“Why did you have no more children, Mother?” Averil asked.
“If I had borne a son before Argel it would have made all our lives difficult,” Gorawen explained. “And your father did not need more daughters. Three was enough.”
“You prevented Ysbail from having other children, didn’t you?” Averil said with great certainty.
Gorawen smiled, but neither did she confirm or deny her daughter’s suspicions. “Here, this is sparagus. The best stalks are those with their heads turned downward towards the earth. They have two uses. Alleviating constipation, or stimulating romantic relations. You must add a little seasoning to them after boiling or they can cause the fibers of the stomach to be damaged. A pinch of salt is enough.”
“Its uses are quite varied,” Averil noted.
Gorawen laughed. “Yes,” she agreed, “they are.”
“How does it affect romantic relations?” Averil asked.
“You boil the stalks until they are just tender, with the salt, and then you serve them in a dish of melted butter,” Gorawen said. “The sight of a woman slowly eating the sparagus, licking the stalks with her tongue, sucking upon the stumps, stimulates a manhood greatly. When you do this before your husband he will imagine you are licking his stalk, and sucking upon it.”
“Ohh!” Averil exclaimed, and she blushed. “I never realized . . .” Her voice trailed off as she blushed once more.
“You will not discuss what I tell you or teach you with either of your sisters. Junia is too young for such knowledge, and as for Maia, it is up to her mother to enlighten her. Now, with regard to a husband’s manhood, you must be absolutely certain it is clean before you touch it. Most men do not bathe regularly, but you must make certain that your husband does. Wash him yourself, which he will enjoy, or bathe with him, which is even more pleasurable,” Gorawen said. “In the finest castles and keeps the hostess is responsible for bathing her guests of honor. That is how the daughters of the house learn. Here at Dragon’s Lair, however, we have no guests. There is no reason for anyone to come here.” She paused a moment to think, and then Gorawen continued. “Both you and Maia must learn the art of bathing a man. I will speak to Argel about it. I believe you should practice on your brother, Brynn.”
“Wash Brynn?” Averil was scandalized. “That little heathen never bathes, Mother, and except in the summer when he swims in the stream I think water never touches his skin.”
“Well,” Gorawen said, rising from the garden, “you and Maia have to learn how to properly wash a male. Brynn and your father are the only men of rank at Dragon’s Lair, and I do not think it proper that you wash Merin.” Then, forgetting Averil entirely, she hurried off to find Argel and present her with this problem.
Argel was in the hall of the keep, working at her loom. She was weaving a tapestry depicting King Arthur’s marriage to his wife, Guinevere. The other of Merin Pendragon’s concubines, Ysbail, was with her, sorting out threads by color for her embroidery frame. They looked up as Gorawen entered the hall.
“The girls must learn to bathe a man,” Gorawen began. “Here, our Lord Merin is beginning to consider husbands for Averil and Maia, and they are lacking in the basic knowledge needed and known by the most common goodwife!”
“Marriages for Averil and Maia?” Ysbail screeched. “What of my daughter?”
“Junia is too young yet,” Argel said, ending any argument. “First our lord will seek a match for Averil, for she is the eldest. It must be a very good match if Maia is to have an even better one. And these two marriages will determine what kind of matches can be made for Junia and Brynn.”
“Of course,” Ysbail said slowly. Then she added, “Our good lord had best work quickly, for Averil is really getting too old to match. I want to see Junia wed at thirteen.”
“Averil’s beauty will make up for her age,” Gorawen said through gritted teeth.
“Averil is the perfect age to wed,” Argel noted quietly. “But Gorawen is correct. The girls are well versed in housekeeping, but know little of common hospitality or courtesy towards a guest. This lack must be remedied quickly.”
“We’ll have to use Brynn,” Gorawen said.
Argel and Ysbail burst out laughing.
“I know, I know,” Gorawen said with a grin, “but we have no one else, do we?”
“Nay, we do not,” Argel said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “We will begin this evening. I shall have the large oak tub set up in the hall, and they can begin to learn. Junia may also take part in these lessons. She is not too young for that.”
“Poor Brynn,” Ysbail said.
“He will survive,” Argel said dryly. “And who knows what we will find beneath those several layers of dirt. They’ll have to pick the nits from his head.”
“There is much to learn,” Gorawen said, “as our daughters will soon find out.”
In early evening the tub was brought into the hall and set before a fireplace to be filled with hot water. Cloths for scrubbing, brushes, cloths for drying, and soap were placed on a small table that had been set at the tub’s edge. Averil, Maia and Junia, long aprons over their chemises, were waiting for their brother to be brought into the hall. They looked at each other, and began to giggle as he was dragged in forcibly, howling with his outrage. At eight years of age, Brynn Pendragon was the image of his father. He was tall for a boy of nine, with long gangly limbs, and thick black hair.
Seeing the tub he struggled all the harder. “I’m not taking a bath!” he raged. “Bathing is for weaklings and Norman coxcombs!”
“Shut your gob!” his father roared at him, and he cuffed the boy sharply, stilling his outrage and struggles. “A proper chatelaine of the house always bathes her guests. Your sisters have had no experience in this art as we rarely receive visitors. You and I are the only men of rank here, and I don’t intend on allowing my daughters to wash me. I am not yet that feeble. So ’tis you, my son, who will submit with good grace, or I’ll beat the hide off of you. I am about to seek a husband for Averil and then Maia. Would you have them disgrace the name of Pendragon by being ill-mannered in matters of hospitality?”
Brynn said nothing, but he was still now. He had received one or two beatings from his father in recent years. It wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat.
“Do you never change your clothing?” Averil said as she came up to him, and began to peel his garments from the boy’s frame. “Ewww! And you stink, little brother! For shame! You are a noble’s son, and should have more care of your person.” She handed the boy’s clothing to Maia and Junia, instructing them to toss them in the fire.
“That’s my favorite sherte!” the boy protested.
“You could poison soup with it, you heathen,” Averil scolded him.
Their father and his women chuckled, but made no move to stop her.
When the lad was brought naked Argel said, “He should stand in the tub, lasses, while he is thoroughly washed. Then he is to sit in the water while the nits are picked from his head prior to washing his hair.”
The three girls set about to bathe their brother, scrubbing him vigorously until his skin was pink again.
“Do we wash all of him?” Maia inquired nervously.
“All!” the three mothers chorused.
Maia looked at her little brother’s masculine apendage, then her eyes met Averil’s.
“You do it,” she said. “He is my brother.”
“He is my brother, too,” Averil noted, “but I’ll do it today. You will have to do it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Brynn yelped! “You’re going to do this tomorrow, too?”
His mother laughed. “Every other day until the girls can bathe you properly. I’m sorry, Brynn, but they must learn. If we had guests they would have already learned, but we are so isolated here in the Welshry, and only those with business at Dragon’s Lair come to Dragon’s Lair.”
Averil took up the washing cloth, soaped it heavily and washed her brother’s male member, pushing th
e foreskin on it up to wash beneath the skin. Her hands moved quickly and efficiently beneath him to soap his seed pouch. She splashed water on him, rinsing the foam away. “That wasn’t so bad,” she noted to Maia.
“A grown man’s equipment will be bigger, lasses,” their father warned them.
“Sit down,” Maia instructed her brother, and when the boy had, the three girls began picking the nits from his head and hair.
He squealed as their fingers dug sharply into his scalp and pulled along the locks of his black hair. “Ouch! Have a care, sisters! Ouch!”
“Your hair is filthy, Brynn,” Averil told him. “You are old enough to know you need to wash it, and yourself, regularly.”
“Too much bathing is not good, the priest says,” he told them. “He says it is a vanity to wash too much.”
“Listen to the priest in matters concerning your soul, my son,” Merin Pendragon advised, “but where the body is concerned, listen to your women. You’ll get a lot farther with the lasses smelling like a rose than like a dung heap.”
The three sisters were finally satisfied with their nitpicking, and poured a dish of water over Brynn’s head. He gasped and sputtered, but they paid him no mind, instead lathering his head with the rich soap, rinsing it, washing and rinsing it a final time. Then they yanked him up, ordering him to step from the tub onto a cloth, which he did. The three girls then set about drying their brother off.
“Get in between his toes,” Gorawen suggested.
Finally, Brynn Pendragon was cleaner than the day he had been born. “I smell like a flower,” he grumbled.
Averil handed him a clean sherte. “You can roll in the pig byre on the morrow, little brother,” she told him with a grin. “Then we shall have something worth washing the day after tomorrow.”
“You’ll have to catch me first,” he warned her, glowering.
“Don’t worry, Brynnie, we will,” she answered him in dulcet tones.
“Go seek your bed, my son,” Argel said quietly. “Your father and I would speak with your sisters now.” She kissed the top of his dark damp head.
“Good night, Mother. Good night, aunts. Good night, Da,” the boy said, and left the hall without further protest.
“That was well done, lasses,” Argel praised them, “but your skills will need some refining. Your brother will be bathed every other day until I am satisfied that you are knowledgeable in this. You may go to your beds now. God protect you and give you sweet dreams this night.”
The three sisters curtsied to the lady of the castle, and then each girl kissed her mother, and their father, before leaving the hall. They slept together in a large bed in a room at the top of the keep. Reaching their chamber they removed their skirts and tunics, washed their faces and hands, and cleaned their teeth with a cloth. They took turns brushing each other’s hair out and plaiting their locks into a single braid for the night. Then they climbed into their bed, drawing the curtains about it, and pulling up the fur robe that kept them warm.
For a long time they were silent, and then Averil said, “Did you note our brother’s manhood? It seemed small, though father did say a grown man’s is larger.”
“He isn’t even nine yet,” Maia defended her little brother. “It does get larger, my mother says, when he becomes a man. She wanted me to know that so I wouldn’t be shocked when I had to bathe a man.”
“How big does it get?” Junia wondered. “It seems to me a useless piece of flesh, dangling there between Brynn’s legs. What use has it other than to pee?”
The two older girls giggled.
“My mother says when roused the manhood grows in length and thickness. It becomes as stiff as a piece of wood,” Maia said.
“Why?” Junia demanded to know.
“Because, you goose, the man puts it into you, and makes a baby. If it were all flaccid he could not do it,” Averil said.
“Where does he put it?” Junia asked, fascinated.
“We’ll show you,” Averil replied, making eye contact with Maia, who, leaning over, held her little sister down while Averil pushed up her chemise, and put a finger on Junia’s hairless little slit. She pushed the fingertip past the two nether lips, saying, “It goes in there. Deep. I don’t want to put my finger any farther lest I damage you, Sister.”
Junia’s eyes were wide with both surprise and shock as her older sister pulled her chemise back down again. “Where I pee?” she gasped.
“Nay, not there. There is an opening farther along. That is where the manhood is lodged, little one,” Averil explained.
“Does it hurt?” Junia wondered.
“My mother says the first time it does, for the manhood shatters your maidenhead, which is hidden within you,” Maia said. “But after that, she says, when the girl has been made a woman, there is pleasure if a man is skilled. She says our father is very skilled, and wishes the same happiness for all of us.”
“I wonder who our husbands will be.” Junia sighed.
“That is something you won’t have to think about for a while,” Maia told her. “Averil will be the first of us to wed, and it must be soon, for she is fifteen on the last day of this month. And then I will be wed, probably next year sometime if Da can find the right husband for me. But you aren’t quite eleven, Junia. You have several more years before a husband will be chosen for you, and you are wed.”
“I shall miss you both when you are gone!” Junia replied.
Averil laughed. “But you will have this bed all to yourself, and you know you have always wanted that. You are forever complaining that Maia and I crowd you, and kick.”
“But I will be so very lonely,” Junia responded. “I shall have no one to talk with before I go to sleep. Or to remind me to say my prayers. And I really like sleeping in the middle between you both.”
“Well, you will have us both for a while, chick,” Averil said, giving her little sister a kiss on the cheek. “Now, let us all settle down. I am fair exhausted from bathing our brother this evening.”
“Gentle Mary, may you and your son, Jesu, watch over us this night,” Maia said.
“May angels guard us through the dark hours,” Junia replied.
“And bring us safely to another day so we may walk in the path that God has set out for us to walk in,” Averil concluded. “Amen.”
After a few moments of restlessness the three sisters slept.
Chapter 2
Godwine FitzHugh lay dying, his bastard son, Rhys, and his only legitimate heir, a six-year-old girl, by his side. “I trust you to look after Mary,” he gasped. “You are all she has now.” His gnarled hand clutched at his grown son.
“You know I will protect her, Father,” Rhys said quietly.
“Have her pledge her fealty to the Mortimers, and you also,” the dying man continued. He glared with dimming sight at the other man in the room. “Priest! You have heard my wishes. My son will have charge over my daughter, and over Everleigh. You must swear it before the Mortimers. Do you give me your promise?” His hands moved restlessly over the coverlet, plucking it nervously.
“I do, my lord,” the priest replied.
Godwine FitzHugh turned his attention to his children again. “Find an heiress, Rhys, marry, and get children on her quickly. Make a good match for Mary.”
“Aye, Father, I will do my best,” Rhys FitzHugh swore. But as he swore it he was thinking that obtaining a wife would probably be impossible. He had nothing to offer any woman. And an heiress? He almost laughed aloud. His father meant well. He had given him his own name, and raised him, for his mother had died at his birth. So had his half sister’s mam. His father wed late in life, having spent his earlier years keeping the peace for the king here in the Marches between England and Wales. His own birth was the result of his father’s youthful passion for Rhys’s mother.
“Steal your bride, lad,” his father whispered.
“What?” Surely he hadn’t heard correctly. He looked questioningly at his sire.
The old man gr
inned, looking like a death’s head as he did so. “Find a propertied lass, steal her and take her virginity,” he repeated. “The family will have to agree to a match if you do that, my son. I know your birth is against you and for that I apologize.”
“There is no honor in such an act,” Rhys murmured to his sire.
“Don’t be a fool, lad. You cannot afford to be honorable in this matter. You need a wife, and stealing one is the only way you will get a lass. Bride stealing is not really dishonorable, Rhys. It is done all the time.”
His son laughed ruefully, and then he nodded. “I will have no other choice, I suppose, if I want legitimate sons,” he said softly.
Again the death’s head grin flashed briefly. Then Godwine held out his hand to his daughter. “Take my hand, Mary, and swear on the FitzHugh name that you will obey your brother until you are wed, and bring no shame upon our name.”
The little girl took the cold, emaciated hand in her small plump one. “I promise, Father,” she said solemnly. “And I shall never send Rhys from Everleigh no matter my husband. He shall always be bailiff here. I swear it on the Blessed Virgin’s name.”
“Good,” her father replied. “Now give me a final kiss, my daughter, and leave me to die, for I shall not live to see the sunset this day.”
Mary FitzHugh bent and kissed her sire’s thin and chilly lips. “Godspeed you, my lord. I shall always pray to the Blessed Mother and our Lord Jesu for your good soul.” She curtsied and then, turning, left the room.
“Priest! Shrive me and give me the last rites of Holy Mother Church. Then you will leave me with my son,” Godwine FitzHugh commanded the cleric.
The priest did not argue, doing as he was bid as Rhys FitzHugh knelt nearby, his dark head bent. Finished, the priest bade his master farewell, and exited the death chamber.
“Come and sit by my side,” the lord of Everleigh manor said to his son. “Your presence comforts me.”
Rhys FitzHugh brought a chair by the draped bed, and sat.
“I would have married your mother, you know,” his father said, “but that she died giving you life. Her family was worthy of mine.”
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