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Count Storslat pulled off the sheets covering his wife Isabella, rolled her onto her back and pulled her nightgown up above her waist.
"No! Please, not again..." she sobbed.
He pushed her thighs apart and without a word, or any foreplay, massaged his cock until stiffly erect and thrust into her.
Isabella sobbed silently. Nearly every night since their marriage seven years earlier, he had made love, well no longer love, not even lust, any more. Just a routine, physical ritual attempt to sire a son and heir. Isabella desperately looked forward to those days when he drank himself into a stupor after a day's hunting and was carried to bed by his servants, or to that time of the month when the flowers were brought on, which no longer seemed a curse to her.
The Count had almost decided she was barren and infertile. He guiltily found himself hoping she might die, perhaps of some accident, so he could re-marry. Whilst he would not, of course, kill her he did start to neglect her, while his attempts to impregnate her took on a rougher, almost violent, aspect.
The Count's physician realised what might be so vexing his lord and felt pity for the Lady Isabella who had, of late, become increasingly prone to ailments and was becoming of an increasingly worn and haggard appearance. She was, it seemed, barely fed other than at public feasts and banquets; after which she often vomited back much of the rich food to which her digestive system had become unaccustomed.
"My Lord." The wise old man approached the subject carefully when the Count was in a good mood. "I have heard that there are still some people of the Old Religion who can help with fertility when a woman has been unable to conceive."
So it was that Count Storslat found himself riding, with only his Squire as company, into the densely wooded valleys where the Romans had once mined iron. A short bearded old man wearing a pointed hood answered their questions nervously, but eventually directed them to a cave in a steep ferny gully lined with moss covered rocks.
As they cautiously entered the cool dark cave a woman's voice echoed from within "Come alone, leave your squire outside."
Count Storslat hesitated, feeling as though the woman was expecting him. He sent his squire back then entered the small, dark, ominous cavern.
"What will you give me if I help you?" she questioned.
"I will decide that, once I hear what you say." The Count haughtily replied.
The woman, whose dark outline he could just about make out, told him that he could only conceive a child if he impregnated his wife with tenderness and love for her and that the union must take place on the night of a full moon in the house of a blacksmith.
"And now, my guest, what shall you pay me?" the woman asked. Count Storslat shivered a little, perhaps from the cold or perhaps because he found her strange soft voice so alluring.
"Your life" he replied. "The punishment for heathens and witches is a horrible and painful death. I have taken vows to defend the Faith from such as you. However my payment to you shall be my silence." At that he turned and stepped out into the daylight. For some reason he paused, with a sense that something was missing, or left undone. Turning back, his heart beating fast, he called to the woman whose presence he had found entrancing "What is your name?"
"Maleficent" her voice echoed back.
Lady Isabella was puzzled, yet delighted, as her husband became more attentive to her and less demanding of his sexual advances. She was even more puzzled as to why he decided they should have to ride many miles and spend the night at the cottage attached to a forge in a remote hillside village.
Their delight upon discovering that Lady Isabella was with child seemed to brighten the whole of their realm. The child's birth was the occasion of great feasting and celebration.
Silently the Count was disappointed that it was a girl, not the hoped for heir. However if, when she came of age, she married the right man, he might be able to ensure that his grant of dowry entailed her husband taking the name of Storslat, so continuing his line.
But he had to be sure. So on the evening after the child was christened Talia the Count again sought out the enchantress of the Old Religion.
"Maleficent!" he roared at the entrance of the gloomy cave.
The woman came to the entrance so he could see her beautiful pale face and long straight black hair almost shining in the dappled light of the setting sun. "What is the future for my newborn daughter, Talia? Who shall she marry? Can she ensure the future of the house of Storslat?"
The Count's heart quickened as her alluring lips parted with her reply. "Your daughter will grow beautiful and be loved by all who see her."
The Count nodded.
"But before she is of age she will be endangered by a splinter of flax and you will never see her married or bear a heir. You are the last to bear the name of Storslat which will be unknown to future generations!" She laughed hysterically but disappeared back into the Stygian darkness as he lunged towards her.
For several years the Inquisition sought for the witch who, according to the King, called herself Maleficent but in the end the Cardinal began to doubt that she had ever existed.
Meanwhile the baby Talia grew into a pretty little girl. Determined that the prophesy should not come to pass the Count ordered that no flax should ever be brought into his estates and that all linen should be bought in ready made.
The pretty girl grew into a slim elegant young lady. Even before she came of age suitors were desperately vying for her favours.
A great ball was held. Count Storslat and Lady Isabella were proud and delighted at the attention from princes and young lords from throughout the Kingdom and, indeed, the whole of the Holy Roman Empire. But the Count wanted a suitor who, while of aristocratic blood with ancient estate would also be in sufficient need of the great dowry he could bestow to agree that it would entail changing his name.
However while her parents deliberated her future young Talia continued to entrance the Count's subjects as she strolled round his estates with her servants and chaperones.
She revelled in the attention she drew from young men, she delighted in the welcome given to her in each village. In one small hamlet at the edge of a great forest her entourage were welcomed into the low roofed cottage of a humble widow as a storm gathered . As the wizened old white haired woman offered to prepare a simple yet wholesome meal for them Talia stared open mouthed at her daughter who returned with some water from the well. She had been excited by the rapt attention she received from handsome young men, yet this pale black haired woman with piercing blue eyes brought on similar feelings in her heart.
While her entourage helped the old woman at the hearth her daughter showed Talia where she had secretly been spinning flax. She watched entranced as the younger woman's slender fingers deftly spun the flax on the spindle. Talia asked if she could stretch the flax herself, but as soon as she began to spin, a splinter of flax stuck under her fingernail.
Without even a cry Talia dropped to the floor. The woman rushed through to her mother, grabbed her hand and hurried her out into the darkening storm. Seconds later the hovel was filled with screams as Talia's chaperone found her body sprawled on the floor by the spinning wheel.
Count Storslat was desolate with grief. For a whole day he sat staring at his beloved, adorable, daughter's body which had been brought back to the castle. He just couldn't bear the thought of burying his beautiful child in the cold, damp ground.
Instead he had her carried to the Belvedere tower in his deer park. There, dressed in her finest clothes, she was gently laid on a great gilded bed. The shutters were closed and barred, the doors locked and a great fence erected round it planted with hawthorn.
The years passed, the Count went slowly mad, beating and raping his wife daily even though her child bearing days were now long past.
Eventually, on the death of the Count the estates returned to the King. Decades later a new King rediscovered the delights of the hunting available in the nearby forests and restored a part of the empty castle as a hunting lodge. His son was also an enthusiastic huntsman and when he was married to a princess from a powerful neighbouring Principality they spent their honeymoon at the castle.
They returned to the castle a couple of years later, just after he had become king. He had previously noticed and enquired about the overgrown boarded up tower on a hill in what had once been a deer park and was told it was a hunting lodge built by a Count who once owned the castle.
He paid no further attention to it until one day, when out hunting, his falcon flew in through the broken shutter of one of the upper windows. The King waited, whistling to recall it, but it did not return.
Drawing his sword he cut a swathe through the tangle of hawthorn to get to the gate in the surrounding fence. Despite its solid appearance the fence was rotten and disintegrated after several kicks.
Close up, the tower was clearly in much worse condition than it appeared from a distance. However the locked door wouldn't yield to the pressure of his foot He then focussed his attention on one of the small ground floor windows. Prising his sword between the shutter and it's frame the rotten wood there yielded and within a couple of minutes he had cleared the opening so he could climb in.
It took a while for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness within. It seemed that the roof was no longer completely watertight for only damp rotten portions of what he assumed were once magnificent tapestries hung in shreds on the peeling plaster work of the walls. Dead leaves and bits of rotten wood littered the floors. He listened, there was no sign of his missing bird.
Carefully he ascended a rotten spiral staircase, testing each decaying wooden tread before putting his full weight on it. At the first landing there was a door which the King tentatively opened then stepped through, all the time aware of the sponge-like feel of the floorboards beneath his feet.
Light coming through a crack in the shutters dimly illuminated heavy, ornately carved, bed with a few bits of peeling gilt still visible in places. The damp yellowed sheets, speckled with mildew, covered what looked like the form of a person asleep in the bed, but the King's eyes were first drawn to his falcon perched imperiously on the great carved headboard.
Then he looked down to see the pale face of a girl. He hurried across the room to her side. She looked so beautiful, so peaceful, as if she were sleeping.
"Wake up." He said gently. He repeated it more loudly. The third time he shouted at her, feeling slightly foolish; it was hardly likely that a young girl could wander in, though the thorny thicket, the admittedly rotten fence and past the locked doors and shutters then go to sleep in an ancient damp, mouldy bed. And yet...
He gently eased his arms beneath her head and shoulders and gently lifted her slightly. Her body though cool was soft and supple, it certainly didn't have the feel of a rotting corpse. The King felt a desperate sadness and he eased her up into a sitting position so he could view her more clearly.
But the thin rotten silk of her dress, yellow with age, tore across her shoulder so its tattered remnants fell to the girdle bound round her slender waist. For a few seconds the King stared at her dimly illuminated small but perfect breasts, then he gently slapped her face trying to wake her.
But he knew it was futile. In his heart he knew she must be dead, yet his loins ached to posses her. Frustrated he slapped her face harder. With both the palm and the back of his hand he beat her face from side to side. Tears welled up in his eyes as he screamed "Wake up, please, for God's sake awake!"
But he couldn't arouse her, though he himself was becoming greatly aroused. He pulled her towards him, then hugged her, ashamed at his tears - crying for something lost which he had never first found.
He ran his hands up and down the soft skin of her bare back and nestled his face against the side of her slender neck. But then, realising he was cuddling a corpse, he let go so she fell back onto the bed as he took a step back.
He knew he should leave, yet he felt a tender love for this girl such as he'd never felt for his wife. He bent forward to give her a farewell kiss on the cheek. He kissed her cheek, then her lips, then pushed his tongue into her mouth. The inside of her mouth didn't feel as cold as the surface of her body.
The King closed his eyes, yet couldn't stop seeing the vision of her loveliness. He took a deep breath and willed his legs to take a step back. They didn't.
He reached down to loosen her girdle, he had only half undone it when the rotten cord parted, he pulled it from her waist, more of the rotten silk dress ripping as he did so. Upon the sight of her bare belly he lost all his regal self control.
Within seconds he had torn the fragile remains of her dress and tunic from her body. He quickly, almost frantically, disrobed then lifted her limp naked body from the bed and held it tight to him. He ran his hands from her shoulders town to her firm, cold, buttocks. He pulled her slender arms round him, but they immediately slipped back to her side.
He knew he could do what he willed with this exquisite pale body, she was beyond feeling shame, pain or love. He pushed her backwards onto the bed, falling on top of her.
The musty cloud of dust from rotten fabric was almost choking, the watching falcon fled to the mantelpiece. The King involuntarily remembered that when he put his tongue between her lips the inside of her mouth had seemed warmer; he wondered if a similar warmth might be found within the body's other lips.
He first gently explored her with his fingers, she did indeed feel a little warmer inside her tight. vagina. Temptation overcame his inhibitions, by now his cock was rock hard and he gently eased it into her.
As his rigid cock gently forced her tight maidenhead he thought that, in the absence of any foreplay, this would almost certainly hurt her if she were alive. He withdrew a little, wondering if he should feel guilty, then thrust firmly back into her.
The damp featherbed squashed beneath her as the King's full weight repeatedly bore down on her body, the stinking grey mouldy dust he disturbed so choked his mouth and nose that he had to get up and stood back coughing, with his eyes streaming.
After a minute, as the dust settled a little, he dragged the body off the bed by the ankles so it dropped heavily down onto the debris covered floor. He felt foolish as he caught himself about to say "Sorry."
Telling himself he had no reason to feel guilty he lowered himself onto, and back into, her and with a growing sense of fulfilment and ecstasy ground her delicate flesh into the rotten floorboards, holding her delicate unresisting arms in a desperate grip.
Finished, he lay still on top. of her while his cock relaxed. When he eventually got back to his feet he saw his falcon, still on the mantelpiece, staring accusingly at him. He lifted the girl's used body back onto the bed then guiltily gathered his hastily discarded clothes. Then as he looked down he realised, with horror, that his cock was streaked with blood.
The King fled the tower with his clothes in disarray. As soon as he returned to the castle he directed the Steward to go to the Belvedere tower and firmly secure any loose shutters, with the strict instructions that under no circumstances should he actually enter the tower on pain of death.
That evening his Queen sensed that something had happened or gone wrong during his day's hunting and quizzed him as they retired for the night. Eventually he admitted that he had lost his falcon for quite a long time and had for a while feared it lost.
"So, my dear, you are not the perfect huntsman you make yourself out to be, after all!" she laughed.
For months afterwards, every time he made love to his wife he was haunted by the beautiful, cold, pale face of that girl in the tower. Her eyes closed until moment he reached an orgasm when, each time, they would suddenly open accusingly, dark and lifeless. The Queen sensed that something had changed between them.
As autumn turned into winter, unseen by anyone, the belly of the naked body in the darkness of the tower filled then swelled. In the first week of spring Talia's body moved for the first time in generations. A slight movement deep in her belly, it certainly didn't disturb the growing family of mice scurrying about the floor.
Her abdomen momentarily hardened then relaxed for a quarter of an hour. The next time it hardened her knees drew up slightly, yet her eyes remained peacefully closed. By nightfall her lower body was racked by contractions more frequently and a sudden gush of fluid from between her spreading thighs soaked the bed as she arched her back. Yet not a sound did she utter. Half an hour later a baby's head appeared, it paused for a couple of seconds then fully emerged to lie crying between Talia's spread thighs. The baby, a boy, lay desperately screaming to be nursed by his cold, unconscious mother. A second baby was born less than a minute later, this one, a girl, was more active than her sibling and first grabbed her brothers umbilical cord and pulled it into her toothless mouth. Unsatisfied she rolled about then managed to crawl over her mother's thin thigh, instinctively seeking her mother's breasts.
Finding, instead, the thin, lifeless fingers of Talia's left hand she sucked at each of them in turn. Finding no nourishment she pathetically cried out again, sending the curious nice scurrying back beneath the floorboards. She sucked again at the middle finger, this time drawing out the small splinter of flax.
Talia's eyes flickered open. She felt as cold as death, could see only darkness, yet felt something gentle sucking her fingers. Still confused, distressed and not even recalling who she was, her maternal instincts took over and she lifted the two babies to her breasts to suckle.
Back in the great Royal City the King, for the first time in many months, suddenly had a vision of the girl in the tower as he dutifully made love to his wife, in the cause of siring a heir. But this time when, at the moment his seed gushed into his queen, the girl's eyes opened they were a beautiful hazel brown in colour, and looked deep into his soul. He leapt from their bed and hurriedly dressed. For the first time he felt real guilt at what he had done to the girl. He felt that, all those months ago, he had indeed betrayed his wife after all. That he really had lain with another woman and not just amused himself with an inanimate ... thing.
Talia couldn't understand anything. Why she was cold and naked inside some ancient dark mouldering ruin. Why she was suckling a pair of newly born babies whose afterbirth she was only now expelling.
Eventually, once she had settled the babies as best she could on the damp mouldering featherbed, she set about exploring the darkened room. The shutters seemed to have securely fastened closed from the outside, peering through the cracks it appeared to be a moonlit night and she had the impression that the ground was some way below.
Talia waited until dawn, when the light of the morning sun shone through gaps in the shutters and birdsong echoed down from within the upper floors of the tower, to explore further. She walked unsteadily, one hand against the stone wall as she hesitantly descended the spiral staircase. The ground floor was, if anything, even more thoroughly secured. She screamed until she was hoarse and the babies' distant cries joined in chorus. She clawed at the rotten shutters until eventually she managed to tear one down into the room, only to find the window still blocked by solid oak planks securely fastened from the outside.
She looked down at her hands, her fingernails broken and bleeding, then returned to her babies, feeling a wave of guilt at having left them alone on the bed for so long, so many precious few minutes.
Talia continued to suckle her unexpected offspring while being less successful in feeding herself. She pushed rotten damp rags of bedding and tapestry into her mouth, chewed them, and sucked the moisture out of them. She kept trying to wrap the twins in pieces of damp, ripe, pieces of linen, but their tiny exploring fingers would soon shred them.
Talia explored the tower thoroughly, every window was shuttered and nailed so securely as to make it a perfect prison. In one of the upper rooms was a full length mirror, cracked where it had slid and dropped in it's rotten frame to rest on the floor. She stood, transfixed by the filthy naked figure just about visible in the dim light, its lower body streaked with excrement from the twins as she nursed them, eyes sunken and hollow, hair matted and colourless. She felt as though her body was starting to shrivel and decay like everything else in that crumbling ruin.
The King's nightmares got worse over the next month. The girl's eyes began to burn with an angry fire which painfully burned his soul. From feeling guilt at what he had done to the maiden's senseless body he began instead to feel guilt when he laid with his wife.
The Queen sensed a change in her husband. It would be bad enough if he occasionally had sex with some whore during the drunken carousing after a successful days hunting or a victory on the battlefield - if he insisted on making a fool of himself; but she began to wonder if he was forming some deeper attachment to some other woman. She decided it would be wise to leave the city for a while.
Therefore it was at her suggestion that the Royal Entourage set off for the remote castle they had last stayed at for the hunting a year ago. It wasn't until a couple of days after their arrival there that the King rather nervously set off, alone, for the Belvedere tower.
He couldn't get in, his carpenter had certainly made a thorough job of securing the tower after his last visit. So the next day he returned with the necessary borrowed tools to allow him to force a way in.
At first it seemed as quiet as before but then, for just a couple of seconds, he thought he could hear faint crying in the distance, perhaps upstairs. Normally the King was renowned for his courage and bravery, but this was not normal. His heart was pounding as he cautiously ascended the stairs. The door into the first floor room was ajar, he took a deep breath and, with a sense of dread, quietly entered.
He hardly recognised the girl sprawled across the bed. Although it now seemed that she was, just about, conscious her body had taken the hue and form of a corpse. Her filthy white skin was tightly stretched over her protruding bones, her face thin and gaunt and the dark damp room stank of faeces and urine. He was surprised that he didn't notice the two babies immediately, but his concern for the girl was so great.
He saw the shock and panic in her eyes as he leant over her. The same eyes that had been haunting him for many weeks. He spoke quietly, trying to reassure her, as he gently put his water bottle to her lips then tenderly persuaded her to eat some of the vittles he had been carrying.
For the next few days he visited her daily. Fetching food, some of his queen's clothes, sheets and blankets. They both had so many questions for each other that they hardly knew where to start. He couldn't get out of his mind the thought that this girl, Talia, believed she was the daughter of a long dead Count whose estate this once was.
Talia couldn't bring herself to believe that everyone she knew was long dead when her coming of age ball seemed so recent to her. She did however begin to realise that this handsome young man might be the father of her twins. She found herself overcome with guilt that she didn't hate him as she ought.
Once the room was mafe a little cleaner and tidier, the shutters opened and the rotten featherbed replaced by a new one with fresh sheets the King asked Mathew, his Secretary, to arramge for a trusted and discrete maidservant to continue to supply food and drink, so his wife wouldn't get suspicious about his frequent absences.
The Queen wondered who 'Talia' was. She heard the King cry out that name in his sleep. Many times over the following few months.
Rather than question her husband, allowing him to come up with some excuse, she discretely made enquiries around the court. It seemed that his Secretary was complicit in some subterfuge.
The Queen's enquiries had also revealed that Mathew, who was married, had a child with a secret mistress, who he was now supporting, getting himself into debt with the moneylenders.
Armed with this knowledge, and a purse of silver, it didn't take long for the Queen to get him to tell what he knew. Seething with fury she sought out her husband to confront him, but by the time she had found him at the Royal Falconer's holding a more diabolical plan was starting to form in her mind, and she said nothing to him.
The Queen retired to her dressing room after searching out a new sheet of parchment from the King's library. She wrote as carefully as she could; a letter purporting to be from her husband to Talia, requesting her to send her children to Court with the servant bearing it. Her writing, explaining that the King thought it best for the babies to be cared for by a nursemaid who would be better placed to feed and look after them than Talia, was untidy and her spelling poor. The Queen was however quite pleased with the result, in any case she hoped that the girl would rely more upon her servant relating the message.
Talia was delighted that the King loved her children so much that he had arranged to care for them, and joyfully bade them farewell.
The Queen handed the babies over to Anton the palace cook, who she knew was in awe of her, with instructions that they were to be slaughtered and used to make tasty dishes for a banquet.
The King enjoyed the unusual tasty meat morsels that were presented at the unexpected feast that his wife had organised in celebration of her second cousin's birthday.
In reply to his expression of delight at the meal she replied "What you eat is yours!"
The next time she said the same thing he turned to her, annoyed "Of course I provide everything we eat." He then carried on to enjoy the remainder of the feast.
The Queen didn't get the satisfaction she had hoped for from that diabolical yet discrete revenge. She was aware, too, that sooner rather than later it would be reported to the King that his offspring had been sent to the palace. Her jealousy now combined with fear to brew into madness.
The day before the King's next 'hunting trip' the Queen despatched her servant with a message for Talia that she could now join the King at Court. Of course Talia enthusiastically returned with the Queen's servant, delighted at the prospect of being reunited with her children.
On arrival at the Palace Talia, tired after the journey, found herself pushed into a guardroom and locked in. Several hours later, thirsty and hungry, she was dragged out into the courtyard to face the Queen.
"Where is the King?" she asked, looking round to see only angry, leering, faces.
Hearing that question only maddened the Queen further, her face reddening she didn't answer that question but, looking the girl up and down, screamed out in indignation "Those are my clothes you're wearing!"
The Queen seemed to be on the verge of choking, as she paused to draw her breath Talia noticed that wood had been piled up around a tall sturdy pole to which heavy chains had been fixed with staples.
"Take them off. Now!" the Queen demanded. "And don't drop them in the dirt, you ignorant whore!" she cried out in exasperation.
Talia cried and sobbed as she removed each item of clothing, the servants she handed them to each averted their gaze from her as she carefully placed garments into their hands. But once back with the watching crowd they couldn't take their eyes off her body.
"Who is she?"
"What has she done?"
"She's a witch."
"She stole clothes and jewelry from the Royal Apartments."
"She used magic and witchcraft to attire herself in the Queen's garments."
Rumours abounded, but all agreed she must have committed some heinous crime or have engaged in diabolical act.
"Burn her!"
"Burn The Witch!"
Talia, tearful and ashamed at her nudity before such a crowd, sagged to her knees, only to be roughly pulled back to her feet by the soldiers guarding her. They dragged her, with her frail legs trailing in the dirt, towards the stake.
Starved, confused and terrified Talia thankfully list consciousness.
As the King's hunting party neared the Belvedere tower he had dismissed his servants to a nearby village. and set off, alone. As he passed through a grove of ancient oaks a woman dressed in black stood before him causing him to rein in his horse. She had long black hair and the most piercing blue eyes he had ever seen. Even though he was the King he couldn't help but dismount and bow to her.
"My Lady, I don't believe we have ever met before, for I could never forget such entrancing beauty...."
He was about to ask her name when she raised her hand to silence him "You must return with all haste to your court where your wife is in great and mortal danger."
The King hesitated before replying "I am sure the Queen is perfectly safe with the household guard to protect her."
The dark beauty who held his attention laughed at him "Your Queen is no wife to you. She has not borne your children. The old religion would not have recognised her as your wife."
The King raised his whip to strike at this insolent enchantress who mocked him, but his heart suddenly felt as if it had been grasped by a hand of ice. "Talia!" he cried out loud and turned to ride at breakneck speed, alone, back to the City.
As he rode into the courtyard he saw Talia's frail white body hanging limply from the heavy chains. Soldiers were holding flaming torches ready to cast them into the wood piled around and beneath the stake.
"Stop!" the King roared. He commanded that Talia be unchained and her nudity covered then he turned on his queen and her retinue. As she glared furiously her servants told how she had previously deceived Talia and had the baby twins brought the palace where the cook had served their flesh to him.
The King was furious with grief and demanded that both the Queen and Anton be burned on the pyre she had prepared for Talia.
"Your Majesty!" Anton cried out, desperate to be heard above the noisy crowd. As he was bundled past the King, his arms pulled up behind his back by the soldiers escorting him, he at last got his attention "Your Majesty, spare me! Your children are alive and well!"
The King ordered the soldiers to stop, as the cook continued "I could never bring myself to carry out such a diabolical order, instead I prepared dishes made of suckling pigs to deceive your Queen. The children are safe in my wife's care, being nursed by my sister in law."
To Anton's surprise the King leant forward and kissed him, before turning his attention back to his wife. "Are you possessed by the devil, woman. However I may have wronged you, what you have tried to do is so cruel, so evil...." Unable to find the words to express what he felt towards her, he turned and beckoned to the Captain of the Household Guard. "Do with her what she would do to Talia." He paused then, to make himself perfectly clear, added "She is no longer my Queen. By her deeds she deserves no more consideration than ... than an animal, a rabid dog... " He turned away and went to comfort Talia as she was led to his private apartments.
The crowd had swelled as word spread that a young woman had been stripped and was to be burnt. Having seen Talia, the supposed witch or thief, stretched naked and terrified for their delectation they were now excited to get the additional satisfaction of seeing their haughty young Queen stripped of her finery, exposed to their leering gaze then publicly destroyed.
The Queen, instead of displaying the cowed terror Talia had, screamed, raged and fought. Instead of meekly removing her clothes she had hers ripped from her body, the knives the soldiers used to cut them free nicking her arms and torso as they slashed away the remaing bits of fabric which, despite their tugging and jerking had refused to tear free from her writhing body.
Emboldened by the retreat of the King into the palace the crowd yelled foul abuse at the Queen, screaming at the soldiers to hideously mutilate her too perfect body. A single cry for her to be raped by the court jester grew into a chant of hundreds of voices. The Queen's face contorted with mad rage as she yelled incomprehensible curses back at the crowd, her subjects.
To silence her one of the soldiers drove the hilt of his sword into her belly with all his strength. Held by both arms she was unable to double up on pain as she so wanted to. The crowd cheered in approval.
Because she was fighting back and kicking so much the soldiers chained only her wrists together then, mounting a ladder one of them passed the end of that chain through the top staple, so her arms were raised above her head, and wound it back round the post securing it to itself with a shackle.
The Queen twisted and tugged and kicked out, few in the crowd were close enough to hear her most un-queenlike obscenities she was screaming, though they could sense her desperation from the way the rusty links cut bloodily into her wrists as she futilely tried pulling them free.
There was no sign of the King returning so it was the Captain of the Guard who raised his hand then gave the command for the torches to be cast into the dry firewood.
For perhaps half a minute it was the smoke from the fire that most troubled the Queen but soon the heat from the glowing flames seared her bare skin. Then, as the flames spread from where the torches had landed towards the post in the centre, they started licking at her feet; she lifted her legs so her chained wrists painfully took her full weight, she drew up her knees and kicked her feet about trying to avoid the growing twisting tongues of flame. Some of the crowd jostled to get a view of the doomed Queen's most private parts before she totally disappeared amongst the smoke and fire.
The last view the watchers had of the Queen before she was totally consumed and turned to ash was of her stretched upper body hanging limply against the post, the updraft of flames and heat lifting her long hair until it too caught alight and the burning red flesh became one with the conflagration.
The King waited for a brief but necessary period of mourning to pass before summoning the Bishop to marry him to Talia, making her Queen. And it may, of course, be assumed that they lived happily ever after. Though he did request Anton to never again serve tasty morsels of suckling pig!
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