I was brought up in the small village of S only a few leagues from Rouen. The people there are quiet peaceful and devout. My mother died when I was very young. I remember milking the cows with her, sweeping the sheds, gathering wild mushrooms in the forest and clinging to her skirts as she cast grain amidst frightening hordes of poultry.

My father was a modest trader and farmer. He raised me with tenderness and love and imparted to me the tenets of the most holy faith. He taught me to read and we would spend edifying nights by the fireside, our great tom cat Pierre dozing in my lap, pondering the scriptures and the lives of the saints.

I learned also with my heart. I felt a strong affinity for my namesake St Agnes. I gasped in awe as my father read of her who preferred martyrdom to the loss of her consecrated virginity. This devotion made me feel destined for a life of marriage with God and the Paraclete.

Even as I grew older I did not strongly feel the sins and temptations of the flesh. My father would tell me that my heart was pure as running water. But I began to notice, through the burgeoning of my own physical charms, that boys and men admired me while women treated me with spiteful envy.

Boys I had known since childhood who once threw rocks at me or pulled my hair in church would now shyly walk at my side, faces blushed, anxious to pluck any passing flower for me, praising the fairness of my skin, the brilliance of my eyes, the exquisite charms of the lineaments of my young form. They were always wishing to help with my chores, to tell me stories, to take me to favorite secret places in the deep wood and many a time I suffered one to hold my hand although I knew it was unmaidenly.

The coarser boys of course simply stared long and hard and made filthy allusions as I passed. Things which even my innocent mind could comprehend.

Older men, friends of my fathers and various villagers would cease their conversations if I stepped into view. Exchanging winks and low whispers followed by boisterous if slightly muffled laughter.

My figure became more supple and bountiful by the day. My father said that great physical beauty was at once a blessing and a test sent by God. Many a maiden before me had failed this test and suffered perdition for it. Examples abound in our local lore.

As I blossomed into marriagable age I still did my best for us cooking, cleaning, tending the animals. All of the humble industry that I was taught pleases our Creator as it diminishes our worldly vanity. Yet I knew my days under my fathers’ roof were numbered.

And then one day we received a strange and unexpected visitor.

M. Beautoix was a very short man, square built and paunched. At least fifty years old with sparse greasy greyish hair that lay flattened over his pointed skull in long waxed mats like the viscous trails of black worms.

His teeth were small, irregular and quite black.

An odor equally sepulchral and cloacic wafted from his mouth when he spoke. His eyes were perpetually bloodshot and rolled like jellied eggs in their tiny pits. He was coarse and spoke a vulgar gutter-French patois.

But, as my father pointed out, he was rich.

My father feigned obliviousness to the horror and repulsion which this man inspired in me revealing a side of himself hitherto unknown to me, a disappointing one.

To my observation he had always possessed a noble, selfless, giving and independent spirit. But now in front of this man whose only "virtue" consisted in the possession of vast amounts of cash he appeared a slavish lickspittle, only too eager to barter my maidenhood and my future happiness for the sake of wealth, lands, chattels, security.

Soon the dreaded day came when my father and M. Beautoix announced to me with smiling complacency that the matter had been settled. I would marry M. in the Spring and we would thereafter retire to his estates at Rouen to live out our lives in wedded bliss.

I have alluded to the grace by which God made me immune, or so I thought, to the temptations of the flesh, even with respect to the comeliest and ruggedest lads of our village. So reader guess my fear, my anxiety, my terror, the disgust, poisoning the well of my soul as I pondered the prospect of lifelong fidelity to this chancre of a man.

A man who judged me as he judged all else in life, as a commodity, as one whose beauty and spirit was only precious insofar as it could be purchased and owned.

I will not describe my wedding, blessed by God and the Church. I will spare the reader details of that night and other nights to come.

My only solace during this period was the presence of my chambermaid Cordelia. But for her I was isolated in M's enormous dreary castle apart from everyone I had ever known and loved. But M. had allowed me to bring her, my dearest friend from childhood, to be my attendant.

It was she into whose arms I flung myself when M. became too much for me. It was she who comforted me, she that dried my tears and held me, she who talked me through as I struggled to find a reason to stay alive.

She was a sweet bright peasant girl like myself blessed with a pure untutored goodness of heart. Of fair, fresh and voluptuous appearance she was famous as one of our villages great beauties. Fresh, ruddy and irrepressibly optimistic with blue eyes and golden waves of hair. That was my Cordelia.

I had not been long eighteen when my namesake St Agnes appeared to five young girls at the famous mineral cure at Rouen. The children stated that Agnes had materialized above the mineral waters as they were playing nearby one day. She was described as an intensely beautiful woman with radiant skin that glowed like gold. She told the children that these waters would help the pregnant, hysterics, ones who had been abused or violated. It was to be a special cure for distressed women.

New reports of miracles were coming to me through my ladies-in-waiting by the day. A woman had been cured of leprosy, another had received a labor that was nearly painless, another had been exorcised of demons.

It seemed that every woman in France had attempted, or would soon attempt to bathe, in the waters blessed by holy Agnes.

Monsieur performed the outward signs of respect and devotion but I always knew that the god Mammon alone ruled his niggardly heart. However he could not very well deny to me what was so en vogue among all the ladies of quality in France at that time.

And so myself, Cordelia, my other ladies, at least those that M. could spare from the maintenance of the castle and many of my friends and peers from the aristocracy of Rouen found ourselves on pilgrimage.

We rode slowly, savoring the fragrant spring. We made flower garlands, weaving them into each others hair. We were happy, excited and at peace.

We were due to arrive at the cure in a couple of hours. It would be twilight when we arrived but the sun was still bright in the sky and the birds still vented their joy. We were hungry and the horses and mules needed water so we stopped, spread a blanket and ate a humble meal. Some of the girls led the animals to be watered, some did their private business. I, in a grateful and hopeful mood walked along a deserted path, careful not to go too far.

Light, filtered and softened, fell through the bowers of the trees.

Seedlings spun and mutely crashed to the forest floor.

All was peaceful. All was pure. I looked up and gasped in shock.

I had thought myself alone. Now stood before me a young woman of unsurpassable beauty.

Only the shimmering ebony hair that enfolded her entire figure covered her nudity. As pale as though the sun had never touched her, her whiteness yet glowed in the muted shadows of the forest. Her arms and legs were of such supple proportions that to my mind no one could be as worthy of love and devotion as she. Her burning emerald eyes were powerful and fierce yet looked at me with kindness and indulgence. I was sure that I was beholding the holy St Agnes herself.

She walked towards me slowly, our eyes fixed together, my heart racing. As she walked, her form became visible and I could see the globes of her perfect breasts, the divine pink of her nipples. I was hypnotized. Was this Agnes or a witch, a minion of the unholy tempter?

She carried an apple. I reached but just as my fingertips touched the fruit I was startled by a loud, "Agnes!" my maidens calling me back to continue the journey. I turned for the merest second and when I looked back she was gone.

We arrived at the cure shortly after nightfall. Our squires erected a pavilion for us, Cordelia and I taking the largest and most sumptuous tent.

A certain squire, Grimaldus, a strapping fellow, settled us in and cooked our meal. He seemed extremely attentive and was always at hand which made me grateful at the time.

Neither of us could sleep as we lay in our beds. Cordelia was all high spirits and giggles but I was more pensive.

I pondered whether to reveal my vision to her in confidence and what she would make of it.

On a whim I jumped out of bed and dug in my satchel for a full wineskin. Cordelia did not take much convincing. We both dressed in light shifts.

It was a warm night and we made our way hand in hand with only the bright light of the moon to guide us towards the sacred spring. We passed the skin between us and as we walked I revealed to her what had appeared to me in that sylvan glade. Cordelia's spirits abated somewhat, she became thoughtful.

We approached the moonlit ripples of the healing waters and leaned against a great oak tree by its shore, letting the waters play over our bare feet as we drank. Not a soul was around. We were utterly alone yet we spoke in whispers and although it was not cold we sat close as if to warm each other.

"I think it was St Agnes giving you a sign that she will heal the afflictions of your soul. You made a most unfortunate match my lady although it is true that you will never want for anything."

" I? Want for nothing? What of love my Cordelia?"

She smoothed my hair back and pressed close to me and I smelt her honey-wine breath.She stared straight into my eyes. Was it the wine and the heady sensations of the day that made my head swim so?

"You will never want for love either sweet Agnes."

She sealed these words by pressing her mouth to mine. It was the most beautiful sensation I had ever felt. I knew that this was the healing I had longed for. The Lords’ will is ineffable.

She pulled away from me and disrobed. The moonlight caressed her naked form. Her breasts themselves like two full moons. Her small pink aureoles peaked with two firm buds. I admired the way her slender waist modulated into the fullness of her hips and behind. And her thighs, the color of fresh cream, of an intoxicating ripeness trailing into the delicacy of her calves. And her center, her sex, a triangle of thick blonde hair.

My husbands crude tumescence amidst its black bushes had always repelled me. I took
his sex like a nasty medicine.

But her...there seemed almost nothing there compared with the sex of a man but oh what subtle mysteries I was to find to explore.

I followed her lead, taking off my shift.

I watched her eyes as they roamed over my naked figure appraisingly. I was brazen as a harlot. I showed myself to her. I wanted her to see me. My fall, my sin did not seem such to me and to the extent it did I gloried in it.

We entered the water together and waded out to a little nook under a great willow. The water rippled between us as we clasped in a close embrace. Our arms around each other, our breasts pressed together. We snacked on each others lips as if discovering some rare delicacy, some sweet trifle brought from the faraway east on an exotic caravan. The water was no longer cold.

Our hands explored the roundness of each others behinds as we pressed closer, our tongues lashing in one anothers mouths. Simply unable to get as close as we needed to be. I wanted to be one with her, to devour her or be devoured.

Her hand went between my legs. I cried out, startling a lone owl in the tree above us who squawked his disapproval and flapped away. Cordelia laughed as she placed her hand over my mouth. She led me back to the shore. We dressed and walked joyously back, to spend the night in the same bed.

I wish I could recall every second but the transports of ecstasy into which she and I plunged seem to preclude any clear precision on the part of memory. I do remember lying there, her face between my spread legs, her azure eyes locked on mine as her mouth clamped to my sex, sucking and licking while I reciprocated, bucking my hips to press her face, wanting her covered in the elixir of love her tongue so deftly called forth.

I remember her lowering herself over my face, how I eagerly spread her hot musky sex and set my tongue to explore her mystery. Feeling her hips roll and buck over me. How I fucked her tender rosebud with my erect tongue.

I no longer felt human but object, her object. I wanted nothing but what would give her pleasure.

I remember the dew that glistened in droplets on the hairs of her cunt and how eagerly I sought to lick and how hot and marvelous that nectar felt in my mouth and dripping down my face. It hung from my chin and slid deliciously down my neck. How I wished I could bathe in it endlessly.

She was not remiss. Her tongue lolled lovingly over my clitoris. Her fingers played and stroked between my enflamed lips. Her hard finger entered me. I gave a deep and muffled cry into her pussy, unwilling to discontinue despite her distracting attentions. I squirmed like a piked eel as she found a sensitive spot within me, as if she knew it was there and deliberately coaxed and worried it.

As our bodies shook and quaked we gripped each other by the thighs, making sure our ministrations would continue even unto complete exhaustion, nay even unto damnation.

I remember her slithering and sliding over my body. The feeling of her wet pussy as it left long slimy trails all over my breasts and my tummy. The remembrance of our passion makes me wet with delirium even now.

It was true. I had been given the gift of love.

Afterwards as we lay contented and satisfied in each others arms, my sweet one dozing happily in my embrace, I marveled at the cruelty of Man. At how his oppressive laws, masquerading as Gods, would deny to women like me and my Cordelia our true nuptial rites, our true mode of worship.