Chapter Text
The old Baron of Alderaan had given his consent for Unkar Plutt, the miller, to marry the orphan Rey at midsummer, and died promptly thereafter, from a fever and his old age. There had been no reason to disapprove of the union. The orphan in question was Plutt’s ward, old enough, and without other prospects. The tax had been paid. The old baron had never been in the habit of meddling too much in the affairs of his serfs, in any case. He gave his magnanimous permission for marriages and took his taxes, but otherwise, he lacked the vigor and health to be tyrannical or overbearing.
Plutt, for all that he was just a miller, did have the capacity to be tyrannical and overbearing. He cheated people out of flour and no one could complain of it. He beat his assistant – a slip of a boy whose father got a scoop of flour every day in exchange for his labor – badly. It was accepted that he’d likely beat his new wife, too.
Still, his ward was lucky in a practical sense. Plutt was wealthy, for someone of his social stratification. He’d accumulated his wealth over forty-three years – he was more than twice the age of his new bride. She would never starve or shiver. There would always be a sturdy thatched roof over her head and bread in her belly. That, and her new husband could offer her status.
It was only by virtue of her beauty that Rey the orphan could be a miller’s wife. She was probably some knight errant’s bastard, but her mother was dead and it was less offensive to call her an orphan. Plutt had kept her fed – barely – for fifteen years. Her mother had died in the night, and she would have otherwise starved. At first, his philanthropy had been motivated by economics. Rey was a scrawny, tough thing, and she labored, either in the baron’s household to fulfill his feudal obligations or in the mill, for nothing more than scraps and a dry place to sleep.
When she’d become a woman, long-limbed and glossy-haired, Unkar had found another way for her to repay him for his kindness. But Rey was clever and pragmatic. She’d refused to spread her legs for him unless their union was condoned by the Church. She’d cited her piety and hoped he had the good sense not to marry an orphan, a bastard, a no-name.
Unkar’s lust had gotten the better of him, and the old baron had given his permission before succumbing, so she was a married woman. She was a serf, so her condition was one of bondage. She could not leave Alderaan. She was Unkar’s ward, and that condition was one of bondage, as well.
Unkar was ostentatious enough to celebrate the union. Trundle tables were laid out in the dusty square of ground in between the timber and morter houses of the village at the base of the hill. From atop the hill, the fortified manor house cast a long shadow.
Rey realized, now, that she would live in the shadow of the manor, in Unkar Plutt’s home, for the rest of her short and miserable life. Her nails cut into her palms under the trundle table. She’d been bathed and dressed in blue – a borrowed dress – in preparation for her wedding. She sat as a guest of honor – a ludicrous thing. She felt as if she was being mocked. The sidelong glances of the villagers pained her almost as much as the idea of her wedding night. As the shadow of the hill grew, that inevitable night drew closer.
The gates of the modest fortification opened as she craned her neck to look up at the manor. Racing the setting sun, four men rode down the sloping ramp to the village. As if war drums portended her fate, hoofbeats made the ground vibrate as they drew closer.
Unkar’s breath was hot near her ear. “The new baron has come to congratulate me on my marriage.”
Rey looked away. She doubted the new baron troubled himself with such things. His father hadn’t. For a moment, she indulged the fantasy that there was some crisis – war, or disease, or even the fiery pit of Hell opened up. She would endure anything, to put a stop to this.
Her heart sunk as the four horsemen looped around the village. They seemed, for an instant, as if they would not interrupt the lowly festivities. Then, the foremost horseman – the tallest – cut through the cluster of houses and, with the impudence only a Lord could be indulged, cantered right into the middle of the feast, as it were.
The new Baron of Alderaan leaned on the pommel of his saddle, arm crooked. The dust seemed to cling to his black surcoat, hair, and skin. It made his pallor – a hallmark of his nobility – more pronounced. His skin looked as if he had never worked in a field. Indeed, since he’d ridden back to Alderaan from Oxford to claim his title by virtue of primogeniture, he had been hidden away in his ancestral home.
“My Lord.” Unkar Plutt supplicated himself, bending nearly all of the way over the trundle table. “I – ”
“I have come to exercise my right.” The baron interrupted him. He did not dignify the miller with a glance. As he hunched over the front of his saddle, predatorily, he looked only at Rey. Where his gaze went, everyone’s followed. Switching to courtly French, as if to flaunt his education and status, he added, “La droit de cuissage.”
One word, Rey understood, for all her lack of education. Cuissage meant thigh. As if she was a piece of meat, a slaughtered chicken hat was owed to the feudal lord. Just as livestock and wheat were owed to the Baron, so too were virgins. The old baron had had no interest in them, but had he taken an interest in any one of them, he could have had her brought to him and had his way with her. No one would deny him their daughter – such a dalliance might even result in a favored bastard, or at the very least, a quiet bribe. Likewise, no bridegroom would deny him their new bride, even on a wedding night.
Plutt sputtered for the briefest of moment – this was highly irregular in Alderaan, given the old baron’s soft touch – and then bowed again, his forehead beading in sweat. He sounded entreating, as if he knew he could not argue, but perhaps he could flatter and grovel. “My Lord – ”
Rey was sure she saw the young baron roll his eyes. He gestured, lazily, to the vassal at his right, and the man dismounted. He circled the table, and she realized he meant to come for her. Abruptly, she stood up from the trundle table and ran.
Another vassal waited at the opposite end of the trundle, cutting her off with his horse. As she stumbled back to avoid being trampled, the first grasped her arm and pushed her to his horse. He lifted her, avoiding her eyes, as if he was a bit embarrassed – not that he was taking her away like a piece of sold chattel, but because she’d run like a feral creature instead of bending to the baron’s will as her status demanded.
The entire transaction took place without her speaking a word, or being spoken to. The horse’s haunches jolted under her and without any further ado, the horses wheeled around, snorting and stomping.
Rey had never ridden a horse before. She clutched the arm of the man mounted behind her, terrified as they rode up the dirt ramp, the earth falling away below her. Her stomach seemed to fall equally as fall, all of the way out of her body.
They clattered into the courtyard of the walled manor, and the baron dismounted. He stomped over to his vassal’s horse and took Rey’s arm in his gloved hand. Without any grace, he tugged her off of the back of the horse, but her feet never touched the ground. Over his shoulder she was slung, like a sack of flour.
Rey knew her place. She knew this was his right. She knew that if she didn’t resist, he’d likely be gentle – or at the least, he wouldn’t drag her to the solar by the hem of her dress. But in a moment of panic, her primal instinct took over. With her fists, she beat at his back as if he was a knave or a robber, not a Lord. “Let me go!”
His hand came down sharply on the backs of her thighs, just above her buttocks, as if she was a disobedient child or a nervous horse. She wriggled all the harder, knocking her knees against his ribs.
At that, the baron dropped her without ceremony, onto the hard ground. Scrabbling at it, Rey tried to crawl away. Suddenly, his hand was tight in her hair, making the blood rush to her scalp. He didn’t yank her hair, but rather held it like the reins of a horse, keeping her in place. Her eyes watered, and even if she only pretended to be pious, she gasped, “God, have mercy.”
The baron tilted her face up to his. He looked curiously amused, as if he enjoyed subjugating her and thought her impertinence was charming. “I am your Lord and God.”
The men who’d come with the baron to fetch her from her own wedding – as if he was expecting resistance from his loyal subjects, or rather, subjects who were still loyal to his father – had the good sense not to jeer until he’d dragged her by the arm under the wide, low threshold of the door at north tip of the great stone house.
The great hall was quiet. Their footsteps slapped on the stone floor as Rey ran to keep up with the lord’s long strides. The old woman cleaning the hearth looked up, went wide-eyed, and then looked away. She seemed to pretend not to see her master manhandle a peasant girl in a borrowed wedding gown, or to hear the noise from the courtyard. The vassal’s laughter and lewd jokes faded as they traversed the huge room.
It was a wonder the baron didn’t break her arm, as they mounted the creaky wooden stairs at the south end of the hall. She was grateful for the strength of his grip when he abruptly stopped at the top of the stairs and she nearly fell back down.
“My Lord.” Her voice echoed in the empty stone cavern of a room. She braced herself against his grip, recoiling from the wooden door to the solar. Behind the door, she knew, lay his private rooms. She tried to make a final entreaty to his decency – an entreaty to the decent boy who’d grown up playing in this great hall, full of mischief. “I – ”
Unceremoniously, the baron put his hand on her back – her low back – and shoved her through the door. His heavy, booted foot kicked it shut behind him. Rey looked around the room, wildly. The only windows were set high, soaking the comfortable, well-furnished room in light. Her captor stood between her and the heavy, bolted door. This was a luxurious hunter’s trap.
The baron’s hair fell around his face, and he was breathing hard through his nose. He was much changed – by war, the weight of his new title and responsibilities, or just by time. She wondered if any one thing had made him cruel, or if he’d always been destined to be cruel, as most men of his stature were, because they could be with impunity.
For all his cruelty, he still looked vaguely charmed by the fight she’d put up. She’d expected him to punish her for her disobedience, not to find it amusing. An impish smile tugged at the corner of his stern mouth, as if he knew a secret. She recognized the boy in him, then.
“You,” The baron told her, panting a little with the effort of manhandling her, but laughing at the same time, “Are very convincing, my sweeting.”