red ochre [1]
series masterlist part one -> minium || part two -> woad and weld
> summary: you become the unlikely treasure of two vikings who raid your convent looking for gold > tags/warnings: religious themes (DLDR), minor suicidal ideation, mention of viking raids (slavery, violence, death), kidnapping, threats, dubcon bathing + touching, mean simon (ish), established goap, reader is underfed and beaten in the convent (corporal punishment), difficult travel, some food description
Near the coast the wind scratches at you when it blows, full of sand and salt.
Once, you'd imagined this as your calling; committed to asceticism, married to God, serving under the abbess. Enclosed, you find yourself stifled more than devoted, pressing your face to the stone barrier that blocks the convent from the outside world.
Isolation, never being quite full, the slow and steady stripping of your identity. This is your life - hollowed out, like meat sucked from a crab, cracked open and used and hollow.
You couldn't have predicted Christ to be such an inconsiderate husband.
"Girl!" the voice is the crack of a whip in empty air. You don't jump, but the hair on your body raises, the welts on your thighs sting.
"Yes, mother?" you put your chin down to your chest, turning, pressing your back to the wall. Demure, submissive, utterly devoid of fight. And still, her grip finds you hard as iron and rough as the rock you'd just been touching, pulling you hard enough to make your shoulder ache back toward the heavy wood doors of the dormitory.
"You shirk your duties again, child? Leave your sisters to pick up your slack?" you didn't mean to, truly. It's only that you ache so deeply you're afraid you might never recover from the feeling.
"Please forgive me, mother, I lost track of time," you murmur. Your uniform is damp from the spray outside, and you relish in the scent and feel of it. Freedom, that's what it is. "Allow me to make up for-"
"Hush!" spit touches your cheek. You don't wipe it away. "You'll finish the tapestry tonight. No matter how long it takes you."
Desperately, you wish for God to strike you down. If you're there, father. You close your eyes. Please, please kill me now.
He doesn't listen, and the abbess pushes you to supper.
Dark bread, boiled turnips, fish and wine. Average, filling, but you'd hoped for more of the crumbly white cheese from yesterdays supper.
You know not to complain. And truly, you are grateful. With your family, it had been gruel upon gruel, often bear, and rarely flavour. Salt kisses your tongue now, and the wine makes your sore muscles relax.
The monks have it harder; you'd visited them once as a girl with your father to pray, but there was still labour to be done here. Cooking was often your job, as was doing the washing and the tilling for the vegetable garden.
Today sister Colette had assigned you weaving so that you wouldn't be out of practice. The muscles in your back and fingers ached from it already, and dread made your stomach sour to the food you ate at the thought of more work.
Mealtimes were quiet, as required. The other women eat mousily, looking down at their plates and pulling their food apart into small little bites, trying to make it last. Obedience, poverty. How silly it was now that you'd dreamed of this.
"Sister?" a whisper, next to you. Margaret was almost a friend, too pious to really confide in but so kind it was impossible to ignore her. "What were you doing?"
"I felt compelled," you shrug, lips oily from the fish. "I felt confined."
"Oh sister," Margaret pushes her bottom lip out, dark eyebrows pulling up. "You should never feel confined here."
You knew, and yet you did. It was like living in a stone coffin. All the work felt pointless since your heart had strayed from God. Even now, touching Margaret's elbow to comfort her in her worry for you, you're sick to death of even clearing plates.
There was one secret they hadn't found. None of the sisters, not even the abbess, had found your secret booklet.
Paper was more valuable than gold since the church needed so much to copy and produce texts. The writing room at the very top of the convent, where you were so seldomly asked, was full of it and guarded by lock and key.
Over months, you'd scrounged, stealing enough to make a booklet. In it, you felt sustained. Free. Titillated, sometimes, when your hand found its way beneath your soft worn blanket under your shift and you drew indecent drawings of men coming to save you. Of the farmboys from your village.
They were nothing like real art, not so detailed, but they lit inside you a spark of life. Without them, you'd be snuffed out.
Candles line the hallway toward the workroom, where you'll likely spend the rest of the night. It's near the very entrance of the convent, so that visitors may see the sisters hard at work and find reason to donate.
Really, it's a temptation. Those massive doors, ready to open and let you free.
But what could you do, really? If God were a kind man and Christ a good husband, they'd turn you into a horse so that you might run, might feel your hooves beating the earth and the coarse air on your skin.
Regrettably human, you sit to work on the tapestry. Curse the abbess and let the holy father hear your thoughts. This is worse than hell, you think. Your fingers cramp and the chair is hard, flat wood. It's made to be uncomfortable on purpose, everything is. After you finish you only have a thin mattress to look forward to, even thoughts of drawing hunky carpenters doesn't draw you out of the misery that is embroidery in the dark.
Is this string strong enough to hold you, should you hang yourself? You're being dramatic, but you feel you've earned the right.
Footsteps walk down the hall towards you. They're sure, heavy. Maybe sister Catharine, tall and splendid, is coming to release you from torment?
"Hello," you say jovially. Please be sister Catharine.
"Look what we've got here, Ghost," it's a male voice. You freeze. The accent is unfamiliar. Had you missed the visit of a monk, an abbot, a priest? "Darlin' little lass, all by herself."
Shivers overtake you. It hurts to straighten from your hunched position, but you have to do it to see properly.
You come face to face with a skull, towering over you from the doorway.
A scream builds, filling your chest, hanging off the tip of your tongue.
Stopped only by the glint of candlelight against a blade, and the quickness of the another man reaching you.
You shake, all sound stuck in your throat, feeling arms as strong as petrified wood circle your arms and pull you toward the door. The pressure, the scrape of rock against your feet, it's unreal and barely registered against the terror that builds when you look to your left and see the skull, sewn into cloth, with the soft clank of bones hanging from his waist.
His eyes find yours, dead and mellow in the eyesockets, piercing through you. Blood rushes through your ears, deafening you, until you leave the room and reality sets in.
Devils, come to sack the convent.
Who will likely kill you and all your sisters. Even the abbess, with her punishment cane and severe face, doesn't deserve that.
You shriek, finding your voice, twisting like a cat in a bag. Their hands tighten against you, growling orders at you to be still, girl.
It's then that you hear the cries, the crashes. Sounds of chaos, a cacophony of harsh voices and the search of the convent. Some of the women weep, some pray, you scream.
"Hey!" Skull snaps, shaking you hard. "Behave and we won't kill you." You comprehend that, but the animal urge to struggle for your life still has a grip on you.
The other man twists towards you, lips snarling. "Ye want to die, then? I'm not opposed to slitting ye open throat to cunt, if that's what ye prefer."
You still, sag, mouth turning downwards in misery. Sweat sticks to your skin, from fear and exertion.
"Good girl," Skull says.
The nuns have been crowded back into the dining room, cowed and cowering, trembling lambs against the storm of awful armoured men ravaging the sanctity of the space.
Some have already found gold, crosses and busts of saints and reliquaries. The abbess weeps to see the bust of Mother Mary, thrown so roughly to the ground that baby Jesus snaps off.
You watch it all happening, eyes wide, shaking despite yourself. Adrenaline makes your legs cramp in their position, curled, back to back with another sister.
"Cap," a younger man runs up, hands full with an ornate chest. "What'cha think of this one?"
"Lookit this one," the man from earlier is giddy, slapping the young one on the back. He holds St Augustine, gilded in gold and jewels. "Not too shabby, eh, Gaz?"
"Not too shabby at all," Gaz grins back at him, turning towards the third man.
"Good job, boys," he says. He's mustached, tall, steadier and calmer than the rest. A leader, clearly.
It smells of smoke, or blood, but you can't see anyone bleeding.
Maybe that's their natural scent, violence clinging to them cloying like they'd bathed in it before coming.
"Soap," Gaz calls. He's run through the library, tossing shelves to the ground, taking one or two books. Walked through the dormitories, throwing open the chests at the ends of each bed. "Take a look at this one!"
A little booklet. Your booklet, tiny in the hand of the devil.
Anxiety crawls up your spine. There's no way they'd know it was yours, but you're still afraid of another kind of raiding, should they discover your sin.
The men laugh, looking with hungry eyes, glinting, mouths stretched and wet.
Look at the ground, be quiet, be still. You want to survive, you want to draw again and feel the air against your skin. You're scared of these men, huge and muscled as they are.
They wear furs, leather, clinking chainmail, wrapped shoes. Weapons hang by their sides and are clutched firmly in hands, though no nuns nor abbesses have been harmed.
Yet.
"Gold ain't the only treasure, eh?" Soap looks down at you while others use pillowcases for bags, stuffing their bounty inside with loud clangs.
His foot nudges your thigh, and you shift away as much as possible, still looking away, still scared.
Skull comes back. Soap calls him over and calls him Ghost, so you switch the name in your head.
Ghost is big, but he glides through the air.
"See that, Ghost?" Soap nudges him, the way he nudged you. Eyes crazed.
"Mm," Ghost grunts. He hasn't looted, not like the others. Just walked through the halls and gathered one or two other stray nuns shuddering in various corners. "You want 'er?"
You blanch, breath leaving you.
"Can we?" He looks back at you and leans down, thick fingers finding your chin, tilting your face up. "Pretty little hen, so scared, aren't ye?"
"Take 'er."
With Ghosts permission, Soap moves his fingers from your face to the meat of your arms, dragging you up, using your stupor to help him.
"Dinnae worry, hen, we'll take good care of ye," it's not reassuring. You think you feel your knees hitting each other from the force of your shaking. "Awe, don't cry."
Two rivers have sprouted form your eyes, tracking searing hot salt down your cheeks, hands twisting in your habit.
The men regroup. You were right about the mustached man being a leader, and learn his name is Price. He commands them like any armyman you've ever seen, clearly holds a lot of authority.
You're the only nun that's a part of the spoils.
The only one tied with coarse rope around the wrists, chafing, tossed between Soap and Gaz through the convent until you reach those big wooden doors.
Those doors you'd dreamed about opening, those doors that you dread opening now.
"Keep walking," Gaz says. He's mellower than the others, but you'd be a fool to underestimate him.
Or ask him for help.
Reality hasn't set. You're in purgatory, stumbling across the wet grass in just wool socks, growing wetter by the minute from mist and dew. The men hoot and cheer and clank their gold, throwing fists and weapons in the air.
A bloodless victory, unless they change their mind and decide to kill you.
Soap jumps, accidentally pulling you forward in a jerk that brings you to your knees. The tears come back, and the pebbles nearing the beach digging into your knees makes you sob.
"Careful!" Ghost barks. Behind you, he reaches under your armpits and helps you up. His hands are still rough, but he lets go of you quickly to yank the rope out of Soaps hands. It doesn't help that it's still near-pitch outside, not yet morning, hard to see.
"Ach," he rubs a hand behind his head, watching you cry and walk like a deadwoman. "Got a little over-excited, darlin. Forgive me."
"I'll be better to ye, don't worry," he falls in beside you, using a knuckle to brush away your tears.
When you reach the beach, you see a few boats, supplies, but that's all. No camp, nowhere to sleep. Did they jump straight from the boats, marching up the hill to the convent to pillage?
God, they're so big. Warriors. Why just you?
"Right," Price calls them to attention. You're stuck next to Ghost, sniffling, shivering a little, praying mentally for the first time in a long time. Dear God, please help me, please strike these men dead and let me run back up the hill.
You miss what Price says, whispering under your breath with your eyes closed and palms together until Ghost puts his hand on your shoulder and pushes you forward again.
"Walk, then get on the boat," his voice is a growl.
"Dinnae worry," Soap chips in. "We brought meat."
They did - dried fish hangs like your laundry across each boats. The gold is loaded alongside you, stuffed to one side, and you're left trying to avoid the men tossing things in your direction.
Ghost ties your wrists to a wooden loop on the side of the boat.
It was built for this. For prisoners, slaves, taken in conquest.
"Ready?"
"Ready!"
Price shouts, the men answer. It's loud, a cacophony of voices and waves and the scrape of the boat against the sand.
You're going, going, gone. Floating. Adrift. Tied to the side of a viking ship with nothing but your thick, woolen habit and woolen socks. At least they provide some warmth, the air colder over the water.
Eyes look you up and down, not just from the two that took you. Gaz smiles to himself and punches Soap in the thigh, then they play wrestle.
You wonder what will happen to you- are you being taken as a slave? A prize?
The positive side to your time spend as a nun is that you know how to work, and you know that if something awful happens, you could find a way to meet God early and put yourself down.
Blood rushes in your ears again.
You register from somewhere outside of yourself that you're panicking again, caught wanting to run and having nowhere to do it. Tied down.
A hand touches your nape, and you turn with wild eyes and desperation all over your face to Ghost.
"Take a breath," he says, low enough that only you hear it, firm and commanding. "In and out, girl. Do it."
You do, if only to save yourself passing out. In and out, in and out, you breathe.
"That's it," he leans down, brown eyes finding yours. The skull is bleached yellow, old, but you try to ignore it. "You're alright."
"No I'm not," you shock the both of you by speaking, voice high and wavering. "I'm not, you're going to kill me or worse-"
"You think we'd take you just to kill you?"
"You're a heathen, aren't you?" you gasp again, wiping your face on the fabric of your sleeves. "Sister Catharine says heathens sacrifice virgins. Please don't."
He startles you by laughing, a ragged thing ripped from his chest.
"Not gonna sacrifice you, lamb," his hand squeeze your nape, his thumb rubbing the edge of your jaw where he can reach. "Gonna be a long journey, you'd better settle now."
It's hell. You were mistaken before, and you'd do anything now to go back to embroidery. You'd let the abbess cane you bloody, you'd kneel and pray with the passion of Christ himself if it meant you could come off the boat.
The boat, the men. The godforsaken fish, too-salty, not much better than the biscuits Soap insists on feeding you by hand.
"Your hands are tied, pretty lamb, how are ye gonna feed yourself?" He breaks it up, wiping crumbs from your cheeks.
You hope Ghost will step in, but he doesn't. He watches, a specter, still wearing that mask on his face. You wonder if it's because of you, or if he's just like that. Private, hidden. Intimidating.
"Open wide," Soap seems fond of holding your face, squishing your cheeks and puckering your lips. He's extra zealous since catching a sea-bird, keen on making you taste it.
The thought makes your stomach roil, despite being sick of the fish and biscuits. You turn your face, trying to avoid him, whimpering when he squeezes a little too hard.
"Come on, hen," he leans closer. "Fresh meat is good, no?"
"Johnny", Ghost saves you again, finally. Pulls on Johnny's shirt until he's sitting back on his heels. "Let her be."
"Awe, just wanna giv'er my catch, Si," if a heathenish, kidnapping devil could whine and pout like a child, it would look like this.
Horrific, is what it is. You tuck your face into your elbow and close your eyes.
You've been doing that most of the journey, closing your eyes and breathing deeply like Ghost taught you. Or Simon, what you've heard Johnny calling him.
Dread sneaks in every once in a while, wakes you up from fitful sleeps or seizes your ability to speak. Nobody else has spoken to you, not even Gaz who keeps glancing at you. Nobody but Simon and Johnny.
"Here," Simon says. You look up.
In his hand, an apple. Your eyes go wide, prickling, and you look even further up to him.
His eyes reveal nothing. Brown, flat.
"For me?" you ask.
"You see me offering it to anyone else?" from the corner of your eye, Soap is staring at you, smiling.
"I can have it?" an apple. You could dance. Days and days of travel after living in the same town and then the same convent to taken by force on a boar. An apple.
"Take it before I give it to Johnny," he grunts.
Suddenly, you feel a kinship with Eve.
Seasickness luckily doesn't affect you, and the melancholy is kept at bay by the apple. You think of it when you think you can't take anymore, remembering it's sweetness.
Simon becomes the safest person, and often if you feel scared your eyes find him.
When a minor storm rocks the boat, pelting rain, waves beating against the front, you tuck yourself close to his side and let Johnny take your hands into his.
Too easy to lean into them, to accept Johnny wiping your face gently with a cloth and eat fresh fish from Simons fingers. You're exhausted, and Simon doesn't push.
He just remains steadfast against chaos, even when Johnny fights with another one of the men and he has to pull them apart by their shirts.
"Si'down!" he barks, the loudest you've ever heard him. It makes you flinch, hiding again, until he sits heavily down beside you and you scoot as close as possible again.
"Not the smartest, are you?" he looks down. That hurts. You're just scared, is all. "Doesn't matter who's there, you'd cling right to them, wouldn't you?"
No, you want to say. But you just hide your face in your arms and cry again. You want to tell him the apple was special, that you know nobody else has one or got one, but you don't.
Your heart beats hard against your ribcage, that dread coming back again, feeling heavy and small under the weight of your predicament and his judgment.
"He didnae mean it," Johnny croons. He strokes your hair away from your face, thumbs finding your tense brows and smoothing them out. "We know you're a good girl. S'why we took ye."
You sniffle. The rocking of the boat has become both maddening and soothing.
You wonder when this journey will end.
Your clothes are stiff with salt, wetted and dried and re-wetted. Your skin itches, wrists burning, welts unhealed from before when the abbess has caught you sneaking mead.
She had accused you of indulgence, of trying to get drunk. Truthfully, you'd just liked the taste of honey and missed it.
Nuns didn't eat honey, at least not there. Cheese and wine were already over the top, God forbid anyone ate anything sweet. That's why you loved the apple, had held each bite long on your tongue, letting the sugars sit there a moment to savor them.
"Hey," someone nudges you, bringing you out of your half-sleep. Easier to be less conscious, less aware, trying not to feel your anguish and your physical pain. "Come on, get up. We're here."
"Hmm?" You're so tired, hissing and whimpering when your wrists are jostled.
Untied. They're being untired. Your head lifts too quickly, making you dizzy. Gaz is squatting in front of you, holding your leash.
"You awake?" he squints, tilting his head. "You look rough, sorry 'bout that. You good to stand?"
Too many questions. You're forced to lean on him heavily to try to stand. He's as solid as the others, just leaner. Kinder, honestly, as he mostly carries you off the longboat.
Muscles like a new foal, you take a seat on the soft wet sand and slump onto a crate. It's a struggle to walk on solid ground.
Men move around you, dumping and lifting and talking. Less excited than the last time they were on the beach, but there's still a buzz aflutter.
"Can I bring'er up?" Johnny is looking at you, his hand on Simon's forearm. Their affection is the quiet kind, something you only noticed the last couple days of the journey. Small touches, murmurs.
"Go ahead," Simon touches him back, moving towards Price when Johnny comes towards you.
"Awe, lamb," he coos, hauling you up with an arm around his shoulder. His other arm goes to hold your waist, squeezing. "Dinnae worry, I'll get ye in a bath soon 'nough."
He's not lying - after a painful, difficult walk, you make it to a wooden cabin. Looking around, there are a few of similar make, a little town.
"Go on in then, sweet hen," he pushes you just enough for you to shuffle your feet in the door.
Modest wooden furniture greets you, a one-room house with a large bed, fireplace, and table. The rest is beyond you once you spot the tub.
"Sit, let me get it ready for ye."
You nearly fall asleep, or maybe you do, because when you open your eyes Johnny has steaming water filled to halfway in the tub, wooden slats fragrant. He's crumbling a dried flower in as well, humming to himself.
"Alright, s'ready," he helps you up again. Modesty is forgotten, you're too tired and weary to care when he slips the woolen habit off and leaves you in a plain shift, finally untying your wrists. "Pretty girl." He says it under his breath, like he can't help it.
The water is better than the apple. You hiss when it touches your wounds, your sore muscles.
You're tired to your marrow, could weep about it, eyes still opening and closing. Around you, Johnny searches through various bags and chests until he finds a bar of soap.
The soap is better than the water.
"Feels good?" he whispers, dipping his hands in and lathering up. How he's up and about, you have no idea. Even his hands near your bare breasts don't phase you - that's how wiped you are.
"S'good," you mumble. "Thought I ws'gonna die."
"We wouldn't've let that happen, sweet girl. Too precious, our treasure," a kiss, on your shoulder. He rubs the soap on your skin, your arms and down to your fingers, washing them each one by one.
"N'ver want to do that again," and then, because you forget he's your captor. "Please."
The attention is soft, patient. The soap washes away salt and dirt and sweat, even tears when he wipes your face with a rag. This is a second baptism, a better one, with gentle hands massaging your scalp and the barest brush against your nipples.
"Sit up," he pushes you forward, rinses your hair, washes your back while you're there.
The rag swipes over your cunt when he gets there, once, twice, eyes boring into you. Your exhaustion mutes the squeeze of anxiety in your chest, closing your eyes to avoid his gaze.
"Right, all done," he helps you back out and into a long, thin shift.
The bed is soft, so soft, covered in furs and actually stuffed enough to cradle your body. You sink into it immediately, just barely registering the door opening again.
"She asleep?" It's Simon, carrying luggage.
"Aye," Johnny says. You hear them kiss, wondering if they think you're asleep. "Anything else?"
"No," he's gruff, to-the-point. Drops bags in the corner with a clank and a chest by the door with a thud. "She give you trouble?"
"Sweet as a lamb, our girl," he sounds proud.
You open your eyes, one last attempt at self-preservation, and see them looking down at you.
Simon swipes a thumb over your cheek, under your eye, still wearing the skull.
"It's alright, go to sleep," he murmurs. Johnny leans his head on Simons shoulder. "Perfect girl, knew we did good takin' you."
