The girl hesitated just long enough to demonstrate some free will before she obeyed. She smiled at me and whispered as she moved away, “I will see you again soon, señor.” I just grinned for at that moment I really did not have the strength for any amorous pursuit.
In any event her hopes of seeing me soon seemed destined to be unfulfilled as the old man came back and scooped me up and carried me into the cottage. We went through the kitchen and then through the room that served as their bedroom into another bedroom beyond. There I was laid on a low, narrow bed that I guessed was the daughter’s. The old man picked up a dresser of clothes and carried that back out of the door to wherever in the cottage the daughter was now going to sleep. It was the first proper bed I had laid on in weeks and within minutes I was asleep.
I stayed tucked up in that bed for two days, interrupted only by the woman with bowls of delicious soup and bread and use of the jakes pot on a chair in the corner. Occasionally I tried to make pictures from the cracks and stains in the low ceiling that hung over the bed, but for the most part I just enjoyed the peace and relaxation. I even managed to sleep through the loud snoring of the couple in the next room each night and the distant clanging of metal sometimes heard during the day.
On the third morning, though, I decided it was time to get up and stretch my legs. After the wife had brought bread for breakfast, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and staggered a little unsteadily to the door. My chest had not bled for a day and was feeling much better, but my legs needed to start regaining their strength. I walked through the empty bedroom next door and into the kitchen. That was also deserted, but I noticed that a bed had been set up in a store room on the other side of the kitchen. Moving to the outside door, I could see the woman and the daughter working in the fields, but a clanging nearby told me that the blacksmith was at work. I walked slowly outside the cottage and round to the forge.
“You can walk then.” The smith nodded at me as he pushed tongs containing some metal back into the glowing coals.
“Yes, I took a lance in the leg at Albuera but it did not break the bone. I was shot through the chest too.”
“You were lucky; two men from the village died there fighting.” He paused, eyeing me over, before he added, “Any man who kills the French is all right by me, provided he keeps his hands off my daughter.”
“I can assure you, sir…” I began, but he cut me off.
“I will only say this once,” he growled. “The girl is innocent and pure and I will not have her corrupted. I will geld any man who lays a finger on her and I will do it with my hammer.” To reinforce the point he plunged his tongs back into the coals and brought out a glowing orange bolt the size of a man’s cock. He put it on the anvil and spoke to me above the sound of the ringing hammer as sparks sprayed from the metal. Clang. “I hope…” Clang. “… we understand…” Clang. “… each other.”
I watched, transfixed, as the glowing metal was slowly flattened from the rhythmic beating. As the size of the metal stretched I felt my manhood shrink. The thought of that hammer and red-hot metal anywhere near me did not bear thinking about. “I can assure you, sir,” I tried again, “that I just want to get well and get back to the army.” I meant it too. I was cut off and alone in that village, and while the girl was pretty, she was not worth the risk.
“Aye, well, just so we are clear. There is a razor and a metal bowl over there,” he said, pointing to the corner of the forge. “You can warm some water in the coals to shave, and if you are fit enough, you can help work the bellows.”
For the next week or so I helped out with some light work in the forge. Mostly I worked the bellows with either my arm or, using a rope loop, with my legs. I liked the old man. It was through him that I learned of the battle between Wellington and Massena at Fuentes de Oñoro. Like Albuera it had been inconclusive, leaving both armies in a state of stalemate on either side of the Portuguese border. The allies held the fortresses on the Portuguese side while the French held the Spanish ones, and neither side seemed to have the will or resources to displace the other. The smith did not care what happened in Spain; he was just concerned that the French would not invade Portugal again. He told me that during the last French occupation of the region he had sent his wife and daughter into the hills, with many of the other women from the town. “The French tortured and hanged plenty of men from here, but they left me alone. I was too useful for repairing weapons and shoeing horses.”
Slowly, as the days passed, I felt my strength coming back. The wife washed my clothes while I borrowed some of her husband’s, and with a daily shave I felt I was on the mend. When you look better you often feel better too. I cut myself a suitable walking stick and took to having an afternoon stroll through the village and a glass of wine at the tavern.
Wherever possible I tried to avoid the daughter, and as her parents were of the same mind it did not prove difficult. For several days she was sent away to visit an aunt. It was the day after she returned that things got more complicated. As I came back from my regular afternoon walk I heard a splashing sound from her little room off the kitchen. Instinctively I turned to look and found her washing with the door open. She still had a shift on but it was wet and stuck to her in all the right places. She gave me a coquettish, knowing smile and I realised that the minx had planned the encounter. My mouth went dry as I looked on and tried to remember when I had last been with a woman. Sally Benton seemed a distant memory and I heard a low growl of desire come from the back of my throat. But my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of dull clanging coming from the forge outside. My ardour cooled like a red-hot rivet being plunged into a bucket of water. “Apologies, ma’am,” I mumbled before turning back out of the door.
My hands were shaking slightly as I reached the well outside for a drink. By God I needed a woman, but not that one. I was fond of my manhood unflattened. There was a wench in the tavern who might oblige and I resolved to ply her with brandy and try her out on my next visit.
I took my supper in my room that evening. If the daughter was willing to play dangerous games like that, I did not want to give the father any grounds for suspicion. I lay awake later that night listening to the old boy snore in the next room, but for me sleep would not come. Every time I tried to doze my mind would conjure the image of the girl with her wet shift clinging to her most delicious breasts.
When I first heard the noise I assumed it was a mouse or rat scurrying above the plastered ceiling. Then I heard the joists creak above me. Someone was in the attic, and as the snoring from the old man and his wife continued, I could guess who it was.
I stared at the now familiar cracks above my head. Candle light started to shine through three of them that made a triangle shape in the ceiling. Then the centre of the triangle moved to create a hole in the roof. The glow from a candle in the attic illuminated a pair of shapely naked legs that dangled through the hole. They were followed by a rope that was slowly lowered to the floor. Maria de Pilar slipped down the rope with practised ease as I swung my legs out of the bed.
“What are you doing?” I whispered hoarsely. It was a stupid question and one that she did not bother answering with words. Her left hand dropped to my shoulder where I still sat on the side of the bed while she bent down and moved her lips down onto mine to still any further enquiries. My body reacted automatically, my left arm around her waist while my right moved up to cup one of those splendid bouncers. Her tongue darted into my mouth, giving further confirmation that the daughter was not nearly as innocent as her father believed. Any lingering doubts were gone a moment later when her right hand disappeared underneath my nightshirt. In a moment she had demonstrated that she certainly knew how to raise more than just my spirits.
I gave a low groan of pleasure and she stopped kissing me long enough to whisper in my ear, “You must not make any noise or my father will hear you.” Those words gave me momentary alarm but a second’s listening proved that the snoring in the next room was just as loud as ev
er. Whether the briefest thought of her father had caused me to flag I don’t know, but now her mouth moved down my body. Her tongue could do things that would have earned her a fortune in a Parisian brothel and I was left gasping in silent delight.
She was an artisan of lovemaking, such that I had not experienced since my days in India. Just when I thought I could bear it no longer she pushed me back on the bed and climbed astride me. How I did not burst my chest wound stitches in the next few minutes is beyond me. If Albuera had taken me to the seventh pit of hell then Maria del Pilar took me to the seventh circle of ecstasy as compensation. She might have been the daughter of a blacksmith, but she was a master craftswoman in her own right.
I was gasping for air as she finished, the blood still rushing in my ears. I strained to listen, and despite the noise we had been making, the snoring in the next room went on with the same regular rhythm.
“How did you know about the hole in the ceiling?” I whispered.
“Silly, I made it months ago when this was my room so that I could go out and see some of the boys in the village.” I grinned in the darkness. “What are you smiling for?”
“Those boys you were with before,” I told her. “I feel sorry for them. Wherever they go in the world, being in bed with a woman is likely to be a disappointment after being with you.”
She purred with pleasure at the compliment. “You have been to many countries?” she asked.
“Yes, quite a few. In India they have temples to the art of lovemaking. You could be a high priestess over there.”
“I have only been in this village and the surrounding towns. My father made me live in the hills when the French came. I want to travel and visit different countries. Will you take me to Britain and this place called India?”
I grinned and patted her shoulder. “We’ll see,” I said in the same tone you might use on a child asking for something that you had no intention of giving them. But Maria del Pilar was not going to be fobbed off like a child, as I was to discover later.
We lay in each other’s arms for most of that night, before Maria disappeared up her rope and back to her own room. The next morning we studiously avoided each other, assisted in that purpose by her parents, who were clearly oblivious to our earlier liaison.
So began one of the most pleasurable months of my life. During the day I would rest in the sun and take gentle exercise, walking or helping the old man in his forge with the bellows. In the evening an angel would drop from the heavens and take me to paradise. My strength slowly recovered and as it did so we became more adventurous in that tiny bedroom. I recalled various colourful Indian temple freezes and we carried out our own re-enactments, all without making a sound. In fact I got so used to silent lovemaking that when I was next in a brothel the girl complained that I showed her no appreciation. We were fortunate that her parents were heavy sleepers and only once did we wake them. Maria was doing something exquisite with her fingers while I took her from behind and I let out an involuntary howl of pleasure.
“Señor Flashman,” called her mother, knocking quietly at the door. “Are you all right?”
The door was less than a yard away from where her daughter was bent over the end of the bed receiving the Flashy one-gun salute. I am proud to say that I did not even break my rhythm as I quietly moved one foot in front of the door while I whispered back, “I am sorry I woke you, ma’am. I have cramp in my wounded leg. I am just doing some exercises to loosen the muscles. Best not come in as I am naked.”
“I am sorry you are hurt, señor,” called back the trusting mother. “Exercise as much as you want.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I replied, grabbing hold of her daughter’s hips and pulling them towards me. “I am sure what I am doing will bring relief.”
Of course I was getting over-confident, a state which normally presages disaster. But there was no sign of imminent calamity the next morning when I helped the smith with the bellows. In fact quite the reverse.
“My wife tells me you were in in pain last night,” he said between pounding a horseshoe.
“Oh, it was nothing, just the old wound settling down,” I replied jovially, patting the fast-healing injury in my thigh.
“I am sorry I did not hear you. I am a little deaf after all these years hammering metal.” He grinned as he plunged a new horseshoe in a bucket of water. As it hissed and steamed he flexed his huge shoulders. “I have a bottle of muscle liniment if you need it. You are welcome to borrow some. I have to say that I have enjoyed having you here much more than I thought. You are an honourable man and have stayed well clear of Maria. My wife thinks that she has a new boy in the village as she has been very distracted lately.”
“Well, you know what young boys are like,” I replied airily, happy to deflect suspicion in a new direction. “I have enjoyed staying here too. In fact I was wondering if we could extend our agreement? I have another two coins I could give you.”
The smith agreed to a second month without any difficulty at all and so I happily continued my time of daily and nightly exercise. I am bound to say that the liniment worked well too. It stung like a whip stroke, but it had a powerful alcohol in it that brought heat deep within my thigh and the muscle seemed to get stronger by the day.
Chapter 12
It was midway through the second month that things started to unravel. Too much of anything can become tiresome after a while, and Maria was starting to get tedious. It was not so much the lovemaking, which was as creative as usual, but the whispered conversations afterwards. The girl was obsessed with leaving the village. She was constantly nagging at me to help her get away. To get a few days’ peace I had even suggested to her mother that if a boy in the village was getting a bit forward, taking her away for a couple of days might be a good idea. But before that scheme could be put in to action Maria launched a plan of her own.
We were lying on my narrow bed after a bout of fornication that would have earned her a standing ovation at Mrs Belmont’s House of Pleasure in Piccadilly when she ruined the mood.
“I have not had my monthly bleed this month,” she whispered. The blood chilled in my veins. “If you have given me a baby, you will marry me, won’t you?” Displaying an appalling knowledge of geography that was only exceeded by her ignorance of my intentions, she added, “You can take me away from here and we can live in a palace in India and go to London for dances.”
I had a horrible flashback to a similar conversation when I was just eighteen. I doubted that girl had been pregnant then and I was by no means sure now about Maria. She saw me as a means of escape and might be trying the oldest trick in the book to get me to do her bidding. In any event I was not going to marry her; for one thing I already had an estranged wife in England, a little detail I had not thought fit to mention.
“Is it one or two days’ ride between London and India?” she twittered on. “Will we need to go by carriage? Do you have a carriage of your own?”
“Let’s wait and see if you are going to have a baby first,” I told her. “Your father would be very cross with you if he knew you had been visiting me.” My mind was suddenly filled with a vision of a metal bolt getting crushed flat with a hammer. The thought left me quite shrivelled.
“Oh, he won’t mind if you marry me,” she prattled on in my ear. “I think my father likes you.”
I managed to persuade her to keep quiet for a few more days, but she was now so excited about the thought of leaving the village that I did not think she would keep it to herself for long. Just the next morning as I was talking to her father in the smithy she swept past. Instead of ignoring me as usual she gave me a dazzling smile. For the first time in ages a look of suspicion crossed her father’s face.
“What has got into her? Why was she smiling at you?” he asked.
“Oh, she was worried about a boy in the village; I mentioned him to your wife. I have had a word with the lad and he won’t trouble her again.”
The smith grunted his acceptance of this ex
planation but he still gave me a hard look and I realised that I needed to leave the village without delay. Otherwise it would only be a matter of time before the ‘sparks would fly’.
After a somewhat tense dinner with the family I made my preparations and retired to my room. Soon I heard the now familiar sounds of the family retiring for the night. In a short while the snoring began in the next room and then I heard the sound I had been waiting for. Light shone through the cracks in the ceiling, which had widened considerably in recent weeks, and then the patch was removed and the rope was lowered down.
“Darling,” I whispered as she dropped directly into my waiting arms. “I have wanted to hold you all day,” I lied as I hugged her to me.
“If we tell Papa that you will marry me, we could be together all of the time,” she urged in my ear.
“You know, I think you are right about that. Let’s tell him tomorrow.”
“Really?” She nearly squealed with delight and I hurriedly put my hand over her mouth.
“Shh, they cannot find us like this. They must believe that you are chaste and pure. Do you understand?”
She nodded silently.
“But while we wait, I want to try something new.”
“New?” she queried and I could understand her puzzlement. For in the last few weeks we had covered most of the content of the Hindu love manuals and she had taken to every single depravity with the enthusiasm of a glutton in a bakery. She thought we had done all that was possible with the sexual act and she was not far wrong, but I still had a surprise in store.
“Yes, what I am going to teach you is how they make love in the Sultan’s harem in Constantinople. They say it is the very best way.”
“You are not going to tickle me again, are you?”
“Er no, not this time. I want to blindfold you and tie you down to the bed. That way you will not know when I am going to touch you or where. They say it is very sensual.”
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