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Part II – Constanza's Origins
She came from an excellent family, dukes, rulers of a tiny German principality. She was raised in ignorance of intrigue. She was pampered and her every whim indulged. Of the brutality inherent in all ruling classes she knew nothing. She knew even less of the harsh lives that the vast majority of humans suffered. When she was fourteen years old she was betrothed to an Italian prince of the two Sicilies and a year later was sent off to his parents capital. It happened as always happens in such tales. Her ship, on the way from Trieste to Naples was blown out to sea in a storm and later becalmed. Sitting in a glassy sea it was happened across by a fleet of Barbary galleys.
The captain and crew of the sloop threw themselves into the sea rather than be captured. They drowned to a man which was a mercy compared to the lot of a galley slave. Constanza's duenna, whom the girl regarded as an ancient though in fact she only 30 years old, met the pirates at the gangplank. She glared defiantly at them and recited in both German, French and Italian the young noblewoman's qualities and ancestors as well as the credentials of the three Italian noblewomen escorting her to their relatives. For this effort, the lady was swiftly stripped. Then her sex and anus were raped and her nipples bitten off by over two-dozen pirates. She was allowed to bleed to death on the deck in front of the horrified Constanza , her maid, and her three Italian ladies in waiting. The duenna was to be an abject lesson. Because in this case, the chief of the corsairs was a bey . He was all too aware of the beauty and value of his catch and forbade his men from immediately having their pleasure with the young women. Instead they sent a young Turk of noble birth as an envoy off to Naples demanding a fittingly large ransom. The cruel and callous Italians castrated and flayed the corsairs' envoy and cast his still breathing body into the sea. They drank sweet yellow wine and listened to his screams as he died. They drafted a reply stating that they would meet the Barbary pirates in battle at sea and called upon the Sublime Porte to reprimand their emir. They vowed that if one hair of their daughters' heads were harmed, they would burn Algiers and Tunis to the ground. The message was wrapped around the envoy's genitals and tossed aboard the pirates' messenger vessel. After this, the Barbary pirates sold Constanza and the ladies-in-waiting to my father, the representative of the Sublime Porte in Tunis, and suggested that she would be a suitable tribute from Barbary to the throne.
My father was not intimidated by the Neopolitans . He summoned the company of mercenaries who comprised his loyal bodyguard. The young ladies were brought before him and his troops. He instructed the women to all disrobe. When they refused he had two soldiers hold each of them securely while my mother's maids carefully undressed each of them, tearing not a single seam nor popping a single button or hook. Even their shoes and stockings were removed, excepting only the ribbons in their hair. Then he had the three ladies-in-waiting tied to chairs. He instructed his barber to ever so carefully shave their heads, removing their hair without disturbing their coiffure. He had their clothing neatly folded and placed in three separate boxes and the hairpieces placed on top. Then with the scourge, the three young ladies were given a mosaic number of lashes, that is two score less one. Their bleeding bodies were assaulted by a dozen of his troops although he forbad them to abuse them to death. Then he gave orders to three of fastest, most powerful Ottoman galleys. Each was to take one of the Italian girls and transport her back to Italy, dropping her off at a small, poorly-defended coastal city. Along the way, each day the noblewoman was to be beaten and abused in a different way than she was the previous day. But not allowed to die. If she perished he would have the captain flayed. And on the voyage, each day, the girl's head was shaved. When the three fleets reached Italy they sacked the three appointed towns. They killed all the men and ate the flesh of their dogs. The children they enslaved. The women, no matter how old, they raped. Afterwards they left a lady-in-waiting with the degraded women. And so was the first part of my father's decree done.
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