My bottom was still sore as a Sunday whipping the next morning, and it being dark winter, Mother had my maid Gertrude fetch not just water and firewood with her morning chores, but also a small block of ice wrapped in cheesecloth. I chipped a bit into a washrag and sat upon it for a few minutes, and soon I felt much better.
The relatively gentle, average-sized assfucking that Brother Mannhaft bestowed upon me had been pleasurably painful, but there was still a cost to pay for it. Then I recalled the pounding Duchess Ilsa had taken from Captain Belbouche's massive monster, and wondered how she was able to take so much so easily, with no lingering after-effects.
Those few extra minutes of icing my newly initiated rosebud made me late to the family table, where I arrived to discover that one of my two older siblings - Lady Ambrosia Schtupt-Waehling, styled the 4th Viscountess of Fowlbottom - had arrived in the night.
The middle child in Mother's brood was much as I remembered her from our nursery years - haughty, dim, boorish and displeasingly plump, with a downward-facing mean-streak she imagined to be evidence of a sparkling wit.
I suppose my dear sister Amby wasn't entirely unattractive. She had the most amazingly tarted-up bodice in all of Christendom, and I could imagine how a drunken, ribald knight might take great pleasure in rippling the flesh of her substantial backside - though truly and fully enjoying either attribute would require nothing less than a thick gag, cinched tightly at the back of her neck.
"Well, there she is," Lady Fowlbottom announced when she spied me. "Lady Catherine the Erstwhile, now risen from her slothful slumber, deigns to join us for breakfast."
Her retinue from the Midlands - two dithering lesser-ladies in matching gowns - tittered. But Mother's silence was deafening.
"As you can see, your dear sister Ambrosia has returned to Norman Hall," Lady Beatrice said, her tone flat as a tidal marsh. "Unannounced. Late last night. You can imagine our surprise."
"When I heard Father's reputation had been so villainously defamed, I of course rushed home to join in the defense of his honor and our family name," Ambrosia said. "I sent a pigeon to alert you."
"I don't do pigeons," Mother replied from her seat opposite her eldest daughter, just below Father's place at the head.
"Doesn't do pigeons!" my sister laughed, inviting her court ladies to join her. "Oh Mother! Do wiggle your way out of the Dark Ages! Everyone does pigeons now!"
I avoided sitting by Amby, and walked the long way around the table to sit beside Mother.
"What the fuck is she doing here?" I asked under my breath.
"Language!" Mother hissed quietly. "And aren't YOU progressing rapidly from the cloister."
"Feels like a lifetime ago," I whispered as a serving girl placed buns and weak beer before me.
"Well," my sister announced, apparently addressing the room, "since I am a Viscountess, making me the highest-ranking noble in the Rhys-Muffington family, by protocol it falls to me to convene this emergency family meeting."
"You're still my daughter!" Father said, flashing angry. "Uppity cunt."
"Oh Daddy," she said, blushing as if his typically dispeptic insult were some private endearment. "I know you're all proud of me!"
But "Daddy" wasn't, and neither were we.
My father, Nigel Rhys-Muffington, the second Baron of Rumpole, was - to put it politely - the most minor figure in the minor nobility, and he was reliably irritable about anything that reminded him of his precarious status.
His father - Uthbert Ravenseye Odinson Rhys-Muffington - had been born a commoner. A particularly violent and insatiable commoner, but still: A commoner.
But after proving his worth by crushing the Scots at Pilkney, sacking the Danish port of Sackenport, repeatedly violating the Turks at Constantinople, and impregnating half the French royal court, the King could not help but recognize the man's talents. In recognition of his distinguished service to the Crown, Uthbert received Norman Hall, a royal title, and a wife, fortuitously plucked from the distinguished Crumpet family.
Father wasn't Uthbert's eldest. That would be Sigurd Uthbertson Rhy-Muffington, who died in an epic sea battle. He was followed in succession by Bjorn Uthbertson Rhys-Muffington, crushed to death in an unfortunate trebuchet accident, and poor Ragnar Uthbertson Rhys-Muffington, who died under mysterious circumstances after winning a bet that involved a keg of mead, two serving wenches, a warhorse and an altar boy.
This left only young Nigel, who returned to Norman Hall from boarding school to take his dead father's place. In retrospect, Father's finest hour was winning the hand of Lady Beatrice, the first cousin of the King's second wife's third lady-in-waiting. It was an arranged marriage, of course, but it served to bolster the legitimacy of his otherwise dubious barony.
Fortunately, Father came of age in a time of war, and though he had no special training at arms, he was so naturally disagreeable that he found sweet release in all aspects of military life: Fighting, killing, raping, pillaging, stealing, whoring, buggery, rent-to-own furniture and easy-credit payday loans.
Sadly, peace returned to the land eventually, and Nigel Rhys-Muffington promptly sank back to his natural level of indifference, incompetence and indolence.
His only son, Eric, was off to sea in the King's Navy. His eldest daughter, Ambrosia, had married up a rank to Viscount. And then there was his youngest, a child deemed too preternaturally erotic to be safely raised anywhere except a convent: Me. Lady Catherine Tracie Lourdes Rhys-Muffington.
"Normally I would begin such a discussion with a question about your plans to counter the slander against you name, Daddy," Ambrosia said. "But I am surprised to find my sister, the nun, back at Norman Hall. Tell me, Catherine: Convent too holy for you?"
"In retrospect, yes," I said.
"Your father and I decided it was time to bring Catherine home," Mother said. "She's an exquisite beauty, and I suspect she'll soon be matched well up the nobility ranks. Which means you might do well to modulate your tone, Lady Ambrosia."
"That?" she said, extending her arm and pointing her finger at me as she stared down Lady Beatrice. "You think THAT is going to marry above ME? I'll have you know that the Viscount of Fowlbottom is created well into the third quartile of all extant Viscountancies!"
"Jealous much?" I asked brightly.
"Silence, harlot!" she snapped. "I've heard a rumor about events in the family chapel last night. In the FAMILY CHAPEL!
"And you!" Ambrosia said, turning her wrath toward Mother. "If you'd just do you marital duty, Daddy wouldn't have to go slinking around to find release for his overwhelming masculine needs! He's a good and noble man!"
"How was I to find space in your Father's bed when you were always so comfortably ensconced therein?" Mother asked calmly.
"SILENCE!" Ambrosia bellowed, rising to her feet. "Here's what's going to happen: Daddy is going to write letters denying all charges against him, commission two respectable emissaries to plead for mercy and forgiveness, and send generous gifts to the King and the Cardinal."
"Won't work," Father said.
"I KNOW IT WON'T WORK!" Ambrosia shouted. "But it will demonstrate your concern for your reputation. Meanwhile, I'll be lobbying behind the scenes at court, where I shall convince the Queen to at least enfold Norman Hall and its estates into the grant provided to the Viscount Fowlbottom. That way, at least, Daddy will have a place to spend his golden years."
"And what of your brother, Eric?" Mother asked. "Or your sister? Or me?"
"You're all such fancy, smart little magpies," she scoffed. "I'm sure you'll do fine on your own. But that one?"
Ambrosia rotated her head to grin at me in triumph.
"She's going back to the convent, where she will soon discover numerous opportunities to serve the needs of our pious faith leaders. Whatever those needs might be."
She tossed her head back and gave a theatrical little laugh, which her ladies echoed.
"Come ladies," she ordered them. "And you too, Daddy."
"Come where?" he asked.
"With me!" she instructed.
"Now?"