Arii's Travels Ch. 06

The world seemed to swim in and out of focus. She felt herself being lifted, heard a sound of clanking and another sound of sloshing, but Arii was unaware of what was happening. She was hiding somewhere safe, where it didn't hurt any more, and that was where she wanted to stay.

Eventually, though, she had to come out again. She was in the inner room, sat laxly in a tin bath that was filled to waist height with warm water, and Seth was washing her gently with a cake of rough soap. By the light of a single candle, she saw that the two of them were alone together.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, and burst into tears before Seth could answer. She sobbed as though her heart would break while Seth finished soaping and rinsing every inch of her, and lifted her out onto a rough off-white towel. "Why did you do that? I was keeping my side of the bargain, I was pleasing all of you – wasn't I?"

"You were," Seth said gently.

"Then why – why – why?" Arii demanded between sobs. "Just for the fun of being cruel?"

He picked her up, wrapped in the towel, and sat on the bed, holding her. She huddled, not wanting to be touched ever again, not by Seth, not by anybody else. "Well, if it was just for that, it wasn't against anything I promised," Seth said, "but it was for a reason. Maybe two reasons."

"I don't understand," sobbed Arii.

"No, you don't," said Seth. "Mostly, you don't understand the difference between a prank and a crime. That's why I did that."

"Why? Because I was enjoying my punishment too much? So for it to be a proper punishment, I had to hurt? Or because I needed more punishment for being a slut?"

"That's not it, exactly," Seth said. "Remember how I told you about the price of a loaf of bread? That's when they find out who did it. I told you what we do to thieves. What I didn't tell you is what happens when nobody saw who did it.

"Now for a start, if you're seen running away from the scene of a crime, and someone yells 'Stop, thief!', or whatever, that's known as the hue and cry. Once the hue and cry's up, anyone can stop you how they like, and if you get hurt or killed, that's your look-out, whether or not you actually did anything.

"But if you do give yourself up, or get dragged in some other way, then there are ways and means, if there's no evidence against you. Sometimes they make you carry a red-hot horseshoe ten paces from the anvil. Then they bind your hands up and on the third day they see if you're burned. Or they get you to swear on the Bible that you're innocent, and the priest gives you a piece of the Host, because that won't go over a lying tongue. Otherwise they take the story to twelve good men and true to hear the case against you, and they have to agree that you're guilty.

"All very well, except that if you ask me, anyone who carries red-hot iron in his hands gets burnt, or if he doesn't, he's got the luck to know some knack that I don't, and it's got nothing to do with whether he's guilty of anything. Or if you've got a crowd looking on ready to swing you from the nearest tree, you're throat's too dry to swallow a hard crust. Or if you go before the jury, you need to hope you're not the village recluse, or a senile old woman who lives alone with just her cat, or a simpleton, or a stranger who looks a bit funny. You see, once a crime's been committed, people like to see someone punished for it."

"What's that got to do with me?" Arii asked.

"Enough," said Seth grimly. "You're light-fingered and soft-footed, and if you hadn't wanted to rub it in, I'm guessing you'd have got well away with our bread before we noticed a thing. That means, wherever you're around, there are likely to be unexplained crimes. Things going missing. Things that don't even seem important to you – but in a land where they'll stretch a man's neck for a lamb, never mind a sheep, or for a silver penny... If I thought that letting you go was going to mean even one innocent person getting the blame for something you'd done, I'd foreswear my oath, and my grandsire's ghost could damn me all he liked. So I came up with this, so you'd remember the lesson. Because anyone seized up for a crime he didn't commit would be really, really wishing to be let off with a fist-fucking and sent on his way. If it takes a piece of brutal cruelty to get the message home, then that's how it's got to be."

Arii looked at Seth through tearful eyes, and suddenly realized that he was hurting too. He couldn't look straight at her, and he was having to hold his voice unnaturally steady. "And then you go and spoil it," she murmured, "by making me see you had a reason."

"More than one reason," Seth answered. "We needed a lesson too. When we first chased after you, the blood was hot in us, as you might say, and we were eager to drag you off and put the frighteners on you. I don't know that we were meaning to follow through right then. Oh, but we did, and in cold blood, and plenty of it. Well, now the boys know what it is to be a rapist, and I hope it's not something we're going to forget, me included. We pushed it to the limit and far beyond until we came up with something violent and horrible. You should see them now, Arii. Guilt and remorse doesn't begin to cover it, Ned included. Well, if it's taught us that there are roads a man shouldn't tread, so much the better."

"May I have my clothes?"

"Of course."

Arii dressed in silence while Seth politely if illogically turned his back. She winced and gasped once or twice as her tight clothing rubbed on one part or another of her bruised body. "All right, I'm dressed," she said. "Seth?"

"What?"

"I know you'll never rape again. And I'll never steal."

She held out her hands to him and, as he stood up, clung to him as though he would save her from drowning.

************

Crowns and thrones have perished and kingdoms risen and waned since then, while my life has gone on unchanging. Seth, I believe, kept his word; I know I did. I never saw him again, though. The memory of the pain went away, although the lesson did not, but it was many years before I passed that way again and the oldest people I listened to barely remembered him. Such is the way of mortal men. He was born in the wrong time and place. He should have been a leader of men – No, Dair was the one that men would have followed, but Seth would have been the guiding light. Well, he is old bones now, as are they all. As for me...

It is in my nature to be able to remember the good and forget the bad. The pleasure, the excitement, that still remains. Pain, fright and degradation – yes, I must have felt those as well, but I have forgotten them. And while men have grown old and died, the memory of those five is still fresh in my mind: masterful Dair, deep Seth, innocent Benji and knowing Len, even cruel Ned. All is remembered without rancour or regret. In truth I believe I got myself caught that day – I know I got myself chased – and I was the richer for it. How fortunate I was, considering how much worse matters might have gone.

I never again wanted to be the plaything of five rough men, but I shed no tears for my lost innocence. Awakened, knowing what delight my body could bring to me and to others, there was no going back for me. Nor did I wish for any; not then, and not since. I have drunk deep at the well of bliss countless times, and yet, when I am alone with no lover but my own hand, I need only close my eyes and I am once again bound by the wrists, dragged bodily off to a rough cot in the woods, where a strong young man will remorselessly undress me and make me pay for my mischief.