‘Not that I see any of it,’ I remark in a voice sharp as horseradish.
She grunts, strides away and starts to harangue one of the charcoal-burners. As I look about, I see the man I lay with amongst them. He smirks in my direction, baring his teeth.
‘I’ve got a couple of good fat sacks for you, missus, if you should care to test them for quality.’
He slaps the bulging nets and the donkey staggers. I eye him as boldly as I am able.
‘I’ve no need for your goods, sir,’ I say primly. ‘I have plenty of wood set by for winter.’
‘Those dry twigs of yours,’ he cackles. ‘Snap in two as soon as look at them. Set a flame and they’ll be gone in a moment. Now, a nice hard bit of charcoal will see you through the longest night.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me that all your wares are promised to the Staple?’
‘Maybe they are. But I can always find some to spare for the right person.’
He winks. The Maid yanks at my skirt so hard I topple slightly.
‘Behave,’ I say.
‘So, this the idiot child I’ve heard of, is it?’ he enquires, jutting his chin at the girl. She growls at him. ‘How’d you like a piece of what I’ve got, girlie?’ he leers, and tickles her under the chin. ‘I’ve never been fussy about the face.’
‘I wouldn’t get too close, if I were you,’ I point out.
‘Why not?’ he says.
For answer, her head snaps forward, quick as a viper, and she sinks her teeth into his hand. She lets go at once, but he springs up and down, making such a fuss you’d think he’d stuck his fingers into the heart of the charcoal pit. I’m not the only one to find it comical, for everyone looks in our direction, always happy for fresh sport. Even the Maid laughs, in that odd way of hers which is more about honking and spitting.
‘The bitch has bitten me!’ he moans.
‘Stop complaining. It’s barely a scratch.’
‘Should have the little bastard strangled, if you can’t control it,’ he mutters.
‘Now, now,’ says William, wading in. ‘That’s our Maid you’re talking about. She’s sent from God, she is.’
‘I found her,’ adds Richard, joining our little crowd.
‘I was there, too,’ says Michael.
‘And I,’ declares Roger.
While they are engaged in their usual argument about who was first to set eyes on her, I tug her hand and we walk away, the charcoal-burner glaring after. It’s the matter of a few moments to reach the stable. As soon as I bolt the lower half of the door and half-close the upper, the Maid stretches, gasping with the pleasure of easing cramped limbs.
‘Every day I wish I’d chosen a more comfortable disguise!’ she says, and casts a sly look upon me. ‘So, tell me, Anne. What was your business with him?’
‘Business?’
My face burns. It is as if she knows what I did. I have a sudden vision of her in the body of a bird, flying over the trees and seeing me grunting beneath that man, crying out my need.
‘I’ve made mistakes,’ I mutter. ‘I’m no saint and you may as well know it.’
She raises her eyebrow but says nothing, nor has she any need to. She laughs at my shamefacedness, and its weight lifts from me as easy as a lid off a pot.
‘I am right glad to hear it.’
‘I am a woman,’ I continue. ‘I hunger. It is as natural as the sap rising in a tree in spring.’
‘And he satisfied that hunger?’
I shrug. ‘For a while. It was—’
‘Brief?’
‘Yes,’ I mutter. ‘Something was – missing.’
She steps to my side, lays her fingers upon my arm and skims her hand from wrist to elbow and back again.
‘Like this?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, and hear an unaccustomed cracking in my voice. ‘Something like that.’
‘Something?’
‘Permit me to demonstrate more precisely.’ I untie the ribbons at my wrists and roll back the sleeves. I take her hand and press it to my naked flesh, and once again she strokes my arm. Every hair pricks to attention.
‘Indeed, that is better,’ she says.
Her face swims close to mine, pale as a moon floating in the dim light of the stable. I do not fully believe she is going to kiss me until she does, but my body is straightway warm with the fire that is ever smouldering. She slides her fingers under my coif, finding the warm spot at the base of my neck.
‘Your hand is cool,’ I rasp.
She draws back a little, regards me carefully. ‘Too much so?’ she asks quietly, and takes her hand away.
I let out a sigh of frustration, for her touch has thrilled me deeply. I am not disappointed for long, however, for she busies herself with drawing out the two pins that hold my kerchief tight. She is about to toss them away when I pluck them from her fingers and stick them in my apron.
‘Do not discard them,’ I whisper. ‘I will need them later.’
‘My careful Anne,’ she murmurs, smiling.
She lifts away my scarf, uncovers my hair and with tantalising slowness unrolls the coiled braid around my left ear then that around my right, combing her fingers through the strands until the tresses spread in a loose shawl across my shoulders.
‘You are the sun, and your hair its rays.’
‘A dull brown sun,’ I mumble.
‘Bright and warm enough for me to warm my hands. What use do I have for a lamp to light the whole world? All I need is a candle to brighten my small patch of earth.’
On any other occasion I would snort at such a ridiculous avowal. But I do not feel inclined to laughter of the scornful sort.
I take a deep breath. ‘Who are you being at this moment?’ I ask, for I must know.
She pauses, and runs her tongue across her upper lip, left to right. ‘No disguises, Anne.’
‘None?’
‘No.’
I ask no further questions. She takes a sheaf of hair and lifts it to her face and smoothes it across her cheek, her lips, her brow, burying her nose in its folds. She runs the tip of her tongue around the whorled flesh of my ear and I let out a strangled gasp that has been building up in my breast. At the sound she pulls away and at first I am afraid she will stop her delightful caressing, but her face is soft, softer than I have ever seen.
‘My legs are unwilling to stand,’ I breathe. ‘It seems foolish to disobey them.’
She laughs, very quietly. I take her hand and lead her to the back of the stable, where the straw is heaped, a mattress made especially for this moment. The mare raises her head and snuffles as we pass, nodding her head in approval. I do not know whether the Maid draws me down or I draw her, but all that matters is that we are in each other’s arms.
I never felt so languorous, so loath to move. I wonder if we might lie here safely until this dying world has passed away and a brighter one has been born. I speak none of this foolishness: I am far too caught up in the enchantment of her embrace. Her lips begin an intimate exploration, pressing their warmth into my throat. Her teeth nibble the fruit of my flesh, and the more hungrily she devours, the more I need to be tasted.
Suddenly, I am burdened with far too many clothes. My fingers tangle in the laces of my bodice, and I never had so much trouble trying to undo them. The harder I try, the tighter the knots become.
‘Let me,’ she breathes, and the ribbons unravel beneath her fingers. She lifts up my skirt, heavy as a stook of wheat. ‘How do you bear such a weight around your legs?’ she says, grinning. ‘You may as well be hobbled. You cannot run.’
‘I never have any reason to run.’
‘And now?’
‘At this moment, the thought of running has never been further from my mind.’
She unpeels me from my garments and it occurs to me I have never been this naked with another, not even with the charcoal-burner in the forest; not since I was a child and was too young to know what it meant when men and women lay together. My fingers search her out, brushing h
er face, her shoulders, her arms, rubbing and squeezing her flesh so frantically that I am unsure where she begins and I end, so do we melt into each other. I draw her shift over her head and devour her; ready, so ready for this banquet delivered into my hands. I think it is a hunger that can never be satiated.
She is all smoothness; different from the broad and bristled bodies of men I thought were my portion. Yet for all she is a woman, we are nothing alike. I trace the curve of her breasts, so small they are almost not there, stretched tight across the basket of her ribs. Only her nipples betray her sex: brown and the size of cherries.
She watches me watching her, my breath halting as her hand brushes against some part of me that is particularly sensitive. Especially my nipples: it is as though all passion and tenderness are concentrated in those two points. She takes them between her teeth and pulls, gently to begin, but more fiercely as my demands to be so used grow fierce.
‘This sharpness pleases you?’
‘Pleases?’ I gasp, voice strange in my ears as though I am speaking a foreign tongue. ‘More than that. It stirs me to life. But no words. You have stopped what you were doing,’ I frown. ‘Go to.’
My body soars into the heaven of her hands. I am soft and wet as though wounded, but there is no pain, only pleasure. She presses her fingers into the folds of my quim, moving faster or slower in time to the urgency of my breath, giving greater rapture than I thought existed in this world. It is like running down a hill, faster than my feet can go, and I cannot slow down because if I do I will tumble head over heels, face first. I cry out almost angrily, as though I am delighted against my will. As though this is a shameful thing. With that thought, all delight crashes about my ears like an old wall.
‘No!’ I whisper. She ceases her wonderful stroking. ‘This is sin,’ I hiss, wishing it were not so. ‘It must be. It is too—’
‘Pleasurable?’ she snorts. ‘Is that so terrible?’ She cups my cheek and smiles very gently.
‘If this is not shameful, then why are we hiding?’
‘There is a world of difference between private and sinful. Your prayers are private, are they not?’
‘You’re telling me this is a prayer?’
‘Why not? Do you not feel closer to heaven than ever before?’
All the blood in my heart presses itself into my face, for I am reminded how wildly I cried out. She grins, and tickles me under the arms, where I am very ticklish. I try to bat her hands away, and we collapse into giggles. She kisses my brow.
‘Listen to me prattle on. Here I am sermonising when there is kissing to be done.’
‘Let us pray,’ I answer.
With that, she makes good as her word. Under her hands I reach into the heavens with my whole body and shake down the stars with my cries. I soar into myself at the insistence of her touch and further still, lifted into rapture I never thought to taste because I did not know it existed. Higher than the summit of a hill, the air crisp as an autumn morning when the world shimmers and sparkles.
I lie gasping in her arms. The stable is the same as a few moments ago: straw tossed about, the mare stamping her foot. But a change has been wrought. I do not know what it is, but it has been waiting its chance to spring up in my soul. Now I understand what the charcoal-burner could not give me. His was a brief satisfaction of the flesh, a hammer pummelling the anvil. She is the furnace, coaxing me to melt into who knows what shape.
It is only afterwards, when I am putting on my gown, that the shilling falls out of the folds and I remember that I bought no charcoal.
Whenever we can steal a moment, the Maid and I dash breathless to the stable, passing secrets on our tongues as we embrace. We have our daily game of seeking each other out away from the eyes and ears of Thomas: a grasped moment amongst the apple trees, another few moments when he goes to the church. We find more and more reasons to go to the well, falling into each other’s arms under the dripping arch of the trees, mouths and hands ravenous. I am so filled with the savour of her flesh against mine that I can think of little else but when I may next clap my arms about her and squeeze her close.
I must have money, she says and I reply Yes, yes, although I know not whence it might come. I do not understand her hurry and determination. I have no desire to hasten this delectable time away. Nothing can dampen my cheer. The sweetest being ever to draw breath is mine. If this is a game, then it is the best I have ever played, for I have already won.
It is only afterwards that I realise this game is in earnest, and of the deadly sort.
VIXEN
I am more naked with her than I have ever been. I am alive. I have not felt alive before. I hate her for making me desire her. I love her for making me melt. But this cannot be love. This is the grinding of flint, two bodies striking sparks.
Anne sees through my disguises and asks who I am: the question I cannot answer, will not answer. Asks to see me, as if that girl exists. I’d like to see her face if I let her in on the wreckage that is my life. See the smile fall away and be traded for fear, her so-called love turned to loathing in the blink of an eye.
I hide in the stable. The mare tosses her head in greeting. I rub my palms along her neck and she blows air through soft-bristled lips.
‘You ask me no questions,’ I murmur, and she snorts once more.
I find a tick under her mane, bloated with blood. I tiptoe to the house, which stands mercifully quiet, take a half-burned stick from the hearth and carry it back to the stable, blowing on the ember to keep it aglow. I touch the red tip to the creature and it sizzles, falling away. The mare stamps her hoof, but I tell her all is well and she quietens, making no more to-do. I inspect every inch of her, tracking down and killing every tick that I find.
I’d be a horse any day. Four legs to carry me away, nothing to do but eat, fart, sleep and serve a stallion when the time is right. I jump on to her back and wrap my arms and legs about her. Her heat sends a shiver through my thighs. I cannot put my arms all the way round her belly, however far I stretch my fingers. My stomach tickles with her rough hair, nostrils prickle with the scent of her hide.
As I drowse in the dip of her spine it occurs to me how dimwitted I am, for the means of my escape is stirring beneath me. I grasp her mane in my fists, press my knees into her flanks and we trot from the stable, out of the yard, through the ford and in a moment are on the road to the sea. It is that easy.
I spur her into an unwilling canter and will not let up, kicking pitilessly until she begins to gallop, faster and faster till the fields are a blur of yellow, brown and green; till we barely touch the earth and she is flying me from this cramped rat-hole, wings on her fetlocks.
We thump along, my backside bouncing on her broad back. I feel the flex of bone and muscle, taste the snort of her breath, rejoice at the thunder of her hooves. The scent of tilled earth is seasoned with the salt of the marshes, stronger and stronger as we draw closer to the coast. I’ll sell her and pay my passage to Ireland as fast as that. I’ll be away.
The mare clatters to a halt, so suddenly I only stop myself from tumbling off by hanging on to her ears. She snorts with a sense of a journey completed. The firm track has petered out and we stand at the edge of the marshland, the ground soft with sour water. Today it is calm, very different from the last time I was here. It stretches ahead, flat and dour, cut through with sluggish ditches meandering towards the sea. I pummel her neck.
‘Move!’ I cry.
She droops her head, nose sniffing the hedgerow for a tasty mouthful. I yank on her mane and she ignores me. I jab my heels into her belly.
‘Come on!’ She finds a patch of grass that meets her approval and begins to crop, teeth grinding down its sweetness. ‘Giddup! Ho! Girl!’ I shout, thinking of all the encouraging words I’ve heard men yell at their beasts.
She pauses in her chewing and I think I have persuaded her: her guts rumble, she lets out a long fart and returns to munching. I kick more and more viciously, punching her head with my fists and t
ugging her ears over and over. She takes as much notice of me as she would a gnat.
I slide off her back and smack her side, kindly this time. She twists her head and brushes her nose against mine, blowing moist heat into my face. I bend, scoop up a handful of mud, hold it to my face and inhale deeply.
‘Smell that? It’s not been dug, or ploughed, or planted. They don’t want it. They say it’s of no use. But it’s beautiful. It smells of escape. Don’t you see?’
She does not. She’s a horse. She sniffs my hand.
‘It’s safe to walk upon, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ She draws away. ‘You won’t get lost. I’ve been here before.’ She knows a falsehood when she hears it and flicks her tail in derision. ‘Over there …’ I wave a dripping hand ‘is the sea. Take me that far. Then I’ll let you go,’ I lie.
She continues to graze.
‘Please,’ I beg. ‘Please take me away from here.’ One ear twirls as though she might be listening. ‘I’ll feed you warm bran mash. I’ll polish your hooves with butter. I’ll groom you with a golden brush set with badger bristle.’ She ignores my fairy tales and does not stir her hoof one jot further.
The sky is low, but not dangerous; like a sheet that needs laundering stretched above my head. Wind is bringing rain from the west. It’ll be here in under an hour, by the look of the clouds. Something about the weather is sickly, and I shudder despite myself. Birds are gathering overhead. Plovers flash their red beaks, a handful of seagulls crack the air with ugly voices. The skin on the back of my neck prickles.
‘Here to tell me of another storm?’ I cry. I shake my fist, setting them into a flap. ‘Afraid of me?’ I scream. ‘Good! You’ve made a dangerous enemy.’
You don’t just act like a simpleton, you are that creature, they cackle.
‘I’m not a fool!’ I yell. ‘I am not!’
You want her. You want her.
‘I don’t!’ I wail.
They swirl away, chattering. For all my protests, they are right. I am stupid. I do want her. Everything I have ever known shrieks at me to keep going, to ride and ride until the horse dies beneath me, and then run until I collapse with exhaustion, and then pick myself and run some more and never stop.
Vixen Page 19