Chapter 30: The Ghost-Girl

The guard who served as Scribe # 8’s contact visited her one more time during the month of April and three times during May. She passed between 20 and 30 sheets of detailed information during each visit. As requested, she concentrated on collecting data about the Bishop, other church officials, and the Vice-Duchy’s finances. She also paid special attention to copying any correspondence between the Vice-Duke or his advisors and people outside the Duchy. She wasn’t able to comply with the request to overhear gossip from the palace women because her duties mostly kept her with the Vice-Duke’s male advisors. However, she was able to provide information about someone far more important than a bunch of gossipy over-dressed noblewomen. She had direct and continuous access to one of the Vice-Duke’s sons.

During her first weeks in the palace, Scribe # 8 had to endure another indignity apart from the washroom shows and constant groping. Her worst tormentor was the obnoxious young prince who had spanked her the day she entered the palace. Whenever he was in the inner portion of the palace, he looked for her. If he could find her, the teenager called her out and made her bend over and grab her ankles. He then subjected her to fondling and a light spanking, regardless of the duty he had pulled her away from or whoever happened to be milling around at the moment. He called her a “very bad girl” for tempting him and made her grovel at his feet begging forgiveness.

Danka was infuriated, but she was little more than a slave and couldn’t do anything, at least for the moment. However, it was obvious the teenager was attracted to her. In the back of her mind she wondered about turning that attraction to her advantage, perhaps by seducing him and then seeing about blackmailing him. The prince’s name was Hristockt. She was surprised to find out he was 19, considering his effeminate appearance and lacy clothing. She had thought he was younger, perhaps 14 or 15. Of course, Scribe # 8 also looked much younger than her real age, thanks to the blue powder. She would turn 24 sometime during 1759, although she wasn’t sure what date because her parents never bothered to tell her. However, anyone looking at her would not have guessed she was any older than 18.

So, with her young appearance and submissive behavior, she coldly studied Prince Hristockt and learned his daily routine. He seemed to be a total idiot besides being an effeminate dandy. It was for sure that he had no experience dealing with the real world. He would be no match for someone like Danka. Her only challenge would be to get him alone without raising any suspicions. Assuming she could figure out how to isolate him, he’d be completely helpless against her wiles.

Scribe # 8 figured the best way to seduce the prince would be to encourage him to take her into his room. She couldn’t be overt about it, but if he “caught” her near his chamber, he’d be likely to take her inside. She started administering birth-control paste to herself and timed her route so she’d be passing close to his door at the same moment he was returning from music practice. Two days later, she bumped into him only a few fathoms from his door. He took the bait and ordered her to go into the room with him.

As always, he made her grab her ankles and caressed her bottom. He started spanking her, with light smacks as always. He spent a very long time “punishing” her, to the point she was uncomfortable, not so much from the smacks, but from her muscles cramping from having to remain bent over and immobilized for such a long time. The prince did something he would not have done outside his room: he put his free hand down his pants and started masturbating while he was spanking the servant. Danka became bored and tired of holding the same position. She took a slight risk and spoke up.

“My lovely Prince. It would be such an honor to have a fine man like yourself use your humble serving girl as you please for your manly pleasure.”

The prince became hard at the suggestion, but it was clear he had no clue what to do. The scribe kissed him and put her hand over the crotch of his pants. She took charge and pushed him onto his bed. She undid rows of buttons and pulled down the three layers of clothing covering his hips. She massaged and kissed him and flattered him with words about his handsomeness and manliness as she pulled the pants completely off. She had a frustrating time with his small, skinny organ. It kept going limp before she had a chance to straddle him. Finally she managed to keep him hard enough to get him inside her. She felt she had achieved a major accomplishment when she finally felt the faint pulsing of a weak orgasm inside. She had to pretend she was enjoying herself instead of wondering how a man could possibly be so contemptible.

Well, that was quite pathetic. However, the servant had accomplished what she wanted. She managed to convince Prince Hristockt that he was an excellent lover and any woman would be ecstatic to have such a virile man at her service. She knew he’d have only one thing one his mind the next day: her.

That afternoon was the first out of many Prince Hristockt spent with Scribe # 8. Love-making was always the same. The sessions always started with the prince ordering her to bend over and fondling her before administering a spanking. The spankings were always the same as well, delivered with his hand and long, but never very hard because he didn’t have much strength. Then she had to go to her knees and beg him to forgive her for being so misbehaved. After all that was taken care of, the Scribe took over. She had to work her way through layers of fancy clothing so she could strip him from the waist down. Occasionally she managed to strip him completely, but undoing all those buttons and removing all those shirts truly tested her patience. She spent a long time massaging his thighs and then his penis. Finally, when he was hard enough, she’d straddle him and try to get him inside her and get him to climax before he went limp. Then she’d massage him and snuggle up to him while he talked.

More than any other time in her life, Danka felt like Lilith every time she spent an afternoon with Hristockt. She was completely in control of him, even when she was bent over taking a spanking or kneeling at his feet. Her submissiveness fed into his ego and made him see himself as superior, both in intellect and in morality. He completely discounted the notion Scribe # 8 could have any ulterior motives for interacting with him; in fact, that idea never even occurred to him. So, around her he chatted, not really for her benefit, but for an opportunity to think out loud. The teenager talked incessantly, as though he had no one else to talk to and had a lot to get off his chest. Yes, he finally could talk. After all, what harm could a naked dishonored former nun possibly do to him?

He bragged about his father’s activities and plots, detailed the intrigues of palace advisors against each other, and plans to favor one advisor at the expense of another. He talked at length about various members of the Vice-Duke’s family, how much he hated his brothers, and how much he held his uncles and cousins in contempt. He talked about his father’s purchases and bragged about how much they cost. He bragged about his father’s foreign contacts and how he managed to use clandestine couriers to move his communications through the western valley. Apparently he had a contact among the guards in the border post in Sebernekt Ris who helped him smuggle his imported items past the Duchy’s main northern entrance. During the first few days with Hristockt, Danka picked up so much information she had a hard time prioritizing what was most important and writing it all down. She used up all the scrap pieces of parchment in the palace and had to steal several clean sheets. She realized the next time she saw her contact; she’d have to tell him to supply her with paper.

After a few days of letting the prince ramble about whatever he wanted to talk about, she started directing the conversations towards the Vice-Duke’s relations with the various city councils, landlords, and Church officials. She was interested in knowing who was favored by the Vice-Duke, who was out of favor or under suspicion, and why. The teenager blathered whatever he knew. Danka suspected some of his information was not accurate, but he blissfully told her the truth as he saw it. On the rare occasions he was reluctant to answer a question, a few strokes of her hand and some cuddling and kisses were enough to make him resume talking.

Scribe # 8 couldn’t imagine how she could possibly improve her access to the Vice-Duke’s secrets. She was wrong about that, because she had underestimated the prince’s stupidity. By the beginning of June, she was spending more time with him as his personal servant. She dutifully followed him around, carrying his documents, books, and whatever else he needed at the moment. On several occasions he led her into his father’s private chambers, allowing her to see where he kept his papers, maps, and official seals. She also saw a True Believers’ coding device and several coded messages laid out on a study table. Her heart jumped into her throat when she saw the coder. If only she could get her hands on it...

Adjacent to the private sleeping chamber was the entrance to a small wine cellar. Danka found out the palace had two wine cellars; the general underground chamber for the main kitchen and dining hall, and a smaller one for the Vice-Duke’s personal stash of more expensive wine and cognac. Hristockt grabbed a bottle of wine and handed it to the scribe to uncork it. She didn’t do it fast enough, so he spanked her. He told her to pick up a wine glass and follow him outside to the garden. The prince ordered two house-servants to bring out a fancy chair from the reception area and set it under a tree. For the rest of the afternoon he sat drinking and eating Turkish delight while Scribe # 8 knelt next to him, holding the bottle and refilling his glass. He did not offer her any of the wine or candy. She was a servant and undeserving of such delicacies. The scribe was not worried about tasting wine or the dismissive treatment. Her mind was on that coding device and how to take a better look at it.

Two days later Scribe # 8 returned to the Vice-Duke’s sleeping chamber, alone. Prince Hristockt had given her copies of the keys she needed to access both the room and the wine cellar. She was to bring out a bottle of wine, a box of Turkish delight, and a small snuff box filled containing white powder. She recognized it as a medical ingredient the Followers called Andean salt, which they imported from the Spanish colonies and used in some of their surgeries.

She did not have to worry about anyone questioning why she was in the Vice-Duke’s chambers or why she had a key to the room, because the prince had written on her back with a quill that she was carrying the key under his orders and was accessing the room because he told her to. The writing on her bare back was supposed to be an additional humiliation, but for a person whose job it was to spy on the household, it was a pass to access the palace’s most important secrets. As she entered the room, sure enough, there it was, the coding device. It was a brass cylinder no bigger than Danka’s hand, made from a stack of 20 disks containing rows of letters in different orders. If she could copy all those letters and deliver coding sheets, Ernockt’s group would be able re-create the device and decipher the True Believers’ messages and secret orders. There was a quill and inkwell on the desk and a basket of discarded paper underneath. Danka decided to take a sheet of discarded paper, copy two rows of letters each time she visited the room, and hide the paper underneath the basket. When she finished copying all the disks, she’d sneak the paper from the room and turn it over to her contact.

She figured she’d have to visit the room a total of ten times to accurately copy all those letters from the cylinder. To copy all those letters in a single sitting would take too long and Prince Hristockt would start wondering why she was delayed bringing out his wine and white snuff. She’d have to be patient and not tell her contact what she was doing until she had duplicated the complete configuration of letters.

After copying two rows and hiding the paper, Danka reported back to the prince. She patiently knelt while Hristockt drank about half the wine and took a sniff of Andean salt. He started acting very strange, both happy and agitated. He paced around the chair and shook his hands. He took another sniff of powder and emptied the entire bottle in a single swallow, a bottle of wine that cost the Vice-Duke a piece of gold. He sent the servant back to the Vice-Duke’s secret cellar for a second bottle.

Danka decided to copy three more disks of letters before returning to the prince with the bottle. He continued to pace around, happy and agitated. He did not notice she had come back. When she tried to draw his attention, he ignored her. He doesn’t know I’m here. He doesn’t know what’s happening at all. I can leave, and he wouldn’t even notice, thought Danka to herself. So, she returned to the Vice-Duke’s chamber. With her heart pounding, she copied the remaining rows of letters from the cylinder. Twenty rows altogether, making sure she had not missed or duplicated any letters or made any other mistakes. There were several copies of coding sheets lying on the desk. Having taken such a crazy risk so far, she checked to make sure they were all the same and stole one. Now she had, in her possession, the configuration of a True Believers’ encryption cylinder and a coding sheet needed to decipher messages. If she could hide the papers and deliver them to the guard, her handlers would have access to the True Believers’ entire system of encrypted messaging.

She hid the papers behind a Virgin Mother statue and ran back to the garden with her bottle. Undoubtedly the prince would punish her for being so late with the wine, but it would be worth it if she could deliver the encryption codes. It turned out Hristockt was in no condition to punish anyone. He was surrounded by guards, his father, and his brothers and was completely incoherent, yelling obscenities at the top of his voice. Scribe # 8 knelt, holding out the second bottle of wine. The Vice-Duke took it from her and slapped her hard across the face. He struck her again and ordered her to return to the inner palace and report to Scribe # 1. He did not notice she still had, in her hand, the prince’s keys to his private chamber.

The palace entourage was preoccupied with the latest scandal: Prince Hristockt had pilfered his father’s snuff-box of Andean salt and had sniffed so much that it made him mad. A foreign surgeon using the latest western-European medicine bled the unfortunate youth, weakening him even more and prolonging his delirious behavior.

With the palace guards and nobles so distracted, the conspirators’ guard decided to approach Scribe # 8, even though he did not have any letters to give her as justification for meeting her. He was speechless when she handed him fifty pages of notes, keys to the Vice-Duke’s chamber, and the encryption information. He promised to return later in the day with the keys (after the conspirators made copies) and the extra parchment the scribe would need to avoid running out of paper in the future.

Danka spent the rest of the afternoon taking dictation from a group of women writing poetry. They occasionally paused to giggle and whisper comments about Prince Hristockt and his unfortunate encounter with Andean salt.

After dinner, Scribe # 8 had to bathe and “do unspeakable things” to Scribe # 1. The worst part of the tasking was the audience. Instead of men, the spectators were a group of women. The women insisted that Scribe # 8 tie her companion’s wrists to the bar above the washtub and for the senior scribe to look directly at them while she was forced to have an orgasm. Her eyes filled with tears as Scribe # 8 concentrated on pleasuring her with her fingers and tongue. When she finally managed to climax, the women in the audience whistled approvingly. Finally, Scribe # 8 untied her companion’s hands, but the spectators insisted she kneel in front of the newer scribe and to thank her for making her a happy woman.

Danka tried to remain detached from everything going on around her. These people are nothing but dishonored degenerates and there is nothing I can do about that.

When Scribe # 8 finally returned to her room and examined the contents of her scribe’s supply folder, she saw it was full of clean paper. Hidden among the papers were copies of the keys to the Vice-Duke’s chamber. They were not the originals, so Danka could only hope the guard had somehow managed to return them to either Prince Hristockt or to the Vice-Duke to avoid suspicion.

Prince Hristockt had a difficult time recovering from his overdose of Andean salt and the treatment he had received at the hands of the incompetent foreign doctor. The loss of blood worsened the brain damage from the salt. The cuts became infected and resulted in a nasty fever that kept the youth in bed for days. Danka coldly watched that idiot foreigner as he performed one counter-productive procedure on the prince after another. She knew that she could have cured Hristockt in a couple of days, but no one in the palace would have believed her. Also, had she argued with the foreigner and attempted to take over the prince’s treatment, she would have unveiled herself as a Follower of the Ancients. She didn’t like the teenager anyway and was pleased to see him suffer. So, she simply sat in the corner as a spectator, working on various letters she had been given to transcribe.

After Prince Hristockt had recovered sufficiently to sit outside, Danka spent much of her daily routine during the final part of June and the first part of July in the garden watching over him. If he wanted something, she had to fetch it for him. She wandered about the palace, naked as always, going after books from the library, snacks from the kitchen, or wine from the Vice-Duke’s stash. She moved about freely, with a message penned on her back stating she was authorized to be in various rooms and that she was not to be questioned or interfered with as she ran her errands. The only item she was not authorized to fetch was Andean salt. However much his son wanted it, the Vice-Duke displayed enough common sense to keep it away from him.

Scribe # 8 was able to glance at a lot of documents as she ran about the Palace. As best she could, she memorized the information and worked on her notes, even while sitting next to the prince. She also wrote her observations of his condition, the procedures performed on him and their effect on his health, and his very slow convalescence. As she entered the Vice-Duke’s chamber to retrieve wine, she paid attention to the desk where the encryption device was located and copied information from new coding sheets and secret messages.

The guard finally gave Scribe # 8 an explanation of what Ernockt’s group was doing with all of the information she was collecting. Their main concern was finding out who the True Believers had marked as suspicious or heretical individuals and thwart plans to arrest them. Another important goal was to frustrate the efforts of tax collectors and prevent farmers from being arrested and executed as tax evaders. Ernockt passed a lot of information to the Prophets of the Grand Temple so they could position sympathizers to seize control of True Believer parishes and to make sure that any attempt to seize a parish did not end in failure. All of the Vice-Duke’s messages to foreign leaders ended up in the hands of the Grand Duke. The Sovereign employed a couple of scribes to forge letters, so the Vice-Duke’s messages to his foreign co-conspirators were being re-written, as were the responses from abroad. Already a shipment of expensive imported items had been seized by “bandits” before they had the chance to enter the Duchy, along with two shipments of gold exiting the Duchy. The Grand Duke left the corrupt Royal Guards helping his rival in their positions, but provided them with falsified information. Ultimately the Grand Duke would frustrate the Vice-Duke by giving him the impression the guards had betrayed him and were the ones guilty of stealing the gold and imports.

Danka thought about the Grand Duke’s excellent group of informers who had allowed him to thwart the Lord of the Red Moon a few years before. Now he had set up a similar spying network against the Vice-Duke. She was part of that network and probably its most valuable member. Ironic, she had escaped from serving the Sovereign in 1755, only to unwittingly return to serving him four years later. The Grand Duke always seemed to win, always seemed to outsmart everyone else.

Scribe # 8 was not surprised to find out from the guard that her most significant contribution to her group was the encryption information. Ernockt had created an exact replica and was busy collecting and translating coded messages from the True Believers’ Bishop. The conspirator had discovered the Bishop and the Vice-Duke were planning a terror purge of tax evaders and suspicious individuals in the late summer: a mass arrest and execution of several thousand people around the Vice-Duchy in an effort to scare everyone else into conforming to the wishes of the two leaders. There was too much dissention and free-thinking in the Vice-Duchy, and the executions should resolve the problem and consolidate the Vice-Duke’s control over his subjects.

The guard concluded by speculating the conspirators might attempt to assassinate the Bishop before he had the chance to distribute arrest lists to the parishes and issue the final orders. If that were true, they would have to conduct the assassination within the next few weeks.

Prince Hristockt slowly recovered throughout the first half of July. Scribe # 8 knew he’d recover a lot faster if that idiot doctor from western Europe would just leave him alone, but she was not in a position to say anything about the treatments. Even had she been able to help, she would have kept her mouth shut because she enjoyed watching the degenerate weakling suffer. However, in spite of everything, he did slowly recover and spent increasing amounts of time outside.

By July 15 the prince felt well enough to make a pilgrimage to the cathedral in a town called Sihidikti Ris, which was located at the far eastern edge of the Duchy. Danka had heard about Sihidikti Ris: it was supposed to be have the most spectacular setting of any Danubian town, surrounded by sheer cliffs on the east, northeast, and southeast sides. Perched high on one of those cliffs was a True Believers’ house of worship containing the largest Virgin Mother statue in the entire Duchy.

The most important summer mass of the Old Believers was traditionally held on August 2. The mass was the opening event of the annual meeting between the Bishop and other important dignitaries, during which the Church hierarchy planned their activities for the rest of the year. Prince Hristockt announced that he wanted to go to the mass in Sihidikti Ris to receive a blessing from the Bishop. It seemed like a good idea to everyone in the inner palace, so much that the Vice-Duke decided his heir would represent the Vice-Duchy’s royal family at the mass. The prince would make the pilgrimage, receive a blessing from the Virgin Mother, and be exposed to fresh air and sunshine along the route.

Scribe # 8 wondered how he could possibly make such a trip on a horse without getting sick and falling off. Well, it turned out he would not be riding a horse. He would be carried in a litter, or a “sedan chair”, which was a silk-covered chair with a large parasol covering the top and poles sticking out of the ends that allowed four men to carry it. Danka looked at the contraption in disbelief. Prince Hristockt would actually be carried all the way from Rika Chorna to Sihidikti Ris, and no one seemed to think there was anything wrong with that.

There was another surprise for the servant. Not only would the prince be carried across the Vice Duchy in a covered chair, but she would accompany him on the trip. He announced that he wanted her to walk alongside the litter, stark naked. Scribe # 8 would be the only naked person in a procession of dozens of top officials and Church leaders. Even the Bishop had misgivings about forcing a servant to walk across the entire Vice-Duchy in the nude, but the prince insisted it was necessary so she could be properly humbled and know her place around him. The scribe knelt and pretended to be very frightened at the prospect of making such a journey completely uncovered. The truth was that she was fine with the arrangement: she had walked in the nude all over the western valley the year before. Walking around naked in the Vice Duchy didn’t bother her in the least, even though it was supposed to be an unbearable humiliation. The only thing she’d need would be shoes to protect her feet. With some massages and flattery she managed to convince the prince to give her a pair of shoes, as though he were granting her a huge and unreasonable favor. Before leaving, she fixed herself a dose of tea from the final batch of blue powder she had kept in her nun’s habit and packed her medicines and the items she needed to clean her teeth in a small cloth she entrusted to one of the litter-carriers. She wanted to make sure that if she did not return to the palace, nothing of her would remain there.

The Vice-Duke decided not to go to Sihidikti Ris that year, figuring that sending his son would be sufficient representation for the region’s royal family. The Bishop was miffed at the Vice-Duke’s slight, but didn’t say anything. The procession gathered in the city’s main plaza as church bells rang and choirs sang. Scribe # 8’s former companions from the nuns’ residence were present, looking at her with curious and mocking expressions as she walked naked alongside the prince’s litter. The men carrying the prince were strong but wretched-looking guards who had been released from punitive confinement. They weren’t complaining about having to carry the prince: the hardship they would endure on the trip was nothing in comparison with what they had to face in confinement.

The procession was one of the most ridiculous spectacles Danka had ever seen. A group of priests walked in front, carrying a large statue of the crucified Son of Man. The Bishop and his associates rode fine horses immediately behind the crucifix-carriers. Prince Hristockt’s litter followed, along with the porters and the naked scribe. More priests followed on foot, with mounted guards and supply mules in the rear. The point of the procession was to take the crucifix of the Son of Man to visit the statue of his mother in Sihidikti Ris. The priests chanted, passed out blessings, and waved burners full of incense as the group left the eastern capitol and traveled towards the mountains, on a pilgrimage that would last two weeks going in each direction. The kneeling residents of Rika Chorna lined the streets and waited for benedictions and whiffs of incense as the group headed out. When they saw naked woman walking in the procession, they stared at her in disbelief.

In spite of the stares and supposed humiliation, Danka enjoyed the following two weeks. For the first time since the previous year she was able to move about outdoors and see some new countryside. The pace was slow and relaxing, more of a stroll than a walk. She had to run back and forth with water, wine, and treats for the prince, but those duties were not very taxing. He was still too weak to fondle her or want sex. She managed to ignore her odious marching companions and just enjoy the feeling of the sun and wind on her bare skin, something she had not experienced for a long time.

At night she undressed the prince, bathed him, and slept with him in a comfortable tent. She ate well and encouraged him to eat fresh fruit. During the journey his condition improved dramatically. The Bishop claimed his recovery was a blessing from the Virgin Mother, but Danka knew the improvement was because he was away from that quack doctor and breathing fresh air and eating decent food.

The eastern valley was flat until it reached a range of steep mountains that formed the eastern border of the Duchy. On the other side of the mountains was territory belonging to the Muscovite Empire. Danka knew the Muscovites were as dangerous to other nations as the Ottomans, but the mountains were impassible and thus protected the Duchy’s eastern flank. The land between Rika Chorna and Sihidikti Ris was covered with small farms, but the soil was full of rocks and not really suitable for agriculture. The residents were poor, but that didn’t stop tax collectors from grabbing what little they had. The procession passed through a village where executions of accused tax evaders had just taken place: three destitute farmers slumped lifeless on three posts, with five arrows sticking out of each body. The sullen townspeople knelt and stared listlessly at the procession as it passed through. The marching clerics were not concerned about the executed men and showed no sympathy towards their widows.

The land closer to Sihidikti Ris had better soil, so most of it had been taken over by wealthy landlords. The poorer residents lived in wooded settlements along ponds and streams, in conditions very similar to the conditions Danka had endured growing up. The town itself was clean and had nice stone buildings, but its residents focused on making luxury goods and providing services for the local elite. There were several churches in Sihidikti Ris, including a gothic chapel modeled after one Danka had seen in ruins in the former Lower Danubia.