Chapter 9: The Princess

We called her the princess while she was with us, a kind of natural curiosity; and she was a marvel indeed. She was not just pretty, she was spectacularly beautiful, consciously sensual and incredibly arousing, and she knew it. Worse, she flaunted it. Her clothes showed it and so did her stance and her attitude. It was hard to glance her way without feeling a surge of something primitive roll through your belly and poke at your member. When she walked by a group of men you could actually hear them exhale.

Foster and two other men had captured her and her Redcoat husband at a roadblock set up to slow Cornwallis or whoever was harassing us in those days. We sent her overstuffed paramour, who was at least twice her age, on up the line for questioning and kept the young girl just to look at. None of us, not even my randy lieutenant, dared to touch her or even speak to her for that matter except for the usual courtesies. Her beauty was like a fence around her, and she was wonderfully alone with in it, serene and seemingly at ease, staying in a small room in the house our officers had commandeered.

She glowed with good health and her rich and clinging clothes framed her lean but voluptuous body and classic face. She always stood and walked with her shoulders back, arms poised behind her upright orbs, her light brown hair flowing behind her like a waterfall that reached the curved small of her slim back. She was enough to give you the shivers and keep you awake at night with your eager prod in your stroking hand. Damn but she was something, long-legged and racehorse limber, full-breasted and straight backed, dark-haired and even darker eyed.

So, after a few days, it was decided to return her to the enemy while we kept her man for exchange, and since Foster brought her in, he was given the job of taking her back. He all but refused - he had a bad knee; his fever was back; he had a report to write. I think the man could not trust himself alone with the woman, and I'm sure his palms itched to caress her bare body. I know mine did.

So I got the job by the luck of the draw, George and I did, but I ended up with the task of seeing that she was returned to her people safe and sound. Foster looked me in the eye, grabbed my jacket in his fist, put on his meanest growl and warned me that he would take me apart if anything happened to the lady. "And don' you dare touch her, you filthy oaf, you stupid pile of shit. Kept that ugly thing in your britches or I'll tear it off," he said as his last rum-tinged charge. I saluted and suppressed a smile.

We took her sturdy carriage and George rode ahead with a flag of truce while I kept the team going the right direction, my docile horse tied on behind. We were both unarmed which made me more than a little bit nervous. The young woman stayed out of sight, having looked right through both of us while we got her and her belongings ready to travel. I enjoyed just watching her breathe, her soft lips barely parted and her high-sprung boobies moving in and out and up and down; they barely jiggled when she strode to her rig and mounted the hanging step.

Then George's horse went down about an hour into our journey, broke a leg in a woodchuck hole or some such. He took my animal and headed back to camp, some ten miles or so behind us, while I plodded on, the white flag flapping beside my ear. I remember whistling tunelessly and simply getting pleasure from the day, the easy work and the knowledge that a true beauty was so close by and in my care.

Then the woman thumped on the roof and yelled at me, a real screech after I guess I had ignored her previous cries, deep in my own reveries. I stopped the team, jumped down, opened the door and she saw me, I am sure, for the first time. Her eyes were kind of green, dark green with golden flecks. Her gaze was actually shocking, heart-stopping, mesmerizing we would say these days.

"What happened?" she asked, her neck trembling, veins jumping, breasts heaving up out of her jacket. I could tell she was frightened, and I ached to comfort her before I rogered her.

"Partner lost his horse," I said. "Broke her leg."

"I heard a shot."

"We had to kill the poor beast."

"Oh." She waved her hand and closed the door, taking her lush body, incredible eyes and trembling lips from my sight.

I climbed back up, got my over-stimulated prod down beside my thigh, and clucked at the team. On they trotted at a comfortable rate. An hour so later, she thumped the roof again, told me she was hungry and demanded I find a place to stop. She was obviously quite used to ordering men about and having her way. Personally, I suspect I would have tried to do anything she asked up to and including attempting to fly by flapping my arms.

The first inn we came to was not much of a place, but I stopped and she hurried off to the necessary, her skirts hoisted above the muddy ruts. I enjoyed watching her ankles flash in their fancy-pattern stockings and her hips roll left and right as she trotted with her elbows out. Temptation was alive and well deep in my gut.

We ordered a simple meal, and I sat facing the young woman. I am sure I was smiling like a simpleton, and I could feel my member creeping down my leg. We ate in silence. "I am Amelia Patterson," she said primly as she pushed the trencher aside, lifting her fine chin as though I should know her husband's family by reputation. I told her my name and she nodded. "Where are you from?" she asked, obviously making polite conversation. Before I could say "Maryland," a Jersey militia officer appeared at my elbow.

"Amelia," she said in surprise. "I thought it was you." He smelled of liquor and tobacco.

She smiled up at him, her hands primly in her lap, thrusting her chest hard against her fancy traveling dress and making dimples in her cheeks.

"What are you doing here with this yahoo?" he asked.

"Going back to the regiment," she said calmly as my temperature rose. "We were captured you know."

"Well, come dine with us at least," the big man said, his hip at my shoulder.

"No," the girl said with a bright smile, "but thank you, captain, we're about to leave."

"I insist," the militiaman said gruffly, and he reached for her hand. She shied back, he cursed foully, and I elbowed him in the groin, not full force but enough to stop him. He grunted, and as I started to stand, I felt the muzzle of a gun in the middle of my back.

"Siddown, shitkicker," a voice said, and the man I had elbowed recovered and hit me in the ear, hard enough to leave a buzz and make me see flashing lights. Then he grabbed Amelia's arm, pulled her from her chair despite her sputtering protests and dragged her toward the stairs while she kicked at him and her tight-fitting jacket slid from her shoulder as buttons skittered over the floor.

"We's gonna have us a little party," he said as the frightened girl struggled in his grip. He had his big paw on her stomach, tearing at her clothes, and her feet off the floor. "Come on boys." He waved to the men at his table and four young militiamen stood and followed him up the stairs, dragging the young woman along, both legs kicking frantically. Two of the men carried stoneware bottles, and all of them looked a bit worse for their drinking, their uniform jackets undone and belts loosened.

"Hey," yelled the man behind me, his gun still hard on my spine. "What about me?" He sprayed my cheek with his spittle.

"You'll get your turn, Davy," said the last men on the steps with a laugh. "We won' forget you." The girl shrieked as if she had been hurt badly, and I heard cloth rip.

"Why don' I jus' take him out back and kill 'im?" Davy asked loudly as they disappeared, following the loud cries for help and mercy. "Damn," he said.

"Don't, please don't," she yelled from the floor above and then I heard a door close.

"Damn," said the man behind me again, poking me harder.

I whirled on him, kneed him, brushed his gun hand down, gripping on the big pistol's hammer and flint so it could not fire, and hit him flush in the mouth with a swinging right that had most of my weight behind it. I felt his teeth crunch. He staggered, and I hit him in the center of his chest while I twisted the gun from his hand. Then I whacked him in the head with his own weapon and ran for the steps, my big knife in one hand and the borrowed pistol in the other.

Enough noise was coming from the room where the five men and the girl were hidden that I did not have to search for them. I kicked open the door. Two were holding the struggling woman's arms at the head of the bedstead while their leader knelt between her flailing legs, his turgid phallus in one hand and her white thigh in the other. She was nearly naked, what was left of her shift bunched about her middle, her small, furry muff a heaving mound between her lean thighs.

I stabbed the man by the door just under his short ribs, pulled my blade loose, shot at the would-be rapist where he knelt, spraying blood and brains across the room, and then leapt at the other two in the powder smoke. The nearer one died on my big blade, clawing at my arm as I buried the knife in his chest, and then I stepped over the mewling woman and jumped on the man who was tangled in the bedclothes and trying to pull his short sword loose. I had left my knife in the other man so I throttled this one with my hands and beat his head against the wall and window frame a time or two. I suppose I was a bit out of control, my blood lust roaring in my ears.

Then his head broke the window, sort of awakening me. I shoved him out against the pointed shards in the heavy frame, tearing his back open, and I let him fall, turning my attention back to the bloody room as the soldier screamed briefly before he thumped the dirt. The girl was sitting by the headboard, legs tucked beneath her, holding her torn shift to her pale chest, her eyes wide and mouth gapping, disordered hair nearly covering her face. The big man I had shot sprawled at her legs, most of his skull blown away. The fellow by the door with the belly wound was down on all fours and had blood pouring from his mouth. I kicked him in the head and then yanked my knife from the body of the militiaman beside the bed.

I wiped my blade on the bare buttocks of the man on the bed, sheathed it and then held out my hand. "Come," I said to the girl. I helped her find her torn clothes and her missing shoe, and we made our way back to the ordinary. I sat her at our table, found the tavern-owner's wife and asked her for help and then went outside. The man I had pushed through the window lay on his face in the wagon ruts, very dead, sliced deeply in several places.

I roused the soldier I had clubbed unconscious and forced him to drag the bodies down the steps and out the back door. I took the leader's purse before he was pulled to the stairway, leaving a trail of blood and brains behind him. When the bodies was gathered, I asked the man who had poked his pistol in my back if he would take care of them or if he would rather join them. He begged me not to kill him, and I urged him to tell the truth about what had happened. He promised and left on foot, thanking me over and over.

With the tavern woman's help, the girl had found a clean dress in her belongings, a plain brown one without decoration except for its fancy buttons which marched resolutely between her pointed mounds and down her luscious body. She had pulled her hair back and tied it with a ribbon and now sat where we had eaten, waiting, looking very pale, eyes red-rimmed, lips a thin line.

I sat across from her, took a deep breath, felt my rigid prod begin to relax, and smiled at her.

"How could you do that?" she asked very quietly.

I exhaled. "My job."

"You could have, maybe, made them stop, I mean, without killing them all. Perhaps."

"What do you think they would have done when they finished with you, all of them?"

"I don't know." She sniffed back a tear.

"Shall I tell you?" I was feeling impatient.

She shook her head.

"Are you ready to travel?" I asked.

She nodded. I held the back door for her, and she barely glanced at the grotesque pile of bodies near the wood shed. She stepped up into the carriage, released my hand, and we proceeded, having lost an hour or two. I wondered where George was.

As clouds built up in the west, twilight came quickly and early. Soon I found a big, stageline tavern and pulled into its yard. While I tended the rig and the animals, she made her careful way across the step stones and ordered us a good meal and a bottle of dark red wine.

After a bit of idle chitchat, she said, "I was wrong."

I waited, forking up stew and munching a biscuit.

"I knew that man, the one who came to the table, the one who, well, who almost." She sniffed and looked away. "He knew my husband too, the bastard, the fool."

I nodded, and she touched her lips with her tiny handkerchief.

"He would surely have killed me, killed us both."

"I think so," I said. "After all six had you."

"So I thank you," she said, putting her small hand atop my big mitt. Rings glittered on two slender fingers.

"You were very brave, put up a good fight," I said, smiling at her.

She smiled her thanks, and I poured her some more wine.

"It was a terrible feeling," she said in almost a whisper. "Knowing what those men were going to do to me. They looked like animals, wolves, ripped my dress to shreds, pawed me." She put a hand to her chest. "I have scratches here."

"A rough bunch," I said.

"I don't know how you moved so fast," she said, her eyes holding mine.

"Neither do I," I told her very honestly.

"I mean," she said, "I'm sure it was less than a minute from the time you kicked the door open to that window breaking. It all seemed to happen at once. Lieutenant Johnson, the man you," she hesitated and then went on, "the man you shot was still falling, waving his arm, when you jumped across me."

I mopped my bowl.

"You should have seen your face," the young woman said. "Fearsome, that's the only word I can find, fearsome, and you were yelling something awful, your teeth showing like a tiger or something."

"I'm always glad I'm behind my face," I said, showing a smile.

She smiled back, encouraging my hopes and pushing my lieutenant's threats out of my head altogether.

"Where is your friend?" Amelia asked, finishing her wine.

I shook my head. "Did you ask about rooms?" I said.

She nodded and looked down. "They have one small one left," she said.

"I can sleep in the shed, maybe in the carriage," I said, trying to look noble.

"Sir," she said quickly. "You saved my life; you'll do no such thing."

"Your reputation," I said.

"My affair," she countered, looking stubborn and very pretty, very desirable. My member surged hopefully.

"I snore," I told her, holding her eyes.

She laughed and then stifled it with her hands.

In the tiny room with its narrow bed, she got down to her shift, a new one and not the one they had nearly torn from her, and rolled under the quilt while I was still working on my boots.

"I haven't bundled for years," she said to my back.

That, of course, was not what I had in mind. I got in on my side, wearing just my long-tailed shirt and turned my back to her, right on the edge of the thin mattress, my hand on the side board. I could feel her breath on the base of my neck. I wished I had shaved that week. I tried to relax and then she touched me, put her hand atop my shoulder. I am sure I jumped.

"Sorry," she sighed to my broad back.

"I was nearly asleep, I guess." It was, of course, a lie. It is hard to sleep tumescent.