Chapter 5

At this point, several memories merged and played games. They danced and they fought; and gradually they fused and combined.

In the first, I saw a nun who had been brought from the prison by the Marquis and who'd been horribly tortured. She was still dressed, although only of a fashion, for her tattered habit clung to her body by instinct rather than design.

Her once beautiful skin was bandaged with strokes emanating from three hubs that were her breasts, her stomach and her thighs. She'd also been crying, but not because of the whip, but because she was going to die.

There had been no judge, no jury. The Marquis had decided that she was an accomplice to my "crime", whatever that meant, and therefore she was in conspiracy and that's what counted.

So the Gens d'Armes made this nun stand with her hands behind her back in the middle of the square and confess it. She was facing us. The remnants of her habit were dislocated upon her shoulders, leaving her neck effectively naked, puffy and bare. It was a swan's neck, white, long, slim and uncomfortably vulnerable. Below it, her breasts were haphazardly uncovered. The whip had cut deep into them tearing her habit into a sequence of slits between which bruises and tramlines showed through.

I knew her, of course. Her name was Ann Marie and she'd grown up in our village, the daughter of our blacksmith. I also knew the origins of the charges against her because shortly after becoming a nun she'd been given the assignment of guarding the lake at the convent. She'd been seventeen and the lake was where the nuns were accustomed to bathe.

Traditionally, the most junior nun at the convent was given the responsibility of keeping watch in case anyone chanced by, and so this task had fallen on Ann Marie. However, given that we'd grown up together she'd been happy to let me sneak past and go to the water's edge where I could watch.

In fact, Ann Marie had suggested it.

"Why not? What they don't know won't hurt them," she'd retorted, accepting my money and urging me on. Twenty sous. That had been her price. Two shiny coins slipped into the palm of her hand at the top of the hill.

At first I'd accepted her pecuniary reasoning at face value. I'd assumed that as a nun without a regular income she was doing it for the money, but then one day I'd grasped that she got a strange kick from pandering to my voyeurism. She was a nun denied the pleasures of the flesh, and illicit complicity with me gave her an odd perverted thrill. So, each time I came up from the lake she'd be waiting for me at the top of the hill. She'd take hold of my hand and lead me between the trees and we'd sit together on the grass, and she'd ask me to describe what I'd seen. They'd be questions about which nuns I liked best. She'd ask me to describe their tits, their pussies, their asses; the shapes and sizes I liked best; and then she'd ask me shyly whether I'd committed a sin - and how many times, and which of the nuns had prompted those sins.

Once I'd grasped that my answers were arousing her passions, I used this knowledge mercilessly against her.

"You should go down to the lake and bathe yourself," I told her one day, placing a fifty sous coin into the seat of her palm and then twisting it about.

She'd blushed, but her palm hadn't closed, and her eyes had been gleaming with excitement. "What? Do you mean now? This minute?"

"Why not? And if like, I'll stay here and keep guard, just as you do for the others."

"You? You will keep guard? For me?" She'd glanced fearfully in the direction of the village. "Are you sure? You'll prevent any men from spying on me?

"Of course I will," I vowed, keeping the edge of my fifty sous coin fixed firmly in her palm. "Ann Marie. We've known each other since we were two years of age. After all this time, don't you trust me?"

"You promise that you won't peep?"

I stared at her darkly, my eyes deliberately wandering across her habit and focusing on her chest and groin. "Of course I won't peep. I promise. I'm your friend. I promise I'll stay at the top of the hill and keep guard and that I won't budge from that spot."

Of course, she'd known that I was lying and that I'd renege from the moment the words left my mouth. She knew that I was insincere and that this was a promise born to be broken, but it allowed her the luxury of pretence. That was her fix. She went down to the lake and she stood at the edge and she teased me in a way that was deliberately unconscious. She stripped to the skin as a woman does when she knows she's being watched by a man and then she stretched and gyrated, alternatively hiding and revealing her body, in her mind pretending that there was a stranger looking, pretending the pretense. Then she lay on the water with the waves lapping at her face and her legs and torso and breasts, and she washed herself, focusing extensively on her large aching nipples and between her legs, stroking and caressing herself in the way that she needed. She inserted first one finger and then two with naturalness and playfulness, and yet soon the fingers became urgent until finally she ended up out of breath with deep dusky eyes, a heavy pulse and a uniform pink glow.

Then she smiled and splashed about in the water, perfectly happy and relaxed. She swam the length of the lake and on returning, she climbed to her feet and with the water streaming from every part of her and still covered with her pink glow, she dried herself and dressed.

I met her soon after at the top of the hill where I pretended I'd remained all along. She walzed up to me with a spring to her step and a warmth in her heart and she kissed me gently on the cheek, and clinging to my hand, she whispered, 'thank you', into my ear.

That secret knowledge of my presence tided her over many long evenings and it led frequently to nervous and guilty confessions to the priests and painful absolution.

But what did that matter?

This was her fix.

And now - all this time after - she'd confessed it under terrible torture. She revealed that she'd been seventeen years old and not long at the convent. I'd been sixteen and she'd known me since I'd been only two and only just able to walk. That's why she'd done it.

Slowly, piece by piece, they'd dragged it out of her, every morsel of information pulled from her heart at terrible cost, and now, her back was stiff and her knees were bruised but the soldiers insisted that she bend down and they tugged at the remainder of her clothes with the tips of their swords. As they did it, she didn't resist them. She let go of her habit and suddenly her religion was plucked from her and dangling at the end of a sword. Then came her veil and finally her wimple and she was naked, her nipples hard and erect. A hand was placed on her shoulder and this pressed her down to her knees, and from here, her head was coerced against the stump of a tree.

She glanced nervously at the size of my erection and didn't look away as a Gens d'Armes placed his heavy boot onto the side of her cheek and as he pinned her in place; but at seeing my manhood for the first time, she smiled, because by now she'd fought the fine fight and her Crown of Glory awaited her.

Yes, she'd taken my money on a number of occasions, she revealed in answer to another of the Marquis's demands.

He waited.

Yes, she'd bathed in the lake.

He waited.

Yes, she'd undressed completely.

Another long wait.

Yes, she'd known I was watching.

I watched the familiar pink glow suffuse across her body as the boot pressing against her cheek did so more forcefully and as she winced from discomfort. I heard the quickening of her breathing.

Had she masturbated?

Yes.

By this point she'd known what was going to happen next and so had I. "There is nothing I can do," I murmured to myself as I watched them grabbing hold of her arms and her legs and holding them tightly. "Whatever happens, I can't stop them."

Had she been aware that others used the lake? Female travelers, for instance, while staying under the shelter of the convent?