A Whore for the King Pt. 06

This story is categorized as science fiction/fantasy, but there are no ray guns or robots. No wizards. No orcs. It is a tale of fictional people living in a fictional kingdom in England a long time ago. There's a lot of sex, but there's also a lot of words devoted to plot and character. Isn't sex more exciting when it involves people we care about? It's my hope that King Harold, Princess Alana, Queen Mother Eunice, Sir Robert, and (especially) Sarah the Whore capture your attention. All characters are adults over 18.

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It would be pleasant to imagine that life continued with uninterrupted happiness for the king and his charming companion. Harold and Sarah were well satisfied with their lot, and no one wanted to change a thing. But that's not how life works. Things happen. The things that happened next marked the beginning of the saddest chapter in Harold's life since his wife died in childbirth.

Princess Alana of Catacan turned 18, which meant that it was time for her marriage to King Harold. The princess and her parents, King Swelt and Queen Aurora, traveled to Middlebury for the wedding. Everyone understood that the event was extraordinarily significant because it affected the destiny of everyone in both kingdoms, since Harold's and Alana's heir would wear the crowns of the new combined realm.

There was every reason to celebrate. It had taken years of negotiations and waiting for this day to happen. It was expected to bring even more peace and prosperity to every aristocrat and commoner. There was only one thing that could go wrong. Princess Alana had to produce a male heir. There was no reason to think this wouldn't happen, but it remained the one concern on anyone's mind.

King Harold reassured Sarah. "Nothing about our relationship will change," he told her. "The princess has already been informed that you are my companion. She knows that I intend to continue spending time with you."

"Surely she will object when she becomes your wife," Sarah said.

"She can object all she wants," Harold said. "It's my decision, not hers. And she has been raised as a royal princess, so she surely knows that this is the way of royalty. If she wishes, she knows she can have her own companion - after she produces an heir. Our marriage is a business arrangement. Don't let it trouble you."

But it did trouble Sarah. She was expected to attend the ceremonial celebrations, and she always felt uncomfortable. Her discomfort escalated at a banquet where she caught Princess Alana looking her way. The expression on Alana's face was one of anger and hostility, and it terrified Sarah.

I can't believe nothing will change, Sarah thought to herself. It goes against common sense. She is to be Harold's wife, and I am just a whore.

Sarah remembered the promise of Sir Robert, who assured her that she'd have a safe and secure position at his estate if anything happened that made it impossible for her to remain with Harold. She feared she'd need to ask him to keep that promise.

Sarah watched the wedding from a seat in the back of the church. The aristocrats were in front, the functionaries in the middle, and the commoners in the rear. She listened to the vows, cringing when King Harold pledged to be faithful to his bride and forsake all others. One way or another, Sarah believed, she would be forsaken.

Things went wrong almost immediately.

On the night of their wedding, Harold went to the room of his bride. He was prepared to consummate their marriage. Alana declined, saying she would not welcome Harold into her bed until he got rid of his companion. Harold pointed out that her demand was improper, but the new queen was insistent.

Harold had the legal right to force himself on his wife, but he was not that kind of king, so he left and spent the night with Sarah. Harold did not tell Sarah what was wrong, but she was smart enough to know there was something amiss if Harold wasn't spending his wedding night with the queen.

The same thing happened the next night. And the next. The servants, guards and other members of the castle staff see everything, and soon everyone was gossiping about the fact that something was terribly wrong between Harold and his new queen. The mystery was solved when people all over the castle heard loud voices coming from the queen's chambers.

"I am not a broodmare!" Queen Alana was heard to say.

"That is exactly what you are, you selfish little bitch!" the Queen Mother Eunice screamed. "The only reason you are here is to produce an heir! That is your one and only duty!"

"Not as long as that woman remains here!" Alana said.

"Be careful where you tread, brat," Eunice said. "That woman is beloved by everyone in this kingdom, not just Harold! That woman is thought to bring good luck wherever she goes! Choose your battles well. If you get into a confrontation with Sarah, it will not go well. You will lose! Grow up, and spread your damn legs!"

Sarah was so frightened that she closeted herself in her chambers. King Harold repeatedly reassured her, but Sarah lived in terror of a clash she feared was inevitable. "Sir Robert has said he will provide a place for me if I am no longer welcome here," she told Harold. "Perhaps it would be best if I left."

"No!" Harold said. "No. No. No. No. No! That. Will. Not. Happen! Sarah, you are overreacting. I will take care of this. I promise.

"But she is your queen, and I am just a whore," she said.

Harold's expression was one of profound sadness and exhaustion. He took Sarah into his arms.

"Out in the countryside, people imagine that the queen has great power. They imagine that she makes decisions that affect everyone in the kingdom.

"Here in the castle everyone knows the truth. The only powers the queen has are those I give her. I will not permit her to threaten your place in my heart. This will pass. I promise you, this will pass."

Harold did his best to comfort Sarah, but he knew she would remain on edge until the situation was resolved. As he was leaving her chambers, Harold gave new orders to her guards.

"Do not allow anyone in Sarah's chambers without her permission," Harold said. "Not even the queen. Make sure all the guards know that this is a place the queen may not enter. If she demands entry, notify me immediately, and DO NOT LET HER IN!"

King Harold felt very uneasy about what might happen to the two kingdoms if Alana never produced an heir, but he was confident he'd done all that was needed to protect his Sarah. It turned out he was too confident.

As part of her effort to avoid an encounter with the queen, Sarah began taking all her meals in her private chamber. The awfulness began on a day when the man who delivered her food fell ill. Sarah considered asking Emma to go to the kitchen and fetch something, but Emma was entertaining her boyfriend at that moment, and Sarah did not want to intrude on her private pleasures. The kitchen was a short walk from Sarah's chamber, so she decided to make the trip herself.

She was in the kitchen gathering food for her breakfast when she decided to get some pastries for the servant who'd fallen ill. Sarah imagined she'd send the treats to the man's family along with a message of hope that he recovered soon. She was almost finished when disaster arrived in the form of Queen Alana.

Alana saw that Sarah was gathering pastries. "What's this!" Alana said. "Stealing pastries! They are for aristocrats, not commoners like you!"

Sarah was terrified, and so were the members of the kitchen staff. "Sarah is permitted to have pastries, your highness," the chief cook said meekly.

"Shut your hole!" Alana said to the cook. "This shall not pass! You have overstepped, whore! Guards! Take her arms! Bend her over this table!"

The guards were alarmed by this turn of events, but they felt compelled to do as they were ordered. They bent Sarah over the table and held her in place. When Sarah was secure, the queen lifted her skirt to her waist. She lowered Sarah's undergarment, exposing her bare bottom to everyone in the kitchen.

"You! Give me your belt!" Alana said to the cook. Everyone in the room knew that what was happening was wrong, but none of them knew how to stop in. Alana was, after all, the queen. The cook quietly removed his belt and handed it over.

Sarah felt shame and humiliation. The idea that people she knew well could see her most private parts appalled her. "Please, your highness!" Sarah said. "Stop! I beg you to stop!"

"I'll do nothing of the sort, whore!" Alana said. "This should cure your impudence!"

And with that she whipped Sarah's bare bottom with the belt. She did it again. And again. The sound of leather slapping against flesh rang loudly through the room. Sarah cried out in pain as the agonizing punishment continued. Alana lashed out again and again. She'd whipped Sarah nine times and was prepared to continue when King Harold and the Queen Mother entered the room. They'd been nearby when they heard the commotion, so they went to the kitchen to investigate.

Harold ran up to his queen, grabbed her by the wrist, and ripped the belt from her hand. The look on Harold's face terrified everyone in the room.

This is about to go from bad to worse, Queen Mother Eunice thought to herself.

"Harold! Son! Say nothing intemperate! Do nothing intemperate! Stand back, and leave this to me!"

Turning to the guards, she said "Release Sarah at once!" Then Eunice turned to Alana and slapped her across the face so hard that the queen staggered backward. Alana looked shocked. In her entire life, no one had ever struck her.

"I am the queen!" she said. "You can't do that to a queen!"

"Is that right?!" the queen mother said. She slapped Alana again, even harder this time, and the expression on the queen's face was one of fear and alarm. That was the exact moment Alana realized the depth of the problem she'd created for herself.

"Guards! Take the queen in hand and hold her here!" the queen mother said. Turning to the kitchen staff, she cried "No one is permitted to leave this room! You are all witnesses to what just happened! You will all give statements that attest to what you just saw!"

The queen mother was shaking with rage, and it took her all her strength to compose herself. Speaking in a calm, quiet voice, she looked at Alana and said, "In this kingdom, commoners have rights. Legal rights. No aristocrat may abuse any subject of King Harold. Our courts have sent aristocrats to the gallows for violating this most sacred law. You will be arrested, tried in court, and subjected to whatever punishment the judge decrees.

"Guards, take 'her majesty' to the tower and lock her away. Harold, take Sarah to her chambers. Find someone to fetch the doctor. There must be something he can do for her pain."

Harold gathered Sarah into his arms and led her out of the kitchen. She was sobbing inconsolably. The whipping had been agonizing, and the assault on her modesty was almost as bad. She was still crying when the doctor arrived and applied a soothing ointment that was only partially successful in diminishing her discomfort. He gave her a goblet full of a dark red liquid and asked her to drink. Sarah took one sip and started to cough.

"What is this awful stuff!? It burns!" she said.

"It's called brandy," the doctor said. "One of the king's emissaries learned about it during a visit to France. It's made from wine that has been distilled to increase its potency. Drink it, Sarah. It will ease the pain more effectively than any medicine I possess."

Sarah forced herself to finish the entire goblet. The brandy felt like fire in her stomach, but its effects were sudden and powerful. Soon the pain was much less severe, and Sarah became so tired she had to lie down. The king stretched out beside her and remained there until she was asleep. Only then did Harold permit himself to shed tears over the awful developments of the day.

He blamed himself. He'd ordered Sarah's guards to prevent the queen from entering her chamber because he knew Alana was a threat. He felt he'd been stupid and neglectful for failing to foresee that Alana might find another way to abuse Sarah. He remained at Sarah's side for the rest of the day and all through the night, entertaining sad thoughts about her and aggrieved thoughts about the queen.

The first thing the Queen Mother did after sending Alana to the tower was to summon Sir Robert, who was well versed in the laws and procedures that applied to cases where aristocrats are accused of abusing commoners. Sir Robert and one of his scribes went to the kitchen, where they gathered statements from every worker who witnessed the events. The group consisted entirely of cooks and members of the cleaning staff, and all were frightened by the prospect of being asked to provide evidence that implicated the queen.

But they all felt a fierce loyalty to Sarah, so they held back nothing, giving identical accounts of exactly what they saw.

Sir Robert had witnessed the growing tension between Harold and Alana. He understood better than anyone what would happen if circumstances prevented Alana from producing an heir. Years of effort had gone into the elaborate negotiations for the merger of the two kingdoms; it felt inconceivable that one spoiled brat could undo so much important work by so many important people.

One development that did not go unnoticed was a sudden change in the weather. The day had dawned sunny and fair, but by nightfall dark clouds gathered and a cold rain poured down. The rain got colder and heavier throughout the night, and a fierce thunderstorm exploded across the sky just before dawn.

As lightning and thunder shook all of Middlebury, virtually everyone was huddled indoors to keep dry and warm. That included the men who cared for the king's horses. Because they were in their beds, they didn't immediately notice that a loud and powerful bolt of lightning struck the stable, setting it ablaze. The fire was raging by the time they finally got there. They were able to rescue all the horses, but a stable boy was burned badly enough to require medical treatment. It would leave a large and ugly scar. The building burned to the ground.

The rain continued all through the next day and night, and the downpour was a special concern because it occurred at a time when the kingdom's farmers were less than half finished planting that year's crop. It was soon obvious that it would take weeks for the fields to dry out enough to resume plowing, and by then it was likely that the prolonged delay would hurt the fall harvest. Heavy rains continued for another day, followed by intermittent rain for an entire week. All anyone could do was sit and watch the skies, hoping for dry weather that came much too late. It was asked if the foul weather was the way God expressed His opinion of the queen's foul behavior.

It might seem unrelated, but as all this was happening a particularly popular clergyman died in his sleep. Father Anthony had presided over church services for decades, baptizing multiple generations of the families in his parish. He was elderly, but he seemed vigorous and healthy right up until his death. It felt . . . suspicious.

As it became clearer that the harvest would suffer, talk about the queen grew uglier. The low point came when someone erected an effigy of Alana and set it on fire in the village commons.

"This is getting completely out of hand," Sir Robert told King Harold. "It's bad for business. Something needs to happen to resolve this unhappy state of affairs."

"I am open to suggestions," Harold said.

The king had been so dispirited since the attack on Sarah that it reminded Sir Robert and many others of the sad days that followed the death of Harold's beloved first wife. It seemed he had grown tired of being king. Increasingly, the other aristocrats were alarmed, and some began imagining scenarios where Harold might be dispatched so they could seize control of the crown.

Queen Mother Eunice struggled to control her outrage. She remembered the years she served as queen, never questioning her duty to produce an heir. Alana's arrogance angered and appalled her, and she found ways to make her displeasure known. The Queen Mother ordered that Alana's finery be taken and replaced with rough dresses made of raw, unbleached wool. She ordered the kitchen to serve Alana the same meals given to the commoners who worked in the castle, and that she be provided with no desserts or baked goods of any kind.

The food was wholesome, but Alana had never consumed such simple fare. As a princess and queen, she ate oatmeal containing bits of apple and raisins, sweetened with honey and cream. As a prisoner in the tower, she received plain oatmeal boiled in nothing but water. Later, she was served a bowl of mutton soup that contained lots of carrots and onions but almost no mutton. Growing up, she'd refused to eat vegetables. Vegetables dominated every meal in the tower.

The food was so bland that she ate little on her first day. But she woke hungry the next morning, and ate everything she received. It did little to change the fact that without the rich food she'd enjoyed her whole life, Alana felt hungry all the time. She complained to a guard, who showed no sympathy.

"You are eating the same food I eat, no more and no less," he said. "You are eating what the Queen Mother ordered for you. If you don't like what you're getting, you don't have to eat it, but don't expect anything else."

As the days went by with no word of what would be done to her, Alana fell into a deep despair. The isolation was maddening. Alana looked out her window one day and saw a curl of smoke emanating from Middlebury, but she didn't know it arose from a public burning of Alana in effigy. She was horrified when a guard told her the reason for the smoke. She began to appreciate the fact that every unfortunate event was being attributed to what was universally called 'The Curse of the Queen' triggered by her attack on Sarah. In time she finally understood that Sarah had long been regarded as the kingdom's bringer of good luck, and Alana was now seen as a harbinger of misfortune.

Sarah didn't leave her chambers for a full day after her attack. The doctor inspected the welts on her backside and declared she would bear no permanent scars. The marks were fading rapidly and the pain was much diminished by the morning after the attack. King Harold remained when his duties allowed it, and he slept next to her every night for weeks.

I need to get out of this bed, Alana thought to herself on the second day.

Sir Robert informed Sarah that she would not have to preside over a prayer service that week because it was canceled by the constant rain, but he encouraged her to make ready for next week's ceremony. "The people are distraught," Sir Robert said. "They love you, Sarah. If you don't make an appearance next week, I fear how they will react."

"I will be there. I promise," Sarah said. "Isolating myself in my chambers does no good at all."

She forced herself to venture out to the places she visited on a typical day. The library. The chapel. The damp gardens in the rear courtyard. The only place she avoided was the kitchen. Most of the workers there had witnessed her assault, and she couldn't bear the idea of being in the presence of so many people who'd seen her bare backside being whipped.

The librarian bought a new translation of Aristotle, and he rushed to give it first to Sarah. Sir Robert claimed that Aristotle was the wisest and most insightful man who'd ever lived, and he encouraged her to read as much of his writing as possible. Sarah sought out one of the chairs on a private balcony off the king's chambers and began reading what Aristotle had written about creatures that live in the oceans. Sarah had never seen an ocean; the treatise made her hope she'd visit the seashore someday.