Part 3
Rough hands dragged the two novice nuns towards the blacksmith’s shack. It was one of the few structures in Medesham that wasn’t on fire, but the blacksmith that Eulalia remembered was nowhere to be seen. The new man was a Dane, travelling with the army, and he wasn’t best pleased at being roused from his cups in the middle of the night.
“Kneel,” he yelled, irritably, pushing Eulalia down in front of a stone block. He pressed her further down, so her head was level with the block, while one of her captors placed the two halves of an iron collar around her neck. By the light of flaming torches, the blacksmith bashed rivets to hold the two parts together, his heavy hammer throwing up sparks. Eulalia hoped he wasn’t as drunk as he appeared; one misplaced blow would shatter her skull like an egg.
Someone pulled her backwards by her hair and her feet were held on the block, while shackles were riveted onto her ankles. When they eventually let her up, she felt the weight of iron on her neck. A short length of chain joined the shackles at her feet, so she would be able to walk, but certainly not run. One of the Danes tied her hands behind her back with a leather lace and shoved her roughly to one side. “Stand there!” he barked, holding onto the chain that hung down from the front of her collar.
Now it was Candida’s turn to go through the same ordeal. She was much less stoic than her friend and whimpered through the whole process, till someone shouted at her to be quiet. Once she was chained, the two slaves were taken back to the monastery and put in the granary, a little way apart from a dozen other women who were restrained the same way. Their neck chains were nailed to a post and one of the Danes untied their hands.
“We’re light sleepers,” he warned with a leery grin. “Don’t try to get away.”
“Nuns,” one of the older women said contemptuously, seeing them in the light of the warriors’ torches. “They’ll fetch a good price from the slavers. Young, pretty, virgins – ripe for some old man to fuck.”
Beside Eulalia in the darkness, Candida sobbed. “Why did we come back here? We could have stayed hidden, now we’ll be sold and who knows what will happen to us.”
Eulalia put her arm around her friend and pulled her close. There was a sick feeling in her stomach, which came with the thought that Candida might be right. Eulalia had overestimated the bargaining power they had; the bastard Danes had taken the money, but the girls would still be slaves.
They could have stayed hidden and waited for the heathen army to pass. And then what? The Danes held land to the north and were pushing south. All around them, the burnt out shells of everything they had ever known. How long would they have survived?
“At least we’re alive, we still have our clothes, the Danes will feed us. One day the chance will come and we’ll escape. We just have to be patient.”
It was tough to sleep in chains on the hard floor and Eulalia could only doze, in between periods of wakefulness, worrying about what was to come. At daybreak, the Danes brought stale bread mashed in milk. The slaves ate in silence and were then rounded up and taken outside.
The early morning light revealed the full horror of what had happened the previous day. Buildings were still burning and the stench of smoke and death was even stronger. Eulalia saw that the prioress had been stripped naked, tied to her own whipping post and was now hanging there dead, with her guts cascading out of her slit belly. On the other side of the post, the abbess had met a similar fate.
Some townsfolk who had survived the slaughter were being coerced into collecting the bodies of those that hadn’t. A pair of carts trundled past piled with corpses and it was clear to Eulalia that many, if not all of the monks had been butchered. There were women too, mostly naked, their bodies streaked with blood and heaven knows what else.
A Dane came now, one who seemed to be in charge. The other men called him Ásgeirr. He gave orders in a sharp, gravelly rasp and everyone ran to do his bidding.
“These women,” he growled, indicating the two novices, “those clothes are too fine for slaves, we can sell the cloth. Find them something else and cut their hair”
The girls were stripped and put into short, rough hessian tunics, which barely covered their buttocks. A man came with crude shears and cut their hair short. Then their hands were tied behind their backs again and the chain hanging from Eulalia’s collar was hooked onto the back of the collar on the woman in front. She felt Candida being attached behind her in the same way.
The line of chained women began to move, shuffling their feet as fast as they could, but not fast enough for the Danes, who harried them with sticks and the points of their swords. About twenty men were assigned to accompany the party and, as far as Eulalia could tell, they were headed north.
She heard one of the men say “Jorvik”. All she knew of that place was snippets overheard in conversations between travellers. It was one of the markets where the Danes took their slaves to be sold, to be shipped across the sea to places she had never heard of and a fate she could scarcely imagine.
The men, shod in heavy leather boots, were used to marching long distances, while their captives, in soft shoes or sandals, found their footwear shredded by sharp stones on the rough tracks. By noon, when they stopped briefly for water and more stale bread, Eulalia had kicked her tattered sandals away and was walking barefoot. By nightfall, when they reached Bourn, her feet were bleeding and every step was agony.
Exhausted and hungry, the women were herded into a barn and chained to the wall. Later girls from the inn brought them bowls of lukewarm stew.
“What is this?” Candida asked, as she fished an unidentifiable lump out of the watery mess.
“I think it was intended for the pigs,” Eulalia replied. “At least they gave us something.”
Candida grimaced, but continued eating. She had to agree, anything was better than nothing. Having emptied the bowl, she lay back on a pile of straw. “We’re going to die, aren’t we? I know it.”
“No!” Eulalia exclaimed vehemently. “We are not going to die. We will get our chance, we just have to be patient.”
Next day was a copy of the first. They reached Sleaford shortly before sunset and were dumped in another barn, for another meal of stewed pigswill.
The Danes set up a makeshift camp by the inn and got drunk. Eulalia could hear them singing and telling stories. They kept her awake.
At last it went quiet. She was just drifting off to sleep when a noise made her open her eyes. Looking round, she saw six men in the doorway, framed by the moonlight outside.
“Whaddya think?” one of them slurred, “the li’ll blonde one, the li’ll nun, she likes me. I gave her cunt a tickle when she fell and she shouted after me, she said she wants me.”
One of his companions laughed. “You idiot, Thorfinn. She told you to go fuck a pig. You should listen more carefully.”
“So, she wants to be fucked like a pig...” Thorfinn lurched forward, the others laughing and trying to hold him back.
“Ásgeirr said the nuns are to be kept as virgins, Halfdan’s orders.”
“Halfdan’s not here, Ásgeirr is snoring like a bull and we can fuck her in the arse. No one will care.”
Candida was awake now and cowered back as the predators approached, but the collar and chain limited her chances of escape. Thorfinn grabbed her legs and flipped her over onto her front. One of the other Danes stuffed cloth into her mouth and held onto her wrists, while another pressed down on her ankles.
“Leave her alone,” Eulalia cried, launching herself at one of the attackers and pulling at his leg. The big Dane turned and smacked her across the face with the back of his hand. She fell back, stunned, tasting blood in her mouth.
“This one wants some too,” the Dane shouted, turning her over the same as Thorfinn had done to Candida. Someone pulled Eulalia’s head up by her hair and also stuffed her mouth with cloth. She tried to kick, but her legs were quickly pinned and her tunic pushed up to her armpits. Her attacker reached round, found her nipples, pinched them between his thumbs and forefingers and twisted them viciously. Eulalia squealed, despite her stuffed mouth. The other women pretended to be asleep.
She heard the Dane behind her spit onto his hand and felt him push wet fingers into her anus. That was bad enough, but he spat again and the fingers were replaced by the slimy head of his cock. He worked his way into her slowly, but with a strong, insistent brutality that took her breath away and made her scream for him to stop.
Now he had gone in as far as he could go, he pulled right back and thrust in harder and, for him, more easily. Eulalia screamed louder, sure he was ripping her anus apart as the humping became faster and ever more urgent. At last he let out a drawn out groan and she felt hot liquid pumping, it seemed, right into her bowels.
There was a moment of traumatised relaxation and relief before the horrified novice realised the Danes were swapping over and she would have to go through it all again. Every chance she got, she kicked and struggled, but it was no use and the collar meant she had nowhere to go. Another cock pushed its way into her passage, finding it lubricated and a little stretched by the previous invasion. That just meant longer thrusts and harder pummelling until the attacker yelled in triumph and hosed another stream of hot semen towards her belly.
As they moved round to prepare for the third rape, Eulalia had given up any thought of fighting. This didn’t suit the Danes, who liked their victims struggling and crying. The one that had been holding her ankles went away and came back with a stick, which he used to prod her sides and beat her across her shoulders. The would-be rapist slapped her buttocks and thighs, yelling “Come on piggy, squeal for your master.” Eulalia just cried, until they gave up with the torments and got back to the main business.
She felt the entrance of the new man’s penis, resisting hopelessly as it scoured her insides, but it was like it was happening to someone else. Her mouth was dry, all her saliva having soaked into the gag, and her throat was sore from screaming. She sobbed and whimpered helplessly, until the violation had run its course.
The men left, laughing and congratulating one another on their prowess, leaving the nuns lying face down, limbs splayed at random angles, a mixture of semen and blood seeping gently from their backsides. One of the Danes came back later with a cup of watery ale that he held to their lips and let them drink. When he had gone, Eulalia sank back onto the straw, wondering if she would ever again be able to sleep.
There was a stone horse trough outside the inn and, in the morning, the women were allowed to wash, but for the two novice nuns, the continuation of their journey was still uncomfortable and humiliating. On top of the reamed out, sore, stretched feeling that seemed to get worse with every step, they had to endure the lewd comments and knowing grins of their assailants. Thorfinn, especially, made a point of staying with the nuns, groping their buttocks under their short tunics and whispering obscenities into their ears whenever he could.
The miserable day wore on until, in the late afternoon, they came to Lincylene.
This place was bigger, more like Medesham, with a large church and a busy market. The women spent the night in a stable, while the Danes got drunk at the inn. The rape, mercifully, was not repeated.
In the morning, Ásgeirr lined the slaves up on a dais in the market. There had been an argument between him and his subordinates, whether to trek another 60 miles to Jorvik, as Halfdan Ragnarsson had ordered, or to get what they could for the slaves here and go back to rejoin the fighting.
Eventually Ásgeirr was persuaded. “Another three days will kill them,” he conceded. “We will sell them here and Halfdan can go fuck himself.”
It was a risk, but not a huge one. The River Witham was sufficient for shallow-draught vessels, such as the Danish long ships, to moor close to the centre. The place attracted traders and merchants from all over the known world, but they would not be specifically looking for slaves. Those types would go to Jorvik, while here it would be more like passing trade.
Candida seemed ill at ease. "I came here sometimes, as a child," she said, when Eulalia asked what was the matter. "We lived less than ten miles away, on the edge of the fens. Before I was sent away, to be a nun."
The prospective clients were mostly men, some local, some from overseas. They took a close interest in the young nuns, opening their mouths, inspecting their teeth, paying particular attention to their breasts, which could be explored under their tunics, and their vaginas. Eulalia found the poking and probing demeaning and she almost wanted to be bought, so it would stop. But, it didn’t happen. The customers thought the girls were too young, too thin, not robust enough for whatever labours they had in mind. Some of the other, tougher-looking women were bought and gradually the length of the line reduced.
Around noon, a woman arrived, accompanied by two young men. She was quite richly dressed in the way of an Anglo Saxon ealdorman’s wife. Her head was covered with a shawl and, having noticed Candida, seemed to go to lengths to conceal her face. She sent one of the young men to investigate.
“What is your name?” he asked the novice, staring at her intently. Candida stayed tight-lipped, until one of the Danes hit her in the stomach with a stick. "Answer him," he snarled.
“Candida, Sir” she replied.
“You were a nun then? What was your name before?”
“I was a novice, at Medesham. My name was Hwita.”
“And you?” he asked, turning to Eulalia.
“Eulalia, but my name before was Aelf.”
“And you were at Medesham too?”
“Yes,” Eulalia said, “we were both there and we are friends.”
The man went back to … it was difficult to say who she was or what their relationship might be, but the woman was clearly in charge. She continued to conceal her face, while her younger emissary took two bags, apparently full of silver, and went to negotiate with Ásgeirr.
The haggling took some time. Ten ounces of silver would be a fair price for a female slave, but the young man offered eighteen ounces for the two. Ásgeirr played on the nuns’ virginity and his intuition that the woman, for some reason, wanted those two girls in particular. He held out for twenty two ounces and, after a lot of shouting by the Saxon and dismissive laughter by the Dane, Ásgeirr got his price.
If Eulalia was hoping that the handover from slave trader to owner would provide a chance of escape, she was disappointed. The Saxon men led the girls to an open wagon and pushed them into the back, fastening their neck chains to hooks on the underside, out of reach. They sprawled at the back of the cart, sharing the space with large sacks of grain, that had clearly been the principal reason for the trip. The two young men and the mysterious woman took their places on the bench at the front and the cart, drawn by a large and powerful horse, began to move.
The party soon left Lincylene and made their way across the flat, dank landscape, a little to the north of the river. The girls lay quietly, trying not to think about the fate that might await them, but it became obvious to Eulalia that, the longer the journey continued, the more tense and unhappy her friend became. She wouldn't be drawn on the reason, though, she just sat hunched against a grain sack, looking miserable. After an hour of tense silence, Eulalia could stand it no longer.
“Candida, we're in this together. Whatever it is that troubles you, you have to tell me.”
“It's just that ... I'm sure I know that woman,” Candida replied, her face white with fear. “I know this place and I know where we’re going. This was my father’s land.”
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, maybe as the story progresses I will find some time. So far we have the story of a simple girl forced to steal to support herself
