Chapter 8

Flinging open her door, she stormed into her room and went to the far side of the room. “Would you care to tell me why you are so intent on me raping you? Are you looking for an excuse for not being a virgin?” I asked.

“I ... am... still ... a ... virgin,” she growled, punctuating each word to make her point. “Something I’m sure you intend to find out for yourself shortly,” she added almost haughtily. She watched as I reached out and took her nightdress. Her eyes flashed with the nervous excitement I’d seen many times from those of my wives who had been virgins and from the virgin daughters who were my slaves, right before we began the process of de-virginizing them.

Stepping behind her, I put my arms around her waist and pulled her back against the rock-hard lump in the front of my pants. She gasped when my lips found the side of her neck and I felt her shiver with excitement. A quiet moan escaped her lips when I nipped gently at her slender, graceful neck. A whimper rewarded me when my tongue burrowed into her ear.

I had barely begun the same process on the other side of her neck when she spun in my arms and sought out my lips with hers. She responded tentatively when my tongue forced itself between her lips and started exploring her sexy mouth.

This time she helped when I picked her up and carried her to her bed, still clothed.

“I have a question for you, my Princess,” I whispered in her ear.

“Hmmmmm?” she answered dreamily, still lost in a blissful haze.

“Will you marry me?” I asked quietly. I grinned to myself when there was no response for several moments.

“What?” she finally squeaked, her eyes opening fully to look at me disbelievingly.

“I asked if you would marry me. You would merely be a Duchess, but I promise that you will be a very happy Duchess and wife.”

“But my father expects me to marry Sebastian, King Alphonse’s son,” she protested.

“I don’t think your father is very happy with King Alphonse right now. He’s the one who instigated this war. Besides, technically, this entire city and everyone in it belong to me now so what he wants doesn’t matter. What do you want?” I replied.

After a few moments of thought, she answered. “If I agree, will you spare my parents?”

I ignored her question long enough to undo the laces of her underclothes enough to just see the tops of her chocolate nipples. I began kissing her neck again, slowly working my way down to her collarbone, and then even further down. I kissed every inch of the exposed tops of her breasts, nipping the soft titflesh gently several times before sliding my tongue as far inside her clothing as I could, caressing each nipple with my tongue before stopping. She mewled in protest and tried to pull my head back to her heaving bosom.

“My Princess, regardless of your answer, your parents will not be harmed unless they try to harm one of my men. In addition, my men have strict orders that there will be no unnecessary killing and no raping. They know me well enough to know they don’t want to find out their punishment should they disobey me. The only things you should consider are whether or not I am a man you can stand beside proudly during the day and enjoy being ravished by at night.”

I knew the answer to the second question already. Her hips were again moving against me. When I touched my lips to hers, she immediately plunged her tongue into my mouth seeking mine.

“Does this mean my Princess agrees to marry me?” I asked when she finally let me come up for air.

“Yes,” she gasped, eyes smoldering.

“How quickly can we get a priest here?” I asked.

“Very quickly,” she gasped.

I went out, found one of the servants who was guiding my men through the house, and sent her for the nearest priest to perform the marriage. “When you return, please bring the King and Queen to the room too,” I requested.

The woman bowed and hurried off, leaving my men to finish their looting. I told the men, “Leave the Queen’s crown, and allow her to choose one piece of her jewelry that she wishes to keep. Also, bring me the Princess’s tiara and tell the men to take only half of the cattle and horses, but make sure to take all the warhorses.”

The men saluted and scurried off to carry out and spread the changed orders. I returned to my horny Princess. While we waited, I finished taking off her clothing, releasing her glorious breasts from their confinement so I could properly worship them. A knock on the door interrupted my worship sometime later. After covering the Princess, I got up to answer it while the Princess hurriedly retied her underclothing.

Fortunately, Princess Isabella’s room was a large one because the Priest, the servant, the King and Queen, and their retinue of my men all came into the room. At first, the priest refused to perform the marriage because I wasn’t Catholic.

“I believe your Princess is trying to follow what you have been preaching to her for so many years. She wishes to be married now so that it is her husband taking her for the first time. I don’t care if she is married or not and if you don’t perform the ceremony, I will still take her today, and will have a priest of my faith perform the marriage when I get home.”

“Fine,” he huffed, “for her sake I’ll do it.”

The brevity of the marriage ceremony showed me how upset the priest was. Well before one of our priests would have been halfway through the short ceremony for a second marriage, the Princess and I were officially married. I helped usher a still pissed off priest and the confused King out of the room, allowing mother and daughter a few moments alone.

“Thank you,” the Queen said to me emotionally when she finally came out.

“You’ve impressed my mother,” Isabella giggled from the middle of her bed where she was sitting, still wrapped modestly in her covers.

“Then I guess it’s time to impress my wife,” I answered, pulling the covers away.

She came to me coyly when I held out my hand and I finished the job of removing her clothing again. Her hands were trembling as she tried to remove my clothes. When she finally accomplished her task, we tumbled into her bed.

It was well after breakfast before she felt properly conquered and would let me out of bed so I could finish my conquest of the rest of Barcelona. I suggested that she wear something fitting for a public appearance so she could meet my men and help me make sure they were obeying my orders. I also explained what I intended to do.

Initially, she was upset, but finally acceded and agreed. Considering what had instigated our invasion, what I intended was more than fair. I also gave her the list of troops from Aragon who had died in the battle. I was sure their families would want to know if their sons, fathers, or husbands were still alive. To make it easier to inform their families, the lists were broken down by city.

She blushed constantly as I watched her dress. It was almost as sexy watching her cover everything back up as it had been to uncover it and the process probably took longer than usual with me fondling so many fun parts of her body before letting her cover them again. She snuggled against me as we rejoined the world. “I think I’m going to be glad I said yes,” she sighed.

Her mother smiled when she saw how deliriously happy her daughter was. Her father was still scowling at me. Isabella went to him and sat on his lap with her arms around his neck like a little girl would and talked quietly with him, not that I would have understood what she said if she’d spoken louder. He kept glancing over at me and gradually, the scowl disappeared--almost.

“Is what my daughter told me true?” he asked gruffly.

“I’m afraid I am neither as smart nor as talented with languages as your daughter so I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but I don’t think she would lie about anything. She and I discussed what I plan to do, and she agreed that it was reasonable considering the circumstances.”

“As much as I don’t like it, I have to agree with her. Most men would have stormed through the city, raping, killing, pillaging, and burning. You are obviously a man of great military strength to have defeated so many enemies and to capture Barcelona, and one of great restraint to only take what you plan to take.”

“My goal is to weaken you enough that you aren’t a threat for a long time and to give everyone something to think about should they ever decide to try it again. It will also give us resources to strengthen our defenses and to provide a better life for everyone in Yorkshire and Lancashire, including those people we select to take with us.

“In addition, I will offer you the option of going to Valencia with us where we plan to do the same thing. By convincing them to lay down their arms and surrender, you will be saving the lives of the men we would otherwise have to kill to capture the city. Anyway, I need to see how things are progressing so I will leave you to think,” I said, reaching for my new bride’s hand. He gave her a kiss on the cheek as she got up.

Jason, Captain Leigh, had everything firmly in hand, just like I knew he would. The surprise on his face when he saw the two of us together was enough to make me grin my stupid grin and to make Isabella blush. “Captain, may I introduce my wife, Isabella? Isabella, this is Captain Jason Leigh, commander of my troops. He bowed gallantly and she curtsied daintily.

“Seven ships have arrived so far today,” he reported. “They have all been sent on to London under guard after loading anything else aboard that we could. The captured weapons have been loaded aboard a ship that arrived yesterday. The craftsmen going with us are selected and their families are packing. They include stonecutters, and several dozen men familiar with building or paving with stone. We have blacksmiths, brickmakers, carpenters, coopers, experienced plowmen, wheelwrights, boatwrights, armorers, physicians, fishermen, cartwrights, glaziers, slaters, and potters. In addition, one of our men came in from outside the first wall with a wagon full of green plants they use to feed their livestock. He says it grows prolifically and stores well to feed any livestock we overwinter.”

“He’s right,” Isabella interjected. “We use it extensively. It’s alfalfa, brought here by the Moors as forage for their horses. It provides more forage than grass from the same acreage. You can cut it more than once a year and it re-grows and seems to keep the livestock healthier. Whatever you plant in the field next produces a better crop than normal. It’s better than allowing a field to lie fallow for a year.”

I dispatched several men to locate the crop and gather as many seeds as they could. If this were true, it would help us raise enough meat to help feed an expanding population by being able to overwinter more animals. It would also make it less expensive to maintain horses for my mounted archers.

Isabella wandered among the dazed and nervous people of Barcelona trying to reassure them that the ones going with us would not be abused. She even talked me into allowing one of the city’s priests to go with us. Allowing the people to continue practicing their faith in the foreign land would give them comfort as they dealt with their new circumstance. I wasn’t exactly sure how King Edward would like me allowing a Catholic priest to set up shop in England, especially since so many stupid wars had been fought across Europe over religion. I made it clear to the priest that he could not proselytize, nor could he browbeat any of his parishioners who decided on their own to stop attending his church. He agreed, still stunned that I would allow him into the country at all. Isabella was quickly learning that I had a difficult time telling her “no” and it made her very affectionate all day.

Captain Leigh had done such an outstanding job that I offered him first choice of the nearly one thousand single young women we were taking with us. Those women would become wives of those soldiers who wanted one, provided that their current wife, if they were married, agreed. I knew that Jason’s wife had already agreed to him bringing home another wife. Hearing my offer, Isabella brought two young women to us and introduced Ramona and Antonia, both dusky beauties and the twin daughters of one of Barcelona’s wealthier and more influential families. Both women spoke English and French in addition to the Castilian and Aragonese dialects. When he was unable to choose between them, I offered one daughter as a personal gift from me, which meant that he could take both sisters as wives. The priest grudgingly performed the marriages although I could tell that he liked a man having more than one wife even less than he liked a non-Catholic marrying one of his parishioners.

I took over for the Captain telling him I that expected him to return by dinnertime. The girls were giggling and blushing nervously as they led him off to their home for an afternoon with their new husband. After they left, Isabella explained that, not only were both sisters extremely beautiful and worthy of a man of social stature, but they were friends of hers and had hinted that they enjoyed pleasuring each other in the bedroom when nobody else was around.

After some initial resistance to the idea of a man having two wives, the families in Lancaster that tried it had realized that it made the women’s lives easier, especially if one of them was pregnant, and the men became even more attentive to their wives. Whether it was because they didn’t want to deal with two upset women at once or because they were happier having two women to share their bed or a combination of the two wasn’t clear. My wives told me that the women were also talking quietly about the sex being much more satisfying with another woman there to tend to any needs the men didn’t, and many of the men had started becoming better lovers, taking their cues from what they observed the women doing for each other.

I know that my mother and Margaret’s mother were both extremely happy with their arrangement and I had seen them, more than once, giving each other affectionate, playful touches and kisses when nobody else was around. The biggest change was Margaret’s father, though. While never exactly gruff, he hadn’t exactly been an outwardly sociable person, even though he’d always been nice to me. Now, it wasn’t uncommon to see him smiling, even if he thought nobody was around. The three of them had been the first to add a second wife, and it had been their successful example that had encouraged others to try it. They had also been the first to add one of my personal slaves as a wife.

Four more ships were loaded with cargo and passengers and sailed for London by the time Jason and his two new brides found us. Still flushed from what had obviously been an exciting afternoon, Jason’s two new wives dragged Isabella off to compare notes about their new “married life.”

By mid-afternoon the next day, every ship had sailed with the exception of our troop ships. The ships carrying only captives sailed directly for Lancaster since the King had expressed no interest in captured civilians. Besides, he still had the captured troops to deal with. The last ship to leave for London had the families of thirty-seven of the captured troops aboard hoping to be reunited somewhere in England with their husbands and fathers. The King had promised me half of the captured troops as slaves when I returned, and I had promised the thirty-seven families that I would try to choose those particular soldiers. I warned the women that they and their families would probably be required to become my personal slaves, and what that entailed.

King Reyes finally decided to accompany us to Valencia, and we set sail in the early evening. Two mornings later found us anchored at Valencia. With the Queen an unspoken hostage aboard ship with me, the King debarked and four of his troops escorted him through town while my troops took defensive positions. Shortly after midmorning, the rest of our ships docked after the city surrendered. The captured weapons were loaded aboard ships and their surrendered troops were assembled in the town market. My troops from the first of our ships to dock quickly took control of the wall surrounding the city and of strategic points throughout the city.

Valencia was a much smaller city than Barcelona and by midday the following day, our plundering of the city and its surroundings was complete. Once again, ships with only passengers aboard sailed directly to Lancaster and the cargo-laden ships to London.

King Reyes took me aside the next morning and asked quietly what would happen if he came with us. He felt that Aragon and Castile would be weakened enough that they would need to merge to have any hope of defending themselves against another invasion by the Moors or the ambitious French. Rather than disputing which King should rule, he was considering abdicating, allowing the Castilian King to rule both countries. He was afraid that his continuing presence in the country, even if he voluntarily abdicated, would only lead to civil unrest. Besides, my capture of Barcelona had dispirited him enough he no longer had the desire to continue ruling.

He hung his head when all I could offer was a life as my personal slave but agreed to the offer, conditional on his wife’s acceptance. At least it didn’t include his execution.