Jack Whyte - Uther

She had railed at her husband then for what she saw as his obsession with her eventual defilement, but she knew now why he had been so concerned, and she blessed him for it.

Balin had known one young woman years before he met Mairidh who had been a clean-living and devoutly religious Christian. This young woman had fallen into the hands of brigands and been repeatedly beaten and violated before being abandoned, naked and alone, by the side of a road far from her home. Her dubious good fortune at being left alive by her abductors was set at naught, however, by the fact that the next group of travellers to come her way was a squad of Roman legionaries who had deserted their post and were fleeing into the mountains—this had been in the north country, almost twenty years earlier, during the final days of Rome's occupation of Britain. These ruffians used the woman even more brutally than had her original captors, but they, too, left her alive when they went on their way.

She was eventually found, close to death, by Balin himself, who was passing that way with his usual large armed escort. He took her into his care, directing his people to make camp right away and then see to the young woman's needs and nurse her back to health. For more than a week—an insignificant amount of time to Balin, who was in no hurry to arrive anywhere by any particular date—they remained in the same spot while the woman recovered her health and faculties, and when she was sufficiently recovered, Balin went to her tent to visit her and asked her to tell him about what had happened to her. She told him all he needed to know, including the details of who she was and where she lived, but he was most concerned by the fact that she seemed to be consumed with guilt, as though all the misfortunes that had happened to her had somehow been her own doing.

Balin tried to comfort her then, to put her mind at ease, for he could see that it was her mind that had been most affected—far more than her body—by what had happened to her. Her body was already beginning to heal, her bruises showing the colours that meant they were fading and improving. Her mind, however, in Balin's judgment, was making no such progress. He talked to her for long hours on each of the three nights she stayed in his camp during her recovery, and on each of those occasions he took the greatest care to stay far removed from her, well beyond the range of any accidental touch, because he had seen the terror that overtook her face whenever he approached her too closely. On each of those three nights, he talked to her quietly, purposely keeping his tone soft and soothing. None of the fault for what had transpired was hers, he told her time and again, but he never began to believe that she paid any heed to his assurances.

On the morning of the fourth day, he awakened to find that she had killed herself during the night, evidently unable to bear the feelings of guilt and uncleanliness that had filled her with despair.

Balin never recovered from the shock of that incident, Mairidh knew. And when he found himself, years later, all unexpectedly blessed with a brilliant and beautiful wife decades younger than himself, he became increasingly concerned about taking steps to ensure that she would never be infected with that kind of crippling, despair- filled guilt, a concern that eventually matured into a mild obsession.

Travel is the function of ambassadors and messengers: they carry tidings over long distances. Balin had to travel, and Mairidh insisted upon going with him. And so Balin had turned his mind towards the instruction of his wife, teaching her to believe that she should feel no guilt if she should ever be forced or violated sexually by anyone.

Her body, Balin had convinced her, was merely the vessel that contained what the Romans called the animus, her soul. As such, her body might be destroyed or mutilated, but her soul, being immortal and immutable, could not be affected by anything earthly. Mairidh now knew, and her mind accepted, that nothing these two men could do to her would change the truth of who she was. They might kill her, and they probably would, but at the moment of her death all power to harm her would be lost to them. Alternatively, they might leave her nurturing a fertile seed. If that were so, she had a score of ways to deal with it, the last of which would be to have the child and pass it on to someone else to rear. They could injure her physically, too, but the pain would heal. What they could not do was hurt her mentally, unless she herself permitted them to do so, and that she never would. The indignity of suffering their animal lusts and brutality was an inconvenience, no more. The filth of their unwashed bodies could be laved away. The marks of their beatings would diminish, and the memory of their foulness would fade.

Her only lasting regret over this incident, she realized, would be for the beautiful boy.

Now Mairidh lay naked on the ground, her arms stretched above her head because they had tied her wrists again and attached the rope to the tree behind her, leaving no slack. It was difficult to breathe lying there, and more difficult still to move at all. The sparse grass on which she lay did nothing to soften the stony ground beneath her, and Mairidh had never known such pain. Her arms were the least troublesome—they soon grew numb, and her awareness of them dwindled to a constant, throbbing ache in her shoulders that flared into white-hot pain only when she attempted to move. The rest of her body was a mass of individual aches and agonies—rope burns on her wrists and a seemingly endless progression of bruises, abrasions and contusions, lumps and welts, and cuts and scratches. There were whole areas where the skin had been torn from knees, ankles, hips, thighs and buttocks when she had fallen and been dragged behind the trotting horse. Her cheeks and brows throbbed dully from the fists that had battered her when she tried to tight them, and her ribs and flanks were sore from the kicks they had used to urge her to her feet whenever she had fallen behind the horse.

For a long time she had thought she might die of cold during the night, but the shorter man had risen to piss and to throw more wood on the fire, and had noticed her lying shivering on the grass. He had stood gaping at her for a while, scratching himself, before dragging his smelly blanket over to where she lay and throwing himself on her again. He had then fallen asleep on top of her, and eventually he slid off to lie huddled against her side, one leg and one arm across her, holding her down. She had not dared to move for fear of wakening him again, and eventually she had slept.

Now she could sleep no more, and the pain in her arms made her want to whimper. Her bladder was full, too, and had been for hours. She knew she could not hold it much longer; the agony was too intense. But if she moved, she would waken the Pig, and then she would have to squat in front of him, naked, and the thrust of his manhood against her hip left her no doubt what that would bring. And that would waken the other one, the big one, who if anything, had been worse than his companion.

The Pig stirred and snuffled, hitching closer, thrusting himself against her and then sliding one heavy leg up along her thigh and onto her belly so that the full weight of it bore down on her swollen bladder. She could no longer fight against the pain or the pressure, and so she gave in and voided where she lay, feeling the scalding heat flooding her thighs, the relief of it almost approaching sexual pleasure. She made no sound, and as the warm reek of her urine rose to her nostrils, it seemed sweeter to her than the goatish stink of her abductor. The heat went quickly from the wetness, however, and she felt it turn icy against her skin. Don't let him feel it! she prayed. Don't let it wake him up!