by Alison Tyler
At the feast, Piers kept one eye on the girl, one eye on his father and a third eye—the invisible one in the back of his head—on her father. If the man was any more toadying, he would begin to croak before the day was out. When the meal was at long last complete, and Edward and his cronies had reeled off to the next amusement, Piers followed her outside. She went in the opposite direction from the crowd, and he closed with her where she had come to a stop by the fountain and the air was redolent of the rosemary and lavender neatly contained in the herbaceous borders.
“Ah,” she said without a trace of irony. “My betrothed.” He inclined his head graciously. Up close she was extremely fair. Not sandy, just faintly gold all over. Pretty, in fact. But her hands were astounding, as if God had bestowed this one great extravagance upon her with unstinting generosity. They were classical in perfection of proportion, and the unbidden thought of those hands on his skin made his body jerk in response.
“May I?” he asked, reaching out. She had imbibed a great deal of wine. She gave him her left hand, languid and curious. He explored it as he would any instrument of detailed engineering—an astrolabe, or something of its like—turning it over in his and deftly tracing all the delicate connections. He released her hand reluctantly, like a woman who puts down an expensive jewel she knows her husband will not purchase for her. She was looking up at him now, with nothing but acceptance in her face. Of the moment? Of him? He didn’t know. He bent his head and kissed her.
The instant he touched her, everything changed. Madchen had been kissed several times, enough to know how. But this was heaven, his full, soft lips against hers, once, and then when she did not protest, but reached up to meet him, again and again. And he kept speaking to her in between, as if he remembered it was her he was kissing, as if to say, See? We aren’t behaving scandalously. Madchen kissed him back, her body coming alive, melting, catching fire. She answered him, in words and with her lips, though later she did not remember any of the words. Her arm crept up around his neck, where it fit perfectly, despite his greater height.
“I love your skin,” he said, and she smiled, her cheek against his as he explored her neck. His next kiss was firmer, with just a hint of slick, inner lip, and the next gave her the barest tip of his tongue, as if he was asking permission. She would have given it gladly, but he pulled away.
“We have to go back,” he said. And what else could she do, the poor girl, except agree?
Madchen spun that night, partly from force of habit, partly because she wasn’t sure if the bizarre events of the previous night would repeat themselves and partly to calm herself. She could think of nothing but Piers Wydeville. She hadn’t known a man existed who could kiss like that. The golden prince of her youth was gone; in his place was a living man, infinitely more complicated and just as unavailable. Every time she remembered his mouth on her own, her body fell into a stupor of desire. How long would it last? A week? A day?
The dwarf broke into her reverie, earlier this time, but brought with him the same amount of finished wool and took away the unspun roving with him, stuffing it into a large sack that he could barely squeeze through the narrow tunnel. He looked slightly more dapper, his hair combed, his beard trimmed. He did not linger. “This will overset them!” he crowed. And then, “Mind you don’t forget your promise, girl.” Madchen assured him she would not. After that, there was nothing to do but sleep.
In the morning, Madchen Sprynger did not look tired at all. Indeed, her face had taken on a rosy glow and her mien was of good cheer, as well it should be. Somehow in the night she had managed to spin three more pounds of roving into yarn. Sometime during the same night, Piers had been beset by a feeling that the bet had not been fair to begin with. Her father and his had colluded so she could not win, to the benefit of everyone but her. Madchen was simply the pawn in their game. The fact that she was winning did not alter this feeling. The fact that she was cheating did not even alter it.
For she was cheating.
He just couldn’t figure out how.
Madchen. It was how he thought of her now. Madchen, the one word containing how the whole of her felt in his arms. He wanted to absorb all of her through his lips: every part of her body and her breath, and not stop at kissing, not stop at anything until she was his. He was going to be married. A man in his position could not afford to stay single, even did he want to. The thought of being tied to Madchen for life held infinitely more appeal than the thought of being tied to Eleanor, whose charms had never held much appeal in the first place. She had been his father’s choice, as was the custom.
Piers sought out his father before dinner that day; early enough that Anthony would not be insensible with drink, and while he was with Edward. It was not hard to find him with Edward. They were always together. After greeting the two men, Piers inquired whether his father had given any thought to what he would do should he lose the bet. Tony Wydeville looked up from his cards. A losing hand, but he was going to bluff. Edward sometimes fell for that. “Do?” he said. He was drunk, but not very. “Do!” he said again, as if his son had made a witty remark.
“If you lose,” Piers repeated patiently.
The earl waved him away. “She can’t win. Can’t. Not possible.” He threw some gold carelessly onto the table. Edward matched it and raised. He had a good hand.
“She might, though,” Piers insisted. “She’s done it two nights running. Why not a third?”
“No,” his father said, as if sheer obstinacy could make it so.
“You won’t honor it?” Piers made his tone merely curious, and watched Edwards’s fingers, clinking his gold pieces together, go still.
“What’s this?” Edward said, straightening in his chair. He gazed at his best friend blearily, through eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. They had not slept. But there was nothing compromised in the mind behind those eyes. “You won’t honor your bet, Tony?” He looked grave, then leaned back in his chair, laughing. “You’ll honor it,” he said with certainty, “because I’m your king and I say you will.” That simply, it was done. Piers hid his sigh of relief. He had planned for it to go that way. He had hoped for it to go that way, but he could not be certain it would. His father sat slack-faced, cards in hand. “Damn you,” he said to Piers, but the words were vacant of anger. He was too busy trying to find a way out of this new predicament.
There were no secrets at court. Before the noon meal was served, every person, from the lowliest servant to the queen, knew what had passed between the king and his dearest friend. This made Madchen the cynosure of more pairs of eyes than the two on either side of her, which she failed to enjoy, but she remained calm, mostly because she was not silly enough to believe she was going to be enjoined in a state of wedded bliss with Lord Scales in the near future. She would cheat to save herself, but she refused to cheat to gain a husband, even one who kissed like Piers. If it came to that, he would have to be told. She shuddered to think about the consequences of that, pushing her food around on the plate with her knife. Spinning in itself was pure simplicity. That was one of the things she loved about it. To have it tangled in such a farcical plot was a painfully ironic juxtaposition.
The day passed. She retired to the spinning chamber as soon as they allowed her, embracing the silence with gratitude. There seemed little point in spinning. She was certain now that the dwarf would appear. He had seemed almost delirious the previous night, with the fruition of his plan so nearly in his grasp.
She fell to pacing, but kept forgetting the walking part, coming to herself in this corner of the room, or that, with no sense of how long she had been standing there. A noise made her look up. Instead of a dwarf through the wall, she got Piers Wydeville through the door—a small, personal miracle that felt infinite. He had brought with him, clever man, a bottle of Bordeaux and two silver goblets.
Twenty minutes later, Madchen knew it wasn’t the Bordeaux, because they hadn’t got around to opening it. Kissing him straight sober was even better in a way. The
urgency built so fast, cresting like a fever in her blood. He was kissing her neck again. “I could do this for hours,” he crooned, breathing her in.
“I can’t.” She was definite. “I’ll split my skin.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re supposed to.” Madchen forgot to be afraid of the unknown, because the knowing was such pure, drenching pleasure, every new thing sublime. Who taught you this? she wanted to ask. How did you know to do this? But touching him was saturation enough. He was taken by everything about her; infatuated, smitten. Her body was strong and supple to his touch in a way that was wildly arousing.
When it became clear that hours was stretching it for him, as well, he stopped long enough to fashion the last three balls of roving into a pallet and covered it with his cloak. He divested them of their clothing and lay Madchen down, and he knew from watching her face that her trembling was from eagerness rather than fear. He touched her first between her legs, knowing she would be wet there. He touched her flesh, and she pulled her legs up, opening them wide. He took the slick moisture and rubbed it on her lips, kissing it off. He glazed it over her nipples, sucking it off. He spread it in her navel, licking it out.
She could please this man. The knowledge broke over Madchen like light. She pleased him by being herself. He didn’t know why, but Piers felt the moment a kind of shivering rapture took hold of her. He entered her then, with one sure thrust, not afraid of the pain he was causing her. Then he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, willing to wait but not to stop. She touched him everywhere she could reach, those gorgeous hands so sweetly inflammatory. She didn’t care about the pain, only that it kept him still when she ached for him to move. “Let go,” she said. “Bring me with you.” But she carried him with her, climaxing first, before he could touch the small nub of flesh that would bring her the greatest pleasure.
“I have so much to tell you, Madchen,” he gasped, before releasing himself to her body.
Much later, when he was near sleep, she began collecting bits of her clothing. “What are you doing?” he asked, his eyes closed.
“Um,” she said, her voice muffled as she wrestled with her drawers under her cloak, which he had spread over them, “just getting a little bit dressed.”
She got as far as her shift before he confiscated the rest of her clothing. “I like you naked. Lie down or I’ll make love to you again.”
“That’s not a very effective threat. You do know that?” But she was worried about the time. “We’re going to have a visitor,” she confessed. “You may be birth-day naked, but I would prefer to be clothed.”
“We’re not having visitors.” He pulled her down. “I made the guard a wealthy man and I have the key.”
“He’s not coming through that door.” Madchen refused to subside. She pointed. “He’s coming through that one.” Piers looked understandably baffled, but Madchen was saved from further explanations by the advent of the dwarf himself, popping through the door in undiminished high spirits. The sight of them brought him up short, but recovering quickly, he rubbed his hands together in a strictly mercenary gesture. “Well, well,” he said. “This is going better than I thought.” And he executed a little bow to Piers, complete with flourishes.
“Where is my tunic?” Madchen got one severe look from Piers when he took it from her hand.
“A little warning would have been nice.”
“Here, here, here.” Bertram was dragging the baskets of yarn from the tunnel and handing them to Piers, who had slipped his tunic over his head and dragged on his hose. “Where is the old roving? Oh, for Lord’s sake!” he exclaimed, upon realizing where it was. “Get up, you silly girl,” he ordered, barely waiting for Madchen to wrap herself in her cloak before gathering it up. “Don’t forget,” were his last instructions to her, and he whisked himself and the wool through the door and had it closed behind him before Piers had time to formulate a single question. In the little pool of silence left behind by the dwarf, Piers and Madchen contemplated one another.
“You knew I was cheating,” she offered.
“Yes, I knew you were cheating. I just couldn’t figure out how.” He glanced musingly at the hidden door. “I had no idea that was there. I don’t know of anyone who does.” Picking up the new yarn, he began to remake the bed.
Madchen watched him, her brow knit. “You don’t mind?”
“Well,” he said reasonably, “they were cheating. And you weren’t facing a very pleasant consequence. Stop looking so worried and come back to bed.”
Curled up with him, near sleep herself, Madchen’s thoughts escaped and made their way to her tongue. “You’ll leave me in the morning.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll marry you in the morning.” Madchen sat straight up, an arrow jerked from its quiver. “Are we going to sleep at all?” he asked, but his eyes were soft, lambent in the firelight. She just shook her head, speechless. “Fine,” he went on, stroking the skin of her belly; he’d gotten her naked again. “Hang me on a technicality. We’ll be married in three weeks. Marry me, Madchen,” he encouraged softly, when she was silent.
“Never call me Maddie,” she said. “I hate it.”
“Agreed.” He waited for her other demands. She was negotiating her marriage contract, after all, for all that she was sitting naked on a pile of yarn and her virginity was gone. “I’ll keep you safe,” he vowed, and seeing her face, perceived the cause of her hesitation. “Do you mean safe from me? Well no, then, I won’t. I’m going to have you. But don’t worry,” he added, “you’re going to like it.”
Still, she said nothing, but there was a smile creeping to the corners of her mouth. “I have no experience with happiness,” she warned him. “It frightens me a little.”
“Only a little every day, I promise,” he said. “Come here.”
This time she let him pull her down, but when his hand slid immediately to the juncture of her thighs, she said, “If we really are to be married, there’s one more thing I have to tell you.”
Elizabeth Wydeville’s mother-in-law, the dowager queen, took her seat at the high table. She was ancient and rheumy-eyed, but anyone who judged her incapable was in danger of making a grave error. Her daughter-in-law, a commoner and a widow with three children when Edward met her under the old oak tree in the forest, had not become the queen of England by accident. The court was abuzz with the latest rumors: the Duke of Somerset paid a fortune to annul his daughter’s betrothal to Earl Rivers’s son, and that son, Lord Scales, was now to be wed to a spinner from the City. The dowager approved. Why leave it all for the nobility? No one knew better than she that you took your happiness where you found it. And she had. She had, and she did not regret any of it for a single instant.
The benches had been moved to clear the hall for dancing, and the musicians were tuning their instruments. The court was in a merry mood. Edward had spared no expense at dinner; the match pleased him, no one knew quite why. But a contented king meant a happy court. The musicians struck up the first number. Everyone waited politely for Edward and Elizabeth to take the floor, but he waved them away. He was too fat to dance. He indicated Lord Scales, who bowed to the girl and led her to the middle of the floor. They had found a proper dress for her. It was palest rose, shot through with gold thread and even to the dowager’s old eyes, she glowed like sunrise. Before they had danced a measure, a disruption at the front of the hall drew everyone’s attention.
A disembodied voice rose up to the beamed ceiling. “An audience! I have an audience with the lady affianced to Lord Scales.” When the servants moved aside and he strode forward, he was revealed as the dwarf, only not the scraggly little man who had made Madchen’s acquaintance. This dwarf wore a tiny, immaculate suit tailored of cloth-of-gold with brocade edging and gilt shoes, turned up at the toes, on his little feet. Reaching Madchen, he bowed, low and grand. “I have come to claim my prize—the firstborn son of Madchen Sprynger and Piers Wydeville!” He made his announcement triumphantly, the culmination of a life
time of planning.
A shocked hush descended upon the room, surprise lighting every face except that of Piers Wydeville. Madchen only looked sorrowful. She stepped forward. “I’m sorry,” she said, bending down to the little man, and she meant it. “I didn’t know that I would marry him.”
“You were supposed to marry him,” the dwarf answered. “I’ve come to claim the child. My child.” Madchen only shook her head. “Come with me. I have something to tell you.”
All eyes were riveted to the play. Into this hush came her father’s voice, loud and bewildered. “What child? She had the scarlet fever when she was seven. She’s barren.”
The dwarf stared at Madchen, a dull red rising into his features. “Barren? Barren? Childless, barren, horrible girl!” Piers stepped forward at that, but Madchen stopped him, a hand on his arm. The dwarf began to stamp his feet in uncontrollable, inchoate anger, his voice rising to a shriek. A low murmur began in the room, rising like a hive of bees about to swarm.
“Be silent!” The dowager had pulled herself to her feet and stepped down from the dais. Reaching the relative safety of the floor, she advanced on the dwarf. “You thorn in my side,” she hissed. “You insolent little man. I thought I was rid of you years ago.”
“Little man!” he screeched. “Little is the only insult I ever hear! Why not evil, why not insufferable, why not traitorous? No one ever—” he pointed wildly at Piers “—accuses him of being tall!” The look of shocked wonder on Piers’s face changed to delight and he began to laugh. The dwarf was nearly apoplectic. “My father loved you, and you banished him because he was a dwarf. You stole him from me. You broke him. My mother never saw him again. And for that, you deserve to pay.”