Though it ached when hard male flesh invaded my soft body, it was nothing compared to the pain the first night, or even the shredded aches on the second or third.
Every morning I was roused by nuns, dressed in a fine gown, and sat to be painted by the most famed artist in Rome. My days were spent being captured in oil, the canvas that housed my sorrow large and dashed with soft colors.
The painter lied.
He showed me softly smiling, but I would never smile again.
No treats tempted me, no offerings from dressmakers or the jokes of clowns fetched to rouse me made a difference.
How could I smile knowing the truth?
There was no God.
All of this opulence was a falsehood, an act of pretender Pharisees who gathered suffering peoples’ coin. I had wealth beyond measure, so they took my virtue instead.
By the passing of the first new moon, I could no longer count how many times the pope’s crooked shaft had been forced inside me. For now, it was not only in the evenings I was taken to be seeded. The cardinals had to be sure a babe was planted in my womb, so I had been made to ride him like a horse upon his throne between meetings, in his study. And the three of the most horrible times, in my own rooms.
He always remained perfectly still until those last grunting moments where his hips thrust with the power of ‘God’s’ release. It was the Holy Spirit, the priests claimed. I was not to resist but allow it.
That slithering man flesh could not be out of me fast enough. Nor did I care if his ejaculation leaked to splatter the bedding.
I would never be clean of it.
“Did you not care for His Holiness’ gifts?”
The serpent himself had arrived. Always attending me. Always demanding I kneel and confess before I was to be raped.
Nothing I said shocked the cardinal. Not my desire to see them all dead, not my dreams of choking the pope until his eyes bled as he bludgeoned my internal organs with his cock. When Beluni came, it was always for the same purpose. I was to be taken to the old codger, stripped naked before the cardinals gathered to watch, grabbed by the hands of priests I was beginning to recognize, and bred.
Knees accustomed to the cold marble floors, I bowed my head and began the unavoidable ritual. “It has been four hours since my last confession.”
Beluni stroked my curl
s. “Let me ease your immortal soul.”
The place between my legs was still sore after this morning’s session. And I hated that not even sunlight could save me from the old man’s lusts now. He’d developed a taste for it. Calling for me at all hours. “I hate you, even more than I hate the pope.”
“And?”
“I wish to see you tormented in the fires of hell.”
His touch had grown bold over the weeks, the backs of Beluni’s manicured fingertips tracing my jaw. “You could not be more perfect. The enraged Madonna brimming with virtue.”
I would be carted off to my new husband so well used the pope’s seed would still leak down my thighs for months. An old rag in pretty lace trim. “What is to be my penance?”
My forward demand to end this farce made Beluni arch a sculpted brow. “Do you plead for the whip? I prefer softer penance for the mother of God’s son.”
He misunderstood my sigh. No amount of pain would wash this sin away. “If that is your will, Your Eminence.”
As if to offer some comfort, he cupped my cheek and swore, “Your work is almost done. God has told me so.”
Every word from this snake’s mouth was poison, yet I cast my eyes to his lips and licked my own.
Our eyes met and he murmured, “Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”
I made the sign of the cross and rose.
“You have been summoned to his apartments. He ails and longs to see the Vessel of God at his side. Comfort your godfather.”