Chapter 36: A Gentleman's Word

The captain's wife and daughter were snotty, stuck-up bitches; that was the consensus after they had been in camp less than a week. By the end of two weeks, that opinion had solidified and they were considered mean-spirited and demanding as well. We would be, all agreed, glad to see them gone despite their obvious and sourly admitted beauty. When Foster called me in and handed me a purse, I knew it was my turn in the barrel. He smiled

"Take them two friggin' females back to the Raritan River, m'boy. Do it quick as you can and then git back here. No dallying."

"Why me?" I whined.

"You done good at this a'fore," he said. "Git on."

It was at least a fifty miles to Branchburg, much of it in territory the British held, more or less. Although the roads were solid, it would take me a week to get there and ride back. I hitched my horse behind their well-appointed wagon, introduced myself to the women, both of whom barely nodded in response, and we were off well before noon.

The women sat on the sprung and upholstered seat behind me, chattering away, and I chewed and spat since the first thing they told me was not to smoke. We stopped in mid-afternoon and they enjoyed a meal the cooks had prepared for them. I gnawed a bit of jerky and ate some hard biscuits. I thought nasty thoughts.

About dusk, the mother tapped me on the shoulder. "We've stayed at the inn just ahead. Stop there."

"Yes'm," I said without looking back. It was the first time she had spoken to me all day.

I pulled into the stable yard and stopped. They got down and headed for the necessary while I saw to the three animals. By the time I got to the tavern, all hell had broken loose, and I found myself in the midst of a very nasty fight.

The mother was struggling with two men who seemed to be trying to bend her over a table. She had her head down and was snorting and swinging her fist in the air while the men cuffed her about and tore at her clothes. I pulled one off and bashed his head again the door jamb and then faced the other, who had freed the woman and pulled a pistol from the back of his belt. I threw my knife at him with the quick flip and it made him duck. I dove in, drove him to the floor, battered his face and then became aware of screaming, a girl's high-pitched howl, from the floor above.

I hit the man square in the face, scrambled off him, found my knife and cut his throat with backhanded slash. Then I galloped for the stairs as the girl screeched again, a muffled cry. Her mother, I noticed, stood sobbing with one hand on the table and the other holding her dress to her chest. I took the steps in three jumps, kicked open the door where the noise was coming from and found three big young men attempting to tie the daughter to a bed.

The young woman was still wearing her stays and a torn fragment of her shift. One ankle and one wrist had been bound, and she was twisting, turning and yelling while one boy sat on her chest and attempted to stuff his engorged member in her mouth at the same time his compatriots worked at getting her hands and feet securely bound.

I pulled the horny man off the girl and threw him into the one at the foot of the bed. Then I knifed the fellow holding her arm and turned to slash at the other two. I got one in the back as he made for the door, but the other ran down the stairs and grabbed the girl's mother. I cut the sobbing youngster loose, noting her lush young body as I did, and hurried after him.

He fired as I got to the bottom of the stairs, spraying wood chips past my face. Then he threw the pistol away and dragged the struggling woman out the back door, drawing a knife from his belt as he did. I ran after them, but he stopped me at the doorway.

"I'll kill 'er," he screamed, the point of his short blade at the mother's throat. "I will!" Her eyes were wide and her bodice was flapping open.

I sheathed my bayonet and showed him my open hands.

"You stay on back," he yelled. "I'm a'leaving here."

I nodded and smiled at him.

"She's," he said, looking around wildly, "she's going wi'me."

"No," I said walking slowly after them and closing the distance. "She'll just slow you down. Let her go."

"Stay back," He yelled just as he tripped over the corner of the watering trough, and the woman managed to twist free of his suddenly-loosened grip.

I was on him before he regained his balance. He swung at me with his blade, back and forth twice, and then I grabbed his wrist, yanked him off his feet and drove his head down in the foot-deep trough. I held him there until he stopped making bubbles and squirming and then left his body head-down in the water.

"Your daughter needs you," I said to the woman standing by her wagon's back wheel. "Get her some fresh clothes."

She looked at me as if she did not understand English and then nodded. I went back into the tavern and found the inn-keeper and his serving wench or wife, a woman about his age, both dead in the kitchen. The woman had obviously been used roughly before she was killed.

I stopped the mother as she entered the inn, her arms full of clothes. "Is there a river nearby?" I asked.

She shook her head, still too stunned to talk.

I found some soft ground back of the stable and dug a deep hole, big enough for two, wrapped the inn-keeper and the woman's body in blankets and buried them as best I could. I put some good-sized stones atop the freshly turned ground. Then I dragged the corpses of the men I had killed off to the edge of a treeline, covered them with deadfall limbs and brush, poured on a jug of oil and set the pile ablaze with a flintlock. I doubted the fire would consume them, but I sure hoped the wind would keep blowing the smoke and smell away from the tavern.

It was fully dark by the time I finished, and I was bone tired and hungry. I flopped at a table and the girl brought me a big bowl of stew and a plate with a loaf of crusty bread. "This was on the stove," she said, sitting across from me. "Mama's upstairs. She did eat a little, but she's awful upset." She was wearing a very plain dress with a neckline so low that I could see her lacy shift and the swell of her young boobies.

"You all right?" I asked, spooning up the squirrel stew.

She nodded and swallowed.

"And you ate?"

She nodded again.

The glow from the burning bodies glinted in her eyes.

"Tell me," I said.

"They were roaring drunk," she said. "And we walked right in on them. They were on us like wolves. I guess those folks you buried were already dead."

I nodded. They had been stiff.

"Anyhow," she said, tearing off a piece of bread and nibbling. "They dragged me upstairs so I don't know what happened to Mama."

"She was putting up a good fight when I got here," I told her. "She might have a black eye tomorrow."

She nodded. "So, well, they tore off my clothes and tried to tie me up with strips of my dress and shift. I scratched and kicked and yelled." She sniffed.

"You did just fine," I said, giving her a smile.

"Never saw men act like that," she said.

I chewed.

"Then you came in, and, well, it was like a blur, and you were out the door again."

Neither of us mentioned the man who had been sitting on her chest.

"Now what?" I asked.

"I guess we sleep here."

I nodded. "Too dark to travel."

"Might be more of them around," she said.

"Doubt it," I told her and patted her hand.

"They soldiers?"

"Maybe," I said.

"Whose?"

"Can't say. Didn't ask. Militia I'd guess."

She yanked her hand away from my paw.

"Go see to your Ma," I said.

She nodded and went up the steps. I found a bottle of whisky and helped myself. In a while they both came down, the mother had changed her clothes as well. We sat in the light of the big fireplace and breathed together, some tension between us.

"There are two beds up there," the mother said, lifting her regal chin. "We'll take the front one."

I nodded.

"I hope we can trust you," she said.

I smiled at her. "Bolt the door," I said.

Before I slept, I went out and encouraged my funeral pyre again with some lighting oil. It was a nasty thing to look at and worse to smell. It would have been hard to find anything looking human. The bodies seemed to have melted together.

Free of my belt, boot and britches, I slid under the old quilt and was nearly gone when the door quietly opened and a ghostly figure came to the side of my bed.

"You asleep?" the girl asked.

I reached out and found her hand after touching her leg. "Nope."

"Will you, I mean, I," she stopped and I held up the side of the quilt. She sat and rolled in, her back to my front. I put my arm around her and gently held her small breast. She purred.

"It was awful," she said quietly, wiggling her rounded rump back at my belly and covering my gripping hand with hers. I felt her small nipple hardening between my thumb and forefinger. "They told me what they were going to do."

"Try to forget it," I said.

"Um," she said, squirming. "This feels good." She was right.

"Doubt your mother would approve."

She giggled in her throat. "She's sound asleep."

My mast began to rise as our bodies warmed each other. I guess she felt it as it slipped between her legs, tenting out her loose-fitting nightdress.

"Don't," she said, "please. I just need to feel you near. I was afraid. Couldn't sleep."

I took a deep breath, completely unable to control my body. My free hand slid down across her stomach, drew up her dress to bare her hips and crawled through her sparse hair to find her tight slit and her tiny nub at its top. Her belly quivered under my palm.

"That's nice," she sighed, as I petted it. "I've only known a man once. Two years ago when I was fourteen, my uncle..." She trembled and stiffened. "Um," she said and turned her head to kiss my stubbbled cheek. "I didn't know what he was doing. He put his fingers in me. Ah, yes, yes, just like that."

She was already wet and getting wetter.

"And then, and then," she gulped as I stimulated her deeply, finding a place she seemed to enjoy, "he had me kneel on this bench." She sniffed and then gasped as my thumb flicked her clitoris and massaged it to rigidity.

"Did he take your maidenhead?" I asked at her ear, two fingers well into her tight passage, walking about and probing deeper.

"I don't know," she whispered. "He poked me."

"Did you bleed? Did it hurt?"

She shook her head and arched her back as she neared her climax. I kissed and sucked her neck and tightened my grip on her firm breast. If she still had a hymen, I could not feel it. It was either deeper or gone.

"He apologized, wept and carried on. He gave me a gold coin. Told me it was our secret. I never saw him again. He - ahh!" She came, spasmed and moaned, gushing fluids on my hand and snorting like a wild horse, legs kicking.

When she subsided and her breathing returned to normal, I got her to roll over and face me, my hard spike jutting out between us, its rounded head at her soft belly, in among the folds of her dress. "Why are you here?" I asked, holding her gently.

She reached down between us and took my stalk in her hand, gripping it firmly. "This," she said. "Today that man tried to put his in my mouth. I was afraid, but I was excited. I'd never seen one except on children. Friends, girl friends, have told me, I mean about men, but, but it's so hard, so hot." She stroked me. "And smooth and long."

"Don't you want to wed as a virgin?" I asked after kissing her lips very gently.

"I don't know," she said, still running her hand up and down my hard rod. "My friends, well, most of them say..."

"You decide," I said, "not what others do."

She nodded, released my spear and slid from my bed. "Thank you," she said and padded away into the dark.

I cursed myself for a fool, turned over, kept my hands off myself and slept. The sun was not quite up when my door creaked open again. The girl's mother shook my shoulder, and I rolled over to face her, barely aware that my huge erection swung about with me, like a bowprit on a turning boat. I saw her eyes widen, but then she looked into my face and licked her lips in the pale light.

"There are noises," she said, "outside. I looked but couldn't see anything, anyone."

"I'll go see," I said, swinging my legs out of bed and sitting there with my anxious stalk rearing up and pointing toward the rafters. The woman all but ran from the room. I got dressed, shambled down the stairs and went out the back door. It was a pack of dogs, perhaps two dozen, all sizes, wild curs, and they were tearing at my crisped stack of barely-recognizable bodies and running off with tattered pieces of what had been men.

I watched for a few minutes as the pink light of pre-dawn made the gory spectacle clearer and then headed back for my bed. The woman met me at the top of the stairs.

"Well?" she said, her hand at my shoulder.

"You don't want to know," I told her.

"Please," she said. "I was afraid."

"Dogs," I said.

She shuddered, put her head on my chest and her arms about my neck. I held her, my hard ram well down my leg.

She whispered, pushing me toward my door. "I saw it, you know, saw your male member sticking out."

It had relaxed a good bit but since I had not visited the privy when I went investigating, it was still rather outsized and surely eager.

She pushed the door closed behind us and rose on her toes to capture my mouth with hers. I held her to me and enjoyed the feel of her warm curves. She was a stone or so heftier than her daughter, and she rubbed her rich body against mine in a most stimulating way. Her night dress was long and thin; it barely clung to her narrow shoulders. I bent and kissed her neck, nudging it aside. She shivered and it slid to the floor with a faint rustle.

I freed her and she crawled up and under my covers while I quickly doffed my boots and britches. My prod sprung up dutifully. She smiled at it as I slid in beside her and captured her mouth.

"I could not believe it," she said when I freed her lips. "Please be gentle." She spread herself for me, lifting her knees. I assumed she was ready and mounted at once. She sucked in air noisily as I entered her and then tilted up her hips and grabbed my butt. In it went, all the way to the very hilt, and she gasped and rocked from side to side as I banged her bones repeatedly. "A monster," she cried happily, "such a fine monster."

It was typical of my morning gift from the gods of licentiousness, and it took us some time to satisfy its needs as well as to sate our lust and longing. She was astride my loins as the sun rose, head bowed down toward mine and rutting like a mad thing when her daughter entered the room. I saw the startled girl, but her busy mother did not. She smiled at me and I returned her smile as her mother lifted her head and put her fist in her mouth to stifle her howl of pleasure.

The girl vanished in a flair of white cloth.

We made good time that second day, and the women even included me in their conversation and comments on the countryside from time to time. We found a very fine stage inn and enjoyed a good meal in midafternoon and then stopped well before dark having covered, I estimated, at least twenty-five miles and having seen almost no one.

Things were a bit tense after we snacked and headed for the only bed they had left. The girl stripped to her shift quickly and slid under the covers, her eyes bright. Her mother stood with her back to the door, obviously unsure.

"I can sleep on the floor," I said, "or out in the stable. I've got a blanket roll."

She nodded. "That might be better."

"No," the voice from the bed. "It's my turn. You had him this morning."

"Karen," the woman said sternly. It was the first time I knew either female's name.

"Mother," the girl said. "I saw you."

The woman smiled at me. "We'll share; he's big enough," she said. "Go on."

I stripped to my skin and climbed in next to the waiting girl. Her mother was soon at my back.

"This is cozy," she said. "Isn't it."

"Go to sleep," said the girl, turning to face me. Our noses met, and with her help I skinned her out of her clinging shift.