A Chuckle In My Ear

"Not really." She tossed her long hair, her fingers plucking at its strands. "He's the Red Knight of Normandy. He's survived all sorts of dangerous situations. He'll be fine." She pondered, staring again at the fire. "If he's not dead, which I'll find out soon enough, I'm sure he's over there already. He's got many friends with many ships. His relatives have a castle at Chaumait." She pursed her full lips. "It'd be nice if he died. That way I'd get my dowry back. But probably not if he's a traitor."

"This is a lot of shit to think about," Gytha pointed out, "and we've got supper on its way, m'Lady."

Alice did not look away from me. "See to a place for Robert to stay the night too, Gytha," she ordered. "We've got things to discuss. Tomorrow."

* * *

I woke to the sound of a child playing outside, through the tiny window they'd built high on the wall of the kitchen where I slept. The voice was shrill, breathless with the energy of a summer dawn, and I smiled to myself as I turned away from the wall to fall back to sleep facing the hearth.

Where Alice sat on a stool, watching me as I lay there in her wool blankets.

I propped myself on my elbow at once. "Good... good morning, Lady Adeliza," I managed, yawning.

"Gytha took your clothes away to wash them a few minutes ago," she smiled, as if she had nothing more important to talk to me about than laundry. "They stank."

"I stink," I agreed, rubbing at my scarred arm beneath the blankets. She wore her dress from last night, and it was hard for me to tell whether she'd slept at all. She might have been perched on that stool all through the night. I hesitated, glancing around the cold dim room.

We were alone.

The twinkle in her eye had not yet come back, not since I'd stamped it out by mentioning Walter's unfortunate arrow. She brooded now, her fingers drumming rapidly on her thigh, and I knew enough to know I should hold my tongue until she opened her mouth. "I'd be grateful," she said after awhile, and with none of her usual sparkle, "if you'd stay today. I'm not feeling safe at the moment."

I opened my mouth to speak and then closed it like an idiot. She had to know how impossible that was. "I'm to get your words, Alice, in writing. And bring them back to him. I told you that." I yawned, reaching down to scratch my balls. I needed to piss badly. "I can't stay."

"What happened to your arm?" She had sat up, then leaned abruptly forward, eyes searching the gloom. Her voice had taken on some of its old snap, that quick alertness she'd always had.

I glanced at my left bicep, the hideous twisting scar. "A Moor happened to it," I admitted at last, "near Nicea. His sword, anyway."

She sprang up and crossed to me, her dress stirring the rushes, then knelt for a closer look. "That looks hideous," she said at last, awe in her voice. I flinched when her finger reached out, fluttering over my puckered flesh. "What?" she asked, and for the first time since last night she laughed. "There was a time when you didn't mind my touch, Robert."

"Times change." I said it thickly, after a pause, and she looked quickly at my face to see what I was thinking. I took a deep breath. "That wound is the reason I had to come home. That wound almost killed me." I settled myself as another of her fingers joined the first, tracing the scar. "It's still not healed, I think. Not inside."

"Can you still fight?" She smiled. "I told you I wanted you to stay and keep me safe, but now I'm not as sure."

"I don't know," I confessed. "I've not been in a fight since it happened." I hesitated, but I'd never been able to lie to this woman. "I worry about my shield. I think that arm would break again like a dry twig. It's a fear I have." She'd moved her fingers off the scar now and down my arm, her face curiously intense, and I used my other hand to move her off. "Don't."

"Don't?" She seemed puzzled, her face still ready to laugh. "I told my maids to leave me alone. Nobody is coming in for an hour, at least."

"No, it's not that." I swallowed, acutely conscious of my dick stretching, thickening under the blanket. "I mean. Not entirely that."

"What, then?" There had been a time I thought I'd never again see those lips of hers, quirking into a mischievous smile. Her hand returned now, on my chest. She ruffled the hair there, circled the nipple. "You weren't this shy five years ago," she pointed out.

I looked away, then found her eyes again. "Don't," I told her again, so quietly. "Please."

She left her hand on my chest a bit longer, her head cocked, then let it fall away with a nod. "I made a decision last night."

"Yeah?" I willed my erection to subside, but it was difficult with her crouching right there. With the memory of her arms, her legs, her cunt... "What did you decide, Alice?"

"You know what he wants from me. Henry." I nodded, her eyes glittering. "So I want you to write my statement."

"Me?"

"You." She sounded firm. "You'll say the right things. And I trust you, Robert, with my life... for even more than the obvious reasons," she added, glancing up at the window.

I nodded slowly, still wary. "If that's really what you want, I suppose."

"It is." She smiled again, then swept to her feet and began pacing the kitchen. "I'll hire a messenger to take the letter to London, today. Then I will go with you to see Henry tomorrow." She faltered. "That's if you think it's a wise idea, I mean."

My heart thudded, my cock twitchy. "I know your needs," I told her after a moment to collect my thoughts. "You think to save Sir Walter's land and to protect your son."

"My son," she nodded, eyes boring into me with her shining intensity. "I do."

"Then I think seeing Lord Henry is probably a wise move," I smiled. I was elated. I could get her to London before the next Sunday, and after that I'd just need to think about how I could handle the new King... what I should ask him, how I could wheedle him. I waited for her to leave, my penis still obstinately high. "Look, can you do me a favor? I need to piss."

She arched an eyebrow and nodded toward the little door in the corner. "The kitchen garden is right outside."

I scowled. "I mean, a little privacy? Perhaps?" I looked meaningfully at the other door, the one leading into the hall. "Could you leave?"

She waved my protest away. "Nonsense. I've seen you naked before, and your clothes won't be dry until the sun is higher." She stopped short, eyes wider. "Wait. Why do you want me to leave?" She raised her hand to her mouth, but not before I saw the smile start to form there. "I got you hard, didn't I?"

"A good hostess," I grumbled, shifting under the blankets, "would concern herself more about my moral welfare. May God forgive you, Alice."

Her lively eyes hardened. "God's all right, but I can't say I've ever needed His help getting you hard." She shrugged. "As you wish, Robert. Try to keep your piss off the herbs, yes? I'll come back with Gytha once she lights the breakfast fires." She rose, smoothing her dress, then grinned. "Did you hear my son playing outside? He was up before dawn."

I matched her smile. "I woke up to his voice." I paused, the thing unsaid between us, always. My cock deflated, a slow even cooling of my ardor, and I looked pointedly away as she made her way through the far door and into the hall.

God be praised. I had fought my lusts.

I was still congratulating myself as I rose naked, stretched, swung my left arm a few times, and then padded across the chilly floor to wave my prick out the garden door, the hot urine hissing down beside the porch. I congratulated myself again in the level rays of the rising sun, for missing Alice's lavender plants, before hurrying back to the blanket by the wall.

I'd ridden hard for four days. I deserved to sleep in.

* * *

My clothes were dry before noon, so I gratefully shrugged out of a spare robe of Sir Walter's. It felt strange wearing the man's things. I'd thought nothing of sliding into his wife years ago, but somehow sliding into his clothing seemed like a more intimate violation. "Thank you for doing the washing," I told Gytha as I changed in front of her. "I know it meant getting up early."

"I'm a servant," she snapped, "so I serve. No need to thank me." She watched, stirring a venison stew, as I stepped out of Sir Walter's clothing. "You're nicely built," she allowed, leering at my cock. "I can see why she let you fuck her."

"Yeah," I sighed, pulling up my trousers, "but it probably would have been better if she hadn't."

"Undoubtedly," Gytha sniffed, turning away. The woman was clearly done with me, so I laid my cleaned cloak in the corner by the blankets I'd slept in and stalked out into the hall.

The midmorning world outside sounded and smelled exactly like the rest of England at that moment: the grassy scent of men haying. Acrid manure and soft whinnies from the low stables, where my three horses had joined the two Sir Walter had left. Woodsmoke and stew, the clack of a loom, the soft silence of the breeze in the meadows.

The laughter of a boy outside.

"He sounds happy," I beamed, finding Alice with her spindle by the fire. She started as I stepped up, and I realized she'd nodded off. "You're tired."

"I slept poorly," she admitted, shaking some charm into her face, "as I think you know." She yawned. "Thank you for writing my letter."

"It was my pleasure." I assumed she could write, but she'd insisted I set her thoughts down for her exactly as Henry will want to read them, so I'd sat by candlelight in the grey morning and I'd done what she asked. Eadric, a boy from the village, had been sent off that morning to ride the message to London on one of Sir Walter's palfreys. "It should arrive on Wednesday. Henry will read it on Thursday."

"And we will arrive on Friday." She paused, staring into the distance. "I think we should take a boat."

"A boat?" My eyebrows shot up. "Fuck that. Pirates. Sea-monsters."

"But I'll have a protector," she wheedled, "and he's almost a knight."

"A protector with a crippled arm," I chuckled, but I supposed a boat was not a terrible idea. "The Great Road is easy traveling this time of year. It was good enough for me, and for your Eadric." I shrugged. "Three easy days, I'd think, with you not being much of a rider. It would be faster by sea..."

"I think you remember I ride quite well," she shot back, gazing up at me through her lashes, the two of us sharing a guilty and secret smile, "but riding horses hurts. By boat, we can get to London in two days, and we can sit down and rest the entire time."

"Yeah. If we don't drown."

She shrugged. "I know a guy. Walter has several vassal fishermen."

"Fealty to Sir Walter Tirel might not have a lot of value for much longer," I reminded her, "once word of your husband's arrow spreads around."

She made a face. "All the more reason to use their loyalty while we can." She yawned again. "I am Lady Adeliza of Langham, and I say we will go by boat."

I smiled. "As my lady wishes."

"But now? I wish to go to sleep. Just for an hour or so" She hesitated. "You could join me. As my protector?" Her voice seemed to me as if it could not decide whether to be hopeful, mocking, or eager, and I held her gaze a moment before I bowed my head.

"No thank you, Lady." I stood, my knees protesting almost as much as my arm these days. "I'm going to see to my horses. Then..." I hesitated, my face going hot as I plunged on, "with your permission, I'd like to meet your son? A bit more formally?"

She brightened at once. "You saw him yesterday. At dinner."

"Yes," I smiled. He'd looked at me with curiosity, but I'd just been a random warrior. A messenger. "But we didn't really talk."

"You might be better off sleeping with me than talking with him," she chuckled. "He's only got four years. Deep conversations are not really what he's good at."

I debated whether I should say it, my cock stirring, feeling things I'd brutally kept down for a long time. "And sleeping is not really what we're good at, Alice." I fled outside before her smile could overtake her entire face.

* * *

I lay down that night in my corner against the kitchen wall, anticipating a morning ride back through Colchester with Alice (and, probably, Gytha) so that we could get to Brightlingsea to find a boat to take us around to London. I grinned to myself, and not because of the roast venison or the excellent beer; no, I was happy to have spoken with the boy.

Her son. And not Sir Walter's.

The blankets did nothing to make the floor any softer, but that was all right. A soldier on campaign soon becomes grateful for anything more substantial than the open sky and the hard ground.

Moonlight through the high window showed me rough stone, the hard planes of the big table where Gytha and the maids did the cooking, the wide hearth on the opposite wall. I was at that stage of the night where a part of my mind was sleeping and the other still clung to its thoughts, sorting them, putting them into baskets, preparing to dream of them. So I was not quite sure whether the door to the rest of the house opened in fact, or in my head, but a faint lance of firelight from the low flames in the hall stabbed across the rushes on the floor.

Did I hear someone enter the kitchen? Did I hear the door close, silent in the middle-night? If so, was it a person or a devil? Or an angel? I did not know what creatures crept the night in these valleys of Essex, nor what phantoms my mind had summoned to punish me for my sins.

But I lay silent, warm and snug in the blankets, head pillowed on my saddle as it had been so many nights before. All around me the stone house slept, rustling with linens, skittering with mice, and I did not even hear the soft sweep of footsteps until they were beside me, a shadow rising up to catch the moonlight.

Alice.

She knelt quickly, my eyes stirring as her nimble fingers wormed their way along the rushes on the floor, inside the blankets, to press against my flesh. "Wha..."

"Shh." I knew she was smiling; I could hear it in her voice, the merry whisper I'd heard five years before, heating my blood. "Just lie there, Robert."

"No," I hissed, her hand closing triumphantly around a cock gone thick with desire. "You can't."

"I can." Her other hand burrowed in to join its fellow, fingers quick and eager on my balls. "I've missed you."

"No." I was firmer now, my voice rising to a hushed grunt, the chuckle of God in my ears. I summoned my will and brought my hands down to hers, forcing them off me. "I can't."

She cocked her head, a hooded shape in the night. "You can't?"

"Please." My mouth had gone wool-dry, my cock twitching helplessly as I steered her hands away. I groaned once more as the blanket dragged across my head when I sat up, the sensation overwhelming. "Fuck. Sorry. You have to go." I tried in vain to summon some saliva. "I... I'll tell you about it tomorrow. Just, please, leave." God still laughed at me, mocking my resolve as my penis strained. "Go, Alice."

She drew back, her hands in her lap, and even though I could not see her eyes I knew exactly what they looked like. "Tomorrow, then," she nodded, her voice like a steel feather as, swiftly, she crept from the room.

Leaving me to sit in the rushes and rue the way Gytha would laugh when she saw my seed staining the blankets at the wash-tub. It pumped out steadily now, even as Alice's door closed, the sinful pleasure coursing through me and out of me unheeded into the wool.

* * *

Gytha looked very uncomfortable on Alice's palfrey the next morning, and I reflected glumly that this was why Alice had insisted on sailing: Gytha could not ride.

And, of course, it would be unheard-of for a baron's wife to travel alone with me. Especially given the fat bag of silver she was carrying at her belt.

I sat on the Grey, waiting in the misty shadow of Sir Walter's gate, watching impatiently as one of the servants tried to hoist the maid into the saddle. "I leave Sir Walter's home in good hands," Alice smiled to herself, looking down at the other elderly servant: I recognized the fellow who'd spoken to me when I'd arrived.

He spat into the dust of the yard. "Yeah. I'll keep everything safe enough."

She glanced serenely over at me. So far she'd said nothing at all about last night, though the morning had been hectic enough to discourage any kind of conversation. "Charles here has been with my husband all his life."

"Served his father," the old man nodded, "back with Duke William, when he come over here to take the country."

I nodded uncertainly, shifting the sword on my hip. I'd felt like I ought to wear it on the road, just in case. "Mine too."

"Yes?" Charles eyed me. "I didn't take you for a Norman."

"My mother is Saxon," I shrugged, "and I take after her, they say. I think my father was from Brittany, but Duke William captured him and brought him here, oh, almost fifty years ago? Before the Conquest."

I received a curt nod. "Brittany isn't Normandy, friend."

"That's as may be," I shrugged, "but he's dead now. So it hardly matters."

"God rest his soul," the man nodded.

"Oh, it's been many years. He and my mother met right after you lot came over."

"Yeah?" Charles leered. "A thegn's daughter, was she? To marry a knight?"

"No. She was a beekeeper," I smiled, "and my father was no knight. He became a glassmaker. There's no telling how God does his work." I nodded toward Alice. "We should go, if you hope to find any fishermen still in port."

The road unwound before us, back toward Colchester and its squat keep, as Alice trotted along beside me. Her voice rang gaily out over the misty summer meadows. "Did you want to discuss anything with me, Robert?"

I looked pointedly back toward Gytha. "Should I, Lady?" Far behind I could see another servant on Walter Tirel's slowest pony, following along to take the other three horses back. We'd leave him behind within the next half mile, I could see.

Alice rolled her eyes and turned in the saddle, smiling back at the dour maid. "Gytha? Last night I sneaked into the kitchen and groped Robert's cock with the full intention of fucking him, but he sent me away. We're going to chat about it now, okay?"

I felt Gytha's gaze on my flushed neck. "Whatever, m'Lady."

"There." She beamed at me. "So. Did you want to discuss anything with me, Robert?"

I sighed unhappily, looking out over the fields. Our ride was about an hour by road, the horses moving strongly in the cool of the morning, and I did not want to talk to her about this. But I'd heard God chuckling at me, and she needed to know about that. "I cannot be with a woman," I told her shortly, my words tumbling out into the Essex marshes.

She turned to me slowly, her lips quirking in one of those mysterious feminine smiles that stir the loins with no effort at all. "Felt like you could," she purred, nudging her horse closer to Grey.

"I was wounded, Lady," I went on, the words tumbling out now, "by a fucking brute of a Moor. Massive fellow. I was on foot, he on a horse. This was past Constantinople, by a lake, four Mays ago. He nearly took my arm off, and that with my shield taking most of the blow." I shuddered. "It's only by God's grace that I survived at all."

"Why were you on foot?" She asked it gently, with the sort of perception expected from a knight's wife.

"Duke Robert of Normandy had lost his horse. I gave him mine so that he could ride to safety." I smiled down at Grey, remembering. "This very horse, in fact. He'd already taken a wound, so I was scrambling for a fresh mount anyway." I thought of Robert's grant of land, of the letter to his brother. His application for my knighthood. "He was very grateful."

"Okay." We rode along in silence for awhile. "What does that have to do with me fucking you?"