THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#39)

As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words
A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World

How I accepted bread from the Duke and olive oil flowed from my breasts

The Duke’s guards came for me the very next morning. Belinda had dressed me in a flowered nightgown and put me in a clean straw bed with real sheets on it in which I enjoyed a deep dreamless sleep, interrupted only by the guards’ banging on the front door. She looked worried as they marched me off in my nightgown across the bare yard into the long, ugly one-story concrete castle.
I was led down a dark corridor to a long, windowless rectangular room lit by smoky torches. At the far end the Duke sat on a raised platform in a large wing-backed, mildew-speckled chair made of woven straw. Two grown young men slouched on stools to his right. To his left four teenage boys in rayon tunics tended an assortment of wild animals on leashes: bobcats, coyotes, wolves, even a young brown bear. At first their collective energies nearly knocked me off my feet. Moving briefly through their beast minds, I determined all had been at the court since infancy, which was maybe the reason they were so docile. The boys were feeding them bread crumbs.
The guards brought me up to the platform directly below the Duke’s chair.
Without saying a word, the Duke tossed some crumbs in my direction. Giver help me, I snatched them right out of the air and ate them, for the Duke to Belinda’s distress had forbidden her to give me any food.
The Duke smirked. Now that he’d demonstrated my low place in his hierarchy, he leaned forward, his face radiating mock curiosity. “Christina the Astonishing, kindly roll up your sleeves and hold out your arms.”
I did as he said. My arms were pink and glowing with health, free of any mark of torture by EverRed.

(to be continued tomorrow)