Project Purple

9 - The Goatwench

She was earnest in her efforts, but still doing almost everything wrong.

"Tis nothing but a foul manner of life." She heaved a sigh, sitting at her wobbly stool, looking down at the small hind leg resting in her milk bucket.

The Goatwench then grabbed a strand of marauding, thick, brown hair, and slid it back under the drab white headdress. As custom dictated, whenever she left the privacy of her little house, her smooth flesh stayed concealed underneath a long, wool dress and long-sleeved blouse.

The Cowleech lazed at the trunk of a small larch tree, and his voice had a soft lilt that was not unpleasant, "Animals are creatures of habit, Henri," he said, grinning at her awkward attempts to milk the goats. "Choose a system, don't vary, and the animals'll adjust ... eventually."

The Goatwench knew that if she asked, he would step right over that little fence and show her how to calm the animal, while at the same time, extract the milk; consequences be damned. But she said nothing, and he didn't leave his lazed position at the tree.

"You've gone and witch-charmed me."

"That's fine," she answered, "we all know how witches fare in these societies, don't we, then?"

He said nothing, letting his cocky smile say it all, before nodding at two people approaching. "These two are probably holding hands already under the shade of some secret tree."

Only then did the Goatwench look up at the two-some, clucking their way through the soft mud, the Matron and the Preacher, who finally reached the little fence and gave their heads exacting shakes at the Goatwench's unendowed undertaking with the animals.

The middle-aged Matron was now wearing her corset, which was already too tight to begin with, extra tight, to give the woman another precious inch of feminine slender-All for a man of the cloth, too, the Preacher, a man in such consuming puritanical zeal that he might not even be aware of the Matron's coquettish designs.

"Milk twelve hours apart, at the same time, in the same place," the Matron coached, "and from the same side each time, and thou willst have troubles none."

The Goatwench answered with a grumble, and squeezed the teats of the little goat further. The Matron was the mother hen in the colony, with her curly gray hair always neatly tucked under a prim cap. The Goatwench knew it was wise to give consideration to any of the Matron's suggested courses of action: One didn't want to wrangle with the bulldozing woman.

"And thou shallt not forget to empty the chamber pot when the milking is finished... after services," the Preacher reminded her.

The two elders then waddled off to the little hut that served as the colony's chapel.

"The sinful pressing of the flesh, yes?" the Cowleech goaded, nodding at the two elders, and clicking his tongue.

The Goatwench grinned, her fingers absently touching the breast of her dress, rubbing the coarse material of a big scarlet letter D the Governor had compelled her to sew on earlier in the week - 'D' for 'Disassembler'.

She sighed. The foul-smelling drudgery accompanied her daily chores, and she disliked her toilsome work to no end. But the tiny colony, the wizened ones, explained, did need its daily supply of milk. She stared off sullenly at their wooden huts, supposedly located somewhere on the great Eastern Coast of the Americas (though she had grave, guarded suspicions about that), some time in the early sixteen hundreds of Our Lord.