Chapter 3

Before going into battle against the cruel and devious hordes of the warriors of Islam, I was shriven of my sins, which were many indeed, by a traveling monk of the Franciscan persuasion. He was a jovial fellow with a well-rounded beer inspired gut of some magnitude. My penance was to wear a hair shirt of evil construction that irritated my skin like some rash of unknown origin.

I abstained from carnal relationships in the pre-battle period gathering my strength for the struggle to gain an upper-hand in the land of Christian birth. Most of my cohorts were of like attitude and I think that was what gave us the edge in the confrontation that turned the sands of the desert into rivers of blood with no sense of Islamic or Christian origins. The gory sights were lifelong memories buried under thick walled compartments of conspired forgetfulness allowing me to resume normal life in a peaceful environment. However in that period immediately following the battle, I shook with emotion at the contemplation of severed limbs and heads floating in a sea of blood without end.

It shames me to admit I made a promise of repudiation of the ways of the flesh to our God on high if I were spared death or dismemberment during the chaotic fray. Of course, it only took the passing of the sun two times for me to break that solemn vow and I ascribe it to my weakness of character when it comes to using female flesh for my pleasure.

I re-visited the Franciscan monk and he told me,

"It is all right to fail in your intent my son providing you are truly sorry for it. I have fallen down on my own vows many times when I visit one of the convents with nuns of dubious vocations and I constantly try my best to be pure of mind and spirit but pull myself up from the mud of sinful behavior when I fail."

We both repaired to the order of the multi-constituted novitiates and sisters to consider our weaknesses and the good sisters did their best to relax our tired souls with their feminine favors in private concert. I personally took a pair of French nuns with shaved slits to my bed and alternated them until I lost all sense of identity between them. My only source of contrast was the fact that the shorter one had a brown eye of extremely tight construction and the other one was able to open her rear door as soon as she tumbled onto her knees and elbows. It was a difference that intrigued me because in all other respects they were like identical twins.

Our victory in the major battle was a great source of rightful pride and we dispatched a large number of the male captives to their obscene God to make certain our odds were more in our favor in future battles. The females were not many in number because the foes had taken the process of capturing Christian female prisoners, using them for a short while and then dispatching them as reminders to all females of their proper place in their Islamic order. I had seen the huddled masses of the female slaves in the marketplace and felt a great degree of pity for their plight but it was not our proper place to interfere in the ordinary conduct of commercial trade without justification.

I found several young women of fair skin banded together in the midst of the captured Islamic women all dressed in the dreary black robes of shapeless concealment. They were also dressed in like manner but their very stance and sparkling eyes gave them away as being of a different stock than the cow-like captives. One of them spoke understandable English but with a flavored accent of uncertain origin. I discovered that they were all from the same village in Palestine and were members of the Jewish religion as were all of the residents of that village. They told me the entire village had been wiped out by the hordes of Islam and that they were the only survivors. The girl told me that they were kept alive because they represented a source of income on the slave markets in Constantinople and were considered ripe pleasures by the Turkish males of repressed depraved practices. They were seldom used by the fighters slain on the battlefield because they considered their race to be inferior in every respect.

I took pity on the six women ranging in age from 35 down to 18 because they were both physically impressive and all seemed to have the same sense of friendly submissiveness to any male they came in contact with. The oldest one was called Ruth and she bemoaned the loss of her husband, her parents and even her two children who were taken by the Islamists for training in their beliefs. Ruth was not the leader of the group because she lacked the intelligence of the 25 year old Ester who apparently had been subjected to torturous interrogation by the Islamic war planners. Ester managed to give erroneous information with a convincing air of truth sending them in the wrong direction hunting the Christian pilgrims. I commended her for her insight and fortitude in her actions and she thanked me for my words.

I turned the 18 year old Eve and the 19 year old Miriam over to my two squires for nocturnal companions and the two girls seemed most appreciative of my decision. I kept the juicy Ruth and the interesting Ester for my own needs and the other two I assigned to the mobile convent for safekeeping in the military camp. The sisters welcomed them and made room for them at the table and in front of their fire.