Reading these few posts, you might think I've got some hangup about stealing a
young woman's virtue. Not so! In fact, I've put off writing these scenes as
long as I could because they're as distasteful as they are necessary. It makes
me ill to write them - literally turns my stomach over.
But they're in the book because the characters are showing me what happened.
Fear not: Unlike Nesta's first assailant, Odo, this fellow gets what's coming to him.
I couldn't find anything relevant that wasn't completely inappropriate, so here is a photograph of a woman walking on a road much like the one the soldiers and monks were using.
Sosthène, Ph'lippe, Médée, Almire, Ludovi and Tancrède were
less encumbered than the soldiers, but also were they not as fit as men who
trained for war like these. In any case, Apollo reached his highest when the
troupe had trod about two leagues. They stopped to find relief behind the
hedgerows. Nesta then directed all the men to leave the road and find their
markings down the hill and out of sight of her. She needed them to take some
time so she could also find relief, and disappeared she up the hill a bit
behind the upclimbed hedge upon t’other side.
Once the sound of all the men trailed off to barely earshot
distance there, she felt relaxed enough to find relief. But then, just then,
some rustling within the bush behind her, near the road.
Her bantam rooster, made he Kekalek as warning bell, but
nary-naught.
“Who’s there? Speak up when you are spoken to!” Nesta heard
declench within her own refrain. She sounded scared and scared she might
remain.
She turned about as quiet as she could and peered about.
Nothing out of place appeared throughout. She breathed, and took a moment to
get dressed again, wherethen a man beset upon her! Grabbed her by the ‘vices on
her armor’s collar! Dashed her down upon the road! She found herself be dazed
and gasping then, with riding trousers, down, and hampering her movementure.
She saw the man in full now: one of William’s men! A man who
was her charge here in the bloody march to Alençon! And by the looks of him a
Saxon born – a mercenary from a dark and foreign land!
Nesta found she had no voice to call out to the rest of
them. The Saxon then removed his belt. She clawed about upon the ground. Her
breath had still deserted her. She could not find a stone or hand of dirt to
throw.
And then, deliberately, he did approach.
She found the strength to stand, and as she did, she emptied
out the scabbard on her cheville gauche with all the subtle grace that she
could manage.
At that last moment, right before he lunged at her, she saw
that spirit of the Lord had fled his eye, and in its place was something quite
demonic. He was not himself, this Saxon man – or, perhaps, he truly was himself
about this moment.
Just as he came to vice her shoulders, dash her to the
ground again and take her virtue from her, Nesta fell back from him to the
ground deliberately. He tripped atop of her, and fell he on her dagger, stuck
between his ribs! Her pretty dagger split his maille and bit within his
ghastly, stinking flesh!
And then she saw within his eyes the shock and fear of death
that all men feel when then their casement tastes of steel. Again was Nesta
bled upon by men with passion turned to harm. He struggled, then he did, and so
she turned the blade a bit. He gasped and cried! And then, another man came up
the hill and grabbed the Saxon and pulled the villain off of her!
It was one the monks – the youngish one with blondish hair.
The one named Guytonnet.
