Chapter Ten
Shamed Before the Throng
Thaddeus was a blacksmith by trade, a stocky fellow with a huge jowly face and nimble hands. As he was shoeing the Duke’s horse, two naked women were led to his stall in the castle stables. Although the sun had risen on a new day, the place was as black as night with smoke filling the air and orange embers glowing inside the fiery grate.
Roslyn and her maid watched for nearly twenty minutes until the man finished with the horse; then the animal was led away to await the day’s ride. Though the two women still had little clue why they were in this dragon’s lair with its heat and fumes, they feared that something terrible was about to happen, worse than the other tortures they’d suffered so far.
“You have to restrain them,” the blacksmith ordered the w
