suggestion of victuals aroused her appetite, though the aroma was not much more appealing than the wash she had seen the women boil by the river of her castle. The men were dressed in little more than rags and their mien disheveled and dirty. Instinctively she mounted; stopping was out of the question, even though she would have welcomed the respite and perhaps some nourishment. She mounted and gently heeled her tired mount to a canter.

Nevertheless, one of them, a sandy-haired rogue in his twenties, obviated her having the luxury of her volition. He had been watching her attentively as she was coming down the trail. When he saw that she was going to pass them by, he jumped up from the campfire, and rushed to the road, stepping in front of her and grabbing the rein.

"Now, missy, that's not very neighborly of you to pass us by—and without a word of greeting."

"This is not my neighborhood; now let go, peasant," she demanded.

"Now, missy, peasants are hard working people, and I have never worked a day in my life. So you have no cause. It seems, though, I have strong cause to call you a horse thief, since you have no saddle, and this fine filly must've had one strapped to it," he observed with a grin of yellow-green teeth barely perceptible midst his hemp-like beard. "Clever of you to sell the saddle already!" He went to reach into her coat pocket.

She slapped his hand. "You have a sick imagination, rogue!"

"I know wily wenches,...and sick indeed is imagination ‘cause it doesn’t lead to loot." He grabbed her wrist and with his other hand, still clinging to the rein, stretched it to its limit into her bodice.

"You filthy swine! How dare you!" she shrieked; she backed away; his hand was constricted by the rein.

He shook his head, let go her wrists and tugged her belt. "No dare, missy, just plain sight. Why, I reckon you stole the fancy coat and breeches and the dyed doeskin boots. Oh, if only you had big feet! — I’m in dire need of a pair."

"Your sight is far from plain with the fancies you add to it," she countered. "Can you not see how perfectly my clothes fit? I cannot say the same for you. Why, that sword you have, though poorly crafted and unworthy of combat, surely can't belong to one so misbegotten—obviously you're no Achilles. Vulcan himself must be thundering a bellicose laugh throughout the clouds of Olympus! Now off with you before I report you to the king's knights, one of whom is my brother who has a sword two times the length and thrice the weight."

Proudly he tapped the hilt above his sash and smirked "Now, who has a running imagination?" He laughed. "If of noble blood, then what are you doing here on this lonely road of thieves? Surely, you would not leave your brave brother's side! And what are you doing in a torn, though costly coat? Have you no ladies-in-waiting?" He laughed again, but in hearing her talk he surmised she was from the gentry. "But I'll believe your tall tale, my lady, and therefore you must accept our hospitality for quite a spell." He reached up to pull her from the horse. Rhonda raised her leg to shove a foot in his face, but he grabbed her boot and toppled her from the mount. He picked her up by the collar and led her and the horse to the camp while she squirmed and screamed.

The middle aged companion, short and very fat, wobbled closer while her antagonist set her by the fire. He took her braids in his pudgy hand, then pressed them to his quivering jowls, after which he ran them under his bulbous veiny nose. Though she pulled her hand away several times, he insisted on smelling a hand so white, clean and smooth, that he had in all his life never seen so close up. "My," rubbing his gray stubble, the fat one said, "she smells so good I should prepare her for the cauldron. What a wonderful stew she would make."

The younger rogue grated, "Bah, that's all you think of is filling that belly of yours—too many years as a miller, stuffing yourself with the grain you stole. How many times do I have to tell you that belly is so cavernous that you will never be satisfied. That's why you belch and eternally unleash smelly winds from your fat ass only to stuff the barrel more." Then he looked into Rhonda's watering eyes. She lowered her head into her drawn up knees. "Never fear, my lovely, we won't eat you....Never get our ransom money that way." He chuckled.

Rhonda looked up and burst out laughing. "Ha, ransom, you say? Why, my father has disinherited me!"

"Wonderful!" cried the fat miller. "Then we shall have a fine meal after all," he added, glancing over at his sandy-haired companion who frowned back. "What say you, Sandy? In truth, I tell you, I've heard from a mariner that there's a treat in store. He says a tribe at the lower end of the world indulges in such sweet cakes which he claims to have tasted and approves, saying it is far better than the juiciest fowl and tenderized venison. And, he says, this is all from colored skin. Think, then, Sandy, what this pearly thing would yield—why, I’ll wager, on the level of royal taste!"

Rhonda laughed nervously and cried, "Why, this is inane—and utterly grotesque!"

The fat miller grabbed her hand and licked it. "Ah, in truth, so sweet!" She wrenched her hand from his grip.

"Oh, turn off your blubbery, blathering mouth!" yelled the sandy-haired one while half drawing his short sword, coupled with a threatening look at the miller. He slid the blade down again and turned to the girl, who had lost her haughty humor and now sat shaking in fear and adjusting herself closer to the fire. "Don't play the fox with us, my haughty missy," the young one said. "If this is in truth, and no one wants you, then there are other ways a pretty lass like you can bring us instant wealth, you know."

She cupped her ears and squeezed shut her eyes as she drew closer to the fire. Sandy pushed the miller away and rolled himself closer to Rhonda who was rubbing her hands over the fire, hoping to alleviate the cold, fearful shivers winnowing her body. He put his hand under her waistcoat; she recoiled and slapped the busy hand and scowled. "That filthy hand be assured will no longer reside with the wrist when the Lord-Protector meets up with you!" she shrieked caution.

"Ha, my pretty, you forget your family has abandoned you. Why, then, should a brother care—and surely not the lofty commander of the famous Mari!"

"Hah!" she exulted, "One and the same!"

"Oh, no!...The mighty Lord Lance! Heaven have mercy!" The miller begged clutching at his fellow-rogue's collar, "Jesus, let her go!"

Sandy pushed him back onto his broad billowy rump. "Bah, she's a liar! First she says she's been disinherited; now she threatens us with the Lord-Protector being her brother, no less!"

"Sandy! For the sake of my precious life! We cannot chance having the warring Mari swooping down on us!"

"Precious! That's worth a horselaugh!" Sandy sputtered, then glanced at her. "Besides, your so-called Lord-Protector brother would have to know of your circumstance, wouldn't he? Why in his lofty position, I'm sure his thoughts are not on you. And surely, no noble would immerse himself in the nether world of us commons."

"Humph, subcommons! For surely neither of you strike me as having the common decency of those working our fertile strips for the good of the commonwealth," she boasted.

The miller clapped his hands. "My, what a spirit—oh, truly straight from the gentry! Show mercy, Sandy, lest the mighty knights of the land hack us to bits!"

"Bah," Sandy grunted, frowning at him, then over at Rhonda, "the common poor, you mean, for the good of the uncommon wealth of the nobles."

Jowls drooping, the fat miller said disappointedly, "Oh, no, your wisest, now turned fool. We must therefore make the evidence disappear. Why, not then, prepare her for the cauldron? Ah, it would outdo the Lord's supper!"

"Zounds, fool of fools!" Sandy scowled.

An elderly, scrawny man approached bearing firewood. His low forehead wrinkled even more in seeing the damsel. "Jumping Jove, what have we here?...Surely she descended from the heavens!" He dropped the sticks and rotted logs; the old man clasped and shook his own veiny hands and exhaled, glancing at the miller "By Jove, your lowest, there is no doubt she's drawn from nobility's womb. Meaning...in store for us is a mighty ransom as fat as you, eh?"

"True, but very dangerous," the still wary miller inserted.

Sandy looked at them with disappointment, coupled with belated worry, and growled, "I fear the blubbery fool might be right, after all."

The miller bounced to his knees and his eyes popped glee. "Ah, good sense has returned. Good! Let us tie her to a tree and begone from here!"

The elder looked at them in puzzlement. "What are you balmy to pass up this opportunity?"

"Yea,” as you say," the miller nodded, for we'd be balmy to court this slip round the country side being the sister of the immortal Lord-Protector!"

"The elder fell to his knees. "Is this in truth, Sandy?"...You have gone mad?"

"Nay, old man," he groaned, then gesturing to the miller, "but the swine has: to believe the bewitching tale of this little whore. Just the same we cannot chance the dangerous implications of a ransom." He looked over at her and touched her cheek which immediately recoiled. Then he stared at each of the men. "Think, my foolish band; just look at her!" He wrenched her braids and forced her face to the fire which blazoned her delicate beauty. "In our permanent possession is this not a lifetime of king's ransoms if we put her to work in God's oldest profession?"

"Youth!" cried the eldest in disgust. "What you propose—slavery!—is far more dangerous! Why, to charge handsome funds we'd have to pander to the gentry! Clearly this lovely thing would cry her heart out and spill the beans to them. And then God help us if the pig here is right!"

The fat one fell back on his haunches and looked to the sky. "God forbid I'm right—nay, I cannot think on the awesome Mari anymore!"

"That's the spirit!" Sandy cheered the miller and turned to the old man. "And damn the nobles! Not a hair of her will they get! They would want her for the entire night—no money in that! No, you unthinking old man, the foreign mariners and the king's sailors at the seaport I am thinking of. With their speedy, anxious loins, she will make us a fortune in a single day!"

“That’s a long journey for my delicate feet!” cried the fat miller.

“For your fat body, you mean,” countered the old man.

Rhonda buried her face in her hands at the sordid speculation.

10. Kalab

With a glistening polished horn of potion in her hand, Erinysia entered the old warlord's chambers. He was sitting up in bed sucking and licking his lips in hot anticipation. Sashaying in rather modest sexual undertones, she approached the bed and said tenderly, "Drink, my lord, but slowly, tastily, letting its warm unctuousness settle on the tongue, slip it gently off to dwell under for a while to caress the sublingual gums.”

Kalab chuckled. "Ah, the mouthful falling from your lips is more than a match for what's in the cup." He eagerly took the horn, ready to guzzle. She placed her hand on the vessel. “Nay, my loving lord, chug not, but rather suspend the swallow for it to pamper your throat and only then ever so gently let it ooze down to fire the blood to set you into action."

He shrugged his battle scarred shoulders and replied, "My dear kitten, when you enter my room, I am ready. You're beauty is incomparable. Why, I'd have to be dead if I were not sexually attracted to you this very moment!"

She giggled and pecked him on the nose while handing back the drink. "Nevertheless, my aging tiger, you must drink─you'll perform better and longer."

"My dear, what I lack in performance you will more than compensate by your fiery nature. However,...drink I shall." But he hesitated and added, "Unless, of course, it is a trick to make me sleep." He roared with confident jest and then ignoring her sensuous instructions, gulped it down wiped his mouth and beard on the coverlet. "Now as you say I am in total readiness, he piped and held out his arms."

Erinysia looked to the high ceiling. "Oh, damn you, Eve, for the gross reconstitution of man to spineless swine!" She paced the foot of the bed, then swivel and stared at him. "Must I bed again with fired loins designed for no other aim than rapid limpness?...I'd prefer the latter first and challenge it to rise by dancing round it while suggestively disrobing."

He roared again and yelped, "I know every inch of your body─no need to exhibit it. I need only that its softness press up against my damnably agÉd flesh....Come now," he commanded, holding out his arms again, "no more of this. Clear the game board and cope with the reality of my hardness."

She dropped her heavy robe to the floor, then removed her flimsy gown, lifted the coverlet, and trailed the gown caressingly along his hairy chest, stomach and legs. She put one knee on the bed, leaned over and kissed him fully on the mouth. The old man pulled her down onto him and ran his hands crazily down her sinuous back.

Because she too had taken the aphrodisiac she responded wildly to the extent that she would not let him roll over on top of her. Indeed, as the old man had suggested, his potion was unnecessary, for it was Erinysia who dominated through the night.

Long after the tumble glass had depleted, they both rolled over exhausted. However, she continued to fondle him while he was on the border of sleep. "She said, "My lord, I'm beginning to think you do not wish to be king."

"He could barely roll his head in the pillow. "Huh,...Oh, I'm worried about Rhonda....The search party has not found her yet....I wonder what she's up to? You don't suppose Henry had anything to do with her disappearance?...No, of course not," he added, answering his own question, "he wouldn't dare....No, it is her own doing─her mother was strong-willed."

Erinysia suggested innocently, "Perhaps she went to find her brother."

The old man's head jerked up from the pillow. "Alone? On that dangerous northern trail!"

Nonchalantly she said, "You just said she's strong-willed;" then added ominously, "however, I think you underestimate the king. What better way to head you off than through your daughter?"

He propped up on his elbow. "Why would that stop me? It would serve as juice to attack now. There is no negotiating with kidnappers. I would have to take the chance."

"Then, you must rally your men," she emphasized.

He fell back and rolled away from her and muttered, "Oh, I know I'm right─she's off somewhere with her damnable horse because she's mad at me....Why, at this very moment, she's probably with your other stepdaughter!"

Erinysia's dark eyes lighted up at the prospect. She then began to run her long fingers down his spine and then curled a finger under his hairy rump. "My Lord, you cannot go to sleep yet. It is your turn now.".... mailto:rrksr@att.net

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