by Karl Quentin
A king had a daughter who was beautiful beyond all measure, but at the same time proud and arrogant. The princess, whose name was Jacquetta, had been raised to expect her every whim to be obeyed. As a result, she lived by whim. Her heart was good, but the shape of her life had become selfish. Sometimes her whims arose from her good heart, and sometimes they did not. More often, as she grew older and more imperious, they did not.
One day the king summoned all the neighbouring kings, and all his own greater vassals, to a council. Barbarian tribes had forged a great alliance, and had broken the bounds of the mountains and descended to the fertile plains in search of fresh kingdoms for younger sons and their bands. A pact of war was made against them, led by Jacquetta's father.
One of the neighbouring kings was called Comas. He was a good looking, regal man of thirty - a young king relatively speaking - but he had a chin that had grown a little crooked. Tired of all the male ego-clashing of the council one day, he rode out into the woods. There he saw the young princess go by at a distance with her retinue. She was dressed as a princess should be: wide skirts of pink and gold, and a bodice of pink and gold lace, over which her rivers of blonde curls tumbled. On her head she wore a silver coronet. Comas had a sweet tooth, and he followed her at a distance. He was dazzled by the contrast between her clothes and her face, which, though very young and very beautiful, seemed thoughtful and reserved, and untouched as yet by life. His heart yearned to be the one to touch her awake, to open out her reserve, to make her aware of him.
As he was following her coach through the wood, he saw a baby bird fall out of its nest. At once the princess called a halt, and two men at arms were sent to climb the tree to put the bird safely back. King Comas was struck by her kindness of heart, but reflected that any child would have done the same if they had men to command. The tree was high and difficult to climb, and the men had been at great risk more than once. He resolved to wait and see more.
They came to a clearing in the wood where stood a tumbledown cottage. It belonged to a poor widowed woodcutter. His back was bent with long overwork to support his seven little children. The princess was moved and horrified by his poverty and cramped life, and instantly ordered him to be given three bags of gold. King Comas was touched by her generosity, but reflected that the princess had grown up with gold as her toy - although many others who had grown up in wealth would have continued to keep it for themselves. The woodcutter stood behind in his clearing looking dazed and lost, while his younger children rolled the glittering coins along the ground.
The coaches stopped beneath a huge beech tree. Princess Jacquetta and her ladies in waiting swarmed out, chattering and giggling. The soldiers took up guard positions while her courtiers set up a picnic. The girls played catch beneath the spreading branches of the beech; whoever was touched was out. Skirts swirled and high-pitched squeals rang out in the forest. All the ladies knew that the princess must always win. But her newest lady, Francesca, was a fresh-faced minor aristocrat from the provinces, with more enthusiasm than courtliness. She had not yet learnt that no one was allowed to beat Jacquetta.
One after another, ladies were touched and sank down on to the grass, panting a little, to see the sport. Even though Jacquetta always won, it was fun to see how it was brought off each time. Then Francesca plunged straight forwards through the melee and grasped her royal mistress by her collar.
"I've got you, your Highness!" she crowed. "You're out!"
Utter silence. A nut fell from a tree, and it sounded like a cannon going off. Everyone held their breath. Francesca giggled inanely, pleased with her coup. Jacquetta turned to her major domo, Claudius, a tall bandy man with a ginger-whiskered face who frightened all the ladies deliciously. She pointed at Francesca. "Spank her!"
Francesca was still giggling uncertainly, not sure what was happening, while two footmen were lowering down the gilded chair that was always carried on the back of the princess' coach in case this need arose. The major domo's Spanking Chair. The chair was placed in the middle of the greensward. Princess Jacquetta flumped herself down in a balloon of skirts on to the cushions that one of her ladies had ready for her and prepared to watch the punishment in the midst of her retainers. Her young face was set.
Claudius detached the tough leather slipper that always dangled from the back of the Spanking Chair and seized Francesca by one little ear. "Ow! Ow!" she gasped as she was dragged to her fate. Over his knee she went, still protesting, and sprawled there in disgrace kicking her heels behind her. She protested considerably more sharply as her dress and white lace-trimmed petticoats were flung brusquely up over her head, exposing her blue silk drawers. "Oh please! Not in front of the soldiers!" she wailed. A small moue of satisfaction, indeed anticipation, appeared on Princess Jacquetta's face. King Comas' face darkened in anger as he watched from the trees.
"The Princess' person must never be insulted!" Claudius barked as he unlaced Francesca's drawers. The outraged lady threshed her legs and tried to stop him by reaching back to grab his fingers, but she got short shrift. Her wrist was taken and pinned down in the silken nest of her underskirts. Claudius was well used to dealing with errant ladies-in-waiting, and indeed well used to unlacing their drawers, in this and in other situations. He was a man of parts, a thrusting sort of fellow, a persistent long-enduring man, and despite his role as their chastiser his attentions were much sought after.
"The princess must never be put in second place by anyone not of the blood!" he scolded as he finished the unlacing one-handed and proceeded to the baring. Jacquetta nodded complacently. There was nothing Francesca could do as her drawers descended along her thighs to the tops of her gartered white stockings except to wail and plead and blush. The soldiers and footmen folded their arms and grinned, leaning against trees while they stood at attention. This was one of the regular benefits of being in the princess' service. Some of them might think that the wrong bottom was exposed over Claudius' knee, but they kept that thought to themselves. King Comas clenched his fist.
"Learn this lesson and learn it well!" thundered Claudius.
WHOPP!!! WHOPP!!! WHOPP!!!
He applied the slipper to Francesca's pink round bottom as vigorously as he applied everything else, and the humiliated young woman, so pleased and delighted a few short minutes ago, cavorted and squirmed across his lap as her unfortunate buttocks changed from pink to red to scarlet beneath the unrelenting wallops of his slipper. She bawled out her apologies to her young mistress, who responded by laughing and chattering pink-faced to her other ladies about the ridiculousness of Francesca's position face down over a man's knee with her gyrations exposing her sex, and her legs constrained by the untidy huddle of her underwear. Each of her maids had been in the same position considerably more than once because of their princess' humours, but they each joined in the cruel laughter.
When her chastisement was ended, Francesca was hauled to her feet and sent to kneel before her mistress to apologise properly. All smiles now, Jacquetta graciously patted her lowered head and lifted her up, turning her round to examine her bruised bottom. "Our thanks, Claudius!" She let her other ladies comfort Francesca as best they could while she turned her attention to the dainties of her picnic.
Comas had seen enough. He rode back to her father's palace and demanded an instant interview. "I have been reflecting on this war and this alliance," he said. "I risk too much for too little gain. Give me your daughter's hand in marriage, and I will join with you. Refuse, and I take no part."
"My daughter's mind is her own," said the king. "I cannot give her away as I would give you a hawk or a box of treasure. She is my only treasure. Let her decide. I am sure that she will do the right thing for the kingdom." Comas raised his eyebrows.
When Jacquetta returned from the woods, her father summoned her. "Here is King Comas," he said. "We all have sore need of his army to aid us in the struggle with the barbarians. Without him we may go under, and I could not bear to think what your fate might be. He desires your hand in marriage as a price for this alliance. What say you, daughter?"
Jacquetta looked at King Comas. "Him!? Look!" she cried out, laughing. "He has a chin like a thrush's beak. Father, I cannot marry such a ludicrous man."
And she ran over, poked King Comas between the ribs, tipped his crown over his forehead, chucked him under the chin, and skipped laughing gaily to rejoin her ladies.
Soon they were all saying: "Thrushbeard! Thrushbeard!" and half a day later it was all over the city. Protocol forbade Comas from reacting as a man normally might, but he readjusted himself, spread his arms wide to her father, bowed rather stiffly, and strode out. The king begged his daughter to think again about her decision, made only on a whim, while the fate of the kingdom hung in the balance; but she laughed again, and reminded him that he had always said she should have a free choice as to whom she should marry, and she did not feel like thinking about it today. Next day, King Comas Thrushbeard rode away, and his army with him. They did not ride far, however - only to the nearest hills where they camped and hid themselves.
The barbarians came swarming down from the mountains, and the kings made a great battle with them. The barbarians were victorious, and the kings fell back on Jacquetta's fortress. In the rout, her father was captured. The barbarian host pursued them right up to the walls, to which they set siege. These were terrible days. Jacquetta spent an hour prostrate with grief when she heard the news of her father's capture; then she girded on a sword and spent two days and nights on the walls without sleep, directing the defences in a vain attempt to overcome her feeling of terrible guilt. If only she had agreed to marry King Thrushbeard, none of this might have happened. Her father's capture was all her fault.
But sleep she must at last. She was awoken by one who told her dreadful news: the walls were breached, and instead of sacking the city, the entire enemy host was making straight for the palace. Jacquetta mounted the throne without delay. There she sat, sword across her lap, while her ladies gathered at the foot of the throne with swords in their hands also. The fighting below was terrible, but brief. Into the throne room stalked ten great bloodstained warriors, behind their lord Ragnar. He was a full head taller than they, and the shortest of them was six foot two. His pale blonde hair cascaded over his leather jerkin. His sweat gleamed upon his brawny thews.
Ten frightened ladies in waiting defended their princess with drawn swords. The effect was more adorable than threatening. Ten frightened ladies-in-waiting were effortlessly disarmed by their opponents and spanked. Ragnar looked on in amusement, but his eyes were always shifting to the ice princess on her throne, who looked on expressionlessly at her ladies' humiliation at the hands of the barbarians, knowing that hers must inevitably follow. At last Ragnar held up his hand, and the spanking stopped. He stepped to the foot of the throne. "Come, little princess," he laughed. "There can be no distinctions among the conquered. I am going to ravish you, and ravish you right well. Do not annoy me with childish pleas or childish resistance, lest I be forced to spank you too before the ravishment."
"Methinks you will find it no simple task, messire," said Jacquetta calmly, in her soft high voice, rising to her feet and lifting her sword, "to ravish any woman when you have neither head on your shoulders nor prick between your legs."
Ragnar threw back his great head and laughed a loud laugh; then he sprang up the stairs upon her. Blades clashed. The beautiful pink princess also looked adorable with a sword in her small hands, but unlike her ladies she had been trained by her father's finest swordsmen, and Ragnar was hard put to it indeed. It seemed extraordinary that his strength and battle-hardened skill could be not only parried but counterattacked for so long. By the time he finally disarmed her he was bleeding from many cuts, and not in the best of humours.
"Spirited little vixen, aren't you!" he snarled, as he sat on her father's throne and hauled her furiously struggling body over his knee. "Didn't your father ever teach you what happens to naughty little girls who play with grown ups' toys?"
His huge hot hand was up amongst her petticoats and thrusting them over her head. He ripped her drawers down her legs. Just then a clamorous shouting was heard from without, far beyond the cries of battle. The would-be conquerors were now in full rout, for King Comas' army had taken the barbarian host from the rear. Ragnar's intention to do much the same with Jacquetta would have to be postponed. He flung her from him with an oath, and gathered up his men. He left four behind.
"Bind these ladies together," he ordered, "and bring them to our camp. There we shall have our fill of ravishment. Seven full nights and days of ravishment shall we have, as is our custom, before we sell them into slavery. Go now! Leave by the shortest ways!" He ran off to the fight.
The remaining warriors lashed together the ten sore bottomed ladies and their shocked princess with ropes around their necks and knots around their wrists, making many tasteless jokes about ravishment as they did so. They led them from the palace with many a cruel jerk at the ropes, and cut their way through to the woods. Jacquetta had never experienced degradation like it. For a princess of the blood to be roped in a team like a slave girl and dragged she knew not where against her will to a fearful fate by chuckling smelly savages! It resembled all too closely some of the most wanton reveries she had indulged in during her lonely nights of adolescence.
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