Morgana's Handmaid and the Creature of the Dungeon Read online

  It was a lovely afternoon. A holy day—or holiday as we called them—celebrating God knows which saint or important occasion from Bible history that came up on the calendar that week. It was sunny and warm, best part of the season really, everyone feeling festive. I was getting rather hot in my robe by then, too. But so far, I’d hesitated about removing it completely and revealing my ample curves underneath. Enjoying myself in the moment though, I did it anyway—and, oh, the reaction I got. Drew quite a few looks from the men at the market—and their wives! Then again, let’s face it, I’d had a couple mugs of that ale, too, and was quite tipsy. What harm could it do getting the men a little aroused? I figured.

  I soon learned why Bedemer was so keenly interested in us. He had once been a fellow mercenary serving right along with Alguin! The two of them had not been great friends back in the day, however they had fought together serving warlords and barons across the land.

  Bedemer wore a filthy shirt that had food stains mixed with soot and grease. It had obviously once been white, but now it was yellowing from years of neglect. Covering that blouse was an even dirtier apron which had likely never been washed. His face was pock-marked from acne scars he’d gotten as a young man. He was also scarred by blade cuts he’d received in combat, and his thick jaw was ringed by a big black and silver beard flecked with dust and flour. He clearly was the chief cook at the inn as well.

  His eyes danced with joy and warmth, merrily brightening under his wrinkled forehead. I gave him a refill and he took it from me, imitating clumsily the manners of a noble lord accepting a gift from a princess or a queen. That made the scene all the more hilarious to the townspeople around us; so I played it up by curtseying deeply like the courtly handmaid I’d once been.

  Unfortunately, when I did so, my big breasts nearly flopped out of my flimsy blouse! The townspeople went right along with the whole charade though, whooping and hollering with amusement—however I was not sure exactly what excited them more, me acting like a lady of the court or my jostling breasts now dangerously exposed!

  This was drawing far too much attention to us; and especially to me in particular, but I simply couldn’t resist. It had been far too long since I’d spoken to or socialized with other people besides Alguin; and seeing this manly specimen standing before me made it far too tempting.

  Alguin came up to the two of us shortly after that, and together the two men stood a full head taller than anyone in the crowd. Both were gigantic; so there was an initial unease as folks wondered how the two would interact with each other. People pulled away to a safe distance, not even realizing they were doing it. I gradually noticed that it was suddenly just the three of us standing together, ringed by gawking villagers.

  “Bedemer?” asked Alguin in his gravelly voice. The big man smiled and nodded. “Vile?” he asked in a deep voice, and for a moment I looked around to see the reaction of the crowd. They only stared in awe. Hushed voices were all I heard surrounding us, commenting on the two giants.

  The town meanwhile was alive with activity and the smells of food cooking. The sounds of children playing nearby. I heard girls and boys giggling. The buildings were decorated for the festival going on. The market was teaming with activity, too. Yet they seemed to be very curious, those nosey townspeople, about seeing their enormous innkeeper recognized apparently by another fellow warrior from his past. Two large men in a crowd would naturally draw looks; however a voluptuous woman like me standing there with them in a revealing blouse was surely an attention-getter! Alguin, for his part, was quite pleased to see who it was.

  “Been a long time, my friend,” chuckled Alguin, which led to a raspy cough. Bedemer smiled even wider, then reached over and hugged him around the neck. “Aye. That it has. Good to see you,” he replied.

  We started chatting, and eventually the other villagers melted away. They returned to enjoying the festivities going on around us.

  I was thrilled to see that my lovable Alguin finally had a male friend he could talk to; and as greetings and formalities turned into small talk, a very comfortable rapport developed between the three of us. In fact, as the conversation continued, the two men were soon laughing and reminiscing joyously about old times.

  True, identifying one or both of us in public would have normally been completely out of the question, but Bedemer had absolutely no intention of exposing us. On the contrary, remembering who Alguin once was, Bedemer sighed with shame at the memory of what had happened all those years before.

  “I hope thou canst forgive me and all the rest of us for that terrible day,” he said. “We were afraid to stand up to that old parson and defend thy good name. Broke our hearts to see what happened to thee. Really it did. I am so very sorry.” Alguin only laughed and shook Bedemer’s hand once again. There was no blame to be laid.

  Instead he turned and introduced me—by name! I drew back with eyes widening in fear. I hadn’t heard my name spoken in public for years, you see? Caution had always been my practice, and even this day when we were throwing all of that to the wind in favor of enjoying the town’s holiday festival, it was still shocking to see Alguin be so terribly un-careful.

  But I recovered quickly, seeing Bedemer smiling down at me and appreciating my curvy form. I felt so free—freed from the prison of anonymity and yet feeling so very safe with these two giants. I threw my arms around the rather stocky Bedemer like he was an uncle or an older brother. I squeezed hard, right around his waist, smashing my jiggling breasts against his belly since he was so tall. What a relief I felt, to actually be a known person again, and no longer a fugitive.

  Now to be sure, Alguin cautioned Bedemer not to ask too many questions whilst we were outdoors in the public market. “Let’s keep our voices down, shall we? No telling who’s about. People might remember us.” he said, eyeing several onlookers. Bedemer laughed at that notion, pointing out that as long as he was around there’d be no trouble for us.

  “I wouldn’t worry thyself, Vile,” he chuckled confidently. “No one will bother, now that they see I know you.” Bedemer was clearly respected in the community, along with being feared due to his threatening size.

  So we stood there in the market square and drank another mug of ale while we talked. I fluffed out my hair and wiped off my face, revealing to Bedemer how beautiful and attractive I still was back in those days. By then no one was even paying attention to us anyway, as the villagers began celebrating the holiday with songs and dances back in the town square. The three of us eventually headed back to Bedemer’s Inn, with the two giants flanking me.

  Together, we would normally have drawn a lot of attention! But the villagers were by now fully engrossed, so we walked to Bedemer’s Inn down mostly empty streets. There, we sat down at an empty table in his tavern and talked for the rest of the day while the townspeople could be heard outside.

  They had so much to catch up on, those two! Alguin recalled with Bedemer everything that had happened…about the monk, about being accused of demonic possession, about escaping to the woods with his young wife, and about her eventually dying of fever. Then, Alguin explained, he’d been working all these years in the castle dungeon as the royal dungeon master. Bedemer laughed and laughed, admitting he’d never known that’s where Alguin ended up; and that after hearing from visitors about the evil creature working in King Arthur’s dungeon, it had never occurred to him that it was his old colleague from their mercenary days.

  He also confided, “And we never knew what to do about that nasty little parson—or his accusations. I do remember being relieved when the matter faded away, after thou fled. I especially remember thy lovely wife.” When he spoke of her, I could see he was vividly recalling her beauty.

  He smiled respectfully toward me several times as he described her, not wanting to make me feel excluded from the conversation or to feel jealous or insulted. Quite the contrary I was very interested in hearing about this woman from another man’s point of view; and Bedemer’s stories clearly matched—even su
rpassed what Alguin had already told me. Bedemer recalled that she was a tiny girl who was very sweet and kind.

  “Allora had a lot of experience dealing with and caring for men, because she’d grown up in a house with brothers,” he remembered. “She took to running our camp like a mother running a house full of kids.” He then chuckled.

  “She knew how to handle boys, and we loved having her boss us around. Loved how she stood up to—about our manners…and cleanliness.” Both men laughed derisively when he made that comment. I’d never heard this side of the story before!

  “See, she travelled with us for nearly an entire campaign season before we’d settled into that village to defend it from those dirty Saxons,” he said. “She even stood up for us whenever villagers were rude or inhospitable. She certainly had no compunction about telling off those among them who were lazy or unwilling to contribute. It was a lot of work setting up those horse traps.” Now I began to see how the villagers might have been so willing to turn on them after the bloody battle.

  As Bedemer recalled it, “The villagers seemed to expect us to come in, build defenses, defend the town, and eliminate the raiders—while they hid themselves safely in their homes. They were damn glad to have the help, no questioning that, but not so willing to aid us in our labors, were they Vile?” Alguin sighed and demurred a bit at hearing his old nickname yet again. I patted his shoulder in a motherly fashion; then he began chuckling.

  “Moving in with peasants—living in their homes and amongst them in the town—certainly put off a lot of folks, and most people had not expected that to be the case,” the burly innkeeper said. However Bedemer’s favorite story was one day when the local monk interceded with their efforts. Like I’d already heard, the monk was in charge of tithes to the church. He came down from the monastery to supervise work on the church fields every week, and to collect “donations” from the villagers and peasants around the area.

  “The monk,” as Bedemer humorously described him, “was a repulsive little bugger with thinning hair, ugly face, and a very nasty disposition. His job was to see to it that the church field was worked so that it produced crops for the big monastery up the road.”

  Bedemer got a big grin then said, “Nay, no one liked him, but he possessed some level of authority in the town, being that he was a member of the Order. The villagers had to pay their tithes, and this awful little man bore the task of gathering them. More specifically, he recorded each family’s contribution to the church, so no one dared cross him.” Everyone knew however—even the detestable friar—that the raiders were coming. What’s more everyone knew what they’d do if they overran the town.

  “But these raiders who wast heading for their town…we’d encountered them before along the coasts. Knew their tactics. They would steal, burn, capture, and enslave anyone they didn’t kill in battle, only to take them back across the sea and never return,” he explained. Therefore in anticipation of this a work detail had been pressed into service by Alguin which was assigned with digging traps. Horse traps would slow down the invaders and constructing them was very hard work. Work that would take all day in fact. So Alguin went throughout the village early one Sunday morning to gather able-bodied men for the job.

  Alguin laughed recalling this, remembering specifically how grumpy and ill-tempered the villagers’ reactions were to his demands. “Aye, I was not well received that day. No, not in the least,” he chuckled. “Nevertheless; slowly but surely they dressed and gathered their digging tools until I amassed a pretty fair-sized work crew.”

  My lover then added, “True, I was not very popular that morning, getting grown men to leave their warm beds ‘ere the dawn, to go do back-breaking work on the Sabbath. I doubted their wives appreciated it much either.”

  Yet before they had dug but a mere ten yards of earth, they were confronted by the angry, arrogant little monk.

  ‘It’s Sunday—a day of rest?” yelled the little man. The mercenaries were vaguely aware of this fact, but it had been only a day since enemy scouts had been spotted, and Alguin’s men knew the enemy might show up at any moment. Everyone would need to hurry to prepare defenses, and the whole town would be required for their construction.

  Disdainfully the monk exclaimed, “If ye soldiers wish to be heathens and work on The Lord’s day, against the very word of the holy Bible demanding one day’s rest in seven, then ye shouldst feel at ease to do so, but the pious and good people of this town should not be engaged in menial labor on a Sunday.”

  In response to this absurd comment Alguin calmly assured the sneering fellow, “These good people would be wise to aid in this task now, otherwise they may not be around come next Sunday to attend Mass my friend.” The monk then became enraged at Alguin’s audacity. Likely no one had ever dared defy him before!

  It was no use explaining this to the balding little cenobite though. He simply would not allow his authority to be challenged. But Allora could hear what was going on from nearby and boldly stepped in. She bounded across the village street from where she was organizing women from the town to help with preparations. Absolutely no one was going to talk to her husband that way. No, not even the local clergy!

  Seeing a dainty little woman now marching angrily toward him, the monk fell silent; amazed and amused, and Allora subsequently gave him a tongue lashing that was so incredibly ferocious, yet so very entertaining, even the grumpy villagers who’d been pressed into service started chuckling at the poor clergyman.

  As Bedemer described it, “The monk eventually got flustered and stormed off. Alguin then turned to his conscripts, who were still chuckling and giggling at the spectacle, saying, ‘Anyone else wish to argue with my wife?’” Bedemer added this last part while mimicking my lover’s Cornish accent.

  “The villagers laughed even louder after that,” said Bedemer with a snicker; then he added that Alguin could be heard laughing right along with them. The innkeeper said, “Meanwhile our dear Allora, sensing that she’d resolved the matter—and true to form as always—now turned to Vile and his work crew who were laughing uproariously and leaning over on their spades.” He claimed she then bellowed in a squeaky yet hilarious voice, which he mimicked comically, “Now get back to work! Our guests will be arriving soon!”

  By the time Bedemer finished this hilarious story, poor Alguin was doubled over laughing. He’d quite honestly forgotten that part of the story over the years, and when I pressed him for rebuttal he could only confess that’s exactly what he remembered happening. All of it but the last part that is: she never yelled at the work crew to get back to work. She went right back to organizing the villagers into work teams. Furthermore, neither Bedemer nor Alguin could remember exactly what she’d said to the monk in the argument.

  She was screaming at him and gesturing so wildly that they probably couldn’t understand her completely. Plus they were all laughing so hard, they probably weren’t paying much attention.

  Chapter 9

  Tale of Bedemer

  Next, we got to learn about Bedemer, who had married many years ago, only to march off to war as a mercenary seeking his fortune.

  “The wife and I had two daughters together,” he said, and his young wife was forced to raise them virtually alone while he continued to send money back to his family each year. Bedemer later traveled in the same band of mercenaries as Alguin, but he started off in life working as a lowly servant. As Bedemer explained it, “The only work I could find was at the local Inn in town, so I worked there as a young lad—eventually falling in love with the boss’s daughter—then marrying her.”

  Orphaned as a young boy, and with no real family of his own, Bedemer had grown up very poor—poorer than most peasants. As a young man in his late teens, he certainly had no means for supporting the innkeeper’s daughter, working as a mere server.

  “But, I always had a big strong body that was capable of most anything,” he pointed out. Clearly, he wanted much more for his loving wife than working in a rowdy tavern amidst
all the drinking and carousing. There was so much more to life than that, he felt. “I guess every young man thinks that way.” But God in his mercy had other plans for the happy couple it seemed, and soon his young wife became pregnant.

  “Aye, and with twin daughters no less!” he boldly clarified. Bedemer was so proud of them, he couldn’t wait to get back home each night from the inn and dote on his adorable little girls. “Much the proud Dad, I was!” he quipped.

  However, with the birth of his daughters, Bedemer had a brand-new family; and a much bigger challenge on his hands. His wife was adamant about it right from the start: no way was she going to see her daughters growing up slaving away in a filthy tavern with drunken fools pawing over them. Foul language hurled about constantly; and little in the way of opportunities for her daughters to find a decent husband someday. His young wife wanted something far better for her baby girls. So did Bedemer.

  “I gave it some thought, I did. Really pondered the matter. Needed to go make my fortune and someday return to her with enough plunder for us to have a better life,” he explained. So Bedemer decided to become a soldier of fortune. He had the size and strength, could lift and carry barrels of beer all day, and when it came to removing unruly guests at the inn, he made short work of even the most stubborn drunkard. The life of a soldier clearly made sense.

  Thus, off to war he went, and didn’t return for years. But he left his young wife with the solemn promise that he’d return, and someday God willing they could run away together.

  “Typical brash young man with dreams of the ’morrow, I was,” grinned Bedemer. But he learned how to fight with weapons, learned how to survive, and learned to exploit every opportunity to send home valuables to his wife and young daughters; just like he’d vowed.

  Some years later though, coincidentally right about the time that Alguin and Allora had to make their hasty escape, Bedemer’s father-in-law fell terribly ill. Bedemer returned home not long after that, expecting to invest his plundered fortune into a brand-new business with his wife. However, upon arrival, he came to find out that she by default had become the local innkeeper! Taking over for her ill father, she had been running the place by herself for a full year before Bedemer returned from campaigning.