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

  No matter, thought Bedemer at the time. He still believed he had a war chest full of gold and jewels that he’d been sending back to her over the years, and intended to deliver her from that dilapidated inn to a brand-new life.

  But to his chagrin, he found that the business was very deeply in debt! Seems the old innkeeper had run the business into the ground, ran up considerable amounts of debt keeping it open, and was now leaving this nearly insurmountable financial burden to his unwitting daughter. To make matters worse, Bedemer discovered a large portion of his plunder had already been spent; and there were still more debts to pay. Bedemer had no choice but to do the right thing for his wife. Ironically, most of Bedemer’s remaining fortune went toward paying off creditors to clear the family’s name. They had little left when it was resolved, and could never afford to run off to start a new life, like he’d planned. They’d be stuck right there, in that rickety old inn, quite likely for the rest of their lives.

  “So…I ne’er so much as blink’d an eye. Had to get right to work I did. And like it or not, I was back in the innkeeping business for good!” said Bedemer with a half-hearted grin. “That’s where I hast been e’er since.” We half-smiled right along with him out of politeness of course, Alguin and me, but we felt awful for the man not being able to live out his dream. Yet Bedemer didn’t seem dismayed by this, looking back. He’d always served there when he was a boy and then later as a young man. Other than fighting and campaigning, the inn had been all he ever knew.

  In no time he learned the management of the business from his wife; and within a year, things were going quite well. Bedemer cleaned the place up and shooed away the ruffians and deadbeats who’d been frequenting the place and scaring off good, paying customers.

  “Aye, but it wasn’t all so bad, mind. I was finally home for good, and we were a family together once more. What more should a man ask for, is how I reasoned it,” said Bedemer with a hearty chuckle.

  Besides, within a few more years the two daughters were old enough to help out. It truly became a family business! “A quite decent life we had I’d say,” uttered Bedemer; then he laughed happily. Alguin and I chuckled as well and shared in the joy these memories brought him.

  “Unfortunately though,” said Bedemer with a growing look of sadness in his eyes, “several years after I returned my wife took ill, much like her father did.” Bedemer developed a strained look on his face now as he spoke. “One day she was vibrant and healthy, the next she was sick,” he said. “She’d recover for a while, then fall ill once more with the same symptoms that plagued her father. She’d be fine for months only to succumb once again; and slowly she got worse and worse each time she came down with it. Within a few years, she was often bedridden and quite apparently dying.”

  Bedemer trailed off at this point in telling the story. He was clearly still heartbroken over the loss of his wife who’d raised their daughters alone while he’d been out seeking their fortune.

  Here he’d gone through the struggle to rebuild the success of the business, only to find his loving wife was no longer going to be around to see it. This devastated the family; and when she finally died he had no one left to share the rest of his life with. “Our daughters had no mother to finish raising them properly either,” he lamented.

  For a long while, Bedemer fell silent and no one spoke at all. Alguin and I politely waited for Bedemer to speak again, sharing in his heartbreak. How awful, I thought. Once again, I’d encountered a person who was most certainly not without sin, yet had suffered an irreversible loss far greater than my own. Accompanying my sadness was that same old feeling of guilt over my comparatively good fortune in finding my loving Alguin. I needn’t be reminded of how close I’d come to disaster during that ordeal with those repulsive inquisitors.

  After a while Bedemer continued. He told us that after her death, he found himself with two lovely daughters who had no mother to keep them under control, and those very same daughters were soon developing into attractive teenagers.

  I immediately knew what he was implying! Motherless teenage daughters working in a tavern? I could picture it already. He need not tell me what he had to go through raising two daughters, let alone running the town tavern while trying to dissuade them of their natural urges. I sure remembered what I’d been like at that age!

  Although the deeply saddened daughters kept on working diligently, there wasn’t the same level of discipline with their Mum gone; that was for certain.

  “Soon, housekeeping declined, and our village inn had turned into more of a raucous tavern once more, with a rundown bunkhouse, and few respectable guests willing to visit after dark,” as Bedemer described it. Meanwhile the two daughters, well, they started running amuck.

  “Lately, it would seem, they work the male customers for food and drink orders,” sighed Bedemer, “and to my great embarrassment, an occasional romantic tryst with some of the more appealing guests of the tavern.”

  He ashamedly explained how this had developed despite his constant objections. It was just like their mother must have feared, I surmised. Bedemer was too busy running the inn to keep an eye on his pretty young daughters once they hit puberty, and the temptations of being around so many young, virile men every night eventually led to oft-repeated indiscretions.

  “They can’t help themselves, really,” explained Bedemer, looking away for a moment. “They’re at that age when they’re attracted to boys; and because they work in a tavern, well, it is far too easy to draw attention to themselves.”

  Their bodies were also developing and patrons of the tavern quickly took notice of them in ways they were most likely unprepared for emotionally. I could personally relate to that! Soon they were finding themselves lured into promiscuity and outright wantonness. Once it began there was virtually no stopping them either.

  It affected how they viewed themselves personally too; and gradually they began falling into the same traps their mother had wanted them to avoid. On top of that, the two girls were twins.

  “They’re very competitive with each other, so they try outdoing one another at practically everything, including seeking out the cutest boys,” he explained. I could picture exactly what he was talking about. I’d seen it before with Gwynevere’s female attendants. Her handmaids regularly made a game of it; and with Ywedelle taking the lead as both their mentor and their champion.

  Of course for his part, Bedemer was one of those gigantic men who, just like Alguin, could split a man’s skull with a battle-axe in combat; but was quite gentle and loving toward women and girls. He was also very much the doting father, who couldn’t bring himself to admonish his daughters’ loose morals and set them straight like he should have. No, not after them losing their mother, and being stuck helping Dad run the family business. He could only berate them for their behavior.

  Besides, Bedemer’s wife had usually been the one doing the parenting in the past. She always had during those years Bedemer was travelling with his mercenary band; so when Bedemer’s wife died, and with no mother to impede them as they hit puberty, his lovely twin daughters went wild.

  Bedemer’s demeanor darkened once again, and I instinctively felt compelled to help him in his sorrow. That was my nature, I guess. Clinging tightly to Alguin’s arm sitting next to me in the tavern, we listened to Bedemer’s story as villagers could be heard ambling about on the street out front. We could tell Bedemer’s business was about to see customers rolling in for a pint or two of ale, but I thought I could ease his mind a bit before he had to return to work.

  Given my own experiences as a young peasant girl, I knew what they were going through. I’d been quite popular with boys when my body began to change and I developed quickly into a very attractive woman at an early age.

  I was bigger and taller—more buxom and voluptuous than most girls. Yet I was always quite sure that the life of a peasant wife, and the rules one must live by simply didn’t apply to me. I had no interest in remaining in that poverty and despair
for long—that is if there was any way I could escape. However I wasn’t so sure how I could ever get out. For that reason I became promiscuous, seeking ways to make life more livable by using the only assets I felt I had to work with: my pretty face and my curvy body.

  Therefore I first assured him that this phase his daughters were going through would pass; just as it did with me. However, seeing how terribly uncomfortable it made him discussing his lovely daughters’ wayward paths, I felt compelled to go one step further. I began to tell him more about my own sinful past!

  For quite a while in fact, as we sipped ale and the two men sat listening intently, I spilled practically everything except my frothy mug of ale, and even told Bedemer some things I’d done that Alguin didn’t even know about! Alguin winced a few times of course, as I told about the Miller’s son, the cook’s boy, the Chandler, and about five other tawdry stories of former lovers when I, too, was young and reckless. I didn’t tell them about Gilbert of course, but nearly everything else I could remember, in scintillating detail.

  Both men laughed uproariously at my stories; imagining how amazing the experiences must have been: like the time with the Miller’s son lying on sacks of flour while he kept interrupting to go look out the window of the mill to make sure no one was coming. “Neither of us were,” I commented mischievously. Both men found that to be especially hilarious.

  I admitted to them that if he’d only paid more attention to me, I’d likely have lost my virginity that very day. But alas, the poor boy was far too distracted to finish the dirty deed. Even Alguin shook his head and sighed at my admissions, but both men chuckled at my candor. These were tales they’d likely never hear a woman tell them, and it shocked them I’m sure. However it served to calm Bedemer somewhat and he relaxed at hearing that his daughters were quite normal given the circumstances.

  You see, I had to make Bedemer understand that his girls likely didn’t believe there was any point in behaving properly, even if they surely knew better due to their mother’s good parenting. Their lives as barmaids in a tavern were essentially a dead-end existence; like I’d believed mine was when I was living as a peasant.

  To this, Bedemer finally confessed, “I see no feasible way of stopping them. I’m guilty as well. I’ve looked the other way as my daughters have become looser and looser with their virtue. I’ve been far too busy running the inn…can’t keep track of their exploits most of the time. And unfortunately, I’m too easily charmed by them, to be perfectly honest.”

  That said, he feared it had gone too far; and he naturally had deep concerns about the girls’ long-term well-being. What started out as pretty young girls flirting with handsome boys visiting the town had degenerated to the point that Bedemer began to fear the things all fathers of young daughters fear, namely illegitimate pregnancies.

  Yet at the same time his two girls were quite delightful, he told us. “Kind and energetic, they have become rather skilled at taking and filling drink orders, pretty much as fast as they identify a good prospect for a romantic liaison out back. Every night, they use food and ale to fill their customers’ bellies; and then,” he said with a sigh, “they have an almost nightly contest with each other to see who can best the other. They identify the most desirable young man in the tavern; then challenge each other to see which one can get the lad back to their room.”

  The loser would have to keep running the tavern, then the winner would return triumphant; telling her sister everything about the boy, as well as his attributes or skills. Bedemer had unfortunately overheard them on more than one occasion boasting like that, and it reminded me so much of my old friend Ywedelle, that I nearly felt inclined to chuckle softly; before I wisely restrained myself. I could see how this distressed him. Any father would feel as he did, no matter what the circumstances or situation.

  Then, a rather clever idea came to mind! What if Bedemer had some help around the place? I wondered. “Maybe if you had a grown woman around, eh Bedemer?” I asked. “Helping out—watching over things. Say uh, me for instance?”

  I figured I could really improve his operation by giving Bedemer a hand; and remarkably, my loving partner Alguin seemed to have come to the same conclusion already, God love him! The mere mention of it and soon Alguin was backing me up with an enthusiastic nod and a confident, reassuring grin. Frankly, Alguin was downright thrilled at the idea of me having something to do every night instead of languishing out there in those woods alone. I could move right in and go to work…if Bedemer was willing to have me on board that is.

  Alguin interjected, “Aye, and I can come from Camelot straight to the inn each morning right after dawn to join you.”

  We’d have his problem solved in no time. Bedemer got a concerned look on his face for a few moments; then smiled broadly with a long sigh. He was apparently starting to like the idea! Why not make this a partnership? After all, he loved our ale and here I was this still-attractive woman in her thirties who knew about teenage girls and their peccadillos. In fact, by the time the first few customers were ambling into the tavern that evening it was agreed: the three of us had decided to go into business together. We’d start by selling Bedemer our ales, and take it from there.

  That night, Alguin and I stayed the whole evening and even spent the night. No use going home when it got close to dark, we wisely observed. Alguin didn’t have to work that night anyway since it was a holiday. He had no prisoners down in the castle dungeon to entertain. Thus, there was no better opportunity to start getting to know Bedemer’s wayward daughters. I got right to work…

  Chapter 10

  Trouble with Twins

  Bedemer warned us that his tavern would fill up with people soon, and he was quite right about that! Not long after dusk customers started filing in. Then came his daughters right along with them, fresh from the festival where they’d been enjoying themselves immensely all afternoon. They were incredible. Dainty and slender teenagers, yet they were clearly more worldly than most other girls their age, I observed.

  I immediately set myself to bringing the girls under my wing. To help their father, I thought of how I might teach the girls how to avoid perpetuating an already questionable reputation and spoil their chances of attracting a good husband someday. My proposal to them was going to be simple, once I got a few moments alone with them to speak that is.

  They were nearing eighteen years old, and by twenty if they missed their opportunity to find themselves husbands, they’d likely be stuck in this life forever. The best prospects would fade away and eventually there’d be no one interested except miscreants, lowlifes, and scoundrels. Then there’d be no point in trying.

  Once I could frighten them about becoming an old maid, I knew they’d listen. I also knew I had to be tactful about it. I was NOT their mother, and could not order them around like she could. I could only set an example for them. I was quite savvy about what they needed to know, that was for sure. I only needed to gain their trust.

  “Leave this to me Bedemer,” I assured our host. “Let me watch them a while, see how they operate.” And that’s how it happened. We stayed at Bedemer’s Inn that night and that’s when the opportunity first arose for me to observe Bedemer’s daughters in action!

  The girls work a while; then disappear with one of the customers for a short time. They’d return to the serving area, sometimes sweaty and disheveled, with hair askew and dress wrinkled up like perhaps they’d tossed it aside, then later put it on rather quickly. They’d be comically adjusting themselves as they returned, and over the course of the evening, I noticed they smelled more and more like the men they’d been slipping out with! They came back to the tavern each time with a naughty look on their faces, bragging about their conquests to one another and giggling mischievously as if no one else was noticing. I of course knew immediately what they’d been up to.

  “Not bad, that one,” said one of the twins. “Nice and quick. Not terribly dirty either.” To this the other twin replied, “Okay then, now it’s my turn
. You take over for me ’sis. I think I hooked one.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!

  In fact I later followed the first twin as she left with a fair-haired lad to go out back. And what I saw next was even worse than I’d imagined. There was an empty bunkhouse they snuck off to, which was nothing more than a shack - not much more elaborate than our old cruck house growing up. I crept up to one of the windows and peered through a small crack to see what might happen next.

  In the darkness, with only a candle lighting their maneuvers, I saw the girl stripping out of her wrinkly dress and laying down in a straw bed with the young man. After kissing him and fondling him, she actually mounted him like a saddle! Then she rode him like a stallion until she climaxed, squealing with delight, quickly hopping off to stimulate the lad to orgasm with her hands. It was astounding! The girl was shameless!

  The second twin was even more efficient with her time. She found a young man who was rather dashing I have to say and led him out to the same bunkhouse while her sister assumed serving duties. Her approach was to brazenly yank down his trousers and swallow down his manhood until he was rigid and firm. She then suckled his penis with an enthusiasm that surpassed anything I’d ever seen—even from Ywedelle—until the man groaned and released his issue.

  On top of that, she then proceeded to stroke his shaft until he sprayed semen all over her chest and the base of her neck! I’d certainly never seen anything like that before! When he was finished, she promptly threw on her dress and scurried back to the tavern, leaving the young man to tend to himself alone.