by P. J. Fox
Hart stepped in closer, his voice pitched for her alone. “Are you sure you’re not with child? Sometimes when women are new to, ah, when it’s their first time they miss the signs—”
Isla hit him. Hard. “Yes I am sure!” she cried.
Into one of those peculiarly timed silences that seems to affect every group, no matter how large. Heads turned. Isla purpled. As if she hadn’t given everyone on this blasted trip enough to talk about already. Defiantly, she smiled. Beside her, Hart rubbed his arm.
“Well that settles that, then.” He sounded aggrieved. And then, trying for a lighter tone and a less controversial topic, “we’ve stopped for lunch.”
“Oh, really.” Isla peered into her saddlebags. “I thought we’d stopped to meet the Elf King.”
“Really, what’s with you lately?” Hart’s tone was complaining. He seemed to take Isla’s ill humor as a personal insult and he was, Isla supposed, at least partly justified. He hadn’t done anything to earn Isla’s animosity. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was here, wasn’t he?
Isla glanced up. They were alone. “Listen, I’m…sorry.” The word, as necessary as it was, caught in her throat. “I know I’ve been…difficult lately.” She met her brother’s eyes, the same brilliant green as her own. Only where his were as clear as emeralds, hers were bog water. “It’s difficult, being a pariah. You wouldn’t know, because everyone likes you. And I don’t begrudge you that; I don’t mean to suggest that you’re doing anything wrong and I want people to like you. You deserve to have people like you. But…it’s hard, being cheerful, day after day”—or at all—”in the face of…this.”
“You deserve to have people like you, too,” Hart said seriously.
But before he could say more, Rowena appeared. Rather than simply ignore Isla, as reason would dictate, she seemed to derive some bizarre pleasure from following her sister around and baiting her. She smiled up at Hart. She was wearing her second best riding habit, and clutched in her hands was The Chivalrous Heart. She’d taken to reading it at lunch.
Eir reappeared, too, from wherever she’d been. Probably helping herself to a bite or two of lunch, as well. Something warm and fuzzy and easy to eat, Isla thought darkly. Like a wolf.
They sat down. Frost-hardened grass crunched beneath her. The air had warmed considerably since she first woke, frigid and stiff and miserable, but Isla couldn’t forget that winter was coming. Especially now that they were approaching the series of passes known as the gate to the true North; with each increase in elevation, the mornings got a little colder.
She wondered idly what was happening at Enzie and decided, probably, nothing. Silas the new overseer seemed competent enough, and he’d had things more or less in hand when they’d left. There’d be more fighting, against every hint of progress he tried to introduce, but she supposed he must be up to the challenge. Tristan, after all, would hardly have sent a man unequal to—
Tristan again. She couldn’t escape thinking about him. She looked down at her lunch, an unappetizing selection of beef strips and one withered apple. The apple was withered before its time; had come off the branch withered. The beef strips were from the previous fall, and as tough as old boot leather. Isla worried seriously that if she tried to chew them she might arrive for her wedding minus her teeth.
And what a lovely bride she’d make then.
“Courtly love,” Rowena droned, “is at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent. The true knight,” she continued, “falls in love with the idea of the woman. With woman as purity, as the ultimate expression of perfection. He admires her from afar, goes to war to defend her virtue and, ultimately, sacrifices his life in her name.
“He does not, however, touch her, because to touch her would be to defile—”
“Hey now,” Hart said reasonably, “that all seems a little unrealistic. Especially if you’re going to get married. And I can tell you,” he added, “from personal experience, being a man, that this—fantasy—isn’t what men want at all. A man might be aroused, enough, as you say by the idea of a virginal woman. But only because he sees her as a challenge. And believes, moreover, that he’ll be the one to thaw the ice. You see—”
“Hart,” Rowena cried, “that is absolutely disgusting!”
“No, it’s actually a lot of fun.”
“The church teaches that celibacy is best, even within marriage. And that when one must stoop so low as to engage in—the act—either to procreate or to satisfy one’s husband’s lustful urges, one must adopt the position least likely to produce pleasure.”
Women, Isla thought, studying her apple, had lustful urges, too. Rowena was right on one score, though: the church frowned on pleasure. The woman on top, which was, according to Rose, the most delightful position was forbidden because it interfered with the natural order. As did love a tergo, or entering her from behind. Isla, who’d heard of none of these positions a fortnight ago, had gotten quite an education from her lady’s maid.
All theoretical, of course.
Should the church somehow discover one indulging in these forbidden pleasures, the penalty could be very harsh: years’ worth of penance, and sometimes even death. And for what? Again according to Hart, some men were too infirm or simply too fat for the more athletic, ah…positions. Why wasn’t becoming too fat to mount a woman properly a sin?
“Procreation is, of course, essential.” Rowena sniffed. “Which is why the Dark One works so hard to prevent its occurrence.”
“You mean,” said Hart, around a mouthful of food, “by trying to make achieving the act as unpleasant as possible?”
Rowena shot her half-brother a withering look. “By sabotaging the male member. Impotence,” she continued, “is caused by demons.”
Isla started to choke.
TWENTY-ONE
“I was told, by Rand, that the priest had advised him to track down the woman he believed was responsible for bewitching his member and persuade her, with violence if necessary, to restore his erections.” They were back in the saddle, Hart riding along beside her.
Eir rode slightly behind them both, contributing nothing to the conversation. For which Isla was glad. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the gnome’s thoughts on this topic.
“Actually,” Hart continued, “it turned out that he’d merely had too much ale.”
They’d spend another few hours riding, and then stop for the night. And as much as Isla hated the unending and unchanging nature of their travel, she hated the idea of stopping more. First, every time they stopped represented another delay and reaching her goal seemed just that littlest bit more impossible. Didn’t anyone understand, she wanted to shout? They had to get there. But no one, of course, shared her urgency. Or cared, really, one way or the other. To them, whether they arrived—or not—was completely immaterial.
Which brought her to her second point: if they did know how much this mattered to her, they might slow down even more just to spite her. She was a pariah. At night, after they made camp and while everyone else chatted and laughed with their friends, Isla sat alone.
She’d tried joining her family. Hart, at least, was happy enough to see her. But Rowena almost immediately started lecturing on one subject or another. Her gaze fixed on some far point, Isla was meant to believe that Rowena had simply thought of this issue. Coincidentally. Her disdain for Isla wasn’t personal; she just happened to see, at that exact moment, an excellent opportunity for edification. The earl, meanwhile, coughed and drank and acted so awkward that Isla wanted to sob.
They all made such a production of how heroic they were in sharing her space.
Isla got the distinct feeling, every time, that she was supposed to be grateful.
So she sat alone, with her thoughts. Sometimes with Eir, too, and sometimes with Rose, although Rose was popular and usually requested elsewhere. She sat, Isla thought, with her mistress out of guilt. And sometimes Hart joined them, too. Most of
ten when Rose was there.
But for the most part, Isla was alone.
Women had lustful urges, too, she’d wanted to tell Rowena. Women, that was, except Rowena. Who if she’d ever had a lustful thought in her life had buried it down so deep as to be almost unrecognizable. Rudolph, undoubtedly, merely thought her to be putting on an act. Like Hart had mentioned at lunch. Pretending coyness, as so many women did, only to reveal—to the right man, and on her wedding night—the fire within. If things continued as they were, though, Rudolph would soon get a terrible surprise.
So many things about marriage, Isla reflected, were a surprise. She’d heard the horror stories, growing up; everyone had. In a world where marriage for love was almost unheard-of, horror stories were common. Of women who discovered, on their wedding nights, that their husbands had no interest in women; of men who discovered, similarly, that their wives had no interest in men. Of couples who loathed each other, found it impossible to be in the same room with each other they were each so repelled by the other’s presence.
Even Isla’s marriage couldn’t be strictly termed a love match; whoever had contacted whom first, she’d only even met Tristan in the first place because her father had something to offer. Something he wanted. And, of course…she shuddered, remembering back to the night they’d first spoken. Whatever her feelings for him now, her fear of him had never entirely fled.
Was she right to be afraid?
Looking around at her traveling companions, she wondered again how things had gotten this bad, this quickly. She’d thought, the season before, that she’d had a happy enough family. Of course, she hadn’t been happy—but as she’d been trained from birth to think that she had no right to be, she’d hardly held that against anyone. And then…from that first moment when she’d finally asserted herself, that was when the first stones fell. Within the fortnight, the foundation of her life had collapsed.
If she wasn’t important, then why did everything depend on her staying home and sacrificing her own future to wait on her father? To, with each decision, with each very breath, make up for his deficiencies? Who had allotted her to the position of permanent scapegoat, and why?
“What are you thinking about?”
Isla started. “What?”
“Well,” Hart said reproachfully, “clearly you weren’t transported by my amusing story.”
Isla had heard enough about Hart’s friends and their cocks to last her a lifetime. Men, as a group, seemed singularly proud of these appendages. Appendages which were, apart from everything else, an accident of birth. Large, small, functioning or no, what did it truly have to do with them? And yet each man seemed to regard his own as his greatest achievement.
She found her mind turning back to Tristan. She couldn’t help thinking about him, even when she didn’t want to. Especially when she didn’t want to. Lately, everything reminded her of him. Of his still posture and his dark, penetrating gaze. Of how he made her feel, when he touched her. She’d seen his cock, and well enough. That, she hadn’t told Rose. Rose was the only person in this accursed group not laboring under the delusion that Isla had done a good deal more than see it—and probably was with child, regardless of her protestations.
In fact, the more she protested the more everyone seemed to disbelieve her!
I’m a virgin, she wanted to shout.
Tristan was her only hope. She’d pinned all her dreams of escape on him, all her dreams for a future that meant something. But what if he was a false hope? What if, as she’d caught herself worrying—more and more, lately, if she were truly honest with herself—he’d merely been leading her on to his own purposes? If he were here, she thought, she’d have an easier time dispelling these fears. She hadn’t, after all, felt them—or at least not much—when she was with him before. She’d been too busy falling in love.
But without him…alone with her thoughts and surrounded on all sides by people she’d once loved and who’d turned out to be enemies, she found that she had a very hard time trusting herself.
Her instincts had betrayed her before, with Rowena….
“So,” Hart prompted, “what are you thinking about?”
“The king,” Isla said.
“The king?” Hart seemed taken aback.
“Yes. I’m wondering if he truly wanted to be king, or if he simply found himself on the throne because no one else would take the job.” If he’d sacrificed himself, as Isla had. Maybe he’d grown into the position later, thankful for his good luck, or maybe he still felt trapped. More and more each day, as the walls closed in around him, the life he’d chosen more and more anathema to his very being.
“The divine right of kings,” Hart quoted, surprising her, “means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost. Isn’t that what the great wit said?” He was referring to a rather well known religious thinker, who’d been burned at the stake for heresy. Which heresy, Isla didn’t remember. There were so many, these days.
“I’d imagine,” Hart continued, “that no one fights for a throne, save he wants to sit on it. A throne—both the taking and the keeping—is far too large a piece of work to be undertaken on a lark. So yes, undoubtedly our Piers is quite pleased with himself.”
“We often find ourselves doing things,” Isla replied, “agreeing to things, not because we want them but because we have no choice in the matter. After all,” she pointed out, turning and meeting her brother’s gaze squarely, “can you truly say that going north is entirely your wish? Living, friendless, among a people alien to you? Adopting their gods?”
“Yes,” Hart said easily. “I’m footloose and fancy free. I have no title to inherit and thus no responsibilities—to anyone but myself, that is. I can go where I please, do as I please. There was nothing stopping me from staying home, or riding south to Eamont.
“And even if you argue,” he continued, showing a rare flash of what Isla thought of as his philosopher’s streak, “that my so-called choices are illusory merely because they’re limited…well by that same logic, no man has a choice.” He paused, thinking. They were riding down a wide, pitted road, this particular section of which was bordered by a sad-looking fence. Whoever owned this land hadn’t maintained it properly in some time.
Perhaps this, Isla thought, was one of the many farms that lay fallow after the war. So much land, all over Morven, was just waiting to be claimed. The labor shortage was terrible, even as the capital swelled with a record number of homeless.
Yellow-brown grass, long uncut, waved in the slight breeze.
“Besides which,” Hart added, “Piers did have a choice. He wasn’t some bastard, forced to forge his path in an unforgiving world. He was—is—the scion of a noble house. Let’s not forget, darling sister, that Piers is the older of the two brothers. But for his thoughtfully vacating Darkling Reach, he’d be Warden of the North. Tristan sits that throne by his sufferance. So yes,” he concluded, “given that Darkling Reach is all but a kingdom in its own right I’d say that his primary motive must have been discontent.”
Hart had been scanning the fields as he spoke, but now he turned. “Why?”
Isla didn’t respond.
“Getting cold feet?” When Hart spoke again, he’d returned to scanning their surroundings. They’d woken that morning in what passed for forest around here and had now, after riding through open country for hours, reached the edge of another glen. A marching stand of trees glared down at them, sentinel-like. Isla, with a shiver, thought of Cariad’s home.
“Because, you know…you’ve already…and I’m not saying it should, of course, I’m a lover of women myself and as people, too, not merely vessels for pleasure but, you know—”
He was really bumbling this.
“Some men might be a bit aggrieved to discover that someone else had been there before them. And he’s rich,” Hart added quickly, “and an excellent judge of horseflesh. He has a fine bow arm also and I’m told that women find him quite attractive. Rose says that he….” Hart’s face fell.
“Oh, bollocks. What I mean is—”
“Hart, give up.” Gods preserve them from Hart offering marital advice. The man for whom relationship meant an exchange of coins. But still, Isla was smiling. In spite of herself.
TWENTY-TWO
Rose was explaining that some men used something called a sheath. Richer men had a new one for every encounter: small linen bags drenched in a solution of salt and herbs. Which herbs, specifically, Rose didn’t know and Isla could only dare speculate. Moreover, Isla didn’t see how salt protected one against disease. Or linen. The church said that bathing naked was sinful, but advised wearing a linen shift. If the shift were little enough protection against ill humors that the church all but forbid bathing on the grounds that water caused disease, then how would the same fabric protect one elsewise?
“Do they protect against pregnancy?” Isla asked.
They were sitting by the fire, alone. Hart had been there until recently, but had gone off in search of other entertainment. No one else wanted to sit with Isla; she was very sure that Rose didn’t, either, but had joined her from a sense of obligation.
The air was chill and a stiff breeze blew. Isla had seen Tristan’s member, so she knew what men were about, but still couldn’t quite picture the act itself. Ladies didn’t talk of such things. Which meant that Rose, with her endless prattle on topics related and non, was Isla’s only source of information. Between noble and peasant existed an almost unbelievable double standard. Noblewomen were kept virtually locked in their rooms, as noblemen everywhere seemed plagued with the idea that their children might not be their own. Which spoke to Isla of a certain…low self-esteem.
The prevailing view was that even going so far as to teach a girl what sex was would result in her immediately rushing out to have it. Becoming insensible with lust, leaving her better judgment behind as she plunged headlong into a hedonistic abyss. Much like men did, she thought darkly, the minute they became old enough.