A REWARD FOR EVIL

Annie has a score to settle with one who once wronged her.

THE COACHMAN'S HOLIDAY - 10

A REWARD FOR EVIL

The woman known as Countess Hope lay on a fragranced bearskin whilst a young roisterer stood over her, dribbling oils from a stone jar onto her bare belly and eyeing her with eyes blinded by any suggestion of reality. He was dressed after the manner of a labourer, for it was true that the countess favoured what she called a bit of rough from time to time. And this was one of them times. She sighed deeply and smiled a twisted smile.

“You want me, don’t you?” she sighed, “you want me with all of your body, young and firm though it be? You want me to guide you down paths you have yet to learn to tread towards delights your body yearns to taste for the first time in an empty life… And will I let you have me? Will I permit my perfect flesh to be sullied by the hands of a mere workman with nails rotten with filth and skin calloused and hard with wretched toil?”

The roisterer, he can’t have been above seventeen or eighteen years old yet had the bearing of almost middle age as a consequence of the life he was forced to live, sighed.

“I have some skin that’s neither calloused nor hard,” he whispered, “and it is yours for the taking, Countess, as you know well.”

“We’re playing games, silly boy,” she laughed, “and the games merely stretch my patience to its breaking point. Come, youth, let me divest you of your trews so that I might get a better look at your firm legs and firmer buttocks...”

“Yes, you’d do that!” hacked a new voice from the shadows near the doorway, and the roisterer leapt back whilst the countess, if countess she be, pulled the bearskin over her where she was naked, and shrunk into it.

“Who are you, crone?” snapped Countess Hope, focussing her eyes on the newcomer who was barely visible in the dim light from a single candle, “and why are you disturbing me whilst I’m at my oiling?”

“You know me all right, Mistress Smallthief,” grinned Annie Anon, for that was who the newcomer was. “It was you who held hands with the loathsome Mayhem creature as she stole the food from the mouths of my sons, who impoverished me just because she could. And it was you as well as she who I blamed for my condition, blamed you then and still do blame you, Mistress Smallthief, for it was you who saw the little I had left after I was robbed and ravaged, and stole even that from me!”

“Bah!” snapped the erstwhile Countess Hope, “none of that can be proved! I am spotless and beloved in this quaint little fishing village, and I bring wealth beyond the expectation of the little men who take their nets to sea. And what is more, you, Mistress Anon … you see that I remember you and how pathetic you are … you are as good as a dead woman now that you have challenged me! This youth, this roisterer who has a fancy for learning a man’s appetites, will do as I order him, and that will be your death!”

“What… me?”” stammered the youth.

“Don’t be a wimp, boy!” lashed out the countess, “you want me, don’t you?”

“Not at any price!” replied the young roisterer, who had considerably more sense than she had seen in him.

“I will still deal with you, Mistress Anon, after I have squeezed yet more from you,” hissed the almost naked woman still partly wrapped in lavish furs.

“Then maybe you will have a drink of forgiveness with me?” suggested Annie, putting on a feeble whine and cringing like the impoverished and abused often do. “Maybe we will sip a cup of kindness together ere the dawn writes a new day into the book of life?”

“Forgiveness? Who am I to forgive you?” snapped the Countess, standing up and letting the bearskin fall to the ground, revealing herself in her naked reality. And where there had seemed to be firm flesh and a smooth complexion there was nothing of the sort. Her skin fell into wrinkles and her breasts sagged towards the floor like empty sacks that had once been full.

“Urgh!” spluttered the roisterer, making sure his trews were tightly braced and his belt knotted. Maybe he had been saved just in time. That thought, anyway, flashed through his mind.

“You are what I see,” sighed Annie, “and were I you I would adorn myself with the proud peacock feathers of your alter ego, for in truth your flesh is hardly a flattering sight. But come, sip this wine with me and we will part as friends...”

Then the erstwhile countess made her fatal error. Addicted as she was to all pleasures, even that provided by good French wines, she took the silver goblet offered her by Annie Anon, and swallowed its contents as though there would be no tomorrow.

And for her, maybe, there wouldn’t, or not a tomorrow she would love.

“That’s you dealt with, madam!” Annie snapped as the expression on Mistress Smallthief’s face turned from the cosmetic white of her powders to a sickly green. “You may wake up again, and you may not,” she added, “but if you do you can be sure it will be for a short while and filled with anguish. For I have coaxed you into swallowing a dire poison squeezed by travellers and adventurers from the throats of foreign toads, a poison that will maybe take your life as surely as the sun rises on its diurnal journey one more time.”

“You mean?” asked Mistress Smallthief, gasping and with a foul and vile fluid dribbling from the corners of her mouth.

“I mean you will sleep and either wake with the dawn for a brief spell in order to suffer consciously, or remain asleep for eternity,” gloated Annie. “Some may say that what I have done to you is evil, but in my mind you and your sort, exploiters of those too poor and weak to defend themselves, are the sum total of evil. You are one of the thieves who obliged me to sell my bairns into the unknown and descend to the gutters myself. It is you and that loathsome Mayhem b***h who as good as stole my life from me, and now I am stealing yours!”

“Lordy me!” gasped the young and very confused roisterer, “and here was I thinking I might spend the night discovering for the first time the greatest joys of what it means to be a man!”

“You will one day, lad, but choose the right wench for you, with rose-blossom cheeks and a ready smile, and not a creature like this,” said Annie. “Now be off with you and thank the Heavens for your escape!”

“Yes miss...” stammered the lad who no longer had the least appearance of a roisterer, and he slunk out into the wet world outside.

“And I’ll off, Smallthief,” snarled Annie, “off to where you never need to cast your eyes on me or envy the odd farthing I may still have in my purse!”

And she turned and followed the lad out.

“Now find your own maiden, and kiss her,” suggested Annie as the youth disappeared into the shadows.

“Is she really dead?” asked the boy.

“Nah, but she thinks she is!” replied Annie, “and the truth is she will have a mighty sore head for a day or two, which may well oblige her to contemplate the evil of her ways, but no, she’s not dead. I don’t kill people, though I do enjoy making bad people think that I might! Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go to my coach. We’re leaving long before the dawn in order to escape further robbery.”

“Goodbye, then,” muttered the roisterer, and he did the most unexpected thing when he turned on Annie and planted a warm and juicy kiss on her dry old mouth.

“Get on with you, lad!” she exclaimed, and blushed.

TO BE CONTINUED....

© Peter Rogerson 01.06.18

Reviews

[Great Aunt Astri]

I enjoyed this well told tale. I was expecting something vey gruesome to happen, as you led us to believe, but I was pleasantly surprised by the ending.

[Peter Rogerson]

I should have added TO BE CONTINUED .... i'll do that right now...