Dull steps

 

Dull footsteps echoed through the stone walls and then got lost in the spacious church space shaped by sacred darkness. Dark clouds had covered the sky and so no rays of sunlight reached the small windows of the church. Only a few candles provided diffuse light inside, in which a young woman moved to the confessional.

It was Sunday afternoon and even a maid had a limited amount of free time on this Lord's Day. The girl wore a simple dress, little more than a piece of linen tied together. Her slightly wavy strawberry-blonde hair fell wildly over her shoulders and surrounded a pretty face. She seemed young and fresh. If the stigma of poverty had not determined her fate, she might have grown into a beauty, but as it was, she was a simple maid in the service of a yeomen.

The girl approached the confessional and got down on her knees. She folded her hands as befitted a good Christian and began: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been 12 days since my last confession.”

There was silence for an infinite moment, so that the young woman had to wonder whether the priest was actually there. But then she heard a throat clearing and a high voice spoke: “God in heaven, who enlightens our hearts, grant you true knowledge of your sins and His mercy.” “

Amen,” the believer whispered. Because despite, or perhaps because of, her poverty, Martha, like most people of her time, was a devout Christian. The promise of salvation of a better world after death was the only thing she had left. And that's why she went to church regularly.

“So speak, my child, what sin burns on your soul.” The priest of Greifenstein was actually a mature and quite corpulent man. He had lived in the small village at the foot of the protective castle for many years. Over the years, his belly has gotten bigger and his voice has gotten higher and higher, so that the priest has often become the target of secret spots.

The girl didn't care at that moment. She had experienced something traumatic and the priest was now her only point of contact. No one was interested in the sufferings of a maid; in 11th century society she counted even less than a pig or a cow. It was a tool and had to function.

The priest noticed her hesitation and asked again in his slightly raised voice: “Speak, Martha, what sin weighs on your soul.” He spoke to her directly, as he had known Martha since she was born 18 years ago. He had said the funeral mass for her mother and he had also welcomed this illegitimate child into the womb of Holy Mother Church.

“I have sinned. It’s about…” she hesitated again. Her voice trembled and she had to stop several times to continue telling Father Alfred about her sin. Their crime was the lust of the flesh. She had given herself to a married man.

“This is a grave offense, my child,” he acknowledged her sin. “Who was it with whom you committed adultery? You have violated the 10 commandments of God. Hellfire is waiting for people who do something like that!”

“With Farmer Friedrich, my master. But I didn't want it. God has to take that into account!” she explained in shock. Hell was a bad place, a place even worse than their current existence.

“Is that so?” Alfred shifted slightly in his confessional. “Maybe it would help if you told me, if you told God, everything that happened. That way he can decide your true remorse.”

“But…” she stammered. Her pale face suddenly turned red.

“Don’t try to bargain with God, child. Speak and don't leave out any detail."

Martha hesitantly followed his request and began to tell the story: "It was last night after supper. The farmer's wife Hilde had already gone to bed and I was scrubbing the pots and pans when the farmer came to me." "

And?" asked the priest.

“He approached me and touched me.”

“How? Tell me exactly what happened and don’t forget, you are standing before God’s judgment.”

Martha sighed slightly and then began to report again in more detail. “He stood in the doorway for a while and watched me at work, as he often did. The farmer is tall and strong. His bald head only had a few hairs stuck together in greasy strands. It was hot and sweat was dripping from every pore on my body. His eyes were glued to me just like my dress was pecking at my sweat-drenched skin."

"And you? What have you done, my child, what sinful thoughts came to your mind when you saw him? Speak!” whispered the priest.

“None, really. I was just shaking a little. I knew that look and had seen it many times. He wanted to commit a sin."

"You mean you tempted him?"

“No, I didn’t want to. He suddenly came to me and grabbed me by the hips. I defended myself, told him to leave me alone.” Her voice sounded desperate. The priest's accusation stuck hard with the young girl. She felt innocent and yet guilty at the same time.

“Yet you have seduced the man, like the serpent in paradise; you are a sinner.” The priest's words brought tears to her eyes.

“No!” she contradicted, almost defiantly.

“Child, don’t forget, you are here for Holy Confession. “You must openly confess your sin so that you can be forgiven,” the priest warned. "So what did he do after that, report it and you'll be forgiven."

"He, he hugged me tight. I smelled his breath. It smelled disgustingly of beer.” The young woman had tears in her eyes as she had to recall the memories of last night in her mind's eye in order to report to the priest as ordered. “He put a hand on one butt and pressed his lips to mine. He forced his tongue into my mouth."

"And you liked it?"

"No!"

"Don't lie! Continue!” Alfred’s voice reflected a certain excitement.

“He pushed me roughly against the kitchen table and tugged my dress over my shoulders. It tore slightly, exposing my breasts. He seemed to like that, because he immediately grabbed them and squeezed them roughly.”

“Did that make her hard?” breathed the priest through the bars of the confessional.

"What?" she asked ignorantly.

“Your nipples! Did that make your nipples hard?"

"I, I don't know," she stammered.

"Yes or no, and don't you dare lie."

"I don't know!" she sobbed.

“Yes or no?” he repeated.

"Yes, I think they got hard." Her green eyes filled with the wet shine of her tears while a slight groan could be heard from the priest's cabin.

“So you were willing! "Yes, and then?"

"He pushed me down on the table and wedged himself between my legs." The pain was still felt as she remembered how he pushed her thin thighs apart, overstretching her delicate muscles. She shifted restlessly on her knees. “He pushed the dress up to my hips and…”

She didn’t have the strength to continue speaking, but then the clergyman forced her with his stern voice, trembling with excitement: “What did he do then, speak up! Don't forget, if you don't confess everything, you won't be spared hell, my child."

Martha obeyed and after a few attempts she told the priest what happened next.

“He grabbed his manhood and held me by my knees. Then he spit briefly between my thighs and immediately rubbed them against my gate with his rough hands."

"You mean on your pussy?"

"Yes," she admitted reluctantly.

“Then say that too. A gate is the holy entrance to a house of worship, not a maid's cunt."

"He rubbed it on my cunt," she repeated the sentence.

“And then?” mumbled the priest.

“Then suddenly it hurt really bad. He pushed his penis into me. Just like animals do.”

“Was he the first man to do that to you?” the priest asked.

"Yes. And it hurt a lot."

"All the time? How long was he inside you?"

"I don't know, but not too long. He gasped and moaned loudly, then it was over. I felt him shoot his seed into me. Then he let me sit back on the table. I, I didn't want any of this, it wasn't my fault."

"Did you touch your pussy afterwards, was it wet?"

"Yes," the maid stammered through tears. "It was not my fault. Please forgive me!”

Suddenly the curtain next to her was torn open and the kneeling woman looked up at the priest with wet eyes. He had pulled his robe over his hips and she could clearly see his erect penis, which he held out to her at head level. He said: “I forgive you, my child. But you must repent. As a sign of your penance, you will take my penis into your mouth, just as you took his cock into your stomach with your cunt. I'll drive the devil and his lust out of you!"

"Wha..." She didn't get any further. As soon as she opened her mouth even slightly, he grabbed her by the head and shoved his unwashed thing into her mouth. His hands wrapped around her head so that the young maid could not escape him.

Martha opened her mouth in surprise. She let him go deep into her throat before she even realized what was happening to her. The priest fucked her with a few rough thrusts into her mouth. Her eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets as she knelt before him in the confessional. Just like the night before with her farmer, the petite girl had no chance of defending herself against the man.

She almost vomited several times when he hit the roof of her mouth. Finally he found access to her throat and sank his cock completely into her. Martha couldn't breathe and was in danger of suffocating. At that moment, her instinct for self-preservation triumphed over her instilled humility. She bit down. Unlike many women, Martha still had all her teeth and managed to bite into the bulging flesh of his manhood. It wasn't tight, but Alfred cried out loudly and staggered back as painful marks were left on his sensitive manhood.

Martha seized the moment. She jumped up and ran away. Her slender legs carried her out of the church like a greyhound, while behind her the priest uttered loud curses. She tore open the gate and stormed outside. Suddenly a strong arm grabbed her.

***

“Thief! Stop the thief!” shouted the priest from inside the church.

The girl tried to tear herself away, but the bailiff's strong arm prevented this. Her blonde hair twirled wildly, tears and fear marked her expression.

“What’s going on here?” asked the bailiff of Greifenstein Castle in a loud, stern voice. Immediately some residents of the small town came running over.

“I… I got the girl,” gasped Father Alfred as he staggered out of the church. His habit still didn't fit properly and you could clearly see the pain in the obese man, which must have come from somewhere.

“With what?” asked the bailiff calmly. His grip on Martha's thin arm was painful and did not bode well. The bailiff was widely known for his cruelty.

“She wanted to violate the sacrificial stick!” said the priest. These outrageous words sent a murmur through the small crowd of onlookers that had now gathered around them.

Frightened by the incredible accusation, the battered maid took courage and shouted: “No, that's not true!”

Her courage was not rewarded, because the bailiff of Greifenstein gave her a strong slap in the face with his gloved hand. “Shut up, woman. You may speak if I allow you.”

Vogt Heinrich’s cruelty towards women was widely known. Rumors said it was because of his own wife, who probably grew up with a stick up her ass. Be that as it may, he was a brutal master and no one dared to mess with him with impunity.

“Speak, priest. “What did you see?”

to tell Father Alfred. Several times he used his high-pitched voice and each time the story became more colorful, so that people who came along later heard an interesting but fictitious story.

Martha immediately recognized what was happening here. The bailiff was the bailiff of the lord of the castle and was directly responsible for taxes, administration and the judiciary. What Henry did here was to speak justice, not about the unchaste priest, but about her.

The girl was passed on to two of the bailiff's cronies, who immediately tied her hands. No one seemed to have any doubts about her guilt. Even when the priest described in confusing words how she had tampered with the sacrificial box and then attacked it before she fled, everyone was convinced of her guilt. At least no one defended the young woman.

Martha herself wasn't allowed to defend herself at first. The court in the village square only listened to the fat priest and any of their objections were punished with beatings. Eventually even her farmer and his wife came to the hearing. They had probably been taken because they were in a certain sense responsible for their maid.

Neither the farmer nor his wife said a word in her favor. No one wanted to be associated with this heinous crime. Some who were well-disposed toward Martha perhaps thought their part, but still anyone who perhaps had doubts about the story remained silent.

Soon new allegations were made. Things that went missing in the village were blamed on the poor girl, who was still not allowed to defend herself. Soon the list of her crimes was so long that she couldn't even remember them in her head.

The Sunday event was something special in the village. So whether he consciously wanted to give her a death blow, the priest, who even pretended to protect her, came up with the topic of her virginity. In front of everyone, her dress was pulled down to her hips and her thighs were spread. Panic shot into her eyes as the farmer's wife pushed her fingers into Martha's vagina and announced to the village that Martha was not only a thief, but also a whore. Actually, a maid's virginity was meaningless since these poor women would never have a normal married life anyway. At that moment, however, everything that made her appear in a bad light became more important. Martha tried again and again to protest her innocence, but after her lips were split open by the blows of the henchmen and the bailiff, she kept quiet about further brutal blows.

The dark, almost black storm clouds in the sky seemed to be an omen. Barely an hour after she asked for forgiveness for her sins in church, the girl was met with a merciless sentence.

“Martha, the maid of the free farmer Friedrich, serious accusations are being made against you. We find you guilty of theft and fornication. For these crimes there is normally only one punishment, death!” announced the bailiff. A murmur went through the crowd. “But because of Father Alfred’s leadership language, you will only be sentenced to 40 lashes in the pillory. After the punishment has been carried out, you will remain in the pillory for a day through deterrence and purification before you are banished from the village community.”

The maid accepted the sentence, sobbing and with tears in her eyes. Death would not have been worse, perhaps even more merciful. Father Alfred probably knew that too. She had seen an unholy smile on his lips when he made the suggestion to Heinrich. Strong hands grabbed her and carried her away. Her life was no longer in her hands.

***

The strawberry-blond girl stood in the pillory, bent over and with her legs spread. The head and arms were clamped between two oak boards that had recesses for the neck and wrists. Her feet were also fixed with a board so that she could neither kneel down nor put her legs in a comfortable position. Her dress was pulled up to her back, exposing her unprotected bottom, her bare thighs and the reddish, blonde down on her privates to the gaze of onlookers.

They had taken their time. Everyone from the village and the castle should have the opportunity to share in Martha's humiliating punishment. Beer kegs were brought in and a right-wing festival atmosphere developed. Nobody was bothered by the dark clouds, nor did they care about the humid heat. The atmosphere was oppressive, but also heated by an eerie excitement. Children played, men drank and women were outraged by the shamelessness of the condemned.

Finally the time had come. Like a reddish fireball from God, the sun pushed out from between the clouds and bathed the village square in an evening orange. A faint rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance, but that was the least of Martha's worries. It felt like she had been waiting in this torturous position for hours. Her limbs ached and children and women threw rubbish at her several times. Torturing people with impunity seemed to make some people lose their inhibitions. She was the condemned one. Everything that was done to her was an act of justice - or at least that's how people felt.

Heinrich put the beer mug aside and stood up. His accomplices, who were now drunk, also stood up. The people from the village now formed a loose circle around the condemned young woman. The murmurs and laughter grew quieter.

Two of the bailiff's men had gotten long willow sticks and were now flicking them through the air. The sound already whispered the expected pain in Martha's ear. She had already felt her farmer's rod several times in her life. Mostly, however, it was just a handful of blows with no real malice, the kind given to a young girl for minor offenses. This time, however, the rods would be wielded by drunken servants who would delight in their pain. Every stroke on her bare ass would be delivered without mercy, the maid knew that - and it would be 40 strokes, 40, the biblical number would eat into her skin.

“Start punishing the little thief, may God be her guardian!” Heinrich’s voice echoed across the village square. Many faces formed a lustful smile, including Father Alfred.

“Ass or pussy?” asked one of the servants.

“Cunt!” said the other and the first blow hit her at the level of her sensitive private parts. The pain was indescribable for someone who had not experienced this themselves. A burning sensation spread across her skin. It didn't feel like she was being hit, more like the skin was being pulled from her thighs.

“One!” announced the bailiff in a loud voice.

The other servant brought his rod down on the girl and she cried out in despair. He hit her buttocks and here too it felt as if a fine strip of her young skin was being peeled from her body.

“Two!”

Now there was a pause. Martha gasped and whimpered. Several times the bailiff's cronies flicked their rods in the air, letting memories of the pain flash through their minds. Then, after an agonizingly long wait, the next blow hit her again on her privates, slightly higher than the first blow, but the pain was the same.

“Three!”, kill Heinrich. His hands were on his belt and his shirt made of finely woven cloth fluttered in the rising wind, which glided like a kiss over people's sweaty bodies. Martha also felt this calming touch. For a moment she opened herself up to this pleasant feeling, but then she had to endure the next blow, which this time hit her at the level of her tailbone.

Once again her loud scream echoed across the village square. Alfred smiled contentedly while Friedrich treated himself to a sip of beer. The farmer felt pity for his maid, whom he had had at the farm since her early childhood. She was almost a kind of daughter to him, even if other feelings had dictated his actions last night. But his desire for the girl was more about rejecting his own wife. During the years of their marriage she had not given him a living child and in recent years she even avoided having sex with him, so that Friedrich was slowly, almost compulsively, driven to new shores. Martha was the logical choice. The attractive young maid had grown into a young woman. What would be wrong with letting her bear his children now?

This option no longer existed. Martha would be banished from the village if she survived the ordeal. The yeoman knew that the priest's accusations were false, but he could not stand up to him. To defend a maid would be to accuse the priest of lying.

Every time one of the servants, with their now bloody rods, went down on Martha's tender flesh, the farmer winced even before her pitiful cries reached his ears. She had already received more than a dozen of them. Red, sore welts decorated her skin.

“Twenty-one!” called out the bailiff and the servants took a short break. Not from exhaustion, their rods had become useless from the violent blows. So they changed their whips for new ones and the girl got a little break.

Hilde, Friedrich's wife, came to her with cloths and a bowl. The farmer was amazed at his wife's willingness to help. So she had a good soul after all, even if he sometimes found her hard and wooden. Helping the poor child was a truly Christian act.

Martha hung limply in her wooden shackles and so she did not recognize her mistress through her tear-stained eyes. At first she thought about getting help, but she quickly noticed the foul smell of the bowl. The farmer's wife opened the girl's mouth with a firm grip and stuffed a vinegar-soaked sponge into her mouth. The sour taste of the sponge revived her senses and she wanted to choke it out, but Hilde covered her mouth. She whispered softly in her ear: “Don’t think I haven’t heard about your affair with the farmer. You probably think I'm stupid. You probably wanted to rob me of my position at court, right? God is now punishing you for it. You get what you deserve!"

The farmer's wife fixed Martha's gag with a scrap of cloth and then washed her wounds with another. The girl writhed in despair while the woman twice her age rubbed the vinegar-soaked cloth over the whipped flesh. No one heard her screams anymore and the more sensitive villagers were grateful to Hilde for her actions. The young woman's pitiful screams have long disturbed some people.

When she was finished, she stroked Martha's hair and whispered to her: "Go to hell, whore!"

The torturers wait patiently. They smelled the vinegar and knew about the painful harassment. Both boys grinned at each other. Then one of them reached out and hit Martha's not yet injured thighs again with full force. Again the young woman felt as if her skin was being ripped off. This time, however, her scream was silenced by the vinegar-filled sponge in her mouth. Nausea overcame her and it was only with difficulty that she could bring herself to breathe in the acidic air through her nose.

“22!” shouted Heinrich. Like Alfred, he disliked the fact that the girl no longer screamed so loudly. But no one thought to take the gag out of her mouth.

Heinrich's servants now took turns again with their blows on the girl's buttocks, thighs and private parts. Martha was now dazed from the pain and the pungent smell in her nose. When the 40th blow hit her sore cunt, she just hung motionless in the pillory. The men smiled contentedly at each other and each went to get a mug of beer.

The priest and Hilde came to her to check whether she was still alive. Martha wheezed slightly as Alfred removed the gag from her. Saliva and other juices dripped from her mouth. The crowd murmured quietly. Only then did they seem to realize that the girl had been beaten almost to death. Some who had previously condemned her felt something like pity. It wasn't enough to help her, but her eyes averted and no longer enjoyed her fate, which in her eyes was her own fault. She had to be guilty, because otherwise, yes, what else would be? There was no alternative. She was guilty and received her just punishment for it.

The thunder grew louder and now a cooling wind blew through the village. While the crowd slowly dispersed, Hilde washed Martha's wounds again with the vinegar. Then she took the sponge and her cloths and left her former maid in the pillory. Friedrich also stopped watching the play. The farmer, like many others, had disappeared into the village tavern.

“The convict remains here in the pillory tonight! Anyone who wants to can approach her amicably, after all she is a well-known whore in the village,” the bailiff announced in a loud voice. Then he turned to his men and said: “Take them out of the village at dawn. I don't want to see her cunt here anymore tomorrow."