by Hall, Ian
By the time Cora returned with an opened bottle, I had stripped off my doublet, and lay back on a large chair of sorts. “Come sit on my lap, Cora.”
She did so without challenge, and settled her backside onto my lap; wonderful.
I grabbed the bottle and took a deep swig. I don’t think it had been out of the country; homemade blackberry, maybe with a hint of cherry.
I pushed the bottle to her lips, and they opened sensuously. “Do you lie with Abigail?”
She nodded after drinking.
“Do you enjoy her hands on you?” Again, she nodded, and I pushed the bottle back at her mouth. She drank steadily, her eyes never leaving mine. “Have you ever had a man?”
She shook her head.
I swear my dick jumped. “Why don’t you take your dress off, my dear, then sit back down again?”
When she lifted the one-piece smock over her head, I nodded appreciatively. Abigail had chosen well. Cora looked like a supermodel; thin yes, yet carrying some sexy curves. Her breasts were larger than I’d envisaged, slightly drooping, yet retaining the pert upward curve of youth.
When she nestled back in my crotch, I could hardly restrain myself from taking her there and then.
I pushed the bottle to her, and she took it, pushing the neck seductively into her mouth to drink. “What do you and Abigail do in bed?” Although I wanted her so badly, I lay back, luxuriating in the certainty of conquest, determined to enjoy the anticipation.
“She touches me,” Cora said, slightly nervous.
“Where does she touch you? Show me.”
The girl’s hand went immediately to her breast, and rested there, cupping the mound neatly.
“Show me what she does.”
Cora squeezed, then gradually let the flesh slip from her fingers, focusing on the small, yet hardening nipple. Then she pulled the nub from her body, holding it firmly between finger and thumb, stretching the skin taut. She inhaled sharply. Then it slipped from her grasp, springing lightly back to her body, the flesh vibrated for a second, then fell still.
I pushed the bottle to her again, and she drank more deeply than before.
“Where else does she touch you?” I asked, brazenly encouraging her.
“Here,” she said, offering the first unprovoked word of narrative all night. “Right here.” She slid her hand into her pubic hair, and spread her leg as she did so. When her own fingers parted her folds, I leant forward and kissed her. Meeting no resistance, I pulled at her nipples while she closed her eyes, then sank my head to suckle.
Again she gasped, her head arching back, the tendons of her neck stretching, trembling.
My hand slid down her arm, then my fingers joined hers, plunging between her legs, delving into the moist tunnel, sampling her nectar. Like squirming snakes our fingers entwined, pushing her folds apart, caressing her insides.
Then I could stand it no more, and lifted her in one motion, laying her on the bedding, and following her down. Between us, we got rid of my jeans, and her hand held a penis for its first time. I could see the questioning look in her eye as her fingers grasped it, exploring its length, feeling the hardness of the sinew.
As I raised myself above her, Cora looked at my dick in fear and wonder, but when I carefully inserted it into her, she closed her eyes in bliss.
I rode her gently to begin, then gradually built up both tempo and depth, until she moaned with every thrust. Her fingernails dug into my back, then down to my backside as she pulled me farther in, then thrust her pelvis at me, jousting together.
I have to say, Abigail had chosen this girl well. She met me at every stab, and responded more than any woman I’d known. Cora, the servant of a vampire, proved the pinnacle of womanhood that night.
Although I’d been exhausted from my weeks search for Abigail, I drank lightly from her neck, because I knew there would be a round two. Afterwards in the dark of the night, I took her for a third time, sliding into her sleeping form from behind, waking her with my ardor, and again filling her with my seed.
Our sleep was broken by the creak of the door opening wide, then banging on the wall behind, temporarily disorienting me.
Abigail stormed into the house screaming. “What’s this?” she roared, then she stopped, halfway to the bed. “Richard?”
I nodded, feeling a little sheepish at using her servant the way I’d done. “The same.”
Abigail crossed the room, and sat next to my naked body, her fingers dallying with my chest hair, her eyes looking at my still flaccid penis. “I see you have already met Cora.”
I looked at the sleeping form beside me, her ass still so inviting. “Yes, I’m sorry…”
Abigail held her hand up. “It is insignificant. But I have to get outside, this house smells of sex. Man sex.” She motioned me out the door. “Come, tell me what you’ve been doing for this time.”
Chapter 26
October 29th, 1553… again
An Ally in the Field
So, yes, sitting on the low wall that surrounded her cottage, I told Abigail I came from the future; what else could I do? I had to enlist her help to get my other self to a meeting where I’d shoot Fallon and send myself forward in time, to come back in time earlier than I’d started and meet her here.
Simple, huh?
She frowned most of the time, but she didn’t call me crazy, so I thought I’d gotten away with it.
“So there are two of you?” she asked, once the whole story had been explained.
“Right now the other me is hiding the Princess Elizabeth near Hereford.”
Abigail shook her head. “It is difficult to believe.”
“I can show you if you like.”
“That might make it easier.” She grinned for the first time in a while.
“In the meantime, what have you been doing?”
Her grin widened. “I’ve moved a few times. I served Eleanor for many years, and lived around the castle for a while, keeping an eye on Rhys.”
“It seems he was quite a man.”
She nodded. “But brash, headstrong. Only his stubbornness led to his death; he could have got out of it if he’d caved to Henry’s will. But he didn’t.” I saw her eyes cloud, just like Eleanor’s had the day before. “But Rhys’s son, Griffith, is a different boy. With the influence of the mother, he’s both strong and intelligent. She married again, she found a good man in her new husband, the Earl of Bridgewater. His second marriage too, but again, sadly he died five years back.”
“And Rhys is at Dinefyr castle?”
“Aye, with his mother.”
“I may have to take a look at this boy.” I turned to her. “So you have a feed at the castle?”
“You have found me out. The cook there is a healthy man, and he is a good lover; I meet him every week.”
“So Cora told me.”
“So if I’ve heard you correctly, I have to come with you to London?”
“If my plan is to succeed.”
“Well, I have nothing else important to do. Shall we bring Cora with us?”
My mind wandered to threesomes galore. “Perhaps she will be too much of a distraction.”
“We can always come back to Llandovery every few weeks.”
“Yes,” I said enthusiastically, looking forward to our first time all together.
With a very sleepy Cora waving goodbye, we set off for the castle. I had no qualms in leaving her behind on the first part of our journey, I’d slaked my thirst on her last night, and it would be a few days before she’d recover.
Dinefyr castle stood on a small hill. The usual walled outer part, the walled inner part, and a large round Norman tower; really quite typical of the period and not too dissimilar from Ludlow.
“I can get us inside, you’ll have to do your own talking from there.”
“No problem,” I said glibly.
“Sir Richard DeVere,” I said at the inner gate, and it got me entrance to the tall Norman keep.
Rhys’s mother p
roved to be another ‘Catherine’. I mean, what is it about this era that justifies so many mothers choosing the same fricking name for their daughters? Tall and stately, Missus Daubney, as she would probably be called now, looked in fine shape for a fifty-year-old. But as usual, her hair swept so severely from her face did little to flatter it. “What brings you to Dinefyr, Sir Richard?”
“I am to pay my respects to the Gruffydd family,” I replied, bowing before the woman. “My grandfather was a friend of Sir Gruffydd when he attended Prince Arthur, and he would not have wanted me to pass the castle by.”
“And how did you achieve your rank?”
“By Order of the Bath, sir, just this year.”
A young man walked into the room. I would have loved to say I saw Arthur’s eyes in the boy, but he looked nothing like his grandfather. “Ah,” his mother said, “My son Griffith Rice. May I present Sir Richard DeVere, recently raised by Queen Mary.”
So I made the right noises, and I smiled at the right places, but my dream of reliving Arthur in the grandson dimmed.
I made the right noises, I told stories of my ‘grandfather’ and his friend Sir Gruffydd Rhys, then bowing and smiling, I made apologies, and left.
“That proved to be a waste of time,” I said to Abigail as we walked away.
“Not what you expected?”
I sighed. “I don’t exactly know what I expected,” I said, hopefully walking in the right direction to get to Walterston House. “But little of the Prince lives on in the grandson, I’m sure of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe it’s for the best. If news surfaced that Griffith Rice was indeed the grandson of Arthur Tudor, he’d be a very legitimate contender for the throne of England.”
We ran for a while in silence, then I began to recognize the landmarks. “Walterston House is over the next hill,” I had done so many defensive sweeps, I knew the area well. “I’ll let you go in on your own.”
I sat down on the grass and waited. I’m pretty certain she hadn’t been gone for more than fifteen minutes.
“Amazing.” And she sped off again. Ten minutes later, she reappeared.
“It’s quite amazing.” She grinned from ear to ear. “You were sitting in the garden, talking to an older woman. A young lady, ginger hair; I assume the princess Elizabeth, picked flowers.”
“I did tell you. There’s two of me here right now.”
So we set off towards London, Abigail silent in her own questioning world, and me determined to plan the next phase of the plan.
“I need a house,” I said at length.
“One of your own?”
“Yes, I need to practice my archery, and we need privacy for our comings and goings; I’m not sure a room at an inn is going to be sufficient.”
“And we need it to be in an area where you don’t come near,” Abigail said. “Otherwise you’ll become ill every time your other self passed it.”
“Ooh, well done,” I said, thankful for her keen insight. I made a mental plan of London’s geography, and reasoned we hadn’t ever travelled northwest from Westminster. Once we were in London, I veered course, and ended up in a small town called Kensington.
We spent all evening moving from one very respectable tavern to another, looking for information, and earwigging conversations. Abigail played the part of my ‘wench’, and attracted all sorts of comments from the drunken patrons around us.
We took a room that night, and although we slept together, and I felt considerable attraction towards her, I resisted all impulses, basking in Cora’s glow from the night before.
The next day we visited dressmakers and bought Abigail some new clothes and set the seamstresses making more. I hadn’t much coin left from my donation to the nunnery at Llanllyr, but enough to see us through a few days.
“We’re interested in settling here, in Kensington, but need a reasonably large sized house,” I said as the seamstresses took their measurements. The owner of the shop looked on, supervising, and probably thinking of the profit she’d make from us.
“I’d approach Sir William Paget, Earl Arundel,” she said, her eyes never leaving the work of her underlings. “He has property here in town, and would know if anything became available.”
I knew Earl Arundel attended the Queen’s court every day, so set off on my own, crossing the three miles across the common to Westminster.
Arundel remembered me from the Knight of the Bath ceremony, and seemed an approachable old man. I did feel slightly unsure in my approach, however, as the last time I’d seen him had been leaning over him in bed, trying to get him to save the life of Princess Elizabeth, about three months ago, in a time that hadn’t happened yet.
I mentally shook my head; with myself in my own timeline I would go through a lot of these timey-wimey moments. I actually cursed seeing episodes of Doctor Who when I was younger. And Quantum Leap.
“Go and see a chap called Christopher Fenwick,” Arundel said, nodding at his own information. “He owns a lot of Kensington; he’s the chap to deal with. Tell him you came from me, and he might be a bit amenable.”
So I zipped back to meet Abigail, standing outside the dress shop looking very stunning in her new almost fitting, off the peg number.
Two questions later, we stood in front of an imposing residence of Christopher Fenwick.
My name got us admitted to the house, and an immediate audience with the man himself; middle-aged, somewhat on the plump side, but he met us smiling, and fawning over Abigail.
“You need a habitation?” he said, his eyes never leaving her. “What made you chose Kensington?”
“I attend the Queen, and the town is only a few miles from the palace.”
Then Abigail walked over to Fenwick, and bent forward to kiss him. “Sell us a property, and let us out of here,” she whispered as her lips left his.
I’d never seen a man turned so quickly.
Then the shimmer came; not much, but very noticeable.
“Sloan House, just a few yards off Sloan Street.” He stiffened, and nodded, as if he’d done the deal already. “It has its own grounds, a high wall round it, and ten bedrooms. How does that sound?”
I nodded. “It sounds exactly what we need. How much will it cost?”
“A thousand pounds.”
Abigail looked at me, as if to ask, ‘That okay’? but I grinned and walked forward to shake his hand.
As I did so, I felt the earth tremble, the house shake fairly roughly, and the world winked in and out of focus. I froze, hoping it wouldn’t send me forward in time again. Doing this with three ‘me’s’ would have done my head in. Then, in seconds all went right back to normal.
“You have a deal, sir. I will have the money sent round within the week. I assume gold coin will be acceptable?”
He nodded, looking slightly flustered.
I took Abigail’s hand, pulling her towards the door. “Is the house empty, or does it have a staff?”
“A caretaker, and maybe a servant or two, I cannot remember.” His words followed us. “I will have my man, Graveney, take you over there, it’s not far.”
“Wonderful.” I grinned, then heard Graveney being called on, very loudly.
The simple story of how Sir Richard DeVere bought his own place in Kensington.
Sloan House turned out to be absolutely perfect for us; two stories, a ten foot stone wall around it, and plenty of trees in the grounds for shade during the few hot days England had. I reckoned it sat in two acres; plenty of room for our archery practice.
Arnold met Graveney at the door, and when informed of the house’s new owners, he introduced himself as caretaker, and bowed. “This is me missus, Sylvie.” Both grey-haired, both in their late fifties, maybe older, both bowing to us, Sir Richard DeVere, and his paramour.
We toured the house on our own, discussing the merits and problems it caused. With the exception of a couple of old chairs, the house had little furniture and we made mental lists as we walked. Every
bedroom had a fireplace, and since I already knew that the snow actually began in December in 1553, I felt grateful for the various sources of heating.
Downstairs, the main hallway opened to two large rooms, with a kitchen area and servant’s quarters to the rear.
Perfect.
Chapter 27
All Hallow’s Eve, 1553
Consolidation, and Future Plans
So basically, each night for a week or so, we moved outside of our Kensington neighborhood, and conducted a two-person crime wave. Drunks, taverns, carriages, brothels, and large houses, like Christopher Fenwick’s, were our basic targets, I even whizzed into Westminster Palace and snagged a few purses from the real gentry, and from Fakenham’s stash.
After a week, I called a halt; we’d amassed enough cash to buy the house, furnish it fully, and still give us enough for an emergency supply.
But we were also careful; we never paid anyone with the coins from the same robbery, we mixed and matched the gold and silver, and with the exception of good friend Christopher, we never stole from our own backyard.
Abigail left me for a couple of days to bring Cora to town. Now that we had our own place, there seemed no need to keep the girl in exile. She arrived wide-eyed, but didn’t take long to settle in. The furniture arrived daily; beds, chests of drawers, tables, chairs; just everything to get our ‘home’ to a livable level.
It also seems that banks hadn’t been invented yet, so basically, you had nowhere to keep your wealth, apart from at home, hidden around the house. Yes, there were some solicitors who would take care of such thing for you, but trust had to be built, and that didn’t come quickly.
But it made sense to have a base of operations; a pied-à-terre to work from, so I set up a system using two lawyers, and a large fund of gold. Between them they would ensure Sloan House always be maintained for the DeVere family, and a staff always employed.
I calculated the money I left in place would last for some years, and I determined to place a larger fund as we continued to use the premises.
We also bought men’s clothes for both Abigail and Cora, and continued archery lessons for both, not knowing exactly the plan to take down Fallon, and knowing that three arrows would be fired. At times, we ran through the gardens, dodging between the trees, firing our bows in increasing accuracy from various positions.