WENCH
by trilby else (trilelse@mail.anonymizer.com)
Disclaimers (if you scroll past, you’ve still read ‘em-don’t blame me):
- Not the AOL Trilby.
- This work is copyright trilby else (trilelse@mail.anonymizer.com), ©2004. Do not repost or otherwise use.
- Adult fiction with nonconsensual sex, etc. In real life, very bad. All characters, events, and places are fictional, any resemblance coincidental, all characters of legal age in all jurisdictions.
- If you’re underage, it’s illegal where you are, or this offends you, leave.
- It’s more about mind control than sex. I’m a fetishist: point isn’t using MC to get sex, it’s sex being something interesting to do with MC. Also, it’s literature, i.e. with redeeming artistic content, i.e. not “obscene” in the legal definition.
- I disparage no lifestyle. If characters are forced into one, it’s the force that degrades, not the lifestyle.
Inspirations: Arclight’s “Kingdom’s Fall,” Tabico’s “Wrach” and “Herd Instinct,” Iago’s “Where the Shadows Lie” and “Dea lo Volt” and his and Tabico’s “In Darkness Bound.”
1.
Carrying home the bread from the village oven of Sous-les-Menhirs, Jeanne stopped before her family’s hut in the cool evening. Nothing stirred. For no good reason she thought of the old men’s tales of plague, when households died together and the dead lay unburied.
She clutched the basket. She should put it down, but her hands wanted to stay full of warmth.
Even the animals were still. What came and killed everything in an afternoon?
She almost sobbed to see smoke drift from the chimney, though even that . . .
“Luc!”
Her brother walked from behind the hut, slowly and firmly. Not sick, not wounded, not like he’d just buried anyone.
He looked at her.
“Luc?” She went to him, and as she came closer she saw his gaze was empty. He saw her but did not know her. She almost ran. She didn’t drop the bread.
He opened the door and held it open for her as though he were a guard up at Lord Bohemond’s donjon on the ridge and she were His Grace’s new lady wife.
Jeanne thought better of speaking to him and went in, even as the terrible fear came over her that all of them, Papa and Maman and the little ones, would be as Luc was. Staring at her, not knowing her or even greeting her as a stranger.
The outer room was dim, and she set the bread down in its place by feel and habit. But as her eyes took in the firelight she gasped. Her father and Lise, and Gilles and little Pasquin, were all at the table, heads down and resting on their arms. Their eyes were closed, but they breathed.
She looked up but Luc had closed the door and stayed outside, still a guard. She went to her father and touched the great oaken shoulder, but he was still. She’d seen him before when he was asleep, but it was frightening that he slept now, like this. Something kept her from trying to wake him.
Where was Maman?
Jeanne looked at her younger siblings. It filled her throat to see Pasquin’s lips purse as he slept. She went to him and put her arms around him, gently raising him up—the youngest, their sweet-natured Easter child.
Angry and terrified, Jeanne held him close again, feeling his heartbeat. She kissed him and softly lowered him to rest again on the table. Usually when he was put to bed, he’d move slightly like a cat to get comfortable, but now he just lay as she put him.
She stood up, wondering why Maman wasn’t here with them. There was the other room, but Jeanne didn’t want to go there. Even facing Luc’s numb gaze seemed better.
Something caught her eye.
On a table by the far wall, a candle flickered. She hadn’t seen it when she came in, but now everything seemed strange. Was there something unseen here, a ghost perhaps, that had just lit it?
She made herself walk over to it. She knew it now as the special candle Maman lit for her each night after prayers, when Papa and the others had nodded into sleep after Maman’s soft voice recited. Each night she kept Jeanne awake by herself, showing her the candle until its flame filled Jeanne’s mind, whispering to her as she stared into it.
By now, just seeing it tranquilized her thoughts. It opened her to whatever the whispers said. Jeanne was half-asleep now before she could catch herself, and blissfully carried the candle to the other room, forgetting all about the sleepers behind her.
The other room was dim and bright at once. Even in the flameflicker-dream, Jeanne nearly scolded Maman for burning all the candles and lamps together.
But Maman was standing still and straight and looking into a darker corner. And Maman was naked as a baby, except for the chain around her neck.
“Still beautiful,” said a woman’s voice from the corner where Maman gazed so raptly. “Even after bearing so many of you, Clotilde is ever the supple mare. Hardy and docile. The stock that keeps us strong.”
Jeanne knew the voice but it made her head spin. Her thoughts swayed to follow it.
When she next heard that voice, she must follow it . . .
That truth had sunk into her mind as breezes soothed her on a hilltop of silent, nude women. Jeanne remembered, and wanted to sleep, and fought to stay awake. She looked at her mother.
Maman was a beauty, long-limbed and strong, still firm-breasted. Jeanne remembered her own dreams about other girls, and now there was no leash on her dreams as she looked at a grown woman. It made her dizzy to covet her own mother, but the defenseless softness of her mother’s breasts made her dizzier.
Maman stood quietly, staring at nothing, her eyes dull as a cow’s, blanker even than Luc’s had been. Jeanne wanted to ask her why but lost herself in the way her mother’s thighs curved inward to her fur, lusher than Jeanne’s.
Her scent must be . . .
Jeanne snapped out of it and her heart paused. There was magic here, dark and evil, and it had her mother in its thrall. She turned to the corner, to the woman who’d spoken of her mother’s beauty, who seemed to have captured her mother’s will.
Serpentine, the woman uncoiled from the shadow to meet her. Jeanne thought of coils slipping around to hold her.
“Be still, child.”
Jeanne saw the yellow eyes, and her mind went soft.
“Still,” she agreed.
She could still see her worry for Maman, but only in the way she could see a leaf carried away on the wind.
Yes. The magic was evil, but it controlled her, and control felt good. She could be told evil was good, and the magic would make her believe. When she believed, she would obey.
“Set the candle down, child.” Jeanne trembled as she did. The spell it had cast on her each night since childhood was nothing to the web that bound her will tonight.
Now she understood why her mother smiled. Maman had looked into the yellow eyes, too, and become their slave.
What really warmed her between her legs was how obedient her mother looked. Tame, submissive, harnessed—like the tractable workhorse the witch spoke of. It felt so sweet . . .
“Jeanne. Let me see you.”
The witch’s voice stroked her, inside and out, and she felt her nipples coming alive as the place between her thighs grew wet and hot. She slipped the bonnet from her hair and worked the dress without thinking. She trod its cloth as she slid from her shift.
Jeanne wanted to obey this woman more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life.
She sensed the witch could trap her mind with a word. Then Jeanne would be like Maman, knowing nothing but the witch’s command. Jeanne wanted badly to be taken like that, but she waited. She was as tame and biddable as her mother. For now, the witch was letting her thoughts stay sluggish but free.
Jeanne looked back at Maman, witless and attentive to the witch.
Under this spell, Maman would do anything she was told. Jeanne shivered a little. Her mind filled with wicked images of what Maman could be told to do, now, by the voice they must both obey.
She looked back at the yellow-eyed witch who’d leashed their souls. The witch smiled at her. She was putting those images into Jeanne’s mind, watching them make her wet.
2.
“You have done well, Clotilde.” The witch had already had her way with Maman’s thoughts, and Maman smiled placidly.
Jeanne found herself wanting to pose. Posing was strangely familiar, like something she’d learned but been told to forget for a while. Jeanne let it stretch her body like a dance. She’d displayed herself like this before, nude before flickering fires on the hilltop. Then, too, there had been the sure touch of someone stronger than she, in her head, controlling her and making her like it.
The candles throbbed in her mind like bonfires. She changed poses to a beat her blood knew, so the yellow eyes could see what each did to her body.
“You have raised the girl to be as lovely as you are.” The witch inhaled. The room reeked now of woman-scent. Hers, her mother’s. And the witch’s?
The witch’s light touch stilled Jeanne and brought her to stand erect again.
“She has your obedience as well.”
She reached up to Jeanne’s breasts, her fingertips agonizingly gentle below them, her thumbs like ghosts on the nipples. “Healthy and strong.”
The fingertips traced downward, probing her belly. “She’ll bear us more willing slaves, when we let her notice men.”
Jeanne shivered and leaned into the touch, wanting to be handled, hardly knowing what the words meant.
“Yes,” the witch said, with a sharpness that neither of her thralls could comprehend. “The dead one’s followers pretend to carve Her Earth into feudal estates. But ours . . .”
Her voice softened while her eyes glittered gold, but even soft it was a glorious chain around Jeanne. “Our estate”—the fingertip was light, light across her nether lips—“is the body and heart of each obedient slave who worships Her.”
Jeanne melted inside. She wanted to be the fertile earth beneath this woman’s feet, to be plowed and sown.
“We are very pleased with you, Clotilde, my sisters and I. And She will be pleased with this weapon you bore and raised for Her.”
Maman gave a little cry and her hips bucked. The witch smiled, seeing a new gleam where Maman’s thighs met. She nodded.
Maman woke a little. She looked once at Jeanne, but then saw only the witch. Maman’s face looked as it did, sometimes, when she smiled at Papa and they thought no one was looking—yearning, inviting, sexual. Maman was offering herself to this witch.
It was so wrong that Jeanne wanted to touch herself.
Instead she changed pose.
Her mother turned and walked to her. Jeanne straightened and held still as Maman walked behind her. Maman touched her shoulders and she knelt to the witch, remembering more about the firelit ceremony where she’d learned to obey, and then to forget.
The yellow eyes stunned her again as they looked down, then swung up to snare her mother’s.
“You gave your daughter to Goddess beneath the midsummer moon, Clotilde.
“Is this maiden who kneels, fair of flesh and soft of thought, she whom you yielded up?”
The ritual words woke parts of Jeanne as she knelt, and put others to sleep. Her skin remembered a midnight breeze and the rolling warmth of a bonfire. Her limbs remembered dancing.
“she is the one, Mistress.” Maman’s voice was toneless but husky.
Jeanne’s mind remembered an endless chant that darkened it.
“Is this your daughter, Clotilde?”
Behind and above her now, Maman’s voice was sleepy and firm at once.
“i have no daughter, Mistress.”
Below her mother’s hands, Jeanne shuddered. Lying on stone, writhing in ecstasy.
“The maidenflesh i offer is Goddess’ slave, Mistress. Like the one who bore her.”
The night sky, the moon lusting for her as she lay to be sacrificed.
The knife upraised in Maman’s hands, Maman’s eyes blank and silvery as the collar on her neck. The scent of Maman’s wanting, hot across the stone by Jeanne’s head as she waited for the downstroke.
“Behold Jeanne, quickened in my womb and born of my loins at Her command. Once mine.
“Forever Hers.”
Jeanne remembered it now.
Jeanne and her mother, looking at each other, filling the cups, watching Papa and the younger children fade into sleep. She looked longer at Lise, pretty but still too young. Like a dream, she thought she remembered Lise, of late, waking and looking into her own candle, knowing only Maman’s whisper, being shaped and prepared for . . . for . . .
A glance and a soft word from Maman wiped Jeanne’s thoughts clean. She thought no more of candles, and knew only festal lamps. Lit, with Maman, the special wicks that would flavor the family’s dreams, so they would awaken with only the right memories of Midsummer Night.
Slipping the loose shifts off and waiting nude and breathless, imagining the nearer houses growing quiet. Waiting for the flutes and tambours.
Falling into trance when the feast-music drew them forth, joining the spellbound village women leading their daughters to the true ceremony on the hill among the old standing stones and the fires between them, menfolk forgotten. Chanting, dancing, baring their bodies to each other and the moon. The robed witches striding among them made no one afraid as They cast spells on this woman, that girl. The spells made a woman’s eyes wider and her dancing more liquid. Each, as she danced, prayed to be the next one bewitched.
As each fell under a witch’s power, she found herself praying to Someone else.
Maman led Jeanne to another witch who stared into her eyes and spoke. Then Jeanne was on the flat altar stone, touching herself and dancing, the music reaching deeper between her hips than her avid fingers could go. She never saw the other chosen girls on the other altars, as the spell dropped them all to their knees.
Jeanne knelt on the altar. She watched her mother dance and masturbate, and barely knew her.
Then she was on her back, naked on the stone, paralyzed and aroused as her mother stepped toward her with a dagger. The witch was beside Maman, and Maman obeyed each gesture as if on strings. She moved like one dreaming, her empty eyes reflecting the fire.
She recited, begging Goddess to accept her daughter. The nights of staring into the candle brought the answer to Jeanne’s own lips.
Jeanne asked Goddess to make her mother kill.
When Goddess made Maman obey, the blade flashed through Jeanne’s gaze, but she watched only Maman’s eyes, where worship lived.
The blades were witch-touched, and slew no offered daughter that night. But under Goddess’ moon, when each girl rose from the stone to her mother’s arms, she left her soul spiked there in the moonbeams.
In the center of the standing stones, minds full of Goddess, they knelt and listened. Their mothers slept and the witches spoke and the magicked blades smoked away to nothing.
They belonged to Goddess now. When their minds had become small and full of truth, the girls chanted the truth. Jeanne sang of being Goddess’ nimble steed, bearing Her on Her hunt, wanting only Her spurs and bit to make her run her heart out. She sang of being Goddess’ draft horse, contentedly pulling Her burden under Her whip until she died under its weight. She sang of being Goddess’ charger, impaling herself on the enemy’s spear to give her Rider the swordstroke She wished.
After she climaxed and her chant broke into screams, something in her head let her turn to see her mother. Maman had danced mindlessly as her daughter surrendered herself, and now her sinuous movement cast its own spell on Jeanne. As Maman stepped away, Jeanne followed in a trance, to the ring around another fire. Each mother, Goddess’ sleepwalker now, drew her newly-dedicated daughter there. They danced and leaped and cried out with the joy only Her slaves ever knew.
Before they left, each girl looked into a witch’s eyes and slept, to wake the next day knowing no more than the drugged menfolk of what had been sacrificed under Her moon.
Awakened to it now, Jeanne looked up at the yellow-eyed witch who made Maman give her to Goddess.
“i am Yours to command, Mistress. And i am Hers, heart and soul. i live to obey.
“What is Her will?”
The witch smiled.
3.
In the inner courtyard of Lord Bohemond’s castle, in the shadow of his keep, the only peasant girl who wasn’t nervous was the one under a spell.
Jeanne didn’t gloat as she glanced at the others with her. Her yellow-eyed mistress had not bidden her to do anything but wait until the compulsion came on her. After last night’s lessons, Jeanne lived to obey her. She could still taste the magic she’d licked from between the witch’s thighs, and felt it within her.
The castellan, steward of the place, had sent to all the villages of the demesne to tell them that the lord’s new lady wife would choose a new chambermaid from among them. Each had sent its best-favored daughter. Jeanne looked at the pretty, capable girls who thought she was their rival and could imagine her Mistress putting them all in thrall, leading them off into slavery to Goddess.
Mistress’ leash was tight on Jeanne’s mind, and she did not even think of smiling.
Then, like reins flicking inside her head, the command took her. Jeanne felt the magic she’d swallowed heat and fill her, like sweet venom needing release. She thirsted for a victim.
She didn’t ask their names. Putting a bashful smile on her face, she went to the nearest, a sturdy girl with brunette braids. Smiling back, the girl took her offered hand, and then stiffened as Jeanne discharged the spell. The girl couldn’t stop smiling, or look away, or think of anything now but Jeanne.
Her mind filled with laughter, and when Jeanne released her she blinked and looked through Jeanne without seeing her.
The next girl frowned at her, sizing her up and wondering what she might have, to win the Lady’s choice. The spell had kept any of them from seeing Jeanne charm the other girl, and as she shyly came over, this one too was alone with Jeanne. Her eyes narrowed, but she was as trapped as the first. Her hand rose to Jeanne’s touch almost without her knowing—and then she was in trance, unresisting.
When Jeanne walked away, the girl’s mind was a juggler’s puzzle, fascinated with spinning and falling things.
The next, a blonde with startling green eyes, was terrified. The power that rode Jeanne knew the terror was for the whole world, and that it would make her unattractive as a servant even without help. Her fears led her to wear a saint’s relic over her heart, but there was an older sort of charm on a cord around her wrist. A wordless plea to the powers who served the powers that bowed to Goddess.
Jeanne didn’t take her hand. She smiled as the witch had smiled down at her. The girl hadn’t been given to Goddess as Maman had given Jeanne, but her belief in the charm opened her to Goddess’ power nevertheless.
As Jeanne turned from her, she heard the hiss of the holy amulet leaving the girl’s neck, and the dull click of a leather knot being undone. The girl would believe herself defenseless, and whether she collapsed in tears or screams before the Lady, she would be unable to put them on until she was gone.
Now there was a girl in front of Jeanne, darker-blonde and plainer, but with a force of character that made her prettier than she was. Her mind was strong enough to see through the dazing glamour, and she’d seen Jeanne do something to each of the others. Almost as if part of her were a knight herself, she attacked.
Her grip on Jeanne’s arm was stronger than expected, even given they were all farm girls who’d been working for most of their lives. Jeanne winced even as she enjoyed the roughness, and looked up into the bemused, angry face.
She smiled. The rough touch was enough to carry back the magic. Jeanne felt it stun the girl and watched strength and caution drain from her. The girl’s will was soft as dough, and Jeanne felt the magic knead it into a new shape.
A few moments later, when the girl’s gaze focused again, she saw only one of the grooms. The castellan’s wife had shooed them off, but one or two of the bolder youths had sidled back to see the gathering of village beauties. Smiling, the girl went to him, in her mind already straddling him, no longer free to dream of anything else.
The last girl was pale and flame-haired, and her grey eyes sought Jeanne’s. Her strength was quieter than the willful blonde’s, but it likewise let her sense what Jeanne had done to the others. She skipped back when Jeanne went to her, but smiled playfully.
“I won’t get in your way,” she whispered, and Jeanne stared. “You don’t need to bewitch me.”
She kept smiling. “I’m Therese, of Petite-Fleuve.” It was the village of the weavers. “I think I know what you’re doing, but . . .”
Jeanne looked at her. It was as if Therese could see the bridle on Jeanne’s thoughts, checking her now but ready to steer her into reaching out with the magic to paralyze Therese’s will. “I promise. I’d like to be chosen to serve Lady Melisande, but . . . there’s something more. I feel it.
“You must be the one.”
Therese shivered, but Jeanne knew it was like her own trembling last night. The redhead wasn’t afraid at all.
“I can leave,” she said. “Say I’m sick, I was frightened. My mother will be glad to have me back.”
Jeanne stayed still, wondering why the magic that owned her didn’t spur her to take Therese and chain her will like the others. Why it let her enjoy knowing that Therese could obviously tell she was under a much more powerful spell than any she cast.
Behind them, the first candidate was called to go in before her Ladyship.
Jeanne and Therese looked into each other’s eyes until the hysterical giggling within grew louder, and the first girl was led out again, laughing too hard even to speak to the noblewoman.
Therese stepped closer. Jeanne let her, feeling like a drugged watchdog, wondering if the other girl’s grey eyes were somehow making a slave of her even as the magic told her otherwise.
The second girl left her interview sniffling, after a colossal din of breakage and a long, shocked silence.
Therese licked her lips. “But perhaps I can stay,” she whispered, suddenly fascinated by Jeanne’s mouth. “Perhaps I can fail.
“Tell me how.”
Behind them now, the castellan’s wife was yelling at the groom.
“Or . . . do to me what you were about to do. Before.” Therese’s eyes were soft as she extended her hand to be magicked. The other girl’s calm submission made Jeanne lightheaded. But instantly Jeanne relaxed, to let the spell decide what she would do.
She took Therese’s hand, and leaned forward, safe in the glamour. No one saw her kiss the other girl, or the way Therese closed her eyes and enjoyed it.
“Go to your mother,” she said. “Go back to Petite-Fleuve.” She smiled, as Therese’s eyes lit up to see Jeanne had marked her village. “When I call to you there, I know you will come.”
Therese sighed happily, and walked away without another word. She ignored the castellan’s wife scolding the other girl and thrashing the groom, and the heartbroken sobbing that issued from the place where her Ladyship’s latest interview had dissolved.
The weeping girl came out gripping her talismans in her hands. The servant who comforted her looked fearfully around, and eyed Jeanne nervously, clearly wondering what disaster she would inflict on his mistress.
4.
Lady Melisande was as beautiful as Jeanne had always thought a lord’s lady should be. Even in the magic that shadowed her mind, Jeanne’s heart raced.
Was this wrong? Would liking her lady keep her from obeying Goddess perfectly?
Jeanne relaxed. Lusting for this highborn bride could only further Her purpose. The thought of her kneeling to Goddess was fulfilling. Raised in faith and obedience, she knew the witch had cleansed her mind well last night. No thought could live in Jeanne’s head that did not make her a better slave.
Melisande was too well-bred to mention the strange parade of afflicted girls before. Someone had swept away the wreckage from the girl Jeanne bespelled into clumsiness. Melisande’s two ladies-in-waiting, slim and aristocratic as she and nearly as pretty, revealed nothing and looked to her for a cue.
The Lady smiled at Jeanne.
“You are the girl from . . . Sous-les-Menhirs, is it?”
“Yes, my Lady.”
“I hope you are luckier than your neighbors.” Melisande’s voice warmed and reassured. It stabbed Jeanne to like her so much.
But Jeanne wore Goddess’ saddle on her soul. Being blade-pierced for the Rider was her honor.
Reins tightened inside her head. The magic swelled in her again—now as warmth, radiating from her owned pussy and all along her limbs and skin. Invisible beneath her homespun dress, it still shone into Lady Melisande’s eyes and her attendants’.
As the magic swept silently through them, each one’s eyelids drooped for a moment. Comfort and trust settled on them.
The magic made Jeanne answer the three sleepy half-smiles with another bashful one of her own, laced with superstitious worry. That roused the others before they knew they’d been charmed.
“Thank you, my Lady.” Her reply grew louder as she spoke it, and the noblewoman smiled again: Melisande believed she was soothing the nervous farmgirl before her.
She crossed to Jeanne and took her hands, and Jeanne sighed. The ladies-in-waiting were a little surprised to see their mistress so forthcoming with a peasant. They relaxed as the charm robbed them of any wonder at why their Lady would want to be kind to this sweet, sweet girl.
Jeanne forgot them. The spell within her was for Melisande, and she watched it take hold. They spoke, but Melisande’s questions and Jeanne’s answers were like insects’ song on a summer day. None of them would remember a word of it, or ever feel a need to.
Presently Lady Melisande’s eyes cleared. The charm had not enslaved her, but it lulled her past any questioning. She knew only that she liked Jeanne, and could suspect no ill of her pretty new servant.
“It was said,” Melisande remarked, “that on my lord’s fief, your village was a place of magic. Under ancient standing stones.”
She smiled teasingly. “Visited by witches—they say, at least. Even hagridden, and under their sway. Perhaps, my little Jeanne, you hexed those other girls!”
The two ladies-in-waiting laughed gently.
“Oh, no, my Lady!” Jeanne blushed and shook like a properly scandalized peasant. “We are pious, devout folk in Sous-les-Menhirs! Not witches!”
Not witches. Only their willing slaves.
Lady Melisande took her hands again. “I know. I would not torment you.” Her tone made Jeanne think of Maman. “Will you forgive me, dear?”
Jeanne smiled and curtseyed, enjoying the older woman’s touch. “Of course, my Lady. I will forgive you anything.”
Melisande released her. “Then I have chosen my new maid.”
She turned. “Yseult?” One of the attendants curtseyed briskly. “Dear cousin, please take our Jeanne in hand. Show her to my apartments and introduce her to the others.”
“My Lady.” Bowing, the older girl looked evenly at Jeanne.
Jeanne curtseyed again, lowering herself almost to the floor. Melisande laughed with delight and smiled at her as she stood, then left with the other attendant in tow.
“You will address me as Mademoiselle.”
Jeanne turned. Yseult regarded her coldly, no longer spellbound. “I attend my noble kinswoman. You are her servant. Never forget the difference.”
Jeanne dipped her head. “Yes, Mademoiselle. I am a good girl. I know my place. I will always remember it, Mademoiselle.”
Almost disappointed, Yseult swept out into the courtyard. She left Jeanne to scuttle after her to the great stone keep, even larger than it seemed from outside. Before last night, Jeanne would have been awed simply to be here. But no girl of Goddess’ felt awe for the works of men.
Yseult brought her to a room below ground, lit with oil lamps. “Take off those rags, wench.” Her eyes glittered in the dimness. “Now. A peasant sow must be obedient, before she’s modest.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
Presently Jeanne’s clothes tangled humbly on the dirt floor. Yseult’s eyes slid over her curves like cold unfriendly hands on livestock at market.
It made Jeanne wet. She stood still, head bowed.
The magic reached out from her slowly, tendrils bringing her Yseult’s thoughts. The Lady’s cousin saw Jeanne as a pretty but common flower. Catching some noble youth’s eye as a plaything to slake his baser desires, perhaps, before courting a lady like herself. Then cast her off for the grooms’ amusement when she bored him, or caught a bastard he didn’t care to sire.
“Or back to the village, to breed more peasants.” Yseult didn’t know she whispered aloud.
“Mademoiselle,” Jeanne breathed to her. Her hands drew back, offering her breasts. Her head rose, not defiantly but as if she couldn’t look away from Yseult’s cold beauty.
Yseult smiled like a cat with a plump mouse. “Yes, little dairymaid. Soon enough, you’ll be mounted, and then you’ll pup for us. A litter of strong new serfs to work my lord’s lands.”
Her hand was cold on Jeanne’s hip. “Built to breed.” She laughed as Jeanne trembled and leaned into it.
Like the witch, she cupped Jeanne’s breasts. “And to nurse, as well. When my dear cousin’s lord gives her his child, she can have you mated again, just to milk you for it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What a passive trollop you are!”
The magic hummed with Yseult’s arousal at a girl who softened to her, instead of fighting back.
Her hand slid between Jeanne’s thighs, then her nether lips. Jeanne juiced onto it anew before it withdrew. “I can smell you, peasant slut.” Yseult’s thoughts thickened, darkened, reddened.
“Yes, M-m-mademoiselle.” Jeanne gasped as Yseult found her clitoris.
“Ma . . . ngh . . . Mademoiselle?” The need was real, and sweeter than the finger in her.
Yseult looked closer, and her finger paused. “What, slut?”
“I—” She swallowed, more able to think. Their faces were close, and Yseult’s was lean and lovely like a Madonna’s in church. “I know my place, Mademoiselle.
“I live only to please my betters. I am born to serve and I am learning to obey.
“I will be on my knees before you, Mademoiselle.”
She stared into Yseult’s triumphantly unblinking eyes, felt her avid breath.
“Please, Mademoiselle.” Jeanne spasmed as the magic kicked within her and reached out for Yseult. “Tell this unworthy slut how to obey!”
Yseult’s pupils dilated and her nostrils flared. “Kneel.”
Jeanne sank down, displaying herself, becoming the whore Yseult coveted. Yseult undressed without looking away from her.
When her cleft was bare, Jeanne leaned forward and kissed deeply, making Yseult grunt. She thrust herself onto Jeanne’s face. The magic had wrapped itself around Yseult’s mind, melting her into what it wanted.
Jeanne licked her deeper into its power.
It was the magic, not either girl’s will, that finally bent Yseult away from Jeanne’s lips and pushed Jeanne down to crawl behind her. Yseult’s mind by then was a dumbly pulsing honeypot. The magic slid Jeanne up between Yseult’s thighs, and she found the other girl’s smaller hole. She tongued it, deaf to Yseult’s wail and numb to the way her thighs tightened.
The magic kept Yseult standing. Soon, her cries grew quieter.
5.
Yseult clapped once.
The other ladies of Melisande’s court gasped when Jeanne emerged into the tower room.
“Do you want to get her whipped?” one asked.
As if told not to look at them or speak to them unless bidden, Jeanne only stood still, holding the tray, staring at the blue sky out the slit window. The breeze was cold on her skin, reminding her how little she wore.
“Yseult likes to whip her own girls, Mireille,” said another. “So I imagine this is for us.”
“Serve these ladies,” Yseult commanded.
“Yes, Mademoiselle.” Jeanne kept her eyes down as she obeyed, handing a porcelain cup of mead to each of the attendants. They were other noble but poor relations of hers, like Yseult, high-bred and lovely. They eyed her with amusement and idle desire.
Yseult had given her a tabard of something thinner than linen and sheer, and nothing to wear beneath it. It barely came down to her thighs, and the little sash that belted it drew it up. It was so thin that her pussy was visible anyway.
She was surprised when no one touched her, but they deferred to Yseult, letting this be her play. “Tasty wench,” the first girl, Mireille, observed. “Ripe melons above sweet peaches. A little muscular, but . . .”
“A perfect village slave,” Yseult told them. “Strong body, weak mind. It took her less than a sandglass to become utterly devoted.”
“How did you teach her?”
Yseult stood up. “A conjurer’s trick I saw as a child.” She gestured without looking, and Jeanne stiffened, letting her eyes go faraway. “Fetch the amulet.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle.” Jeanne dampened as she obeyed, feeling the honey cool on her lips. She knew the young noblewomen saw it inflame her, and the flow quickened. Curtseying, she presented Yseult with the little golden disk on its fine chain, and stood to await new orders.
“Does the girl know what you will do to her, Yseult?”
“No, Catherine. Each time, I bid her forget, and each time she is readier to obey.”
The ladies murmured excitedly. This must be different than Yseult’s usual games.
“Kneel.”
The floor was smooth under Jeanne’s knees. She kept her back straight and her eyes lowered.
“Look up now,” said Yseult more softly. It sounded almost playful, but the other girls, hearing the edge, laughed nervously.
Jeanne’s gaze floated up as though the gentler command had seduced her, and she gaped at the amulet as it spun over her head. It caught a ray of light from the afternoon sun through one of the slit windows and flashed it through the room with each spin.
“Yes, you dull-witted little whore,” Yseult crooned. “See only the disk. Watch it spin.” Jeanne moved her head a little, as through trying to look away but forgetting how. She swayed on her knees, gaping up at the bauble. The young noblewomen laughed at her fascination, but quietly.
“See it spin, see it sparkle, see it shine. So pretty to watch. So pretty . . .”
“So pretty . . .” Jeanne’s lips repeated Yseult’s chant, without the force to say them aloud.
Yseult told her how rapt she was, how riveting and lovely the amulet was, and then told Jeanne of the wonders of sleep and obedience that she would soon enjoy. The older girl’s voice stroked and caressed her.
The room seemed to fill with the flicker of the spinning disk on is chain and the quiet hammering of Yseult’s words, promising rest and oblivion in exchange for a surrendered mind. When Yseult suggested her hands were lighter and floating to her shoulders, they were, and Jeanne never looked away from the mesmerizing amulet.
Tirelessly Yseult twirled it and droned on in her lulling voice. Jeanne felt no soreness as she knelt and stared up as if worshipping.
Then Yseult stopped, and palmed the amulet. Without being told, Jeanne rose and looked around.
Each of the other ladies-in-waiting sat limp and expressionless, eyes closed. Two of them still smiled faintly. They might have seen the others fall under the spell first, or even felt themselves succumbing, and it amused them to be so gullible.
The yellow-eyed witch’s control of Jeanne’s thoughts had shielded her, and Yseult was a puppet of the magic Jeanne had licked into her, or both of them would be just as helplessly entranced.
Yseult stood still and empty. Jeanne left her staring and went to the first of the slumbering attendants. Her cunt was already dripping, from playing naked slave-wench before them, and from knowing she was obeying Goddess’ will.
Dipping a fingertip into herself, she put it to the girl’s lips and bent down to kiss her ear and whisper. In a moment the highborn girl was sighing and gasping, and in another she was reaching under her garments with dreamy, unhurried speed. The words flowed from Jeanne’s bewitched mind to her lips. She barely knew what she told the girl, only that it pleased the witch and convinced her victim. Soon the girl was trembling to her own touch.
Jeanne kissed her to swallow the cry, and stepped quietly to the next. None of the other women would hear anything or move until told. None of them could resist, or help each other.
She heard footsteps, as the spell that controlled Yseult moved her to watch the door. The magic wiped it from Jeanne’s thoughts, and she went on from woman to woman, turning each one into another pawn. They did not yet belong to Goddess—only one of Her witches could make a woman Her utter slave—but their minds were in bondage to any of Her servants. They would obey without question.
After Jeanne had enthralled them, they left without speaking. Whatever they thought they remembered of Yseult and her toy would be on top of the commands that made an endless carillon in their minds.
Jeanne herself could no longer recall the commands. The magic had used her to install them, and now it only needed her to control Yseult. Once she had the older girl find her more modest frock, she let Yseult lead her to Lady Melisande’s chamber.
Melisande looked curiously at her newest girl, seeing Jeanne for the first time in her own apartments.
“Ah. The lovely little gift to me from my lord’s good people.” Her voice was kind. It would have soothed Jeanne, if the witch had left her still able to need soothing.
“Jeanne is docile but very nervous, dear cousin.” Yseult stroked Jeanne’s shoulder in its borrowed linen like someone absently calming a cat. Yseult sounded so aware, mindlessly reciting what pleasure had etched into her.
Jeanne kept her eyes down as the other girl continued. “Such a meek and obedient girl should know she serves a gentle lady.”
Melisande drew near. This time her slim hand took Jeanne’s chin and drew up her gaze. The magic followed the Lady’s touch into her thoughts. She was still charmed into adoring her new maid.
“Dear timid child. Do you fear offending me?”
She leaned in and kissed Jeanne’s cheek, more than ever reminding her of Maman. If her will had been free, Jeanne would have wept.
“Pauvre petite. I know you will only please me, Jeanne.”
Jeanne loved Maman. Maman was a slave, who had raised her from childhood to be enslaved beside her. If Lady Melisande were as loving and tender as her mother was, it was sheer bliss to be Goddess’ tool to make Melisande as obedient as Maman had become.
If the witches had no further use for Jeanne after this, she might well be kept to wet-nurse the Lady’s child. A daughter, whom Melisande obediently would lead naked and entranced to Her altar at the Stones, a few Midsummers hence.
Jeanne was only a slave, without permission to long for it. The thought passed. Obedience remained.
“My Lady,” she breathed, gazing at her mistress in wonder as the magic coiled inside her.
6.
“I must pray my office now,” Melisande told her. She smiled, like a little girl; perhaps she was not as diligent at her prayers as her confessor wished. “I would go to the pilgrims’ cloister to greet some wayfarers lately come, but it would only be a pretext.
“And they are mendicant nuns, who will praise me for my piety in staying.” Her smile was more playful now, and Jeanne thought of Therese the weaver’s daughter, tempting her to play with her mind.
“Mireille and Catherine will bring them refreshment with my blessing. Go and help them, Jeanne, and return to me.”
“My Lady!” Jeanne curtseyed deeply, and Melisande only sighed to see such devotion from her simple peasant maid.
Yseult said nothing. Her face was as empty as her mind, whenever her cousin’s gaze was elsewhere.
In the kitchen below, Jeanne found the two ladies-in-waiting. They smiled condescendingly at her, remembering only what her commands allowed them to: herself, naked on her knees under Yseult’s amulet-trance. But they all served their Lady, and she was an especially willing pair of hands, and she took up the tray of food they told her to and followed them to the pilgrims’ cloister where the visitors were lodged.
The nuns of this order wore grey habits, and most seemed lost in prayer as the three maidservants entered. A young novice let them in, but drifted listlessly away. Mireille and Catherine looked around, whispering to each other how drowsy the nuns seemed, as if they all longed to sleep but could not.
“Are they fasting?” Catherine suddenly looked guiltily at the food they’d brought, then at Jeanne as though it were somehow her fault.
Mireille stopped and knelt by an older nun with a round, pleasant face but dull eyes, and her own looked troubled. The woman stared right through her, even when she went down on one knee and softly asked her health.
“As though under a spell,” she whispered, looking up at Catherine.
Watching them, Jeanne felt something reach into her, making her soft and open and slick. When the other will entered her she tightened around it. At its silent command, she set her platter down without the other girls’ leave. Mireille and Catherine looked at her, clinging amid all this strangeness to their scorn for her. Catherine opened her mouth to rebuke her.
“Sleep,” she told them. She saw the amulet spin in their minds before they surrendered to it. Both girls quietly closed their eyes. None of the grey-robed nuns reacted.
Jeanne walked further to where her body was drawn, finding an elderly sister in a small candlelit room, attended by three novices her own age. Two of them were glassy-eyed, staring at the candles. The third smiled at her with interest, before looking back at the old woman.
The elderly nun, unlike the rest, seemed to be fighting the lethargy that owned her flock. She blinked at Jeanne’s curtsey, clinging to protocol in her confusion.
“My thanks to your Lady for welcoming us so. We . . . our journey was to Provence but this morning I . . .” She blinked again, trying to remember. “I was told . . . it was as if I was told . . . that I must come to this place. And wait to be told . . .” Her eyes apologized to Jeanne as her thoughts fled.
The bright-eyed novice stood. Almost leering at her teacher, she said unctuously, “Mother Superior, now you must rest. Rest and sleep and stop thinking. Rest.”
“Resssst . . .” The other two girls, rapt in the flames they watched, breathed it together. Slumber slid over Jeanne’s body like a seductive oil. If she weren’t already a slave, she would have crumpled to the floor in sleep to obey it.
It was then that she saw the novice’s eyes were yellow.
Amazingly, the Mother Superior still resisted sleep, but it was an old struggle. The witch-novice smiled more harshly as she watched the older woman lose once more, and Jeanne saw that was why she did it so. The old nun looked at her appealingly—the enchantment kept her from knowing who held her in thrall.
Tiring of the game, the young witch flicked her hand and the Mother Superior melted back into the sheets with a sigh. The witch reached down and moved her fingertips on the sleeper’s forehead until a foolish smile opened below her closed eyes.
“Dream of Elizabeth this time,” the witch whispered, and then turned to Jeanne.
Jeanne jerked where she stood as the yellow eyes reached into her thoughts, dazed with the orgasm and its suddenness. Suddenly she knew she was everyone’s toy. Once given to Goddess, she walked the world like every other of Her mares, harnessed by whichever of Her priestesses found her handy and useful at any time. Obeying that Mistress until released.
But this witch did not claim her, only ensured she was still harnessed. Why she was here was nothing a slave needed to wonder about.
Jeanne stood quietly, free of need to do anything but enjoy being controlled. Her mind was wet and sweetly aching from the sudden thrust of use. The beautiful young witch leered at her, feeling her breast in the same demeaning way Yseult had done. “But you have some tasks to perform,” she sighed.
She squeezed, and Jeanne gasped. “Fetch the ones who brought you.”
Jeanne swayed out to the larger room of drowsy nuns and came to the pair of damsels she’d left dreamlessly asleep on their feet.
“Come,” she told them. Their eyes opened with no wit in them, and Mireille and Catherine stepped toward her, their lissome bodies as sluggish as oxen in the trance. Jeanne marveled and moistened at women so controlled that they obeyed her.
She was only a slave. The thought passed. Obedience remained.
Back in the candlelit room, the witch had put the two novices all the way to sleep, and they curled on either side of the Mother Superior. When Catherine and Mireille stood before her, the witch considered them both. She didn’t make them strip, but seemed more interested to gaze into their eyes.
Then, still staring into space, Catherine began slowly to undress.
“Yes,” Jeanne and Mireille suddenly said, together.
“Catherine chose to remain with the nuns to pray.” In Jeanne’s mind it was already true, truer than the girl disrobing blankly before her. “She is a most pious maiden.”
“We remember that clearly,” Jeanne said in harmony with Mireille.
The witch made a delighted sound as the last clothing slid down. She looked at Catherine’s slim thighs and the pale fur where they met, then gazed up her belly to the breasts’ even motion as she breathed.
“Splendid,” the witch whispered to herself. “We will breed this.
“Maybe she’ll have a vocation.” A laugh. “And when we leave this stone mausoleum we’ll bring her with us as a new postulant.” She didn’t look away from Catherine, but Jeanne felt her mind ravished and ransacked again.
“Goddess favors me. This noble wench has no other role for Her after this shadowplay ends.
“She’s mine.”
Catherine stepped forward like a sleepwalker and began slowly to help the witch out of her novice’s habit. Jeanne and Mireille calmly turned and walked out, not blinking as their nude companion sank to her knees and began to lick. The two girls left the cloister, no longer paying attention to the dream-chained sisters there. The sisters, of course, had no will to pay attention to them.
Nevertheless, for a moment, Mireille seemed to hesitate.
In her trance, she was more alive to what the nuns recited as they knelt or sat. Her bound mind could hear the sinful antiphons the witch had etched onto their souls. They were fingers teasing her brain. They tempted her to join the enthralled nuns in prayer, silently longing to be summoned to serve the witch as Catherine did. Or in stranger ways.
But Mireille was slaved to Jeanne’s voice first, and she would remain thus until Goddess had used her. She kept walking, and nothing stayed in her mind but readiness for Jeanne’s next command.
The magic kept Jeanne’s mind still, and she spoke no command for a while.
They ascended the keep to attend their Lady.
7.
Lady Melisande was at her bath.
In the anteroom the other ladies of her court, less Catherine, stood genteel guard. Before attending her Lady, the magic had spoken to them through Jeanne. They thought of nothing now but keeping the Lady undisturbed.
Within, Yseult was nude behind her in the lamplight, and both highborn cousins smiled at Jeanne’s shyness to see them. Yseult went to her when she hesitated, coaxing her from her own clothes. She soon had Jeanne bringing warm water from the hearth to the tub where Melisande soaked. Yseult was little but obedience now, but the Lady saw only her loving cousin beguiling a virgin.
It all lulled Jeanne into servile contentment. She waited serenely for commands—from her betters or from the witch-harness within her.
“Such lovely breasts,” Melisande said eventually.
Yseult washed her shoulders. “Healthy udders on a fine young cow.”
“Yseult!” Melisande mock-slapped at her but smiled. Jeanne’s subservience and the warmth and Yseult’s massage sedated Lady Melisande out of worrying more about it.
That and her own deep submission stiffened Jeanne’s nipples. It inflamed her to see how the sight made her Ladyship’s do the same.
The noblewoman was transfixed for now. Jeanne raised her eyes and captured Yseult’s. Instantly the other girl’s sneer softened to placid obedience, unseen by Melisande. The magic spoke, and Yseult’s mind listened.
“Tame little calf,” Yseult purred. The Lady didn’t reproach her this time, only nodded dreamily. Yseult smiled, empty-eyed, and eased her hips forward. As Lady Melisande’s head lolled back, it rested against her belly.
“Ready for milking,” Yseult murmured. Their Lady’s eyelids fluttered as the thought shivered through her.
“Put the pail aside and drink from her.” It was a raw little whisper, and now Melisande was staring. The bathwater rippled a little under her own breasts as she panted.
“She’s so still,” the noblewoman whispered back, to cherish Jeanne’s apparent daze.
“As if she’d been given a sleeping dr—oh, cousin! You didn’t—!”
“Hush, dear cousin.” Yseult soothed her back into the warm water. “Shhh. I’d hardly waste expensive potions on some village strumpet. No . . . our Jeanne is just eager to please, and easy to persuade. One can do so much to the simple peasant mind.”
“Did you steal her wits, Yseult?” Melisande sounded amused, but also a little sad. “Magic is a sin, either venial or mortal . . .”
“No, noble cousin.” Yseult spoke the implanted words gleefully. “Only made her trust them to me.
“Do you want her? I can draw her closer, for suckling.”
Melisande shuddered. “Those are s-sinful games too.” But she sighed . . .
“My confessor has said so.
“And I would not force a maid.” She swallowed. “Not with fear or with—this.” Jeanne found herself liking her Lady still more. She realized Yseult had loved her cousin truly, before the magic.
She smiled sleepily at the good woman she served, and felt the magic flick Yseult’s reins.
“A girl like this needs no forcing,” whispered Yseult. Her fingertip on Melisande’s left breast was so light the distracted Lady had no idea why she felt so aroused.
“Jeanne,” Yseult said more loudly, as if commanding her.
Jeanne blinked. “Ohhh—oh! I must have drifted . . . your pardon, my Lady!” She blushed and squirmed a little.
It charmed Melisande. “Bathing relaxes one, little Jeanne. So much better if it relaxes us all.”
Jeanne kept her eyes wide and astonished. “Thank you, my Lady! Mademoiselle Yseult also spoke to me of relaxation, while I washed myself!” She beamed gratefully at Yseult, who looked blankly back and awaited the next compulsion, while stroking Melisande’s neck and shoulders.
“Tell her of that,” urged Yseult’s mouth.
Melisande nodded encouragingly.
“But I remember so little!” Jeanne giggled, abashed. “I was watching the water as Yseult said.” She looked down at the water now, still again before Melisande’s breasts, and they all watched the soft glow of the reflected lamps.
“How beautifully the candles reflect in it like stars, like the moon . . .”
“Yes, Jeanne,” Yseult said. “The moon . . . think of the moon . . .”
“Mooooon,” Jeanne breathed, feeling her eyes go wider still. Melisande’s breathing deepened.
“I found . . . one light . . . like one moon . . . onnnnne moooon . . .” Jeanne let it repeat for a while. Presently the water stilled. Her Ladyship was relaxed in the warm still water under Yseult’s warm rhythmic hands. Seeing only one light, obediently forgetting all the others.
The magic reached through Yseult’s captive mind and stroking fingers, to read Melisande. The Lady was deep in trance, trusting and suggestible.
“Onnnnne moooon” . . . Melisande’s whisper was slower and dreamier than hers.
“One moon, yes.” A new ritual for making slaves grew like a vine from Jeanne’s womb to her lips.
“Look at the moon, my Lady. Look at the moon. There is only the moon.
“The moon rules the tide. The moon rules the ride. The tide obeys the moon.” Jeanne had never seen a tide. She just obeyed the stronger will inside her and let Goddess’ truths drip from her mouth.
Melisande, bare-breasted and blank-eyed and lovely, stared at empty water. Her arms floated before her, just below the surface, unheeded. She had forgotten the bath. Forgotten herself.
“The tide is our blood,” Jeanne murmured. Melisande was already repeating it.
“Our blood rules us.”
“Blood . . . rules . . . us . . .” Melisande convinced herself, nodding.
Behind her, Yseult was a mindless sentinel. She needed nothing to bind her gaze.
“One moon.” Jeanne watched it stun Melisande.
“Onnnnne . . . moooon . . .” Her Ladyship groaned as if touching herself, never looking away from the reflected light. As Jeanne whispered to her, the hypnotized noblewoman recited her new lessons with increasing fervor.
Melisande knew only the dream-moon. She combined the truths. “The moon rules my tide. I obey the moon with my blood.”
She sighed rapturously. “Look at the moon—and obey . . .”
For a long time, Jeanne let her recite. Less and less did the maidservant need to instruct her Lady: Melisande was an apt pupil. Her thoughtful eyes widened as she believed it more each time. Jeanne watched her send herself deeper.
It faded, as Melisande lapsed into a more passive trance. A moment’s worry, as Melisande sensed her maid’s emptier thoughts . . . then her brow smoothed and she smiled vacantly, accepting.
“We must obey the moon,” Jeanne told her.
“We must obey the moon.”
They all waited quietly. The still water dimly mirrored Lady Melisande, who simpered at nothing with unfocussed eyes.
Jeanne let her drift. Her Lady was not yet ready for the last truth, worshipping Her Who ruled the moon they obeyed. But she was soft now, and would not resist reshaping.
A glance activated Yseult. Expressionless, she bent from the waist and dipped her hands into the water without rousing the sleeper.
“Cousin?” she breathed into Melisande’s ear, while feather-tapping her nipples. The Lady jerked in the water, eyes suddenly wide as she threw her head back against Yseult’s belly.
Dazed and abashed, Melisande looked up at Yseult as she came back to herself, deciding she’d only dreamed it. Then Melisande looked at Jeanne.
Jeanne gazed back at her adoringly, and it was real. The girl she’d been, before looking into yellow eyes, would have been Melisande’s devoted puppy. Even now Jeanne knew how kind and wise and beautiful this earthly mistress was.
It was joy to deliver her to Goddess’ control.
When the light was brighter in the Lady’s eyes, she sighed and made to rise.
“We must obey the moon,” Jeanne said softly.
Water sloshed as Melisande collapsed, staring. “We mussst . . . obeyyyy . . . mmmoonnn . . .”
“Awaken.”
Melisande’s eyelids fluttered. She looked confused, but shook it off as they helped her out and began to dry her slim, firm limbs and body.
“We must obey the moon.”
Both girls caught Melisande as it melted her. She could barely repeat it now, but tried to, fervently, in an erotic gasp.
More slowly than before, she woke when told. She blinked at them, remembering nothing.
She submitted to it twice more on the way to her bed. At the last she managed only a soft moan. The magic told Jeanne that the Lady was ready.