Charlie and the Convent of Oblivion
By J. Dumas
(2)
Novice Sarah, back when she was still Sarah of Charnia, had decided to join the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration after a long struggle with her conscience. As the second daughter of her serf father, she was of no use to the family as a bride for a wealthier family, which would have brought the little family a few gold coins that might have proved sufficient to keep them fed through the harsh winter that kept the soil from producing more than the bare minimum that Lord Charnia, the owner of the land, required of them.
One of Sarah’s choices, if such they could be called, had been to join the house of Lord Charnia as a servant, a prospect that said Lord had relished as Sarah was beautiful, fair skinned and golden haired like her mother was. The way Lord Charnia had looked at her that first time he had visited their little farm had reminded Sarah of a falcon tracking a field mouse before pouncing.
She knew, deep in her heart, that Lord Charnia would have turned her into a pleasure girl for him and his familiars. That was what he had done with her best friend, Fawn. Sarah remembered the night when Lord Charnia came to claim Fawn, who had come into maturity as a beautiful tall redhead with breasts that every girl in the burg envied and every boy fancied. Sarah had stood by, helpless, powerless, able only watch and cry as her friend was dragged away against her will by soldiers. Her friend’s family stood by her, their faces broken with worry and with the knowledge that there was little they could do.
Sarah would later hear rumors of the horrors that had been inflicted on poor Fawn in the Lord’s household. For Fawn had become a pleasure girl, and the pleasures that assuaged the Lord’s lust were of the kind to prevent Sarah from sleeping for nearly a fortnight upon hearing of them.
She never saw Fawn again.
Sarah’s only other choice, the one choice that Lord Charnia would accept, however reluctantly, was to join a Theistic Order, to devote her life and her body to the gods. The law of the land still forbade the Lord of a domain to interfere with divine vocation, even under a sovereign as corrupt as Queen Helena.
Once she had decided to go the vocational route, Sarah had been keenly aware that Lord Charnia viewed her too tasty a treat to lose her to a life of wasted abstinence. After all, stories of abduction were not rare, especially when they involved virginal girls whose beauty and worth far outweighed potential repercussions.
Sarah had tricked Lord Charnia by initially conveying to him by writing that she was accepting the Lord’s offer to join his seraglio, much to the Lord’s gleeful and lewd joy, before absconding in the middle of the night to meet Sister Dehlia of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration.
The choice of which Theistic Order to join had been the easy one to make. The sisters of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration were known for their pious life, their good works, and for their care of ill women. That they worshipped a single god in contrast to most other Orders was odd, and that they expressed their devotion and cultivated their worship by never speaking louder than a whisper was odder still, but the Covenant proscribed any manner of contact between sisters and males, and such was exactly what Sarah wanted, even if she did not know it at first. She still shivered whenever she thought back to the stories she had heard about Lord Charnia, and the fate of Fawn.
And so it was that Novice Sarah, latest addition to the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration, was being given her duties by Sister Margaret, who greeted all new arrivals to the Covenant and introduced them to their novitiate, their path to full sisterhood.
Sister Margaret was a tall and thin woman, of indeterminate age, whose whispers had a lispy quality.
“As you were told, Novice Sarah,” she whispered, “All novices are expected at first to devote their time to our charge. After two years, you will begin your instruction into the Covenant proper, and should you be successful, you will subsequently join us as Sister Sarah.”
Sarah nodded, knowing she was not to speak unless asked a direct question.
Sister Margaret, her long white gown flowing, walked her into the wing of the convent dedicated to the care of the ill. It was a large flat structure, detached from the section of the cloister housing the sisters and accommodating the day-to-day activities of the Covenant.
“The blood sinner are housed here,” Sister Margaret whispered, motioning to a large room filled with beds and partitioned with hanging curtains. Blood sinners was how the Covenant referred to victims of blood fever. They judged the affliction a chastisement from their One God to sinners of the flesh, but still maintained that they were worthy of care, if not of salvation. “In here, their needs are seen to, and their urges are soothed. The novices that you see strive to assuage their ills and pains.”
Women of all kinds filled the beds, young and old, pretty and ill-favored, frail and strong. They were all quiet, subdued, and Sarah could not help but notice an almost vacant gleam in most eyes.
“Yes,” Sister Margaret whispered, either because she saw the look on Sarah’s face, or because every novice asked the same question at that point, “they have been given a draught to keep them calm and abate their ardors. Have you ever seen the effects of blood fever?”
“No, Sister Margaret.” Sarah had never seen the effects of blood fever, but she had heard of them, from tales told around fires during warm autumn months. Tales of women overtaken with vertigo, seizures, unquenchable impulses. Tales of women driven to commit unspeakable acts by impulses that seemed spurred by Demons. Tales of women dying after their blood ran so hot that it boiled in their own veins. Fawn had been an avid partaker of such tales.
“Before your first month is over, child, you shall have witnessed the evils of blood fever. And you will understand the need for the quieting draught. When some of our blood sinners are feeling well enough, they can be taken in the inner courtyard, where they can play and read and socialize if that is their intent. But the draught is distributed whenever their temperature increases in the slightest. Ah, High Novice Gertrude,” Sister Margaret whispered as a portly woman bearing the blue gown of the novitiate approached slowly.
“Sister Margaret,” the new arrival whispered, bowing her head.
“This is Novice Sarah, the newest addition to our small congregation.”
High Novice Gertrude nodded at Sarah, her face unreadable. Sarah smiled and nodded back.
“High Novice Gertrude here is in charge of the blood sinners’ ward,” Sister Margaret continued. “She has been with us for...”
“A long time already, Sister Margaret,” Gertrude replied, her voice sounding harsh even under the cover of whispers. “But I do so enjoy taking care of these poor miserable souls, and I see no hurry in moving on.”
“Beware that Devotion does not turn to Pride, High Novice Gertrude,” Sister Margaret whispered back.
“May the One God preserve me from such a downfall,” Gertrude whispered back.
Sister Margaret nodded. “Novice Sarah, I leave you in the capable hands of High Novice Gertrude. I will see you again in three months time, when you shall keep me appraised of your progress. Good day, and may we all whisper with the One God.”
“May we all whisper with the One God, Sister Margaret,” Sarah whispered, bowing her head.
“May we all whisper with the One God,” Gertrude added, bowing as well.
When Sister Margaret, after bowing to other novices along the way and nodding to at least one blood sinner who stretched out an arm towards her as if to claw her leg before two novices rushed to her side to subdue her, Gertrude sighed and turned to Sarah, her whispers sounding even harsher.
“Well, I guess it’s a welcome, then, Novice Sarah.”
“Thanks?” Sarah did not know how to read the older novice.
“Anything you want to know that the old cunt didn’t say?”
Sarah was taken aback by Gertrude’s language.
Gertrude merely laughed, softly, under her breath, a wheezing sound that chilled Sarah’s bones. “You should see your face. Yes, Sister Margaret’s an old cunt. All the sisters are old cunts. And they should be—they ask us, what, to spend at least ten years in the novitiate, before deigning to let one move on over to sisterhood? And treating us as slaves in the interim? Pretty convenient, don’t you think?”
“If you are so unhappy,” Sarah whispered, “why are you staying here?”
“And do what? Go back home to work my bones off on the family farm, tilling a ground that is too dry to even produce those roots that forrest raccoons sneer at disdainfully and getting boned every night by my stupid ass half-brothers? Head to the nearby burg and become a pleasure girl so that a man can slobber over me all night while barely paying enough for me to afford the rent of the small room where they rob me of my last shreds of dignity?”
Sarah wanted to reply, but found herself without words. Aside from the cynicism and the bitterness in Gertrude’s voice, it was a reflexion she had had herself, one that had led her to the Covenant as surely as Gertrude’s seemed to have. “It is an unfair world, this one,” she whispered.
Gertrude’s sneer softened, and she wrapped her arm around Sarah’s shoulders. “That it is. And any fairness we seek must be bought at the cost of blood. I like you, Sarah. I believe we shall become friends.”
Sarah smiled uncertainly, as she was unsure that she wished for a friend like Gertrude.
“Let me introduce you around,” Gertrude whispered.
And she did, walking around the ward and introducing Sarah to the other novices, who all seemed to treat Gertrude as the dean of this section of the cloister.
Gertrude also introduced her to several of the blood sinners, taking some time with each to describe in explicit detail the effect of their blood fever. For every woman afflicted by a blood fever externalized her symptoms differently, beyond the common and overpowering need for sexual release.
One blood sinner in the middle of an attack would start screaming in pain as if her insides were being turned to boiling stew. Another blood sinner would start to shake uncontrollably in so violent a fashion that she had bitten off her own tongue and had scratched off one of her eyes. Another blood sinner would believe that everyone around her was conspiring to hand her over to the Inquisitional Orders and would scream and attack even as she was being taken by a man. Most of the blood sinners on the ward were soothed by the quieting draught that was prepared in the kitchens beneath the ward, and whose vaguely acrid flavor permeated the air.
Sarah, affected by all she was learning, approached a corner of the ward and indicated a sheet of linen hung from the ceiling and curtailing this section of the ward from rest.
Gertrude hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision and pulled the sheet, letting Sarah through.
There was a bed, like the other beds in which the blood sinners lay. On the bed, sleeping deeply, was a beautiful woman, her body relaxed underneath the white sheets drawn upon her. Even though she was covered, Sarah could tell she was strong, and was probably a warrior—she had seen them often enough when her older brother came back to the farm with some of his fellow soldiers. Their aura was unmistakable. This woman in the bed was such a warrior, if not more, thought Sarah.
And close to the truth was Novice Sarah, for on the bed, knocked out by a heavy dose of the quieting draught whose recipe the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration guarded almost jealously, lay Lady Charlotte of Artagnia, knight of the Royal Guard of the late King Altobar the First.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Gertrude whispered with her usual harshness. She was looking at Sarah carefully.
Sarah nodded mechanically, her eyes on Charlie, who did not move a muscle, lying on the bed as if on a memorial dais, as if her body simply waited to be slipped onto a funeral pyre and sent back to the One God.
“Is she...?” Sarah whispered.
“Dead?” Gertrude’s harsh whisper was so close to Sarah’s ear that the young woman nearly jumped out of her skin. “No. She is sleeping. Our little princess here has such a violent blood fever that she requires a dose strong enough to completely knock her out.” Gertrude was eyeing Charlie’s unmoving form on the bed, and Sarah let her own eyes stray to the older novice, unable to interpret either the tone of voice or the expression in her eyes. Was there malevolence in them? Was a novice of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration able to feel malevolence toward a fellow human creature?
“Who is she?” Sarah whispered.
“Nobody knows. She was found in an inn two days’ travel from here, a plaything for the lust of men, her blood fever forcing her to give herself away to whomever expressed even the tiniest desire towards her body, driven to exhaust herself in the arts of love with no regard for her own dignity or her own well-being.”
Sarah’s eyes widened and she looked back at the beautiful woman on the bed, whose face was soft and calm and at odds with the harsh words of High Novice Gertrude. Images came unbidden to Sarah’s mind, of the warrior in front of her naked, giving herself away like the most shameless of pleasure girls, to men, to women, to anybody.
Sarah felt herself grow warm with the wicked stirrings down in her loins that she had learned to recognize long ago and squash mercilessly. She closed her eyes. Sarah felt her lap grown moist with impure longings, and she had to press her thighs together to keep her juices from leaking out, a movement that merely increased the delectable pressure on her hungry cleft.
“You like her, don’t you?” Gertrude’s whisper was even closer against her ear now, and Sarah kept her eyes closed, willing the flush that she was feeling taking over her face to subdue.
When she finally opened her eyes, Gertrude was staring at her with a look that Sarah could only describe as calculating, as if she was weighing Sarah’s soul against the wickedness of the world. What Gertrude concluded Sarah could not tell from the smile that formed on the high novice’s lips.
“Let us find you a duty, Novice Sarah,” was all Gertrude said as she pulled the sheet on Charlie’s bed and took Sarah’s elbow.