I made a mistake. I coveted my neighbor's woman. Nay... I coveted my king's woman. And for that we must suffer. And, so, this is our story.
*
She was a handmaiden in the stable. A young and curious lass, with fire like a stallion in her hair and eye.
We bathed and brushed the king's horses, morning and night. We passed each other, with ever a slight touch, from stable to stable. But I knew, with her hesitant hand and coy smile that she was mine. She was mine, if only I'd had the courage to ask.
Instead, I am here, in the black, searching.
*
She was asked to be a bridle maid. An honor, of course, for it was only the most beautiful and fair stable maidens that were allowed to escort and handle the king's personal equines.
One night, I watched the king enter the stable after a successful foxhunt, drunk on the rush of the hunt and fine red wine. He hungered for a woman's flesh. From a stable over, I watched.
He followed her with half lidded eyes as she stepped up to his stirrup. Gaze down cast, she grabbed his boot and steadied the mare and helped him unhorse. As she bent away to check the mare's shoeing, he undid the lace at his belt. Red cheeked and stumbling he made himself ready to take her.
I could do nothing as he forced himself upon her. Lifting her skirt with his burly hands, he pushed her against the stall wall. Through a knothole, I saw him pull down her corset and lay her bare breasts against the hay.
The wee thing had barely the bones to lift a saddle, she was no match for him. His red face grew slobbery as he moaned and grunted against her. She winced as he entered her, and bit her lip against the pain. As I knew it, she was a virgin.
Knowing her place she kept her tongue. Growing desperate against mine, I remained. But the king grew violent. After several thrusts, I saw the blood dibble down her leg. And finally she let out a squeal, not lustful but desperate.
In an attempt to quiet her cries, he grabbed her throat. Silencing her, he quickened, hungry to let fly his seed. I stayed, knowing my place... and her place... until... she collapsed.
Grunting against her lifeless body, he grew more vigorous. Breasts bare and wild, buttocks and hips shaded by lifted skirts, but no longer any restraint or cries.
Seconds it seemed after her faint that he was near bursting but I could take it no longer. I growled, like an animal. With a horseshoe hammer in my hand, I entered the stall and swung at my king.
*
It had been two fortnights since they bagged me, gagged me and put me in this pit.
The last thing I recall is her open mouth, desperate for air, as I pulled the brut off of her. A sharp, hard thwack to the back of my skull and here I awoke, in pitch black.
Musty, damp and cold is my cell. It is dark to the point of feeling like I have my eyes closed against a bad dream from which I cannot wake. I am chained, and - from the feel of it - can only sense a fraction of the wall in my circular cell.
Days pass of nothing but water and gruel. The steamy summer keeps it humid and moist in what I assume are the deepest depths of the castle dungeon. I know it to be the deepest because I have no sense of time other than meals with no light of day or stars of night.
Then, they brought her.