Chapter 4: Penance
Many young women in Dorée's position would have wept and cried out, "What have I done to deserve this?" It was a harsh situation indeed. She was chained by her neck, wrists, and ankles to the stone wall of the chateau's oubliette. She was naked, without a shred of cloth on her body but for a black ribbon that tied back her long, golden hair so that she couldn't hide her face. Her bonds allowed her to stand or to sit against the wall with her head back and the collar snug at her throat, but not to lie down or to move a step in any direction. Even if she could walk, there was no place to go. The room was barely five paces long each way, tucked away in a secret prison under the floors with a trap door that let down through the ceiling of the tiny room.
It was a lamentable position, but Dorée knew very well what she had done to deserve this. She talked too much. She had backtalked, debated, and criticized the Duc, upon whom her life and freedom should depend. The chambermaid Berenice had warned her and tried, in her cruel way, to keep Dorée from temptation by gagging her with a handkerchief. But Dorée had pushed out the loose gag, unable to stay silent, and called the Duc unjust, his staff perverse, his manor corrupted. She could barely believe her own audacity, now that she thought back on it. No, the question was not "what have I done to deserve this?" but "how can I atone for what I did?"
When the guards had first brought Dorée down into the oubliette, a dark-haired young man in a dark, high-collared jacket like a lawyer's had come to the edge of the trap-door to read her sentence. His tone was curt as he looked down upon her shivering body and tear-stained face from above.
"Verbal Offence against the Duc. Punishable by up to one week in the oubliette."
He squinted at the roll of parchment he carried.
"There is a special addendum from the Duc. He says you must do penance."
Penance.
Dorée now thought this word over and over as she huddled against the wall. Clearly she had to repent her sins and undergo a mortification of the flesh in order to be forgiven. It seemed perverse to perform this sacred rite for a mere mortal man. And yet he was an aristocrat, a being far above her, in a class with the King. And was not the King ordained by God Himself to hold absolute power over the land and all its citizens? Dorée had heard that some of the men in her village opposed the King and called for revolution. But her step-mother had told her they were nothing but rabble-rousers who would "get what they deserved" when the time came. Understanding little of the world of men, Dorée still thought that the King must truly possess a God-given right to rule, a power no mortal could take away him.
So why had she questioned the Duc, who was in a position of rightful authority?
Dorée shook her head. To begin thinking about that was to open up once again all her doubts about the obscenities the Duc and his guests had engaged in at the Feast of the Fall, which still seemed unholy and unjust to her. When she found herself growing indignant about it once again, she tried to focus instead on the one thing that was absolutely clear to her: it was wrong of her to attack him with her words, and she must now do penance in atonement. She prayed for the Duc's forgiveness.
She also used this time to ponder the strange words he had spoken to her about the Law of Nature and her own desires. He said she had an ability to experience more than most, to know ecstasy in suffering. He said that it wasn't wrong, that it was even right and natural for her to feel as she did. When she thought about how he touched her while whispering such strange, seductive thoughts into her ear, her body responded once again as it had then, growing warm, vibrant, and flushed, especially between her legs. Sometimes in the deepest part of the night, as she crouched against the wall and drifted in the twilight of slumber, her fingers found their way to her cleft and, stroking it, came away moist. Then her muscles trembled with a delicious weakness that was more than simply fatigue. In a way, these times were more difficult than her moments of anger, for she felt herself almost luxuriate in her bondage even as she wondered how she could feel this way.
Perhaps it was right to surrender to the mortification of the flesh. At the very least, her penance would be true if she was not fighting it in her own heart. That, she reflected, was the difference between punishment and penance. A punishment may be inflicted on someone who has not repented but suffers as an unwilling victim, learning nothing and changing not at all in their heart. But a true penitent embraces the suffering of the body for the purification of the soul.
Dorée supposed that her time in the oubliette was the act of penance she had to perform, so she bore it mildly. She did not bite at the servants who passed down trays of barley gruel and bone broth to sustain her. She did not scream or sob when doused with water from above to sluice away her waste. She did not even call for mercy when the trapdoor opened so that shadowy figures silhouetted against the too-bright light could gaze upon her at their leisure. She assumed that if she showed that her repentance was sincere through good behaviour, she would earn her release and be forgiven with no further penalties. In this assumption, however, she was quite wrong.
On the seventh day of her imprisonment, the hatch in the ceiling opened to reveal a shadowy group of courtiers. At first Dorée merely looked away from the light, which hurt her eyes. The hatch had been opened several times before to let people see her, and nothing had ever come of it. This time, however, there was a loud creak and a sturdy wooden ladder was lowered into her cell. The severe young man who had read her sentence descended the ladder with another parchment in hand. Sensing that something momentous was about to happen, Dorée stood up and faced the man, observing him through shaded eyelids. He hardly fit the classic image of a dungeon-keeper, which she imagined to be someone muscular and coarse-featured, maybe even wearing a mask or hood, like a hangman. On the contrary, this man was slender and fine-featured, almost intellectual in appearance, though he was quite a bit taller than Dorée, and, she had no doubt, quite a bit stronger as well. He had short, wavy black hair and an expression of haughty dignity.
"I am the Executor of Justice for minor offenses at the Chateau. You have now passed seven days in the oubliette. Before your release, however, the Duc has decreed that you are to perform an additional penance that suits your trespass."
Dorée bowed her head obediently, but her heart was pounding in her breast. Dozens of questions hung unasked on her lips. What was an Executor of Justice? What were Minor Offenses -and what Major ones? What additional penance? Who was watching them from overhead? How was she to understand the rules and customs of this place? She bit them all back, fearful of offending again.
"Have you come to understand that nature of your transgression, Dorée?" The Executor asked.
Dorée's voice came out rusty after so many days of silence.
"V-verbal Off-fence." She croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Verbal Offence against the Duc. It means I talked back to the Duc. I criticized him. But it was not my place to do so."
