The Ballad of Bronwyn

by Gary Switch, Writer & Contributing Editor to Prometheus Magazine
garyswitch@aol.com

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Chapter IV
 
I slept that night on my hard bench, on my stomach, my rough blanket irritating the stripes inflicted by the cheery brown-robed sister who brought me my gruel the next morning. I sat up, carefully keeping the blanket in my lap, my stripes burning against the gnarled wood. "I am Robert, how shall I call you?"
 
"I'm not permitted to speak with you." She closed the door behind her. "My name within these walls is Ursula."
 
"Do you know of the Lady Bronwyn who arrived with me and entered the Novitiate yesterday?"
 
She drew close, grasping the wrist of my hand that held the hem of my blanket closed over me. "The new ones are not seen for a week, after which time they appear much changed. We have five minutes." With her free hand, she hauled up her habit and her undergarments to her waist, revealing a clean-shaved mound. She tugged my hand from my blanket, placing it between her legs. The blanket flapped open. After pulling my hand back and across her lips, she released my wrist. I continued the motion, opening her and pressing my fingers into her moistening slit in between pinching her button between my finger and thumb.
 
With her free hand, Ursula avidly explored my clean-shaved manhood, urging me quickly into erection, but restricting her movements to deny me release. I cupped her abundant buttocks and teased her rectal opening with a fingertip, returning to her wet slit and taut button which I stroked rapidly. "What will become of me?"
 
"The…tests..are…sorely trying." Her hand left my straining member and drew my head forward into her quim. I sucked on her button, tormenting her with the edges of my teeth. Her muscles tightened. "No man…has ever…endured…ahhhhhh." She pulled against the suction of my lips which held her bud tightly between them, then thrust her mound forward in spasms that drew her up upon her toes. I released her.
 
"Eat well and rest. Do not bring yourself to pleasure. You will require your strength." She kissed her juices off my lips and departed.
 
Hours later, my dozing was interrupted by Ursula's return with her stern partner who instructed me to stand and clasp my hands behind me. Ursula bore a tray, an open bag of dried beans from the kitchen and a length of cord. The tall sister stroked my member briefly, gauging my response which appeared satisfactory. She pulled my hands before me and bound my wrists together with the cord. Ursula placed the tray on the floor and filled it with the beans. The tall sister spoke. "Kneel there."
 
I knelt on the beans which pressed so painfully into my knees I could barely resist springing back up again immediately. The tall sister instructed, "Raise your arms." She passed the end of the cord through a hole bored through a ceiling beam and pulled it out the other side. Ursula held my arms up as high as possible while my tormentress wound the free end of the cord about my sac, knotting it firmly. "the male's anatomy makes it eminently simple to leash him."
 
They stood back to observe. Shifting my knees to relieve the torment of the dried beans on which they rested only pulled down on my arms and thus upward on my tightly bound balls. I could not relax my arms against the cord for the same reason. In minutes, my arms grew heavy and my muscles ached to support them. Their weight threatened to pull my balls from my sac while my knees felt as if I knelt on a bed of tiny, burning coals.
 
They made to depart and I prepared to end my improve my position by the expedient of rising to my feet but before I could do so, the returned bearing between them a log studded with dull spikes over every inch of its surface which was lowered upon the bend of my legs, held in place by the swell of my calf muscles. I could not budge it. The spikes added another layer of pain to my agony. My knees were held in the jaws of an angry beast. Every movement I made to relieve the pressure of her teeth only found more teeth biting sharper in a different location. Thus began an accelerating cycle of torments each following more swiftly than the last as I writhed uncontrollably between the screaming muscles holding my arms aloft, the wrenching pull of the cord on my balls and the teeth tearing at the raw nerves in my knees.
 
"One hour."
 
When Ursula returned to cut me down I was certain that my body was ruined beyond repair until the agonies began to lessen and her knowing hands massaged sensation back into me and rubbed a soothing balm on my racked joints and sore sack. The miraculous relief was horrifyingly suggestive of the potential pain my body could support without breaking under the expert skills of my tormenters and of the trials to come. Ursula gave me water then straddled me on the bench again demanding service of my tongue, teeth and lips while she held my tender balls hostage, urging my cock to a readiness that found no release while her thighs gripped so firmly in her climaxes that I almost fainted for lack of breath.
 
The next morning after another thorough bathing, grooming, shaving and purging of my bowels, a thick, stiff collar was fitted on my neck, to which a length of wood was attached behind, to the ends of which my wrists were pinioned by more thick bands of leather. A smaller collar was fastened about the root of my sack and cock and a third around the base of my sack alone, having a smaller strap that ran between them with a tiny ring attached. Thus pinioned, I was led away from the kitchen chamber up a flight of steps to a heavy door.
 
Here we paused while Ursula stroked my captive balls and member into attention, the straps tightening over my swollen flesh. The door was opened and I was prodded into a large, sunny chamber. Two dozen white-robed novices observed my entrance, impassive faces framed by their wimples, each bearing a long switch cut from a tree branch. I scrutinized their faces but did not find Bronwyn among them. They formed two rows. The tall sister was handed a cord which she attached to the ring in my harness while Ursula received from one of the novices a hobble of the type used to restrain horses from kicking. This she fastened around my ankles, leaving only a foot of play between them. The tall sister played out her cord, stopping beyond the end of the rows of novices. She pulled steadily, drawing me forward between them, making the slow, short steps the hobble allowed me.
 
As I passed, each novice drew back her switch and cut me with all her strength, some making grunting exhalations at the effort. They chose their targets cunningly, striking at my nipples, the tender groove beneath my buttocks, my calves and my belly. The agonizingly slow pace of my progress provided ample time for them to aim and execute their strokes. When I reached the tall sister, I could feel twenty-four blazing stripes. The tall sister turned me by pulling on my balls, walked to the opposite end of the gantlet and pulled the cord tight again.
 
This time the Sisters directed their aim toward a single target, the very center of my bottomcheeks. Halfway through the line I felt I was being sliced through and expected to witness my legs walking off leaving the top of me behind when a bell began to toll urgently in the distance. Nearer bells joined in, until the convent resounded with their clanging. The Sisters immediately ceased their switching of me. One collected the rods of all and ran out of the chamber with them. The rest scattered, leaving me in the care of my wards.
 
Ursula drew the hobbles off my feet and I was pulled along by the leash on my balls at a rapid pace down corridors filled with brown and black and white-robed nuns in frantic commotion. The lead was removed, but not the straps confining my jewels nor the harness about my shoulders at the top of a downward flight of steps where Ursula and the tall nun each plucked a candle from the wall to guide us. We descended into the cellars and further still until entering a wide, musty vault. We hurried along between a row of biers as fast as we could go without extinguishing the candle. On the pedestals lay stone coffins, decorated with robed figures in relief, names and dates. We halted before a mausoleum whose door the tall sister finally opened after a complex series of manipulations. We hurried through a narrow aisle between walls lined with coffins stacked on shelves against which my hands scraped, held apart by the wooden crosspiece on my shoulders.
 
My guide led me through the far wall of this crypt within the sepulcher. She stopped me there, placed her candle on the floor and vanished. I heard the wall close behind her with an echo of finality. The candle shone not far in my prison and I dared not pick it up in an awkwardly bound hand to examine the walls for the risk of extinguishing the flame that was my only consolation in my tomb.
 
I had not long to wait. I was considering lowering myself to the dusty floor when the wall, featureless from my side except for a narrow rectangular outline, opened inward. A woman entered, full of figure, clad in a bright red dress and corset, her bubbies overflowing. She turned back to question her companion only to see the wall slam shut. She screamed, swore, pounded on it, turned, saw me and screamed again, cringing back against the wall and crossing herself. "Spawn of the devil! All the saints preserve me!"
 
"Bess, good Bess, it's only me, Rob Rakham. I'm confined here even as you and if I'm in league with the Evil One, I'm in no condition to harm you." Between her engagements, Bess had minded me at the tavern when my uncles had no one to leave me with and were forced to bring me along with them on their quests for ale and sometimes for her hired favors.
 
"You joined with the young witch who gained her powers from the old. The power to befuddle men, to consume them in the flames with which the old witch perished. You are her minion!"
 
The wall opened again. Bronwyn entered all in white, Dame Hecatie all in black, their cowls thrown back, their candles casting ominous shadows on their faces from below. Bess gave one last shriek and collapsed onto the dusty floor as the wall swung shut.
 
They put down their candles. Hettie saw to Bess, who had swooned carefully so as not to crack her head on the stone floor. Bronwyn regarded me in approval. "It seems you are being kept out of mischief, Rob. I have worried how fickle your love for me might prove, surrounded by maidens who regret they have vowed to forsake the flesh and who have you under their orders. I would lock up your little man and keep the key."
 
She kissed the switch marks on my chest while her fingernails explored between the straps around my cock and balls. My mouth gasped open to hers. She nipped and sucked my tongue as her hands detached mine from the yoke about my shoulders. She detached the yoke from my collar, leaving the leather bands about my neck and wrists and sack; my member still strained upward, engorged. I embraced her, my shaft pressing against her belly. Wherever I clutched her back or bottom, even through the coarse cloth of her habit, the contact made her flinch in pain. She held me fast for a moment, then pulled out of my arms. "Did I command you to hold me, sir? You forget you place. You are fortunate I lack a proper instrument with which to remind you of it." But she was smiling.
 
Hettie was stroking Bess's brow and temples, murmuring softly into her ear. Bess's breathing became slow and regular. Hettie maintained a droning chant.
 
Bronwyn busied herself with the straps below my waist but could not undo them. She grasped the tiny ring and dragged me into a dark corner by it. Her skilled fingers rapidly relieved me of the my turgid state, my seed spilling onto the stone, an act of practicality, not of passion. Unbinding my parts, she removed her robe and put it over me, underneath she was amply covered in a roughspun woolen slip down to her ankles. Herhabit reached only to my knees. I felt drained and humbled, more so than when naked, chilled by the cold drafts that wafted up under the hem of my ridiculous garment.
 
"Why are we all here?" I wondered aloud.
 
"Because we should not be found when Lord Virgil's men arrive," Hettie replied. "They were seen from the tower to be approaching in force.
 
Turning back to Bess, she repeated a command in a language I could not translate. Bess's eyes opened and through her fear she responded, "You as Her, I serve."
 
Only regarding Hettie, she spoke. "Said they were dry, they did. Their sleeves was wet with red. I brought their ale and the big one, the one they called by 'captain,' pulled me on his lap. He paid me good silver so I polished his weapon for him while they drank. Captain drank it slow, he did, always lookin' round e'en though there weren't no one else in there but his men. One of 'em got more troubled the more ale he took. He was almost shakin' when he finally told the captain that he'd seen no need to cut down men who had not a sword to raise against them. The captain explained all patient-like that if they wouldn't fight for him, they wouldn't be fightin' against him now and it was an example to the rest. He told the worried one to hang the ten fools up by their heels from the castle walls. They come back the next night and the next and kept me and Mary busy up the stairs, they did. A manly length of weapon has the captain, not that he took a whit of pride in it, nor a whit of pleasure in its use. More like he wanted to take the edge off and so the upstart 'tween his legs would stop distractin' his attention. Mary liked her sergeant more an' he's sweet on her so much he told her he regrets to join the march."
 
"March? Where to?" Hettie inquired.
 
"Well, Mary asked him that, sayin' she'd follow him anywhere." Bess crinkled in satisfaction. "It's to the West they go, this comin' Sunday, on to Broadhurst."
 
"The Baron's lands!" Bronwyn exclaimed.
 
"Quiet!" hissed Hettie. We heard the mausoleum's outer door creak open. Tramping footfalls resounded on the other side of our wall, then departed. We sat in silence for a long time. Bronwyn sat beside me, her head cradled on my shoulder.
 
The wall opened with no warning. The Abbess entered. She was disheveled, her hair unruly. No gold or jewels adorned her. Her features were seized by a cold fury. "They provisioned for an army. Our stores are depleted. All of us…all of us, even I, were stripped naked to discover any men hiding beneath the habit."
 
She regarded me. "There is work for you, young sir. You will be baptized on the morrow." She departed with the Dame, the whore and my love.
 
My warders entered to reclaim me. Their wimples were off, their long hair hanging free. Plump, merry Ursula had a stern aspect. A fire of determination had been kindled in her eyes. Her tall companion's clenched lips opened to a grin when she spied the abbreviated habit that rode up my thighs. "Our Robert makes a poor nun, but a better ox we pray, for there's hauling to be done." She seized the thick leather band that ringed my throat. "If he performs his labors without shirking, he may be spared the yoke." She pulled my face close to hers and suddenly kissed me on the lips with a smacking sound. "You may address me as Sister Margaret, since our Good Abbess has seen fit to permit thy baptism. Bring the cart, Sister Ursula, and the whip. It's the only goad these dumb beasts understand. Follow me, Robert."
 
She walked to the rear of the chamber, halting to draw away an arras that had blended invisibly into the stone from which it hung. Behind was a storeroom, filled with cases and barrels. One wall supported a rack reaching over my head, bristling with protruding bottlenecks. My eyes discerned a steely glitter reflecting from a distant corner.
 
The creaking cart wheels announced Ursula's approach. She halted the sledge before me, handing to Margaret a narrow strap affixed to a wooden handle. Ursula pointed to the objects I was to load upon the cart while Margaret imposed a rapid pace upon my efforts by snapping her goad against my nether flesh, offered as I bent to pick up the heavy freight. She struck not viciously but dangerously near my jewels, the lash snaking upward under the ludicrous habit that billowed about my waist.
 
When the cart was full, I bent nearly double to draw it out of the storeroom, back through the crypt and to the base of the stairs. There I carried each piece of my load up the long, steep flight, my poor legs straining, Margaret's whip having its teasing way with me.
 
My last load consisted of kegs with spigots poking out. These I carried into the long hall where earlier that day, Margaret had pulled me by the balls through the line of flagellatrices. I placed the kegs on a table. My head swam from my efforts. My parched throat croaked in need for drink. My legs failed me and I fell into the arms of my companions, who laid me on my back upon a bench. The rough wood tormented the switch marks which had been aggravated by Margaret's urgings with her leather strap. I tried to turn myself over. They seized my hands and joined them underneath the bench behind me by the cuffs affixed to my wrists. My robe had worked up to my waist, my manhood exposed to their clever fingers' ticklings and playful slaps. I writhed in discomfort on the bench, my pole poking up rigidly while my warders refreshed themselves from the kegs I'd borne. They returned to me bearing a wetted cloth with which Ursula swabbed my dusty face and a blessed beaker of water she tipped into my parched mouth.
 
Ursula made to straddle the bench at my head. Margaret instructed her, "Sit not upon you garments, Sister." Ursula gingerly sat herself on the bench, lifting my head into her lap, twitching about with many little cries until she settled at last. "It was selfish of you to reserve the fruit of this young lad's talents, Sister but wise to disclose them to me, albeit you might have spared yourself the pretense of innocence and the whipping it took to bring you to admittance of the truth. Thinked you I could not discern the fragrance of your enjoyment nor the roses in your cheeks. Now all your cheeks are rosy."
 
She handed her lash to Ursula. She pulled up her robes and straddled the bench at my neck, affording me a fine view of her bulging quim. She settled upon my nose and mouth. My head was held fast between Ursula's soft belly beneath and Margaret's bush pressing down from above. My view was obscured by her robes cascading over my eyes. Ursula swung her whip so that it landed smartly on my belly, then, softly on my rejuvenated cock. I licked and thrust my tongue into the fragrant lips that pressed upon me. I could hear Margaret's futile attempts to stifle her cries, which I did my best to incite. I also heard unmistakable sounds of kisses and sighs from Ursula who was grinding her pubis through her robes against the back of my head. My sorely tired legs, resting on the floor on either side of he bench, pushed my beleaguered bottom upward off its tortuous surface, only to meet the swinging lash that Ursula plied with greater and greater abandon the more their passion increased.
 
At last I succeeded in grasping Margaret's swollen button between my lips and sucked fiercely, drawing it in between my teeth at the same time, striving mightily to bring her to completion so I could be released from the bench's cruel rubbings and the lash's stinging strokes. Her final cry commenced loudly then was muffled, I surmised by Ursula's hands clapped over her mouth as I heard the whip clatter to the floor. A thick flow exuded into my mouth which I dutifully swallowed. Margaret then fastidiously presented her nether regions from bunghole to belly to my tongue for cleaning.
 
Margaret and Ursula slowly extricated themselves from our congress. I was unpinioned from the bench and stood upright, my manhood reddened from the flogging, poking out my habit in front. I was led back to my cell which now contained a table laden with steaming soup and bread and a basin and cloth and a featherbed laid over my narrow sleeping platform. I ate greatly and fell upon the soft mattress, my member to raw to rub to satisfy its demand.
 
On the morrow, I awoke much refreshed but sore and aching back and front and in all my muscles. I strove to remove the leather bands about my wrists and throat but fund this impossible, so devious were their fastenings. Pulling my slop pail from under my bed, I spied a scrap of paper behind it, lying upon a black-bound volume, its cover worked with runes much like those Hettie had scrawled upon the walls of the Snuggery. I read the note:
 
"My dearest Robert,
Briefly I'll write be as this note needs be your breakfast. I am so proud of your endurance and what you have suffered for me. My trials are but a thousandth of what I'd bear to feel your arms again. Bear all for one more day! Be obedient, no bonds will constrain you. Be strong of will. There are plans for us.
Your B."
 
The book was thick, its leaves dense with words marvelously small, a life's work for the finest scribe, though no scribe had participated in it's rendering. Apart from the scriptures, it was the only volume I had seen in the Convent that had been reproduced in the modern fashion, by a machine that held iron letters in a tray and pressed them down onto waiting paper, an entire page at a time. As was my habit, I opened it randomly as does a supplicant entreat the Holy Bible for a verse germane to his predicament.
 
"In the rushing of the river, hear us. In the whisper of the wind through the leaves, in the scurry of the small beasts over the ground, in the pelting of the raindrops, know our power. For no man may stand against the flood, nor the storm nor the great beasts who feed upon the small. In the curving of the sun, see our path. In the arc of he stars, in the turning of the seasons, in the night that brings day, in the death that feeds life, find your way back to the beginning from the end."
 
"There may also be a good and true bond of marriage even if the husband has naught to contribute to the joint estate, the property thereof consisting entirely of the wife's possessions, lands and titles, or in spite of opposition of the wifely kin or even if the vows between them are known only to one another."
 
"She rides too swiftly to be discerned by men lest she should choose to make herself known to the one she seeks. Her mount imbues her power over the earth. Dismounted, her safety lies below, her other empire: the undercaverns, the tunnels, the pits, the wormholes where the red-ear lurks, the well of the source."
 
"As hunters and raiders and outcasts and wanderers and seekers shall they, in their youth, depart from their kin and their comfort and their shelter. The deer shall feed them and with the taking of her life and the consumption of her flesh, shall the hunters be hunted in their turn and take on their rightful share of death and know their days are numbered. The crow shall warn them of the battle when he brings the spirits from the far world to witness the passage of men. The boar shall test them for none but heroes win his flesh. The stag shall lead them to the far world where the spirits shall judge of them their worthiness of manhood and womanhood."
 
Distracted by the odor of my body, I pulled my sweat-soaked habit over my head and washed the dust off my flesh and Margaret's essence form my face, causing myself no little pain when I cleansed my welts but at last feeling marginally more scrubbed than soiled. Hearing steps in the corridor, I tore the note into fragments and hurriedly swallowed them. I thrust the volume back underneath and held the habit in my lap as the door swung open to a trill of laughter.
 
Margaret and Ursula sat down on either side of my bench beside me. Ursula gently drew away the habit from my loins while Margaret tuned my head toward her and kissed me. her tongue plying against mine most mischievously. Her face was flushed and her breath smelled not unpleasantly of spirits. She stood and pulled me up by the hand. "Come along, sweet Robert, the Holy Water is almost ready." Ursula laughed again and staggered unsteadily to her feet.
 

~~~

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