I’d never been a man myself to take a bondwoman by force or chase a serving girl for sport, as I knew that Hugh did frequently behind my mother’s back. When a base urge became too strong, I’d simply tamed the beast by taking it in hand. Or else paid Lewes whores to do it for me at a basic price for something brisk and businesslike, believing that the haste reduced the sin. And yet. And yet despite it all – despite my ignorance and my obsession with croisade, thoughts of the girl began to chafe at me like burrs inside my britches. When I beheld her riding legs astride, or pictured them astride without the horse, I couldn’t help but think, and revel in the thought that she would soon be mine to get an heir on. To fuck repeatedly and legally in sight of God and all his blushing angels.
It had taken the best part of two hours, nonetheless, to satisfy my squire that I was ready for my matress duty. I’d cleared my bowels. Jos set a tub before the kitchen fire in view of half a dozen smirking serfs, de-loused me, scrubbed me, shaved me, cleaned my teeth with salt and willow, even plucked my nostrils. He washed my hair in almond oil and trimmed it, combed the tangles to lie in meek waves on my neck, then showed me my reflection in a buckler. He groomed and polished every inch of me, but for my arme de combat which I attended to myself.
‘Long as life, eh Sir? Soon stretch her understandin’ that will!’ someone shouted from behind the pastry table.
The way Jos beamed as he held up a fur-lined pelisson to clothe my gleaming limbs, you might have thought he’d earned the compliment himself. With any more encouragement it wouldn’t have surprised me if my squire had stuck an apple in my mouth, a sprig of parsley up my arse and served me to the woman on a lattice of crossed leeks!
Flowers in the rushes on the floor – herb robert with fluellen and blue scabious to bring the grassy fragrance of the field into our chamber.
They’ve lit me in with torches made of hawthorn to bring fertility into the house. The fire is scented with sweet rosemary, and even Maman must appreciate an upper chamber with a chimney hearth, a thing unheard of in the north. Candles are everywhere – a chest, a hutch-press, perches for my clothes, a bench beside the hearth, a pisspot by the window. On the sill in a brown jug, Hoddie’s set a bunch of wilting harebells, one of the peasant women’s bouquets. The bed, near wide as it is long, stands open to the fire and Maman’s tactless observations.
‘But how wise to leave Sir Garon’s better sheets for later,’ she’s pretending to believe. ‘These wedding stains can be so stubborn – with first rate Irish linen hard to come by, I suppose, down here in Sussex?’
‘We weave and bleach our own linen and to a standard we have reason to be proud of,’ Lady Constance frigidly informs her.
‘And cat fur for a counterpane – do look Elise! How quaint it seems beside the marten we’ve been spoiled with up in Lancaster for all these years.’
‘I think the tabby’s lovely, Maman.’
And for Lord’s sake can’t she see I’m nervous – that the very last thing that I need just now’s another demonstration of her disapproval. Hod sees it, makes a sympathetic face while I squat on the pot beside the window. But Maman’s off again on a new tack.
‘We’ll put the candles out, and range the curtains round three sides of the bed-celer,’ she says to no one in particular and all of us in general. ‘That way Sir Garon’s first glimpse of my darling will be by firelight.’
‘Unless he falls and breaks his neck in his attempt to find her in the dark.’ Lady Constance gives a mirthless smile.
‘In my experience the method never fails in its effect on bridegrooms.’ Maman’s reaching up with both short arms to arrange the indigo-dyed curtains in the manner that she recommends, as Hoddie brings my night shift from its warming place before the fire.
‘It’s how we got Elise’s sister Cecily with child, when she was barely fifteen and her husband barely had the sense to tell his middle finger from his middle leg.’
‘Perhaps in his case,’ Lady Constance says caustically, ‘they were of the same size?’
Of course I know about these things. It hardly could be otherwise when you sleep with your parents half your life, and spend so much time stumbling over couples in the other half – in the long grass, in passageways and under tables – anywhere that they can find the space! You’d have to be blind, deaf and very stupid not to know what men and women do to together when they get the chance (although I do remember thinking as a child that if God extracted Eve from Adam’s body in the first place, it really should be women who are eager to get back into men and not the other way about).
After so many years of Maman’s teaching and of Hoddie’s, I think I know enough to be the mistress of a manor. Weaving isn’t difficult to learn and nor are spinning, baking, curing, brewing – none of them too hard to master once you know the way. But to be the mistress of a man in bed is something you would think, like Turkish-point, that needs some aptitude and quite a bit of practice – and although I’ve grasped the basics well enough I’m still a little hazy on the detail. I mean, how’s it going to feel to have that gristly thing pushed into me? And what should I be doing while he’s pushing? There’s bound to be some kind of trick to it…
Elise, unseemly! Stop at once!
‘The sheets have been well cleansed with Jordan Water. I saw to them myself,’ I am assured by Lady Constance.
‘And even if they’re still a little damp, please God the heated bricks I’ve brought will dry them in a jiffy.’ Maman’s wiping both hands on her skirts.
‘I’ve slipped some lavender and tansy leaves between them – and if I were you, chérie, I’d lodge a sprig or two under your shift as well.’
‘But see to it he asks you more than twice before you grant him sight of what’s below,’ Sir Garon’s mother offers as I climb into the bed. ‘You may believe that men will never set much value on a prize, my girl, unless they have to make some kind of trial to win it.’
‘Nor hit the target truly neither, the precious awks, without a woman’s hand to set them in the way.’ Hod pops a sugured violet in my mouth to make my breath smell sweet,
‘But don’t keep him waiting for too long dear,’ is Maman’s next advice. ‘Men can be generous enough and kind. But not when they’re denied.’
Hod’s sponged and scented me with lily water. She’s used carnation on my cheeks and lips, and even on the soft skin of my belly. I’d like to wriggle down in bed. But that would never do, because I have to be propped up on pillows while they spread my hair around me like a halo. The bolster smells of lavender and starch, has parsnip seeds pressed underneath it for fruitful union – and I can’t move my head for fear of ruining the look.
‘You look quite beautiful, my treasure.’
The pride in Maman’s voice is touching, until she spoils it with another caution. ‘’Tis best to leave your hair unbraided for the honey-month,’ is what she recommends. ‘It helps the man to think you maidenly each time he comes to bed – a virgin fresh and whole, you see, for him to conquer every night.’
But now at last it’s over – all the fussing, tweaking and instruction – and they’re leaving. Maman’s pinching out the candles…
‘I say the devil has the right of it, a woman looks as well undressed by firelight as in the costliest attire. Try not to think too much, my dear, it makes you frown and that’s so unattractive. And while you’re waiting it would do no harm to say a rosary.’
Her very last advice – ‘Or if there’s time, a prayer to Margaret of Antioch who blesses all our bellies.’
Hoddie’s trying to tiptoe away on feet three times too large to manage it. Her chin recedes. She’s dewlapped like a bloodhound. But her grim smile as they pass through the chamber door tugs at my heartstrings.
So I’m alone and shivering despite the fire – interlacing fingers, wriggling my toes and sucking on the violet muscadin. It’s been a strange, momentous day, and nothing stranger than this moment, now.
Afraid? I know I must be because my heart is be
ating on my ribs like something in a cage! There’s no escape, nowhere to hide – what’s been a game before now all too real.
What can I do that’s calming? ‘Ave Maria gratia plena… Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee…’
The glass beads of the rosary are something to hold onto. Above the beam that ties its outer walls there’s nothing but a film of cobwebs to separate us from the men. They’re laughing out there. Someone’s playing bagpipes. The fire has been attended to and has a good red heart, its flames embracing seasoned wood, gleaming on the bedposts. Dancing on the wall.
Silence now beyond the beam. But there’s the latch. He’s coming in! ‘Sancta Maria, mater Dei…’ Surely your Joseph was a gentle sort of man who wouldn’t treat a woman ill?
Holy Saint Margaret, please help me do it right…’
‘Knees up little lady! Best way to say yer prayers tonight,’ a drunken voice cries through the open door. ‘Give thanks for what ye will receive ’afore ye taste the flavour!’
Low comedy which isn’t funny, not at all (although what about the knees? I wish when Garda listed all the ways she’s tried it, I’d paid her more attention.)
Will he speak first? Or shall I do it? Surely anything is better than a silence?
The hinges creak. The door latch drops a second time. He’s shooting the top bolt, and now the other…
Time to set the rosary aside. ‘Dear God, defend me with Thy mighty power, and remind him if You will, that I’m an untried virgin.
So eyes tight shut and all my other senses straining…
Can he see how my hair’s spread on the pillow? I hope that Maman’s right about the firelight. But now I wish I hadn’t closed my eyes – because I can’t see WHAT HE’S DOING!
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was difficult to see what I was doing when I’d shut the door and shot the bolts. But of course I knew what was expected, knew I had to do my duty as a husband before I came to open it again, to prove myself a natural man in the most obvious way on earth.
I felt excited, agitated, hot as hades, cold as Ice. No one, I told myself with one hand underneath my robe, would call me ‘soft-sword’ – least of all my wife.
I found her in the bed where I was born, eyes closed, hair rippling across the pillows like ripe corn in the breeze. I knew she couldn’t be asleep because behind me Martin Reeve was either torturing an jackass or playing something on his bagpipes.
Then Jos began to sing about the law of cock and how it goes. ‘Take it as a truth from one who knows. The more we use the thing the more it grows!’
A burst of laughter followed, along with all the usual hints for threading needles, planting roots and imitating randy livestock. That’s how it is at weddings. All brides the same. All waiting for a husbandman, or bull, or ram to fuck them. That’s how it was with us. And as she waited for me with her eyes closed, my new wife must have seen herself as I did. As a ready cunt.
OW! OW! OW! Garda told me it would hurt the first time – and it DOES! So thick and hot it burns like fire!
But Garda didn’t say how HEAVY he would be, how far he’d ram that alien thing inside me – jarring, pounding, crushing me into the mattress, forcing my legs wider with each furious thrust! He didn’t ask me, hardly even spoke. He just looked baffled for a moment, then made a frantic dive to sieze me like some kind of animal. I swore I wouldn’t scream or cry – eyes on the canopy above us, mouth tight, tight shut. But I can’t BREATHE! No air! Can’t take the weight! His fingers hurt – tight round my neck as if he thinks I might escape. I have to STOP HIM! Have to try to heave him off before…
‘Ahh-aaa-oo-aaaah!!!’
Convulsion. Yeasty, beery breath gusting from his lungs into my face. And someone cheering, chanting something lewd about Jack and planting orchards – more cheers. More catcalls, drunken laughter…
But thank the Lord, he’s off me – hot and slimy and SO WET!
It’s all SO VERY WET AND MESSY! I know that this is not the time for squeamishness. But Jésu, what a stink! (And who’d have thought that it would smell of ivy pollen, and so strongly?) And what a clumsy, painful, messy sort of business altogether! I didn’t even feel it spurt as I expected, only heard the fuss he made.
So is this IT? Is THIS the thing men boast and sing about so endlessly? Because if it is, it’s going to take a lot of getting used to – that’s all that I can say! He’s dribbled on me and there’s blood – down here and on my fingers where I’ve touched it…
But oh dear, a sudden picture’s flashed into my mind of Everlasting God with grey hair and a long grey beard, peering through the clouds to see me flattened and spread-eagled, sticky with Sir Garon’s seed! God speaking in my father’s sternest tones.
‘I TOLD YOU NOT TO EAT THE APPLE, TOLD YOU IT WAS BITTER TO THE TASTE! BUT THEN YOU HAD TO HAVE IT DIDN’T YOU, MY FOOLISH CHILD. AND NOW SEE WHAT IT’S BROUGHT YOU!’
I hear The Everlasting’s voice. But not Sir Garon’s, not a peep. Only pants and groans, a huge yawn and a series of deep breaths – because, I wish he wasn’t but he’s already snoring like a hedge-pig – fast asleep!
While I am bound to lie here wide-awake for simply hours!
Muffled birdsong, distant cock-crow, dawn light through the window, ashes in the hearth. So here are we a married couple, and joined last night by rather more than hands and vows!
See here’s a bloodstain on my shift, another on the sheet. Maman will be gratified to see them, and that’s something I suppose. Anyway the worst is over and I didn’t cry aloud. And there he lies, my untamed ravisher, flat on his back across the ruin of our bed – a Samson shorn, a naked man asleep – eyes shut, chin sticking up, mouth open, snoring still ’though not so loud. We make our faces work so hard to tell our stories while we are awake, and look so different when we aren’t. It’s true. He looks much better doesn’t he without the shifty eyes.
The cat-fur’s on the floor, the over-sheet bunched up across one thigh and twisted round his foot. Those arms and hands – last night they felt like iron bars! He has big knuckles and broad fingers, a hairy crucifix imprinted on his chest – yellow bruises, traces of old scars, outlines of bones beneath the skin and two red fleabites on his neck…
So long as he’s asleep I have him to myself, to smooth his hair if I so choose. To feel the ragged edge of his sliced ear. And yes Elise, admit it – to take a good long look at what he has down there while you still have the chance!
It isn’t that I’ve never seen one. But glimpses of pink sprouts in hair – of men on hot days in the water, or pissing against tree-trunks – can hardly count as decent views. Well, can they? In chansons the male member is a force of life, battling with death to fountain seed into the world. In verse it is the mythic horn – the unicorn that’s bound to women by a golden chain.
But now I can look his fiery engine in the eye, I can’t say that I find it all that wonderfully impressive. What does it remind me of – shrunken, limply wrinkled, lolling drunkenly across a shiny slime-trail on his thigh? Much lesss a unicorn I’d say than a defenceless turtle squab hatched out of hairy eggs! And puny actually, beside a horse’s or a mule’s. No honestly, it doesn’t seem to go with any other part of him, looks added on somehow, and strange for something quite so commonplace and universal. I mean all men must have one…
But I’ve just thought, if God made men in His Own Image, He must have one too! (Stop it you wicked girl – that’s more than quite enough! But the Everlasting with a pizzle. What a fantasic thought!)
I know I shouldn’t smile, but it’s so silly, all of it – the legendary unicorn, the songs men sing obsessively about their own peculiar bodies, and in the end the unimpressive thing itself. To look at it you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt – the only mystery how men can ever hope to be taken seriously with that arrangement dangling between their legs or standing up and sticking out in front…
But Holy Godfathers, HE IS AWAKE!!
It’s said the way you feel when you awak
e from your first engagement with a woman is like to set the pattern for your future with her, and if that’s true it didn’t bode too well for ours!
I’d seen her smile before I quite remembered where I was. And when I did, and caught her smirking at my cock, my confidence was shattered.
The night before, I’d acted as I thought no worse than any man confronted by a virgin bride. Squared my shoulders. Boldly pulled the sheet aside, and muttering ‘Victoire’ beneath my breath, lifted her shift to bare the target and make my charge against its maiden shield. No sense, I thought, in wasting time or looking doubtful. She’d flinched a bit and cried a little afterwards as I’d been told she would. But by then I’d dropped into the blameless sleep of any fellow who’s successfully performed his matress-duty.
At dawn I’d planned another onslaught, knowing they expected me to do it twice at least within the first hours of her breeding cycle. And ’though I’d wilted sometime in the night, to wake as limp as a slit pilchard I would have risen to the task and willingly.
I would have done. I’m sure I would. But for the girl’s unnerving smile.
‘I can explain,’ she said. But when she tried she only made things worse. I can’t recall the words she used to make me think that she admired my body. I wasn’t in a frame to listen. Instead I broke all records for jumping out of bed and dressing, stumbled on the hutch beside the bed and stubbed my toe, but didn’t care and wouldn’t stop not even for an instant. With boots in hand I freed the chamber door and bolted through it.
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