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Special Stew (m/f)
by
Kid Indy
Ships’ masts dotted the horizon where only a watchman on a tower could spot them. Lieutenant Henri scanned with a telescope, took his eye from the glass to look down at the masses of beggars wandering the harbor district, lifted the telescope again, looked back out at the ships, wondered where he would end, trapped between the two. General Junot had put Henri in charge of this segment of the harbor, and he had kept the peace and even employed many of the city’s poor in re-purposed armaments workshops, but with the British blockade showing no signs of moving, rumors had started to trickle in that rebel fighters were starting to mass in the countryside.
No matter; Henri’s station was Lisbon, and Lisbon’s harbor, and that’s where the trouble was starting to arrive. So now that would be his duty.
Henri was shrewd enough to keep eyes and ears in the streets, and word started coming in his morning briefings with his spymasters that the rebel fighters were preparing to stage a raid on his harbor warehouses to arm the southern resistance. Once again his eyes scanned the crowds in the streets. No amount of surveillance could catch this plot in the open; he’d need some other way to anticipate the attack.
As he scanned, the yellow bonnet of the young mother caught his eye. She always came to the yard at about the same time, sometimes with a young child in tow, sometimes alone. But her face was undeniable, and when at times some stray blond lock escaped and fell across her face, Henri was enraptured. Now that spring was arriving, and the morning’s chill sometimes gave way to a warm breeze, her lifted face and bright smile at the sun and the warm air was nothing short of a rescue for a few moments from blockades and plots and everything else.
Wait… and plots…
Henri called a sergeant to his side and pointed down into the crowd. The sergeant nodded as Henri gave quiet instructions, and as the sergeant left the watch tower he took two soldiers with him.
* * * * * * *
In the dark of the early morning two soldiers returned from the makeshift prison and let the Lieutenant know that she was secure and isolated. Her husband and children were in a jailer’s cart heading for the other side of Lisbon, and they would not be coming back from that military prison until he gave the order. His spies had let him know that the young woman was a local physician’s daughter, that her husband had been a local magistrate climbing the ranks to the city’s courts. So she was visible and known to the locals.
Henri’s soldiers might have thought those data were something beyond incidental to the Lieutenant’s choice. They could keep thinking wrong.
Henri was as deliberate as always checking on the morning’s reports from other Grand Armee officers, running down his supply levels and troop positions, hearing from his intelligence agents, and otherwise getting ready for the attack whose moves were taking shape beyond where he could see. And as each piece fell into place he knew that a visit to his new prison was getting closer.
Dismissing his senior staff, Henri gestured to two guardsmen to follow him, and he started making his way down the street to the guarded building. He took off his hat as he entered, and the lawyer’s young wife, no bonnet keeping her blond hair from the cool spring air, rose from her bench and grabbed the bars.
“Where are my children? Where is Raul? We’ve committed no crime against you or against Napoleon!”
“My intelligence officers tell me your husband is passing information to the rebels.”
“My husband hasn’t been out of the city!”
“We’ll see about that when he reaches the prison in East Lisbon. I’m sure he’ll let my superiors know exactly the nature of his involvement.”
“No! People die in that prison! And where are my babies?”
“If you and Raul cooperate, you’ll all be reunited soon enough. If not, there are fine orphanages in France.”
She shook the bars again. “You let me out of here! I need to see my children!”
“Tell me who’s involved in the plot to steal weapons.”
“I know nothing of that! Raul is a lawyer! He is no spy!”
“So be it. Just know that if Raul gives us the intelligence we need and you do not, the consequences will be dire.” Henri turned on his heel and walked out of the warehouse-turned-brig, smiling as he went. The young lawyer would sit in a cell in east Lisbon as long as Henri decided; he knew well enough that the fine young man and his exquisite young wife were not in the Grand Armee’s custody for what they knew but for what she would look like.
And sound like.
* * * * * * *
Raul went about his business during the day, continuing to work his real spy network, searching for leads that might help him anticipate the raids that were starting to strain the occupiers in other parts of the city. He did have posters printed at a local shop and nailed to corners and lamp-poles and anything that wouldn’t move throughout the harbor; when the day’s work ended and the sun was beginning to set, there would be a sight to see.
Late in the afternoon, Emilia heard the lock engage, and she saw the tall lieutenant come into the warehouse again. Behind him were four men carrying a tub of steaming soapy water. “Bad news, my dear. Raul has given us the location of one of the coming raids. That means he remains useful for intelligence and you do not.”
“But we don’t know anyone in the rebellion!”
“That remains to be seen. But your use lies elsewhere than information, I fear.” The tub came to rest as the four men lowered it to the floor. “I’m going to let you out of that cell, and you’ll have twenty minutes to wash up and put on that gown.” Emilia looked behind him to see that in fact one of the men had lain a white cotton gown on a bench. Henri turned the key now on her cell door. “If you are not clean and in that gown, then my men have leave to wash you.” She could see them leering and feared that the lieutenant was threatening in earnest. The four men began to leave, and Henri backed towards the door. “Be sure especially to wash your feet before you put on those slippers. We want you clean before we make an example of you.” Henri closed the warehouse’s door and ordered his men to attend the four corners of the building in case she attempted to loosen a board and escape.
Checking a mechanical pocket watch periodically, Henri waited for the time to elapse. Down the way a crowd was starting to gather around the wooden platform that Henri’s men had built in the street. When the minutes had passed, Henri unlocked the door once more, and Emilia was there, standing just outside of her cell, radiant in the thin white cotton. The slippers were on her feet, and Henri gestured to the bench for her to sit. “Show me your feet, Emilia.” Resigned, she took off one shoe, and then the other, showing him that in fact she had washed off the dirt that had collected as she waited barefoot in the cell. “Put them back on. I want you to have something to eat.” He gestured to one of his men, who brought forth a bowl of soup.
Emilia, who had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours, took the soup eagerly and began to eat. Henri smiled as he saw her, ravenous but always proper, devour everything in the bowl without spilling a drop. “Good. Now my men are going to bind your hands, and we’re going to walk you to the platform.” She blanched as he said “platform”--although there weren’t many, she could remember public hangings when sailors had committed violent crimes or crimes against the Portuguese crown. She offered her wrists without a struggle--she knew she wouldn’t last long against four armed men--and let them tie smooth, silk ropes around her wrists. She was impressed at that humane detail as she followed Henri, a soldier at her left and one at her right, towards the door. Outside the escort led her towards some wooden stairs, and she could see a hangman’s gallows waiting at the top. Already on the platform were three more men in military uniform.
When they reached the top, one of the officers--not Henri--began to address the crowd in a booming baritone voice speaking fluent Portuguese:
“People of Lisbon! We are the officer corps of the Grand Armee, the rightful administrators of this city. Your royal family has abdicated rule of Lisbon and greater Portugal in their retreat to America, and the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte now rightly controls this land.”
A smattering of boos started through the crowd but no major reaction.
The officer continued: “We do not come to harm you, but treason we will not abide.” He did not wait for the crowd now. “Behold! The daughter of your local physician, wife to a lawyer of your courts. Mother of two of your town’s children.” Emilia could feel the eyes turn towards her. The officer spoke again: “She has committed no crime and will not die this day.”
Emilia heard herself before she realized she was shouting, “WHAT?”
“But we have her here to show you that, if you aid or abet any insurgent plot, we will find out, and we will find out from your daughters and sisters and wives.”
Emilia found new strength to struggle as the soldiers grabbed her upper arms to take her towards the heavy wooden frame from which three nooses dangled. But as they got closer, she realized that only two of them were nooses: the one which she approached had no noose but a deep but blunt-pointed hook. As the two soldiers pressed her towards the rope, a third quickly put the ropes around her wrists on the hook, and a fourth hoisted the pulley to which the rope was attached. Emilia screamed as the hook raised and pulled her arms with it. Now she faced the crowd, which had begun to grin at her, with her arms raised above her head.
The officer began to address the crowd again in Portuguese: “Now you will see what lies in store for your women if we suspect you of assisting the insurgents!” He kept talking, but all Emilia could hear was Henri, who was now whispering in her ear in French: “Perhaps you’ve heard of Garcia de Orta, my beauty. His knowledge of the natural world and its influences on the human body made him a valuable man in the courts of the Sultans… and their harems.”
She hissed at him. “What are you doing? He said himself that I’m not involved!”
“By now I’m sure you can feel the special truffles from your evening meal working their magic inside of you. Garcia de Orta discovered that even one of those truffles could drive a harem-wife to the heights of desire on an evening when it pleased the Sultan to have her. That bowl of soup had six of them.”
As he spoke, Emilia realized that she could feel something driving through her, from her chest and through her belly and into her loins. She crossed her legs beneath her, trying to stay defiant as she felt her body continue to betray her. “You’ll never have me, you French dog!”
She heard the officer’s Portuguese as he continued to speak to the crowd, which was staring at her with looks that she could only see as predatory. “Lieutenant Henri will show you what we French can do to your women with only a few touches of our hands.”
Henri looped his left arm around Emilia’s waist as she dangled by her wrists, and he could feel her gasp. “I’m going to return you to your husband without leaving any room to wonder whether your third child is his.” He could feel relief and anticipation in her body as he pressed her buttocks against himself. “But we do need to give the people a show, don’t we?” And with that his right hand gave her hip a gentle squeeze, and she screamed as his fingers tickled her soft skin through the cotton.
The crowd began to laugh their lust as Henri’s right hand moved from her hip up her ribs and into her armpit, poking and pinching as he went, each touch making the helpless young wife squeal and writhe against him. Now that the plot was revealed, he released his grip with his left arm and began to tickle with both sides, and Emilia’s knees buckled, leaving her upper body dangling downwards from the wrists and leaving for his delight her soft, sensitive underarms. His fingers did not miss the moment but began a new invasion, strumming her skin as fast as they could and bringing a shriek out of the young wife that now had the crowd fully on board: hands started to clap, and the people shouted for more of the free show.
As she laughed, Emilia managed to straighten her legs out, but Henri did not stop tormenting the bare flesh under her arms. Her knees threatened to give out again, and she twisted this way and that as his hands continued to devour her ticklish skin. Then she learned a new way he could humiliate her: his right hand dropped from her armpit to her leg, just where her thigh joined her bottom, and squeezed, and she jumped and screamed at the new tickling. His left once again wrapped around her midsection, fingers digging into her side and tickling even more, but the right hand was unbearable, pumping her thigh and making her knees squeeze together as she squealed and laughed. Now she was certain that the truffles were doing their work on her: nothing should be tickling this badly. The cotton gown was scant protection against the Frenchman’s strong hands, and between her own laughs she could hear the crowd hooting for more. His hands switched, and the back of her left thigh proved just as vulnerable as her right. Henri moved both hands to Emilia’s hips, and his unstoppable fingers kneaded out giggles with every squeeze. She tried to shake his hands off of her hips, and the crowd hooted louder at her lewd, ticklish dance.
Henri’s fingers returned to her underarms, and she twisted this way and that, laughing against her will as he tickled. She could feel his hips against her bottom as she writhed, and she could feel the truffles doing their work as her skin betrayed her and her voice responded to his fingers every time they touched, sweeping across her gown and pinching at her flesh and making her mouth giggle and her hips squirm.
Henri’s hands stopped, and Emilia’s weight sank against the ropes. She leaned against her captor and let out a moan of relief… and frustration? She had never once strayed from Raul, but she knew that whatever was in that stew was stirring her in ways that were nothing short of sorcery. She bit her lower lip as she caught her breath. Henri called out to his men in French (Emilia had studied before she married): “Bring out the bench!”
Emilia looked on in curiosity as they brought forward a newly crafted, padded, salon-style chaise. They carried it to where she stood and set it down on the platform, and as one of them let some slack out of the rope, Henri’s strong hands helped her to sit down on it. Her hands were still bound, but she could bring them down to her lap, and that was something. Then Henri called out to his Portuguese-speaking spokesman: “Get a girl from the crowd.”
Emily could not decide to be relieved or terrified as the man once again addressed the crowd. “As you can see, we have ways to assist your women if they’re shy about what they know. Now we need to talk to one of you.”
The crowd began to murmur.
“Up here.”
Grins broke out visibly on faces.
“Right now.”
Suddenly the faces of men scanned the crowd, and women who in other moments strolled the harbor’s streets like young royalty scrambled to find a route of escape. For one it was too late. The crowd jostled a young body towards the platform, and two French soldiers hoisted her up to the platform. As they dragged her towards the gallows-arm next to Emilia, which a third was fitting with silken cuffs like her own, the young mother recognized the slender farmer’s daughter whose stall she had visited often in the market.
“Coraline!”
“Emilia! Don’t let them do this to me!” But Emilia’s hands, still bound, would be of no help as the soldiers tied the young woman’s hands above her head and pulled the rope tight. Emilia began to worry: what if Coraline really did know some of the resistance fighters out in the countryside? The crowds, seemingly unconcerned about such things, continued to hoot as they anticipated more of the show.
Henri now stepped forward and addressed the crowd in Portuguese: “Now, good people of Lisbon, a bit of a game: my men are going to tickle this young woman without mercy, but only where your Emilia tells them to!” Emilia’s eyes broadened in shock, but as soon as surprise abated, she steeled those same eyes with resolution.
“You’re not going to make me part of this!”
The crowd let out a laugh at the young wife’s defiance of the occupiers. Henri just smiled. “And I’m going to tickle Emilia’s feet until the other girl gives up one of the rebels!” Now the crowd roared its approval.
Emilia tugged on her hand-rope and tried to pull her feet under her, and Henri sat on the padded bench next to her. His hands shot to her sides, tickling furiously, and Emilia’s legs kicked out from under her as she squirmed. Collecting them and placing them atop his own legs, he wrapped one arm around her calves and with the other hand began to remove one of her slippers. Her foot thrashed this way and that, but the shoes were loose, and one slipper and then another hit the platform. Henri turned towards the crowd. “We begin tickling the second captive at the orders of the first!” And with that he began to run his fingers up Emilia’s sole.
Now Emilia knew that she stood no chance against the truffles: The touch of his fingers made her let out a scream of desperation, and she cried out, “No!” as his large, strong hand gripped her ankle, immobilizing one foot. His fingertips, nibbling at her sensitive toes, were too much; Emilia began to squeal, and the squeal turned into a giggle as she pulled in vain at the rope above her head. She writhed against the soft padding of the chaise as he tormented her skin, and when his fingers found certain paths from her heel to the ball of her foot, her thighs instinctively squeezed together as the sensations shot up through her legs and into her loins. If she had been in Henri’s harem, she thought in between giggles, she would have borne him sons without stopping just to end the terrible tickling.
In a moment when her laughter and her arousal nearly drove her to the little death, she looked over at Coraline, the beautiful young woman just the right age for some Portuguese soldier to marry--if they hadn’t put down their weapons and left Lisbon’s women to these French ticklers--and, to her own horror, started to think about how the French might break her young body.
“Tickle her under the arms!”
Henri, grinning from ear to ear as he continued to run his fingers up and down Emilia’s sole, translated for the soldiers near Coraline, and the country girl screamed at their touch. What a pity, thought Emilia--even without the truffles, this girl thrashed as the young soldier pinched at her underarms. She wouldn’t last long if they kept this up.
And that was now the only thing driving Emilia now: if Coraline did break, even if that would mean betraying some Portuguese men planning the gun run, at least Emilia could be free. Henri would not stop tickling her feet; now he had her ankles crossed and tucked under one arm as his other hand ranged freely over both soles, and she was starting to spasm between her legs, a feeling that not even Raul could always invoke. She knew that either Coraline was going to give up a rebel or she, Emilia, was going to die the little death in front of all of Lisbon harbor, and her tickled pride would not let her be so humiliated. “Tickle her hips!”
Henri relayed the message, and within seconds the soldiers had their hands on Coraline’s sides. The farm-girl moaned and squealed at their hands, and if Emilia’s vision were not blurring from the monstrous tickling Henri was giving her, she would have seen that the prospect of two beautiful ticklish women in the throes of their own flesh was driving the crowd into a kind of frenzy. Emilia let out a moan as Henri’s finger slid between two of her toes, and her eyes locked with his, seeing him promise without speaking a word that he was going to torture her with that sensation until she broke. She could hear Coraline at what seemed an impossible distance trying to keep screaming but failing as the soldiers tickled her into a continuous, tickled laugh. Another spasm ripped through Emilia’s abdomen, and she knew her time was running out.
She cried out. “Get her a bench! Tickle her feet!” Henri stopped tickling so that the women could look at each other. Coraline, her brown hair flying in her face from the tickling she had already endured, stared at Emilia in disbelief. The crowd began now to chant for Coraline’s feet. As Emilia watched the soldiers bring another chaise onto the platform, she felt Henri’s body turn: he slid himself, still sitting, between her feet, so that one rested on each side of his body. Emilia sucked in air as she felt one of his hands slide up her leg, past her knee, and come to rest on the inside of her thigh.
Meanwhile the soldiers had moved Coraline onto the bench and taken off her shoes. Her ticklish squeal cut through the air, and she shook her head “no” as the soldiers tickled her toes. Emilia’s mind returned just for a moment, and her mind had a second’s respite to feel remorse.
Then Henri’s hand jumped to life. The first time those strong fingers squeezed the inside of Emilia’s thigh, the young mother squealed over Coraline, whose feet were reaching new ticklish heights at the hands of the soldiers. The crowd’s heads swiveled back and forth between the two women like commoners at a tennis match, and Emilia’s hips could not find rest. She writhed and laughed and squealed as Henri’s hand tickled higher and higher, and she felt the point of no return rushing on. A white-hot blaze was now threatening to explode between her legs, and she did not so much scream as she heard herself scream a command to the men tickling the farmer’s daughter.
“Tickle between her legs! Tickle her thighs!”
“Emilia! No!”
But the soldier’s hands were already up the young woman’s dress, and within seconds she was promising to tell them everything. Henri’s hands lifted off of Emilia, and he raised them in triumph. The soldiers untied Coraline’s hands, put her shoes back on, and escorted her towards the prison where Emilia had been held. She looked to the crowd and saw young men scrambling to pass warning to their comrades and other men, watching their movements, no doubt ready to pass intelligence to Henri.
She felt Henri begin to put her slippers back on, and the tall officer unhooked her hands from the gallows but left her hands bound. They left the platform, but they walked in the opposite direction from the makeshift prison. Still numb from the betrayal that her legs had just carried her to, Emilia was unaware until they had been escorted through a wooden door that she must be in Henri’s quarters. He took her to his bed and sat her down.
“You do realize, of course, that whatever Coraline tells my men, the rebels will have passed word one to another and realigned. The most that you’ve just helped happen is a delay in the impending attack.”
“You deserve anything the freedom fighters do to you, drugging women and making them betray their men!” Henri chuckled. Emilia’s nostrils flared as she glared at him. “Do not mock me! I’m now humiliated by your truffles!” Again he laughed. Emilia growled. “I hope you and your magic mushrooms burn in Hell when the raid comes to Lisbon harbor!”
“Emilia, you do know that aphrodisiac truffles are a superstition of the east, don’t you?”
Emilia’s face dropped. “What? What do you mean?”
“Your meal before we went to the gallows was a local stew from a local kitchen. There was no magic in that bowl.”
Emilia shook her head. “What?”
“Whatever you felt when my hands were on your skin was all your own ticklishness. In fact, you’re just as ticklish now as you were back on the platform.”
“No… that can’t be right…”
“So now, Emilia, I fulfill my promise. You’ve not been violated, and you’ve not been hurt. I’ve sent men to retrieve your husband and children, and when they return, you’ll be reunited as a happy family. I recommend buying your food from another farmer at the market--Coraline is getting the tickling of her life right now, I assure you, but your life returns to normal as soon as they’re back.”
“Then untie me so that I can go!”
“No, I said when he returns. They’re on the other side of the city, and I told my men to go slowly. You surrendered entirely too quickly when I tickled you between the thighs. We’re going to have quite a bit of time to make that right before they return!”
Emilia, her hands still tied, pushed her thighs together in vain as Henri, grinning like a wolf about to pounce, took off his boots and prepared to join her on the bed.
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KI
Special Stew (m/f)
by
Kid Indy
Ships’ masts dotted the horizon where only a watchman on a tower could spot them. Lieutenant Henri scanned with a telescope, took his eye from the glass to look down at the masses of beggars wandering the harbor district, lifted the telescope again, looked back out at the ships, wondered where he would end, trapped between the two. General Junot had put Henri in charge of this segment of the harbor, and he had kept the peace and even employed many of the city’s poor in re-purposed armaments workshops, but with the British blockade showing no signs of moving, rumors had started to trickle in that rebel fighters were starting to mass in the countryside.
No matter; Henri’s station was Lisbon, and Lisbon’s harbor, and that’s where the trouble was starting to arrive. So now that would be his duty.
Henri was shrewd enough to keep eyes and ears in the streets, and word started coming in his morning briefings with his spymasters that the rebel fighters were preparing to stage a raid on his harbor warehouses to arm the southern resistance. Once again his eyes scanned the crowds in the streets. No amount of surveillance could catch this plot in the open; he’d need some other way to anticipate the attack.
As he scanned, the yellow bonnet of the young mother caught his eye. She always came to the yard at about the same time, sometimes with a young child in tow, sometimes alone. But her face was undeniable, and when at times some stray blond lock escaped and fell across her face, Henri was enraptured. Now that spring was arriving, and the morning’s chill sometimes gave way to a warm breeze, her lifted face and bright smile at the sun and the warm air was nothing short of a rescue for a few moments from blockades and plots and everything else.
Wait… and plots…
Henri called a sergeant to his side and pointed down into the crowd. The sergeant nodded as Henri gave quiet instructions, and as the sergeant left the watch tower he took two soldiers with him.
* * * * * * *
In the dark of the early morning two soldiers returned from the makeshift prison and let the Lieutenant know that she was secure and isolated. Her husband and children were in a jailer’s cart heading for the other side of Lisbon, and they would not be coming back from that military prison until he gave the order. His spies had let him know that the young woman was a local physician’s daughter, that her husband had been a local magistrate climbing the ranks to the city’s courts. So she was visible and known to the locals.
Henri’s soldiers might have thought those data were something beyond incidental to the Lieutenant’s choice. They could keep thinking wrong.
Henri was as deliberate as always checking on the morning’s reports from other Grand Armee officers, running down his supply levels and troop positions, hearing from his intelligence agents, and otherwise getting ready for the attack whose moves were taking shape beyond where he could see. And as each piece fell into place he knew that a visit to his new prison was getting closer.
Dismissing his senior staff, Henri gestured to two guardsmen to follow him, and he started making his way down the street to the guarded building. He took off his hat as he entered, and the lawyer’s young wife, no bonnet keeping her blond hair from the cool spring air, rose from her bench and grabbed the bars.
“Where are my children? Where is Raul? We’ve committed no crime against you or against Napoleon!”
“My intelligence officers tell me your husband is passing information to the rebels.”
“My husband hasn’t been out of the city!”
“We’ll see about that when he reaches the prison in East Lisbon. I’m sure he’ll let my superiors know exactly the nature of his involvement.”
“No! People die in that prison! And where are my babies?”
“If you and Raul cooperate, you’ll all be reunited soon enough. If not, there are fine orphanages in France.”
She shook the bars again. “You let me out of here! I need to see my children!”
“Tell me who’s involved in the plot to steal weapons.”
“I know nothing of that! Raul is a lawyer! He is no spy!”
“So be it. Just know that if Raul gives us the intelligence we need and you do not, the consequences will be dire.” Henri turned on his heel and walked out of the warehouse-turned-brig, smiling as he went. The young lawyer would sit in a cell in east Lisbon as long as Henri decided; he knew well enough that the fine young man and his exquisite young wife were not in the Grand Armee’s custody for what they knew but for what she would look like.
And sound like.
* * * * * * *
Raul went about his business during the day, continuing to work his real spy network, searching for leads that might help him anticipate the raids that were starting to strain the occupiers in other parts of the city. He did have posters printed at a local shop and nailed to corners and lamp-poles and anything that wouldn’t move throughout the harbor; when the day’s work ended and the sun was beginning to set, there would be a sight to see.
Late in the afternoon, Emilia heard the lock engage, and she saw the tall lieutenant come into the warehouse again. Behind him were four men carrying a tub of steaming soapy water. “Bad news, my dear. Raul has given us the location of one of the coming raids. That means he remains useful for intelligence and you do not.”
“But we don’t know anyone in the rebellion!”
“That remains to be seen. But your use lies elsewhere than information, I fear.” The tub came to rest as the four men lowered it to the floor. “I’m going to let you out of that cell, and you’ll have twenty minutes to wash up and put on that gown.” Emilia looked behind him to see that in fact one of the men had lain a white cotton gown on a bench. Henri turned the key now on her cell door. “If you are not clean and in that gown, then my men have leave to wash you.” She could see them leering and feared that the lieutenant was threatening in earnest. The four men began to leave, and Henri backed towards the door. “Be sure especially to wash your feet before you put on those slippers. We want you clean before we make an example of you.” Henri closed the warehouse’s door and ordered his men to attend the four corners of the building in case she attempted to loosen a board and escape.
Checking a mechanical pocket watch periodically, Henri waited for the time to elapse. Down the way a crowd was starting to gather around the wooden platform that Henri’s men had built in the street. When the minutes had passed, Henri unlocked the door once more, and Emilia was there, standing just outside of her cell, radiant in the thin white cotton. The slippers were on her feet, and Henri gestured to the bench for her to sit. “Show me your feet, Emilia.” Resigned, she took off one shoe, and then the other, showing him that in fact she had washed off the dirt that had collected as she waited barefoot in the cell. “Put them back on. I want you to have something to eat.” He gestured to one of his men, who brought forth a bowl of soup.
Emilia, who had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours, took the soup eagerly and began to eat. Henri smiled as he saw her, ravenous but always proper, devour everything in the bowl without spilling a drop. “Good. Now my men are going to bind your hands, and we’re going to walk you to the platform.” She blanched as he said “platform”--although there weren’t many, she could remember public hangings when sailors had committed violent crimes or crimes against the Portuguese crown. She offered her wrists without a struggle--she knew she wouldn’t last long against four armed men--and let them tie smooth, silk ropes around her wrists. She was impressed at that humane detail as she followed Henri, a soldier at her left and one at her right, towards the door. Outside the escort led her towards some wooden stairs, and she could see a hangman’s gallows waiting at the top. Already on the platform were three more men in military uniform.
When they reached the top, one of the officers--not Henri--began to address the crowd in a booming baritone voice speaking fluent Portuguese:
“People of Lisbon! We are the officer corps of the Grand Armee, the rightful administrators of this city. Your royal family has abdicated rule of Lisbon and greater Portugal in their retreat to America, and the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte now rightly controls this land.”
A smattering of boos started through the crowd but no major reaction.
The officer continued: “We do not come to harm you, but treason we will not abide.” He did not wait for the crowd now. “Behold! The daughter of your local physician, wife to a lawyer of your courts. Mother of two of your town’s children.” Emilia could feel the eyes turn towards her. The officer spoke again: “She has committed no crime and will not die this day.”
Emilia heard herself before she realized she was shouting, “WHAT?”
“But we have her here to show you that, if you aid or abet any insurgent plot, we will find out, and we will find out from your daughters and sisters and wives.”
Emilia found new strength to struggle as the soldiers grabbed her upper arms to take her towards the heavy wooden frame from which three nooses dangled. But as they got closer, she realized that only two of them were nooses: the one which she approached had no noose but a deep but blunt-pointed hook. As the two soldiers pressed her towards the rope, a third quickly put the ropes around her wrists on the hook, and a fourth hoisted the pulley to which the rope was attached. Emilia screamed as the hook raised and pulled her arms with it. Now she faced the crowd, which had begun to grin at her, with her arms raised above her head.
The officer began to address the crowd again in Portuguese: “Now you will see what lies in store for your women if we suspect you of assisting the insurgents!” He kept talking, but all Emilia could hear was Henri, who was now whispering in her ear in French: “Perhaps you’ve heard of Garcia de Orta, my beauty. His knowledge of the natural world and its influences on the human body made him a valuable man in the courts of the Sultans… and their harems.”
She hissed at him. “What are you doing? He said himself that I’m not involved!”
“By now I’m sure you can feel the special truffles from your evening meal working their magic inside of you. Garcia de Orta discovered that even one of those truffles could drive a harem-wife to the heights of desire on an evening when it pleased the Sultan to have her. That bowl of soup had six of them.”
As he spoke, Emilia realized that she could feel something driving through her, from her chest and through her belly and into her loins. She crossed her legs beneath her, trying to stay defiant as she felt her body continue to betray her. “You’ll never have me, you French dog!”
She heard the officer’s Portuguese as he continued to speak to the crowd, which was staring at her with looks that she could only see as predatory. “Lieutenant Henri will show you what we French can do to your women with only a few touches of our hands.”
Henri looped his left arm around Emilia’s waist as she dangled by her wrists, and he could feel her gasp. “I’m going to return you to your husband without leaving any room to wonder whether your third child is his.” He could feel relief and anticipation in her body as he pressed her buttocks against himself. “But we do need to give the people a show, don’t we?” And with that his right hand gave her hip a gentle squeeze, and she screamed as his fingers tickled her soft skin through the cotton.
The crowd began to laugh their lust as Henri’s right hand moved from her hip up her ribs and into her armpit, poking and pinching as he went, each touch making the helpless young wife squeal and writhe against him. Now that the plot was revealed, he released his grip with his left arm and began to tickle with both sides, and Emilia’s knees buckled, leaving her upper body dangling downwards from the wrists and leaving for his delight her soft, sensitive underarms. His fingers did not miss the moment but began a new invasion, strumming her skin as fast as they could and bringing a shriek out of the young wife that now had the crowd fully on board: hands started to clap, and the people shouted for more of the free show.
As she laughed, Emilia managed to straighten her legs out, but Henri did not stop tormenting the bare flesh under her arms. Her knees threatened to give out again, and she twisted this way and that as his hands continued to devour her ticklish skin. Then she learned a new way he could humiliate her: his right hand dropped from her armpit to her leg, just where her thigh joined her bottom, and squeezed, and she jumped and screamed at the new tickling. His left once again wrapped around her midsection, fingers digging into her side and tickling even more, but the right hand was unbearable, pumping her thigh and making her knees squeeze together as she squealed and laughed. Now she was certain that the truffles were doing their work on her: nothing should be tickling this badly. The cotton gown was scant protection against the Frenchman’s strong hands, and between her own laughs she could hear the crowd hooting for more. His hands switched, and the back of her left thigh proved just as vulnerable as her right. Henri moved both hands to Emilia’s hips, and his unstoppable fingers kneaded out giggles with every squeeze. She tried to shake his hands off of her hips, and the crowd hooted louder at her lewd, ticklish dance.
Henri’s fingers returned to her underarms, and she twisted this way and that, laughing against her will as he tickled. She could feel his hips against her bottom as she writhed, and she could feel the truffles doing their work as her skin betrayed her and her voice responded to his fingers every time they touched, sweeping across her gown and pinching at her flesh and making her mouth giggle and her hips squirm.
Henri’s hands stopped, and Emilia’s weight sank against the ropes. She leaned against her captor and let out a moan of relief… and frustration? She had never once strayed from Raul, but she knew that whatever was in that stew was stirring her in ways that were nothing short of sorcery. She bit her lower lip as she caught her breath. Henri called out to his men in French (Emilia had studied before she married): “Bring out the bench!”
Emilia looked on in curiosity as they brought forward a newly crafted, padded, salon-style chaise. They carried it to where she stood and set it down on the platform, and as one of them let some slack out of the rope, Henri’s strong hands helped her to sit down on it. Her hands were still bound, but she could bring them down to her lap, and that was something. Then Henri called out to his Portuguese-speaking spokesman: “Get a girl from the crowd.”
Emily could not decide to be relieved or terrified as the man once again addressed the crowd. “As you can see, we have ways to assist your women if they’re shy about what they know. Now we need to talk to one of you.”
The crowd began to murmur.
“Up here.”
Grins broke out visibly on faces.
“Right now.”
Suddenly the faces of men scanned the crowd, and women who in other moments strolled the harbor’s streets like young royalty scrambled to find a route of escape. For one it was too late. The crowd jostled a young body towards the platform, and two French soldiers hoisted her up to the platform. As they dragged her towards the gallows-arm next to Emilia, which a third was fitting with silken cuffs like her own, the young mother recognized the slender farmer’s daughter whose stall she had visited often in the market.
“Coraline!”
“Emilia! Don’t let them do this to me!” But Emilia’s hands, still bound, would be of no help as the soldiers tied the young woman’s hands above her head and pulled the rope tight. Emilia began to worry: what if Coraline really did know some of the resistance fighters out in the countryside? The crowds, seemingly unconcerned about such things, continued to hoot as they anticipated more of the show.
Henri now stepped forward and addressed the crowd in Portuguese: “Now, good people of Lisbon, a bit of a game: my men are going to tickle this young woman without mercy, but only where your Emilia tells them to!” Emilia’s eyes broadened in shock, but as soon as surprise abated, she steeled those same eyes with resolution.
“You’re not going to make me part of this!”
The crowd let out a laugh at the young wife’s defiance of the occupiers. Henri just smiled. “And I’m going to tickle Emilia’s feet until the other girl gives up one of the rebels!” Now the crowd roared its approval.
Emilia tugged on her hand-rope and tried to pull her feet under her, and Henri sat on the padded bench next to her. His hands shot to her sides, tickling furiously, and Emilia’s legs kicked out from under her as she squirmed. Collecting them and placing them atop his own legs, he wrapped one arm around her calves and with the other hand began to remove one of her slippers. Her foot thrashed this way and that, but the shoes were loose, and one slipper and then another hit the platform. Henri turned towards the crowd. “We begin tickling the second captive at the orders of the first!” And with that he began to run his fingers up Emilia’s sole.
Now Emilia knew that she stood no chance against the truffles: The touch of his fingers made her let out a scream of desperation, and she cried out, “No!” as his large, strong hand gripped her ankle, immobilizing one foot. His fingertips, nibbling at her sensitive toes, were too much; Emilia began to squeal, and the squeal turned into a giggle as she pulled in vain at the rope above her head. She writhed against the soft padding of the chaise as he tormented her skin, and when his fingers found certain paths from her heel to the ball of her foot, her thighs instinctively squeezed together as the sensations shot up through her legs and into her loins. If she had been in Henri’s harem, she thought in between giggles, she would have borne him sons without stopping just to end the terrible tickling.
In a moment when her laughter and her arousal nearly drove her to the little death, she looked over at Coraline, the beautiful young woman just the right age for some Portuguese soldier to marry--if they hadn’t put down their weapons and left Lisbon’s women to these French ticklers--and, to her own horror, started to think about how the French might break her young body.
“Tickle her under the arms!”
Henri, grinning from ear to ear as he continued to run his fingers up and down Emilia’s sole, translated for the soldiers near Coraline, and the country girl screamed at their touch. What a pity, thought Emilia--even without the truffles, this girl thrashed as the young soldier pinched at her underarms. She wouldn’t last long if they kept this up.
And that was now the only thing driving Emilia now: if Coraline did break, even if that would mean betraying some Portuguese men planning the gun run, at least Emilia could be free. Henri would not stop tickling her feet; now he had her ankles crossed and tucked under one arm as his other hand ranged freely over both soles, and she was starting to spasm between her legs, a feeling that not even Raul could always invoke. She knew that either Coraline was going to give up a rebel or she, Emilia, was going to die the little death in front of all of Lisbon harbor, and her tickled pride would not let her be so humiliated. “Tickle her hips!”
Henri relayed the message, and within seconds the soldiers had their hands on Coraline’s sides. The farm-girl moaned and squealed at their hands, and if Emilia’s vision were not blurring from the monstrous tickling Henri was giving her, she would have seen that the prospect of two beautiful ticklish women in the throes of their own flesh was driving the crowd into a kind of frenzy. Emilia let out a moan as Henri’s finger slid between two of her toes, and her eyes locked with his, seeing him promise without speaking a word that he was going to torture her with that sensation until she broke. She could hear Coraline at what seemed an impossible distance trying to keep screaming but failing as the soldiers tickled her into a continuous, tickled laugh. Another spasm ripped through Emilia’s abdomen, and she knew her time was running out.
She cried out. “Get her a bench! Tickle her feet!” Henri stopped tickling so that the women could look at each other. Coraline, her brown hair flying in her face from the tickling she had already endured, stared at Emilia in disbelief. The crowd began now to chant for Coraline’s feet. As Emilia watched the soldiers bring another chaise onto the platform, she felt Henri’s body turn: he slid himself, still sitting, between her feet, so that one rested on each side of his body. Emilia sucked in air as she felt one of his hands slide up her leg, past her knee, and come to rest on the inside of her thigh.
Meanwhile the soldiers had moved Coraline onto the bench and taken off her shoes. Her ticklish squeal cut through the air, and she shook her head “no” as the soldiers tickled her toes. Emilia’s mind returned just for a moment, and her mind had a second’s respite to feel remorse.
Then Henri’s hand jumped to life. The first time those strong fingers squeezed the inside of Emilia’s thigh, the young mother squealed over Coraline, whose feet were reaching new ticklish heights at the hands of the soldiers. The crowd’s heads swiveled back and forth between the two women like commoners at a tennis match, and Emilia’s hips could not find rest. She writhed and laughed and squealed as Henri’s hand tickled higher and higher, and she felt the point of no return rushing on. A white-hot blaze was now threatening to explode between her legs, and she did not so much scream as she heard herself scream a command to the men tickling the farmer’s daughter.
“Tickle between her legs! Tickle her thighs!”
“Emilia! No!”
But the soldier’s hands were already up the young woman’s dress, and within seconds she was promising to tell them everything. Henri’s hands lifted off of Emilia, and he raised them in triumph. The soldiers untied Coraline’s hands, put her shoes back on, and escorted her towards the prison where Emilia had been held. She looked to the crowd and saw young men scrambling to pass warning to their comrades and other men, watching their movements, no doubt ready to pass intelligence to Henri.
She felt Henri begin to put her slippers back on, and the tall officer unhooked her hands from the gallows but left her hands bound. They left the platform, but they walked in the opposite direction from the makeshift prison. Still numb from the betrayal that her legs had just carried her to, Emilia was unaware until they had been escorted through a wooden door that she must be in Henri’s quarters. He took her to his bed and sat her down.
“You do realize, of course, that whatever Coraline tells my men, the rebels will have passed word one to another and realigned. The most that you’ve just helped happen is a delay in the impending attack.”
“You deserve anything the freedom fighters do to you, drugging women and making them betray their men!” Henri chuckled. Emilia’s nostrils flared as she glared at him. “Do not mock me! I’m now humiliated by your truffles!” Again he laughed. Emilia growled. “I hope you and your magic mushrooms burn in Hell when the raid comes to Lisbon harbor!”
“Emilia, you do know that aphrodisiac truffles are a superstition of the east, don’t you?”
Emilia’s face dropped. “What? What do you mean?”
“Your meal before we went to the gallows was a local stew from a local kitchen. There was no magic in that bowl.”
Emilia shook her head. “What?”
“Whatever you felt when my hands were on your skin was all your own ticklishness. In fact, you’re just as ticklish now as you were back on the platform.”
“No… that can’t be right…”
“So now, Emilia, I fulfill my promise. You’ve not been violated, and you’ve not been hurt. I’ve sent men to retrieve your husband and children, and when they return, you’ll be reunited as a happy family. I recommend buying your food from another farmer at the market--Coraline is getting the tickling of her life right now, I assure you, but your life returns to normal as soon as they’re back.”
“Then untie me so that I can go!”
“No, I said when he returns. They’re on the other side of the city, and I told my men to go slowly. You surrendered entirely too quickly when I tickled you between the thighs. We’re going to have quite a bit of time to make that right before they return!”
Emilia, her hands still tied, pushed her thighs together in vain as Henri, grinning like a wolf about to pounce, took off his boots and prepared to join her on the bed.
I hope you enjoyed! Be sure to leave a comment here, and if you're interested in a commission or some other story request, hit me with a private message.
KI
