Chapter 23 Irena
IRENA
“Come on with me and I’ll teach you a lesson no prince ever will,” the smelly, hairy man says, still dragging me away.
“Let go of me! Unhand me!” I’m shouting at the top of my lungs, but no one seems to care. They’re all just staring at me, as though it’s perfectly normal for a man to drag a woman away into a dark corner for unnamed nefarious purposes.
It’s not “unnamed nefarious purposes!” It’s rape! shouts a panicked voice in my head. If you don’t get away from him, he’s going to rape you, Irena! Go—get away!
I pull with all my might, but the man’s grip on my wrist is too strong to break. His companion—the man with the red beard—is watching with mild interest as he sips his ale, as though we are putting on a play solely for his benefit. Everyone else seems to be ignoring us.
“I heard what you said about the Lady of the Forest!” I shout at red-beard. “It’s her I’m going to visit—the Sorceress! She’ll make you sorry if you don’t tell your friend to let me go!”
This gets a reaction from the whole room that my ongoing attack and abduction failed to provoke. I hear gasps and mutters and someone says,
“Going to visit the Sorceress? She must be a witch!”
“That’s right—I’m a witch!” I say desperately. I glare at my attacker. “And if you don’t let me go this minute, I’ll make you sorry!”
“First you’re a princess and now you’re a witch,” he scoffs, but he looks uneasy. However, he doesn’t release his grip on my wrist. If anything, it tightens as he continues dragging me into the shadows.
My panic rises higher and higher until it threatens to choke me like bile. What’s wrong with the people here? Why won’t they help me? Do they really not mind that a woman is being dragged away to be raped?
“Come on now, girly—don’t be troublesome. None of the barmaids mind,” the man says, his fingers tightening until I feel the small bones of my wrist grinding together.
So, this is something he regularly does to the women working here—no wonder the patrons of the inn are looking the other direction! Rape is normalized here at The Slaughtered Lamb.
I feel sick but I’m more determined than ever to get free of him.
“Let go of me!” I shout in his face, trying one more time. “Let go or you’ll be sorry!”
“I’d listen to her,” a low, growling voice says, and a huge hand suddenly clamps itself onto the man’s shoulder.
I follow the hand and wrist up the muscular arm and see—to my relief—Valen standing there.
His long black hair is wild around his shoulders and he’s bare-chested.
The firelight gilds his bronze skin, making him look like some kind of demi-god.
The look on his face is terrible to behold—a kind of possessive rage twists his features, and his eyes are glowing like two live coals.
“Get your fucking hands off my woman,” Valen growls and I see his grip tighten until his knuckles turn white.
The man who grabbed me gasps and abruptly drops my wrist. Valen lets him go and he backs away, glaring at us mistrustfully as he rubs his bruised shoulder.
“Hey, Maud!” he shouts, his beady little eyes never leaving Valen and me. “What the hell is going on around here?”
“What’s that?” I hear a familiar voice shout from the back of the inn.
A moment later, our innkeeper, Maud, comes bustling up, wiping her hands on a grimy dishcloth.
“What’s all this then?” she demands, her sharp eyes taking in me and Valen and the man with the dirty, hairy face who’s looking at us accusingly. “What’s wrong, Harry?” she demands, looking at him. “What happened?”
“What happened? This bastard here attacked me and this other one claims she’s a witch!” he snarls, pointing at first Valen and then me. “What kind of people are you letting into my inn, woman?”
“He’s lying!” I say quickly. “None of what he said is true!”
“What—you mean him saying you said you’re a witch?” Maud asks, raising her eyebrows.
“Well, no—I mean, I did say that, but only to make him leave me alone!” I say quickly. “He was attacking me and Valen made him stop.”
Her look of suspicion becomes one of anger.
“Are you saying my husband was attacking you?” she demands.
Her husband? Oh, no…
But though she might not want to hear it, there’s no other way to put it.
“He had his hand on my wrist, and he was dragging me away.”
I pull back my cloak and show her my wrist, which still bears angry red finger marks from where her husband grabbed me.
“He admitted he’s done this to the barmaids,” I say. “You must see I’m telling the truth—this is where he grabbed me!” I shoved my wrist closer to her face.
Maud’s face gets even darker.
“Well maybe he was trying to throw you out seeing as how you’re a witch!” she exclaims.
Clearly she doesn’t want to know the truth about her husband. I’ve made a grave error. I look at Valen for support, but now that I’m no longer in imminent danger of being raped, he’s just standing there with his arms crossed over his bare chest, watching me with what appears to be mild interest.
Looks like it’s up to me to get myself out of this.
“Look, I’m not really a witch—” I begin.
“Then why did you say so?” the man with the red beard still sitting at the table interjects. “Said she was going to see the Lady of Thornmere, so she did!” he exclaims, and the rest of the room murmurs in agreement.
Great, now I’ve been branded as a witch, and it seems that no one around here likes that. In fact, the looks I’m getting are positively hostile.
“Come with me,” Maud says, giving me the most dire glare I’ve seen yet. “Fine lady or not, I think it’s time you left my establishment.”
“But…but you told us we could stay as long as we liked,” I protest, as Valen and I follow her back to the “Deluxe Suite.”
“That was before I knew you was a witch—and before you accused my husband,” she snaps. “So I’ll take my payment now, and the two of you can get out of my inn!”
“Payment?” I’m covered in confusion. I know I should have expected this, but somehow I didn’t. When she first found us lying on the grass, Maud was so eager to bring us inside and so kind to us. I guess I thought she was doing a good deed, taking us in from the cold so to speak.
“Yes, payment!” she snaps. “A fine lady like you, dressed like that, can certainly afford to pay. So that will be ten gold and out you go.”
“Ten gold?” I’m aghast.
I haven’t had to deal with money much—being a princess has both its perks and its drawbacks—but I do know how much it costs to stay the night somewhere and have a meal. Even the nicest Inn with the most expensive restaurant back in my kingdom wouldn’t be more than two gold—three at the very most.
And though The Slaughtered Lamb is warm and has running water and good food, there’s no way the accommodations here are worth ten gold.
“Yes, ten gold and not a centine less.” Maud narrows her eyes at me.
“But this room and the food you gave us isn’t worth ten gold, even if I had it—which I don’t!” I exclaim, angry at her attempt to overcharge me.
“Are you saying you can’t pay? Because we may be a small town, but we have a debtor’s prison, right enough,” she snaps.
“And the Head Constable is sitting in my common room eating my beef and mushroom pie—which happens to be his favorite. He’ll be happy to haul the two of you off for non-payment if I ask him to. ”
“Surely you can’t be serious!” I protest. “You’re asking too much!”
She narrows her eyes to slits.
“I’m asking a fair rate, and you’d better pay it now. If you don’t have any gold on you, you can give me your hairpins and dress.”
“What?” I take a step back from her, shocked at the absurdity of her request. “My mother gave me these hairpins for my sixteenth birthday. And this dress was specially made for me by a very famous tailor!”
“And now you’ll give them to me to pay your bill!” Maud insists. “Or it’s off to debtor’s prison with the both of you!”
I’m about to argue more but at that point, Valen steps in.
“All right—enough of this,” he growls. “We’re grateful for your hospitality and the room and food you gave us, but you know it’s not worth ten gold. I could rent a room in a castle for that.” He gives me a meaningful look as he speaks.
Maud gets a mulish expression on her face.
“It costs what I say it costs!” she insists. “Now are you going to pay or am I calling the Constable?”
“Fine—we’ll give you the dress, but Irena gets to keep her hairpins,” he says.
“What?” I’m shocked all over again. I stare up at him. “What are you talking about? I can’t take off my dress!”
“You can and you will,” he says firmly. “You’ve got another dress on under it, don’t you?”
“I have a shift!” I protest. “And some undergarments—I can’t be seen in public like that!”
“You’ll have to be.” Ruthlessly, he pulls off my cloak and lets it drop to the floor. Then he turns me around and begins unbuttoning the myriad tiny mother-of-pearl buttons that go down the back of my dress.
“Hey—stop it!” I cry, but before I know it, he’s stripping the dress down and forcing me to step out of it. I’m left shivering in my thin white shift which barely covers my breasts and only comes down to my knees.
“Here.” Valen shoves the bundle of silver-green fabric at Maud, who takes it, stroking the embroidered silk greedily.
“All right,” she says, not looking up from her new treasure. “You can go.”
“But I can’t—” I begin to say.
“We need a back way out,” Valen interrupts, speaking to Maud. “So my lady won’t be exposed to the eyes of your other guests,” he adds, nodding at me.
“This way.”
She jerks her head and leads us through a door in the far end of the room I hadn’t noticed earlier.
It leads down a long, dark hallway with another thick wooden door at the end.
Maud opens it, revealing the back of the inn where there are several rickety-looking smaller buildings.
Looming behind them are the tall, foreboding trees of Thornmere Forest. In the gathering dusk, they look like the shadows of monsters.
“Out you go,” she snaps. “And don’t come back! We don’t want no more of your lies around here.”
Valen takes my arm and pulls me outside and she slams the door behind us.