Bondmaiden Read Online Free PDF Page A

miserably.
    ‘Don’t feel bad,’ Tilda said, patting her hand. ‘I know you didn’t have any choice. Actually, you should be thankful it was only a wank he was wanting. When he knows you better and is feeling braver he’ll make you suck him off. He’s a slimy toad, our Jarold, always telling tales and creeping to the overseer—’
    ‘What’s going on here then?’ a gruff voice demanded. ‘Idling, is it?’
    Two heads whipped round guiltily, but it was only Durwin playing a prank. Lia let out a sigh of relief, and Tilda swiped at him with her cloth.
    ‘Idling?’ she cried with mock indignation. ‘We’re not all called Dagna, you know.’
    Her timing was unfortunate, for Dagna appeared just as she said her name. Lia doubted the woman heard everything clearly. Obviously she heard her name being mocked, but thankfully she merely told them to get on with their work, although bestowing upon Tilda a particularly venomous look.
    At noon lunch was carried up to the kitchen’s clientele, namely the royal family, their immediate household and servants, and the guards. The kitchen staff, Lia learned, always ate later, when everyone else was done and everything cleared away. Tilda and Lia were tasked with feeding the guards, and Tilda told her to fill a basket with bread, saying she would bring the stew.
    ‘You need fourteen loaves,’ she said, ‘one for each of the men and one for the sergeant and captain. We only feed the king’s personal guard, you understand; the one’s who live here in the keep, that is. Most of the soldiers stay in the barracks in town. They have their own kitchens, so they’re nothing to do with us.’
    As she spoke she ladled steaming, fragrant beef stew from a big cauldron over the fire into a smaller pot. When she was done she led Lia to a narrow spiral stairway in the back corner of the kitchen. ‘This is the servants’ stair,’ she explained. ‘We aren’t allowed to use the main stairs at the front; they’re for highborn and soldiers only.’
    They made their way up the steep stairs to the guards’ quarters, where a roar of approval and raised wooden flagons greeted their arrival. The men – a few in mail armour, the rest in ordinary attire – were sitting at a long table in the middle of the room. They seemed in boisterous good spirits.
    ‘As you can see,’ Tilda said ruefully, ‘they supply their own drinks. Obviously they started on the ale early.’ She set the pot down on the end of the table and shouted for silence. ‘This is Lia,’ she said, when the men had quietened somewhat. ‘She’s new, and she’s not to be manhandled. She’s a virgin, is what I’m saying, and you know what that means.’
    ‘We know, Til,’ a big man with a grizzled beard said. ‘And how about you, sweetheart? Are you to be touched?’
    He made a grab for her, but she laughed and stepped nimbly out of harm’s way. ‘Not by an ugly sod like you I’m not, Varrik,’ she retorted.
    The others howled in approval and banged their flagons on the table. Tilda looked at Lia and rolled her eyes. ‘We’d better get them fed,’ she said over the din. ‘They aren’t likely to sober up anytime soon. Stay close to me, all right? If anyone grabs you tip the basket over his head.’
    Lia gulped, wishing she could be as calm and relaxed as Tilda was about all this. She would almost have preferred to hand-feed a pack of wolves! She followed Tilda around the table, more than a little impressed by the way she managed to ladle stew into the waiting bowls whilst simultaneously avoiding the clutching hands. As for Lia, close on her heels, she just handed each man a loaf and thanked the saints she didn’t have to run the gauntlet herself.
    At the very end Tilda’s concentration seemed to fail her. A soldier reached out and she just managed to set the pot down safely on the table before being pulled onto his lap. Egged on by his cheering companions, he tugged up her skirts and nuzzled his face against