MSL-09 The Cardinal's Mistress


FOREWORD

Maria lay, bound, on the huge, canopied bed. Around her was an opulence
she had never dreamed about, even though she had seen the Royal Progress
on occasions, as they passed through her little village.

And she had never seen a man before--at least, not a nude man. The priapic
vision standing before her, gazing at her shameful nudity was frightening to
the little nine-year-old.

His eyes pried out the secrets of her most private flesh, and Maria blushed
with fear and humiliation.

She clenched her delicate little hands in the cruel bonds that constrained her
to the evil will of the approaching man.

That great rod of flesh between his legs bobbed luridly. As the clever, if
unlettered little girl gazed at the huge spear, she gasped.

Now she knew what her secret little hole was for, and her fear increased to
panic proportions.

"No!" she gasped, her eyes widening, dark with horror.

"Yes," the man leered, as he came closer.

"Yes!"

His large body fell on Maria's delicate little frame, and the girl cried out in
anguish.


CHAPTER ONE
The encampment was in a small copse of woods, near the highway which
led to Paris, and perhaps, riches.

Maria, with the old crone Vassilie, stooped over the fire, stirring the pot of
stew. The men would be served first, then the women. The children would
be served last.

Maria was the least of the band of Magyars who had traveled from Romany
to Paris. Her mother had been found on the road, dying of starvation, and
pregnant with her. The only thing Maria had of her mother's was a gold
cross which she wore around her neck. On the back of the crucifix was
some strange writing in a strange language.

The old crone Vassilie, who had assumed the nurturing of the infant, had
tried to sell the cross, but no one would buy it, which frustrated Vassilie
considerably.

But it belonged to the strange orphan, whose mother lay in an unmarked
grave in the woods of Romany, and the people regarded it superstitiously.

Vassilie had ripped it from Maria's neck just after they reached France, to
attempt to sell it to passersby or merchants in the streets. Many of them had
looked at the diamond-studded crucifix, read the legend on the back, and
gasped with horror.

One merchant had forcibly detained Vassilie and attempted to summon a
gendarme, but Vassilie had retrieved the cross and run away.

"Here, dog!" she had sneered at the exquisite child. "You must be cursed,
and your cross along with you. Take it and be damned!"

Maria had gratefully accepted the cross, and wrapped it in a piece of
chamois, and tied it on a cord around her neck, hoping some day to get the
intricate gold chain repaired.

In her miserable life, the crucifix was the only thing that gave her an
identity, some contact with her roots, whatever they were.
Maria bore all the marks of distinction, which made her an object of
particular hostility among the band of gypsies with whom she traveled.

She looked as if she would be tall. Her figure, while still that of a nine-year-
old, was already blossoming, and giving hints of the extraordinary beauty
which would be hers when she achieved womanhood.

Her eyes were singularly large, and of an unusual shade of green, looking
almost like finely-polished jade. Her hair was jet black, and glossy. It hung
in thick waves to just past her waist. There was a refinement and a
sensitivity about her that the rest of her fellow travelers just did not possess.
They sensed it, and it made them uncomfortable.

It was suspected that she was the child of a witch. To that end, Vassilie was
training her to be a necromancer, a teller of fortunes, a seer.

Vassilie was the wisest woman in that ignorant clan, a witch of singular
power, and a mean, vindictive woman. The rest of the group of gypsies
cow-towed to her when it was necessary to be in her presence, and for the
rest of the time, avoided her.

The men, women, and children started to filter back into the camp. They
looked like the spawn of hell. Many of them had begged in the streets, and
they were covered with artificial sores, their clothes ragged, their bodies
hideous, their expressions rapacious.

Konyet, the leader of the group, walked up to the fire, and threw aside his
crutch.

"Give me food!" he snarled.
Vassilie held out her gnarled, brown hand.

Reluctantly, Konyet reached into his pocket and pulled out some small
coins.

"These French!" he snorted, throwing the coins into her upturned palm.
"They are bad-tempered and stingy. I think we have been misled that we
could find riches here."

"Patience," Vassilie counseled. "We are not near Paris yet. That is where
they say the gold is.

" Little Dart, so called because of his swiftness, bounded up to the stew pot,
with a cloth bundle, which he dropped in front of Vassilie. She opened it,
grunted and nodded.

"Good! From whence came these goods?"

"I stole the gold chain from a gentleman near the horse market," Dart said.
"The crystal goblets were in a window, which I broke. This silver bowl I
stole from a house. It was sitting in a casement, with pretty blue flowers in
it. The window was open. I reached up and took it.

" A pretty little brown-haired girl, wearing a shawl of patched worsted
walked up to Vassilie.

"Wretch! Where is the babe?"

"I sold her," the little girl said, taking out some silver coins. "A nun was
passing by while I was begging. She offered me this money for the little
heathen. She said it was ten francs. I don't know how much money that is."

"Is that all you brought back from a whole day of begging?"
"No, while I begged for food for the child, I got these."

There was the tinkle of metal, as the little brunette dropped a few more
coins into Vassilie's palm.

"Bah!" she snarled, spitting on the coins.
"Listen!" Konyet said, as Maria handed him a bowl of stew.

They heard the sound of horses' hooves coming through the copse of trees.
Two men appeared. One of them was elegantly clad in velvet. Around his
neck was a huge gold chain with an ornate medallion dangling from it. The
other man, though less elaborately attired, was also well-clad.

Konyet made an elaborate bow. "Good evening, My Lord," he said.
The man clad in velvet sneered at the assembled troop.

"You are camping on My Lord, the Duke of Lorraine's property. I am his
chief steward. You will remove yourselves immediately."

Maria was still ladling out stew for those straggling in from their day of
thievery and begging. As she handed a bowl to the girl who had sold the
baby to the nun, a drop of it fell on Vassilie's shoulder, scalding her.

"Aieee, sow!" she screamed, rising with unusual alacrity for an old woman,
and bestowing a horrendous blow on Maria's soft cheek.

The girl gasped with the pain, and staggered backward, the shawl covering
her glowing hair falling off, as she sprawled on the ground near the chief
steward's horse.

"My Lord, they have a treasure among them!" the lesser vassal said,
pointing at the exquisite Maria.

The steward gazed at her, and then dismounted. He grabbed Maria roughly
by her shoulders, and pulled her to her feet, tilting her head up to face him,
his callous hand under her chin. A thin, sardonic smile stretched his
humorless lips taut.

"Where did you get this one, ehh?" he said, turning to Vassilie.
"She is my daughter," Vassilie spat.

"You lie, harlot! There is breeding in this face. From where did you steal
her?"

"My Lord," Konyet exclaimed, "we did not steal her! We found her mother
dying of starvation on a mountain road in Romany. We have brought her up
as one of ours."

The chief steward sneered at the whining tone in Konyet's voice, his
fawning attitude.

He reached into his doublet and pulled out a small leather sack. From it, he
pulled two large gold sovereigns, which he threw at the feet of the old
crone.

"This is for the girl. I am buying her."

Maria felt her heart fluttering in her breast, as she watched Vassilie
scramble wildly for the coins.

"Thank you, My Lord, thank you!" she rasped, her beady eyes glowing,
reflecting the harsh glare of the gold in her leathery palm.

Maria felt the tears flowing in her heart. She had long ago learned to quell
any display of emotion. She stood, erect, beautiful, and forlorn, her full
under lip quivering slightly, her eyes bright with her unshed tears, and took
her last look at the only home she had known.

Horrible as it had been, abusive as the gypsies were to her, at least it was
familiar land.

Roughly, the chief steward threw her up into the saddle, and mounted
behind her.

"Phagh! You stink!" he growled, as he grabbed the reins of his horse, and
wheeled it around. Maria blushed. She knew well her physical condition,
and it had been a constant source of distress to her.

He reined the horse in, and looked over his shoulder.
"Remember, you will be off this property immediately!"

"Yes, My Lord," Konyet said, bowing obsequiously again.
They galloped through parks abounding in deer and pheasant, and after
about an hour, the chief steward reined his horse behind a huge, white
mansion, which glowed in the fading light of the day. He dismounted, and
pulled the lovely creature off the saddle, and dragged her into a huge,
vaulted room, which served as the kitchen of the castle.

Maria felt the tight grip of hunger in her belly, as she smelled the wonderful
aroma of good food cooking.

"Bilotta! Bilotta!" the chief steward bellowed.

Through the throngs of hustling servants, a plump, gray-haired woman
waddled.

Maria felt a chill in her heart when she beheld the woman. She was cruel-

faced, her mouth set in a tight slash, her eyes cold and glittering with a
harsh light.

"Wash this strumpet, and clothe her. She can be My Lord's entertainment
for the evening."

"Yes, My Lord," the woman said.

Her claw-like hands gripped Maria's shoulder, and she was propelled
through another door, and up a flight of stairs. She was rudely thrust into a
large, mahogany-paneled room.

"Sit!" Bilotta said, pointing to a chair. "And don't touch anything with your
filthy hands."

The woman left, closing the door.

Maria sat, trembling, in the chair and gazed around her, at the elegant
paintings on the ceiling, the large marble fireplace, which almost filled one
wall. At the strange furniture in the room.

This was the first time in her life that Maria had ever been in a house,
although she had frequently begged outside the doors of more affluent
houses throughout the countryside, until she was driven away.
In a little while, two male servants came in, leering at her. Maria felt her
skin crawl. They were carrying a large copper kettle. Maria frowned at it,
wondering what it was for.

They set it in the middle of the room, and then departed. They were
followed almost immediately by maidservants, carrying huge buckets of
steaming water, with which they filled the tub.

Bilotta came back with another maid. The maid carried a beautifully shaped
vase. She took the glass stopper off the vase, and poured the contents of it
into the water. Immediately, the room was filled with a marvelous
fragrance. Maria inhaled deeply. She couldn't identify the fragrance. It
smelled like all the sweet spring meadows she had ever lain in, looking at
the sky, watching the progress of the clouds.

"Undress her and bathe her. I shall bring a gown."
Bilotta left the room.

The maid, with hands considerably gentler and more deft than Bilotta's,
pulled the awe-struck Maria out of the chair, and took off her shabby, filthy
clothes, and then instructed her to get into the tub.

Maria was shamed at first of her nudity. She never remembered being nude
before, and she always slept in her clothing.

She got into the tub gingerly, and gasped at the warmth of the water.
Standing in the tub, she looked like a Venus made of alabaster. Her nipples
stood out straight from her tiny tits, which were just developing. There was
as yet, no hair on her little love mound.

The maid put her hands on Maria's soft, white shoulders, and pressed down,
and Maria knew that she was to sit in the tub.

She was immediately laved with the warm oil-laced water. The maid
cleaned her, using a sponge, which Maria had never seen before.
She washed her glossy hair. Maria felt as if she were floating in a sea of
perfume, and strange, sensual emotions coursed through her, which she had
never felt before.

The old crone Vassilie had not deemed it necessary to tell Maria anything
about the facts of life, and she was totally ignorant. She knew only that men
were different from women. They were the strong ones, the ones to whom
women were subservient. She knew, too, that mature men differed
anatomically from women, but beyond this, her knowledge was vague.

She knew that women had breasts, and men didn't. And that was all. When
the maid had finished washing Maria, she helped the little girl out of the
tub, and dried her beautiful body with a towel.

Wrapped in the towel, Marie was again seated in the chair, to wait for
Bilotta.

The woman appeared in the room, and threw a garment on what Maria was
to learn was a bed.

"Clothe her in this, and dress her hair, then bring her down to the main hall.
His Lordship is anxious to see her." Maria felt the soft folds of the gown,
and shivered with delight at the way the smooth fabric caressed her skin--so
different from the rough garment she had worn for years.

The maid combed out her hair, and left it loose, hanging in glossy waves
down her back. Then the maid took the awed child by the hand and led her
down a flight of stairs, to a massive hall, from which Maria could hear a lot
of noise, a lot of male laughter, and the clinking of dishes. Again the barely-
fed girl salivated, as she smelled the food.

She felt herself blush, as she was brought to the head of a long table, where
a large man sat. He was drinking from a golden goblet. He put the goblet
down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and stared at the
exquisite child.

"This is no gypsy, My Lord!" one of the men exclaimed.
"Send for my chief steward," the man barked to a servant standing behind
his high-backed chair.

The servant left quickly, as the man grasped the girl's slender, well-formed
wrist, and pulled her roughly to him, his eyes still devouring her.

Maria felt faint. The man shoved her into a chair which stood empty beside
him, and snapped his fingers. Immediately, a servant appeared with a plate
full of food, and a goblet of wine for Maria.

"Eat!" the man commanded, when Maria stared at the plate of food, not
knowing whether she should eat it or not.

"She eats daintily for a gypsy," the man said, still glaring at her. Maria, in
spite of her fear, and the bewilderment which stunned her into silence, was
too hungry to refuse the food.

The chief steward came into the room.

"You have done well, Rosco," the man said. "Go to the paymaster, and
claim five gold sovereigns. She's a beauty!"

The chief steward smiled, bowed, and left.

The dinner seemed to go on interminably, and Maria's senses whirled.
Finally, the man stood up, and grasped her wrist, pulling her to her feet. He
threw her roughly into the arms of a maidservant.

"You know what to do with her," he said.

As Maria was led from the room, she felt uncomfortable with the comments
which the men sitting around the table made, although she didn't understand
the import of the remarks.

She was led to a chamber which was even more elegant and richly-
furnished than the first one she was in. There, the maid stripped her, and
pushed her onto a massive, canopied bed.
The maid then tied her wrists to the ornately carved posts of the bed, and,
spread-eagling her legs, tied her ankles to the posts at the foot of the bed.

She lay there, shivering, ashamed of her nudity. She heard footsteps in the
hall, after the maid had left, and the large, carved door was flung open.

The strange man came into the room. He stood at the side of the bed, staring
at Maria, who started to struggle in her bonds.

The man laughed, and started to remove his clothes. Maria closed her eyes,
now more afraid than ever. She had never seen a man unclothed, and the
thought of it frightened her for some reason she couldn't fathom.

She gave up trying to release herself from her bonds. They were tied tightly.
Even as she closed her eyes, to hide from her sight the secrets which
frightened her, though she knew not why, she felt a strange excitement
building in her body, which confused her even more.

She felt as if the heat of her body had risen, and that she had a fever. She
couldn't help it, when her eyes opened.

She gasped at the sight of the man, at his broad shoulders, his very hairy
chest, which caused enormous wonder in the little nine-year-old. Her eyes
traveled down over his body, and she felt her hands and feet go cold.

What was that fleshy rod, which stood straight out from the man's hairy
loins? It frightened her, and at the same time, she felt that strange
excitement build some more, until her flesh tingled.

She clenched her tiny hands in her bonds, and struggled with them again,
wanting to escape this frightening apparition, which stood before her.

The man's hand grasped the huge, snake-like thing, and he started to rub it,
pumping his hand back and forth, until Maria, enthralled as a bird is by a
snake, watched the tip of it glisten with a drop of opaque liquid.

Her eyes swept around the room, desperately looking for a solution to her
problem. Never in her life had she seen such opulence. The room gleamed
with gold and silver, with polished wood, and crystal.

Once, when Maria was a little girl, she had stood by the side of the road, as
a strange procession passed through-people richly clad on magnificent
horses, followed by pack mules, laden with trunks.

She had been told, when she asked another observer, that it was a Royal
Progress.

But now that opulence was stained with the black cloud of her fear, and a
wild, primal knowledge that struggled to the surface of the struggling
child's mind.

She knew this must not be, this horrible thing the man intended. As she
watched the man pumping on the thick meaty rod, the knowledge flooded
over her, sickening her.

She knew now what that rod was for, felt the tingling in the little hole,
which had always puzzled her, that little orifice which lately had been wet
so often, and whose purpose she never understood--not till now.

"No!" she gasped, as the man approached the bed.

He laughed raucously, as he threw himself on top of her helpless, delicate
little body.

"Yes!" he hissed.

Maria's body stiffened as she felt the weight of the man's body pressing her
into the mattress. She screamed with fear, as the man's devouring mouth
came down on her soft, beautifully shaped lips.

Her scream was stifled by the man's mouth. As he kissed her, his tongue
prying between her teeth, she felt the strange feelings in her body intensify,
until she felt she was going to faint.

Against her lean belly, the man's massive fleshy rod pulsed. The sensation
excited Maria, and also made her terribly afraid. The liquid which was
oozing from the small slit at the mushroom-shaped tip of his manly flesh
was slimy, she realized, as some of it dripped onto her quivering flesh.

The man rolled partially off her, and his hands greedily and roughly
caressed her soft skin.

"A prize," he muttered, chuckling lewdly, "a prize! I wonder which
nobleman's bastard you are," he said, as his hand moved roughly to Maria's
hairless love mound.

"Ahh!" Maria gasped, awed at the strength of the sensations which coursed
through her, as she felt the first touch of a man on her pussy.

The man's finger pried into her little cleft, digging almost brutally into the
pink petals of her sex flesh.

Maria felt that tiny little secret hole pouring out a hot slimy liquid. She
gasped again, her hips writhing, as the man's finger pried into that little hole
which had so fascinated and puzzled Maria.

She couldn't have defined the kind of feelings which filled her, and made
her feel as if her very entrails were melting, as the man's finger moved into
the secret flesh of her drooling cavern.

Her eyes stung with tears, which she held back. She bit her lip, shame and
pleasure blending in her aroused young body simultaneously.

The man grunted, and pulled his finger out of her hole, and again Maria felt
the weight of his hairy torso, pressing her into the mattress.

He pressed his slime-covered cock head at the puckered ring of her virginal
tunnel of love, and Maria stiffened, as the awful reality flooded over her.

There was no recourse for the helpless little creature, no mercy for which
she could beg.

The man braced his hands on either side of her body, and his great rod,
throbbing against her sex flesh looked deadly to the bound and helpless
little girl.
With a powerful, brutal lunge, and an animal-like growl, the man thrust into
her.

Maria heard her high-pitched scream of pain echo against the walls of the
bed chamber, as her womanhood was pierced by the deadly sword of the
Duke of Lorraine.

The pain which ripped through Maria's delicate body was horrendous.

Mixed with her agonized shriek was the guttural laughter of the greedy man
who lowered over her cruelly bound body.

His huge, hot shaft stretched her walls wide. With his first brutal lunge, he
had shattered her virginal shield.

Grunting, he thrust in again, and Maria felt the burning pain of his dry hard
rod, abrading the delicate flesh of her pussy. She felt as if she had been split
in two.

Lost, and alone, a prey to the evil carnality of the nobleman slavering over
her like a wild animal, Maria bit her trembling lip, as she felt the huge spear
piercing her secret recesses.

The blood of her slain maidenhead welled up over the merciless battering
ram which violated her virginity, and flowed out of her.

Her limbs vibrated with her agony, and the tension which gripped her body
in a steel-like vise, which only added to the hideous, wracking pain which
seared her.

She felt her senses reeling, as the duke continued to push into her, grunting
like a rutting pig. Each inward lunge added to her pain, and the monstrous
pressure which built in her body, until Maria was afraid that she would
explode, or be rent asunder.

Surely this man was killing her! She could think of no other logical
consequence of the unspeakable act which the man was committing on her
helpless body.
The man thrust inward again, and Maria felt something new--the tickling
sensation of the man's hairy fleshy sacs, rubbing against her quivering ass
cheeks.

The pain, flashed through her luridly. Her whole body screamed with agony,
as she felt the full cruel length of the duke's manhood throbbing against her
brutalized pussy walls.

Perhaps, she thought to herself, he was now finished with her. Perhaps this
was the end of the assault, and perhaps, if she could stanch the flow of
blood from her wounded hole, she would survive.

Never again, she thought, would she even look at a man!

She moaned, rebelling against her fate, as the duke moved in her tight little
cavern. He pulled his cock out to the tip, and then lunged forward again,
ravaging her little love hole.

Maria cried out in despair, as she realized that her ordeal was not over yet.
The pain which seared her was almost unbearable, as the man's massive rod
burrowed brutally into her fleshy cavern, each movement, in and out, ad
ding to the burning pain which seemed to possess her body like a tribe of
demons.

Her head ached, as did her constrained limbs. The man's buttocks, muscular
and hairy, rose and fell as he battered her little pussy over and over again.

She looked down over the creamy-white, silken expanse of her torso, and
gazed at the blood-stained weapon of her ravisher, as he pulled it out, and
then thrust it inward again.

He was a demon, she thought, as she watched the raging phallus
rummaging in the soft, pink depths of her pussy. Each time the duke moved
in her she re-lived the initial anguish.

As his cock slammed into her, prying into the quivering depths of her
womanhood, she started to feel other sensations. They rippled subtlely
through her pain, and seemed to ease it.
Maria closed her eyes. Her beautiful face, over which the firelight flickered,
was limned with perspiration. Her features were distorted with the agony
she was suffering.

She quelled the tears which threatened to burst from her throat, knowing, as
she had always known, that there was no mercy in her life, nothing to be
gained but malicious jibes and jeers for them.

As it had been in the gypsy camp, so it was in this great castle of the
nobleman. She was fated for pain, for poverty and misery.

She had thought once that the rich were happy. Perhaps they were, but there
was no happiness for her, only pain and degradation, and unceasing travail.

She shivered, as she felt the more subtle sensations gain ascendance. The
pain began to fade, as her cuntal walls stretched to accommodate the brutal
invader which still dipped in and out of her, like an oar dips in and out of
the water, propelling the ship forward.

She felt the slimy flood from her well start to pour over the cock as it
plunged into her greedily, again and again, its hard throbbing shaft still
abrading the lining of her soft, fleshy aperture.

Her body rocked up and down, as the duke lunged into her, his hairy loins
battering her soft sweet flesh, until Maria felt the pink petals of skin which
nestled between her plump white outer lips swelling, filling with lusty
blood.

She observed, fascinated, the strange changes which took place in her body,
as the pain miraculously started to subside, as the raging phallus of the duke
drove deeply into her little hole.

The duke's breathing became harsh and labored. His face flushed, and he
became ugly as the unbridled lust which possessed him distorted his
features.

Maria felt her own breathing whistle harshly through her throat. Her tiny,
cherry-red nipples puckered, and began to tingle.
The duke's cock seemed to swell in her tight little canal, which was now
very moist with her juices. Like a soothing balm, they flowed over her
wounded inner flesh, easing the passage of the duke's hard, cruel rod, as it
lunged into her, battering the depths of her womanhood.

The duke growled ferociously. His massive rod seemed to turn into a torch,
burning her interior, setting her flowing cavern on fire.

Then she felt a great warm flood pouring into her tortured little well. She
felt as if she were swelling with the pressure. The pain faded even more, as
the duke lunged into her, spearing her quivering body brutally with his great
fleshy stick.

Maria felt a strange fiery tingling at the tip of her pink flower-like flesh,
which was compelling in its intensity.

"Aarggh!" the duke growled.

His body suddenly fell on top of Maria's. He was sweating copiously, and
his chest heaved violently against Maria's tiny, delicate budding titties. The
sweet tingling in the little nubbins which crowned the slight swelling of
flesh became more intense.

Maria felt a strange sense of desolation wash over her. With a grunt, the
duke removed his fleshy rod, and lay on his back.

"Girard! Girard! Ho, there!"

The door opened, and the flush which suffused Maria's face spread through
her bloody, abused body, as she saw the impersonal gaze followed by the
lewd grin of the duke's vassal.

"Bring me wine, and release her!"

The door closed, and barely moments later, it was opened again. On a silver
tray, there was a silver decanter and a goblet. Girard placed it on a table,
near the bed, and then released Maria.

"Shall I take her to the cellar?"
"Leave her. She pleases me. I haven't seen such a pretty piece in a long
time. Strangely enough, she was a virgin, even though she traveled with the

gypsies."

"So I see, My Lord," the vassal said, pouring wine.

Maria looked down, and noticed that the duke's cock had shrunk! It was
blood-stained, and his hand went absently to it, to rub it. He sat up, and
drank the wine, and stared at the prone body of Maria, who had folded her
arms across her burgeoning breasts, to cover herself.

Her thighs were blood-stained, and a slimy stream of liquid still oozed from
that tiny little hole, which now felt like a gaping bloody wound in her body.

"Will that be all, My Lord?"
"For now."

The vassal retired, closing the door. The duke chuckled as he looked down
at Maria's body.

"Sit up!" he commanded. Maria did as she was told, wincing as she felt the
fiery pain in her pussy, and the ache in her shoulders, and thighs.

"Drink!" he said, handing her the wine. Maria drank thirstily. The wine
made her head feel strange, and then it made her body feel warm.

The duke pulled the cup away from her roughly, and drained its contents.
Maria's eyes went to his cock, and she gasped. It had started to grow again,
the inner fire swelling the blood-streaked flesh.

"What is your name?" the duke asked, as he tweaked her nipples. Maria
shivered, feeling that strange warm fire gripping at her wounded
womanhood.

"Maria," she said softly.

"Maria! How did you get a name like that?"
"Vassilie said it was the last thing my mother said before she died, when she
saw me."

"Maria is a civilized name. It doesn't belong to a gypsy. What is this? An
amulet?"

Marie had put her chamois bag, containing the cross around her neck,
retrieving it from the pile of shabby, stinking clothes which the maid had
taken from her.

The maid, gentler, and perhaps less perceptive than Bilotta, had either not
noticed, or not cared, when the girl put the small bag with its string, around
her neck.

The duke now removed it from her neck, roughly, and opened it. The
diamond-studded cross gleamed in the flickering light from the fireplace, as
he studied it.

Suddenly he gasped, as he turned it over, and saw the inscription on the
back. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He moved the
crucifix close to the candle which rested on the table with the wine, and his
mouth worked as he read it, frowning fiercely.

He turned sharply, grasping Maria by her hair, and viciously pulling her
close to his face.

His eyes burned with the light that Maria had always imagined glowed in a
demon's eyes.

"Where did you get this?" he hissed.

"It-it was my mother's. Vassilie took it from her neck when she died, to sell
it."

"It was not sold?"

"N-no," Maria gasped, wincing at the pain of her pulled hair.

"Why not?"
"People would not touch it. Vassilie tried to sell it when we arrived in
France, to a merchant, who tried to hold her and call the gendarmes, but
Vassilie got away from him, and took the cross. She thinks it is cursed
because it is gold that no one wants, so she gave it back to me."

The laughter that issued from the duke's throat was humorless and
frightening. He released his grip on Maria's hair.

"Girard!" he bellowed.

Again the door opened.

"My Lord?" the servant said in an inquiring I voice.

"Go fetch my chief steward. Tell him to attend me immediately!"

"Very good, My Lord," the vassal said, bowing and backing out of the
room.

The duke got out of the bed, and paced the room, every now and then
rubbing the massive balls beneath his cock, which were also stained with
Maria's blood.

There was a knock on the door.

"Enter!"

The chief steward stood in the doorway and bowed.

"Rosco, come here. Your little prize is more valuable than you thought."

The chief steward walked up to the duke, who held out the hand containing
the cross. It was blood-stained from contact with his cock.

He dropped the priceless object into the hand of the chief steward, who
looked at it, bemused.

"Where did the little slut steal this?" he asked, laughing.
"She did not!"

The duke turned to Maria, still cowering on the bed, trying to cover her
nakedness.

"Tell him!" the duke barked.
Again Maria told her story. The chief steward frowned.

"Read the legend on the back of it," the duke commanded. Rosco brought
the crucifix to the candle, his eyes flicking from Maria to the glistening
gold cross in his hand.

He gasped, and his face paled.

"My Lord!" he exclaimed, dropping the crucifix on the bed, as if it had
burned him. Maria snatched it up, grateful to have it back.

"It was that Plantagenet brat, the first wife of the Count of Rheims!" The
duke burst out into a fit of raucous laughter. He gripped the post of the
canopied bed, his blood-stained cock bobbing as he laughed.

The chief steward did not laugh.

"My Lord would please remember that Alphonse, the Count of Rhiems, is
your sworn enemy. Should word of this reach him... "

"And how will it, Rosco? How will it, unless you say something?"
The chief steward smiled.

"My Lord knows where my loyalties lie," he said.

"And My Lord knows why, Rosco!" the duke sneered.

Maria was thoroughly bewildered, as she listened to the exchange between
the two men.
"Take that wench, and give her to the Abbey of St. Alphonse. That will
effectively dispose of her. And donate the cross to the Abbess's coffers. She
loves only gold," the duke commanded. "Go, and take her now. She would
have bored me in a few days at any rate. Find me another virgin."

"Yes, My Lord," Rosco said. His hands were not so rough, Maria noticed,
when he pulled her to a sitting position, found her gown, and told her to
dress.

"My Lord?"
"Yes."

"What about the legend on the back of the cross? If the Abbess should
discover...!"

The duke's smile was truly frightening.

"The Abbess is my sister, and she has been well-supplied with pretty little
things to please the priests and cardinals of France," he said. "What should
she say, when I can say so much more. I am immune from the reprisals of
moral fools. I am a duke. She is merely a woman!"

Maria was helped to her feet by the chief steward. She staggered slightly,
and the fiery pain in her cunt returned. She moaned.

The chief steward dragged her out of the duke's bed chamber, and again
Maria found herself sharing his saddle, as he rode through the countryside.
At the foot of a large hill, the chief steward reined in his horse.

"Look at me, wench," he said, his voice harsh.

Maria looked up at him with her limpid, jade-green eyes. There was a
strange look on his face. He stared at her for a long time, and then he smiled
again, evilly.

He pulled the cross out, and dangled it in front of Maria.
"Listen to me," he said fiercely, "and keep your counsel, do you hear? Your
life may depend upon it."

Maria's hand reached out, tentatively, and gripped the cross. The chief
steward released it.

Maria clutched it to her, gratefully.

"Here," the chief steward said, handing her the chamois bag in which Maria
had secreted the cross. "I will tell the Abbess that the duke was pleased with
you, and has given you a cheap bauble which you are to keep. Do you
understand?"

"Yes," Maria whispered.

"You will soon be taught the ways of the world, and why I do this. And for
my pains, I wish eventually to be rewarded by you, is that understood?"

"Yes."

"The duke, to keep secret what we have discovered tonight, will see to it
that I die. I am going to England. Remember me, and remember the Count
of Rheims. If you can ever get to him, to present him with that cross, your
fortune is made, but do not go before you have experienced the rigors of the
religious hell I am about to take you to. You will need the knowledge you
can gain there. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

The chief steward cantered the horse to a high iron gate, and rang an iron
bell which stood to one side of it.

After what appeared to be a long time, a black-garbed woman approached
the gate with a torch raised high.

Maria gasped when she saw her face. It was colder and harsher even than
Bilotta's face.

"Who?"
"Rosco, chief steward of the Duke of Lorraine."
"Hah! Rosco! What have you there?"

" Another prize, an exceptional one, from the duke. She bears a little bauble
in a chamois bag, which the duke instructs that she keep. Otherwise, she is
yours to do with what you please."

The black-garbed woman chuckled lewdly, and unfastened the bolts,
swinging the iron door open.

Rosco handed down little Maria. The black-garbed woman stared at her.
"She is exquisite," the woman said. "Unusual! Where did you find her?"
"Among a band of gypsies. Farewell, Lady Eustacia."

Rosco wheeled his horse around and galloped away, the sound of his horse's
hooves fading in the distance, as his form was swallowed up in the
darkness.

The black-garbed woman slammed the iron gate to, with a harsh, grating
noise, that sent a shiver of fear coursing through Maria's body. There was a
note of finality in that sound, as the woman slammed the bolt back into its
hinges.

"Follow me, wench," the woman said.

Maria silently followed the woman into the dark, gaping maw of the door
leading into the interior of the convent. The door slammed behind her, and
again she heard a bolt slamming into place.

Maria waited, trembling for the next command which would usher in her
new life.


CHAPTER TWO

"Follow me," the nun said, her voice harsh, almost hollow. Maria followed
the nun down the long dark corridor, the torch weaving grotesque shadows
on the masonry.

They came to a huge steel-studded door. The nun pulled out a huge ring of
keys from a cincture and fitted one into the huge lock. The door swung
open on creaking steel hinges.

The nun turned to Maria and waved her into the room.

It was a huge room, with a vaulted ceiling. There was a massive stone
fireplace at one end of the room. Around the huge chamber on the stone
walls, hung frightening-looking instruments.

Maria's hands and feet became cold. She trembled with fear.

The nun pulled her over to a raised block of stone, which had iron manacles
buried in it.

The nun placed the torch in a sconce, and then approached the delicate little
girl.

Brusquely, she pulled off the gown, which skimmed her body lightly. Again
Maria felt the blush of shame suffuse her face, and then spread over her
body as greedy eyes raked her naked flesh.

Her hairless muff was caked with blood, as were her thighs. There were
several bruises on her body, where Vassilie had beaten her, and where the
chief steward's and the duke's hands had grabbed her harshly.

The nun laid her down on the stone block. Maria knew well enough, having
served such harsh task-masters as the gypsies, not to quarrel with superior
strength.

She was bound, spread-eagled, to the stone block, shivering at the cold
contact of the stone on her white flesh, her eyes doe-like as she gazed at the
harsh-looking nun.

"I am the Abbess, and this is the Abbey of St. Eustacia. It is a convent for
indigent and bastard girls, who would serve no constructive purpose in life.
You will refer to me as 'Mother.'! You will be trained for the only life you
can lead, now that you have been despoiled," she said, leering at the girl's
blood-covered muff.

Maria gazed at the Abbess with fear and bewilderment. She couldn't
imagine what kind of life she would lead, unless they were going to train
her as a servant.

But Maria was too intelligent to assume this, suspecting a hidden meaning
behind the Abbess's words.

The door opened. A black-frocked priest walked into the room. His hair
was white. He was of medium height, and singularly young-looking.

"This is Father Melchior," the Abbess said. Maria's hands clenched in her
bonds. She wanted to weep, to beg them to let her go.

The priest came up to the foot of the stone block.
"What's your name?" he asked in harsh tones.
"Ma-Maria," she whispered.

"Rosco found her among the gypsies."

"Ahh, a heathen. She's rather beautiful, wouldn't you say. She could be one
of our more expensive courtesans."

"True, if she continues to grow well. It would be hard to tell about her
intelligence, however."

The priest walked around and Maria gasped when she felt his hands roughly
fondling her tits. In spite of the shock, her nipples puckered as the priest
pressed his sweating palm into the budding little mounds of flesh.

"What is this?" he asked, frowning, picking up the chamois bag which was
around her neck. "I'm surprised at you, Mother Eustacia, to leave such a
heathenish thing as an amulet on her neck."
"It is not that, Father. It is a bauble which the Duke, my brother, insists that
she keep."

"Ahh! Very well, we shall break her in. I think she does hold promise. We
should make a lot of money from her."

As Maria watched, her shock and horror growing by leaps and bounds, the
priest deftly unbuttoned his cassock and stood before the bewildered girl,
stark naked.

Her breathing came in sobbing gasps, as she saw his monstrous rod, and
remembered the pain of the duke's great spear as it slew her virginity.

"No, please!" she gasped, her voice light and breathy with her fear.
"You will be quiet, and do as you're told!

You aren't fit for any life but that of a harlot, and that is what we will train
you to be."

The priest got up on the stone slab, crouched between Maria's spread-eagled
legs.

"She's a pretty piece, I'll say that for her," the priest said, running his hands
up and down her smooth trembling legs.

As his hands caressed her thighs, Maria felt, mixed with her fear, those
same strange emotions which had coursed through her when the duke's cock
had ceased hurting her so badly. And the tremor in her body was a mixture
of fear, humiliation, and that odd excitement which Maria could not

identify.

She whimpered as the priest's hand moved up to her inner thigh. He laughed
when he saw the blood.

"It's a pity the duke doesn't send us virgins," he said, as his finger tickled
her cunt cleft. "The last time I deflowered a maiden was when they brought
in that hideous hunchback."
The nun laughed. She was standing near Maria's head, looking down at the
girl with an evil light in her eye.

"Ohh!" Maria gasped, as the priest's finger wiggled into her plump white
outer lips, and started to move up and down the flower-like folds of her sex
flesh.

"You must learn to enjoy this," the priest said. "You will be taught what you
don't know, and you are being taught now. Your first lesson is to enjoy!" he
commanded.

His finger was insistent as it pried into Maria's pussy, rummaging around in
the delicate pink folds of her labia.

Maria's body jerked suddenly, as the priest's questing fingers, moving up
and down on her folds of flesh, made hot contact with her clitoris. Maria
didn't understand the flaming sensation which ripped through her body.

She began to sweat. The hot demanding sensations which coursed through
her took precedence over the fear and humiliation she felt. The iron cuffs
which manacled her wrists and ankles to the stone block, cut into her
delicate flesh, as she struggled.

The sensations which she felt frightened her. There was an element in the
hot emotions flooding her young body, which Maria felt was akin to
degradation. She didn't understand why.

Her whole body was enthralled by the feelings which flooded her as the
priest's hands moved up and down over her folds of flesh. His finger pried
into her pussy.

Maria was embarrassed. Her little hole had been oozing its secret, slimy
juices since the duke had deflowered her, and now the trickling stream
seemed to have turned into a flood, as the priest's finger moved in and out
of her tight little fleshy tunnel.

Maria gazed down over her body at the priest crouching like a priapic devil
between her legs. His cock was fully erect, as big as the duke's, and it
throbbed lewdly with the blood which pulsed through it, engorging it.
She saw the drop of pre-come which oozed from his slit.
The priest grinned at her, his eyes lust-bright.

"This," he said, pumping his finger in and out of her hole, "is your pussy. It
is also called a love hole, or a vagina, or a cunt. Have you heard those
words before?"

His finger never ceased its restless prodding of her secret inner flesh.

"No," she gasped. The strange feelings were getting stronger, and Maria felt
something akin to pleasure rippling through her body.

He pulled his finger out of her little hole. "These are your lips, cunt lips, or
pussy lips, or labia," he said, rubbing his now-wet finger up and down over
the pink folds of flesh which hid between the plump outer mound.

Maria's body now shook convulsively every now and then as stronger
feelings gripped her, and then faded, leaving behind a warm after-glow. Her
pink lips swelled, pouted from between her hairless white outer lips.

The priest then cupped her muff, and the strange warm sensations become
stronger and stronger. Maria was breathing heavily. Her beautiful lips were
parted and moist with the erotic excitement which flowed through her.

"This is your love mound. It is also called a muff. Soon you will have hair
on it. Current fashion always devises new names for this little plump lump
of flesh," the priest said, grinning as he fondled her little pussy. "You must
be careful to keep abreast of the fashions."

Maria became mesmerized. She was fascinated with having names put to
things she didn't know. She wanted to know what that rod of flesh between
the priest's legs was called.

Since Vassilie kept her carefully apart from the rest of the camp of gypsies,
she never heard their smutty talk, their half-veiled innuendos. Therefore,
she had never learned the language of love.
Her mind felt singularly keen, even though her body seemed to be boiling
in a vortex of hot wild passion that she had never felt before.

The priest's hands moved up over her soft quivering belly. Maria felt her
now-heated flesh jump under the priest's caressing fingers.

He cupped her little mounds of tits again.

"And these are your breasts. They will grow bigger," he said, as he twirled
her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. His hands moved again
over the delicate little mounds of flesh, and Maria felt goose flesh forming
on her shivering body.

"They are also called boobs, or tits. Lately, in Paris, I have heard some of
the dandies referring to them as jugs."

The nun laughed. Her laughter was raucous, and lascivious. Maria looked
up at her. Her face was flushed, and there was a gleaming moustache of
sweat on her upper lip. Her black-garbed breasts heaved with excitement,
and Maria guessed it was the same excitement which coursed through her.

The priest lay on top of her body, and at first Maria winced, flinching
against his weight.

His great hot rod of flesh throbbed between their pressed-together bellies.
His mouth came down and he began to suck on her nipples, first one and
then the other.

Maria gasped, as she felt the pleasure mount in her body. His tongue moved
around and around on her nipples. She felt his teeth gently grating against
the pink little nubbins which stood so pertly on her delicate little fleshy
mounds.

Her breathing became labored, and she felt a strange, different kind of pain
in her cunt--different from the pain she had felt when the duke had thrust
his rod into her so brutally.
She couldn't define the ache, or the strange fluid which flowed so rapidly
now from her little love tunnel, seeping out of her wounded hole, trickling
down her ass crack onto the stone beneath her buttocks.

The priest covered her tits with his mouth, until they gleamed with his
spittle. Then he removed his mouth and leered at her.

He got up off her body, still crouching between her legs.
He grasped his thick rod in his hand.

"This is my cock," he said, his voice now guttural with lust. "It is also
called a penis. It has many other names. You will learn them all. Your sole
purpose in life will be to give pleasure to my cock, and to the cocks of those
to whom you are sold. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Maria said. But she didn't understand. The priest was fingering the
gleaming drop of fluid which oozed from the tip of his cock.

"This is love juice, or semen," he said. "Your little pussy drips with the
same fluid. That makes it easy for my cock to fit in your cunt."

The priest pressed his throbbing rod against Maria's little cunt. Again Maria
felt fear, remembering the pain she had felt when the duke's cock had
lunged into her.

This time, however, Maria quivered with a pleasant expectation. She
couldn't understand the difference, although the expert tutoring she would
get in the convent would eventually teach her what the difference was.

She hadn't been ready. Now she was. Her pussy walls quivered with a
lustful hunger that engulfed Maria with a heady emotional brew. She felt
clear-headed and at the same time, confused.

She stiffened, as the priest, now on his knees, his hands braced on either
side of Maria's waist, pushed inward.

She winced, as she felt the pain of her vaginal walls being stretched as the
priest's great rod started to push into her, stuffing her, creating that strange
pressure she had felt as the duke had finished fucking her.

But the pain did not equal that which she had felt when the duke's cock had
plowed into her, and Maria was surprised.

She felt the cock of the priest, like a snake, slithering into her hot wet hole.
Her body was stiff with anxiety, and yet there flowed through it a lurid river
of strange pleasure.

The priest's cock seemed to move in forever. He moved slowly, grunting,
swiveling his hips. Each movement made the little girl shiver. The anxiety,
the fear, the humiliation, didn't seem to matter now.

She was almost awed by the wild sensations which coursed through her.

The priest grunted, and then Maria felt those strange fleshy balls pressing
against her quivering ass cheeks. She wondered what they were for, and
decided that she would soon learn.

The priest's body covered hers now, pressing her into the cold stone. The
glowing eyes of the nun never left her body, now impaled on the throbbing
cock of the priest.

She waited, remembering what the duke had done, and then the priest
started to move his cock in her cunt. He pulled out of her until only his cock
head was embedded in her tight wet tunnel.

Maria felt a slight sting, and a slight discomfort, but that was all. The
pleasure far outweighed any other consideration in the little girl's mind at
the moment.

"And this is called fucking," the priest said, as his throbbing shaft rubbed
against the quivering walls of the little girl's tunnel.

He pumped his shaft in and out of the girl's little pussy, his hard flesh
rubbing against the strangely-itching walls. Her juices flooded out of her
hole, and coated the priest's massive cock, making its pumping easier and
easier.
As the priest's cock pried into her womanly tunnel with more ease and
speed, Maria felt the wild pleasure sensations getting more and more
intense. They were even a bit frightening to the little girl, bound as she was
to the stone block.

There was no more pain, just the delicious discomfort of feeling stuffed,
and the rising welter of emotions which rippled through her, enthralling her,
fascinating her.

The priest's ass rose and fell, gleaming in the firelight, covered with sweat.
His perspiration fell on Maria, and their bodies made wet sucking noises, as
he slammed into her, driving his cock deep into her flowing hot well, and
then rose from her body, bringing his cock out to the tip.

Maria started to whimper. She felt as if her body were possessed by a devil,
who danced in her veins, making her blood boil, who beat on her heart until
its hammering resounded in her delicately-shaped little ears.

She closed her eyes, trying to sort it out, but her mind seemed to float away
from her, to stand outside her body.

She trembled in every limb. Her toes curled, and her little hands curled into
fists, as the hot pleasure mounted.

Beside her, she could hear the harsh, excited breathing of the nun.

"She's coming, Father!" the nun gasped, her voice hoarse with her own
passion, "she's coming! Ahhh!"

Maria was indeed suffering in the delicious anguish of her first orgasm. As
the feelings became more and more intense, they nearly approached the
point of pain.

Maria's body turned stiff. That little nubbin which the priest had teased felt
as if it were on fire, and Maria's breath hissed from between her clenched
teeth.
Her beautiful head tossed from side to side on the stone block, and her
whole body became fearfully wild to the little sex novice. Her hips went out
of her rational control.

She was amazed as she felt them arching upward, her hairless pussy being
tickled delightfully by the very hairy loins of the priest who was fucking
her.

The priest started to grunt and groan. Maria kept her eyes closed. The
feelings were so hot and gripped at her with such intensity, but at the same
time they seemed as fiercely ephemeral and transient as lightning flickering
across a stormy sky.

The hot feelings flickered through her, gripping her nerves, her muscles,
causing her body to convulse furiously. The hot flames of pleasure licked at
her loins, and caused her cuntal flesh to close in like a greedy mouth around
the hot hard pumping rod of the priest.

Maria could hear the wet sucking sounds of his cock as it slammed deeply
into her quivering pussy. Her hips swiveled up and down, moving more and
more furiously, as her orgasm built.

Her whole body convulsed furiously in her bonds, and again Maria had the
feeling that she was possessed by a demon who was moving her, and that
she was powerless to control herself.

The sweat poured from her beautiful torso, and dripped onto the stone slab
to which she was manacled.

She shivered, and twisted insanely, as the hot lustful feelings took
possession of her, and peaked furiously, causing her cunt to convulse with a
rhythmic excitement, around the priest's hard-thrusting pole of pleasure.

His cock seemed to become even hotter in her pussy, as he drove it in and
out of her, rampaging in her little hot hole, exciting her to even more
intense joy.
The fire filled her, consumed her, as she felt the hot wet kiss of his love
juices, as they flowed into her. She felt his man juice pouring into her
teeming well of lust. They mixed with her own hot juices, and flowed
lavishly out of her stuffed pussy.

She felt the combined juices of both of them pouring over her ass cheeks, as
they humped wildly up and down on the stone slab.

Blindly, wildly, she arched upward, bucking her dainty little hairless muff
into the priest's down-thrusting loins. As the pleasure and the fulfillment
washed over her like a wave, so did her hunger. Her little hole seemed to
suck on the spewing cock, as it poured its heavy warm load into her
quivering tunnel.

The nun was making strange sounds. As Maria's orgasm started to ease up,
the spasms becoming fainter, she opened her eyes. She was gasping for
breath.

She looked at the nun. Her hand was under her skirt, which was pulled high
up, near her crotch. She was trembling.

Maria was puzzled at the expression on her face, as the nun removed her
hand, which was gleaming with liquid, and sighed deeply. Her face was
flushed, her eyes sparkling with the rampant lust in which she had just
indulged.

Maria was puzzled. It looked to her as if the nun had just experienced the
same sensations she had, but Maria didn't know how.

The priest growled, and she felt some more of his hot, manly juices pouring
into her, and then his body collapsed on top of hers.

"Ahh!" he gasped.

Maria felt a warm relaxation flowing through her such as she had never felt
before.
She was hungry to experience the sensations she had just gone through
again.

"She-she will do fine. Train her as a lady," the priest said, pulling out of her.
"She's a natural--very highly sexed."

"Very well, Father. We shall see to her education."

"But be strict with her. We don't want her spoiled, and she will be indulged
enough when she embarks on her new career."

"Yes, Father."
The nun, her hands trembling, unlocked the shackles which bound Maria.

"You will come with me. I will show you to your cell, where you will live
for the next several years. You will learn everything you're taught. We will
be investing considerable time and effort in you, and we expect a good
return. Is that understood?"

"Yes."

"Yes, Mother! You have the manners of a heathen, but we will teach you,"
the woman said harshly.

"Yes, Mother," said Maria.

She was led to a small cell, which contained a small bed, and a desk and
chair.

The Abbess placed a small candle on the desk, and brought her a
nightgown, and a basin of water and soap, and a towel, so that she could
wash herself.

Then the door was closed and Maria was left alone.

When Maria had bathed carefully, and put on the white nightie, she went to
the window and looked out at the rolling countryside from an enormous
height.
In the distance, she could see a campfire, and wondered if it were the gypsy
band with whom she had come to France.

She shivered. The room was much to small, and Maria felt closed in,
helpless. She had never been inside any building before this memorable
day. It made her feel tense.

She longed for the open fields, the great spreading canopy of the sky over
her head, but that was not to be.

She was a prisoner, chained to the strange destiny which these strange
people had chosen for her.

Her body still felt warm and sweet. Her sex flesh was moist and trembled
with remembered pleasure. The orgasm which she had just experienced had
wiped out the horrible pain she had suffered at the hands of the duke.

She clutched the chamois bag, which contained the crucifix, and pondered
the chief steward's words.

Something strange had happened--something she couldn't understand. But
these people had said they would educate her, and perhaps, once she
dispelled the ignorance in which she existed, she would be able to make
some sense of it all.

She shivered with the deepening cold of the night, and looked around for a
blanket to cover her, meaning to he on the floor.

And then a light flashed in her mind. These people did not sleep on floors,
or on the ground.

That narrow platform, with the white covering--that was where she was to
sleep. She pulled at the covering on the bed, and realized that the top one
was loose, tucked up under the pillow. She pulled it down, and lay down on
the bed and pulled the cover up to her neck.

It was a strange way to sleep, she thought, but a warm and comfortable one.
It did not occur to the wild little girl, who had always slept on the ground or
in abandoned barns, on hay if they were lucky enough to find it, that the bed
was hard, and the linen coarse.

She fell asleep instantly, exhausted by her strenuous day.


CHAPTER THREE

Maria was awake at dawn, as her life with the gypsies had accustomed her.
She felt a great fear and bewilderment flow over her. At first she didn't
know where she was, and then the tingle in her little pussy reminded her of
the previous day's exertions.

She got up and went to the window and gazed longingly at the morning star.
Her practiced eye scanned the horizon, as the rising sun slowly turned the
landscape from lumps of black forms into gray copses of trees, and small
cottages.

As the burning rim of the sun peered over the horizon, and the sky paled,
color was slowly invested in the scene before her.

Maria was hungry. She stared out the casement window until she heard her
doorknob turn.

A plump, pleasant-faced nun peered in.

"Ahh, so you are awake already! That bodes well for you."

The woman came into the room. "I am Sister Linette. And you are Maria?"
"Yes."

"Say, 'Yes, Sister,’ or 'Yes, Sister Linette.' A lady never merely says 'yes' or
'no.' " she instructed.

"Yes, Sister Linette."

"Good! Now, you will wash and then put these garments on. And then you
will come with me. You're up betimes. The other sisters do not awaken for
another hour or so, but we have instructions to pay particular attention to
your training."

Sister Linette smiled at Maria and pinched her soft cheek.

"I can see why, too! You're lovely. But don't let it go to your head. Pride is a
very stupid virtue in a woman. It blinds her to the primal necessities of life."

As Sister Linette watched, and chattered away, Maria bathed, and put on the
long gray worsted gown, and the white close-fitting cap of the novice of the
convent.

"There! You are now Sister Maria. That is, until you are sold."

Maria paled noticeably, and clutched her heart, trying to still its wild
fluttering.

"Now, now! Come on with me! And don't be so fearful. All will go well
with you. It won't be so bad as it must have been with the duke, ehh?"

Sister Linette winked at the girl lasciviously. Maria lowered her eyes.

Sister Linette took her by the hand and they traveled down long,
bewildering corridors, down twisting stairs, to the kitchen.

Already the cooks were at work. Maria was given some oatmeal and a cup
of black coffee to drink. It was strong and rich, not like the coffee the
gypsies drank, if they were fortunate enough to steal some of the expensive
bean.

Sister Linette explained to Maria, exactly what was expected of her. Maria
listened quietly, absorbing as much of it as she could, confused and afraid,
and feeling terribly alone.

But she felt a vague exciting creeping through her. She was to learn to read
and write. She would learn music and dancing. She would learn all the arts
that the great ladies she had seen only once and from a distance, must have
acquired.
She was to be trained for servicing the high and mighty in the Church, to be
their concubine.

"Of course, you will also have to learn religion, heathen as you are. It
wouldn't do for you to be the consort of a Cardinal, say, or a Bishop, and
not know the rudiments of the One True Faith."

Mother Eustacia came into the kitchen.
"Well, how are we doing?"

"Well, Mother Eustacia, well! She listens without vain chattering, and she
was up early."

"Good! You know what her schedule is for today?"
"I shall pursue it rigidly, Mother Eustacia," said Sister Linette.

"I want her particularly well-versed in all the skills of love, Sister Linette,
and you can teach her well."

Sister Linette laughed heartily, her massive bosom heaving, her eyes
sparkling. "Aye, that I can! That I can!"

"But what do you have her in the kitchen for?" Mother Eustacia said,
frowning.

"Because if she is to be the kind of lady you want her to be, she will start as
a sculler maid. She will learn how to cook and clean. How better can she
learn how to manage servants later?"

"Hmmm!"

"Mother Eustacia, trust me. I know what I'm talking about." Sister Linette
giggled. "Remember the house to which I was first sent?"

"Bishop Eusebio of Cologne. Yes, I remember."
"Well, those servants walked all over me, and I was fair on the way to
displeasing his eminence, until the chatelaine who wasn't a bad sort, took
me under her wing, and told me a few of the facts of life. It will be good
discipline for her."

"Very well, but I don't want her picking up common habits."

"Have no fear, Mother. I shall tend to her rearing for the next year, and then
she will be turned over to you, a finished jewel, and ready for her next
lessons."

Maria's morning was bewildering, and exhausting. Maria worked with the
cooks. At lunch time, she ate in the kitchen. It was Sister Linette's plan that
she would not have any contact with the other inhabitants of the house.

Sister Linette stayed with her, talking constantly, instructing, badgering,
scolding.

Maria's head, by early afternoon, was swimming.

For three hours in the afternoon, she sat in a quiet garden at a table with
Sister Linette, and learned her first rudiments of the art of writing.

"Good!" said Sister Linette, when the three hours were up. "You are a quick
pupil, and you will learn well."

Maria had a headache. But she did not complain. Sister Linette took her
after her lesson, to a room on the top floor.

There were two other girls seated in the room, one about Maria's age, the
other about eleven or twelve.

"Are you ready, ladies?" Sister Linette said.
"Yes, Sister Linette," the two girls said, rising and curtseying prettily.

The older girl looked greedily at Maria.
"Is this the new one they're talking about?" she asked, her eyes raking the
lovely girl's body in a strange way.

Maria shivered, and yet, that strange excitement she had felt the day before
rippled through her.

"It is, and you will have nothing to do with her except for lessons, Sister
Nadine."

The older girl frowned.
"Why not? She is not more special than I. I am the daughter of the king."

"Aye, that you are--the bastard daughter of the king, and no better than she.
You will serve the same purpose in life."

"Not I!" the girl said, her blue eyes snapping with anger. "I shall be the
mistress of a king!"

"You will be lucky if we can find a lowly abbot for you, my girl, with your
nastiness." Sister Linette looked severely at Maria. "And I don't want you
picking up her nasty habits, and her arrogance, is that understood."

"Yes, Sister Linette," Maria said softly. "That's my good girl. Now disrobe,
ladies." Maria obeyed, still ashamed to be seen nude. But at least it did not
appear to be as bad to her, to be nude in front of her own sex, as the other
sex. And she did not think the consequences could be so dire.

"Now, Sister Nadine," Sister Linette said, as she removed her own garb,
"Let us see how good you have become in the art of pleasing a woman. You
will cause Maria to have a carnal crisis. You, Maria, will imitate Sister
Nadine. You will try to make her achieve the same kind of frenzy that Sister
Nadine, if she is as good as she claims to be, will cause in you.

"And you, my little duckling," Sister Linette said, looking at the girl about
Maria's age, "come here, and taste my womanly wares."

Sister Linette had completely disrobed. Her figure was plump but firm,
opulent, thought Maria. Her breasts were large, and pear-shaped. And her
love mound was covered with thick brown hair.

"Come on, get up on the bed," Sister Linette said, clapping her hands, and
shooing Maria and Sister Nadine onto the bed.

Sister Nadine had a full, ripe figure, just short of complete maturity.

"I don't know why I have to do it with her!" she snarled, her dignity
offended. "Why can't I do it with Sister Anice, and you do it with her!"

"You get to work, lady, or you'll feel my hand across your insolent face!"
Sister Linette said.

Sister Nadine turned to Maria, who was gazing at her in mute question, and
roughly slapped the lovely girl across her face.

"And so, lie down!" Sister Nadine commanded.

Maria bit her quivering lower lip, and lay on the bed. She gasped, when she
saw the creamy white body of Sister Linette, towering over her. The
woman's face was livid with her rage.

She raised her hand and dealt a smart, loud blow to Sister Nadine's face,
and then gave her a back-hand on her other cheek.

"No more of your soldier's roughness, My Lady, or you shall feel just how
rough I can be!"

Maria lay meekly on the bed, waiting, rubbing her reddened cheek.

"You will treat her well, or it will be the dungeon for you, for a week,"
Sister Linette said, going back to Sister Anice, who was kneeling on the
carpeted floor, waiting with apparent eagerness for Sister Linette to return.

Sister Nadine roughly spread Maria's legs. Maria gasped when she felt the
girl's body resting on top of hers. The sensation to the little girl was
fascinating. As she lay, trembling, under the body of the vicious little Sister
Nadine, she felt her softness, and her body warmed to it.
She remembered Sister Linette's instructions. She was to try to bring Sister
Nadine to a climax.

Maria for all her lack of education, was not lacking in powers of
observation, nor in the ability to make analogies. She understood from her
own experience the day before, exactly what kind of feelings she was to
arouse in the lovely if bad-tempered little girl's body.

What puzzled her was how she, a mere gypsy girl, could do it. She was no
man, with that huge rod hanging between her legs. But Sister Linette had
told her to imitate Sister Nadine, and this Maria was prepared to do.

Cautiously, with a sensual appreciation of the girl's soft body, she ran her
hand over Sister Nadine's legs. Her skin was so smooth, not like Maria's
body which was covered with chilblains, her hands rough from too much
work, and no care.

"Ugh!" Sister Nadine barked looking up at Sister Linette. Maria peered in
that direction, and gasped.

Little Sister Anice's head was pressed against Sister Linette's furry bush.
Her eyes widened.

"Now what is it?" Sister Linette gasped, her face flushed with passion.
"Her skin is rough. Look at her shins!"

"Aye, and yours would be, too, if you spent all your time out of doors, as
she has."

"She's a commoner!"

"And you're a bastard! You will get to work, Sister Nadine, immediately. If
I have to interrupt my own pleasure to teach Sister Maria what to do, you
will spend a week in the dungeons acquiring chilblains yourself."

Maria gasped sharply, when she felt Sister Nadine's mouth press down onto
her secret sex flesh.
At first she was shamed that the girl should do this to her, and then, as
Sister Nadine's tongue began to trace the line of her cuntal slit, she felt a
strange and different kind of pleasure course through her.

It was different from when the two men had fucked her. Maria conned the
lessons she had learned the day before, closing her eyes, as she attempted to
adjust her body and her senses to this new experience.

It went through her mind in a rainbow of dissonant colors and shapes. The
words she had learned yesterday when the priest had fucked her. The Count
of Lorraine, Rosco, the chief steward, the Count of Rheims, who was
supposed to be most important in her life.

Her hand moved to the chamois bag around her neck. Then, as Sister
Nadine's mouth became more insistent, she remembered that she had
lessons to learn.

No longer was any part of her body, obviously, to be considered private.
According to Sister Linette, she was to be used by priests and cardinals and
bishops, used for their pleasure. Privacy was not one of the privileges that
was to be hers.

Maria, trained to no morality, paid attention to the sensual impact of Sister
Nadine's tongue. The girl's hands moved up and down over her rough legs,
and her calloused knees.

Her skin was so smooth and white that Maria felt herself aroused almost
immediately.

"Will you stop lying there like a rotten log!" Sister Nadine barked, turning
to look over her shoulder at the enthralled Maria.

Maria remembered her instructions, and pressed her mouth tentatively,
against Sister Nadine's little lightly-furred pussy. She flicked out her pink
tongue swiping at the girl's pink meat.

She had never examined her own private parts, although she made a mental
note to do so, but she had remembered the strange throbbing which had
filled her pink inner lips. She remembered, as the priest filled her with
pleasure, that the inner meat of her pussy had become swollen.

And that was the condition of Sister Nadine's cunt. As she gazed at it, she
realized that her flower-like inner folds of sex flesh had pouted out from
between her plump white outer lips.

This fascinated Maria.

"Sister Linette, Maria is being lazy and good-for-nothing!" Sister Nadine
said, again raising her head from the little girl's love mound.

Maria didn't hear Sister Nadine's complaint. Her rough little fingers, had
reached between Sister Nadine's legs. She was so thoroughly fascinated,
that she had to see, to examine.

She noted the swelling of the pink tissues, as she gently parted the girl's
outer white meat. She noticed how the girl's tissues flowered outward,
luridly. And then she noted the tiny little hole. It was gleaming with juice.

Tentatively, Maria stuck a finger at the hole, and Sister Nadine grunted.
Maria noticed that her hips humped downward, pressing into Maria's chin,
as she gently pried her fingertip into the hole, and twisted it around a little.

She smiled when she felt the girl's cuntal walls closing in around her little
finger tip.

"Hah! "

Maria gasped, and jumped as she heard Sister Linette's voice, very close by
her ear.

Sister Linette's hand came down sharply on Sister Nadine's buttocks,
causing the girl's hips to hump again into Maria's chin.

"I told you if you interrupted my pleasure that you would spend a week in
the dungeon. So be it. The child is exploring. She is learning, as you
yourself had to learn. I do not see her being lazy."
Sister Linette looked down at Maria's flushed face.
"Do you know the names of the various parts, of flesh you are touching?"

Maria, placing her rough little finger against the various parts of her
anatomy that she could reach, named them.

"Good. As I said, you imitate Sister Nadine. When she is not being
intransigent, she is rather good. You missy, be more patient. You will not
leave this room, until I see that child convulsing."

The warmth from Sister Nadine's body spread through Maria's body. She
felt herself writhing slightly, causing Sister Nadine's body to undulate.
Sister Nadine pressed her slender smooth thighs against the sides of Maria's
head, closing out the rutting noises that had commenced again from the
large arm chair where Sister Anice was again munching on the furry love
mound of Sister Linette.

Again Maria flicked her tongue out, to taste the opalescent liquid which
flowed turgidly from the girl's little love hole. She drew the drop of dew
into her mouth, and tasted it.

It tasted strange, but not unpleasant. Again Maria's tongue flicked out. This
time, Sister Nadine's love mound pressed downward against Maria's mouth.
She ground it around against her Ups, until Maria's cheeks became wet with
the dew which flowed from her little hole.

Maria sniffed deeply of the girl's aroused womanhood, and enjoyed the
savory fragrance. It was pungent, and exciting, and Maria became more and
more aroused.

Her body felt hot. She felt as if she had turned to liquid fire, as Sister
Nadine's mouth covered her own hairless pussy. She felt the girl's tongue
lapping up and down over her little muff. Her heart hammered in her chest,
as her excitement rose to a feverish pitch.

Her little hands moved up and down over the marvelous, white, silky-soft
skin of the arrogant novice.
She paid careful attention to what Sister Nadine was doing to her, and she
followed her example.

She ran her tongue up and down over the pink fleshy petals of the girl's sex
flesh, digging her tongue deeply into the moist crevices, swallowing the
thick warm liquid which flowed from her tiny hole.

Sister Nadine's pussy moved rhythmically now, up and down on Maria's
mouth. Maria felt the warm liquid flowing over her cheeks as she let her
tongue flow wetly up and down over the incredibly smooth flesh of Sister
Nadine's cunt.

Sister Nadine's mouth worked wildly on Maria's pussy. Maria's hips started
to arch upward as the excitement flowed through her, possessing her again
in that strange way that she had remembered last night.

Old Vassilie, when someone had offended her, used to make potions at
night, and make Maria take part in her rituals, which were very frightening
to the little girl. Her object was to possess the one who had offended her
with a devil which would torture him.

And it usually happened, when she had given the sign of her curse, that
something awful would happen to the one who had aroused her rage--
usually something which killed the person.

But surely no devil would create this kind of pleasure. If the convulsions
were so powerful as to be frightening, if the excitement were more intense
than anything Maria had ever known, or knew how to cope with, they were
nevertheless sublimely beautiful to the little girl. She was awed by the
sensations which coursed through her, and she abandoned herself to Sister
Nadine's skillful tonguing of her sex flesh.

The more excited she became, the more eagerly and wildly Maria's tongue
moved up and down over Sister Nadine's pink fleshy flower. She felt the
flesh swell outward even more, and against her tongue, as she savored the
feel and taste of Sister Nadine's meat, she felt the throbbing of the novice's
excitement.
And then she gasped with even more excitement. Sister Nadine's tongue
had made contact with a piece of flesh, situated near the top of her flesh,
where the cleft began. Maria had become conscious of it the night before,
but the priest had not named it.

As Sister Nadine's tongue flicked over this hard little nubbin of flesh, wild,
searing waves of intense ecstasy coursed through Maria's little body.

She felt her body writhing, out of her control. She started to arch her hips
upward, her motion becoming more and more frenzied as Sister Nadine
seemed to find the very core of her fleshy pleasure.

She moaned against Sister Nadine's pink flesh, and felt the juices gush even
more heavily from her quivering hole.

She searched with her tongue for the core of Sister Nadine's pleasure.
Surely if she had one, and Sister Nadine was a woman like her, then Sister
Nadine had a center of pleasure like that.

She dug deeply into the young novice's flesh, rubbing upward over the
curved expanse of throbbing velvet-soft flesh.

And then she found it, the hard little vibrating nubbin that shot such
delicious hot ecstasy through her, like lightning flickering to the earth on a
sultry hot night, presaging a storm.

And she felt the vibrations of Sister Nadine's moan against her pussy flesh.
It seemed to rumble through her, like iron cart wheels rumble against the
cobblestones on market day.

Maria used to like to stand just on the edge of the road, and feel the
vibrations shooting through her bare feet. The sensation to her was
pleasurable. Vassilie was constantly cuffing her for standing to close to the
moving vehicles, in danger of being run over.

For what did the gentry care about the common folk, as Vassilie used to
complain to her.
Now, as Nadine's moan vibrated against her swollen, inflamed pussy flesh,
she felt that same kind of tingling sensation, only far more intense. It was
centered in the hard little button of flesh, which Sister Nadine's tongue was
lashing.

Maria did the same to Sister Nadine's little love button, flicking her tongue
like a snake's tongue back and forth over the little hard piece of flesh.
Nadine's love mound now ground furiously into Maria's mouth.

Marie closed her eyes, and became lost in her body. She felt as if a
delicious, carnal storm were devastating her. She writhed and moaned under
Sister Nadine's body, and her hands sought again to savor the soft sweet
flesh of the young, arrogant novice.

She squeezed the girl's buttocks, feeling the muscles ripple beneath the
silky-soft flesh as she humped her muff into Maria's wide-open and eager
mouth.

Maria's body felt like one huge pulse, as the hot pleasure rose still higher.
Sister Nadine's teeth scraped a little more harshly than necessary against
Maria's hard little love button, but the effect to Maria was devastating.

She felt her whole body bloat with lust, felt her flesh tingle. Her body
started to writhe even more madly, and her fingers moved ardently over the
soft smooth flesh of Sister Nadine.

She felt her own juices cascading like a mountain waterfall from her
quivering pussy, felt them trickling down her ass crack, felt her pussy walls
close in convulsively on themselves, as she started to spasm.

The spasms of her climax rippled through her, getting stronger and stronger.
Maria opened her mouth, and encased all of Sister Nadine's pussy in her
mouth. Without even knowing what she was doing, she started to suck, as if
hungry for the little girl's flesh. Maria felt the fine fuzz which covered
Sister Nadine's cunt tickling the roof of her mouth. The novice's cream
flowed into Maria's mouth.
She swallowed hard, seeking in her own passionate apex, to devour all of
Sister Nadine's juices.

Her orgasm peaked. As Sister Nadine started to come, the novice's mouth
against Maria's cunt became hotter and wilder, driving Maria to the brink of
a sexual insanity, which almost frightened her.

But there was no time for fear. There was only time to catch hold of the
marvelous, fleeting sensations which rippled through her, fading before
Maria could catch them and hold onto them.

She writhed and squirmed until the orgasm faded away. Then she lay on the
bed, feeling the pleasant afterglow of her climax.

Sister Nadine's body writhed against her body for a while longer, and then
Maria felt her body collapse. Her chest with its lovely rounded breasts,
heaved against the lower part of Maria's belly.

Sister Nadine rolled off Maria's body. Maria saw her face, and smiled.
Sister Nadine's face was flushed, and she had the look of satiated lust which
Maria had recognized on the face of the Abbess the night before.

She felt a strange impulse to fondle her own little love mound, but the
sound of Sister Linette sitting on the chair, caught her attention.

"Good!" Sister Linette gasped, and then her eyes rolled back in her head.
Her plump white body jumped and heaved in the chair, her flesh jiggling
wildly, as Sister Linette started to come.

Little Sister Anice's mouth worked noisily over Sister Linette's sex flesh.
Maria felt her juices flowing anew down her quivering hot tunnel of love.

She watched, as Sister Linette climaxed violently. Then the woman gasped,
and her body sagged forward somewhat.

Maria noticed that Sister Anice was also squirming on her knees. She saw
Sister Anice's hand moving back and forth between her legs.
Maria couldn't wait to retire to her room. She wanted to try that. She had
become hungry for this intense, awesome, and wonderful sexual
experience. She wanted to feel it all over again.


CHAPTER FOUR

Sister Linette was a conscientious teacher. Every day there were love
lessons, which Maria looked forward to hungrily.

Every night, she conned the lessons she had learned during the day, doing
her own experimenting on her own lovely body.

And there were other lessons to learn. How to cook, how to do plain
sewing, how to keep accounts, do the marketing, how to clean and scrub
and mop. And every day, there were those precious three hours in which
Maria learned how to read and write.

She was a basically silent girl. She asked few questions. She was docile and
sweet-tempered, and steady with her tasks, a fact which did not escape the
notice of the Abbess, who became more and more excited with the little
treasure.

For a year, Maria bore patiently the mockery of her fellow sisters, who
teased her for her simple garb, her work-roughened hands, her calloused
knees.

Sister Linette's lessons were hard, but the woman was not harsh.

"You are alone, because I want you to be alone. I want you to learn to suffer
the mockery of those girls who think they're superior, because you have no
class, no status," the woman repeated to her over and over again.

"You are one of God's bastard children, and since no one will look out for
you, you must look out for yourself. I learned sadly, and hard myself, my
child, and IT would like you to learn more easily. Your aloneness, your
ability to collect security for yourself in gold and jewels and clothing, and
perhaps houses, if your masters are generous enough, will help you to
survive, will give you the strength you need.
"And you are strong and hard from work. I want you to remain that way.
You do not suffer the vapors, nor a bad stomach from over-indulgence, and
I want you to stay strong. You must walk vigorously every day. When it is
time for you to learn finer things, you will learn how to ride a horse. Ride it
every day, and do not shun the rain or the snow. It is good for you."

Maria, silent, and increasingly purposeful, took in the lessons Sister Linette
taught, and she surpassed her teacher.

For a whole year, her world was small, confined to the upper bed chambers
which she kept clean, the kitchen, the scullery, the pantry which she learned
how to stock and to keep an accurate inventory of.

And there was the little garden in the back where they learned their reading
and writing lessons.

Maria was fascinated, as she began to excel in the basic lessons she learned,
with the scope of the world, the complicated hierarchy of mankind. She
learned that she was the lowest of the low, and because she took the lesson
to heart, she did not become proud nor overbearing, as Sister Nadine did.

And then one day, when she came downstairs to the kitchen, the Abbess
was sitting at the table.

"Today, you start a new life, my child," the woman said. If Maria had
thought she was harsh when she first met the Abbess, she did not think so
now. The Abbess's attitude toward her had softened. Maria was so quiet, so
appealing, so loving and willing to work, so grateful for any gesture of
kindness, that without any artifice at all, she did naturally what the other
girls had to be trained to do: she won the good will and affection of those
whom she had to please in order to survive.

And if the other novices mocked, it wasn't for the reasons they stated: that
her hands were rough, her garments coarser than theirs, but that they sensed
in her a quickness of intellect, a natural grace, a sensitivity which they did
not possess, and had to be taught.
And so it was with the Abbess. Mother Eustacia looked forward greedily to
the next phase in Maria's training.

Maria had been able to describe the approximate time she was born, and
had learned that she was nine years old when she came to the Abbey. She
was now ten, and was growing well.

She was healthy, and more beautiful than ever. Her jade-green eyes sparkled
with high spirits and good health. Her complexion, though her skin tended
to be the color of alabaster, had a pink healthy glow to it, and the sheen of
her hair, washed and dressed regularly, if simply, was marvelous to behold.

Maria was led to a different bed chamber. It was still simple, but less
austere than her other one. This time, Sister Linette was not with her. It was
the Abbess who undressed her, and put her into a tub, which was filled with
sweet-smelling oils.

She was bathed by a little serving girl, and then soft, sweet-scented

unguents were applied to her chapped hands and work-roughened knees and
body.

"From now on, you will be bathed like this every day. Your training as a
lady commences from this day. We shall be very strict with you, and you
will be forced to learn some very difficult things.

"It is not meet that you be a heathen, given the kind of masters who will
own you, so you must be instructed in the faith, and from now on you will
attend religious services regularly.

"You will be taught fine sewing and music. You will be taught the
languages of those countries where you might be sent. You will be taught
the fine art of conversation. I am sure you will learn well. You have
acquitted yourself well, so far."

For a year, Maria had indulged in the love play that women delight in
among themselves, wondering why, since it was men whom she was
expected to please, that she was not taught more about that act which the
duke and the priest had performed on her.
She had learned her lessons well, approached them with the natural ardor of
her healthy body and curious mind, which was untainted with moral
strictures.

Her new training was more complicated, but Maria was naturally deft,
physically and mentally.

When her bath was finished, the serving girl tried to dress her.
"No, thank you," Maria said. "I can do it."

"No, my child, you may not do it. You must learn now to let others wait on
you," the Abbess said, sternly.

"Yes, Mother Eustacia."

"That's my good girl. When you are finished with her," she instructed the
serving girl, "bring her down to my closet, where I shall begin her
instructions."

The serving girl dressed Maria in a soft white gown, and then brushed her
jet-black hair until it glowed warmly with blue lights. The style was more
complicated. A white veil was placed on her head, and then the serving girl
led her to the study.

"Well, how did she comport herself?" Mother Eustacia asked the little
serving girl.

"Well, Mother Eustacia. She doesn't chatter as the other girls do."

"Good! That, at least, is one lesson I do not have to teach her. Sit, Sister
Maria."

Maria sat in the elegant, embroidered chair that the Abbess pointed out to
her. The Abbess sat opposite her, looking at her.

"You will be a beautiful woman, Sister Maria."
Maria blushed slightly and lowered her head, not knowing what to say. She
heard the Abbess make a thoughtful sound in her throat, and looked up at
her, attentive.

"You know one thing by instinct, which most females have to be taught,"
the Abbess said, gazing at the girl thoughtfully. "You are silent by nature,
and you listen well. This will serve you in good stead. Try to keep that trait.
It will enhance your worth, and perhaps we can place you even higher than
I suspected."

"Yes, Mother Eustacia," Maria said.

"You have been taught all the arts of pleasing women. Sister Linette tells
me that you surpass any of her pupils in this. That is good. There are many
females attached to the males who will buy you, who will want that kind of
dalliance. It will not hurt you, indeed it will augur well for you, to have that
skill. That is why you learn it.

"Your second learning phase begins today. You will be taught to please
men, all kinds of men. You will be taught to serve their every whim. Here is
your basic schedule, which will be filled out as you progress."

The Abbess handed Maria a piece of paper.

Shi was no longer awed at the ways of civilization, and the schedule excited
her. Whatever there was of wealth and beauty and learning that her meager
station in life could offer, Maria wanted, grateful for every undeserved
crumb of joy which came her way.

She was to learn to ride horses. She was to learn to sing and play the
harpsichord, the virginal, and the lute. She was to learn the history and
languages of several countries she had already read about in some of the
books which Sister Linette had given her to read. Sister Linette had
informed the Abbess of the girl's voracious reading habits, and Maria had
started to keep a diary.

In her innocence, she detailed all her love lessons, all that she heard, all that
she learned of the occupants of the Abbey. The journal was detailed in a
way that would titillate those who read it.

She was not now aware of that, having no moral grounding on which to
base her knowledge and her natural powers of discrimination. Eventually,
she would learn, and wonder at the deviousness of men.

And so a new phase began in Maria's life.

The Abbess stood up, and rang a bell, and the pert little Sister Anice came
into the room, and curtseyed.

"Yes, Mother."

"From now on, you are the abigail of Sister Maria. You will attend to her
wants, and serve her well."

Maria gasped. As far as she knew, Sister Anice was her peer, a fellow
student. How was it that Sister Anice was to be her lady's maid?

She looked, puzzled at the Abbess, not saying anything, just asking a mute
question with her eyes.

"Yes, Mother," Sister Anice said, gaily, bobbing again.
"Go fetch her cloak. She is to take a riding lesson in ten minutes."

The little girl curtseyed to the Abbess again and to Maria, and swiftly left
the room.

When Sister Anice had gone, the Abbess, smiling grimly sat down again.

"Sister Anice is a girl of limited intelligence. If you have noticed, she also
has a club foot. She cannot be placed highly, if we can place her at all. She
will not bring much money, so she is to be trained differently from you.

"Her life will no doubt be one of harsh labor. She has learned her lessons
well, and she will serve you. Do not let her become lax. It is part of your
training now to learn how to manage those who serve you. As a courtesan,
you will no doubt have many servants, so teach her well, as I suspect you
will. And do not be too gentle with her if she becomes slack in her duty.
Cuff her a few times."

Maria winced at the thought of cuffing the gentle, eager-to-please Anice.
She was the only girl who had never mocked Maria, had always pleased
her. Anice would learn her lessons about pleasing men, along with Maria.
The convent was famous for the skill of the women who were trained there,
no matter what station they held in the outside world.

Sister Anice came back with a simple, but well-made black cloak, which
she put on Maria's shoulders, and fastened. Sister Anice was a bubbly sort.
She always announced her arrival and departure.

Maria noticed the look of displeasure on the Abbesses' face when she came
in, making a pleasant racket, pleased to be Maria's serving maid.

"Go, take her to the stables. The riding master is waiting for her," the
Abbess said, frowning at Anice.

When they had left the Abbess's closet, Maria turned to the pert little
novice.

"Sister Anice, please! Do not make such a noise when you come and go.
Save it for those places where Mother Eustacia cannot hear." Anice's bright
blue eyes widened.

"I am sorry, Sister Maria!" she exclaimed, her voice starting at a high pitch,
which she lowered as she heard it. "I did not mean to offend."

Maria smiled at her, something she rarely did, and the smile caused her face
to glow with a radiance that caught at Anice's throat like a lump.

"It is not displeasing to be cheerful," Maria said, putting her hand gently on
Anice's shoulder, aware of how eager the young girl was to please. "Just be
a little more quiet about it. I saw Mother Eustacia frown."

"Yes, I know," Anice said, leading Maria to a side doorway, which led to the
stables of the Abbey. She opened the door for her new mistress. "And Sister
Linette is always boxing me on the ears, or shaking me for being so
ostentatious, she calls it."

"I don't want to cuff you, Sister Anice. Please try to be careful?"

"Yes, Sister Maria," the little girl said, smiling lovingly up into the beautiful
girl's kind, young face.

Anice accompanied her mistress, as she would always, on her lesson. Maria
was not afraid of horses, having seen and ridden a few in her time, and the
riding master was pleased with her. She was quiet--almost too quiet, he
thought to himself--and he gave her special attention, sensing that she was
different from most of the other vain chatterboxes, who flirted with him.

Maria, as she finished her lesson, and returned regretfully to the stable,
unwilling to leave the bridle paths, the soft cool woods, the first freedom
she had known since the duke's chief steward had bought her for his carnal
pleasure, didn't realize that she had started her career as a lady well, that
Anice gazed at her new mistress with total adoration, and vowed to be
worthy of the little girl's gentleness.

Anice's intelligence was not as limited as Mother Eustacia had estimated.
The little girl was shrewd and she had sharp ears. Over the years that she
remained with Maria, she was an invaluable source of information, and her
mistress was a superb and intelligent listener, who learned all her lessons,
great and small, with consummate skill and thoroughness.

When she returned to the great Abbey, she was summoned to the Abbess's
closet again.

"Your first love lesson is waiting in the lower chambers. Go to him."

Maria felt her heart falter slightly. She raised her chin slightly, bowed to the
Abbess, and left. Anice was not to go with her. She had her own lessons in
another chamber.

In the long, dark, smelly corridor that she traversed, her footsteps silent,
Maria heard her harsh breathing, a combination of some fear, and
considerable anxiety.
Sister Linette was waiting near the end of the long corridor.

"Good, just be quiet, as you usually are, my child, and learn your lesson
well. It will be a good one!"

She pushed the girl through a low, heavy oaken door. Maria heard it close
behind her with a resounding bang, and she was in a low-ceilinged, but
ornate chamber.

At one end was a huge bed, and near it stood a man in the black cassock of
a priest. He smiled at her, and then laughed, his voice low in his throat. He
was very young, and elegant-looking.

"Good, they were not lying about your beauty. Come here."

Maria approached the rather handsome man, and stood before him, meekly.
He tilted her chin up, and gazed into her eyes.

"You have a witch's eyes. Be careful of the Inquisition. Don't do anything to
arouse their interest, or their concupiscence," he said.

Maria had never heard of the Inquisition, but it had a frightening ring to it.
The man's mouth came down and covered hers.

Maria trembled at the touch of his lips. The taste and touch of his mouth
was wonderful to the little girl, and he wasn't hurting her, or being rough.
She felt all her heated passions rise in her, until she trembled not from
anxiety, but from the pleasure of the man's mouth.

He fumbled with her simple white dress, and pulled it over her head, and.
Maria blushed. It was the first time in a year, she had been nude in front of a
man. The priest removed her silken shift and her veil, and took the
fastenings out of her hair.

It cascaded down past her waist, almost covering her lovely dimpled round
buttocks now.
Her little breasts had been growing all year. They were rounder, fuller now,
and the nipples shone pinkly, crowning the growing little mounds of flesh.
Her young body had acquired a shape, her waistline curving in gently, only
to flow in a smooth outward line over the delicate swell of her hips. Already
a very fine fuzz of fur was forming on her love mound.

The priest pressed his hands into her breasts, cupping them, fondling them.
Maria felt little shivers of pleasure course through her. Pagan as she was,
and not having any rules against indulging her animal instincts to the hilt,
she responded to the man's gentle caresses.

He was kinder than the duke. Kinder than the priest who had followed the
duke. His hands moved over her soft belly, and then she felt his fingers
dabbling in the wet flesh of her pussy.

He pushed her down onto the bed. Her hair fanned out on the white
counterpane, glowing beautifully, and in startling contrast to her white skin.

She watched, fascinated, eager, as the priest removed his cassock and stood
before her, naked. She stared at his great rod.

She wanted to touch it. She looked at him, her green eyes bright with lust.
"Why do you look at me that way?" he asked, coming closer to the bed.
"May-may I touch it?"

The priest laughed. Without his clothing, he looked like nothing less than a
satyr, one of those mythical creatures that Maria had read in her books on
mythology.

"Never ask, my little pretty. Just do it."

Maria's hand came out, and for the first time in her life, she touched a cock.
The skin felt incredibly smooth, but it encased a hot hardness that made
Maria's heart flutter, and her breathing to become even more labored.

She felt the juices flowing from her pussy, as the priest's hands moved
down over her body, tracing the developing curves of her body.
Her touch was gentle, as she ran her sweaty palm up and down over the
man's large rod of flesh. She saw the drop of love juice which formed at the
tip of it.

She had tasted a woman's juices, and now she was curious to taste his juice.
She rubbed the tip of her finger over the head of his cock, and then put her
finger in her mouth to suck on it.

It was different, as it should be, she thought to herself, but she was pleased
with the taste of it. It was strong and musky.

The priest lay down on the bed beside her, laughing huskily.

"A natural. The Abbess said you were a heathen, and so you are. Come
here."

The priest pulled her into his strong arms, pressing her body against his.
She could feel his heart throbbing against one of her growing tits, felt the
heat of his body.

His excitement seemed to flow through Maria's body, making her one with
him, causing her to become hotter, and wilder.

Her anxiety was forgotten, as she surrendered to another kiss. The priest's
mouth covered hers again, and this time, she felt his tongue flicking along
her beautifully shaped, full lips. She opened her mouth, as his tongue
pressed against her straight white teeth, and she moaned as she felt his
tongue, like a moist, slithering snake, thrust into her hot oral cavity,
ravaging with pleasure the delicate, sensitive pink membranes of her mouth.

She reached between their bodies, to caress his cock again, to feel the heat
of it permeating her palm. It seemed to spread through her arm, and fill her

body.

The ardor she had felt when she had embraced the naked bodies of the
women of the abbey became intensified. This time she felt even more
wanton, more aroused. She didn't understand the difference, but she tried to
hold onto the feeling, as lightning-like flashes of pleasure coursed through
her.

The priest rolled her over onto her back. His hands again went to her soft
breasts. He teased the spongy soft flesh, and pinched her nipples.

He was a playful fucker.

She felt them pucker with delight, felt as if they had become fiery little
sockets of pleasure, which coursed through her.

As the priest caressed her, his hand moving lower down her body, until he
had cupped her eager love mound, Maria knew that this time it would be
different. She knew that this time, the awesome act with a man, to which
she had been so brutally introduced a year ago, would become the most
desired pleasure of her life.

She closed her eyes, and moaned, her hands blindly seeking the man's
smooth, hard flesh.

She kneaded his chest, marveling at the hardness of his muscles. She
fondled his small nipples, and was pleased to feel them pucker beneath her
gentle touch.

She gasped, when the man's finger pried through the soggy swamp of her
lust, and his finger sought the interior of her little hole.

"Ohh!" she gasped, as her cuntal walls closed in around the prying digit.
"Yes," the priest said, his voice savage with rampant lust. "You are ready."

Maria spread her legs, hungry for the taste of his cock, as the priest
mounted her.

This time, Maria was ready, and more than willing!


CHAPTER FIVE
Maria felt little explosions of pleasure rip through her cunt, as the priest's
hard, thick cock head pressed at the entrance to her drooling tunnel of lust.

Her mouth opened wide, in a soundless scream of ecstasy, as the priest's
massive rod thrust inward, penetrating deeply into her womanhood.

And it felt good! Maria moaned, and wriggled her hips upward, driving
more of the man's thick, throbbing rod into her pinioned womanhood.

Her little cleft parted. The pleasure was so intense that Maria had neither
voice nor breath to cry out, and wondered if she should have. His massive
ramrod plowed deeply into her, stretching the walls of her hot wet cave,
each inward thrust adding to the sweet welter of pleasure which filled
Maria's body.

The priest grunted, his arms, braced on his elbows on either side of Maria's
body, trembled with his own pleasure, as his hairy groin pressed against her
little pussy.

Maria tried to quell the sounds of joy which gurgled in her throat. She
clenched her teeth together, staring up at the rough, handsome face of the
lustful priest.

His eyes glowed with desire. His cock pounded against her tight little pussy
walls, enhancing the lurid bliss which possessed the little novice of love.

"Have I hurt you?" he asked, pressing his chest against her burgeoning little
tits.

"N-noo," she gasped, trembling. "No, sir," she amended shyly.
"No, father," the priest said. "You call a priest 'father,' little heathen."

"No, father," Maria said, squirming upward against his hairy groin. The
flaming sensations which coursed through her made her tremble violently.

"Put your arms around my neck," he instructed.
Maria did so, willingly, eagerly. The priest's mouth came down on hers
again, and he started to move in her eager, dripping cunt. Maria moaned
against his mouth, not able to help the animal-like sounds which were
wrenched from her throat by the hot pleasure which the priest's hard,
throbbing lance of flesh was giving her.

If this were to be her life, pleasing men, then Maria wanted every minute of
it.

He tossed his head and growled, and then kissed her again, possessively,
demandingly, as he pulled his great prod out to the tip, and then thrust it in
again.

The delicious flaming abrasions of his cock against her pussy walls, as he
thrust in and out of her pussy caused her to shiver with delight. Her ears
rang with the battering which his great ramrod was giving her.

He plunged into the depths of her womanhood over and over again,
grunting like a rutting pig. Maria enjoyed the sounds he was making, and
surrendered to her own impulse to make soft rutting noises, thinking that it
would please him.

Apparently it did, because the priest's cock began to pound in and out of her
insanely.

The priest's massive, muscular hips humped into her again and again, his
great fleshy rod rubbing against her itching pussy walls. Maria decided she
preferred men to women.

The friction of his fleshy stalk against her tight, tingling walls created
strange wonderful sensations in her. Her body went taut under his humping
loins, her muscles quivered violently.

Maria felt as if her cunt were turning into a raging inferno, as he thrust into
her over and over again, his cock making wet sucking noises, as he
plumbed the depths of her womanhood.
Maria's cuntal walls rippled around the fleshy invader, and a ponderous,
inexplicable pleasure took possession of her body.

She moaned, her lovely head tossing from side to side on the pillow. She
fought slightly against the pleasure, remembering that when it peaked, it
signaled the end and she was always fascinated and frustrated by the
ephemeral nature of the ecstasy she invariably felt in any sexual encounter.

The priest pierced her depths repeatedly, driving the pleasure in Maria's
body higher and higher.

She quivered, and her body arched upward, hungrily. Her arms tightened
around his neck. She savored the wet hot feeling of his body pressed into
hers, rubbing against her, as he pulled his great cock out and thrust it inward
again.

His thrusting became more and more violent. His balls slapped heavily
against Maria's come-covered ass cheeks, as she arched upward. Her pussy
had become like a sucking, hungry mouth.

Her cuntal walls gripped at the man's raging rod as he lunged into her
deeply, and then pulled out again.

Like a plow, digging into the soft moist soil of spring, he left behind deep
furrows of carnal pleasure to which Maria surrendered, whimpering and
squealing with the ecstasy that took hold of her young, ardent body.

His cock lurched wildly in her pussy. It seemed to get hotter, harder, bigger.
And then she felt the first heavy flow of his juices cascading into her pussy.

His heavy, frothing creamy flood bloated her. Maria felt as if her body had
transcended the bonds of her flesh, become larger, lighter. She was filled
with light and heat.

Her little love button, that seat of incredible pleasure tingled hotly as the
priest's hairy groin mashed into her over and over again, stimulating it.
Maria felt the first spasms of her climax rippling through her body, as the
priest's thick wads of steaming, frothing juice churned around inside her
secret womanhood, and drooled down the walls of her fleshy cave.

She felt her cunt convulse in that strange way, her sex muscles gripping at
his cock as it spewed load after load into her deep interior.

Again and again the priest lunged into her teeming tunnel, depositing a
great liquid load into her, filling her up, causing a sweet, wild riot to fill her
body.

Her nipples seemed to pucker even harder with the hot demanding pleasure.
Her pussy convulsed wildly, the muscles clutching hungrily against the
great fleshy sword of the priest as he pierced through her wet, hot tunnel,
until he gasped, slamming into her one last time.

Maria's body still quivered as her orgasm peaked, and then started to fade
away. Like a sunset, the color seemed to darken in the secret recesses of her
body; like twilight, after a hot day, her body cooled, and relaxed. She lay
still under the heavy body of the priest, marveling at the wondrous sense of
relaxation which possessed her.

The priest smiled down at her, caressing her silken tresses, and kissed her
again.

"You are a delight, little heathen. You will make a fine consort for some
great man of the Church. But we must have you baptized."

Maria frowned. This she had never heard of.

She had learned early not to ask questions, and she asked none now. The
priest pulled his fleshy snake, gleaming with their combined sexual floods,
from her still-quivering cunt.

They bathed together at the lovely china urn set out for that purpose, and
then Maria got dressed again, reluctantly.
Maria went to her next lesson, her cunt still aflame. And every day after
that, there was a steady procession of teachers, enough man flesh to please
her seemingly insatiable snatch.

The one lesson which Maria did not seem to learn, now that she was in the
general community, with the other ladies set aside for the same purpose as
she, was the art of light conversation.

She kept her counsel, writing every night in her diary, listening to the
practical, down-to-earth lessons which Sister Anice could give her in her
chattering.

And to give Sister Anice credit, which Maria did readily, she learned the
lessons which Maria had to impart.

She learned to save her chatter for Maria, and to unburden herself to her
mistress. They shared their sexual lessons. Anice's were a little rougher, and
she was learning to take some abuse, which distressed Maria.

Maria learned of the flagrant, licentious, after-dark life of the convent. And
she also learned of the strange dichotomy which existed between
appearances and actual fact.

She had read enough to know that convents were for the chaste, or those
who had been ruined, and vowed chastity. In her religious lessons, she
learned that it was a virtue much to be honored, but there was no sign of it
in this convent, and Maria suspected that other Priories and Abbeys were
the same.

She became enthralled with the story of the little Jesus, a God born to be
meek and gentle, and to die for men's sins.

At the instructions of the priest who had fucked her, Maria was taught these
religious lessons. It took her awhile to learn that the story of Christ was not
considered another fanciful legend, but was a fact in the lives of those who
lived behind convent walls, at least.
What puzzled her, was the difference between their belief and their
behavior. Maria followed the Bible lessons assiduously, and read
assiduously, enamored of this Christ she was supposed to believe in, and
gradually did come to believe.

As she knelt in the great chapel at religious services, she would offer her
mind and soul to this God she had never heard of, this strange God who
decided to become a man and die in the worst possible way. But she could
not make those crucial vows to him.

She wept before him, constantly begging forgiveness for her despoiled
body, and puzzled beyond her own capacity to sort it out, as to why, in this
convent, this very haven of belief, those very virtues which were supposed
to be practiced, were defied and mocked in the most unspeakable ways.

And there was no one to whom she could speak.

The years passed. Maria was now thirteen years old, and highly
accomplished. She had learned surpassingly well all the lessons she had
been taught. Her voice was sweet when she sang, her strong hands were
skilled in any work.

Her flesh had become as creamy-soft and her complexion now surpassed
even Sister Nadine's.

Sister Nadine had been twice sold and twice returned. Her wit was acerbic,
her manners haughty. And being the bastard daughter of the reigning king
didn't help her to keep her positions.

She was told she had one more chance, and if she failed, she would be
trained as a scullery maid, and sold to a merchant, or some poor abbot in the
country.

This did not seem to alter her arrogant temper at all.

Maria was summoned to the elegant parlor one day. Sitting with the Abbess
were several of the nuns, including Sister Nadine. Maria gasped. There was
a man, a very richly dressed man, leaning against the great marble mantel
piece of the fireplace. His eyes raked her body coldly, and then his face
softened, as she curtseyed, first to the Abbess and then to the man. She also
accorded the same courtesy to her fellow sisters, a fact which fell upon the
man like a brick from a chimney, apparently, for he gasped. Sister Nadine

giggled.
"There she is, the little heathen, the gypsy."

"Sister Maria has been baptized and confirmed," the Abbess said, sternly.
"And she is very devout, Monsignor. Very gentle and docile. Play for us,
Maria."

Maria went to the virginal, which stood in the corner of the room, and her
slender fingers worked swiftly and delicately over the keyboard. She was
tall, for her age, her body beautifully shaped. Her breasts were high and
round and firm. She had kept the glow of health and her strength, having
pursued the daily exercise of vigorous walking and riding, which Sister
Linette had advised for her.

"She is dull," Sister Nadine said, twitching under the eye of the man, and
flirting with him. "She does not know how to be witty or gay."

"Indeed," the man said, walking over to the musical instrument which
Maria was playing with such consummate skill.

"Are you witty, Sister Maria?" he asked, a sardonic smile on his face.
"No, My Lord," she answered meekly.
"Is she dull?" the impressive man asked, turning to the Abbess.

"Far from it," the Abbess said. "Of all the girls who have passed through
these portals, she is the most astute. She learns quickly. But she has no
ready tongue. She does not chatter to anyone. She keeps her own counsel."

"I see. That is a most valuable asset. The Cardinal cannot, as you already
know, have any more gossips around him. Just how docile is she?"
The Abbess smiled and rose, going to the virginal and placing her hand
lightly, with an unaccustomed gesture of affection, on the exquisite young
girl's shoulder.

"She is most pliant, My Lord Monsignor. And she has my affection."
The monsignor's eyes rose, and he gazed keenly at the Abbess.
"Indeed, I have never heard such an admission from you before."

In Spanish, the monsignor spoke to Maria.

"You must please quite readily, to have acquired the honor of the Abbess's
affection."

"She is most kind, and the affection is returned, My Lord," Maria said in the
same language. Maria felt the pressure of the Abbess's hand increase on her
shoulder slightly, and then the older woman walked back to her chair, and
sat.

"That will be all. You may go to your chambers, and wait."

Maria left the virginal and went to her room, trembling. It was about to
happen, she thought.

Sister Anice came into the room.

"You are awaited in the red chamber in the cellars!" she gasped, her eyes
wide. And then her face crumpled, and there were tears in your eyes.

"I think we are to lose you. The Cardinal, Lord Joseph of Navarre, is
looking for another mistress. The one he had died."

She threw her arms around Maria's neck.

"I am happy if he is kind to you, and you will be rich and have pretty
clothes, and see the world. But I shall miss you, Sister Maria. I love you."
Maria squeezed the little girl tightly to her, and went quickly to the chamber
to which she had been summoned.

The Abbess was waiting outside the door.
"The monsignor is most interested in you.

Please him well, my dear. It will be a new life for you, and he is willing to
pay a king's ransom if he finds you suitable for the Cardinal."

"Yes, Mother Eustacia," said Maria. She went quickly through the door, and
stepped inside. She gasped. The monsignor was already lying on the red
velvet bed, nude. His cock stood magnificently up from his groin, like a
lurid stalk, bobbing slightly.

She trembled, and said a quiet little prayer to the strange God she had
learned to worship, and, knowing what was expected of her, removed her
clothes, the monsignor's dark, burning gaze following her every motion.

Maria was singularly graceful, and lithe. As her burgeoning body was
revealed to the monsignor, he grunted.

"Superb! In another two years you will be a raving beauty, fit for a king.
That will please the Cardinal. He does not like to have anything but the
best, and that includes his women."

He was speaking in Spanish now, and not French, the language which
Maria was used to. She approached the bed.

Gleaming on her neck was the diamond-studded crucifix, which she always
wore. One day, when she had gone to market for Sister Linette,
accompanied by another black-cloaked nun, she had done particularly well,
and come back with much more change than was expected.

Sister Linette had thrust several coins in her hand, and told her to buy
herself a trinket.

The next time she had gone to market, she went to a goldsmith, and had the
chain of her cross repaired. She now wore it all the time.
The monsignor frowned when he saw the cross.

"Get up here," he said, patting the side of the bed. Maria got up on the bed,
curling up beside the monsignor. Her hand reached for his cock, and he
gasped, when he felt her gentle touch.

His body was hairy, powerful, and Maria ran her hands over his chest, as
the monsignor fingered the cross.

"Where did you get his?"

Maria gently extracted it from his hands, not wanting him to read the legend
on the back of it. She knew what it said, now.

"Maria Theresa Plantagenet, from her Husband, Alphonse Guillaume
Verette, Count of Rheims, on this day of our marriage, June fourth, 1682:
May God guide us and bless our progeny."

"Does it matter, My Lord? I wear it to honor our blessed Savior who died
for our sins."

The monsignors hands framed Maria's exquisite face. He looked at her
keenly, and then smiled slightly.

"The Abbess was right. You keep your counsel. And I approve your
sentiments. I think the Cardinal will be pleased."

Maria twined her arms around the monsignor's neck, seeking to bring his
face down to hers for a kiss.

"No, you must not," he said, rolling over onto his back again. "The Cardinal
is portly, and prefers to be mounted by his women. Can you do that?"

"Yes, My Lord," Maria said. She straddled the monsignor's powerful, hairy
hips, feeling her excitement build in her. She grasped his cock, and caressed
it, shivering as a wild exhilaration roared through her like a hot moist wind.
Her cunt melted, the heavy aromatic syrup of her desire rolling copiously
from her little hole, greasing her cunt for the monsignor's cock.
The monsignor's male member was unusually thick, and it pulsed with
incredible strength against her gentle palm.

Maria rose slightly on her haunches, until she could press the hot, drooling
tip of his cock against the dripping entrance to her womanhood.

She gritted her teeth against the exquisite pleasure which rushed through
her. She moaned, breathily, the sound filling her ears, and mixing with the
harsh breathing of this awesome man who was testing her, proving her.

She had to do well, she thought, for the Abbess, who had been so kind to
her. Others in the convent, perhaps, had not fared so well at her hands, but
then they were constantly rebelling against the discipline, putting on airs. It
had been so easy to please them all, Sister Linette, and the Abbess, by being
meek as Christ had been meek. And it pleased Maria to please others. The
trait came to her naturally.

She wriggled downward, and listened to the monsignor moan and grunt. His

body stiffened somewhat as Maria's tight, sweet wet snatch encompassed
his throbbing cock head.

His face flushed, and his thickly-lashed eyes closed. Maria smiled slightly,
recognizing the pleasure in his face.

She continued to work her way downward, squeezing her cuntal muscles
around the monsignor's cock, pushing inch after inch of it into her tight,
deep well of pleasure.

She saw his body gleaming with sweat, as she buried his manhood deep in
the cave of her womanhood. His balls, hairy and pendulous, tickled her ass.

And for the first time in her life, awed as she had always been by men, by
their power to create the incredible pleasure which she loved and looked for
so much, she felt what her own power was.

She had practiced this position with a jolly corpulent monk, once, and had
enjoyed it. He had made her laugh. But this man, for all his power and
position, was as much a thrall to the pleasure which her sweet wet nest
could give his manhood, as the monk, or any of the priests, or that strange
abbot she had fucked.

She shivered, and rubbed her soft, dimpled ass cheeks against the man's
hairy balls, grinding her swollen sex flesh against the base of his cock. The
pressure of her movements spread the folds of her pink wet inner flesh, and
released her clitoris from its fleshy sheath. She felt it tingle as it was
stimulated by the wiry pubic hairs of the man whose lance had pierced
through her womanhood.

She braced her hands on the man's hard, flat belly, and started to move up
and down on his cock. Her motions were sensuous, slow at first.

The monsignor's hands came out and he cupped her beautiful breasts. Again
Maria shivered, feeling more of her lustful juices pouring out of her cunt, as
his hands began to knead her spongy, soft flesh.

He twirled her nipples expertly, between the thumb and forefinger of each
hand, causing them to pucker. They became inflamed, sending searing
shards of intense pleasure through her.

Her body glowed with her happiness. There was no duty she found more
pleasurable than pleasing, and no pleasure more to be sought than fucking.

She moved up and down on the monsignor's cock, swiveling her hips
around and around, savoring the demonic pleasure which raced through her,
causing her blood to boil, and her heart to hammer wildly against her rib
cage.

As she bobbed up and down, riding his cock, the monsignor's hips started to
buck upward. Maria matched her downward motions to his upward thrusts,
driving his cock deeper and deeper into her tight little tunnel of love.

She used every inch of her inner flesh to caress the throbbing shaft in her
cunt, to give him every ounce of pleasure she could. And in the process of
pleasing him, she pleased herself.
The monsignor's hands on her breasts became more and more insistent, as
she bobbed up and down on his cock. She felt a bit as if she were riding a
horse like a man, something she had always wanted to do, her slender, well-
rounded thighs clutching the steaming sides of the horse, embracing the
animal.

Riding to her had always been a sensual exercise, and she enjoyed it. She
was also surpassingly good at that, as at all the other skills she had learned.

The monsignor responded wildly to Maria's fucking. She had whipped his
lust into a fury. She felt his cock swell in her cunt, as she squeezed her
pussy muscles greedily against the man's hard-pumping member. She
massaged his throbbing shaft, as he pierced her deeply, his humping rhythm
becoming more and more demanding,

Her juices flowed wildly out of her heated cunt, and glistened in a slimy
pool on the hairy groin of the hard-thrusting man beneath her.

The monsignor's hands came down to grip her slender, soft haunches. Again
Maria felt his cock distend to an incredible size in her cunt. She could tell
by the waves of heat which flowed from his cock, permeating her wet nest
of lust, that he was about to come.

She clenched her pussy muscles harder around his thick shaft, feeling the
soft ripples of pleasure course through her, knowing, as her muscles tensed,
and a violent tremor went through her, that she was about to climax herself.

She became mad with the lust which filled her, gyrating lasciviously on the
man's cock, bouncing up and down with an increasing abandonment which
only inflamed the monsignor more.

His mouth opened, and he let out a loud cry, as he bucked violently up into
Maria's hot pussy, jarring her with his motions. His hands became almost
harsh on the soft flesh of her haunches, as his fingers dug into her.

"Ahhh!" he cried. His thick, hot man juice poured into her. It melded with
her own frothing juices, and rolled out of her quivering cunt.
Her pussy had become a sucking mouth again, as she took in the hot, heavy
stream of liquid lust, which poured from the monsignor's cock.

She cried out herself, as her orgasm started to peak, sending violent spastic
waves through her cunt.

The monsignor's hips slammed up into Maria, as he emptied his balls into
her sweet, hungry little pussy. Maria's body gleamed with sweat, her face
was flushed with the passion which possessed her. She sucked all of his
juices out of him, crying out again and again, at the sweet, searing waves of
ecstasy which filled her, bloated her, and made her hungry for more.

With another feral grunt, the monsignor thrust upward, violently. Maria felt
the last flow of his warm, viscid flood pour into her, mix with her still-
flowing honey, and then trickle warmly, turgidly down her hot, well-stuffed
hole.

He collapsed into the mattress. His grip on her haunches became lighter. He
opened his eyes, as Maria's body sagged forward slightly, her own orgasm
passing way into the lovely listlessness which followed her orgasms.

He smiled at her, his chest heaving. Maria caressed his hairy chest, and his
strong hard belly. Then he laughed, his hands going to her shoulders.

He pulled her down on top of him, and kissed her greedily.
"Your pagan heritage has served you well. You're magnificent!"

He pushed her roughly away from him, and pulled his cock out of her still
drooling cunt.

"And I must be loyal to the man I serve. Enough of you, Maria! Leave."

She got up without a word, and put on her gown and veil, and left the
chamber.

She wasn't sure what the man meant.

"Well?" the Abbess asked, when she walked into her bed chamber.
"I don't know, Mother. He-he told me he had enough of me, that I was to
leave."

"I will go down and see," she said. "Bathe yourself and wait for further
orders."

Sister Anice was singularly quiet as she attended her lovely mistress. Half
an hour later, the Abbess sent for her.

When Maria walked into her closet, she was smiling.

"His Lordship, the monsignor, was most pleased with you, Sister Maria.
You have been purchased for the Cardinal. My child, you must learn to
discern when you please a man, and take advantage of it.

"What I tell you is for your own good. The monsignor asked you to leave
because he found you most entrancing--too entrancing, he told me.
Tomorrow, dressmakers will come. You are to be clothed in the manner
befitting the consort of one of the most powerful Cardinals in the world.

"And then you will travel in the monsignor's company to Spain. I wish you
God-speed."

Maria flushed, and bowed deeply to the Abbess.

A new life had begun for her.


CHAPTER SIX

The next two weeks were exciting as Maria was fitted with a wardrobe
which would do justice to her new position.

The monsignor came frequently to check on the progress.

"You will need jewels," he said to her one day, as she was being fitted for a
magnificent green velvet riding habit. "I will send a jeweler to you. Pick
what you please."
"My Lord, I would rather not wear jewels," Maria said, flushing at her
assertiveness.

"What? Why not? All women want jewels!" the man exclaimed, his hands
on his hips, the look on his face one of disbelief.

"I would prefer only to wear my cross, if I may," she said, looking at him
meekly, pleadingly. "Jewels are for great ladies of virtue. I am merely a
lowly courtesan, a consort. I do not deserve them."

"Well, well, well!" the monsignor said, striding to the window and gazing
out at the gardens which surrounded the convent.

He turned to stare at her, for a moment.

"What would you like, then? You should have some little present to please
you."

"Sister Maria," the Abbess said, a strange smile in her eyes, "you should
have some jewels."

"If you say so, Mother Eustacia."

"What would you rather have?" the monsignor persisted.

"With your permission, Mother Eustacia," Maria said, bowing to the
woman, and then bowing in supplication to the monsignor, "may I have
Sister Anice as my lady's maid? She is good and competent, but no one
special will have her, and she is devoted to me. I should like to have her
share my new life."

"It would be better than any we can offer her," the Abbess said, a strange
new expression on her face, as she gazed at Maria.

"And considerably less expensive than diamonds!" the monsignor laughed.
"So be it. I will discuss it with Mother Eustacia."

Maria's face flushed, and she smiled that peculiarly radiant, but rare smile
of hers, which lit up her face to a breath-catching beauty.
"Thank you," she said softly.

"Enough. Run along with you. You must retire early tonight. There is much
to take care of before you leave, day after tomorrow."

She was deluged with kisses and tears, when Anice learned that she was to
accompany Maria.

She, too, received a new outfit, to suit her new station as the abigail of the
consort of a Cardinal, and the two young girls, set out one windy cold day,
in a great coach, with a coat of arms emblazoned on the sides. Anice sat on
top, as befitted her station, while Maria found herself nestled in the soft
cushions of the elegant interior.

For a week, they traveled over the countryside. The monsignor pointed out
landmarks, as the countryside changed. Maria was in a constant state of
excitement, as she exclaimed over everything, pleased beyond belief at the
sights she saw, and the knowledge she acquired.

The monsignor seemed to be more and more pleased with her. When they
did talk, he discovered that she had a profound, almost disturbing
intelligence. Her questions were piercing and often disturbing. She had a
mind of her own, and it was well-trained.

"The Abbess was right," he said to her, as they were approaching the
outskirts of Toledo, where the Cardinal ruled. "You have learned far more
and far better than you were taught. You have surpassed your teachers. But I
warn you, in this city of intrigue and rancor, where no man trusts anyone,
you will have to guard that tongue. Do not trust anyone, not even me. Do
you understand, my child?"

"Yes, My Lord," Maria said. "I am sorry I have offended you."

"You do not offend, Maria. You think too keenly, and it is frightening. I
warn you. Do not display that acute perception of yours to anyone. You will
become, without even willing it, a threat."
Maria became silent as she saw the great city. The crowds got thicker and
thicker, and finally the coach stopped.

"What is it?" Maria asked. Approaching from a side street, was a line of
black-garbed monks, their cowls pulled far forward on their faces, candles
in their hands. Behind them, piercing Maria's soul with anguish and
compassion, was the most wretched company of creatures she had ever
seen. They were dressed in sack cloth. Great pointed hats with various signs
painted on them were on their heads.

Some of them could not even walk, so mangled were their legs, and they
were dragged along, held by two monks.

Other monks, with open prayer books, stood beside the wretched, bloodied,
and mutilated band of men and women, and even children, as they moved
through the wide, cobbled street.

A great pang of fear and horror filled Maria, as she stared at the monsignor
with troubled eyes.

"That is an auto-da-fe. They have been found guilty of heresy, and they are
to be burned."

Maria knew better than to protest. Her quick mind conned the lessons of the
gentle Nazarene, and she wondered that his ministers could be so brutal,
when he loved the sinners, and died for them Himself. It boggled her mind.

But when Maria felt confused, felt that something was too big for her
comprehension, she always held her peace, and waited--and learned. She
guarded her tongue now.

Soon the coach was moving again, and they pulled up in front of an ornate,
magnificent building.

"This is the residence of the Cardinal. You will step foot in it just once, and
never again. You will be housed elsewhere. Protocol and discretion demand
this," the monsignor said.
She stepped down, and followed the monsignor up a wide, curving flight of
marble steps, and was ushered into a huge hall with a winding marble
staircase, which seemed to flow ever upward into the roof of the great
mansion.

A majordomo preceded them down the long hall, to a door near the back.
Maria listened as he announced the monsignor.

A hard voice bellowed forth, "Send them in! Send them in!"
Maria walked in, her heart beating, behind the monsignor.
"Your Excellence, may I present Maria?"

She made a deep bow to the Cardinal. He was indeed portly, she noticed,
but not to the point of obesity. He was tall, square of shoulder and square of
jaw, a powerful man, with an obvious will of his own.

He stared at her keenly for a moment, and then grunted. He was sitting at a
table, eating, and Maria suddenly felt the pangs of hunger, which her
excitement had hidden from her consciousness.

"Very pretty. Come forward," the man said, beckoning with a jeweled
finger. Maria walked with the lilting grace which was characteristic of her,
up to the table, and stood, suffering the gaze of the Cardinal. And then she
realized that he was short-sighted. His eyes widened, as he stared at her.

The monsignor was now standing right behind Maria, having come forward
himself.

"Beautiful!" the Cardinal gasped, his eyes lighting up luridly. "Good God,
Beaufort, she's magnificent!"

"I thought Your Excellency would be pleased. She is well-schooled and
docile, and also, it will please Your Grace to know, she is also very devout.
She has a becoming humility that I think you will find entrancing."

"What is this?" the Cardinal asked, reaching up to finger the cross. Maria
started slightly, but let him turn the crucifix around in his hands. She was
sure if he were short-sighted, that he would not be able to read the
inscription on it.

"It's the only jewel she wishes to wear, Your Excellency. She feels she is
unworthy to wear anything else."

"And why do you wear this, Maria?" the Cardinal said, his eyes a harsh
light which seemed to ferret out the secret of her soul. Those eyes, she was
to learn, did indeed terrorize those who were tried at the Inquisition over
which the Cardinal presided.

"In honor of our Savior who died for our sins, Your Excellency," she said in
her soft, sweet voice.

"Huh! Very well. I shall see you presently. You may take her to the house,
Beaufort."

"Very good, Your Excellency." The monsignor knelt and kissed another
fabulous ring on the Cardinal's right hand. He stood up, and with a light
hand on Maria's shoulder, indicated that she should do the same.

Maria, who had spent hours on her knee, adoring the God she loved, found
the gesture somewhat offensive, but she did as she was told.

The Cardinal's beefy hand rested momentarily on her glossy black tresses.
"Beautiful hair! But not very fashionable."

"Your Excellency, I think you will find the woman herself a jewel of such
beauty with her grace and her virtue, that you will discover she needs
nothing to adorn her. She will be a crowning glory to your taste and your
perception."

"We shall see. Report to me here at eight this evening," he said. "I have
much to discuss with you."

Again the monsignor bowed, and led Maria out of the great, elegant
chamber. Again, she was placed in the coach, and driven down lovely broad
avenues until they arrived at a small, but elegant house on the corner of one
of the streets.

It was surrounded by a huge iron fence, and there was a hedge, which hid
the gardens surrounding the house from the view of passersby. They entered
through an ornately decorated iron gate, and walked down a path lined with
trees and flowers, to a small portico.

This was where Maria and Anice were to live, the monsignor said. They
would become involved in the social life of the great city, but Maria was to
use her native discretion.

No one would ever acknowledge her as the mistress of the Cardinal, and
she was never to give any indication that such was her station.

She would be asked on occasion, to decorate a ball or fete. She would
practice her religion faithfully. Her confessor was the Cardinal's confessor.
Maria, although she practiced the faith she had been taught, always had
difficulty reconciling her activities with the practice of confessing, but she
determined to do her best.

"The Cardinal will visit you, probably this afternoon. He has a Council
meeting tonight," the monsignor instructed her. "Don't be anxious. You will
please him, I assure you!"

He left, and Maria was left, mistress of her own home, and a staff of
servants who seemed anxious to please her.

She was not aware of the gentleness and warmth she radiated. She was not
aware that the servants had stared at her keenly, curious, and relieved. She
would learn later about the harsh mistress who ruled this little love nest,
before she had been dispatched for being indiscreet, at the Cardinal's orders.

She had died of poison, administered in a glass of wine by the monsignor.

She asked for lunch, and got a delicious one. And then she retired to her
room, to supervise the unpacking of her trunks.
Maria was awed by the opulence of the house. She changed into a fresh
gown, a white satin creation of exquisite simplicity, which showed her
figure to perfection.

Gypsy-like, she went into the garden, and picked some white camellias
which grew there, and brought them in for Anice to affix them to her dark

hair.

"Oh, My Lady!" Anice crowed, clasping her hands. "If you aren't the most
beautiful woman any abigail was pleased to serve!"

"Enough, Anice. You had better go to the kitchen, until you are summoned.
I do not think the Cardinal will be pleased to see me on familiar terms with
a servant."

Anice bowed, and limped out of the room. Her limp wasn't bad, but
noticeable. The Cardinal came at three.

"Good!" he exclaimed, heartily, as he gazed at her. "You are most lovely.
But you should have jewels."

Maria bowed low. "I will do what Your Excellence wishes," she said, softly.
"But you do not care for jewels?"

"No, Your Excellence, I do not deserve them."

"Then you are unique. Most women adore jewels."

Maria smiled. "I adore God, Your Excellency."

"Well said. "Come," he commanded, going to the stairs. "I have only an
hour to spend."

Maria followed him up the graceful stairway, to her ornate bed chamber.

"Get undressed," the Cardinal ordered, sitting in a chair. His face was red
from the effort of climbing the stairs.
Maria undressed skillfully and gracefully, none of which was lost on the
Cardinal. He stood up, and removed his ornate clothes, standing before her.

His cock was what Maria had learned was average size, but his corpulence
did stand in the way of effective fucking. No wonder he insisted on lying on
his back and being mounted.

He sat on the bed, and grunted.

"I would give almost anything, not to have to lie on my back all the time,"
he complained.

"Do you prefer to stand?"
"Ehh?"

"I think I know a way which will please you," she said, the skilled mistress
of the art of love.

She went to the bed, which was raised on a platform covered with Oriental
rugs, and sat down on the edge of it. She spread her legs slightly, feeling her
plump white outer lips, now covered with a thick glossy black down, spread
to reveal the pink moist treasure within.

"If you will stand in front of me, I will show you,’
mistress of the situation.

she said, complete
The Cardinal, wearing a look of some doubt, stood up, and then positioned
himself between her lovely legs.

His hands came down to caress her soft white flesh.

"Beautiful, most beautiful," he said, with the air of a connoisseur.

Maria lay back on the blue satin coverlet of the bed, working her soft,
dimpled buttocks to the edge of the bed.

"Come closer," she whispered to the Cardinal. He did as she instructed, and
Maria rested her ankles on the man's powerful shoulders.
The Cardinal gasped, and his eyes lit up with sexual greed.

"Wonderful!" he gasped, walking further into her, until his cock head, hard,
and throbbing with lust, was pressed against Maria's wet and waiting pussy.

The Cardinal grunted, and thrust inward, and Maria gasped, as she felt his
thick rod spreading the walls of her pussy. She watched the Cardinal's
strong, square face flush with passion, and the knowledge of his lust
aroused her keenly.

She moved her legs further onto his shoulders, as he walked into her,
driving his raging cock deeply into the soft furrow of her womanhood.

Finally, her legs were hooked over his shoulders at her knees. She felt her
breathing become deeper, as she accepted more and more of his heavy cock,
as it plunged into her wet tunnel.

The Cardinal's cock was hot and hard. He thrust into her mightily, and she
felt his great, drooling, bulbous cock head prying deep in the recesses of her
womanhood, stretching her pussy walls, raising the heat of her lust to a
feverish pitch.

She began to find him attractive. She had been nervous about meeting him,
afraid that he wouldn't like her. But his rapt, flushed face, as he drove his
cock further and further into the depths of her pussy, told her that she need
have no worries on that score.

His hairy, very large balls pressed into her quivering ass. The Cardinal
leaned forward, and gripped the top of Maria's thighs, his frighteningly
powerful hands digging into her soft flesh.

Maria moaned, as his balls tickled the sensitive flesh of her ass. Already she
felt the sweet pressure of an incipient orgasm coursing through her belly.

This was her destiny, and her pleasure, to please a man, and even more, to
please a great man. It did not give her any degree of pride. But it made her
feel happy.
She looked down over the soft mounds of her tits, down to the lewd
juncture of his manhood with her woman's hole.

He started to move out of her, his cock gleaming with the juices which
already coated her cuntal walls.

And then he thrust inward, grunting. As he drove his cock deeply into her
pussy, his brown pubic hair meshed with the glossy maidenhair which
covered her love mound. She felt that hair tickling her clitoris as he
slammed his hairy loins into her pink, sensitive meat.

Maria was aroused by the sight of his cock appearing and disappearing, as
he pulled it out, and then slid it in again.

As his great rippling buttocks arched backward, drawing his great fleshy
sword out of her cunt, she feasted her eyes on the gleaming juices which
had greased his cock, making his increasingly rhythmic thrusting in and out
of her pussy easy and incredibly pleasurable.

On his out-thrusts, Maria squeezed her cuntal muscles tightly against the
throbbing shaft, massaging it, and creating more pleasure for the Cardinal.

He groaned loudly, and his hips rocked back and forth with increasing
frenzy, as Maria applied to his cock every art she had learned in the five
long years she had spent in the convent.

He was breathing heavily. His body was covered with sweat, which rolled
off his firm, if portly flesh in gleaming rivulets.

Maria felt her own breathing become labored with the growing passion in
her groin. She watched his great rod appear and disappear. Her juices
flowed more lavishly, trickling out of her stuffed, hot hole, and making a
gleaming, slimy rivulet of her ass crack.

The Cardinal's hairy balls became wet, soaked with the warm, aromatic
honey from her twat. His lips were parted, his full sensual lower lip moist,
as he drove his cock with wet, sucking noises in and out of her cunt.
His cock became a raging beast of lust, plowing through the wet lush
meadowland of her vagina, leaving behind those ever-new and always
familiar furrows of lustful bliss.

As the Cardinal's cock massaged the itching walls of her pussy, she closed
her eyes, and her body began to writhe hotly on the bed. The sight to the
Cardinal was devastating. His cock swelled wildly in her cunt, the heat of it
became more intense.

He plunged into her womanhood with a wild fury that triggered Maria's
orgasm. She felt it rippling wildly through her, as his cock pried deeper and
deeper into her wet hot womanhood.

Her body began to thrash around wildly on the satin coverlet as the Cardinal
unleashed the full fury of his lust. She ground her swollen pussy lips
lasciviously against his hairy groin, as he thrust inward, his raging loins
almost beating her womanhood as he felt his own orgasm roar through him.

Maria's body convulsed wildly, arching her slender hips upward into his
hairy loins, as the Cardinal's cock started to spew its heavy load of liquid
lust deep into her pussy.

He cried out, his voice guttural, as his thick slimy juices poured into her
already teeming pussy. She felt his thick juices washing against the
quivering, rippling walls of her cunt, as her orgasm peaked.

His great, powerful rod spewed quarts of thick, hot syrup into her waiting
and eager cunt. She could feel her cuntal muscles clutching ardently at his
hard-thrusting rod, as it moved in and out of her drooling channel.

Each outward thrust occasioned another clutching spasm, while each
inward thrust, spewing another load of juice into her pussy, sent wild hot
waves of ecstasy coursing through her.

Her body gleamed with sex sweat, as she writhed in the sweet agony of her
orgasm.
The Cardinal thrust inward again, and then grunted, his body relaxing
slightly, while Maria squirmed around on the great spear which nailed her
body to his, savoring the after-spasms of her violent orgasm.

She sighed, and opened her eyes as the spasms faded away, looking at him
almost pleadingly, to see if she had pleased him.

She had. The look on his face was almost beatific, as he pulled out of her.

"A bath," he gasped, walking to a chair, and sitting on it. His cock still
throbbed, semi-erect between his massive, chunky, but powerful legs.

Maria hastened to obey him.

When the tub had arrived, and the water poured into it, it was Maria who
insisted on bathing the Cardinal, scrubbing his back, and lavishing attention
on him.

He was pleased. None of his mistresses had ever waited on him like that, or
so silently. She spoke graciously when spoken to, but did not indulge in the
foolish chatter the Cardinal had come to expect.

The monsignor found himself a richer man that evening, as the Cardinal
handed him a bag of gold for his good taste.


CHAPTER SEVEN

"You must know what the Cardinal has told the monsignor about you,"
Anice said, one morning, dressing her hair.

Maria had been the consort of the Cardinal for almost two years. She had
explored the city in the company of her maid, and discovered behind the
elegant, brilliant facade of the avenues, the festering stinking squalor of the
slums.

She wasn't aware that she shouldn't be alone on the streets. She wasn't
aware of the danger. She learned later, and by then it was too late for her,
bent on her missions of mercy to the poor, that ladies were, if they did not
have an armed male escort, set upon, raped, and deprived of their valuables.
But by the time she knew that, she had become a beloved figure among the
poor. Initially shocked at her being among them, they grew to love her, and
protected her ardently.

She was the lady of the Cardinal, but to them she was a little madonna of
mercy.

She never asked for more allowance than the Cardinal gave her. To her it
was a magnificent sum, more than enough for her simple needs, and what
was left over, instead of putting away as any wise courtesan would do,
against the time when she would be old and no longer desirable, she
invested in alleviating the misery of the poor and wretched. She made
clothes for them, supplied them with food and medicine, visited them in
their time of trouble.

Eventually it occurred to her that the Cardinal might not be pleased with her
behavior, and so she did as she had always done: she kept her own counsel.

Her clothes were startling in their simplicity, and the only jewel she wore
was the diamond-studded gold crucifix. The ladies of fashion in the capital
began to copy her. She always wore fresh flowers in her hair.

She was not aware of the adulation.

She smiled in the mirror now. She was wearing a low-cut, jade green dress
which matched her eyes, and in her hair were the white camellias she had
learned to love.

The diamonds in the cross, nestling in her now magnificent cleavage,
twinkled. The Cardinal was coming to lunch, and bringing friends. She
would entertain. After the first week with him, she discovered that he came
more and more frequently to the lovely home she lived in. He would sit and
talk, talk endlessly. It was another education for Maria, and education in the
vicious wiles of men who want power, because there is nothing else to wish
for.

The Cardinal was of the nobility, the younger son of a Duke. He had money,
wealth, and power. There was nothing left for him to seek but more power.
Listening attentively, asking an occasional question to clarify a point, and
never, never voicing her own opinion, Maria became astute in the ways of
rulers.

There was very little about what was going on in the great capitals of the
world that she didn't know about.

"What did he say, Anice?"

"He said you were restful!" Anice exclaimed, affixing another camellia to
her glossy black hair.

Maria was now fully grown. At sixteen, she had turned into the raving
beauty that everyone predicted she would be. She was exceptionally tall for
a woman. Her beautiful, heart-shaped face, rested elegantly on a long, white
swan-like neck. Her shoulders were perfection in their creamy whiteness.

She was full-breasted, and long-waisted, and her hips flared out from her
tiny waist in perfect proportion to her breasts.

She was renowned throughout the capital as a superb horsewoman, a gifted
musician, a graceful and accomplished hostess.

But more than that, for all the jealous vying of the ladies of high society,
she was deeply loved, almost venerated for her simplicity, her humility, and
her generosity.

The Cardinal, always feared, loved by few, became slightly more popular,
which he was aware of. And eventually, he found out why. He increased his
allowance to Maria, and she promptly dispensed with the additional money.

"Perhaps he meant boring," Maria said, laughing gaily.

"Oh, no! He says he enjoys your company more than that of his counselors.
He says you are the finest woman he has ever met."

"Anice, some day you are going to be caught eavesdropping, and His
Excellency is going to cut off your ear."
Anice giggled, and then frowned at her mistress, as she applied a light
fragrance to her throat, and in her cleavage.

"You wouldn't let that happen, would you, My Lady?"
" Absolutely not! I find your ears indispensable."

The talk in the drawing room, when Maria came down, was of the death of
the French king and his successor.

"Would you like to accompany me to Paris for the coronation?" the
Cardinal asked, as he and his guests dined.

"Yes, if it would please you to take me," Maria said.

"There are plenty of poor for you to consort with," laughed the Cardinal's
bastard son. Maria knew the Cardinal was looking for recognition for the
young man.

He was tall, and elegantly proportioned. He had been a soldier of fortune
for a while, and then settled, with some reluctance, in a house provided by
his father in Toledo.

And Maria suspected, although the cardinal hadn't voiced the idea yet, that
perhaps the new French king would be the answer to the Cardinal's wishes.
She had been excited, and wanted desperately to go to France.

The Cardinal had told her only the day before, that the new French king was
a Plantagenet. She had felt her face go pale when she heard the name.

They discussed it now.

"What about the Duke of Lorraine, Your Excellency?" asked the monsignor,
ignoring Edward's jibe at Maria's charity. He had become a close friend and
confidant of the young woman, loving her as deeply as the poor she fed and
clothed, awed by the depths of her goodness.

Again Maria paled. Her slender hand clutched at the crystal goblet which
contained a rare Malmsey wine.
"He's no friend of anyone's but himself. And he has never married. He has
no children, except a few bastards," the Cardinal said, frowning. "What we
have to worry about is the Count of Rheims. He is the brother-in-law of that
Plantagenet."

"But his second marriage is in question, since there is no proof of his first
wife's death. He may object to Edward's becoming titled, since he has two
sons by Carla of Wertheim."

"Bah! He killed her! He did away with her, and if we got some soldiers, and
dug up his property, I'll wager we could find her skeleton," Edward said,
sneering slightly.

"What is the matter with you?" the Cardinal demanded. "You insist on
saying outrageous things at the most inauspicious moments. I am trying to
secure for you a legitimate title, which will dispel the onus of your bastardy,
and entitle you to marry a decent woman of good name. And what do you
do? You mock me!"

"I am sorry, Your Excellency. I hate your intrigues, your constant
manipulations to acquire more power. Just how much do you need of
anything? Or I? I can marry a commoner, if I find one worth marrying, or
not marry at all and wench it up. And what's the difference?"

"Plenty, as you will discover in later life. Right now the balance of power in
all our nations is unsure. We do not know which way this Plantagenet will
go. It behooves all of us to dance attendance on him," the Cardinal said,
frowning.

He turned to Maria.

"And you, Maria. Please buy a new wardrobe. I cannot say I like your taste,
but I do not want any of the ladies who have seen you here at court
functions, to see you in the same clothes. You are my mistress, and you
must dress accordingly. And I do wish you would buy some jewels."

"I will do it, Your Excellency," Maria said meekly.
"That's my good girl!" the Cardinal said, leaning back in his chair.

Edward laughed, and stood up, pacing over to the French windows which
led into the sun-drenched garden.

"I wonder, if she ever knew the power she possessed, just how meek the
lovely gentle Maria would be?"

"Maria is not interested in politics," the Cardinal said, rising.

Edward laughed, and Maria frowned. He was constantly mocking her,
constantly sneering, and it grieved her. She would have liked to make him
like her, just to please the Cardinal.

"But those who are interested in politics have some strong feelings about
her," Edward pointed out, "which have accrued to your benefit, Your

2

Excellency."
"I am aware of that, Edward."

"Are you also aware that she probably knows more about politics than any
of us?"

"No!" the monsignor said, laying his napkin on the table, and rising. He
went over to Edward, clapping his hand on the young man's shoulder. "No
one would know what she knew. She keeps her own counsel, or have you
failed to observe that?"

"I have observed," Edward said, turning to bow to Maria. He bowed low to
her. The lovely girl blushed, feeling extremely uncomfortable.

"That will do, Edward," the monsignor said. "Let us leave. We, too have to
acquire new wardrobes for the coronation, and I want to get to the mercer's
and the tailor's, before the great avalanche of dandies."

"Agreed."

Edward went to his father, and knelt beside his chair. His father with an air
of almost indifference, held out his beringed hand to be kissed. The
monsignor followed suit, leaving the Cardinal and Maria alone.

Maria got out of the chair, and went behind the Cardinal's chair, at his
explosion of temper. He slammed his fist on the table, making the china and
crystal jump and tinkle.

"Damn that boy!" he growled, his face getting red.

Maria's strong hands went to the Cardinal's neck, and she began to massage
the tension out of his powerful shoulders. She never advised, never
requested that he calm down, or relax. But she was, as she had always been,
a superb listener.

"That was a superb luncheon, Maria," he said. "What can I give you that
would please you?"

"I would like, if it pleases you, not to have to wear jewels, Your
Excellency."

The Cardinal's shoulders stiffened under Maria's competent, massaging
hands. And then they shook.

"By God, my son is right. I think you know better than anyone how to take
the bit into your mouth and deceive the rider into thinking he's leading!
Very well, wear your cross."

He rose from the table, and took her hand. Maria smiled shyly at him, as he
pulled her arm through his arm, and led her to the staircase to the room they
shared together once a day.

In the room, the Cardinal took the exquisite creature in his arms. He kissed
her on her cheek.

"You are very dear to me," he said, his voice low. Maria flushed with
pleasure.

"I am going to try to find you a husband," he said, as he removed his ornate
red satin cassock, which buttoned with priceless pearl buttons.
"I don't please you?" she asked, walking toward him.

"Oh, very much! Very much! But you are a very unwise courtesan," he said,
laughing, as he moved the elegant garment. "You keep spending my money
on the poor, instead of on yourself. You have enhanced my reputation, and
made yourself much loved.

"He won't be a man of good family, but I shall take care that he is able to
support you."

"Your Excellency!" Maria gasped, clutching her heart, to try to still the wild
beating of it.

"That is why I want you to come to the coronation. I believe that France is
your native country?"

Maria was silent. She had traveled to France with the gypsy band several
times, but she had always thought the wild woods and hills of Romany were
her home.

Until she learned to read the inscription on the crucifix. Her home was,
indeed, the land which had witnessed her despoliation at the hands of the
Duke of Lorraine.

It was almost too much for Maria to cope with, and so she gracefully
slipped out of her gown, as the Cardinal lay down on the bed. His cock was
erect, as it always was with Maria. It throbbed, powerful, indefatigable,
standing at right angles to his round, hairless belly.

Smiling, Maria approached the canopied bed, and straddled the Cardinal's
haunches. He was built like a bull, she thought, as she rubbed her hands up
and down over his belly. He reached out, as she began to caress his cock,
rubbing her soft palm up and down its throbbing hot length.

His beefy, strangely powerful hands cupped her magnificent, melon-shaped
breasts. He grunted, as he ran his hands sensuously over the magnificent
fleshy wealth of them. Maria's finger was now circling the Cardinal's piss
slit, smearing the oily balm of his sex juices, around the tip. She brought her
finger to her mouth and sucked it, enjoying the taste of his juices.

"You're a heathen!" he gasped, enjoying her sensuality, her unbridled
pleasure in pleasing him. He had never been so enthralled with a woman in
his whole cynical life.

She smiled at him, her soft cheeks dimpling as her mouth curved upward.
Her eyes sparkled.

"But I've been baptized, Your Excellency!"

"You're still a heathen-a saved heathen--but a heathen nevertheless. And I
wouldn't have you any other way!"

He laughed, his flesh undulating with the laughter, as he continued to caress
her soft breasts, his fingers digging gently into the soft ripeness of her tits.

He tweaked her nipples, pulling on them.

Maria felt her juices starting to seep from her honeyed hole, as she raised
her hips up, and pressed the slick bulb which crowned the passion-red
fleshy rod of the Cardinal against the puckered pink ring of her cavern of
lust.

She started to squirm downward, feeling the warmth of the cock against her
pussy walls, feeling the girth of his manhood stretching her tight walls.

She threw her head back, her mouth open, as she felt the lusty pleasure of
his great spear piercing her womanhood. She moaned softly, as she
squirmed downward on the Cardinal's cock, feeling it throb against her
walls.

Her sweet pink labia pressed downward, into the hairy groin of the
Cardinal. She felt his balls, hairy and full of liquid lust, throbbing against
her ass cheeks, as she gyrated lasciviously against his raging groin.

Pressing her hands into his surprisingly hard, if rounded belly, she rose
upward, her jet black hair, glowing like porphyry, falling over her
shoulders, as she peered down at the Cardinal's cock, seeing it appear as she
rose off it, gleaming with her juices.

The heat rose in her cunt, as she slid downward again, the Cardinal's
massive cock cutting through her wet hot tunnel like a hot knife cuts
through butter.

She started to ride his cock, rising and falling gently at first, savoring the
pleasure of his great rod as it rubbed against the dark walls of her tunnel of
lust.

Her honey flowed in thick, aromatic streams from her well-stuffed pussy,
and poured onto the hairy loins of the Cardinal.

His hands on her breasts became more insistent, as he fondled her breasts,
and Maria felt the fiery pleasure of her nipples ripple through her as a
spring brook ripples, glistening over white stones on a warm day.

The sensation of the Cardinal's cock, stuffing her cunt, created a pressure
which took hold of her body, exciting her to more frenzied activity.

Sometimes, when Maria would recall her wild gyrations on the Cardinal's
cock, she would think of a poor creature she had seen in the gutter one day,
who bounced and danced around wildly, a victim of St. Vitus' Dance.

And the apex of the pleasure never ceased to fascinate her. Each orgasm
was different, the pleasure was fleeting, profound, but it soon passed,
always leaving her hungry for more.

She had never wanted more than the Cardinal's cock, although she would
have been pleased with more attention from him. She knew he had
purchased her, and for all the attention paid her by courtiers and dandies at
the court, she was unquestioningly loyal to him, a fact which the Cardinal
had quickly ascertained.

He trusted her. She never called him ridiculous pet names, as some of his
courtesans had. She never pleaded with him, talking foolishly. She treated
him with the same respect she had evinced on the first day he had seen her.
If truth be told, the Cardinal loved her, and with the exception of his oldest
bastard son, Edward, the only one of his children who showed any spine or
enterprise, and whom he ached to legitimize, she was the only other
creature who could claim that distinction.

He had even toyed with the idea of mating her to his son. He understood
that Edward's restlessness was a need to be useful, to find purpose in his
life, and love and a family.

But Edward's attitude toward the gentle Maria was such that the Cardinal
didn't dare broach the subject. He loved the gorgeous, sweet-tempered
creature enough to know that she would suffer the tortures of the damned
under Edward's cutting tongue and obvious contempt.

There were times when the Cardinal was almost sorry that he had met her
and been so moved by her. But then, he had made the decision to marry her.

The new king of France would be the person to apply to for her sake, as

well as for his son's. A good peasant of good stock, and a generous dowry
should do the trick.

His face became a distorted mask of lust, as he thrust his hips up into her
tight, warm nest of love. He felt her pussy muscles gripping at his cock with
unfeigned hunger, the dew of her desire flowing lavishly over his hard-
driving ramrod.

He thrust deeply into her, his cock head prying into the depths of her
womanhood, stirring her to that carnal wildness he loved so much.

Maria whined as the pleasure built and built, until it was almost unbearable
in its intensity.

Maria had learned what she did to the Cardinal, and she basked in her
womanly sense of power as she pleased herself by giving pleasure to her
man, her lord and master, the owner of her body.

His prick pulsed powerful in her demanding pussy, as she rode up and down
on it. She ground into the hairy base of his cock, feeling his wiry pubic
hairs teasing her clitoris, inflaming it. The hot bliss from her excited love
button flowed through her in swift, hot shards of ecstasy, which caused her
to quiver violently. Her muscles tightened, her body became alive, pulsing
with, the wild sweet flames of pleasure which always threatened to
consume her, but which always seemed to leave her more alive and

refreshed than she had felt before.

The Cardinal's body gleamed with sweat. His face was flushed with the fire
that burned in his loins, as he pumped his cock in and out of Maria's sweet
little cunt with increasing fury.

His hands came down, and he gripped her bouncing haunches, feeling the
taut muscles, the wiry strength of her.

She was always a healthy dam, a wild lusty creature, never ill, never
complaining. She was unalloyed joy, pure gold to the Cardinal. He buried
his consciousness in his cock, and burrowed deeply in the sweet pink folds
of her love tunnel, and felt the titillating ripple in her womb which presaged
the sweet storm that was to follow.

Maria's bouncing motions became frantic, as she felt her orgasm rumbling
in the depths of her belly. She felt his cock plumbing the wet depths of her
teeming pussy. He slammed into her with increasing force, and Maria felt
the flood-tide of her passion roll over her in wave after wave of delicious
delirium.

Her lovely mouth opened and she wailed with the wild ecstasy which
consumed her, possessing her body, removing it from her rational control.

She felt the Cardinal's prick slamming into her, swelling in her tight tunnel.
Her cuntal muscles sucked on the hard-driving prick, as it drove into her
over and over and with increasing speed.

His pubic hairs were now thickly coated with the honey which flowed from
her cunt.

She felt the rhythmic rippling of her cunt on his great rod, sucking the
juices out of his balls.
And then his come slit erupted like a volcano, pouring lavish loads of hot
steaming man juice deep into her wild and willing womanhood.

"Ohh!" she gasped, feeling her ecstasy pitch her higher into a hot, turbulent
ether comprised of fleshy delight. The two of them wrestled wildly together
in the throes of their orgasm, the room redolent with the fragrance of their
sex juices, resounding with the wet sucking noises of their genital flesh as it
rubbed wetly together.

The Cardinal's thick gism blended hotly with Maria's juices, and she
squealed with delight, as she felt the stream of her syrup become a hot,
wonderful flood, which flowed out of her convulsing cunt, making a slimy
pool in the thick matted hairs of the Cardinal's loins, trickling from his
hard-humping groin to pool on the bed beneath his humping, powerful
buttocks.

Maria's orgasm peaked, and again she felt it fading away. She clutched at it
in her mind, trying to keep it, trying to keep the wild heavenly joy that this
sexual act always gave her.

The Cardinal grunted, his loins arching upward to mesh with hers, as he
emptied his balls into her sucking, rippling cunt, and then his body
collapsed.

Maria kept grinding around on his stiff rod until the last sweet tendrils of
sensual bliss had faded away, leaving her relaxed, and warm, and trembling.

The Cardinal had affairs of state and church to manage. He reluctantly left
her bed, and let Maria minister to him, as she always did, bathing him
gently, teasing him with her mouth and hands.

He kissed her hand as he left, smiling at her warmly.
"You don't need jewels," he said. "You are a perfect gem in yourself."

Maria smiled, wondering if the happiness of married life would be hers. Her
chances were slim at best, but with the Cardinal working for her happiness,
she knew that her odds, as the gaming courtiers said about horses and cards,
became smaller.


CHAPTER EIGHT

When Maria thought about it later, the coronation always assumed the
dimensions of an incredible nightmare.

There were so many facets of it, so many blows which she experienced at
the same time, or in swift succession, that she reeled for months afterward.

The Cardinal had rented a small house on a fashionable street for her. The
capital was teeming with people from every nation and every major city in
the world.

Anice was beside herself with excitement. "May I visit the convent to say

hello to the Abbess?" she had asked the Cardinal when they had arrived,
and he had asked her what she wanted to do.

"Of course, my child," he had said. "I shall be busy all day today. So take
your time." Anice and she, dressed in her characteristic simple elegance, her
only jewel beside her youth and beauty being the lovely cross she wore on
her lovely bosom, drove in an open carriage through the streets of Paris,
having the sights pointed out to them by the monsignor who accompanied
them.

The monsignor had informed Maria that her reputation had preceded her,
that everyone in Paris, in addition to seeing the king crowned, was most
anxious to see her.

"I am ashamed," she said softly, lowering her thickly-fringed green eyes.

"Why? Your goodness and beauty are gifts from God. You should be
appreciated."

"I am a courtesan, the lowliest of the low."

"His Excellency tells me he intends to look for a husband for you."
The monsignor never could get over the full bright gaze of her, when she
looked at him directly, as she did now. She nodded.

The Abbess was enchanted at the lovely girl's thoughtfulness. She had
brought her a present-a very rare bottle of wine, and a bag of gold for her
convent.

They had luncheon at the convent. Sister Nadine had finally been sold, she
was informed, to a merchant. She was still as haughty as ever, but the
merchant managed to beat her into some semblance of obedience and
docility.

Far from being joyful at her former tormentor's discomfort, Maria was
obviously saddened by the story.

Sister Linette had a secret little vice, which Maria had discovered one day.
She had a fondness for tippling brandy.

Maria brought her, and gave her secretly a bottle of very rare Spanish
brandy. The woman was little changed, and delighted with Maria's
prospects and her unaffected goodness and simplicity, so obviously
unspoiled by her opulent life.

The Abbess was well-informed and the stories of Maria's goodness had
reached her ears. It had improved the business of her convent remarkably.

On their way back from the convent, they passed an opulent procession of
noblemen with their retainers, from Cologne. As they passed a crossroad,
the carriage halted, and the driver dickered with the leading postern of the
caravan.

The carriage in which Maria was traveling was light and fast, and the
caravan would necessarily move more slowly.

The German prince, seeing the lovely woman's beauty, sent one of his
retainers forward to find out who she was.
The retainer, tall and proud in his horse, wearing velvets and a fur-lined
cape, came forward, took his jewel-studded cap from his head and bowed
deeply, and then rose erect in his saddle.

"Hedwig, the Prince of Cologne, requests to know who seeks right of way,"
he said.

Maria gasped. The retainer looked at her curiously, and then his eyes
traveled to the crucifix. His eyes widened, and he bowed again.

"Maria, the Consort of the Cardinal of Toledo," the monsignor said, gazing
with puzzlement from Maria's rather pale face, to the surprised look of
recognition on the face of the retainer.

"Does My Lady remember me?" the retainer asked, boldly.

"Yes, My Lord," she said, softly. It was Rosco, the chief steward of the
Duke of Lorraine, who had bought her.

"Pass!" he said, cantering back to the coach.
The carriage passed in front of the magnificent caravan.

"Who is he?" the monsignor asked Maria, whose heart was pounding
violently in her chest.

Maria did not answer, and the monsignor, puzzled, but trusting the exquisite
courtesan implicitly, did not press the matter.

When she arrived at the house, the Cardinal was waiting for her impatiently.
He led her immediately to their bed chamber, hungry for her, and pressed
for time.

Maria smiled, and raised the man's cassock, and revealed his massive cock
beneath his pants, when he blustered about her having kept him waiting.

She opened her mouth, to receive his cock in her hot oral cavern.
"Ahh!" the Cardinal gasped, as he felt the soft, sweet mouth close in around
his dripping head. She began to suck on it, her mouth making wet noises, as
she savored the taste of his manhood.

"How wonderful...!" the Cardinal gasped, as Maria's wet warm mouth
closed in around his wondrous male rod.

She moaned against his hard hot flesh, sucking it into her mouth slowly.
She raised her eyes to his face, and watched his features turn into a mask of
unbridled, rampant lust, as he surrendered to the hot pleasure which her
mouth was affording him.

She kept on sucking on his cock, driving it more deeply into her mouth,
until she felt it pressing against her throat. His massive shaft throbbed
violently against the tight walls of her throat, as she started to swallow,
driving his cock deeply into the hot wet tunnel.

She enjoyed the heavy musky fragrance of his manhood. His pubic hairs
tickled her nose and mouth, the itching another pleasurable counterpoint in
the growing music of her own passion.

Her juices flowed freely. It would not matter that he didn't satisfy her. There
was always her own hand, or Anice's willing and eager mouth.

Her body felt as if it were on fire, her blood boiling in her veins, threatening
to annihilate her. She felt as if her entrails were melting in her ardent belly,
and flowing thickly from her sweet little cunt.

The Cardinal's cock pulsed as he started to fuck her mouth, driving his cock
deeply into her rippling throat. Maria swallowed frantically, sucking on the
great hot sword which drove into her over and over again.

The Cardinal's jeweled hands clutched at the arm of the chair in which he
was sitting. His hips beat a wild tattoo on the tapestried seat, as he bucked
his hips up into her mouth.

Maria lashed her tongue around and around on his hot shaft, loving the life
of his manhood which throbbed so hotly in her overstuffed mouth.
She bobbed her head up and down on his huge prick, her tongue caressing
the soft, stretched skin of his prick. She listened to the wet sucking sounds
she was making, and it aroused her to even more heated activity.

She pressed his throbbing prick between her tongue and the roof of her
mouth, massaging it eagerly and with devastating effect.

The Cardinal's hips moved harder and faster, as his passion built. He drove
his hairy loins into her soft mouth with an almost bruising violence, as he
felt his cock swell in her mouth, felt his balls contract, hungry to chum up
their heavy wet load.

Maria's soft hands reached beneath her chin, to squeeze the Cardinal's balls.
The Cardinal grunted. His raging cock distended in Maria's soft mouth, and
he bucked up into her soft sweet oral cavity like a stallion.

He threw his head back, his mouth open, his face flushed with lust, and he
began to ejaculate into her skillful mouth’.

Maria swallowed even harder, seeking to capture all of the Cardinal's juices.
A thin trickle of saliva gleamed at the corner of her distorted lips, as she
gulped noisily on his raging manhood.

Each inward thrust of his cock spewed more and more of his man juice
deep into her willing, hard-working throat.

He gasped, again, his hips humping upward, and Maria swallowed the last
of his gism, as he poured it down her throat.

She licked his cock clean, quivering with her own lust, and then put his
manhood under wraps, after kissing the tip of his cock.

"Please forgive me, Your Excellency, for keeping you waiting."
He smiled at her, caressing her silky black tresses.

"I was being a crotchety old man. I told you to spend the day as you
pleased, that I had business to attend to. And now I must go. I expect you at
the palace at six this evening. There is to be a ball, and all Paris, I have
discovered, is agog, waiting to see you."

Maria blushed.

The Cardinal left to go to his own residence, and prepare for the pre-
coronation festivities. The king would be there with the crown princess, his
wife.

When he had left, Anice excitedly bustled into the room.

"Oh, My Lady, you must hurry. My Lord the monsignor is arriving in an
hour to escort you."

Maria gasped, thinking of her own physical excitement, which she wanted
assuaged.

"Why what time is it?" she asked.

"Five of the clock, My Lady," she said, deftly removing Maria's clothing.
Her tub was brought and filled with warm water, to which Anice added
richly scented oils. Maria was bathed, her hair washed and dried near the
fire. She always wore it simply, which made it easy for Anice.

She was dressed in a starkly simple white satin gown, whose elegant folds
flowed away from her tiny waist to a hemline trimmed in Alencon lace,
which also decorated the low-cut bodice. There were lace insets in the
sleeves.

Into her hair, which Anice dressed with a more elaborate style, Anice
affixed white orchids.

"There, you are truly beautiful," Anice said, smiling at the lovely woman.
"You will be the most beautiful woman at the ball."

"And the most dishonorable,"

Maria laughed.
The ball was dazzling, and Maria actually found it rather tiring. She was
courted, introduced to all the nobility. She longed intensely to meet the
Count of Rheims, wondering if she wanted to identify herself.

When she finally met him, just before she was introduced to the king, her
heart caught in her throat. He was tall, white haired. There was a look on
his face, which spelled grief. He was careworn looking.

Maria's beautiful face was suffused with a delicate shade of crimson. Before
the man who was her father, she was overcome with remorse and shame.
She said nothing to him.

"They do not exaggerate your beauty or your grace," the elderly man said.
"And I understand that you are as good as you are beautiful."

He bowed over her hand. Maria with her other hand, clutched the crucifix,
to hide it from him.

Some of the courtiers were importunate, and Maria kept trying to avoid
them. Anice was there, in the waiting room set aside for the ladies' maids.
She summoned her frequently, distressed by the flagrant advances of the
men.

"What is distressing you?"

She was sitting on a velvet chair, sipping champagne. Before her, in
saturnine elegance, stood Edward, the bastard son of the Cardinal of Toledo.

"I-I am not used to such crowds," she said, lamely.

The young man, well over six feet, his hair a burnished mahogany color, his
eyes as blue and commanding as his father's, laughed.

"Nor, I think, the advances of the men. The court is dissolute, and you
should not be left alone. I shall speak to my father to find you a
companion."

"I am grateful," she said breathlessly.
There was one man, a count from a small principality which Maria had
already forgotten the name of, who had been particularly persistent.

"Wait in the small drawing room, off the main hall," Edward instructed. "I
shall send your abigail to you, until we find a suitable female companion
for you."

Maria went quickly to the room. It was empty. She smiled, and sat in a
chair, and began actually to enjoy the champagne. The noise from the main
ballroom, and the salons which opened onto it, was muted here. She began
to relax.

"Aha! I have found you!"

Maria gasped, and stood up, dropping the champagne glass, which was,
fortunately, empty.

Her persistent admirer of the little principality advanced upon her. Maria
kept backing up, trying to find some way to escape. As she backed into a
highboy, her hands spread at her sides, one of her hands came in contact
with a letter opener. She picked it up, just as the petty nobleman reached her
side, and his arm went around her tiny waist.

"No!" she cried, bringing the knife down sharply.

It cut quickly, and with brutal efficiency through the man's velvet sleeve,
gouging his arm.

"Arggh!" he cried, as Maria, taking advantage of his sudden shock, pushed
him violently away from her.

He staggered backward, blood spurting from his wound. Maria, the blood-
stained letter opener in her hand, stood shocked, as the man fell into the
arms of Edward. Behind him, she could see the Cardinal, Anice, and several
other men.

"What is this!" she heard a deep voice command. The Count of Rheims
strode into the room.
"This tart attacked me!" the nobleman barked.

"Ehh? She did not do that, I think, My Lord, without provocation!" the
count said.

"What is happening?"

Maria's hand went to her mouth, as Anice reached her side. His Majesty
himself walked into the room, just as Edward swung a brutal blow at the
nobleman, knocking him down.

"I will see you at dawn with swords."

The nobleman laughed.

"You will not! I will fight no duel over a whore."

"Dog!" Edward growled, making a motion to attack the insolent nobleman.
Two of the king's retainers, forcibly held Edward back.

The king strode into the room, looking keenly at the exquisite creature. The
Cardinal stood, stunned, near the doorway. Idle onlookers crowded around,
gazing at the bedlam which was happening in the small salon.

The king removed the letter opener gently from her hand, smiling.
"You are a spirited lass, for all your touted gentleness."

"Your Majesty," Maria gasped, her voice shaking with fear and distress, "I
apologize for what has happened.”

The king turned sharply on his heels.

"I will not accept an apology from you. But I will accept one from My
Lord, the Count of Weltenstein."

"Apologize! Apologize for what, Your Majesty."
"For offending the honor of a lady," the king said.
"Oh, Your Majesty, please, I...!"
The king held up his hand sharply.

"She is the Cardinal's whore!" the nobleman barked. Again the retainers,
with another added for effect, restrained Edward.

A sudden cry from the Count of Rheims arrested their attention. He was
staring at the golden crucifix at Maria's throat.

He strode forward, his eyes wide, and grasped the cross.
"Where-where did you get this?" he gasped.

Maria lowered her head, ashamed to answer.

"Answer me!" he demanded. "My Lord Harold, will you gaze on this?"

A tall, blond man stepped forward, one of the retainers who had restrained
Edward.

"Good God!" the man exclaimed. "It was the crucifix you gave Maria
Theresa at your wedding! My Lord Cardinal, how is this in her
possession?"

"My sister?" the king gasped, striding up to examine the legend on the back
of the crucifix.

He gazed at the Cardinal, his eyes afire.

"Your Majesty," the Cardinal said, "she came to me with it. She will wear
no other jewelry."

"Your Majesty," Maria said, "he-he never knew what was on the back of it.
His Excellency is short-sighted."
"Where!" the Count demanded, pressing the girl. Several men worked their
way through the crowd, one of them Rosco.

"My Lord, the crucifix belonged to her mother," the Duke of Lorraine's
chief steward volunteered.

"I am Rosco, formerly the chief steward of the Duke of Lorraine," he
continued. "I bought the girl from a band of gypsies, encamped on his
property. She was wearing the crucifix then. The old crone who guarded her
could not sell it. Apparently a merchant had tried to detain her when she
attempted to sell it to him, and called the gendarmes. The woman believed
it was cursed and let the girl keep it."

The king indicated a chair: "Sit!" he commanded the very exhausted and
distraught woman. "And tell us your story."

In hesitating accents, Maria obeyed. Various points of her story were
verified by the assembled guests, as she told it.

The king's face was a paradigm of violent rage. The Count went to the
trembling weeping woman, grasping her shoulders.

"Why did you not identify yourself when you were presented to me."

"I did not want to shame you, My Lord. I am dishonored, and deserve no
family, nor your recognition."

With another cry of grief, the Count pulled the trembling, exhausted woman
into his arms.

"Send for the Duke of Lorraine!" the King bellowed, his rage frightening to
behold.

"Some brandy for the lady might be in order," Edward said, still constrained
between two retainers.

When the Duke arrived, it took him approximately one minute, given the
King's incredible tirade, the crucifix, and the sight of the young woman in
the arms of the Count of Rheims, to assess the situation, and to turn stark
white with fear.

"You will marry her!" the King spat at the Duke, "or I shall see to it that you
do not reside another day in this kingdom"

"No!" came a bellow from the enraged Edward, who broke loose from his
captors. "No, in the name of God! Are you mad? Would you throw this
woman into the arms of her ravisher? A man known for his cruelty to
women? You cannot claim to care for her life or her honor if you do such a
despicable thing!"

"Edward!" the Cardinal barked, stepping forward, "who then will marry
her?"

"I will!" Edward said. There was a gasp from Maria, and the men
murmured among themselves.

"You? You love her more, perhaps than the Duke of Lorraine?" the Cardinal
said, with some sarcasm.

"Forgive me, Your Excellency," Edward said, kneeling before his father. "I
have loved her, nay, adored her, from the moment I laid eyes on her. But
what could I do? She was the only woman in your life who cared for you,
who was absolutely trustworthy, who comforted you. Could I have stolen
away your comfort? Could I have deprived you of the one woman in your
life I think you have loved?" Great tears rolled down the Cardinal's cheeks,
as he heard his son's confession.

"Then I agree!" he said. "You shall marry her, and I shall double her
dowry."

The King laughed.
"My Lord, the Duke of Lorraine has, I believe, property in Westphalia?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," he replied.
"Good! You will repair there tomorrow, with your household. Before you
go, nay, before you leave this ball tonight, you shall sign over all your
property, your titles, to the new Duke of Lorraine, Edward."

The Duke staggered, his eyes almost popping out of his head. He turned
white, and then his face flushed.

"My chamberlain will escort you to my study. There you shall perform what
I have commanded. I warn you, My Lord," the King said, sneering at the
vicious Duke, "you will be out of this kingdom before the sun sets
tomorrow."

The old Duke of Lorraine staggered out of the room, accompanied by the

King's chamberlain, and the new Duke of Lorraine looked at his bride-to-
be.

The King bowed to the Cardinal.

"Your Excellency, it grieves me to rob Spanish soil of one of its finest
women, who I know will be a crown of glory among the women of France,
but this is her native land. She belongs to us."

The Cardinal smiled, as the King approached him, clapping a hand on his
shoulder. "But I think I can offer you some small compensation, if you
would care to walk with me back to the ballroom."

At the door, both men turned and smiled at the handsome young couple.
Edward had retrieved Maria from the protective arms of Anice, and had
sent the little abigail in search of brandy for his beloved.

"I shall see you tomorrow. We shall have two things to celebrate--your
marriage, and my coronation, My Lord Edward."

The chamberlain walked into the room, as Maria was sipping the brandy.
He handed a large ring of keys to Edward.

"The keys to your house, My Lord Edward," he said smiling. "And this is
from the King, a wedding gift. In his hand was a fabulous ring, encrusted
with diamonds.

"There is a priest waiting in the palace chapel, to marry you. I shall stand as
witness."

"And you shall dance at your wedding, bewildered, and thoroughly shaken 
Maria."

Edward said, smiling at the

She did dance at her wedding, the diamonds on the cross glistening just as
brightly as the diamond wedding band.

At dawn, Edward brought her to the castle of the Duke of Lorraine. The
house was empty of servants, and the halls echoed eerily. Edward had
brought his manservant, and Maria had brought Anice.

He led her to the massive bed chamber of the Duke.

Inside the door, Maria quailed, clutching her heart. She looked pleadingly at
Edward.

"What is it?" he asked, as he removed his richly embroidered outer coat,
throwing it carelessly over a chair.

"Not here," she whispered, remembering the anguish of her night with the
Duke.

Edward pulled her into his arms, holding her closely. His mouth pressed
against the soft luxuriance of her hair.

"My poor darling! Don't lose your courage now. Forget what happened. It's
all in the past. We shall make a new life together."

She looked up into his eyes, and trusted him, as he led her toward the bed
where she had been deflowered.

She followed him meekly, as he sat her down, his gentle hands unbuttoning
the elegant satin and lace gown. Again she felt the bizarre and erotic
combination of remembered fear and sexual anticipation.
Naked finally, Edward disrobed. His body was magnificent. He combined
the strange physical power of his father, with a lithe elegance. He lay down
beside her, and pulled her trembling body against his.

His mouth covered hers in a deep, passionate kiss. Maria shivered in his
arms, and surrendered to the wild wonder of his kiss, his love for her.

Maria felt strange. This afternoon, she had serviced his father's cock with
her mouth, and now she was Edward's wife.

And Edward was the Duke of Lorraine. Her eyes widened. She broke the
kiss to stare at him.

She looked around the room, remembering the last time she had been in this
castle.

Edward gazed at her lush' beauty, leaning up on one elbow, his other hand
wandering softly, sensuously over her curving body.

His cock throbbed against one of her thighs. His cock was huge, and thick.

Maria reached down and grabbed it, fondling it, awed as usual by the velvet
softness of the flesh, and the hot hardness which throbbed beneath the
velvet sheath.

Edward rolled over on top of her. For a moment, Maria was startled. It had
been a long time since she had felt the weight of a man's body on top of
hers, pressing her into the mattress.

The Cardinal, of course, couldn't fuck that way because of his girth. She
smiled up at him.

"What is it?" he asked, running his hands through the gleaming halo of her
black hair.

"I think it's strange that I lost my honor to one Duke of Lorraine and then
found it with another one."

Edward laughed.
His cock was now throbbing between their pressed-together bellies. Maria
stretched, arching her body up against Edward's, savoring the glorious
feeling of being married to the man who wanted her.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and brought his face down to hers.
He covered her mouth with a deep passionate kiss, his tongue snaking into
her mouth, teasing the soft pink flesh.

Maria moaned against her mouth, feeling her passion rise. This time her
carnal embrace with a man was different.

This man had married her, had said he loved her.

He worked his arms under her smooth white back, pressing her breasts
against his chest. She could feel his heart beating against her, and it felt as if
her whole body were suffused with that throbbing, as if her whole body had
become one passionate pulse point.

The lustful anguish built in her.

Edward's hands moved softly down her back, to cup her ass cheeks. His
strong slender fingers kneaded her dimpled soft flesh.

Then he spread her legs, pressing his knee between them.

Maria felt her pink flesh flower, swelling and throbbing with desire, as he
pressed his cock head at the entrance to her hungry, waiting love tunnel.

She gasped, as she felt him thrust inward. She bent her knees up, wanting to
feel more of his cock, easing his passage into her tight little channel.

Maria forgot all the arts she had learned, all the calculated moves she had
learned which would please a man.

She had never been loved, never expected to be loved. She had a feeling
that she couldn't do anything to displease this man, who was taking her with
such ardor, such obvious need.
His mouth moved from her mouth to her cheeks. He left little gleaming kiss
marks behind as he savored her soft, warm skin. He kissed her eyes, her
nose. His breath was warm and moist on her face, his eyes glowing.

Maria, gazing into the blue depths of them felt as if she could drown in
them.

The huge hard length of his ramrod filled her pussy with its throbbing
strength. She felt his hard shaft throbbing against the walls of her cunt, his
cock head prying deep into the well of her womanhood.

His warm, sweating chest pressed her breasts flat. They felt bloated. They
throbbed with a passionate pleasure of their own, her nipples puckering and
tingling against his smooth skin.

The excitement which filled her seemed to bloat her body. She felt as if
every particle of her being throbbed with the hot wet excitement which
coursed through her.

Edward pushed inward until the whole length of his cock was buried in her
wet warm, quivering pussy.

Maria felt her pussy walls close in around the cock, caressing the pulsating
sides of his manhood. His hairy balls pressed against her quivering ass
cheeks.

"I love you," he said soft, as he started to move in her.

Maria felt the tears well up in her eyes, happy tears, tears of remembered
grief, tears of hope.

"Oh, I will learn to love you," she said softly, as his great spear slid in and
out of her pussy.

"I will do anything you want to please you."

He smiled, as his cock moved slowly in and out of her cunt, prying deeply
into her womb.
"You do please me," he whispered, kissing her softly on her moist, parted
lips. "You please me very much."

Maria felt his cock planting hot furrows of pleasure in the wake of his
moving cock. Her breathing became labored as her passion built in her,
becoming a raging fire that threatened to consume both of them.

Her ears rang with her pulsing blood, and her mouth became dry with the
wild lust which gripped her.

She felt possessed, she felt as if she belonged to this man who was making
love to her, whose cock impaled her to his body.

And it made all the difference in the world in the pleasure Maria felt.

It wasn't the same as practicing the sexual arts you have learned to please
someone who has purchased you. Maria knew that she was fond of many of
the men from whom she had learned, whom she had pleased.

She knew she had an undeniable affection for the Cardinal, and she was
aware that he loved her, too. But it wasn't the same as being your own
woman, which Maria now was, with a name of her own, a family of her
own, and a husband who had claimed her for his own.

She moaned softly, as his fleshy prod massaged the itching walls of her
pussy. Her juices flooded lavishly down her cunt, lubricating his great,
pulsing shaft, as it thrust in and out of her pink wet depths, oozing out of
her well-stuffed hole, to trickle down her ass cheeks.

Edward's balls became wet and matted with the effluence of her desire, as it
flowed in thick warm streams from the depths of her womanhood.

She pressed her feet into the mattress, driving her hips up against Edward's
hard-thrusting loins, driving his cock even deeper into her well-plumbed,
honeyed well.

Edward thrust into her steadily, each inward lunge adding to the hot welter
of pleasure which Maria felt.
His steady, strong thrusting filled her cunt with heat. She felt a delicious,
pre-orgasmic tension grip at her muscles. Her cunt was an inferno of lust, a
tiny speck of light that flared, grew outward, made her whole body tremble
violently.

The waves of ecstasy lapped gently at her consciousness, and then grew
stronger and more demanding, as Edward's cock lurched in her hot wet
tunnel.

Edward's embrace became stronger, more demanding, and his cock seemed
to get hotter and harder in her pussy.

Maria bucked upward, matching his down-thrusting motions, as he lunged
into her teeming well of lust. She felt her mind float away somewhere in a
turgid mist. Her pleasure mounted, possessed her body, commanded it,
drove it. She closed her eyes, as Edward's cock swelled in her cunt.

His mouth sought hers again, and his tongue drove demandingly, insistently
into her hot wet oral cavity, as his cock pried out the secrets of her sex
tunnel. Maria's body quivered violently, as she started to feel the spasms of
her climax growing stronger.

It gripped deeply in her womanhood. Her nerves tingled with the hot harsh
pleasure which shot through her like lightning in a summer sky.

She melted in his embrace, responding to him wantonly, her body writhing
under his strong one. She surrendered eagerly to his possessing her, and felt
the hot searing waves of pleasure build to an almost unbearable pitch.

She whimpered, clutching at his neck, and then running her hands down
over the rippling muscles of his back.

Her hands explored his flesh eagerly. She cupped his hard muscular
buttocks, as they rose and fell with his humping motions.

And then the full waves of orgasm burst over her, lashing at her body. She
writhed convulsively, and moaned loudly against Edward's mouth, which
still held hers captured, greedily, his tongue still lashing at her soft inner
membranes.

She flushed with the incredible passion which possessed her. The pleasure
became a raging inferno which possessed her whole body.

Against her mouth, Edward now moaned. His humping motions became
more and more frenzied, as his passion built.

The sweat of his desire poured from his body, glued Maria to his flesh,
made them one. And in her abandoned state, wantonly writhing, totally lost
in the hot heady pleasure of her first orgasm with her husband, Maria felt as
if they were one.


The End
