Everyone in this tale is over 18. It is set in pre-revolution France, in a time even less enlightened than today.
*
Celine was a slut. Not a witch -- she didn't believe in
them,
anyway -- stuff of fairy-tales, old hags in silly hats flying around improbably on broomsticks. But a slut, she certainly was, and unashamedly so. She tossed her lovely mane of auburn hair proudly as she walked proudly down the village street, often clad in the sort of silk dress that only the Baron's patronage could ensure.
A year ago, Celine had been living with her parents, when her mother, a quiet, God-fearing soul, had suddenly caught an incurable lung disease, and died, within weeks. Her father, Georges, a brute of a man, and the village butcher, had blundered, drunk, into her attic bedroom, and ripped off the sheet that was all that covered her nineteen-year-old slender body on a warm summer night.
'You've been fucking half the village,' he yelled, 'now it's my turn, you whore!' But when he dived on top of her, she slipped adroitly off the bed, grabbed a robe, and ran downstairs and out into the street. Not really clear where to go, she eventually decided upon her aunt's house at the other end of the village.
Georges was furious, and denounced his daughter to the village elders, telling them she was guilty of witchcraft -- as she had 'bewitched' two devout monks from the local AbbΓ©. It was true that Celine had given relief to the two young monks. Only the week before, she had come across the two of them sharing a book, on a bench in the park. When she approached, one of them tried to hide the text swiftly under his robes, and both looked red with guilt.
'Let's have a look!' she taunted, but had to wrestle the book from Brother Jean-Pierre's hands. It was full of drawings, graphic images of young women being impaled on massive phalluses. Celine took pity on the two, and led them behind a clump of bushes, where she lifted Brother Claude's robe, and took his erect dick into her mouth, while she pumped Jean-Pierre's equally eager weapon with an expert hand. Both came in great, relieving spurts of creamy cum, which she licked from each cock in turn.
As they left their refuge behind the bushes, who should be passing but Marie-Claire Souchaux, whom Celine knew to be the village gossip. 'Oh, shit!' she thought, but then thought no more of it, until the bailiffs came to fetch her from her aunt's house.
They started to drag her towards the door, but she yelled at them, 'You don't need to do that, you ignorant bastards, I'll come with you.'
They insisted on shackling her ankles with a heavy chain, and cuffing her wrists, then led her, head held high, out down the streets, as people watched, and began to follow. By the time they reached the square in front of the church, it was packed -- it seemed most of the population wanted to watch what Celine was sure would be her execution. She was even more certain when the two brutes led her up the steps to the wooden platform, above which the great stake towered. Her wrists were uncuffed, then tied tightly with rough hemp rope to a peg on the side of the stake, as the crowd bayed for her blood. She had expected to be burned, though, and no faggots had been placed around her.
Suddenly one of the bailiffs grasped the neck of her gown and rent it viciously down, exposing her whole upper body, though her breasts were partially hidden by the post to which she was tethered. The other brute took from his belt a braided leather whip, and the crowd started to howl, 'Whip the bitch, make her bleed, thrash her to death,' and so forth, as the bailiff drew back his arm and lashed Celine's tender flesh brutally. She gasped at the agony, but so relieved was she that it looked as if she would be allowed to live, that the pain soon became bearable. As she writhed under the lash she looked aside and saw that many of the men appeared to be masturbating under their robes, and she, too, could feel the beginnings of sexual pleasure allied to the pain of the whip. But worse was to come, and when the man threw down his whip, his colleague came up the steps from where he had been attending a brazier. He carried a red-hot iron, and without ceremony, plunged it hard against Celine's white, soft flesh, just below her shoulder-blade. She screamed wildly, then passed out.
The crowd soon lost interest and went about their daily business, but, as Celine recovered consciousness, having been taken down from the scaffold to sit alone on the bottom step, she found herself looking at the maroon, gold-trimmed robes of a nobleman, astride a lovely white horse.
She self-consciously pulled her dress up to cover herself. 'You are Celine, the butcher's daughter, I think,' said a cultured voice, 'and now you wear a
P
for
putain.'
I didn't know what it was, but it hurst like hell,' she said.
'Get some lotion on it quickly,' he said, and she saw he was actually quite a handsome man of about fifty, 'and tomorrow at ten I will have a carriage pick you up here.'
Before Celine could reply, he had wheeled his steed about and trotted off.
The next day, her back still hurting horribly where she had been so cruelly branded, she nonetheless stood awaiting the promised carriage, and was slightly surprised when it, indeed, showed up, and a supercilious footman opened the door for her, as she looked truculently at him. Celine had no idea what was in store for her, but it couldn't, she thought, be a lot worse than living oon her wits in the village, alternating between cleaning for elderly neighbours and giving small sexual favours to anyone who asked.
The castle she was brought to was splendid, she thought, set in rolling parkland, with lakes and gardens, and when she was shown into the great hall, she was almost overcome by its grandeur. The man who had invited her was now in front of her, dressed more informally, in riding breeches and a short jacket.
'Welcome to the Castle Deschamps,' he said,
'I am the seventh Baron Deschamps.'
She didn't know how she was meant to respond, so said nothing.
He looked at her with a small flicker of amusement on his lips. 'I saw your punishment yesterday, and I believe my earlier intervention may have saved you a worse fate. Now I am prepared to offer you some....er..employment, Celine.'
'And what form would that take?'
'You should perhaps start by addressing me as "Sir,"' he said, and waited until she said, 'Yes, sir.'
'You are an attractive girl, Celine,' he said, 'and I can use someone of your...er talents in my household, as my wife no longer shares my bedchamber.'