With my skirts in the way, I couldn’t see what she did, only feel. The two lips of flesh God designed to cover a woman’s shame were stretched wide open, the old nun’s forefinger manipulating the skin until it stung.
She pulled the tender area this way and that, opening me like an unready flower so the glinting eyes of godly men might see what set me apart.
Chastity.
When I began to keen from the tugs, when my bottom began to tuck as if to escape her, she hissed.
Again I stilled.
Prodding fingers nudged places I’d never explored. Pulled my flesh again, and cackled triumph. “The membrane is solid where a whore would be open. The girl is sealed off by an untorn maidenhead.”
There was no mercy here, the only pair of eyes on mine were those of Cardinal Beluni. Not once through the ordeal had he gaped between my legs like the others. His hands never strove to hold me down. Instead he lorded over the swarm, unbent, and steady where the others were excitable and vicious.
As if to tell me he did not need proof of my innocence. As if to give me someone to scream for when I begged for help.
The angry Spanish Cardinal ground his teeth and put his ringed hand on the nun’s shoulder. “You declare her pure?”
The burn as my pinched flesh was pulled even further apart had me squealing and fighting anew. It was ignored, so all in attendance might see to what the nun referred.
“Before God. She is intact.” Smacking her lips, the old woman wiped her fingers down the front of her habit and hobbled to her feet.
Not one of the men offered to assist her, nor did they pay her any heed now that her purpose had been served. As if aware of her dismissal, the crone hobbled off and left me alone in a room full of men.
“Your Eminence, do you wish to see the girl’s attributes for yourself?”
All was visible to the throne without the nun between my thighs, God’s highest servant leaning forward, eyes beady as he stared between my legs. “Bring her to me. I would see with my own eyes the vessel of our Lord.”
It was the first I’d heard his voice ring out. Ghastly in its intent. Horrid.
Not at all the voice of an angel.
Caught in the clutches of many, I was hoisted toward the sky, legs still spread, and carried like a kill for the fire. I was more afraid of that smacking mouth than I had been of the old nun’s jagged nails.
Such fear stole the fight from me. Limp, teeth chattering, I shivered.
Hovering, my legs obscenely spread by the hands of many, my private place was held just inches from the pope’s face. I felt something brush the fine ha
irs over my sex and jolted.
“She smells of youth.”
A smile in his voice, Cardinal Beluni stated, “Her mother was very fertile. Six children she bore. Five lived past ten. Not a single one was lost in the womb.”
“I feel a stirring…”
My tormentor with his beauty and sly smile, declared, “The spirit of God, your Holiness. His power shall fill your loins.”
I felt a cough of sick air across my sex, the pope waving me away. “Have her bathed and fed well.”
Glittering eyes still locked on mine, Cardinal Beluni reached out a hand as if I was capable of reaching back. “His Holiness is appeased. Rise, Lady Agnese, and accept your godfather’s blessing.”
Set to the floor at the base of the dais. Far past the point of hysterics, tears came anew. I would be bruised from this, and if the sting between my legs was any judge, also bleeding. Trying to vanish into the air-puffed pillow of my skirts, clinging to the torn silk, I hid my face in my knees and rocked.
Skittering noises, like the scampering of rats drifted away. But I knew them for what they were. The cardinals backing away, their stiff robes rubbing out a hiss of noise on that immaculate floor.
“Why?” I drawled out the sobbed word, sick, coiffed hair a tumble past my shoulders like a common harlot’s.
“Is she not the vision of purity?” I knew not which one of them spoke. “I would see her painted with just that look on her face.”