Balin tried to comfort her then, to put her mind at ease, for he could see that it was her mind that had been most affected—far more than her body—by what had happened to her. Her body was already beginning to heal, her bruises showing the colours that meant they were fading and improving. Her mind, however, in Balin's judgment, was making no such progress. He talked to her for long hours on each of the three nights she stayed in his camp during her recovery, and on each of those occasions he took the greatest care to stay far removed from her, well beyond the range of any accidental touch, because he had seen the terror that overtook her face whenever he approached her too closely. On each of those three nights, he talked to her quietly, purposely keeping his tone soft and soothing. None of the fault for what had transpired was hers, he told her time and again, but he never began to believe that she paid any heed to his assurances.
On the morning of the fourth day, he awakened to find that she had killed herself during the night, evidently unable to bear the feelings of guilt and uncleanliness that had filled her with despair.
Balin never recovered from the shock of that incident, Mairidh knew. And when he found himself, years later, all unexpectedly blessed with a brilliant and beautiful wife decades younger than himself, he became increasingly concerned about taking steps to ensure that she would never be infected with that kind of crippling, despair- filled guilt, a concern that eventually matured into a mild obsession.
Travel is the function of ambassadors and messengers: they carry tidings over long distances. Balin had to travel, and Mairidh insisted upon going with him. And so Balin had turned his mind towards the instruction of his wife, teaching her to believe that she should feel no guilt if she should ever be forced or violated sexually by anyone.
Her body, Balin had convinced her, was merely the vessel that contained what the Romans called the animus, her soul. As such, her body might be destroyed or mutilated, but her soul, being immortal and immutable, could not be affected by anything earthly. Mairidh now knew, and her mind accepted, that nothing these two men could do to her would change the truth of who she was. They might kill her, and they probably would, but at the moment of her death all power to harm her would be lost to them. Alternatively, they might leave her nurturing a fertile seed. If that were so, she had a score of ways to deal with it, the last of which would be to have the child and pass it on to someone else to rear. They could injure her physically, too, but the pain would heal. What they could not do was hurt her mentally, unless she herself permitted them to do so, and that she never would. The indignity of suffering their animal lusts and brutality was an inconvenience, no more. The filth of their unwashed bodies could be laved away. The marks of their beatings would diminish, and the memory of their foulness would fade.
Her only lasting regret over this incident, she realized, would be for the beautiful boy.
Now Mairidh lay naked on the ground, her arms stretched above her head because they had tied her wrists again and attached the rope to the tree behind her, leaving no slack. It was difficult to breathe lying there, and more difficult still to move at all. The sparse grass on which she lay did nothing to soften the stony ground beneath her, and Mairidh had never known such pain. Her arms were the least troublesome—they soon grew numb, and her awareness of them dwindled to a constant, throbbing ache in her shoulders that flared into white-hot pain only when she attempted to move. The rest of her body was a mass of individual aches and agonies—rope burns on her wrists and a seemingly endless progression of bruises, abrasions and contusions, lumps and welts, and cuts and scratches. There were whole areas where the skin had been torn from knees, ankles, hips, thighs and buttocks when she had fallen and been dragged behind the trotting horse. Her cheeks and brows throbbed dully from the fists that had battered her when she tried to tight them, and her ribs and flanks were sore from the kicks they had used to urge her to her feet whenever she had fallen behind the horse.
For a long time she had thought she might die of cold during the night, but the shorter man had risen to piss and to throw more wood on the fire, and had noticed her lying shivering on the grass. He had stood gaping at her for a while, scratching himself, before dragging his smelly blanket over to where she lay and throwing himself on her again. He had then fallen asleep on top of her, and eventually he slid off to lie huddled against her side, one leg and one arm across her, holding her down. She had not dared to move for fear of wakening him again, and eventually she had slept.
Now she could sleep no more, and the pain in her arms made her want to whimper. Her bladder was full, too, and had been for hours. She knew she could not hold it much longer; the agony was too intense. But if she moved, she would waken the Pig, and then she would have to squat in front of him, naked, and the thrust of his manhood against her hip left her no doubt what that would bring. And that would waken the other one, the big one, who if anything, had been worse than his companion.
The Pig stirred and snuffled, hitching closer, thrusting himself against her and then sliding one heavy leg up along her thigh and onto her belly so that the full weight of it bore down on her swollen bladder. She could no longer fight against the pain or the pressure, and so she gave in and voided where she lay, feeling the scalding heat flooding her thighs, the relief of it almost approaching sexual pleasure. She made no sound, and as the warm reek of her urine rose to her nostrils, it seemed sweeter to her than the goatish stink of her abductor. The heat went quickly from the wetness, however, and she felt it turn icy against her skin. Don't let him feel it! she prayed. Don't let it wake him up!
She knew there were others close by. She had learned that much the previous day, listening to the two of them. They had not talked much, and when they had it was in a dialect she had never heard before, but she had been able to decipher enough to gather that they belonged to a party of twelve who had landed their boat here on the coast and then split up and travelled inland in twos and threes in search of whatever plunder they might find. They were to meet again and disembark for home this morning, and anyone who failed to reach the meeting place by then would be abandoned, presumed dead. These two could have joined their friends the previous night—the short foray made by the tall one on their arrival here had verified that—but they had been unwilling to share her with the others and so had stayed here to keep her for themselves.
Mairidh had no illusions. She knew these two would leave her dead behind them. Her body, she thought. That they could take and destroy, but not her mind, not her spirit—not the animus that was herself.
The man beside her stirred again and grunted, and she froze. For several heartbeats nothing happened, and then she felt his hand move to her hip and push her away, rolling her over onto her side. The hand moved then to her belly, grasping her and pulling her backward, hard, against his loins. But as she tensed against the thrust of him she heard a scuffling noise, and then the sound of a meaty, concussive, crunching blow directly behind her head. The man convulsed, flinging her away from him and filling her ears with a gasping, gurgling, outraged noise that sent her scrabbling, legs scissoring in panic, all thoughts of her philosophy forgotten as she rolled wildly in search of survival, her eyes wide-stretched in terror, her tethered arms preventing her from making any attempt to gather or protect herself.