Wages of Sin (8 page)

‘I think not, mistress,' she hissed, and Jane could feel the woman's hot breath against her cheeks. ‘You are no longer some spoilt miss, giving orders to your servants. I am in charge here and you will do as I say.' The hand holding the fistful of hair jerked again and Jane whimpered with pain, then staggered back as she was released. Mother Ursula looked at her and dusted her hands with distaste. ‘And if you will not go of your own accord, then you must be aided.' She nodded to the two nuns. ‘Take her.'

Sister Michael stepped forward, smiling. She was well named. Tall and gaunt, she looked more like a man than a woman, her loose habit barely disguising the flat chest and scrawny body beneath. Her bony fingers dug into the soft skin of Jane's upper arm. Her companion, Sister Marie, fluttered round her ineffectually, her round face pink with distress.

‘Don't struggle, it will only make things worse,' she whispered, her lips barely moving. Her frightened eyes darted sideways towards Mother Ursula. ‘She likes it when you struggle.'

Jane caught the triumphant expression in Mother Ursula's eyes and made herself relax. Her lips tightened. She wouldn't give the vile woman the satisfaction. As the watching nuns dispersed about their tasks she allowed herself to be half-marched, half-carried towards the novices' wing, Sister Michael holding her firmly while Sister Marie pattered along at her side. Mother Ursula glided along behind.

When they reached the novices' dorter, Jane's resolution deserted her. The windowless cell was more like a prison. It was tiny and completely featureless apart from a crucifix on one wall. A narrow cot, with a thin rolled-up straw mattress and threadbare blanket, took up more than half the space. Crumpled at the foot of the cot lay a stained grey shift that looked as if it was made out of old sacking. A pair of down-at-heel shoes, patched, worn and at least two sizes too big for Jane's dainty feet, sat beneath.

‘Your novice's habit,' said Mother Ursula, indicating the grimy cast-offs. ‘You will remove your worldly garments and put it on.'

‘Oh no, I won't!' spat Jane. She picked up the coarse shift and held it between two fingers. ‘It isn't even clean.' She flung it down and glared at Mother Ursula. ‘You cannot make me put it on.'

The woman's lips curled in a cruel smile. ‘Oh, I think I can, my dear,' she purred. ‘Sister Michael?'

Bony fingers seized the neck of Jane's velvet gown and pulled viciously. There was a rending sound as the seam gave way and the dress fell to the floor, dragged down by its own weight. Jane gasped and crossed her arms protectively across her chest. Sister Marie gasped, her hands held to her face in dismay. Mother Ursula gave the plump nun one scathing glance and dismissed her contemptuously, then turned back to enjoy the spectacle before her.

Grinning, Sister Michael grabbed Jane's wrists and twisted her arms behind her back, trapping them in one enormous hand. With the other she gripped Jane's flimsy shift and tore that away as well, then pushed her on to the narrow cot and deftly peeled off her shoes and stockings, leaving her naked and defenceless.

To Jane's horror the woman's hands seemed to linger for a moment on the soft flesh of her thighs before she stepped back and stood waiting for Mother Ursula's next order. She shook herself. She had imagined the caress. Of course she had. No matter how unfeminine, Sister Michael was still a woman, after all. She glared up at her tormentors and a defiant smile touched her lips. ‘I'd rather stay naked as God made me than put on that foul garment,' she said defiantly.

Mother Ursula shrugged. ‘As you wish,' she said. ‘But perhaps you will feel differently when the cold begins to bite.' She ran her eyes over Jane's shrinking body and smiled. ‘Vanity is a sin. ‘And we must try and wash our sins away, must we not?' She nodded at Sister Michael again and Jane found herself wrenched to her feet and propelled naked out of the cell and along the cold corridor.

The next room she found herself in was larger, but just as bare, except for the wooden tub in the centre of the floor. It was filled with water - but, unlike her bathtub at home, there were no comforting tendrils of steam rising from the surface, no hot towels waiting to be wrapped round her afterwards, no fire to toast herself in front of as she sipped a warm glass of mulled wine and nibbled comfits. Nothing but the tub itself, waiting ominously.

She halted on the threshold and attempted to back away, but Sister Michael was right behind her. With a grunt of satisfaction she scooped Jane up, carried her across to the tub, held her above it - and let her drop.

The icy water closed above her head. For a moment the shock was so intense she could not breathe, then she gasped and spluttered as her head broke the surface and air flooded back into her lungs. Her feet scrabbled for purchase and she forced herself to stand, gasping and shivering. Her hair was almost black, plastered against the whiteness of her body in long tendrils, from which rivulets coursed down her quivering thighs. Her nipples, tightly puckered with the cold, stood out from the soft globes of her breasts as if they had a life of their own. Sister Michael's eyes lingered on them, then turned towards Mother Ursula, hopefully seeking permission.

Mother Ursula smiled. ‘We must mortify the flesh, must we not?' She nodded to Sister Michael. ‘Perhaps you will be kind enough to teach our young novice her first lesson? Help her scrub away the temptations that beset the unwary sinner.'

The next quarter of an hour was one of the worst of Jane's life. She flinched as sadistic fingers pinched and poked her tender body, invading its secret places under the masquerade of ‘cleansing' her. She gasped as the harsh scrubbing-brush scoured her back, leaving a mass of thin lines as Sister Michael drew it down with exquisite slowness, revelling in the way Jane writhed and whimpered as her fine alabaster skin reddened in its wake.

But most of all, what scoured her soul as well as her body was the humiliation, and the frightening knowledge that here was a kind of calculated wickedness she'd never faced before. She shuddered. Even her stepfather and Sir Harry - even Fletcher and Cooper - had been
natural
compared to this.

Beneath her mask of piety and her claims that she was ‘mortifying the flesh', Jane could sense that Mother Ursula was looking on, taking an unholy pleasure in the way her perverted puppet was abusing her. There was a faint hint of colour in her marble cheeks and her breath was coming quicker through slightly parted lips as she watched Sister Michael twisting and kneading Jane's pale breasts.

At last it was over. Mother Ursula clapped her hands, the expression on her face leaving Jane in no doubt that the pleasure the woman was taking from the scene was sexual in its nature. ‘Enough,' she ordered. ‘Take her back to her cell.'

Reluctantly, Sister Michael withdrew and allowed Jane to stand up and climb slowly and painfully from the tub. Jane stood there for a moment, shivering and sobbing, then began to limp along the corridor to her cell, her arms huddled round her for comfort, the deathly chill in her body matched only by the chill in her soul.

Without a word she gratefully put on the shift she had refused to wear earlier, feeling its coarse fibres scratch her already tender skin.

‘Good,' smiled Mother Ursula. ‘Already you have learnt two parts of the rule: poverty and obedience. Perhaps we shall make a nun of you yet.' She bent and picked up a length of material that had been hidden beneath the sacking dress. ‘Here,' she ordered, flinging it at Jane. ‘Cover that blasphemous red hair of yours.' Her lip curled. ‘When you take your vows it will be shaved off. Until then, we'll have none of Satan's temptations here.'

Dumb with misery, Jane did as she was told, winding the rough material round her head. Mother Ursula seemed to regard the shabby figure before her with pleasure, satisfied there was now nothing left of the wilful young miss who had tried to defy her.

‘You may remain here and think about your many sins, until you find repentance,' she said. Gliding out of the cell she closed the door firmly behind her, and Jane heard the key turn in the lock. For a moment she stood staring at it, then collapsed on the narrow cot, giving herself up to her misery.

 

On the other side of the door Ursula listened to the muffled sobbing, a smile of relish on her lips. Not such a cocky young madam now. Her smile widened. Not that this abasement would last, she was certain of that. She could recognise a fighter when she saw one. Give the girl time to recover and she'd try to stand up for herself again.

The smile became lascivious and Ursula licked her lips as a familiar heat surged through her loins. When that time came she'd be ready and waiting. Miss High-and-mighty might think she had done her worst - but she had only just begun!

 

 

 

‘Bless you, mistress,' muttered the toothless old woman, accepting the ladle of slops that Jane tipped into the wooden bowl she held out in her palsied hands. Jane shivered. Even with nothing but a sacking apron tied over her threadbare shift and the broken shoes that had already raised blisters on her tender feet, she was better dressed than the pathetic bundles of rags who queued patiently outside the gate for whatever poor meats the convent doled out.

She sighed. The slop bucket was almost empty, yet the pitiful line still stretched out, waiting to be fed. Dull eyes stared at her hopelessly as the ladle scraped the bottom of the bucket and came out empty.

‘Isn't there anything else?' demanded Jane. ‘We can't just leave them hungry.'

‘No,' whispered Sister Marie. ‘This is all Mother Ursula allows.'

‘There's got to be something,' said Jane indignantly. Her lips twisted in scorn. She might be deficient in kindness and Christian charity, but the one thing Mother Ursula did not stint on was food. There had to be more left over. ‘I'm going to look in the kitchens,' she announced.

‘You mustn't,' whimpered Sister Marie. ‘If Mother Ursula finds out...' Her voice trailed off, then she swallowed and tried again. ‘You don't know what she's like.'

Sister Marie was wrong. Jane knew exactly - and for a moment she paused as she remembered the icy ducking she'd had to endure at the hands of Sister Michael and the way those same hands had crawled over her helpless body. Then she took another look at the scrawny children huddling into their desperate mothers, the old and the weak and the crippled, all waiting with the dumb patience of brute beasts. Her heart smote her. She couldn't turn them away starving.

‘I don't care,' she said defiantly. ‘I won't be long.' She spun on her heel and headed towards the convent kitchen as fast as her blistered feet would allow.

Inside, the warmth of the ovens and fires hit her like a blow after the cool air outside. The kitchen was a hive of industry. A great joint of meat was already dripping its grease on to the flames as the spit-dog wearily turned in its treadmill. Two enormous trays of fresh bread sat cooling from the ovens. The fat nun who was in charge wiped sweat from her forehead as she supervised several hefty lay sisters who sat, heavy thighs splayed wide, scraping the vegetables.

Jane's eyes searched the steamy room and finally lit on two covered buckets standing beside the long table. She darted across, lifted the lids and smiled as she saw the contents. They were piled high with broken crusts, scraps of meat and squashed vegetables. Admittedly they were still leavings, but compared to the thin slops she'd just been doling out this was a banquet fit for King Henry. Grasping a handle in each hand, she staggered towards the door.

‘And just where do you think you're going with those?' demanded the fat nun, stepping in front of her, clutching a broom.

‘To feed the poor,' said Jane, edging sideways. ‘Isn't that what we're supposed to do?'

‘Not with that you're not,' replied the cook smugly. ‘That's for the pigs. Mother Ursula wants them fattened up in time for Father Peter's visit.'

For a moment Jane was stunned. Hungry people were waiting at the gate and Mother Ursula was letting them starve while she fattened up pigs? Her mouth set in a grim line. Well, not today she wasn't.

One of the heavy buckets collided with the cook's shin and she suddenly lost all interest in preventing Jane's passage. ‘Sorry,' Jane apologised as she pushed past the wincing woman, the buckets still swinging dangerously. She was aware of every person in the kitchen watching her in astonishment, mouths open, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire to giggle. As she passed the tray of bread she paused, put down one of the buckets and helped herself to a couple of loaves, tucking them under her arms before retrieving the bucket again.

She shrugged as best she could under the circumstances. ‘Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,' she announced cheerfully to her stunned audience before fleeing the kitchens as fast as her burdens would permit.

Sister Marie's eyes widened as she saw Jane's booty. ‘Where did you get that?' she whispered.

‘Don't ask,' muttered Jane. ‘The less you know, the better. Right, who's next?' she called, brandishing her ladle. The little crowd surged forward with renewed hope and for the next ten minutes there was no time to think as she dished out the life-giving food. Finally the last scraps had been devoured in a mutter of grateful blessings and, with full bellies for once, the supplicants dispersed.