Another Sin to Pay For

Meredith was beginning to think it might be wise to run away. Soon.

Alongside them stood Osmer, holding both horses, staring with nonchalant stoniness out over the plains. If he was excited at the thought that his Lady was about to disrobe right here on this hilltop, he didn't show it, but then he had other things on his mind that autumn: Edith the blacksmith's daughter was with child, meaning that once the blacksmith figured it out, then Osmer's cock might have some explaining to do.

So Osmer was beginning to think it might be wise to run away, too.

"Time, m'lady." Meredith's voice came out as a squeak. "It's cold, and there's no point in waiting, surely."

Time! Easy for you to say, you worthless empty-headed little bitch. You're not the one who has to strip down and then ride among your people. "Yes," she sighed. Brother Gladbert would be expecting her shortly after noon at the Priory, where he would absolve her of her sin with Thomas, and after that?

She didn't want to think any further ahead. She stepped out of her shoes.

Her hand went to her throat, to where the brooch held her cloak; she removed it carefully and shrugged off the thick blue wool, handing it to Meredith to fold. She glanced nervously around before she removed her red hood, silently mocking her own modesty: she was about to ride virtually naked among her people. What difference did it make now if a passing shepherd or farmer saw her exposing her hair? But still it felt shameful, the weak sun glinting off her golden locks as Meredith moved silently to help her remove the plaits.

The maid also helped with her dress, a finely woven burgundy with brown braiding at the hems, the two of them lifting it over her head as Osmer looked studiously away. Godeve had, for once, dispensed with any jewelry: she knew her maid would steal anything shiny she gave her. Meredith gathered the clothes into a careful bundle, and when her eyes met Godeve's she looked deeply frightened. "I'll see you at the church, Mistress," the murmured.

"Thank you," Godeve managed. Even here, far from the town and from anybody but her servants, the Lady of Mercia struggled to control herself, her mind screeching at her to put her clothing back on. She stood there barefoot, her hair cascading around her shoulders, in nothing but the sketchiness of a linen shift, nearly transparent in the sun. She tugged ineffectually at the hem, realizing with a sinking feeling in her soul that it wouldn't do much more than cover her cunt, and that only while she was standing still with no breeze: once she was up on the horse, her legs spread wide, she knew it would be difficult to keep herself even slightly covered. The tightly-fitted garment clung to the curves of her body. "I'm scared," she blurted.

"So am I, Mistress. I'll be there for you, though," Meredith replied softly, resolving to run off that very evening. Probably with some of m'lady's gold, too. The maid glanced down a moment, seeing Godeve's nipples already beginning to poke at the fabric. She looked away. "I'll be off then, m'lady."

Osmer, bless him, continued to look stubbornly away as he stepped up to help Godeve onto her horse's back. She raised her foot and planted it into his interlaced hands, marveling at how odd it was for him to be touching her skin that way; he seemed just as embarrassed, though she did catch him flipping a furtive glance at her ass as she swung her bare leg awkwardly over the saddle. Even before she felt secure in her seat, she was already scrambling to pull her shift down, but it was no use: if she pulled it low enough to tuck underneath, between her vagina and her saddle, it would sit tightly enough over her tits that her dark nipples would show clearly through the linen. The thought almost made her weep in frustration, even as the warrior guided her feet softly into the stirrups.

She couldn't even manage any thanks as the man stepped back, his head low. Up here, the breeze freshened. She felt it stir her hair and her shift, her mind racing. "Let's go," she croaked, the shame brimming over in her heart; ahead, Meredith was already at the bottom of the hill, striding toward the priory. "The sooner we get done with this, the better."

"Amen," the carle said sourly as he swung up onto his own horse. The word reminded Godeve that she was supposed to be praying, penitent, feeling the punishing benevolence of God, and as the warrior's horse stepped off she gulped hard.

The land passed slowly, so slowly beneath their hooves. Ahead, Meredith was soon lost in the distance as she hurried, the horses loping coolly along. All around them the world was silent but for the occasional bird, the leaf-stripped trees reaching nakedly toward the autumn sky. The smooth leather of the saddle creaked against her bare inner thighs, her cunt, her ass.

She saw the man coming before he saw her, just another farmer out on the puddled path, minding his business with some late-season withies on his back. He glanced up when he heard the hooves, then stood aside, then looked again. Longer and harder.

At her legs.

She felt a shiver, quite apart from the autumn breeze, a sense of blazing outrage that swept from her legs all the way up to her brain. How dare he look at me? she demanded of herself, of God? I am his thegn! My husband is his Earl! But was she, really? Today? Was she anything but a filthy sinner in need of salvation?

Was she anything, really, but a whore?

Godeve made herself straighten, her feet tender in the stirrups, eyes down at where her body met the saddle. Slowly, she raised her eyes to stare straight ahead between her horse's alert ears, telling herself she needed to endure this man's gaze as she would have to endure so many others. That this was what St Mary and God required of her. That these were the wages of her treacherous cunt's voracious appetite for Thomas' virile cock.

That she must never, ever let this happen again. That God, at long last, had his eye on the needy body and vile mind of Godeve, Lady of Mercia.

She felt his stare as a palpable thing on her leg, knew his eyes were wandering up, up along her thigh, to where the linen sat bunched at the saddle, hiding little. She heard a growl from Osmer ahead of her then, and knew the gaze had left her... until she rode slowly past and felt the farmer's eyes, once again, on her half-bared ass. Godeve knew she was scarlet from the top of her forehead to the tips of her nipples, and probably elsewhere too.

Osmer should be letting them stare, of course; she understood that was how the penance worked. But if he was going to step in to try to protect his Lady's virtue, Godeve certainly wasn't going to stop him.

She felt the thin strap slipping off her shoulder when she was still three furlongs from the first homes. Two more passersby had seen her by then, a clucking old lady and a young man who stared holes in her shift. But the thin linen wasn't made to be worn like this, outside, riding on her bare flesh with no heavy dress atop it to hold it down; she wasn't even aware it was off her shoulder until she felt the cloth over her left breast peeling away a bit, riding down over her the tempting skin there. She thought wildly of reaching up to replace the strap, and in her haste to claw it back up onto her shoulder she snapped the delicate fabric.

The shift slid down, front and back, tit and shoulderblade. And Lady Godeve, grim and desperate, clamped her arm tight to her left ribcage to try to prevent the shift from falling further. Another man passed, a monk, one of the grey ones; he rolled his eyes up to the heavens and made the sign of the cross as he passed, though he did not look away.

Godeve gritted her teeth, feeling damnation licking at her heels. She had to press on, her horse glued to Osmer's, her own face set rigidly ahead in an aloof, Godly scowl.

But the horse was not moving easily along the muddy track, rocking her in the saddle, her tits quivering. She knew the hem was riding up at her hips, but promised herself wildly that nobody would notice in the high saddle. She dared not look down at where the linen was inching its way down her chest, but now she grew acutely conscious of the way the other strap was digging into her right shoulder. Pressing into the skin there. Straining anew with every jostle of the horse's gait.

She swallowed hard, staring at the back of her horse's head as though it were the only thing keeping her on this earth, in this place, as though its solidity could ward off the growing crowds that lay ahead in Coventry's grubby high street. But of course it couldn't: that was the way this penance was supposed to work. They were supposed to stare at her bareheaded, exposed, vulnerable. Almost as God made her.

All the while, as she passed the public well, she felt the shift strap tightening at her right shoulder. Her gaze flickered down, searching the street desperately, hoping for firm footing... but it was not to be, and as her eyes rolled down toward the rut filled with fetid water, her horse stumbled with an indignant snort and, that quickly, the other shift-strap snapped.

And so it was that the Lady Godeve rode into her town of Coventry on market day with her tits flung forth in the autumn sunlight, shame staining her heart and her body as her people gathered curiously to glance at her. For everyone watched the Lady Godeve when she rode to St Mary's. She was the wife of the Earl, and that made her special. Plus she was a fine rider, tall in the saddle, and a beautiful woman into the bargain.

And today, every one of them wondered in their hearts what her sin might be.

The horse swerved around a puddle and she moved with it, her nude skin glowing in the noon sun: by this time, her fine shift had degenerated into a wisp of linen around her belly, showing everything else to the gawking crowd. She kept her eyes straight over her horse's head, even when she felt a tear brimming, trembling at her left eye; she blinked it back, but the next one spilled over and ran down a red face set in solemn penitence. People began looking away then, the corner of her eye showing her the backs of heads rather than the fronts of faces, but by then her ride had plunged her into the midst of the town and the buildings rose up on either side.

She caught a gasp of surprise from off to the left. A lewd snicker from the right, in front of her, the man looking straight up at her spread cunt atop the saddle. A bearded man, she discovered, was walking alongside her horse, staring greedily, drinking her in: what nastiness, she reflected, that he'd be thinking about her body later as he pleasured his wife.

Nastiness, indeed. But slowly, wickedly, a new thought began to grow within her, bringing along with it another secret and unexpected thrill: the awareness that as grotesque as all this was, as shamefully as she was flaunting herself before her people, there was a tiny red part of her mind that would have leapt from the horse naked and gladly bent over the counter a the fuller's stall, offering herself to that loathsome bearded man for his pleasure.

She shuddered, the thought shaming her even as it dampened her saddle.

Osmer was bellowing up ahead now, thrusting his horse through a gathering throng of people as the word spread and the entire town arrived to witness their lady's debasement. And still she rode on, straight-backed, her body on display, her shamed mind seeking a desperate sense of pride and worth that she could find in the lust she read in the eyes of the men who looked up at her and craved her. She knew, in that moment, that she could have any and all of them, as many times as she wished, in any way she desired: they were hers.

She was their thegn and, now, she was the woman they wanted to fuck. And still, whether they looked up at her with hopeful smiles or worried stares or wondering glances, very few of them held her gaze even now.

So she kept it high, finding the pride amidst her shame, tall and beautiful and sad with her guilt clear on her body, the horse loping gamely along toward the slowly growing spire of St Mary's. Nobody shouted or yelled; the silence, in fact, made her curious, but she was not about to glance around herself to see why nobody was speaking. She already knew: they were busy looking.

Osmer drew near the blacksmith at last, most of the market behind them by that point, and she saw his head turn briefly toward where Edith stood shyly in the shadow of her father's stall, watching her lady instead of the man who'd put a child in her belly. Just beyond rose the half-finished Priory she and the Earl were paying for, but between them she could make out the home and shop of Gilbert the Tailor tucked back from the muddy street.

Godeve could not stop herself from looking that way, her gaze at last straying as her cunt already had, hoping for... what? For Thomas, her Thomas, standing outside the shop, pining? For an empty doorway and the awareness that she meant nothing to him, less than an afternoon's stitching? Or for nothing but the bleak, dry glance that blighted lovers give to each other when what they want can never be?

She saw Gilbert first, eyebrow arched in frank disapproval even as his eyes coldly roamed her body, lingering on her tits before he looked away, shaking his head. Beside him, leaning with obviously conscious indolence against the neighboring shop, she saw one of the lay brothers from Gladbert's order, a vaguely familiar-looking fellow whose eyes darted back and forth now between her own body and a patch of shadow beneath Gilbert's awning. With frantic, desperate guilt, Godeve's eyes went to that same shadow.

Thomas stared boldly, with no hint of his father's judgement, his eyes blazing dark and glittery like polished jet as he gazed frankly at her body. She felt him stripping her further, flaying her, digging deeply into her soul as his cock had already dug deeply into her body, and with a sudden surge of fascinated embarrassment she understood that this, today, this shameful penance, was giving her and Thomas something she'd wanted for them that evening in her bedchamber: she was offering herself to him, again, displaying her nakedness to him now in a very different way than Brother Gladbert had intended.

And that thought, crushing her like a millstone, made her shame complete. She was a sinner even now, a vile contemptible thing using even her penance as a chance to offer herself yet again to Thomas the Tailor of Coventry. And as her nude body swayed with the rhythm of the horse, cunt trickling into the saddle as Thomas' gaze made her nipples tingle, she gave herself at last to her wanton shame.

She looked away, the tears falling uncontrollably now, alone in the marketplace with her shame, lonely even in the throng of her people. She wasn't even aware of her horse following Osmer's into the churchyard, over to the broad buttresses the builders had planted here in the soil of her new Priory, but she did hear the welcome voice of Gladbert, snapping orders from among the blur of her tears. "Get her down. Her cloak, quickly!"

She felt hands on her thighs, an arm wrapping warmly but firmly along her waist, where the ruins of her shift sat all wrinkled. They pulled her from the horse, maybe Osmer, or Gladbert, or one of the other monks, but whoever it was was gentle as he set her on her feet in the flagstones of the unfinished cloister. She blinked back her sobs as Meredith hastened forward with the cloak she'd shrugged out of up on the hilltop outside the town.

A blue cloak, its fur collar fraying.

And so it was that Godeve, Lady of Mercia, let herself be led humbly along the cloister to Gladbert's hut, her heart troubled by the thought of her shame... but even more troubled by the memory of dark, gimlet eyes in the shadow of Gilbert's tailor shop.

She wondered what Brother Gladbert would come up with as penance the next time she saw those eyes.

* * *

Epilogue: Remembrance

* * *

"Well. That's quite a story." Alwin frowned over at the neat lines on Aethelnod's vellum while he warmed his hands over the brazier. He sniffed. "Think there's any chance it's true?"

"Hey," Aethelnod shrugged defensively, "it's an annal we're keeping here. I just write down what I'm told." He glanced over at the letter he'd received. "This comes from Eynesbury. St Neot's. Some Benedictine named Godric. He says this happened last autumn."

"Yeah?" Alwin sighed. He was forever having to sort fact from fiction, assembling and editing the chronicles. "Earl Leofric's wife riding nude through the market out of penitence? I think not."

"I call 'em like I see 'em," Aethelnod protested. "How are we supposed to know the truth of it?"

Good point, Alwin told himself, frowning at the neat Latin on the page. He cocked his head. "Of course, if we fuck it up, Leofric will come and butcher us," he added morosely. "He did it before, he can do it again."

"He'd destroy the Chronicle, anyway," Aethelnod agreed unhappily. "So, like, does it even matter what I write?"

Alwin came to his decision. "Rewrite it. Give it a happier ending." He nodded. "Say she did it because of something nice. Tax relief, maybe; I dunno. And say that Leofric punished this Thomas kid."

"Might as well." Aethelnod shrugged again. "Might even be true."

* * *

Thank you for making it to the end. I hope you enjoyed it. Please vote up your favorite Nude Day stories. You can find out what eventually happens to Brother Godric, if you wish, in "The Smell of Horse and Leather."

...oh. And yes, I'm aware an actual Anglo-Saxon shift would have gone below the knees. But I liked it better this way.